The two were prostrating themselves in front of the man, he was a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing. He didn’t know anything about teaching people or guiding them in any way shape or form.
“You want me to be your master? I just met you two. Why would I even take you in as disciples?”
The two kept their heads down, not looking into his eyes while trying to get his approval.
“Please honorable Uncle, we want to be strong to protect the Clan. We almost lost everything before you arrived, we can’t let it happen again.”
The girl from the group did most of the talking, while the boy mostly just said yes and nodded his head, which only caused him to hit the ground with his forehead. The whole scene was quite uncomfortable for Matt as he had no idea how to even train those two if he agreed, also this would be quite the long term binding contract. Masters in the cultivation world tended to be treated as your own parents, sometimes they were put on an even higher pedestal. He didn’t really want to be responsible for teaching them some strange things, which would get them killed later on.
“Don’t think that’s a good idea… I need to go take care of a couple of things… so see you around…”
He just bolted out of there, trying not to think about it too much. The kids would probably forget about it, leaving him alone. Also due to the fact that he didn’t eat much for the past week when he was cultivating and making items, he was famished. He wondered if he should just go to the city and find himself a restaurant, or ask someone about food, he could probably get some here if he wanted. Matt was curious about the city though, it looked nice from the top of his peak top apartment. Would it be a problem if people recognized him in the streets? Though not many people had actually seen his face.
He looked around, there were some people here and there doing their thing. No one was really keeping tabs on him, he didn’t have any bodyguards as no one in their right mind would want to attack a cultivator that could take out four core formation cultivators. He figured ol’ gramps probably gave the order to not interfere in his business too much unless asked directly. Matt thought that he would probably get the rundown of the place only after he officially got the Patriarch spot.
For not he just hopped onto his sword and flew around the city a couple of times before coming down into an empty alleyway. He swapped the color of his robe to a brown one, this being quite common. He finished his disguise by covering his head with his hood, he also debated on putting on some cool shades to hide his eyes but have up on the idea. A cultivator with dark shades would just look out of place around here. Also, he could use his cultivation to mask his appearance somehow. If people tried looking at his face they would see it blur slightly, but that only worked for people below his strength level.
He mingled with the crown, slipping from the empty alleyway. He Hit some stalls on the way, getting some noodles and slurping them as he continued to walk. There was quite a lot of things to see, from street performers playing on their zithers to various monuments and statues. He had spirit stones and regular money so he wasn’t a scrooge as he tipped the street dancers while enjoying the day.
The day seemed quite peaceful, he walked into one of the larger restaurants that looked quite busy. By this time he knew how things worked in these types of places. The people with more money would get better treatment, in most restaurants the higher you were seated the greater your status was. So after flashing the serving lady some spirit stones he was guided upwards into a more peaceful booth where there weren’t as many people around. He ordered something similar to kung pao chicken, though the paultry used for it had some spiritual Qi in it so the taste was somewhat better. Spirit Spring city also was quite famous for its spirit mineral water, so he ordered that with it instead of alcohol.
He thanked the cute serving girl that brought him his food and then started munching, the view outside the window reminded him a bit of the previous city he visited. He hoped that he wouldn’t bump into some spoiled brats on his way out though, as this time around they would probably belong to the Zhang clan. It would be quite the sight to see if the future patriarch would get run down by his own clan members. The thought of brats made him recall the two kids that begged him to become their sensei, he wondered if that would even be possible. He brought up his system screen, by this time he was quite sure no one was able to see it beside him.
*Would this thing even help me with disciples and stuff like that, didn’t it give me some prompt about clan building when I got here…*
This system was kind of wonky, it would sometimes hide things from him and only show them later. Was there some kind of trigger for it, maybe his power level counted or some steps needed to be taken to unlock things? He glanced at his system screen, it looked like a computer screen just hovering there. His eyes twitched as there was indeed a new icon there, it looked like a scroll with some Chinese symbols on it. He poked at it while wondering what was inside. As the window changed he could see that there wasn’t much inside, but there were a couple of tabs. There was one for disciples when he clicked it the inside was just empty. There was also one for disciple candidates, that showed up with a red ‘!’ mark. It looked like a friend invite, but there was more. He could see a window with some statics for both of them.
He looked at the prompts and numbers, taken aback by the D&D styled alignment one. Also, the trust percentage was quite high, was me saving them enough to bring it up so high? The potentials were the same and quite high, B should probably be above average as you started off from F with the worst kind.
*I guess they have potential, but wait… if this is letting me see those stats… could it be possible to change their potential later?*
The system was quite overpowered it had really many functions, but it also needed a lot of points to run on he didn’t think changing someone’s actual inborn potential would come cheap.
*I do have all those manuals in my storage ring, they always appear after I buy skills and I have all the ones I got from the start too.*
He had all the materials he needed to teach people his skills, even the Dao of lightning passive skill had a big manual coming with it. The techniques had basic manuals for Qi condensation practitioners if it was feasible for them to learn a weaker version of it. Like his cultivation art went from the noobie stages up to the core formation stage. The stages you needed to take to go from Qi condensation to foundation establishment, forming your lightning Dao pillars were all explained. He also had the knowledge in his brain, so in theory, he should be able to teach plus if the system let him spend points on his disciples it would be even easier.
The two seemed like promising candidates, they were good kids and had high potential but he was still on the fence about the whole thing. He was never really good with people, to begin with, now someone wanted him to guide them while he himself didn’t really have things figured out. But maybe this would also be a good way for him to come out of his shell. For now, he moved the thought to the back of his mind and went back to eating, he wasn’t really in a hurry. He finished his meal but was still quite hungry so he wondered what he should order next while looking at the menu.
At the same time, he could hear a woman’s scream followed by some plates breaking. When he turned around he could see some people sitting in a booth not far away from him, bothering the serving lady that was serving him before.
“Oh little missy, look what you did. You dropped all the food.”
The man laughed while the girl was hiding her rear end behind the serving tray. Probably one of the men had touched her there.
“You perverts!”
The woman replied while fuming with anger.
Matt kind of facepalmed as these things kept happening around him, wherever he went there were some people in trouble. Some damsel or kids in distress. Did he really have to go over there, or could someone else handle this, weren’t there any bodyguards around here?
One guy from there was in the foundation establishment level, probably the leader the rest were probably just his goons.
“Listen here girly, big bro here is a big shot in a big clan, you little Zhang clan can’t hold a candle to it! Be glad that he showed interest in you!”
The big bro in question was a sleazy looking man, he just licked his lips and yanked on the girl’s wrist making her fall into his lap.
Zhang Dong doubted that claim to fame, as the group was quite shady-looking and didn’t conduct themselves as people from a prominent clan. Their clothes were quite shabby as well, so they clearly were low on cash.
*Aw shit, here we go again.*
He was slowly getting used to this, so he just stood up from his seat and slowly walked over to the booth the goons were sitting in. They quieted down after seeing the unknown cultivator. They tried to say something, but before they could do anything the man grasped their leader by the face, lifting him up while not letting him speak. The man thrashed about, kicking, punching and trying to move Zhang Dong’s hand away, but to his horror, it wasn’t budging at all. The whole group kind of figured that this man was strong from the way that their leader was just squirming around not being able to break free.
The female escaped and went behind Matt who turned his head to her and asked.
“Hey, could you open that window miss?”
While the girl was still getting ahold of herself he tested something out. He could only analyze people’s names and cultivation levels from afar. But what if he had direct contact like when he identified items. It did work, the man did indeed lie about belonging to a clan he also had a fitting name for his attitude.
*Dung Gang huh? Well, at least he isn’t evil…*
The girl looked back nodding, she didn’t say much and just followed the order. As soon as the window was open, the cultivator walked over to it, just holding the thug with one hand while his feet dangled around. The rowdy character was chucked out of the window, he made a nice arc before falling face-first into a pile of horse excrement.
“Hah, bullseye!”
He then turned back to the rest of the thug squad while shrugging.
“You guys still here?”
The group looked at each other and then started running to get to their ‘captain’ just leaving the place altogether while hanging their heads low.
“Hey miss, could you bring over some meat dumplings?”
He sat back in his booth while the female employee thanked him, the restaurant owner showed up later to as he was grateful as well. Security around here had dropped since the Zhang Clan was busy with other things like the siege and the Patriarch ceremony so they didn’t blame them that much. Matt just ate his fill, probably staying there another hour as he got a good deal.