After following her instructions for a bit, the two went back to sword-fighting, albeit much slower for Alex to learn it.
He quickly began to realize the way she was fighting earlier wasn't going easy on him.
Instead, her style was to use the least amount of energy to do the fastest strikes toward the opponent.
Hard-hitting was rendered useless, with the emphasis solely on being able to slash as fast as possible.
At the same time, he quickly understood what she meant by self-defense, as her style was perfect for counterstriking the enemy.
With every attack Alex directed towards Luqing, he was immediately met with a strike that forced him to block.
It was almost a battle of attrition, assuming Luqing didn't use her full power to strike even faster.
"Thank you Luqing.... You taught me a lot today."
Alex bowed a little in gratitude as he could feel his sword skill drastically improve.
"I didn't teach that much. You're the one that's a fast learner——"
"Would you look at that? Qingqing and Alex had already gotten used to each other so well."
Meiya interrupted as she and Katherine entered the storage room, with their face looking a little surprised.
"Thank you for teaching my son."
Katherine thanked Luqing as she could hear all the sword-clashing sounds all the way from the living room.
"No problem."
---
The next day...
As Alex woke up from his bed, the area around his eyes was full of dark circles.
For some reason, he couldn't fall asleep, and when he did fall asleep in the middle of the night, he was dragged to fighting in his dream.
"Alex, you okay? Did you not get any sleep yesterday?"
Katherine asked, looking a little concerned as she brought his plate full of food to him.
"I did sleep... I was just too excited to go back to school."
As Alex sat down and began to eat his food, the other two girls were finally finished using the bathroom.
"How was your sleep yesterday?" Katherine asked as she put their breakfast before the two.
"Great! I can't wait for school already!" Mary excitedly replied, her voice full of energy.
Meanwhile, Sophia looked the polar opposite. She looked extremely tired, and her eyes were full of dark circles, just like Alex's.
"Not good at all... I want to go back for a nap right now." Sophia complained as she lay flat on the table.
"What happened to you, Sophia?"
Katherine curiously asked, looking a little concerned once again as she sat down in her seat.
"All because of Mary. I woke up like three times last night because she keeps moving and hugging me in her sleep." Sophia complained.
"Hey! It's not my fault. I can't control how I sleep." Mary argued.
Miss Amy finally asked the question that had been on her mind the moment the four had walked in.
"She's Duchess's friend... Lady Luqing?"
Luqing immediately took out the letter that Katherine had handed over to Miss Amy before moving back.
"Huh... A letter from the principal?"
As Miss Amy opened the letter and began reading it, her eyes began to widen as she read further down.
After she finished reading it, she quickly put the letter back inside before turning her attention back to Luqing.
"Nice to meet you, Lady Luqing. I'm this class's teacher. You can just call me Amy."
Luqing nodded silently, even though her brain was all over the place from the way she was being treated.
"Ahem, Katherine, can you bring Lady Luqing to an empty seat? Alex and Mary, you two can go back to your seats now."
The four of them finally went back to their seats as Miss Amy stood in front of the class.
"Welcome back, everyone. I hope you all enjoyed your winter break... Let's get the first thing out of the way.
Please raise your hand and hand your paper to the front if you have finished the winter break homework."
The three kids quickly passed their homework forward and raised their hands, with half of the class doing the same.
The other half of the class had their hands down, with their winter break packet on the desk.
"Okay... Now, everyone that hasn't finished the winter break homework, you can also pass it to the front."
With two stacks of paper piled over the front row, Miss Amy cast some sort of levitation magic as the papers floated to her desk.
"Now, who has done the optional homework?"
This time, only a third of the students raised their hands, including Alex and the other two.
"That's a lot more than I expected... Ahem, anyway, good job to everyone who did the homework.
But don't worry if you didn't complete it. I wasn't expecting you all actually to do it.
I was only using this as a way to test your knowledge... All the material inside was just the things I'll be teaching now."
As Miss Mary began writing on the blackboard, everyone took out their notebook to begin writing down notes.
Except for Luqing, who sat still with their table empty as she didn't bring anything at all.
"Oh, sorry, I almost forgot... Lady Luqing, can we go outside and talk for a second?"
Luqing agreed and quickly got up from her seat before the two of them headed outside the classroom.
"Lady Luqing, have you read the letter yourself?"
"I haven't read it yet."
Miss Amy let out a sigh as if she expected her to say that after seeing her idling in the classroom.
"Here, you should read it yourself first."
After handing the envelope back, Luqing took out the letter and began reading it.
However, just reading the first line left Luqing in confusion. She couldn't understand why she suddenly had a new position.
"I'm a teacher now?"
Luqing murmured in confusion as the letter stated that she was a martial arts teacher for specifically class 204.