As it turned out, senior sister Qing Hua wasn't showing them motherly affection when she said that they'd need the energy the next day.
Right after dawn, Han Xuhan's peaceful sleep was broken by a series of loud gongs reverberating throughout the mountains.
"How big are these bells? Good God!"
Moaning in his sleep, Han Xuhan put a pillow over his head to block out the noise.
Five minutes later, someone began to bang on the door of his hut incessantly. His mind slowly came alive as yesterday's memories came flooding in, and he realized where he was.
Jumping out of his bed on unsteady feet, he wrapped the quilt around himself and opened the door in a hurry, only to see Xuanyuan Zhou standing at the doorsill, wearing the official uniform of outer court disciples.
She looked quite disgruntled, to begin with. And her anger only seemed to swell after taking a look at his unkempt appearance.
"The Sect's bells have already rung, Attendant Xuhan. It is naturally your duty to wake up before me and accompany me to the outer court assembly. So why do our roles seem to have shifted?"
"...How the hell am I supposed to know about these rules? What outer court assembly?" Han Xuhan asked in a daze.
"There's a rulebook in every disciple's hut. Did you not go through it last night before sleeping?" Xuanyuan Zhou said with a sigh of disappointment.
"It was dark in here, and I was tired. Senior sister Qing Hua should have said something!"
Forced to keep his grief to himself, Han Xuhan quickly went back inside and went through the wardrobe in the bedroom. Inside, he discovered a couple of simple robes similar to the uniforms worn by the servants of the sect.
Splashing some water in his face, he left the hut, sprinting to catch up with an impatient Xuanyuan Zhou.
He was one of the precious few who hadn't read that rulebook, it seemed. At the edge of the central field, a large crowd of disciples had already gathered near the foot of a small mountain.
If this was the entirety of the outer court, by his estimate, more than four hundred disciples had been recruited this year.
Four hundred disciples seemed to be rather low considering how powerful people claimed Crimson Snow Sect to be. It was known even to foreigners from distant continents, from what he had heard.
But once Han Xuhan recalled how expensive a month's residence in this sect was, he thought it made sense. In the novels he used to read, the sect paid its disciples, but here, it was the other way around.
No wonder the number of recruits wasn't high!
Luckily for him, the assembly started a bit late, probably because the Elders wanted to ensure everyone was present. About ten minutes after his arrival, a familiar voice suddenly came from the sky, deafening in volume.
"Good morning, disciples of the Crimson Snow Sect!"
Once the crowd was silenced, the fog in front of them began to fade little by little, and the mountain they were facing showed itself in its full glory. Han Xuhan recognized it after a long look.
This was where he had met Xuan Zi. The artificial-looking grass, the impossibly smooth staircase leading to a distant temple, the perfectly arranged formation of geometrically pleasing trees—there was no doubt that this mountain was maintained by someone with OCD.
A silhouette became visible at the top of the small mountain as the fog became lighter. Sect Master Xuan Zi seemed to be fond of theatrics, because instead of walking down the stairs, he flew.
That's right. He didn't have wings on his back, nor any other visible attachments that might allow someone to fly. His hands and feet moved slowly in the air as if he were running through a dense liquid.
He crossed more than a hundred meters of distance without touching the ground once. His landing on the bottom of the staircase was so smooth that it didn't even make any noise.
Han Xuhan, an avid fan of cultivation novels, couldn't help but yell in his mind like an excited fanboy.
This was Qigong! This was the peak of martial skills, using self-cultivated inner energy to keep one's body afloat!
Even the smallest burst of momentum can let you cross a thousand feet!
Having successfully captured the entirety of the outer court's attention, Sect Master Xuan Zi gave a brief opening speech. It seemed no different from the templates one would hear in a typical college on Earth, except the terminology was replaced with many words Han Xuhan didn't understand.
Xuanyuan Zhou, after being gently prodded a couple of times, relented and explained some of it to him between the gaps in his speech.
Having a 'master' like her was proving to be full of benefits, standing against a few burdensome duties. Han Xuhan felt so grateful to her that he decided to cultivate some proper habits of an attendant just to keep her happy.
Waking up with the dawn bells to accompany her to the assembly... Yeah, he could start with that.
After the speech ended, a frail-looking Elder surnamed Ning declared that he'd be leading their daily basic lectures, held in his mountain peak's guest hall at the first hour of the day.
Another Elder declared that his lectures would follow right after, held in his mountain peak at the second hour of the day.
As more Elders announced their schedules one by one, Han Xuhan couldn't help but grow concerned. The distance between each mountain peak was by no means short.
For ordinary mortals like him, attending each class would require half an hour's trek. But most of these classes had been arranged without a gap. How was he supposed to attend them all?
"Maybe I'm overthinking it. I can't be the only one who's gonna have trouble adjusting to this airtight schedule." Consoling himself, he followed Elder Ning to his mountain alongside the crowd.