I’d never tried transferring between sectors on Setria 9 before. As I approached the heavily guarded door, the guards barred my way.

"Halt. State your reason for entry into Sector B." One of the guards, a burly man, demanded.

"Shopping." I said simply, not thinking I needed any particular reason to change sectors. The guard raised his eyebrows at me and I rolled my eyes, picked up my money pouch, and shook it for effect.

The guard nodded.

"Very well. There’s been a lot of inter-sector crime recently. A new face passing through to sector B is something of note. Be on your way citizen. And be careful, someone without any cultivation like yourself is ripe pickings for thugs in the lower sectors."

I inwardly cringed at his stereotypical opinion about the lower sectors, but I couldn’t exactly counter him or say he was wrong.

I passed by the guards and left the familiar pipes and machine walls for sleek metal walls with holo-ads playing for various products and stores in the sector.

As the sector opened up in front of me, I saw various trees and bushes as I entered into a park. The wood and earth qi were stronger here than I was used to back home and I was tempted to sit down in the park and cultivate while I had the chance. I decided against it due to the sour looks I was getting from the various people spending time in the park. I made my way to a map nearby and found the directions to the market district.

As opposed to the hustle and bustle of the market district in Sector E, Sector B was much more relaxed. People walked leisurely down the street with their families, no one was loudly hawking their wares to the people passing on the street. In fact, no vendors set up shop on the street, instead each vendor had their own shop that people could enter.

I found my way to an antique shop in the eastern district. I walked in and the door chimed letting the old woman behind the counter know I had entered the store. To my surprise she didn’t seem disgusted at my appearance which made me smile.

"Hello ma’am this is a beautiful store you have here." I said, genuinely meaning it.

"Why thank you dearey," The kind old lady responded.

"I’ve spent a long time making this store look just so, and I knew one day someone with good taste would walk in and appreciate it. Now what can I do for you?"

"I’m here looking for some antiques actually, and for some information, if possible." I told her as I walked up to the counter. I sneakily analyzed some of the antiques on display and saw a few with that distinct blue glow on them.

My interest in the items must have shown on my face because the experienced older woman smiled at me with that grin all merchants got when they knew they were going to make a sale.

"I see you’ve got good eyes, young lady, those are some wonderful pieces you’ve noticed." She said.

"Do you have any more like them? I’m looking for items similar to these." I said, pointing out the items that glowed blue.

She rubbed her hands together as I picked the items out but stopped suddenly when I had picked out the last few items.

"Those items…" She said, her voice trailing off at the end.

"What, is there something wrong with them?" I asked her.

"N-no nothing wrong, but I was sold all of these items by a strange man who asked that should someone come looking for them I should give them this." She said, handing me a holo-note from underneath her desk.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"He sold them to me for so cheap I didn’t think anything of his strange request, but to think that someone would come looking for all these items specifically. Truly a wonder of the universe."

She tallied up the total for all of the antiques and bid me farewell as I left her shop. I took a look at the holo-note but instead of having any text on it, it had a symbol. The symbol was that of the six elements arranged in a double helix formation: fire, earth, and metal on one side of the helix and water, wind, and wood on the other.

I pondered the meaning of the symbol as I walked to a few of the other antique shops in the sector. Not all of them had any that glowed with the presence of qi, but some did. At each that did I was told an eerily similar story to that of the old antique shop lady. Each shop also gave me another holo-note with the same symbol on it.

As I was heading to the next, and last, shop in sector B I was waylaid by a commotion happening down a side alley from where I stood. A pair of children were cowering away from a pair of men who didn’t look like they belonged in this sector. At first, I hesitated, not sure if I should get involved. What if they were strong cultivators and I’d be putting myself into danger? I looked upon the fearful figures of the two children and steeled my resolve. I was never going to reach the pinnacle of the cultivation world if I acted like a coward all the time.

I jumped into action padding down the alley quickly but as to not draw any attention. I came up behind the two men, thugs really, and interrupted their maniacal laughing by clearing my throat.

They turned around quickly at the sound and backed away from me initially before they realized who was standing in front of them. They both blinked, looked at each other, and then began laughing again. I bristled at the slight and involuntarily twitched one of my eyes.

I tried to sense their cultivation levels, but found neither were cultivators, even at their advanced ages. Which meant they also couldn’t sense how much stronger I was. I sighed and walked forward to the two children still cowering in fear on the ground. I knelt by them, ignoring the two men whose laughing had died down at this point.

"Hey you two, you alright? They didn’t hurt you, did they?" I asked the two kids. They both shook their heads, but the older looking of the two, a young girl of around seven years stood in front of the young boy defiantly and stared at the two men.

"They wanted to steal my ring." The young girl said. Clutching something in her hand tightly.

I quirked an eyebrow at her and examined her hand, inside I saw a faint blue glow and realized that perhaps the men weren’t as simple as I initially thought.

"So, you two." I turned and addressed the men.

"Do you enjoy picking on kids and stealing from them or did your parents simply raise imbeciles who can’t be entertained in any other way than preying on the weak?" I asked in my best contemptuous tone. They both grew red-faced as I spoke and without so much as a rebuttal, they charged at me. I heard the young boy behind me gasp, but I wasn’t worried. Two qi condensation realm cultivators couldn’t truly injure a cultivator in the foundation-building stage when they were paying attention.

As they rushed me, I reached within myself and took some earth qi from within my dantian and coated my hands in a light layer of the liquid qi. I could feel it almost dripping off of my skin but at the same time, it felt solid in my hands. As the first, the bulkier of the two men, reached me he threw a left cross and I dodged out of the way, getting close to his guard and pummeling him with multiple hits from my fists to the stomach. As he doubled over in pain I bounced back on the balls of my feet. All those years of training under my dad had paid off.

The other man came at me and tried to tackle me to the ground, but I gave him a similar treatment as I did to his buddy and soon enough both men were doubled over on the ground gasping for air.

I turned back to the two children who were both staring at me wide-eyed and walked over to them. The girl, seeing me approach, and being the more suspicious of the pair, stepped in front of the young boy again, still clutching her ring in her hand.

"Now you two, run along back to your parents." I told them and they both nodded.

"And you, keep that ring safe okay." I poked the little girl in the chest and winked at her.

They both ran away down the alley and back onto the main thoroughfare and I followed them, walking past the two incapacitated thugs and feeling empowered. If it had been the old me, I might have been afraid, but now I felt so powerful, like I could do anything.

I made it back to the gate to Sector E and took note that no one asked me why I was heading there or what my purpose in traveling to Sector E was. Again, I traded the sleek metal walls and clean air for the raucous environment and machine and pipe-lined walls of my home sector. I took a deep breath, immediately regretted it, and began coughing, the guards at the gate chuckling at me as I struggled to breathe.

I took my haul of new treasures back to my apartment and I was looking forward to finding out what each of them did.