As Bai Feng walked within the sect she noticed that the vast majority of those she passed by had modified their uniforms in some way or another. Most were just small things. A small floral pattern in green there, an elaborate symbol in red there. And that they had for the most parts gathered in little groups idly talking amongst each other as they watched those around them. Most had given her looks clearly denoting their disdain when she passed by them. It dampened her mood and smile a little but she wasn't going to let that intimidate her. Like she particularly cared for what they thought of her, if the first thing they did when they saw her was that then all it did was let her know in advance who to watch out for in the future.
A few of them though had far more thorough modifications done to their uniforms making her wonder just how far was too far in the modifications. One particularly handsome boy had depictions of lightning streaking alongside river streams on the uniform and was talking with a particularly large group of people. Another boy had a wide-brimmed hat tilted downwards covering his face and was leaning against a wall as a few others were talking with him. His uniform was modified to have great waves of water depicted seemingly at random along it. And there was a girl with imagery of insects of all things animatedly chatting with another girl who only had a small bird embroidered on her chest. Most seemed to be giving them a wide berth for whatever reason. Or maybe it was because of the giant dragonfly buzzing around them.
Well, whatever the case Bai Feng didn't stop walking until she had found the lecture hall the driver cultivator had told her about, taking his advice and making sure she didn't miss the explanation that would be happening there. Situated right at the very edge of the river was a large elegant building that seemed like it was going to fall into the river at any moment. He had been right with it being hard to miss as it towered over everything nearby
Stepping inside she was not prepared for the impossible sight that awaited her.
Within the lecture hall was quite simple really. All around were spacious paths leading towards small desks with benches set for every one of them. There were many tiers of this encircling the center of the room where a small pool of water laid. But what had stopped was just how expansive the room was. She was certain that there was no way that the room could be this big nor deep without cutting into the river with how close it was to it. And yet it was.
Bai Feng shook her head. She was a cultivator now, well not yet but soon she would be and she couldn't stop to gawk at every impossible sight she saw now. Well maybe she could gawk a little for now but he was going to just have to get used to sights such as this.
There were already a decent few inside having elected to head in early as she had. None really seemed to pay her any mind and a few even seemed like they had simply fallen asleep while waiting. One girl with long silver hair and fair skin that was seated closer to the front, in particular, caught her eye, having meticulously set a whole array of brushes in front of her beside the pad of paper the sect had provided for them. In a way, she reminded her of Xue Huan, the only one in her gang that could read and identify what places within the city were called. She did need to start making some new friends if she was going to be able to do well here. All the little groups here reminded her of other gangs that just looked a lot fancier and she knew well enough what happened to those who found themselves alone. And the meticulous girl there seemed like as good a place to start as any. Worse comes to worst she'd just go find somewhere else to sit.
Nodding to herself she headed down to where the girl was and to the desk left of her. The moment she arrived though the meticulous girl twitched and a moment after turned and fixed her with a piercing gaze from her steel-grey eyes. She momentarily paused at just how focused her gaze was on her but shook it off. The look she was being given was quite like that of an alert guard scrutinizing something, if far more intense. But it wasn't the disdainful looks others outside had given her and she wasn't about to back down from a simple look.
Bai Feng put on her best friendly smile and stepped a bit closer to the girl, "Hey, do ya mind if I take this seat?"
The girl was silent for a moment before nodding. "You may, I do not mind."
Bai Feng nodded to her as she set her bag on the desk before offering the girl her hand. "I'm Bai Feng, how about ya?"
The girl stared at her for a moment and Bai Feng worried for a moment she had offended her somehow before she softly giggled and reached out to shake her hand. The sleeve of her dress decorated with a single silver arrow on it. "I am Yi An." It was a bit of an awkward shake but afterward, Bai Feng could feel the piercing gaze she had been given before lighten somewhat as Yi An gave her a small grin.
"Well, it's good to meet ya, Yi An. It's certainly was quite the journey gettin' here." Bai Feng sat down at the desk. Yi An was a bit strange but everyone had their little quirks and she wasn't about to judge her for that. She hadn't before with others and she wasn't about to start now.
"I suppose for you it must have been. They had the local transportation here to take you here, correct?" How did Yi An arrive if not by carriage? She put it out of her mind for now as she responded.
"Uh, yeah. Had this carriage take me all the way from Qizuishan to here. Didn't even know carriages could go that fast 'til I rode in that one." Yi An nodded to herself.
"Qizuishan, a prominent city of the Yuan despite it lacking in most things a cultivator would prefer. Quite a ways north of here too." The Yuan? She racked through her thoughts for any memory of that name but came up with nothing. How the hell was she even supposed to respond here without embarrassing herself with her lack of knowledge of her home?
Yi An gave Bai Feng a questioning look at her silence right before the sound of ringing chimes echoed through the lecture hall, with people beginning to trickle into the lecture hall moments after. Bai Feng looked for where the sound might've come from but couldn't figure where they had been rung.
"The chimes seem to have been rung. It is nearly time for the honored elders greeting to begin." Yi An turned towards the center of the room where the pool of water lay still as she grabbed one of her brushes seemingly at random. "We should prepare to receive it."
Bai Feng looked around and saw more and more people flooding inside before looking back. She gave a silent sigh of relief that the chimes had saved her there from that question. And it seemed like Yi An was done talking for now too, her attention completely focused upon the center pool. Probably where the elder would talk from if she had to guess. Hopefully, cultivator elders were different from the elders back home and nowhere near as slow as normal elders were.
She sat patiently and after a few minutes, the stream of people coming in had stopped. And a minute afterward a single ripple began to spread throughout the center pool seemingly without anything causing it. Bai Feng watched it with curiosity as the single ripple became two, then four, then eight. Each one followed by more and more ripples until she heard the sound of rushing water coming from her side and a few gasps from a few of the others sitting around her.
Looking over she discovered that water was beginning to flow quickly from some unseen channel throughout the paths in the lecture hall. She watched it warily as the water reached her and flowed under her seat without any trouble and soaked her shoes as it passed by and continued onward.
Confused at what was happening she looked back up and towards the center of the room only to discover that in the few moments she had been distracted an older serene woman in a light blue dress had somehow gotten to the center of the room and was standing there as if she had always been there. She then slowly looked up with bright yellow eyes towards everyone before lazily spinning in a circle. Bai Feng could've sworn her gaze had found her at some point during it before she finished.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
"Greeting new disciples of the Flowing Waters." Her voice rung clearly throughout the hall as she began to speak, her arms folded in front of her and a small smile on her face as she seemed to gaze everywhere she could at once. "I am Elder Xie Ning and I am here to lay down the groundwork and rules for your time here. You will all be joining the ranks of the outer disciples and as this is your first year you will be separated from the older outer disciples. We would not wish for you to compete with them just yet, it would be quite stifling to your own growth if they did. Of course, though, you shall all be competing with each other. After all, conflict in moderation can greatly help to inspire growth and new ideas."
"We do not impose many rules here as to grant you all the freedom to act and grow as you wish. But the few we will impose are not to be broken for any reason. Break them and you will learn that what we will provide here for you all is a privilege and not an obligation." As she said that she could feel the water flowing beneath her speed up for just a moment before slowing down again. Was she able to control that? "The rules are as follows. None of you are allowed to leave the grounds of this sect unless you are given explicit permission to do so until you are done with your first year here, nor will you all be allowed any correspondences with anyone outside the sect for your first four months here. Your first year here will be essential for your growth in the future and any distractions from the outside world will only cause the foundation you create now to be flawed or weakened."
Off to her side, she could see Yi An nodding to herself as she scribbled... no diligently wrote something on the pad of paper she had in front of her, engrossed in the elder's words. But Bai Feng could not help but feel a touch of dread. An entire year before she would be able to go back and let her gang know what was going on. It wasn't going to stop her from doing her best to learn what it was to be a cultivator and how to become powerful but... would they be okay? A few of the other disciples around her began to whisper amongst each other before the sound abruptly died away as Elder Ning's voice simply drowned them out.
"There will also be no fighting or stealing amongst you all for your first two months here. A truce if you will. Just as we will not be letting the older outer disciples cause any sort of disruption towards you all in this first year, there are those among you who have a far more solid grasp on cultivation than your peers. It will not do for those who are just learning and did not have the same opportunies you had to learn and practice earlier to be drowned before they even had a chance to swim. And once that truce is up everything goes except for any maiming or killing. We are civilized folks who know better, not barbarians."
They would not only be competing with each other but in time actually fighting each other? Bai Feng couldn't help but let a frown grow on her face. The vague similarities to gangs she had noticed in her fellow disciples earlier seemed quite a bit more worrisome suddenly. She would make sure though that once that truce was up that she was ready. She had survived in the slums and alleys of Qizuishan, she would survive here. Hell, she even had proper warning and time to prepare this time around. She glanced towards Yi An. She'd just have to make sure that what friends she did make were good ones too, and not ones like Lu Jia.
"And finally, sect property is sect property. Any who are caught stealing or damaging property of the sect intentionally will find swift judgment our response. This, however, does not include the residences you all will be staying at. Those will be considered your own property for the duration you are staying there. And while we're on the topic of residences across the river is where you will find all the residences you will be staying at during your first year. We will make sure to supply those of you with mortal needs still with what they need in order to thrive while you're here. The residences are separated into two distinct areas. One for males and one for females. Break that at your own risk. You will also almost certainly have to share these residences with another as well so be prepared to do so unless you wish to sleep on the riverside when all the residences have been claimed."
A sensible rule, though that she might have to defend whatever home she might claim here from others once the truce broke was a sobering thought. This really was just like living in the alleys, if a lot less likely to end terribly with the few key rules they did have and fancier looking. At least she had a good idea of who she might room with already, glancing momentarily towards Yi An before focusing back on Elder Ning.
"Now, let us get onto far more exciting things." Elder Ning smiled as she reached into the pool of water and pulled a glowing dull blue stone from it and held up so that all the room could see it clearly. "This is the spirit stone that we of the Flowing Water make use of and produce here. Within it lays some of the qi of the many rivers that pass through the region of the Singing Tides after having gathered together in the great Lake Xiong. Which after having gathered we refined into the spirit stone I'm holding now. We will be providing you all with a small allowance of these every month. There will be various ways for you to increase your allowance, as well as the quality since these are lesser ones, but initially, we will only be providing ten every month. For those who don't know what spirit stones are, and I do know that there are a few of you here, these spirit stones are the key to cultivation. They are essential to gathering qi in your dantian so that you may progress and as a cultivator. They also function as the currency here and in many places around the world for high-quality works.
Bai Feng focused her gaze on the spirit stone the elder was holding. Those were to be the key to her cultivation and would double as coins? She wasn't entirely sure how they worked or why they were essential but she would just have to learn quickly and figure out how she was supposed to increase that allowance and earn more of them. Ten per month as it stands meant that she could only use one every three days if she focused completely on however you were supposed to cultivate with them and left her with nothing to spend on whatever you bought with them. That was almost certainly not going to be enough.
"Now there is far more to this than what I've said but I do not want to draw this out for too much longer. It is not too much longer until the sun sets after all. So for the final thing, I'll be going over before I let you all go to pick out wherever residence you'll be staying at is the lessons you all will be able to receive. There will be two different elders who will be handling the two different aspects of your cultivation, physical and spiritual. The elder handling physical cultivation will be handling his lessons out in the training fields during the afternoons, while spiritual matters will be taking place within this very lecture hall in the mornings. I do recommend for those of you just beginning on this path to focus on one or the other for the day but you'll be free to go these as you please. At least you will for the first few months, but in time the lessons will, unfortunately, have to cut some of you out. After all, on the path of the immortal, not everybody will be able to reach the peaks of cultivation whether it be because of a lack of ambition or talent. Some will have to lose so that those with a truly strong talent and drive will be able to truly rise to the very heights of cultivation."
So only a few would be able to reach the true limits of cultivation? Bai Feng would just have to ensure that she was one of them. That superior cultivator had declared she had enough talent, or at least she hoped she did. She'd just have to put in the effort to learn how to cultivate so that she might be able to reach those heights. She was going to be strong now that she had the chance and she was not going to let anything stop her.
"And that's all I'll be going over today. May the rest of your time here be fruitful so that you may flow as freely as the rivers here in the future." The serene Elder Ning then raised her hands and clapped them together and the waters flowing all around the desks suddenly flowed upwards in a focused torrent of water that hovered right over the desks. Bai Feng nearly jumped out of her seat at the seemingly living water rising in front of her though managed to force herself to remain seated as she watched it just hovering there. A moment later the same spirit stones that the Elder had shown before started to gently fall out of it and onto the desk in front of her until ten lay there and the torrent of water receded back into the flow underneath her. She looked back towards the now smiling elder. "And here is your first allowance of spirit stones. Do use them well." And then she seemingly melted into the water while the sound of whispering returned, quickly rising in volume as the other disciples all began to talk amongst each other and take their spirit stones.
Bai Feng carefully took one of the stones she had gotten and took a much closer look at it. The dull glow was mesmerizing in a way she hadn't ever felt before and the intricate channels within it even more so. She took a deep breath before putting it and the rest of her new spirit stones into her bag before standing up. There would be a time to figure out the secrets within them later, right now it was time to find a residence to stay at and figure out if Yi An would be down to be her roommate or if she'd have to find someone else.