After all the chaos Will started, the sect leader of the Brightrose Sect was conflicted. At first she was worried she'd picked up a little tyrant by mistake, one who executed people over slight missteps. But the turnaround into a lesson at the end? That was legendary. Incredible leadership potential. And then her bundle of leadership potential turned to the side and called someone a loser repeatedly until they got beat up. And then, just as she thought her little disciple would die here, said disciple somehow managed to take punch after punch to the face without flinching.

Overall, it had been a hell of a night. She was a bit disappointed about what happened to Chen Jun, since he was supposed to be a promising disciple, but that was mostly what other people thought of him as. In her eyes, he was a brat with a shit personality who relied on his above average talent and a ridiculous amount of resources. There was a reason she didn't pick him as her disciple.

Will was oblivious to the sect leader's thoughts, though. He was just wondering about what to do next. He was hoping it wouldn't have to be more antics, because he was pretty anticked out after all that. Luckily his wish was granted as the banquet was about over.

The sect leader passed Chen Jun off to some guard/cop looking people, then headed back to stand in front of her chair at the front of the room.

She introduced Will and Ranna as her new disciples, to which everyone clapped. She then gave some information for the new disciples about how things worked, which Will ignored since it didn't apply to him. Then she gave a “good luck” type message and sent everyone off.

Except for Will and Ranna of course. They were brought back to the sect leader's place.

“Since it's late, I'll leave the two of you to settle in and rest for tonight. We'll begin lessons tomorrow.”

Ranna did her whole bowing schtick, and Will nodded. They both set off down the hall heading to their rooms. As they walked, Ranna started off with some small-talk.

“So… we're disciples now, huh?”

Will responded.

“Yep!”

Ranna was clearly unused to talking to people like Will. Well, everyone was unused to talking to people like Will, since people like Will weren't really a thing, but she was especially so.

They continued the rest of the way in silence, Will heading off into his room first since it was closer. Once inside, Will stretched and yawned.

He was reminded of his points after all that happened tonight. He had an astronomical amount, and it'd only grown higher with the events in the sect. Of course, he'd helped get the Sick Freak caught first and foremost, but now he'd also changed who the first place was on the trial scoreboards, cheesed the second trial in a way that definitely caused distress for the people running it, and got such a ridiculous score in the third one that people were probably thinking he was a monster.

He also muscled in on Ranna's sect leader disciple event by also becoming the sect leader's disciple, and then muscled in on her bullying scene, then unlackeyified a bully, then probably ruined a young master's reputation if not worse.

All in all, he'd done a lot.

He considered what to buy with it all. He could go to the Information Manual Exchange Marketplace, but even with all the points he had, he probably wouldn't be able to get anything better than the legendary martial arts he had now nor whatever he'd get from the leader of a sect. He went to the General Utility section to see if he could buy anything there.

As it turned out, he actually could buy some things there. He could upgrade the Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar. In fact, it wouldn't even cost most of his points. He bought it immediately. Upgrading it again was ridiculously out of his price range.

He went over to the Homesickness Rectification section and grabbed his phone to test it. There was still that manga he had wanted to read more of, so he decided to try that. He opened up his browser and searched the name of it. He found that he was able to get to the site he used to read it on. Checking the Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar, it seemed like it was doing fine so far. He laid down on the fancy bed as he read.

It had actually completed since the time he'd last read it, which wasn't that surprising since it had been a while and it was already like fifty chapters back then. It seemed like there were no funky time shenanigans to be seen with this situation. Which was honestly somewhat funky in and of itself, since it was a completely separate universe.

He was able to complete the whole thing before his Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar ran out. It was a good manga, as he'd remembered. His enhanced brain let him read pretty quickly, so he'd only taken a couple hours to get through it.

Now that he thought of it, couldn't he have copied it into his document storage? And he also didn't really need to read the English translation anymore, did he?

In that case, there was that one manga that was dropped that he hadn't been able to read because of it that he really liked. He went and found the site he'd read the translated chapters on, copied the title in Japanese (the regular copy paste way, not the Document Manipulation way), then searched that.

He was, of course, able to read it perfectly. He even got all the references that he wouldn't have understood normally. He also copied the whole thing into his Document Storage as he read. Just because he could.

By the time he was done, after another couple of hours, the Inter-Universal Connection Dimensional Energy Bar was pretty much empty.

He was tired now, though, so he played down and went to sleep. Without taking off the makeup or fancy clothes.

—

Will woke up in the morning. Pretty late into the morning, but still the morning nonetheless. He hopped up out of bed and stretched. After a bit of groggily wandering around the room looking at things, he heard a knock on the door.

After opening it, he was greeted by one of the servants, who came to take him to see the sect leader. He followed after the servant, who took him to a new area this time. It was an open area with a giant rose in the center.

The rose was bigger than some trees, with a lightly glowing green stalk, and petals of white and red glowing brightly. It was a bright rose, indeed.

Standing next to it was the sect leader, who smiled as Will came in. As the servant left, another servant brought Ranna. She was back to wearing her usual get-up, and no longer had on the makeup from last night.

As she arrived, the sect leader began speaking.

“I hope you both had a good rest last night?”

They both nodded.

“In that case, let's begin. First off, I'll need to check your spiritual roots to find the most suitable method for each of you. We'll start with you, Ranna.”

Will didn't show it on his face, but he was kind of panicking. His spiritual roots were not the kind of thing he really intended to show people and he didn't know what to do.

After she finished up with Ranna, which didn't take long at all, it was Will's turn. Will walked over like he was walking to his execution.

Which made him realize. It didn't actually matter, did it? The one who should be freaked out was the sect leader. And so, his panic abruptly switched to excitement.

The sect leader was quite looking forward to seeing what spiritual roots someone as promising as Will would have. The child was a mystery to her.

She'd even run a background check on both of her new disciples, but nothing turned up for Will, as if they hadn't existed in the area around the sect until the day of the admission test.

She placed a hand on Will's back and sent in her spiritual sense.

Then she pulled back in fright.

What the fuck was that!? How the hell was this kid alive!? What happened to them!?

Will was getting a kick out of this now that he'd stopped panicking. He turned around to the sect leader, looking as innocent as he could manage.

“What's wwong?”

The sect leader's face went paler than it already was. She tried to collect herself and respond politely.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Will… um… are you feeling okay?”

Will cocked his head to the side innocently.

“Hm? I feel fine. Why?”

“O-oh… it's nothing much. Would you turn around again for me?”

Will did so obediently as the sect leader placed her hand on his back again.

She looked closer at the spiritual roots, trying to understand what was going on. Sure, they looked bad, but if the child could be so oblivious to it like that, then they must not be so simple. Perhaps there was something more to them.

She found that there was more to them. Only, that “more” just made it worse.

They seemed to be made up of spiritual energy, some kind of demonic lightning spiritual energy, qi, lifeforce that seemed to come from hundreds of different beasts, healing energy like from healing pills, something that felt worryingly similar to a storage ring, an energy that felt like death, impurities that would usually be found in the meridians…

The only part that felt like actual spiritual roots was pitifully small too. It was all a mess.

“How did this even happen?”

She muttered to herself.

Will turned around, still all smiles.

“Is anything wwong?”

The sect leader shook her head, regretfully.

“I'm sorry. I don't think you'll be able to cultivate.”

That the kid shouldn't be able to live either went unsaid.

Will, of course, had a perfect response.

“Hm? But I alweady have cultivated.”

The sect leader stood still, unmoving for five full seconds before she finished processing Will's words.

“May I… check your cultivation?”

Will didn't know if he should allow that, but… well, it would be funny to see her reaction.

“Okay.”

The sect leader placed her hand on Will's back again and sent in her spiritual sense.

How were there nine dantians here? What the fuck? That… how?

She pushed it aside and checked the bottom one, the one usually used for cultivation. It was full of storm qi that felt incredibly aggressive and dangerous. She noticed then that the meridians were full of even more of that storm qi than the dantian. How was it staying in there? It should've broken out immediately and torn them to shreds.

She decided to check the other nine dantians. The next one up was empty, but the one after that had…

Was that a space ring? No, the mechanisms of a space ring? How? How does one do that? Where was the ring itself? She gave up and moved on.

The next one up was also empty, but the one after that was…

Scary. Very scary. That was the most chaotic spiritual energy she'd seen in her entire life. And it was just raw spiritual energy. Raw spiritual energy on its own would've been bad enough, but this was even worse. And was that a physical object in there? How the hell? Not to mention the array carved into the side.

She moved on, now fearing what she'd find next. The next was a dud again, but after that was…

She wasn't really sure. It was some space-related energy for sure, but beyond that… she couldn't tell. She moved on, and after another empty one she reached the final dantian.

Well… it was something. It seemed to be the lifeforce of a whole ton of beasts, mixed together with some weird healing something? It felt kind of gross. She stepped back.

“What even are you?”

She felt bad after saying it, but she couldn't help herself. That wasn't right. None of that was right.

Sarah was laughing her ass off, while Will turned around, acting cute and innocent.

“Hm? What do you mean?”

The sect leader calmed down and tried to ignore the common sense nagging at her. The storm qi in the meridians would remove the possibility of most spiritual cultivation methods, as would the dantians' contents. So then body cultivation? Seemed like the best option.

“I guess body cultivation would be best for you.”

She calmed her nerves even further and started speaking again.

“Then that'll be all for now. You can return to your rooms for the time being. Ask one of the servants if you need anything.”

After that, a servant came and brought Will and Ranna back to their rooms. Once inside, Will started thinking.

He didn't really have anything to do now. He'd been expecting a bit more from that encounter. He didn't think it would end so quickly.

He was suddenly curious what happened to Chen Jun. He walked out of his room and asked a servant.

As it turned out, Chen Jun wasn't punished severely. Just under temporary house arrest. Which was a shame. Or was it?

If he wasn't punished severely, he could still cause issues, which meant more things for Will to do. Like a sort of recurring villain. But he couldn't do anything to Will if he didn't leave the sect leader's place.

As such, Will went to leave the sect leader's place. Standing out front of the building, he found an issue with that. This place was very, very high up. Which meant going out would require walking down a lot of stairs. Which Will refused to do.

But what else could he do?

He stood at the edge of the flat part the building was on. As he looked down, it really struck him how high up this place was. It was really steep too.

That gave him an idea. He turned around from the edge and headed closer to the house. Then, he tried to jump as far forward as possible. He found he could jump pretty far if he made good use of his footwork.

It seemed like his plan would work, then. He turned to the edge of the cliff, and set off at a run. The servants outside all looked with fear. That fear grew even larger when he jumped off the edge as far as he could.

Will started to regret his decision as soon as he started falling. Falling was not a comfortable feeling. It made his tummy feel bad. But he couldn't really back out, so he just dealt with it.

He was sure that he'd die on impact from this height. Especially so if he hit the ground headfirst. But only if he hit the ground. If he tumbled down the side, he'd just suffer a bunch of damage and die. His heart calmed down a lot more when he saw that he was directly over the ground at the foot of the mountain.

He was now upside-down, falling at terminal velocity towards the hard ground. It didn't feel as uncomfortable now. He had a little over two full minutes to get used to it, so by the end he didn't have any issue at all.

Will slammed into the ground headfirst, scaring the shit out of the few people nearby. As the dust cleared, they saw a small child, completely unharmed.

Though, Will actually wasn't completely unharmed. He got some dust in his eye. That was all, though.

He stood up and dusted himself off. His plan had worked perfectly. Now he just had to figure out what to do next.

He had a vague idea where things were because of his map, but that had been made from flying overhead, so he didn't really know what was what specifically. He decided to head to the place that looked most likely to be a shopping area.

It was a pretty long run away. Long enough that he had to play on his phone to not get bored, but he made it eventually. Looking around it seemed his guess was right.

There were a bunch of small stores and stands around, a cacophony of ware-hawking filling the street. More importantly, Will saw a big building labeled Spiritual Affairs Bureau. If his memory was correct, that would need to be his first destination.

He currently had no money at all. Not even mortal money. And so he entered the building and headed to the only empty counter. The counter was a bit higher than he would've liked, but he was still able to converse. The counter was manned by a grumpy looking old guy, who adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses as he looked at Will.

“Whatcha need, kid?”

Will smiled brightly.

“Money.”

The old man snorted.

“Thought so. What's your name?”

“Will.”

“How's that spelled?”

Will took out the ingot he used to kill a guy that one time, and used the Export function to carve his name onto it. Then he showed it to the old man.

“Like this.”

After that, it didn't take long for him to get a bag of spirit stones, which he put in his ring.

Money obtained, Will headed off to check out the market.

There were a lot of different things to buy. Some people were selling furniture, some were selling beast corpses, some were selling beast cores, whatever those were, some were selling pills, some were selling weapons. Everyone was selling everything, pretty much.

Will headed to the beast core stand. He wanted to know what a beast core was. Once he arrived the man at the counter turned to him excitedly.

“Heya! Lookin' for a beast core, perchance?”

“What is a beast cowe?”

The man seemed to get this a lot, as he grabbed one of the little orbs from the shelves behind him and showed it to Will.

“This right here! They come from monstrous beasts, and can be used for all sorts of things!”

In that case, Will probably had some already. He thanked the man for the information, and headed off.

He wasn't really sure what he wanted to buy. He hadn't really thought that far.

He headed to an alchemy shop for now. Maybe he'd find something interesting there.

This one was an actual indoor shop. He looked around at the display cases at all the pills and read the descriptions on them.

There were a lot of different kinds. A lot of them didn't seem useful to him at all. Like most of the ones for cultivation.

But not all of them seemed useless. A few gave temporary power-ups in return for various downsides, which was pretty interesting. Especially the one that made the user more prone to qi deviation afterward. He picked up ten of them and a few healing pills and headed out.

Now that he'd bought pills, he didn't really want to buy anything else. Nothing seemed interesting. He decided to bring out one of his special moves instead.

That move being searching for weird stuff with the help of his hand-dandy map.

He wasn't really expecting to find anything much, but it was a way to pass the time. He headed out of the shopping street and into the wilderness-like area nearby.

His technique had been refined since the last time. For everything around, he would look at it on the map and in reality to compare and test for any anti-recognition nonsense. But that wasn't all.

He couldn't really explain what he'd done in human words, but he'd made it easier to see any non-euclidian geometry. He'd basically put a black sheet in an extra-dimensional layer, and when anything was funky, it would poke through and he'd see it from the other side.

He really was straying further and further away from a human understanding of dimensions. Or really an anything understanding of them. He wondered idly if the other people with a Quantum True Soul Duplication Phenomenon Metaphysical Black Hole Prevention Fate Collection Assistance Toolkit were like this as well. They probably were, at least most of them. The way it described all the features was just about begging people to do stuff like this.

His results were a lot of nothing, at least in the first hour. Well, not nothing. He found a cool rock. Not cool enough to take, but it was nice to look at.

It was only in the middle of the second hour that he actually found something. Though, it wasn't really what he was looking for, since it wasn't hidden with any formations or anything.

It seemed to be a pond or a spring or something. He wasn't an expert on water locations. Or whatever they were called.

The water seemed nice. It was a pretty blue color. There was also singing. Which was uncommon for small bodies of water. Or not. He wasn't an expert. Maybe that was normal. He doubted it, though.

He briefly considered running, as to avoid the classic “getting beaten up for stumbling upon a woman bathing outside” scene but he currently looked like a little girl, so he doubted that would happen here.

He couldn't see anyone currently since the place was mostly obscured by rocks and trees and stuff from his current position. He moved forward through them to get a full view of the whatever it was.

As expected. Naked woman bathing outside. Well, he'd expected that. The woman turned towards him with a death glare as soon as he came into view. Only for that death glare to fade right after.

“Huh? Who are you?”

“I'm Will. Who are you?”

“I'm Yan Qingxue. You say you're… ‘Weer’?”

Will shook his head.

“No, I say I'm ‘Will’.”

After he got correcting her pronunciation out of the way, he tried to find her name on the scoreboards in his map. He managed to find her in thirteenth place on distance in the first trial, seventeenth place in the third trial, but the real big one was her place on second trial scoreboard that he'd been ignoring. She was first of all time, while he was right behind her at second.

But even more than that was that her name was a really “ice princess” sounding name.

“Are you the one called ‘Ice Pwincess’?”

The woman, Yan Qingxue, nodded.

“Yes, that is correct.”

Will celebrated internally about how spot on his guess was. He decided to throw out a few more.

“The one fwom the pwestigious Yan Clan?”

She nodded.

Will rejoiced again. That one was a bit of a gamble, since it could've been either clan or family. He decided to try his luck again.

“Are you the one engaged to the young master of the Chen Cwan?”

Yan Qingxue's face contorted into a light grimace, but she nodded nonetheless.

“I suppose you aren't fond of him?”

She snorted, only for her to freeze when she realized what she'd done. She quickly schooled her facial expressions and responded.

“Why would you say that?”

Will didn't have any plan to humor her pretending. There was no point.

“Don't wowwy, he'll be dying soon anyway.”

Yan Qingxue showed a look of shock and confusion. She straightened her expression and tried to act the part of a proper fiance.

“You dare to say to my face that you'll kill the man who is to be my husband?”

Will nodded, then paused and shook his head.

“Actuawwy, I just said he'll die, not that I'll kiww him. Awso, he won't be your husband. He'ww be dead.”

Ranna might end up doing it instead. That actually reminded him of something. Why was there an ice princess bathing in the woods when the “heaven's chosen” was Ranna? The scene wouldn't work with a female protagonist.

After some thought, the answer he came to was crossdressing. Ranna would crossdress for some reason, and then stumble upon Yan Qingxue bathing. Sounded about right.

Yan Qingxue was flabbergasted at the audacity of this kid.

“Who are you to speak so flippantly, huh?”

Will puffed up his chest proudly.

“I'm the discipwe of the sect weader!”

Yan Qingxue looked like she just got flashbanged.

“Wh-huh? You?”

Will nodded.

“Yep! Weww, one of them, anyway.”

Yan Qingxue bowed low, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was still completely naked.

“This disciple begs senior sister for forgiveness!”

Will wasn't really expecting a response like that. He didn't really want a response like that either. Well, whatever.

“I'ww forgive you. Anyway, how often do you come hewe?”

Yan Qingxue breathed a sigh of relief. She was really glad this kid didn't care, because she would be pretty annoyed if she got in trouble for defending the honor of the guy whose guts she hated.

“I come here once a week. Oh, but I could stop if you want me to!”

Will shook his head.

“Come again evewy day this week.”

Yan Qingxue almost couldn't believe her ears. An excuse to come here even more? It sounded like a dream come true. But it also didn't make much sense.

“May I ask why, senior sister?”

Will shook his head.

“No.”

Alright then. She dropped the matter there.

Will smiled. If she and Ranna were gonna bump into each other anyway, he might as well speed it up, right?

With his work done, he smiled brightly.

“Bye!”

And headed off to go back to his room and prepare for his plan. It was only when he'd exited the forest that he realized the issue with that.

He had no idea how to get back up there.