Chapter 104: School

Chapter 104: School

Word count = 3000 on 10/30/2023 - Happy Early Halloween Everyone

Xue Tie begins his much faster journey back. With his presence reaffirmed by the beast lords of the forest, he is not bothered in his journey back to his kingdom. He stops halfway through as he has an intrusive thought for what the future holds. As such, he slightly shifts directions to Suotuo City which is a city under the control of Balak Kingdom which is part of his territory.

He takes a few minutes to arrive there as he was already heading back to his land. He easily passes through the gates as he naturally has his own imperial token, it was more of a struggle to stop the guards from bowing than some of the sea gods trials. He heads to the city majors office and finds an attendant there.

"Hello, I would like to meet with the major" He asks

"Do you have an appointment sir?" The butler like attendant questions

"Heh, I think if he wants to keep his job then the answer is yes" He says with a small grin on his face.

"Under what name is the appointment under?" the butler asks another question as he is uncertain about how to proceed with the situation. The guards here notice the attendants' wariness, yet they all start to panic at his next words.

"Xue" He takes out his token again and sets it on the table. The butler's eyes look like they are going to pop out of their sockets in a cartoonish style. He looks like he has just aged 30 years as he bends his back and shuffles over to the door to open it and is met with the response.

"Why are you bothering me? I don't have any appointments." The mayor says in annoyance for being bothered in his work.

The butler attendant stutters out his words. "N. no. no. y.yes….yes. Yo.yo.yo.yo you do"

"What's wrong with you, stand straight, speak clearly. I don't know what your saying with all that stuttering. "

Xue Tie approaches the room but has to crouch due to his height, so he grabs the top of the door as he shimmies inside while saying. "Oh? But i'd like to meet you"

The mayor turns to look at the stranger but pauses as he witnesses the elegant but gigantic royal robes worn by Xue Tie, who has a mischievous smile on his face.

The mayor turns to stone as he quickly recognizes the person in his office. The over 7ft tall giant of a man who is the lord emperor of the Empyrean Empire, Xue Tie ... ..who is in his office!!!!

He looks like he is on the verge of turning to dust after already turning to stone.

"Oy, don't die on me, i'm not interested in taking your soul this day. I just have a few questions for you before I head out again." His words seem to shock the mayor out of his petrification as he seeks to be useful for the benevolent but slightly crazy emperor. He understands that this might be another of his whims as just a few months ago, he had kidnapped a bunch of people with certain spirit affinities for an unknown reason. The people came back but they could not reveal the circumstances behind the event.

The butler moves to the corner of the room to blair witch and not interfere in the emperor's business. "Ye.yes. How may I be of assistance?" The mayor asks in a shaky voice.

"Has anybody approached you at all in regards to making some sort of spirit master academy? One for 'monster' students?" Xue Tie asks with interest.

"Ah, yes yes yes. There was a group about that. They came a few months ago but they seem to struggle financially as they are sometimes late on the land payment. In fact, they have not delivered payment for this month yet. Should I assemble guards to have them arrested? Have they offended your majesty?" The mayor begins to mutter like an insane person to figure out what reason the emperor might have a reason to personally seek this group out.

"Just tell me where they are exactly, I wish to meet with them myself. For business of course" He requests the information and the mayor scrambles to his desk to grab the paperwork regarding this prototype academy. He soon finds the paperwork and hands it over.

Xue Tie has a contemplative look as he quickly learns that the registration period which started 2 days ago is currently going on. He has a slightly wicked expression as he leaves the office and even exits the city. Guards from the city try to follow along at the Mayors behest as they wanted to give the emperor an entourage but Xue Tie seems to have simply disappeared, only a golden eyed black haired young girl was found around the corner that the emperor was seen going through. Once the guards run off in search of the emperor, the girl lets out a Cheshire grin as he makes his way outside the city to the nearby forest.

Strangely enough, there is a sizable hotel just outside the city and it also gets quite a bit of service as many couples are seen going in and out of the hotel. Granted, this place is fairly iconic for being the location that Tang San and Xiao Wu meet Dai Mubai in the original future.

The young girl passes by the hotel and continues forward deeper into the forest where she happens upon a clearing that has what looks like a small crappy startup village. There is a small stand occupied by an old man who looks like he is sleeping. The stand says Shrek Academy Registration.

The young girl approaches the stand and speaks up in a cute voice. "Hello?"

The old man shuffles awake as even though he was resting, he could clearly sense everything around him as he is A level 63 Spirit Emperor. So the fact that this little girl snuck up on him like this is truly behind his thoughts. He gazes at the girl and kindly says.

"Young miss, Where are your parents? This is the registration booth for a spirit master school." The man who is Li Yusong, the same man who tested Tang San in the future when he registered for the school in canon.

The girl speaks up and says, "I am older than I look, I am here to try registering for this school. By your words, the registration period isn't over yet?"

"Ahem, no it's not but it is supposed to end by tonight, so you are cutting it quite close young miss. If you wish to register then you must pay the fee"

The girl seemingly in a clueless manner takes out what is actually a 10 thousand coin and hands it over. "Uncle, is this enough? If yes then you can keep the rest"

The old man Yusong is shivering, tears are flowing down his face as he truly is poor. The situation of the school is such that it's only his bond with the headmaster that he can work tirelessly like this. For that very reason he is now crying over the generosity of the girl. Who is looking at the scene with a tilt of her head and a finger hovering over her mouth in shock of the situation.

Yusong coughs as he regains his bearings and holds out his hand. "Please give me your arm so I can test your bone age as part of the verification.

The girl does so with a smile but Yusong frowns as he cant tell her bone age. "Young lady, do you train in some sort of technique that changes your arm bone age?"

"Yes, but not just my arms, but." "Ah Yusong, did we finally get a student? Are they a good seedling?" A short but overly muscular man wearing what looks like a bikers jacket and a pauldron on his shoulder [1] saunters over and interrupts the young girl as she is talking. He has short hair and a thick beard stuck onto a stoic face.

"We have a candidate but I'm in the middle of their admission, if you could not interrupt, then that would be great." The short man Zhou Wuji grumbles as he shifts to scratch his ass.

Yusong tries to calm down the girl who has her cheeks puffed out over the interruption, radiating feeble hostility. "Ah let's forget the age, release your martial spirit so we can see your progress, if your spirit power is over 20 then you pass.

"Humph, just a little spirit power 20, I reached level 20 just a few days after awakening thanks to a treasure I got while on a field trip with my father."

She releases her martial spirit to reveal a giant black dragon that is seemingly made of fire, the dragon then shrinks to form a scale like armor coating the girl. The martial spirit shocks both Li Yusong and Zhou Wuji as the pressure it releases almost makes them both fall over flat but once the martial spirit settles down, they are baffled to find that the girl only has a single level of spirit power? She dispells her martial spirit.

"HAAAH, little girl, don't joke around like this. You have a high grade martial spirit but you are clearly too young to be our student. Your clearly lacking in terms of the spirit power necessary to attend Shrek. After all, this is a school for monster and your not on our level." Zhao Wuji berates the girl and messes up the girl's hair when she grabs his hand.

"Monsters eh? Ill have you know, there is no one as monstrous as me in this generation" The girl says and Zhao Wuji tries to retract his hand before he continues his argument but finds that he cant retract his hand at all.

Yusong is silent, initially planning to coax the girl who would typically be scared silly or disheartened by Zhao Wuji but when he sees that Wuji couldn't take his grabbed hand back. Yusong starts to get nervous, especially when he hears the girl's words.

"Motionless Bright King, Zhao Wuji, you are proud of your strength and defenses. Let's see how you fare against me. Just a simple match between true experts" The girl, using Zhao Wujis arm as a fulcrum, lifts him up into the air bit by bit with no strain on her face. Once Wuji is fully lifted above her head, she slams him down onto the ground.

Lift, slam, Lift, slam, Lift, slam. The cycle repeats for a few moments as the force behind each slam increases quite noticeably. They haven't even noticed that the girls black hair has turned blood red though with the absence of actual blood as Zhao Wuji is just bruised badly by the impact.

The impacts reach such a power that a few of the other elders from the school come out to check whats going on. There is the chef, Shao Xin wearing his signature pink hat, Yin Shu one of the schools teachers who is in charge of finding and testing others to see if they are suitable teachers. Lu Jibin, an over 70 year old man who originally was supposed to be Li Yusong's assistant but had left when it looked like the registration time was over early. The last one is a slightly aged man in a black outfit, with black and gray hair, wearing a pair of glasses, he has a frown on his face. This last person is Flender, the headmaster of Shrek academy.

"Who are you?" Flender questions.

"Oh, my name is Tie'er. I am your emperor. You may bow or whatever you want. I've come for business with you Flender. hehehehe" the girl says which causes a frown on everyone's faces as they hold great respect for the young Emperor that is Xue Tie. So seeing some young girl claim to be their respectable emperor puts a bad taste in their mouth. Though they quickly notice that as the girl laughs, her voice starts to distort, her height growing as well. Her physique changed quite quickly from a small dainty girl to a muscular tall man. 'Her' clothes rip but the martial spirit is resummoned to create armor around the person's body. They eventually reach 7' 5" ft tall, far taller than everyone else.

"Ah, that was quite fun" The masculine voice states and the helmet portion of the martial spirit is dispelled to reveal a face that they all recognize, along with the signature red hair.

Flender is the first to kneel with his head down whilst saying, "This one greets Xue Tie, the emperor of Empyrean." His words echo through the ears of them all who also kneel to pay respects. Except Zhao Wuji who is a pancake right now but slowly recovering.

All of them are shaking in fear and confusion over why the emperor would come out to meet with them in the first place and even more so how he had turned into a little girl. They recall the rumors of what is considered a true form of retardation over some of the things the emperor did since he had ended the last war with Star Luo. Kidnapping random children, randomly running through the streets by crab walking and yelling 'woo woo woo woo woo'. Or the time he wrestled with a dragon spirit beast in the capital so that he could brush the beast's teeth, all the while complaining about their bad breath.

"Rise" Xue Tie says and they do, except for pancake Wuji. They are all still slightly scared before he continues by saying, "let's go to your office Flender"

"Ah, yes your majesty, please follow me", Flender and Xue Tie talk away while the others help Zhao Wuji out of the imprint he created in the ground and take him to rest until he recovers.

Flender and Xue Tie soon arrive at an office and Flender offers his head seat but Xue Tie just sits in the smallish size chairs which are actually regular sized but he forgets his own size sometimes. Flender can only reluctantly sit in his own chair with a worried expression. Xue Tie takes out his imperial robes and puts it on then dispels the martial spirit armor. "Ah, much better. That was fun. But now it's time for business"

"How may a small school like ours be of service to your majesty?" Flender asks with a grave sense of curiosity.

"I wish to sponsor this school"

"Huh!?"

"You heard me correctly, I, Xue Tie, the emperor of Empyrean….wish to spooooonsoooorrrr YOUR schooooooool." He elongates his words to ensure the meaning is understood by Flender.

"We haven't even had a single proper student, just a few attemptees who ran away after a few days." Flender asks confused.

"What is your school?" Xue Tie simply responds

"It….it's a school for monster students" Flender says and his eyes start to brighten as his brain starts to see a sort of pattern.

"Correct, and if I didn't join spirit hall, would I not be a student here that easily entered?" Flender bobs his head like a bird as the history of Xue Tie was long found out by some spirit hall members who had witnessed his time in Spirit Hall. Of course they were bribed.

"So, I want to make your school, the unofficially sanctioned school of my empire. I won't put restrictions on you but I will financially sponsor you and your school so you can actually pay your employees and maybe develop the land a bit over the years to have proper buildings instead of literal hovels made of hay. I don't want you to overdevelop too quickly as too much would place high expectations on you and make you on par with something like Heaven Dou Academy. No, I want you to make…. Better…monsters. Anyone can be considered a monster based on talent but personality is also a key factor. Character matters in the grand scheme of things" Xue Tie explains his idea and how he would like the school to develop. Flender is shocked by the profundity of the ideology that Xue Tie proposes that actually matches and exceeds Flenders goal.

"So you don't want us to have too many students?"

"A large number doesnt matter, as long as you can at one point get a proper team of spirit masters to represent your school within 15 or so years then I'm satisfied. In fact, I even have 2 candidates that can join your school once they reach roughly 12 to 13 years old. Which means you have to wait at least 9 to 10 years before they can join your school. Ill give them both a token that looks like my own token but with your shrek symbol. Acceptable?"

"Yes, yes, yes yes yes yes YES" Flender has trouble holding back his excitement as all but one of his desires is being fulfilled (obviously Liu Erlong is the last)

"Hmm, good. Here is the first payment, you can use it to pay off the taxes you still owe for this month as the mayor complained a bit that you were behind. Ill send more every month, but ensure that your own behavior doesnt change. Don't let the money blind you to your own goals" Xue Tie sets down a sack of money on Flenders desk. As Flender counts the money, he looks like his soul has reached nirvana. Xue Tie takes his leave, he waves off the others who watch him go. He sprouts his wings wide and finally returns home.

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[1] Donghua art is better and more memorable which is why i use it for all character