Later that night, Bai Yunfei was back in his room in Zheng manor.
Laid upon the table in his room was a single white stone that served as the only source of illumination for Bai Yunfei. In front of him were a stack of books, with one of them currently being read by him.
This was the ‘homework’ he gave to the class.
They were filled with the insights each of the student had about crafting when Bai Yunfei did it the other day.
Today’s class had gone pretty smoothly, if he had to say so for himself. He had been worried that he wouldn’t do a good job of teaching, but as time went on, Bai Yunfei realized that it was actually a lot simpler than he initially thought.
He just had to convey the meaning as clearly as he could so that the students could understand. They were very knowledgeable, just only not in the aspect of crafting. But with their great memory and capabilities of connecting the dots easily, the students were undoubtedly geniuses among their peers.
By the end of class today, Bai Yunfei distributed several copies of the Art of Firebending to the students. In the aspect of fire manipulation, the Art of Firebending was top-notch. In other aspects, it wasn’t as good as several other styles of training in elemental fire.
In the end, the Art of Firebending was only just another way of how to manipulate elemental fire and several applications of said way. It wasn’t revolutionary and it wasn’t an esoteric secret. If he was to teach the class how to craft, then the Art of Firebending would definitely have to be given to them.
It was Bai Yunfei’s hope that the students would be able to almost master the Art of Firebending within the week.
Such a request was quite demanding, but they were all extremely capable soul cultivators. Having a higher bar for geniuses was only natural.
He had said that should they have even a rudimentary grasp of the Art of Firebending, he’d let them try crafting a soul armament themselves the next class.
The rate in which the seven were learning the art of crafting was already far better than what Bai Yunfei was capable of, but was that not what being a ‘genius’ meant? Their starting points were far different to Bai Yunfei with even the weakest of them being a mid-stage Soul Ancestor when they started.
……
After class ended earlier that night, Bai Yunfei went looking for Zheng Kai in the academy, only to find him sitting with a female student to ‘teach’ her how to control her soulforce. By the time Bai Yunfei left with Zheng Kai, Bai Yunfei could see the sheer reluctance the female had about Zheng Kai leaving her. What in the world Zheng Kai had been teaching, he didn’t know….
They returned to the manor after eating a simple dinner at a restaurant. And without further ado, Bai Yunfei headed into his own room to start reading through the ‘homework’.
And what he was reading had beyond what he expected.
In fact, they blew his expectations out from the water.
Their understandings of what they saw from Bai Yunfei’s crafting attempt had been exceedingly detailed in several cases. What many normal people wouldn’t see, the seven had noticed. What supplementary Bai Yunfei used to stabilize the process, the seven were able to identify and roughly guess their usages. What fluctuations in his soulforce, the seven were able to tell. And what changes in elemental fire, the seven were able to see, describe, and even theorize about.
Even Mo Chen, who wrote the least of the seven, had been able to concisely write about many different details on what happened.
Bai Yunfei was in fact starting to doubt if the seven of them had spent some time as a student of the Crafting School before.
This was also to say that they held an exceedingly strong comprehensive ability on soul armaments and the art of crafting. And it also meant to say that the seven of them had fairly decent talent for the art.
Had they….once tried to take the examinations to enter the Crafting school before>
It was a random thought Bai Yunfei had, but it wasn’t a very slim chance either.
……
“Eh?”
The final book he was reading had surprised Bai Yunfei immensely, and he was only on the first page of the book!
There was about twenty pages to this book, and the more Bai Yunfei read, the more surprised he felt about it. In the end, Bai Yunfei couldn’t even put his praise into words.
This book was….so detailed!!
From when he first placed down the Lightningfire Cauldron to the fluctuations in the air, to the formation of the heaven-tier soul armament, every single little detail had been written down!
Every single change in the fire of the cauldron had been noted, the intensity of the flames measured, and the amount of differing materials categorized, sequentialized, and even theorized on their potential uses and combinations…..
Not only was each step of the procedure written clearly, the author had also written in their own analysis and conjectures. Some details were even unclear to Bai Yunfei on how to answer.
It was a complete and utter analysis on the crafting attempt Bai Yunfei did two weeks ago. Many of the conjectures the author came up with had been right for the most part, and as a whole, the book could practically be used as a teaching manual on the crafting process.
Bai Yunfei made his decision as soon as he finished reading: This analysis was without a doubt the best homework given to him.
He flipped the cover to look at who wrote it, but when he saw the name, Bai Yunfei froze in shock.
“Him?!”
On the top right corner of the cover had two words written neatly on there—Ye Ming.
The very same sixth year student from the lightning section that came up to Bai Yunfei before class today!!
At some point during the day, Bai Yunfei had put his book together with the books of the other seven students. And Bai Yunfei had gone through them all.
He had no idea that the one book that he’d be most pleased with would belong to the only one that….wasn’t his student.
“What a shame!!”
Bai Yunfei sighed in disappointment before packing away the books.
……
Allowing his soulsense to scan his space ring, Bai Yunfei’s eyebrows knitted together when he felt something different, “Right, nearly forgot about this….”
Shaking his right hand, Bai Yunfei took out a pile of things from his space ring and plopped them onto the table.
These things belonged to the young man who he won against back in Casino Jin. The one man who had practically nothing but random trash to his name.
Low-grade primal stones, even lower class soulgems, human-tier soul armaments, and even clothes…..’trash’ in almost every sense of the word.
But Bai Yunfei looked over the pile of things he won with a pleased smile. Aside from wanting to put a complete stop to the young man’s gambling addiction, Bai Yunfei had found something very ‘special’ among the pile of things he had….
After rummaging through the pile, Bai Yunfei took out a small ‘white cloth’ about thirty centimeters squared in size. On it were several black lines that crisscrossed with one another as if messily scrawled on.
Placing the shabby looking cloth onto the table, Bai Yunfei stared pensively at it, “Can’t believe there’s actually a second piece….”