32 - Chapter 30

Sa Bina smirked as she saw Xiu Lian change her direction to come straight towards her. “Seems like the fun is about to begin.” she said to Jia Yun quietly.

Jia Yun looked up and saw Xiu Lian stalking towards their table with a scowl on her face. She came to stop directly in front of Sa Bina. “I don’t know what this person has told you Lady Jia Yun,” she started, “But she is no noble. Just pretending to be one.”

“Oh really?” asked Jia Yun. “And how do you know that?”

“I ran into this charlatan last night,” said Xiu Lian. “She was pretending to be a lady, but one look at her style made it abundantly obvious that she is only a commoner. So I asked my father. He said there was no noble family with the name Sa in the kingdom, not that he had heard of anyway.”

“Really,” asked Jia Yun. “And your father knows all the noble families in the whole kingdom? That is most impressive.”

“I take it your father is a historian.” replied Sa Bina. She had a small smirk playing on her face the entire time Xiu Lian was delivering her little speech.

“Of course not.” scoffed Xiu Lian. “Why would my father be a historian? As a baron he doesn’t have the time to waste on such things.”

“Ah, I really thought he was a historian.” mused Sa Bina. “How else would he know every single noble family in the kingdom that has ever existed. I am sure several noble families must have disappeared over the years, Lady Jia Yun?”

“Don’t you dare to address Lady Jia Yun with your common tongue you charlatan.” said Xiu Lian with vehemence. “We should have her arrested Lady Jia Yun. Impersonating a noble is a serious crime.” she said, addressing the girl with a lot more deference.

“Is your love for all this gossiping and meddling the reason that you are not doing very well academically?” asked Sa Bina in a false sweet tone.

The simple question left Xiu Lian struggling to respond. It took her almost a minute to regain enough of her composure to respond coherently. “What are you blabbering about now.” she managed to get out.

“Well, I did not see you in either of my classes this morning.” replied Sa Bina. “Meaning that you are not good enough to join those classes. Then you come here, and you tell us that you have been busy spreading gossip, having spent your time meddling in the affairs of your betters.”

“What do you think, Lady Jia Yun.” asked Sa Bina, openly laughing now. “Do you think Lian here would be able to improve her marks if she spent more time studying and less time looking to gossip? Or is she too stupid to learn?

The calculated insult left Xiu Lian scrambling to respond. By now all the students at the new by tables were paying full attention to this conversation. The attention was making the student's gossip even more. The story of her morning lessons started to spread like wildfire, with those who had been in those lessons quickly becoming centres of attention.

Jia Yun was having more fun than she thought she would. Sa Bina seemed to be able to find the right levers to rile up Xiu Lian. She wondered if she should stay on the sidelines or engage as Sa Bina obviously wanted her to. To be fair to Sa Bina, she had not instigated, and had not tried to bring in Jia Yun, until Xiu Lian had tried to get her to come out against Sa Bina first. From the mischievous twinkle in Sa Bina’s eye, not only was she challenging Jia Yun to step up, but Jia Yun was almost certain that Sa Bina wouldn’t care which way she decided to go.

“Well, Sa Bina.” replied Jia Yun feigning a thoughtful look, “While I can not speak to a specific situation, without a lot more information. I would have to agree with your assertion that there is a correlation between effort and success. If a student were to spend more time in academic pursuits, then generally that would be reflected in their performance. Of course there may be extenuating circumstances, where no amount of effort can make up for low aptitude.”

“Well put Lady Jia Yun,” replied Sa Bina, then turned back to Xiu Lian and continued in a musing tone. “So which category do you fall into Xiu Lian, the lack of effort or the lack of aptitude? I wonder if you are in the third special category, where the lack of aptitude is compounded by the lack of effort? I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. You can think of it like an academic survey.”

Jia Yun could not help but start to giggle at the way Sa Bina was taunting and provoking Xiu Lian. Though she had never had much interaction with the girl in the past, she had seen how Xiu Lian liked to gossip and stick her nose in places where it did not belong. She was also always trying to get those with higher social standing to take her side, as if associating with such people would raise her own meagre standing.

Xiu Lian was getting redder and redder as Sa Bina continued with her taunts. By now a large proportion of the student body in the cafeteria were openly focused on the verbal altercation. If she did not make a comeback soon, her reputation would be trashed. Xiu Lian knew that recovering from that would be a monumental task. She thought about the crux of Sa Bina’s argument. She had expected to see her in her class, but for each subject there were four classes. There was the entry level, an introduction to the subject, the basic level, which introduced slightly more advanced concepts, the intermediate level, and finally the advanced level teaching the most difficult concepts. The students were not placed in a class based on age, but rather were placed with those of similar ability to make it easier for the professors to tailor their courses appropriately.

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Xiu Lian could not believe that a new student could be in the advanced classes for any subjects, and thought it was more likely that she was thinking that she was doing well by not being in the entry level classes. How could she know which grade Xiu Lian was in, and was just trying to fluster her into not pushing Sa Bina into revealing that she was no noble. Xiu Lian decided to push back.

“Just because you are not in the entry classes,” sneered Xiu Lian, “does that make you feel like you are doing well? It will take you years to catch up to the rest of us. I am in the intermediate classes, you can talk back to me when you catch up.”

“She is not in the entry classes.” replied a mirthful Jia Yun. “She spent the morning in the advanced classes for both Mathematics and Economics.”

The look on Xiu Lian’s face was a picture indeed. How the hell had this girl made it into the advanced classes for those two subjects. The professors were tough, and would not let anyone jump classes without strict tests. That must be it, thought Xiu Lian. She must have been placed into those classes, no way did she test into the advanced classes.

“Getting the headmaster to get you into the advanced class won’t mean anything when you can't keep up.” said Xiu Lian, “Let’s see how long it takes you to get kicked out. I bet you won’t even make it past the first test.”

“She was tested,” said a boy on an adjoining table. “Both the professors tested her. I was there.”

“Not only did she pass.” added another boy on another table. “But she passed out of the curriculum and is now a teaching assistant for both subjects.”

Xiu Lian’s face became ashen at hearing others talk about the morning. More and more people started talking about what had happened in the morning classes. How, just how could a 13 year old girl, who had just started school today become so good at two of the most difficult subjects taught in the whole school.

“You were saying something about a bet?” asked Sa Bina in a sickly sweet voice. “Did you still want to go ahead?” Sa Bina was a little annoyed that the boys had spoiled her fun, but such was life.

Xiu Lian realised that nothing she could say would help her right now, so she just turned around and stomped out, while swearing to get revenge. She would speak to her father about this uppity girl.

“That was a pity, I really thought she would dig herself deeper.” said Jia Yun.

“Yes, the boys spoiled our fun.” replied Sa Bina. “Oh well, I am sure we will have more opportunities later on. What other classes do you have today?”

“I have advanced management and advanced history today.” replied Jia Yun. “What about you?”

“I will be joining you for advanced management.” replied Sa Bina. “My last class of the day is entry level geography.”

“Yes, that would make sense.” replied Jia Yun. “So let us order, other wise we will not have the time to eat and make it to management. You aren’t a teaching assistant in that one also are you?”

“Sure, I will let you order for us as I have no idea what is good here.” replied Sa Bina. “And no, I tested out of only two classes. My views on management are different enough from what is considered normal here to only get me into the advanced class.”

“That’s interesting.” replied Jia Yun, as she called over the waiter and ordered two seafood dishes for them both.. “I would love to hear about the differences.”

“Sure,” replied Sa Bina. “Having someone to discuss the difference will help me understand the situation here better. The other subjects will not be as easy. Though I am looking forward to history. I would really like to understand why the kingdoms became so insular over time. It seems only the most powerful cultivators ever leave to travel.”

“Yes, they will go over it in a great amount of detail in history class.” replied Jia Yun. “But essentially the changes are driven by the beast waves. A long time ago, the beast waves were rare and infrequent. That allowed people the ability to travel far and wide. But as time has gone on, the beast waves have not only become a regular occurrence, but the time between each wave has also been reducing. Now, we barely have the time to prepare between waves to be ready for the next one.”

“Are the beast waves still occurring every 5 years or so?” replied Sa Bina. “I heard that the reduction in the time between beast waves had actually helped?

“Well.” replied Jia Yun. “While that is true to a certain extent, that answer has lost all its nuance. The shorter cycle means that each beast wave is less intense, but that does not mean it is always better. The shorter time to prepare has made it impossible to do much beyond the beast wave preparations. It has also stopped a lot of the interactions between kingdoms apart from at the high levels. As you will learn in geography, the distances between kingdoms are extremely large. The wilds are full of beasts that make travel hazardous, and highly risky.”

“So the kingdom is almost always on a war footing making it impossible to spend resources on any other large projects.” finished Sa Bina for her. It seemed like the shortening time frames was the primary cause of the insular behaviour.

“Yes, and the time between waves is largely considered stable,” finished Jia Yun. “The cycle is actually decreasing. Not by years, or even months, but each cycle is shaving on average between 5 days and 15 days each time.”

“So every 100 years the full cycle reduces by a year.” replied Sa Bina thoughtfully. “In the next 500 years, we will be left with an annual beast wave, leading to a perpetual one.” She fervently hoped that some of those powerful people were trying to get to the bottom of the escalating cycle, otherwise her fun in this new world would be curtailed by a permanent state of war.