I returned to Dumassa the next morning, after spending the entire night reading the Tiger Fist manuscript dozens of times, focusing on the Initiate and Muscle Reinforcement sections, trying to see if there was a way to detect others and hide my ability.

A significant time investment, but not for nothing. There were two benefits; one immediate, and one conceptual. The immediate benefit, after reading the confusing poems again and again, I discovered a way to compress the energy in my chest so that it wasn't detected easily by anyone, even in the realm of Skin Forging. Discovering its existence took ten hours.

Learning took ten minutes.

The conceptual benefit was more interesting. The more I read the Initiate and Muscle Reinforcement sections, the more those poems started to make sense, and I saw some kind of meaning in them.

That understanding strengthened my muscles.

An interesting benefit. Unfortunately, I didn't have it back on Earth. I would have studied far harder for literature if reading Shakespeare made me a better boxer.

I was feeling confident when I returned to Dumassa. Not only did I have a way to hide my Martial Cultivation reasonably well, but also I had an action plan. Earn the pity of the mysterious sexy older lady, so she gave me some freebies, let the System multiply it so that I had a decent storage of food in my storage.

Most importantly, it delayed breaking through the next stage not only to keep my consumption down, but also not to lose the precious cultivation multiplier.

"Good morning," I said, my smile wide as I approached her stall, deliberately using a rich accent — once again glad for the language jade for the comprehensive language information it granted — to play on my role as a previously rich man that had fallen into dire straits for mysterious reasons.

Naturally, I once again changed back into the rags to make myself more pitiful.

"You're here again," she said, looking disinterested, but I noticed she was observing me. What she was looking for was obvious. She had been looking for the signs of Tiger Fist, but the technique from the book, combined with my pill-enhanced martial talent, allowed me to erase all signs.

I didn't want to look like some kind of genius to her. It was hard to pity a genius. A hardworking, incompetent rich kid with no idea how the world worked, on the other hand, was a much better idea.

"Yes, I had come across an Opportunity —" I started, then made a show of freezing before trying to fix my words. "A … a job opportunity. There's some work at the warehouse," I said, doing a terrible job of fixing it. An Opportunity — with capital letters — was a big deal, and talking about it was a worse idea than bragging about stealing from criminals.

I let it slip deliberately.

I was playing the role of the handsome yet gullible young man, a role that paid great dividends when I was making a living seducing rich ladies. A woman might appreciate intelligence in a long-term partner, but a boy toy worked on different principles.

To be more accurate, that worked on a subset, like if the lady in question was not married, or her husband was more permissive to her dalliances. The ones who wanted to have hidden affairs had different tastes.

Ultimately, however, the seduction thing was more of a dream than a plan. I needed her to believe that I was a hardworking yet gullible young man to continue helping until she got bored with supporting me.

"Good," she said. "How many do you need?"

"Five," I said after I counted six copper pieces and twenty copper coins carefully. There was something in counting coins one by one that underlined my current lack of wealth, and I wanted to push it as much as possible.

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She passed six at me. "One is on the house," she said.

[Cultivation Difference Bonus - 20; Pity Bonus - 30 (Capped)]

[50x Return - Meat Skewer, Mortal Low-Grade]

"Thanks," I said, giving her the biggest smile I could, happy that the System gave me a reward for the free one. Still, it was frustrating to see that the System had already lost some multiplier after my breakthrough.

Also, this time, the skewer was an ordinary one, limiting the multiplication even further. A loss, considering the difference between Low, Medium, and High Grades was not measured by percentage, but was significant.

I savored my food, doing my best to show my appreciation for her gift. Showing the effect of a gift was a good way to keep them coming — another important lesson from my successful life as a boy toy. It helped that I was hungry. Martial Arts burned a lot of energy.

As I ate, I observed her just like she did me, but my observation was more beneficial. She might be stronger than me, but she wasn't working as hard to hide her actions, and I could catch several subtle tells of her martial arts.

I wasn't knowledgeable enough to understand her true strength — though based on how the System counted things, it was either late Skin Refinement, or early Bone Forging — but other details were more obvious.

One important one, her Martial Arts style was not Tiger Fist.

It was very likely an important difference … but how important, I did not know. My knowledge about the world was limited to a very good command of the language with limited context, and the gossip I overheard.

I knew that stealing others' Martial Arts was bad, but whether it was bad like shoplifting, or bad like murder, it was harder to guess.

I shrugged. A question for another time.

"If you don't have anything to do, chop these onions, and I'll give you two more skewers," she said.

"Sure, can I have one now? I promise I'll do my best," I said. She passed another one. It was clearly an excuse to give me some free food. I waited for the System to give me a bonus…

It did not.

I wanted to curse. Dicing a few onions for a minute was clearly not an equivalent exchange for almost three copper pieces, but apparently, the System didn't calculate it like that. It counted it as trade.

Not only annoying, but dangerous. It would ruin my whole plan here if she tried to create such unequal exchanges. I needed to prevent it, using one of the most evil tools in the arsenal of men against women.

Weaponized incompetence.

I had lost count of the stories about men who had never washed dishes after breaking a few prized plates of their wives, putting an expensive cast iron pan into the dishwasher and ruining it, or breaking a family heirloom or two while vacuuming. Doing a job badly enough meant that it was never granted again.

It needed to be used with care, considering, most of those tales, I heard not from the husbands, but wives in question, usually after a nice tumble in a hotel room, or in their bedroom — even wearing the favorite lingerie of the husband in question if she was feeling vindictive.

It was difficult to pull off, especially when I was reliant on her pity. I couldn't just fuck it up.

She passed the blade to me, and I started peeling the onion while holding the knife like a pen, to make it look like I was doing domestic work for the first time in my life. Luckily, it fit my general fake identity as a young man from a rich family.

With the class structure even more strict than my old world, it wasn't absurd that it was the first time I was using a knife. I chopped the onions slowly and carefully, doing work that would take her seconds longer than a minute.

Still, I did it flawlessly. "I'm sorry," I said once I finished it. "I … I never — I'm not the best at cooking," I said, doing my best to show that I took my poor performance badly.

It was a cheap manipulation, but I literally couldn't afford to trigger the System.

"At least you tried. It's what matters," she said, trying to console me. I smiled at her, but it was another fake one, one that showed the despair of failure behind it.

"… I think I need to return to work," I said as I beat a hasty retreat. If all went well, she would be more careful about offering me extra work. The occasional free promotion was all I needed from her to build a nice pile of mortal-grade food.

As for money, disguising myself to beg the passing caravans was not the most lucrative, but earning a couple silvers for an hour of work should be easy, which would be enough to get me three meals from her.

Three meals should be enough to meet the consumption of Tiger Fist for a few hours … as long as I focus on practicing the six punches of the Initiate realm. Otherwise, three meals wouldn't even be enough to use the first punch of Muscle Reinforcement.

Which was okay, as I didn't dare to practice the Muscle Reinforcement section. I was afraid of a breakthrough, which would not only increase the amount of food I needed, but would also ruin the nice multiplier I had been enjoying.

Being a Freeloader required careful work.