Aimless Ascension

"Why are you with us again?" Gale asked the woman who was cradling her baby in her lap.

"What?" Wang Li raised an eyebrow. "Do you have a problem with my presence? If so, you shouldn't have agreed to Grandma when she proposed letting me come with you."

Gale grunted and didn't bother to reply. Yes, he had agreed with Wang Li joining them, thinking Xiaolin wouldn't feel alone being the only woman in the vicinity.

"What?" But Wang Li was in the mood to not let it go. She asked, giving a meaningful look, nudging Xiaolin on the shoulder. "Did my presence foil your plan?"

Gale replied with an annoyed expression. "At least, you can help Xiaolin recover quicker with your Life Qi," he said. "I'm going to use you completely and leave you utterly spent, just you watch."

"Uh, that's not a very nice thing to say to a lady."

"Fine, you'll use your entire stay in the kitchen making nutritious, Life Qi-filled meals for us."

"That's a bit better," Wang Li snorted. She stopped cradling, finding Rong'er already asleep in her lap. "For the records, you still haven't given me your cookbook and you can't ask too much from me."

"You want the cookbook," Gale said, "Alright, let me look."

He closed his eyes and poured his senses into the void lock. It didn't take long for him to find a bunch of notebooks stacked together near his bookshelves. Gale brought all of them out, as he couldn't distinguish them at all.

Over a dozen stacks of notebooks hit the ground of the carriage in the next moment.

"Wait a minute," Gale said and searched through the contents of the notebook. Most of them were notebooks that he used a long time ago. He didn't even add anything to the cookbook for over a year.

"This is written in an unfamiliar language," Xiaolin said, opening one of the books.

"Give me that," Gale said, recognising that one as his diary, written entirely in English.

"What is this?" Wang Li asked with another one open in her palm. She read with a frown. " 'I don't know the common tongue very well.' . . . 'Nice to meet you.' . . . 'Can you teach me how to do it?' . . ." Wang Li had an incredulous expression on her face. "What are all these?"

"Oh, that one is from when I was still trying to learn the common tongue," Gale said as he sized the notebooks from their grasp and stored them back into the void lock after checking their contents. He finally got the cookbook after returning six books to the dimension storage.

He handed the cookbook to Wang Li and stored all the other books. "That is the one you're looking for. Thankfully, I wrote it in the common tongue."

"Master, didn't all practitioners use the same tongue?" Xiaolin asked, peeking at the cookbook in her elder sister's hand.

"Probably not, but they all know the common tongue."

"There is still foreign text in it," Wang Li said, showing him a page where Gale had written notes in English.

"It's just for me not to mess with the terms," Gale said. "You don't need to read those."

Wang Li nodded and started to read from the beginning. There were clear details on how to use Qi on different types of ingredients. There were details on all kinds of ingredients, from vegetables, fruits, oil, and spirit herbs to different kinds of meats.

"This is going to be very useful," she muttered.

"A good woman would've thanked me by now."

Wang Li lifted her head to give him a charming smile. "Thank you, Young Master Gale Joseph Paul Carpenter."

Gale pursed his lips in disapproval.

"By the way, where did you manage to get all these recipes?"

"Some of them, I meticulously learned from some inns, some I literally stole, watching Master chefs at work. While most are experiments on recreating and improving foods, I liked most."

"You seem to like this hamburger thing very much," Wang Li said. "I already found a dozen pages over this."

Gale smiled as the carriage rolled down the path. It would still take them a couple of hours to reach Stormhold. A couple of hours for nothing else to do. Well, Gale could cycle his Qi, and Wang Li was busy with the cookbook, but his disciple had nothing to do.

Well, she could meditate too, but she already spent a lot of energy on her training in the morning. It didn't hurt to try, and it seemed like she wanted to continue too. . .

"Linlin, do you need any books to read?"

His disciple shook her head with a contemplative look. "Master, if it's not too personal for you to answer," she asked, instead, "then please tell me why did you start practising spirit art late?"

It seemed like she still held onto what he said during their morning training and pondered over it.

"Circumstances," Gale said, "I literally had no options."

That didn't seem to quench Xiaolin's curiosity even a little. She sucked in a deep breath and collected all her courage to ask: "Master, can you tell me stories of your adventure if it is not too rude to ask? How you became what you are today in such a short time, I would like to know it all."

Gale lifted his head. Nobody had yet asked him for his stories yet. Many had asked about his world after learning he was from an alternate dimension, but most people hardly had any curiosity about his struggle. Everyone was busy with their own thing.

"What good will it do even if you learn it," he said, at last.

"Maybe she will write a story out of it and publish it," Wang Li said with a laugh. "Who knows? Perhaps you can become famous like Lord Heartflame, or Sage of the Nine Moon."

"It is us and our deeds that become our story," Gale snorted. "The story didn't become us."

"Then perhaps you haven't done much to make your story famous," Wang Li added straightforwardly.

"Elder sister," Xiaolin bit her lips, turning to Wang Li. Her look said how can she be so audacious to a Master?

"Nah, it's alright," Gale said, leaning back in his seat. "She probably found that aggravating me is the best way to get a response."

"Was I right?" Wang Li smiled brilliantly.

Gale snorted and turned to his disciple. "You want my tale?" he asked. His disciple nodded heavily. "Fine, I'll tell you for all the good I have done to your world and all the good it did me."

He turned his head towards the older woman. "You said I hadn't done much, and you're probably right, but very few managed to do what I did and still stood back again.

"I'll give you my story, but be warned. If you're looking for a myth, you've thoroughly mistaken. I'm just as bit a man as both of you. Although I have more names than most people. My mother named me Gale, and now I wondered if she had the foresight to know the storm I'll bring.

"The people of the southern land chose the name "Caizer". Depending on the way it's spoken, it can mean, "The Crownless King", or "The Homeless Fool."

"I'm both. A fool and a King, but I abandoned both years ago. There have been many other names. Gale the blasphemer. The Heretic. Gale the Last Protector. Gale the Stormbrigher and many more. However, what struck with me was the name I was brought up with, the name my mother had given me.

"Gale. It is like there is electricity in the name itself. In case you're wondering, it means, "a very strong wind". A force of nature.

"And my life is like the wind, too. If the wind stops, what will be left of it. . . The wreckage it brought down in its path.

"I have blown away places that tried to confine me. I have given up power that can make the strongest of men tremble. I laid down my life multiple times, unaware of what I was there to prove. I doomed thousands and saved millions, and that still keeps me awake at the night.

"I bore scars very few can imagine, loved women, very few had the gall to talk, and tread paths with chaosfiends.

"And I'm still standing."

___________

This chapter needs more polishing.