The morning alarm clock shrieked, jolting Li Fei out of her Meditation state.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her nightgown, and without even opening her eyes, she reached over and silenced her phone alarm with practiced ease.
Intelligence: 20 (17) → 21 (18)
Mana: 300/300 → 303/303
After checking the changes to her stats, Li Fei pried her eyelids open with great effort and mumbled, "So tired… It really doesn't seem like Meditation can replace sleep. At least not at this stage."
Practicing a Meditation method could improve a Transcendent's abilities across the board — but there were bottlenecks, which meant the fantasy of "a Sequence 9 cultivator sealing themselves away to meditate for a hundred years and then emerging to one-shot high-Sequence powerhouses" was never going to happen.
"At this rate, I should be able to complete the Introductory Meditation method in about a month."
Li Fei stretched luxuriously and stepped barefoot out of bed.
Her fairy maid — absolutely brimming with energy — had scrubbed the floor inch by inch with a towel the previous night, leaving the spacious room gleaming like new, spotless and immaculate. A pleasant coolness seeped up from the tiles into the soles of her feet, chasing away the last of her drowsiness.
She yanked open the curtains. The bright morning sunlight was almost blinding. Li Fei had barely reached the bedroom doorway before a rich, warm scent of milk reached out and burrowed straight into her nose.
Three dainty, adorable fairies came fluttering in on beating wings, circling their mother in happy loops above and below. Li Fei broke into a smile and gathered them into her arms, pressing her cheek against each of theirs in turn.
"You've all worked hard."
Li Fei ruffled Ram's head with warm approval.
"It is our duty, dear Mother."
Ram nestled into Li Fei's embrace, savoring the warmth radiating from that soft palm.
It had to be said — the maid's training had been remarkably effective. Credit was also due to Ram's own meticulous and thoughtful nature; in just two short days, the star courtesan's quality of life had risen by an entire tier.
In the washroom, the towel — freshly scalded with boiling water — was still warm to the touch. Even the toothpaste had been pre-squeezed onto the brush. Who wouldn't love a life where every comfort was simply handed to you?
The noble lords of this world probably live no better than this.
A shame that after using the toilet, one still had to wipe oneself. There was room for improvement on the details.
Seated at the dining table, the star courtesan was treated to a freshly baked, pillowy-soft cake paired with a glass of unicorn milk — a truly delightful breakfast. Ram even styled her hair into twin-tails while she ate.
Li Fei preferred her hair long, straight, and black — but given that her daughter had put in such filial effort, she didn't mind trying a new style for the occasion.
"Tomorrow morning, fry a few eggs and pour out a small dish of soy sauce."
Li Fei issued the instructions with deep contentment.
"Understood."
Ram gave a dignified nod befitting a head maid and committed her mother's request to memory.
After breakfast, Li Fei personally hand-fed flower nectar to all three fairies. During the brief conversation that followed, she quickly determined that the fairy born that morning was also an R-pull — charmingly vacant, with that blank, endearing look — but she was obedient, sweet-natured, and easy on the eyes. Perfectly serviceable.
"Everyone hates the nobility. Everyone wants to be nobility…"
With a sigh that even Ram couldn't quite parse, Li Fei walked out into the bright morning sun toward the Academy.
...
"Guess who."
At the school gates, Li Fei covered the grey-haired girl's eyes from behind and spoke in a theatrically muffled voice.
"Saya?"
Irena felt Li Fei's hands.
"Wrong answer means a flogging."
Li Fei's smile turned dangerous.
"Hahaha — as if I couldn't tell, Annesia."
Irena laughed her off.
This shameless woman.
Li Fei puffed out her cheeks and released Irena in a huff, then shook her head vigorously. Her twin-tails whipped around and smacked Irena like a pair of flails.
"Ah — good morning, Fei."
Irena rubbed her head and attempted a defense. "I did figure it out just now, I just wanted to make a little joke."
"Hmph."
Li Fei gave her the cold shoulder and walked through the school gates without another word. Irena laughed softly and followed behind her.
Then — a mop of eye-catching blond hair entered Li Fei's field of vision.
It belonged to a handsome young man in a black mage's robe. He was trailing after a short-haired girl, talking nonstop — while she clearly couldn't be less interested, her footsteps clipped and impatient.
Li Fei stared for a moment, then a slow, amused smile spread across her face. She hooked her arm through Irena's, closed the distance in a few quick steps, and called out with bright, breezy cheer:
"Well, well, well — if it isn't Senior Kenneth! Haven't seen you in a few days. How are you… still looking as distinguished as ever."
Kenneth went rigid. He turned around, a polite and pleasant smile fixed on his face.
"What a surprise, running into you so soon, Miss Li Fei."
Then his gaze landed on Irena's face, and lingered a beat too long on the linked arms between the two women. His chest tightened.
Damn it. She's only been enrolled for two days and she's already gotten her hooks into one of the Twin Stars?!
The connection between Irena and Nicole flashed through his mind, and Kenneth's heart sank like a stone — yet he still forced a smile, dipping his head in greeting. "Miss Irena."
Social grace was a fundamental skill for any noble, and as fellow alumni, Kenneth and Irena had exchanged pleasantries on a handful of occasions in the past.
"Good morning," Irena replied, composed and perfectly courteous.
"Oh, sis, let me tell you — Senior Kenneth and I go way back." Li Fei launched into an enthusiastic introduction. "Back when I was waiting tables at a restaurant, he was so concerned about my working conditions that he generously invited me to serve as a senior handmaiden at his estate. And just recently, when I accidentally hurt a few of his people, he was incredibly magnanimous about the whole thing and forgave me without a second thought."
"Ah… I see…"
The cheerfully venomous recounting left Irena blinking for half a second — then the implication registered, and she took a small, deliberate step back.
In the span of a few sentences, the star courtesan had successfully driven Irena's opinion of Kenneth straight into the negatives.
Kenneth kept the warm smile on his face. Behind his back, however, his hand had balled into a fist — knuckles white, fingers grinding silently.
Beside him, the short-haired girl had also caught the name "Li Fei." She paused, turned her head, and looked over with a flicker of curiosity.
Apparently, the Rising Generation speech at the enrollment ceremony had given a certain new student representative something of a reputation within the Magic Academy.
She's beautiful…
Seeing Li Fei's face up close, the short-haired girl's breath caught for a moment.
She was looking at Li Fei. Li Fei was looking back at her.
The girl looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, with fine, tousled flaxen hair — soft and airy-looking, the ends grazing her shoulders. Her skin was luminously fair — not the rich white of milk, but a pale, almost translucent color, like a flawless sheet of ice. Her cyan eyes were bright and carried a faint edge of sharpness. Her features were well-defined and refined, though she wore an air of cool reserve that left little room for the kind of vitality and girlish brightness one might expect at her age.
A light brown leather armor fit snugly over her slender but upright frame — an unusual sight within the Magic Academy — but what drew Li Fei's eye most was the silver brooch pinned to her chest.
Special Enrollment students naturally received a silver badge. But there were also cases where students who'd entered with unremarkable Aptitude had, through outstanding performance, gradually upgraded their bronze brooch to silver — or even gold. So a silver badge alone wasn't conclusive.
Still, Mama Nicole had mentioned to the star courtesan that there was one other Special Enrollment student in this year's cohort.
"Are you Grace?"
Li Fei stepped right past Kenneth and walked up to the girl, her twin-tails bobbing perkily with each step. "Nice to meet you."
"You… know me?"
Grace seemed a little unaccustomed to such a warm greeting. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her expression caught somewhere between surprise and uncertainty.
"Well, there are only two Special Enrollment students this year, after all." Li Fei extended her hand, and on the words Special Enrollment, her tone lingered — just the tiniest bit — on the syllables. "I'm Li Fei."
Four people stood here: two were Special Enrollment students, one wore the gold brooch of the top student, and the last one… well. The remaining party might want to find a hole to disappear into.
Isn't that right, Kenneth?
Grace hesitated for a brief moment before taking the offered hand. "I know who you are."
"How wonderful!" Li Fei's face lit up with perfectly timed delight. "Then we're friends from now on — let's talk whenever we get the chance."
"…Mm," Grace replied quietly after a short pause.
"Senior Kenneth, your friend is really lovely."
Li Fei turned back to him with an expression of pure, pleasant appreciation.
She had, after all, witnessed with her own eyes how thoroughly Grace had been ignoring Kenneth — otherwise the star courtesan would far rather have invested her limited time in cultivating a certain… teacher-student dynamic.
Come on, show me that jealous face.
"We're not particularly close," Grace added, right on cue.
The star courtesan caught the telltale twitch at the corner of Kenneth's mouth, and her smile grew even more radiant.
"I have somewhere to be. Good day."
Kenneth finally found the limits of his composure. He turned away with an icy expression and walked off without another word.
"As expected."
Once he had passed through the corridor and fully escaped Li Fei's line of sight, Kenneth let out a cold, quiet laugh.
...
"Truly mastering a Meditation method is no simple matter. You must approach it with sufficient patience and focus — moving from the surface inward, layer by layer, until you reach the deepest state of Meditation."
At the front of the classroom, Melodia was guiding her students through the mysteries and nuances of Meditation in her steady, unhurried voice.
She had changed into a deep blue mage's robe today, embroidered with a pattern of starfields across the fabric. The hem barely covered the upper half of her thighs, leaving her long, perfectly rounded legs on full display beneath a layer of semi-translucent black stockings — through the dim, hazy darkness of the fabric, a captivating, flawless white gleamed beneath.
Li Fei propped her chin on one hand, doing her best to maintain the appearance of a diligent student. Her mind, however, had drifted off entirely — she was tallying up how much income that contract she'd signed last night, through sheer dignified suffering, was going to generate.
Given Li Fei's transcendent natural gifts, she had grasped the Introductory Meditation method in approximately one second flat — which meant this entire portion of the lesson was completely useless to her.
The other students, by contrast, were all listening intently with expressions of quiet contemplation. Whether that was because yesterday's point-deduction warning had finally hit home, or because Melodia's teaching was genuinely illuminating, Li Fei couldn't say.
"Of course, what we gain during Meditation is not merely denser mana and a stronger spirit — we also begin to perceive the Laws themselves."
"Fragments of the Laws will manifest in your mind during Meditation — perhaps as leaping symbols, perhaps as vivid colors, perhaps as cryptic script, perhaps as distorted patterns… Explore them. They will deepen your understanding of Transcendent knowledge. Believe me — this is the true foundation of the Transcendent path. It is worth far more than a small boost to your mana or a marginal improvement to your spell effects…"
Melodia continued her lecture, pausing now and then to flick her wand through the air, tracing abstract, inscrutable symbols that hung glowing in the space before her.
Hm?
Li Fei frowned.
Why was it that when she meditated, she felt nothing but emptiness and void?
She stared hard at the bizarre, luminous symbols Melodia was drawing — turning them over and over in her mind, searching for some hidden meaning — and ultimately concluded that they made calculus look straightforward by comparison. She came away with absolutely nothing.
She glanced at the other students. They were all gazing at the symbols with rapt concentration, expressions breaking into occasional flickers of delight — the look of someone who'd just cracked a difficult exam problem in the final moments.
Sigh…
Li Fei deflated. She slumped back in her chair and quietly pulled up her System Panel, eyeing the glaring zero in her Aptitude column with a sullen pout.
A useless system that won't even add Aptitude points. You're really dragging this lady down.
"Any questions?"
As the lecture portion wound down, Melodia drained her coffee in one go and waited for students to speak up.
"Teacher, last night while I was practicing Meditation, I did manage to perceive some fragments of the Laws," a female student raised her hand. "But I simply can't make sense of them…"
"Don't try to understand them — feel them!"
Melodia's voice was emphatic. "Analyzing the Laws, commanding the Laws — that belongs to high-Sequence powerhouses! What you should be doing is familiarizing yourself with the Laws. Becoming one with them."
"I understand. Thank you, Teacher."
The female student nodded, something visibly clicking into place.
"Naturally." Melodia let her gaze drift to Li Fei. "If one's Aptitude is high enough, even at low Sequences one may instinctively catch a glimpse of the Laws' true nature… but that is a miracle accessible only to those with at least 'Gold'-grade Aptitude. I hope everyone here will keep their feet firmly on the ground and not waste their own time chasing after the impossible."
Why are you looking at me?
This lady's Aptitude doesn't even meet the Bronze standard…
Li Fei complained inwardly. Outwardly, she maintained her most perfectly well-behaved expression.
"The Academy will provide all necessary resources for everyone's advancement to Sequence 9 — including the Ritual knowledge and the secret potion. Barring any complications, you should all be able to step into Sequence 9 in the near future."
Melodia laced her fingers together. "At that time, the first among you to fully master the Introductory Meditation method will receive a rare spell as a personal award from me."
At those words, the previously daydreaming Li Fei snapped to full attention.
Now you have my interest.
A wave of lively murmuring spread through the class as the other students perked up considerably.
Many of them turned their gazes toward Li — Class Beauty — New Student Representative — Rising Generation Speaker — Special Enrollment Student — Fei. Reactions varied: some looked ready to compete, some turned bashful at the sight of her, and a few quietly grumbled to themselves that the teacher was playing favorites and the prize was basically earmarked for Li Fei from the start.
"I'll also let you in on a little detail — the prize I've prepared is a Tier-2 spell: Fortune Spell."
Melodia refilled her coffee with a pleased smile. "It may not be the most decisive spell in direct combat, but in certain moments — cast during an advancement Ritual, for instance — it might just grant you an Innate Talent that changes the course of your entire life."
"Do your best."
Irena, the grey-haired assistant instructor, poked Li Fei lightly in the ribs and leaned in to whisper: "The Fortune Spell is worth at least three times any other spell of the same tier. Charisma, Luck, Aptitude, Command — those four stats are the hardest of all to raise, which makes anything that influences them extraordinarily rare."
"Got it."
Li Fei nodded — then raised her hand.
"Teacher, I've already mastered the Introductory Meditation method."
The room went dead silent for a beat — then a collective sharp intake of breath swept through the entire class.
____
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