It took days to learn how to use some more basic arrays, and I had to say, it was a lot of fun. Progress was steady since the librarian acted like a pseudo-teacher. Sure, he kept saying he wasn't showing favoritism, but as the old guy pointed out, Xin Ma said one thing and did another.
Today was like any other day, with the librarian and I discussing the Binding Array. While the old janitor looked at us from the sidelines, shaking his head with disappointment, "Youngsters these days. Drowning themselves in books and forgetting how to live. Back in my day..."
He stopped and rubbed his chin, "Actually, back in my day we were killing each other for such books. So, yeah... But still, it's very disappointing seeing you both like this."
Both the librarian and I knew the old goat was trying to get a rise out of us, so we didn't respond in any way. While some might hate to admit it, the old janitor had a way with words. No matter what, he would always drag us to his level, and there he had the advantage.
"The ritual part of an array is the hardest step to skip, but usually the one that is most convenient to cut off. While some can handle doing the hand seals and chants during the midst of a fight, the ritual is next to impossible. But there are some ways to circumvent this and improvise on the spot," the librarian explained while drawing a circle on a blank piece of paper and noting down four points. "For example, the Bind array you're so fond of requires four points in the array, forming a cross with the target in the middle."
"Yes, the four points being candles," I said.
"Well, you will understand more if there comes a time when you can sense Qi. But what if, let's say you are fighting inside the building. You do a chant and don't have candles around. While the candles serve as points and are easier to use in the array. The array only needs the four points and the opponent being at the point where the four points form a cross," he smiled. "So if you were fighting inside the building, you could use the pillars as points."
He then pointed at the library around us, but contrary to what he said, there were no visible pillars. I looked at him for an explanation, but he only cracked a small smile. It was unusual for him to do that since it was working hours with a couple of disciples still around.
"That's enough for today," he said, closing the book to his side and handing it to me. It was the same book he had sold me, and we often used it as a reference. "Try to think of ways you would use the Bind array in the right conditions. Perhaps try to guess what you can't see. Those four points to erect the array could be anything."
Well, the four points couldn't be air. The four points had to be tangible and theoretically destroyable for the Bind array to work.
It felt like I was back in high school studying chemistry, but now I actually liked it.
I grabbed the book and walked toward the old janitor, and he took it off my hands. The librarian in the distance frowned, but there was little he could do about it. Technically, he only had jurisdiction on the first floor. Also, he didn't actually want to stop me.
Holding the array book on my person would be dangerous. But if the old guy took it to the second floor and kept it where he apparently kept his secret tea stash, then nobody would find it. I had no idea if the secret tea stash was something that existed. But I trusted the old guy not to screw me over and protect the thing he had helped me get.
How legal was this? Probably not very much.
Whatever the situation was, the librarian had turned a blind eye to this and wouldn't pay too much attention to it. The old man had already done his "job" and spoken his ear off about favoritism. Thankfully, the librarian was used to these things and hadn't even blinked.
After taking the book to the second floor, the old janitor returned with a hot teacup and looked at me with a bewildered look. "What? You're still here? By now, shouldn't you be out there, indulging in debauchery?"
I frowned, "What do you think I do when I leave the library, old man?"
"Probably read the books you borrowed for the day or something else as lame as that," he said.
Okay, that was a surprisingly good guess. "Nope, I train."
"Wow, I was actually joking," the old man muttered under his breath, and he knew damn well I could hear him when he did that. "This kid really has no friends or anything going on for him. What a loser. The young generation these days are really pitiful."
This old goat...
"Actually, for today, I'm going to stay in the library and rest for a bit," I said.
Since progress had been a bit slow with training, I had to push my body beyond what I could recover in a day's rest. Every so often I had to take some break days, which was a perfect time to study arrays.
These days, I was able to be a bit more stress-free, especially since the murders around the outer sect had been dying down after that whole Spirit Stones fiasco.
Things should soon settle down somewhat. There was even some news of the inner sect getting involved due to how many people who used to be prisoners went missing. Amongst the missing people were likely even some innocent guys who only aroused somebody's suspicion.
Someone would have to take responsibility for those deaths. Some of the deaths had to have been disciples from clans. The paranoid core elder who started this mess would have to do a lot of apologizing and bowing to absolve all this. It had all started with him being paranoid.
Though the Sect Leader had likely been worried about spies too, otherwise he would not have approved such a thing. Perhaps the paranoid elder was being used as a scapegoat?
Well, at least that was how it could have gone. It wasn't like I had much interest in what was happening in this whole mess.
...
As time passed and evening came about, the disciples left, leaving only the librarian, the old guy, and me lingering about. This was another one of those days where I would not sleep in my dorm room.
But just then, someone came in. The guy had on a blue uniform, unlike the other disciples who usually hung around these parts, indicating he was an inner disciple.
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Didn't the inner disciples have their own library? I doubted this library had anything that an inner disciple would be interested in at this time of the night.
So now the question was, what was this guy doing here?
He had long dark hair that went just below his shoulders. But his face adorned a scowl, and his eyes wandered around like an angry alcoholic stepfather looking to take out their anger on something. Then his gaze landed on me, and the rage behind his eyes ignited.
He approached me with a heavy stomp on each step, and the closer he got, the tenser the atmosphere. "Are you Liu Feng?"
"Yes," I answered.
"How dare you!" He scowled.
What did I do this time? Whatever it was, it felt like another headache.
"You dare make this young master wait for you?! I waited for two days in front of your building, and made a fool of myself! A mere outer disciple trash like you dare to humiliate someone like me!" He yelled and was almost within arm's reach.
But despite how he got closer, I was more surprised by something else than him looking ready to bash my face in.
People like this existed? He even spoke about himself in the third person. Was this the so-called young master? I had never encountered someone like this yet, and even the inner disciples I had met until now were nothing less than polite. So it was only a matter of time until I met someone like this.
But still, holy shit. It felt like I was looking at those Karen YouTube videos. These people couldn't be real.
Despite his threatening manner, I didn't move from my place even as he approached. Once he was close enough, he threw a punch at my face without a second thought.
Just from the wind shifting around the attack, I could tell it would probably knock out all the teeth in my mouth.
As expected of an inner disciple and someone at the Qi Gathering stage. Even without using Qi, he was probably many times stronger than me.
A couple of inches before his fist made contact with my face, it halted into place and lost all momentum.
Yeah, as expected.
"There is no fighting allowed in the library," the librarian confronted him, his grip steel-like on the inner disciple's arm. "Explain yourself."
"Do you know who I am?!" The disciple frowned.
"No," the librarian answered without hesitation as his eyes slowly turned colder. "Even if I did, no important inner disciple would wander about the outer sect or be sent here to do chores."
"I'm Elder Rong's grandson!" The wanna-be young master snorted in distaste. "Unlike you, he is an inner elder!"
"Ah, Elder Rong," the librarian's face remained impassive. "He has many grandsons. You must be one of his unimportant ones if he was willing to send you here."
"No fights allowed in here, young-uns," the old janitor finally appeared. "Whatever conflicts you have, take it outside."
The inner disciple grit his teeth, huffed, and tried to pull his arm away from the librarian's grip. But the librarian used his other hand and took off his glasses, tightened the grip on the inner disciple's arms, and warned him. "Just in case you forget. If you come here with the same attitude again, I will appropriately deal with you."
He let the inner disciple go, and the inner disciple rubbed his arm without making much noise. He got ready to walk out. However, the librarian interrupted him, "You think you can leave my library without telling me why you're here?"
The inner disciple didn't even turn to face him and hurriedly muttered, "Every prisoner now has a guard from the inner sect. Both in case they're attacked or are actually spies. But it was impossible to find Liu Feng."
After that, he hurriedly walked off. The librarian's gaze sharpened, and he had murder in his eyes. There was a tense feeling in the air radiating from the usually calm librarian, a tension I couldn't simply put into words.
So this was what he was like when he was actually angry? Scary.
"You sure you should have done that?" I asked. It was already late, and the librarian could have kicked me out of the library and left me with the inner disciple. There was no need for him to make enemies. "This Elder Rong could cause problems for you."
"Rong is an old man with one foot already in the grave," the janitor answered this time.
“First of all, I don’t care who he is. If someone causes trouble in my library, they will be dealt with,” the librarian put on his glasses. Which softened his looks, and made him return to the harmless-looking but strict librarian. "True. Back in the day, he was someone who barely qualified to become an inner elder. He spent his new wealth and the long life offered when someone reaches the Foundation Establishment to enjoy sinful activities. He has more children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren than he can count."
"Nowadays, someone like him just regrets what he wasted his youth on and tries to increase his cultivation," the old janitor chuckled. "I bet if his grandson tried to come to him with a complaint, the kid would end up with a bashed head for wasting his time. He is the kind of man who just realized no prostitutes or excessive drinking mattered now that he is about to die."
There were all kinds of cultivators out there, even ones who wasted their extra years offered by being at a higher rank. The more I looked at these cultivators, the less they seemed like wise figures beyond their years.
They were not monsters, nor were they creatures beyond understanding. They were just humans who lived much longer than they were supposed to, and some changed very little as they grew older.
“Oh, look, he is waiting outside,” the old janitor pointed out while glancing over the door.
I followed his gaze, and the inner disciple was in the distance in front of the stairs going down. He had his arms crossed and stared at the entrance of the library like a damn hawk.
“How long is he going to wait there?” I asked and turned toward the librarian.
“Unless he is doing something like preparing to attack the library, I can do little against him,” the librarian said as he cleaned the lenses of his glasses again.
The old man stared at the librarian and shook his head, “You have one of the weirdest and confusing moral codes of conduct, ever. One moment you are willing to let things be or look the other way, and in the next, you become a damn tyrant.”
I somewhat agreed with that assessment, but now was not the best time to discuss this. Because there was a Qi Gathering disciple outside just waiting to teach me a lesson.
He probably would not kill me; after all, he was technically here to make sure I didn’t die.
But at the same time, he looked like the kind of guy who would beat the shit out of me to let go of his aggression.
“Yep. This is a battle you can't escape,” the old man chuckled. He turned toward me with an odd look in his eyes. “I know you enough to understand what you want in this situation, brat. But I also know you are smart enough to understand that this is not something you can run from."
He walked closer to me with his cane rhythmically clicking against the ground and he continued speaking, "This is someone stronger than you, who wants to beat the shit out of you. Why? For fun. Because he just can. There is no logical plan here and no way you can reason with him.”
Yeah, I already saw that. However, while the situation might seem like there were few reasonable choices to make. It wasn’t like I could just charge out there without a plan.
“You want to live a quiet life, learn techniques, and train without the outside world bothering you. But the world doesn't work like that; there will be people who can uproot and destroy your life just because they feel like it,” the old man's gaze intensified. “I hope you weren’t stupid enough to think you could live the rest of your life quietly while becoming a cultivator. Because that would make you more foolish than a fool.”
I stared him back in the eyes and didn’t look away as a small smile made its way onto my face, “I know all that already, old man. Now can you stop yapping so I can think a bit.”