"Haha, what's wrong with that?" the Vice president asked, clearly amused at the situation. "You don't mean to say that people can get better with talent instead as well, right?"
"No no. That's not what I meant," Ning said. "What I mean is, aside from just being born with the ability to gather Aether, you can also gather Aether with an absorption technique."
The vice president's face changed a little. "What's an absorption technique?" he asked with a curious look on his face.
Ning saw his face and got the idea that he too likely didn't know about it. He sighed and began to explain.
"It's a technique that you can use in your body, and soon enough, you will start gathering Aether on your own, even if you have no potential in your body to gather Aether naturally," Ning said.
The vice president's face got serious. "No way something so good exists, right?" he asked.
"It does," Ning said. "I use one myself."
The Vice president's eyes went wide. "You use an absorption technique?" he asked.
"Yes," Ning said.
The vice president thought for a while and asked, "where did you find it?"
"I didn't find it. It's… something that's been passed down in my family for many lineages," Ning said.
"Oh, what's your family name again? Ruogong? I don't think there is a noble family like that in this country," the Vice President said.
"Huh? No, I'm not noble," Ning said.
"You're not? Oh right, sorry. Can I see this absorption technique?" the Vice President asked.
Ning thought for a moment and bought a very simple technique that would make someone take about a year in Vilmore time to go from Aether Starter to Aether Student if they absorbed for 2 hours a day.
He made the scroll look rough and dirty, with parts of it torn apart. The Vice president looked at it with shocked eyes.
"This is the absorption technique?" he asked.
"Yes," Ning said.
"Hm, I don't really understand what it's trying to say, but I probably will if I read it a few times," he said.
"Do you mind if I take it back with me to study?" he asked.
Ning was fine with it since it was garbage in his eyes. Still, this world didn't have such techniques so he acted a little hesitant.
In the end, he sighed and said "Sure, vice president."
The vice president put the scroll in a storage ring of his and stood up to leave. Before he did, however, he got close to Ning and said, "this talk we had just now. Keep it between the two of us, okay? I don't want people to get excited about this only for it to turn out to be wrong."
"I will research it a bit and see if it is true. After I'm done, I will return this scroll back to you," the vice president said
"Okay," Ning agreed with a smile.
"Good luck on your classes, young man," the vice president said as he left. Ning smiled, watching the old man walk away.
As soon as the old man disappeared, Ning's smile disappeared as well. "That was… weird," he thought. "Why did the old man turn so sketchy regarding the scroll? Does he know more than he's letting on?"
Ning couldn't really understand what had happened, so he decided to not be concerned with it for now.
He got back to eating his lunch and decided to wait for the day the vice president returned his scroll and revealed this 'new' information to the world.
Until then, Ning would do what he said and keep quiet about it. After lunch, Ning went back to his class to hopefully learn about Aether and hopefully not literature or other things.
Fortunately, his wishes were answered. Unfortunately, he now wished he would rather do literature than learn this.
The class after lunch break had 2 teachers coming to teach at the same time. One was an Enchanter, the other an Invoker.
The Invoker teacher would teach them into creating something basic like a small stone. Everyone knew stone. Even if they didn't understand the different types of stones, or how a stone was solid and such stuff, they were still familiar with stone.
This made creating them very easy. Which was what the lesson currently was. The students were all made to create stones.
As for the Enchanters, they were made to hover the stones. Just that. The Enchanter teacher handed them a stone and told the students to hover them in the air.
Ning couldn't believe how basic the lesson was. Not only him but even the other 4 adult students were also left scratching their heads at the ease behind the task.
Ning had registered in the tower as an Enchanter, so his task right now was to hover this small piece of stone. This was too easy.
Since the tasks were meant for the children, they didn't bother to make the task as difficult for the other students as well.
Henry stood up and told the teachers that this was too easy and they would need to learn something else.
"This is for the children, so we will have to start from the basics. Besides, most of you are from the rural parts of the empire. It is unlikely that you ever received proper education on Aether itself. So, you will have to start from the very beginning here," was the answer they got.
Ning got bored, he would rather do anything else, maybe even learn math. He slumped on his desk, with his head resting on one hand, while his other moved the stone in the air.
"Excuse me, can you move away a little," Rachel said.
"Hm, oh sorry," Ning said and got a little further away from her. He looked at her curiously and then went on to smell himself. 'It can't be that I smell, right?' he thought.
The class ended, and the next classes were once more the normal ones for the children.. The 5 students decided to leave the class, and since there were no more Aether-related classes for the day, they went back home.
