After taking his leave of Xia Hong, Chief Instructor Liu brought Huang Tian to the Library Pavilion of the Martial Guard.
The Library Pavilion stood at the very back of the government office complex. It had three stories, with green tiles, red pillars, and winglike eaves. It looked quite elegant.
A squad of strongmen armed with sabers guarded the outside. Farther in, a young clerk sat behind a desk, apparently reading a popular romance novel with rapt attention.
Standing outside the Library Pavilion, Liu Kuo said, "The token Xia the Thousand-Household gave you doesn't just let you enter the second floor and choose two martial arts. It also allows you to come and go from the Guard Academy as you please.
"However, according to the rules, students like you get only one day off every twenty days, when you're allowed to leave the Guard Academy. So unless you're going to the Library Pavilion, try not to use it to go out, or people might gossip."
"Understood."
"Good. Go on in. Remember, when you get to the second floor, don't rush to choose a martial art. Look around and find the one that suits you best."
In this world, martial arts weren't divided into the so-called Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow grades. There were only martial arts and divine abilities.
Divine abilities were performed by Celestials above the Grandmaster realm, according to legend. Martial arts were cultivated by warriors from the Ninth to the First Rank.
Of course, if one insisted on dividing the latter into categories, one could roughly sort them into ordinary, exquisite, and peerless. The reason for the exquisite and peerless levels was that they involved manipulating "qi," a field that warriors of the middle three ranks only began to explore.
Every martial art on the second floor