The key jade's distinct chime enters my mind and I acknowledge it and a hostess's young voice springs forth "young sage, Array Grandmaster Nissian Frost has arrive and will be heading up soon."

So I go with "thank you my dear, and can you please send up a bottle of her favorite cultivation wine."

Her crisp reply "it will be delivered as soon a possible young sage."

I had reviewed the file jade I purchase on Nissian Frost, and found out her name is taken from an extremely cold tier seven danger zo ne on the northern edge of the Eastern Continent. Appearantly during winter the morning frost is so cold that stage six cultivators would freeze to death in hours, while stage seven cultivators would need powerful protective artifacts to keep them alive. She keeps men at arms length to honor her deceased dao companion, however there is no info on how her dao companion past away. Due to her frosty personality, the information jade was rather cheap as it contained only a few useful tid bits of information.

The door chime rings and I open the door and watch a hostess escort Nissian into my workshop that I had set up with two compfy chairs with a room displaying a place I once camp at and thought what a great place and view. So I hidden a secret recording crystal to capture place and now using that recording to project it though the workshop appearance restrictions.

It's a perfect mock up which cause both women to gasp in pleasure and Nissian states "little brother! Your an excellent host, I never would have imagine conversing with you with such a magnificent view."

I replied "your to kind big sister Nissi" remembering that is what she wanted me to call her. I then hand over "it was once a place I camped for the night, it was such a great place I left a recording jade there and picked it up a month later when I passed by the place again."

While Nissi is staring at the mountain scenary filled with all manners of demonbeasts, the hostess palms me a void pouch with the wine and then sends a blank paper into her void ring while masking "I'll have your new list checked right away young sage" and turns around and leaves. The hostess is good enough to fool Nissi's divine sense lingering around, I like how this hostess maintains secrecy and offer "come pick up my auctions items tomorrow around noon my dear."

She smiles and gives "I won't be late young sage!" as she hops out and I close the door that dissipates into the scenary then I continue with "I had to boost the auction house's appearance restrictions to get this level of reality going" as I head towards her as she gazes out from a wilderness mountain ledge to see a wide valley filled with all manners of demonbeasts roving about.

It's sundown and the low mellow rays cast long shadows as the day time demonbeast retire for the night and the night crew comes out to play. As the sunlight streams across the valley and lights up the base of the eastern side of the valley we see the demonbeasts from the day slink into their nest sites. We even see a few even up defensive formations to improves their defenses.

The darkened half of the western side are encroaching demonbeasts coming out from their lairs and staying out of the sunlight. It's obvious they are mortal enemies of the demonbeast of the east side as many jeer at the retiring demonbeast as cowards and other treacherous words trying to goad a few of them out.

But that doesn't fool any of them and once the sunlight finally ends they rush the eastern lairs and find them too well defended to break though and curse in disgust and many then leave to go hunting. The night view is just as amazing, the heavy qi concentration in the area has cause many plant mutations which include luminescence as a common side effect. A patch work of rainbow colors illuminate the entire valley and half way up the mountains as varius species of plants produce their own colored light.

The giant moon orbiting overhead about the size of my fist and cheerfully bright, the moonlight bask the land in it's healthy glow. I can still the backs of the demonbeast that left the valley to go hunting, it's not sunlight, but the combine light sources is strong enough to see the northern end of the valley without using qi to empower my eyes.

"Would you like to try a vegetarian or a meat dish?" Since I have to play host today I decide to give her a choice.

"Oh, I guess a meat dish since I'm rather tired of vegetarian dishes" and gives a friendly smile.

I guess I go with "no problem" then I activate the new void pouch in my hand and pull out a bottle of Midwinter's Gale by Ditsy Breeze and two glasses which I quickly fill and hand her a glass while picking up my own and "looking forward to seeing what the future hold for us" she smiles to the toast and we drank. It has an chilling effect as it slide down and permeates my body. It like a cold rage storming though my body as I sense my cold resistance jump up a bit and tiny move to my ice affinity mastery while my spiritual veins toughen as they make a tiny advance.

It is a decent wine and considering my available food options I decided to pull out a mid stage eight Kadyshun Frostbear that boost ice affinity mastery to get a synergy effect and touch of toughness. I had to slow cook this thing for nearly a month, because if I cooked it touch degree higher it would just melt. My spiritual Ancient Iceflame was a big help with the cooking the meat without charring it. I quickly cut two large slabs and place each on a platter and set it on the table. Then I cause the roast to dissappear back into it's storage crystal and sat down to enjoy the diner with my guest.

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I can see she is truely enjoying the dinner as she lets go of her well crafted icy facade and lets the girl in her out. She slowly ramps up her chatting speed trying to gauge how far she could go before becoming an irritation. As her chatterbox nature slowly matures as we eat, I realize she acts like a big sister as she inserts random questions along with her conversational chatter.

Dealing with Mara all the time I learn to look for these hidden questions snuck in the dinner conversation on how I prepared and cooked the dinner to light interrogation of my life using the excuse of being the big sister to get some answers. Of course I repose back questions about her personal life acting the curiosity of a little brother, can't have it going one way this soon. As we ping pong spiritual cooking with personal questions we develop a fairly good sketch of each other.

Of course we don't pry too deeply into each others secrets, just enough to show respect for each other's mastery. With dinner over I inquire "big sister Nissi, our agreement was if I provide you a diner to your liking, then you would give me a lesson on arrays. You had nothing but praise thoughout the dinner so I believe I have fullfilled my part of the bargain."

Nissi looks at me somewhat miffed and states "I didn't know you are a master of spiritual cooking, that like cheating!" But then she smiles and licks her chops in rememberance and gives "fine! So what does my little brother need help with?"

I announce "basic late tier seven arrays!" Thus started my daily array lessons tought by the only grandmaster in arrays residing in Karvallus at the moment. The payment is a slice of Kadyshun Frostbear and a bottle of Midwinter's Gale before each lesson has cause my mastery to shoot up in noticable advances. Learning the new arrays and techniques is a whole lot easier with a grandmaster teaching me, and she even taught me some useful basic array variants to delay for extra meals.

In the end she ate up half my stock to give me a decent grasp on the new techniques and a good step forward in mastery of each of the new basic arrays. I almost laugh as she was sad to go because there was nothing more to teach me. To satisfy her glutiny nature I toss over the Kadyshun Frostbear's storage crystal as a bonus for given me her knowledge of basic arrays for the past month caused her big sister looking face to light up as she snatches at the approaching crystal with unabash greed.

I had also given her a copy of my display crystal since she liked the view so much, but had to cut the month long recording to only the first couple of days to create an all in one display crystal. My current set up using two crystals so I can view the entire month, besides this isn't the only recording crystal I have. So I need one to breach the appearance formation, link to a recording crystal, display recording and finally boost visual reality with a illusionary array.

To give her an excuse to come visit me I hand out "if you ever come across a fresh corpse of a Kadyshun Frostbear, bring it to me and I'll cook it for you for half the meat." Of course nothing is for free like Mara taught me and will take half the meat for my troubles. This has become my standard farewell line, asking experts to bring me something to cook the next time they see me. Of course for those into cultivation wines, I would replace it with something like if you find a wine recipe you want to try then bring me the ingredients I will make half a batch for you.

There are plenty of cultivation wine recipes sold at auction houses, so finding one for your stage of cultivation is rather easy. However finding the ingredients for higher stage wines can be troublesome, but stage five and six ingredients is easy enough to buy.

She smiles and goes with "little brother is too kind! I'll make sure to visit when I can." I guess she is a half the meat is better than no meat cheerful person. These kind of people are so much easier to deal with so I don't mind have to call this hundreds of unknown number of years my big sister. I guess because she looks like a big sister that I didn't mind doing what she asks.

But I didn't expect her to actually act like a big sister and the game we play is to casually probe around for answers. My first impression of her is fairly good, big sister aside, I find her playful and comfortable to be around. Not to mention her stomach is too easy to please for future lessons, I can tap her knowledge all the way to late stage eight if I keep feeding her to stay on her good side.

I can already think of a few ice affinity improving dishes, pills and wines, so I take out a memory jade and place them in order of usefulness and titled the jade 'Big Sister Nissi' Then I take out another memory jade and record the raw materials and call for a serving girl to take it to management.

I should be able to get all the items soon and I even picked sea type demonbeasts for the dishes. Why procrastinate when I can hand messages off to servants who do all the leg work. The serving girl is a cute late stage five practioner so I give her a tier six resource as her tip. She brighten up as her day is made and bows deeply and offer "thank you young sage"

I laugh and supply "you servants always work hard for me so I have no choice to but to treat you well." Her pay is probably a few tier five resources and access to the auction house's cultivation chambers. She can exchange her tip into a giant gift basket of tier five resources, so watching her face light up is a really good feeling.

It's a bit of an overbearing tip, but I like seeing those fun expressions, besides how else do I spend tier six resoures from the bandits I killed in my travels. Sure I can exchange it, but I don't feel like going though all void containers I've collected so far.

I sigh, because I always come up with more work for myself. I begin setting up a formation to organize and separate items, another layer to do the same for resources, a layer for weapons, one for protective gears, and a last for qi emitting artifacts. With an after thought I decide to add one more layer to divide for spiritual foods and cultivation wines. After that I crafting a basic spirit formation to oversee the formation and to open the void containers and even gave it two power layers to help breach any security formations some void containers may have.

I put the entire set up into a formation crystal to create a permanent tool and activate it off to the side and hand over all my spare void containers I've looted. I let auto sorter formation go to work and I head back to center to work on my late tier seven array mastery. Just two more advances to get to tier eight arrays, I am getting a little excited to reduce my layers spiritual cost and thus increase the number layers I could put in each formation.