"Ah, why is Brother Tang Ze bruised though?"
"Didn't you hear? He tried to confess his love to Tang Ru and she beat him like a dog!" This statement was not correct, but it was the version of events.
"Oh, I see - Tang Ze is a masochist who likes it when girls beat him."
"No, that beating was not an expression of love - she rejected him and then she did that to him. She's always been a cold-hearted harpy."
"Hmm... she is pretty though - and has a really nice rear."
"True, likely why Brother Tang Ze fell for her in the first place."
"But to thrash him so thoroughly after he confessed to her, Tang Ru might have the appearance of a sura, but she has the personality and temperament of an asura!"
The suras were divine beings who were noted to be beautiful, powerful, serene, benevolent, wise, and restrained. They ruled over heaven, and Indra was said to be their king. They were often mentioned in the mythology of this world, though no one in living memory could be reliably said to have seen one for themselves.
The asuras, in contrast, were deformed, demonic, violent, ruthless, malevolent, ill-tempered, and cruel. It was said that long before the Raswatian Empire was founded the asuras were engaged in a massive war with humanity. The asuras not only eventually lost said war, but were also completely eliminated by its end. Archeologists would occasionally find the remains of the asuras, so unlike with the suras, there was at least concrete evidence that they had, at one point, existed.
"Wait- their names are Tang Ze and Tang Ru, no? Aren't they related? Why was Tang Ze confessing his feelings to her?"
"No, no, they just coincidentally share the surname 'Tang', they aren't actually related… at least I hope so."
When all of it was over, there were so many rumors and misunderstandings from this one simple incident that Tang Ze himself had trouble keeping his own head on right as to what actually had happened.
And yet, no matter what Tang Ze did, he couldn't straighten things out. Many of the men respected him for crossing over to the women's side and confessing his feelings to a girl- something a lot of them fantasized of doing but were never bold enough to carry out. The fact that Tang Ru had 'rejected his love' also made it so that he garnered some of their sympathies- and the others thought that even if he had been rejected in the end, he had at least been bold enough to put his heart on the table.
Of course, these people didn't understand what actually happened, nor would they believe it even if Tang Ze told them.
And while Tang Ze's reputation amongst the men might have skyrocketed, his reputation in the eyes of the women was now lower than even the piles of mud that one would find after the rainwater had dried up!
'Nasty pig', 'pervert', and 'heartless boor' were some of the nicer things that they called him.
There were quite a number of downsides to joining a sect, Tang Ze had soon realized this after joining - but there was quite a bit of upside as well.
One such upside were the lessons.
Lessons were sparse and not as frequent as Tang Ze would've liked - usually only two or three per week, but the fruit of such was quite rich.
The best part was definitely the attitude of the teacher's - Tang Ze had initially been worried, or perhaps it was from the influence of consuming media back in his world, that the teachers here would be overly strict and arrogant.
But it was not so!
As an example, when they had a lesson about cultivating, the teacher did not seem to be the slightest bit fazed when he found that Tang Ze was at the Zeroth Realm.
He did not scoff at Tang Ze or dismiss him as being hopeless.
Instead, the teacher gave Tang Ze some even more basic pointers than everyone else, based on what he thought Tang Ze could do to get to the first minor realm of Qi Condensation quicker.
In truth, even his teacher didn't have much to say to him in that regard, because something like this was not a problem that people usually encountered.
However, even a few pointers went a long way to someone like Tang Ze - who felt like he was stuck with no real guidance on how to move forward.
"Cultivation, at its core is about knowing oneself," his teacher told him. "If one does not know oneself, how can one understand the vastness of Heaven and Earth?"
There was a technique called mirror-meditating that worked well for the same.
The concept was simple, one had to sit in front of a mirror - which were not that common in this world, so most people preferred to sit in front of a small pond or lake, so that there was the added benefit of being surrounded by nature.
And then, one would look at one's reflection, contemplating every inch of it, and thinking of one's past experiences.
The goal was to get to know oneself better.
"Once you have become comfortable with that, the next step is to understand the world around you," the teacher continued. "But, that is jumping far too quickly ahead. For now, focus upon yourself."
Additionally, the teacher noted that Tang Ze's dantian and meridians were quite weak right now, and much like Yin Tiang, also advised against the use of pills. "Your meridians are weak - just like the bones of a baby are much weaker than that of an adult. Put too much stress on them, and they may be irreparably damaged."
As for the baby oil, the teacher noted that he wasn't really sure whether it would work or not, but at the very least it wouldn't hurt either. "My knowledge has limits, you know," he said with an apologetic tone.
However, that only made his image rise higher in Tang Ze's eyes.
In Tang Ze's experience, not just from this world, but also back on Earth - a teacher who couldn't admit they didn't know something was usually not a very good one. They might make up an answer, or get angry and deflect the question - but this man wasn't like that.
That told Tang Ze that he likely knew what he was talking about, and he continued to try to meditate daily, hoping that he would soon be able to use the more advanced techniques that Zhang Long and his other squad members could use.
In the meanwhile, he continued to try to strengthen himself with the help of making new costumes. However, he was now running into some issues with this that he hadn't foreseen earlier.
For one - while it was fine enough to make new costumes for different characters, the fact remained that some were far more powerful than others!
As an example, he had purchased a large amount of orange cloth to make an outfit that was based on a certain character who was even more powerful than the superhero he had first emulated. This character was based off of Sun Wukong - and for some reason was quite beloved by cartels back on Earth. He could even use Qi to some extent, though was still weak to most magical and spiritual abilities.
But because some characters were so much better than others, it led to the issue that there was little point in making dozens of costumes. Better to just make one and absorb that one's power completely!
On top of that, he hadn't figured out a way to make things go faster. It would take about three hundred years for him to absorb this new character's power quickly, but because the ceiling was much higher- it still meant that he got stronger faster with this costume than with the previous one.
But, it was extremely frustrating to do nothing but wear a costume and wait to get stronger!
On top of which, it wasn't just strength he was after. But when it came to thinking of other abilities, he was so spoiled for choice that it was hard to decide. He had the opposite problem here - there being too much choice, and not too little. He didn't know what might be useful in the future.
The downside of having a unique talent such as this was of course, that there was no one who could guide him further on what to do here.
Tang Ze would have to learn by trial and error.
It was here that a teacher could've helped him - but if he was the only one with such a talent which truly did seem to be the case, he could rely only upon himself.
If the student was unwilling to learn or was completely hopeless, it wouldn't matter how good the teacher was - that student would not go far.
Conversely, even if there was no teacher, a willing and good student could eventually accomplish or figure out most things for themselves.
But that would take time!
The role of a good teacher in that kind of scenario was to make the few things that a student couldn't figure out on their own clear - and to shorten the amount of effort and time needed to understand things.
A good teacher could take something that might take hours to understand comprehensible in a few minutes!
And even in this world, where people could potentially live for thousands of years, time was not a luxury that could casually be discarded.
When it came to his talent, Tang Ze would have stumble in the dark to find what worked and what didn't. There would be no help on that front.
Other than the cultivation lectures, they had had a basic alchemy lesson as well.
This was a 'basic lesson' with the more advanced ones reserved for those like Yin Tiang who showed that they were ready to actually specialize as being alchemists.
These basic lessons were, as the teacher said, more for making sure that they all didn't make a dumb mistake like eating or drinking something that could kill them, and to ensure that they wouldn't be swindled when buying or selling such objects either.
After all, sect missions did involve things like collecting herbs - which is what Zhang Long had been doing when he had run into Tang Ze in the first place.
They could not do these jobs correctly if they could not, to some extent, identify the plants which were relevant to cultivation.
Tang Ze found this whole class to be quite boring - as it was just the teacher handing out a plant, going into details about it, asking them to memorize its name, appearance, and properties, and this would continue for another forty plants.
Tang Ze's ability to rote memorize things were not good - he could've been a much better student back on Earth had that been the case.
Zhang Long and Yin Tiang shared much of the same predilections as him when it came to this lesson, but because they had been born in this world and had been raised in it, they had some ideas of these plants as they had seen them before.
Tang Ze was approaching this subject as a total newcomer, and things that would've been otherwise very obvious to even an ordinary mortal were foreign to him.
The teacher though, didn't seem to care and kept droning on, hoping that by showing them things again and again often enough they would get a hang of it.
And for those who would reach the Golden Core stage - there was likely some truth to that. After looking at plants over and over again for potentially hundreds of years, even if you weren't actively trying, you would be able to get quite a bit of information on them.
Tang Ze did not particularly like this class - mainly because he wasn't too good at it. It was much the same with the cultivation lessons, only he was far more interested in those as that was a definitive requirement of this world if he wanted to go forward.
In contrast to those two, there were the martial arts lessons. Tang Ze did reasonably well with these, though, in this instance, he had the opposite problem. While he was happy, his teacher was quite annoyed with him.
The martial arts instructor walked up to Tang Ze after telling everyone else to pair up to practice, and he had a sour expression on his face.