If she devotes herself quite strongly to the lessons she can make what her tutor assures her is actually quite a good amount of progress! Especially if she reads things and writes down all the characters she doesn't understand to ask about later, as suggested. She can make progress through most books alone, now, though it's slow work. She can read signs, and write without making a huge mess, just a small one.

She even begins absorbing some imperial history, at least the basics- Cai's ascension was really not that long ago. And her daughter went to this very sect a decade ago. The Empire has been around for a long, long time and so very many things have happened. Cao Shan assures her thay having at least a basic grounding in history is a good thing. It might help her recognize cultivation things, if nothing else.

The arcane world of mathematics is nearly impenetrable though. Perhaps 'zero' and 'variables' and 'orders of magnitude' are something that only makes sense when you become a cultivator? How can a number be less than nothing?

Mathematics is awful. She does well where she can just memorise things, but Mei Cao fails at this point to realise that mathematics is a procedure and not a series of cases to be memorised one by one and then keep getting blind-sided by the teacher providing new ones. It isn't helping her that cultivators apparently use different numbers than shepherds to count and she has to relearn that from scratch. She thinks she has addition down, more or less, though. 

She prefers reading and history. She's very excited to walk into the footsteps of the Cai Heiress. She likes knowing facts about the world. Reading seems hypothetically useful and people keep saying it's very important but she hasn't found things which are, to her, important to read as of yet. 

Eventually, her tutor does notice the constant struggles with mathematics, and takes the time to interrupt the usual lessons and restart on math from first principle, explaining how a number is just a symbol, not a thing, handing her copper coins and counting them out, using debt to analogize negative numbers and purchases of multiple copies of things for multiplication and division. Cao Shan is quite good at teaching, always seeming to say things in ways that just make sense.

(She also succeeds in not giving off the impression that a small child should already know these things, even while explaining that, well, the nobles and upper class will expect her to already know these things. But really, it can be learned, it's all just fancy counting in the end-)

Hopefully this will get her past the bit of a roadblock in math, because the time remaining before official sect entrance is vanishing quite quickly. Only a few days left now.

She was already completely clear she was behind, but you know. She's being rewarded by being allowed to try at all? She's going to do her best, but it's only natural if the people who started this far up already will look down on someone only getting there because the Duchess decided to be nice to her. 

She eventually understands the procedures that are addition and subtraction and some of the related abstractions. 

When the day of entry comes, she is given another carriage ride up one of the mountains. And then further up. And then further up. The peaks make a landscape framed by cloud and sky, here, sprawled out before her eyes. The air feels alive, somehow. It's a beautiful place.

She's dropped off with a polite 'goodbye' and pointed towards a two story building standing alone, looking a bit more like a shrine than most of the buildings down from the sect village. Stately stone, surrounded by pretty little gardens and well maintained paths and flowering peach trees. She catches sight of another grey-robed new disciple heading into the building, and upon entering herself- It may well be prudent that she did learn to read. A short instructional paper that was delivered the previous day indicates that she is to go to Hall 2, and one of the signs, conveniently enough, indicates the way to Hall 2.

She doesn't quite trust the ambience. Studying pushed down the sensation that everything was fake; this increases it. 

These are the most allegorical peach trees she's ever seen. She's much more used to the ones which are used to produce (in her experience) brandy and arguments with your neighbours about who gets to have the best smoked meat next year. These ones feel like they were planted specifically to make one's students forget that this is real life and not a folk tale, at great expense. 

Carrying herself with all the dignity and composure afforded a teenaged collier, she will go to Hall 2. 

It's a large lecture hall, with comfy seating arranged with plenty of space. Light snacks and juice sit on a few tables here and there, kept at the correct temperature by subtle runes. There's seven other people in here already-

Four seem to have formed a sort of clique in the corner, animatedly discussing something and facing each other. Something to do with finance, or taxes, by the occasional overheard word. She might recognize one of them as from the Teng clan, a Viscount level clan from the south of the Emerald Seas, from her past lessons. Or perhaps not.

There's a dark-skinned girl with bright white hair, sitting utterly still, with the obvious bulge of some kind of weapon under her robe.

There's a tall and lanky boy with slicked down brown hair, fidgeting with a small carrying case. Inkstains on his fingers. He's nodding along to something the last person is saying, and locks eyes with her for a moment when she enters, but evidently she is not the one he's waiting for.

There's a broad-shouldered guy with messy black hair and a soldier's countenance and muscles, steadily milling through a plate of snacks and telling some kind of war story, from the tone and hand gestures.

She will pause a moment to see if anyone expects anything of her. But then she'll go introduce herself to her nominal peers. The two talking boys? Four people is scary and finance is scary (she does not identify the clan) and the single girl doesn't look like she wants to talk to people. Also, she probably needs to learn about war eventually. She will be polite and formal as she does so. 

They introduce themselves too; Li Shen (the soldierly one) and Mo Bao (the tall, scribe-y one).

"I'm looking forward to cultivating here. I hear it's easier on the mountain, and even easier in some special spots if you can find them," Mo Bao says. "And the library here is going to be much better than the paltry family texts on formations..."

"I'll leave formations to you scholarly types, I'm going to train my body and prepare for the army. Determination and sweat and pain now will see us through. You look like someone who's not unused to hard work, sect sister Mei Cao."

"Yes, I'm here by the grace of the Duchess. I hope to learn whatever skills will let me be most useful during my service, and afterwards, but I don't know what those are yet." 

Li Shen takes this as his cue to start talking excitedly about military doctrine and the cooperation of lower and higher realm cultivators and proper exercise form and other related things!! He'll control the pace of the conversation with meathead rambling, unless something changes.

Mei Cao won't prevent this. She doesn't know the first thing about military doctrine and shamelessly asking people basic questions has worked out so far so she's going to keep doing that. 

She didn't realise exercise was a thing? Don't you end up strong by eating well and having a hard job? 

Oh no there is definitely more to it than that. Having a hard job and eating the right macronutrients surely helps compared to one who has a non-physical job and eats gruel or candy and wine, but there are depths of bodily optimization she has not yet begun to glimpse. Careful study of the ways the body can move, the strength and actions of the muscles and joints, their limits and their ability to coordinate in balance, is the essence of physical cultivation! Pushing one's limits helps one know where exactly those limits are and judge whether they can leap or dodge or strike successfully! It's crucial to have a strong foundation of exercise before cultivating the body to higher levels by absorbing qi into the bones and muscles!

(He's being kind of loud. Drawing amused and disdainful glances from the nobility clique and a few others who have trickled in during the meanwhile.)

Ah, it's a secret cultivator thing. She takes mental notes. 

As people trickle in, she's going to try to keep track of what sorts of people there are, and if this conversation peters out she's going to see if there's anyone who isn't obviously noble or fighty to talk to. 

Most of them seem to be minor or major nobility! Nobody higher than a Count clan's second or third child.

The white-haired girl is being avoided. People seem almost slightly afraid of her? A few others don't seem obviously noble, but most of those are fighty. The remainder of that small pool consist of two different scribes and a girl with scraggly hair and a fox's tail and ears, scowling at everyone.

Wow, that's a slightly alienating field isn't it. Nobles and soldiers and literate people as far as the eye can see. She hopes she doesn't read as overly a soldier-candidate to everyone here. 

She's never going to have a better chance to figure out what's going on with that, is she? Now, everyone is watching, she's understood to be some harmless hick (which is correct and will continue to be correct for far longer than people will give her slack for it, but whatever). So she should go say hi to the terrifying girl and see if it's legible why she's terrifying to everyone. 

Having extracted herself from military doctrine 101, she will wander (entirely unsubtly) over to weird scary still girl and formally greet her. 

She looks somehow both less and more scary, up close. Like a knife, being held by the handle.

She turns and nods politely. Golden eyes. Blue skin.

"Hello. This one is Sia Bis, of the Bis clan of Thousand Lakes. I look forward to becoming deadly alongside you and everyone else in the noble Argent Peak."

She's heard of Thousand Lakes. Mostly in folktales. Not happy folktales. 

"Greetings, Lord Master. This one is Mei Cao. I am but a poor collier so please forgive the inadequacy of my education, but I am not familiar with the Bis Clan." 

They're not the Bai clan, at least. 

The Bai clan, it is said, is not so much a family as an ethnicity in Thousand Lakes by now.

"I believe the correct term of address between us now is 'sect sibling'. The Bis clan is not of sufficient consequence to be known much outside of Thousand Lakes." It is quite a considerable internal scandal that they are 'Bis' instead of 'Bai', anyway, but it's best to not air that too casually. "We are a subordinate clan to the Bai, a baronial clan, of little consequence to the wider Empire. We carve weapons from bones and keep the mountain-beasts of Old Smoke's slopes afraid."

"Yes, Sect Sister." Can she make it sound like 'Lord Master' through sheer inflection? 

"I was not aware you could make weapons out of bone." 

"Not mundane bones."

She smiles and pulls the weapon from under her robes. It's a harpoon. It's snow-white, and there are silver and red runes carved on it. "From a Steeltusk Boar. Then prepared and carved with the family techniques to channel lake and thunder qi. I helped track it down."

"Wow. That's very impressive."

If Sia Bis doesn't have anything else to say. 

"Do you know why people seem to be scared of you?" 

"The Bis do not make such prolific use of poison as the Bai, but that simply means we need... Other ways of intimidation. I do intend to demonstrate to anyone who interferes with me why that is a bad decision."

The ambient gossip cloud audibly shifts at this declaration.

Well, fair enough. Mei Cao feels like she'd have a much better clue how to take this if Sia Bis was making any sort of facial expressions. 

She does her best not to visibly quail in terror though. 

"I'm sure that will serve you well?" She trails off.