The city guard at the east gate barely looked at him.
That was a relief.
He kept his head down and moved with the crowd.
He found a message board near the central square and stood in front of it scanning the posted notices.
Laborers needed — dock unloading, sunrise to midday, 3 copper per day.
Wanted: experienced beast handler for merchant caravan.
Training assistant sought by Master Feng's school — inquire within.
He looked at the training assistant posting for a long moment.
Master Feng's school was a small martial arts outfit on the south side of the city — mostly teaching basic forms to children of merchants who wanted their kids to have some self-defense. Jelani had passed it hundreds of times growing up without a second glance because attending required a cultivation base he hadn't had.
He pulled the notice from the board before someone else could and walked south.
{The Jobs category,} the system said helpfully, {would allow you to learn at approximately twenty times the normal learning rate.}
Master Feng was a short man in his fifties with forearms like braided rope and the squinting, appraising look of someone who had spent decades watching people move and immediately identifying what was wrong with how they did it. He looked at Jelani for about four seconds before speaking.
"How old are you."
"Eighteen."
"Cultivation level."
"Level 5 Body Refinement."
The squint sharpened. "That's higher than it should be for your age. Which school did you train at?"
"Self-taught," Jelani said, which was technically true if you counted a divine system that had restructured his body overnight as self-teaching.
Master Feng looked at him for another long moment. "Show me the Mountain Shattering Fist."
Jelani blinked. "You know the Mountain Shattering Fist?"
"I taught it for fifteen years before my knees gave out. Show me."
He ran the form. He felt the system quietly optimizing his demonstration as he moved, feeding micro-corrections through his limbs, and when he finished, Master Feng's squint had shifted into something more like consideration.
"Your footwork is rough," the old man said. "But the core channeling is correct. Better than correct, actually. Where did you get the technique?"
"It came to me naturally," Jelani said.
Master Feng looked deeply unconvinced but apparently decided not to push it. "You'll assist with the under-tens class in the morning and the merchant apprentice class in the afternoon. Five copper a day. Don't be late."
Jelani nodded and left before Feng could change his mind.
He had a job. He had a reason to be in the city every day. He had cover.
And five copper a day was not much, but it was something
{Good start,} the system said.
"I'm full of good starts," Jelani said. "It's the follow-through that gets complicated."