Li Tian’s idea of ‘pointing out my mistakes’ was to give me; what he considered a light strike to make me understand.

  Light to him only.

  It hurt like hell, but it was damn effective. By the end of our little training session, I somehow had most of the basics down, although my stamina was shockingly bad. The speed of my attacks were slow, and let’s not even talk about my strength.

  Despite all this, I managed to understand the foundational moves, in a 2D sort of way. I actually needed much more experience to execute them in a real scenario, and lots of training to make them effective.

  I also needed a lot of physical training to contain and use this ‘Qi’

  Basically, I was going to need to train, a lot. To make it worse, It’s a tight schedule with only 3 months until the sect examination.

  By the time the sun was almost setting, I was sweating profusely and ached all over. This asshole Li Tian didn’t look like he broke a sweat once, but I had to admit that I was very impressed with him.

  “I-” I got cut off by myself trying to catch my breath, “I can’t anymore, I give up.” I managed to get out.

  As if the words were law, I fell down and sprawled over the floor, looking up at the sky. The setting sun was beautiful. Thankfully the sun was as usual, at least some things stay the same.

  “I need to shower…” I muttered to myself, Li Tian with his sharp senses picked it up somehow, “Hm? What’s a shower?”.

  Straining to get up I told him “Nah, nothing. Is there anywhere to bathe around here?”.

  “Of course, follow me.”.

  He took me to a river not far away and he started to take his clothes off, “What are you doing?” I asked him, which got me an eye brow raise from him.

  “Uh, bathing? What else?”, my jaw opened, “Out here in the open? And isn’t the river cold?”.

  He chuckled slightly, “don’t worry, this area is for men and the river is actually warm.”. He finished undressing and cannonballed straight into the river, I got some splashes and oddly he wasn’t lying, the water was somehow warm.

  I shrugged mentally, in some cultures it was normal to get undressed with same gender, although personally I wasn’t a fan. It was either jump in or stay dirty though, so I followed along.

  The river was extremely comfortable, the water was nice and warm. A lot of things didn’t make sense here, so I didn’t question it.

  10 minutes later we were walking back to the compound. As we got to the entrance I started to give a farewell, “See you later”.

  “What do you mean? Oh, your memory, I forgot. You have a place here; the medical area was only for recovery. Follow me.” Li tian said.

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  This was a pleasant surprise, the Li family is closer to me, or maybe my family, than I thought. I followed him for a few minutes until we found ourselves in front of a courtyard.

  “This is it, your place.”. I was stunned. I had a whole courtyard to myself? The Li family is incredibly wealthy, and crucially, kind to me.

  I need to repay them when I can.

  “Thank you for everything.” I said with some emotion, to which he waved off as if nothing. He then said “Same time tomorrow? I’m really glad you are training now, and you have some talent for it.”.

  “Of course. I’ll beat your ass soon.” I replied, I meant it as a joke, but it was definitely a goal of mine.

  It stung how hard that made him laugh…

  I entered the building to see a well lived in space, a little messy but nothing too bad. I took a few minutes to clean things up a little, the place was actually very nice and felt cozy.

  I walked to my now new wardrobe and carefully hung up my robes before jumping in bed.

  The soft bed felt like paradise after a day of hard work, both mentally and physically. I fell asleep instantly.

  …

  I woke up sore again, thankfully this time It was from sore muscles. That was a good sign, I felt some pride in feeling it. Although it sounds strange, feeling it showed how hard I worked yesterday, which I felt pride in.

  I got some good quality sleep and felt better than I had ever in this place.

  Ignoring my soreness, I got out of bed and got dressed. There were a few variants in the wardrobe, but all were a sort of robe. I decided to choose a set of black with red linings.

  I looked in a long mirror on the wall, taking another look at myself. I had to admit I liked the new fashion, slightly odd but it also felt nice.

  I decided to look around a little more before I left since I didn’t have much time to look at things properly because of my exhaustion last night.

  Surprisingly, the house had a few books in it. They were all about blacksmithing and forges. I noted these and decided to have a proper look again later.

  Another interesting thing was a big wooden box. It didn’t have much height but was quite wide, like a big rectangle. I opened it up and found some jewellery and lots of pieces of parchment.

  The jewellery consisted of two rings and one necklace; both were actually really nice. The two rings looked to be a set, one black and one white, each were relatively simple in desgin and very smooth. They were opposing colours, but they were perfectly contrasting which made them a perfect set.

  the necklace was a type of pendant, it looked simple but clearly of high quality. It had a thin silver chain, and a little rectangle with slight cuts on the corners that hung portrait. It had a smooth white surface, seemingly made from a type of stone. On the back it had the character of “Tang” at the top and the character for “White” and at the bottom. The other side of it was left plain.

  He tried on the necklace and thought it fit him quite well, and the rings were perfect, almost as if they were made for him. He put the black ring on his left hand and white on his right, and it felt right.

  Thinking of the day ahead, I decided to put them carefully back into the box so they could be kept safe. Then I decided to pick up the parchments.

  They contained two drawings. One was a slightly grotesque man, he was gaunt man, he looked to be old, yet young at the same time. The most definitive feature was his eyes though, completely black and the drawing seemed to bring a feeling of coldness to them.

  On the back of the parchment was a mess of words, they overlapped with each other often, they read “DIE!”, “KILL!” and “WHY?”. Totally normal… not.

  I took a wild guess that this guy was not well liked.

  Another piece had another person drawn, I couldn’t quite tell the gender of the person, they had long straight hair and some feminine features. They looked a lot less intimidating than the other guy. However, the same writing was on the back of the drawing.

  The other pieces of parchments made me very sad. They contained letters, it seemed the previous Song Duyi had wrote them to his family who were long gone.

  Many letters detailing his days, and how much he missed them all were laying there.

  I felt terrible seeing them. I didn’t read them through properly, but I made sure to carefully put them away, as these were all important things.

  I solemnly put the wooden box away, keeping it at the bottom of the closet where it fit nicely.