The journey from his village to Merakk's tribe was vast enough that the old man had to carry Teng on his back for almost the entire time, a distance so great it would have taken Teng over six months to walk on his own. When on the old man's back, like a child, the world around him blurred with each step. Trees flew by, the wind blasted his face to the point he had to keep his eyes closed, and he wondered if this was how it felt like to be a bird.
His thoughts swirled back to his village, family, and friends during this time. Mostly, though, to Delia. She kept appearing in his head, making him wallow in how things could have been. Married to Delia? Live together with her in their hut? Sleep together? Chat around the fire every night, or sit by the creek and talk until the sky grew dark? At times, he wanted to tell the old man to drop him so he could turn back.
Teng was also fearful about whether he really made the right decision. Merakk was an outsider, and Teng had met him recently; why did he trust and follow him? But each day, as he learned more and more about the world, these thoughts crawled back to the back of his mind. Teng would not return without a paragon bone. He could not and would not.
"How big is the world, truly?" Teng asked one day as they sat down to eat. Merakk had hunted down a beast unknown to the young man. It had the body of a deer, black in color, with the crown of an antler, twice the size of a wolf, and not even the old man knew what type of beast it was except for it being at the savage rank.
At this point, they had traveled for two months and were halfway to Merakk's tribe. Teng was awed by the different landscapes they had passed; through forests filled with white webbing, across plains dotted with deep, large holes that led deep underground, and over bare rock that cut through the ground as if carved by a gigantic flake of flint.
There were many creatures in the distance within these varied landscapes, but as the two passed, the native beasts hid from them, a benefit of this thing called domain, which Merakk had yet to explain but told him helped ward off beasts while active. The old man only shook his head as Teng asked if it could work instead of a paragon bone.
There was one time when they had to hide themselves. Merakk had seen something in the distance, causing him to swear, stop, and cover Teng with his body. The young man had sat unpleasantly under the old man, who smelled of sweat, and waited with bated breath. Later, Merakk told Teng he had activated the mirage lore to avoid being detected by a beast at the primordial stage, which he couldn't fight while protecting Teng.
"I don't know," Merakk admitted. “But it is vast. Our shamans say the world is shaped like an impossibly large, single mountain. You notice we are higher up, right?
Teng nodded. There had been a slight incline to the ground throughout their journey, barely noticeable, but there, as if they were going upwards. The air felt less, and his lungs had to work harder for each breath, though not by much.
"Think of your valley – water pools in the deepest part," Merakk said as he took a piece of the roasted meat. "Essence desires the opposite; it rises up like smoke. We're now at the outskirts of the world, the base some call it. My tribe lies further in but by not much. The closer to the middle – the higher up you go – the more essence the land contains. All beasts strive to go toward the middle of the world, the summit, the highest point where the essence is thickest, to grow stronger.
“What exists up there?” Teng asked as they ate.
Merakk shrugged, "Some powerful cultivators have journeyed quite high but never up to the summit. Titans and paragons rule there, and the competition is fierce, for what I don't know. Food? Territory? Pride?"
The old man lay back against his pack, using a thin knife of white bone to clean his teeth. Teng had learned to sense essence with varying degrees of success during their time together, and he could feel that this knife wasn't ordinary.
"The essence density is too thick for most cultivators to endure," Merakk explained. “And the beasts are too strong. Most of the paragon bones we possess today are from wounded beasts who have fled the inner region to the outer regions. Even wounded, these paragons take multiple of a tribe's strongest cultivators to take down, and that's when other paragons don't come and fight us for them."
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Teng was perplexed and asked. "Didn't you say the beast ranks match the cultivation ranks?"
This made Merakk laugh. "About as much as a deer to a tiger. They are both animals, yet the tiger easily rips the deer apart."
"Ah," Teng said unintelligently. He thought for a moment, then posed another question. "You told me some cultivators have gone up high. You're a cultivator at the merge stage. Should you not be able to do the same?"
"Let me show you something, Laddie." Merakk widened his arms to demonstrate a gap. "This is a stride." he shortened it in half. "This is half a stride." He halved it again. “And this is a handspan."
Tens listened with rapt attention.
"In cultivation, the closer we get to the end, the harder it is to progress," Merakk told him seriously. "The difference between someone close to my right hand, if that is beascension, compared to my left, which is just broken through to the merge stage, is so incredibly vast it's hard to comprehend."
The old man chuckled without mirth. "And that's purely based on cultivation alone. I reached the merge stage almost two decades ago, and I won't say more, but I'm like a child to many other mergers."
"I understand what you say, but it doesn't make sense," Teng answered honestly.
“I know."
They sat in silence for a time.
“What does stride, half a stride, and handspan have to do with this?”
“Not a damned thing.” Merakk slapped his thigh and laughed. "But we use these words to measure distance. I thought it would be useful to know when you come to the tribe."
"We also use words to describe distance." Teng pointed out.
“Yeah, like what?”
"Well, a stone's throw, the mountain's shadow–"
"That might work in your valley." the old man interrupted. "But if one man can throw a stone further than your eye can see and another barely across a glade, how would you know how far away a stone's throw is? And what if one mountain is higher than another? How big is a mountain's shadow?"
Teng snorted. “I see your point.”
The days and weeks passed, and Teng learned more about the world. He realized how small his understanding of beasts, essence, and life had been. Another event he remembered clearly about the journey to the tribe was when the old man mentioned his fighting stick.
"Teng, about that spear," Merakk said as they settled for the night.
"My fighting stick?”
"Your fighting stick, yes," Merakk coughed. "When we get to the tribe, you should change to another type of weapon."
“Why?”
"With your disfigurement," Merakk gestured at Teng's left hand," something you can use with only your right hand is better."
"I can wield it well even with two fingers missing," Teng said.
That was a lie, but the young man had grown to love the fighting stick. And it's the one thing that reminds me of home.
Merakk noticed Teng's expression and softened his voice. “Look, Laddie. To fight with a long spear against animals is simple and straightforward. Keep the spear in front of you, thrust. But you are not in your valley anymore. We don't only fight beasts. If you want to earn a paragon bone from my tribe, you'll have to fight for us against other people."
This surprised Teng. Fighting other people hadn't really crossed his mind. Then he recalled the outsiders and quickly changed his mind. If all outsiders were like them, stealing and killing men who had done nothing but defend themselves and their homes, he would have no choice.
"That disfigurement will affect your ability to move the spear swiftly," Merakk said, cutting straight to the point. "Control is the second most important factor when fighting other cultivators, so think about it, at least."
"What's the most important?"
"Cultivation."
The young man nodded, and they went to sleep soon after.
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After six months of traveling, they were finally here. They stood upon a hill, and before Teng's wide eyes, a town, something Merak had told him about, had been built in the face of a mountain. Hundreds of large, hut-like homes, but of wood and stone, perched snugly in rocky terrain like a blueberry bush with too many blueberries. Smoke from many of the homes, of which there were too many to count, forming plumes of gray, rising and reaching for the sky. Teng saw people, like bustling ants in an anthill, weave between the homes, walk through the town in pairs and groups, or congregate in certain parts as if the ants had found a tasty strip of meat on the ground.
Merakk had explained it to him, yet he could not believe the sight before his very eyes. In his whole life, he had never believed men and women, like him and the villagers, could ever be so numerous nor build a place like this. It was so… big.
Below the mountain face, a grassland sprawled like a green mat, upon which formations of wood fences divided parts of the ground into shapes, and in these shapes grazed beasts. But these beasts were not wild. Teng understood this after watching them with furrowed brows. They stayed docile and calm, chewed grass, and walked around aimlessly—but they didn't try to escape the wooden fence that kept them inside.
The thing of stone, more than ten strides high, covering the whole town, stood between the grassland and the city on the mountain face. Many, many, many boulders were stacked on top of each other, much like the fences but on a grander scale.
"Welcome to the Stonefang tribe, Laddie," Merakk said with a sly grin as Teng turned to him with wide eyes. "It's time to begin your new life as a cultivator."