Prince's Mother

While Lin Er was lost in thought, the conversation somehow turned to this. She came back to herself and shook her head with a smile.

"I can't. I have martial arts classes on Saturdays and Sundays!"

"Huh!?"

Her classmates all looked at her curiously. Almost none of them had ever taken extracurricular classes.

The only one everyone knew about was Gao Yueyue, who was now in group four.

You could tell from her posture that she had studied dance since elementary school. But she was also an excellent fiction writer. Lin Er remembered that she had started submitting stories to Huahuo in her second year of middle school.

The handwritten manuscripts of her novels that teachers had confiscated in class had spread like wildfire through the school. Every time one was taken away, it got stolen, more often than even the rented novels did.

Apparently, a few had been confiscated in class by teachers of higher grades and returned.

Her mother was very supportive, too. As long as she didn't write in class, even the teachers had little reason to interfere.

If a manuscript hadn't been sent off yet, her mother would even come and ask the teacher for it, because Gao Yueyue followed the rules.

But the classmates who borrowed her manuscripts didn't. When the sound of sobbing wouldn't stop in class, the teachers couldn't ignore it even if they wanted to.

That was also why Lin Er couldn't get into novels now.

They were all melodramatic, angsty romances, and her tastes had changed long ago.

Now that someone was learning martial arts, the girls were curious, and the boys were even more curious.

Was there somewhere to learn martial arts in their little town?

"It's in the city, at the Li Family Martial Arts School next to Wenchang Square. I only became a disciple last week."

Xu Chao, who sat behind Shi Meng in the back row, rubbed his arm. This tigress still needed to learn martial arts?

Who was she trying to kill?

"But didn't I see you practicing calligraphy with a brush every day?"

Xu Wang could hardly believe it.

Classes weren't cheap. They'd had six years to see what Lin Er's family finances were like. Had her family suddenly struck it rich?

Plenty of people knew brush calligraphy at the time, and any elder with a bit of education could do it, so it wasn't strange for someone to teach her.

But martial arts classes sounded expensive.

Lin Er glanced at him, a little puzzled. "Those are the school rules and my master's instructions. Besides, practicing calligraphy doesn't stop me from learning martial arts. You don't think learning martial arts means practicing fighting all day long, do you?"

Her classmates looked away, then glanced at one another. All right, this was outside their knowledge.

Lin Er didn't find it funny, because that was probably how she had understood it before last week, too. She had even planned to set aside an hour every morning to practice stance training and hold a horse stance.

But her master had said three to five minutes at a time was enough, or ten minutes for a longer session. There was no need to push too hard at once, or she could easily hurt herself.

Only then did she fully understand what it meant to progress gradually.

After Lin Er finished explaining, everyone was a little tempted. But when they heard the tuition, they all sat back down.

No need, no need. Eight classes a month cost five hundred in tuition, and they'd have to pay for transportation there and back. None of their families would agree.

Lin Er didn't mention that she had only paid five hundred once. She had benefited from being the first student since the school was established; Master Li would need to make money from those who came after her.

Xu Wang was visibly tempted, though. Xu Pan glanced at him twice but said nothing. His aunt was a dorm supervisor at the school anyway, and his mother would take care of him when he went back that evening.

Once the seating arrangements were settled, the homeroom teacher glanced around from the podium, then asked Lin Er to make a seating chart to post up there.

They were all elementary school students who had only recently started school, and few had practiced their handwriting. Even though Lin Er was still practicing basic horizontal, slanting, and vertical brushstrokes, the handwriting she had used for her self-criticism was good enough.

It had no particular style, but it was neat. At a glance, it was clear she had learned by practicing from textbooks. Combined with a few little habits picked up from practicing for a long time, it looked relaxed and easy to read.

It was no big deal, so Lin Er agreed. But she still hadn't memorized all her classmates' names, and ended up completing it with Yan Jingting's help.

Over the weekend, Lin Er worked up a sweat at the martial arts school. An adult's rationality kept her from fooling herself: if she hadn't met the standard, she hadn't met it.

If she couldn't do it once, she would try a few more times.

Seeing that she wasn't hurting herself, Master Li let her practice. No master disliked a hardworking disciple.

Her young pen pal knew she had been busy lately and told her she didn't need to send him food at every meal anymore. He seemed to have reconciled with his mother a little, and she would help him.

Meanwhile, Lin Er lent him her wand when she wasn't using it, and he could occasionally ask his mother to take him to Diagon Alley.

They needed a wand to summon the Knight Bus and to protect themselves, and his mother's wand had broken.

The change in his family circumstances benefited Lin Er a great deal as well. At least, after she signed a parchment agreement his mother had given her, their pen-pal relationship was finally known to a parent.

She provided food, while his mother supplied potions and things from the Wizarding World.

That kind of exchange was a matter for adults, and his mother wouldn't take part in their ordinary correspondence. That was a relief to Lin Er.

As unbelievable as it seemed, she really did consider her seven-year-old pen pal a friend, and she didn't want to lose him yet.

With no more food to send at every meal, their daily correspondence focused more on learning Chinese and English.

Even though Prince's mother had given her magical textbooks, she couldn't understand any of them.

Oh, and her young pen pal Prince really was called Prince. That wasn't quite accurate, though: his mother's surname was Prince, and Prince was his middle name.

For some reason, Lin Er thought it sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it, and eventually forgot about it.

The reason she practiced so much every day and kept surpassing the standards Master Li had initially set was that she now had potions.

Prince's mother was a potioneer. As long as Lin Er could pay the price, she could make potions for her to relieve aches and strengthen her body.

Out of trust in her young pen pal, Lin Er had drunk a bottle. Other than tasting so awful that she couldn't eat for a day, it had no other side effects.

Master Li also knew a fair bit of traditional Chinese medicine, and noticed after taking her pulse twice. But he thought she had been taking medicinal baths and drinking tonics.

After frowning over it for a while, he forbade her from using them.

"Xiao Er, you're still young, and you don't need to become skilled enough to go into battle and kill enemies. Don't take medicine indiscriminately. There's no need to rush."

Lin Er nodded obediently. She would get used to the aches eventually anyway.

Besides, her little stash of gold couldn't hold out.

The Wizarding World had its own currency, and she had long known what her young pen pal's family situation was like. She paid for all the potion ingredients herself, and they couldn't be bought with yuan.

Moreover, the two of them had tacitly agreed not to tell Prince's mother what they had discovered about time and space. She had always assumed Lin Er was a witch too, just from a different country.

And alchemy came in all sorts of forms. It was only a magical book that let them communicate and send things to each other. Though valuable, it wasn't particularly strange.

It was their good fortune that the two of them had found it and been able to use it.

She had found the gold while scavenging peanuts back then. There wasn't much, just two pieces of jewelry.

Since Master Li had forbidden her from using the potions, Prince's mother didn't take advantage of her. After asking her, she exchanged them for Dittany that could be stored and an Improved Pepperup Potion, the version that didn't make steam come out of you when drunk.

She had asked whether there was any magic or alchemical item that could let them communicate without a language barrier.

There really was, but the former had to be cast face-to-face, while the latter required a lot of Galleons. There wasn't much of a market for such an item, so it had to be custom-made.

And so they carried on guessing every day.