Chapter 44 – Chess Association
Leyvi and Anda came out of the control room with a high spirit.
"Tal, Tasya. Each of you pick a room on the ground floor. I will take the master bedroom on the top floor, Anda and Lilian will take the room adjacent to mine. Understand?" Leyvi instructed and waited for confirmation.
Anda, Lilian, and Tal immediately nodded while Tasya looked hesitant and she kept glancing at Tal. Since the tragedy in her town, she never slept apart from Tal. Tal would be in the same room as her every night, so when she heard they would need to sleep separately, she felt a bit strange.
Anda could sense the distress of her disciple so she gently stroked her neck-length hair, adjusted her bangs a little, and whispered, "Tasya, it's only a different room, you and Tal still live in the same house. Furthermore, Tal is a growing boy so he needs a little privacy. It's not like you can't come to his room at all."
"Thank you, master." Tasya felt a lot more relieved after the whisper. She would let Tal choose the room first and she would pick the room next to him.
"If you want to be in the same room with Tal, just marry him, problem solved!" Leyvi teased.
"Brother Leyvi!" Tasya stomped her foot. She was embarrassed as she secretly glanced at Tal and when she saw Tal slyly smile at her, she got even more embarrassed.
"Does Tasya like Tal?" Leyvi suddenly got a sound transmission from Lilian. He looked at Lilian in disbelief. Girl, how dense can you be? You just noticed now?
Lilian's innocent eye stared at Leyvi demanding an answer. Leyvi finally nodded. As soon as she got her answer, she immediately looked very excited and tried to cheer for Tasya.
"..." Leyvi was speechless. This second wife of his was way older than him but her mentality probably stagnated a bit due to a lack of human interactions. She got way too excited about a teenage girl's love story.
Afterward, everyone picked their room and roamed the mansion to get used to it.
Leyvi went to Lilian's room to ask her about the peach but was shocked by the sight, her room was already filled with many pots of plants and flowers. She even has different kinds of vines hanging from the ceiling. Lilian excitedly asked whether her room looked beautiful so Leyvi could only say that her room looked nice, not to hurt her feelings.
"How was it? Could you grow a new peach tree?" Leyvi asked after entertaining Lilian a bit.
Lilian shook her head. She took out the peach and gave it back to Leyvi.
"The peach didn't have any seed, so it can't grow a new peach tree," Lilian told him.
"Huh?" Leyvi was stunned. He then scanned the peach and found out it really didn't have a seed. Leyvi quickly remembered when he and everyone else ate the peaches, none of them had any seed.
He then sent his consciousness to the internal storage room to inspect the rest of the peaches.
None! All of the peaches don't have any seeds. Leyvi was disappointed. His plan to produce unlimited mysterious peaches had collapsed.
However, Leyvi was not disappointed for long because realistically, it wouldn't be a heaven-defying fruit if it was that easy to grow it. Looking at the bright side, he still had plenty of the peaches in the storage.
"This peach is called Child Spirit Peach. A world would birth only one Spirit Peach Tree and bear Spirit Peaches. Only Spirit Peach could grow a new tree but the new tree only produced seedless peaches that is the Child Spirit Peach. I got this information from the Goddess of Fertility Garden." Lilian saw Leyvi's disappointed look, so she tried to cheer him up by giving him information about the peach.
"Really? Wow!" Leyvi was quite surprised. If the effect of a Child Spirit Peach was already this miraculous, what about the effect of the Spirit Peach which comes from the original tree? Could his spirit root become higher than a top grade?
After some flirting with Lilian and reminding her not to forget cultivating, Leyvi left her jungle room.
Leyvi arrived in front of Tal's room and knocked on the door. Tal quickly went out and greeted him.
"Let's go to the Chess Association," Leyvi said. Since he promised yesterday, he would bring him to join the Chess Association today.
"Thank you, master!" Tal excitedly bowed to Leyvi.
A head poked out from the next room. It was Tasya.
Leyvi chuckled. "You can come too if you want."
Tasya immediately went out of her room and stood beside Tal, smiling.
Leyvi, Tal, and Tasya rode the carriage and had Mr. Bison carry them to the City Center again.
Soon, they arrived in front of the Bara City Chess Association office. It was painted in black and white to match the color of chess pieces. Some people came here by flying so it must be true that Chess was quite popular among cultivators.
Leyvi brought the kids to the reception counter. The receptionist was a middle-aged male this time. His beard was black and white in color. Usually, the receptionist was a pretty girl, but obviously, the Chess Association didn't care about this trivial matter. They wanted to bring in chess talents, not skirt chasers.
"Do you want to join the Chess Association? I've never seen you before." The middle-aged man asked as soon as Leyvi was near the counter. He talked casually without the usual politeness of a receptionist.
"Haha! I'm not the one who wants to join the Chess Association, but my disciple. He has some talent for playing chess so I brought him here so he could explore his talent more." Leyvi also speaks casually with the receptionist.
"Oh? Listen, young man. It's not that easy to join the Chess Association you know. Your disciple has to pass a few tests before he can join!" The middle-aged man had seen this situation many times. Many of them brought their kids or disciples saying they had chess talents but most failed the test in the end.
Leyvi smiled. Uncle, you are going to shit your pants when you know the talent of my disciple. He chuckled inwardly.
Suddenly, Tal stepped forward and showed himself from behind Leyvi and said, "Master, this is the Vice President of Bara City Chess Association. He's the one who gave me the first-place reward."
Leyvi was dumbfounded. What the heck! Why are you acting like a receptionist when you are the vice president? What kind of hobby is this? Leyvi cursed in his heart.
"Huh? Aren't you Tal? Bwahaha! So it was you who is joining the association! Good, good!" the middle-aged man was instantly excited. He immediately jumped out of the counter and patted Tal's shoulder.
"Uncle, what about the test?" Leyvi interrupted.
"Bwahaha! What uncle, call me Brother Rustam! Tal won the Under 20 Chess Tournament, the test can go to hell! Come, come." Rustam invited the group to enter the inner part of the building.
"Haha! Alright Brother Rustam. I'm Leyvi, Tal's master." Since Rustam was casual, he would act casual too.
Soon they entered a room with a round table.
"Brother Leyvi thank you for bringing Tal here. I was sad previously when he declined our offer. There aren't many chess talents that appeared lately so when Tal took the tournament by storm, I saw the hope of seeing Bara City in the top rank again." Rustam said with emotions.
"Ranking? Is there a chess competition between cities or something?" Leyvi was curious. It seemed that what Tal told him was true. The chess world was indeed bigger than he thought. He probably never heard about any of this in the Mountain Dew Sect because he was a nobody.
"Bwahaha! It wasn't just the cities, it also included the sects, other kinds of organizations, and big families." Rustam proudly elaborated while playing with his black and white beard.
"It's that popular?" Leyvi was surprised. The big families that Rustam was referring to were the cultivation families that were as strong as a sect or even stronger. He thought these families would just focus on cultivation and making their family heritage last forever.
"You probably wonder why chess was so popular among cultivators right?" Rustam smiled. He had seen many people ignorant about the chess world like Leyvi so he was not surprised.
Leyvi nodded. There were many things in the world that he didn't know of. After all, he was just an orphan. Only recently he was able to experience more things.
"Bwahaha! Let me tell you, the reason why chess is very popular among cultivators is because they have a higher chance to gain insight into the Dao by focusing on chess!" Rustam explained.
"Insight into the Dao? It can make you stronger and your cultivation smoother right?" Leyvi said. It was the extent of his knowledge of Dao. He had seen this from Anda previously.
"Yes! What Brother Leyvi said is correct, but the most important thing is when you reach a certain cultivation level if you don't have any insight into any Dao, your cultivation will stop there!" Rustam was serious.