As much fun as it was putting my favorite punching bag through the wringer, I did have to run a few errands. So I left him in the hands of another Adept for a few days while we travelled to the nearest town of any note.
Mistress Song was in charge of the monastery overall, but had a couple of Experts who would keep things running while she guided Kaoru and myself. Besides, she was also going to arrange for the delivery of the few sundries we truly needed, but couldn’t make, forage, or grow ourselves. Even the best of environments can’t provide everything, after all.
And so we found ourselves on the road, talking a bit as we moved, but mostly I was focused on my surroundings. I almost forgot how abundant the qi at the monastery was, and it almost felt hard to breathe when we got outside the valley.
“If you two need a moment, we can rest.”
I didn’t, but Kaoru flopped to her rear in a surprisingly undignified manner. Normally she worked pretty hard to maintain some sense of elegance and mystery about her, mostly because it made the men we lived around easier to tease. Her dao was oriented around her love of mischief, unsurprisingly.
But now that we weren’t moving, I was instinctively re-orienting my cultivation to draw on what was available. Pure qi was sparse, but when I felt the ground beneath me, and the trees and plants beside the path… huh. Of course.
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“Kaoru, try drawing in fire qi. It’s a bright day, so the sun might help.”
She closed her eyes, and stepped into a bright spot like I suggested. Almost immediately, her affinity for flame helped her to charge up her energy… and she flopped onto the road in that bright spot like a lazy kit. Mistress sighed.
“There are times I worry your habits will get you both killed. Still, good work on picking up how to cultivate in areas where pure qi is weak. The two of you learn so readily.”
Mistress and I struck camp, and Kaoru went from the sunny spot to curling up by a fire while gnawing on some dried meat. My own rations were a bit more… herbivore-oriented. I’d miss having fresh greens for a while, but the travel bread I carried wasn’t completely inedible, especially when soaked in water for a minute.
We ate in silence, cultivating as we did so. The area was quiet enough, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there were hunters or thieves hiding behind every bush and tree from here to our destination. Our senses could pick up on everything around us, and none of us were anything close to helpless.
So ultimately, an uneventful trip through three mountain valleys until we reached a broader plain that a river ran through. And along the river, humans had built a warren that I was having trouble processing the size of. It could easily hold twenty monasteries, maybe fifty, and even from this far away I could hear and smell a level of habitation that I’d never even conceived of until now.
“Well, there it is. Rivermill. The largest human settlement for a hundred miles in any direction. Impressed?”
A tiny pink rabbit squeaked back in response. I… was going to need a moment.