Jinmei’s family died in a spirit-beast horde before she ever knew them.

The Feng dynasty was not so cruel as to leave orphans to die. But it was not a kind place.

When Jinmei was old enough to carry a pickaxe, she started working. And she was among the best, today, at only fourteen. So even the adults came to her with their problems.

She pushed frizzy orange hair out of her face, squinting to look at the broken wheelbarrow Old Lao had brought her. The man sat on the dusty earth next to her.

“You drop it off a cliff?” Jinmei asked as she checked the metal fastener securing the wheel. Sure enough, it was loose. She pulled a pair of pliers from her overalls and screwed it tight.

“Ah, thank you Jinmei! You know, you really ought to become a supervisor or find a job elsewhere.”

Jinmei huffed out a laugh. Old Lao frowned. He wore old, ratty clothes, deep brown and coarsely threaded to beat by the harsh heat of the Gold Water river valley. The entire province was riddled with rivers from the Stormwall.

“No one hiring around here, Old Lao. If they were, you wouldn’t be joining us.”

The organizational body that oversaw the mines offered room and board on behalf of the city. If you fulfilled a daily quota, they also offered you three square meals.

“C’mon. We gotta work today.”

Jinmei pushed his wheelbarrow back over and pushed it to him with a smile. He was still frowning. Then she took her own wheelbarrow and headed down into the valley. The dirt path was stomped flat from the mining operation around it. They moved in a massive flux of tents to whatever valley they were extracting spiritstones from.

Ledges crisscrossed the valley she descended into. She distantly heard the rush of water below her. Insects filled the valley in the lush vegetation that survived on the sides.

Most of the easy spirit-stone was already picked clean, leaving gaping wounds that scarred the orange-red stone of the small canyon carved by one of the Gold Rivers. Over the edge and below, she could see harvesters panning the water for spirit-dust. She made a disappointed noise.

They wouldn’t even earn a days pay for that.

Down the path, the mouth of a carved mineshaft opened to reveal a tunnel lit by oil lamps. It was the same tunnel Jinmei had been prospecting. She headed inside, then took a turn through a smaller tunnel none of the adults could fit through.

This was a secret place for the child laborers. She found a few of them inside. Bao leaned against the wall, smoking casually. He was the oldest of the bunch at 15. Jinmei nodded with warm familiarity to him.

“Jinmei! Have you heard?” Bao said, smiling wildly.

Jinmei paused. She wasn’t very social. Most of these kids had grown up with families before coming here. They didn’t have much in common.

“Heard what?” Jinmei asked. Then she paused to think about it. “Are we moving to a new location already?”

The inside of the smaller tunnel was less professional than the outside. The wooden struts were irregular, and the lamps lighting the place often sat on the ground or a chunk of stone instead of hanging. Dust choked the air. Bao’s smoke didn’t help either. Jinmei pulled her bandana up around her mouth, tying it up.

Bao smiled with manic intensity.

“I can sense qi!”

Jinmei froze.

“You’re gonna be a cultivator?” She asked.

“Yup!” He said. “Today’s my last day! We’re celebrating tonight!”

The Feng mines produced two products. One was the spirit stones they extracted. The constant exposure to spirit-ore embedded in cave walls and searching for it enabled so many to obtain qi-sensing.

The second product was a steady flow of cultivators who could reach into the lower realms. Some would become guards and retainers of the subfamilies in the Feng Dynasty, and others would join the meager martial schools that dotted the territory. A select few may have the chance to join a Feng subfamily.

Most of them would die before thirty. Jinmei knew that part. The other kids said its what happened to her parents. Not in a bad way. They said it meant she could become a cultivator too.

For the others here, this place was a prison. But Jinmei didn’t need anything else.

Jinmei had been able to sense qi for years. She hadn’t told anyone. She didn’t want to die like her parents did. She was happy in the mine. So when Bao revealed that he could, now, too, it didn’t surprise her.

“Congrats, big brother Bao.” She said.

Bao offered that dorky smile.

Jinmei smiled back awkwardly before continuing on into the mine, her pickaxe bouncing in her cart. She chipped away at the smaller, cracked spirit veins in the tiny tunnels until her cart was full.

The pillars holding up the ceiling held.

When lunch came, she brought her wheelbarrow back, completely full.

There was a station set up to bring your daily quota. Approaching it always gave her an odd shivering sensation, like the qi in the air around it was… wrong. An old guard marked off her name in a sheet. She took her lunch; a sandwich, wrapped in waxy paper; and headed out.

Jinmei had a favorite spot at this camp. They had been here for months now, more than half way to a year by her count, and she had cleared out a small spot in the grass and shrubs, but as she approached it this time, she noticed something… wrong. There was a disturbance in the air. She sensed a qi she hadn’t sensed before.

It felt like blood and meat, like anger and pain.

Jinmei frowned. She had showed this spot to a few of the other kids, but… none of them had ever felt like this.

“Bao?” She asked as she stepped into the clearing. Something shook in the brush.

She reached for the sharpened chisel she kept in a pocket, pulling it out and holding it. Her chest tightened as she stepped forward.

“Your pranks aren’t funny! I told you! I will stab you!”

An injured animal stumbled forward. It was a water deer. It whimpered over its tusks. It had a terrible gash on its side, and it let out a sad cry. But there was more to it. Its fur had a blue sheen. Among the qi of blood and pain, she sensed something refreshing.

Jinmei kept the knife in hand as it took two steps forward. Then it fell on the ground. It looked up at her with piteous eyes.

She stared in shock.

“A spirit-beast.” She said, realizing what it was. It was an animal that had eaten enough qi to begin a progression through cultivation.

Like the ones that killed her family.

Her hands shook.

This one wasn’t the monsters who killed her family. It was a tiny animal in pain. Jinmei knelt down over it. She kept the knife in her hand, wondering what to do.

Should she kill it? She heard that adults did that to end an animals pain, sometimes. It stared up at her.

No, she wouldn’t do that. Instead, she pulled an almost clean rag from her overalls.

“We need to clean that.” Jinmei said. She stared into the deers eyes. She pulled a canteen of water with her other hand and poured it over the wound. The water deer twitched. She wiped it with the rag. It stretched its head for the canteen.

She gave it water. It drank greedily.

Then she split her sandwich in half, giving the spirit-beast half.

Jinmei giggled as she watched the spirit-beast eat messily, spilling food.

“I’ll take care of you.”

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Jinmei carried the wounded spiritbeast after cleaning and feeding it, taking down to one of the exhausted tunnels. She had to light and carry her own lamp as she crossed through the mines. She crouched to move through one of the tiny tunnels the younger miners made, following a path she knew was here.

Light from above flooded this little section where the faulty engineering and dig direction had led to a collapse in the ceiling. A pile of dirt and stone laid on the floor.

“You’ll be safe here.” Jinmei said, setting the water-deer down. “Hmmmm… we need a better name for you. You’re blue… Water Blossom? Or just Blossom.”

Jinmei stared into the deer’s eyes, lifting it above her head. It let out a soft cry. She took it as a sign of approval. She nodded to herself, pulling out the rag from her pocket and rolling it out as bedding before setting the water-deer down.

Jinmei fidgeted.

“I’ve never taken care of an injured person.” She admitted to the water-deer. “How do you do this? I should run and get you bedding.”

Jinmei stood. Then sat. Blossom blinked repeatedly.

“Maybe… I’ll tell you a story? People do that, right?” Jinmei asked. Then she continued.

She told the Blossom about her first few years mining, being only nine and unable to swing a pickaxe, how she had pushed wheelbarrows back and forth or otherwise missed lunch and dinner. She told Blossom about the mine bosses; cultivators, all, she could tell. When she first told them she could sense qi, none of them believed her. She was lucky in that.

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The last thing she wanted was to become a cultivator like them, who didn’t even recognize her existence.

She told Blossom about the two work sites before this one, also spread across the Gold River Valley. Half way through, she noticed Blossom was asleep. She nodded to herself. Sunset was coming; she could see it getting darker and chillier.

She left the little lighted clearing, then up to the tunnel for children to climb through. But before she left, she rolled one of the roundish chunks of broken stone in the way. Now only the smallest creatures and Blossom herself could come and go at will.

Then she ran back to camp, grabbing blankets from the supply warehouse, a thrown together wooden structure. They were the cheapest, scratchy linens that the mining company could afford, often even carrying stains. But they would be better than nothing for blossom.

She pushed the rock out of the way and found blossom still there and still asleep, so she piled one of the blankets on her and headed back out before resealing the tunnel.

It was time to find where Bao’s celebration was.

She found another one of the young miners standing around the massive outdoor firepit where the miners were fed during the summer months, who gave her directions to another, separate, abandoned mining area.

Bao was throwing a party in a stripped down quarry only a half an a hour walk away.

There was an entire wagon of looted supplies and freshly hunted food cooking on an open fire pit. Instruments — handcrafted or probably stolen — filled the air with a discordant song.

That made Jinmei wonder where Bao had gotten the food. But she slipped down the stairs to the quarry and found a seat at the make shift quarries. Bao danced, clearly drunk. Jinmei frowned. How much had they stolen for this?

They received barely any pay, and some of it was deducted for the food and clothes and blankets and tents. Which left less than nothing. Half of them were in debt, according to the adults.

The tables had been dusted and cleaned. This had clearly been planned days in advance. Jinmei wondered where Bao had found the time to clean while meeting his daily mining quota. Or maybe he just didn’t meet his daily mining quota.

Jinmei started eating. Then she kept eating. There was fresh meat sealed in wax paper that maintained it. Jinmei ate until she could eat no more, and then she greedily hoarded the square cuts of meat in a pile in front of her.

Children dragged logs and rotting wood to add to the pile of fire. Sparks filled the air. Bao slipped out of the crowd, talking to everyone he met, exchanging hugs and words of congratulations.

Then he sat down at the table across from me.

“Meimei!” He said. His face was red. He was drunk.

“Don’t call me that. I told you.” Jinmei said.

Bao’s face fell. Then lit back up.

“When I become immortal, I’ll come back and and buy the entire mining company! And we will eat meat for dinner every night!” Bao smiled. One of his teeth was missing on the side from a fight he got in before he came here. Bao’s smiled turned to a frown. “You look exactly like my little sister looked, you know.”

Jinmei frowned. Bao had never mentioned his little sister. He had lost his family to a spirit-beast horde too. Most of the children here had.

“Okay. Come back and buy us all better food and I’ll let you call me Meimei.”

Bao smiled again. It looked pained. Then he stood up on her table.

Jinmei gasped in offense, leaning back as Bao called attention to himself.

“Thank you all for being here! When I become an immortal, I will repay you all for all you’ve done for me!”

The crowd of children cheered. Adults had slowly filtered in when they heard about the food. But none of the mines supervisor’s. Bao started to give a long winded speech about the people he was thankful for. Jinmei grabbed as much food as she could carry and slipped away.

She had to grab her lantern; the sun had fallen completely. The smell of ash stuck to her clothes. She found Blossom asleep in the cave and piled her store of rations there.

She didn’t know that she would end up needing them.

The next day a caravan came and took Bao away. Jinmei watched from a distance as they exchanged a pouch of silver coins for the boy. Then he left without another word.

Wherever they had accumulated the supplies for the party from, no one was any the wiser.

Jinmei checked Bao’s tent. Someone else had looted everything that remained in it before she got there. There were just ratty cheap clothes provided by the mining company remaining. She tsked and continued on her day.

Every day, she mined her quota. She saved some of her food, adding more stolen rations of meat to it and sharing it with Blossom. After a few days, she walked into the cave she kept it in to find it stumbling around the room.

“You want to go for a walk?” She asked.

Blossom loved the river and devoured the plants growing at its side. She noticed its qi grew stronger when it did. It led her down branching paths of river where it plucked strange plants from where they were buried in the rocks. She helped it pull roots free.

A few days later, another caravan dropped off another group of kids. Somewhere, a town had fallen to ruin.

Life went on for Jinmei.

Then, more than a month after Bao had left, there was a commotion that woke her up.

“Jinmei! Jinmei!” A teenage girl whispered into her tent, waking her up. “Jinmei! The supervisors are calling everyone together!”

Jinmei threw herself out of bed. More than a hundred laborers gathered in the cold of early morning. At the edge of the compound of tents and temporary structures, outside the thrown together wooden warehouse. A cultivator sat in the wooden desk under a half built shed. He threw his feet up on the desk, scuffing it. The crowd milled about, waiting.

The mine supervisor stood behind him, visibly sweating.

“Listen up. I do not wish to repeat myself.” The cultivator said, removing his feet from the desk and leaning forward. The qi in the air shifted. But not by a lot.

The cultivators qi felt weakener than the supervisor’s. So why was the supervisor afraid?

“I am Fenglin Bo, of the Feng Family. And this camp is missing supplies. Starting immediately, food rations and clothing are being restricted until the camp earns back double the missing lot. I don’t know which of you thought you could get away with stealing and selling from the Feng Clan, but you have another thing coming.”

Jinmei didn’t like how similar his name was to Bao. But Bao didn’t return.

Jinmei ran out of meat rations. But Blossom got bigger. She dug up more of her own food. Jinmei had to stretch soup rations. She barely had any to share. On the days she had enough energy to double her quota, she got a second meal, which she normally shared with Blossom.

Jinmei laid in the cave that she kept Blossom in, stomach rumbling, as she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she found a pile of roots and tubers on the same rag she had once given Blossom for bedding. After two months, Blossom had grown far too large for it. She laid on the grass that was regrowing on the pile of dirt that fell through the hole in the ceiling.

Jinmei rubbed her eyes. Blossom nudged her with her nose.

“These are for me?” She asked.

Blossom made a soft noise and licked her face. Jinmei laughed. Then she wiped the dirt off of one of the tubular plants.

She frowned. The plants were wet from spit. Blossom must have carried them in her mouth, one at a time. The sun was setting outside.

“I still need to make quota today.” Jinmei complained. She felt weak. She wiped the plants off with another rag from her overalls. Then she bit into the tuber.

To her surprise, it tasted delicious — rich, and earthy, and full of energy that swelled within her. She chewed slowly, considering it. Then she kept eating.

Life went on.

Until one day, Jinmei returned to find Blossom missing. The rock that blocked the tunnel was cast aside. The tiny pack of supplies and roots she had there were strewn about or looted.

“Blossom?” Jinmei asked, standing at the end of the hall. Her heart raced. Had whatever wounded her returned for her?

She whipped around, stepping out of the tunnel. Immediately, one of the mining company’s guards grabbed her wrist.

“The supervisor needs to talk to you about your stolen goods.” He said, bored.

Jinmei struggled, trying to get out of his grip.

“Let go of me!” She shouted.

“No.” The guard said. He sighed.

Jinmei wailed on him, punching and kicking and failing to separate them as the guard dragged her to the camp’s supervisor. He was once again standing behind the cultivator who had visited them.

Blossom was standing next to the desk in shackles. The animal didn’t make a noise of pain or alarm. She stared at Jinmei sadly.

The supervisor lifted the scraps of paper from the stolen rations from Bao’s party.

“So, you’ve been stealing food to feed a spirit-beast?” The cultivator asked, interrupting the supervisor before he could talk.

Jinmei ripped her hand out of the grip of the guard, rubbing her wrist.

She looked around.

“No. I got those from the other miners.” And it wasn’t a lie. She had taken from Bao. Bao was the one who stole them.

“There’s no point in lying.” The cultivator said. But he was smiling. “We were considering extending the debt period to pay back for the meals by another month… but I think I’ve decided that this deer you’ve raised for me will be plenty.”

Fenglin Bo petted blossom, who turned to look at him. He frowned and pulled his hand back, aware of her tusks.

“You can’t do that! Untie Blossom.” Jinmei shouted.

Fenglin Bo smiled.

“Your name is Blossom, huh? The Second Young Master from the main family is coming down tonight. She will make an excellent dinner.”

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A guard dragged Jinmei back to her tent and blocked the entrance. She cried alone inside.

Blossom had been her first friend — the first she had gotten really close to. The only one who knew everything about her and hadn’t left.

The sun set when she heard a commotion outside. She heard Old Lao shouting that there was a fire. There was running and shouting.

Then her tent door popped open. Another one of the teenagers — one of Bao’s friends — stared inside.

“Come quick! Lao set his tent on fire to distract them. They were saying they stole your deer! Let’s break her out!”

Jinmei didn’t ask why or argue. She had fought for every scrap she had every day of her life. She pushed away her tears and stood to her feet on shaking legs.

Then she made a determined face and followed the teenager out. A few of them gathered together, going with her to the rudimentary lodge that housed the supervisor. There was a caravan of wagons and a row of adults standing out front. Among them was a teenager probably the same age as Bao. His eyes scanned the rows of tents. Jinmei almost imagined that she looked right at him. His expression was one of growing displeasure.

“We have to sneak by.”

“What’s the plan, Jinmei?”

“How do we get in, Jinmei?”

The others asked her. Jinmei always had a plan. She was younger than all of them, but still the most experienced miner. She fixed their carts, taught them half of what they knew about mining, and told them how to stay safe.

Today, she just shrugged, staring at the ground.

They stood in the distance, covered by tall grass that obscured the view from the rudimentary lodge.

“Are they arguing?” One of the teenagers asked.

Jinmei perked up and listened.

“Yes, Second Young Master, but you don’t understand! We don’t just produce spirit-stones here! We produce cultivators!”

The young man paused. He looked around the camp. His eyes landed on Jinmei, intentionally and obviously this time, and, contrary to her expectations, his face schooled. It became calm and placid, a lake of water.

He looked no older than sixteen. She couldn’t help but think that he was the same age Bao would have been now.

Yet Fenglin Bo, the cultivator that had disrupted so much of their lives, bowed to him. Was that the power afforded by being a cultivator? For the first time in her life, Jinmei second guessed her decision to hide her qi sensing.

“Child soldiers?” The Second Young Master asked. He sounded like he was about to smack Fenglin Bo. He took a step forward. One of his hands fell on his sword.

“Don’t be irrational Sai.” A taller adult behind the Second Young Master put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back.

“Yes, Wen.” Feng Sai’s expression became schooled again.

“Not child soldiers! No! Trainees! They go to train. Many of them become retainers of the Feng or branch families like Fenglin!” Fenglin Bo said.

“Your branch families such as Fenglin act against the virtues that we cultivators ascribe to.” Sai said. “The situation here is worse than I thought. The governor of this province lied to me…” Sai trailed off.

“We cannot be everywhere, young master.” Wen said.

“Seize the assets of the Fenglin family. We will find holistic schools for their trainees to attend.” Sai spat the word. “We’ll use the Fenglin’s assets and the orphanage funds to pay for the quality of life of all the laborers here.”

Three adult guards behind Sai bowed.

“Do you have any more crimes to bravely declare?” Sai asked Fenglin Bo.

Jinmei stepped out of the bushes and pointed at Fenglin Bo.

“He stole my friend!” She shouted.

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“So your name is Blossom?” Feng Sai asked, petting Blossom.

Blossom leaned into the petting happily.

Jinmei — and the other teenagers who came with her — were scarfing down food in the kitchen of the supervisor. Feng Sai and Fenglin Bo sat in the living room. Blossom stood on the arm of a leather padded chair, demanding pets from Feng Sai.

Fenglin Bo stared at the ground in shock in the corner.

“You know,” Feng Sai started, then looked up at Fenglin Bo. “This spirit-beast could have killed you at any time.”

“What?” Fenglin Bo asked dumbly.

“It’s probably equivalent to a Core Formation cultivator.” Feng Wen said from the stove. He was cooking more food for the teenagers. He had gone through six different dishes already, but they never stopped eating.

Blossom pushed off of Sai’s hand and walked over to the table. Then she shook herself off and jumped up on top of it. She tracked mud over the white table cloth. One of the teenagers pushed a plate to her. Blossom started eating off the side.

“And Jinmei here has an open meridian.” Feng Wen said.

Jinmei stopped eating. She looked up, the horror and fear in her heart redoubling. She shook her head no.

“I don’t want to be a cultivator!” Jinmei said before anyone else talked.

The other teenagers stared at her.

“That’s alright.” Feng Sai said, much to Jinmei’s shock. “You don’t have to be. Not everyone should be a cultivator. We’re starting a few new schools — not martial schools. We could use a few more people with lots of experience mining.”

Jinmei nodded.

“I’m good at mining!”

“We won’t have you doing any more mining.” Feng Sai chuckled. “But maybe you can help teach others and record some of what you’ve learned here?”

“Jinmei is a great teacher!” One of the teenagers chimed in.

Feng Sai smiled.

“Have you ever been to a desert? We’re building a new city in one.”