The next few days were spent in much the same manner. Stand up early in the morning, roam around the division for a bit, then join the class of Adept Di, run back and train some more, and the newest addition to this list, going to the book reserve.

Now he sat down on the second floor of the book reserve, thinking about the events leading up to this moment.

The hours spent in class were not really that interesting to Ren. At first, he feared that Zhen Jian would try to bully him in some way, but when the other boy only chose to glare at him occasionally, this fear disappeared like clouds in the wind.

It also looked like Di Niu would not let them practice anything new in his class, at least for now, making them repeat the bowl exercise till the disciples could no longer see it. This was more than a little upsetting to Ren, as he was already itching to test his practice sword with the others, and led to Ren trying to get ever more complicated shapes to appear in the water, a leaf, the pagoda, and even different people. Darkhaven, Ai, Adept Ji, Daiyu, Nanao, and of course Lin and Aya. He also asked Daiyu if the Adept was part of her family, but she had no idea. The more complicated shapes were always harder to form and looked like they were cut out with a knife, though, Ren had to admit.

Thinking back to Aya and Lin, as he drew shapes in his bowl, he dearly wished to know what they were doing. He thought about them almost every class, his mood sometimes turning sour as well. He did not get to meet them yet after all and likely wouldn't for the foreseeable future. This also led him to think about Ning who should also be somewhere in the sect, though it might be quite hard for him to locate her, as he did not know how she looked exactly or which part of the sect she joined. The task of finding her being more of a self imposed obligation to Nanao than anything else. Maybe he could ask Master Darkhaven, when he came to check on his progress? Thinking about the scary old man didn't really inspire confidence in him, but Darkhaven would definitely have a more informed opinion on how and where to search.

Pushing these thoughts to the back of his mind, he remembered his first experience in the book reserve.

Wanting to read a bit more about their kingdom, the sect and cultivation, Ren walked through the main entrance of the book reserve.

Immediately upon entering, he had to admire the architecture of the place, wherever he looked, bookshelves lined the smooth stone walls, while the ground floor had multiple tables ready for reading and taking notes. An enormous mosaic was lining the ceiling, depicting a man with a sword and book in each hand and only one eye open, making him look like he was winking. Multiple staircases led to higher floors, inviting Ren to explore the secrets within. They were made from different material, ranging from dark wood to stones that looked like marble.

While he admired all of this, multiple disciples were coming and going all around him, mostly dressed in greys, but there were some other colours mixed in as well.

Not having any idea where to even start in this flood of paper, Ren decided to look for a librarian or someone else who worked here or could direct him.

He didn't even need to look for long, as after he passed the entrance hallway, multiple desks were arranged next to each over in an orderly manner. All of them were manned with either a man or woman who looked very much like a librarian to Ren.

Walking up to one of them, a nice enough looking woman with her long brown hair in a ponytail, but before a word even left his mouth, she already looked down in a patronizing way, making Ren's heart drop. "Well, who do we have here, are you looking for your family, little one? Do you maybe want this big Sister to help you find them?" She said, in a honeyed voice and with a big smile pasted on her face, that almost made Ren cringe.

In an indignant voice, trying to sound as mature as possible, he responded. "No. I am one of the new disciples of the weapon division and would like to get to know where all the books are, and if I can take any with me. Master Darkhaven made it clear to me that I could make use of the book reserve." He told her, trying to sound confident, and even though Darkhaven did not say this outright, he thought that her checking if he really did have permission to be very unlikely.

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After this, the woman blinked at him, looking like an owl. Surprisingly, she was only professional after he told her of Darkhaven, not even asking him anything more or making any complaint, directing him to the books he desired, and telling him, that arts of any kind were only on the third floor and up.

There were even some forbidden arts, though not anyone could just look at those, and taking books with you was also not normally permitted.

He asked himself how they could even tell if someone took a book with them, as most were just ordinary books, but he supposed that it was mostly implemented with arts in mind, that would be somehow secured or traceable by their spirit.

Since then, Ren had skimmed through a few books on the structure of the sect, as well as the local kingdom and the world at large.

What he read in those books stunned his young mind. He had always thought that the Heart's Illusion Sect must be one of the strongest in the world, as everyone back in the town only talked about it in reverence, praising their elders as exalted masters, and young girls and boys joining as sons and doughters of heaven. Now he knew, that while it was by far not the strongest sect in the world, it was also not exactly small.

As far as he could tell, there were sects with as little as four disciples, while there were also true mammoths of sects in the world, spanning over multiple mountains and having ten's of thousands of disciples.

Their kingdom was also not a true colossus, but instead also more of a middling size, with multiple countries of about the same strength all around it.

Apparently there was also an empire full of mages to the east, dominating that part of the continent. He had already seen one such book in Darkhaven's study. Apparently the mages of the east were also cultivators, they just approached it a little differently, though in what way, the book he was reading, did not say.

The mages were also extremely proficient with the forging of artefacts.

They could imbue different effects, at a low level, that only Masters were able to achieve in the sect, like bags of holding and their even more coveted brothers, spatial rings, being able to hold, for Ren, unimaginable amounts of items in a single piece of jewelry.

He also now knew why not all the other disciples in his class were ten years old. If you did not pass the examination for the inner sect directly after the elementary division, you could still join the inner sect through the outer sect, and there was no true cap on taking the test, though anyone that wasn't able to pass by the time they were twenty was basically guaranteed to fail their whole life.

He was also tempted into looking around on the higher floors, but as he was still very much at the beginning of his cultivation journey and his manual should hold most of what he needed till the level of Master, he decided against it. Though, he thought to himself, he would maybe look for some exercises for his body and spirit both, as the bowl exercise was getting old really fast, in his opinion.

Two more weeks came and went, without meeting either Ai, Adept Ji, or Darkhaven, and in class they were still hung up on the water bowl.

But while Ren did not get any closer to any other disciples in their hours looking at water, he did meet up with Daiyu multiple times. They talked about her family and the high expectations placed on her. How she wanted to join the puppet division, but after seeing the demon like Zhi Mu, changed her mind. Their expectations for the future, how Ren came to join the sect, as well as the stages of cultivation.

They were: Initiate, Novice, Adept, Master, Grandmaster, Transcendent.

She said there were even more stages above those, but she had no idea about them. A practitioner who reached the Transcendent stage apparently could live for up to a thousand years and as far as Daiyu knew the highest level in the sect was Grandmaster, though even those were extremely rare. Seeing as a Master was the de facto head of this part of the weapon division and Ren had not yet met any Grandmasters, he could believe this easily enough.

Talking more about cultivation in general revealed to Ren that it wasn't actually as simple as he believed it to be. Daiyu described arts that changed your body in weird ways, demonic rituals sacrificing others. But even normal cultivation arts apparently shouldn't be that easy to learn, as you had to think about how and where you transmitted your spirit, how fast you circulated before you hurt yourself, as well as how much spirit you could draw in. All of this and more, ideally, all the time.

Ren felt a little weird when she talked about her troubles with cultivation, and constantly wanted to help her in some way. But he simply did not encounter any of her woes.

Instead, he just listened.

And his next meeting with Darkhaven was coming closer, as the man said that he would check up on his progress.