Zixu

The start of this day was rather heated, it seemed that having to watch had rendered his wives to the state of being pent-up in an astonishingly short amount of time, even though he had already done it with them to the point of exhaustion the night just before, they had behaved like it had been months.

Seemed like Edrick had truly trained them well.

But although this was all very pleasant, Anoteros hadn't come to the Myriad-Arm Sect to bed his wives on the daily or to have fun with Hui, so he was feeling pretty upbeat as he arrived before the sect's main building, not quite at the time of the sun setting, Edrick never arrived somewhere late, and since he was no wizard, he did not arrive precisely in time either.

The early bird gets the worm, as they say and moreover, arriving in advance meant that you could scout out the area, but that only applied when laying a trap, right now, it was more like Edrick was going to walk into a trap himself.

Elder Gang had been rather clear concerning Elder Ku Xing, he made her sound like a lunatic and someone that one should avoid getting anywhere close to, the old man had seemed to have been talking from experience too.

Edrick wasn't Gang however, neither was he the previous people that had tried to learn under Ku Xing, in fact, if anything, the warnings had sounded more alluring than anything else, to him, it sounded like that woman was a real professional.

Looking up, the building was a rather tall one, dwarfing every other in both the sect and city by a large margin, built out of white wood, the sect leader was supposedly in isolation at the very top, basically locked inside of his own room, although no one would describe it like that.

Apparently, he was trying to attain enlightenment to break through a bottleneck or something, not sure how one could reach a bottleneck when there were no clear tiers or levels to go off of, but he guessed that some people would struggle to keep progressing after a while, like when practising a sport.

Although this building was tall and wide, it was actually mostly empty from what Anoteros understood, as it served as a keep for the sect's greatest artefacts, techniques, treasures and the likes, as well as housing for the elder and core disciples, but they were only singular people, so they didn't need that much space anyways.

As such, entire floors were said to be empty all year round, knowing this, the sect's greatest edifice lost some of its lustre.

"Excuse me, would you happen to know where Elder Ku Xing's quarters are located?" putting on his most charming smile, he asked a disciple passing by, there were multiple of them walking together, outer disciples as their robes indicated, their presence here wasn't too surprising, they were probably like Hui and had gotten themselves a job as cleaners to not be kicked out.

"On the third floor, just walk to the right, you can't miss it!" a shinny girl responded with enthusiasm, she wasn't even the one Edrick had addressed, the rest of the disciples, all males, glared at him as if asking themselves why they couldn't be in Edrick's shoes.

But they didn't say anything concerning that despite not having a flying clue that Anoteros was a special disciple.

"Yes… What she said" the one he had originally spoken up to responded.

"Alright, my thanks" as they went, he winked at the skinny girl, although a big guy like Edrick was certainly not every woman's dream man, far from it, this was the Myriad-Arm Sect where strength was valued, his build was naturally of interest here.

Or so he guessed why that girl seemed so happy to speak to him, he didn't care much about it and went to walk toward the stairs.

"Who was this guy? I never saw him before" one of the male disciples broke the silence.

"And he's going to Elder Ku Xing's quarters? I wouldn't go there for triple the pay…"

"Insanity, I would go there in exchange for one five copper Leyen- No, just one and I would go…" this one looked around at his fellow, trying to see if any was willing to take him up on those words and pay him.

"Urgh… Maybe this guy is a direct disciple of hers?"

"Do you know him?" one asked the skinny girl directly.

"Huh? No, I never saw him before" she casually responded.

'Damn, really outmatched by a complete stranger… I need to build some muscles up'

Edrick walked up the squeaky stairs until he reached the third floor, the inside of the main building felt a bit labyrinthic on account that the singular, winding flight stairs that was available placed you in the middle of each floor, and since you needed to open a door that looked like every other door in this place to get to that floor, it seemed that getting lost was pretty easy.

Especially on the third floor, although Ku Xing's quarters did not span even a quarter of it, she was the only elder on it, probably on purpose, and thus, every window was shut, the only light peering in greatly weakened by having to pass through wooden blinds.

Following the given directions, he walked to the right and indeed, it did not take long for him to find the right place, the door leading in was different from the rest, being that the door supposed to be there had been removed and replaced by curtains instead for some reason.

A strong aromatic smell, something like lemon, could be smelled from there.

'How do you knock on a curtain?' as he thought of it, he heard a woman's voice calling out from beyond the curtains, far from being melodic, it was a bit raspy, like its owner was congested and threatening to spit out mucus without every word.

"Come in" said the voice, followed by a metallic ting.

Edrick spread the curtains aside and went in, greeted by a dimly lit room, full of scented candles and censer hanging from the ceiling, the smell was so great that one could see the smoke it created.

But most notably, was a woman lounging on the ground, a fluffy blanket laid out alongside some pillows.

"Ah! Here you are, and on time too! You know, anyone I try to invite here either shows up late or never at all? I wonder what I did to deserve such poor treatment…" she snickered as though knowing exactly the reason and stood, loudly clearing her throat and expelling a nearly walnut-sized mass of spit and mucus into a sort of spittoon.

Immediately, she sounded better.

"Zixu! You've grown so much since I last saw you!"

The feared and dreaded Ku Xing opened her arms as though beckoning a little child to come and hug her.