On Wings of Qi: Chapters 20-27 (Patreon)

Chapter 20

When Keiko and I broached the subject of leaving to our friends at breakfast, which I prepared, we got back about as much pushback as we’d expected. Aria and Gong Jin assured us that we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted to, they even offered to help us get back to the Inheritance of the Eclipse if we wanted to, we politely declined their offer. Naomi and Taka were totally for us leaving, they were excited about us going out to explore the world at large and asked us to come back and tell them the stories of our travels we had some time. As Sages, they knew they had hundreds of years left to live, so one or two decades apart wasn’t going to change the fact that we were friends with them. Eventually, with Naomi and Taka’s help, Keiko, Sensei, Ellie, and I managed to talk Aria and Gong Jin out of forcibly detaining us.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind, I spent time with Old Ironbellows, who refused to admit that the map he gave me was special, even though I proved that it was. He merely claimed that it was a regular map to him and that he was glad I had found his gift useful. While Keiko and Ellie headed out with the Sun Guard for one final patrol of the area around Sun’s End, Sensei and I scoured the markets for anything that was unique to Sunset Island. There weren't a lot, but we did find a few random plants that were difficult to find in other places that were pretty common on the island. I bought everything they had, and I mean everything, from herbs, to plants, to spices, to fruits.

I forced them to take my cores as payment, even though they kept telling me that I didn’t have to pay them. More than one of the vendors tried to push the cores back into my hands, but I simply let them fall to the ground and walked away. They eventually went and picked them up, so as not to let someone randomly take them.

I went and spoke with Kuzco, who was very excited to hear that we were going to be headed off an adventure. He asked that we find a way to contact him and his sister, Aria, as soon as possible once we arrived back in the outside world. He told me that Aria was worried that we would get there safely, seeing as we were such trouble magnets. I admonished him, saying that we were Savior magnets, seeing as everywhere we’d found a tragedy, we’d managed to save those involved. He refused to admit that his clan had needed saving, though from the gleam in his eyes I knew that he was kidding.

After that, I went to see Rongo Jin. He was also excited to hear that Keiko and I were going on an adventure and wished us well. He gave me a technique manual for using Arctic qi and explained that he had spent the last three months copying it, assuming that Keiko and I would want it when we left. I tried to tell him that it was too much, but just like the vendors, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He told me that I should learn as much as I could from it and save it for Keiko, because he was sure that I would be able to fix the issue with her lower core eventually and that his technique manual could serve as the spark to reignite her passion for Arctic qi.

The final person I went to visit was Juniper. She was working with her husband to prepare for a trip to visit her sister, Miriam. She told me that Naomi and Taka had agreed to travel with them around the island, though they were going to be going overland, to see as much as they could, rather than using the tunnels which would have been much faster. She was very excited to get to meet Clyde and little John. She wished me and Sensei well and assured me that the rest of the Torak family would be fine in Sun’s End. More of them had been arriving in the previous months and they’d been integrating themselves into all aspects of life in the city. They were even working on getting a group together to try and revive one of the Dawnrise Clan’s cities that were exposed to the world. Though that was something that would take years to get fully up and running, they were going to establish a camp there as a basis to make it happen in the future.

After stashing all the random things I’d purchased and been given, I made my way to visit the grave of the woman who had been a Crone. She had passed away in the nearly two years since we’d left. I paid my respects and said a little prayer before leaving. I saw Panthro as I was leaving her grave and he nodded to me respectfully, which was a far cry for the growling he had done when we first met.

He and I had fought back-to-back in the battle outside Sun’s End and doing that with someone changes how they perceive you. He no longer thought I was some young cub with too much importance and not enough power. Now he understood that I was a warrior in my own right and a worthy ally. He took one look at me and clapped me on the back, wishing Keiko and I well in all further hunts. I clapped him on the shoulder and bid him good hunting, before giving him a warrior’s handshake and leaving him to pay his respects.

I went to lunch at the little inn by Old Ironbellows’ forge and just enjoyed the sounds of Sun’s End all around me. Gone were the empty buildings that made the place feel like a tomb, that cold silence was replaced with the sounds of laughing children and hawkers selling their wares. Those were the sounds of life and I was happy that Keiko and I had been a part of saving the lives contained within that place.

***

The following day, Keiko and I set off with a couple of extra spatial storage devices full of food, camping supplies, and other miscellaneous items as we left to the cheers of the assembled members of the populace. It seemed like everyone in Sun’s End had showed up and it did my heart well to hear the sounds of joy come from people I’d seen so downtrodden in the past. We had said our goodbyes to our friends the night before while eating dinner with them. We were all cultivators and warriors, so everyone understood that we needed to go and expand our horizons.

When I turned back to look at Sun’s End as we were leaving, I saw Aria and Gong Jin start to hustle down the tunnel behind us, but Naomi and Taka sprung forward and stopped them, waving as the massive stone slab that served to hide the entrance to Sun’s End slammed shut behind us.

It took Keiko and I nearly a year to make it to Sun’s End from where we got deposited from to make it to Sun’s End the first time, but our return trip was significantly faster. All we did was make our way to the nearest tunnel entrance, conveniently the one that we had just recently used on our way from Juniper and Raymond Torak’s waystation. It was a simple matter to figure out where the nearest exit was to where we were going and, even running at two thirds speed, we made it what we were going in one tenth the time that it had previously taken us to travel that distance.

We took to camping out in the hills near the ridge we knew Roderigo and Melody would arrive upon when they arrived. We were planning on springing out of where we were waiting and joining them as quickly as possible.

We didn’t have long to wait, only two weeks after we set up camp, Keiko and I watched as Roderigo and Melody snapped into existence in a flash of rainbow light. With a gentle probe of their cultivations, I could tell that both of them were at the very peak of Brain level, but nothing further. Their auras almost felt fit to burst, as if they just needed something to push them over the edge, which alchemy was great at. I knew I’d have to get him something to get them past that bottleneck soon. Doing so would rebuild their bodies and repair Roderigo’s meridians in his arm.

Keiko and I sprang out of the foliage we had been waiting within and charged up the hill to hug Melody and Roderigo respectively. We both spun the people we were hugging around briefly before setting them down again and doing the same with the other part of the pair. After a moment, they both looked at us like we were crazy, though they were smiling.

I beamed, “Alright, turn back around. We’re going back into the Inheritance.”

Roderigo looked at me like I was crazy, “What do you mean? Aren’t we going to the Inheritance of the Eclipse? I figured you’d have gotten new totem earrings for us by now. We really want to go.”

Keiko’s face fell and she moved quietly behind me. Ellie slid off my shoulders to go and crawl around her mother, doing her best to comfort her.

“No such luck, it’s tough to get ahold of those things.”

That was absolutely untrue at that point. I had eight sets of those earrings in my spatial storage earring. We had found dozens of sets of them after we killed all those Indus Sect members. We’d also found their stash in their headquarters.

“We need to go back to the Inheritance of the Lovers now. Are you guys in?”

Melody groaned, “We just spent two weeks waiting for the stupid spatial opening to get us here and you want us to go back?” Melody was being uncharacteristically flippant and when I looked closer, I saw a gleam of mirth in her eye, she was playing it up. “OK.”

I sighed exaggeratedly, “yeah, that’s it. Take us home, Roddy!”

He opened his mouth to object, but eventually looked at his wife before looking at me and shaking his head, “One trip to the Inheritance of the Lovers, coming right up.” He pulled out a tile from his bag that looked less ornate than the one that Keiko and I still carried. That tile was able to bring us into the Inheritance of the Lovers from anywhere in the world.

He put his arm around everyone gathered and snapped the tile. One moment of disorientation and a flash of rainbow light later and we were all sprawled out in the entrance room of the Inheritance of the Lovers. We took a few moments to stand up and brush ourselves off before walking down the hallway toward where I was confident that Dawn and Dusk would be waiting for us.

No matter what Roderigo and Melody asked, Keiko and I remained tightlipped. Sensei was dead silent, which was unusual for him, but I knew that he was overcome with emotion, he was just humming with anticipation at what was about to happen.

We exited the long hallway into a different room than we’d entered the last time we left the hallway. Instead of the massive silver dais that Keiko and I had been forced to climb to gain entrance to the Inheritance of the Lovers and the gold dais that Dawn and Dusk had sat on to watch us, instead it was a basic parlor. There were three loveseats and a single perch for Ellie to sit on. There’s also a small table before one of the couches, the one with the perch near it. I was pretty sure that was where Keiko and I were supposed to sit.

After we all got seated, Roderigo still glaring back and forth at Keiko and I, Dawn and Dusk snapped into existence on the third, previously empty, couch. They beamed at Keiko and I before looking over at Ellie and smiling even wider.

When Dusk spoke, his tone was warm, like the rays of the setting sun in Spring-year, “It is wonderful to have the pair of you back. Steven, Keiko, who are our third and fourth additions? Somehow the Inheritance didn’t kick them out, so I’m assuming they’re bound to you in some way.”

I had to admit, they didn’t miss much, but that kind of made sense considering they were the spirits in control of the entire Inheritance. Before I could speak up, Keiko did.

“The little lady on the perch is our daughter, Ellie. She’s a Five-element Coatl. Our other family member is someone quite special and you would be shocked to learn who he was, but we’ll let him tell you that himself.”

Before Sensei could speak up, Ellie chittered happily, “Hi! I’m Ellie, Steven and Keiko are my daddy and mommy. I’m a Coatl. The qi in here isn’t as good as the Inheritance of the Eclipse, but it’s still pretty good. It feels a little bit like Sensei.”

Keiko and I chuckled as Sensei took that as his cue, “As Ellie said, I am Steven and Keiko’s sensei, but my real name is Granville Torak.” Dawn and Dusk both gasped in shock, but Sensei continued. “Yes, that kind of Torak. The progenitors of this place are my son and his wife and I would desperately like to speak with them, if at all possible. Would you please make that available? Steven and I have agreed to provide a number of beast cores and qi stones if it will allow us to sustain a longer conversation.”

Dawn was the first of the pair to recover from shock, “That shouldn’t be necessary. Ever since we were given more autonomy, Dusk and I have found a number of places where qi was being siphoned off by less scrupulous members of this Inheritance. After plugging those leaks, we’ve had more than enough to build up a good amount of reserve qi. You should be able to speak with Elliott and Chandra as long as you want.”

Sensei’s voice was exuberant, “Excellent, take my pot wherever you need to, to make that happen.”

Dusk, finally having recovered, smiled, “There’s no need for that, simply have Steven and Keiko take you back to the room that they share with Roderigo and Melody. We’ve just placed a plinth in there that will allow you to speak with your son and daughter directly, for as long as you want.” His eyes shone with joy at the happy squeak coming from Sensei.

Sensei quickly coughed, even though he didn’t have a body, to try to draw attention away from the cute noise he’d made a moment before, “Thank you. If you have any questions for me, please ask. I know the pair of you have passed on, but curiosity is still a thing you likely experience and I’d be happy to speak to you, spirit to spirit.”

Dawn’s eyes glowed, she was more bookish than Dusk, “If you’re here long enough, we’ll take you up on that. There are a number of things from the progenitors’ time that I have questions about and I’m assuming that you’ll have the answers.” She turned to look at Ellie with her head cocked to the side, “Keiko, you said that your daughter was a Five-element Coatl, but I only see metal qi, wind qi, and water qi. What are the other two?”

Sensei cut in before I could respond, “I’ll explain that in one of our little meetings, after I speak to my son and daughter.”

I’d worked with Sensei long enough that I knew when he was done talking.

I smiled, “Trust me, you won’t get any more out of him now. Keiko and I could answer you, but Sensei will do a better job of it. Suffice to say, maybe we should all wait until he can tell you two, as well as Melody and Roderigo all at one time. Especially if they’re going to be traveling with us.”

Melody and Roderigo looked at me, shocked, “What do you mean?” They spoke in unison.

I grinned, “We’re going to take back your hometown!”

The look of shock on both of their faces was priceless and I knew then that I had made a good choice in our destination.

Chapter 21

Sensei spoke to Elliott and Chandra for almost two straight days before snapping back to his pot, which had been completely useless with him out of it. It had forced me to use my backup pot, which was still terrible and I knew I needed to get a new one. I resolved to take a look at what pots were available in the Disciple hallway shop, seeing as Keiko and I had access to it at that point as Saints. As he re-entered his pot, it glowed brightly, like it did when I practiced my flame wheel technique and the bright lights drew all five of us to stand around the plinth.

When he spoke, he sounded almost drunk with happiness, “My young friends, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for what you’ve given me. Because of this little visit, I was able to lay to rest every worry I had about the time following the establishment of my own Inheritance. I am forever in your debt, Steven and Keiko. I was always going to be your Sensei, and I was always going to be your friend, but I now know that the two of you are even more so family to me than my descendants.”

Two threads of qi shot out from Sensei’s pot and entered Keiko and I. They didn’t last long, just a second or two, but when I checked what he had done, I found an incredibly intricate rune carved upon my brain core and I felt a very similar one on Keiko’s heart core. We both writhed on the ground in pain for a few moments before Melody and Roderigo helped us back to our feet.

Before I could ask what he had done, he spoke, “Those are my wife’s crowning achievement. Each person can only have one and I chose the ones that I thought would be most useful to the pair of you. Steven, if I placed the rune on your lower core, the increase would’ve been negligible in your qi capacity and it would have been wasted. Instead, I placed it on your brain core, which should help increase your control over that core by a drastic amount. Keiko, I placed the rune on your heart core because of your fighting style. If you’re going to be fighting as a front-liner, you’ll need to be able to perform like a front-liner. That rune should allow you to circulate qi more rapidly, pushing the limits of your body even farther than before.

“They are called runes of proficiency and eventually your bodies will incorporate them and their effects will grow, but even in their current state they are incredibly potent. I only had the ability to give two of them and I was planning on waiting to see if we would ever meet someone who needed them, but I didn’t want to wait anymore. I wanted to give my grandson and granddaughter the greatest gifts I had available and those were them.”

I was shocked, I’d never expected to find that Sensei was holding something like that back, but in the end, it made sense. He had given us his wife’s crowning achievement, it was probably the last thing he had left of her, so to give it as a gift meant he didn’t have it anymore. However, now he would see pieces of his wife in everything we did.

I recovered before Keiko did, she was bawling into Melody’s arms at what Sensei had said, “To be clear, I’m still calling you Sensei. I had a grandfather and he was a wonderful man, but you’re my sensei. That isn’t to say that I don’t acknowledge you as my grandfather, I know that people can have multiples of those, but to think of you as Grandfather would be confusing.”

Keiko glared at me, but when Sensei spoke, he sounded happy, “I wouldn’t ask anything different. I am and forever will be your Sensei, but you are more precious to me than any student I’ve had before. That is all those marks are, marks of how precious you are to me.”

Roderigo looked at me like he had no idea what was going on and it was at that moment that I realized that Sensei had been speaking to Keiko and I in an ancient language that we had somehow picked up.

I turned to glare at his pot, “You forgot to mention the imparted language, didn’t you?”

He chuckled and spoke in the normal language of our time, “It’s not just one language, it’s a dozen that my wife and I perfected over the years. There are very few ancient scripts that you and your wife will not be able to read at this point, though some ancient sect writings will be in different forms of code or ciphers. You should bill to decipher nearly any writing, assuming it was around back in my time.”

I shook my head and Roderigo took that as his moment, “What time? What did you just do? Someone please tell me; I hate being confused.” His voice sounded pained, like someone was slowly wringing out all the patience he had.

While Keiko collected herself, I explained to Roderigo and Melody the situation with Sensei. I told them about how he was from the past and after a while, Sensei pitched in and explained about light qi and dark qi and how they worked. He didn’t explain how to gather them, but he did explain how they worked to our friends. He also explained that they had to be used in balance. He said that he’d be watching out for any imbalance between the pair of them, as part of his teaching them.

When Roderigo asked why Sensei would be teaching them, he explained that anyone traveling with Steven and Keiko was more than welcome to his teachings. That was enough for Melody, but it took a conversation in the hot Springs with me to finally satiate Roderigo’s curiosity.

“Yeah, so that’s what happened. Sunset Island is a beautiful place, but it was terrible there for us after everything that happened. Keiko couldn’t stand to look at anything there anymore, so we knew we had to leave. The fact that you were arriving soon was perfect and we took that as an opportunity to leave.” I lounged back in our hot spring, luxuriating in the heat.

He just nodded, “Alright, I think I understood about seventy percent of what you’ve been talking about and that will have to do. Now, you mentioned going to visit the village Melody I grew up in. Why?”

I wrung my hands in anticipation, “I realized that your wife, Keiko, and I, along with Ellie, are all basically totally immune to poison. While we don’t get stronger when we get poisoned, we are effectively immune. With the three of us, plus you if I can get you tempered in time, we should have no problem taking out the clan that ousted Melody’s family.”

He looked at me with unexpected fear in his eyes, “Melody and I are just Brain cultivators, we can’t hang in a fight with the Azure Vein Clan. Their guards are all at least Saints and their patriarch is a Sage, there was a rumor that he was on the verge of becoming a Duke. If we went into battle with you as we are now, there’s no chance we’d walk back out.”

My eyes gleamed, even as I twirled my wrist with a flourish to hold out a pill case I had summoned from my spatial ring, “That won’t be a problem. Take this to make sure that you and Melody each take one in the morning just before cultivating breakfast. That’s when they’ll be at their most effective.”

I smiled when I saw the look of shock on Roderigo’s face when he opened the jade pill case to see the two Expert grade Foundation Building pills I’d placed within. He was so nervous that he nearly dropped them in the hot spring, but I managed to snatch them out of the air with a thread of wind qi I’d left nearby, just in case. I quickly placed the pill case over by the door where it would be safe, “Grab that when you leave. I’m not leaving it up to chance, they’re too valuable to risk dropping in the water and wrecking them.”

He stared at me, “We’re not deserving of that gift, I’m not even an alchemist and I know that the pills you just gave me are worth more than my whole life, hell they’re worth more than both Melody and my lives. Why would you give them to us?” His voice was pained, like he knew he was doing something wrong, but couldn’t stop himself.

I had to nip that thought in the bud, “First, you’re wrong. You and Melody are worth everything, even if you don’t think that of yourselves, Keiko and I think enough of you two for all four of us. Secondly, I didn’t pay for those pills, I made them. I made them specifically for the two of you, so if you don’t use them, you’re wasting them. Do you want to waste expensive pills? I didn’t think so.”

With the snap of my final word, I stood up and strode to the entrance of the hot spring, drying off my body with a quick wave of Inferno qi before summoning my gold and white Robe of the Sun and Boon back on before turning to look back at Roderigo, who was still staring at me in shock.

“Friends don’t keep ledgers of things they’ve done for friends, they just do them. I don’t care how long it’s been since we’ve been together, the four of us are friends and no matter what you two need, we’re going to help you get it.” I cracked my neck, “Rest up, I hear the Inheritance is going to be rumbling through your neck of the woods in a little less than a month. Hopefully you can break through to Saint by then and be well on your way to the fog or liquid stage. Good night.”

With that, I quickly strode to my bedroom, where I found Keiko fast asleep in the middle of the bed, with Ellie coiled up by her head. I was very glad that we had cultivated dinner earlier and happily crawled in beside her, curling my body around hers.

I whispered in her ear, “Never forget, no matter where we are, as long as we’re all together, the four of us are always home.”

Chapter 22

In the days leading up to our exit from the Inheritance of the Lovers, Keiko and I really took advantage of all the things we’d had to do without the last time we were there. I’d only managed to sneak into the library once or twice years ago, but this time, I was in the library for twelve hours a day. Just because I was curious, I spent a couple hours hunting for information on the Inheritance of the Eclipse or even just Sunset Island and found precious little. There wasn’t even a book similar to the Tome of Inheritances I’d found inside the Centering Lotus when I originally took it from the vault.

Speaking of that, I didn’t so much miss the Centering Lotus for its qi gathering properties, I missed it because it was a really comfortable bed for Keiko and I. It was going to be hard getting used to sleeping on bedrolls.

On the subject of the northern portion of the Empire, however, there were a number of tomes. Many of them detailed the different kinds of beasts that could be found and how to deal with them, but since we were going to be with Roderigo and Melody, I didn’t really feel the need to explore those much further. Anything we didn’t know about, they would probably know about because they grew up there, that’s not to mention that Sensei would likely have a number of insights. The only monsters I studied at any length were the equivalent of Sage cultivators and higher, it’s always good to know everything you can about what can kill you, rather than what you’re going to have no issues fighting.

The other tomes about the northern edge of the Empire talked about the northwestern section of it and how there was a massive military fort there, due to its strategic importance. Seeing as we were going to Melody and Roderigo’s hometown, which was very near the northeastern corner of the Empire, I found a number of books about that section of the north as well.

The northeastern corner of the Empire was about as backwoods as any part of it. There was very little trade besides one major city that actually saw a bit of airship travel, seeing as it was extremely remote and cut off from the world without it. The city was called Hightower and everything I found about it called it out as a thriving metropolitan city, despite how remote it was. To be clear, the book I read that in was almost a hundred years old, but in the terms of the Empire, that was no time at all, so it was still likely to be very similar. The major draw for traders to Hightower were the materials taken from the beasts just across the border with the Empire’s northern neighbor, the Federation.

The Federation espoused a strange method of cultivation, in which a person exclusively cultivates one type of elemental qi. To make up for their lack of flexibility, Federation cultivators outside of their main cities were always found with a group of five other cultivators, who each specialized in one of the other five main types of qi. It sounded strange to me, but when I asked Sensei about it, he told me that it was a quick path to power, but the ceiling on that power was Duke at the highest, though most who practiced cultivation that way never made it past Sage.

When I asked Roderigo about how the villages around where he grew up didn’t get surrounded and destroyed by the huge groups of powerful beasts, he laughed. He told me that there was no way the beasts would be able to climb up the sheer cliffs that served as the border between the Empire and the Federation, especially with the huge number of guards lining the cliff top with bows. He said that cultivators would either use earth qi to climb the walls, or the villages would throw down massive rope ladders that would later be hauled back up by the hunters themselves once they climbed back up.

He talked about how getting a job as a ladder hauler would’ve been good for him, considering how poor his family really was. The problem was, he never passed the test to become one, which we knew at that point was because of the broken meridians in his arm. Seeing as he and Melody had broken through to Saint the date before, they were very excited to be one step closer to the body reforging of Sage. At that point, his meridians would be completely rebuilt and he would be even more whole than he was when he was born.

Sensei only spent one more hour with his son and daughter, but the sense of peace that rolled off of him told me that was all he needed. As long as he knew that everything he’d set in motion had finished up alright, he was absolutely okay with moving on, because we could always come back whenever we wanted and he could talk to them again. When I asked what they talked about, he told me straight. They’d just spoken about the time when they were growing up and the time Elliott and Chandra spent with Sensei’s grandchildren.

***

Despite the lack of progress on fixing Keiko’s attributed qi issue, she was in high spirits. Gone was the depressed woman in the shape of my darling spitfire, that woman was replaced by her normal bubbly self and I couldn’t have been happier to see it.

Though we were only there for a few days, Keiko spent her time teaching cultivators who wanted to try their hand at formations. She took advantage of her malady and turned it into a benefit, I was so proud of her.

On the night before we were scheduled to leave, I put together a feast and even invited Dawn and Dusk, though they expressed their regrets and didn’t come. The four of us, Melody, Rodrigo, Keiko, and I all enjoyed a well-balanced meal, full of qi, followed by cultivation and finally, conversation.

As we sat on the divans in our living area, I took a few moments to look around at what I was leaving behind again. I expected to feel a pang of loss, but it was exactly the same as it was when I left it, so it almost felt like a constant I could rely on. The wonders and horrors that Keiko and I had seen on Sunset Island were just that, wonderful and horrific, but now we were back in the place where we became a couple, the place where we got married. There, nothing had changed. That thought gave me hope that no matter what happened, we would always have that place to fall back to, to serve as a place to regroup and recover before going back out into the cruel world.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to our trip the following day, but I cut everyone off before they could get too deep into it, “Listen, I am absolutely excited to be going to visit your hometown, guys, I really am, but let’s save that for tomorrow. I’ve been up to my ears in books telling me about everything around your village, from Hightower to the small town down the cliffs and across the border into the Federation of Free People, though I know you probably just call it the Elemental Federation. We don’t need to talk about it more now, let’s make tonight a time for silent contemplation or doing something fun. We’re not going to have this kind of time in the near future, where we aren’t in any danger and can relax like this.

“Oh, Dusk also told me today that the Inheritance isn’t going to be able to drop us on the southern side of the border. Instead, we’re going to be dropped about a hundred and fifty miles north of it, outside of that town I talked about a minute ago.” Everyone started the pipe up, but I raised my hand to stop them, “Like I said, it’s not something to talk about today. Any questions you have, save them for tomorrow morning at breakfast. I’m making thunder chicken egg omelettes with Zephyr Rice mixed in. I’m going to call them Thunder Rice Omelettes, they’ll be chockablock full of wind qi and I’ll add in a bunch of other goodies to get us all the qi we need to prepare for our travels.”

I stood up and stretched, before glancing at Keiko meaningfully. I could’ve messaged her mentally, but I wanted to test and see if she got where I was going with it.

True to form, she did. She immediately followed me in getting up before waving to Melody and Roderigo, “I think we’re going to bed after we cultivate for a while. See you in the morning.”

Ellie waved her tail at Melody and Roderigo before following Keiko and I to our bedroom, where we did exactly what we said we were going to. We cultivated and then went to bed, with a few extracurricular activities in between.

Chapter 23

Our departure from the Inheritance of the Lovers was much more subdued that time. There was no heartfelt speech from Dawn and Dusk, though they did stop by to say goodbye and to wish us luck. We waited until the pillars framing the inactive portal glowed green and the portal activated before jumping through.

We found ourselves in a snow-covered forest that was so cold as to chill us to the bone within seconds. I was so glad that I had purchased necklaces that we could pop fire qi stones or fire beast cores into to keep all of us warm. They were pretty expensive, so I only bought one for each of us and two extras, but with the additional points we got for reuniting Sensei and his kids, we weren’t really sweating point costs at that point. I also bought two years’ worth of food for six people, just in case we ended up outside of civilization for an extended period of time.

To get our bearings, I climbed to the top of one of the nearby trees, which were of a variety unlike any I’d seen outside of the peaks of Sunset Island. They were very tall, nearly a thousand feet tall and rather than branching out at the top, they were wider at the bottom than they were at the top. I climbed up as high as I could, making myself lighter with the use of wind qi before pulling out the map from Old Ironbellows. Just like I’d hoped, gone was the outline of Sunset Island and its place was a truly massive expanse of land with a tiny dot in the upper right corner that I could only assume was where I was.

Injecting a thread of qi into its qi matrix, I focused the image down upon the tiny dot in the upper right corner and brought myself into a much greater focus. Instead of showing hundreds of thousand miles worth of land, now it was showing probably closer to ten thousand miles worth of land. That wasn’t close enough to be useful, so I focused again and used another thread of qi to get it down to a thousand miles horizontal by five hundred miles vertical, which was enough that I could make out where my party was located relevant to the border.

From what Keiko and I had figured out before, the map updated itself with anything that we could see, including adding the names of things that we didn’t even know, which was pretty handy. It was how we had found the Alchemists’ Grotto back on Sunset Island, without it there would have been almost no chance of us actually locating it. The southern edge of the Elemental Federation was an arctic forest and I could feel monsters in the area, even if I couldn’t see them. I checked the map and after having Keiko walk to the left for three or four minutes, I figured out which way was north. After climbing down, we headed south as quickly as we could, or we would have if Melody and Roderigo hadn’t stopped us.

Melody looked at me like I was crazy when she stopped me from running for the cliffs at a dead sprint, “Are you trying to get us killed? There are beasts close to the cliffs that are equivalent to Sage or even Duke cultivators, that’s why groups going hunting never leave without at least half a dozen Saints, maybe even a Sage or two of their own. We have to be as stealthy as we can if we want to make it to the cliffs safely.

“Once there, we can all use earth qi, so we can just climb the cliffs, but even then, we’ll have to be careful not to get shot down by the archers guarding the border. They’re all at least Brain cultivators and they specialized in qi techniques that enhance their archery. Kind of like the Naomi you mentioned in your stories, they’re not much for qi constructs, but they enhance their bows and arrows with qi. I don’t have to tell you how effective that is, you’ve seen it firsthand.”

I closed my lips tightly for a moment before grinning and whispering, “Mum’s the word.”

She merely grimaced as she and Roderigo started picking their way through the enormous trees, which had to be at least hundred feet thick at the bottom. They were moving mostly through the already disturbed snow where the trees would periodically drop the accumulated buildup of snow on their branches, so as to avoid leaving tracks. Despite that, they were still leaving behind a trail so easy to follow that I could have tracked us with my eyes shut. In the end, I used a bit of wind qi and water qi to make snow to fill in our footsteps. Eventually Melody caught on to what I was doing and our path went from very circuitous to incredibly straight in less than a minute.

We’re moving relatively quickly, chewing up fifty miles or so an hour, though we were probably running much faster than that, the circuitous route that Melody had us taking originally had cost us a lot of time.

An hour into our run, we all stopped when we felt a wave of killing intent coming from the forest all around us. When Keiko and I looked around, we didn’t see anything threatening, but we could definitely feel it.

Melody hissed under her breath, “Tundra Maulers, they’re like enormous white wolves with the ability to blast out ice qi. They’re basically immune to fire qi, so they’re incredibly difficult to deal with. Even their pups are Saint level, alphas start at Sage and move up to Duke. If they found us, there’s not much…”

She was cut off by the sound of snarling coming from all around us and a moment later, half a dozen enormous white wolves sprang out of nowhere to attack us. The scene that followed wasn’t pretty. Keiko and I held our own, she was a strong as a weak King cultivator, which means she was stupidly strong, and they may have been fire qi resistant, but they’d never dealt with Inferno qi before and I was able to toast one of them alive, though it did totally destroy the pelt of the one I did that to, so ended up trying a different means of attacking for the next one.

When I turned to check on Roderigo and Melody, they were not doing well. They had just become Saints two days before and were absolutely getting thrashed. Melody was already bleeding from five different bites and Roderigo was pinned by his neck to the ground by the largest of the Tundra Maulers. I could hear him squeaking, trying to call for help, but no words came out.

I quickly messaged Keiko, “You can handle our last one, right? I’m going to save our companions.” She didn’t even answer, she just drew the Dawnblade and spun it once in her hand before moving to attack our third Tundra Mauler, having used her fists to take out the previous one, which left a much cleaner corpse I might add.

I blurred into motion, speeding over to launch a massive kick into the underside of the Alpha Tundra Mauler’s chin, which didn’t kill it, but it did send it reeling back for a moment. I heard Roderigo coughing for breath as he rolled over toward where his wife was being brutally attacked by another Tundra Mauler. I felt a manifestation of qi forming to my left and without thinking, I punched a hand out toward the source of that feeling and launched a spike of Arctic qi.

To be honest, it wasn’t like I wanted to use Arctic qi, it was just what came unbidden when I felt threatened. It must have been the environment, it felt easier to use Arctic qi in that field. However, it was highly effective when I eventually checked what had come of my attack. The fifth Tundra Mauler’s mouth was completely coated with Arctic qi and the blast of ice qi it was forming inside its throat was stopped up. The look of panic in its eyes as it froze itself solid was understandably satisfying.

Half a second later, I glanced back and saw that Melody had formed a shell of earth qi over herself and Roderigo. She was doing her best to keep them safe, but the Tundra Mauler that had been attacking her was stomping on it and leaving deep fissures throughout it with audible cracks. Before I could move to help, Keiko roared as she leapt through the air with the Dawnblade grown to its largest size. She tried to bring it down on the head of the Tundra Mauler, but it skittered backward and she ended up burying the Dawnblade five feet into the earth, though she quickly drew it out by shrinking it down to its short sword size before moving to attack again.

I was confident she had it, so I directed my attention back to the Alpha and was very glad that I had. Somehow, I hadn’t felt it gathering qi and as I looked over, I saw the very beginnings of a cone of ice qi releasing from its mouth and screaming toward where all of my allies were gathered. I quickly summoned a shell of Inferno qi and dove directly toward the cone, which stopped the blast, but also sent me flying back into one of the enormous trees like an arrow from a bow. The Inferno qi shell was so hot that I bored a hole forty feet deep through the trunk of the tree until I bumped into something hard and metallic, but I didn’t have time to think about that. I quickly launched a blast of wind qi behind me as I rocketed out of the hole I’d drilled through the tree with and pulled out something I was very proud of.

It was the Orichalcum spiked chain with its stingray grip. Coating the last few spikes was a particularly potent poison that Sensei helped me cook up. If it struck, which it did, it would render anything struck with it under the Duke level dead within moments and stronger beings would at least be slowed down for a while. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Alpha was halfway through gathering up enough qi to launch the same attack that had blasted me through the tree, I wouldn’t’ve used it. The materials for the poison were incredibly expensive and hard to find, but Sensei was adamant that I was supposed to use my poisons, not just let them sit in my spatial ring as decoration.

As the Alpha Tundra Mauler was struck with the spines of the spiked chain, the qi construct it was forming died. It turned out that Orichalcum eats qi. I was lucky that I was even able to coat it with Inferno qi back in the fight with Bocca. If I hadn’t been burning everything I had in that fight, I wouldn’t have been able to do so. I pushed through its qi resistant nature through raw force, which was only possible because it was an Orichalcum alloy, pure Orichalcum would have stopped my attempts dead.

I heard a soft gurgling from the Alpha as it died choking on its own blood as it filled its lungs. When I turned to check on Keiko and our companions, I found them seated on top of the earthen berm that Melody had created, though there was a hole in the top of it where they’d obviously crawled out.

I walked forward and gathered up the bodies of all five of the intact Tundra Maulers, three of which were in great condition because of how Keiko had taken care of them, one was burned to a crisp and before I could even gather it up, it fell to ash leaving only a Common water core behind. The beast that had been frozen solid wasn’t actually dead, but a quick stab from the Dawnblade fixed that. I didn’t bother thawing it out, I just threw it into my spatial ring alongside the Alpha, which was in remarkable condition because I’d only actually hit it one time. We might have to get the core out of it eventually, but that was a job for a later date. At that point, I saw Keiko looking at me meaningfully as Ellie healed Melody and Roderigo.

I walked over and squatted next to them, “Sorry about that. If I thought about it, I would’ve healed you instead of making Ellie do it. My bad.” I ran my fingers through my hair nervously. I didn’t like it when Keiko was grumpy with me following a fight, usually those put her in a great mood.

Ellie yawned after finishing up with Melody, who was the worst wounded of the group, “Don’t worry about it, Daddy, I like healing people. Ever since Sensei told me about the other stuff, I’ve been able to heal even better. You know the light and dark stuff? I use a little bit of each when I heal and it makes it work better, but it makes me really tired when I do it.” She yawned again, “I’m going to curl up on your shoulders, Daddy. Mommy’s shoulders aren’t wide enough for me anymore.” She was as good as her word, though Keiko scowled at me because of what was happening. Ellie immediately flapped over and crawled up around my shoulders, looking like nothing if not a scaled scarf. She sighed contentedly as she settled in.

Melody was marveling at how her wounds were already healed, “If I’d used wood qi for this, I probably wouldn’t have been healed for at least ten minutes, even if I really put some qi behind it. It’s been thirty seconds and I’m already feeling much better. Ellie, your Arctic qi is remarkable.”

I don’t think Melody and Roderigo noticed, but Keiko’s whole body tensed up for a moment at the mention of Ellie’s Arctic qi, but that moment passed and she was back to normal. The problem was, I saw it and when she looked over at me, she knew I’d seen it.

Before she could say anything to me, Roderigo patted me on the shoulder, “Thanks for getting that big dog off me. I thought that if I took on the Alpha that Melody would be able to hold off the other two until you guys took care of your half, but I may have overestimated my skills and power. I should’ve left the Alpha, and three of the others, to you two and Melody and I should’ve focused on a pair by ourselves. It was my mistake, but we live and learn.”

He held out his hand for a moment and a second later, a trail ration bar appeared in his hand. He took a huge bite out of it with a resounding crunch. He mumbled around the huge bite he’d just taken, “I always get hungry after a big fight.”

I’m pretty sure that’s what he said, but I might be wrong.

Chapter 24

We rested until Roderigo finished his snack before getting up and moving again. This time, we were less careful, which may feel a bit counterintuitive, but we were only one hundred miles from the border and if we went at a dead sprint, we could do that in an hour and a half, even over snow, if not less.

Just after leaving the site of our battle, I had a crazy idea. Since I knew that I was much faster than Roderigo and Melody, though not nearly as fast as Keiko, I felt safe trying it out.

I told everyone to continue on and that I was going to try something. They reluctantly agreed, though Keiko threatened to kick my ass if I didn’t reach the border with them, so I knew I had to be fast.

I quickly ran back toward the tree I’d been blasted into and when rooted around in the hole, I found something strange inside. It was a simple green sphere, no more than six inches in diameter, but when I picked it up it was incredibly light. Sensei told me that the material I was holding was Malachite, which was useful for holding complex qi constructs.

Back in his days traveling with his wife, she had given him a Malachite ring containing a qi construct that would help him escape combat if needed. It had saved his life a number of times before crumbling to dust, the qi stone inside spent.

I stashed the ball of Malachite away in my spatial storage earring, treating it as a precious material since Sensei told me that the ball was incredibly pure and how it would be very useful for any kind of intricate formations Keiko might want to make permanent. Following that, I crawled out of the hole and started looking around for what would usually be referred to as a log, but in this case, it was definitely just a branch.

I found one just a few yards away from the tree I’d just exited and quickly cut it in half to get it down to about eight feet long before slicing it in half horizontally to leave me with a four-foot diameter half cylinder. I used a combination of metal qi blades and Inferno qi to swiftly carve out the majority of the interior of the half log until there were only three inches of wood left before the bark.

Next, I used wood qi to form an angular prow, just like the boats in all the stories Sensei and Keiko had told me. Once that was done, I coated the entire bottom of the boat in Arctic qi, which set it sliding across the snow like fat on a hot skillet. I hurriedly built a spike to hold it in place as I tried to figure out how to steer the darn thing.

After a moment, Sensei figured out what I was building and guided me in forming a steering mechanism, which was constructed from a metal qi paddle attached to a frame made out of wood qi and metal qi that led to a handle. Eager to test my design, I adjusted my snow boat until the prow was pointed toward where my companions were headed and then hopped in.

At first, I only used a little bit of wind qi to push myself along, but the ride was stable due to Sensei’s insistence that I needed something called outriggers, which were really just twigs on sticks that were attached to the steering mechanism I was using, though they didn’t turn when I turned the rudder, which is what Sensei told me the paddle of metal qi was supposed to be called.

At only ten percent of the wind qi I could release sustainably, the snow boat was already traveling as fast as I could run, probably faster. I decided to really give it the beans and let loose fifty percent of what I could do sustainably. The resulting speeds were terrifying and I quickly caught up to my allies, though I blew straight past them and had to use a combination of earth qi and metal qi to stop myself, leaving a deep furrow in the snow for almost a hundred feet before I came to a stop.

Keiko rushed up to me, her face a mask of curiosity and rage, which was an odd combination for most people, but not for her. It looked like she wanted to yell at me, but when she realized what I’d built, the huge grin that flowed across her face was amazing.

“You made a boat for the snow!”

Without another word, she hopped up into the snow boat and took her rightful place at the prow, like the figureheads on all the ships in the stories. It didn’t hurt that she was physically the strongest of our group and would be more than capable of handling the wind pressure that built up at high speeds. I’d been forced to slow down when I tried out one hundred percent of my sustainable speed, via wind qi as I was sure Inferno qi would be much faster. The air rushing toward me nearly blew me out of the boat, which would have then been sent careening into a tree. Even when I slowed down a bit, the wind crashing into my open eyes was enough to make even my Saint body twinge with pain. Fifty percent of my sustainable qi was the max I could use and not get hurt, I only hoped that Melody and Roderigo would be able to handle it as well.

Melody and Roderigo stared at me like I’d grown three heads as I stood at the rear of my snow boat, but eventually Keiko was able to coax them into the boat by promising that maybe we’d be able to have a hot meal tonight if we got to one of the villages quickly enough.

As they got on, I heard Melody muttering under her breath, “We’re only a hundred miles from the cliffs, we would’ve made it to a village in plenty of time for dinner… I should just let her have this one.”

I patted her on the back thankfully and when she looked at me, I nodded. Our unspoken communication complete, she nodded back to me and went to settle in along the inner wall of the snow boat, doing her best to keep her head below the level of the top of the hull. Roderigo, however, said that he wanted to go sit up front, but there wasn’t enough room for him and Keiko to sit up by the prow, so he settled in behind her. He crafted wood qi handles for him and Keiko to grab onto, which I appreciated.

Chapter 25

The rest of our trip was uneventful on our way to the cliffs. We passed a number of beast packs, but none of them were fast enough to keep up with the screaming speed of the snow boat, so we just left them behind, choking on the snow that spread out behind us. When we arrived at the cliffs, I considered ditching the snow boat, but I’d grown a bit attached to it, so I stashed it in one of my extra spatial storage rings, though it did take up most of the remaining space in it. That ring was the one I’d received from the Moonbeam Clan after Keiko and I had saved them from the Indus Tribe back in Moonbeam Grotto.

The four of us wandered up to the cliffs and I was impressed by the sheer majesty of them. They were completely sheer and stretched up over 3,000 feet. Melody and Roderigo had told Keiko and I that there were no paths to walk up the cliffs, the only way to ascend them was to climb them using some qi technique, or to wait for a rope ladder to be lowered. I asked the pair if there was a way to tell where the rope ladder would be lowered, but they shook their heads. If there was a sign of where the rope ladders would come down, the Elemental Federations’ groups would be able to mark those locations and attack anyone who came down much more easily.

Instead, the points up top that were used to drop the ropes were chosen at random every day by rolling dice, if you believe that. There were twenty different locations for each camp of soldiers, so a twenty-sided die was shaped to figure out where the three drop locations would be for the day. I thought that was strange, but interesting.

“So, are we just going to start climbing now, or do you have a better idea?” I looked at Melody and Roderigo in turn before quickly glancing over at Keiko. She was just taking in the huge white stone cliffs. They were so tall as to appear to be the edge of the world, though we knew for a fact that the Empire we called home, or at least used to, was beyond them to the south.

I’d never really thought about it, but maybe Keiko and I weren’t really citizens of the Empire anymore. Roh City was part of the Empire, but Keiko and I hadn’t been back in two years and the place we truly called home, at least the physical location of it, was the Inheritance of the Lovers. I knew I needed to talk with her about it, but I didn’t even know how I felt about it, I didn’t know where that left us. That thought was energizing though, the uncertainty gave me goosebumps and I idly rubbed the scar on my shoulder from my final day in Roh City, until the day my body was reforged by advancing to become a Sage, that scar would be a constant reminder of why I didn’t want to go back to Roh City. The people there were worthless as far as I was concerned, with a few notable exceptions like Kory, who had saved me from those trumped-up elders’ kids.

Melody and Roderigo had finished scanning the cliffs at that point and they pointed a way down them to the east before she spoke, “If we head down that way, there are a few spots I can see that have had the rope ladder slammed into them. There’s a slight scuffing of the stone that hasn’t been smooth the way by earth qi yet. If we head there, I know we’ll end up somewhere that we can safely get off the cliff once we get up on top. Rigo and I will have to go up first, because with your accents, there’s a good chance they’d shoot you off the wall, just in case you’re some kind of Elemental Federation spies trying to pass yourselves off as Empire citizens.” She turned to face Keiko and I with fire in her eyes, “How does that sound to you two?”

Before I could reply, Keiko jumped in, “That sounds excellent. I’ll ride up on Steven’s back, that’ll let me deflect any kind of arrows shot down at him, just in case you guys aren’t able to convince them that we’re friendly.” With that, she snapped her jaw shut and walked behind me.

She was obviously uncomfortable to be needing someone else for something, but it spoke to her mental well-being that she didn’t freak out and say she could climb the sheer cliff without any help. Even for Saints like us, a fall from half the height of that cliff would be enough to be lethal, even with the healing prowess of Ellie and I at our disposal.

I shrugged, “I defer to your judgment, this is your backyard, not ours. Lead the way.” I waved my hand toward where she had pointed moments ago.

Melody flipped her long hair and trotted over toward where she had pointed earlier. Without any preamble, she and Roderigo started climbing the cliff face like a pair of Shale Monkeys, a particularly fast earth attributed monster that was known for scaling up and down cliff faces like this even faster than they could move on flat ground.

Keiko and I followed at a more sedated pace, with Keiko giving me tips on how to improve my form with the earth qi and water qi technique I was using to create handholds, the very same technique Aria had shown us when we first left Sun’s End. As usual, I wasn’t exceptional at it, but the tips I got from Keiko really helped me catch my theoretical stride and with my increased strength from Dragon Dancing and being farther along as a Saint than our companions, I caught up with them.

I stayed behind by about ten feet, but in the grand scheme of things, I was right up next to them. The ascent took about twenty minutes, mostly because Roderigo and Melody were marveling at how fast they could climb now that they were Saints and were scuttling left and right like crabs on a beach. At least that’s what Keiko said, but I didn’t have any real form of reference besides the Iron Crabs I’d killed and cooked for dinner back in the Inheritance of the Lovers.

When we got within five hundred feet of the top, a booming voice called out from above, “State your business! Stop or you will be fired upon!”

The three of us climbing all stopped dead and Keiko shrunk down into my shadow, doing her best imitation of a backpack. She had Ellie stop flying and wrap herself around my leg because it would be safer for her there with Keiko and I protecting the space she was occupying. She balked at first, but a single hiss from Keiko was enough to get her to comply. With my increased strength, there was no problem holding up my wife and daughter. They felt as light as an empty teacup about to be filled with delicious tea.

Rodrigo hollered up, “Empire citizens coming back from an extended monster hunt. We bagged five and a half Tundra Maulers, one of them was an Alpha!”

A few moments passed and then the same voice from above rang out again, “You may approach. Do not leave the ten-foot circle at the top of the cliffs or you will be pin-cushioned with arrows and dumped back over the cliff.”

We took that as permission, so we got back to climbing. It only took us a minute to climb the rest of the way, seeing as we now knew that we were being watched, Melody and Roderigo didn’t play around while climbing, instead picking the optimal path.

When we crested the cliff, I was shocked to see how disorganized the border was. None of the archers had matching armor or weapons, the only things they had in common were a hardened look and the gleaming silver badge on their chest that denoted them as Empire border guards. Not all of the silver badges were shining, some were dingy, but despite that, I could feel that the guards on this cliff were far stronger, on average, than the guards in Roh City. I guess that’s what dealing with monsters all the time does for you, it helps strengthen you, or at least it forces you to grow stronger to survive.

Despite the look of his ragtag group of soldiers, the man who was obviously in charge was entirely different. His breastplate armor was polished to a gleaming silver and the leather beneath it was well oiled and its russet tones shone through wherever metal didn’t cover it. His leather breeches matched the leather under his armor and his boots were jet black, in stark contrast to the rest of his outfit. No hat or helmet covered the wild blonde mane of that man, though it didn’t appear the cold was bothering him anymore than it was me and my companions.

The thing is, I didn’t see, or feel, a construct like the necklaces we all wore, he was demonstrating incredible resilience. When I took the time to check his cultivation level, I found that he was a very powerful Sage, probably just a few steps away from Duke, should he ever see fit to break through, I didn’t think it would take him more than a few hours of concerted effort.

The person in charge stared at us coldly, “My name is Captain Alexi, I’m in charge of this section of the Empire’s border. I hope you’re not wasting my time here, you lot expect me to believe that you took down five and a half Tundra Maulers? I find that hard to believe. Everyone knows that Tundra Maulers are incredibly strong, even the weakest are as strong as Saints in their prime, even as cubs. How did you four Saints take down five and a half of them, with one of them being an Alpha? Also, how did you take down half and a half Tundra Maulers? Did one of them limp away?”

Despite his serious tone, it was obvious that Captain Alexi was very curious.

Roderigo grinned sheepishly, “That would be my friend Steven’s fault,” he pointed a finger over toward me, “he broke through the fire resistance of one of the Tundra Maulers and incinerated it. All we got from that one was a single common water core. The others should all be in good shape though, if you want to see their bodies to prove that we’re telling the truth.”

Seeing the look of shock on Captain Alexi’s face, Roderigo’s demeanor shifted to be more confident. His reaction reminded me a lot of when he’d been running the shop at the end of the hall back in the Inheritance of the Lovers. I’d seen him work with a number of different customers and he gave each of them the correct attitude to draw them into additional purchases. This was no different, but instead of trying to get people to buy things from him, he was trying to get Captain Alexi to buy his story, which in this case was true.

Captain Alexi stared at me, which I returned with a quick wave and a smile, all the while doing my best to hide Ellie around my right leg until she caught the hint and slid up along my back until she was hiding were Keiko had been holding on before, but instead of being over my cloak, she was under it.

She mentally messaged Keiko and I, “I don’t like being under the cloak, but I remembered that you said people were going to be mean to me if they knew what I was, so I’ll stay here for now. Hopefully I can have extra treats tonight because I’m being so good.”

Some days it was strange that Ellie, who Keiko and I considered to be our daughter, asked for treats like a pet would if they could talk. In the end I blamed myself for having called them treats instead of snacks, but she was adamant that she was only ever going to call them treats and that she wanted as many of them as possible, so I eventually gave up on getting her to change what she called snacks. Just a random thought, but it did strike me there.

Captain Alexi stared at each of us in turn before finally stopping on Keiko. He walked up within five feet of her and it took everything I had not to step in between them.

He looked at her coldly, “I can tell you’re a Saint, why were you clinging to that guy’s back instead of climbing the cliff yourself?” His voice wasn’t unkind, but it was a bit aggressive. Keiko didn’t respond well to aggression.

She walked up until she was standing within six inches of Captain Alexi, though she had to crane her neck up to look at his six-foot five form, she didn’t look afraid, despite her only being five-foot tall.

Her voice was cold, “I have an injury that interferes with my usage of qi. Got a problem with that?” Her voice was full of all the ice she could no longer produce.

Captain Alexi took a reflexive step back at the killing intent rolling off of Keiko. He even put his hand on his sword for a moment, though he didn’t draw it.

I took a moment to consider what would happen if the scene turned into a battle. The problem is, I hadn’t had time to temper Melody and Roderigo’s bodies against poison yet, so if it had come down to us fighting the thirty archers as well as Captain Alexi, it was going to get messy. I wouldn’t be able to use my poison sachets to take care of the large group of archers, so we’d have to fight them differently than we usually would.

A few seconds later, Captain Alexi caught himself before nodding, “I’m sorry I asked. If there’s anything the Border Defense Force can do for you, just ask. You four are free to go.”

Chapter 26

Melody and Roderigo quickly ushered us past Captain Alexi and through the crowd of murmuring archers out onto a narrow path that snaked down at least a few hundred feet before reaching another path that I could see in the distance.

We didn’t speak at all for a full minute as we hurried all the way down to the main path, where Melody walked over and pushed Keiko in the shoulder, “You almost got us killed up there. I’m sure that you and Steven would’ve survived, with all the stories you two told us about the things you’ve done, there’s no doubt that. The people who would’ve been killed would be Rigo and I. Do you really want our blood on your hands? That was needlessly reckless.”

Without looking back, she spun on her heel and marched off down the path. Keiko was stunned, Melody had never spoken to her like that before and it felt very out of character for her, though what Roderigo told us next made it make more sense.

“Cliff Captains are given carte blanche when it comes to doling out punishment to anyone in their camp, including hunters. They’re in charge of large forces of trained cultivators, some of which took the job as a means to better themselves and get them out of bad situations. Others do it as part of what effectively amounts to a prison sentence. The fact that you stared him down, he could just as easily have had everyone shoot us full of arrows instead of letting us go by. One of the Cliff Captains by our home village was in the pocket of the Azure Vein Clan and when her uncle came back from a hunting trip across the cliff, he was shot as he was leaving the top of the cliff, even though he was telling the truth and had produced all the things he had claimed to have hunted.”

He sighed deeply as he looked back toward where his wife had walked off, “Melody was there to visit him at the top of the cliff when that happened. He was one of her last remaining family members and she loved him like a father. To see him pincushioned like that, it still weighs on her to this day. The fact that the person who gave the order for it is probably still alive is actually one of the major reasons we wanted to come back. Captain Gulch was barely a Saint the last time we saw him and even back then, had the reek of alchemical aids… not that there’s anything wrong with alchemy, but he didn’t earn his cultivation, he bought it with his ill-gotten gains from bribes and pay-offs.”

Keiko swore softly under her breath, “Stars-damn it. I was so stupid. I should’ve thought about that. I know that these places are going to bring back bad memories for you guys, I should’ve been more cognizant of that.”

Despite her not speaking loudly, Rodrigo heard it all. He nodded, “Don’t worry about it. Just do your best and try not to trigger too many more traumatic memories for Melody, though there are quite a few things that do that up here, so your results may vary. I’ll do my best to warn you if I see anything that might set her off, but no promises.” He spun on his heel and ran off to join his wife, who was almost two hundred feet away at that point.

I walked up and pulled Keiko along with me, “It’s going to be okay. Melody’s strong, though we both know that it’s better to excise the poison than to let it spread throughout the entire body, so we should take care of this Captain Gulch, assuming that he’s still in charge.” Keiko merely grunted, while Ellie trilled from my back.

As we walked, Sensei and I came up with a plan to deal with how everyone would react to Ellie. Now that she had access to wind qi, he recommended that we let her hang around us like she used to, but when people asked what she was, we were to say that she was a wind qi and metal qi Coatl, better known as a Bladestorm Coatl for their ability to throw large numbers of qi forged knives at their enemies with nearly unerring accuracy. The fact that Ellie was going to be able to leave the dark under my cloak made her very happy and she immediately took advantage of it to fly around our pair as we jogged to catch up with Melody and Roderigo. The only other rule we had was that, when we were in town, she had to curl up around my shoulders. The same went for approaching any kind of town or village. She rapidly agreed, so long as she was allowed to fly around as much as she wanted when we weren’t in or around a town.

To my untrained eyes, it appeared that we were nowhere near any kind of settlement, which was strange considering that we had just come from a checkpoint at the top of the cliff for hunters. I figured it must be a defensive tactic to have settlements pushed back from the border, to keep them safe.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Melody had stopped and was pointing at what appeared to be an average rock as she argued with Roderigo about something. I heard the end of their argument as we got closer.

Roderigo snapped at his wife, “I don’t care if you think this is the way in, you and I both know that they like to change the qi matrices hiding the path every few weeks and we haven’t even been in this region in almost four years. We aren’t even close to Goldenhollow, so what are the odds of what you’re trying working? Nil.” Roderigo was being very blunt with Melody and it took me a moment to realize that he knew her best, so he wouldn’t do something to antagonize her, unless it was intentional.

She looked at him with derision in her eyes, “Well look at Mr. Runemith here, analyzing the runes on this qi matrix and telling me what I’m working with. I’m the Formation Master in this relationship, so I’m going to master this formation.” She took one hand and slammed it down on the almost invisible rune that I only then saw. She pulsed qi into it and a few moments later, we heard a loud rumbling sound.

Seconds later a pair of large boulders coated in very crude formations started rolling down the pathway toward us, the stones followed the same path that we had all just walked, though they were going significantly faster than we had.

Melody looked at Roderigo sheepishly, “So, you were right… Everybody get ready to jump!”

To be completely honest, Melody may have overreacted a bit, because all four of us were Saints, so jumping over the stone wheels wasn’t going to be a problem, the problem was that once the stone wheels settled into place, we’d have to break them up if we wanted to access the formation they were guarding and Keiko told me that she saw a glimmer of formations on the stone wheels, which I assumed had to be to reinforce them to prevent just that.

Despite the fact that the stone wheels were fifteen feet tall and probably weighed close to seven tons each, Keiko’s Pseudo-King level strength was more than adequate to stop them in their track. She blurred toward them at a speed far greater than I’d ever seen her use and when she got right up against the first stone wheel, she planted herself firmly and reinforced her entire body with qi, I could feel it. The resulting effect was anticlimactic, all Keiko did was slide back a couple feet before slowly stopping the stone wheel’s movement.

I turned to look at Melody and Roderigo and found that they were still in a pre-jumping stance. I hip checked Roderigo, “Well… get us in. Keiko is really strong, but those stone wheels look really heavy, so she’d probably prefer it if you take care of that quickly.”

From down the way, Keiko yelled back, “Take your time, I could literally do this all day!”

I shrugged, “You heard the lady, take your time, but she’s also a formation master and her mocking will be really bad if you don’t take care of this quickly. Just letting you know…”

Roderigo and Melody hurried over to the bottom of the shallow valley, where the entrance was located. Over the course of the next ten minutes, Roderigo and Melody argued, tested a few different ideas, and after a few more times hearing the grinding noise that would have released the stone wheels, they finally got it.

“Yes!”

They both cheered as they pulled each other into a big hug and jumped around like children. I merely smiled and looked over to where my wife was sitting with her back against the boulder, snacking on some carrots I’d passed her so she’d have something to do.

I stood up from my seat on the slope and walked over to join them, “Well, are we ready to go in?”

Roderigo nodded with a smug look on his face, “Yes, we are. This is not one of your standard runes you see. Whoever put this together did a real number on this little mechanism, it only reacts to the opposite of what you’d expect. This kind of rune almost always takes fire qi, but in the end, it actually wanted water qi pulsed in a particular pattern. It’s a pretty clever lock, I’d love to meet the runemaster who worked on it.”

Melody glared at him and chucked him on the shoulder, which he rolled with, though I did see him rubbing his shoulder later when he thought no one was looking.

I chuckled, “Glad to hear you figured it out, how long does it take to activate the correct sequence? We’ll have to do it quickly so Keiko can rush down behind us and slip in before the huge stone wheels come down and smash us flat.”

“That won’t be a problem, the runes on this are attached to the runes in those stone wheels, once the formation is activated properly, the wheels will roll themselves back up the hill and hide behind their formation again. It really is quite ingenious; I can only hope to be so skilled in the future. I’m only an Advanced runesmith, so I’ve got a long way to go before I could create something like this.”

As Melody activated the formation, I watched as the stone wheels rolled back up the hill just like Roderigo said they would, it was kind of surreal to see them defying gravity, but in the end I’d seen things far crazier than that happen, so I didn’t let it get to me.

Sensei spoke to just Keiko and I mentally, “That’s a good bit of runemastering there, whoever made that is probably a Master, or an Expert with a hell of a lot of time on their hands. My wife practiced runesmithing, along with her formation mastering, though she was always better as a formation master than she was as a runesmith, only reaching master in that field near the end of our lives. I’m just saying you should be careful, your friends are decently strong, but you need to make sure to watch out for them. They’re treating this trip like they have home-field advantage and while they may have knowledge of the terrain, the political structures around here can change rapidly, and even if they don’t, they’ve been volatile for tens of thousands of years. That volatility can be a good and a bad thing, but whether it’s one or the other will be plain to see once we arrive in their hometown.”

Chapter 27

When we finally entered the ten-foot-wide passage down toward what appeared to be a small village, I was surprised at how loud it was. I had expected a sedated little hamlet, but this was a village in truth. It turned out to be named Brookvale, after the quick moving bit of water running through the center of town.

I saw old men working fishing rods unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Rather than a wooden pole with a line of string, they were using metal poles with a flexible strand of metal hanging in the water. I watched as one of them caught what appeared to be a large pink and blue salmon, which he hauled in with a roar until it landed in a pile of similar fishes that his compatriot took the pile of furs off of so he could place it there before returning the furs. There were children playing in the square, running around in fur coats as they chased each other around the Awakening Crystal on its plinth in the center of the square, cheering all the way.

Awakening Crystals are what allows aspiring Body cultivators to break through their first cultivation bottleneck, to open up their lower core. They’re incredibly precious, but most villages of at least a hundred people find a way to get ahold of one at some point or another. Without an Awakening Crystal, new cultivators either have to wait until their lower core opens up on its own, or travel to a larger settlement where they can use their Awakening Crystal, usually at great cost.

As Keiko and I took in the local sights, Melody and Roderigo dragged us along to the biggest hut in the village, which turned out to be the chief’s residence. The chief was a pleasant fellow, not much of a free thinker, but solid. He asked for a pair of basic monster cores for each person staying in town overnight, or six silver coins if we were planning to just stop and get a meal before heading back out.

Before I could ask why he was telling us how much everything was going to cost, Melody and Roderigo shook their heads to silence me. They quickly paid the monster cores to the chief and then led us back out until we found the next largest building in town. It was right next to the chief’s residence and it served as an inn for travelers.

Once we entered the inn, we strode up to the barkeep, who was a tall, solidly built, black-haired woman. When we told her that we had already spoken with the chief, she led us straight up to our rooms where she ushered us into one of what she said were two large private rooms for parties of hunters coming back from their escapades across the cliffs. We bid her farewell, learning that her name was Olga in the process.

When we finally settled in for a bit, but before going down to get dinner, Roderigo explained what was going on with the chief.

“In a village as small as this up on the border, the village chief’s word is law. Any money coming into or out of the village goes straight through their hands before being dribbled out to those they deem fit.”

Before I could open my mouth to object, he raised a hand to stop me, “Before you say anything, no, the people don’t know that this is wrong, it’s what they’ve always known. Most chiefs are good, dishing out coins and cores to those who actually do the work that earns him those resources, but others aren’t. The chief here in Brookvale appears to be quite fair, seeing as all the faces we saw when we were walking into town were quite happy.”

He shrugged, “It’s not for everyone, but it goes a long way to helping those people who aren’t strong enough to go out and earn a living to be able to survive. All they have to do is prove that they have some sort of use and most chiefs will see that they're being taken care of, even if those uses aren’t traditionally valued.”

Even though I disagreed with the practices of the village, I knew it wasn’t my place to change them, but Keiko was affronted, her father’s mercantile ways showing through once again.

She slammed her hand onto the table we were sitting around, breaking a chunk of it off with a loud crack, “This is barbaric! Those who craft items aren’t free to sell them directly? They have to go through the village chief, who will then dole out the profits as he sees fit? Why would anyone stay here? There has to be a bigger town nearby that would let them function as they normally would out in the rest of the Empire… isn’t there?”

Melody shook her head, “Most people in villages like this don’t cultivate actively, they don’t have time to focus on gathering enough qi or work hard on refining their bodies, instead they focus on survival. Rather than taking four hours a day to cultivate and spar, instead they spend those hours fishing and hunting for food, or sewing up blankets and pelts to keep their families warm and while their other family members find ways to feed them. Most of them have probably never left the walls of this village, minus those who go out hunting, of course. That’s how it is in small villages like this, they don’t know what’s happening to them is unusual, they just assume it’s correct and normal. It doesn’t hurt that the most powerful person in the village is almost always chief, unless the person who is the strongest refuses the title. That’s really rare though.”

Keiko was fuming, so I did my best to calm her down, “Darling, we’re not in Roh City anymore. Even though Roh City can’t be considered metropolitan, compared to this place it’s like the capital is to everyone in Roh City. Most people know that they’re never going to see a place that big, so they don’t even try. How many people actually leave Roh City? How many people go on adventures and then come back to regale us with their tales? You and I both know the answers to those questions, they almost never happened.

“I can only remember people leaving Roh City two or three times a year, even just going to the local Duke’s city, and those were merchants who had to do so for a living. You and your father were the exception to that rule, you traveled a bit around and because of that you're worldlier than most in Roh City and far worldlier than anyone here. You have to remember, not everyone is like you and your father, free to explore the world as they wish. Some of them are like me, who never left Roh City until the day he got sucked away, into a magical Inheritance with the woman he loved.” My eyes glistened for a moment at the memory and I felt a twinge in my shoulder from the scar there.

Keiko was quiet for a while after that. Even when we went downstairs, she didn’t talk at all through dinner, which was terrible and she usually would have complained. Instead, she calmly ate the food and then we met with it upstairs to go to bed, after cultivating of course. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her to talk, so I eventually let it lie for the moment.

I set up the Stellar Cube to increase the density of the qi in the area before we got to cultivating. I do have to say, the one advantage Orbital Breathing had over Dragon Dancing was that it could be done in a much smaller location. We had to take up the entire room to do even the most basic form of Dragon Dancing and that was only fifty percent more effective than Orbital Breathing would’ve been. It was still a significant increase in efficiency, so we did it. Surprisingly, it was almost as effective as it should’ve been, despite us not having room to fly around the room like we usually did outside.

Melody and Roderigo actually went back down to the common room on the first floor to give us space to cultivate, so we took full advantage of it. Something I noticed was that instead of just waiting for condensed qi imperfections to fall out of the air like she had as a newborn, instead Ellie was dancing alongside us, in a strange counterpoint that somehow felt right. She was still absorbing the imperfections, but she wasn’t letting them get close to the ground, rather they were forming directly in front of her and she was swallowing them as quickly as they arrived.