48 Rewards and Preparations.

After spending a long time with Zhu Cai talking about the past six months and new and old equipment Yun finally returned to her own space for the first time in six months, only to realize that this was no longer her space either. She quickly packed up the very few items she had and reported to her new master, Elder Lei.

Down in the deep cavern she waited patiently for Elder Lei to come out of his cultivation chamber and instruct her on where to put her belongings. After a few minutes of waiting he came out to speak with her.

"Disciple greets Master Lei."

Elder Lei gestured to her to stand up from her bow before speaking to her, "Congratulations again on your exceedingly high placement in the tournament. For someone so young you really are quite strong, and your level of comprehension and battle-comprehension is frightening to think about.

"For the next while you will be staying in a specially made cultivation room designed to isolate energy. This chamber will prevent the vast majority of your high quality stone essence from leaving the room, allowing you to activate the array within and create an extremely energy-dense environment.

"I must warn you, disciple, that allowing the density to reach too high is dangerous. If you start to feel like the air in the room is too thin you must immediately disable the array and absorb the energy in the room to lower the concentration to a tolerable level. In the next few months you will learn to adapt to the process and the optimal density for you."

Elder Lei motioned for her to follow as he began to walk to the next floor up. When they reached it he took her to the first room available, "As the only personal Disciple I have taken, you have the first room in this hall. Additionally, this entire floor is yours to use as you please until such time as I take another disciple.

"There are multiple different types of rooms here. There are the disciple rooms on the right side of the hallway, and on the left is various types of practice rooms, from cultivation and battle skills to illusion arrays and crafting rooms. Each type of crafting has its own special room, and the illusion arrays are outfitted with enough fuel to operate for two days each week."

Yun felt like Elder Lei was giving her a massive gift. She felt like he had emphasized the crafting room knowing about her relationship with Zhu Cai, and was urging her to bring her down here to live and work.

"Master, this Yun would like to know whether you will be taking another disciple in the near future?"

"No. You are the first disciple I've ever taken, and likely the only one there ever shall be. I am not prone to taking an interest in the younger generation, and in all truth, beyond the fact that you are simply extraordinary, I also owe your father a debt from when we were on the battlefield together long ago. He's unaware of the fact that I'm an Elder here, and as far as I can control it he will never know."

Yun bowed her head in acknowledgement, understanding that this was her master's way of telling her to refrain from telling her father of this. Elder Lei then took her to the end of the hall and pointed out the special cultivation room.

"Disciple Yun, you will spend the next few months at the very least within this chamber, prepare rations accordingly. When you feel you have a sufficient stock of food within your spatial storage come tell me and I will show you how to activate this array."

"Yes master. This Yun will prepare now."

Yun bowed deeply to her master as he walked back towards his own chambers in the large cavern. After he started down the stairs she went to her room to deposit her home goods before going back up the stairs.

The first thing she did was go to visit Zhu Cai. She informed her of the opportunity that her master, Elder Lei, had nearly foisted upon her, and told her to come live in the second room of her chambers. After she convinced Zhu Cai to pack the few material possessions she had that were not already stored in a spatial artifact she proceeded to the rations desk, where she retrieved the past six months of ration allotment in dried goods and water. Finally, after thinking for a few moments, she also proceeded to the library, where she picked out a few battle skills and a movement technique suited to spears and one of her elemental laws.

Finally, she proceeded to the weapons and armor desk to claim her Direct Disciple level equipment. She was allotted two items from any of the items present within this storage space, as she was now at the highest level a disciple could be.

She spent some time going through the supportive items and equipment, ignoring weapons all together, and eventually she came upon two items that suited her quite well.

The first item was akin to a belt or a sash, but was actually an incredibly long silken rope. It was about as wide as a hand, but it was layered over itself dozens of times to become as thick as a heavy linen cloth. The material, when opened to a single layer, was extraordinarily tough and so thin as to be nearly see-through. When layered it looked like a high quality black silk sash.

The interesting part about it was that, since it was layered, you could easily use it in multiple different forms. You could have it be long and tie it in a large bow at the lower back, or shorten it and tie it in a flat knot at the front with twin tails flowing down. Somehow this fabric had a sort of magnetic attraction to itself, and would remember the length of fold you trained it into, making it extremely easy to fold back up when you used it as a rope.

The other item she found was a pair of bracers with what looked like a matched bracelet. Conveniently, this matched bracelet looked similar enough to her spatial storage bracelet that she was confident she could convince Zhu Cai to tweak the ring to look almost identical. This would give her an extremely good disguise for her incredibly valuable artifact.

Finally, with these two items picked, she went back down to her new chambers and put on the new robes that Zhu Cai had made her, then tied them with a beautiful bow behind her back with the new sash rope she had just acquired. She presented the bracers to Zhu Cai briefly and requested the change, then went down to get Elder Lei and request instructions.