She took a deep breath. She was already eight years old. She was already at stage 3 of the late Qi Refinement.

  In just four days she was scheduled to leave for Mount Rotira. The capital of the Eastern Outer Court. She'll be there for two years getting ready for the tournament. She will have the opportunity to enroll in Cloud Academy if she is the best.

  Given her level of cultivation, she should have no problem getting into the Eastern Outer Cloud Academy branch.

  Before I go I have to take care of a few things.

  At first, she wanted to meet Little Xiao, who was not so little any longer.

  She went to one of the various meet-up places, it was quite poetic as it was also their first place where they met. The beginning and the end.

  "I told you before, but this is the last meeting. Here's a little gift for you as a parting gift." She said and tossed him a pouch of coins. She gave him 1,000. He had been working with her for a long time so she figured it wouldn't hurt to give him some money to say goodbye.

  "Yes. Thank you. Bye."

  He did not seem particularly concerned.

  A quick goodbye, huh. Guess he doesn't want to talk to me.

  “I heard you started a gang.”

  "A gang?" He asked, stopping abruptly, still with his back turned to her.

  "No... And since you're abandoning us we have to make it somehow. We have no intention of starving like dogs."

  “And you plan to survive by dealing drugs, terrorizing the regular citizens and setting up brothels?”

  She recently heard about a strange new brothel in town. She had heard about the cultivators who were going there, she was awfully surprised when she heard about who was running it. It looked like they were supported by some cultivators from the town.

  "Do you or perhaps your master have any problem with this? I have fulfilled my part of the agreement. I didn't tell anyone about you."

  “It's none of my business.” She said. After a moment's thought, she continued.

  "However, be aware that you are walking on thin ice. Cultivators are terrible motherfuckers. If necessary, they will get rid of you without blinking an eye."

  "However, repeating your words: It is none of your business."

  "Yes, you are right. In that case, goodbye."

  She still wondered for a while if she had definitely done the right thing. After all, one could say that the whole situation was solely her fault. However, after thinking about it for a while, she decided that it simply had to be that way.

  Everyone makes decisions in their lives, and he made his, too. Had she been in his shoes, would she have acted differently?

  It's hard to say. Her life was never as difficult as his. She had a loving family with a large estate. They could even afford to train her to be a cultivator. They were orphans—they had no home or food. She could not clearly judge whether they were doing wrong.

  In any case, they were still criminals. However, this world was corrupted. Law, justice, fairness, rules, and regulations applied only to powerful cultivators, not to ordinary people. They had no rights—they were treated like animals.

  Thinking about it indefinitely won't get me anywhere.

  In the meantime, changes were taking place in the town.

  Out of nowhere, a new force was born under the leadership of a person known as Fatty Xiao. Many people did not like the rise of the new group especially since it was a bunch of kids.

  However, they were shrouded in mystery. Out of nowhere they had a huge amount of money, which obviously indicated that they had the support of some mysterious person or even a whole group.

  However, that is a story for another time.

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  "Are you ready for tomorrow? Be sure to take only the most necessary things"

  “I just took clothes and some resources for cultivation.”

  “Good.”

  They were about to leave to the Eastern Outer Court Capital tomorrow morning. She spent the whole day saying goodbyes first to her mother and then to others.

  Thousands of children wanted to get into the Academy every year. For obvious reasons, it was impossible to accept everyone. Therefore, a weeding out was required, an exam that would separate the wheat from the chaff.

  "You don't have to worry about this exam. It is mainly to separate loose cultivators and people from outside the sect."

  In theory, people from the outside of the sect could send their child, but rarely would such a child get into the academy.

  If there was no entrance exam each year, there wouldn't be thousands of candidates but tens of thousands.

  The entrance exam had a lethality rate of about 30-40% depending on the year. However, most of the victims were non-Sect members.

  However, even surviving to the end of the exams did not guarantee getting into Outer Sect Academy. This turned away many potential candidates.

  However, every year there were some crazy people who took the risk anyway.

  I, however, should have no problem with it.

  In theory, you don't even need to be at the Qi Refinement stage, the most important thing is talent. And this is where she was very confident.

  Each year the academy accepted about 500 people. Each of the 10 classes had 50 students each. The classes were designated by sequential letters of the alphabet. The first - class A was for the most talented. That's where she intended to get in.

  Incidentally, her sister was in Class D. Which was also quite impressive.

  They departed early in the morning. The journey would be a long one. She was still not very familiar with the geography of this world but she already knew that this world was absurdly larger than Earth.

  They drove along the Yuan Yi River, which cut the Eastern Outer Court in two. Its water was crystal clear.

  This is the first time I've seen this world. I had never left Pualin Town before.

  "Haha if such sights impress you, I wonder what you will say when you see the capital in Inner Court. More than a million people live there."

  In truth, she doubted the capital would impress her, in her previous life she had seen much larger cities. She has seen New York and even Tokyo with her own eyes. Although a city with a population of a million was not small, given the technological state of this world, they are unlikely to have huge skyscrapers. She doubted that any city in this world could top the cities of Earth.

  For her, the strange and peculiar nature of the countryside was much more interesting.

  Strange huge animals, a deer with three heads, a man-eating tree - that's what I was curious about!

  They finally arrived at the place. It was a real city and not a small town. Life was lively there, with thousands of people selling various things, as well as thousands of buyers. It was the town of Rotira, named after the highest mountain, which was also the seat of the Eastern Outer Court government. On the opposite side of the mountain was the Academy.

  The mountain was truly more impressive than the city that lay at its base.

  I wonder how big this mountain is. At least five thousand meters to my eye… It's impressive.

  "There is one week left until the exam. Until then, I will stay with my family. My mother's cousin is the daughter of Xi Shang, who resides in a luxurious residence in this area. She is a medical doctor, so she earns quite a good salary."

  I guess people respect doctors no matter what the world is like, right?

  They finally arrived at the site. The residence was indeed nice, but it was not as luxurious as she had expected. Of course, it was nicer than their home, but her father praised the house as if it were a Versailles palace. In reality, the place was more like an elaborate nouveau riche home. Pretty, but a bit cheesy.

  "Oh hello! You must be May, my talented girl! You look lovely."

  An elderly woman greeted them. She did not resemble her father at all. Well she was just ... the daughter of his mother's cousin? It's too complicated, but the thing is, it's quite a distant family. She was seeing her for the first time.

  She had curly long black hair - definitely not natural. Could it be a wig? It was none of her business so she decided it wasn't worth thinking about it too much.

  “Yes, that's me, thank you for deciding to host us in your home,” she said.

  "Uuu what a polite child, not like your foolish father."

  Did she have any problem with her father? However, after a while she realized that it was rather friendly teasing.

  She had a few wrinkles on her face, so she decided to use her Qi Sensing and examine her cultivation level.

  “Hey!”

  She immediately paused. Shit she was detected.

  Normally, it is impossible to detect being inspected by Qi Sensing.

  She often checked on her father. At a lower cultivation level, it could only be detected if the other person also used Qi Sensing at the same time.

  Which meant that either she was already at the Foundation Establishment stage, or she was using Qi Sensing at that moment.

  No matter how basic Qi Sensing was, it was still a technique, so it required Qi to be consumed. Hardly anyone would be able to use it all the time.

  So she either checked her herself, or maintained this technique all the time.

  Regardless of the option, all possibilities were quite scary.

  "You're lucky. Don't do that again. If it had been someone else you could have been killed."

  Her father grabbed her strongly by her shoulders. "Are you crazy?! What did I tell you! You were not supposed to use it on other people!"

  "Calm down. Nothing has happened. Look, she got quite a scare there haha!"

  She started laughing.

  "But let that be a lesson to you. There won't be a second chance."