Eclipse Academy, Paired Cultivation Book Two: Chapters 10-12 (A Threads of Fate Universe Story) (Patreon)

Chapter 10

The next day was nothing special, I distributed the Bone Strengthening Powder to four of the seven couples to were joining of little cabal of active sector competitors. Each of the couples were very grateful and, over the next two days, I noticed a marked improvement in their durability in combat. Those strikes that would’ve leveled them before, now usually just knocked them back a few feet, so I was very pleased with the results of my efforts.

Sensei graded the powder with an A-, because I had held it too long in the pot while searching for the vials to contain the powder, they had degraded slightly. Other than that, he was very happy with my results.

While it may sound like Keiko and I were just working on our respective crafts, rather than our cultivation, nothing could be further from the truth. We were also cultivating six hours a day and sparring for another two as a pair. We also sparred with Naomi and Taka, who were both Sage cultivators, so we had our work cut out for us. I can’t tell you how many times I was blasted back by a qi infused strike from one of Naomi’s kicks, or been pounded into the ground by one of Taka’s enormous earth qi boulders that he seemed to be able to produce out of thin air, literally. Despite how many times I asked, he wouldn’t tell me how he pulled that off. He promised that if I ever actually beat him in a fight, that he would tell me, but I never beat him in training.

In addition to our intense cultivation, we also did our best to learn as much as we could about paired cultivation from anyone who would talk to us about it. It ended up being that Bortus was the most forthcoming with the different secrets of paired cultivation among all of the couples in the Calm River sect. He was a font of wisdom that never seemed to stop talking. Then again, I wasn’t complaining. He explained how the use of different body positions when doing paired cultivation with your partner could lead to different qi absorption rates or impurity removal rates.

When we explained how we used Orbital Breathing to cultivate, he nodded appreciatively. “Orbital breathing is a phenomenal first paired cultivation method, but once you get to the Sage level, it’s not going to cut it.” When he saw the look of dismay on Keiko and my faces, he waved his hands, “Don’t be discouraged, it’s not like you’ll suddenly not be able to do paired cultivation with Orbital Breathing, but your efficiency will drop dramatically. You’ll need a Sage level paired cultivation method, which might be a bit of an issue.”

He sighed, “Ever since the most recent controllers took over the Inheritance the Eclipse, all of the paired cultivation manuals have been locked behind different kinds of trials found in various sectors sowed all around the layer. Don’t be dismayed, the sect you are a part of, or in your case not a part of, doesn’t need to be in control of the sector you’re going to to take part in the trial there. But if you’re not allied with the sect in charge of the sector, getting there might be difficult if the sector you’re going to is particularly populated with cultivators of different sects.”

Keiko frowned, “Why can’t we just learn one of those methods from you guys? You’ve been Sage cultivators for years; shouldn’t you have a number of methods you’d be able to teach us?” She stared at him strangely for a moment before blushing as red as a rose.

Before she could start stammering, Bortus cut her off while chuckling, “No, it’s not because it would be embarrassing to teach you. The issue is…”

When Bortus trailed off, I picked up the thread of an answer he had left behind, “The issue is the contract seals we signed to become official cultivators of the Inheritance the Eclipse. We swore that we wouldn’t pass on any cultivation methods we learned in here, apparently it stretches even to other people in here.”

Bortus sounded very defeated, “I’m very sorry, but Steven is right. The only techniques that you’re allowed to pass on, from the time you spend in here, are the ones you come up with yourselves. The only problem is, Auntie and I never came up with any techniques of our own in here. We found that a few of the standard methods worked perfectly for us, so we didn’t look any further. I wish I could help more, but all I can do is give you a list of the different cultivation techniques you might want to try and get access to. I’ll also go over the pros and cons for each of them. Is that agreeable?” He sounded hopeful, but all of us knew that he was ashamed and that he would be willing to do much more, especially considering how much Sensei had helped Alayna earlier in the day.

Keiko and I exchanged a look before we both nodded, “Agreed.” We said in unison.

Bortus chuckled, “I figured you might, seeing as it’s free information. The most commonly used, Sage level, paired cultivation technique is Unified Heart. Unified Heart is very easy to learn, all it requires is that you bond a second core together with your partner, leaving only a single core free of your partner’s direct influence. This method has many great parts to it, it allows for one partner to, depending on which cores are bound, either push qi more efficiently to their partner, or draw it more efficiently. Assuming you bound your heart cores together, which is why the technique is named this, it also allows you to reinforce your partner’s body, even if they are not able to do so themselves due to pain, unconscious, or some other reason. Paired cultivators who use other methods can learn to do that, but they’re a difficult set of techniques to learn, at least if you want to learn how to use them quickly. Users of the Unified Heart method of cultivation get that benefit with nearly no effort.”

Sensei scoffed out loud, “You might as well call it the lazy method! That’s basically calling a cultivation shortcut a cultivation method, but it’s nearly worthless at the higher levels of cultivation. I’m surprised they even teach that abomination here anymore.”

I flicked my eyes from Sensei’s pot over to Bortus and saw that he was nodding along.

He stroked his pointy gray beard, “That’s exactly what Alayna and I believe. Over the years, we’ve learned that to use those techniques without hampering our cultivation in the future by using an inferior method of paired cultivation. The major problem with the Unified Heart is that, because they bound two of their types of cores together, their cultivation systems are too stiffly linked. Users of this technique run into problems with qi usage if they’re separated from their partner by more than a few miles.

“Paired cultivators with only one bound set of cores, like normal, can be anywhere in the world and maintain their bond with their partner. Though passing qi that far does take quite a while, it can still be done. Mental communication over any amount of distance is quite easy. Many years ago, apparently, paired cultivators were among the best messengers, because using techniques unique to paired cultivators, they could allow powerful cultivators, or monarchs, to have discussions with each other verbally over vast distances.”

Keiko and I exchanged a glance before both shaking our heads.

I spoke up, “It doesn’t look like Keiko and I are going to want to use the Unified Heart method, we’re not looking to cut any corners in our cultivation, especially not when it doesn’t seem the techniques you gain so easily are even that hard to learn. Honestly, we’re both journeymen in our respective crafts and we’ve only been cultivating for a year and a half. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to pick up that technique without too much of an issue.”

Bortus laughed, “That’s fair enough. The second most common method, which Auntie and I do practice, is called Unending Serpent. Unending Serpent is a bit like your Orbital cultivation, assuming I understand how that works correctly. The difference is that it requires physical contact at all times and has to be completed in a number of hours that is an exponential value of two. Before you ask, by that I mean we can either cultivate for one, two, four, eight, sixteen, or thirty-two hours. We cannot cultivate for three hours, to do so would give us no benefit. Seeing as we knew that we would be in the Inheritance of the Eclipse for quite a while, we decided that the Unending Serpent method was right for us.

“There are a host of benefits from the Unending Serpent method and only a single other small drawback. The benefits include increased strength, durability, and speed when within a certain range of your partner, which grows as you cultivate with the method longer. It also allows nearly instantaneous mental messaging, which I know you think you have, but each of your messages takes about two or three seconds to send. Auntie and I can have an entire conversation in the time it takes you to blink. The other small downside of the Unending Serpent method is that any qi we draw in is exactly evenly split between the pair of us, no exceptions. For Auntie and I, that’s not really an issue, but it could be if we weren't using the same types of qi, or if one of us were to draw in a type of qi the other didn’t need instead of the type of qi we did need.”

While Keiko and I mentally discussed that option, Sensei spoke up, “I believe that’s the method my son and daughter-in-law went with. When they exited this Inheritance, they were so much stronger than they were when they went in, but they couldn’t tell me why. Now I know, they probably went with that technique, or some variation of it at least. It’s not a bad option, especially considering it will help the pair of them keep their light and dark qi in balance, making sure to draw in the same amount so that they’re always aware of how much the other has, without even checking. That can save their lives, or at the very least their sanity.”

“That method doesn’t sound too bad, are there any others that you might recommend?” Keiko batted her eyes at Bortus, which made me chuckle internally.

“There are a few more, but the only other one that’s worth talking about is the least common method, but if you can pass the trial to get access to it, you should absolutely use it. There’s no substitution.” He cracked his knuckles, “The third method is called Dragon Dancing and it is the most effective method of paired cultivation, all the way up to the Emperor level. It becomes an option to learn at the Sage level. The later you learn it, the less effective it becomes.”

From the look on his face, I could tell he was waiting for the question, so I obliged him, “What makes this method so difficult to get access to?”

Bortus’ laugh this time was more like a bark than anything else, “The trial is absolutely devastating. The grand trial is split into five different smaller trials. At least two of them are questions about cultivation as well as your partner, while two of them are combat based, one as a pair and the other as an individual, cut off from your partner. No one makes it to the final trial, so I have no idea what it might entail. What I do know is that I heard of one couple who passed that trial and after going into secluded cultivation for two months, they went from low tier members of this layer to ascending to the third layer.”

As Keiko and I exchanged glances, Sensei spoke up. He sounded very excited, “That’s it! If the pair of you are going to survive going up against someone as inordinately strong as Kabis, you’ll need a cultivation method that helps you gain strength quickly. If what Bortus said is true,” Bortus nodded, “then we absolutely have to make sure that the pair of you make it through those trials and gain access to the Dragon Dancing cultivation method. Bortus, what would we have to do for you for you to get us a map leading to the location containing the Dragon Dancing method? In addition, we would need as much information as possible about the particular trials within.”

Bortus looked from Sensei’s pot, over me, before glancing at Keiko, who shrugged. He returned his gaze to Sensei’s pot, “What could you offer our sect that we don’t already have? I appreciate your assistance in creating plans to help take down the Indus sect, but at this point that’s something we could do for ourselves.” He didn’t sound happy about what he’d just said, but I could tell that he was serious.

Before I could speak up, Sensei launched into a tirade, “You ungrateful worm! Out of the goodness of our hearts, we’ve already produced Bone Strengthening Powder for the people entering the sector contests, we also created a number of different healing poultices and potions the other day. Those acts, along with me helping your wife break through to become an Expert Formations Master… what else could you possibly ask for?!

“Back in our time, because you and I are actually more alike than any other cultivators in here, if someone had performed the services we’ve already done for you, anyone would’ve been beholden to us, even if they were a large sect. Let alone a puny sect like yours! Do you value alchemists and formation masters so little here? If so, maybe we’ll go and make an offer to the Scholars! If we can offer them enough knowledge, they may turn on the Indus sect.”

He harrumphed, “Steven, Keiko, take my pot and we should leave this place at once. If they are going to disrespect us like this…”

Bordetella held his hands up placatingly, “Hold on, hold on. I didn’t mean any disrespect by what I said, but you don’t understand how dangerous it would be to get the information you’re asking for.” He sighed, “The only people who have the information you’re looking for are the Scholars and they only take payment in the form of knowledge. We don’t have enough knowledge to offer them without giving up serious sect secrets. What would you have us do?”

I looked from Bortus down to Sensei’s pot, “Sensei, what knowledge do you have of the ancient world, which is what I’m going to be calling the time you’re from going forward, that wouldn’t be harmful to the outside world if it got out? It would need to be something interesting, but mostly useless.”

Sensei’s grumbling slowly ground to a halt, “I mean, I guess we could tell them the story of the Phoenix Emperor, up until when Bortus and Alayna entered the Inheritance. He didn’t do anything overt with light or dark qi until nearly one hundred years after they entered here, so even if they search for his name in the libraries, they shouldn’t find anything else pertaining to them. However, that information still has value and now you’re asking us for something additional to get something we asked you for. How is that supposed to work? Couldn’t we just go and offer the information to them in exchange for the information we need?”

Bortus wrung his hands nervously, “In theory, yes, you could. However, I may, or may not, have a pair of contacts within the Scholars who might be amenable to aiding us if we made it worth their while. Honestly, if we can offer them enough information, they might even join our sect.” He tried to look smug, but it just looked like he was nervous while trying to look smug.

I frowned, “Now that you know that time is strange in her, that you’re effectively from the past, wouldn’t you be able to bring any number of the Scholars overt to your side, just with your knowledge of the ancient world that you can give them that wouldn’t be harmful?”

My tone grew stern, “You probably lived at least fifty to one hundred years out in the world before entering this Inheritance, didn’t you?” Bortus nodded hesitantly, “There has to be something else going on, otherwise this situation makes no sense. What aren’t you telling us?”

I crossed my arms and Keiko moved to mirror me. From her place wrapped around my arm, Ellie moved so that the tip of her tail was crossed underneath what passed for her chin, doing her best to emulate what Keiko and my crossed arms as best she could. Despite the humor of what Ellie was doing, Bortus wasn’t laughing, and neither were we.

“The contacts I have inside the Scholars may, potentially, have been members of the Calm River sect fifty years ago. They left due to differences of opinion between him and Alayna. She can never know that I’m still talking to them, otherwise it likely won’t go well for me.”

His shoulders slumped, “In order to get my contacts to do as we want, I’m likely going to have to say that Alayna is sorry, seeing as she’s the reason they left the Calm River sect. The only problem is, Alayna isn’t sorry. She thought she was right then, and she still thinks she’s right now.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair, “I really wish we could get them to rejoin our sect, the pair of them were Expert formation masters. Honestly, all four of us, Alayna, Donovan, Michael, and I, worked together to put up the latest layer of formations that protect this place. To be clear, the strongest formations protecting our headquarters were put in place here generations before we put up anything, but the only ones added in our lifetimes were done with Donovan and Michael’s help. It would be nice to work with them again. Now that Alayna has joined us in the realm of Expert formation masters, there’s so much more we could do together.”

Sensei grunted, “I get it, you want your friends back. How does that change the fact that you’re disrespecting us?”

Sensei had voiced exactly what I was thinking, so I stayed quiet and let the old men argue. Over the next forty-five minutes, Sensei and Bortus bartered back and forth. Sensei threatened to leave four more times and Bortus threatened to kick us out once. In the end, Sensei promised that I would create six sets of Building Foundation pills, of at least Advanced grade, but preferably Journeymen. Once I had those done, Bortus would meet with Donovan and Michael and get the information that we required.

After the long argument, Bortus sighed and lugged himself out of his lotus position and bowed to the four of us, “You drive a hard bargain, but I respect that. As soon as I have those pills, I’ll get the information you need. Until then, good luck with your sector contests in two days’ time. We’re counting on you.” He bowed slightly and turned to walk away. As he did so, I heard muttering under his breath, “Still feels weird to be relying on them, but we don’t really have a choice at this point.” He passed out of earshot before I could hear anymore.

The next day, Sensei and I worked on the Building Foundation pills. When the box of ingredients we needed showed up in the alchemical chamber, as soon as the messenger had left, he waited a few moments before giggling.

“We don’t have to let them know everything about what we have access to. With these ingredients, we can make everything they asked for and more. Now, get set up on the Centering Lotus with the petals up to three quarters closed. I don’t want Keiko to get caught in the blast if she comes to visit us.”

I did as he said, but as I was doing so, I had a few questions for him, “Is the process of making these pills so dangerous? I’ve made pills hundreds of times and this is the first time you’ve demanded that I get the Centering Lotus set up in a defensive posture before I even started. What’s different about these pills?”

Sensei didn’t answer until I was settled in, with the Centering Lotus closed up most of the way around us. He spoke to me mentally, “Today’s the day I teach you a new alchemical technique and, while it has great results, if it’s performed improperly, it can be a little bit dangerous.”

It sounded like he has something more to say, so I decided to press for more, “What aren’t you telling me Sensei? Why did you wait until now to teach me this technique? You’ve taught me dozens of different alchemical tips and tricks, but none of them were dangerous. What makes this one different?”

I was a bit apprehensive, but I knew that Sensei wouldn’t put my life in serious danger, poison not-withstanding. Especially considering how he had me using poison in combat, I was very glad he had walked Keiko and I through tempering our bodies against all types of poison. Honestly, the fact that he knew how to create poisons that would get around normal poison tempering, while leaving ourselves immune, was amazing. That was the power of an Imperial alchemist.

Sensei’s mental voice was apprehensive, it even sounded a little bit scared. “The Flame Wheel technique is incredibly useful. It makes pill refining significantly easier, but it has a significant downside. To understand the downside, I’ll need to explain how to use it. The Flame Wheel method of pill refining starts with you using whatever method you like to superheat your alchemical pot while it is entirely empty. After that, you use threads of any type of qi, usually the type of whatever kind of pill you’re refining has as its primary element, to stir up the superheated flame inside to create a concentrated cyclone of flame.

“At that point, you add in the ingredients like you normally would, but you can’t stop the cyclone inside when you do so. You have to use the threads of qi used to create the cyclone to hold in the superheated, super qi-charged, flame inside whatever you throw in ingredients. Small ingredients, like anything you’ve ground-up, or chopped finely, are pretty easy. The issue comes in you have to throw in whole mana stone, or beast core. It takes an incredible level of skill, plus a lot of talent, to keep the Flame Wheel technique from going haywire and blowing up everything nearby with a blast of superheated flame. Due to how my pot is constructed, the odds of that happening are very low and, even if it does happen, whoever is using my pot will be protected by my formations… probably. However, anyone else who’s anywhere nearby, they’re not going to do so well. With how intense the flame cyclone, that gives this method its name, is, anyone who comes into even partial contact with it will almost assuredly die a horrible death.”

I couldn’t keep the horror off my face, or out of my voice, “This method sounds terrible, why would we risk that happening?!”

“To be honest, that’s why I didn’t tell you about it until now, it’s too dangerous to use unless you’re either completely confident, or it’s necessary. That’s where we are now. A few of the pills you’ll need, primarily the later stage Foundation Building pills, require this method of pill refinement. Anything less and their efficacy drops by fifty percent, leaving them nearly useless to most people. I was always going to teach you how to use this technique, but I was going to wait until we had all the ingredients for the next stage of your Foundation Building cycle of pills.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, why are you teaching me this technique now?” I was agitated, if felt like I was being manipulated and I hated that feeling.

Sensei groaned, “Teaching you how to use this method on this particular set of pills is the best possible way I could teach you how to do so. Seeing as you two don’t need these pills in particular, I was kind of at a loss as for what I’d use as a teaching aid. Now, however, we have ample ingredients, twice what we need, that we didn’t even provide.”

“That’s the long and short of it. This is a technique you need to know, but I was afraid to teach it to you. Seeing as you have a nice, safe, alchemical laboratory at your disposal, with formations protecting the door, along with my formations. There is a very high likelihood that this goes entirely safely, at least here it does. In the outside world, you’ll need to do this in the Centering Lotus while it is entirely closed. To do so, you’ll need to rely entirely on the qi within your lower core to fuel the pill refinement, no external sources will be available. Most people wouldn’t be able to do that, but with your enlarged lower core, it’s possible for you.

“Also, without your unusual control over qi threads, you wouldn’t be able to pull off this method until you were at least a Duke cultivator. Most people can only control one or two qi threads as a Saint, with you being able to control dozens, I’m confident that you can pull this off.”

I waited a few minutes, pondering what Sensei had said. The method he was talking about was dangerous, but, apparently no as much for me. When I thought back on all of the times I had done alchemy before with Sensei, Keiko was nearly always around. At least until we ended up here, in the Calm River sect’s headquarters. I mean, we’d had some separation back in the Moonbeam grotto, but there, she could’ve shown up at any time and I would’ve had no warning.

In the end, I decided that it would be worth the risk, at least here. I needed to think long and hard about using it when I didn’t have additional protections for the people around me. It was at that point that realized how glad I was that I’d made Ellie stay with Keiko today, even though it was my turn to have her with me.

“Fine, I’ll try this technique, I think you called it the Flame Wheel? Why is it called that when it’s done by making a flaming tornado or cyclone? We’re not really making a wheel inside the pot, so it doesn’t make much sense.”

Sensei laughed nervously, “I’m glad to hear you’re willing to try the technique, I think you’re going to be great at it if I’m being totally honest. As for the name, at the higher levels of cultivation, your control over your qi is strong enough that, instead of creating a cyclone, you’ll be able to create a condensed disc, or wheel, of all the flames that were filling the pot. That’s not something I’m expecting you to be able to do now, but the closer to the bottom of the pot you can keep the cyclone, the better this method will work. For example, as a Sage cultivator, I wasn’t even able to use this technique. I had to wait until I was a Duke cultivator, and even then, my flame cyclone nearly licked out of the pot each time I opened it.

“It wasn’t until I was a peak King cultivator that I was able to get my qi threads strong enough that I could get my flame cyclone halfway down the pot. The lowest I ever got my flame cyclone was the day before I went into the Inheritance the Pot for the last time. It was four inches thick and the pills I created that day were the best I’d ever made. This method is powerful, but it’s not without its risks. I’m very glad that you’re able to see how worthwhile this technique is.”

I nodded thoughtfully, “That makes a lot of sense. I wonder how far down your pot I’ll be able to push my cyclone? From what you’ve described, my qi threads are already stronger than yours were as a Duke, so maybe I’ll be able to push the cyclone down an inch or so.”

Sensei’s pot was eighteen inches tall, so a couple of inches didn’t feel it a lot. It turned out that I was wrong.

Sensei laughed so hard that, if he’d had a body, I’m sure he would have bust a gut, “You think you’ll be able to get the flames down a couple of inches?! If that’s the case, I’ll let you ask me any single question about my life from before the Inheritance and I promise that I’ll tell you the truth. However, if you take this bet, if you fail, I get to decide the next five things you make in my pot. Anything else, you’ll have to use one of the pieces of garbage pots you found in this chamber. Do we have a bet?”

As far as I was concerned, Sensei was already going to be telling me what to make, so I figured there wasn’t any real way I could lose this bet, “You have a bet, now walk me through using this technique again.”

Over the next two hours, Sensei drilled into me how to use this technique. I figured out the basics pretty quickly, but when I tried to do a dry run, only using fifty percent of the heat I’d need to actually use the technique in full, when I opened the pot to add the ground ingredients, tongues of Inferno qi licked out and bounced off of glowing golden barriers that sprung up from the formations around the lid of Sensei’s pot. Even though Sensei laughed, he explained to me that this was entirely within his expectations, and that he knew that would be the first thing to happen to me. I didn’t like the way he reacted, so I decided to do better the next time.

The next time I faked opening the pot at fifty percent to add ingredients, not a single tongue of Inferno qi licked out. Sensei was impressed. He had me move up to three quarters of the heat and pressure I’d need to do technique properly. I got the same result, absolutely no qi leakage, which truly surprised Sensei.

“I’m astounded, if I wasn’t inhabiting the vessel you were using to do that, I wouldn’t believe what you’ve just done. I can’t help but wonder if we’re related somehow,” he laughed, “if not, you must be descended from one of my rivals. I really hope it wasn’t Valerian Telios, he was a right git!”

After we got done laughing at the idea of us being related, I got back to work. Before I tried using the technique with ingredients, I did one final test with all of the heat needed to pull it off, but nothing else inside. It went flawlessly and I even compressed the flames by a centimeter or two, which got Sensei a little bit nervous regarding our bet. He assured me that it must’ve been luck, because there was no way that I’d be able to compress the flames any farther in the moment. Something inside me told me that he was wrong and that I was going to make him regret our bet.

Before we began, I had to process the ingredients. I gently crushed the petals of a Rainbow Lily, using the heel of my hand to make sure I didn’t break them up too much. I ground a Common Mana Stone to a fine powder, before adding Ironwood Sap to that powder, to turn it into a thick paste. The Firestone Briquettes just required a rough chop to get down to size and the Universal Beast Core didn’t need any preparation at all. With that, my preparations were done. There was nothing left to do except generate the flame cyclone and get started. I took a few minutes to settle myself before sending a quick message to Keiko.

“Hey, I know were supposed to eat lunch in a couple of hours, but I’m going to be late for that. Please, don’t interrupt me, no matter what happens. Also, no matter what you hear coming from the alchemical laboratory, do not cross the threshold. There are formations in place there to protect you in case something goes wrong inside, but I’d really rather not have to test them.”

Keiko’s response was immediate, and she sounded a bit worried, “Is everything okay? Alchemy isn’t usually all that dangerous, at least not for you. Do I need to worry? Tell me.” She was insistent, but understandably so.

“It’s nothing crazy, but Sensei taught me a new technique and I’m not completely comfortable with it yet. No matter what, I’m going to be fine, but if someone else comes inside, they might not be. Make sure everyone knows not to interrupt me please. I’ll talk to you after I’m done. I love you.”

She sounded as sweet as anything in her reply, “I love you too, be safe. I’ll see you at lunch, though I am definitely going to snack until I see you.”

I chuckled as I settled in to use the Flame Wheel technique for the first time for actual alchemy. I settled in with Sensei’s pot in between my legs as I did a full lotus pose. I moved the heels of my feet until they were were pressed against the flame jets on the bottom of the pot. I poured a ton of Inferno qi inside the pot until it was fit to burst. After that, I started using threads of Inferno qi to spin the, already incredibly dense, Inferno qi that was already inside the pot. About a minute later, I knew from practice that I’d reached the maximum speed I could get the flames spinning, but I wasn’t happy with the compression.

I was only three quarters of an inch down and my bet with Sensei was that I wouldn’t get an inch. I knew that I could do more, so I decided to go for the gusto and created another dozen qi threads to join the twenty-eight that I already had inside the pot. Using the additional threads, I was able to increase the speed marginally, but the compression I got was everything I wanted. Not only did I compress it down to an inch, I actually got it to an inch and a half down. My green Inferno qi flames looked darker and richer than ever before down in the pot.

Sensei was flabbergasted and the sound he made in my head was hilarious, but he didn’t say anything, because to do so could throw off what I had just pulled off.

Using a thread of air qi, I gently lifted the lid off of Sensei’s pot and slid in the cup of rough paste, which I had spread into a very thin disk, nearly as large as the lid of Sensei’s pot. There wasn’t even an attempt of a tongue of flame licking out from inside, which I knew was unusual, but I rolled with it. After closing the lid back up, I use the threads of Inferno qi inside to chop up the platter of paste into four equal sections, before splitting each of those four sections into four equal sections. In the end, I had sixteen tiny pie slices of paste, which I used individual strands of Inferno qi to work into roughly ovoid pill shapes.

After I was satisfied with the rough pill shapes, I dusted in the fine powder of Rainbow Lily, which only required a tiny lift of Sensei’s pot lid, so I wasn’t worried about that. I guided the Rainbow Lily powder with a thread of pure wind qi to surround the sixteen pill shapes evenly. After the powder had baked onto the pills for a few minutes, I added the roughly chopped Firestone Briquettes to the pot, which only needed an inch of space to pull off. I used threads of earth qi to shatter the Firestone Briquette chunks, raising the temperature inside the pot even higher.

After I got used to the increased heat from the Firestone Briquettes, it was time to take the biggest risk. I had to open the pot lid nearly three whole inches to allow the Universal Beast Core to slide inside. That was twice as high as it had taken to let the platter of paste slide in and I was a little bit nervous.

I heard Sensei’s calming voice in my head, “you’re going to be fine, all you have to do is maintain control of the qi threads inside and don’t stop spinning, no matter what you think is happening.”

I steeled myself and then decided that there was no time like the present. I quickly lifted up the lid of the pot with a thread of metal qi, before shoving the Universal Beast Core into the pot and slamming it shut with a clatter. I heard Sensei gasp, but I didn’t have time to think about it. At that point, I knew that I had to finish up the pills’ refinement. I used threads of Inferno qi to gather all sixteen pills around the Universal Beast Core evenly spaced, just barely touching it. At that point, I had to do the second hardest part of this pill refinement process. I had to shoot a drill of condensed qi made up of as many types of qi as I could, through the Universal Beast Core. Sensei told me that if I could get at least four, the pills would end up as low Journeyman rank. If I could do five, they would be mid Journeyman, and six would be peak Journeyman. He didn’t even tell me what would happen if I used all eight, because he thought that there was no chance that I’d be able to pull that off.

I took a deep breath to center myself and looked around the room I was in. Despite my limited view, due to the mostly closed Centering Lotus, I was struck by the shadows cast by the formations by the doorway. I knew that they always activated when I started pill refinement, they were some kind of automatic safety mechanism built into this building ages ago. However, I felt something odd contained within the shadow cast by the light of those formations. Something called to me, something inside me instinctually reached out to that feeling and something came back. It was ephemeral and strange, but from my studies with Sensei, I knew that I was holding light qi and that thought nearly broke my concentration and exploded the entire process. I felt the flames inside the pot decompress and nearly leak out around the lid of the pot, but I shoved them back down through sheer force of will and heard Sensei gasp again.

His voice was equal parts quiet and serious, “What you’re holding is light qi. It’s incredibly powerful, but also very dangerous. You need to find dark qi to balance it. Look at the shadows cast by the Centering Lotus’ petals by my pot, there you will find the purest dark qi around that you can use to balance out the pure light qi you got from the formations by the door.

“Don’t worry about the pills inside the pot, one of the benefits of this advanced method is that you can take your time in between steps, due to how quickly they actually go. I know it sounds strange, but don’t worry about it. Focus on the dark qi, it’s important that you always keep yourself balanced between dark and light.”

Sensei taught Keiko and I that if we thought about the opposite of light qi, we wouldn’t find dark qi. So instead, I just looked down at the shadows cast by the petals of the Centering Lotus around Sensei’s pot and thought about the absence of light, rather than the opposite of light. Moments later, I knew I had it and was able to draw a thread of dark qi up next to the thread of light qi I had found. I knew from Sensei’s warnings that I should never let those two types of qi touch without other types of qi alongside them. So, I did just that.

I created threads of the six normal elements before compressing them into a six-element qi drill. As soon as that was finished, I wrapped the dark and light qi around it in an alternating pattern that never touched until the very tip. I felt, rather than saw, as the eight qi types became one and formed into some kind of more important, more special, construct. Seconds later, I went for it, I lanced the Universal Beast Core with the qi drill and I knew that I had succeeded. The qi drill pierced the core perfectly and each of the pills absorbed the perfect amount of qi to maximize their potential.

The rest of the process was easy, all I had to do was slowly lower the heat until I had just a tiny bit at the bottom to finish the coating on the pills. That went swimmingly and at the end of my pill making session, which I eventually learned was three and a half hours long, I had sixteen perfectly shiny Foundation Building pills. They had a luster to them, not unlike the opals I’d seen on the ears of some of the people in the Inheritance of the Lovers.

However, something about their opalescence was more than just those gewgaws I’d seen before. I knew there was something special about them. I placed into their jade boxes, pairs of pills. I was glad that Sensei had made me prepare them before I had even begun practicing this technique for pill refinement.

As soon as that was done, I slowly slumped back and rested against the petal of the mostly closed Centering Lotus. I couldn’t believe I’d done it, not only had I pulled off the Flame Wheel method, I’d also created an eight-qi construct. I couldn’t wait to tell Keiko.

Sensei’s voice was calm when he spoke a few minutes later, but the words he used betrayed his feelings, “What you did just did was dangerous, foolish, reckless, and absolutely incredible! Did you check how much you compressed the flames inside after your little flareup?”

I shook my head, “No, I figured it would throw me out of my groove, so I didn’t bother to look. I assume it was just barely not touching the top?”

He snorted, “No, you compressed it down a full two inches and there wasn’t even a single tongue of Inferno qi at the top of the pot, all of them were pointed down and in. They were actually helping you form the pills, rather than attempting to hurt you. There’s something special about your Inferno qi that makes it perfect for pill refinement and I am actually incredibly jealous that I didn’t have access to it when I was learning to become an alchemist.”

I burst out laughing, “No way, you’re lying to me. There’s no way I did better after that flareup. You’re just trying to make me feel better… right?” I wanted to believe Sensei. I wanted to believe that I’d managed to come back stronger, but I knew that it was so unlikely that I didn’t hold out hope for it.

Sensei was entirely serious at this point, “Yes, two inches of compression as a Saint cultivator. I’d almost go so far as to say that you’re a menace at this point, because you’ve already completed all of the required tasks to become an Expert alchemist and you aren’t even a Sage yet. You’re absolutely disgusting.”

If I hadn’t been laying down, I probably would’ve fallen over. I spluttered, “What… What… What are you talking about? I wasn’t even working on the test to become an Expert alchemist! That takes years of training.”

Sensei snorted, “Those people they call Expert alchemists nowadays, they’re all using the secondary method to get that title. Years ago, it required using all eight types of qi to create a pill successfully without causing damage to anything, or anyone, in the process. Honestly, you’re considered a mid-Expert grade alchemist because of how you used the Flame Wheel technique like that. I would hate you little bit, if you weren’t my disciple of course. Because you are, I can only say that I’m very proud of you. Those pills are Expert grade and they’re entirely too valuable to give up for what we’re getting, so you’re going to have to ask for more in return.”

I shook my head, “Honestly, I’m going to take this experience as part of the payment. We wouldn’t have tried this method with these pills if it wasn’t for the fact that we weren’t using our ingredients. We would have tried some other method and would’ve made decent Journeyman pills, but they wouldn’t have been Expert grade. I’ll think of the excess value as my tuition for become an Expert alchemist and move on from there.” I paused before speaking again, “Do you think I’m the youngest Expert alchemist ever?”

Sensei deadpanned, “Yes, yes, you are. I thought I was hot stuff and I became an Expert when I was forty years old. You’re less than half that age, don’t make me hate you.” He waited a few moments before laughing, “I’m just kidding, though yes, you are the youngest Expert alchemist ever. There’s no doubt in my mind. I shudder to think of what you’ll be capable of when you’re given enough time to mature.”

The look on Bortus’ face when I presented the six jade pill cases was nearly priceless, though Sensei admonished me and told me that the price I was paying was the cost of the pills that I could’ve gotten on the open market, but I ignored him. We’d already talked about the cost of tuition, as it were, for becoming an Expert alchemist and the fact that these pills were a steal compared to that.

“I… I can’t believe what you created.” He squinted at me for a moment before shrugging, “Are you sure you didn’t let Sensei take control of your body and have him create these pills? I’ve never heard of that actually happening, but it could be possible, so I have to know. Did you make them?”

I shook my head, feeling more than slightly offended, “No, I created these pills. The only help Sensei gave me was instructing the in the usage of a new technique. Yes, I’ll admit he did help me with that, but that’s the role of any good mentor.” Sensei harrumphed, but he didn’t speak up any more than that, though I knew he wanted to.

Bortus smiled shyly, “I apologize for my insinuation, these pills are worth far more than the information I’m getting for you. I’ll have to find something else to make up the difference. I wouldn’t want to be any more in your debt.”

Sensei blurted mentally, “He must have something good from previous generations stored somewhere, maybe he has some good ingredients!”

I smiled and shrugged, “Bortus, I’m not going to ask for anything additional, without the ingredients and facilities you provided, it might’ve been years before I became an Expert alchemist, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re square.” Sensei howled at me, but I just chuckled in response.

Bortus took a few seconds to stare at me, “Hold on, did you say that you were now an Expert alchemist? How did that happen?”

I shrugged, “I had a bit of an epiphany while making those pills. Sensei told me that what I did made me a mid-Expert alchemist.”

He appeared to be shaken, “That’s unheard of!”

“Sensei told me that I was one of a kind. I just said that I had a good teacher and a few lucky breaks, so it was only natural that I advanced so quickly. Anyway, is there any chance you have any alchemical ingredients laying around? I’d take them if you’ll let me.”

He shook himself, “If you’re completely sure… I think we might have some alchemical ingredients left behind by our previous sect master. I hope they’ll make up for the difference in value between the information and the pills.”

Sensei grunted, “See, he understands that what you’re giving him is too valuable. He was right to offer those ingredients to you. If he didn’t, I wasn’t going to instruct his wife anymore.”

I mentally sighed, before nodding, “That sounds more than fair, I appreciate your generosity. Now, when do you think you’ll be able to get in contact with your contacts with the Scholars? Keiko and I would like to make for the trial of the Dancing Dragons technique as soon as possible.”

Bortus smiled, “It shouldn’t be more than two or three weeks,” seeing the look of frustration on my face, he rapidly continued, “You don’t understand, the information they’ll be transferring is highly privileged. They’ll have to find the right opportunity to pass that information on to me, and before that, I’ll need to find time to get them the story of the Phoenix emperor. If we’re talking about trying to get them to rejoin the Gentle River sect, the transfer of information could take months, if not years.”

The way he’d talked before, it had sounded like he was going to make the trade for the information we needed immediately. I was frustrated to find that wasn’t the case. It felt like I was being misled, and I hated that feeling.

I frowned, “When I get the information I’m after, you’ll get these pills, but I’ll need to see those alchemical ingredients as soon as possible. Without them there’s no way you’ll get these pills.” I swept up the six jade pill cases that were sitting on the table in front of me, which elicited a gasp from Bortus.

He stood up sharply, “We had a deal!” I could tell that he was angry, as he was pulling up his fists like he was ready to fight.

Honestly, I wasn’t scared of Bortus, at least not with Alayna and Keiko out checking the perimeter formations. I was confident in my ability to defend myself if he got violent. Honestly, with the protections of the Inheritance, unless I agreed to a formal duel, I had nothing to worry about from him.

I sighed, “Our agreement was information for pills. When you can provide the information I seek, I’ll give you the pills you wanted.” With that, I stood up from the table and smoothed out my white robes, the same set I’d received from Elliott and Chandra back in the Inheritance of the Lovers.

“You have until the end of week, at that point, I’ll be taking them and selling them off for myself. From what Sensei tells me, these pills are worth far more than nearly any information you could get, let alone the information you’re offering.” I pulled a single jade pill container out of my storage ring and held it in the palm of my hand. “You can have this single pair of pills in exchange for the ingredients you mentioned before. To be clear, this is part of your previous commission, not an additional pair. I guess we’ll have to be more concrete in our deals moving forward.” My voice snapped.

It felt good to stand up for myself for once, especially using the authority granted by my new Expert alchemist status. The way Sensei explained it, back in his time, an alchemist of my grade would be considered a national treasure, not quite a crown jewel, but definitely something to be protected. He said that with light and dark qi being lost to the world, the number of Expert alchemists would be much lower than it was in his time. With that in mind, I knew that I would have no issue finding a very lucrative position when I left Sunset Island.

The Sage cultivator turned around freakishly quickly and he was nearly frothing at the mouth. It appeared that Keiko and Alayna were back in the compound, otherwise there’s no way that he would have been able to move that fast.

He snarled, “I’ll have a guard lead you to the ingredients. Let me know…”

I cut him off, “No. You will take me to where the ingredients are stored, you will wait while I go through them, and you will make sure I get out of their location safely. Am I clear?”

He spun on his heel wordlessly, before walking down the hallway quickly. He called over his shoulder, “I don’t have all day.”

After that, I followed Bortus as he traveled down a number of hallways until reaching the main courtyard. After that, he walked up to the central pagoda, before scowling at me again. He’d obviously realized that he couldn’t actually open the door to his own residence on his own. He eventually whistled for one of his guards to come down and help him open the door, which they did while glaring at me. I guess it wasn’t unusual for their faction leader to be so irate, but it was his own fault, so I didn’t have a problem with them.

Bortus led me up to the second floor of the pagoda, before leading me to the room opposite the sitting room we had made our plan for sector domination within.

He grunted and pointed at the door, “The ingredients are in there. I’ll be over in the sitting room waiting.” He didn’t even have the courtesy to nod to me as he left, walking briskly over the sitting room before slamming the sliding door there.

I whistled, “Seems like somebody’s a bit testy. Maybe they should be clearer when they make deals.” I heard the snapping of wood as Bortus obviously cracked a set of chopsticks in half. There was muffled cursing from the sitting room after that, then silence.

Sensei cackled, “I like Expert alchemist Steven, he has all the confidence he should have had as a Journeyman, but none of the hesitance. I could get used to you acting like this.” I felt a wave of excitement and pride coming from Sensei, he really hadn’t liked it when I was letting people push me around and now that I was defending itself, he found it refreshing.

“What can I say? I’m tired of walking around on eggshells because my cultivation is lower than theirs. Especially in this Inheritance, there’s nothing they can do to me that I’m worried about, so I’ll show them some respect when they show me some in return.”

“I can appreciate that. Only show respect to those who show it to you.” Sensei echoed my statement.

As I was inspecting the door leading to the former sect leader’s alchemical laboratory, I took note of the fact that Sensei was being much more familiar with me now, rather than the guarded way he used to talk, now he treated me more as a colleague, rather than simply as a disciple. He would always be my Sensei, but it was nice to be talked to like a fellow alchemist, rather than just a student.

The door in front of me was nothing special, but when I took a deep sniff after opening the door a crack, I smelled something familiar. It was woodsy, with a bit of acrid stink in the background. I recognize the smell nearly immediately; it was Jade Serpent poison, the very same poison I used to great effect in the battle to reclaim the Moonbeam Grotto from the Indus tribe. I watched as it turned powerful cultivators into shriveling husks, though Keiko and I were fine, even when exposed.

Eventually I found the trigger for the poison dispersal device. It was the floor tile directly inside the room. As soon as I would have stepped on it, I would’ve been sprayed with enough Jade Serpent poison to kill a dozen people, let alone a single Saint cultivator. Sensei wanted me to disarm the trap, which wouldn’t have been difficult, but I had another plan. I didn’t need any more Jade Serpent poison, so I figured I would test my host.

I slid the door open wide, the sliding door clacking against its holder as it slammed into place. Before I stepped in, I looked around and saw that the room was pristine. There was a single medium-sized jade storage unit against the back wall, which I knew to be the exterior wall of the room. In addition to that, I also saw a pyramid of scrolls on the table in the middle of the room. A crimson piece of paper was draped over top of it.

Before I could step inside, Sensei yelled in my head, “Stop! That red paper is alchemically reactive. If any kind of alchemical substance comes into contact with it, it will burst into flames and burn the scrolls. The poison contained inside the trap was obviously put in place, not only to kill the intruder, but also to destroy those scrolls.

“If I’m reading your plan correctly, before you go inside, you should use a thread of qi to gather up that paper, along with the scrolls, just in case. We wouldn’t want those scrolls to get destroyed for a simple test.” He paused for a moment, “Do you have any random paper you can roll up like scrolls? They don’t need to have anything written on them.”

I frowned, “Yes, I do have some paper I could roll up to imitate those scrolls,” realization dawned upon me and I hurriedly did as we’d discussed. To start, I used a thread of wind qi to pull the alchemically reactive paper into my storage ring, before doing the same with each of the ten scrolls on the table in front of me. I did all this from the door to the room, not having taken a single step inside. A few moments later, I had ten blank scrolls placed on the table, arranged in the same pyramid shape the other scrolls had been in, with the same alchemically reactive paper on top of the pile.

I assumed that if I was correct, Bortus didn’t just want to hurt me, he probably also wanted the scrolls intact. To be clear, I hoped I was wrong, but I also knew that people’s true natures revealed themselves when pushed into a corner, so it was time to see who Bortus really was.

When my preparations were complete, I stepped into the room. Less than a second later, an enormous cloud of Jade Serpent poison filled the room I was in, though I figured out later that the jade chest was completely untouched. I faked stumbling before toppling forward to the ground, though I caught myself with a hand on the table, as if I was clinging to life. I felt, rather than saw, as the alchemically reactive paper burst into flames and consumed the scrolls I’d laid out on the table, though the ten brass rings that were holding them were all left in the same pyramid shape.

From outside the door, I heard a loud cracking noise before hearing the footsteps of Bortus quickly running across the intervening distance until he arrived at the doorway I’d entered. To my surprise, Bortus didn’t sneer, yell, or anything of the sort. Rather, he took one look at me and immediately covered his face with a ball of water qi, before stepping inside to drag me out.

I heard him muttering under his breath, “Please be okay, please be okay. I know I was mad, but no one deserves to die like this.” He didn’t even mention the scrolls on the table, though there was no way he wouldn’t have seen them. He was just worried that I was in trouble.

I was pleasantly surprised and when I eventually sat up to take a look at Bortus, I saw that he was pulling out a large jade bottle with a silver stopper and was about to pour someting into my mouth.

I held up a hand, “Don’t worry about that, though I appreciate the thought.”

Bortus looked at me dumbly, before his face transitioned from worry, back to rage. Before he could yell at me, I cut him off.

“I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot today. I was frustrated that the information Keiko and I needed was going to take far longer than anticipated, so maybe I lashed out a little bit too much. I still feel all of those things I said before, but I should have been more tactful. I’m sorry that I tricked you, but I’m glad to see that you didn’t trigger the trap. The trigger was on the floor tile in front of the door. It appeared to be quite obvious, so I was convinced that you knew it was there.”

Bortus sighed and shook his head, “Auntie and I are both formation masters, but we don’t know anything about alchemy. We figured that we would wait until the sect had a decent alchemist before we opened up the old sect leader’s alchemy chamber, but it’s nearly impossible to attract an alchemist in here if you aren’t the Scholars. They have an effective monopoly on all alchemical substances on this layer, with the notable exception of the cultivation aids the Inheritance gives us directly.”

He waved a hand and a wave of pure water qi rushed over his body, and then my own, before slowly condensing into a very small green ball, which I assumed contained all of the Jade Serpent poison I’d been coated in. I pulled out another jade bottle and scooped it up, I wasn’t one to let good poison go to waste.

He continued, “I’m sorry about the way I misled you, but once I learned of the kinds of pills you could make, I knew I needed to get them as soon as possible. So… I may have misled you as to the time frames involved. It wasn’t honest, but it was necessary.” He looked longingly at the table inside the room, where the ten brass rings lay stacked where the scrolls would’ve been. “I was really hoping that you would be able to tell me what was inside those scrolls, I’ve been curious the last hundred years or so, after noticing them while on a drunken binge.”

I laughed and pulled out a single one of the scrolls, before pulling off the brass ring and unfurling it so Bortus and I could both read it. He seemed happy, but not entirely surprised.

The scroll contained ingredients for a basic healing potion, which matched neatly to the technique and ingredient list that Sensei had taught me. Sensei confirmed that it was a good example of a starter healing potion. When I explained that to Bortus, he asked me to check the rest. All but one of the scrolls contained alchemical recipes, all of which Sensei knew, so I gave each of them to Bortus in turn.

The last scroll had a golden band, rather than the brass the others had, and it did not contain a list of ingredients or the technique for creating something. Rather it was a letter.

Dear Successor,

If you’re reading this, my partner and I are gone from the Battle Layer, finally, though I hope it’s to ascend to the Academy layer, rather than in death. I hope that the recipes I’ve left behind will serve you well. They served me and my partner well for many years. If you’re reading this and Bortus and Alayna are still the sect leaders, please let them know that I’m proud of them.

Sincerely,

Angelo

I handed the letter to Bortus and he quickly read it for himself, despite the fact that I had just read it out loud. He smiled, “That’s definitely written by Angelo, he was a phenomenal alchemist, but a better person. He and his partner were the sect leaders before Auntie and I, they were so strong, but also so wise. They taught Auntie and I everything we know about leading a sect. Though they were both alchemists, so they weren’t able to pass on those skills to us.” He nodded to me gratefully, “Thank you, if not for you, it may have been quite a while before we were able to get access to these scrolls. Are you sure it’s okay for me to take these ingredient lists and instructions? Don’t you need them?”

I shook my head, “Sensei knows all of those techniques and how to make each of those concoctions. He’s already had me write all of them out at least half a dozen times into a notebook, so I probably know them better than the person who actually wrote those instructions. Don’t worry about me, save them for the next alchemist you manage to bring into the Gentle River sect.”

We chatted for a minute about different things, but after our little conversation I felt much better about Bortus, but worse about how I’d acted. I knew that I needed to be careful now, because of my advanced alchemical rank, I had to make sure I didn’t lord over people. That was the best way to get myself hurt, or even killed.

When I brought that up to Sensei, he begrudgingly agreed. “You’re right, at your level of cultivation, you do need to be more careful than I ever was, though I did really like how confident you were. You reminded me of a young me!”

When I eventually investigated the rest of the room, most of the things I found were very basic. They were all things I had way too much of inside the Inheritance of the Pot, in addition to thirty sets of ingredients for each of the recipes I found on the table. I passed those over to Bortus and he gratefully took them.

There were only two things of real interest to me inside the room, besides what I’ve already mentioned. There was some sort of hairpin that was made out of a blue gemstone and gold. It was shaped like a star and I figured it would look good in Keiko’s hair, so I took it. The last thing that I found the room was slightly was more exciting. I found a stockpile of almost a thousand jade containers, which I only took eight hundred of. I never wanted to be in a situation where I needed a jade pill bottle again when I couldn’t find one. There were ten different sizes, but the most common ones were pill bottles and powder cases.

Sensei was pleased, “You won’t need to worry about those anytime soon, that’s good. In the future, you’ll be making a lot of pills to sell, so you’ll need as many jade bottles as you can lay your hands on. Good find.”

Chapter 11

When the day of the sector contest came upon us, the only person, of the four of us, who was nervous was Taka. We assured him that his racing skills were more than up to par and that he would have no problems, but he was still a nervous wreck. It took Naomi nearly ten minutes of sending positive feelings and affirmations his way, along with a back massage, before he finally calmed down enough to actually fly us in for the competition.

The competition took place on an oddly shaped island, it was a four-pointed star, but each of the four corners had a circle of land at the end of them that would host the competitions.

My alchemical competition was up first, but it was pretty anticlimactic. At the beginning of the competition, when we were announcing our names and alchemical ranks, I said that I was an expert alchemist. Following the confirmation of that, everyone else just dropped out. No one even tried to compete with me. I was little bit miffed, but it was nice that I would now be able to watch Keiko compete, so I took it as a win.

Takas race was nearly as anticlimactic as my alchemical competition, if you could call it that. He only had to race against two other people and both of them were using standard circular discs, unlike the triangular disc that Taka was flying on. Not only did he beat them, he lapped them twice in a five-lap race. By the end, he was so far ahead that he could’ve walked the rest the track and still won handily.

The singing competition was a bit fiercer, but Naomi’s gorgeous soprano cut through the noise and she was victorious following her rendition of Dragon’s Folly, a tragedy about a dragon who valued money more than cultivation and ended up being killed for alchemical purposes. It was a bit gruesome, but it did make me want Dragon parts for alchemy. Sensei confirmed that they were fantastic for some applications, but terrible for others. I stored away that information as Naomi joined Taka and I as we observed Keiko’s formation competition.

Her competition was two parts, rather than the single part competitions that Naomi and Taka’s had taken part in. Mine would’ve been three parts, but no one wanted to compete against an Expert alchemist. Anyway, the first stage of her competition was building the best defensive formation you could to block a physical blow.

Sensei’s play-by-play was invaluable, otherwise Naomi, Taka, Ellie, and I wouldn’t have known anything that was going on.

“Alright, so she’s working on a physical barrier right now, it’s reinforced with earth and metal qi, and I think that she’s… she’s starting to add in some Arctic qi to tighten it up. That’s going to be a very strong barrier.”

A few flashing lights and a few gasps from the gathered cultivators later.

“It appears that she went with an elongated diamond formation, with the leading point reinforced with Arctic qi, while the other four corners are equally distributed with qi. It’s a bit of a risky choice, but from what I’ve seen at this competition, there isn’t a lot of subtlety, so she’s probably correct to do so.”

As sure as anything, as soon as the bell went off, bolts of fire and earth qi were launched at each of the five contestants taking part in the formation competition and only three of their barriers blocked the blasts in their entirety. The other two contestants were asked to leave and they were down to three competitors.

Keiko seemed to be cruising through and Sensei confirmed that fact. “Keiko’s barrier is of significantly higher quality than any of her competitors. Despite all of the competitors being journeymen, she’s worked on significantly more complex formations the most journeymen, so she has a much deeper bank of knowledge to draw from than these other journeymen. They’ve probably never seen anything more detailed than a four-layered formation, while Keiko cultivates inside an object with sixty-four layers of formations on it every day, that being the Centering Lotus. The formations inside the Centering Lotus are so fine that you probably don’t even notice them, but I can tell that they’re mesmerizing to Keiko.”

The next part of the formation master competition was to create the best offensive formation and to try and use them to break the barrier formations that were still left standing from the previous challenge.

Sensei laughed, “She’s a cheeky one, she obviously had a feeling that this was coming, so she made it so that her formation could be converted into a hybrid of offensive and defensive. Just wait till someone tries to attack her formation, you’ll see how exceptional her efforts are then.”

A few minutes later, a chime sounded and both of the other remaining competitors, two pairs of Indus sect cultivators who were obviously working together, each launched identical volleys of metal and earth spikes, respectively, from their formations that directly impacted the leading edge of Keiko’s barrier. Not only did their attacks not break her barrier, rather they were blasted back at them with nearly double their original power. They were also laced with Arctic qi now, which gave the metal and earth spikes that the other competitors had sent her way significantly more dangerous. Both of their barriers shattered like glass and Keiko was immediately declared the winner.

She ran over and jumped into my arms, where I swung her around excitedly, “You did an amazing job! I’m so proud of you!” I pulled her into a deep hug before giving her a nice kiss. We separated after a moment and settled in for the adjudicator to allot us our sectors.

The adjudicator was not a person, rather it was a large white orb with a very primitive face designed on it. The “face”, if it could really be called that, was just two large black circles with a curved line below them.

When it spoke, it was a very deep monotone, “Steven Roh, you are now in control of sector seventy-two. Would you like to maintain control, or pass control to one of the sects on this layer?”

I’ll spare you the details, but each of us were granted control of a sector, sectors seventy-two, seventy-three, sixty-two, and sixty-three to be exact. All of us gave control of our sectors to the Gentle River sect, which made the audience gasp.

We rolled with it and we waved to the gathered crowd as we were leaving. We told the crowd that the Gentle River sect was going to be making moves, so if they were looking for somewhere to go that wasn’t quite so aggressive, they should make a change and head over to their headquarters to join.

Of the people watching, there were ten couples who had no allegiance at that time, and four of those couples actually ended up joining the Gentle River sect that day. The following week, one of those four couples who had joined ended up becoming part of the group we were planning on using to take control of the rest of the sectors.

The week following our successful sector competition was absolutely ordinary. Keiko and I cultivated together and we each worked on our own separate projects, but nothing exceptional happened. We kept up with our daily sparring requirement, usually sparring with Naomi and Taka, but occasionally sparring with Bortus and Alayna. Both of those couples found our style of fighting to be refreshing, seeing as we didn’t use flashy named, large bursts of qi, or unwieldy techniques. Rather, our more reserved style of fighting was truly unusual to them.

Sensei remarked that even though Bortus and Alayna came from his time, cultivators never change. They always end up preferring large flashy maneuvers over the more optimal choice of more finessed techniques. He explained that as soon as you got up to the level of the King cultivator, you realized that everyone can throw roughly the same amount of qi, it’s all about how you can utilize that same quantity of ki. High ranking cultivator fights were more about refining your technique than proving how much qi you could produce at one time.

It made a large amount of sense, at King level, a person’s cores were as well-developed as they would ever be. It was only the qi pathways and meridians that underwent anything significant in the transition to Emperor. Sensei had given us a bit of a rundown on how our cores would develop, along with rest of our bodies, as we advanced through the ranks of cultivation.

Besides our normal sparring and crafting, Keiko and I did our best to absorb as much information as we could from the members of the Gentle River sect. It didn’t matter who we talked to, everyone in the Inheritance of the Eclipse had been a paired cultivator longer than we had, so they all had potential nuggets of wisdom for us.

A lot of them end up giving us the same hints, things like make sure you and your partner find the best position for cultivation and don’t be afraid to change things up if it’s not working anymore. It turned out that most of the advice we got about paired cultivation ended up being closer to relationship advice, which made a lot of sense. The power of our paired cultivation was directly tied to how close we were as people and as a couple.

I learned that there were a few pairs in the Gentle River sect who were not romantically entwined, but those pairs were few and far between. However, those pairs also had some of the strongest bonds I’d ever seen between two people. The best examples I could give of that kind of pair were the two pairs of guards who went with Bortus and Alayna whenever they left the sect headquarters.

I got to know Tim and Juan, who were the male pair of guards, when Keiko and I spent a few hours sparring with them. Afterward, they told Keiko and I how they ended up in the Inheritance of the Eclipse. Tim and Juan grew up together, fighting upon the streets of a city far larger than anywhere I had ever heard of or even dreamed of called Rushmon. They explained how, in the massive city they grew up in, if you didn’t have money, you weren’t allowed to cultivate.

Both Tim and Juan were orphans with no sort of backing, so the idea of them being able to cultivate beyond opening up their lower cores was nearly unthinkable. Eventually, through tenacity and teamwork, the pair managed to become Heart cultivators and started to take small jobs guarding caravans that traveled throughout the enormous city they lived in. These caravans traveled for weeks, or even months, without leaving the city proper.

They told me about how the walls of the city they grew up in were a thousand feet high and that the beast waves crashing against their base could be felt if you lived in the slums around the outer ring, which they both had. One day, Juan had run back to find Tim with a brown parcel held in his hand. Inside the parcel were the totem earrings they were still wearing to that day and a flyer which denoted a tournament for pairs of cultivators who wanted a chance at a better life.

Despite the mention of fabulous riches and cultivation aids, all they needed to see was a chance for a better life for them to make up their minds about entering the tournament. They left their final caravan guarding job, just having completed it, and never look back. When we went to the place the flyer referenced, there was nothing there but a circular formation in the ground with a matching flyer to the one they had in their hands. They didn’t think they had anything to lose, so they stepped into the formation together, brothers in arms.

They were incredibly lucky that the entrance tournament for the Inheritance of the Eclipse had occurred less than a week before their arrival. That meant that they had nearly a full year to learn to cultivate together, using all the cultivation aids the Inheritance granted them. It was like heaven to them.

Because of the strength of their brotherhood, their cultivation soared. Gone were the days where they were hunting for scraps to survive as children. Now they were being given incredibly qi rich foods and all of the cultivation aids they could use, from pills, to potions, to meditation formations, etc. When the time came for their tournament, they had progressed all the way to peak Meridian cultivators and they swept the tournament without batting an eyelash.

They assumed that, when they exited the tournament, they would be heralded as hot commodities, but instead of that the Indus sect attempted to coerce them into joining their faction with false promises of endless power. The problem was, they had faced Indus tribe members in the tournament and knew of their proclivities, namely cannibalism. Juan and Tim weren’t like that, so they turned down the Indus sect’s offer. At that point they were harried by a number of Indus sect pairs on their disks and ended up flailing and being knocked off their disks. It was only the fact that Bortus and Alayna happened to be flying by that they end up surviving.

The story of Eliza and Emily was entirely different. They had grown up in the Indus tribe, but hadn’t ever partaken of their tribe’s favorite food. For that, they were called out as weak and close-minded. When Emily learned that Eliza was going to be turned into dinner the next day, she stole a set of totem earrings from her parents and dove into the Inheritance with her.

Knowing that there was nowhere else left for them to hide, they sought out the Gentle River sect, which Emily had heard her parents cursing about before. However, on their way to find the Gentle River sect, they missed their daily sparring, due to not be able to find anybody else who would spar with them. At the end of the week, they made their way to the grand melee and were surprised to find the sect leaders of the Gentle River sect there, Bortus and Alayna. They were very excited, but also afraid, because they saw Emily’s parents there preparing for the melee and when they saw Emily and Eliza their predatory grins shook them to their cores.

As soon as the melee began all of the Indus sect members charged straight for Emily and Eliza, who were barely Heart cultivators at the time, just having started performing paired cultivation together. They were beaten bloody on the ground when Bortus and Alayna swept over and saved them, protecting them until the end of the grand melee. After the fighting was done, the pair were swept up onto a disk with Bortus and Alayna and brought to the Gentle River sect’s headquarters. From that day forward they followed Bortus and Alayna around like lost puppies until they eventually grew in power enough that they became their guards. Their sisterhood was strong enough to break them free of the Indus tribe and power their cultivation to the peak of Sage, so it was nothing to scoff at.

I heard scuttlebutt that Juan and Eliza in addition to Emily and Tim, were couples, but no one would confirm it for me. Either way, hose platonic pairs were every bit as strong as any romantically involved pair I met in the Inheritance of the Eclipse.

At the end of the week, it was time for Taka’s first part in our master plan to begin. He took to it like a fish to water. Rather than attempting to knock people off of their discs as they were heading to the grand melee, rather he was simply delaying their travel by flying in front of them to force them to find a way around. Keiko and I flew over to watch the festivities. Though we were much slower than Taka and Naomi, we were fast enough to stay away from any of the Indus sect who wanted to try their old tricks on us. Keiko neatly dodged two separate attempts to knock us off of our disks. One of the couples who tried to knock us off ended up pushing too far and ended up caterwauling down into the clouds below. They didn’t come back out.

Taka’s flying was masterful, he single-handedly prevented a dozen Indus sect pairs from reaching the grand melee. Five minutes before the grand melee began, there were only five pairs standing, waiting for the battle to begin. I didn’t recognize four of the pairs, but from the colors they wore, I knew that they were all part of the Indus sect. The final pair I did recognize, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would never forget their faces.

It was Bocca and Victrix, the spike chain and qi charged nail using Indus tribe members that Keiko and I had fought before arriving at the Moonbeam grotto. They looked incredibly bored, like what they were doing didn’t have any meaning, which, in a way, it didn’t. All the people down there were part of the Indus sect, so nobody down there was going to be fighting like their life was on the line.

Keiko and I exchanged a grin and when I spoke, her smile only widened. “I think we may want to join this grand melee, not that we have to, but there’s something we need to take care of down there.”

Keiko nodded appreciatively, “I’ve been wanting to give that hussy a piece of my mind for weeks now, I think today’s the day.” She frowned as she looked down at the group of Indus sect members gathered below before looking back to me. “We’ll be badly outnumbered if we go down there. Unless you have a plan for the other four groups?”

She raised her eyebrows when I grinned devilishly.

“Bocca and Victrix are incredibly proud, it was obvious when they were lecturing us while fighting us and again when they met us inside the Inheritance a few weeks ago. If we offered to square up against them, two on two, there is a very high percentage chance they’d agree. Stars, they might even help us clear out their fellow Indus sect members. I didn’t get the impression that they were big team players.”

As Keiko mulled that over over, Sensei spoke up. “There’s an aspect of risk in what you’re talking about, but I trust your judgement. It’s not a good idea to leave an enemy behind you when you’re moving forward, so this is a good chance to make up for doing so previously. All I ask is that you be safe and, if it appears that the fight cannot be won, that you use some Jade Serpent poison to create a cloud around you two to keep yourselves safe. You and Keiko should be immune, so that the best form of defense you have access to right now. Anybody who enters dies, to a point of course. Dukes might survive a few seconds and Kings could walk right through it if they tempered their bodies against poison.”

After a few moments of hesitation, Keiko nodded, “I think Sensei’s right. If we don’t take care of Bocca and Victrix, they’ll do something terrible to make us fight them and I’m afraid of what that might be. They can’t strike against us directly in here, but they can cause serious problem for us in other ways.”

I hailed Naomi and Taka, from where they floated above us and a bit to the left about thirty feet. Taka slowly lowered their disk down so that it floated next to Keiko and my disk.

Naomi frowned, “What’s up? Did you need something?”

I shrugged, “Keiko and I have some business to finish with the couple standing by themselves down there,” I pointed down to where Bocca and Victrix stood apart from the other Indus sect members. I could tell from their stances that they held the other members of their sect with no kind of regard at all. “We’ve fought those two before and we barely managed to escape with our lives. Then, they found us when you dropped us off to go through orientation. At that time, they were seriously excited to see us. If we don’t go and deal with them now, I have every confidence that they’ll come back to bite us. What do you think?” I knew that it couldn’t hurt to get their opinion, even though our minds were mostly made up.

Naomi frowned and looked over at Taka who was nodding sagely, “I understand that. There are a number of monsters who will hunt their prey to their dying breath, across vast distances, especially if that prey got the best of them in the past. The Ebony Python has been known to hunt down cultivators who milked their venom and released them until they died hundreds of years later. It makes sense to me that some particularly primal people might have similar tendencies.” He looked thoughtfully from me, to Naomi, to Keiko, and then finally back to me. “What do you need from us? Do you need us to enter with you and deal with the other four groups? It looks like they’re mostly Meridian cultivators, so they should be a breeze for us to deal with.”

I shook my head, “I’m relatively sure that the people were going down to fight will help us clear out their fellow Indus sect members when they hear the offer we have for them.”

Naomi snorted, “If that’s what you want to do, go for it. We’ll be here when you get done with the grand melee, so don’t make us watch you die.” Her voice broke at the end there, but her face remained stoic.

I nodded and pulled Keiko close, “Agreed, we’ve got this.” I gently released Keiko from the side hug I had just pulled her into. “Keiko, would you please lower us down to the battleground? I want to talk to Bocca and Victrix.”

Keiko nodded and as we were lowering down, I heard a yell come from Naomi.

“Hold on! Victrix? She’s killed more people in grand melees than anybody in the last two hundred years. What are you doing?”

Keiko didn’t slow down; we’d already made up our minds.

I yelled back up at where our friends sat, staring down at us with worry plastered across their faces. “We’ve fought them before and hopefully we won’t have to fight them again after this.” With a wave, I produced the spiked chain I had taken from Bocca, “We even took a souvenir from them in our last fight.” I banished the spiked chain back into my spatial ring with a thought.

At that point, we were too far away for any reasonable conversation, but I knew that Naomi was shaking her head and glaring down at me. You could call it a sixth sense, but I always knew when someone was unhappy with me.

As Keiko and I touched down onto the battleground, we heard a booming voice. “The grand melee will begin in five minutes.” The booming voice echoed throughout the enormous battlefield that contained six couples, including us.

I knew it was a bit ridiculous, but I chuckled at how empty this place was. “It seems like Taka did too good of a job! This place feels totally empty.” I chuckled, but I wrung my hands at the same time. I was nervous. Keiko and I nearly died the last time we fought Bocca and Victrix. It was only a last-ditch blast of qi from me and Aria arriving that had saved our lives.

Keiko rubbed the small of my back, “I know you’re nervous, but we’ve got this. Also, Taka did do too good of a job. It’s a darn shame to waste a huge battlefield like this on six couples.” She chuckled and I did my best to join her, but I didn’t have the heart to do so.

Bocca looked up and grinned when he saw us. He cut a rather impressive figure in his jet-black set of leather armor, the whip he had replaced his spike chain with was still wrapped around his waist like a belt.

He tugged on Victrix’s extremely revealing suit of leather armor and pointed over at Keiko and I, where Keiko had just picked up the disk we flew in on.

Without exchanging any words, the pair started over toward us, the feeling of dread in my stomach faded as they crossed the hundred feet to stand near us. When we fought them first time, we had merely been Brain cultivators. Now, we were well trained Saint cultivators and had a number of new tricks we could use to help us win in a fight against them. All we had to do was fight intelligently and everything was going to be okay… at least I hoped we would.

When they arrived next to us, Victrix giggled and did a seductive little twirl, which made Keiko growl under her breath. Victrix saw Keiko’s reaction and giggled even harder. “The kiddies came to play! Bocca, aren’t you so excited?”

Bocca hadn’t stopped staring into my eyes from the moment he realized I was there, on the battlefield with them. He grinned, “Ecstatic, we’ll teach these pups what paired cultivation really looks like!” He pulled Victrix toward him and kissed her passionately, which made Keiko make gagging noises from behind me.

I merely shook my head derisively, “I got an offer for you, if you’re willing to hear me out.” I tapped my foot as Bocca untangled himself from Victrix to stare into my eyes again.

“What kind of offer?” I could tell from the way he was looking at me that he was hanging on my every word.

I shrugged, “We want to fight you guys, just us.” I waved over at the octet of Indus sect members who were staring over at us, “Those guys would just get in the way. Don’t you agree?” My voice was icier than Keiko’s Arctic qi.

While Bocca continued to stare at me, Victrix smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. Rather, it was as predatory as any monster I’d ever seen.

She rubbed her hands together greedily, “I think that can be arranged. We can even have a bit of a challenge! We should see who can take care of their two pairs before the other does. We won’t fight until all four other pairs are gone. Do we have a deal?” Bocca held out his calloused hand to shake immediately afterward, it was obvious that that pair had used the same Sage level cultivation technique as Bortus and Alayna, Unending Serpent. That explained how much stronger we had found them months ago. It also meant that they could have conversations nearly instantaneously, so for all we knew, they could have had an entire strategy session about how to defeat us in the moment I proffered the idea of fighting two on two.

Despite that fact, I still reached out and shook Bocca’s hand. As he squeezed my hand, I felt the calluses dig into my hands and was reminded of the fact that, while I was a good fighter, these people killed for fun. We were going to have to be very careful if we wanted to walk out of this alive, let alone unharmed.

We stood there shaking hands for almost a minute before finally breaking off our handshake. Bocca seemed to have relaxed and was slowly rolling his shoulders to loosen up. Gone was the intense stare, it was replaced with an easy grin and happy eyes.

“Like I told you before, I want the last thing you remember when you die to be my name. In case you forgot, it’s Bocca.”

Victrix merely stood there grinding her foot-long nails against each other, doing some sort of sharpening routine if I had to guess. Behind me, I heard Keiko unsheathed the Dawnblade and start doing katas with it as a shortsword, rather than her normal broadsword form. It was clever, if they were preparing for her to fight with a shortsword, they were going to be greatly mistaken. Despite the fact that they had seen Keiko fighting with the Dawnblade as a broadsword before, seeing her switching up her style would cause anyone to doubt the plans they had made to deal with a particular combatant. I upholstered the Duskguard tonfas and went through a slow kata to center myself before the battle.

A while later, the loud voice boomed out again, “One minute until the grand melee begins. Participants, please move inside the silver ring.”

As if summoned, a ring of silver runes appeared on the ground near the middle of the enormous battlefield. It couldn’t have been more than one hundred feet across.

When she saw me staring quizzically at the ring of runes, Victrix actually supplied the information is looking for.

“Oh, sweet thing, didn’t you know that the grand melee starts in close quarters and slowly get bigger? What are those Gentle River sect people teaching you?” She shimmied her hips a little bit, which I have to admit, did make my heart race for a moment, “Don’t worry, Bocca and I’ll teach you plenty before we kill you.” With that, she and Bocca strode towards the silver ring of runes, as if nothing had happened.

Keiko glared at the form of Victrix as she walked away, obviously swinging her hips more than was required to walk. I heard her grinding her teeth from six feet away, so I walked over and pulled her into a tight embrace, kissing her passionately for a solid thirty seconds. When we disentangled, I had to work her fingers out of my hair from where she’d leapt up to latch onto me. I took her hand as we walked toward the silver ring, which was only fifty feet from us.

I sent her mental message, “You’re the only one for me. Don’t forget it. Now, let’s see what kind of damage we can do to the Indus sect in this melee.”

I heard Keiko sigh contentedly before responding to me in kind, “You know I feel the same. Now, are we disabling or killing the other Indus sect members? At their level of cultivation, against us, it’s just as easy to do either.”

I knew what my answer had to be, even if I wasn’t a huge fan of it, “We have to kill them. I know that’s not the answer you were expecting, but the fewer Indus sect members there are, the fewer Indus tribe members there will be for us to deal with when we eventually have to destroy their entire tribe. It’s just how it has to be.”

Keiko merely nodded and squeezed my hand comfortingly, she could tell I didn’t like what we had to do, but she understood that it was part of the war we were in with the Indus tribe. The Indus sect was merely a single link in the chain, but there was a huge chance that it was the most important link in the chain. It could prove to be the single point of failure that was providing the Indus tribe all of the power they had accumulated over the years. Severing that critical link could be the reason why Sunset Island eventually gained its freedom from the tyranny of the Indus tribe.

We crossed the silver line with ten seconds to go and Victrix called over from five yards away. “If you beat us, make sure you kill us. Otherwise, we’ll hunt you until you die. Also, make sure you take our belongings before somebody comes to collect them. I wrote you a little surprise if you somehow manage to win.” She shimmied seductively once more, “I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating.”

Keiko nearly broke my hand, she was squeezing it so hard, but I reflexively released her hand before she could do any real damage.

I called over to Victrix, “That sounds like a plan, I hope we can at least have a good fight.”

Bocca snorted, “I’ve been waiting to do this for months, I’m going to destroy you.” With that last statement, he pulled the whip from around his waist and it lit up with formations. He cracked it once and an arc of wind qi shot out from it that barely missed one of the other Indus tribe members. He looked back at me with a stone-cold sneer, “Don’t take too long, otherwise we’ll get bored. I’m going…”

Before he could finish his sentence, the booming voice filled the battleground once more, “Grand melee… Start!”

Bocca and Victrix shot off like arrows toward the four Indus sect members on the side closest to them, while Keiko and I did the same toward the four closest to us. Keiko didn’t bother to lengthen her blade, rather she used the Dawnblade in its shortsword form to get up close and personal and immediately stab an Indus sect woman through the heart. It took less than a second for her partner to roar with rage and attempt to smash Keiko in the back with hammers formed of earth qi, but I was there in a flash to deflect his strike before jabbing a blade of Inferno qi formed from the butt of the Duskguard tonfa up under the chin of the woman’s partner.

Keiko and I both kicked away our first victims and turned to look at the terrified faces of the next two \Indus sect members. They looked at each other meaningfully before turning and sneering at us before charging toward us, like sheep to the slaughter. Two quick exchanges of blows later and both of those Indus sect members were headless. Keiko got a little bit angry when one of them almost managed to bleed on her robes after she cut his head off. She snarled and cut off the head of their partner in retribution.

She danced on the battlefield like avenging angel, reaping life wherever she went. I knew she could handle it, so while she took care of them, I turned to watch those Victrix and Bocca dismantled their opponents without appearing to break a sweat. For the first pair I didn’t get to see what happened, but I saw that both of them lay bisected on the ground. I could only assume that was the results of the wind qi whip strike I’d seen Bocca use moments before.

I did get to see what Victrix was doing, as she appeared to be toying with the other pair. She had lopped off the left arms of both Indus sect members she was fighting and was watching them, laughing, as they screamed. She didn’t try and do anything else to them, merely giggling at their agony. A few moments later, Bocca got irritated and snapped out another blast of wind qi, neatly beheading the other couple, which made Victrix shout in displeasure.

“Oh, you fun-killer, I didn’t ask you to do that!” She sighed, “At least got to have some some fun while it lasted.” She pouted.

Bocca merely grunted and grinned when he saw that Keiko and I had already cleared up our pairs. He stepped into the center of the battleground like he owned it, while Victrix hung her head in irritation as she followed him. Keiko and I joined up and stood across from them, separated by ten feet of open space.

Without any words, we sprung into battle.

I neatly dodged a blade of wind qi from Bocca’s whip as I darted in to get closer to him, trying to cut off the advantage he had in reach. My tonfas only extended a foot from my fists, while his whip nearly reached my chest when he snapped it out. I would’ve called it luck that I dodged his whip, but I knew he would’ve gone for something direct, so I was already dodging when he attacked. I was relatively sure that he was going to be going after me, seeing as I was the one who’d stolen his spiked chain before.

Meanwhile, Victrix blasted toward Keiko with a rush of fire qi from her feet. She giggled maniacally, “I can’t wait to use those big breasts of yours to deep fry the rest of you!”

Through our connection, I knew that Keiko was actually faring just as well as I was. While Victrix had the advantage when it came to attack speed, due to her using both hands of bladed fingernails to attack, Keiko kept her on her toes by switching the Dawnblade from its shortsword form to broadsword form mid-strike, and then back again. Her antics kept Victrix on her toes, which wasn’t a bad way to begin the fight. The sounds of the Dawnblade clashing against Victrix’s nails rang throughout the battleground, but there were no cheers or jibes from an audience. Besides Naomi and Taka, who sat one hundred feet above us on their disk, Bocca, Victrix, Keiko, and I were the only people around.

Just as I managed to slip within arm’s reach of Bocca, where I was planning to pepper him with quick jabs of different elemental blades affixed to the ends of the Duskguard tonfas, I felt something was wrong. I was never one to ignore my instincts, so instead of attacking like he obviously expected me to, I quickly released a jet of Inferno qi behind me and slid through his legs.

No sooner had I done so, than the place I was going to have been standing was cleaved in twain by a guillotine of hardened metal qi dropping toward it. The guillotine had to be at least five feet long and three feet tall, but razor-sharp. If I hadn’t moved, if I hadn’t died I would’ve at least lost my arms at the elbows.

Bocca sprang away from me, but I couldn’t follow him because I was still sliding to my feet.

He spat angrily, “Dismemberment is usually Victrix’s thing, but I figured I would give it a try so I could enjoy killing you slowly until time runs out. I guess I’ll have to go back to strangling you, or whatever else works. At this point, I’m not picky.”

“Gale Force Flurry!”

With a yell, Bocca unleashed a flurry of slashes with his whip that each produced a blade of wind qi that I had to dodge, or I would have had to dodge if I didn’t have the Duskguard tonfas held up defensively in front of me. I was shoved back at least a foot by each of the two dozen blades of wind qi that I blocked with the Duskguard. I was very glad to see that they lived up to their reputation for durability, there wasn’t even a scratch on them.

Seeing his latest attack foiled, Bocca howled in rage.

Seeing that he was distracted, I made my move. I gathered large amounts of fire, wind, and metal qi from my lower core and forced them together between the Duskguard tonfas. I struggled with the power of my own creation for a moment, before I felt the qi mixture hit the perfect blend. With a silent roar, I unleashed that combination of qi I’d gathered, which became lightning as it left the tips of the Duskguard tonfas. The lightning wasn’t very well controlled, but it didn’t have to be. I’d charged nearly four times the normal amount of qi into that lightning blast, taking advantage of my enormous lower core. I wanted to make sure there’d be no escape or retaliation for my lightning strike.

The look of surprise on Bocca’s face was satisfying, but the way he leapt backwards toward where Keiko and Victrix were fighting nearly got him clear of my lightning blast. He was just so fast due to him cultivating the Unending Serpent method.

He howled in pain as the lightning coursed throughout his body, the small metal hooks embedded in his whip helping conduct the lightning up until it reached him, which left him with no way to escape. He stood there, convulsing, for a moment before I heard a loud bang coming from where Keiko was fighting Victrix. A moment later, I saw Victrix appear behind Bocca, where she stared at me with utter hatred in her eyes. She wasn’t playing around anymore; she was all business.

My eyes darted over to where Keiko had been fighting ‘The Hussy’, but she was nowhere to be seen. I quickly scanned the arena a bit more and found her slumped up against the silver ring of formations that formed the boundaries of the arena we were standing in, though it had slowly grown twenty feet wider throughout the course of the grand melee. It was only four minutes into the fifteen-minute grand melee, but I had a feeling that there was going to be a victor decided well before the fifteen-minute mark.

I quickly charged toward Keiko’s slumped over form, all the while watching Bocca and Victrix for any kind of tricks they might have up their sleeves. It appeared that they were working on a plan, or at least waiting for the lightning to leave Bocca’s system before they did anything major to us.

When I reached Keiko, I went to pull out a healing potion, but she waved me away. She stood up and dusted herself off, “You might think her nails are her most dangerous body part, and you’d technically be right, but it’s actually her toenails that are the worst. Her feet don’t even get close to filling the boots she wears, there has to be at least four inches of blade coming off of her toenails too.” She rubbed her sternum, “I was not expecting a straight kick to the chest, especially considering how quickly we’d been exchanging blows. She’s not just a killer, she’s an amazing fighter too.”

I did a quick sweep through Keiko’s cultivation system and found that everything was okay, though she did appear to have been channeling a lot more metal qi than anything else, not that that was unusual for her, it was part of Arctic qi and she also used it to form a sort of armor on her upper body when fighting.

I grunted, “I don’t think Bocca just uses wind qi, I think that was just when he was toying with us. He nearly dropped a metal qi guillotine on me that would’ve taken my arms, if not my head. We can’t take them lightly.”

Before she could respond, I heard the cracking of earth and when I turned around to look at where Bocca and Victrix had been, I saw that they’d closed the gap between us by more than half. Without missing a beat, Keiko and I fell into one of our standard formations, with me slightly in front and her behind me and a bit to my left.

In that position, Keiko could dart forward and strike hard with the Dawnblade, all the while I could protect her with the Duskguard. I usually used jets of Inferno qi at the same time to distract, or kill, my opponents. It usually worked pretty well, but I didn’t get the impression things be so easy that time.

Victrix screamed as she sprinted towards us, “Wall of Pain!”

I felt the ground beneath my feet rumble and I immediately grabbed Keiko and darted to my left, or I would have if she hadn’t already dived to her own left. We were pretty in sync. I didn’t dive quite far enough, so I got caught by the corner of the twenty-foot-wide wall of earth that was covered in metal spikes. Moments after the wall appeared, I saw Victrix grin and I knew something was wrong. The technique she’d just used was probably useful for stopping people from running away, but she placed it where we’d be able to escape easily, what was she…

Something inside me screamed and I immediately launched myself at Keiko, where I crawled up around her like a ball, all while surrounding myself, and her, and shell of Inferno qi. Not a second later, all of the metal spikes on the Wall of Pain that Victrix had summoned burst forth from the wall and arrowed toward the rolling ball of Inferno qi that was protecting Keiko and I. My Inferno qi shell took the worst of the spikes, but I felt more than a dozen of them strike me, all over my body, including one that got dangerously close to hitting my neck. It hit me in the shoulder instead.

I howled in agony and I could hear Victrix’s insane laughter from outside our shell. Keiko immediately knew what to do, she flooded my body with a wave of Arctic qi, not unlike what Ellie would’ve done if she been there. I was so glad I’d left her with Naomi and Taka before coming down, despite her objections. I felt the incredible cold of Keiko’s Arctic qi as it flooded through my body, the fact that she and I shared a cultivation system meant that she knew exactly where qi traveled through my body best, so in less than five seconds she had all of the metal spikes out of my body and was rapidly closing up the wounds they left behind.

I smiled grimly at Keiko, “Wonder how close they are?” With a surge of will, the Inferno qi shell that had protected us turned into the most lethal attack I had ever launched, besides the unified qi beam that Keiko and I could use after we gathered up an incredible amount of qi.

I channeled all of the qi up and out, not bothering to waste any of it downward in hopes to disable one, or both, of our assailants.

I wasn’t that lucky, but when I launched myself to my feet in a defensive stance, I saw that Bocca’s whip was down to just a handle and his jet black leather armor was nearly disintegrated, just a few buckles and straps were left.

Victrix fared much worse, her aesthetic choice of exposing the majority of her skin did not serve her well. Her armor was completely destroyed, if you could actually call it that, and the skin left behind was a charred mass. Only due to the fact that I could see her bared teeth and her eyes, open and blazing with hatred, did I realize that she was still alive. Despite destroying her armor, her fingernails gleamed. When I glanced down toward her feet, I saw that the boots she was wearing had also been destroyed, revealing exactly what Keiko had thought. There were four-inch-long blade like nails attached to her tiny feet.

She screamed in agony, filled rage, and launched herself at me, Keiko was completely forgotten.

What she didn’t know, was that was exactly what I hoped was going to happen. We began a dance of eight limbs, me blocking with the Duskguard tonfas and unleashing devastating kicks with my legs. She didn’t know what hit her, I pushed her back twenty, thirty, forty feet before she realized what she had done.

I realized then that she wasn’t baring her teeth at me, her lips had been completely destroyed by the wave of Inferno qi I had unleashed upon her. So, when she spoke, without lips her voice was hard to understand, but I got the gist of what she was trying to say… eventually.

“Kill you! I… kill you!”

The nails on her fingers and toes grew six inches longer, each, and at that point it was a whole new fight. She was effectively slashing ten short swords at me with her fingers and ten daggers at me with her toes, so I was pushed on the defensive. I didn’t know what technique she was using, but it was devastating.

After a minute of her unceasing barrage of slashes and stabs, I figured out that she had a pattern. On the fifth strike with her left hand, she would always try and do a leg sweep if I was touching the ground. It wasn’t much of a pattern, but it was enough.

I waited for my chance and when it came, I struck. After the fifth strike with her left hand, instead of jumping over the daggers coming from her foot, instead I drove directly at her chest, what little of it there was remaining. I hit her with exactly the same combination of qi I had used against her partner, but in her case, she was standing directly in front of the ends of the Duskguard tonfas, so the results were dramatically different.

The lightning had nowhere to go from side to side, seeing as it couldn’t break through the Duskguard tonfas, so went the only way it could, out. I blasted a two-foot hole through a five-foot tall woman that day and I knew that I would never forget that sight.

She stared at me in horror as she attempted to strike at me once more with her swordlike nails on her right hand, but there was no strength left in her body to do so. She slumped to the ground, her face of mask of horror at what had just happened, and I knew that my face had nearly the exact same look on.

From behind me, I heard a wail of anguish from Bocca and a second later a wet plop. When I turned around to look, I saw that Keiko had taken Bocca’s head when he turned around to attempt to kill me. A whip of pure qi dissolved as I watched and I saw that it had nearly reached me from behind. If Keiko hadn’t done something, I would’ve been dead.

I was in battle mode, so I pushed past the horror of what I’d just done and immediately attempted to snag the earrings off of Victrix’s dead body, but as soon as my hand touched her right ear, a wave of force erupted from the earring and blasted me twenty feet straight up into the air. At first, I thought that Victrix had somehow survived and was attempting to kill me, but when I landed on the ground with a thud, I looked over and saw that the earrings were both missing from her ears, but everything else was still there.

Keiko landed half a second after I did and I realized that she had done exactly what I had, gone for the earrings.

I shook my head to clear out the dizziness from falling and immediately stripped Victrix of a single spatial ring and a single other earring she was wearing. She didn’t have any weapons, but then again, I wouldn’t have expected her to. Even as her body started to dissolve into motes of light, which I thought was really strange until I looked over and saw a large white orb, identical to the one that had judged our contests over the sectors.

The orb absorbed the motes of light from Victrix and Bocca’s forms, but left behind any belongings that had. Notably, Victrix’s finger and toenails left behind. I made a note to ask Sensei why that would’ve been as I swept them into my spatial ring. I stashed her spatial ring in a belt pouch and threw the earring in alongside it. I was really confused at what had happened with the totem earrings, but I figured someone would tell me eventually.

I walked over and checked on Keiko and found her covered in wounds, her arms and legs were covered in cuts that ranged from scratches to two-inch-deep lacerations on her thighs.

She whimpered, “We won,” before falling to the ground in front of me.

I didn’t waste a second and immediately poured the most powerful healing potion I had in my spatial ring in her mouth. It was one that Sensei had walked me through more than a dozen times before I’d actually succeeded in making it. Assuming the imbiber was still alive, it could heal almost any wound. The ingredients to make it were incredibly hard to find and I only had one more brewed, let alone the fact that I could only make one more given what I had access to, but I didn’t even hesitate.

I watched as Keiko’s wounds sealed up before my eyes and the color returned her face.

I hugged her tightly to my chest, so tightly in fact that when she woke up she grunted, “Hey, I know I almost died there, but no one on this battlefield died of suffocation. You should let me go if you don’t want to change that.” I didn’t let her go, but I did loosen my grip so I wasn’t crushing her so much.

From where we sat, the giant Judgeball, which I decided I was going to call these things, spoke. “The victors of this week’s grand melee are Steven and Keiko Roh. You’ll each be granted three Advanced Regeneration pills and a Journeyman meditation formation, good for seven uses.” A moment later a metal tray appeared and floated down toward us with three pills and the stones that would make the formation it had talked about on it. I lazily swept them into my spatial ring before laying back beside Keiko.

She whispered in my ear, she sounded exhausted. “You should see the other guy.” She tried to laugh, but it came as a wet chuckle. The potion I gave her brought her back from the brink of death, but it would still be a few weeks before she was back to full fighting shape.

I laughed, despite the situation, “Did you grab everything off of Bocca? When I tried to grab his totem earrings, something blasted me into the air, I saw it happened to you too.”

She nodded weakly, “Yeah, I got everything else, but you did a real number on him with that explosion, so all he had was a single spatial ring, the hilt of his whip, and a dagger I found in a sheath made of flesh on his back.” She made a disgusted noise, “he was a real piece of work. I think he may have been cultivating some kind of poison, because I wouldn’t touch that dagger if it wasn’t for how well Sensei had us temper ourselves against poison.”

At that point, Naomi and Taka streaked down from the air above the battleground. From the look of frustration on both of their faces, I was under the impression that they hadn’t been able to join us, not that they hadn’t wanted to join us, after the fight until now.

Ellie streaked off from the disk and slapped both Keiko and I with her tail. “Don’t do that again! I should be a fighting with you, mom and dad, not sitting there watching as my parents get killed. If you guys go, I don’t know what’ll happened to me, so you have to make sure you take me with you… always, okay?”

The look in her tiny eyes was nearly more I could bear. She was obviously distraught and I couldn’t blame her. She had watched as both her parents nearly died and she’d been powerless to stop it from happening.

Before I could say anything, she streaked out and bit Keiko on the shoulder. If any other magical beast had bit Keiko on the shoulder, I would’ve cut them in half with a blade of Inferno qi, no questions asked. However, I knew that my little girl was one of the best healers in this Inheritance, maybe the best, so I was happy to see it happen. I heard Keiko sigh with relief as Ellie’s pure Arctic qi filled her body. I turned to look over at Naomi and Taka and saw that both of them were glaring at me.

To my surprise, Taka spoke up first, “Do you know how stupid you are? If you had just asked us, we could’ve told you all the little tricks those pair like to use. I knew all about formation whip, including the metal hooks embedded in it. I knew about the poison dagger that he didn’t get a chance to use that he keeps sheathed behind him. I knew about Victrix’s bladed toenails and how they actually aren’t a part of her, but blades she’d embedded in her extremities that she forced her body to adapt to. I’m a researcher, you wasted a resource and the fact that you had to use such a valuable potion on Keiko, which I’m assuming is why she’s still alive, is because you were stupid.”

I’d never heard Taka speak so passionately about anything except monsters and magical beasts, so I took notice. After I nodded toward him, Naomi walked over and slapped me, about as hard as she could, which sent me spinning overtop Keiko, narrowly missing Ellie. I knew she hadn’t meant to injure me, because if she had, she would have started glowing like the woman in orientation had, but she was obviously pissed off.

Her voice shook with rage, “We finally have a chance at taking down the Indus sect and ending their reign of terror and the two architects of our plan decided that it’s the best idea to do battle with two of the most lethal members of said sect. Does that seem wrong to anybody here?” She waited for a minute and I didn’t have a response for her.

I knew why Keiko and I had to fight Bocca and Victrix, but the way we did it may not have been the smartest. We went in without a plan and that wasn’t like us. We were the types to plan out everything, from our cultivation, to dinner, to how we were going to spend date night. We weren’t spontaneous, most the time.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Naomi cut me off. “You couldn’t come up with a good reason, could you? I didn’t think so. If you ever do that again, you won’t be able to call the Gentle River sect your home. We don’t deal with suicidal maniacs. If that’s how you’re going to be, join the Indus sect, because that’s the kind of idiocy they reward.” She spun on her heel and marched over toward the disk that Taka had landed a few yards away. She sat down and crossed her arms, but I could see tears rolling down her face.

Taka shook his head and went to join his partner on the disk, but he did make it bigger so Keiko and I could join them, eventually.

Keiko sighed with pleasure as Ellie unlatched from her shoulder. She worked her shoulder in a circle to get blood flowing so she could get feeling back into it. A few moments later, she reached out and gave Ellie a scritch on her head frill, which made her trill happily for a second before she glared at Keiko and forcibly stopped herself from trilling.

Keiko’s voice was a little bit dopey, seeing as she was full of Arctic qi that wasn’t of her own make, “I have to say, thank you Ellie. I feel much better.” If I didn’t know why she was talking like that, I would’ve assumed she was drunk. “Anyway,” she turned to look at me, “we should go through their spatial rings we get home.” She almost fell over, but caught herself. “So, we should definitely get on that disk so I can go to sleep.” Her eyes drooped and she started snoring. I guessed she got a jumpstart on that sleep she was talking about.

I stood up slowly and gently rolled my neck muscles before picking up Keiko as delicately as I could. I slowly strode over to the disk that Taka was helming and sat down in the center of it with Keiko in my arms. Without a word, Taka launched us up into the sky, though he did so at a much more sedated pace than usual.

Interlude

Gong Jin and Aria were dumped out, unceremoniously, on their butts from the tower they’d spent the last few days in. Inside, they were told that, until they understood the basics of paired cultivation, they would be stuck on the first layer of the Inheritance of the Eclipse, unable to leave. They were told that there were no rules on the first layer and that their only goal was to ascend to the next layer, the battle layer. That suited the pair just fine.

Aria stared out at the desolate landscape in front of her before rolling her neck and glancing over at Gong Jin, “How many people down here do you think are Sages?” She actually laughed a little bit at the end there.

Gong Jin stared at her with a confused look on his face for a second before realization dawned upon him, “Probably none, but there may be a couple. Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” The surprised look on his face transitioned to a wide grin.

She cracked her knuckles, “Yeah, I am. We’ve been given a golden opportunity; we get to take out all the Indus tribe’s little cultivators before they get to turn into big problems for our clans. Even if they’re Saints, between the two of us, they don’t stand a chance.” She stopped and stared at him for a moment, before continuing. “We both know that as soon as we master the basics of paired cultivation, we’ll have to reenter this tower so we can ascend to the battle layer. We should wait until the absolute last second before doing that. I want every single Indus tribe member on this layer dead before that happens. You good with that?” Her eyes were set and there was a fire in them, not unlike the Dawn qi she wielded most often in battle.

Gong Jin started stretching, squatting down on one leg with the other outstretched and then switching the other way. He looked up at Aria from his crouched stance, “I’m ready when you are. You pick the target and I’ll help take it out.”

Over the past couple days, the couple realized… that was their dynamic. Aria was very outspoken and made a lot of decisions, while Gong Jin was mostly along for the ride. He would only step up when there was something he genuinely did not believe in that was going on, but they hadn’t run into that issue yet. He did make it clear to her that would be the case if he ever felt that way and Aria agreed, as long as he let her have mostly free reign. She was a rampaging Cragcat and he was a Great Iron Bear. Both were very strong, but their styles were absolutely different.

However, it worked for them and over the past two days they’d grown closer, if they weren’t quite a couple yet, they were at least on the way there. They’d had a few flings in their youth, but once the two clans stopped coming together for gatherings, they hadn’t really seen each other since. They’d tried rekindling what they’d lost, but found that it didn’t really feel right anymore. Something platonic wasn’t going to do it for them, they knew that a real connection born out of mutual respect was going to be necessary to get any benefit out of paired cultivation.

Aria straightened up and surveilled the blasted landscape in front of them. She pointed at a small encampment about half a mile away, “There looks to be three or four pairs there, given how many tents are set up, as long as they’re not Sages or Saints, I don’t think they’ll give us any real problems.”

Gong Jin straightened up and cracked his knuckles, before pulling out a massive Warhammer from his spatial ring and thumping it against his other hand. “Sounds like a plan, let’s get going.”

Without another word, the pair made a beeline for the small camp of what turned out to be Indus tribe members. Not a single one of them got off any sort of techniques, they were just slaughtered.

Afterward, Aria looked at the camp with a dissatisfied sneer, “That wasn’t even a challenge… Heart cultivators and even a single pair of Body cultivators. They must be the pride of the Indus tribe if they sent them in here already, or they were.” She snorted derisively.

Gong Jin straightened up with a frown on his face, “Their totem earrings keep disappearing, most of them were gone before I even got to take a look at them, but that last pair disappeared just before I touched them. I guess the Indus tribe has some sort of recovery mechanism for them on the later layers, not that I can blame them.”

She shrugged, “That’s not my problem, at least not right now. Until we clear out this layer of every single Indus tribe member, I don’t care what else is going on above us. I want to bring the Indus tribe to their knees and the fact that they can’t stop us… makes it all the sweeter.” Her feline grin took on a fierce, nearly feral, aspect to it. “All right, eight down, who knows how many to go. Let’s get to work.”

Two months later, Aria and Gong Jin were sitting back-to-back, breathing heavily. All around them was a scene of chaos, not unlike what you’d expect of a war zone. Gong Jin’s hammer was gone, it was replaced by a massive two-handed maul with a glittering black and gold ax head, with a broad spike behind it. Replacing her old hand wraps, Aria now wore a pair of ward cesti, which are a pair of leather gloves with metal plates along the knuckles and fingers. Both of them were inlaid with basic formations, not that she knew what they meant. All she knew was that when she hit things with them, it hurt them a lot and didn’t hurt her hands anymore.

Aria grinned through the pain in her side, where the final Indus tribe Saint had managed to stab her as she killed him with a massive uppercut that knocked his head clean off. She chuckled wetly as she addressed Gong Jin, “All right, looks like it’s time to start cultivating.”

“oh really,” he deadpanned before leaning over and helping Aria heal her wound with the last bit of wood qi he’d gathered before the enormous battle they were sitting in the remains of. “I can’t wait to get off this layer, the qi here is so impure, you can’t even use it unless you take the time to refine it.” He focused on healing her, forcing her to stop talking until he was done.

A few minutes passed before Aria sighed with relief as the wound in her side finished closing up, “Anyway, back to paired cultivation. From what Steven told me about it, the majority of paired cultivation is just the fact that the pair has linked a pair of cores and they work together to purify all the qi they take in by passing it back and forth in a pattern of sorts.” She coughed loudly and spat out a globule of black and red blood, the last remnant of her wound after Gong Jin finished healing her. “I think I can remember how Steven and Keiko used to cultivate, even if I don’t remember it exactly, at least it’s a place to start.”

From the ruins nearby, a small voice called out. “Is it safe? Can we come over?” Gong Jin looked Aria straight in the eye and she nodded.

He roared back, “Yeah, come on over. We’re about to try cultivating together for the first time and it can’t hurt for the four of you to join us.”

Aria chuckled and this time there was no gurgling, wet, sounds when she did so, “I still can’t believe we ‘adopted’ two pairs of Indus tribe members. It feels disgusting.” She spat to one side.

Gong Jin looked at her reproachfully, “They’re just kids, they can’t be more than eighteen years old. None of them have filed their teeth, split their tongues, or partaken of human flesh of any kind. They didn’t want to.” He gripped Aria’s arm tightly, “We both know that it isn’t your lineage that gives you strength, or determines who you are. It’s the decisions you make. Jonas, Tamara, Julia, and Cindy are all good kids. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be alive right now, and you know it.”

Arias eyes softened as she sighed, she leaned back into Gong Jin’s chest and nuzzled closer. She sighed, “I know, I just like to hear you get all fired up.” Gong Jin snorted, even as he pulled Aria in closer, which made her purr contentedly.

The three women, and one man, who approached from the ruins looked nothing like the kids that Gong Jin and Aria had first met. All four of them were wearing nice boots, while before, only one of them even had shoes. They each wore a pair of spatial rings, before there hadn’t been a single one among their whole group. They each wore weapons taken from the corpses of the Indus tribe that were slain by Aria and Gong Jin.

The each bowed when they arrived, but it was Julia who spoke up first. Her voice was high and melodic, they knew for a fact that she was a wonderful singer from their nights around the campfire, trying to draw in random Indus tribe pairs with her singing.

“I think that’s all of them, the map only has the six of us on it now. I think you guys did it!” The other three people with her cheered and her girlfriend snuck up and gave Julia big hug.

Gong Jin laughed heartily, “You all know that you don’t need to bow to us. We’re just fellow cultivators in here, no outside status holds a candle to what we’re going to learn in here.” The group of youngsters nodded. “Anyway, when we get enough energy, we’re going to walk off to the nice group of tents over there, that we didn’t mess with, not much at least, and give paired cultivation a try.” The excited grins on all of the gathered people’s faces made him laugh heartily, “Anyway, if you four could go over and get a meditation setup arranged for us, we’d really appreciate it.”

The four former Indus tribe members bowed low, but before Gong Jin could admonish them for it, they all ran off toward where Gong Jin had indicated.

Aria laughed quietly, “They really think you’re their leader, I guess the fact that I’ve never countermanded a single order you’ve given has let them think that. I wonder how they’d feel if they knew that I was the one making most of the decisions around here?” She giggled softly and snuggled closer to him.

Gong Jin snorted, “My dear, I don’t think they’d care at all. The fact that we saved their lives and didn’t ask anything from them except honesty, in their previous lives would have been unheard of. From what they’ve told us, the Indus tribe is a total dictatorship. Kabis makes all the orders and tells everyone how everything should get done. The fact that we let them pick what they eat for dinner is a huge thing to them. I don’t think they’d care a bit if they knew you were actually in charge. Not that you are, but I’m not going to have that argument with you again.”

He squeezed her just tightly enough that that she groaned in pleasure. He managed to pop her back just right. Aria chuckled as she watched the four youngsters, she’d come to care about a great deal, run across the battlefield, snatching anything they found interesting. Most of those things were spatial rings or fancy looking weapons and armor.

Aria and Gong Jin sat that way for twenty minutes or so before slowly getting to their feet and wandering over to the gathering of tents where their quartet of followers had cleaned up. There were three meditation mats laid out in a triangle, so each pair would be able to see what was going on with the other two pairs. Two of the meditation mats were filled with Jonas and Tamara on one and Julia and Cindy on another. The nicest of the three was left open for Aria and Gong Jin, but they didn’t try to fight it anymore. No matter what they said, those kids wouldn’t be getting up.

Aria and Gong Jin settled in across from each other before turning to look at the other pairs. All eyes were on them. The quartet of youngsters were all wide-eyed and hopeful. Because of their unwillingness to go with the flow of the Indus tribe, none of them had been taught any paired cultivation methods, not even the most basic steps involved. Jonas and Tamara had almost joined their Lower cores once, but since that moment of epiphany, they hadn’t even come close.

However, they insisted that because they hadn’t succeeded, they’d been able to meet Gong Jin and Aria and gotten out from under the thumb of the Indus tribe, so they took it as a blessing.

Aria spoke softly, but her voice was powerful enough that everyone could easily hear her, “all right, the couple I told you about, Steven and Keiko, told me a bit about how their cultivation worked. We’re going to do our best to emulate what they told me, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll work the first time.”

She saw the looks of worry shoot across their faces, before they quickly hid them, but Aria noticed. “Don’t worry, Gong Jin and I are going to wait to bond our cores together until the four of you already have. I’m hoping that all four of you can pull it off at close to the same time, so we’ll have time to bond ours. That way, we can all go up to the Battle layer together. If my guess is correct, we’ll have a few friends up there that’ll make our transition significantly easier.”

Aria and Gong Jin turned to face each other again and slowly tried to work their way through Orbital Breathing like Steven and Keiko did when they thought Aria wasn’t watching. When Gong Jin tried using his feet like Steven did, it felt wrong, so eventually he switched using his hands and found it much easier. After nearly an hour of attempted cultivating like that, they felt like they could bond their Lower cores together, but stopped. It was the most agonizing thing, to be so close but to stop themselves in the midst of it. It was like edging, but a thousand times worse.

Aria and Gong Jin looked over at their charges with flushed faces to find that they were being stared at by four pairs of wide eyes.

Tamara spoke up hesitantly, “You…you guys almost succeeded. I can’t believe you stopped for us.” Her husky voice didn’t at all match her petite frame. Her partner, Jonas, put his arm around her to calm her down, as she appeared to be about to cry. He was nearly exactly the same height and build as her, but his blonde spikey hair looked very nice against her raven bob.

Julia and Cindy were of average height, redheaded and blonde respectively, and looked incredibly determined. They didn’t spare a word, merely turning around and starting to try Orbital Breathing, or some bastardized version of it, for themselves. Not to be outdone, Jonas pulled Tamara around and they also got started.

Aria and Gong Jin just sat back and relaxed while they watched their young charges cultivate together seriously for the first time.

Three hours later, Jonas and Tamara gasped as a burst of golden light flew out from them. The other young couple didn’t even notice, because less than two minutes later a nearly identical burst of golden light erupted from them. The couples each grabbed their partners and jumped around laughing while Aria and Gong Jin smiled at each other, before turning to try cultivating together again.

They drowned out the world and merely a minute later they felt the same connection they could have had before, but there was another connection, similar but not the same, that they also felt. After a bit of investigating inside themselves, figured out that their Heart cores wanted to link as well, what they knew they’d have to choose.

Binding Heart cores meant that they wouldn’t be able to freely share their qi like Steven and Keiko did, but it would make them significantly stronger when they were around each other. Unbeknownst to them, this was the basic technique of the Unending Serpent Sage cultivation method. All that method was doing was duplicating effects of if the users had bound their Heart cores together, instead of their Lower cores. Eventually, after some debate, they came to the realization that, as they were already Sages, they didn’t need to share qi directly. When they bound their Heart cores together, there was an enormous flash of golden light, dwarfing the golden blasts of the youngsters one thousandfold.

When the golden light faded Aria and Gong Jin surged towards each other and held each other tightly. When they eventually looked out at their young charges, they saw that all of them were blinking rapidly, having been blinded by the massive blast of golden light.

Cindy started to talk, but before she could begin, a golden loop of light appeared around each of their waists. At first, they all panicked and attempted to get the golden light to release their waists, but to no avail. Eventually the golden loops resolved into tethers stretching back toward the tower in the center of the layer. A few moments later each pair of partners tethers bound them together. The tethers immediately started to reel themselves in rapidly toward the distant tower that Aria and Gong Jin had exited two months ago. The tethers surged even faster and the group took to jumping to avoid being dragged along the ground.

Aria grinned as she looked over at Gong Jin, “It looks like we’re headed for the Battle layer, I wonder if Steven and Keiko missed us?” She couldn’t help but whoop with laughter as she jumped twenty feet in the air to avoid the small ruin they were about the blast through. The tethers ignored the existence of anything before them, passing through ruins and hills alike with ignoring their existence entirely. The youngsters all had to run around the ruined house instead. As they were Body cultivators, they weren’t strong enough to jump high enough to clear it, at least not reliably.

Gong Jin laughed as he extended his hands and allowed wind qi to drift off of his fingers, “Oh, I bet they’ve been bored up there. We’ve got a hell of a story to tell them though. We killed four hundred and twenty-six Indus tribe members and recruited four more. Let’s see if they can beat that.”

Aria did a side flip, “I doubt it!”

Chapter 12

In the month following the grand melee that nearly ended Keiko and my lives, we kept our activities very benign. We cultivated, worked on our individual skills and projects, and sparred with Naomi and Taka every day. One day, Naomi and Taka had to leave the headquarters due to a request from the Inheritance itself, so Keiko and I ended up fighting Bortus and Alayna instead.

Keiko was finally back at full strength, though it had taken her almost four weeks to get that way. The lifesaving potion she’d taken had the nasty side effect of overtaxing the body to heal itself, in exchange for the healing properties it had. At first, Keiko had been angry at the fact that she felt so poorly after the battle, but I stared her down and explained that, if I hadn’t done what I did, she wouldn’t be there. After that, she shut up about it.

She was, however, excited to be able to spar to her heart’s content again, so when it turned out we were going to be sparring against Bortus and Alayna, she was over the moon. I smiled and nodded, knowing that no matter what I said, she was still going to be just as excited.

our sparring went as well as it could’ve, by which I mean neither Keiko nor I took any serious, or lasting, injuries. Bortus gave both of us tips on our fighting forms, while Alayna gave us tips on how to best utilize our qi, though her style was very different from our own, so it took her guidance with a grain of salt.

Sensei mumbled in our heads that we had the right idea, but that we should take her advice under advisement. She’d been cultivating for over five hundred years and probably knew a trick or two that we didn’t.

As we sat down for tea in a small, open sided, pagoda near the training fields, standing merely fifteen feet tall, Bortus couldn’t stop grinning. I knew it wasn’t my tea, seeing as he hadn’t even taken a sip yet, though I was sure that if he had taken a sip, that smile would have been because of my tea. Instead, his eyes were flicking back and forth from me, to Keiko, then back to me. Alayna just smiled and drank the tea I provided her, though she did sigh with pleasure as she did so.

I figured out a few weeks ago what types of teas she liked, so I was trying different combinations of ingredients to figure out something that would be close to her favorite, Ancient’s Brew, but something she could make for herself with the ingredients she had to hand. This tea was a mixture of Star Blossom and Dendu Fruit, both of which grew in the forest surrounding the Gentle River sect’s headquarters. The trick to getting the flavor right was to roast the Dendu Fruit until it was nearly black and then grind it up with the Star Blossom, followed by drying that paste out. A few days of drying later and you’d have a delicious tea.

Finally, Bortus couldn’t hold it in anymore. He exclaimed, “I have the information you asked for!” He looked over at his wife, who nodded happily before going back for another sip of tea. He continued, though he kept glancing back at his wife while speaking to us, “I have the sector number that contains the Dragon Dancing trial. You’re in luck, it’s only about twenty-five sectors away, ten to the north and fifteen to the east. You’ll need to avoid a few Indus sect fortified positions along the way, but you should be fine other than that.”

I grinned and held up my hand for the map I knew he had, “Nice job, Bortus.” He smiled as he handed me the map. Before he could continue speaking, I pocketed the map spoke up again with a devilish grin, “What about your sources? Are they coming back to rejoin the Gentle River sect again?” Bortus looked at me like I’d stabbed his favorite puppy, or maybe his newborn child.

Before he could say anything, however, Alayna spoke up icily. “What sources is Steven talking about, dear? The only people I know who have left the Gentle River sect that could possibly have the information that our two esteemed guests were looking for are those who must not be named. I thought I ordered you to cut off all contact from them?” Her voice rose, “Am I correct!?”

She looked over at Keiko and I with an ice-cold smile, “You two are free to go, I need to have a conversation with my husband.”

Keiko and I didn’t have to be told twice, so we immediately downed our tea in a single gulp each, before leaving the entire tea set behind, I knew I’d get it back eventually. I made the mistake of looking back at Bortus and saw that he looked at me with big puppy dog eyes, like I’d betrayed him. I felt bad, at least for a minute or two, but eventually Keiko’s laughing made me start to smile, which then turned into a laugh of my own. It served him right for lying to his wife, that wasn’t a life I wanted to live, and I didn’t want to encourage it in anyone else either. He was going to get his comeuppance for lying to his wife, and they’d become a stronger couple afterwards… hopefully.

I pulled out the map Bortus had handed me before being assaulted verbally by his wife. It was actually two maps on one sheet of parchment. In the bottom left corner was a small map with each of the sectors of this layer on it. There was a gold star where I knew the Gentle River sect’s headquarters to be and a single other sector had a red dot on it. To the right of that small map was a blown-up image of what I assumed the red sector on the other map was indicating. It showed the different floating islands in that sector and in the middle of it all was a building labeled with a pair of entwined dragons.

I showed Keiko the map and she grinned, “It looks like we have a target. Why wait? We should get going now.”

I shook my head, “Shouldn’t we wait for Naomi and Taka to get back? It’d be nice to have them with us if we’re going to be traveling so far. From the looks of this map, it could take two or three weeks to get over there, even if we used a triangular disk. On a round, we’re looking at a minimum of three weeks, if not more. That’s not even taking into account the fact that neither of us are confident enough in using a triangular disk to go that far on one. If we wait for them, we’ll at least have backup.”

Keiko shook her head, “Did you hear what Taka said about this task for the Inheritance? He said that each time he and Naomi have had to process a new couple that it would take at least two or three days for them to get processed, but that he had to be waiting for them when they got there. He also said that this was not a single couple, so that it would take at least a week. I don’t want to wait that long; I want to go now.” She clenched and unclenched her fists.

I knew that she just wanted to get back in the swing of things, following her injury. She’d never been out of commission for so long before, so she was overcompensating for it by being overzealous now. However, I also didn’t disagree with her, I didn’t want to wait a week or two to leave for the Dragon Dancing trial.

I hemmed and I hawed, but I eventually let her think she got her way, “Fine, we’ll do it your way. We’ll head out for the trial in the morning, but I get to decide what we have for dinner tonight, deal?”

Her face went white, “You get to pick dinner?” She stuttered, “As… As… As long as it’s not B… Blazing Elk, I don’t care.” She shook her head vigorously; she really did not care for the taste of Blazing Elk.

I grinned, “Would I make you eat your least favorite food?” She shook her head tentatively, which made me laugh, “Of course not. I think we’ll bust out some Great Cragcat and maybe a medley of Earth attributed vegetables. I’ve been working on my wind qi lately and I’d like to top up.”

Keiko sighed loudly in relief, “that sounds totally fair.” She jumped up and wrapped her arms and legs around me, “I can’t wait to go to this trial with you.” She kissed me deeply and we eventually found our way to our room.

Five hours later, Keiko and I were seated around the dinner table with Alayna and her, very bruised, husband. She smiled politely at Keiko and I, while Bortus looked at me with hurt in his eyes.

I explained my stance on lying, especially to your partner, and when everyone else echoed my sentiment, he back down, though he was still staring at me like I’d done something wrong.

Dinner was delicious, the Great Cragcat had a surprisingly light texture, which paired nicely with the earthy vegetables. I’d made an Empyrean Boar bone marrow sauce for the fire and metal qi inside it, it really brought the dish together. Once dinner was done, I gathered up the plates and we all sat around enjoying our full bellies.

A few minutes later we turned around and cultivated our meals, taking about an hour to do so each. Alayna remarked on how efficient our cultivation method was, despite only being a basic paired cultivation method. Keiko and I explained how we had tuned this method to work best for ourselves, so we were much more efficient the most people when they did Orbital Breathing. Alayna smiled and agreed that tailoring your cultivation method was the best way. After that, neither she, nor Bortus, really had anything else to say for the rest the night.

Keiko and I headed back to our room and the next morning we left bright and early for the trial of the Dragon Dancers, as we later found out was the real name of the trial we were headed toward.

Our trip with Naomi and Taka to the trial of the Dragon dancers was relatively uneventful. Every day we would stop on a different island, floating in the mist, and spar like we were required to. After the sparring was done, I would make a meal for all of us, and then we would cultivate with our respective partners. It was a pleasant, if a bit monotonous, time that I spent most of in a state of quiet contemplation.

Eventually, I brought up my concerns to Sensei privately, “I’m worried about how stable Keiko and my cultivation bases are. I know that the Foundation Building pills we took helped to stabilize our cores as Heart cultivators, but we’ve advanced so rapidly to become Saints that I’m worried. Everything I’ve read or heard from other cultivators says that we’re growing much too fast and that there are pitfalls we’ll run into that will harm our cultivation in the long run. What do you think? Do I have anything to worry about?”

Sensei snorted derisively, “If you had taken Foundation Building pills made by anybody else, yes you’d have to worry. However, because you took Imperial grade Foundation Building pills, made by me, you have nothing to worry about unless you suddenly break through to Sage today. However, due to the unique way your cores are now structured, buoyed up by those pills, you will need to produce the next tier in that cycle of pills before you can advance to Sage safely. To be honest, the closer you take those pills to the time you break through to Sage, the better off you’ll be. If you could bite down those pills and break through at the exact same time, that would be the ideal scenario. However, the real problem you have, is that the ingredients to make the next tier of Foundation Building pill are exceedingly rare, even in my time.”

I sighed mentally, “You never did tell me what the ingredients needed for those pills were, why is that?”

“It isn’t that I didn’t want to tell you, or that I thought you couldn’t handle the list. It’s that, as an Imperial alchemist, I can help you substitute ingredients without affecting the final product, to a point. However, if you think it’s a substitution, the pill refinement is much more likely to go awry than if you didn’t know it was a substitution. It’s probably psychosomatic, but we can’t risk that.”

I started to speak up, but Sensei cut me off, “What I can tell you is the four types of items you’ll need and the one item that you will definitely need. First off, we’ll need items full of the six main types of qi, plus an item or two that contain traces of light and dark qi. Those are very rare, but the Ancient Berries you have happened to contain just the traces we need, even if they are in minuscule amounts. Next, you’ll need something as a base, like a type of metal, earth, or nut that can serve as the body of the pill which will wrap around the core you make with the Ancient Berries. Finally, you’ll need a Celestial grade, universal, qistone.

“There should be one in the Inheritance of the Pot’s stores, but I may have given it to my son before I closed it up. I’m a bit ashamed to say it, but he needed it to power the airship he was using to leave Sunset Island. I’m not sure if it took me up on my offer, but if he did, it won’t be in there.”

I nodded. It was nice to have a list of ingredients to look out for, even if it was a bit vague. Now I knew what to look for, “That’s completely fair. If you see something that meets those requirements, please let me know and I’ll make sure to grab whatever it is, even if it requires Keiko and I to jump through some hoops to get ahold of them. I want Keiko and I to be able to ascent do Sage safely and once we have the Dragon Dancing cultivation technique, we’ll be primed and ready to break through, though it might take a while for us to get to that point.”

Sensei merely grunted before going silent.

One we got within half a day’s flight of the first Indus sect encampment, Keiko and I were confident that flying as high as we could would get us past them, but Naomi and Taka both shook their heads and laughed.

Taka explained why they were laughing, “The Indus sect will have people scattered between the level of the island the top of this layer, there’s no way we’ll get through that way. However, if we go down significantly lower than the level of the island, we’ll slip by completely unnoticed. If it weren’t for the number of times that Naomi and I have gone down to pick up ascendants, we wouldn’t want to go down there either. There a lot of freak lightning strikes and things, but because of our preferred status as guides, we have a talisman that diverts the lightning away from the disc we’re flying on.” He held up a small white and black wooden placard with a string through it that I knew he usually wore on his hip.

Keiko and I couldn’t come up with a better argument, and why would we? So, we let him do what he wanted. We sailed directly underneath that Indus sect encampment and they were none the wiser.

The same thing happened with the next one. We didn’t even talk about it, we just slid right underneath. We did almost get hit by the contents of a chamber pot, which was very unpleasant, but Naomi’s quick thinking with a shield of water qi of over our heads protected us from its disgustingly smelly contents. Keiko shivered at the thought of getting hit by someone else’s excrement and vowed to be more careful when she was flying from now on.

A week after we left the Gentle River sect’s headquarters, we arrived in the sector containing the trial of the Dragon Dancers. The sector was relatively close to the center of the layer, so it was strange to find very nobody there. Eventually, we found out why.

Around noon, we landed on a small island about two hours away from where we thought the trial site would be. After sparring and eating, we were sitting there relaxing when we heard the sound of rushing wind coming from the other side of the small island, which couldn’t have been any bigger than a hundred and fifty feet across. We all jumped to our feet and when we turned around to look, a tornado, at least fifty feet tall and forty feet wide, was roaring toward us.

Ever the quick thinker, Taka immediately deployed the disk we we’d flown in on and swept up Naomi, who was flinging boulders of earth qi at the tornado, as if that was going to do anything. For the record, it didn’t. Keiko and I tumbled onto the disk and Taka launched us into the sky.

However, the pull of the tornado was too great it took both Taka and Naomi’s whole concentration to get the disk to leave the tornado’s pull. I watched in horror as the storm talisman that Taka wore was ripped off of his side by the tornado. Without a second thought, I summoned up Bocca’s spiked chain and lashed out toward the rapidly disappearing talisman. The final two links of the spiked chain caught the string the talisman was attached to and I gingerly drew in the spiked chain, being careful not to stab myself.

I was so glad that I’d spent so many hours training on using the spiked chain with Alayna. It was one of the four or five weapons she had mastered and she got me decently proficient with its use, not that I was ever going to use it over the Duskguard in general combat, but it obviously had its uses.

I handed back the talisman to Taka and he bowed deeply to me, “Thank you so much, it would’ve cost us two trips worth of rewards to get another of those talismans, so we really appreciate what you did.” Naomi bowed as well, but not nearly as deeply as Taka had.

I waved aside their formalities, “We’re friends, all I was doing was helping out my friends. No need for the formalities.” I noticed that when Taka put away the talisman, this time he put it inside a spatial ring, where it would be safe until he and Naomi needed it again. I smiled to myself, but made sure that neither of the couple were able to see me when I did so.

He grinned, “That was an amazing move with that spiked chain though! Is that the one you took from Bocca?”

I smiled, “The very same. Also, thanks for the complement. It wouldn’t have been possible without Alayna’s help in learning how to actually use this ungainly thing.”

When I turned over to check on Keiko, I saw that she had coated the underside of the disk with layer of Arctic qi, which was somehow allowing us to fly faster, so I didn’t question it. She was totally focused on it, so I didn’t interrupt her.

Finally, an hour and a half later, we arrived at the trial of the Dragon Dancers. The building was imposing, despite the fact that the island it was on was only barely as large as the building itself, leaving only ten feet around for landing and disembarking. The trial site was shaped like an enormous cathedral, with stained-glass windows depicting entwined dragons and pairs of people doing battle. The stone was jet black, almost dark enough that it actually seemed darker nearby, due to the stone drinking in excess light. The twin towers on either side of the wall the entrance was on stood nearly fifty feet taller than the hundred-foot-tall building.

The doors were a work of art. They stood nearly thirty feet tall and were made of a gorgeous ruby red wood bound with huge bands of silver and red metal. Sensei told me that the bands of metal were Mithril and Adamantine respectively.

“Back in my time, those two-foot-wide bands of metal would have been nearly priceless, Mithril repels qi attacks flawlessly and Adamantine is nearly indestructible to physical attacks. Without exaggeration, you could sell a single pair of those bands, assuming they wrap all the way around, and buy a small kingdom of at least 100,000 people… and still have the funds required to outfit your army with Expert grade weaponry and armor. Whoever built this place must have really wanted this technique protected, but it feels like there might be something more going on, so you’ll need to be on your guards the entire time you’re inside.”

Keiko and I nodded. I knew that we were in for a challenge, and it looked like Keiko did too. No matter what, we both knew that, together, we could do anything.

The moment we stepped off of the disk we flew in on, both Naomi and Taka’s heads spun around to look toward the center of the layer. Naomi groaned while Taka grinned.

He turned around and smiled even bigger, “So, who are we supposed to spar with while you two are in there for a week or two? That’s how long these things usually take, from what I’ve heard.”

I looked at him, dumbfounded. How could I have forgotten the basic rules of the Inheritance? I groaned as I ran my fingers through my hair nervously, “I am so sorry. We should just go back and get another couple, it didn’t take that long to get here, what’s another three weeks or so?” I made to get back on the disc, but Taka floated away slowly.

Naomi butted in before Taka could speak again, “If it weren’t for the fact that Taka and I were both just requested to take care of an ascendance, we’d take you up on that offer, but seeing as there are not one, but three couples coming up… it’s gonna take us at least a week to finish the paperwork and basic orientation for them.”

She shook her head when I looked confused, “Not everyone comes in here knowing exactly how Inheritances work and how paired cultivation is supposed to work. Most the people who end up on the first layer of this Inheritance end up at least a little bit feral. The week of time in the tower is to allow them time to adjust to what’s going to be required of them, up to and including an orientation that we’ll actually give, unlike what happened with you two.” Taka’s grin grew, at which point I think that my jaw would’ve started to hurt.

He laughed out loud, “Yeah, so we’ll be going. Good luck in your trial! If you get back sooner than a week… hopefully you won’t.” He shook his head, “I’m kidding, go and fight some Indus tribe members, call it sparring. Their pride is too strong for them to deny your challenges, so take advantage of that. They’re not allowed to kill you, so don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine!” Naomi and Taka’s heads spun around again and this time it looked a little bit painful.

Taka look back at me with a pained expression, “The Inheritance is being pretty insistent, we have to go now.” He floated down and gave both Keiko and I a hug, Naomi did the same. He flitted back up, “We’ll be seeing you!”

With a wave, he turned his disk around and flew it rapidly toward the center of the Inheritance, which was only a few sectors away.

Keiko laughed, “Sometimes things work out, but that was a bit serendipitous, wouldn’t you agree?” She stared at me, as if I’d know why that was the case.

I merely shrugged, “Sometimes good things happen to good people, I’m just going to take this one of those good things.” I waved up at the giant red doors, “Anyway, we need to go in before the end of the day tomorrow. Is there anything else we want to do before that?” We’d already sparred with Naomi and Taka today, so we had until the end of the day tomorrow to enter the trial, which we knew would suspend the requirement for sparring imposed by the Inheritance.

Keiko shrugged, “Can we just camp here for the night and go inside tomorrow after lunch? We can both make sure we have all the alchemical and formation preparations we’ll need for anything we run into in the trial. Does that work for you?” She stepped over and gave me a big hug.

I stared deep into her eyes, “That sounds lovely, but I’ve got something else planned for tonight.” I picked her up my arms and spun her around before holding her close.

The next day, after having spent all morning preparing, Keiko and I stepped up to the massive red doors, bound in red and silver bands. Having gotten out all our nervousness the night before, Keiko and I both confidently placed our hands on the right and left doors respectively. Without even a hint of pressure from us, the doors slowly swung open without a sound. The thing was, all that was in front of us was a wall of pure black, darker than the walls of this place, stood before us. The only thing we could see in the blackness before us were the doors, which seemed to be hanging in a field of nothingness.

Keiko and I took each other’s hand and stepped forward confidently into the trial of the Dragon Dancers.

A few seconds of disorientation later and I realized that Keiko’s hand was missing from my right hand. I looked around the room I was in and found that it was a small, featureless, room of black stone. I was in a room that was a ten-foot cube, the walls of which seemed to match the exterior walls of the trial site, which made a certain amount of sense. Despite not seeing any sources of light, I could see just fine, but there wasn’t anything to see in the room except myself. There wasn’t even a door out.

I spent the next few minutes searching the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, but I didn’t find any kind of secret lever or catch that would allow me to escape. Eventually, I decided that this must be part of the trial, so I sat down dead center in the room and started to meditate, not that I could cultivate by myself, but meditation was still a good way to take stock of your internal situation. I had an equal balance of each type of qi, minus light and dark qi, which I had a very tiny amount of, and Inferno qi, which I had roughly 1/3 of my entire capacity full of inside my lower core. I didn’t know if I was going to have the fight in there, but I wanted to be ready if I did.

Four hours later, a voice came from all of the walls at once, it sounded old, ancient even. It was deep, rich, and felt like it demanded my utmost respect.

“What is the purpose of paired cultivation? You have one minute to begin your answer.”

In front of me, on the wall, was a golden circle that appeared to be slowly filling with golden light. I got the impression that when it reached the top, my minute would be up, due to the rate it was filling up.

I considered the question and, while I was tempted to say strength, I knew that was wrong. I hemmed and hawed, but before the golden light filled even three quarters of the circle, I knew my answer.

I spoke confidently, “Paired cultivation is a means for two people to become as close as two people can possibly be. While it grants strength, most of what it grants is understanding. The trust it breeds is what allows paired cultivators to ascend through the ranks of cultivation so quickly. Two souls working on one shared goal can be significantly more productive than one.” It wasn’t eloquent, but it was how I felt. Those were the things that paired cultivation meant to me, why I was so glad that I practiced it.

The golden circle in front of me had stopped filling as soon as I’d spoken my first word, but when I finished, it slowly drained until it hung empty.

As soon as the circle was totally empty, the massive voice spoke again, “What is paired cultivation?”

The golden circle in front of me started filling up again and it appeared to be filling at the same rate as before.

I didn’t even take a moment to think about it, I just answered, “Paired cultivation is the bonding of a pair of cores between two people. Traditionally it is done between a pair of romantic partners, but a strong enough platonic bond is also an acceptable beginning of paired cultivation. It is used to create a unified cultivation system between two people.”

For a moment, there was nothing and then the golden circle in front of me emptied again.

I wiped away a bead of sweat, I wished that I had actually taken a few moments to think about that answer, but it just flowed out of me. I trusted my instincts, but when I searched for Sensei’s pot to talk to him, it was still there, but I couldn’t talk to him. It didn’t feel like my connection to him was gone, just that I wasn’t able to speak to him while I was in there. I figured it was part of the trial, so I did my best not to think about it too hard after that.

The huge voice spoke again, “Would you sacrifice your partner for power?”

I didn’t even let the circle start filling, “Never! I would die before I let my partner die, no question.” That fact was so intrinsic to my being, I felt my whole heart going out with that answer.

I thought I heard an amused chuckle, but I could’ve imagined it. Despite the fact that the voice wasn’t asking me any questions, the golden circle remained. About twenty minutes after I finished the first set of questions, the giant voice spoke again.

“What are your favorite thing and least favorite thing about your partner?” The golden circle started filling up again.

I thought about that one for almost the whole minute. Was it her smile, her laugh, or something else entirely? I knew everything about her, so it was really hard to isolate what the best thing about her was. As for my least favorite thing, I thought about that until the golden circle was almost entirely full before speaking.

“My favorite thing about Keiko is how free she is. She doesn’t let anything tear her down or tie her down. She is the essence of freedom.” I took a deep breath, “My least favorite thing is how hard she is on herself. Whenever someone comments on her form, she works twice as hard as she needs to, just to prove them wrong, rather than accepting their criticism and adjusting the way she does things.”

The golden circle emptied and the huge voice came back, “What is your partner’s favorite thing about you, and their least favorite thing about you?”

The golden circle began to fill again, not that I was surprised about it at that point.

I realized that this question was harder than it looked on the surface. I could say what I thought would be her favorite, but I’d probably be wrong. I needed to dig deeper and think about our entire relationship, but it was hard to do that when I only had a minute. Eventually I remembered a time back when we were kids and found my answer.

“Keiko’s favorite thing about me is that I don’t take no for an answer. If it wasn’t for that, we never would have become a couple and that’s incomprehensible to me. Her least favorite thing about me is that I care more about the qi content of the food I cook than I do about her taste in food.”

Case in point, Blazing Elk is amazing as far as qi goes, but Keiko couldn’t stand the taste of it. I still cooked it once in a while, just because of how good it was for us. Keiko always complained about how unfair it was, but I knew it was for the best.

The golden circle emptied and the giant voice came back, “What is your partner’s most fervent desire?” The golden circle started filling again, but it was much faster that time. It looked like I only had thirty seconds this time.

I knew the answer, so I didn’t dawdle, “Keiko’s most fervent desire is to grow as a cultivator so that she can explore the world with me.” I sat back smugly, knowing that was the correct answer.

I sat in the ten-foot cube of dark stone for what felt like hours, but could have been minutes. I ended up pulling out some ingredients from my spatial ring and organizing them to pass the time.

After what felt like forever, a section of stone in front of me, where the golden circle had been, disappeared. The opening was five feet wide and stretched from floor to ceiling. I quickly gathered up the ingredients I’d been sorting, I’d gotten through almost my entire collection of wood qi attributed plants, after having organized my entire collection of fire and water qi attributed plants.

I strode through the open door without a second thought. The moment I crossed the threshold, I looked ahead and saw Keiko before me. We ran toward each other, before crashing together like we hadn’t seen each other in weeks, not hours.

She hugged me fiercely, “They asked me some questions, but I did my best to answer them. What did they have you do?” She clung to me, like I was driftwood on the raging sea after a shipwreck, like in the stories she’d told me about.

I smiled and nodded, “I’m trusting that we passed their test, because were here. Together.” She just smiled in return and hugged me even tighter, causing some things in my back to crack and pop, but that was totally normal.

Before we could discuss exactly what happened in our time apart, doors opened in the walls to our left and right. We were inside a one-hundred-foot-long room and the entrances we’d come in through were now gone. On the walls adjacent to the walls, we’d come in through were ten-foot openings leading to endless voids. Out of those voids came black stone figures, which were roughly man shaped.

Keiko and I whirled into fighting stances, back-to-back.

I quickly sent her message, “I’ll fend off the one over here, you take care of the one over there. As soon as you’re clear, let me know.”

Keiko grunted in assent before dashing forward quickly, at which time I noticed that Ellie was wrapped around her neck and shoulders, hissing all the way. The pair of them launched needles of Arctic qi at the black stone man, but didn’t appear to be doing anything.

At that point, I had my own automaton to deal with, so I turned around to fight it. It swung its club like arms at me, but I deflected with the Duskguard like the attack didn’t exist. No matter how hard it swung, it was so slow that I had nothing to worry about. Eventually, I saw an opening, so I took it. I unleashed a devastating salvo of attacks, punches, kicks, and tonfa strikes. The combination of which sent the automaton reeling back, its balance broken.

I swept its legs with a roundhouse kick, which hurt quite a bit as I was kicking some kind of stone, but sent it toppling over onto its back. A second later, it sank into the floor and the entrance it came from closed. I whirled around and saw that Keiko wasn’t doing nearly as well as I had been, she had nasty bruises up and down her arms, but the automaton in front of her didn’t appear much the worse for the time it had been fighting her. Despite a number of deep cuts and holes punched through its body, it appeared to be fully operational.

I spun over to Keiko’s side before stepping before her, taking a massive slam from the stone man on the Duskguard, but deflecting it down into the ground harmlessly.

I pulled out a generic healing potion and tossed it to Keiko using a thread of qi.

“Drink that, I have a feeling we’ve got more fights to come and I can handle this guy for now.”

I knew that she’d listened when I heard the cork pop off and the sound of gurgling coming from behind me. Though there was not much liquid in them, healing potions were kind of thick, so they were hard to chug unless they were designed with that in mind. Seeing as I had this fight in hand, I gave her one of the generic healing potions I usually reserved for trading with the Gentle River sect, which weren’t nearly as good for chugging.

I did to Keiko’s automaton exactly what I’d done to my own, though I did play it out a little bit to allow the healing potion work on Keiko. As soon as I thought she was healthy enough, I repeated the same tactic and it worked exactly the same way.

As the automaton sunk into the floor and the door it had exited from closed, I turned around to check on Keiko and she was gone. I looked around frantically, but she was nowhere to be seen. I growled and sat down the middle of the room, very unhappy with what was going on.

I sat there for what felt like two or three days, though it could’ve been hours. I actually finished sorting all of the alchemical plants I had access to and got started on all the other materials, which I knew were going to take even longer. By the time I’d gotten through metal qi attributed miscellaneous alchemical supplies, I heard a grinding sound coming from the wall to my left. I swept my ingredients into the Inheritance of the Pot’s tile, before sweeping that into the waiting bag for it, this took only a few seconds.

I stood up and brushed myself off before taking a look at what was making all that racket. Out of the opening in the wall, this one nearly twenty feet wide, came an enormous, metallic, spider. It skittered forward on metal limbs and its eyes glowed with a sickeningly bright green light.

I wasn’t worried, I was immune to poison and that was probably what that thing was designed to do, inject a ton of poison. I was confident that this fight was going to be easy.

I was very wrong.

The first time the metal spider golem managed to bite me, it didn’t inject me with poison. Instead, it shocked me with an incredible amount of lightning qi. It was only via the grace of something looking out for me that I managed to randomly jerk away from one of its legs as it jammed down through where my head would’ve been. I frantically channeled the lightning qi that had been used on me and managed to gather it in my right foot. I did a spinning kick off the ground and managed to strike out with my right foot and land a solid blow on the nearest leg to me. While my kick landed, the force of it was completely ignored by the tough metallic skin of this thing. The lightning discharge on the kick did strike the beast, it didn’t appear to do anything.

I really wished I had Keiko with me, the Dawnblade would’ve made short work of these spindly, yet surprisingly tough, metal limbs. I decided to do my best imitation of her, creating a foot long blade of Inferno qi out of the short ends of the Duskguard tonfas. I dashed forward, trying to slide underneath the giant metal spider to get at its underbelly, but it was too fast. No matter how quickly I dashed in to get up close to it, it managed to skitter away, landing blow after blow on me. If it weren’t for the cultivator robes Keiko and I had received from the Inheritance of the Lovers, I would’ve been dead. As it was, I had to drink two different healing potions and do my best to stall to let them heal me.

My battle with the metal monstrosity lasted almost two days. By the end of the second day, even my enlarged lower core was running on fumes, which was a first for me in a combat scenario. I knew I had to make a move, so I decided to what Keiko would have done to start, attack with reckless abandon.

I banished the Duskguard tonfas to my spatial ring, despite the fact that their sheath was on my back, the spatial ring was faster to get rid of them. I summoned out the spiked chain I had taken from Bocca and set it whirling, but unlike Bocca, who only launched blades of wind qi with a whip-like crack, instead I flooded the entire chain with Inferno qi. I was lucky that, when I’d shown that spiked chain to Alayna, she’d commented about how it was made of some Earth grade metal, so it could handle quite a bit of qi before breaking.

I took full advantage of that trait and pumped as much Inferno qi into the spiked chain as I could. Knowing that this was my final chance, I left it all out there. I launched a burst of Inferno qi out of the soles and heels of my feet, blasting myself underneath the metal behemoth, at which time I started spinning, both myself and the spiked chain, it almost looked like I was dancing with my back against the ground. I focused on keeping my Inferno qi as hot as humanly possible, hotter than I’d ever made it before except for when I was using the Flame Wheel alchemical technique, which is what inspired my actions.

The faster I spun, the smaller the flames were, but the more intense they became. After a few seconds, there was just a whisper of qi on the surface of the chain, but as soon as it came into contact with the leg of the monstrosity, it was sliced cleanly off. A second later another came off, then another, then all of them. I rolled out of the way of the massive body before it crashed into the ground. I leapt into the air and with a single downward strike, cleaved it in twain.

I saw the light din in the monstrosity’s eyes and knew that it was dead, if it had ever been alive. When I reached down to take into my spatial ring, I felt no resistance, so that’s what I did. I walked around and gathered up the severed legs and was able to gather each of them as well.

Before I could sit down and metaphorically lick my wounds, the wall in front of me opened and I saw inside a well-appointed room with a couch and on that couch was Keiko. She looked battered and bruised, but triumphant as she slept.

After checking the room I was in, one last time, to make sure it was well and truly empty, I walked through the “door”. When I turned around to look back at it, it was no longer there, replaced by a stone wall with a bookshelf on it. I shook my head and sat down next to Keiko on the couch, but she didn’t even stir. I craned my neck to look around the room from my seat on the couch.

I saw that there were dragon motifs everywhere in the room, but that wasn’t all that I noticed. There were also eclipse motifs everywhere, they were depicted as a mostly covered circle with a crescent of white left behind. This room had a very similar feeling to it as Ruby and Sapphire’s sanctum, though now we knew their actual names to be Elliott and Chandra. Physically, there were no real similarities, but it had the same feel. It felt important.

As if summoned, a flickering image of an elderly couple appeared before the couch, when I went to wake up Keiko, they shook their heads.

The male figure spoke first and his voice sounded kind, “Don’t wake her up, she’ll wake up in due time on her own. She finished the fight with her metal beast a day ago and she’s been sleeping ever since.”

As if summoned, at that point, Keiko yawned and stretched before reaching out for my hand instinctively. I took it and when she looked over to see me, she was elated, so she jumped over to give me a big hug.

I coughed and gestured toward the flickering old couple in front of us.

After one more squeeze, she disentangled herself from me and looked forward. A moment later, she looked back at me confusedly, “This place feels a lot like the sanctum at the end of the tournament in the Inheritance of the Lovers, don’t you agree?”

I smiled, having just had that thought myself, “Yeah, it does, but we shouldn’t waste our time here. Remember how Elliott and Chandra had a limited amount of time to talk to us? I bet it’s the same here.”

The flickering man spoke again, though he sounded amused this time, “You would be correct in that, but our time is not so limited that I would deny a young couple, especially one as promising as yourselves, their happy reunion.”

I bowed from my seat, “Thank you, we really appreciate it,” I rubbed the punctures and scratches all over my arms and legs. Keiko, having seen them for the first time, inspected each of them before finally settling back in for a long hug. A bit later, we settled in, sitting with our arms around each other as we looked back at the flickering forms before us.

After we both settled in, the woman of the flickering pair spoke, her voice sounded like what I imagined a grandmother’s voice was supposed to sound like, not that I’d ever gotten to know mine.

“The pair of you passed our test with flying colors and you’ll be given the scroll you need to learn the Dragon Dance, though that’s not actually what it’s called. In reality, it’s called the Dragon Eclipse method when in it’s true form. The basic form, which you’ll use first, is known as the Dragon Dance. As you advance your cultivation, eventually you’ll unlock the technique’s secrets and unlock its true form, the Dragon Eclipse cultivation method.

Don’t worry about that for now, as that’s many years in the future. For now, enjoy the fact that you succeeded, where none have succeeded fully before. I sense great love between the pair of you, both for each other and for others and that is a truly rare and enviable trait.”

The man spoke up, patting his wife on the shoulder to comfort her, as she was getting to become verklempt, “What my wife is trying to say is that we see a bit of ourselves in you, though you probably heard that before, and wanted to talk to you. We are but echoes of the original progenitors of this Inheritance, but we left behind this trial as a safeguard in case the people we had replace us went against our wishes. If it wasn’t for that bit of forethought, you never would’ve met us. You would’ve met a pair of automatons who would have walked you through the basics of the Dragon Dance and then you would’ve been forced to go on your merry way, not knowing what could have been. That is what the last couple who succeeded here ended up with, before the great shift happened.”

I frowned, “The great shift? Is that the time dilation effect that was on this place?”

The grandfatherly figure nodded, “That is correct. The couple we had take over the Inheritance after we were no longer able to sustain ourselves slowed down time in here so they could gather up the qi necessary to sustain this place for years to come. That wasn’t what we would’ve done, but we weren’t in charge anymore, so we couldn’t stop them. However, it was the couple after them, the current controllers of this Inheritance, that became a real problem. They turned our place of learning into a place of death and that is one of the most horrific things either of us could imagine. The fact that you are all required to fight every day, or every week, or to the death, sickens us.” He looked meaningfully at his wife, who nodded solemnly.

I felt something strange, like a wave of regret, coming from them, “What’s wrong? You’re about to ask me to do something I’m not going to want to do, aren’t you?”

Keiko looked at me strangely, but didn’t interrupt, she usually trusted my feelings on things like that.

The woman sighed again, and when she spoke there was an incredible amount of emotion in her voice, “That is correct. We would like to charge you with the destruction of our Inheritance. There is too much dangerous knowledge trapped within this place that has already fallen into the hands of people who would misuse it.”

I was shocked, if Sensei had been able to speak, I would’ve been willing to bet that he would’ve been as well. It was almost unheard of for an Inheritance to collapse besides by running out of energy to sustain itself, being collapsed from the inside was very unusual, nearly unheard of.

I shook my head, “Are you sure? That is something that can’t be undone.” I took a few seconds to think while they looked at me sadly, “What if I had a better way?”

The pair looked at me with hope in their eyes, though I could tell it was just a flicker of hope, not the raging flame I was hoping to build for them. They nodded and waved their hands for me to continue.

“We’re working with the Gentle River sect, who are very moderate, to get rid of the Indus sect within the Battle layer. From what I understand, there are no members of the Indus sect on the Academy layer. Can you confirm that?”

The man nodded, “That is correct, there are no members of the Indus tribe, or sect, on the Academy layer. However, the current controllers of this Inheritance, despite being dead, are the founders of the Indus tribe, and sect.”

I nodded, “That’s what I thought, but we have a plan. We’re going to make it so that only a single couple of the Indus sect survives this year. While the tribe may be able to send in more people, they’ll be significantly weaker than those who’ve been here for years. At that point, the Gentle River sect, along with the Scholars if we can coerce them, should be able to keep them down, at least to much more manageable level.”

I spread my arms wide, “This place is a triumph and it would be a crying shame to lose it, considering how much knowledge of the ancient world has been lost to time. I’m going to propose that we keep the destruction of this Inheritance as an absolute last resort, though I will have you teach us the method to do so, just in case.”

The flickering forms of the Inheritance’s progenitors went solid for a moment, before speaking in unison, “The bargain has been struck.”

I looked at them strangely, I hadn’t struck a bargain, not that I’d noticed at least.

After the couple faded back to their original flickering forms, the man snapped out of whatever had happened. “It appears you triggered one of the failsafes we put in place. You two are now the heirs to the current controllers of this Inheritance, as they had yet to set any. If you can manage to unseat the crystals containing their souls within the core of this layer, you will be able to take over control of this Inheritance, even though you’re still alive. It would be better if you could leave some sort of powerful soul, or spirit, to hold your place until you eventually pass, but even without it, due to our successors’ actions, this Inheritance will sustain itself for thousands of years, so no need to worry about that.”

I briefly thought about using Sensei as the spirit, but then dismissed that idea. Unless it was absolutely necessary, I didn’t want to lose Sensei just to hold our place if we were to die, I didn’t plan on dying anytime soon, if at all.

I nodded, “We have a goal now, we have to unseat the crystals of the current controllers of this Inheritance, so that we can assert control ourselves. If we can’t do that, you’ll teach us the method to destroy the Inheritance.” I looked at both of them meaningfully, “Is that correct?”

The couple nodded, their formerly depressed looking faces now beaming with hope.

Keiko stood up and stretched, and when she looked back at me, I saw a fierce grin on her face.

“That all sounds awesome, let’s get to work.”

The End