Riluo City (Blue Phoenix Book 1) (25 page)

Hui Yue felt some curiosity towards these different subjects. He liked the idea of focusing on one specific class at a time, but for now he could do nothing about his curiosity as the subjects would not be revealed before the following day.

“This Royal Academy is sponsored by the Royal Family, and they wish to provide the country’s young generation of cultivators with the best possibilities. This includes the Martial Art Skills that we have gathered in the Martial Art Skill Hall. Together with providing Martial Art Skills and Qi Cultivation Methods, we have the Pill Distribution Day once a month.”

The mention of Pill Distribution Day caused almost all students within the class to hold their breath and look at teacher Li Yuan with glistening eyes. Even Lan Feng and Hui Yue felt excitement within their shared soul as they looked towards their teacher.

Teacher Li Yuan felt a brief feeling of satisfaction upon seeing the expressions of his students, especially when he noticed that both Hui Yue and Wang Ju Long were engrossed in his words. Although both came from noble backgrounds, medicinal pills were a major influence in bringing the noble sons to the Academy.

“The pill outlet will hand out a medicinal pill to the student cultivators at our Academy each full moon. The strength of the medicinal pill depends on the rank of your cultivation, and sometimes a specific cultivator might be granted an extra pill as a reward for impressive progress. The Medicinal Pill Outlet will open after the next full moon and it is possible to buy extra pills there at any time.” Hui Yue l slightly narrowed his eyes, the next full moon was three days away so it would not be too long before he would gain his first medicinal pill.

The teacher was quiet for quite some time allowing the students to chat amongst themselves. He was fully aware of how tempting the medicinal pills were as he himself worked at the Academy for the sake of the medicinal pills he was rewarded with.

Hui Yue was sitting at back of the students and he overheard small bits of their conversations. It would seem that many of the more impoverished families had their children sell this medicinal pill in order to support their family. Having children who made it into the Royal Academy could be considered a way to supplement their income. Although cultivation would be much slower without the medicinal pill it would still be possible for them to maintain a decent cultivation.

As the students finally calmed down a little Li Yuan continued, “Students at our Academy are allowed to leave the Academy whenever they feel like it. There is no rule that states that you may not visit your family to gain additional cultivation resources or martial art skills.”

Although some students such as Wang Ju Long would most likely use the trips to gain extra resources, the majority of the students would travel to Riluo City to sell their pills for their families. The Royal Academy is perfectly aware of this however they considered the medicinal pills to be an acceptable investment. This was due to the consideration of the number of cultivators who joined The Royal Army after graduating.

“Once a year we encourage our students to leave the academy to engage in field training,” Li Yuan continued while looking around, “Some of you will follow your families into one of the Magical Forests, while others of you will work together with your family guards for a period of time. Those of you without suitable placement for field practice will be offered a spot in the Royal Army.”

Hui Yue nodded as he had expected this, he had heard about this a long time ago when he first met Rong Ming. Due to this he knew that the school put a lot of value into the student’s practice outside of the school. Although the majority of these students were thanks to Lord Rong Liang’s Martial Art Schools within the city, he could not help but feel a slight admiration towards the Royal Family for reeling in cultivators at such a young age. Li Yuan kept talking about the specific rules of the school as well as which buildings were used for what. Meanwhile Hui Yue slipped into deep thought as these were extremely boring for him.

Hui Yue knew that the Rong twins would most likely offer to have him join them in the Magical Forest next year. However he was uncertain how much he should accept from the Rong family as they had been treating him specially for quite some time. Hui Yue knew that Rong Xing and Rong Ming held no hostility towards him however, Lord Rong Liang was a City Lord. It was obvious that he was used to scheming and manipulating people. As such Hui Yue didn’t want to accept too much from him without the knowledge of what Lord Rong Liang expected to get in return.

Although Hui Yue had no wish to rely on Lord Rong Liang for his future, he also knew that his family was unable to help him with his cultivation. None of them had cultivated above the student rank and their income was already incredibly low. Asking them to purchase medicinal pills was something that Hui Yue would never do as it would be asking them to sell their land. Hui Yue decided that he could only rely on himself and Lan Feng in the end. This was because they would be able to gain strength without having to owe anything to family or friends.

However, Hui Yue knew that while it was one thing to say that they would rely on themselves, it was another thing to actually go through with it. He also understood that the most important thing to have was money. It didn’t matter if it was in this world or his old one, money was the thing that made the impossible possible. As such Hui Yue needed a way to earn money.

The first thing that flashed into Hui Yue’s mind was the looks of greed and desire that had appeared on Gao Yan, Deng Wu and Ma Kong’s faces when they heard about the martial art skills he had found within the Magical Forest. It seemed that Martial Art Skills would be a very good way to earn money however, selling those high ranked martial art skills had some downsides that caused Hui Yue to become unsure. Having fought Wang Ju Long, Hui Yue was now aware of how important and powerful those high ranked martial art skills that Lan Feng had given him were and, if he were to sell skills of that ranking he would be unable to control who would buy them. If they ended up in the hands of the Wang family or the Deng family he would most likely be creating more trouble for himself.

‘Why don’t you just ask me?’ Lan Feng’s smug voice appeared within Hui Yue’s concentrating mind, causing the white-haired boy to be slightly startled. ‘Do you have a solution?’ he curiously asked and sighed internally when he noticed how Lan Feng puffed up his feathers and looked very self-assured.

‘I am Lan Feng! The legendary Blue Phoenix! Of course I have a solution,’ He said with his usual haughty attitude. Hui Yue did not ask anything and just observed the feathered boy waiting for him to continue.

‘I have a wide array of Martial Art Skills and even Spiritual Art Skills. I even have some skills that you would be unable to comprehend, but those I will not share with anyone. Of my limitless supply of martial and spiritual skills, some of them are really quite useless. They might have very high rank and their potential are almost unlimited however, a few of them were tailor-made to the creator so no one else is capable of activating them while others were created so quickly that they have become unstable. The cultivators within this City will not be able to see whether or not they are useful and will buy them as they will believe that some of their cultivators might be able to actually activate it one day.’

Hui Yue furrowed his brows after hearing this, although it seemed promising, they were relying on the fact that the families did not happen to have anyone who would be able to activate the skills. ‘Don’t worry,’ Lan Feng said quietly, ‘even if they do manage to learn the skill, they will need years upon years to actually perfect it, and by then you will be gone from here.’ Hui Yue snorted upon hearing this. Lan Feng was definitely a person that only cared about himself and a very few specific amount of people, everyone else could die for all he cared.

Although this plan had some loose ends, Hui Yue knew that this was possibly the best way they had to earn money quickly. Hopefully there would be no one around who would know how to activate the skills in question. ‘Okay,’ he finally agreed with a sigh, ‘after this class lets go to the library. I need to check a few things before we start planning how to do this.’

Chapter 14 – Shenyuan

The rest of the lesson went by at a snail’s pace as Teacher Li Yuan spent an extended amount of time to explain all the superior Qi Cultivation Methods that The Royal Academy provided. This information was mandatory for every teacher to teach new student as all the commoners had learned one of the standard Qi Cultivation Method within the Martial Art School.

The Royal Academy was obviously much more prestigious than the Martial Art Schools and they were capable of providing more detailed cultivation methods, however the commoners had never been taught about the differences in the methods before, as that was considered unnecessary information since the Martial Art Schools did not have multiple methods to choose between.

Hui Yue spent the time in deep thought, constantly contemplating the risks of selling a high ranked martial art skill. He tried to come up with other ways to earn money, but no matter what he came up with, none of the solutions would provide a significant income.

Hui Yue sighed deeply, unable to completely ignore the uncomfortable feeling he had whenever he thought of Deng Wu suddenly mastering a high ranked martial art skill and he decided to stop worrying about it for now. Instead he allowed his gaze to sweep across the other students.

Most of the commoners were paying attention to every word that Teacher Li Yuan said, while the nobles were busy doing other things. Some of them were chatting together with low voices while others were clearly mocking the commoners. A few were fiercely glaring at Hui Yue as they noticed his gaze, and once again Hui Yue looked at Wang Ju Long.

Wang Ju Long was another reason he had to be careful. Deng Wu was terrifying because of his knowledge; however, Hui Yue had heard that he was not an outstanding genius. The likelihood of him being able to activate the skills were incredibly limited.

Wang Ju Long on the other hand had a high quality of qi and at the same time he already processed enough skill for Hui Yue to be unable to beat him. If he had another high ranked skill, then it would be certain that Hui Yue could not win with the skills he had available for now.

Teacher Li Yuan finally finished his speech about Qi Cultivation Methods before he went on to the Academy rules about duelling.

Hui Yue had already heard all the rules from Rong Ming and Ma Kong before he engaged in the duel against Wang Ju Long, so he decided not to pay attention to the speech and instead found the low student ranked, non-combat martial art skill Fire Spark which he focused on completely.

Lan Feng was about to complain about the choice of Martial Art Skill once again, but he noticed a slight change within Hui Yue’s soul, a sense of expectation, as if he had noticed something hidden within this Skill roll, and the blue phoenix decided to stay quiet and wait instead.

Wang Ju Long narrowed his eyes as he noticed that the white-haired boy had started studying, and since he had sworn to defeat Hui Yue soon, he closed his eyes and started to meditate, slowly sucking in the essence from within the room and refining it into qi.

Everyone in the room noticed the movement of the essence and looked at the cultivating Wang Ju Long. The sight shocked most commoners as they had never expected anyone to be so bold as to clearly ignore their teacher who was still speaking and instead started to meditate.

However, when looking at Wang Ju Long, everyone would also look at Hui Yue as somehow to compare the two geniuses to each other, and when looking at this child, the students felt even more shocked upon noticing that he was not focusing on the teacher either. He was instead sitting still, reading what appeared to be a martial art skill.

The commoners felt amazed from deep within while looking at these two boys. They were all clearly the same age, however those two individuals felt as if they were in a completely different world from them. Their indifferent attitude and stoic expressions clearly allowed the rest to know what it meant to be a true genius.

Teacher Li Yuan could do nothing else than sighing gently while looking at those two children. Competition was a great thing, especially since it could push them to improve much quicker than if they had no one to compete against, however Teacher Li Yuan could not help but feel slightly helpless as both boys clearly ignored him, not paying attention to his lecture.

Instead he cleared his throat and continued his explanation of the rules of duelling, about the arenas that were open for everyone and about the student emblem that would record wins and losses.