29 Master (2/2)

I thought about that for a second. I wanted to be strong so I could have a great impact on the world and become someone people admire. I wanted recognition.

”I wanna do really cool things.”

”So, ya want admiration? Pretty shallow, but I can't blame ya.”

Yin Xue crossed his brows in thought.

”But that's not quite it, is it? Usually, kids who want admiration didn't get enough from their parents. But ya must have been a little baby or toddler when ya started cultivating.”

He shook his head and scratched his beard,

”That's way too early… There's gotta be somethin' else…”

Yin Xue squinted his eyes at me, and I stayed silent.

”Well, I'll find out eventually. Anyway, if ya came here, ya wanna be a fighter, right?”

”Yeah.”

”Finally, a start. I guess, cos I'm yer master, I should help ya choose a technique,” he clapped his hands together, ”come 'ere.”

Yin Xue heaved himself out of the armchair and shuffled through to the vault.

”Most masters would teach ya their own techniques. But that's damn boring…”

”What is master's technique?”

Yin Xue whipped around,

”No interrupting!” he yelled, ”But yeah, I should probably show ya my techniques. Ya can see qi, right?”

At this point, showing that off seemed fairly inconsequential. I channelled qi to my eyes and could only see a trickle of aura leaking from Yin Xue's eyes.

”I mainly practice two modified techniques. First, my Spirit Hands technique.”

He waved both his hands, facing his palms upward. Three ghostly golden hands spiralled out of each palm, settling in an arc around his body.

”Now, my special All-Seeing Eyes technique.”

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. All the ghostly hands clamped shut as well, and light shone through their fingers.

With a flash of qi, his eyes and hands snapped open. Embedded in each golden palm was a twitching, ephemeral golden eye.

Wisps of qi drifted like smoke from his real eyes as he looked at me with pride. With his wreath of golden hands, he looked like some divine asura.

”These techniques right 'ere are usually used to support combat. But I've modified them to do this!”

The hands shot out, spinning around the library. They extracted some books from the shelves and brought them down, floating around Yin Xue.

The hands flipped open the books, and I could see the spectral eyes scanning the pages at a phenomenal pace. The vault was filled with the sound of fluttering pages.

”With this, I can read seven books at a time! How 'bout that!”

I felt a little let down on hearing this. Such an impressive looking technique was just used to read more books.

However, on second thought, I realised the difficulty of the feat in front of me.

”Master, how can you understand it all?”

”Remember what I said. If there's somethin' ya don't understand, it's probably a weird constitution. I have a Mind Partition Constitution, so I can separate my mind into seven parts.”

This level of multi-tasking was impossible for a normal brain. Any ordinary person would suffer massive performance deficits trying to read even two books.

Yin Xue's incredible mental prowess could have made him expert in many fields in my old world. But here, he was just a school librarian?

I realised just how skewed the standards were in this world. What fantastic abilities did people in high power have?

”My techniques aren't really useful in combat, and they definitely don't suit ya. But I've read all the cultivation techniques in here, so I can help ya choose a good one.”

”Now, just tell me what ya want. With these techniques,” he swirled his finger in a circle, ”the world's yer oyster.”