Rank-up

Fine dinner and Yue's company was enough to restore my sanity. Once dinner was over, I returned to my research and made a model focuser with just four layers. After thinking it over some more, I came to the conclusion that design based on either wood or stone would reveal too much. So I opened my notes and decided to design ceramic lenses.

A series of sketches with different shapes and methodical calculation for each of them gave designs for lenses meant to gather energy from the air, soil, and water. I also calculated a cavity-lenses for soil-air and soil-water combinations.

Once Yue was done with dishes, she returned to the common room and began cultivating, with my permission. Two hours later, in which she got two more points of the soul force. I sent her to bed and came out into the yard for a full night of cultivation.

It took a bit over 8 hours to gather 83 points and breakthrough into the Bronze rank. My breakthrough was really easy, it felt like I got a second heart and a third lung. One downside was that my clothes got covered in grime, expelled from the pores of my body. Naturally, I cleaned up, changed my clothes and ate a double portion for breakfast.

Yue have noticed my good mood and directly asked if I got a breakthrough. I readily confirmed her guess. She happily promised to make my favorite cake for dinner. And I promised to give her another lesson about cultivation and warned that I'm going to invite my aunt Xiu for dinner.

I was in a fantastic mood and spent the time on my way to school mentally calculating tiered pyramidal focuser (made of common materials), meant to serve cultivators of different ranks (from none to legend). Rought estimation gave me 500 meters tall monstrosity, that would make even Egyptians and Sith proud.

Today's lesson was about Glory City laws. Including the reference system and how it serves to keep our knowledge-base intact. The teacher has conveniently omitted how it facilitated that heinous scholarly practice of grinding knowledge down to crumbs and selling each crumb separately. At least now, I knew where his plan for the attack on our family's inscriptions came from.

Once the lesson has ended I found aunt Shen Xiu at her office to discuss a couple of my ideas.

"Good day, teacher Xiu," - it pays to be polite in my environment.

"Good day, nephew, is there something you need from me?" - she asked directly.

"Just had a couple of ideas, that aunt might find interesting." - I wasn't sure, that this place was safe enough for honest talk.

"I heard, that you've been binging alchemy tomes yesterday, found anything interesting?" - there was a slight hint of curiosity in her voice.

"You could say that," - I gave her my handicraft from last evening, - "here, check this out."

"What's so interesting about it?" - she asked without interest.

"Put your palm on the tip and try feeling the energy there and elsewhere in this room," - I said with a small smile.

"This ..." - I could see a spark of interest in her eyes - "where did you get it?"

"I made it myself, I also reached the bronze rank and decided to invite you for dinner at my place." - I answered.

"You did what?" - her calm facade was cracked. Next instant she was pressing me into her big, soft, warm breasts with a hug. - "I ... I'll be there, want me to bring anything special?"

"A bit of blood of the silver ranked fire fox would be good. We'll need a few drops, literally. Silver-rank inscription materials are still kind of expensive for me." - and it was even true.

"If that what you want, then aunt would surely come through for you." - she replied with a radiant smile.

"Then I'll be going, there's still much work to be done." - I said a minute later, untangling her hold on me.

"Congratulations, Yue'er, I'll be there tonight." - she said, letting me go.

I didn't know if it came from experience or from bronze rank or both, but this time my alchemy research was going even faster. Even my henchmen got faster in finding books I asked for. Still, I made only 25 pages of notes, simply because they were repeating things I already got from other books.