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When I returned, my three roommates were just sitting around playing cards and having fun. This slightly bothered me because I knew we were supposed to be spending this time cultivating. If we weren’t careful, there might be someone like my old instructor from the Su Clan who came and started killing people to make a point.

I entered the room silently to not make a scene, quietly sat on my bed, and picked up the cultivation technique scroll I’d been given. Just as I was about to open it, Ko spoke up to stop me.

“Put that down for a while and come join us,” he said. “Don’t worry about that thing.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be cultivating?” I asked. “We need to be careful, or the boss might get angry. We need to try and advance to Martial Disciple 4 like he wants, right?”

Ko looked at the other two boys and they all simply nodded their heads. They all stood up as one, and Ko looked at me. “Stay here for a moment,” he said to me. Moving furtively, the group snuck out of the dormitory.

Less than a minute later Ko carefully opened the door and slid back inside alone. He walked close to me and started talking in a quiet voice.

“Listen, you’re new in the city, right? I’ve not seen you on the streets before. You must’ve come in from some farm somewhere. You don’t know how things work around here, so I need to give you a few warnings. Don’t read that technique. Don’t cultivate. No matter what they tell you, don’t do it.”

“What do you mean?” His words sounded threatening, so I thought I would need to defend myself, but looking at his expression, I felt he was actually concerned about me.

“I know guys who came here before. The treatment is pretty good. Get a free house and food for a year, but you gotta make sure you don’t read that book. Otherwise, they’re going to trap you here.”

He seemed to glance around the room at the shadows, worried that someone would overhear him.

“This guy, right, well, he’s a couple years older than me. Well, he came here like all of us to get a free place to live and earn a little money. Well, he had this idea. He was gonna cultivate up to level three or whatever. Then, he’d return to the street like a king. With the power he got, he would be able to lord over everyone out there. Thing is, he never came back. The guys who were with him said after he started cultivating, his mind began to change and all he could think about was how to make the boss happy so he could keep advancing that technique of theirs.”

“But… aren’t you all here to cultivate? Why did you come here?”

Ko shook his head sharply. “No, you see, as long as you work and do the job, you get free food for a year. They pay you even if you don’t cultivate as long as you do the job. You can just walk out after that, and no one will say anything. If you cultivate, though, you’re gonna be trapped here for the rest of your life.”

I hadn’t expected the boys who came here to be servants to know so much. If this had been happening for a long time, sure, they would pick up on some things, but to know how dangerous it was to cultivate? I didn’t expect that.

Still, I understood what he was saying, but that didn’t change what I needed to do. If I wanted to live long enough, I had to be a Martial Master, so I would cultivate. It just wouldn’t affect me in the way they thought it would.

I knew that if I did this, it would change my place in the group. I also had to accept that the plan of simply staying slightly ahead of the other boys was not going to work. I would have to figure out how fast to cultivate on my own.

“Sorry, Ko, but this is something I have to do. I understand what you’re saying, and you’re right, but this is something I have to do.”

Ko shook his head again quickly. “Look, I understand you’ve had a tough life, but this isn’t the way to do it. Just… think about what I said. Oh, and don’t talk to anybody else about this. If the boss hears we’ve been saying things about cultivation, they might punish or expel us, so just keep it quiet.”

After speaking, he went to the door and knocked twice. Then, the two other boys reentered the room. They had been stationed as lookouts during our conversation.

As I was about to pick the technique manual back up, one of them spoke up. “Fang, come over here and join us for cards. I need some help to take these bastards down.”

I saw a pleading look in his eyes, like he really wanted me to join them. I knew what I would have to do, but I didn’t have to do it that night. I decided to sit down and just play some cards.

For the rest of the week, I was assigned various chores involving washing things around the complex. At night, any time I moved to pick up the cultivation technique, one of my roommates would find an excuse to pull me away from it.

I didn’t need that book to cultivate, but it was unique enough that I needed to get it stored in my mental library for future research. To do that, I would need to find time to sit down and read it carefully without interruption. Since that didn’t seem likely, I decided to implement an idea I had been thinking about for years.

The requirement of carefully reading every book before it could be stored in my library had been extremely restrictive. If I wanted to add hundreds of mortal reference books, I needed to spend years carefully studying them first. I needed a better solution.

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“System, I want to add a new capability to my mental library. I want a perfect copy of any book I touch to be directly added to the library.”

Host’s current mental library is capable of storing information up to Rank 3. Upgrading the library to store any information Rank 3 and below upon touch. Cost 10 million credits.

That was a bit more than I wanted to spend at the moment.

“How much to just apply this upgrade to mortal and Rank 1 information?”

Cost 100,000 credits.

That was acceptable. “Purchase.”

Purchase confirmed. Remaining credits 149,833,275.

I reached for the cultivation technique I had been given and gave it a light tap. With a thought, I saw that it had successfully been stored away.

Once it was successfully stored, I shifted my focus to cultivating the Subdued Waves Mantra. I wasn’t sure what rate the boss was expecting us to grow at, but with only doing an hour or two at night before bed, there was no way I was going to rush through any levels too quickly, so I didn’t worry. I just cultivated at a pace that felt natural.

At the end of the week, we had a day off. A different group of servants would be taking over our duties so that we had a little time to relax. At first, I was a little surprised at this since it seemed strange that they would give the servants any free time at all. From what I’d seen in the city, it seemed like everybody was working all the time. Then, I realized what this time was for. It was to give us an opportunity to cultivate without interruption. The people in charge wanted us to advance, so we needed to have a chance to do so.

I was considering doing as they wanted me to and cultivating the entire day, but Ko came up to me and pulled me out of the dormitory with the others.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going into the city. You know, the girls are going there too. We might get a chance to spend some time with them. I think Meimei might even have a bit of a crush on you.”

I froze.

I didn’t know who Meimei was, but the name… I wasn’t willing to pursue any ideas about someone with that name.

Ko saw my reaction and didn’t bring up the girls again, but he didn’t take no for an answer. He insisted that I go with them into the city no matter what.

The four of us walked to a poorer area I hadn’t visited before. They said there was a place to get some good food, so I followed them. They took me to a food stall where a lady had a big pot of meat simmering in a light stew. On the side, she had a few small buns and several more cooking in an oven.

“Old Liu, four Roujiamo!” announced Ko.

“Right away, Young Master Ko,” the lady said with a wide grin. They both seemed happy, and it felt like this ritual had been played out countless times before.

The woman took the buns one at a time, split them open, filled them with meat, then drizzled a little stew on top. She finished them off with a few sprigs of a green herb.

“Here you are. 48 copper for the lot.”

Ko took out a large copper coin and two smaller ones, placed them on the counter, and took his sandwich. When the other two boys followed suit, I went ahead and did the same.

I took a bite and was amazed at how good it was. Ko saw the look on my face and couldn’t help but comment on it.

“I told you. This is the good stuff. Expensive though, so it’s a bit of a treat for our first day off. If you want meat, better to stick with donkey in the future, it’s a lot cheaper.”

I was somewhat alarmed at the idea of eating donkey meat. When the flash of fear showed on my face, the other boys couldn’t help but laugh.

We walked down the street as we talked, but we were soon stopped by two groups of boys facing off against each other. I wanted to retreat immediately, but Ko calmed me down and pulled me forward to take a look.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Things aren’t gonna get too out of hand here. This is just a small fight for some territory. Both of them are cultivators and one probably advanced recently, so he’s looking to take over a few more streets. They won’t bother us if we don’t get involved.”

“You think you can take me now?” The larger boy puffed out his chest and cracked his knuckles. “Sounds like you need to learn a little respect.”

His opponent smirked. “You don’t stand a chance. I’m not the same person I was last time. I’ve advanced. I’m now a High Middle Martial Disciple 2 just like you. If you don’t want to get hurt, leave now!”

The large boy laughed. “You think just advancing to High Middle Disciple 2 is enough to face me? You’ve only just advanced while I’ve been at this stage for months. I’ve already advanced to Middle High Middle Disciple 2!”

His opponent’s eyes widened in shock, but he grit his teeth and kept his feet planted.

I looked at Ko confused. “Middle High Middle?”

He nodded. “You might not know. Martial Disciple is the first realm of cultivation and it’s divided up into several stages. 1, 2, 3, and so on. Well, each stage is a pretty big gap, so they are divided up into Low, Middle, High, and Peak. Just because two people are at Middle Disciple 2 doesn’t mean they’re equal, though. Those two are both High Middle Disciple 2, so they can defeat most other Middle Disciple 2 cultivators.”

I blinked at him wordlessly.

“Now, Shin is a Middle High Middle, but Yang should only be Low High Middle since he just advanced. Their power is nearly the same, but even the smallest advantage can mean the difference between life and death as a cultivator.”

My mind went blank for a second at the absurdity of it all. Did these boys have any affinities at all? Even with a low nine-star affinity, Martial Disciple 2 shouldn’t be very challenging to skip through. Why did they need so many substages?

I watched as the two finally started fighting, but there was little to see. They didn’t use their qi at all, they just started throwing punches and kicks at each other, and they weren’t even good at that. It finally made sense to me why Ko said someone thought he could rule the streets by only advancing to Martial Disciple 3 if this was his competition.

Their small gangs started to get involved in the scuffle, but that’s when Ko suggested that we hurry and leave. If the fighting drew attention from actual cultivators, we didn’t want to get caught in the mess.

After spending the day in town, the boys all returned back to the dormitory, and I began secretly cultivating.

They were living the simple life of mortals, facing mortal issues. Their biggest concerns were where they were staying for the night and where their next meal was going to come from. They didn’t have to deal with Lords and Kings plotting against them.

Watching my roommates live their lives, I couldn’t help but think back to Old Pei. He was what these boys would become one day. He had lived a life of sorrow and was never able to climb out of the poorest district in the city. That was the destiny of most mortals in this world.

There had to be some that rose above their station. Honest craftsmen could earn more than a street vendor, and there certainly had to be mortal merchants who were able to become quite wealthy, but all of it was balanced on a razor\'s edge. The moment they made a cultivator upset, their life could end in an instant.

I wished I could change it, but even with the immense power the System granted me, I had no idea how to even begin. I could help those I met. I could provide something for the people who were kind to me. But I couldn’t fix the structural problems of this society.

I sighed. I didn’t know what I was looking for in this life anymore, but I knew I wouldn’t find it here among Ko and the others.

If there were any answers for me in this place, I needed to advance to find them.