Eclipse Academy, Paired Cultivation Book Two: Chapters 1-3 (A Threads of Fate Universe Story) (Patreon)

Chapter 1

The full, lustrous, moon was high in the sky as Keiko, Aria, Ellie, and I crested the hill to look down upon the last remaining Moonbeam Clan village that we knew of. Rather than seeing a clan prepared for war or battle, instead we saw something that chilled us to our cores. Instead of the proud Moonbeam Clan, instead the village was full of Indus Tribe members of varying strengths. They had the remaining Moonbeam Clan members in chains, shackles, and sometimes stockades. In the distance we could hear the sounds of women and children screaming in fear and disgust while we heard men scream in pain as we saw smoke rise over the cook fires. I turned to look at the group I was with and saw that Keiko and Aria’s faces had similar, if not identical, looks of disgust and rage plastered across them.

I subtly gestured for us to retreat down the hill side, so as to avoid being seen by the Indus Tribe encampment below. I whispered, “Well… it seems like we’re not going to be welcomed as heroes initially, but I’m getting the impression that if we were to save these people, we would definitely move up their list.” I tried my best to use humor to calm Keiko and Aria down, but from the looks on their faces I didn’t get the impression that I did a very good job.

Seeing that, I hurriedly continued. “All right, so unless you guys have a plan, here’s what I think we should do. Aria, you need to head over to those cook fires and take out the people who are restraining the people who are being cooked and wipe them off the face of the world. If you see a pair of cultivators who seem to be acting too well together, make sure to focus on the one who seems like they’re being protected by the other. I know that most paired cultivation couples end up doing that. The one who’s being protected probably has the better offensive abilities, but they usually take a bit of time to get prepared. Ellie,” I rubbed a finger over the frill on top of the Arctic Coatl’s head, “you’re with Keiko and I, okay?”

Ellie trilled and rubbed her head on my finger. She was raring to go. Ellie’s ability to heal was going to be in great demand in the coming battle, if not for ourselves, then at least for the people who had been captured and put into bondage. Our little girl had her work cut out for her, but with both Keiko and I by her side, I was confident that she would be able to take care of whatever she needed to do.

I locked eyes with Keiko and she nodded softly. I grinned, “You and I are going to be doing something really dangerous. We’re going to use the qi beam we used in the tournament and we’re going to do our best to strafe as many of their warriors with it as possible. I don’t know how many of them it will kill, but you and I both know that if Sage level cultivators were having trouble even reinforcing the barrier it was striking, there’s a good chance that we’ll be able to take care of at least a few of their combatants before we engage them directly.”

I licked my lips nervously as my eyes darted back to the crest of the hill, over which lay dozens, if not hundreds, of Indus Tribe members. We had no idea how many of them were paired cultivators, and even if they weren’t paired cultivation pairs… with Keiko and I only being Brain cultivators, Saint or Sage cultivators were still incredibly dangerous to us. That’s assuming they didn’t have anyone as strong as a Duke cultivator, because if they did, there was nothing any of us would be able to do to stop them.

“After we unleash the qi beam, we’ll need to engage as many of them as possible. Ellie, I just thought of this, but I think you’ll be able to take care of any metal shackles they’re using. Your Arctic qi should be able to shatter the metal with no problem. If you can’t, come back to us as quickly as possible, okay?” I gently lifted Ellie off of the crown of my head and held her in my hands as I looked her in the eyes.

My little girl was a bluish, grayish, greenish two-foot-long snake with beautiful silver wings that lay flat against her body when she wasn’t flying. Her eyes were a vibrant sapphire shade of blue. She looked so small in my hands, but I knew from the few times that she’d grown irritated with me that she was much stronger than she looked. One time she froze my entire leg when I refused to give her a bit of the Aqua Vitae drenched Blazing Elk that I had been eating for dinner. Being the good parent that I was trying to be, I didn’t give in and eventually my leg did thaw out, though it took most of the night. Ellie looked at me with pride in her eyes and I knew that she would do everything she could for these people, it was just in her nature.

On my left, Aria was practically vibrating. When she spoke, her voice quivered with rage, “Alright, if you’re done making plans, I’m going to go kill some people. Right now. If you need me… Don’t need me. It isn’t often that I get like this, but when I do, I lose sight of a lot of things and I don’t want to accidentally hurt you.” Her face was dead serious, I could tell that she was remembering something as she flinched at the shock on Keiko’s face.

I put my hand on Keiko’s shoulder gently, doing my best to reassure her. “I understand, if you need us, just yell. We’ll do our best to make our way to you.”

Aria didn’t even chuckle, her face was set in a grimace. “I don’t see that happening, but thanks for the information.”

From the small cloth bag at my hip, I heard Sensei speak up. “I’m sorry my boy, if they weren’t cannibals, I would have a dozen poisons I could help you make that would make this combat easier, but I don’t want to have you poison people to try and weaken the enemy. You have the few sachets of poison you made during your trials; those should be good if you have a group of them that aren’t near any other people. If my math is correct, upon striking the ground that poison cloud should spread about ten feet.” He sighed, “Be sure to keep any civilians away from it. Anybody who takes in that poison, assuming they’re not at least a Sage level cultivator, they should die within ten or fifteen seconds.”

I usually appreciated Sensei’s input, I don’t know how Keiko and I got along as well as we did until that point without his guidance. With his help we had reached the peak stage of the Brain level of cultivation in the time it took us to travel between the Inheritance of the Pot and this hideaway. It wouldn’t be long now before we increased our cultivation to the Saint level of cultivation.

The fact that he was at least an Emperor level cultivator who bound his soul to an alchemical pot, so he could raise the next great alchemist of the world, spoke volumes of his character. While he did give up a lot of his knowledge to be able to maintain his level of sentience, the bits and pieces he did maintain of his former knowledge, which included all of his alchemical knowledge, were more than most powerful sects had. I would learn that later, though I was shocked when I learned about it.

“One of these days we’re going to need to make it a point to temper you and Keiko to become immune to your own poisons. After that, you’ll be able to throw your poison sachets about in combat and use them as a pseudo-smokescreen that does more than just obscure your movements.”

I took a deep breath and checked to make sure that I had gathered up as much qi as humanly possible within my enormous lower core. The last time we’d used the qi beam, it had taken everything out of both Keiko and I. Hopefully using the poison as a distraction would give us time to regenerate enough qi that we’d be able to at least assist in the fight, if not act as the primary force once we freed the Moonbeam Clan’s members.

I looked at Keiko and saw things in them that if someone had told me would be there two years ago, I would’ve called them a liar. True love and trust were all I saw in Keiko's eyes, though I knew that rage simmered right behind them at the scenes we had all seen over the ridge. She trusted me implicitly and it was because of that that I felt confident enough to make the plans that I had. Without her support, I never would’ve been able to boss around a Sage level cultivator, though Aria is pretty laid back as far as I had ever met as far as Sage cultivators went.

“We’re going to target as many of the paired cultivators as we can with the qi beam. We all know that if one of them dies, the other’s cultivation will be shattered, so we don’t need to target both halves of the pair, just whichever one we think is weaker. I’m hoping that these Indus Tribe members will act like stereotypical machismo filled assholes and the men will all gather around the prisoners to mock them while the women will be doing the real work.”

Keiko snorted before waiting for me to continue.

“If we target someone who’s lazing about, it’ll be significantly easier to kill them than attacking someone who’s prepared, or at least actually working on something. When we blast the group mocking the prisoners, we should be able to take out a good portion of the enemy’s forces without leaving our vantage point on the hill.”

I steeled myself and slowly rose up from my position against the hillside to crouch with one knee against the ground. I looked back and forth from Keiko to Aria then down to Ellie who had wrapped herself around my left arm.

“Any final questions?”

The furious stares I received told me everything I needed to know. “Alright, Aria, wait until you hear the first scream before you attack. Our qi beam takes approximately ten seconds to get up and going, or at least it did back when we were Heart cultivators. I don’t know how fast it will come together now, but I’m under the impression that it might take the same amount of time now, just be a lot more powerful.”

Keiko nodded sagely before taking my left hand in her right, Ellie twirled around our conjoined hands before resting her head down by our knuckles. The sensation was cold, but not unpleasantly so, it was a chilly reminder of our little girl so it made me smile.

I worked on gathering all the qi that I could as I said, “Let’s show the Indus tribe that they’re not the kings of this island.”

With that, mildly inspiring line, Aria dashed away into the foliage surrounding the hidden grotto that contained the former Moonbeam Clan village. I knew that with her speed she would be near the cook fires in less than thirty seconds.

I shot Keiko a mental message, “All right, let’s get this qi beam started.”

She grunted in response as I felt her drawing in a massive amount of qi through all the meridians she had open. I followed suit and in less than five seconds we had gathered up double the amount of qi that we had produced the original qi beam with and I didn’t feel like the beam was even close to being ready to fire. Keiko looked frightened, so I sent calm vibes through our mental connection along with a sense of assurance and confidence that I was trying to portray, though in my heart of hearts I knew I was actually faking.

We slowly crept up to the ridge of the hillside and looked down upon the former Moonbeam Clan village once more. The first time we had looked we hadn’t really gotten a chance to take in very much, so this time I did my best to take in as many details as I could.

The village was built into a hillside grotto that was hidden among enormous coniferous trees, Ironwood Pines, not unlike the acorn I used in my final trial during the Inheritance the Pot. The trees were so large that the boughs that overhung the grotto actually extended to cover the entire thing, leaving the entire grotto deep in shadow. The entire village couldn’t have been longer than two hundred feet along its longest side and eighty feet on the short side. Up near the far end of the village I could see what was obviously either the elders’ or chief’s dwelling. It was an enormous, ten story structure, shaped like a pagoda, but instead of being square, it appeared to be octagonal. Each phase of the moon was depicted, one per floor, starting with a new moon at the bottom and a full moon up at the top below the enormous silver topper to the building.

In the courtyard of that building was where the screaming was still coming from, though we could only now hear it as we had passed through some sort of silencing formation that surrounded the entire grotto. A little way closer to us from the pagoda were a series of large buildings that appeared to be places for wealthier or more powerful clan members to live. There were dozens of smashed open windows, their shutters hanging off, broken, or missing entirely.

Even closer to us there was some sort of bazaar with a bunch of tents surrounding it that I took to be the general living situation for most Moonbeam Clan members. Finally, just below the hill that Keiko and I stood upon there was a large battlefield, obviously used for training cultivators on how to fight.

Inside said battlefield there were at least eighty, though probably closer to one hundred and twenty, men and women of the Indus tribe jeering and laughing at the sorry state of the two hundred plus members of the Moonbeam Clan that were huddled against the base of the hill that Keiko and I were standing on. They were all in chains that glittered with formations that I could only assume would dampen the cultivation of anyone wearing them.

Keiko and I exchanged a glance and we knew we had our target. Without me even needing to point the way, Ellie slid off of Keiko and my hands and darted down the hill toward the prisoners. She would do her best to free as many of them as she could, healing those who needed it to get back in the fight. I knew that with none of them having access to their cultivation, they wouldn’t be able to hurt my little girl, I just hoped that they were smart enough to figure out that she was helping them, rather than hurting them, as she freed them. If anything happened to our little girl while she was trying to help one of them… I knew that Keiko and I would find a way to make them pay for it, most likely in blood.

Our qi gathering reached a crescendo as the ten second mark hit and we knew it was time. Without so much as a whisper, we extended our conjoined hands toward the gathered mass of laughing Indus tribe members, some of whom were throwing rotten food and other things at the prisoners. As if it was meant to be, we felt all of the gathered qi we had projected into a single beam of pure destruction. We started from the right side of the mass of Indus tribe warriors, as that was the side closest to the rest of the village. We didn’t want any of them to be able to escape, not if we had anything to say about it.

As the beam left our extended hands, I stepped forward and slowly started sliding down the hillside, so as to get a better angle and blast more of the Indus tribe members at one time with the qi beam. Keiko read my thoughts perfectly and kept up exactly as I hoped she would.

When the beam of qi struck the first Indus tribe member they were killed instantly. Then the beam continued through them into the five people behind them, killing all of them instantly as well, rupturing their lower cores in a series of explosions that took out even more of their compatriots. As we slid down the hillside, we saw the warriors closest to the right side start to panic as they saw the utter destruction raining down upon them from the hill behind the prisoners. Some of them tried to run, but they ran straight into our beam of qi as we swept it toward them and died from being cut in half. As we swept the beam to the left it was digging a hole so deep at an angle that we couldn’t see the bottom, but we didn’t particularly care, the most important part was that it was bisecting every Indus tribe member that it came into contact with.

By the time we got to the end of our sweep it looked like we killed at least hundred and seventy Indus tribe members and mortally wounded another dozen of them. All that remained were the eighteen or so of them that were smart enough to jump up, rather than left or right when they saw what we were doing. That was when they made their next tactical error, rather than running towards the prisoners so as to gain cover, they ran toward the other side of the battlefield to regroup. As my left arm hung limp from the enormous amount of qi that I had pushed through it, I produced a sachet of poison with my right arm from my spatial storage ring. I used a burst of wind qi that I pulled from the air around me to launch the poison sack all the way into their midst.

At first none of the tribe members reacted to the poison cloud, except to start throwing weak qi constructs toward Keiko and I, which Keiko deflected with the Dawnblade, using its enormous size as an improvised shield. A few seconds later, the group of people who were struck by the poison cloud started to cough and then to vomit blood as they all fell over dead with blood coming out of their eyes.

I heard Sensei’s voice from my side, though for some reason I got the impression that he was speaking to me mentally, rather than out loud. “My boy, that is why we alchemists are feared on the battlefield. Even when you’re almost entirely out of qi, you can still produce incredible amounts of death and confusion with something even a novice alchemist can put together. Though, in your case that was something more akin to an expert grade poison, so yours was much more effective than most novices would’ve been. Never forget that.”

I decided that I would ponder the farther-reaching effects of that information later. I knew that Keiko and I were both exhausted as far as qi went, though I knew that I would be able to gather more qi very quickly, due to my additional meridians in my heels and the gravity of my enlarged lower core. I opened every meridian I had and started sucking in as much fire and wind qi as I could before spinning it up into Inferno qi inside my lower core. I knew that I had another fight coming and I wanted to be ready. Through our link, I felt Keiko do the same, though in her case she was gathering metal and water qi to create her Arctic qi combination. It seemed that her qi gathering was going better than mine was, which was unusual, but it made sense when I thought about it later. If this is somewhere that the Moonbeam Clan had settled, they would obviously want to be somewhere that they could make their special combination of qi easily.

As we finished sliding down into the gathered group of Moonbeam Clan members, I saw that they were much worse for wear than we thought they were. They looked haggard, as if they hadn’t eaten in days and like they hadn’t had much to drink either during that time. I saw that Ellie had freed two Indus tribe members nearly immediately and those two were helping her free the rest. It seems that little girl had found the two strongest members that were trapped here and they had some semblance of qi control left that they could use to create their own Arctic qi to shatter the manacles or bindings easily.

The largest of the freed people looked at Keiko and I with a look of pure awe on his face. He cupped his hands and bowed deeply into it to us, “Young masters, we can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing but we are not the ones who need saving. It is the people in the pens by the elder’s pagoda that need assistance more. They were to be cooked for the beasts’ feast tonight. The men who you killed came down here to laugh as they told us about the fates of our loved ones. They said that the cooking was going to be done soon and that they were excited to be able to partake of our kind again.” He spat in a rage before quickly calming himself down again, showing his impressive self-control more than any flaw in his character. “Please do your best to save our people, we are all that remains of the Moonbeam Clan.”

Before either of us could respond we heard an enormous explosion come from down under the pagoda and when we looked off to the right, we heard a brief scream that was cut off by the sound of an enormous green fireball exploding up by the pagoda.

Keiko looked at me and shrugged before I turned back to the man we’d been speaking with. “We brought a Sage level cultivator with us who is taking care of your people up there. She’s a representative of the Dawnrise Clan who agreed with us that we had to save your people.”

The man’s face brightened, his eyes crinkling, and his lips curling into an easy smile for a second before going back to his normal stoic look. “Solaria is here? If that’s the case, I’m not worried about the people up by the cook fires anymore.”

He ruffled his dirty blonde hair and did his best to smooth out his grayish blue robe. It seemed like he was doing his best to pretty himself up, which seemed odd to me for a second before I realized that this man obviously had feelings for Aria. It was understandable, she was intelligent, strong, and fiercely loyal. If Keiko and I weren’t together she would have been someone I would’ve considered getting involved with, though she didn’t hold a candle to Keiko as far as I was concerned.

The man cupped his hands to us and bowed again, “My name is Gong Jin, I am the son of the chieftain, who was set to be the main course for the meal tonight. Solaria and I have been friends since childhood, though it has been a couple of years since we’ve met. If I had the strength, I would go and fight with her, but I think in my reduced state… my limited energy would be better served helping free the rest of my comrades. They gave us some sort of drugs that blocked up a lot of our meridians, though it seems that the more meridians you have opened, the less effective it was. I’m a Sage level cultivator, so I still have two of mine that are clear. That should be enough for me to gather and combine enough Arctic qi to be able to free the rest of these people, but not enough to fight. If you would be able to go and assist Solaria, I think we can handle ourselves here.”

I checked the state of qi in my lower core and was surprised to find that it was nearly half full already. It seems that Keiko was working overtime to draw in as much qi as possible while I was focused on the conversation with Gong Jin. She looked at me and grinned before nodding toward the main village.

“I think it’s time to get going.” She looked to Gong Jin, “Besides the people who were being prepared for dinner, are there any other members of your clan left alive besides the ones we see here?”

Gong Jin nodded sadly, “Three of our young womenfolk were taken by those beasts disguised as men. They were taken merely twenty minutes ago as a reward for the three warriors who found our final sanctum.” His face grew dark, “I hesitate to imagine the horrors being wreaked upon those young women, but if you could find them and bring them back to us… we will be eternally in your debt.” His voice broke, “My little sister is among them, she’s only thirteen!”

I felt Keiko’s qi gathering redouble in intensity as rage swept through her entire form. I put a hand on Gong Jin’s shoulder. “We’ll find the young girls, but what are their names? I’d like to be able to yell out for them so we know where to go to find them.”

Through half-choked sobs Gong Jin spoke. “My sister is Luna Jin, the other two taken were the fourteen-year-old twins Song Li and Chen Li. If I had to guess, I would assume they were taken to the Chief’s home, which is the building closest to the elders’ pagoda in the residential district. You can find it by the fact that is the only building in town with blue shutters on the windows. It should be on your left side as you go on the street toward the put the elders’ pagoda.”

With that, he squeezed his eyes shut and fought back tears as he turned to help the rest of his clan mates.

I exchanged a glance with Keiko and found that she was practically vibrating with rage. We both knew what the other was thinking, we would get those girls back in one piece, making those who took them pay, or we would avenge those young girls with extreme prejudice.

We both bowed slightly toward Gong Jin before running as quickly as we could down the street toward the residential district.

As we ran through the ruined Moonbeam clan settlement, I was astounded by how artfully designed it appeared to have been. Everything was laid out logically, there were no dead ends on the pathways, all of the streets were paved with wooden planks that appeared to be made of Ironwood, like the trees above. Even the tents we passed that surrounded the bazaar were all beautifully made with depictions of different phases of the moon or magical beasts on them that were staggeringly beautiful. It hurt to see a lot of those tents being used as fire material. I could see a pile of them near the massive blaze at the center of the bazaar where the Indus tribe members had kicked all of the wooden shop stands into a pile and then set them ablaze.

It seemed that this invasion had only happened a day ago, maybe less, I cursed myself for having wasted time at the Inheritance of the pot, if we had arrived here sooner… maybe we could have stopped all this pain and suffering.

As if hearing my thoughts, Keiko turned and spoke to me softly, “Don’t take this on yourself, the time you spent in that Inheritance earned us a teacher who helped us increase our cultivation along the way here. If it wasn’t for him, we still wouldn’t be here, we would be at least two or three days away and when we got here, we would have been totally exhausted. When we arrived, all of these people would already be dead and we would’ve arrived at the ruins of this place, rather than just the state of destruction it’s in now.” She lightly slapped my arm, “Now, get your head on the task of finding these girls, because I want to eviscerate the men who took them.” Her voice smoldered with rage as she charged ahead of me toward the residential district.

As I charged behind her I heard Sensei again. “She’s right lad, at the speed you were going when I first met you, there’s no way you could’ve gotten here in time. If anything, I wish I could’ve met you a year sooner, so as to be able to impart even more alchemical knowledge to you, along with cultivation knowledge to make even stronger. You’ve done the best you could so far, now do the best you can to save those young girls. If it’s too late to save them, know that the poison sachets you have are a very quick death, though it’s anything but painless.”

I resolved myself to that fact, knowing that if there was no way to save those girls… that I had a way to make sure their captors never drew another breath. I lengthened my stride and caught up with Keiko as she was within ten feet of the door of the house with the blue shutters on it. Every other house seemed to be in a ramshackle state, but this one was nearly pristine. It dawned on me then that we were likely to encounter more than just the three men who had taken the young girls when we entered this place, but at that point there was no time for me to stop our advance.

The house in front of Keiko and I was largely plain besides the blue shutters. The only other ornamentation on it was a pair of iron lanterns that bracketed the traditional paper door. Keiko didn’t even try and open the door before her, rather she charged through it headlong, Dawnblade held out in a defensive stance. She immediately darted to the left as soon as she passed through the doorway.

I followed behind her with the Duskguard held in my customary switch grip as I stayed as tight behind her as I possibly could, without getting in the way of her ability to swing her enormous sword.

The inside of the house reeked of alcohol and excess. In the room to left of the doorway I saw a traditional table and chairs that wouldn’t have been an uncommon sight back in Roh City. The table was only eighteen inches off the floor and there were traditional tatami mats surrounding it along with padded seats for eight people. The room to the right of the door was another story. Inside that room were a bunch of piles of furs that had drunk Indus tribe members splayed out across them. They all appeared to either be drunk or high, so they didn’t even notice us coming in. Some of them may even have been asleep.

I didn’t waste any time as I waved for Keiko to go up the stairs. Before I followed her, I pulled out one of my four remaining poison sachets and pitched it into the room full of drugged out Indus tribe members, there had to be at least twenty of them in there. The poison gas mixed in with the drugs they were smoking and they greedily sucked it up, even those who were so drunk they could barely move. As we moved up the stairs to where were we could hear whimpering coming from, I heard the sounds of bodies hitting the floor behind me.

The staircase was narrow and steep. As we climbed it, we passed a floor that was open to the four walls of the building, there was nothing but pillars left in there. It appears that the people downstairs had dragged the sleeping furs downstairs to make it easy for them to leave the building. We charged up the nearly ladder like stairs that led up to a hatch in the ceiling. Despite her rage, Keiko did her best to be quiet as she headed up the stairs. She knew what was on the line if we made a mistake and she didn’t want to be the one who got those girls killed. We could hear muffled cries and the sound of a loud slap on bare skin coming through the hatch as we approached it. I knew that if I could’ve seen Keiko’s eyes, they would’ve been glowing with rage as I felt the temperature around her drop drastically.

As I got to the top of the staircase, I patted her back and sent her a mental message. “Stay calm, remember that our mission is to save the girls, not kill their captors. I’m not saying we shouldn’t kill the captors, but we need to be sure that the girls are safe first.”

Keiko turned to look at me and I saw pain as she reigned in the qi that was leaking out from her meridians. She replied mentally, “You’re going to have to go through first, if I do… I know that I won’t be able to stop myself from attacking them, even if it puts the girls in danger.” With that, she ducked behind me and prepared to charge up as soon as I made the way clear.

I was impressed by her self-restraint; Aria was a good example of a cultivator who hadn’t had to temper herself. Cultivators who never had to temper their actions could end up as nothing more than beasts. Controlling oneself, both in action and emotion is what makes leads one to become a more enlightened type of cultivator and person.

I put the tip of one of the Duskguard tonfas against the hatch and gently pressed up on it. The hatch lifted as if it was made of nothing but wood, and not even heavy wood at that. It didn’t appear that anyone was standing or sitting on the hatch as I had feared, so I gathered up all the Inferno qi I could and burst up through the hatch in a blur of motion.

As I leapt from the staircase into the room, I did a quick spin to get my bearings. I saw that, rather than the three men I had expected, instead there were two men and one woman. The woman was sitting with another of the men as they were watching the third man take a large flat leather paddle as he beat the three girls where they stood naked in the corner. The pair watching the action were laughing like schoolchildren at each cry from the young girls. I immediately launched myself toward the man who was assaulting the young girls, as I knew my qi control was significantly better than Keiko’s. I also knew that Keiko’s explosiveness was better than mine, so I was trusting her to take care of what were obviously a couple of paired cultivators who were watching the “festivities”.

I dove toward the man with the leather bat with a blade of Inferno qi extended from the tip of my trailing Duskguard tonfas. The tall dark-skinned man turned and glared at me with his pointed teeth as he used the leather bat to try and bash me away from him.

“Get away you brats, can’t you see were enjoying ourselves?”

Those were the last words he ever spoke as I used my leading tonfa to deflect the leather bat before driving the blade of Inferno qi directly up under the man’s chin and out the top of his skull. I spun and kicked him into the other corner of the room in a fury as I turned to see how Keiko was doing. The girls behind me were cowering, but they were smart enough not to get too close as I still had my blade of Inferno qi out and ready to defend myself and them.

Despite her Arctic qi lending itself to a more subtle approach, Keiko decided to make it her own. I watched as she spun in a whirlwind of Dawnblade and other blades formed of Arctic qi. She managed to remove the right arm of the female cultivator as she spun clockwise in her dance of death. The man of the pair growled as he roughly shoved himself and his partner back away from Keiko as I moved to stand beside her. We settled into a formation with me slightly ahead and to her right as we advanced upon the wounded couple.

The man hissed at us. As he did, I saw that in addition to his pointed teeth he had also cut the tip of his tongue as to make it forked. “We are going to kill you little brats, I hope you taste as good as those little girls are going to.” He licked his lips, his forked tongue flicking once back and forth.

My blood burned nearly as hot as the Inferno qi sitting in my lower core. For a second, I debated my course of actions, but in the end, I knew that the only way to make sure they died was to go with the tried-and-true. Keiko read my mind, again, and as I unleashed an enormous torrent of Inferno qi upon the pair from my left foot as I kicked toward them, Keiko also unleashed a barrage of Arctic qi knives at them as she swung the Dawn blade to propel her attacks even more quickly, doing her best to make sure they struck before my wave of flame.

It appeared that the female cultivator was trying to do something, but she seemed to be entirely reliant on her right arm as she failed to produce even the most basic of defenses before Keiko’s rain of Arctic qi knives tore her apart. The man did slightly better… up until his partner died, then his defense faded away as quickly as his remains did as the Inferno qi devoured his body greedily. After we were done, all that was left of their bodies were their storage rings and a pair of matching daggers that appeared to double as their eating knives.

Keiko glared at the daggers angrily and with a snap of her fingers exploded both of them in a burst of Arctic qi that was actually so strong it made her stagger for a second. She obviously used more qi than she intended with that. I patted her on the shoulder for a second before turning to see that the three women had put their clothes back on over their bloodied bodies and were now kneeling in dogeza before us.

I guessed that the leading girl had to be Luna Jin, as she was nearly a foot taller than the other two girls. Despite the fact that she was a year younger than the other two girls, she had an air of dignity around her that must’ve been something she had developed as the chieftain’s daughter.

She spoke and immediately confirmed my theory. “Thank you for saving us, I am Luna Jin and these are my handmaidens, Song and Chen. We are forever in your debt.” All three girls pressed their foreheads to the floor as they waited for us to speak.

Keiko rushed over and helped them each to their feet before speaking, I let her do the talking in this case as I was entirely out of my depth.

She looked each of them over, making sure that none of their wounds were grievous enough as to be fatal. She doled out a small amount of Arctic qi to each of them to stop any of the wounds they had that were still bleeding before talking to them.

“Are you three doing alright? Were there any other Indus tribe members up here, or are these three the only ones who tried to hurt you?” Her voice was concerned and from the look on Luna Jin’s face, she was glad to see a friendly face after the ordeal she been through.

I was astounded at the poise of Luna Jin; despite the physical state she was in… she maintained a level of dignity and self-assuredness that I admired. She slowly sat up until she rested on her calves. When she spoke, her voice sounded like the most beautiful music and it made me wonder if maybe her name should’ve been Song, rather than Luna.

“How did you know where to find us? It can’t have been easy to search all of the buildings in town for survivors.” I thought I caught hint of a wince, but she hid it incredibly well.

Keiko spoke softly, “Your brother Gong Jin sent us to find you. The other members of the Indus tribe were bragging about where they had taken you and what they were going to do to you. If it weren’t for him, there’s no way we could have found you before something more drastic happened.”

As Keiko was talking to the girls, I took that time to walk around the perimeter of the room and check out the scene through each of the windows. The thing I found most startling was that there were no more explosions or sounds of battle coming from anywhere in the grotto. It appeared that either Aria had completed her mission, or we were worse off than we thought we were, so I decided to hope for the best because the worst wouldn’t allow our survival.

After taking fifteen minutes to make sure that the girls were healthy and getting them back to their families by the training field, Keiko and I headed off toward the elders’ pagoda to check on Aria. As we left the group of Moonbeam Clan members, Ellie waved her tail at us as she crawled around the neck of a woman who had been in a stockade. I could hear the woman sigh in relief as Ellie used her Arctic qi to soothe her wounds.

As we jogged through the grotto, I patted Keiko on the shoulder. “We did a good job with Ellie, she’s helping all those people, even though it keeps her away from us. I’m glad she feels independent enough that she can do that, but I can’t help but be sad that she’s not with us right now.”

Keiko’s stride faltered for a second before she continued jogging, doing her best to keep up with me and my long stride. When she spoke, her voice was full of pride.

“Something my father used to say just made sense to me after seeing how Ellie was doing with all those people. He used to say that a parent’s greatest joy is seeing their child do as they were intended to. As far as he was concerned, I never did as I was intended to, but I think that he was correct in his thought about how rewarding it would have been. Watching Ellie heal all of those people made me incredibly happy. She was doing what she was born to do there. All we have to do is make sure we can protect her once we get back to civilization.” Her voice took on a steely tone as I knew she was thinking of all the people who would try and take our little girl from us.

“As long as we keep getting stronger at the rate we are now, we will always be a will to protect our little girl, and if we can’t, we’ll make enough allies that we can get her back no matter what. With my alchemical skills and your burgeoning healing skills we’ll be in high demand when we go back to the mainland. We should do our best to ingratiate ourselves to as many powerful people as possible. I know that it sounds like a double-edged sword, seeing as those people could try and take Ellie from us, but not all of the powerful people will want to take her from us, only those who are bereft of moral character will do so.”

I laughed, “I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of moral character… I did befriend you as a child despite the fact that you were the elder’s daughter!”

Keiko laughed even as she smacked me in the side for my comment. “That was a low blow and you know it. I can’t help who my father is any more than you can help…” Her voice faded to whisper as she considered what she was about to say.

I continued on, shaking my head as I did so. “It’s all right to talk about it, I know that I’m an orphan. Technically, even before my grandfather died, I was an orphan. Both of my parents are either missing or dead, and that’s something I’ve been coming to grips with my entire life. My grandfather always said that people who overcome adversity become stronger and I’ve been trying to take that to heart. At some point, I’d like to try and track down my parents, or at least figure out what happened to them, but that’s something for another time. Though, at this point, I just want to make sure Aria is okay, along with the rest of the Moonbeam Clan.”

Keiko jumped up and hugged me midstride, but I was used to it so I just kept jogging as she released me a moment later. You’d be surprised how often she did things like that, but I never tried to stop her, because it made me smile when she did it. She didn’t say anything more, her hug having conveyed her feelings of love and support to me better than any words could have.

A few moments later, we entered the courtyard in front of the elders’ pagoda and saw an odd sight. Piled in one corner of the courtyard was a pile of charred bodies. As we ran past the pile to check on Aria, I saw that all of the charred bodies’ mouths were open in silent screams, Aria’s Dawn qi having roasted them alive in the most painful way possible. It was at that point that I realized I was grateful for how volatile my Inferno qi was, I didn’t have a cruel bone in my body and I wouldn’t have it in me to use something like that to kill.

We ran towards where Aria was helping the dozen or so people out of their bonds, but she seemed to be having an issue with them, as she kept swearing each time her hands slid off of their bonds. There wasn’t a single free Moonbeam member near her, all of them were still stuck in their stockades and chains.

When we arrived, she turned around with fists coated in Dawn qi before allowing it to dissipate when she saw that it was us. She smiled faintly, “I take it your qi beam went well?” She quirked an eyebrow furtively.

Keiko jumped up and clapped happily, “Yes it did! I think we took out almost two hundred of them with just that. Steven killed another twenty of them by throwing poison across the battlefield from the prisoners. After we freed them, we went and saved the chieftain’s daughter, Luna Jin, along with her handmaidens Song and Chen.”

I spoke up as Keiko looked at me expectantly to continue. “I also killed two dozen of them on the first floor of the chieftain’s house before helping Keiko take out three more on the top floor where they were torturing the three girls.”

An enormously tall man, who I could tell from the resemblance was Gong Jin’s father, struggled against the stockade he was bound in. His voice was hoarse as he begged us. “Please, please, tell me my children are all right. After losing their mother they’re all I have left!” Tears were rolling down his face and his eyes were red and puffy.

I walked up and took a look at his bonds as I reassured the man. “Don’t worry Chief, your son is currently freeing the remaining members of your population and we saved your daughter and her handmaidens before any serious harm could come to them. They were beaten with a leather paddle, but suffered no serious injuries.”

I saw the man’s eyes glow with rage at the thought of what had been done to his daughter. “Don’t worry about dealing with who did it though, I incinerated him, along with the two people who stood by and watched it happen... Now let me work on getting you free of these bonds before we talk too much more. Save your strength.”

Despite our combined efforts, neither Keiko, nor Aria, nor I were able to figure out how to break the bonds of the dozen most powerful Moonbeam clan members. We tried Inferno qi, Arctic qi, and Dawn qi, including combinations of them… none of them even made a dent in their bonds.

After struggling for nearly an hour, Sensei spoke up from my hip. “Assuming they have an alchemist in town, or least some kind of apothecary, I should be able to walk you through working up an acid that should eat through those bonds relatively quickly. Be careful not to get it on their skin because it’ll eat through that significantly faster than it does their bonds.

“I know that we have all those supplies from the inheritance, but we have to take any opportunity to gather more of them. You never know when you might need something new and unusual for a concoction. Places like this have interesting materials that might be useful later, so be sure to stock up.”

I looked over at where the chief sat talking with his children.

“Chief, do you guys have anywhere you store alchemical supplies? I think I can whip up an acid to eat through those bonds.”

The chief looked at me in wonder, “Our alchemist died in the attack, but they lived on the first floor of the Elders’ pagoda and all of their materials should still be in their workshop. Take whatever you need, we owe you far more than whatever those materials were worth.”

I grinned at the thought of working with a new alchemical formula and I heard Sensei hum appreciatively as I did so. It was time to get to work, so I bid everyone else farewell and headed into the pagoda to find the alchemical workshop.

Chapter 2

When I entered the Elders’ pagoda, I was shocked at how sparsely filled the first floor was. Most of it was open, with the notable exception of what I assumed was the alchemical lab. As I walked across the room, I marveled at how masterful the construction of this place was. There were intricate carvings all along the pillars holding up the next floor that ran all the way from the floor to the twenty-foot-tall ceiling. There were eight pillars holding up the next floor and the carvings of each told the story of the Moonbeam Clan, not unlike the mural and the staircase on the way down to the hallway that brought Keiko and I into the Dawnrise Clan’s mountain sanctuary.

I forced myself to focus, because I knew that if I let myself get distracted by the architecture of the building, I wouldn’t be able to perform as well alchemically and I couldn’t afford that. When I opened up the sliding door to the alchemical workshop, I was greeted by a smell that, over the last few weeks of training, had become very familiar and welcome. The smell of burnt ingredients and noxious chemical substances greeted me like an old colleague. I walked over toward the outside wall, which had a series of small windows near the top of the wall near the ceiling, for ventilation. I pulled out the alchemical pot that contained Sensei from the spatial bag at my hip.

For a while I kept him in the spatial ring on my finger, but he complained that it was harder for him to smell from in there and that the bag, which was much smaller, allowed him to interact with the world more easily. I decided that it wasn’t worth it to fight him on that and have been carrying him in the bag ever since. I felt, rather than saw, Sensei sweep his gaze over the arrayed ingredients. While he did that, I did my best to identify as many of them as I could. There were a ton of things there that I had never even heard of, let alone used, so I waited for Sensei’s guidance before starting anything.

Sensei hummed appreciatively, “For a backwater village… this is better than I was expecting as far as alchemical supplies go. The alchemical pot they’re using is total garbage, but you don’t need that, so you can ignore it. I recommend you take it, so we can sell it when we get back to the mainland though, it’s something that a Brain or Saint level alchemists could get good use out of, but after that they’ll noticed that obvious flaws in it.”

I looked at Sensei’s pot strangely, “That sounds like a fine alchemical pot to me… Why are you saying that it’s garbage?”

“It isn’t that it’s total garbage, but it is for you. Your Inferno qi is far too volatile to be contained within an alchemical pot that is so flimsy. The amount of heat you can produce is akin to what a Duke level cultivator can produce regularly, though you require significantly more qi to produce that level of heat. Your enlarged lower core is the only reason you can maintain your most intense level of heat for so long, without it you would only be able to do so for a couple minutes at most.”

I nodded even as I shook my head. I knew that my Inferno qi lent itself well to alchemy, but I had no idea that the level of heat I was producing was even close to what someone at the Duke level would be able to do. That did explain why it was so effective in combat though, I hadn’t actually heard of many other cultivators incinerating their foes, but for me it was a pretty common occurrence. I wondered how hot my flames would get when I reached the Duke level. Would they be as powerful as that of an Emperor? I figured that only time would tell.

Sensei finished analyzing the ingredients before speaking again. “All right Steven, for the concoction I’m thinking of having you make, you’ll need four of these ingredients. Do your best to figure out which four they are. If you have any questions about what something does, or can be used for, please let me know.”

I sighed heavily. That was Sensei’s favorite game, he would ask me to take a look at a ton of ingredients and then try and figure out how to make what he asked using them. Usually, I did okay at the challenge, but occasionally when I failed, Sensei would let me make the failed products just so that I would understand why they failed. The reason he was having me be so stingy with the ingredients from the Inheritance was that I could tell that, over the next few years, he and I were going to work through the majority of them just training me, let alone trying to sell anything for profit or actually using them to make anything it.

First, I took stock of how the ingredients were stored. There were half a dozen jade pots that I knew from experience usually contained some sort of concoction base that the other alchemist had probably prepared. From what Sensei told me, a lot of alchemists would take that shortcut, as it significantly sped up making basic healing potions and poultices, but he had admonished me when I asked if I should do the same. He said that while it does save some time, the alchemical properties of the ingredients all degrade slowly, even though it was only a little bit. He said that a good alchemist would find it simple enough to just make the new base each time he needed it. He said it was a waste of ingredients to keep a starter ready for any occasion.

It was clear to me that the elder alchemist whose workshop I was in was someone who put practicality above all else. They obviously understood the things that their community would need most often and took it upon themselves to always be ready for those requests. I ignored those starters and moved on to the four-foot-high chest of drawers made of white jade.

Seeing that my attention had turned to the white jade cabinet, Sensei spoke up. “That white jade set of drawers is a very nice alchemical storage tool. When we’re done, we should make sure that we take it with us.”

I shook my head, “It almost feels wrong to take it, but I know that in the long run it makes a lot of sense for me to have something like it…so I guess I’ll take it.”

If the chief had told me that they had an apprentice alchemist who was going to take over for the elder who died, I never would’ve taken anything from this place except what I needed to make the acid. Because he didn’t, I felt it was best to make sure none of their supplies went to waste, though I would make sure to convert their starters into full potions so they would have access to least a little alchemical help until it that they went to join the Dawnrise Clan.

Each of the white jade drawers was labeled and after examining all seventy-two drawers, I found five ingredients that looked promising. The first was almost too obvious and it made me nervous about it, I was called Acid Root. When I asked Sensei what Acid Root was used for, he laughed and told me that it was used by alchemists as a starter for most acids they would need to make. Because he called it a starter, I kept it to the side, not knowing if I would find any other ingredients that would be better than that.

The next ingredient I found was a Burning Blossom. It was a plant full of fire qi that was actually hot to the touch and as soon as I did touch it, small flames appeared along where I traced my finger. I figured that that the Burning Blossom would do well to help me reduce the mixture down to concentrate the acid when it was near completion. Following that was a drawer just labeled Water, though Sensei informed me it was actually alchemically purified water with a good mixture of wood and water qi stored within it.

The fourth item I found was a fine black sand labeled Blade Breaker. Sensei said that the sand was actually a powder created from the Blade Breaker stone that was incredibly high in metal and earth qi. He said we were very lucky to have found the sand because if we had to crush the actual stone it would take quite a while. We had some of the Blade Breaker stones in the Inheritance supplies, but that they weren’t crushed.

Finally, I found a tiny green mushroom that was labeled with a bunch of question marks. When I asked Sensei what it was, he chuckled and told me to be careful with it. It was called a Caustic Toadstool and they were incredibly dense with wood qi and were often used to amplify a poison or toxin that was nearly completed.

I assembled the five ingredients I found on the workbench and tried to figure out which one didn’t fit. My first instinct was to put away the Acid Root, but after thinking about it more and more I ended up getting rid of the alchemically purified water. From my lectures with Sensei along the travel from the Inheritance I knew that water and acid don’t mix, so my thought process was that the water would actually dilute the acid and make it less effective.

After settling on my four choices, I waved for Sensei to judge.

It was just a few seconds before Sensei was laughing. “You chose correctly my boy, most alchemists would have included the water you had pulled out, but you were correct in thinking that it would dilute the solution. Though in most cases that special water would actually go a long way to stretching the acid you’re creating, the water and wood qi within it would serve to sustain a larger vat of acid. However, in our case, we’re focused more on intensity than shelf life, so we have to make sure we make the most vitriolic acidic concoction we can.”

I set about preparing the alchemical materials as Sensei guided me. I ground up the Acid Root and slowly integrated the Blade Breaker sand into the paste I had created. Next, I started heating up the alchemical pot after forming the base paste and forming it around the center flame port at the bottom of the pot. I put on gloves and get a rough squish of the Caustic Toadstool until it was a roughly ground mass. Finally, as the base combination of the Acid Root and Blade Breaker sand heated up, I dropped the Burning Blossom to sit on top of the concoction already in the pot.

For the next ten minutes I focused on removing any impurities from my ingredients by increasing the heat gradually, despite the intense nature of my Inferno qi. At the fifteen-minute mark, Sensei had me grab the rough crumble of Caustic Toadstool and gently sprinkle it to cover the entirety of the bottom of the pot. At that point, I felt a wave of understanding strike me and I set out to work. Sensei seemed to sense what was going on and left me alone for the rest of the production of the concoction.

As I sat with my pot before me, I used my feet to fill the lower ports with flame as I focused on fine manipulation using qi threads from my fingers. First, I made sure to dice up the Burning Blossom very finely until it integrated with the paste at the bottom of the pot. Next was mixing in the Caustic Toadstool crumble until the paste at the bottom of the pot was uniform consistency. To finish it off, I cranked up the heat in the pot to as hot as I could.

At a certain point I was glad for the fact that I had such a high-quality alchemical pot, because I knew that if any of the heat inside the pot had leaked out it would’ve burned me to a crisp. After exactly thirty minutes of the hottest flame I could make, I removed all heat from the pot and instead used threads of water qi to stir the mixture down below until it became a viscous paste that appeared to be more like a glue than an acid. Somehow, however, I knew that the mixture was done so I popped off the lid.

Sensei immediately yelled at me. “Put the lid back on!”

I rapidly complied, coughing as the acrid smell from inside the pot that had leaked out a little bit. I rubbed my nose as the scent of burned ingredients and toxic fumes flooded my nose.

Sensei scolded me again, “I know I don’t often have you make poisons or acids, but you have to make sure you never open the pot until it needs to be used! If you are not prepared the mere fumes of some of the things, I’ll have you make could kill you. I’ve put all my eggs in your basket, so you need to be more careful.” His voice softened. “I just want you to be safe my boy.”

I bowed gently to the pot by my feet before sitting up. “Understood, Sensei, it won’t happen again.”

Sensei positively beamed from inside the alchemical pot, which sounds odd, but somehow, I knew that he was smiling. “My boy, we made a fine acidic paste, which is much easier to deal with than your traditional liquid style acids and nearly twice as effective. We should have no issues getting these people out of their bonds with this. Good showing! I give you results an A-. You could’ve stirred in a single wood qi strand when you were doing the final water mixing. It would’ve increased the efficiency of the acid by three percent, but that’s not a big deal here.”

“Good, now this is a very thick acidic paste so you’ll need to make sure you spread it on as thin as possible on each of the bonds you’re trying to use it to break. Make sure that the people you’re using the acidic paste to free hold their bonds out as far from their bodies as possible. It’s imperative that they keep their arms and legs as far from the mixture as possible, I wasn’t joking when I said it would chew through skin and bone just as easily as it does metal and formations.”

When I looked around the alchemical workshop for something to spread the acidic paste with, I eventually found a jade putty knife that I figured would do the job. Satisfied with the alchemical concoction I’d made and the tool I had found to apply it, I headed outside to help free the rest of the Moonbeam clan’s members.

When I got outside, I found that most of the clan members were seated near their more powerful family members who were still locked up, though there was a lot more laughing and rejoicing that I thought there would be after what everyone had gone through recently. After a second, I figured out why. Luna Jin, Chen, and Song were all trying to teach Keiko a traditional Moonbeam Clan dance, but she was not doing well with it. She kept falling all over, making a fool out of herself, though the smile never left her face, so I wasn’t worried about it.

Seeing me, she sent me a mental message. “I wanted to do something to make them feel better and it seems that watching me fall down makes most of them laugh, so I’m okay with it.” She paused him a moment before continuing. “I could definitely do this dance without falling over! I’m failing because it makes them laugh!”

I laughed before walking over to chat with the chieftain.

The chieftain bowed to me as I approached with my alchemical pot held tightly under my arm.

He grinned, “Your wife is quite the dancer; ha, ha, ha! Did you have any luck finding the materials to make something to get us out of these bonds?” He shrugged shoulders that were still encased in a stockade.

I beamed from ear to ear as I looked up to watch Keiko dance poorly for a moment before looking back at him. “Not only did I find materials to make something to get you out of your bonds, I’ve already created the concoction that will be required to do so.” I looked around the courtyard at the thirteen people still bound. “I just need a volunteer so that I can try it.”

The chief tried to clap his hands together but couldn’t because of the stockade. “Well, that’s easy, try it on my stockade.” I started to object before the chieftain stared me in the eye to stop me. “I’m not going to ask any of my people to try something that’s untested without trying it myself. I’m the only Sage level cultivator in the village, so I know that if something goes wrong, I’m the one most likely to survive it.”

As I looked at him in surprise, he held up his stockade and proffered the lock toward me. “Well? Get going on this. I don’t have all day.” He smiled, though I could tell he was very nervous about what I was about to do.

I heard Sensei’s voice in my head. “Make sure to use as little of the of the acidic paste as you can on that lock. Any more than that and it’ll eat through it too quickly and land on his skin after boring through the body of the lock and the stockade itself.”

As I moved over to apply the paste, I looked the chief in the eye. “I’m going to need you to lean away from this pot and angle of the stockade down as much as you can so that the lock isn’t hanging over any of your body parts. Can you do that?”

Rather than answering me verbally, the chief just did as I asked and looked at me expectantly. I smiled and got to work. I opened the pot a minuscule amount and used a qi thread to sweep the jade putty knife through a small section of the acidic paste. After drawing the paste out of the open pot, I leaned away before snapping the lid shut and then dabbed three tiny dots of the paste on the lock holding the chieftain’s stockade together.

Over the next five seconds, I watched as the acidic paste I had made ate straight through the lock holding the chief’s stockade on, before eating all the way through the lock and falling to the ground where the pasted dug a nearly foot deep hole in each of the spots where it hit the ground.

As the chief took off the stockade he had been trapped in, he looked down at the holes where my acidic paste had eaten through the ground before whistling. “You weren’t kidding about how strong this acidic stuff was. I’m glad I listened when you told me to keep myself as far from it as possible.”

He looked out at the gathered people and waited for Keiko and the girls to finish dancing. As soon as they did, he spoke up, “My fellow Moonbeam Clan members, our savior has helped once again as he created a paste that will eat through the locking mechanisms that are holding our elders and most powerful cultivators captive. Please be sure to keep yourself as far away from the pot he carries as he is working and follow any instructions he gives you. As soon as everyone is free, I want to have a clan meeting on the steps of the elders’ pagoda.”

As I looked away from the chief, I saw that arrayed to my left was a line of the other twelve people who were still locked up following the Indus Tribe’s attack. Over the next five minutes, I made sure to free all of the Moonbeam Clan members who hadn’t yet been freed, but at the end I still had nearly a pint of powerful acidic paste left over. I asked Sensei what to do with it.

He laughed, “Why you store it away of course! The hallmark of a good alchemist is to always be prepared and a concoction like that doesn’t degrade like a potion does. Now you have an acidic paste that will eat through nearly anything weaker than Celestial grade material. As long as gravity is on your side, you can get through most barriers with that. Be sure to store it in a jade bottle that you coat with a thin layer of water and wood qi before you put in your spatial storage ring to help it keep its potency.”

I followed his instructions to the letter and after twenty minutes of very careful jar filling, I was ready to go back and find Keiko, Aria, and Ellie. When I walked out, I immediately heard, rather than saw, Gong Jin laughing as he was chatting with Aria. The two of them seem to be getting along famously and as I walked by, Aria waved but made no move to follow.

At first, I didn’t know where to go once I got outside, but eventually I heard Keiko’s distinctive chuckle and hurried over to where I found her alongside the chief’s daughter and her two handmaidens again. There was more teaching going on, but this time it was Keiko showing the three of them how to defend themselves, rather than them teaching her how to do a dance. Ellie flew from the crown of Keiko’s head to wrap around my left wrist with an excited trill. I rubbed her head and assured her of how well she had done with the prisoners. That only made her trill even more happily and despite how cold she was, I felt the proud warmth of parenthood.

Keiko kept up her training of the three girls for another twenty minutes as I sat and watched while petting Ellie’s head frill until she fell asleep in a coil in my hands. As Keiko finished up with the three girls, they bowed to her and said thank you before heading off to go and check in with the village chief. It appears that the chief had decided to delay the meeting until everyone had had a few minutes to settle in, so it was probably coming up pretty quickly.

Keiko walked over and gave me a kiss as she helped pull me to my feet. “You did a great job getting the bonds off of the chief and most of the elders. Without them this village is totally defenseless.”

We linked arms as I gently settled Ellie around the crown of my head, where she settled in peacefully with a tiny sigh. I smiled and pulled Keiko close. “We should head over to the meeting now, there’s a good chance that we’re going to have to explain the plan alongside Aria. It’s not fair to make her take responsibility for it, it was our plan initially.”

Keiko half walked and half skipped as we continued toward the front of the elders’ pagoda. “That’s fine with me, but in this case, I think you would have to be the one doing all the talking for us. Despite the illusion of these people being city folk, they are very set in their ways and I don’t think my noble sensibilities will go over well with them.”

I laughed and kissed Keiko on the side of the head. “That’s okay, eventually it’ll be your job to do the talking, but I guess today isn’t the day.” She chuckled and pulled me into a hug as we sidled up alongside Aria up in front of the gathered Moonbeam Clan members up by the elders’ pagoda.

The chief’s face was grim as he nodded in response to our approach.

Aria didn’t react to our arrival the way I anticipated. Rather than greeting us warmly as she had nearly every other time we’d met her, instead her face was set in a determined grimace. She nodded as we approached and indicated for us to stand to her left.

I sent a message to Keiko. “If Aria is already this serious, I get the impression that this meeting is going to be pretty intense.” I gave Keiko a quick hug as we separated to stand side-by-side, up by Aria.

She replied in kind. “Yeah, I kind of got the same impression. Remember, I’m going to let you do most of the talking here, but if you need me… don’t hesitate to let me know.” I felt a wave of confidence and appreciation from Keiko as she smiled, her eyes lighting up like a pair of noonday stars.

The meeting that followed was nearly three hours long and by the end of it everyone but the elders, the Chief and his son, plus the people we had brought with us were left paying attention to it. During the meeting I explained our current plan to the Chief. He was impressed by our plan to sneak into the Eclipse Academy while Aria led the Moonbeam Clan to join up with the Dawnrise Clan. The Chief’s son’s face brightened at the idea of living with the Dawnrise Clan. I caught him stealing more than a few glances at Aria as she was making her points about the plan we had come up with.

I’ll spare you the logistical details of transporting almost two hundred people, some of which were children, nearly a thousand miles. The long and the short of it was that they knew the journey would take at least ten weeks due to the complications of traveling with such a large group. Despite the fact that they didn’t need to have a supply train they would still have to augment their food supplies by hunting and doing that for so many people takes time. As part of their movement, they planned on having twenty of their warriors split off and create false trails for the Indus Tribe to follow in an attempt to delay the inevitable conflict between the Moonbeam Clan and the Indus Tribe along the journey. The Chief and Aria were confident that between the two of them, they would be able to defend the convoy as they traveled unless the Indus Tribe’s Chief, who was purportedly a Duke level cultivator, decided to take them down himself. However, as far as they knew he hadn’t left Indus Tribe’s lands in the past seventy-five years.

The Chief’s son, Gong Jin, had a few good points about Keiko and my sneaking strategy. He told us about a few ancient pathways that the Moonbeam Clan used to use to traverse their way toward the Eclipse Academy until it was taken over by the Indus Tribe. As he pointed them out on our map, the map actually updated itself with the locations we would need to know. He was astounded by the treasure our map was and again I was thankful toward Old Ironbellows for his truly magnanimous gift. The fact that we always knew where we were and that the map itself would update when we learned things was truly invaluable. I knew that in the future we would need to be much more careful with who we revealed this incredibly valuable artifact to.

Due to the solemn nature of the events that we’d saved them from, the Moonbeam Clan did not put on a feast to celebrate us. Instead, Keiko and I joined the Chief and his family for a solemn dinner after finishing up the meeting with the elders. Aria went with Gong Jin to his dwelling in the shared living space, around the bazar in the grotto. It appeared that she was quite taken with him and I was happy to see it. If those two made a relationship work, it would act as a nice bridge between the two clans who would be living together from now on and the combined clan would be all the better for it.

If I’m being completely honest, I wish that I had cooked dinner instead of allowing Chief Goro to take care of it. The meat was overcooked and devoid of any remaining qi within it, the noodles were also overcooked and fell apart when I tried to pick them up with chopsticks. After the meal the look Keiko gave me told me all I needed to know, she was going to expect me to cook from now on and not trust other people unless I watched them cook for myself. That was fine with me, because I was not at all pleased with the quality of food I had been given either. Our cultivation session following dinner was far less productive than usual because we didn’t have nearly enough natural qi in our bellies to help fuel it. On the other hand, the ambient qi around us was significantly thicker than usual, so the cultivation session wasn’t nearly as poor as it could have been, though it would’ve been much better if I had cooked a nice meal for us.

Despite our lackluster cultivation session, I could tell that Keiko and I were just a breath away from breaking through to become Sage level cultivators and I resolved to have us break through before we left the Moonbeam Clan’s grotto. Otherwise, I knew that the amount of energy expelled when we ranked up would draw undue attention on our stealth mission to sneak into the Eclipse Academy. When I brought the idea to Keiko she agreed, though she was worried that it would take us more than a couple of days to break through.

I smiled and explained that if that was the case then we would stay behind in the grotto until we were ready to leave. After the rest of the Moonbeam Clan members left, the ambient qi would only grow stronger, making it easier and easier for us to break through. That appeared to mollify her as she stopped asking about when we were leaving and instead focused on our post-cultivation sparring. Before sparring, we actually headed down to the training field near where we had entered the grotto. It appeared that someone had gathered the bodies of those we had killed, though I did notice a large box with our names written on it placed by the edge of the training field. It was a simple wooden box with a simple metallic lock that I found was actually bound to Keiko’s qi signature.

When I asked Keiko why that was, she shrugged, “Oh, one of the warriors asked me to imprint on that lock with my qi signature. I didn’t really know why, but I decided there wasn’t much harm in doing that for someone we already helped.”

I smiled, “It seems that the members of the Moonbeam Clan were quite generous, because I’m pretty sure that this box is going to contain all the storage devices and belongings of the people we killed while saving all those people who were locked up.”

I gestured towards the lock and Keiko caught my drift. She placed her thumb upon the lock and sent a thread of qi into it. A second later, the lock clicked open and Keiko pocketed it. When I looked at her strangely, she shrugged.

“What? It’s a lock bound to my qi signature. You never know when you might have to lock something up.”

I couldn’t argue with her logic, so instead I decided to open the box and check out our haul. At first, I was disappointed in the contents of the box. Rather than the two hundred spatial rings I was expecting to find, instead there were only two of them. It was then that I noticed that each of the rings had a silver moon embossed on them and seem to be of significantly higher quality than any of the rings I’d seen on the fallen Indus Tribe members. I picked one up and handed it to Keiko before picking up the other one and inspecting it for myself. I sent a thread of qi into the spatial ring and was astounded by what I found.

Inside the ring were hundreds of standard beast cores and a decent number of larger ones as well. There were also over two dozen earth grade weapons that I knew would fetch a great price when we got back to somewhere we could sell them. However, the most valuable thing in the haul was the spatial ring itself. It was nearly double the size of the rings that I had purchased for Keiko and I back in the Inheritance of the Lovers and that ring was already quite large with one hundred cubic feet of space.

I took that moment to look over at Keiko and saw that her eyes were wide at what she had found inside her ring. As if she felt me staring at her she looked at over at me and shook her head.

“It’s too much, we can’t take these.” She tried to hand me the ring she had inspected, but I rejected it with an upturned palm.

I shook my head, “I’m going to have to explain something you don’t understand here Keiko. When you’re wealthy and of a noble caste, you can turn away gifts and the people who gave them to you will gladly take them back. It isn’t like that out here. Out here, these people work for every single thing they have and when they decided to give us these wonderful gifts, they decided that we were worth it and that we deserved them. To deny their gifts, or to give them back, would be tantamount to spitting in their faces and rejecting their hospitality.” I saw the look of shock on Keiko’s face and knew that she hadn’t even considered that possibility. “What was in your ring that made you freak out so badly though? Mine just contained some basic cores and some Earth grade weapons.”

She held out the hand containing the ring she had picked up and I exchanged it for the one I had already inspected. When I sent the thread of qi inside the other ring, I saw what had startled Keiko so badly. Contained within the ring were two pairs of sleek silver vambraces with matching bracers. In addition to those, there was also an enormous sheath sized for the Dawnblade and a holster that looked eerily like it would hold the Duskguard tonfas. When I ran my qi thread over those items to inspect them, I was shocked to find that I already had a connection to the tonfa sheath, albeit one that was very tenuous. I felt that Keiko had us subtle connection to the sheath that appeared to be for the Dawnblade as well, with the same type of tenuous connection.

That was shocking, but I didn’t let it deter me from inspecting the armor pieces. It turned out that the four pieces each formed a set that together would greatly increase our defense against physical attacks. With the robes we received after the tournament in the Inheritance of the Lovers, we didn’t really worry about qi-based attacks, but physical blows were still incredibly dangerous to us. With these new bracers and vambraces we would be significantly better protected in the future and we wouldn’t be weighed down as much as we would have been in traditional armor. Both Keiko and my styles were based entirely on fluid movement and darting in and out while attacking. Traditional heavy armor would do nothing but slow us down and make us easier targets.

The items that we had been provided were the perfect compromise for us. When I checked them over, they were all Earth grade and together they formed a set called The Vestments of the Moon. They also had the effect of increasing our movement speed when under the light of at least a crescent moon, be it day or night. All of this information was on a small card that was nestled between the two piles of armor pieces. There was no description for the pair of sheathes, but we didn’t need descriptions for those.

I immediately drew out the tonfas holsters and put the Duskguard into it. They settled in perfectly and I felt a sense of rightness as I settled that the moulded leather into the small of my back. It was nearly weightless and it wasn’t until we began sparring that I noticed that it actually was weightless. While I was wearing the holster, the Duskguard had no weight, despite how heavy they usually were. I thought that the holster might have other abilities, but at that point I was just pleased to find that I wouldn’t have to worry about the Duskguard pulling my robes down while fighting anymore. I drew out the Dawnblade’s sheath and threw it over to Keiko, she had gone and sat down where viewers would’ve sat to watch training fights and tournaments.

She caught the sheath reflexively and took a few moments to marvel at it before sighing and putting it against her back, where it settled in nicely. A second later she drew the Dawnblade and then re-sheathed it into its proper sheath. A moment later she gasped as the sword shrunk down to a size more akin to a traditional shortsword, which fit her stature significantly better than the enormous Dawnblade had.

She started swearing before drawing the Dawnblade again. As she did, the blade came out the exact same size it was when she put it in. It seemed that her sheath would shrink the Dawnblade down to fit the size of its wielder, so as to make it more convenient to move around with.

I, for one, was excited to see that. I was tired accidentally getting whacked with the hilt of the Dawnblade when Keiko forgot how long it actually was as we were traveling. With how short she was, she nearly gave me a black eye when I leaned over to help her one time after dinner.

“Aww, I kind of liked having a giant sword on my back! It made me look so much more imposing!” Keiko growled playfully. I couldn’t help it, I laughed incredibly hard at that. A few moments later I collected myself and responded.

“I’m sorry that you’re going to be less imposing now, but I can’t say I’m not glad you got that sheath. Now when we try and sneak into places you’re not going to stand out as much with a giant gold and red saber on your back.”

She pouted, “It was in a leather sheath, what are you talking about?”

I got to my feet from the bench and stood up before starting to stretch. “Let’s just say that despite your sheath’s best effort, that sword still stood out like a sore thumb no matter what you did with it.” I held out my hand for Keiko to grab as I glanced back at the training field behind me.

Keiko grumbled to herself, quietly enough that I couldn’t even hear it, before grabbing my hand and allowing me to help her up off the bench. We sparred for the next hour as we worked on harnessing as much of the ambient qi in the area as possible. Keiko was significantly stronger here than she had been in the past, mostly due to the increased wood and metal qi levels and her use of Arctic qi while fighting. I can’t tell you how many times I got caught in the legs with a shard of Arctic qi only to be trapped by a sideways slash of the Dawnblade.

The next day, Keiko and I did our best to help people get ready to move. We also found out what that what the Moonbeam Clan members had done with the spatial rings of the people Keiko and I had killed. They had given every man, woman, and child one of them and told them to take everything they could with them on the journey. By the end of the day the village was entirely barren with the exception of the elders’ pagoda. Everything else had been gathered up by enterprising Moonbeam Clan members, including the Chief’s house and the other houses in the nicer district near the elders’ pagoda. It turns out that each of the walls of the nicer houses weren’t actually attached to the whole. Instead, there were wooden pegs that were used to hold them in place. This method of construction was used to allow the people to pack up their dwellings and take them with wherever they ended up going. I marveled at their ingenuity, seeing as the Chief’s house was nearly forty feet tall and I thought it would be difficult for them to carry it, but they just took five medium-sized spatial rings and they were able to take it with them.

The elders’ pagoda on the other hand had been a part of this grotto for as long as the Moonbeam Clan had been around. There was nothing they could do to bring it with them and they didn’t have the heart to destroy it. They did their best to clean out anything of value from the interior of the pagoda, though they left the alchemical lab entirely alone so that I could avail myself of its contents. I made it a point to take the white jade chest of drawers and to store it in the dais that contained the entirety of the Inheritance of the Pot. I tucked it right up alongside the wall containing shelves upon shelves of beast cores and other such objects.

Before I put away all of the ingredients, I had Sensei help me convert each of the six starters that the elder alchemist had into full-fledged potions, so as to fulfill my earlier promise to myself. The potions weren’t complicated, especially with most of the work already having being done by using the starter. I did my best to make the potions as potent as I could and, in the end, they had two large pots of general healing potions, one potion of bone regrowth, one potion of burn remedy, and one potion to ease childbirth. The final pot was significantly larger because it contained something to assist in the gathering of wood and metal qi.

I asked Sensei why the last pot was so much larger and he answered my question with a question of his own.

“Why wouldn’t you want your cultivation potion to be the thing you have the most of? The answer being, of course you would! The more powerful people become, the more difficult it is for them to get injured or sick. I’m willing to bet that the elder was preparing to serve the contents of that pot with a large meal that was probably coming up, so as to help the whole clan at one time. Despite it not being the best method, many small clans like this don’t focus on more than one or two types of qi. In this clan’s case they focus on Arctic qi, which is a unique combination of wood and metal qi, as you know.

“It isn’t until you get into the larger cities and more dangerous locations that you find people who focus on more than just a few types of qi. I hoped that when I eventually found a successor the world would’ve advanced enough that they’d understand the need for balance, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, it’s worse now than it was back then, because back then people at least knew about all eight types of qi. I’m not going to go into the specifics now, but I’m excited to see how you and Keiko shape the world once you learn more about them.”

Everything Sensei said made so much sense. I made sure that when I handed off the pots to the Chief to make sure he knew exactly what each of them did. When I handed him the final pot containing the cultivation aid, his eyes misted over.

“Elder Boggle used to make this potion once a year for the Harvest Moon Festival. It was supposed to be a month from now, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to get a chance to do that.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand before continuing. “Thank you for finishing what he started. It’ll let the whole clan experience the love and devotion of Elder Boggle one last time in his memory. I’ll make sure to distribute the potion on the night that would’ve been the festival.” He held onto the lid of the pot tightly as he quickly inclined his head to me before straightening up.

I bowed back to him, slightly deeper than he had bowed to me. “It’s been an honor to assist your clan and I wish you all the best. When Keiko and I are done with the Inheritance of the Eclipse we will head back to the Dawnrise clan’s location, so I look forward to seeing you again.”

We chatted for a few minutes about inane things like our favorite travel snacks and other such things before we heard a gong sound from the top of the pagoda.

The Chief sighed and tucked away the cultivation aid potion inside his spatial rang. “It appears that it’s time for us to go, that was the elder on watch for the scouting party to come back and with only a single gong it means that the coast is clear and it’s time for us to leave.” He bowed to me one more time, this time significantly deeper. From that position he spoke once more.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for my people and I wish you safe travels.”

With that, he straightened up and strode out the front door of the elders’ pagoda with a purpose. He didn’t look back even once and I respected him for that. It takes a strong man to admit you need help. It takes an even stronger one to show gratitude to someone who is significantly weaker than you for doing something you couldn’t do. Chief Goro was every bit the type of man I hope to become. Strong, yet humble in the face of adversity. I followed the Chief out of the elders’ pagoda and as I watched him lead the procession out of the grotto, Keiko joined me at my side.

She leaned in and hugged me and put her head against my side. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, don’t we?” She snuggled her head into my side as she had me tightly.

I smiled wanly and held her back, “Yeah, but in the long run it’s going to be worth it. If we don’t stop the Indus Tribe members from getting to the higher levels of the Inheritance of the Eclipse… there’s no telling what havoc the they would wreak upon the world.”

As the last Moonbeam Clan member exited the grotto, I picked up Keiko and spun her around so that she faced me. She wrapped her legs around my back as we stared deeply into each other’s eyes. I spoke calmly, but with a purpose. “No one asked us to help save the world from the threat the Indus Tribe poses, but even if they had asked, I would still be doing it. Any group of people what’s willing to eat other people has lost its right to exist on this world and I can’t wait to learn enough that I can figure out how to remove them from it.”

Keiko hugged me tight and we kissed passionately for a few moments. “There’s no time like the present, right? We need to focus on breaking through to become Sage cultivators as quickly as possible.” She hopped down and patted her stomach. “Why don’t you get lunch ready while I go check out the top level of the elders’ pagoda. I think there may be a qi gathering formation up there that might be beneficial for both of us, or at least with the help of Sensei we could convert it to be helpful to both of us.”

Sensei spoke up from my hip, “That’s a wonderful idea, Keiko. Steven, give Keiko my bag so I can go up and help her investigate the formation. As soon as you get done with food, come up and join us.”

I shrugged and handed Keiko the bag containing Sensei’s pot. There was no one I trusted more in the world than Keiko, so handing off what was probably my most valuable possession to her wasn’t even a question.

“I’ll get lunch ready; you guys figure out the formation thing.”

I walked over to the kitchen on the bottom floor of the elders’ pagoda and began preparing a meal full of qi for Keiko and I with a smile. Secretly I hoped that Keiko would have a knack for formations, because if she did… we would be a true force of creative talents with my alchemical skills and her formations.

Ellie trilled from around my head and I was surprised when I heard an odd snort coming from her. I pulled her down from around the crown of my head and let her pool between my hands as I raised her up to my eye level.

Falteringly, Ellie spoke for the first time, “Don’t… for… forget to… make me some… make me food too.” She sagged into my hands, exhausted, but I couldn’t have been happier. I kissed Ellie on top of her frill before giving her good scratch there in my excitement.

I beamed, “I’m so proud of you Ellie, I hadn’t realized that you would be able to speak so soon.” A mischievous smile crossed my face. “I’m going to have you surprise mom with that when we get upstairs, okay?”

Ellie bowed her head tiredly before trilling softly. “Yeah.”

As I headed up the stairs that wrapped around the outside wall of the elders’ pagoda, I heard Keiko and Sensei discussing what I could only assume were formations.

“Yes! If we were to change this line from a zigzag into a curve it should help us draw in more wind qi and less metal qi.” Sensei said excitedly.

I heard Keiko pad across the room and as I crested the stairs, I saw that she was bent over another inscription on the ground. She looked over towards the center of the room where Sensei’s pot sat. “If that’s the case, can we change these half-moons into full on circles to draw in more fire qi? Once we get done with that, we should be eighty percent of the way to converting this formation into a general qi absorption formation rather than one that specifically draws in water and metal qi.”

“Excellent! You have quite the knack for this, young Keiko. I can’t wait to teach you all I know about formations.” Sensei’s voice was full of a longing that I had only heard back in Inheritance of the pot when he finally told me that I was to be his successor. I resolved to ask him why that was the case, but knew that was a conversation for another time.

From where I stood at top of the stairs, I rapped my knuckles on the railing to alert Keiko and Sensei to my presence. When Keiko turned around, she waved to me over. As I moved across the room, I grew very excited at what was about to happen. I couldn’t wait to see Keiko’s face.

When I reached over to give Keiko a hug, Ellie transferred from the crown of my head to drape herself around Keiko’s neck. When she settled in, she spoke to Keiko for the first time.

“Hi Mama, I… can talk… now.” She raised her head until she was wrapped fully once around Keiko’s neck and shoulders before finally resting her head on her chest. After the shock left her face, with her mouth agape, Keiko screamed in excitement. That made Ellie, Sensei, and I laugh heartily, though Ellie’s laugh sounded very tired.

When she finally sobered up enough to speak, she glared at me. “You knew our little girl could talk and you didn’t tell me? You are the absolute…” I held up a hand to stop her as she seemed to be working herself up.

I spoke calmly, though the smile plastered across my face probably didn’t help to calm her down. “She only just spoke to me for the first time downstairs and I wanted you to hear her as soon as possible. I didn’t wait a long time, I did it almost immediately. I just so happened to be able to watch your expression when she spoke to you for the first time, because I know that the face I made was probably quite good.”

From behind Keiko, Sensei spoke up with a chuckle. “With the method of cultivation that you two used together, coupled with the fact that you allow Ellie to consume the qi impurities that you expel, it meant that she was going to become much stronger, much faster, than your average Coatl. The stronger a beast gets, the more intelligent they get. If I had to guess, at this point, Ellie is about as intelligent as a five or six-year-old human child. She may be more cunning, due to her nature, but remember that in essence she is still a child.”

I knew that Ellie eating all of the qi impurities that Keiko and I generated while doing our Orbital Breathing would make her stronger, but I guess that I hadn’t really thought about it making her smarter. In the end, it made a lot of sense. From what I understood, more powerful beasts were almost always more dangerous, not just because they are more powerful, but because they were significantly smarter. At one point, I thought that the most intelligent beasts were only like that because they had lived longer. I was happy to have Sensei explain it in a succinct way; as beasts become stronger, they also become smarter made a lot of sense.

Keiko grumbled something under her breath that I couldn’t hear, even though I was right next to her. When I looked at her expectantly, she shook her head ruefully before staring me in the eye.

“The next time something like that happens with our daughter, I want to be made aware of it immediately. You and I share a connection that can span a dozen miles with nonverbal communication, you could’ve let me know that she was talking from downstairs. If you had, I could’ve come down and enjoyed it with you, instead of having you watch me freak out. Not cool.” She poked me in the chest once before turning around to walk back toward Sensei’s pot while gently petting Ellie on the head.

As she walked away, I heard what she said to Ellie. “I’m so excited that you can talk now and I hope that if you need anything you come to me, because no matter what, your dad and I have your back. Forever.” Rather than replying verbally, Ellie merely mewed contentedly and snuggled up around Keiko’s shoulders.

Over the next few days, Keiko and I fell into a comfortable rhythm. First thing in the morning I would make us breakfast while Keiko would work with Sensei on the basics of formations. It turned out that she had a knack for it, like I had hoped, and while Sensei wasn’t as knowledgeable with formations as he was with alchemy, he was still relatively skilled in that realm due to the crossover between alchemy and formations.

They decided that training with formations while I was cooking would allow them enough time to get her at least partially proficient before we made it to Eclipse Academy. After breakfast, Keiko and I would cultivate using Orbital Breathing for an hour and then spar for at least half an hour, if not longer. Following that sparring session, Keiko and I would bathe in the hot spring we found behind the elders’ pagoda before doing more Orbital Breathing until lunch, making sure to use the Centering Lotus to maximize the effect. Keiko and I always used the Centering Lotus when practicing Orbital Breathing, as without it we were significantly less efficient at qi collection from the world around us.

Our afternoon schedule was very similar to our morning schedule, eat, cultivate, and spar. Rinse and repeat all day. The only time that Keiko and I weren’t eating, cultivating, or sparring was after dinner when we would each pursue our own interests. I would work with Sensei on alchemical formulas and techniques while Keiko would experiment with basic formations as well as trying to perfect her Arctic qi using the scrolls that the Moonbeam Clan had left her to allow her to do so.

It wasn’t a perfect existence, but it was very close. The repetition and pattern of our daily lives was incredibly satisfying. I could tell that we were growing stronger by the day and knew that if we could keep it up, we would be able to break through to become Saint level cultivators in a week or so. That was our goal, at that point we would be strong enough to enter Eclipse Academy and make our mark there. From what Sensei told us, his son and his daughter in law were going to create the Inheritance of the Lovers as something like a junior entry point to the Eclipse Academy.

He explained that the plan for the Inheritance of the Lovers was to have people leave once they became Saints and then head to the Inheritance of the Eclipse, but something must’ve been lost throughout the ages because as far as Keiko and I knew, very few people actually left Inheritance of the Lovers to go to the Eclipse Academy.

On the fifth day after the Moonbeam Clan left the grotto, Keiko and I broke through to become Saint cultivators. We were cultivating up on the top floor of the elders’ pagoda, dead center, using the Centering Lotus and our Orbital Breathing technique. Keiko and Sensei had redesigned the qi gathering formation to channel every bit of qi possible into the Centering Lotus which in turn focused all of that qi into Keiko and I, but in a more controlled fashion.

The feeling of breaking through was rapturous, but Keiko and I did our best to maintain focus as we powered through cultivating to make sure we harnessed every last iota of energy that was produced due to our breakthrough. We broke through right after breakfast and we didn’t stop cultivating until nearly midnight. After all of the time we spent cultivating, Keiko and I rolled up together in the Centering Lotus exhausted, but exhilarated.

I whispered in Keiko’s ear. “You and I are officially Saint cultivators. How does that feel? For me, it feels like I’ll be able to use a lot more qi at once and maybe be able to sustain that use for longer.”

Keiko mumbled for a moment before collecting herself. When she spoke, she sounded exhausted. “I feel like I’m going to be able to do the same. I’m very tired, can we go to bed soon? We just cultivated for fifteen hours straight and I am completely exhausted.” She let her head fall to the soft surface of the Centering Lotus as she eyed me expectantly.

I slowly ran my fingers through her hair as I nodded. “It’s okay, go to sleep. We can talk more after breakfast in the morning.”

She sighed contentedly before crawling up beside me and started to snore. Ellie, who was now nearly three feet long, looked at me and nodded before going over to curl up next to Keiko.

“I’m tired too, I’m going to go to sleep next to Mom.” With that, Ellie curled up next to Keiko and was fast asleep in seconds.

I smiled over at Keiko and couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky. Less than two years ago, Keiko and I were Body cultivators and now we had passed from Body, to Heart, to Meridian, to Brain, and finally to the Saint level of cultivation. It had been a wild ride, but with Keiko by my side it had all been amazing. I reflected on my life up to that point for a few minutes after that and found that, overall, I was very happy with everything that happened. If anything was changed, there was every chance that Keiko and I would not have ended up sitting at the top of a tower soaking up enormous amounts of qi as Saint cultivators who were less than twenty years old.

As if reading my mind, Sensei spoke up from beside the Centering Lotus, though I could tell that he was speaking directly into my mind. His voice was solemn, but hopeful.

“You and I are very similar, Steven. We both fell in love with a woman of significantly higher status than us and through sheer tenacity and skill, plus a little luck, we were able to become partners with them.”

I reached down and grabbed Sensei’s pot, before placing it beside me while I leaned up against one of the petals of the Centering Lotus.

“There are so many things that I wish I would’ve been able to do with my wife, but that opportunity was taken from me by… it doesn’t matter. The point is that you were incredibly lucky and I don’t ever want you to squander your relationship in the pursuit of power. I know that, as a paired cultivator, that really isn’t an option for you, but you also have to be cognizant that you need to make sure that you two are growing in strength equally, it can’t be lopsided. If one of you were to become significantly stronger than the other, you would actually strain your partner’s cultivation base to the point that you could kill them. That’s why for every pill you make that you’re going to consume, you need to make one for her too. No shortcuts.

My path to Emperor was very different from that of my wife. While I traveled the path of alchemy, she traveled the path of the formation master. For centuries, our paths really didn’t align, besides the fact that we were traveling with each other. Yes, we fought together, but I didn’t think that alchemy and formations had anything to do with each other. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When we both reached the peak of our fields, we realized that we had been wasting a golden opportunity for centuries.”

I replied quietly through the same mental communication that Sensei was using. “I take it there’s a strong connection between formations and alchemy? If I had to guess, I would say that it’s because of the fact that higher tier pills need to be inscribed and maybe higher tier formations need to be layered like pills do?”

Sensei’s voice was monotone for a moment. “Yes, my wife and I were kicking ourselves when we realized how we could have been helping each other for years. We’d been so wrapped up in ourselves that we hadn’t realized that we could use each other as a resource. When we were young, we were too stubborn to realize that.”

His voice became a little livelier, “My wife and I didn’t have our son, Elliot, until we were already Emperors, so when he was born, he was already incredibly strong. At least the level of a Spirit Knight, sorry, I mean Brain cultivator. He ended up finding a peasant girl who was, to him, everything my wife was to me, but in reverse. He lived in the palace that my wife and I had built, while his partner grew up on a farm that grew vegetables to feed the people we employed in the palace. One day, my son couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old, he was out inspecting the fields to make sure that no beasts had come by and was struck by the work ethic of the girl he saw in the fields.

It was incredibly hot that summer and I had allowed all of the farmers to work at night, using alchemical glowing solutions that I provided to them, so they wouldn’t overheat in the sun. However, this young woman was out picking carrots on the hottest day of the year… at noon. My son went over to her and asked why she was out in the field at midday when she didn’t need to be. She told him that she wanted to try and get ahead on her harvest so that she could help her best friend’s family, as the man of the house had been wounded the day before when he’d been kicked by an ox.

“My son had always been a bit flighty, but something about that girl made him stay and help her pick those vegetables. With a surge of Earth qi, he could have picked nearly all of the vegetables himself, but the young woman stopped him. She explained that if he didn’t take great care when extracting the plants that you could break the stalk and damage the plant and she didn’t want to get her family in trouble by doing so.

“He and that young woman picked the entire field of carrots together. My son never told her who he was, though he did use a subtle working of wind qi to create a stiff breeze that cooled down the air around them significantly. The pair of them talked about everything and nothing during the five hours they picked carrots together and by the end of it, he was smitten. The problem was, she was barely a Body cultivator and he was already a Spirit Knight. After he helped the young woman put all of the carrots into the wagon they were going to use to bring the harvest into the palace, he bid her farewell.”

Sensei paused for a moment and I wanted to ask a question, but I was enraptured by the story. Sensei had never been so plain about his life before the Inheritance of the Pot, so I was afraid to interject and stop him from telling the story anymore.

To my relief, Sensei continued after a few moments.

“He came to me as soon as he got back to the palace, not even taking the time to clean himself up with either qi or bath. He told me about his day, how he had found the girl of his dreams out in the fields surrounding the palace, but he was worried that she would die before becoming powerful enough for him to practice Paired Cultivation with her. You see, my son had heard about Paired Cultivation from a scroll he had purchased in one of the larger towns back then and after seeing it had decided that he wouldn’t cultivate any other way. He refused to cultivate until he found the woman of his dreams so that they would always be together. I tried to talk him out of it, but I knew that once he had set his mind on something, there was nothing I could do to change it.

“I offered my son a couple of choices, either I could produce enough alchemical aids to rapidly increase the young woman’s cultivation, or my son could go and live among the people and walk her through the path of cultivation until she was strong enough to join him in Paired Cultivation. He asked why he couldn’t do both, but I explained that I was forcing him to make a choice. I also knew that a foundation based solely upon alchemy was a shaky one. I had prided myself on making sure to solidify my cultivation through battle before using alchemical supplies to push through to the next stage each time. My wife was the same, but in her case, she used powerful formations and qi focuses to increase her cultivation before fighting alongside me as we took down rogue cultivators and bandits.”

“In the end, my son decided that he would go and live among the people, hoping that the young woman would take notice of him and decide to be with him. He was in for a rude awakening; he had never had to actually work a day in his life. We raised him like the prince he was and he didn’t even know how to make a cook fire without using qi, or cook dinner for himself or anything else. I watched from the tower on top of the palace and saw him struggle and all I wanted to do was help him, but my wife would let me. She said that allowing him to struggle would make him stronger as a person and I could only hope that she was correct. Eventually, he ended up getting into the good graces of the woman, who I just now realized that I haven’t told you the name of. Her name was Chandra.”

I heard pain in Sensei’s voice as he talked about his daughter-in-law, Chandra must’ve truly meant a lot to him and knowing that she was gone now must’ve been awful. Sensei continued, though he sounded more wistful than anything at this point.

“After nearly three years of laboring in the fields together, Chandra and Elliott were wed. They had a simple ceremony with the rest of the farmers and as I watched from my tower, I could see how happy the pair of them were. The next day, they left the village and went off on their own. By that time Elliott had assisted Chandra in becoming a Meridian cultivator, but she was having trouble breaking through to become a Spirit Knight. To help her break through, Elliott led Chandra through battle after battle with bandits, using his wits and advanced cultivation to keep them both safe from harm, mostly.

“I still remember my son running full tilt toward the palace walls and bounding over them rather than waiting for the gates to open as he slid into my audience chamber on his knees begging for a life-saving medicine for his wife. He had gone out to look for dinner that night and while he was gone, his wife was attacked by the remnants of a bandit camp they’d attacked prior that week. She lay on her deathbed and I knew that if she died my son would be destroyed. I swept my son up into my arms and told him that there was no way I’d ever let my daughter-in-law die while I still drew breath.”

At this point, Sensei was sniffling and I thought that he was so enthralled by his own story that no matter what I did he was going to continue.

“Carrying my son, I flew us toward where his wife lay in a cave in the woods with a massive boulder stuck in front of it as camouflage, Elliot wasn’t subtle. When I arrived, I swatted the boulder into dust and strode into the cave to find that she was nearly gone. I asked my son how close she was to breaking through to become a Spirit Knight like him and he said that she was stuck at the bottleneck and that she just needed a final push to get past it. I pulled out a single Foundation Building pill, not unlike the ones you and Keiko took, and gave it to her alongside a pill that would heal all but the most grievous of wounds, though I made it appear that I only gave her a single pill.

“Almost immediately, she started to glow and as we watched she broke through to become a Spirit Knight before our very eyes. I watched as the enormous gash on her side slowly sealed back up and eventually there wasn’t even a scar left. My son and I sat there, watching his wife as she lay there, breathing normally for about an hour. When she opened her eyes, I introduced myself as her father-in-law and swept her up into a hug. To her credit, she didn’t push me away. Instead, she returned my embrace and thanked me for raising the wonderful man she had married.

“At that point, I decided that I would do everything in my power to keep those two safe, so I swept both of them into my arms and flew us directly back to the palace, despite my son’s objections. When we arrived, my wife did damage control, as she was significantly more subtle what I was, and after a couple hours of arguing we came to the conclusion that the two of them would live with us until they broke through to become Saint cultivators, as at that point that would mean they could easily use all eight types of qi and be strong enough to take on nearly all comers. I also found them each a pair of earrings like the pair that you and Keiko wear so they would be able to enter the Eclipse Academy to learn paired cultivation.

“After a long conversation with my wife, she convinced me to allow Elliott and Chandra to attend Eclipse Academy as they were then, not as Saint cultivators. Her main argument was that from what she’d heard, Eclipse Academy was excellent for growth. If a couple went in there too developed, they wouldn’t be able to get as much out of it compared to a pair like you and Keiko, who have been paired cultivators since you were Body cultivators.

“I personally escorted them to the Inheritance of the Eclipse, better known as Eclipse Academy, and ensured they had everything they needed to survive inside. As an overprotective father, I decided that I would move my residence to the tallest mountain on this island to keep watch for when my son and his wife would emerge from Eclipse Academy. Eventually my wife joined me and we ended up creating a pretty sizable cavern underneath the mountain, which you saw as the basis for the Inheritance of the Pot I eventually constructed. Don’t bother going back there looking for treasures though, I gave all of them to my wife so that she could use them as prizes for her Inheritance of the Architect, where she was going to teach young formation masters.”

I was glad that he had spoken up at the end there, because I was going to ask if we needed to go back and take a look. Sensing that we were nearing the end of his story, I finally decided to ask a question. “When your son and his wife came out of Eclipse Academy, were they changed dramatically?” That wasn’t the question I wanted to ask, but it was a leading question that I hoped would lead toward the answer I was looking for.

“They emerge changed, but not in a bad way. Unlike you and Keiko, who bound your lower cores together, instead they bound their heart cores together. That allowed them to reinforce each other’s bodies significantly in combat and it allowed them to become among the fiercest duelists in the world. They traveled all over, battling anyone, even when they were outranked in cultivation. I felt confident that my son and his wife were going to do great things, so when my wife and I felt that our time was coming, we had seen the writing on the wall and knew that we only had a few good years left.

“After making sure that Elliott and Chandra were set for life, my wife and I made the decision to each create our own Inheritance so that our knowledge would be passed on. My wife was much kinder than I, she was going to allow anyone who could make at least a Novice formation access to her Inheritance, but you know I was much pickier. The last thing I remember from before entering my Inheritance for the last time were hugs from my wife, Elliott, and Chandra. They all wished me well and said that they were going to miss me.

“Elliott and Chandra told me then about how they were going to be creating something they were going to call the Inheritance of the Lovers and how they were going to teach people to become paired cultivators from the very beginning of cultivation, rather than late like they had.”

Sensei was quiet for a moment and just before I was about to ask a question, he spoke up one more time. “Do you know anything about what happened to my son and his wife? Do you know what came of them?” His voice was pleading, despite how old and wise he was, in the end he was simply a father worried about his son. I wondered how long he’d been waiting to ask that question of me and knew that I had to tell him everything I knew, be it good or bad.

I told him everything I knew. “I’ve only spoken to your son and his wife once and they told me about how the current Emperor’s ancestor had gravely wounded Chandra and since they knew that she wasn’t long for this world, they put together the Inheritance of the Lovers to make sure that they would be able to stay together forever. If it makes you feel any better about it, their cultivation knowledge is gone, but I believe their sentience is still there. If I’m powerful enough the next time I go there, I think I should be able to trigger another conversation with them so you could speak with your son and daughter one more time. Actually, if we bring enough contained qi with us when we go, you should be able to speak with them whenever you’d like.”

At that point, I heard the wall Sensei had put up break as he started crying. It was a few minutes later that he finally gave me a very simple reply.

“Nothing would make me happier than that and I thank the guardians that you were the one who completed my Inheritance challenge and became my true inheritor.” He grew silent after that.

I looked at his pot strangely, “Guardians?”

Sensei got a bit cagey at my question. “Oh, never mind that. It’s just something we used to say back in my time. Anyway, I can’t wait until you can return, triumphantly, to the Inheritance of the Lovers.”

I could tell that Sensei was holding something back from me, but I didn’t know what it was or why he was doing so. I decided to press the issue for a bit, seeing that he was in such a good mood. “Sensei, I don’t think you’re telling me the whole truth here. Is there something I need to know about these guardians?” I did my best to keep my voice level, despite how anxious I felt about him actually hiding something from me for once. I knew he wouldn’t be able to tell me everything, but he’d never outright denied something being important when it actually was before and it made me distinctly uncomfortable.

He sighed, “There are things you learn when you reach the upper ranks of cultivation that change the way you look at the world. Knowledge of who, and what, the guardians are is one of those things. When you become a King cultivator, I can safely tell you about them, but until then you’ll have to trust that I’m not telling you for a good reason.” With that, he went silent and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get him to speak again that night.

A little while later, I curled up to sleep around my little family. As I drifted off, I realized that I wished I had asked for the chief of either the Moonbeam or Dawnrise clans to marry Keiko and I, because I knew that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. I decided to make it a point to get that done as soon as possible, assuming she was willing of course.

Chapter 3

Keiko and I spent the following three days becoming acquainted with our increased strength. Each of our cores had increased greatly in size and because of that we could safely use a lot more qi at once than we could before. We fell into a rhythm similar to what we had been doing before breaking through to become Saints. We would eat, cultivate, and spar. However, now when we would spar, we were doing our best to maximize the efficiency of our qi usage while still taking advantage of our newly enlarged qi pathways for sudden bursts of large amounts of qi. I can’t tell you how many times my foot got frozen to the ground by a quick shot of Arctic qi from Keiko that I never saw coming. Similarly, Keiko would tell you that she lost count of the number of times I blew her across the arena with a cushion of Inferno qi that I would create while clapping my hands.

With the amount of training that Sensei was able to give both Keiko and I in our respective crafts, I was able to become what he referred to as a Journeyman alchemist while Keiko was able to become what he called an Advanced formation master. At first, I was confused about Keiko being called Advanced while I was only called a Journeyman as I had been working on my alchemy far longer than she had on her formations. Sensei set me straight on that front. He said that the crafting ranks go like this; Novice, Advanced, Journeymen, Expert, Master, Grand Master, and finally Imperial. He said that both he and his wife had reached the Grand Master rank in their respective specialties and Expert rank in each other’s specialties. He lamented that he never reached the rank of Imperial alchemist, despite him spending his entire life striving for that goal. For some reason he was never able to reach the nirvana-like state that was required to break through to the new level of understanding that was represented by the Imperial rank.

As Keiko and I were packing up to leave the grotto she presented seven copper formation plates to me. “These formations should help obscure us from Indus tribe members under the Brain cultivator level. They’re going to work by warping the light around our campsite to make it appear that there’s nothing there.” She rubbed her head ruefully. “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to build them, but Sensei told me a story about how he and his wife had used this formation to follow a group of bandits back to their hideout for almost two weeks back in his youth. After that, all I wanted to do was use it to help us hunt the Indus tribe members.”

I picked up one of the plates and the formations on them were decently complex, yet I could see how rough they were compared to the formations on the Centering Lotus, for example. Either way, if Sensei thought that they would do the job, I wasn’t going argue with him.

I smile back at Keiko as I put the stack of formation plates into my spatial ring. “They look great Keiko, is there anything else we want to try and gather from what’s left in the grotto, or are we ready to go now?” I had already gathered up everything I could find in the grotto that I thought might be useful. The Moonbeam clan didn’t leave much behind, so I only found a few stray broken pieces of armor and some old broken weapons that the previous owners had obviously thrown out instead of taking with them. I figured we might find a use for them, so I took them with.

Keiko shook her head, “Nope, I combed the entire grotto this morning after our post-breakfast cultivation and sparring.” She looked up at the elders’ pagoda and smiled sadly. “I’m sad that we have to leave the formation up at the top of that tower behind, but Sensei said that it was such an integral part to it that if we were to get the formation out and try and use it, the qi that we would gather would explode. It turns out that the tower itself is acting as a sort of protective element that helps defuse all of the qi that is gathered so as not to damage or injure anything, or anyone, upon the top floor the tower.”

I nodded along, before deciding to do a final check of our spatial rings as Ellie flew around Keiko’s head looking for snacks.

“Mom? I want snacks. Can I have some snacks?”

Over the last few days, Ellie’s speech had gone from halting and soft that exhausted her to frequent and excited that lasted all day.

Keiko shook her head, “Ellie, you and I both know that you ate breakfast less than an hour ago. You’re going to have to wait until lunch to eat, just like we are.” She used her best mom voice and from the huff that came from Ellie, I took it to be quite effective.

I made sure that the Duskguard tonfas were tucked safely into their holster on my back before I made sure that Keiko’s Dawnblade was secured in its sheathe on her back. Both weapons were secured and primed for use, though I hoped we wouldn’t be needing them anytime soon.

Without further ado I strode toward the exit of the grotto on the way to the pathway the Moonbeam clan’s chief had told us about. Behind me, I heard Keiko and Ellie bickering about snacks again and I couldn’t help but smile and wish that these times would never end.

The following week was difficult, not because the actual hiking was difficult, it wasn’t. Rather, it was difficult because Keiko and I had to wrap our heads around the fact that we were going to have to kill more Indus tribe members. Now, they were cannibals, so their lives were forfeit, but that didn’t do a lot to make it easier knowing that we were going to have to kill people. I take that back, I didn’t have any problems killing Indus tribe members, the way they lived was the antithesis of how I thought life should be lived. Rather than live and let live they live and take the lives of other sentient beings.

Keiko, on the other hand, felt that almost anyone could be redeemed, but after we discussed it a few times she started to understand that maybe that wasn’t true if the people were killing other people who hadn’t harmed them or anyone else… for food. When she came to that realization, I saw Keiko’s eyes go steely and I didn’t see her usual grin nearly as often after that point… not for a long time. The only times I saw her smile in that first week were when Ellie would do something silly like try to fly upside down and end up almost falling out of the air or trying to curl around Keiko’s head, only to figure out that she was too long now and covering up Keiko’s eyes while doing so. I could tell that Ellie was doing those things just make her mom smile and I was even more grateful than usual to have her in our lives.

As we were sitting in camp, one week after leaving the Moonbeam grotto, I was cooking dinner while Keiko was sucking the smoke into her spatial rang. At first, I wasn’t sure that it would work, but then we figured out that if you could take water into a spatial ring… why couldn’t you take in smoke instead. Either way, it was great because we were really tired of eating cold food at that point, so we decided that it was worth the risk.

Just as I put the finishing touches on our meal, I heard the snap of a twig come from behind me and when I whirled around to see what it was, I saw an enormous black-haired Boar pawing the ground with its enormous hooves while snorting at me. It was tossing its head side to side to accentuate its eight-foot-long tusks. The Empyrean Boar’s body was over twenty feet long without its tasks and with them it was nearly thirty feet long. I quickly gathered up all of our camping supplies into my spatial ring as I turned to square up against the Empyrean Boar.

When I glanced sideways at Keiko, she was staring directly at the Empyrean Boar and her hand was inching toward the Dawnblade. I flicked my eyes away toward Ellie and she got the message. I wanted her to get Ellie somewhere safe so that, if I needed help, she could do that and make sure our little girl stayed out of harm’s way.

I slowly unlimbered the Duskguard tonfas as the Empyrean Boar continued to paw at the ground and sniff toward one of the formation plates that Keiko had made. It didn’t appear that it could see us, but it definitely smelled the food I was cooking and was trying to figure out where the smell was coming from. With a single titanic step, the second worst thing that could’ve happened, happened. The Empyrean Boar stepped forward and I watched as its hove punched directly through the one-inch-thick copper plate and shattered Keiko’s illusion formation.

Knowing that the jig was up, I started to dart in between the Empyrean Boar’s tusks before I realized that the edges of them were serrated like knives. Instead, I ducked down and shot beneath the Empyrean Boar, using Inferno qi from the palm of one hand to propel myself forward as I coated my left foot in a blade formed of Inferno qi as I skated along the bottom of the Boar, doing nearly no damage to it despite how much qi I was putting into my attacks. All I ended up doing was pissing it off, which in hindsight actually succeeded in taking it the attention away from the rest of my family, so I was okay with the result.

The Empyrean Boar whirled around, surprisingly agile for its size, and I did a back handspring to get out of the way of its scything tasks as it attempted to cut me in half with a quick jerk with head. The Board really fall that up with a few quick jabs with its tusks as I nimbly danced away from the razor-sharp tusks.

I was racking my brain, searching for something that might be able to damage this beast when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keiko unlimber the Dawnblade and start to coat it in a very concentrated layer of Arctic qi. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be able to damage this thing, because I was pretty sure it was at least Sage level, if not higher, and even with my most destructive technique, that I can use a my own, I was barely able to scratch its hide.

As it continued to slash and stab at me with its tusks, the Boar was taking in a very deep breath that took nearly fifteen seconds to complete. I felt the levels of ambient qi in the area drop as it suddenly stood still and I watched as lines of lightning formed between the tasks of the Empyrean Boar as it harnessed metal, wind, and fire qi to blast an enormous lightning bolt directly at me. In a panic, I launch myself into the air and poured as much Inferno qi as I could out of both my foot and heel meridians in a desperate attempt to escape the righteous fury of the lightning that the Empyrean Boar had created. It was to no avail, as I continued to rise into the air the Empyrean Boar merely shifted its head until I was caught full bore with the lightning and was nearly turned to ash. However, the robes Keiko and I had received from Elliott and Chandra glowed brightly and instead of being burnt to a crisp, I was launched even higher in the air.

At that point, I was nearly two hundred feet in the air and as I looked around, I saw that we were very near to the next landmark that we been looking for the last day or so. As I looked down at the situation by the campsite I watched as Keiko screamed and slashed at the rear shank of the Empyrean Boar with the Arctic qi coated Dawnblade after spinning in a circle a couple of times to generate as much force as possible in a single swing. She buried the Dawnblade almost a foot into the Empyrean Boar’s rear shank and I heard both the Empyrean Boar and Keiko scream in a rage as the blade kept slicing until it removed the entire right rear leg of the Empyrean Boar. I smiled as I was falling because Keiko reached out with her left hand and sucked the Empyrean Boar’s severed leg into her spatial ring and actually licked her lips.

At that point, I realized that I was plummeting out of the air and needed to find a way to stop myself from hitting the ground and breaking every bone in my body. I decided that I would do my best to use the Empyrean Boar’s surprise and anger, as it turned to attack Keiko, to my advantage. I started spinning, using tiny amounts of Inferno qi to rapidly increase my revolutions as I formed metal qi along the Duskguard tonfas until it formed a sort of arrowhead with broad blades as I spun on my way down toward the Empyrean Boar. Just before impact with the Empyrean Boar I poured the largest amount of Inferno qi I had ever unleashed out of my foot and heel meridians, causing a fifty-foot cone of green and blue flame to launch out of my feet as I drove my way directly through the spine of the Empyrean Boar. I slid through the Empyrean Boar and as I did, I dragged out the entirety of its intestines and most of it stomach before digging myself nearly two feet deep in the ground as the beast groaned and died above me before falling to cover up the hole I had dug myself into. The Empyrean Boar must’ve weighed every bit of three thousand pounds.

Despite the combined efforts of Keiko and I, we were not able to remove the Empyrean Boar from on top of the hole in one piece. Instead, Keiko used the Dawnblade and started slicing off bits of the Empyrean Boar until she was finally able to stuff the remainder of the beast into her spatial rang with a satisfying sucking noise. I slowly lifted myself out of the hole and looked over at Keiko, who looked pissed.

The first thing she did was blast me with an enormous amount of water qi, in an attempt to remove the terrible spelling offal from me from when I had punch through the intestines of the Empyrean Boar. After she finished spraying me down, for nearly three minutes, I still smelled awful, so she forced me to coat myself in Inferno qi, so as to burn off anything that smelled bad before she would spray me down with even more water qi.

I always stripped down naked when I used the Inferno qi method of getting clean, I knew that my Inferno qi wouldn’t hurt me, but I wasn’t confident that it wouldn’t hurt my clothes. I also knew that the robes we got from the Inheritance of the Lovers would be completely clean when I drew them out of my spatial ring. I took a few minutes to fully coat myself with Inferno qi before allowing Keiko to spray me with water again. I dried myself off with more Inferno qi and then put my robes back on. After that, she walked up and slapped me.

At first, I was shocked, but then I saw the tears well up in her eyes as she jumped up and hugged me as tightly as she could, causing multiple bones to pop in my back.

“Why do you always put yourself in situations where it’s all or nothing? We could have fought that thing as a team and taken it down together, but instead you had to get launched into the air and then drive yourself through it like a giant spear. Is that fun for you? Does it make you feel big and strong?” Her voice was shaking with rage, though I could see the tears streaking down her face.

At first, I didn’t say anything, I just hugged her tightly. A minute later I finally spoke up and did my best to explain myself. “My number one priority was to make sure that you got Ellie out of harm’s way. I was hoping that we would be able to fight it from in front and behind, but because I didn’t know it had access to attack with lightning, I misjudged it. That must have been a Sage or higher equivalent Empyrean Boar. I did not intend to go all or nothing on anything, but I was worried that when the Empyrean Boar turned around it would still be charged with lightning and you would get zapped when your blade touched its tusks. I didn’t want him to gore you, so I did everything I could to get down next to you as fast as possible. It just so happened, that doing so also killed the Empyrean Boar.”

I leaned back slightly to take in Keiko’s facial expression, to see if she was still as angry as she was a minute ago at me. Her face was a mask and the only way I knew that she was okay at that point was through our emotional connection due to our linked cores.

At that point, Ellie flew over and headbutted me in the forehead. “Don’t make mom mad, when she’s mad, she doesn’t give me treats.” She spoke with such authority, as if those were the most important things in the world and I guessed that to someone with a five-year-old intelligence, snacks did feel like the most important thing in the world. Keiko and I both laughed and I knew that I was out of the woods at that point. I mentally thanked Ellie for coming over to distract Keiko and resolved to make sure that she got a nice snack after dinner, I was thinking maybe some Empyrean Boar chicharrons.

I heard Sensei speak up as we walked over to take a look at the demolished formation plate that the Empyrean Boar had stepped all the way through, due to its immense mass.

“All right Keiko, I prepared you for this. What do you need to do to the other six plates so that you can keep using them to make that formation?” He sounded exactly like he did when he was asking the alchemy questions, it was kind of interesting to hear him talk like that to someone else.

Keiko picked up one of the six remaining illusion plates and stared at it for a few moments. In the end she pulled out her formation carving chisel and completed a circuit that wasn’t glowing with qi yet. I saw her walk over to the to the other five plates to do the same thing. After that I saw, from the outside, the illusion of our empty campsite snap into place. As I stepped through the illusion, I heard Sensei exclaim happily.

“Excellent job! Now, you need to remember that this barrier is significantly smaller than it was a few minutes ago. Instead of being twenty feet in radius, now it’s only sixteen feet in radius. I know it doesn’t sound like a significant decrease, but in overall coverage area, that is a significant decrease in in usable space.”

Keiko and I were very careful when we set the camp back up. I asked Sensei if there was any kind of alchemical solution that I could create to nullify the smells created by a cook fire and he said that there was, but that it wasn’t very efficient to make. It used ingredients that were much too precious to an aspiring alchemist to use just to allow us to have a cook fire. He recommended that we find some kind of stone outcropping or maybe even use the hidden pathways that the Moonbeam Chief had told us about for resting. Either of those things would help deter both the Indus tribe and random beasts from finding us.

After dinner and the hour of cultivation that followed, Keiko, Ellie, and I went to sleep. Sensei had been taken care of watch since we were with Aria and he didn’t seem to want to stop, so we let him take care of it.

The following day we ate the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner for breakfast before briefly cultivating and moving toward where I had spotted the landmark we were looking for. Despite how useful our map was, it didn’t help us locate pinpoint locations. Rather, it gave us locations to within a half mile radius and from there we had to find the entrances ourselves.

Not that I was complaining, I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to find a place as well hidden as the entrances we were heading toward without the map’s assistance. Until we found the entrance, I wasn’t sure it was actually there. The entrance was under the roots of an enormous Ironwood Tree. The tree must’ve been every bit of a thousand feet tall and its trunk was nearly ten feet thick. All around, we were surrounded by trees of similar sizes, but this one had a uniquely shaped knot of branches that formed the crescent moon about two hundred feet up that I had spotted when I was blasted into the air by the Empyrean Boar.

The instructions that we had received from the chief told us that all we needed to do was walk into the hollow beneath the tree and our path would be made clear, so that’s what we did. I walked in front of Keiko and Ellie with Duskguard tonfas up in a ready stance. I was ready for trouble. When it looked like I was about to walk into the wall of roots, I actually ended up passing through an illusion and appeared in a rough-hewn tunnel that stretched on out of sight. Keiko and Ellie followed me in a moment later and together we walked along for nearly two days in the relative safety of the tunnel.

It struck me then how similar the Dawnrise and Moonbeam Clans actually were. Both of them used a unique form of qi formed of two others, both of them were native to this island, and both of them were very comfortable with long tunnels that they kept secret. I couldn’t help but wonder if they potentially had some shared ancestral tribe or ancestral family that spawned the two clans after some sort of disagreement or other event.

As we walked, I decided that it was time to ask Sensei about that. “Hey Sensei, do you know anything about the origins of the Moonbeam and Dawnrise clans?”

Keiko leaned in to listen as Ellie flew forward along the tunnel and then back where we had come from, her energy seemingly never ending until she would eventually pass out on one of our shoulders.

When Sensei spoke, he sounded wistful. “There were no clans that I knew of who lived on this island when I first arrived.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Though, I did bring about two hundred servants with when I came to take care of my wife and I while we waited for Elliott to emerge from the Inheritance of the Eclipse with Chandra. There’s a good chance that all of the people living on this island are descendants of those two hundred people. I had never considered what happened to them after I created my Inheritance. I know that my wife didn’t care for servants much, so there is every opportunity that she would’ve left them behind to go and finish her inheritance in peace.”

I nodded thoughtfully before thinking about what he had said for a minute and then groaning. “You’re telling me that some of your servants grew up and founded a tribe full of cannibals? That’s bad form…”

Sensei sputtered for a minute before I laughed and stopped him. “I was only joking Sensei, there was no way that you could have known the proclivities of all of your servants and their families, let alone anything that their descendants might’ve done or wanted to do.”

Sensei, when he finally responded, came across as being rightfully admonished. “I suppose you’re right, though I did do my best to make sure that most, if not all, of the people in my employee were of staunch moral character. My wife did most of the hiring though, so I didn’t directly know many of the servants besides those who attended me directly.”

Keiko spoke up, “It was the same way with my father back in Roh City, he may have been the one in charge of the household, but it was the house’s majordomo who hired all of the servants. I don’t think my father knew more than a dozen of the servants’ names and we had almost one hundred of them at one point. I was told by one of my nursemaids that, when she was alive, my mother used to know all of the servants’ names and that she did the hiring herself, rather than leave it to the majordomo.”

When I looked over to see her expression, I saw that there was a mist of tears around her eyes and she quickly moved to wipe them away when she saw me glance over at her. I gently pulled her into my side to give her a quick hug before releasing her so we could continue walking.

“I had no idea that rich people handled their servants that way, I assumed that they would make sure that to handle all of the hiring by themselves. I thought it was a control thing.” I shrugged, “I guess I really don’t understand rich people.”

Sensei laughed, “You would be surprised at how little a truly rich person knows about their house or compound. Most of them make sure to hire one or two people they truly trust and then entrust the rest of the workings of the house to those people. Those who are lucky, like I was, find partners who want to take over the majority of the more mundane tasks of running a household. Things like hiring people, organizing work details, and things like that. Growing up, I was from a poor family. So, I did everything in my power to forget that life so that people wouldn’t think I was some kind of country rube.”

We talked for the next hour or so about the different houses we been a part of, though Sensei had far more to speak on the subject than either Keiko or I. She and I had each only been a part of one household, besides the one we were currently in, which was composed of each other and Ellie, plus potentially Sensei himself. One story Sensei told really stuck with me.

“When I was a young Body cultivator, only fifteen years old, I was selected to be the healer’s apprentice of my village. You have to understand, I was very excited of the prospect of becoming a healer, because I knew that healers were very respected and, growing up very poor, I was used to being ridiculed. The village healer was more likely to use wood qi to try and heal wounds that he was to use alchemical concoctions, though he did brew certain mixtures quite often.

“I found out later that the potions that he regularly brewed were hangover cures for the village elders’ guards. They had a tendency to drink too much at night and not be able to go in to work, so they were willing to pay quite a bit of coin to get rid of a nasty hangover. As I worked with the healer, he realized that I had a knack for making the hangover cure so eventually I was the only one making the cure and even more of the guards were coming in looking for it, not just the elders’ guards anymore. It turned out that the healer had not been doing a very good job of making the hangover concoction, he was seriously overheating the ingredients in the early stages and then turning down the temperature when instead he should have been babying the ingredients until the last moment and then increasing the temperature rapidly, but I digress.

“Eventually the Alchemists Guild’s convoy came to town and one of their guards got very drunk with one of the guards of the village elders and the next day that same village elders’ guard introduced the Alchemists Guild’s guard to me and asked for a hangover cure.

“The Alchemists Guild’s guard was hesitant to take a potion created by someone as lowly as me, but he was desperate so in the end he ended up taking it. In seconds, his hangover was completely gone and he was staring at me in shock. At the time, I was very scared of this man and bowed deeply before him before asking if he needed anything else. I later learned that the Alchemists Guild’s guards were paid a handsome sum for finding promising young alchemists, so the fact that he dragged me out of the healer’s hut and toward the caravan of the Alchemists Guild’s wagons made sense then, but at the time I was incredibly scared. I kicked and fought and did everything I could to try and get away, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape the viselike grip of the Spirit Knight. I’ll never forget that man’s name, it was Akbar, and I owe the rest of my accomplishments at least partially to him. Without his help, I never would’ve left that little village or moved on to do any of the great things I did.

“The alchemist in charge of the caravan gave me a very basic version of the same test I gave you during my Inheritance. It was actually the basis for it, though I did make it significantly more difficult. In his case, the head alchemist gave me four ingredients and asked me to turn them into a potion that would allow the drinker to breathe underwater. I spent ten minutes inspecting the ingredients and taking as close a look at them with my limited qi as possible before beginning. By the end of the test, the head alchemist had decided that I would be his disciple, seeing as I was so talented. I don’t even remember that alchemist’s name, because as soon as I made it back to the main city, his master took me under his wing and I never saw that man again.

“My new master was one of the three heads of the Alchemists Guild in the city that I’d ended up in. I was still a lowly Novice alchemist at that point, though I was quickly on my way to becoming an Advanced alchemist. I spent the next year trying to become the best alchemist that I could. By the end of the year, I was what you would call a Meridian cultivator and a Journeyman alchemist. My growth rate would’ve been astonishing to anyone else, but my master had seen all of the alchemical substances I’d used to assist in my cultivation, so he only nodded and told me that I needed to solidify my foundations before taking any more alchemical substances.”

His voice grew distant as he was obviously reminiscing. I looked at Keiko and found that she was totally enraptured by his story, Sensei had that kind of way about him that made you just want to keep listening to his stories and search for the nuggets of wisdom in them. It reminded me a lot of how my grandfather used to make me feel and I smiled at the thought.

As if realizing that all of our minds were wandering, Sensei snapped back to it and continued his story.

“Because my master wouldn’t allow me to make any more alchemical pills to assist in my cultivation, I ended up heading down to a training academy that I could see from the room I usually practiced alchemy in. At the time, I didn’t know that it was restricted to nobles only, but when I got there and showed them my money, they allowed me to enter, even though I would never be taught due to my low status. It was there that I met the love of my life.

“She was resplendent in her long blue robe with silver coy fish artfully decorating it. Her jet-black hair framed her heart-shaped face of alabaster skin. I knew that it was love at first sight. I watched as she mercilessly beat down one of the trainers who she was working with before yelling out to the rest of the crowd, asking who would fight her. I decided that getting beat up by the girl of my dreams was better than not even meeting her, so I volunteered.

“Now, I’m not going to tell you that I did well in the fight, because I didn’t. Instead, I’m going to say that I made an impression on the woman I was crazy about and that I didn’t give up. She beat me black and blue, all across the fighting arena more than a dozen times, but I never gave up. Eventually, I landed a single blow to her non-dominant shoulder and with that she called the match to a close. If it wasn’t for the potion I chugged immediately after the fight ended, I’m relatively sure I would’ve passed out from the lasting pain of the beating I’d taken. She walked over and introduced herself as Jeanette. It’s been such a long time since I said her name that I’m surprised I was able say it so easily. I don’t think I’ve ever even told you my name yet, have I?”

“No, Sensei, you haven’t. I assumed it had to do with you trying to keep the definition between master and student between us. Is that not the case?” I was genuinely curious as to the reason, because I had wondered why he never told me his name, even when telling me stories about his life.

Sensei laughed, “My boy, my name is Granville. My friends called me Gran, which got me more than a bit of trouble when I was around older women.” He laughed, “It’s painful to think about my given name, because the last person to use it was my wife the last time I saw her. I’m glad I’m telling you this story now, because I think it’s helping me remember more of who I was before storing my consciousness in my Inheritance and the more I do that, the better teacher I’ll be able to be for you.”

I bowed deeply, even though Sensei was in a pot, in a bag on my hip as we were walking down a long, roughhewn, stone hallway underneath an island. It was the thought that counted, and I knew that Sensei would be able to see what I was doing.

He chuckled once more before continuing. “When I told her my name, Jeanette laughed and told me that she was always going to call me Gran, because I reminded her of her grandmother. I was just as tenacious as she was before she passed. Over the period of the next six months or so, we became close and would have become even closer if it wasn’t for the fact that her father found out about me and had me banned from the fighting school. Nearly two years later, I was eighteen at that point, I finally caught a glimpse of my darling Jeanette and saw that she was to be wed to the biggest blowhard I’d ever met, and I knew him well because he was the chief of the Alchemists Guild’s son.

“As a newly minted Spirit Knight, I took it upon myself to sneak into the tent they had prepared for her wedding and stole her away. We stole disguises on our way out of town and never looked back as we laughed the whole way. We didn’t stop running for four whole days, using potions I had brewed, just in case I needed to run somewhere long distance, to sustain us. As we were sitting around the campfire, I realized that I was a terrible cook and in addition to that, I hadn’t brought any food with me. All I had were alchemical ingredients and most of those were harmful if not used in tinctures or pills.

“Jeanette laughed and stalked away from the camp saying that she’d be back soon. Ten minutes later, she came back empty-handed and when I looked at her strangely, she shrugged and said that food would be along shortly.

“Sure enough, ten minutes later I had heard a loud snapping noise followed by a couple other, smaller, snapping noises. Jeanette stood up and walked back the same way she’d gone before and when she came back, she was carrying three small thunder chickens and one much larger thunder chicken with a crack in its beak. She explained that her mother had forced her to learn to cook, to be a better bride, and that she had ended up enjoying it. As she cooked, she explained that she was trying to become a formation master and that she had recently reached the journeymen stage as one.

“At that point, I told her that I wanted to marry her and at the next village we came to, we had the village chief marry us, using a made-up last name that we actually ended up taking as our official family name years later. My full name is Granville Torak.”

Sensei was quiet for a moment after that, obviously reliving bits of his life was taking a toll on him. I decided that it was up to me to make him feel good about it, but before I could try Keiko spoke up.

“Sensei… actually in this case, Granville, you did everything you could for your family. The fact that you stole your wife away from someone she wouldn’t have liked and ran away with her for four days before getting married to her, is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard. You two sound like the perfect match and I’m glad that you found each other.” She wiped away a tear from her eye as she increased her pace, doing her best to conceal that her face was a bit puffy from crying.

I kept it simple, “Yeah, what she said.”

Sensei and I both laughed, and we spent the rest of the day talking about how it was to grow up poor, really poor. Keiko gasped multiple times at the stories we told. Stories about how we ate grass soup when money was really tight or how my grandfather would go missing for days at a time just to come back with enough money that he could buy a present to give me for my birthday. I knew that he was employed by Keiko’s father, but the amount of money that he was paid was atrocious. If we ever wanted anything more than the four walls we lived in, my grandfather had to get creative. In his older years, he ended up making quite a bit of money carving staves and other such wooden weapons alongside training weapons for the wealthier citizens of Roh city.

Sensei talked about how his parents had been farmers and how they had eight children. He was the youngest boy, with two younger sisters.

The next day, I decided that it was time for a special dinner that night. I made Empyrean Boar steaks with Aqua Vitae sauce, paired with Ironwood Tree Nettles and Gemroot Mash. To all accounts, it was the tastiest thing I’d ever cooked, though I knew it was mostly due to the immense amount of qi that was packed inside the meat. I felt a dramatic shift in the amount of qi in my body after cultivation post-meal and that cultivation took so long that we didn’t even spar that night.

Around noon the next day we reached the end of the tunnel and were surprised to see that there was a small encampment of Indus Tribe members not even ten feet away from the exit. It didn’t appear that they knew where the entrance to the tunnel was, though when we exited, I knew that there was no way they wouldn’t see us, or at least hear us.

I slowly drew Keiko back deeper into the tunnel and started to strategize.

“Alright, Sensei had me make another half-dozen of those poison sacks from the trial, so I should be good if we wanted to start out with those to clear out most of them. How many of them did you see?”

Keiko’s face was dead serious, “I saw that there were five tents, each of them appeared to be big enough to hold four or five people. Two of the tents were open and I saw that half of the beds were filled, so they must be sleeping in shifts.”

I nodded, “If I lob in a sachet of poison, it should take care of everyone awake and outside the tents, but if any of the ones who’re asleep wake up, we’re going to have to fight them. Are you okay with that?”

Before she could speak up, I heard a scream coming from the camp and when I looked over, I saw a boy who couldn’t have been more than eight years old. The people around him were binding him to a long metal rod and I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to be able to use poison for this fight.

I looked over to check Keiko’s reaction only to find her already gone. I started sprinting toward the camp, catching up with Keiko easily due to my long legs. Both of us drew our weapons, though we kept as quiet as we could, so we’d be able to catch them unawares.

The first thing Keiko did when she entered the camp was swing high with the Dawnblade and sever the heads of both people who were trying to tie the young boy to the metal spit. Her slice was so clean that it went through both of their heads and the spit without even nicking the young boy. She followed that slash with a vertical cut that cleaved the rope they were using to tie him up.

I saw a single, much larger, tent tucked behind a huge bush that we couldn’t see from the cave entrance. I immediately pulled out a sachet of poison and lobbed it in there before using a burst of wind qi to shut the tent flap. I turned and had to block a savage slash from a saw-toothed Indus Tribe member who licked his lips when he saw me block his strike.

“Oh look, someone brought seconds!”

It didn’t even take a second for me to jab the knife blade of Inferno qi up through his chin and up into his brain before giving it a swift twist and cutting off his head. That man couldn’t have even been Heart cultivator, so him attacking a pair of Saints like Keiko and I was a death sentence. When I looked around the rest of the camp, I didn’t see anyone more powerful than a Brain cultivator, though I did hear quite a bit of coughing coming from the large tent behind me. I knew that as long as the poison I had created worked as it was supposed to, we wouldn’t have anything to worry about with the people in that there.

Trusting in my work, I set about exterminating the rest of the Indus Tribe members in the camp. I whirled around the camp, killing the cannibals where they stood with blasts of Inferno qi and swift jabs with the Duskguard tonfas into temples and other such soft spots. I noticed that Keiko was standing guard over the young boy who had collapsed into a heap at her feet. She was still sending out blades of Arctic qi to stop people from catching me from behind, but she wasn’t her usual berserk self. The fact that she had something to protect tempered her response dramatically.

In the end, after counting all the bodies from inside the large tent in addition to the other bodies, Keiko and I had killed over thirty Indus Tribe members. It appeared that the most powerful numbers were all inside the large tent, so the fact that I managed to get my poison in there before they could do anything was a massive stroke of good luck. When we inspected their bodies, only if the people in the larger tent had spatial rings and even then, all they had were basic supplies in them. I made sure to gather up anything that looked like meat and toss it into a pile before igniting it with as much Inferno qi as I could put out, doing my best to knock down the sickly-sweet smell.

I thanked Sensei for forcing me to make more poison, but he explained that that was his job as my teacher and that every alchemist should have at least some poison accessible to him, always.

The young boy refused to speak at all, even when Keiko did her best to get as small as possible and as gentle as she could. In the end, it was Ellie who got him to talk. She flew over and tried to start playing with him, though at first the young boy didn’t seem to want to play, eventually Ellie wore him down with her unique combination of exuberance and tireless energy. After they played tag for a little while the boy came and asked for food. At that point, we got some information out of him.

“What’s your name?” Keiko wiped a bit of snot from under the boy’s nose.

The boy’s stomach growled as he answered. “My name’s John, do you have any food? I’m really hungry.” His stomach growled even louder.

“So, where are your mom and dad?” Keiko asked gently as she handed the young boy a bowl full of soup that I’d made the week before.

John’s face fell as he started crying while he ate his soup. A few moments later he pointed at the ashes from where I head burned the meat from the spatial rings of the people in the tent.

Keiko did her best to keep her stomach calm, but I was just full of rage.

I sat down next to the boy, John, and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about that John, I wish there was more we could do for you. With your parents gone, do you have anyone who can take care of you?”

Keiko glared daggers at me, but I knew that the mission we were on was very important and that we wouldn’t be able to take along a young boy who hadn’t even opened all three of his cores yet.

The boy looked up at me and smiled through the tears. “Thank you for the soup, it was really tasty.” He put the soup bowl down the ground in front of him before wiping his hands on his roughhewn pants. “My gran-gran and pop-pop live that way.” The boy raised his hand and pointed the way we were supposed to be going, toward the next secret passageway.

Keiko looked at me with pleading eyes and I reluctantly acquiesced, shrugging.

Keiko smiled, then looked at the boy once more. “John, would you like us to take you to your gran-gran and pop-pop?”

The boy jumped up excitedly, “Yeah!”

Ellie flew around John’s head a few times before stopping in front of his face and booping him on the nose before flying around yelling.

“Catch me if you can!”

John tore off running after Ellie and the pair of them ran around like that for half an hour before both were tired. I ended up carrying John, while Keiko carried Ellie. Keiko and I both were hungry, though after what we’d seen, we decided to skip lunch for the day. After walking for a while, John woke up and pointed at a very large tree that broke through the canopy over four hundred feet above the forest floor.

“Gran-gran and Pop-pop live inside that tree. I can show you how to get in.” He sounded a bit unsure. “I hope I remember how to get in, Mom only taught me a couple of days ago.” He did his best not to cry, but I could see that he needed to. I patted him on the back and assured him that it was okay to cry, and he bawled his eyes out.

I was hyperaware of anything that might approach us, but it appeared that the encampment of Indus Tribe numbers that Keiko and I had taken down had cleared out the area of anything else that might have been cause for alarm.

Eventually, we reached the enormous tree. John walked down to the roots of the tree and walked through the roots like they didn’t exist. Keiko and I followed him, we passed through another illusion, not unlike the one we’d seen at the last passageway. Once we got inside, John walked ten feet in before turning to the right wall and reciting a little rhyme.

“Three to the right, four up top. Make it bite, you’ll know what’s right.” As he recited the rhyme, he would tap different parts of the wall that appeared to just be random pictures, but as he finished, we heard a grinding noise and a staircase appeared, leading upward.

John ran up the stairs yelling, “Gran-gran, Pop-pop, I’m here. These nice people saved me!”

I looked over at Keiko and shrugged. She returned my shrug before walking up the stairs to follow John.