BXBX NOVEL Chapter 226 This is going to be a massive pain in the ass, won't it?
But accounting for the clumsiness stemming from our recent advance, each of those simple steps suddenly turned into a complex and time-consuming process.
Just putting on the temporary clothes that Chihiro provided turned out to be a task requiring the same level of precision and focus I would only ever dedicate to my crafts in the past—a fact proven by how, by the end of the dressing-up process, most of those clothes had turned into shredded rags, held together by hopes, faith, and fortune.
At the very least, washing up wasn\'t all that bad. Surprisingly, it was the activity that consumed the least time out of everything, contrary to how it should normally be.
Still, after we got all the dried-off liquids cleaned off and swapped the dirt and sweat for a slight perfume, we still had to get dressed again. This time, however, there was no room for mistakes, not with the official clothes we simply didn\'t have spares for.
This was also the moment when, having no other choice, I allowed the inn\'s maid to help Claire out, but not before I ensured her nether regions were properly covered—a process that came at the cost of close to half of the lingerie collection Claire brought with her on the trip.
Knowing full well that I was unable to control my strength—as we found out back when we tried to dress ourselves back in the training room—I had no other choice but to stand back in my bathrobe and watch how the inn maids helped Claire get dressed.
Judging by their enthusiasm, the talk I saw Chihiro having with the inn\'s boss had to involve quite the mind-boggling sum changing hands. That only made me question just how massive Chihiro\'s "gratuity" was over the destruction of the training room, plus the added help for the owner of the inn to willingly share parts of it with the maids… and still for the maids to act as if the gods of fortune personally descended to the world of mortals to bless them.
When it came to my end of this part of the bargain, however, we found ourselves at quite the impasse. A conundrum was solved in the most embarrassing and awkward way possible, with Chihiro himself stepping in to help me first refresh the ceremonial robes before taking his time to help me properly put them on.
This entire affair—something that would normally take us no more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes—ended up consuming pretty much all the time we had. It was so down to the wire, in fact, that not even a single minute passed between us gathering outside the inn and the clan\'s sky-carriage appearing from behind the street\'s corner.
"We\'ve made it…" Claire sighed softly, watching the sky-carriage approach in a way that opposed its name by riding not through the skies but on the road instead. "It was all down to the wire, but we\'ve made it."
I could hear the relief in her voice, a relief that I pretty much shared.
"The bad thing is, as relieved as we might be right now, this is actually where the trouble begins," I said before I could actually think about it, letting the momentary relief get into my head a bit too much.
"What do you mean?" Forced out of her momentary comfort, Claire threw me a startled glance.
"I mean…" I hesitated for a second, only to gulp down my hesitations and cast a quick glance at her. "We are still stronger than what strength we are used to controlling. In other words, we now have to do our very best to pretend as if everything is alright throughout the entire visit, not to let the clan know just how easily we can advance."
I shrugged my shoulders as I said it, hurrying my words out just a bit to ensure I got my piece out before the sky-carriage arrived right at the inn\'s doorstep.
Contrary to the winged bus, the carriage itself was actually much closer to the original meaning of its core word. It was pretty much just a normal, horse-drawn carriage, merely on the slightly bigger, fancier end. The horses pulling it down the street didn\'t seem any special either, making me question just where the "sky" part of its name even came from.
Yet, as soon as the carriage stopped, rather than finally getting the chance to take a proper look at it and figure out how it worked, I was faced with one element of being a part of a big, rich clan that was so obvious, yet I still failed to expect it.
"My name is Graticus Bornelio; I\'m the butler of the Corian Clan," a tall man appearing to be in his late fifties stepped out from a special platform at the back of the carriage, dressed in a way that reminded me of nothing else but the long-gone Victorian era. He wore an elegant, perfectly fitting tuxedo with an oversized, perfectly white piece of triangular cloth hanging down his neck. "I\'m here to offer you a ride."
This man…
He looked like an old, respected butler yet spoke like a relatively modern person, making it a strange if not outright weird example of mismatched trends.
Still, the way he jumped down from the small platform, the way he elegantly bowed his head, even his manner of speech - they were impeccable, as if designed to make others feel bad about their lacking manners.
"Thanks," Chihiro replied while taking a step forward, merely acknowledging the butler\'s presence instead of offering him a bow or even a nod back. "We would be delighted to partake in the service offered."
Turning towards the two of us, Chihiro lightly nodded his head.
"Daughter, son, follow me."
My eyes twitched when the man referred to me in such an extremely formal way, even the word son suddenly took on a different, much more dignified meaning than in the rare few occasions when he called me like that in the past. Find more chapters on empire
"Allow us to indulge, then," I replied with the formula Chihiro taught me back when he was still busy fixing my complex robes. Yet, as opposed to what my words would imply, we remained in place, waiting for Chihiro to fully enter the carriage and take a seat before finally following him inside.
Even this small element of the whole process was formalized to its limits, with Claire counting the exact number of steps she made on her approach to the carriage\'s step, taking exactly three steps to climb inside and then two further steps to get a bit deeper in before turning around on the spot and slowly putting her bum down on the cushions of the seat.
Thankfully, as an outsider of the group who wasn\'t formally trained in the local etiquette, I could afford to make some mistakes.
Yet, in my bid to show everyone how I wasn\'t just some peasant who just lucked out to join Claire\'s clan - which I, by all means, was - I made sure to follow each step of the process of entering the carriage to perfection.
"Hmm..." after replicating pretty much the same steps Claire took, I made sure to exhale a small sigh of relief as I sat down, all to implicate that the service offered was not only appreciated but also genuinely required.
This step, just like all the others to be perfectly honest, was nothing more than a political dance, where even the smallest gestures would take on meanings only people with way too much time on their hands could ever understand or even see.
Which, by simple math, most of the cultivators in the spiritual world were! After all, contrary to normal humans who would be lucky to live to see their hundredth birthday, the citizens of the spiritual world could easily live all the way up to two and maybe even three centuries, with the actual cultivators who reached the higher ranks easily capable of surviving for as long as half of a millennium!
In other words, when the people who witnessed the birth of the last spiritual era were still around while ideologically depriving themselves of all sorts of entertainment offered by the modern world, every tiniest gesture would suddenly gain a great and profound meaning - all in a bid to simply entertain themselves.
Still, as I breathed out my sigh, I looked up, only to see both Chihiro and Claire tense up.
\'It\'s only now that the reality is hitting them, huh?\'
Up until now, everything was extremely rushed.
From Chihiro\'s desperate bid to break through to the tenth rank of mortal cultivation before his deadline, through Claire\'s rush to teach me all the basics of the formal etiquette of the spiritual world all the while dealing with all sorts of issues related to our projects...
Not even our first day in the spiritual world was filled with peace, given the trouble we found ourselves pretty much right after waking up this morning.
With all of those pressing matters occupying everyone\'s thoughts, those two could hardly think about what the future held for them, not getting any real chances to properly internalize what they knew was coming.
Now that we\'ve all sat in the carriage and felt the pull as the horses started to run again, they had no other choice but to accept the simple yet extremely weighty truth.
For Chihiro, this was the journey to finally reunite with his dear wife that her clan forced back into the spiritual world.
For Claire, it was the journey to finally see her mom, someone who unwillingly abandoned her all those years prior.
When it came to me, however, I had no emotional burden related to Claire\'s original clan. But that didn\'t mean I was looking forward to reaching our destination either.
\'It\'s really going to be a pain trying to hold myself back over there, huh?\' I thought, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath as I too finally found the right time to internalize what the future had in store for me. \'Be it dealing with the arrogant young masters, not showing enough respect or manners refined well enough to my elders or even hiding out the fact that I can\'t really control my cultivation...\'
I resisted the desire to shake my head in exasperation over just what kind of mess I ended up throwing myself into.
\'This is really going to be one hell of a pain in the ass, won\'t it.\'