Chapter 34. One request and two suggestions

The Beginner's Ranking Tournament expectedly ended in a final battle between the first and second geniuses. Din Dong and Na Prawe fought evenly for a while, then the latter got fed up and surrendered. The winner nearly vomited blood from such a victory.

At the end, all the contestants were lined up to receive their awards.

All those who won one battle received ten Qi stones. Those who won two fights received one hundred Qi stones and one contribution point. The winners of three fights received one thousand Qi stones and two contribution points.

As for the Seven Gems technique, out of a hundred copies, half went straight to the first fifty places. That is, all of the seven and six wisps, plus some of the five wisp disciples. Of the remaining half, students of one, two and three wisps each received ten copies per level, and the remaining twenty went to novices of four wisps. Of course, this was with the allowance that you had to have at least one win to get a technique. If there were extra copies of a technique left, they were redistributed amongst the best disciples in the nearest category.

There was also a system of rewards for reaching the next thousand in the ranking. However, this only applied to those who had managed to secure a higher place compared to the representatives of their Qi level.

Rewards for first places Yee Rhys let it pass his ears. Only a waste of soul.

Through his efforts, the young man managed to snag a spot at the very end of the seventh thousand, which gave him a bonus prize as a Meridian Purification Pill. The three victories also earned him a thousand Qi stones and two contribution points. As well as an official copy of the Seven Gems technique. Well, at least he wouldn't have to hide it anymore. Yes, and the appearance of the finances made him quite happy.

Yee Rhys looked up to the bottomless sky. Ah, where was his ring? There was a lot of value in it. He had remembered taking the ring with him but after a cursory inspection he had removed it. He never saw his ring again.

***

After the official conclusion of the Beginner Ranking Tournament, Yee Rhys wanted to go straight home, but as soon as he headed for the exit, he was touched by a "hold it" sound transmission. The young man stopped and looked around for the caller.

The Inner Sect Elder from the Discipline Department stood up from his seat in the Inner Sect Loggia and slowly glided down.

- You are coming with me. - Coldly he announced.

- As you say, Elder. - Yee Rhys bowed slightly.

The next moment the elder soared into the air, the young man was enveloped in a torrent of wind and carried along. After flying through the Inner Sect, they landed on the wall of an enormous dark stone castle riddled with narrow openings of battlement windows.

- Follow me. - The elder ordered and headed down.

Yee Rhys followed him. Together they descended two floors and walked through a series of grey, featureless corridors lit only by sparse slits of narrow windows. Finally, the elder stopped in front of a wooden door padded with thick strips of iron. The escort knocked.

- I have brought him in. - He announced.

- Send him in. - The door opened with a soft creak. - You may go.

- Yes, Master. - The elder bowed his head and moved swiftly down the corridor, paying no further attention to the young man.

Yee Rhys sighed and stepped inside.

Behind the door was a relatively small room. To the left and right of the entrance were long cupboards, whose shelves held books, scrolls, and jade slips. Much of these repositories of knowledge were old and dirty, some were even damaged. All this revealed the long and uneasy fate of the refuges of information. All this wealth was enclosed by metal bars and protected by powerful formations.

On the floor was a thick, fluffy carpet made of the leather of an unknown beast. At the far end of the room stood a pair of sofas and a table between them. There was an elegant candleholder on the table, but the candles were replaced by three night pearls, giving off a soft and slightly yellowish light.

On one of the sofas sat a grey-haired old man with one eye.

- Yee Rhys welcomes the Grand Elder Raz Beg.

- Have a seat, - the old man nodded at the adjacent sofa.

The young man walked forward and sat down in the offered seat.

The door closed by itself. The formations activated, cutting off the room from the outside world.

- A video recording array. - the Elder pulled out a disc in the shape of a stone square densely covered in runes. - Do you mind?

- I don't mind. - Yee Rhys agreed. - I also have one request and two suggestions.

- A request? - Master Raz Beg frowned.

- I am considered a normal disciple in the Outer Sect. - Younger explained. - So I ask you to keep our meetings private. The fewer people know about them, the better. Constant appearances in the Discipline Department by a newcomer like me will create unnecessary interest. I might as well go off on my own to some deserted place where your man will pick me up.

- Yes. - The one-eyed old man agreed involuntarily. - I hadn't thought. The very existence of mental techniques in the sect is a mystery. So is the existence of mental practitioners. We are not allowed to draw attention to it.

- That's good. - Nodded Yee Rhys - I could say about one time, for example, that they wanted to clarify something from my past. But the second time will be more difficult to explain. Now my first suggestion: since we both need to get information, it would be logical if one hour I ask questions and you answer, and the second hour vice versa.

- Acceptable. - The Elder agreed. After all the initial goal was to teach the boy. And receiving the information is rather a pleasant addition. - And the second offer?

- I have been occupied with other things these days. - Youngster scratched his head. - That's why I don't have any questions at the moment. So I would like to start by going through the basics. That will broaden my horizons and allow us to avoid any misunderstandings due to differences in the interpretation of terms or other differences in background information when discussing higher spheres.

- Reasonable. - Master Raz Beg admitted. He looked at the boy with a different expression. Despite his young age, he was saying sensible things and looking a step ahead. In some situations that was more valuable than talent or level of cultivation. The one-eyed old man pulled out two blank jade slips. He placed one on the table and pushed it towards the young man. The latter looked at the slip that had stopped at the edge of the table.

- Let's put the basic concepts and basic terms on the slips and then exchange them? That way we'll know each other's basics and we can find the differences.

- Hmm. - Yee Rhys took the slip in his hand. - I thought you had a whole base on a separate slip.

- Our base is tied to the technique. - The Elder shook his head. - But some of the techniques and documents received later have discrepancies with the original base. At one time my predecessors tried to link it all together, but some things remained unclear.

- I see. - The young man nodded.

Two people can have a different understanding of the same technique. Let's suppose that each of them makes a copy of it, with corrections of their own understanding. Then they pass it on to the disciple, who reinterprets it and makes a copy of his own. After going through a dozen of such copies, one technique can easily make two.

Fortunately, with ancestral memory, no such misunderstandings will arise. Many Fa-Al practitioners have reached higher levels, where they can easily merge all the private interpretations of a technique back into a single whole. Thanks to this view from above, Yee Rhys' basics were clear of private interpretations.

Covering his eyes, the young man plunged into his ancestral memory, scrolling through the basics once more. Because of the racial differences, the energy was used slightly differently, but it wasn't critical. After all, the Fa-Al had lived with humans for a long time and were well versed in human specifics. Yes, and the mental energy itself was uniform.

It was reminiscent of the use of Qi by humans and magical beasts. Both absorbed Qi and then transformed it into techniques. And while a human could not replicate the techniques of a magical beast, and a beast a human technique, the result could be very similar, sometimes identical.

So, Yee Rhys wasn't worried. Excluding the racial twist, the basics were identical.

Placing his hand on the jade slip, the young man released a thread of Qi and poured the information inside. He looked at his interlocutor.

The two slips changed owners.