The Lunar Peaks Sect was located on three large mountains that were situated next to each other, forming a rough triangle. It consisted of thousands of buildings large and small, housing the sect’s members and facilities.

The nine halls of the sect were evenly spread across, with three of them being located on each mountain. The sect’s headquarters where the patriarch resided stood atop the highest of the mountains, overlooking the entire sect.

Walking along one of the many roads that lead through the sect was an outer disciple by the name of Zixin. His steps had a bounce to them and plastered across his face was a poorly suppressed grin.

A recent growth spurt had led the 16-year-old to complete the Qi Gathering realm just yesterday, months ahead of most of his peers. Just a few hours ago he had taken his very first steps into the Body Reformation realm and his instructor had even given him permission to retrieve a Qi Refinement pill from the alchemy hall, which would help him move along this new path even faster.

Once again eyeing the pill which was contained in a small wooden box which he clutched with both of his hands, he sped up even more. He wanted to be in his room and start cultivating as soon as possible. It was early in the afternoon and if he skipped dinner, he could put in at least seven to eight hours of cultivation before it was time to sleep. He would show up in to training tomorrow morning showing off an impressive leap in his cultivation to the instructor.

If he used this pill and kept up his effort, he would continue to outgrow the others, maybe even enough for one of the halls to notice him and accept him as an inner disciple.

His dreamy thoughts were cut short when he, distracted as he was, ran straight into a wall. The impact was so hard that the box containing his pill was flung out of his hands while he himself staggered backwards, fell and promptly landing in his behind.

Highly confused by the sudden obstacle, Zixin looked up only to find his face freeze in shock as he discovered, that what he had run into was not in fact a wall but a tall, stern-faced man with long, white hair.

Shock quickly turned to dread, when he recognized the man’s robes as those of an elder.

“I am terribly sorry!” Zixin blurted out, as he hurriedly got on his feet and into a deep bow towards the man.

“Not just a bumbling fool who can’t watch where he walks, but discourteous as well. You are to address me as honorable elder at all times.” The man’s voice was cold as ice.

“I-” Zyxin’s voice stuttered “I apologize, honorable e- elder”

He could practically feel the man’s gaze lingering on him. The man remained silent for a few moments during which every second felt like hours to him.

“Your apology is warranted but in no way sufficient. You shall receive proper punishment for your actions.”

Zixin felt a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead and his heart pounded faster and faster.

“What is this box you were carrying?”

Zixin froze a second time. Please no

“A Qi Refinement pill, honorable elder.”

“What did you receive it for?” The Elder asked, as the box floated to his hand and he looked at it with visible disinterest.

“I recently stepped into the body reformation realm, honorable elder”, Zixin said sheepishly.

“What an inconsequential thing to celebrate.”

The box was suddenly engulfed in a pillar of flame. Only a second later the flames receded, leaving nothing but a few particles of ash suspended in the air. Zixin could do nothing but helplessly watch as the wind picked the last remains of his precious pill up and carried them away.

“You will hand yourself in to the enforcement hall, where you will be punished with one hundred lashes. After that, you will sign up for punitive labor for three months before you will be allowed to return to your cultivation.”

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Zixin expended all of his effort to prevent himself from breaking down in tears right then and there. This would not only make him lose the lead he had before the others, perhaps even make him fall behind, it would also mark him as an outcast. Who would want to associate with someone in bad standing with an elder?

“Do you accept?”

“I accept, honorable elder.”

Without losing any more words the elder stepped around him and left. Zixin stood motionless in the same spot for a while longer, before falling to his knees and beginning to cry.

…

Liu Wei’s mood was sour. It had been quite a while since he had been met with such disrespect from a lowly disciple. But what annoyed him most wasn’t even the actions of the disciple. It was his feelings.

Having actively participated in cultivator’s politics for over 300 years had taught him to see through almost any facade someone could possibly put up. Only the most skilled actors amongst the sect elders could still hope to hide their true emotions from him. That was to say that when it came to dealing with those members of the sect outside of the council of elders, Liu Wei could read their emotions like an open book.

Those he punished, especially the younger ones, almost always seemed to share one central emotion, one that was utterly confusing to Liu Wei: Bewilderment.

Liu Wei could understand if they were scared. He could understand if they were sad. He could understand if they were angry at him, or even at themselves. All of those were emotions that he could picture himself to have if he were to be punished for offending someone more powerful, not that there was anyone like that left in the sect. What he couldn’t understand was the total lack of understanding the disciples had as to why they were being punished.

How could they not understand? It was the natural order of things. The weak had to grovel before the strong. Nobody would question a human swatting an annoying insect so why would anyone question this?

It was this lack of understanding, this unasked question of “Why?” on the face of that disciple that had made Liu Wei want to break out of his character and scream at him. That ruined his mood for as long as he thought about it. And, ironically, he didn’t even know the reason it made him this angry.

Unable to get rid of the bitter aftertaste the situation had left him with, Liu Wei decided that he had had enough of this stroll through the sect. Basking in the admiration of the lesser ones would bring him no further pleasure after this.

It took barely a thought for him to rise into the air and start flying rapidly in the direction of his residence.

…

The place Liu Wei called home was a tall and imposing pagoda that stood rather close to the base of one of the mountains within a forested area. It was quite the unusual place for an elder of his status to live, but Liu Wei had erected it before he had held any real power within the sect and he didn’t see any good reason to relocate.

When he arrived, Liu Wei’s thoughts had cleared up and he had stopped thinking of the previous incident. Unfortunately, that did little to help his mood as he had instead turned to thinking about his troubled cultivation again.

Sitting down, he forced himself to once again go over the entire situation from the start.

His predicament hadn’t really started with the breakthrough. Ever since the breakthrough to the fifth stage, his speed of progress had been stalling. In many ways, this was to be expected. As a cultivator furthered their understanding of their chosen Dao, they would naturally approach the limits of their capacity to learn. This would continuously slow them down until their progress was ground down to practically nothing.

His own slowing down however was notably different to a normal cultivator in that it was much more sudden. His speed of cultivation had barely shown any signs of slowing down before he had reached the fifth stage.

After struggling against this unexpected roadblock for over two-and-a-half centuries, Liu Wei had managed to ascend all the way to the eighth stage. But whereas he had previously been able to slowly inch himself forward, he had at the very moment of the breakthrough felt himself hitting a totally insurmountable wall.

An attempt at contemplating the Dao confirmed what he already knew: he was making literally no progress at all, not even the tiniest bit.

To his understanding, what normally brought cultivators in the Dao Contemplation Realm to a halt was the inability to answer the questions that pursuing their understanding brought them to.

This was undesirable in its own right, but it still allowed them to utilize certain methods to progress. From witnessing great manifestations of their Dao in the physical world, over absorbing natural treasures to feel the nature of their Dao, to simply consuming powerful pills that were tailored to help them understand more – There were ways one could answer questions that were outside of their normal range.

Liu Wei however found himself faced with a totally different conundrum: There were no more questions to ask. Contemplating his Dao was completely pointless as there was nothing left to contemplate. Theoretically, this was the state that one should find themselves in when they had reached the tenth stage of Contemplation and as such built up a complete interpretation of their Dao.

Liu Wei however was evidentially two stages short of that. This left him with no path ahead whatsoever as his path to progressing was completely cut off. It would do him no good to start a search for great, undiscovered natural treasures, ancient artifacts, inheritances of long forgotten masters or the ingredients for a potent pill. None of that could help him overcome this wall. The longer he thought about it, the more hopeless it felt.

This wasn’t who he was however. If he was the type to lose himself in despair, he would have drowned in it long ago. He couldn’t solve this problem, at least not for now, so the next best thing to do was to solve the things he could.

It was time to decide what his future stance in regards to the sect should be.