Madam Cho led Jin Huang away from cheering, raucous students and prying eyes. They went past a thick curtain into the kitchens where she worked, but then past that and into another room.
Jin Huang remarked that the place was deceptively large, having much more space inside than he realized while working there. Madam Cho noticed him gawking and gave him an amused look before she kept walking, stopping to open a door and gesturing for him to enter.
When Jin Huang entered, he looked around and realized that this was most likely Madam Cho's office, but it was layered with formations and arrays that glowed and glittered as though they had only just been activated.
"Someone who prefers you not know of their involvement put these in place," Madam Cho said as she stepped in, shutting the door behind her and undoing the cloth on her head. Her long hair fell, her serene eyes narrowing but revealing far more than they ever had.
Something calculating arose in them, and Jin Huang gulped.
She felt like something ancient- on par with the feeling that came from the Fallen Heaven realm and everything in it. Uncertain, Jin Huang could merely rely on his gut feelings to navigate this situation.
What reassured him was the fact that Madam Cho had been nothing but helpful ever since he came to the academy.
"Are you still hungry?" She asked bluntly.
"Yes, quite a bit."
"Did you eat something interesting recently?"
His first instinct was to answer honestly, even though he knew that he should not divulge all of the information. "Yes. On Monday. I can't say where I found it."
The older woman shifted, her folded arms coming undone as the maternal, restaurant-owner aura dropped entirely. Replacing it was an overwhelming fierceness that made Jin Huang's heart skip a beat.
"What did you eat, and where did you find it?"
Jin Huang lost control of himself entirely. He could no longer keep the secret even if he tried to.
"I snuck into the sacred realm- which is actually called the Fallen Heaven realm- and found the Lunar Goddess. She had some kind of divine plant or herb and I ate it. Then my body changed."
Madam Cho paused, then nodded as the fierce aura around her subsided. "Changed how?"
"Hei Shisan said that-" He froze, realizing that he had outed his new friend.
"I won't tell anybody," she giggled, momentarily reminding Jin Huang that there was an attractive woman somewhere behind the terrifying woman he saw at the moment.
"He told me that eating it pushed me straight to a peak Mortal Foundation. He even said that he had never seen one so well-cultivated and tempered. He felt that it was-"
"Perfect. Yes. My sight tells me that you now possess no regular kind of Mortal Foundation. What I now need to know is whether it was all because of the divine herb you ate, or if there's something about your body that I've been missing." She pinched her chin and fell into thought.
Jin Huang shrugged helplessly, "I don't come from a world of cultivators. My parents- everyone I ever knew- had no idea what cultivation really was. Of course we had heard about immortals and gods, but we didn't even know if they were still around."
Madam Cho sighed, "Thankfully, I suspected as much. Which is why I went to the trouble of bribing someone into setting up this array formation. Step into that central array."
Following where she pointed, Jin Huang stepped into the large, oval shape at the center and awaited her next instruction. She circulated some energy and poured it into the formation, which caused it to come to life.
A golden light tinged with various other colors washed over him, forcing the band in his hair to come loose as his fiery yellow hair spread out.
"Just focus on putting up as little resistance as possible," she offered a reassuring nod as she further activated the formation.
"Your bodily constitution is special. Possibly far more special than anything I've ever seen. This array formation is meant to offer me a direct line of sight into the secrets of your body. Hopefully, it can show me something that the Academy's test missed."
Jin Huang closed his eyes and, as she suggested, focused on offering no resistance as best as he could. He felt nothing but the surge of energy running over him, starting at his stomach and spreading out from there.
It travelled from his shoulders to his fingertips, from his thighs to the tips of his toes, from his neck up past the roots of his hairs and further yet. All of him was bombarded with that energy, yet he felt no discomfort.
Madam Cho stood there, supplying energy to the formation in seemingly unending amounts. Her eyes were shut as they searched from behind her eyelids, her mind offering her a projection of Jin Huang's internal structure. She searched far and wide.
In his blood, his bones and marrow, his organs, his mind and as far into his soul as she could. As she tried to push further, frustrated that nothing was giving any results, she suddenly felt her energy being directed into a massive space that felt hollow.
Gasping and almost breaking concentration, she focused on that place inside of Jin Huang, pouring more than two times the initial amount of energy into the formation, all in an attempt to see into that massive space.
However, her energy seemed to be attempting to fill a pit far too large for even her. The reserves of her energy expanded to more than twenty times what they had been previously, and Jin Huang's uniform started ruffling as though a storm of wind was battering him.
"This must be it," she thought. "There is something there. Something about his body that is flawlessly concealed."
More and more power flowed through the array formation, increasing by such a large amount that the formation seemed unable to withstand it.
"I must see it. I must." Focusing her mind, Madam Cho put out the maximum effort she possibly could without breaking the formation.
"I must see it!" She yelled, her final effort irreparably damaging the formation. A number of cracks formed in the intricate arrays, releasing golden surges of energy.
Jin Huang's hair fell, covering his face as he fell somewhat limp without the energy.
Madam Cho exhaled, a bead of sweat running down the side of her face. Her eyes snapped open and she sighed, "Damnit."
"What... happened?" Jin Huang asked, a hint of caution in his voice.
"There is... something. A concealed corner of you that refuses to come to the light. My energy went through the formation and into you, but once it entered that spot all of my effort and energy just vanished."
"No matter how hard I tried to get it to expose itself to me... it wouldn't. Or maybe it's not that it wouldn't but that it... couldn't."
A gleam of something like excitement flashed in her eyes and she gave the briefest smile Jin Huang had ever seen. Confusion overcame him as she suddenly rushed him, grabbing his arm and staring at where his eyes were behind the curtain hair.
"From now on, I will be your personal chef. You aren't allowed to eat anything but the food I make you. Conversely, I will only make the food you request- but know that I will ensure the meal is always balanced."
Jin Huang paused, blinked, and gave her a look that said, 'Are you sure you just said what you said?'
Madam Cho parted his hair, starting directly into his eyes. "I'm going to pull out all the stops and feed you until you burst. Let's see what this body of yours has to say when I overload it completely with more vital energy than it can ever hope to digest."
The childish excitement she exhibited in that moment was extremely uncharacteristic of her, and Jin Huang became unsure of how to act. Giving a light nod, he said, "Yeah. Let's do it."