NOVEL NEXT 30 - Professional Assistance
Honestly, I kind of just want to tell her the truth to get it over with. It's not like she'll believe me if I lie and tell her I'm not reincarnated. And if I tell her to wait and that I'll answer later, that's basically confirmation. There are two big problems with doing that though. First, is that she'll have a million questions, and I will no longer have a good reason not to answer them. Second is that I have no idea who else is listening. I'd love to believe that the Administrators and the Floor Lord respect our privacy, but I'm not stupid.
There is actually one way I should be able to get around any surveillance. I'll need to double check with Nadia, but I believe that Trinity's private space should be sealed off from the outside. I'll have to wait until I can actually access it though.
I really shouldn't have made that promise to her. I was definitely way too reckless when I entered the Tower. I could just disappear without telling her, saying it's not "later" yet, and then avoid her forever, but that's the coward's way out. I could be here for thousands of years. I'm not going to live my whole life hiding from Vanessa or waiting until she dies, just so I don't have to fulfill a promise I made.
I'll tell her eventually. Once I have Trinity trained properly, I'll take Vanessa inside and make her sign a soul pact. Until then though…
"It's not later yet," I say.
"But-!"
"It's not later yet."
She frowns at me, her lower lip trembling slightly, but after a few seconds, she huffs and crosses her arms.
"Fine," she says. "But if you're not going to tell me, then you have to help me with this cultivation stuff. I was having some trouble earlier."
"No," I say.
"Please?"
"No," I say, turning toward the hall. "I'm going to bed."
"Just one question," she begs. "I was cultivating and I was having this weird problem-"
"Ask Ganyu."
"Please? It'll be quick."
She's using her best impression of puppy dog eyes. She's done this a few other times on Earth when she wanted to get me to go with her somewhere or something. Most of the time, it didn't work. At least this time, it will probably actually be quick. And I guess if I'm going to be going ahead on my own after this Floor, I could help her a little bit while I'm here to repay her for helping me on Earth. Just as a small favor.
"Fine," I say. "But only one question."
"Thank you!" she exclaims. "It's kinda hard to put into words, but when I try to cultivate, and I work on my core, when I gather my oum and shove it in there, it just feels like-" she makes a squeezing motion with her hands. "I dunno how to describe it, but it's just… clumsy? It feels wrong."
That's not a very helpful description.
"Just sit down and start cultivating," I say. "Let me see."
A minute later, she's sitting on the floor in her room with me behind, my hand on her back as she tries to sense and circulate oum. She's actually really good at it. I already knew she would be, but it's still impressive to witness it in real time. She has no trouble getting into a meditative trance, and soon, she begins to pull oum in from the air and move it through her body. Her body is already purified from the purification pill Ganyu was handing out earlier, so she can jump straight to the core formation part, but shortly after she starts.
"See what I mean?" she asks, turning to look at me.
"No?" I reply. "You were doing fine."
"'Fine' isn't good enough," she says. "It doesn't feel right, just gathering it all into a big ball like that. There has to be a better way, right?"
Huh. I really didn't expect her to notice that. Her talent for controlling oum is definitely great, though it's only average amongst geniuses, but her perception is incredible. I can count the number of people I've known who could detect the inefficiency of basic ki centers as a beginner on one hand.
"You're right," I say, nodding. "You can sense your meridi- I mean oum pathways, right?"
"Mostly, yeah."
"Can you follow them throughout the knot at your core?"
"I'm not sure…"
She turns back and begins meditating again. I place my hand back on her back to check her progress as she circulates the oum through her body. She spends five minutes doing nothing but watching the flow before she opens her eyes again.
"I can kind of follow it," she says. "But not very much. It's so complicated. There are hundreds of them."
"Right," I say. "Those pathways are the optimal ways to transfer oum throughout the body. However, as you've noticed, forming a core will destroy, or at least merge all the pathways in that knot, and while this allows you to store much more oum, it also makes the flow less efficient."
"There's a way to do it better though, right?" she asks.
"Of course," I say. "It's not easy though. And if you want a perfect result, it's probably impossible."
"How come?"
"Time. You only have 4 years on this Floor before you have to ascend or become a Stray. On top of that, there's this Starter Quest coming up, and if you try for the perfect result, you won't really have any oum to work with by the time that happens. Even if you manage to make it through that unscathed, it's still very, very complex work, and even if you spent years and years trying for it, you might not ever do it, and be stuck as a mortal- I mean 0 star forever."
"Oh," she says, looking crestfallen.
"But you'll be able to fix it further down the line," I continue. "And you should be able to accomplish the middle ground version without much trouble."
"Oh!" she says, looking much happier.
"In the perfect version, you would memorize your pathways. Every single twist and turn, every knot, every crossing, every connection. Then, you would finely control your oum to protect these pathways and keep them intact during the formation of your core. It's almost impossible for a new practitioner to accomplish, even after years and years of study.
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"If you just dial it back a bit though, you can make something similar. There are thousands of pathways running throughout your body, but you can group them up a bit. There are the ones going to each of your limbs, the ones going toward your heart, your lungs, your head, your spine, and so on. If you can isolate those sections, you can form your core with some wider, more general pathways. It won't be as good as a perfect core, but it will be much more efficient than the basic one that you were trying for earlier."
"I see," she says, nodding seriously. "Hold on. I'm gonna try it really quick."
She returns to meditation, and this time, I feel a slight change in the way she moves the oum. It's very clumsy, but I can sense her trying to direct more oum to different sections of her body to follow its movement through her pathways. As the minutes pass, she gets noticeably better at it, and I can tell she's getting a very good sense of which pathways lead to her legs.
There's not really much more I can help her with, so when she moves on to checking her arms, I gently pull away and stand up. I can't help but smile slightly as I see her meditating like that. It's always good to see young ones with drive and ambition. I'm not sure what it is she wants so badly at the top of the Tower, but with this level of motivation and talent, I'd wager she stands a decent chance of getting it.
I watch her for a few more seconds, then turn around and creep out the room. I silently thank the Floor Lord for keeping the doors so well-oiled as it closes noiselessly behind me, then I walk back to my room. On my way there, someone else comes up the stairs on to face me, and I recognize him as the formerly shirtless jogger I saw in the first trial. He nods to me in acknowledgement, then walks forward… straight into me.
We don't fully collide, but we end up in one of those annoying this-way-or-that-way situations where we keep trying to get out of each other's way. After two back and forths, I just stop moving, letting him slip past, then we both almost immediately stop, me in front of my door, and him in front of the one right next to it, labeled 3.
I didn't expect him to place so highly. I didn't notice anything too special about him other than his slight hero complex, but he must be pretty talented. When I open my own door, I notice him trying to make eye contact with me, probably to start up a conversation, but I just ignore him and head inside.
Trinity pops into existence right in front of me and proceeds to dump Jinlan's body on the ground again.
"Trinity, no!" I shout.
The corpse is over a day old now, and is starting to smell, and it's also leaking fluids all over my floor. The cat ignores me and dives right into chomping away at his leg. That can't be good for her. There's no way that meat is good.
"Trinity!" I say.
She ignores me. She probably doesn't know her name yet.
I sigh and start thinking of what I can do. I need to get rid of that corpse, but I don't really know where. There are trash cans around, but none big enough for a body, and I don't really want to answer the questions that will follow if I just leave this thing lying around for someone else to clean up. After a few seconds of staring and wondering, an idea comes to me.
I walk over to the kitchen and open drawers until I find the one I saw earlier that has the little bell in it. It looks like the kind that a noble would use to summon a servant, and though I haven't seen any servants around, I can't imagine the bell is just here for decoration. I give it a little ring, and then flinch as a construct shaped like man appears a few feet away from me.
"Good evening," he says with a bow. "How may I be of assistance?"
The construct looks like an older man, gray-haired and with a very impressive mustache. He's as thin as a twig and dressed in a black suit and red tie.
"What can you do?" I ask.
"I exist to assist you with household chores, such as cooking and cleaning," he replies, his voice monotone.
"Can you clean up bodies?"
"Certainly."
"Clean up that body."
"As you command."
I point to Jinlan, and watch as the butler strolls up to it. When he reaches it, Trinity looks up at him warily, and hisses when he bends down to touch it. She tries to claw his hand away, but she can't even scratch his clothes, let alone push him away. The moment he touches the corpse, a wave of oum spreads through the body, and a moment later, it disintegrates, and the particulate remains get sucked into his sleeve. Trinity yowls and tries to attack him, putting all her oum into her strikes, but he ignores her, returning to me as if she's not there.
"Is there anything else I can assist you with?" he asks.
My jaw is hanging open at the display of raw power that the construct just exhibited, but I recover shortly and look back at the room. The body is gone, but the floor is covered in blood and other substances. Actually, now that I look around, it looks like Trinity has been making messes in other ways. She's left… droppings… in the corner of the room. I guess I should have known she would do that after Nadia told me she's basically a normal animal, but I can't believe I didn't notice it before.
"Clean up this room."
"As you command."
The butler turns around, and in a whirlwind of motion, he travels around the room, turning it spotless wherever he passes. Not thirty seconds later, the entire room is just as clean as it was when I arrived, and he is standing back in front of me.
"Is there anything else I can assist you with?"
I think for a few seconds more. "Can you tell me about the Floor Lord?"
"I'm sorry. My information is limited to methods for accomplishing household chores."
"What exactly qualifies as a household chore?"
"Would you like me to list you every household chore I am capable of accomplishing?"
"Sure, why not."
After about five minutes, I regret saying that. I had no idea there were so many different ways to expand the definition of "household chore." None of them are really loopholes, and all of them are definitely household chores, but the list is exhaustive and granular, and frankly pointless. I didn't know there were so many ways to clean a carpet, but now I do, and it's just as horrifying as it is fascinating.
I'm tempted to stop him, but I'm honestly too curious. Just how long can this list be? Will he just keep going on forever if I don't stop him.
…
I think the answer is yes. At half an hour, I have now heard hundreds of ways to clean, maintain, and enhance about every household fixture in existence, as well as ways to provide more direct assistance like raising pets, raising children, hosting parties, hosting dates, giving-
"Wait, did you say you can give massages?" I ask.
A minute later, I'm on my bed receiving the most heavenly massage I've ever experienced.
Is it dumb of me to entrust my body to the thing that was able to disintegrate a corpse in an instant? Well, normally yes, but it should be fine in this case. It's a construct with specific orders, and I confirmed that it wasn't able to harm living things. Allegedly. If it actually wanted to hurt me, it's not like there's anything I can do to stop it anyway.
Plus, it's a very interesting new application of ki. I've never seen a construct so robust before. Of course I need to test out its features. It could give me some inspiration for my own use of oum. At the very least, it will give me insight into how other residents of the Tower use their oum. Yes, it's all to gather information…
Anyways, I also worked up a bit of a sweat earlier walking around. Not really, but still, cleanliness is a virtue. It's important to take care of your body, and that includes cleansing it regularly, which means I'll have to jump in the shower after this massage. And while I'm in there, I might as well do some cultivation. It would be a waste to turn on the shower without benefitting from the hot spring waterfall features…
And like that, my night disappears.
For the next six days, I enter a routine. Wake up. Cultivate for an hour with Trinity. Work on training Trinity. Eat breakfast. Attend the first half of Ganyu's lesson. Cultivate. Lunch. Cultivate. Dinner. Cultivate. Sleep. Of course, there's the occasional massage and/or hot spring waterfall shower in there, and I spend a few minutes here and there helping Vanessa out, but I mostly keep to myself and focus solely on cultivation.
On the seventh day, when I wake up, I smile. My meridians are finally healed. My core is still a bit bigger than I usually prefer, but I've shrunk it enough that it's no longer uncomfortable. I'll test this out a bit before I decide whether to compress it further. For now though, it's time to finally get off my ass and work my martial arts a bit.
Now, I just need to decide which to do first: going hunting in the north while searching for ginseng, or teaching some foolish challengers a lesson in the sparring arenas.