Wei Zian slowed down and allowed Ao Jiao to catch up to him. The girl could be insufferable sometimes, but she was a good person overall and he didn't want to snap at her just because the assessment didn't go the way he wanted.
"How do you think you did back there?" she asked.
"Poorly," he answered, not seeing the point in lying.
"Yes, me too."
Wei Zian inwardly rolled his eyes. His and her definition of 'poorly' differed greatly.
"Ning Yi finished in only half an hour," said Ao Jiao after a brief silence. "I bet she'll get a perfect score again."
"Ao Jiao..." Wei Zian sighed.
"I know everyone thinks I'm jealous but that's not normal!" said Ao Jiao in a hushed but agitated voice. "I'm quite talented and I study all the time and I'm still having problems with the curriculum. And we've both been in the same training group as Ning Yi for the past two years and she was never this good. And... and now she's surpassing me in every single session!"
"Kind of like Zhao Hong," said Wei Zian.
"Exactly like Zhao Hong!" she agreed. "They even spend time together, two of them and one other female disciple I don't know, behaving like... like they're in their own private immortal realm."
"Or like they're dual cultivating," said Wei Zian, before frowning. "Triple? What's the term for a cultivation partnership between three people?"
Ao Jiao scoffed. "Whatever. The point is the three of them do nothing but waste time together and antagonize the Elders and get perfect scores anyway. They even refused the opportunity to be transferred to first-tier groups, can you believe that!?"
"You're too worked up over this," Wei Zian warned.
"Aren't you at least a little curious how they do it?" asked Ao Jiao.
"Of course I am," scoffed Wei Zian. "It's hard not to be. But what can I do about it? Besides, Zhao Hong has never done anything to me. I don't want to cause problems for him just because he has suddenly discovered his inner prodigy."
Wei Zian sensed Bai Ning joining them suddenly, simply appearing from around a corner so he could walk beside them. Sometimes Wei Zian wondered if the chubby boy could smell gossip.
"I know what you mean," Bai Ning said. "I always thought Zhao Hong was no good at anything. You know, like me?"
"Hah. Well there's no way he got this good at everything over one summer meditation break," Wei Zian said. "I guess he was hiding his true abilities all this time."
"By the Heavens, that's so stupid," said Bai Ning. "If I were that good I'd make sure everyone knew it."
"I don't think he was pretending to lack skill for two years straight," Ao Jiao huffed. "He would have slipped at least occasionally."
"Well, what's left then?" Wei Zian asked. He refrained from listing some of the more obscure ways such a rapid growth could be accomplished with forbidden techniques, because most of them were criminal and he was sure the sect had checked Zhao Hong to make sure he wasn't a body-snatching imposter or possessed by the vengeful ghost of an ancient cultivator.
"Maybe he knows the answers in advance," she suggested.
"Only if he's using some heaven-defying divination technique," Bai Ning said. "Elder Ning gave him a surprise assessment last Tuesday when you went to visit your family's compound, and he was reciting answers like he had memorized all the jade slips in the Scripture Hall."
The conversation died down as all three filed into the alchemy classroom, which was really more of a large alchemy workshop than a typical training hall. There were about twenty tables, each one covered with various containers and equipment. All ingredients for the day's lesson were already set out in front of them, though some would require additional preparation before they could be used in whatever concoction they were learning about that day, he was pretty sure they weren't going to be putting live cave crickets into the boiling solution, for instance.
Alchemy, like Spirit Protection, was a complex art, but their alchemy instructor knew her craft and knew how to teach, so Wei Zian wasn't having any issues with the class. Technically they had to work in groups of two or three disciples because there weren't enough tables and equipment, but Wei Zian always paired up with Bai Ning, which translated to working alone in practice. The only problem was getting Bai Ning to shut up and stop distracting him during the sessions.
"Hey Wei Zian," Bai Ning whispered to him not so quietly. "I never noticed it until now, but our instructor is quite enchanting!"
Wei Zian gritted his teeth. The blasted idiot couldn't keep his voice down if his life depended on it. There was no way she didn't hear that.
"Bai Ning," he whispered back to his partner. "I need excellent marks in alchemy to secure my future position when I graduate. If you ruin this for me I will never speak to you again."
Bai Ning grumbled but returned to his ogling. Wei Zian refocused on grinding the iron-eating beetle shells into a fine powder needed for the particular type of adhesive they were supposed to be making.
Admittedly, Elder Lin did look surprisingly youthful for a cultivator in her fifth decade. Some kind of beauty technique, probably, she was their alchemy instructor, after all. Maybe even a genuine youth elixir, though those were exceedingly rare and usually imperfect in some way.
"I don't see why you like this class so much," grumbled Bai Ning. "I'm not even sure I'd call it cultivation. You don't need qi for it. It's all searching for herbs this, cutting the roots the right way that... it's like cooking. Heavens, we're making adhesive, of all things. You should leave that to female disciples."
"Bai Ning..."
"It's true!" he protested. "Even our instructor is female. An attractive female, but still. I read somewhere that alchemy traces its origins back to ancient medicine women, with their potions and what not. Even now the best alchemical lineages are descended from medicine clans. I bet you didn't know that, did you?"