A lady dressed in a traditional skirt and a short-sleeved blouse came in with a jute bag containing canned beer. "Thank you, Second Uncle," she bowed to the middle-aged man.
"Cousin, how have you been?" she asked slowly and carefully, sitting down cross-legged opposite Lu Ding and placing the beer between them.
"You got off work quite early today, and also, who do you have beer with you again this calm evening, Sister Rouxue?" Lu Ding asked.
"Enough with the formalities; we are of the same age, but you always make it sound like I'm too old. The beer is for relaxing; it's not an ordinary beer. It's one of the freshly made ones from the family factory in the Sky City," Cao Rouxue replied, taking out one of the beers to drink.
"About yesterday, why did you say I shouldn't touch that rude bastard?" Lu Ding asked.
"Pfft...rude, you say? Actually, he's not, given that he didn't beat you to pulp the moment you captured him. According to my understanding of him, he's a very petty person and very unreasonable," Cao Rouxue said.
"I sure hope you didn't call him a martial artist," Lu Ding said.
"Hmm, I did, but he turned fierce, almost choking me. It surprised me, though, when he said he felt a similar vibe from me, almost the same as yours," Cao Rouxue replied.
Lu Ding suddenly laughed, not knowing how to react, his facial expression extremely childish as he grasped for air, holding his ribs.
"So that bastard is still on about the martial art issue, and even tried choking you?" He suddenly turned serious after saying this, almost as if he never laughed.
"Firstly, I should give it to him that his senses are still sharp, compared to the past. Also, it seems like his cultivation base should be at the Ninth realm of Qi formation to be able to grab," Lu Ding said.
"Wow, you sure change faces so fast. Nevertheless, he didn't have any sign of Qi fluctuation when he was near. I'm very sure of this, since I've already reached the Fifth realm of Qi formation," Cao Rouxue said.
"That's strange. It seems like he's firstly tampering with his body to an extreme level. Although the method of cultivating in the Lu family automatically tempers your body along with the increase in realm and stages, its flaw is facing a well-tempered cultivator. But that shouldn't be the case for him, since he sits in front of me every day. Also, I wonder since when he has a calm temper," Lu Ding said.
"It's no wonder he calls you a tricky bastard, cursing you from time to time in the detention room," Cao Rouxue muttered.
"I feel that if I were to practice a little more, I should be able to catch up with you," Cao Rouxue said.
"Is that so...? I've already reached the second realm of Foundation stage, almost as strong as the upper echelon in Sky City," Lu Ding replied.
"You really are a genius, cousin. How I wish I had the same talent as yours," Cao Rouxue said.
"You do have talent, since you were able to force your breakthrough to five levels. But you shouldn't care about my own progress. What's necessary now is for you to stabilize yourself and constantly drink nutritional medicine, just to avoid damaging your foundation. The jade bone soup should do the trick," Lu Ding said.
"That's an almost impossible thing to get, since only the Zhen family of Sky City cultivates it," Cao Rouxue panicked.
"It would be better if you just take the Advancement Immigration Exam this year, so that you can just relocate the whole branch family back to Sky Floating City," Lu Ding said, smiling as he looked up at the large city above them, making him feel mysterious.
Later that evening, Tang Yan left the house for school, since the school closed at 9 pm for martial arts practitioners. In this world, due to the emergence of the floating city, many institutions had two categories of learning, which was either to stay as a mortal and advance one's schooling as a mortal in the lower city or to advance as a cultivator, be it in martial arts or cultivation arts.
Most people strived to be the latter, because, as usual, strength ruled over everything, and only the strong made the rules.
On arriving at the school, Tang Yan coincidentally met Fu Chen at the gate, along with Yan Fan.
"Hello again, did you miss me?" Tang Yan sneaked up on them with an awful smile hung on his delicate face.
The duo felt their hearts out of their bodies when they heard his voice, since they were sneaking around.
"Which bastard dares to scare Laozi...?"
Yan Fan scolded before seeing Tang Yan behind him with a smile that looked very scary to him. Even Fu Chen fell to the ground, scared, seeing Tang Yan.
"What do you want from me?" Yan Fan asked, trembling uncontrollably.
Although Yan Fan may be said to be a bully from a second-class family, he could be considered a third-class first-rank since he didn't really hold much connection like the others, and he was often ridiculed by his fellow second-class family students.
"No need to be scared of me, hehehe. I'm only here to get my list from your follower as discussed," Tang Yan said.
Yan Fan and Fu Chen both heaved a sigh of relief since he wasn't there to beat them up like the previous time.
Fu Chen brought out a fiddled, rough paper containing seven names, out of which three belonged to the second class, exempting the degraded Yan Fan, and four of the first class family. But the first, ruling out the first class, on the list was stated unknown.
"Interesting," Tang Yan muttered to himself.
"Who's the unknown person?" Tang Yan asked, looking at Yan Fan.
"I don't know. The person didn't give his name, but he paid a huge sum of money to be included in the list," Yan Fan replied.
Tang Yan's eyes sparkled with interest as he took the list from Fu Chen.
"I'll be going now. Don't forget to keep our little secret," Tang Yan said, smiling as he walked away.
Yan Fan and Fu Chen watched him leave, still feeling scared and uneasy.
"Let's get out of here before he comes back," Yan Fan said, quickly turning around to leave.
Fu Chen followed closely behind, still looking around nervously.
As they walked away, Tang Yan's smile grew wider, and his eyes sparkled with excitement.
He had a plan, and it was already in motion.