Chapter 23: Cultivation Methods
I'd been standing outside Wei Lin's door for maybe an hour, trying to decide if enough time had passed since his breakthrough, when the door suddenly swung open.
"Ah-ha!" Wei Lin stood there with his usual merchant's grin, looking distinctly un-exploded. "My customer sense was tingling!"
"I'm not here to buy anything," I said automatically. Then I actually got a good look at him and paused. There was something different about his spiritual presence, a new depth to his qi that hadn't been there before.
We both stood there for a moment, staring at each other. Then, at exactly the same time:
"Congratulations on reaching Third Stage!"
Wei Lin burst out laughing. "I should have known you'd break through too." He looked me up and down. "Though I have to say, you're handling it better than me. I nearly blew up my ceiling when my inner world expanded."
"Is that what that noise was yesterday?" I'd heard something that sounded like a small explosion, but that wasn't exactly unusual around the cultivation quarters.
"Just a minor mishap with spatial dynamics," Wei Lin waved it off. "Nothing a few repair talismans couldn't fix. Though I did have to convince Senior Brother Mo that I wasn't trying to create a new technique marketplace in my room."
"Were you?"