Two weeks before the end of our Disciple training program, our class had its final martial competition. In the class we were facing, everyone had a martial blessing that formed some type of external incarnation, a beast made out of pure elemental energy that would fight alongside them.


    Neither Zhuge Yan nor Lin LiTing had blessings to help them, nor did their professions grant them any advantages that they were willing to display openly. This might have been offset if I had been allowed to give them a few formations, but a competitor was only allowed to use items they created themself.


    Yan and LiTing did their best, but even though they had trained relentlessly, they weren’t able to match up against blessed fighters.


    Shi YuLong and Chai JiaQi were a different story. Their blessings had let them develop martial skills far beyond what normal Disciples would possess. The external incarnations of our opponents were tricky to deal with, but the martial skills of the fighters themselves were underwhelming, so there was no question of YuLong’s and JiaQi’s victory.


    That left my fight to determine our team’s victory or defeat.


    My opponent was a tall thin boy with short raven-black hair. His robes were bright reds and oranges, and his blessing was a bird formed of fire that he could either control directly or allow to act of its own volition.


    I didn’t expect much from the fighter himself, but the bird was going to be difficult to deal with. As a fire incarnation, it didn’t have a physical body. If I threw a stone at it, the stone would simply pass right through without dealing any damage.


    To start the fight, I used a simple plan. I threw a handful of small exploding formations at the bird, disrupting its energy and blocking its path. Then, I rushed toward my opponent as quickly as I could, trying to end the fight before he could respond.


    This strategy was going all too smoothly. When I was within only a few meters, the boy reached into his robes, pulled out a small object, and threw it at me.


    Looking in energy vision, I noticed the tell-tale signs of medicinal fire energy wrapped in metal energy that told me it was a Rank 1 Explosive Pill.


    I halted my forward rush, planted my feet, and activated my Earth Wall technique. The floor of the arena was solid stone, not the packed dirt I was used to. Moving stone took more energy, but it was still responsive to earth qi.


    I pulled with all my might and a wall of stone rose up in front of me, blocking me from the pill’s blast.


    I was protected, but defending myself caused me to delay for just long enough that the fire bird was able to free itself from the minor energy storm I had created and began approaching me. I needed to retreat so that I didn’t have to defend against both bird and cultivator simultaneously, but before I did, I connected my qi to the stone wall and began drawing a formation inside of it.


    Keeping the raised stone between me and my opponent, I jumped backward several times, opening the distance between us before he could surprise attack me. As I did, I maintained a connection with the qi I left in the stone and continued carving the formation from a distance.


    A small pill arched over the wall and exploded in a downward blast where I had previously been standing. My opponent must have thought that since I was still working on the formation, I hadn’t moved.


    I stopped carving during the blast, waited a few seconds, then resumed, hoping to trick him into thinking that I had dodged and then returned to the previous spot.


    He must have sensed my ruse, though, because he didn’t try attacking again. What surprised me was that he didn’t even try to destroy the formation I was creating. He must have thought it was nothing more than a deception. That was fine with me.


    Unwilling to give me too much time to fortify my position, the boy circled around the earth wall from the left side while he sent his fire bird to circle around the right, aiming to pincer me.


    I placed my hand on the ground and quickly inscribed a very basic formation, an unfiltered Rank 1 Qi Gathering Formation. I made it as strong as I could in the limited time I had. It would pull in energy at several times the rate of a normal Rank 1 formation, but it would burn itself out in less than a minute.


    When my two opponents were nearly upon me, I activated the formation and rushed toward the boy.


    The Qi Gathering Formation flared to life, sucking in as much energy as it could, including the pesky fire bird. Even after overcharging the formation, it wasn’t enough to keep the bird trapped for long, but it would have to do.


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    As I approached my opponent, he threw another Explosive Pill at me.


    I countered with an exploding formation.


    My formation didn’t have the strength to stop the explosion from the pill, but I was able to push the energy away, letting me advance further.


    When I was right in front of him, I locked my right foot to the ground with a variant of the Mountain’s Repose and swung my left leg at him with a variant of the Mountain Crushing Fist.


    He channeled all the energy of his arms into a blocking technique and prevented my blow from doing any damage, but the force of the impact had to go somewhere, and I was locked to the earth.


    The boy went flying backward and hit the stone wall I had raised earlier. He was prepared for this, so the impact didn’t cause him any damage, but the moment he hit, I activated the formation I had created previously.


    The stone wall burst apart.


    It was a weak blast. The stone was heavy, and I hadn’t been able to infuse it with much energy, but it was enough to send several small rocks flying in every direction.


    My opponent was pelted by stone fragments from behind, knocking him forward with great force and sending him to the ground prone.


    I didn’t hesitate. The moment I had activated the formation, I had begun running forward. Before he could even begin struggling to raise himself off the ground, I was standing over him and punching toward his chest.


    The moment my blow landed, the match was called in my favor to prevent me from doing any more harm, and our team won our final competition as Martial Disciples.


    <hr>


    When we came to class the next day, Instructor Sun greeted us with his usual stoic expression.


    “You won. That will make things easier for you going forward, but don’t think you can use it as an opportunity to slack off.”


    After reaching into his storage bag, he handed everyone a token.


    “Those will get you access to a Rank 2 skill. If you don’t already have a proper cultivation technique, this is your chance to get one. Just remember, you only have two weeks left before our classes end. If you do not continue your studies here, you will need to have anything you take from the library memorized before you leave.”


    <hr>


    After we were dismissed, my classmates decided to head to the library as a group, but I begged off. I needed some time to think about my future. I returned to my dormitory to consider my options.


    This life had shown me everything I was lacking in the Disciple realm, and I could only expect my deficits to grow as I ascended through Master and Grandmaster. I needed the education that this school could provide me with if I wanted to become the best I could be.


    At the same time, I considered my plan to have no life last longer than ten years. It wasn’t a hard rule, and I was willing to bend it, but staying here for courses as a Martial Master would take ten years on its own, not to mention the time I would need to spend as a Grandmaster.


    It would be time well spent, and I knew I needed to do it, but walking that path would mean that this life would be at least thirty years long, and once I finished the Grandmaster classes, I would likely want to follow the path the school and sect provided through to Lord and beyond.


    It was one thing to bend the ten-year plan, but that would be breaking it entirely, and I wasn’t willing to do that. I had to return to the Wastes to begin settling debts, and if I didn’t follow through in this instance, I was worried that I wouldn’t follow through in the future either.


    I couldn’t allow myself to follow the path of the Master-level courses in this life, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an even better solution available to me.


    “System, how much to move my temporary reset point to this moment?”


    Cost 2,240 credits.


    “Okay, now how much would it cost to add a temporary reset point that would bring me back to this point in time while also maintaining the previous reset point so that after one death I return here and after two deaths I go to that one?”


    Secondary Temporary Reset Point. Cost 17,920 credits.


    This price hike for the secondary point was a bit more than I was hoping for. It didn’t mean much right now, but it would become a real problem at higher cultivation levels.


    “Purchase the secondary reset point.”


    Purchase confirmed. Cost 17,920 credits. 83,467,645 credits remaining.


    Now, I could rush my cultivation up over the next six years, die, come back to this point in time, and then have ten fresh years to work with.


    That solved one of my problems, but a more important question still needed to be dealt with. How was I going to make the most out of my remaining years?


    I could easily rush to False Lord again, but doing so held little allure. In the past, I would have considered the credits I received from such a cultivation level to be a huge windfall, but now they were a bare fraction of what I had in reserve. My goal had to be higher. I needed to find a way to ascend to Peak Lord, False King, or possibly even true Martial King.


    One way to get the karmic energy necessary to ascend to these levels would have been by going through the Blue Wind Pavilion, but I felt that path didn’t hold much promise. When I had tried to become a nominal city lord there through WuJing in the past, it took many years before it was approved. This could be different if I went to the main branch, but that would introduce many new complications.


    If I didn’t have any other choice, I would have still gone down this route, but fortunately, I had other options available.


    Shi YuLong was a scion of some imperial family. Even if it was only a branch family, he should still have connections that could get me a position as nominal city lord. The girls also had connections to various Kingdoms and Empires I could try to get a city from, but the person I felt I needed to talk to first was Zhuge Yan.


    His blessing had given him a sharp strategic mind, and he seemed to know more about Rulers than most. If there was anyone who could help me plan how to reach the higher levels of cultivation, it was him.


    Also, while he had never spoken about his family, and no one was willing to tell me anything about it in his place, the way he was treated by others told me a lot. When we first met, all he said was that he was from the Zhuge Clan, and everyone expected I would know what that meant. I didn’t, of course, but the expectation itself was telling.


    If Zhuge Yan’s family was as powerful as I expected, it should be more than possible to make a deal for a nominal lordship with them. I just didn’t know what political concerns this would present.