Wasted day of unease

Collin settled down into a nice routine. Waking up, followed by cultivation, followed by body refining, followed by breakfast, followed by gardening, followed by alchemy practice, followed by dinner, followed by more gardening, followed by fire pill refining, followed by cultivation, followed by bathing, followed by inscription practice, followed by bed.

It wasn't the most exciting routine that has ever existed, but he was showing good progress. He had used Valeria's explanation of his failure and succeeded in refining two spirit herbs. It still wasn't perfect but that was only a matter of time and practice.

His body refinement was turning his body from skinny to lean and muscular. He was also starting to feel like his body was getting stronger and stronger. He liked this feeling far better than the weak feeling he had when he first arrived at his villa.

He was even doing well in his inscription practice; it only took him twelve attempts to create his first inscription array. Granted the inscription array was the easiest array possible to create, and most inscription instructors use it as a test for beginning inscriptionists. They believed failing one hundred times meant you had absolutely no talent for inscription and should quit inscription, forever.

His nice routine lasted nineteen days, before things outside his control changed it. Collin ended his body refining when he heard the sound of birds chirping and headed to the delivery chute. Instead of a delicious meal waiting for him in the chute, he found last night dirty dishes.

He was sure he knew the reason his breakfast wasn't delivered. After closing the cute he headed to the little room with the control panel for the security arrays. Using the control panel, he was able to look outside his main gate, and it was just like he thought. Groups of guards could be seen marching on the road in groups of four. He also saw something he wasn't expecting.

There were two people walking down the road, they were wearing plum purple colored outer coats with gold trim. This meant that they were from the Monten Clan, Collin's former clan. He didn't recognize either of them, and they weren't heading to his front gate, but this did little to ease the unsettling feeling he was having.

He expected that his clan would be out showing themselves in a time of panic, after all they were the clan of the territorial lord. What he didn't expect was that there would be two of them right outside his villa.

For the last nineteen days Collin had been trying not to think about his past so he could focus on his future, but he also knew as long as he stayed in Camis city, his past could always be around the corner.

He no longer felt like having breakfast, but he had to make plans for dinner, just in case. It would probably be a couple of days before his meals were delivered again. Collin didn't know if the restaurant was closed, or if the delivery person couldn't or wouldn't get past the guards, or if the guards were taking the food and eating it for investigation purposes. What he did know was tonight's dinner was supposed to be a large portion of perfectly steamed fish with a spicy butter sauce and sides. Instead, his dinner would most likely be a bean soup, it wouldn't be as good as the fish, but it would be filling.

While walking to the alchemy room he found himself repeatedly looking towards the front gate as if he was expecting it to be destroyed. He knew he needed to calm down and focus on something else, but it was hard to ignore with how close they were.

He tried to practice alchemy, but all his attempts ended in failure. Collin decided that today was a waste, he was too distracted to do anything that required concentration. Thinking of all the things he has been doing up till now, the only things that he could do in this state were gardening and cooking.

Collin didn't want to tend his garden at the moment due to the fact that several of the garden beds were near the front gate. It would be hard to try to pay attention to gardening when the thing he was trying not to pay attention to was thirty feet away.

This left cooking, but what he was planning to cook would only take two hours to finish so starting now would be pointless since it was still so early. Feeling frustrated by his lack of options of things to do, he decided to have a long soak in the bath and spend the day reading. If he learned something, then maybe the day wouldn't be a complete waste, or so he hoped.

Sitting in the bath water Collin closed his eyes and tried his best to let go of his stray thoughts. He was starting to succeed, until he noticed his success and ruined his efforts. He spent the rest of his time in the bath disappointed in himself, he had a belief of what a cultivator should be like, and he was very far away from it.

To Collin the cultivators he looked up to were not the first cultivators from the pioneering era, or the cultivators from the renaissance of the second era, or the cultivators from the current modern era, he looked up to the cultivators of the cataclysmic third era. They survived the great cultivator wars, they survived the beast wars, and they survived against their fellow survivors. The heavens fell, the earth shattered, and when it seemed the world itself was trying to kill them, but they survived.

Collin could see similarities to his own life. The second era was the renaissance of cultivation, everything was peaceful, and overindulgence was the way of things. New arts, spells, and techniques were created every day, knowledge flowed like a mighty river for all to benefit. Mountains were carved out and made into personal mansions for the wealthy to flaunt their wealth ad status. Then one day everything changed, a massive war spread across the world almost instantaneously. The good times of peace and happiness of the second era were over, and the third era had begun, everyone had to adapt or die.

To Collin this was similar to his own situation, he was a young lord that had everything he could ever want, then everything changed in an instant. Of course, there were no armies of cultivators, hordes of beasts, or cataclysmic natural disasters trying to kill him.

After soaking in the tub for a while Collin started feeling hungry, he went to the kitchen to make something to eat. He was looking forward to when his cultivation was high enough that he wouldn't need to eat food, but he was also dreading the fact he wouldn't get to taste all the good food around him.

Other than snacks, this was the first time Collin would be cooking for himself. He had butter fried potato slices with mushrooms with pickled vegetables for side dishes. The meal was quick to make and even quicker to eat, as it disappeared almost immediately after it was done cooking. He didn't know if the meal was going to last until he made his dinner later, so he took a plate with pickled eggs and vegetables with him to the library.

For nineteen days he had been sitting at one of the desks practicing inscription, but today he was back to sitting on the couch reading. He was going to read about treasure refining, he was going to read till the alarm for dinner went off. If his dinner was delivered, he would eat it happily, but he wasn't expecting it to be there, he was expecting to have to make own his dinner. His only hope for this day was that if he learned something then today would be a complete waste.