Eclipse Academy, Paired Cultivation Book Two: Chapters 4-6 (A Threads of Fate Universe Story) (Patreon)

Chapter 4

As Keiko and I made our way up the stairs to follow John, I was astounded at the intricate carving work that was done on the walls made up of tree roots that we were passing between. Each of the carvings was incredibly intricate and no matter how hard I searched for a pattern; I was unable to find one. However, I did have a strange feeling that there was something obvious I was missing about the carvings that I really should’ve understood.

At my hip, Sensei started laughing and when I asked him what he was laughing about he told me I would understand in good time. I knew it had to be related to the carvings on the wall, but despite my best efforts I was unable to figure out what was special about them.

Unlike me, Keiko was mostly focused on following John up the massive spiral staircase. To catch up to him she infused her legs with a bit of qi from her heart core and bounded up the stairs like a rabbit. I trusted that she would be able to take care of the situation, so I followed at a much more sedated pace while staring at the carvings on the walls.

After climbing forty or fifty feet in the air while working our way slowly around the massive tree I gave up on figuring out the carvings and instead allowed myself to relax for a minute. As soon as I relaxed, my field of perception expanded beyond simply the carvings and when it did so I finally figured out what was so special about them. Each of the carvings was a high-grade illusion formation that only worked when you weren’t intentionally staring at it. I laughed as I passed small shapes of the different beasts that could only be found on the island of the Eclipse.

Sensei laughed, “I see you relaxed a bit. Do you appreciate the carvings more now? Or are you just annoyed with them now?”

I shook my head, “I’m not disappointed, per se. I actually think it’s kind of genius that you have to relax to view the art they created. That way whoever created this masterpiece would know what the person coming to visit them was uptight or not. All they’d have to do is ask how they liked the carvings on the way up.”

“You’d be right there, though I happen to know that a formation like this is incredibly difficult to construct. Usually, it would take an Expert formation master hundreds of hours to make even one storey of this. We’ve gone up at least seven or eight storeys and the carvings don’t seem to be lowering in quality at all. If I had to guess, there’s someone who is incredibly talented with formations living here, though that person may actually have already passed. If that’s the case, hopefully they’ve passed on their skills to those who came after them.”

“One can only hope.”

As I was pondering the situation, I heard a short scream come from a way above me on the staircase. Surging qi from my heart core, I reinforce my arms and legs and immediately sprinted up the stairs to see if it was Keiko or John who screamed. When I got to the top of the stairs, I was amazed to find an enormous chamber, easily fifty feet across, that was full of what looked to be an entire house. There was a living room, dining room, kitchen, and a spiral staircase.

In addition to the homey setting, I also saw a giant, twenty-foot-tall feathered reptile that appeared to be trying to eat Keiko, who was the one who had screamed. I immediately sprang into action, charging forward with hands coated in Inferno qi.

The sight of the large feathered reptile was startling, but what was even weirder was that John was standing behind the beast, but he didn’t seem to be reacting to it at all. In fact, I was sure that he had no idea it was there, he was looking at a basket of fruit without a care in the world.

The beast roared and, while I could hear the noise, there was no pressure wave behind it. In front of me, Keiko tried to slash at the beast’s leg and was met by a flash of golden sparks rather than the clean cut we both expected. As she swore in a particularly colorful manner, I realized what must be going on.

At that point, I heard John yell and everything became clear. “Gran Gran, Pop Pop, don’t hurt them! They’re the ones who saved me!

The Dawnblade was able to cut through nearly any material that was less than the celestial grade, which included most beast hide. I didn’t think that the beast in front of us was at the level of a King cultivator, so it became obvious as to what we were dealing with.

“We brought your grandson back to you; can you dismiss this formation before I have to do something that you’d not like to your tree to get rid of it?”

I yelled toward where I had seen John run behind the beast. The beast roared once again for a few moments before being cut off as it dissolved into golden sparkles in the air. From behind its body came a pair of mature looking people. The man was wearing a pair of green leather pants that blended in seamlessly with his mottled green and brown vest. In addition to that, he wore shoes that appeared to be made of Ironwood leaves wrapped around his feet. Beneath his vest I could see that, despite his age, he was in very good shape. The woman appeared slightly younger than the man. She wore the same colors as the man, though instead of pants and a vest she wore a long skirt and a surprisingly artful blouse. Both of their hair colors matched John’s dirty blonde mop.

When I took a gauge of their cultivation, I suspected that they were somewhere between Brain and Saint cultivators, though they could have been either, just about to break through to Saint or not having advanced far through Saint.

The woman spoke up, though she kept John tucked tightly behind her with a hand placed on his shoulder protectively. “You saved John? What was in it for you?” The man she was with stood beside her with crossed arms and grunted in agreement.

Keiko looked at me with pleading eyes and I immediately knew that she did not think that her particular brand of diplomacy would work well with this group, so she was going to be leaving it to me. At some point we were going to have to talk about how she wasn’t using mental communication like she was supposed to be doing, but that was a conversation for another time.

I slowly strode up beside Keiko and pulled her into such a side hug, she quickly sheathed the Dawnblade, while I sheathed the Duskguard. I nodded and smiled at the trio standing before Keiko and I.

“Yes, we did save John from the Indus tribe.” The man standing in front of John spat angrily at the mention of the Indus tribe. I noted that before continuing, “We didn’t want the boy who we assume to be your grandson to suffer the same fate as his parents or the rest of the people he was with. That wasn’t the first group of Indus tribe members we wiped out and I don’t think it will be the last.” I clenched my fists and made a good show of appearing to be tougher than actually thought I was. I wasn’t sure if it was going to help, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

The woman standing before John laughed out loud and waved for us to follow as she walked over toward what I could only assume to be her kitchen.

“Any enemy of the Indus tribe is a friend of ours, come over and join us for a spot of tea.”

John was bouncing up and in his grandmother’s grip while pointing at Keiko and I. “See, I told you, they saved me!”

The older woman didn’t respond to John with anything more than a simple pat on the shoulder before starting to pull out mugs and a jar that I figured must have been full of tea leaves. As she did that, the man she had appeared with took over standing beside the kitchen while waving towards a pair of chairs that were along a long stretch of log that had been cut in half to form a counter of sorts. To that point, he had never uncrossed his arms or said a word.

I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with this couple, which they obviously were. They were obviously related to John, but they didn’t seem all that broken up about the loss of their son or daughter.

Keiko dragged me over to go sit in the chairs the man had indicated and as we sat there waiting, the woman spoke up.

“You can call me Miriam and my husband’s name is Clyde. We’ve served as the guardians of the path for this station for nearly one hundred years now, though you wouldn’t be able to tell it by our looks. I know what you’re thinking, how can a pair of Saint cultivators look so old? The answer is that we’ve both been stuck at a bottleneck since we reached Saint and we haven’t been able to push through since then.”

She smiled the shock on my face before continuing.

“It was written all over your face, I figured I would just let you know so you didn’t have to keep wondering. Clyde and I made our peace with it years ago and we’re fine with our lot in life. Our daughter, on the other hand, was another story. She kept looking for ways for Clyde and I to push past the bottleneck we were stuck at, but in all her hunting she never found anything that would help.

“In her travels she met that Tristan boy and soon after that John entered our lives. Miriam was ecstatic to have a little boy and was heartbroken when she thought that she had to keep leaving to try and find something to help her father and I. We can’t thank you enough for taking care of our little boy, he had only just recently gone off with his parents on their most recent hunt for some mythical treasure trove of alchemical ingredients. Fools they were.” Her voice choked up for just a second, but almost immediately went back to normal.

I heard since Sensei’s voice in my head, “You know that means they were searching for my Inheritance, correct?”

I replied in kind, “Yeah, I figured that out. Do we have anything that can help push through their bottlenecks so they might have a chance to advance past early Saint?” I was pretty sure that we did, but I wasn’t sure if Sensei would tell me how to make it, seeing as the ingredients were probably very valuable and Keiko and I might need them eventually.

“Yes, we do have something that could help them push through that bottleneck, but the problem is that at their age there’s a chance that it would actually kill them. You’d have to make them a second alchemical substance to keep them unconscious so their bodies can’t thrash as they break through their bottlenecks. What I’d guess is that they aren’t actually at a true bottleneck. Their meridians are probably just clogged up with too much metal and wood qi, probably due to living in this Ironwood tree for so long. You’ll need to make something to push as much fire and wind qi through their meridians as possible to clear out the clogs. It shouldn’t be too difficult, though the ingredients might be difficult to replace.”

I thought about it for a moment before speaking to Sensei again. “What if I didn’t use an alchemical solution? What if I just thought of a better way to fix their issue?”

Sensei sounded surprised, “I’m all ears, what are you thinking?”

As Sensei and I were discussing that, Keiko was talking with Miriam about how she and Clyde have been taking care of John since he was a baby and that was about all I got from that conversation because my mind was racing with ideas of how to help the couple break through.

I detailed out my plan to Sensei. “Keiko and I cultivate with Orbital Breathing, which acts as a way to purify the qi that we draw into our bodies while expelling the impurities. What if, instead of doing Orbital breathing with Keiko, I used a similar method to essentially pull out any fire and wind qi inside of one of them while forcing as much Inferno qi into their system as I think they’d be able to handle. Eventually, my Inferno qi should be able to burn through the blockages they’ve got and allow them to cultivate normally again. We don’t share a linked core, so I know that the efficiency of this method won’t be very high, but I think it might work. What do you think?”

Sensei was silent for a few minutes, so I spent that time listening to Keiko try and get Clyde to talk, but no matter what she did, the best she was able to get out of him was a grunt at her mention of how much she hated the Indus tribe.

Sensei’s voice crept back into my head. “I’ve reviewed all the facts and as long as you don’t immediately incinerate them, I think there’s a very good chance of your plan succeeding. The only problem is that it’s going to be absolutely exhausting and you need to be heading toward the next stop on the map on your way to Eclipse Academy. There’s only one more stop before the home stretch and I worry that this is going to drain you and slow down you and Keiko’s travel. Is it worth it to you to help two strangers you just met?”

I looked at Miriam as she smiled down at John before he jumped up onto the split log that Keiko was sitting beside the try and tackle her into a big hug. I watched as Miriam took Clyde’s hand and squeezed it while looking at her grandson with pain in her eyes. I considered how they had lost their daughter and for their grandson’s sake they weren’t taking the time to grieve.

I knew my answer beyond the shadow of a doubt.

“You know it’s worth it to me and I’d bet anything that Keiko will agree with me on this.”

I could feel Sensei’s pride at my answer, “That’s the right answer. The best alchemists, actually, strike that. The best cultivators are those who aren’t afraid to take a risk to help people. When you get to the level of power I was at before creating my Inheritance, you start going through your life and thinking about the choices you made along the way. I can honestly say that I never regretted any of the times I took a risk to help someone else when it was within my power to do so, even the times I failed and it cost me.”

I was flabbergasted, “I’ve never thought about it like that, but I think I’m going to feel the same way.”

“Yet again, I have to say how proud of you I am. I couldn’t have found a better successor for my Inheritance of the Pot.” Warmth radiated through his mental voice. “Anyway, the next thing you have to do is convince them that what you just thought of is necessary. I don’t think they trust easily and based on the fact that even after John told them you and Keiko were friendly, they still tried to kill you with a formation, I’d be hesitant to say that you’re going to definitely succeed in that.”

I looked over at where Keiko was sitting and watched as her rapport with the set of grandparents grew and knew that I already had my secret weapon.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that hard, with Keiko and I working as a team there’s not much we can’t do.”

I waited until there was a lull in the conversation between Keiko and Miriam before speaking.

“Miriam, I think I have a way to help you take care of John more easily moving forward.”

She snorted, “What are you going to do? Give me ten-foot-long arms? We both know that boys will be boys and I’ll be chasing after him forever.” Clyde grunted in agreement.

I grinned, “Would you believe me if I told you that the alchemical treasure trove your daughter was searching for was real? Beyond that, would you believe it if I told you that I was the one who had found that Inheritance?”

The smile left Miriam’s face and was replaced by tears welling up in her eyes. She sniffled, “You’re telling me that my daughter wasn’t crazy? The thing she spent her life searching for actually did exist?”

I nodded, “It was an alchemical Inheritance that there’s every chance they wouldn’t even have been able to get into. However, I did learn quite a few things in there and I think I’m going be able to help you and your husband break through the bottleneck you’re been stuck in all those years. After doing so, you’ll be even better protectors of your grandson, for even longer than you would’ve been before.”

I knew that I was laying it on a little thick, but I genuinely believed that it was a good idea for them to do this and knew that if I didn’t give them a tangible reason to allow me to try what I was thinking, there was almost no chance of them agreeing to it.

Clyde looked over at Miriam and the two of them left John while he was eating a snack of some kind of tree fruit before going into a door I hadn’t even seen and closing it behind them.

About ten minutes later, Miriam came out with determination plastered across her face before addressing me. “If you think you can help Clyde and I break through, do whatever you need to. The only thing we ask is, if we don’t make it through the procedure, that you take care of John for us. We both know that alchemists make decent money and should be able to support a child relatively easily.”

At that point, Clyde spoke for the first time. “Me first. Miriam will watch the boy.” He looked at me expectantly. Despite not knowing him very well, I could tell from the way he was fidgeting with his fingers that he was nervous about what I was going to be doing.

I did my best to keep him calm, as the calmer he was the higher his chance of survival was. At least that’s what I thought, the process I was about to try was entirely untrodden ground at that point.

“Is there somewhere we can go that we won’t be disturbed for a while?”

Wordlessly, Clyde turned around and opened up the door he and Miriam had exited through just a moment ago. He walked in and left the door open behind him, so I took that as an invitation and followed him through. As I closed the door behind me, I was not surprised to find what appeared to be a meditation chamber.

The room wasn’t very large, only fifteen feet by twenty feet if I had to guess. The two cushions placed inside were spaced so that they would be perfectly equidistant from each other as well as the corners of the room.

Clyde waved his hand toward one of the cushions and made to sit down before I raised a hand to stop him.

“We won’t be needing those, I brought something a little bit more effective with me to help.” After Clyde nodded, I pulled the Centering Lotus out of my spatial earring and set it down dead center in the room, between the two cushions. As soon as it grew to full size, I took my seat within it and waved for Clyde to join me. At first, he looked confused but eventually he shrugged and joined me, mirroring my pose. I smiled, not every cultivator would trust someone they just met, going so far as to isolate themselves in a room and entering an artifact they knew nothing about. Either Clyde was very confident in his ability to defend himself or he genuinely trusted me, maybe a bit of both. No matter how it was, I knew that I do my best to prove that I was there to help him and Miriam.

I spent a few minutes explaining to Clyde how the basics of Orbital Breathing worked. I explained how we would be exchanging qi in a pattern that would eventually would become more and more natural as we did it. When I tried to explain how I was going to use a combination of wind and fire qi to aid him he asked if I meant Dawn qi and I had to explain that I actually use something called Inferno qi. I explained the differences between the two types of qi to him and he merely grunted in response. That was only the second time he’d ever spoken to me.

After a few minutes of explanation, I asked Clyde if he was ready to begin. He grunted in response before settling in. Taking that as affirmation, I began by taking a significantly deeper look at Clyde’s cultivation. I saw that, despite his current predicament, he had actually done a pretty fair job at balancing his qi usage. Inside his lower core was a very even mix of the six primary types of qi, lacking only light and dark qi, which wasn’t unusual. It appeared that living in this enormous Ironwood was the only reason that Clyde had been able to break through to a higher stage of cultivation. Otherwise, from what I could tell, he would be able to advance to at least the level of Sage, if not farther, given enough time and resources.

Next, I checked out his qi pathways and found that all of them were healthy right up until the point where they terminated at his swollen and damaged meridians. Each of his meridians were calcified over with layer upon layer of wood and metal qi. It was a wonder that he could use any other type of qi besides those two types, but I knew from my limited studies of formations, mostly following along while Keiko was talking to Sensei, that the formation he had used to create the image of that large beast would take at least four or five types of qi, not just wood and metal. I took it as a sign that either this man, or his wife, were either formation masters of incredible skill themselves or one or both of them had inherited the teachings of the formation master who had created the carvings along the stairs up to the tree house.

I heard Sensei’s voice in my head, “It’s worse than I thought. Do you see how the blockage is spreading up the qi channels toward his cores? It hasn’t spread far yet, but unless something is done within the next year or two, there’s no way he’ll survive. He is truly fortunate that you found him when you did, if this had been allowed to advance for another six months there would be no turning back without completely destroying his cultivation in an attempt to remove the blockages.”

I mentally sighed, “This is going to be incredibly painful and I’m worried that John or Miriam will try and enter to try and save him.”

Sensei chuckled, “Tell Keiko to keep them out. With her strength, she should be able to hold back Miriam long enough for you to finish the process, regardless of how badly she wants to get in.”

I mentally slapped my forehead, because to do so visibly would have been foolish in front of Clyde. “You’re right, I’ll send her a message now.”

I sent Keiko mental message. “You may hear some screaming from in here, no matter what happens don’t let John or Miriam enter until we open the door.”

She replied in kind, though she sounded worried. “All right, don’t do anything reckless.”

If only she knew what I was going to do, she would probably kick my butt.

After taking a deep breath to center myself, I had Clyde Mayor me. Palm to palm and sole of foot to sole of foot. It was nothing like the easy way that Keiko and I usually cultivated, but we had the added benefit of a linked core, while Clyde and I did not. It would take all of my concentration to guide the qi out of his body and into my own. I decided that there was no time like the present and began the process.

I had Clyde slowly gather as much fire and wind qi as he could within his lower core and then push it as close to his meridians as he could. I started with the meridian in his left hand, seeing as he seemed to be favoring it, I assumed it was his dominant hand. I extended a thread of my qi into his meridian, using metal qi to slip through the blockage and loop the gathered fire and wind qi gathered on the other side.

The next thing I did was gently push Inferno qi along the thread of metal qi I had created. It slowly inched its way through Clyde’s clogged meridian. When it met the resistance of the blockage, I heard Clyde grit his teeth as I felt, rather than saw, the wood and metal qi began to burn away as if they had never been. As soon as even a speck of my Inferno qi reached the fire and wind qi within him, the combination of fire and wind qi immediately moved to mirror my Inferno qi and with a thought I gained control of it.

At that point, I started the cycle. Using the Inferno qi I had created using Clyde’s own qi I, as gently as I could, scoured the blockage from the meridian in his left hand, all the while gathering up the other pockets of fire and wind qi he had gathered at each meridian site across his body.

After I finished clearing out the blockages on his left and right hand the process got significantly easier. At that point, I was able to create a cycle between he and I that was a lot gentler than forcibly burning away the blockages with borrowed Inferno qi. I used the tightly controlled Inferno qi to slowly eat away at each of the blockages in turn as I cycled it through his body. I realize along the way that I was tempering his qi pathways as I went through this process and I wondered if it was something I should do for Keiko as well when we had some down time.

From the look on Clyde’s face, the process was intensely painful, but it didn’t appear to be doing any damage. Rather, with every pass of my Inferno qi it appeared that I was actually strengthening his qi pathways and I was willing to bet that given enough passes there would be a qualitative increase in the amount of qi he would be able to use at any given time.

However, that wasn’t what I was working with him to do at that point, it was just a happy coincidence. Over the course of the next two hours, I scoured every last speck of wood and metal qi blockage from every meridian in Clyde’s body. If it weren’t for my enlarged lower core, there was no way I would’ve been able to maintain the required level of qi output for so long. Unlike with Keiko, the qi I took in from Clyde didn’t respond naturally and eventually I would have to expel it. About an hour in, I started having use only my own qi and at that point it started to become tiring.

After the process was done, Clyde and I both laid back on our own petals on the Centering Lotus for a few moments. While quietly panting, I looked over at Clyde and saw that he was staring at his hands as he flexed them. A moment later I saw him generate a ball of water qi in one hand and a ball of fire qi in the other. He slowly set them swirling around each other before combining them overhead to create a mist which eventually condensed into drops of water that landed upon us in a pleasantly warm rain.

“Thank you.”

I craned my head over to see Clyde’s face, but by that point he had already rolled off of the Centering Lotus and was walking toward the door to the main room of the treehouse.

I gingerly stepped off of the Centering Lotus before drawing it back into my spatial earring. I languidly followed Clyde as he moved toward the door. As soon as he reached it, Clyde slid the door open and saw that Keiko was standing in front of the door with the Dawnblade drawn in a defensive stance while Miriam appeared to be incredibly anxious and was glancing furtively behind Keiko toward the now open door.

Hearing the door open, Keiko slid to the side and allowed Clyde to exit. I slowly walked up beside her and pulled her into a side hug. “You did good. I think the process worked.”

Keiko sighed in relief before sheathing the Dawnblade, which shrank it back down to its short sword appearance. “I’m glad Sensei worked on teaching me about formations, if he hadn’t there’s no way I would’ve been able to stop Miriam from getting in there. The things she can do with wood and metal qi are insidious. At one point I was almost one hundred percent sure that the Dawnblade was going to reach around and stab me, all by itself.” She shivered, “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

I kissed from the top of the head will giving her another hug. “Like I said, you did a great job Keiko.”

Across the room I could see that Clyde and Miriam were whispering to each other. I figured that listening in on them was rude, so I did my best to tune them out. It turned out that Sensei, on the other hand, had no such qualms.

“Heh. She’s very impressed with your work Steven, good job. I have to say that I’m impressed as well, with the level of qi control you showed just now I’m even more confident that you will be an exceptional alchemist one day.”

I smiled, but didn’t bow like I usually would. “Thank you for the compliment, Sensei. I’m certain that your alchemical training is the primary reason I was able to help him. Without that, there’s no way that I would be able to control the miniscule levels of Inferno qi I was able to generate within his body.”

“You’re too kind.” Sensei sounded proud of himself, which as far as I was concerned was a valid response, given what I had just accomplished.

A few minutes later, Miriam walked over and bowed deeply to me. “Thank you so much for the kindness you showed my husband. What do you require before being able to do the same for me?” She did not raise from her bow, in fact she deepened it further until she was nearly bent at a right angle.

“First thing, I need you to do is stand up straight.” I sighed.

Miriam slowly straightened up with a confused look on her face. “I was just paying my respects. When someone does something so generous it is only right to show them deference.” She gave me another small bow, but this time she straightened back up quickly.

I shrugged, “I understand. If that’s your way I won’t contest it. At this point, all I require before I can assist you is a good meal and a bit of time cultivating with my partner. Would it be alright with you if we started about two hours after dinner?”

Miriam smiled and gestured toward the kitchen. “With all you’ve done for our family, I’ll cook you and your wife the tastiest meal you’ve ever eaten.”

Keiko laughed, “Steven is quite the chef, so you’ll have your work cut out for you on that front. However, if you do manage to make something tastier than he can, I’ll need you to teach me how to make it, okay?”

She blushed when I chuckled at that. She was a bit self-conscious about the fact that she was utterly hopeless in the kitchen.

Miriam laughed. “For our saviors? Anything.” She bowed once more before walking toward the kitchen where I saw her produce a bunch of ingredients, knives, other cooking utensils, and finally a load of different spices.

Clyde caught my eye with a wave before pointing towards where he and John were sitting around the table with some kind of tiles laid out on it. John seemed to be very excited, so I figured it must be some type of game.

“What’s the game called?” I asked as I sat down across from John. Keiko sat down across from Clyde a moment after I settled in.

John was more than happy to explain. “It’s called Restore the Balance. Gran Gran and Pop Pop taught me how to play it when I turned five. They always told a story about how powerful cultivators used to keep the balance of nature, back in the before times. I think that was like twenty years ago or something, they’re really old.” He snickered before getting his ear flicked by Clyde, though from behind John I could see that Clyde was smiling at his grandson.

John howled in pain, doing his best to play up the flick from his grandfather as significantly more than what it was. A minute or two later he finally calmed down and continued to tell us about the game.

“So yeah, there are six different colors of tiles, one for each type of qi. You have to get three of the same kind of tile…” He went on to explain the entire game, but it was the last thing he said about it that struck a chord with me.

“Yeah, the last rule doesn’t really make much sense, but Gran Gran and Pop Pop keep telling me that they’re sure it’s right. For some reason you have to get eight groups of colored tiles, not six. That doesn’t make much sense to me because even a kid like me knows that there’s only six types of qi. I figured it’s just them trying to make it so the game’s a little longer.” John hurriedly started shuffling the tiles so we could play the game. He didn’t even ask if we wanted to play, though I knew that we would both gladly give it a try.

Keiko and I exchanged a glance, but before I could send Keiko message Sensei sent both of us a message at the same time.

“This was my son’s favorite game as a child. I’m surprised to see that it survived for so long. This doesn’t seem to be a full set of tiles though, there should be eight colors of tiles. One for each type of qi.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Ask Clyde if you can see the box the tiles came in, I want to test out a theory.”

I smiled at Clyde. “Would it be alright if I saw the box that these tiles came out of? They’re beautiful and I’d love to see the handiwork.”

Clyde grunted before handing me a surprisingly long and thin box. It was made of Ironwood, like most of the things in this dwelling, and when I opened it, I saw that there were spaces for six colors of tiles, twenty of each color. There were spots for forty tiles across and they were stacked three deep to account for all of the tiles. The craftsmanship on the box was exquisite, it was something my grandfather would’ve been incredibly proud to have created, he always loved making game pieces and the like.

Sensei startled me as I was taking in the craftsmanship of the box. “Ask who made that box.”

I figured I would humor my teacher, so I acquiesced. “Clyde, who made this box?”

Clyde stared at me for a moment before speaking slowly. “The original master of this waystation brought a similar box with them when they created this place. The way it was explained to me, they made a new box out of Ironwood after coming here to keep the tiles safe. The tiles were some sort of memento from before they came to this island.”

At this point, Sensei’s voice was shaking. “Find the green five and show it to me.”

I checked the hand of tiles I had pulled and found that I actually had already drawn the green five. I picked up my hand to look at it more closely and heard Sensei start to weep.

Keiko looked at me, concern evident on her face. “Sensei, what’s wrong?”

Through heavy sobs he replied. “That’s my son’s set. His mother made him those tiles as a wedding present. My wife’s signature is in the center of the green five’s central pip, just like I remember. It’s been a long time, but I’d recognize that qi signature anywhere. I think I know who the original caretaker of this place was.” His voice grew even more hoarse, though he did stop sobbing. “My son said that he was going to pass the tile set on to his firstborn when they were of age to start playing seriously. I never got to meet my grandchildren, but I know that my son wouldn’t have left this life without leaving at least one child behind to carry on our name.”

“Sens…” I started to speak to Sensei, but he cut me off.

“Put the box on the table, close it, and then tap on the lid three times.”

I figured that Sensei wouldn’t be trying to get me killed, so I did as he asked. I set the box on the table, closed it, and then tapped on the top three times. From inside the box, I heard a distinct clicking sound. When I opened the box back up to look, there were forty more tiles set into the top of the thin box. They were white and black, to represent light and dark qi.

When Sensei spoke to me again, his voice was full of happiness, rather than sadness. “My son was very competitive and when we played with all eight suits, he was never able to beat his mother or I. However, when you play with only six suits there’s a lot more luck to the game, so he would occasionally be able to beat us. That’s why this box is special. It’s designed to only highlight the six suits that my son liked to play with. Only someone who knew the trick would be able to get the other two suits to appear to allow for a full game.

“His mother made the original version of that box to hold the tiles she made for him for his wedding as a first anniversary gift. She made that box from Soarwood, which is as beautiful as it is incredibly delicate. I’m not surprised that he made a box to hold his tiles out of Ironwood, he grew quite cautious in the years before I created my Inheritance. I wonder if the box my wife made is stored somewhere in this tree?”

From across the table, I saw that Clyde’s eyebrows were raised and when I spun the long wooden box around so he could see what was inside the lid, he was astounded.

“What did you do?” He stared at me suspiciously.

I wryly ran my fingers through my hair. “I saw something strange on the lid of the box, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a few taps to see what would happen.” Alright, that was a terrible lie, but I wasn’t going to tell him about a multiple millennia old spirit stored in a pot hanging in a bag at my hip telling me that the tiles were from his time. I had built up a pretty good rapport with them, especially after fixing Clyde’s meridians, but I didn’t want to stress it so early.

Clyde grunted and shook his head. “Yeah, strange.” He pulled the box back over toward him so he could take a look at the new tiles that had appeared in the box.

I heard him mutter under his breath.

“Always though six colors of tiles felt odd in this game, especially with the win needing eight groups.” He cracked his knuckles and pulled the other tiles out of the box and started mixing them in with the hands we had already drawn, sneaking all of our tiles back into a big pile.

I felt Sensei’s awareness spread out from the bag at my hip in a wave. I was surprised, he hadn’t done that in all the time he’d been with me. I hadn’t even known that he was able to do so.

John seemed worried about how excited Clyde was to see the additional forty tiles appear.

“Pop Pop, I don’t know how to play the game with eight suits, can’t we just play with six like we usually do?” He made big doe eyes at his grandfather, who proceeded to ignore him entirely while dealing out hands of tiles to the four of us around the table with an uncharacteristically large smile on his face.

It turned out that Clyde was a bit of a gamesman and the fact that he lived in a waystation that didn’t see any travelers is what made him as grumpy as he was. I had a feeling that the longer we stayed there the more he would open up to us. I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to stay long enough to see who Clyde really was, but made a point to actively remember to come back to this waystation after Keiko and I were done with Eclipse Academy.

Over the next hour the four of us played Restore the Balance and I got the impression that Clyde wasn’t holding back on us, which John didn’t appear to be used to. Clyde won both full games and only lost one hand to Keiko when she managed to pull the perfect starting hand. I could tell that he was enjoying himself a lot more with the additional tiles, but John was not nearly as excited. He kept complaining about how it was unfair that Clyde was so much older than him and had been playing Restore the Balance a lot longer than he had. Clyde explained that he was just excited to try out the new tiles and that they would play a six-suited game with Keiko after I took Miriam in to help her. That promise seemed to mollify John and he complained significantly less afterward.

Just after the second game finished, I heard Sensei exclaim triumphantly. “There it is!”

It took everything I had to not to stare down at my hip, where his pot was. Keiko, on the other hand, wasn’t able to resist and overtly stared down at my side with her mouth agape. He really was loud in his exuberance and it gave me a bit of a headache, though that passed quickly.

Sensei continued excitedly, “The Soarwood box is in the middle of the meditation chamber. Right underneath where you set up the Centering Lotus when you helped Clyde. I wondered why there were no formations in that room that would help gather qi and now I know why. Soarwood is very greedy. That’s what makes it very useful to both formation masters and alchemists alike. The older piece of Soarwood is, the more qi it will naturally draw into itself. At the time my wife made the box for my son… the Soarwood she had used was already 20,000 years old. It was an incredibly rich gift and she had to pay a trader a dozen master-grade formations to acquire it.…” He grew quiet for a moment before suddenly continuing. “That’s it! It wasn’t the tree’s fault that their meridians were clogged up, it was the box!

“Take the Moonbeam Clan’s grotto for example, almost everything in there was made of Ironwood as well, but none of them had clogged meridians like Clyde and Miriam. Ironwood trees are incredibly good at maintaining the absorption of their qi. However, Soarwood is very greedy and it’s probably been drawing in all of the wood and metal qi from the Ironwood for millennia. I’m willing to bet that when they started running into issues with their cultivation, both Miriam and Clyde spent more and more time in the meditation chamber trying to break through, to no avail. The problem is, the longer they spent in there, the worse it was going to get. The only reason you were able to bypass the qi absorption field of the Soarwood was because of the Centering Lotus!

“We have to take it with us! A single shaving from that box would be enough for the basis of the next grade of qi gathering pill that you and Keiko will need to continue your rapid growth. There are untold multitudes of alchemical preparations that require Soarwood and all of them are made better the older the Soarwood is. Also, if we don’t take the box, the issue with their meridians will come back over time, I’m sure of it.”

At that point, he was almost pleading with me. He obviously wanted something created by his wife’s hand, even if he wasn’t able to touch it himself. Merely having it somewhere that he could be close to was probably enough for him.

I messaged both Keiko and Sensei. “How are we going to convince Clyde and Miriam to let us take something that was probably enshrined in this waystation by its creator? Any ideas?”

I figured that I could always tell keep Clyde and Miriam that the box was killing them, but I really wanted to avoid explaining how we had found it. I hoped that Keiko or Sensei would be able to come up with something better.

Sensei was blunt, “Tell them that the box is killing them. They should have no problem with you taking it after that.”

Before I could tell Sensei why I didn’t want to do that, Keiko spoke up. “Why do they have to know about us taking it?”

I stared at her in wonder. “Are you saying that we should steal it? You, the highborn daughter of an elder of Roh city, talking about stealing something from two people who are currently showing us such hospitality?”

She mentally snorted, “Laying it on a little thick there, aren’t you?” I smiled. “I may not have needed to steal to live like some people, but I did have to steal to get access to anything related to my mother. I learned years ago, what the person being stolen from doesn’t know, doesn’t hurt you.”

Her mental voice was smug, but I sensed a thread of sadness in there at the thought of her mother. I did my best to remember to ask about that later, but knew that it was likely a conversation would need to wait a while.

Sensei was all for it, “Excellent! After dinner, you two should asked to cultivate in their meditation chamber and once we’re in there I can show you where the box is and probably teach you how to release the formation that is hiding it. If I had to guess, it’ll be one of my son’s favorites.”

At that point, Miriam had Clyde pack away the tiles, being sure to pack the forty new tiles up in the lid of the box, where they promptly disappeared after all of them were placed inside. I explained that tapping on the lid three times while the box was closed would release them. After the tiles were put away, Miriam strode over to the table with an enormous roasting pan full of a delectable smelling meat of some sort along with a batch of side dishes all held precariously along her opposite arm.

After setting down the roasting pan she produced plates from the spatial ring on her right hand and placed them before each of us. She then laid out the accompanying side dishes before settling into the seat between John and Clyde.

From the smell alone, I knew that the meal was going to be phenomenal, it was doing wonderful things to my senses with hints of spicy and sweet. I was incredibly excited to taste everything.

“This all smells amazing, what wonders do we have before us?”

Some people may say I was laying it on thick there, but I was genuinely curious what the delicious smelling dishes in front of me were.

Miriam blushed slightly, “Our entrée is braised Glacier Python. Clyde and I killed it when we were in the mountainous region a few years ago and I’ve been saving the most tender portion of it for a special occasion, this seemed to fit. We have scalloped potatoes with Ironwood dust, for that nutty flavor. We also have Rainbow Cabbage with Thunder Chicken slices,” That made John cheer. Miriam smiled while continuing, “because they’re John’s favorite. Finally, except dessert, we have Sabertooth soup. Made from a Great Sabertoothed Bear I killed as a young woman. I make one pot of soup from it each year and after this I believe I only have enough to make two more.” She took a deep breath. “As for dessert, you’ll have to wait and see after we eat.” She grinned mischievously before waiting for everyone to dig in.

The dinner was as sumptuous and delicious as I could’ve hoped. After eating a bit of everything and waiting for the meal to wind down, I asked for detailed notes from Miriam as to how she prepared everything and recorded her wisdom in a notebook I hadn’t had much cause to use since leaving the Inheritance of the lovers. Stored inside that black, leatherbound, notebook was all of my culinary knowledge. I kept my dish ideas in an entirely separate, also leatherbound, notebook, though that one was red.

Once everything had been eaten, Ellie having swollen up to almost double her usual diameter before she crawled up around my neck and shoulders, Miriam produced a single dish from her spatial rang and placed it in the center of the table. It was breathtaking. It was a large piece of fruit carved into an exceptionally detailed flower. Between each petal, eight different types of fruit and berry compressed disks had been placed. In the very center was a purple sauce that Miriam explained was made of something simply called Ancient Berry. She explained that we were supposed to take as much of the fruit as we wanted, which was called Thousand-Year Fruit, but to make sure that everyone got an equal portion of the Ancient Berry sauce.

From my hip Sensei spoke up, “Make sure you follow her instructions, while this woman is obviously more of a formation master than an alchemist, cooking is its own form of alchemy. From the way she prepared that sauce, I can tell that it’s going to have a dramatic impact on the way you’ll cultivate this meal afterward. It has a multiplicative effect on everything eaten before it, so make sure to eat as much of the Thousand-Year Fruit as you want before adding your portion of the Ancient Berry sauce. You should ask where she found an Ancient Berry bush, I thought all of them had been harvested and wiped out by greedy alchemists in my own time. Each of the berries requires 5,000 years to grow and each bush can only hold twenty berries at a time, each at a different stage of growth. It’s very rare to find more than a couple of ripe Ancient Berries on a bush and that sauce looks to be made of at least three or four of them.”

After devouring the dessert, we all settled back into our comfortable leather chairs and relaxed for a few minutes. Eventually I worked up the nerve to ask Miriam where she found the Ancient Berries.

She was more than happy to tell me, “There’s an Ancient Berry bush about a half day run from here. The creatures nearby stay away from it for some reason. I actually stumbled upon it while running from the same Great Sabertoothed Bear that you ate as part of the soup earlier. There were a dozen berries on that bush, and all of them were ripe, so I picked them. Why do you ask?”

I smiled and held my hands out wide, “I’m an alchemist and I know that there are few concoctions that can only be made with Ancient Berries. I figured that I would have to pay a king’s ransom to eventually get them once I returned to the mainland, but to find out that there’s a bush nearby… I’m very excited. I wonder if any of the berries have finished ripening since you picked the ones you did.” I sighed, “I doubt it, seeing as they take so long to ripen, but hope springs eternal for the determined alchemist.”

Miriam smiled and shook her head before waving her hand toward me. To my surprise, I saw that, each seated in their own jade cup, there were six Ancient Berries.

Sensei immediately spoke up, “Don’t you dare tell her to keep them, put those away now.” He was incredibly forceful and I knew that it was best to listen to him when he spoke like that.

I bowed shallowly to Miriam before sweeping them into my spatial earring.

“Your generosity is greatly appreciated; this will do well to assist me in my alchemical journey.” I cupped my hands toward her before turning to a relaxed posture.

She merely laughed and waved away my seriousness. “For what you’ve done for my husband, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give you, besides our lives. You also saved John’s life, so as far as I’m concerned you can take anything you want from here.”

Her voice was full of tears and I watched as they started to run down her cheeks. She let them fall for a moment before wiping them away with a napkin. Clyde reached over and gave her a brief side hug while John started to tear up before putting his own hand in his grandmother’s grasp.

After chatting for a few minutes, Keiko and I broke from the table and asked to cultivate in the meditation chamber as we had planned. Clyde and Miriam had no objections, so we headed in there immediately afterward.

As soon as we closed the door behind us, Sensei had Keiko drop a silencing formation by the door, to prevent any sounds from leaking out.

“Alright, go to the exact center of the room and take a look at the floor. If you see a woodgrain that looks like a wagon wheel with six spokes, you’ll find the place you need to press to open up the Soarwood box’s location.”

I was flabbergasted, “You’re saying that it’s something so simple? I’m very surprised. I expected that there would be significantly more defenses on something as valuable as this.”

Sensei laughed, “There was. When I swept my senses over it, I felt each of them deactivate. It seems that my son, in keeping with family tradition, made sure that each of the main family members’ qi signatures were allowed to open up each other’s hidden caches. I can’t tell you how many times a cache of my wife’s saved my son and his wife’s lives. Once or twice my sons cache saved my own life, so it makes sense.”

Keiko and I scoured the center of the room for a few minutes before finally finding an infinitesimally small wagon wheel set about fifteen inches off the center of the room. As Keiko found the tiny wagon wheel, she pressed down on it. As we watched, the central board of the room swung up along the long edge to reveal a gorgeous box made out of light blue wood.

Along the lid of the box were detailed carvings of creatures I had never seen before, but I figured Sensei would eventually tell us what each of them were.

“Store the box immediately, the amount of wood and metal qi coming off of it right now will be damaging to you after just a few minutes. It seems that the formations my son used to store the box were actually helping to contain the immense amount of wood and metal qi that it had trapped. Actually, make sure you open up the box and look inside before you store it. It wouldn’t surprise me if my son left something inside for whoever was going to gather it up.”

Keiko hauled out the box and opened it up. Inside was a simple piece of parchment and a beautiful blue wooden ring. She took the two items out of the box and then had me store the box, seeing as it was an alchemical ingredient.

Sensei sounded both anxious and excited. “Well, read the letter, I can’t seem to breach the formations on it to read it myself.”

I unfurled the scroll and found that the inside letter was written in an oddly shimmering, beautiful, script.

Sensei grumbled, “I still can’t read it… can you read it for me please?”

He sounded desperate, which sort of made sense, seeing as he found something that could tie him back to his old life this far into the future. I started reading aloud.

To whoever is reading this letter, either your much more powerful than I was while writing this letter, or you somehow managed to pass the Inheritance of my grandmother or grandfather. If it was the latter, speak their name now or this scroll will immediately incinerate itself.

All of the script below that line disappeared and the lines that I’d already read started to glow red.

Sensei yelled in my head, “Say my name!”

I hurriedly did so. “Granville Torak.” A wave of light swept over me before the rest of the script reappeared. I went back to reading aloud.

I’m going to assume that if you’re still able to read this letter at this point you somehow have access to the qi signature of my mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather. In that case, what I’m about to tell you is especially pertinent.

As I’m penning this letter, Sunset Island is in a state of turmoil. Nearly all of the servants from grandmother and grandfather’s dwelling have left to form groups of their own and over the last thousand years or so seem to have reverted a bit from the level of sophistication that they lived in with grandmother and grandfather. I can’t say that they’re going back to being hunters and gatherers, but rather than living for the arts and for cultivation, instead they seem to be focusing mostly on agriculture and, in particular, the notion of combining qi types.

I created this waystation, one of twelve throughout the island, as a means to protect those few people who didn’t decide to join either of the clans or the single tribe that formed from the servants. My parents did their best after my grandparents left, but in the end, I don’t think it was enough. I’ve been here nearly one hundred years, after my mother and father spent nearly nine hundred years here, honing their crafts. They decided that they needed to leave, to seek out challenges, so that when they established their own Inheritance, they would have wisdom to pass on. I couldn’t fault my mother and father for that, so I didn’t try and stop them from leaving.

I fell in love with a descendent of grandmother’s head maid, her name is Ariel. Unlike my parents, I do not practice paired cultivation, so instead I focused on teaching her how to strengthen her own body, so as to lengthen her life.

At the time I am writing this letter, I am four hundred years old and my wife is three hundred and twenty years old. We have three lovely children, Eric, Sylvia, and Jasper. We all live in this ironwood tree that I protected with more formations than any place I’ve seen besides grandmother’s workshop. An Emperor level cultivator couldn’t get in if I didn’t want them to, though I assume by the time this note is found that may no longer be the case.

If I’m correct, some fragment of grandmother, or grandfather, is with the reader of this letter. All I ask is that you let them know that only blood relatives of ours are able to live in this place for more than a month. After that time, the formations in the main room will slowly drive anyone else insane. If you find anyone living in this place, they are family. Please do your best to protect them.

Forever yours,

Brandon Torak

PS

Dad noticed that the box grandmother made for his wedding was causing problems with my cultivation, but he didn’t have the heart to destroy it. Instead, he created a new box for the tiles and stored the old box here. Feel free to take the box if you think it could be useful, the only thing besides the note of value inside is a qi focus for metal and water qi. Those were always my mother’s favorites, seeing as she was always overly warm.

To my surprise, I was wrong about who was crying in the room with me. Sensei was resolute, but Keiko was bawling her eyes out. Her response didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I dutifully rubbed her shoulders and gave her a hug before addressing Sensei.

“So, it looks like you have more family around than you thought. What do you think about that?”

“I… I.” Sensei paused for a moment before speaking softly. “I have an apology to make.”

I looked down at the bag on my hip strangely, but didn’t interrupt him.

He sighed, “I had fully intended to convince you and Keiko to leave this island if you weren’t able to easily slip into Eclipse Academy. I was going to talk about how dangerous it would be inside if you weren’t able to slip in and how it wasn’t worth your lives to try and save those people who live on this island, whom you owe nothing to.

“However, now my opinion has changed. I would like you to do everything in your power to protect this island from the threat that is the Indus Tribe. Not only do I now know that I have a many times great-grandson, and potentially either another many times great-grandson or granddaughter, but if I’m correct each of the twelve waystation’s may or may not house more of my family members. If I’m correct of course.” Sensei’s voice was filled with something that was unusual for him, hope, but not just regular old hope, which he often had while speaking to me. Instead, this was hope that his family line wasn’t dead, that it had somehow found a way to live on through the ages until he could come back to them.

Keiko sniffled a moment before sucking a huge amount of air through her nose to stop it from dripping. “Sensei, we were already going to help the people here anyway, knowing that doing so will also help your family is just a bonus.” She sniffled again, but just stared meaningfully at the bag on my hip before pulling out a rag to fully blow her nose with a loud trumpet noise.

Most young ladies would’ve done their best to use qi to clean their nose or just leave the room to blow their nose, but not my Keiko. She was about as real as a person can get, and that’s one of the things I loved about her.

I chuckled while giving Keiko a gentle push before speaking to the, now silent, pot on my hip. “Keiko spoke correctly, she and I were always going to help the people here, but now we know there’s something more personal at stake, so it will only push us to try and be better.”

I pulled Keiko into a hug, she resisted for a moment before melting into me.

Sensei burst out laughing, “You two are absolutely crazy and at this time I’d like to say that I like you this way. Most cultivators don’t give a crap about anybody but themselves, but you two care so much about the people here, that don’t even have anything to do with you, and I find that very endearing. My wife and I did our best to help out everyone around us, but in the end our push for personal power drove us past everything except our family. I’m glad you two are on a similar path, but I hope that when you reach the heights of power, you’re still protective of the people around you.”

After that bit of excitement, Keiko and I settled back into our standard pattern of paired cultivation, doing our Orbital Breathing and following that up with a brief spar. Sensei was much more hands on than usual, today he was much more focused on assisting us in becoming stronger, rather than becoming more skilled. He told us ways that we could use qi to bolster our bodies in times of need using our Heart cores and explained how accelerating our thoughts using our Brain cores could be the difference between life and death. He encouraged each of us to practice accelerating our thoughts for only a few minutes at a time until we got comfortable with it, then learn to lengthen the time we could do so and see how fast we could sustainably continue doing so.

Keiko took to it like a duck to water, she was easily able to hold accelerated thought for two minutes right at the beginning of her training, while I struggled to even make it the full minute. When I asked why that was the case, Sensei explained that due to my enlarged Lower core I wouldn’t be as adept with my other cores, though over time I would be able to fix that, but now was not that time. He also said that Keiko was a bit of a prodigy at using her Brain core, which he said would make her use of formations in battle much easier.

After thinking about it for a moment I asked Sensei why I was so good at using qi threads, especially when it came to alchemy, if I wasn’t good at using my brain core. He explained that he wasn’t actually sure why that was the case, but that I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He said that there was a chance that there was some sort of natural affinity to multitasking that transcended the use of a particular core and that maybe I was exceptional with that. I designed to let it pass at that point and to worry about it later.

As soon as Keiko and I were done sparring and chatting with Sensei we headed back out into the central chamber to find John asleep on the couch, with his head on Clyde’s lap while Miriam was slowly pacing on the rug in front of the couch, glancing between the door we were exiting and her grandson on the couch.

Keiko gave me a kiss on the cheek before settling in to stand guard before the door, acting every part of the bouncer at a particularly nice inn back in Roh City.

I smiled and waved toward Miriam. “All right, it’s time to get started.” I spoke softly, doing my best not to wake up John from where he lay peacefully snoring on the couch. Miriam leaned down and gave her husband and grandson each a kiss on the forehead before following me back into the meditative chamber.

When I tried to explain what I was going to do, she stopped me and told me that she had already discussed it with Clyde. She strode confidently toward the Centering Lotus and settled in exactly where I would’ve told her to go. Smiling, I hopped up and settled in where I usually sat and got ready.

“Before we begin, do you have any questions for me? Don’t hesitate, because the more you trust me, the easier this will be.” I kept my voice as level and soothing as I could, because I could tell from the way that Miriam was tapping her foot that she was very nervous.

Miriam’s eyes flicked from poring over my face to staring at the door and then back to stare at my face. Her grin was shaky, “I don’t have any real questions, but I feel like I should. Can you just tell me about something about yourself that might put me at ease?”

If I didn’t know how dangerous doing this type of procedure was, I would’ve felt that it was strange that a badass like Miriam was so scared to be sitting near me. However, knowing that someone was going to be burning out parts of your cultivation system was incredibly intimidating, I kind of understood.

“Keiko and I are what are known as paired cultivators, we have linked two of our cores together and we can freely share qi between them. We also always progress through cultivation levels together, no matter what. There are a few other benefits, but in my mind, the greatest benefit is that I can trust my partner implicitly, because no matter what happens she and I are bound together forever.” I saw the look of shock on Miriam’s face, so I smiled in response. “I heard from my grandfather how the loss of his wife, who ran away, destroyed him. I never wanted that to happen to me, so I couldn’t even ask Keiko out until we were thrust together.”

Miriam had calm down a bit at that point, “That makes sense, I understand the fear you speak of, though Clyde and I have been together since we were children, so neither of us ever really worried about it too much.”

She was remarkably calm at this point, so I figured we could begin.

“All right, here we go…”

Having done the immolation process before, this time I was able to deal with the issue much more efficiently. What took me nearly two hours with Clyde only took an hour with Miriam, despite the blockages in her meridians being even more calcified than her husband’s were. Sensei said that she wouldn’t have lasted another two months without our help.

I shook my head and smiled as Miriam followed in her husband’s footsteps, immediately created a few balls of qi, though hers were earth and wind, rather than water and fire. She swirled them around and around for a few moments before bringing them together and then pulling her hands in as she produced a bit of fire qi into her palms to merge with the wind and earth qi. A minute later she was finished and she handed me a thumb sized crystal.

“Please, take this.”

I smiled, “I appreciate the thought, but there’s no need for a gift. All I ask is that, if you see any members of the Dawnrise or Moonbeam clans being accosted that you assist them.”

Miriam was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking hard about what I’d asked her to do. Eventually she nodded slowly. “As long as it doesn’t put the existence of our waystation in danger, I have no problem doing what you ask. Additionally, if it would put John in harm’s way… I just can’t do that. Is that sufficient?” It felt like she was staring deep into my soul with how hard she was focusing on me.

I shrugged, “Both of those caveats are reasonable, so yes, that is more than sufficient.”

As I assisted Miriam in getting off of the Centering Lotus, I was grinning ear to ear. It might sound odd, but I was excited for what the following day would bring as well as excited that I had helped two cultivators along their paths despite the risk to myself.

I knew that if I had made a mistake and drawn in too much of either Miriam or Clyde’s qi at once there was a chance that I could overwhelm myself or cause damage to my qi channels or meridians. The fact that both of their procedures went so flawlessly was nearly miraculous, especially seeing as they were the first and second times I had ever done anything like that procedure.

As we were standing beside the Centering Lotus, Miriam still playing with different balls of qi, I had a question for her.

“Would it be all right if Keiko and I slept in here? We usually just sleep on the Centering Lotus, so we shouldn’t need any special accommodations.”

Miriam chortled, “If you’d asked to sleep in Clyde’s and my bed, I would’ve agreed to it. Our meditation room is yours, as long as you need it.” She patted me on the back as she walked over and opened the door to the main room. Inside, Keiko, Clyde, and John were all playing Restore the Balance and they seemed to be having a great time. Even John was laughing along, to my novice’s eye it appeared that he was winning, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if Clyde had wanted to be winning… he probably could have been.

I gently bumped into Miriam, “Should we join them?”

She shook her head and instead led me towards the kitchen, “No, instead I think I’d like to teach you a few different cooking tips that I regularly use. If we get through mine, maybe you can show me a few of yours?”

I grinned and cracked my knuckles, “Alright, let’s do this!” I pulled out my notebook in preparation to take notes.

Over the next hour, Miriam showed me a ton of different techniques, most of them very quick, but a couple took a few minutes. She was a master of multi-tasking, showing me techniques that took longer at the same time as she showed me shorter ones, taking advantage of her down time like a professional chef. One technique she showed me took almost forty-five minutes to complete, it was a special way of smoking meat using Ironwood nettles as the wood chips.

She explained that the smoke from the Ironwood nettles actually has the ability to eliminate the wind qi inside whatever was being smoked. She explained that doing so she had good luck in balancing the qi in the meals she prepared. She said that she hadn’t figured out other ways to remove other types of qi, but that she knew Ironwood nettles would do the trick for wind qi.

At that point, we heard John yawn from across the room and just a few moments later Clyde started putting away the tiles before leading John off to another well-hidden door that I knew would have led to a staircase leading upstairs. Clyde nodded to me as he went, grunting when he saw that his wife was standing beside me and seemed to be okay. He looked meaningfully at Miriam and she nodded in return before starting to put away all of the things she’d pulled out to show me her cooking techniques.

She smiled before bowing to me, “Alright, I agree with Clyde that it’s time for bed. As we discussed, you and Keiko are welcome to use our meditation chamber as your bedroom for the night. I’ll be preparing breakfast at dawn, so if you’re interested in that, make sure that you’re up and ready about twenty minutes after dawn.”

I clasped both Miriam’s hands gently and nodded while pumping them softly. “Thank you very much for your instruction and we appreciate the place to sleep. We’ll see you in the morning.”

Miriam waved as she headed to the same door her husband had gone into to head upstairs. I wandered over toward the meditation room’s door before waving for Keiko to follow me. A few moments later she joined me and when we got onto the centering lotus that evening our extracurricular activities were exceptional and we both slept soundly following them. The warm glow of exchanged qi did much to facilitate a good night sleep.

Chapter 5

The following day, around noon, Keiko, Sensei, Ellie, and I were all headed down the same tunnel we’d found the entrance to the waystation in. As we walked, Sensei was drilling us on different methods to combat other paired cultivators.

“What do you do if one of the cultivators is an earth specialist who specializes in defense, while the other is a fire specialist who specializes in offense? You are to address this as if you were up against two Sage level cultivators.”

While I was thinking about it, I Keiko gave it a go. “The first thing I would do is shoot a blast of Arctic qi at the offensive fire user, doing my best to disrupt whatever attack he’s performing or preparing. After that, I’d have Steven focus on the defensive earth user, while I systematically picked apart the offensive fire user. My Arctic qi shields are exceptional at dealing with normal fire qi, so I wouldn’t be particularly worried about them burning through it unless their partner was very close, or pushing them qi instead of using it for themselves. As for Steven, I’d assume that he would be doing something to trip up the earth user, but I’m not sure what.”

I chimed in to finish off Keiko’s plan. “I agree with everything Keiko said, except for the last part about me. Instead, I would use a torrent of Inferno qi to bake the earthen wall he would probably be using to defend himself before smashing through it with the Duskguard tonfas. Once I’m up in their face, I’d generate blades of Inferno qi at the end of the Duskguard and go to town on the defensive qi user. Frow what I’ve seen, most people who are defensive like that don’t deal well when people are up in their faces.”

Sensei pondered our plan for a moment before giving it his critique. “Keiko’s strategy for the offensive fire user is nearly perfect, though if they also use wood qi, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt. Steven, other hand, you are too reliant on your massive lower core. I know that it’s hard to ignore, seeing as you don’t get tired when using qi very often, if at any time besides when you’re doing alchemy. You have to keep in mind that if someone is a full rank of cultivation higher than you, your enlarged lower core isn’t going to have as dramatic effect on the battle as it does when fighting someone of your own rank. You never know what other types of things they’ll be able to do.”

His voice grew soft. “I’m not saying that your enlarged lower core isn’t a huge asset, it is. However, I need you to understand that if all you can do is produce big flames and swing them at people, eventually you’ll encounter someone who can counter that.

Lastly, and this is actually for both of you. I understand that each of you have a specialized type of qi, Arctic for Keiko and Inferno for Steven, but you have to be careful to maintain a balance of the types of qi you use. The more varied your use of qi, especially when it comes to keeping a balance inside your cores, the stronger a cultivator you’ll be. This is especially important when using the light and dark qi, as being out of balance for either one of those is liable to destroy you, or warp you into something beyond your own understanding.

“As paired cultivators, you have a huge benefit, you can help each other balance your qi usage. If you notice each other using too much of one type of qi and not enough of another, you can help each other by cycling the correct type to balance each other out. However, don’t be too reliant on that process. It is much better to become adept at using all types of qi, as doing so will allow you to adapt your plans on the fly with many more options.”

He went on to speak more about balancing light and dark qi usage, despite the fact that neither of us had ever actually used either of those types consciously, though our qi beam we did together apparently used some of each to bind the other six types of qi together.

I thought about what he said afterward for quite a while as we walked. When light and dark qi are out of balance inside a person, not only does it warp your cultivation, but it can also warp your personality. That’s why most of the people who would use light and dark qi used them very sparingly and always in equal proportions. Otherwise, they were liable to have imbalanced levels of light and dark qi and slowly end up not themselves. I shivered at the thought of not being myself after using a type of qi.

I asked Sensei the question that had been burning in me from the first time I learned about Dark and Light qi. “What different kinds of things could we use light and dark qi for? I guess we don’t really know how to generate it, so we’ll need help with that as well, but can you give us an example of what each of them can do?”

Sensei pondered my question for a moment, obviously deciding if he should tell us anything about it, before finally speaking softly. “Light qi functions a little bit like fire qi, it’s very unpredictable and can also be very dangerous. However, dark qi is unlike anything else, it can be used as a type of smokescreen in low concentrations or as a blast of sorts in higher concentrations. In addition to using dark qi to attack or to limit mobility and vision, I recommend that you eventually learn how to use it to leave a tag on somebody that last a while so that you can track them.”

When I tried to get more information out of Sensei about using light and dark qi, he was pretty tightlipped about them. He said that learning how to use light and dark qi in an uncontrolled setting was a recipe for disaster. He explained how he knew a nice scholar who ended up using too much dark and not enough light qi, he ended up becoming a necromancer and trying to kill everyone in the village he grew up in because they had been rude to him about his habit of reading books, rather than fighting, while cultivating.

He explained how he and his wife Jeanette had been forced to kill that necromancer in order to save the town he was attacking. Even when Keiko asked for more information about light and dark qi, for once, Sensei remained firm in his stance. I was shocked, usually he would have given in to her requests, but I guessed that in this case he thought it was best to stick to his stance.

After a week of traveling through the underground tunnels, we discovered another entrance that was very like the one that led towards were Miriam, Clyde, and John lived. However, unlike the other puzzle on the wall, as soon as Sensei ran his qi over the puzzle it snapped into the proper position and revealed the passageway up to the waystation. When we headed up the stairs, we found that this waystation’s staircase was unadorned of anything but the most basic of formations. I got the feeling that this wasn’t a place that was used much by the original caretakers, AKA Sensei’s family.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw that the room was sparsely decorated, not even going as far as to have a kitchen with an island. Instead, there was a well-shielded iron stove and a pair of additional rooms off of the central chamber that appeared to be designed for sleeping and meditation respectively. As it was late, we all stayed the night and during our stay Sensei realized that, seeing as his qi signature opened the door, each of the waystations, at least in this area, were probably created by his family. This got him very excited, as there was a chance that there were more of his family members left out there than he knew about.

Before going to bed, I saw that one of the larger stumps around the stove that we had assumed were for sitting on was revealed to be a detailed map of Sunset Island with twelve spots marked on it. It didn’t take a lot for Keiko, Sensei, and I to figure out that those spots were marking where the waystations were. There were three per sector, and they appeared to be positioned equidistantly. I pulled out the map that Old Iron Bellows had given me and made sure that it updated with the new information we had found. Following that, we went to sleep.

The next day, when we consulted our updated map, we realized that our destination, Eclipse Academy, was between where we had spent the night and the next waystation. After we figured in our travel speed, we realized that the Eclipse Academy was a two-day hike away. Neither Keiko, nor I, were very nervous about that fact, but Sensei was another story.

“I understand that the two of you are feeling very powerful after becoming Saints, but you have to remember that there will always be more powerful people. I’m relatively sure that the Indus tribe, given their proclivities, is likely have some of those people. Gong Jin himself said that they had a Duke cultivator as their Chief. If that’s the case, he likely has a number of Sages as subordinates.

“Never forget that there’s always going to be more powerful cultivators than you, no matter how strong you get. Even as an Emperor, there were still going to be a few other cultivators who been at that rank longer than you have to worry about. As paired cultivators, you do have an edge over regular cultivators in most ways. The fact that you are perfectly in sync, most of the time, and can give each other qi is incredibly helpful. However, it’s also a detriment in that if one of you goes down, the other one falls as well.”

Keiko and I exchanged a glance, before she started talking. “We understand what you’re saying Sensei, but we refuse to live in fear. Between the two of us, we’re pretty confident that we can handle most things that come away. Then again, if someone with a King or Emperor level of cultivation were to show up in front of us, were dead just like everybody else nearby.”

I merely nodded and continued walking with Keiko at my side while Sensei laughed.

“I understand that the pair of you are confident, and that’s a huge benefit, but there’s more to battle than cultivation rank. If your opponent is significantly more experienced than you, even if they’re of significantly lower cultivation, they can be an even more lethal than a powerful, yet less inexperienced, opponent.”

He laughed, “Here’s a bit of ancient wisdom: A sharp dagger is more dangerous than a dull ax. I’m hoping that the pair of you can become a matching pair of wickedly sharp daggers with my help.”

Keiko grumbled under her breath, “I don’t want to be some stupid dagger, I want to be a giant sword.” Sensei and I couldn’t help but laugh at her response.

As we continued walking along the underground path toward the exit nearest the Eclipse Academy, we discussed different techniques we might use against peoples much stronger than Keiko and I. Unsurprisingly, Sensei was adamant that I take advantage of the poisons I was carrying, as most of them had at least some effect on people up to the Duke level. Anybody less powerful than that level was definitely going to have a bad day, what with their lungs being liquefied. Despite the fact that I’d use poison in every large-scale fight I had ever been in, I still wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with it.

I knew that as an alchemist I would have access to those tools, but at that time I hadn’t considered the long-term effects of using them. The fact that I could kill someone without even having to touch them with my body or my qi struck me as dishonorable. When I brought up that thought to Sensei, he was incredulous. He said that I was looking at the life of an alchemist in the wrong way. He explained that, unlike those cultivators who focused all of their efforts on battle training, sparring, and practicing fancy moves with dumb names, I was instead on a path that had the ability to heal and harm. That I could use my skills to cure sicknesses and heal people one day and destroy my enemies on another day.

He asked if I would feel the same using formations to kill people and I assured him that I wouldn’t. He asked what the difference was and I didn’t have an answer for him. After a few more minutes of pep talk from Sensei, I was feeling much better about what I would inevitably have to do.

Following that conversation, I took time to organize the poisons I had access to, should I need them. I had five doses of five different poisons, all of which were designed for mass dispersal, rather than direct dispersal. The first was the same green cloud poison that I’d used to take out the Indus Tribe members in the Moonrise grotto. It was wood qi attributed with a hint of metal qi from some Ironwood nettles I added, along with a few other ingredients to greatly assist in the spreading of. That poison was exceptional at destroying the respiratory system of anyone who inhaled it. I realized at that point that I hadn’t ever asked Sensei what this particular poison was called and he told me that it was called the Jade Lung poison. I didn’t have to ask why; I’d seen the results of it firsthand.

The next three poisons were just different variations a basic gaseous poison, each with a different element that all lead to paralysis, just in case I had to deal with someone who was holding a hostage. Sensei said that the names of those particular poisons always changed with the alchemist and he usually just called them Wood Mist, Fire Mist, and Earth Mist. I gave him a bit of a ribbing for how bad his naming was and he said that when you had to name tens of thousands of concoctions you ran out of good names for things, which I didn’t have a rebuttal for.

The final poison type I had prepared was in much smaller dispersal pouches. I knew that they would only burst in about a five-foot diameter, rather than the twenty-foot radius of the other pouches, but it was incredibly potent. Sensei actually had me use an Earth grade wood core to finish off the batch and he said that it turned out spectacularly.

He called that particularly virulent poison Creeping Cobra poison. He explained that it would quickly shut down the entire nervous system of whoever it touched the skin of, let alone if it was inhaled. That was the only one of the five poisons I had that I couldn’t make more of. It was made of a rare snake venom from a Dune Asp that, as far as I knew, didn’t exist on this island. Sensei said it was from a desert he had visited many years ago and that even then the Dune Asps were very hard to find.

I checked in with Keiko and found that she was going through the formations she had ready for battle as well, hers were significantly less lethal. She had half a dozen assorted formations. Two for putting up barriers to protect us, two for dampening sound, and two for drawing all of the qi out of the area, which I can tell you is particularly unpleasant if you’re not ready for it.

By the end of the first day of our most recent hike, I was very glad for the underground tunnels that allowed us to move significantly more quickly than we would have been able to up above. I knew that neither Keiko, nor I, were very fond of when we had been traipsing up and down the valleys of the mountainous region around the Dawnrise clan. Looking at the map, I could tell that the incredibly dense ravines that made up the area around the Inheritance of the Eclipse would be absolutely torturous to traverse and would take an incredibly long time to navigate if you weren’t running across the top of them. I also knew that, seeing as the fastest way out of the region was to travel above the ravines, besides the tunnels we ran, that the Indus Tribe would have a multitude of different guard stations and sentries placed on top to prevent people from rapidly invading their territory.

I was not looking forward to leaving the tunnel system, but I knew that it would be necessary to do so up at around noon the next day, because at that time, we would be at the closest point to the Eclipse Academy as we could get to through the waystation tunnel system.

As my mind was wandering, Keiko bumped up against me. Ellie jumped from her neck to fly around my head in a tight circle. I looked up at her and cocked my head slightly.

“How can I help you?” I couldn’t help but grin a little bit.

Ellie’s speech had improved dramatically over the last few days, “I’m excited! Mama says that we get to leave the tunnels tomorrow. I don’t really like the tunnels. They feel very small and cramped. I haven’t even gotten to go outside since I could really fly and I want to spread my wings!” She trilled happily at the that.

I looked over at Keiko, who smiled and shook her head sadly. Apparently, it was up to me to play the bearer of bad news.

“Ellie, sweetheart?”

Ellie sensed the change in my tone and stopped flying in circles happily before slowly turning to face me while gently flapping her wings to keep herself aloft.

“What? Why do you sound sad?”

She bumped up against my forehead and my nose in an attempt to cheer me up.

I sighed and ran my fingers down along her back from right behind her eyes all the way down to the tip of her tail, which left her shivering for second.

“Sweetheart, you’re not going to be able to go out and fly freely when we get up above ground,” Ellie gasped, “it’s just not safe. If Keiko and I weren’t good parents, we would let you do whatever you want, but that’s not the case. When we found your egg, we resolved to keep you safe forever and it’s still forever.”

Ellie looked crestfallen and it absolutely broke my heart to see her that way. However, I knew that if I let our little girl go out and fly about like she wanted, there was every chance that she’d get taken out by either of more powerful monster, or more likely, an Indus tribe member.

Keiko reached up and petted Ellie, just like I did before. “We’re sorry, but you’re too precious to us to risk.” She paused for a moment, obviously thinking hard before speaking again. “Actually, I’m willing to bet that your dad could make you some sort of potion to make you stealthier, for at least a little bit. Maybe a potion or a paste of some kind?” She looked to me hopefully.

As I was pondering our options on that front, Sensei spoke up. “While it isn’t my place to speak up when two parents are making decisions, I know that you prepared a type of invisibility potion in your testing, though that is a bit of a grand statement of what it is. I’m confident that we could put together some sort of camouflage paste that would allow her to at least fly around a tree and keep her safe. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would go a long way to keeping her safe while allowing her to fly, at least a little bit.”

Ellie stared at me, her eyes pleading, before darting down to yell at the bag at my hip, where Sensei’s pot was. She was very excited, “Thanks Grandpa-Sensei, you’re the best!” With that, she wrapped herself around the bag containing Sensei’s pot and gave it a good squeeze before releasing it and flying back around our heads, going back to happy circles like nothing ever happened.

“Alright, I guess that’s the plan. Keiko, I’m going to work with Sensei on putting together something that we can use to camouflage Ellie while she’s flying around a tree outside. I really doubt that it’s going to be any real alchemy, mostly just putting together a few basic ingredients to change her color.”

Keiko gave me a very tight hug. “I’ll leave that to you to. I’m going to scout ahead with Ellie for a little bit to give you guys some space for whatever you need to do.” She kissed me on the cheek before darting forward until she and Ellie were almost two hundred feet ahead of us, the only way I could see them was by the light Keiko was carrying, the small inscriptions on the walls did nothing to illuminate the gap between us.

I sighed heavily, “Sensei, how much work is this paste going to be?” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to make Ellie happy, it was the fact that I was worried about using materials that I might need later on something that was mostly frivolous.

“It’s not too bad, just some very basic ingredients that you have by the ton. It shouldn’t take more than two minutes to put together and I don’t even think you’ll need to add any cores to it to stabilize it. Honestly, I think that this is a great opportunity to see if you can walk and do alchemy at the same time. It’s a skill that not all alchemists back in my time learned, but those that did made a lot more progress on the road than those that didn’t.”

Sensei went on to rattle off three different basic ingredients that I’d already worked with and explained that I needed to mix them together in a two-one-one ratio before slowly cooking out the impurities. He said removing the impurities was an optional step, but I decided it was right to do it, especially if this was for my daughter. It didn’t hurt that it was good for practice either.

Over the next hour, I failed at combining those ingredients four times before finally figuring out that I needed to time my jets of flame with my steps, rather than trying to stop and send the jets of flame and then walking again. The resulting camouflage paste was enough for three applications for Ellie. I decided that I’d wait until tomorrow to let her see it, so I tucked it away inside my spatial ring.

Chapter 6

The next day, around noon, we arrived at the exit that we were headed towards. I decided that it would be best to prepare a large meal, because we wouldn’t be able to make another one safely until we made it into the Inheritance of the Eclipse. I went all out, cooking up everybody’s favorites, from Iron Shell crabs for Keiko, to Thunder Chicken for Ellie, and Blazing Elk for myself. Everybody also got a thin slice of Empyrean Boar, seeing as we had so much of it left and it contained an immense amount of qi. After a delicious meal, Keiko and I cultivated for far longer than usual, enjoying the last time we would feel safe doing so for, at the very least, a day or so. After luxuriating on the Centering Lotus for a little while, Keiko and I sighed before rolling off of it and having me store the Centering Lotus in my spatial earring.

It felt odd staring at the exit to the tunnels, seeing as it was simply an illusion formation from the other side, albeit a powerful one. When I leaned closer to listen to the not-wall I heard very little for a moment until I heard the sounds of boots working their way through the undergrowth. I spent a little while studying the scene through the illusion formation and found that there was indeed a group of Indus tribe members who were headed toward our current location.

We decided it was prudent to wait for them to pass by, rather than trying to take them out quietly. As they walked by, I could tell that there was at least one Saint level cultivator among them, which a bit more than we wanted to bite off as soon as we left the tunnel system. The group was made up of six cultivators, ranging from peak Heart cultivator, all the way up to the single Saint. They moved with a purpose, like they had somewhere to be, which I thought was surprising until I heard what they were talking about.

The Saint was talking to one of the Brain cultivators. “We have to get back soon, otherwise we’ll miss the feast. You lot better hurry up, or I’ll leave you behind.” He sneered, his pointed teeth gleaming in the glaring noon sun as it pierced straight down into the ravine the exit was located in.

The single heart cultivator looked surprised, “What’s this feast about again? No one tells me anything back in the village.”

The answer to that question shocked me to my cores.

One of the other brain cultivators answered with a big dopey grin, “We caught the Princess of those mountain rats.” He barked out a shrill laugh. “She was with the head mouse of those forest mice too! What a score! Kabis said that he would make sure each of us got a piece of them so we could take in the power of two Sages. We definitely don’t want to miss that! I’ve heard that it can help you break through two whole stages if you’re less than a Saint yourself.”

It took every ounce of control I had to stop myself from rocketing through the fake wall and eviscerating the group of scouts, but in the end, it was the fact that I wasn’t confident that we could kill all of them fast enough for none of them to be able to escape that stopped me. Beside me, Keiko was shaking with rage and I knew that she was thinking along the same lines that I was. I contemplated just hitting them with a sachet of the Jade Lung poison, but decided against it eventually. I had to preserve as much of that as I could, just in case I needed to use it to get a larger group at the actual Indus tribe camp, though I guess they called it a village.

I knew the Indus tribe had originally occupied the jungle across the island from our current location, and I noticed that the clothes of the Indus tribe members in front of us were significantly different from the ones we had seen before. The other Indus Tribe member’s I’d seen had jungle appropriate clothing, with lots of open skin and room for air to move along their bodies. These were dressed much more like Roderigo and Melody. They were covered nearly from head to toe, with the notable exception of their faces. I noticed flecks of red on the fronts of their stark white robes and almost instinctively knew that they left those bloodstains as signs of good luck, which sickened me. I resolved to make sure that each one of these people paid, there was no way I was going to be able to let them live after hearing how excited they were to eat my friend, Aria.

Sensei’s voice entered both Keiko and my minds. “You two are doing and admirable job not losing your temper here. I know that I would not have had your sense of self control at your age. I probably would’ve rushed out there and tried to kill them all myself and died in the process.” He sighed, “I know that it doesn’t make this situation feel any better, but I just wanted to let you know.”

From the map I could tell that the group that had just passed us by was not actually headed directly back to the Indus Tribe village. Rather, they were sweeping along one of the three ravines that surrounded the village and the entrance to the Inheritance of the Eclipse. If we were fast, we could shoot up the ravine we were in and be at the Indus tribe’s village in less than an hour. However, that would mean giving up all pretense of stealth and going in qi-a-blazing. That way was liable to get us all killed, so I had to grit my teeth and resolve myself to not doing that, no matter how much I wanted to. The only viable option I thought we had was to advance along the ravine until reaching the village, but doing so at a pace that allowed us to maintain our stealth. It would take twice as long, but it would mean that we had a lot more options at the end of our journey. In the end, it was no contest and that’s what we ended up doing.

If we had gone full tilt toward the village, we could’ve made it in an hour and a half from the tunnel exit. Moving at a more cautious pace I figured that it would take us about 2 1/2 hours. I resolved myself to the fact that both Gong Jin and Aria were both incredibly tough and would be able to deal with whatever was happening to them until we arrived.

As our little group snuck down the ravine, I was struck by how desolate it was. Everywhere else I’d been on Sunset Island was full of life, even the mountainous region by the Dawnrise clan. However, the ravine that we were moving down was barren of all life except for some scrub brush. There wasn’t even a tree for Ellie to try out her camouflage paste with, much to her dismay.

I asked Sensei if he knew what might’ve caused the area around the Inheritance of the Eclipse to be so barren and what he told me was frightening.

“When dark qi outweighs light, it has a corrupting effect on everything nearby, in addition to the effect it has on the user. It appears that at least a few of the Indus tribe members have gained some basic access to learning about dark qi, but they probably haven’t learned enough to know how to balance it out with light qi yet.” His voice shivered, “Things are more dire than I anticipated, you two need to do whatever you can to take care of those members of the Indus tribe who are inside the Inheritance of the Eclipse, or there’s every chance that they’ll corrupt this entire island.”

As we moved along, I noticed something strange, what appeared to be a normal scrub tree actually appeared to be what must’ve been an enormous oak tree. However, it looked like all of the life had been sucked out of it recently because if it hadn’t happened recently, it would’ve fallen down because it appeared to be on its last legs as we walked past it.

Keiko saw where I was looking and after she took a look at the tree herself, she spoke up, “I don’t think that tree has been like that for very long. It’s odd, an old oak like that can have roots that go down for hundreds of feet and should be able to survive for years, even in an environment laden with inhospitable qi… at least that’s my dad always said. Sensei, what could cause an old oak like this to die so quickly, because from the fissures in the bark it appears to have happened all of a sudden, rather than gradually.”

“How can you tell that?”

She stopped and pointed at the deep fissures in the bark, “When a tree is dying, it’s bark shrivels up gradually, leaving shallow lines behind over the course of a long time. This tree’s bark has incredibly deep gouges in it, that only happens when all of the water is pulled from the tree at once.”

I was shocked, I had no idea Keiko knew so much about trees, given her affinity for metal qi. I’d always assumed that she wasn’t very interested in plants or any of the wood qi related pursuits. What I heard next made me glad I was wrong.

Sensei piped up, “You’re right Keiko, something like that would require an immense pulse of earth qi that would dry up all the moisture in the roots, or sever them entirely. Unless this effect is incredibly localized, it means that we’re up against someone significantly stronger than your average Duke cultivator.” Sensei’s voice grew stern. “You two have to promise me that, no matter what happens, you’ll make sure to get through the entrance to the Inheritance of the Eclipse. There’s no way that you can fight with someone powerful enough to do this on an even playing field, not even with the qi beam that you two can make together, which is frankly terrifying for your cultivation rank.”

I stopped myself from interjecting, seeing as I was just about to ask about the qi beam.

Sensei huffed mentally, “Anyway, like I said, you two making it into the Inheritance of the Eclipse is of the utmost importance. From what I saw when my son and daughter-in-law went into it, I know that the entrance to the Inheritance is set into a cliff face and there’s a pair of statues that you’ll need to touch to open the portal. The statues are only ten feet from the portal on either side, so you’ll need to be quick if you want to sneak in unnoticed.”

Keiko snarled, “You’re forgetting something important, Sensei. We’re not just going to the village to get into the Inheritance of the Eclipse, we’re also going there to save Aria and Gong Jin. Steven and I won’t let our friends die to keep ourselves safe, it’s not who we are.”

I merely grunted at what Keiko had said, she’d said everything I would have already. Instead, I merely threw my weight behind what she’d said, showing solidarity.

From around my neck, Ellie spoke up. “Mommy, Daddy, am I going to be able to go in with you to the Inheritance?”

I stumbled over a rock on the craggy walking surface of the ravine at that. She’d hit on exactly the same worry I’d had as well. I ran my hand down her back, trying to keep her calm, but I could feel that she was shaking with fear at the thought of being separated from Keiko and I.

Sensei’s voice was calm, “Ellie, due to your unique status as their bonded magical beast, because you’ve imprinted on both Steven and Keiko, you should have no problem entering the Inheritance with them, as long as you’re with them when they go through.” His voice grew sterner, “As for you two, your lives are the most important things and I won’t let you throw them away for the lives of two people you’ve only just met. I know that sounds hypocritical, seeing as you’ve known me for less time than you’ve known Solaria, but you have to be practical. If you can find a way to help them escape without alerting everyone to your presence, then do it, but if you have to assault the camp to save them, I can’t condone it. You two are too precious to me to lose… I’ve lost so much already.” He grew silent, pensive even.

As Keiko and I jogged along, we hopped over a fallen scrub tree, not unlike the oak we’d seen just a few minutes ago. Ahead of us I could see the end of the ravine narrowing down until it was only ten feet wide. The walkway we were on was going to shrink down to about three foot wide and after that we would be in enemy territory, even more so than we already were. I started generating as much qi all the different types as I could in my lower core, doing my best to prepare for the worst, even though I was hoping for the best.

Keiko felt what I was doing and immediately started doing the same for herself. Both of us probably gathered nearly double of our preferred qi combinations than any other element, but unlike before, we didn’t do half of our combination qi and half of every other type of qi. Instead, we did our best to keep ourselves balanced, seeing as we now knew how important it was do so. We both knew that we were headed into somewhere dangerous and wanted to be prepared, all we had to do after that was be as stealthy as we could and do our best to avoid any patrols that we came upon.

I took a glance down into the middle of the ravine and saw that the river that had cut it was nearly fifty feet below the level of the path and ran towards where the village was on the map, which gave me an idea.

“Sensei, Keiko, I think I have an idea for getting us into the village without being noticed by the Indus tribe.” Keiko looked at me strangely before noticing that I was looking over the edge of the ravine.

She shook her head, “Oh no, you and I are not going to be swimming our way into enemy territory, dodging giant fish all the while!”

Sensei laughed, “Actually, I think that’s a glorious idea. If the Indus tribe is as confident as you say they are, there’s a very small chance that they’ll be monitoring the river as it passes into their village. Rather, they probably take it for granted, just like those who are abusing qi in their village do so. Not to mention the eating proclivities of this group of monsters.”

I pulled Keiko into a side hug, which she resisted for a moment or two before finally relenting. “Come on, we can use the technique that Aria taught us to soften the stone so we can get a grip and then hardening it to tighten our handholds. Come on, it’d be saving her with her own technique! How poetic is that?”

It was at that point that I was again glad that all of our communications since we’d exited the tunnel were mental, otherwise someone would definitely have heard how excited I was about climbing down the ravine wall, even if I wasn’t actually that excited about it.

She hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, but eventually agreed that taking an enemy by surprise was significantly better than doing our best to sneak in and having to fight everybody. A little while later, Keiko and I started climbing down the ravine, doing our best to match the technique that Aria taught us, but I still wasn’t very good at it. I ended up having to use threads of wind qi to harden the lumps of water and earth qi that I was using to create the handholds. I used the same strands of wind qi to slice off the handle that Ireland deleted, though I had to thread a bit of metal qi in to assist in the cutting power. Keiko had no such problems, she scampered down the wall without a care in the world and stared up at me from about a foot above the water with disdain for almost a whole minute until I caught up with her.

“All right, it was your plan, so you have to get in the water first.”

Sensei spoke up, “Don’t worry about any large magical beasts, with the imbalance of qi in this area, there’s very little chance that any beasts with real power are still living here, those that could leave have probably already left and those that couldn’t are probably dead.”

I grinned, “Well, that’s good enough for me.” I gingerly released my final handhold on the wall and slowly lowered myself into the water that I found out was about five feet deep. I would have no problem standing in it, but Keiko was another story.

“All right Keiko, you’re going have to hold onto me as we move down this if you want to walk, the water is about five feet deep. If you plan on swimming, never mind.” Ellie relaxed her tail from around my neck and settled it into the water. Before I knew it, she slid off of me and into the water, where I saw that she was swimming even more gracefully than she flew.

“Mommy, daddy, I like swimming! It’s so much easier than flying!” I saw that she used her wings to help direct her in the water, just like they did in the air. They did an admirable job acting as oars, keeping her on whatever path she was trying to cut.

Keiko mumbled something under her breath as she gently lowered herself into the water, she didn’t have to use a thread of qi to break off her handholds. Hers were nearly as good as Aria’s had been, they fell off mere moments after she released them.

With a grimace, she swam past me, down toward the Indus tribe’s village. I grinned and followed.

We actually ended up making better time swimming that we had while on land, the river down at bottom of the ravine was remarkably straight, while the pathways to either side were quite jagged, with lots of obstacles. Nearly half an hour later, we started seeing more signs of habitation. There were houses with clothes hung on the line and the sounds of children playing, though the games they were playing were much more twisted than those Keiko and I had learned. I heard things like “Catch the Baby” and “Toast the Orphan” bandied about amid the sounds of laughter, it made me sick to my stomach. I hardened my resolve, knowing that there was a non-zero chance that some of those children might be collateral damage moving forward.

It turned out that the river we were in ran almost directly toward where we wanted to go. Also, it appeared that the ravine that we had been walking down was sloped downward slightly and at this point the river was only ten feet below its bank. Keiko and I did our best to remain stealthy, trying to hide behind little scrub trees that were trying to survive for all they were worth down by the water’s edge, but it wasn’t easy going. A couple minutes later, I heard the distinctive sound of fire crackling and smelled the sickly-sweet smell of burning human flesh. I knew then that we were approaching where Aria and Gong Jin were being held.

I messaged Keiko. “Alright, it’s almost time to do this. Is there anything you need from me before we get going?”

Keiko gave me a kiss before shaking her head, “Not besides that, I don’t. Do your best to keep Ellie out of harm’s way. Ever since she started talking, I think she’s been trying to prove herself to us, not understanding that, as our daughter, she’s everything we could want and more already.”

The wave of love, mixed with fear, that came from her with that message was enough to stop me mid swimming stroke for a moment. I hadn’t considered that Ellie was trying to prove herself to us, but now that Keiko had brought it up to me, it made complete sense. I remembered all those times I’d tried to impress my grandfather, whether it be by doing well in class or by going out to hunt magical beasts by myself as a child, which rarely went well. She was just doing her best to look good in front of us, even though she didn’t have to.

I merely nodded, before lowering myself down deeper in the water swimming forward as quietly as I possibly could. Ellie realized what was going on and swam up to wrap herself around my neck and shoulders again. The only difference was that now she put her head on top of my head, to make sure that she wasn’t getting drowned by the water. “Okay Daddy, I’m with you.” I patted her head briefly before settling back swimming.

The sickly-sweet smells grew more intense and I heard the odd grunt that sounded remarkably like that of Gong Jin. I was surprised that I was able to identify him by a few grunts, but seeing as I had heard them do that more that more than I had heard them speak, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

When I felt we’d made it close enough, I stretched my long arms up to the bank and pulled myself up slightly so I could take a look around. We’d somehow made our way into what appeared to be what I would’ve called the wealthier district, if I thought these people used money. Rather, here, they were probably the houses of those people who had actually made it into the Inheritance of the Eclipse and back out again, if I had to guess. I took a look around and saw that there was no one within sight, so I pulled myself most of the way up and let Keiko scramble up my back and out of the water.

She did so begrudgingly, but after that, settled into a crouch and snuck up toward the scrub bush that surrounded the courtyard that we could see Aria and Gong Jin burning in. When I got beside her, I saw that both of them were still alive, but they appeared to be in immense pain. The skin on their arms and legs had all burned to a point where there was very little resemblance to them left, but I noticed that their cores and their heads were nearly unharmed, besides a few cuts and bruises. When I checked there cultivations, I saw that they were both pumping out an immense amount of water qi to sustain the parts of their bodies that they couldn’t live without. I was impressed, maintaining that level of water qi in an area that was this dry, surrounded by fire, was very impressive.

As I was marveling at how resilient the pair was, I felt the weight of Ellie come off of my neck and a second later I saw her flash of silver scales going toward one of the huts nearby. I swore internally, we’d explained the plan to Ellie, she was supposed to stick with me unless I asked her to run away. She was going rogue on this one, and I didn’t know how I felt about it. Strike that, I did know how I felt about it, I was pissed off, scared, and a little bit proud.

Every parent wants their child to be independent, but I wanted my child to be a little bit less independent until she’d had time to grow up and become little more powerful. She was probably the equivalent of a brain cultivator at this point, but she still only had access to metal and water qi. Though I’d heard her talking with Keiko about how she could sometimes feel wind qi and was trying to figure out how to use it.

I figured that I would hear if someone caught Ellie, so I didn’t follow her, no matter how much I wanted to. Instead, I spent a minute or two scanning the area around Aria and Gong Jin’s pyres. I noticed that everyone was gone. I couldn’t figure out why and eventually decided that I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I scampered forward, across the twenty-foot courtyard until I was standing between the two pyres. Sweat was dripping off my forehead already. Neither Aria, nor Gong Jin, noticed that I was there. They were entirely focused on keeping her eyes shut to protect them, I could see that their ears were pretty badly burned and that both of them had formed blockages of earth and wood qi in their ears to protect them.

At that point, I did something a little bit dumb, instead of using water or wind qi to put out the flames, instead I used a combination of earth qi to smother the flames and water qi to turn the earth qi into mud to make sure that the fire stayed smothered. What I didn’t know, was that when you took intense flame and added dirt and then water to it, you made a lot of loud cracking noises that can be heard from all around. Aria’s eyes snapped open and she looked all around until she saw me standing between her and Gong Jin. Moments later, Gong Jin did the same. In his eyes, instead of fear, I saw excitement.

With a will, both of them popped out their earplugs of earth and wood qi. I generated a small blade of Inferno qi and used it to cut the chains that were holding the pair of them, though I lamented the fact that I wouldn’t have access to strong chains like that that had the ability to block most qi usage in case I needed them in the Inheritance of the Eclipse.

As I was turning to run back to Keiko, I heard clapping coming from behind me, back behind where Aria and Gong Jin had been burning at the stake. I slowly turned around to look and twenty feet away I saw the most powerful person I had ever seen. The man wore featureless black robes that could’ve been stolen directly from the night sky on the most starless night of the year. Unlike his brethren, his teeth weren’t pointed, instead they were serrated like a shark’s. His eyes and his hair with the same color, jet black. I gulped despite how dry my mouth was all of a sudden. I instinctively knew that this was Kabis, the Duke cultivator and chief of the Indus tribe.

With a gentle wave of his hand, I was slammed int the ground and shoved back five feet along with Aria and Gong Jin. We were each held in place by with what appeared to be dark black spiders made of metal, but I could tell they weren’t magical beasts. Rather, they were just qi constructs that Kabis had created.

He grinned and started clapping gently. “My, my, I hadn’t anticipated them sending a rescue party this soon. I was planning on slow roasting those two for a while longer, at least a few days. To whom do I owe the honor of learning their name?”

The amount of killing intent rolling off of Kabis was nearly enough to make me speechless, but eventually I managed to choke out something. “Steven, you stars-damned monster!” It took all my effort to get out that sentence and a second later I was crushed even harder by the large black metal spider on my chest. I had never been gladder for Ellie disobeying me, seeing as she wasn’t in danger right now, at least that’s what I hoped.

I saw Kabis’ eyes flick up and a moment later I felt the ground shake as Keiko slammed into the ground behind me, she’d just been pulled along the ground by a black metallic spider, just like the ones that were holding aria, Gong Jin, and myself.

Kabis spoke again and his voice dripped with ridicule. “Oh, another rat. I take it you’re connected with this one? Never mind, don’t answer that. I guess we’ll just have all of you for dinner, I think you’ll enjoy being cooked, I’ve heard that some masochists do. Either way, I’ll enjoy watching you squirm up in the fire.”

From behind Kabis, someone walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. I knew this was the only chance I was going to get, so I produced a sachet of my most potent poison and, using a burst of wind qi, blasted it right at the back of his head. Mere inches from hitting him, a sheet of metal appeared in front of him that blocked the sachet, but that wasn’t enough, because the gas cloud just spread around it and engulfed Kabis and the person who had given me the opening I’d needed. Both of them were hacking and coughing as their bodies moved in different stutter stepping movements. I almost thought that I saw something black try and reach out of the skin of Kabis, but I assumed that it must’ve been a trick of the eye. He roared in pain and I knew that if we didn’t escape immediately, there was no chance we would. I felt as the metal spiders holding the four of us down broke down into raw metal qi, releasing us.

Ellie streaked across the courtyard with something wrapped up tightly with the end of her tail. She flew up alongside me as I scrambled to get to my feet along with Keiko, Aria, and Gong Jin. She bumped her head against me as she apologized. “I’m sorry Daddy! I felt something in there just like those things you and mommy wear on your ears. I wanted to get them for you. Open up your hand.”

As I opened my hand, Ellie uncurled the end of her tail and dropped two pairs of earrings, one white, and one black into it.

I stared at her in shock before a big grin shot across my face. “Ellie, you can have whatever you want for dinner tonight. I think you just gave me exactly what we needed.”