7 Four Years Later

Amelia was staring at him when Louis woke up. Bags were under her eyes and dawn has just come up.

"What's wrong, sis?" Louis said, sitting up. Picture and musical books, half-opened, were scattered around the bed. "Too excited about your first day at school?"

Amelia shook her head. "I can't stay home anymore."

"Oh. You mean because you have to stay at classes." Louis said. He flicked Amelia's forehead and grinned. "So the fearless Amelia knows fear too."

Amelia frowned and smashed her head into his head. "Mom says that there will be many people, not just sisters."

"Scared?"

"A bit."

"It might be fun. There's a lot of new things."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Not just music and those playing with those clay orbs. Friends. Games. New things."

"I rather stay here."

"Carla will be going with you. It will be fine. You have a friend there already. Shea already goes to school there too. You won't be lonely."

"You and mother won't be there."

"True. I'll go there soon. Two years. It will be fast. And mother will bring you there and back everyday."

"Promise?"

"Promise. Now get some sleep. Sleep well and beat them." Louis said, laying her down and putting the blankets over her. They slept together, now that he was big enough to not sleep with his mother, but his mother feared that he would be too lonely at night and there were only two rooms in the house, so he and his sister shared a room and bed. "I'll wake you up."

"Alright."

Louis smiled then got off the bed, sitting at the corner against the bed. It was a morning routine, the morning cultivation. Today, in particular, was important. His wind element had reached the sixth layer a month ago but cultivating the second element, water, took much more effort and time. Perhaps it was because he was originally only cultivated the fire element, but it felt slow and he had to cultivate to the sixth layer peak of the wind element before he could breakthrough to the sixth element of the water element.

Eleven hairs, six silver and five blue, formed tiny undercurrents within his meridians. The thinner, the better and easier to fuse when breaking through. The qi surrounding the eleven hairs were a dark blue, unlike the clear qi it was when he broke through last month. Whenever he cultivated, he would absorb both water and wind qi equally, but he could only cultivate one element at one time, so half of his qi would have to be expelled to be filled by more of one element. The process was repeated until the one element filled his qi with a ninety-five percent purity before he could continue. It was tedious and he thought it would only get more so as he unlocked more elements.

He started at his middle dantian, like he always did, and pushed the qi through the meridians into his head and through the rest of his body before it returned into his middle dantian. As the qi passed through his middle dantian, it was constricted into a smaller diameter and splitting into two parts: a dark blue inner layer and a clear outer layer. The inner layer passed into the center of the eleven hairs. He would need to complete eight more revolutions to condense that inner layer into a hair-width strand of water qi.

He took a deep breath before opening his eyes. This process would last three hours, so the sun was already up and breakfast almost ready. He could hear the shower in the bathroom running. His sister was sleeping, gripping on a small rabbit plushie. Another few minutes of sleep can't hurt.

Louis gathered the books on the bed and returned them to the bookshelf in the room. It only had to shelves and most of them were picture and musical books, except for a few history books he borrowed from the library.

"Wake up, sis." Louis said. "Time to get up."

After his mother and sister left for sister's first day of school, Louis went to the library. Silva, his silver-hair maid, carried him and she flew to the library on the other side of the canal. Around the time his mother had decided he was big enough to need to sleep with her anymore, they got a new house, with a bigger one in all aspects. However, the two maids got their own room each, so there were only two bedrooms remaining for his mother, sister and him.

Silva brought Louis directly up to the third floor. He had just a couple more three star alchemy books to read. Unlike the alchemy he knew, this world's alchemy mainly used fire to concoct pills, eliminating other forms of alchemy like jellies, liquids and powders. Because of this, pills requiring another element were rated much higher and some of the low star fire element alchemy pills were actually higher level fire pills due to its necessity in higher tier fire pills.

He read an alchemy book, taking time to make detailed notes in his notebook, in his original language, Chinese. After he was done, he would read an array formation book. While he was less interested in this subject, he was interested in combining more arrays in his alchemy, besides the formations that simply prevented people from spying while he was concocting. The array formation books required more time for him to read and piece together, since he didn't know very much before he was reborn and the arrays here were different too. The original arrays he knew either were elementless, had the four main elements in harmony or denied specific elements. There were very few elementless arrays in this world and many arrays, especially in Allyn County used water and wind, with the occasional four element harmony array.

The Allyn County was within the elemental county belt, where each of the county had their own two main elements and would be deficient in another two. So formations were used to supplement and strengthen the current elements while foreign mages would be called to add the minimal level of an element necessary to maintain the land's integrity.

Louis took a break for lunch before continuing to read. By the end of the day, he had completed four books: two alchemy and two array formation books.

"What is it, mother?" Louis asked, taking off his jacket. "Is this an interrogation? Did sis's first day of classes go that bad?"

He handed the jacket to the maid before looking at this sister, then his mother. Amelia was whistling, looking up at the sky. She always did, when she failed to keep a secret. Clara gripped the edges of her dress and looked at him with guilt written all over her face. Shea was napping beside Clara. Her mother and Elaine both looked serious, well as a serious a gentle mother could. A tint of worry was in his mother's eyes, as much as she tried to look stern. He didn't have the heart to tell her she was failing. Elaine looked calm, smiling gently like she normally did, though he felt it looked much more eerie.

What secret did she fail to keep this time? Louis sighed as he sat on the chair. Hopefully it wasn't as dreary as it normally was, though he said that every time.

"Your sisters have told me that you have been helping them cultivate," his mother said.

"I only helped them make their soul and elemental affinity stronger." Louis said, pulling out the orb he had modified four years ago. It retained its same shape, though the clay surrounding the array within the orb had adopted wind and water attributes, instead of its natural earth element. "Have a look at the array within. It helps, but only for people of low realms. It can't improve mother's soul, but it can help you control it better and close the elemental affinity disparity between your body and soul."

Mother looked at the orb, pouring her qi into it. She quickly became absorbed into it. "Since when can you make an array, let alone such a complicated one?"

"I can only make basic one and two star arrays. That array is a special one only I can make." Louis said. "You can take the orb, if you like."

"You don't need it?"

"Not anymore."

"Why haven't you made any other arrays or told me anything about this before?"

"It would be weird if a child started talking all of a sudden and brought out arrays, right? I thought it was better for me to keep a secret for a little while longer, when I could say I finished reading the library books and started practicing. It would have been more reasonable then."

"You don't trust me?"

"I was afraid."

"Yet you gave it to your sister."

"She didn't ask questions and she was more interested in the what, not the why or how."

Elaine and his mother became silent. Clara and Amelia looked at their faces and looked around nervously, guilt-ridden to make a scene while too confused to ask any questions.

Eventually, it was Elaine who spoke first. "Well, Louis is quite talented in arrays, as far as I can tell. Don't you have a personal array specialist your sister sent, Melissa? Why not have him tutor Louis for now?"

Melissa gave Elaine a weird look before sighing. "I do. His a four star array formation master from Rosenburg City." Then she looked at Louis. "I can call him here tomorrow, if you are interested."