My physical breakthrough does not grant me some power spike, more like some overall conditioning. I can breathe more air with each breath. My endurance, flexibility and sense of balance have increased. My strength has increased a bit by default, but those gains have been pushed back to the second realm as the second physical rank focuses upon attaining my element and qi compression.

Nothing highlights this more clearly than my fight with the golem. Five minutes of fighting, I lie defeated once more. The only thing helping me last longer is my increasing qi density, which has been hindering the golem more than I thought. The golem has yet to increase its strength for the past few days. So perhaps it does have some level cap. I feel I can win once I breakthrough spiritually. If not immediately, soon after. Either that, or I have now bought into the sappy story that the clan elders have been trying to sell me for about a month.

As much as I want to awaken the fire element first, it sounds painful. Definitely going to obtain the water element from Spirit Like Water before that. On that front, I progress much slower. I have almost mastered liquid to solid qi conversion. But the transition is less an instant change and more I have to constantly fill my qi reserves with qi, empty them and refill them with slightly more solid qi.

It honestly feels really slow, but Aunt Meng says this process is important, even if she thinks I should wait until after I awaken my element and strengthen my body. I don’t think she has quite realized that I am on the cusp of reaching the third spiritual rank – I should probably ask for more sections of the Mind’s Eye for my cover.

҉҉҉

While only a quarter of the students roam the campus these days, they are often followed by anger and crying. Their guardians bemoan the fact that this children are growing ‘slowly’, as if the children can control that. But not only do they make no effort to hide their disappointment, but dare to criticize the children under their tutelage. These children are little more than babies and the variance in their development is greater than I thought – since I ranked highly, I associate with the more mature children, forming a much more distorted picture of reality.

My arguments with these adults have done little good – the adults take the high ground by pure virtue that ‘they know better’ despite the fact that these two months have been anything but. My words fall on deaf ears. My criticisms are ‘out of place’, ‘ignorant’ and ‘factually incorrect’ by the words of their guardians, at least the ones I have gotten into arguments. Aunt Meng now follows me around, mainly to prevent me from getting into arguments with these abusive guardians.

“Don’t.” Aunt Meng says, hugging me. A classic redirection, since her opinion on the subject, while not as bad, is not particularly great either. “Perhaps it is time for you to enter closed door meditation. How close are you to the second spiritual rank?”

“I’m a few days away from reaching the third spiritual rank.” I say, grasping her hands, staring at a guardian yelling the child under their tutelage. This treatment is hardly acceptable from an exhausted parent who has worked all day then has to deal with underfed child, let alone from a cultivator who is stronger, smarter and richer than such a parent. Let alone the guardian has no other job than to care for the child, not abuse it.

“That’s quite the fact to drop on me out of the blue.” Aunt Meng says. “But if that is really true, once you break through, I can write a letter to the clan elders running this experiment to account for your considerations. As the foremost spiritual cultivator in your cohort, your words will have merit.”

“Time for that closed door meditation then.” I say.

“Not going to physically cultivate?” Aunt Meng asks, releasing me.

“No, I only need a day or two. My body can handle that much neglect.” I say, running back to my dorm room.

҉҉҉

Two days later, my soul reaches a critical mass of solid qi. My soul implodes onto itself and, within moments, my soul is a little bigger than the size of my head. I can already tell that the first step in the third spiritual rank is going to be no different than the second rank: regrow my soul size while strengthening it with solid qi.

It’s not like the first time around took me eight months to complete, with a spiritual lake to help me. No biggie, I’m now a big boy and can handle such trivialities. Suppressing a groan as I open my eyes, Aunt Meng throws me a small cube. A ‘900’ appears above the cube within moments. My spiritual cloak reads ‘1400’.

Either way, Aunt Meng looks at me funny, before sighing. “Alright, I’ll write that letter. What you want on it?”

“Allowing children to be children – not to allow them to run rampant and destroy everything, but when they do something wrong, take the time to explain it calmly and carefully, even if it takes a few repetitions and different ways. Recognize that the first year of growth, no matter how accelerated, is extremely demanding and can be confusing. While children do not have work or fight monsters and other clans, we struggle just finding our footing as it changes every single day and have little prior experience…” I begin.

The entire letter takes about half a day to write, bouncing ideas back and forth with Aunt Meng. It becomes clear that she views all of childhood as ‘a waste of time’, with a focus on how valuable the campus is an opportunity. I have trouble getting her to see if that the children cannot use the opportunity, then it is useless. The campus is geared for twelve year old children and up – not babies who are physically twelve years old. But we eventually hash something out. Only time will tell its effectiveness in changing the campus for the better. Perhaps I am intervening into something I have no idea about, since I am no more a child than Aunt Meng is, but I do believe I offer some insight due to my unique reincarnator and child status.

҉҉҉

After that, I take out the spiritual pill. It was supposed to be used to strengthen my soul enough for a cultivation breakthrough, but eating it then when all I needed to do was condense my qi…seemed wasteful. Now, I can skip the monotonous repairing and growing portion.

My soul begins glistening, growing stronger and stronger as a rush of qi begins flooding it. It’s much greater than the Three Soul Nurturing Pill, which had a much more passive and subtle improvement. I feel like I am dropped back into the Spiritual Lake again, instead of being fed a pill weighing just a few ounces, so I get to work. The smaller my soul is, the easier it is to repair.

I divert the qi that is feeding my soul to grow to its repairment. Not the most easy task given how much qi is at play. I am not sure what Aunt Meng was thinking when she thought I needed such a high grade pill. Sure, it would have been nice, but it would have definitely shattered some talismans if I took it at the second spiritual rank. Now, my soul is hungry enough to consume what qi is thrown at it. And, if for some miracle it cannot, my body is now strong enough to join in on the meal.

Collect qi. Make strings. Weave qi. Repeat.

As much as I try to repair my soul before it grows, I am only half-way successful. It grows so fast and repairs require so much more effort, consideration and qi. But by the time the pill’s effects wear off, my soul has regained half of its former size, and a quarter of its repairs are done. The spiritual cloak reads ‘1748’, so I guess I really have any reason to complain.

҉҉҉

I wake up in a bathtub of medicinal qi. Oh how I miss that herbal smell – waking and soaking within it almost every moment of every day. Uncomforting that something so familiar feels like it happened so long ago. It was just two months ago.

My room, once again, has gained eight new inhabitants: my friends and their guardians. Story time it seems, three of the four guardians sit together on one of the couches, where a formation mat lays across their laps. But they are not the ones telling the story, only operating the formations to recreate a story that is gradually told by my four friends. The story meanders a lot and I am left quite confused by the end of it – no surprise given I entered near the end.

Once changed and ready, I join the little group – story time ends as it seems the four have just been passing the time until I exit my meditation. Kind of defeats the point of the closed door meditation part, if someone just walks in while I meditate, but alright. I may have missed some company.

“We heard you broke through the third spiritual rank.” Chen Yingyue says, giving me a few bits of candy.

“Do you know what that means?” Nan Yenay asks, giving me a few more bits of candy before moving aside.

“Time to beat the golems?” I ask. Not quite confident I can win, but one of the four is bound to be strong enough after their breakthroughs.

“Already did, so no.” Fang Wangyong says, shaking his head sagely, taking a few bits of my candy. “Punishment for wrong answer.”

He doesn’t get to eat it before Tie Lijie steals and eats them, as he goads Fang Wangyong. Once done, he hands me more bits. “Vacation time. We should visit the Three River Town. The Tie Branch has a base, full of activities.”

When was leaving the campus even an option? “Aren’t we supposed to spend the next four months here?” I ask.

“Since you all broke through, you get a little freedom. A privilege and motivation for hard work.” Aunt Meng says.

If that’s the case, I might as well aim for the Divine Item hidden within the mountain. The Colorful Peaks, not the Hundred Peaks, are known to have their own Divine Item, at least according to the author who wrote Overthrowing the Heavens. While Xin Feng only obtained two of them due to various reasons, I remember where and how to get all of them to a rough degree.

One of Xin Feng’s wives, Bing Meifan, gains some type of water-related treasure in the Blue Terrace Hot Springs. Not too sure what it was, as after she entered his harem, which was pretty early in the series, she enacted her best rendition of a wallflower plant, negating whatever use the item may have had. However, Bing Meifan did describe where she got it.

“How about the Blue Terrace Hot Springs?” I ask.

My suggestion is less than well received. Hard to be satisfied with mere hot springs when you could take something similar in their bathrooms, since those are big enough already, with food at their fingertips if they so choose. And I don’t really have any other way to convince them cause I want the Divine Item…so yeah.

But eventually they do decide to take a lot of Ls for me. Mostly they decided highest cultivation gets priority choosing. Nan Yenay only has ‘564’ for her spiritual cultivation and she’s the highest, followed by Fang Wangyong at ‘513’. Kind of surprised Chen Yingyue is at ‘472’, but apparently she dumped a lot of her time into her musical and physical cultivation to beat the golem, hence her spiritual cultivation lagged a bit.

Tie Lijie is at ‘436’. He is now the smallest out of the four, by several inches, since Wang Fangyong has grown a lot in the last two months. As such, it seems his soul and development is hindered by his physical age. Still bigger than me, but I got sixteen months of spiritual cultivation on him. And now that I have reached the second cultivation realm, my body is going to start growing faster to match the strength of my soul, so I even might outgrow him. Rip.