Aimless Ascension

"Ai?" Gale called, as a frown crawled up on his brow, recognizing the girl.

With her display of catching knives, he had a hard time putting her together with the clumsy girl he helped yesterday.

The girl of yesterday would have missed all the knives as far as he was concerned, and probably would have injured herself through it.

However, her next reaction led him to amend his opinion he first held of her.

His call drew the girl out of her concentration, and the next moment, the knife hit her chest. Thankfully, these were showmen's knives, although carved out of metal. They couldn't harm a girl with an iron body. Still, she fell to the ground, providing her clumsiness.

But Xiaolin didn't have enough common sense about the spirit arts to know about the resilience of a true iron body. She came to rescue the blind girl.

"Are you okay?" Xiaolin asked in a concerned voice, quickly rushing towards the girl to help her.

Ai's face was a little pale, definitely not from any injury, but it could be from overusing her abilities and Qi. She nodded as she put her hand on her chest.

"I'm fine," she said, brushing off their worries. "I guess you're Sir Gale's disciple. Nice to meet you, I'm Ai. I think we're going to be good friends in the future."

Xiaolin lifted her eyebrows, unsure about many things. She glanced towards Gale to find he was looking at the blind girl with interest as well. She guessed the blind girl knew her master from before somewhere.

Anyway, since it was bad manners to not introduce her back to someone who conversed with her so cordially, Xiaolin returned to the girl. "I'm Xiaolin, as you mentioned I'm master's disciple. How do you know that? Do you know him previously?"

The blind girl shook her head and removed the blindfold from her eyes as it didn't make any difference just for the show. She somehow managed to turn exactly towards the other woman who was training her so far.

"Thank you for your help, Sister Len," she said, "but I fear I won't be able to perform within a week or two."

Len, the circus master, narrowed her eyes at the new addition to her crew and sighed. "My performance is coming up. I'll leave you with them, as you clearly seem to have much left to speak with them. If you need anything, yell at any of the crew members."

With that, the circus master departed. Ai's shoulders sagged the very next moment, as if she was holding it in tirelessly for sometime. She almost fell to the ground, but Xiaolin, to the rescue, caught her before she could drop to the ground again.

"I'm sorry," Ai apologised. "Thank you."

"Something is very wrong with your abilities," Gale said, noticing something peculiar that he couldn't understand fairly.

"It's not wrong," Ai said. Xiaolin kept her standing. "I'm just bad at balancing out my spirit arts."

"You seemed quite skilled with the knives, though," Xiaolin said, a hint of admiration in her voice, also unsure of what kind of balance they were talking about.

"My skills aren't even related to knives," the girl smiled. "I guess that's why it made me so clumsy." ‌

"I'm not sure if I can follow," Xiaolin said hesitantly.

"How do I explain this?" Ai hummed, considering simpler words to explain her abilities. "I guess you can say my abilities can make me extremely lucky at times."

Xiaolin lifted an eyebrow, not completely understanding.

"I can peek a little into the future as well," Ai continued. "It's mostly irreverent stuff I get, though I can force it to drift in a certain direction. That's how I know your identity. That was how I was catching the knives, but still not that good enough."

"An Oracle," Xiaolin blurted, skidding up a little in surprise and excitement.

"Hardly." Ai gave a helpless smile. "I was barely an apprentice."

But Xiaolin wasn't listening to her at all. She was filled with her youthful glee, learning she was before an oracle.

"So what can you do?" Xiaolin's question came in unrelenting motions of her lips and tongues, but somehow she managed to keep her voice coherent. "Can you do divination? Well, you can already tell the future. How far can you see? Oh, can you bless anyone with luck or curse anyone with misfortune? How many languages can you speak? Is it true that oracles knows all the languages of the world? Oh! Can you look into someone's past?"

"Linlin, take a breath," Gale said, smiling. "You're bothering her with too many questions."

"But Master, she's an oracle," Xiaolin said, still excited. "How can I calm down after learning that?"

Ai gave a helpless shrug. "As I mentioned, I was merely an apprentice," she said, "don't mock this poor girl too much."

"Was?" Gale arched an eyebrow. "Are you looking for a job change?"

Well, she was already in a circus. What else could make it more oblivious? The blind girl shook her head in resignation.

"Sadly, not everyone is good at different jobs like you, Sir Gale," she said as Xiaolin helped her sit. "I'm barely a day in the crew and already questioning my purpose here. Maybe I should look for another room. . ." Ai turned her head to find Gale. "You have a job slot open, right? Sir Gale?"

"You mean?" Gale tired just to be sure.

"Master, she already knew about the maid you're searching for." Xiaolin whistled through her teeth.

Gale had been wrong about the blind girl he helped yesterday. She certainly was much more capable than a simple oracle apprentice.

Oh, Gale had met with Oracle, who was the real deal, though he couldn't say any good words about his meeting with her. She simply acted mysteriously and threw a bunch of rhetoric to confuse him.

But Ai seemed much more direct. Of course, she still had much more to learn, much more left to cultivate the mysterious aura.

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Sorry about the delay, more chapters are coming today.

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