She huffed mock-proudly, tossing her lunchbox onto the table and pushing aside Avyr— as much as she, weak mortal as she was could shove aside a peak-Shedding cultivator— and settled in beside her. Then, whatever retort she’d cooked up faded as she felt it. It was even more obvious that it had been just walking next to him— “you’re warm.”
Mimi snickered. “Oh, really?”
“Shut up!” Lily flushed furiously and glared at her fellow ward. “I mean, he’s using a qi technique to keep himself warm!” That, at least, managed to garner enough information from the other two girls to forestall rebuttal. Qi techniques were legendary, after all— only one person in the whole Precinct could truly use them, formations masters and not quite masters notwithstanding— Councillor Guxi. “How’d you manage it? I mean— before Opening?”
Avyr was silent for a long moment. Lily began to fear he wouldn’t respond— which would’ve been totally within his rights— it already wasn’t… polite, per say, to ask about someone’s cultivation. “It’s not really a technique.” It took a minute, but luckily, he did respond. “Not in the sense of what I know about qi techniques, at least. A qi technique is, at its core, almost a… carving within one’s spirit. Or not quite— a channel, not a carving, a furrow dug into fertile soil to channel the internal qi of the user. At least, that’s how I’ve heard it described. A Shedding cultivator can’t use qi techniques because the spirit is not developed enough to carve until Opening. My technique is really just me spinning my qi around within my body. It’s easy, if somewhat crude. I can’t keep it up all day, but I can keep it up long enough to eat lunch outside.” And to walk too and from school, and get around, and… yeah, Lily could see how that might be useful.
She was jealous, now… pausing, she frowned as a thought came to her. “Cool, but… how did you know that?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Avyr shifted a bit awkwardly behind her— she could feel it, the way he twitched and squirmed behind her back. “Well… uh. Mingtian told me. I presume he probably figured it out because of some sort of… esoteric knowledge he got from formations.”
Huh. She’d have to redouble the work she put into formations if it was that useful… either that, or Mingtian was just that much better than her. Honestly, she suspected the latter, but… “that’s now what I meant. I mean— how did you know about how techniques work?”
The cat went unnaturally, disconcertingly still behind her— for a few seconds, before he relaxed, a long breath billowing out into— the heat, the frigid air, pluming white as he sighed. “Just… something I picked up around, here and there.”
Usually— Lily was aware— of the two of them, Avyr was the better lier. But she didn’t think she’d ever heard a more obviously disingenuous statement than that.
She didn’t push… but, she knew, and Avyr knew she knew. It was all way too obvious.
Before it could get too awkward, she pointedly started rummaging through her lunchbox. The matron had packed them some good stuff… nice dumplings, little pork skewers, a small box of rice each… though, she was totally going to take Mimi’s dumplings. Math problems didn’t solve themselves for free after all!
The sound of something hitting the table with a heavy thud dragged her attention straight back to Avyr… and she fought down the urge to snicker as she looked between the slab of raw, bloody meat he’d begun to delicately unwrap, and the pale faces of Mimi and… Tongjian or whatever her name was. Right— they’d never eaten with Avyr before, no?
Both of them winced as the cat sank a suddenly once-again very threatening looking bite into the meat, tearing off a massive chunk with a soft ripping sound— and she lost her internal battle, laughing out loud. They were in for a treat.
The rest of the meal was equal parts comical and calm, conversation flowing… more or less normally between the four of them, math problems solved as per the usual, and so on and so forth….
Still, she didn’t, couldn’t forget. Avyr knew something.
She couldn’t help but wonder what it was.
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