“I want that boy.”

“Chonglin?”

“No. Don’t get me wrong, I would be happy to accept him as well. But need Zixin to become an inner disciple of the Enforcement Hall.”

“May I ask why exactly?”

“He has got the mindset. I know it when I see it. The mindset that one needs in order to overcome all odds.”

“What mindset?”

“He is an incredibly hard worker, am I right?”

“I suppose you are.”

“I thought so. He also didn’t show any kind of jealousy when his friend qualified for the tournament while he didn’t. He was just happy for him. This combination of ambition and honor is what I am looking for. He will make a fine disciple.”

Lan Shi hadn’t given Liu Wei any space to breathe as soon as he had been outside the range of the other elder’s ears.

“So why are you asking me instead of just making an offer to him? We already have an agreement on that, don’t we?”

Liu Wei couldn’t see the reason Lan Shi wasn’t just taking Zixin under her wings immediately. Making this process easy and effective had been the entire purpose of their hall cooperation program after all.

“Think of the boy. He undoubtedly feels indebted to you and would probably straight up refuse the offer to transfer to another hall if he was just approached from the outside.”

After thinking on it for a moment, Liu Wei found himself agreeing.

“You are right, I didn’t consider that. Anyways, I don’t have any objection to him becoming an inner disciple as long as you treat him well.”

“Naturally.”

“I will approach him about it. If he agrees, I’ll send word to you, so you can register him as disciple of your hall.”

“Alright, thank you.”

“You have nothing to thank me for. If anything, I should be the one thanking you for consulting with me on this matter.”

“It’s only natural.”

“Many of our peers would disagree with you on this matter.”

“Many of our peers are selfish bastards.”

“Well… Anyways, I’ll inform you of Zixin’s decision soon. If it’s alright, I’ll excuse myself now.”

Lan Shi answered with a nod before turning around and heading off. Liu Wei’s thoughts lingered on their conversation for a while longer before he refocused. He would talk to Zixin after the competition was over. Until then, he would also need to decide what to do with Chonglin.

The boy would need to be properly prepared for the tournament now that he had qualified. While Liu Wei could have taken up that task himself, it wasn’t really worth the effort on a purely rational level, as much as he liked the boy and wanted to reward his effort.

Right now, he wanted to focus on something else though: Investigating whatever he had felt in the immediate aftermath of Chonglin’s win. Whatever it was, he needed to identify it. To be able to do so in peace, he would head to his residence.

…

The sun had sunken beneath the horizon, leaving the world and all that occupied it behind to fend for themselves in the darkness till the next morning. There were places in the vastness of this world where this darkness would have been a reason to cower in fear, to hide and to roll up in some hole. Under the tranquil safety of the Lunar Peaks though, all it meant was that a blanket of silence was laid upon the forests and fields as the creatures of the day peacefully drifted into the realm of dreams.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Quietly listening to the noises of the night, produced by those left awake in this otherwise sleeping forest, Liu Wei loosened the grip he held on the world around him, dropping out of the air and steadily landing on the ground before his residence.

He breathed in deeply, taking in the atmosphere of the nightly forest. Everything was as usual and yet the air seemed heavier than usually. Not the depressing and desperate kind of heavy, that seemed to make it difficult to breathe and suck the joy out of all life. No, it was heavy with meaning and expectation, as if it was waiting for an event of great importance to take place.

Perhaps it was just imagination, rooted in the fact that the last time Liu Wei had come to this place intending to unravel a mystery had been the catalyst that had changed his life forever and set him on the path that he was now walking on with so much conviction.

Whatever the case, idling around would not get him anywhere. Liu Wei dispelled the protective formations intended to fend of unwanted visitors in his absence and entered the pagoda.

After reactivating the formations and heading to the second floor, where his meditation room lay, he wasted no time to sit down cross-legged and turn his focus towards his mind. Before entering meditation, he would have to determine the best method of finding whatever he was looking for. This was easier said than done considering he had no idea what it even was.

Perhaps the most pressing matter was making sure that whatever it was, it wasn’t harmful to him. To this end, Liu Wei decided to start by checking himself for curses.

Curses were one of the less common methods cultivators could use to cause each other harm. They were essentially just a small part of a soul, split off and imbued with intend that the user of the curse would then implant into someone. If left unattended, the curse would then slowly siphon of qi from the victim’s soul over a long period of time before suddenly exploding outwards with a variety of effects, attempting to deal as much damage to them as possible.

If it worked, a curse could cause serious harm or even outright kill someone. The trouble was that it rarely did. Not only was it difficult to implant a curse into someone without them noticing, it was also rather trivial to detect a curse once it had been implanted, if one knew what to look for. Any experienced cultivator somewhat rooted in common sense periodically scanned themselves for curses as a basic safety measure.

On top of that, splitting off a part of one’s soul would incur the kind of permanent damage that few would be willing to take upon themselves. To this end, curses were rarely at all and it was exceedingly unlikely that Liu Wei was dealing with one in this instance. Back when the techniques were first developed, and people didn't know to keep an eye out for them, many fell to curses. In recent times though, it had become exceedingly rare to them, especially with how the many different kinds of poison that had been developed presented a much less risky alternative.

Nevertheless, caution had never hurt anybody, especially when all it took to scan oneself for curses was examining the souls qi-flow for a few minutes, looking for irregularities.

Liu Wei’s expectations were confirmed when he found nothing of note this way. This meant that the phenomenon in question was very likely to have originated from within himself. The best way forward was probably a process of eliminating what it was not.

For starters, Liu Wei was certain that it wasn’t simply a bodily function or physical stimulus like an itch. It also wasn’t a purely psychological effect, like an emotion. That left all things in between, mainly those related to qi or the Dao. Phenomena like these were bound to leave behind some sort of mark that he could identify.

This would suffice. Liu Wei closed his eyes and entered his meditation. The first thing he did was shut all off his senses of and suppress his emotions. Both were just noise that would hinder him in his search. Then, the sensation that he was looking for at the front of his mind, he plunged his consciousness into his soul.

Consciously examining one’s soul was an experience that could not be properly described with words and that was impossible to fully grasp for those who had not experienced it themselves.

The soul was the essence of one’s self and as such, it was both observer and observed in this case. It was like looking into a mirror while simultaneously seeing through the eyes of one’s reflection; a truly paradoxical experience.

Liu Wei was used to it; he had done it many times in the past after all. Slowly and methodically, he combed through every part of his soul, looking for the unfamiliar feeling he had felt.

Time was impossible to track in this state. Every moment stretched out into an eternity and yet an infinite number of eternities seemed to rush by every moment. But at some point, he found it.

Had he needed to wager a guess, Liu Wei would have assumed that it took him quite a while, based solely on the fact that he had already searched through most parts of his soul when he finally identified the phenomenon.

It was difficult to grasp but it could be most likened to a spark. It seemed to have sprung into existence in reaction to Liu Wei’s emotions. And the place of its origin was…

The Dao of Fire.