Two days later, Wei Zian was well settled into his new quarters and it was Monday morning. Rising early was pure torture after he had gotten into the habit of meditating late into the morning, but he managed. He had many flaws, but a lack of self-discipline wasn't one of them.
He had successfully fended off Tian Wen after three hours of verbal sparring, though he was in no mood for anything after her visit and put off studying the jade slips for another day. In the end, he spent the entire weekend simply relaxing, actually somewhat impatient for the training sessions to begin.
The first session of the day was Essential Arts, and Wei Zian wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to teach. Most of the other sessions on his schedule had a clear subject visible from the very name, but 'arts' was a general term. Cultivation arts were what most people thought about when someone said 'cultivation', a few mystical incantations and strange hand seals and poof! Supernatural effect. It was actually more involved than that, a lot more involved, but that was the visible part, so that's what people focused on. Clearly the sect felt the class was important, because they had a session scheduled for it every day of the week.
As he approached the training hall, he noticed a familiar person standing in front of the door with a jade slip in her hands. This, at least, was a familiar sight. Ao Jiao had been the cohort representative since their first year, and she took her position very seriously. She gave him a harsh look when she noticed him, and Wei Zian wondered what he had done to annoy her this time.
"You're late," she stated when he got close enough.
Wei Zian raised an eyebrow at this. "The session doesn't start for at least 10 more minutes. How can I be late?"
"Disciples are supposed to be in the training hall and ready for instruction 15 minutes before the session starts," she stated.
Wei Zian rolled his eyes. This was ridiculous, even for Ao Jiao. "Am I the last person to arrive?"
"No," she conceded after a short silence.
Wei Zian walked past her and entered the training hall.
You could always tell when you walked into a gathering of cultivators, their appearance and fashion sense gave them away unerringly, especially in Celestial Peak Sect where cultivators from all over the Nine Provinces sent their children. Many of his fellow disciples came from established cultivation families, if not outright Noble Clans, and many cultivation lineages produced children with noticeable peculiarities, either because of bloodlines passed down from parents or because of secret enhancement rituals they underwent... things like having green hair, or always giving birth to spirit-linked twins, or having tattoo-like markings on their cheeks and forehead. And these were real examples exhibited by his fellow disciples.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he headed toward the front of the hall, giving polite greetings to those few classmates he knew a little better than the rest. No one really tried to talk to him, though there was no animosity between him and anyone in the cohort, he was not particularly close to any of them either.
He was just about to sit down when frantic hissing interrupted him. He glanced to his left, watching his fellow disciple whisper soothingly to the red-scaled lizard in his lap. The creature was staring at him intently with its bright yellow eyes, nervously flicking its tongue, but didn't hiss again when Wei Zian carefully lowered himself onto the cushion.
"Sorry about that," the boy said. "He's still a little nervous around strangers."
"Don't worry about it," Wei Zian said, waving the apology away. He didn't know Bai Lian very well, but he did know his family bred fire dragons for a living, so it wasn't that unusual for him to have one. "I see your family has given you a fire dragon of your own. Spirit beast companion?"
Bai Lian nodded happily, scratching the lizard's head absent-mindedly and causing the creature to close its eyes in contentment. "I formed a spiritual bond with him during the summer meditation break," he said. "The beast connection feels a little strange at first, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. At least I've managed to convince him not to breathe fire at people without permission, or else I would have to put a fire-suppression talisman on him, and he hates those things."
"The sect won't trouble you about bringing him to sessions?" Wei Zian asked curiously.
"Him," Bai Lian corrected. "And no, they won't. You can bring a spirit beast companion to training if you've registered them with the sect and can keep them under control. And, of course, as long as they're reasonably sized."
"I hear fire dragons can get pretty big," Wei Zian remarked speculatively.
"They do," Bai Lian agreed. "That's why I wasn't allowed to have one until now. In a few years he'll get way too big to follow me into the training hall, but by that time I'll already be finished with my education and back at the family compound."
Satisfied the creature wouldn't try to take a bite out of him during the session, Wei Zian let his attention wander elsewhere. He mostly spent his time studying the female disciples as covertly as possible. He blamed Bai Ning for this, since he usually wasn't in the habit of staring at his fellow disciples. No matter how pretty some of them were...
"Quite captivating, isn't she?"
Wei Zian jumped in surprise at the voice behind him and cursed himself for being caught so unaware.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said quickly, turning as calmly as possible in his seat to face Zhao Hong. The cheerful, smiling face of his fellow disciple told him he wasn't fooling anyone.
"Don't be so flustered," Zhao Hong told him happily. "I don't think there's a single male disciple in the cohort who doesn't occasionally dream about our resident red-haired goddess."