“Both of you, this here is my friend, Lindsay. He will guide you in your cultivation and basic education. You both know that I stay busy a lot. That’s why I cannot teach you myself. But I will check on you everyday, so don’t you dare slack off.

I assure you that you can trust him on his guidance. But don’t you dare try to trust his character---” Ren was suddenly cut of by a “Hey!” from Lindsay but he ignored it and continued. ”---And now it’s for you Lindsay. Don’t you dare do anything to Riya… or Lye.”

“Don’t you have any trust in me!? And Lye!? How can you even think of something like that!? Uwah!!!” Lindsay cried out.

Lye had a strange expression on his face, watching these two grown up men acting like this. Really, having friends is truly a privilege. It can be understood why he thought, having no experience with friends from his memories of Akshay, or his life here as no one who was his age was someone he could meet daily. If he had any experience, he would have definitely said them to be worth at least a galaxy or two. Obviously if they were true friends.

When Ren had gone back, Lindsay took a deep breath and looked at both of them. At this moment, the playfulness they saw back then was replaced by a stoic strictness that demanded their respect as students.

Riya went first. She showed him the clan’s body refining technique that Ren had taught her. Lye watched expectantly. This was the technique that Ren was supposed to teach him today. He watched her doing the movements with utmost attention and thought that there was something strangely familiar to her movements. Then it clicked. ‘It is just like the Basic Body Refining Movements with slight changes.’ Lye felt a bit strange. His clan (main branch) was one of the top most clans in the Empire and their technique was a rip-off of the movements provided by Stream.

‘Where is the originality!? Where is the blood and the sweat the ancestor spent on making the technique that made our whole clan stand up!? This is plain robbery! Plagiarism!’ Lye was disappointed in his heart but as he watched Riya, his disappointment lessened a little. The slight changes, he noticed, they made the movements more natural, more fluid. As he calmed down more, he started thinking.

‘Stream has access to everyone’s mind. Moreover, it gives everyone basic information for every field. People also seem to rely on it as well. So that means the given info must be reliable. In that case, it must also be usable by everyone. But the people are clearly different. They have different bloodlines. So some things might actually be harmful to a person while being useful to someone else. Since everyone uses stream, it has to be a general technique. In that case, these slight modifications might just be slight tweaking of aspects to make it fit better with the user.’

Just when his thoughts were about to spiral further, he finally heard both Riya and Lindsay calling him.

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“Yeah?” Lye asked with an innocent face. He finally noticed that he was looking down at the ground.

“We called you so many times. Why didn’t you listen? Were you thinking about your harem again, Lye?” Riya asked with a playful voice.

Before Lye could reply, Lindsay suddenly said,” Kid, you are way to young to follow in my footsteps. Grow up before that. Now show me what you know.”

Lye just nodded and started doing the Basic Body Refining Movements that he had learned just the day before.

After watching both of them, Lindsay took a breath and then said,”What do you both think about your techniques?”

Lye raised his hand and said,”May I?”

Both Lindsay and Riya pushed one eyebrow up and looked at him. After all this gesture wasn’t of this world. Lye took the cue and immediately started talking without giving the situation time to mature.

“I think that both of our techniques are very similar, even though she used the clan art while I used the basic technique which stream gave me yesterday. So, I think that we don’t have an actual clan art, instead it is a variation of the basic technique which suits us better due to our bloodline.” Lye had to think up of all this again, as due to the combination of [strong memory] and [attention deficiency], he could remember only tidbits of his original thoughts.

Both Riya and Lindsay were a bit shocked. This wasn’t a big secret but it wasn’t something a child could have figured out on his own, more so just by watching. But they both were sure that no one had told him that either. So, they both had big smiles on their faces as they faced Lye again. Riya immediately jumped on Lye and gave him a tight hug while saying,”Oh my Lye, I knew that you didn’t use your brain to only think of having a harem.”

“Hmm... Good. Keep it up Lye. … Now Riya, I think you should let him breathe again. We wouldn’t like it if he suddenly went unconscious. Thanks. Now, where were we? Ah yes, Lye Do you have anything else you would like to say?” Lindsay said in a full on teacher mode.

“*Deep breath* Huuuh, I want to ask, what are these movements supposed to do?”

“We will get back to it later. For now, let’s switch to Riya. What do you think?”

“I don’t have anything to say. Master had already fixed all the problems that I encountered.”

“Good, so Lye, you wanted to know the purpose of these movements? These are supposed to help you easily gather the natural Qi and absorb it.”

“Then what about training the muscles and coordination etc.”

“Yeah, they are also a part of it. But they aren’t the main focus as the Qi you absorb will strengthen your body nonetheless.”

‘So, the people here don’t train their bodies by themselves. It is like a side effect that their bodies stronger. In that case, their dexterity would be poor I guess. Then, they would most likely be using Qi to brute force their way across the things that require exquisite muscle control… What was I thinking? Shit!! I need to do something about my short attention span. I don’t even understand what I was thinking just now. I really need to do something.’

“Lye? What happened? You spaced out again.” Riya asked with some concern in her voice.

“Don’t worry. I am fine. I was just digesting what teacher taught me.” Lye replied.

And from then on, Lye started his path of cultivation.