Sun moved with purpose as he made his way through the sect grounds, passing training halls and meditation chambers, heading towards the alchemy hall. The squat stone building was reminiscent of a forge with the many chimneys and smoke billowing out from their tops.

He entered and was met by the empty entrance room, bare of any decoration save for a piece of calligraphy hanging on the wall declaring the “purity of the flame”.

He approached the lone disciple managing the desk, a young woman wearing the pristine white robes of an alchemist, and asked her for his allowance of pills for the month as well as thirty days worth of food pills. He handed her his sect token and she disappeared into a back storage room to collect his order.

Outer disciples like him were allowed a limited number of pills from the alchemy hall each month, any more he would have to pay for in some fashion, but that was not his goal today. Marrow Washing and Spirit Refining pills had never had much of an impact on his cultivation and he doubted more powerful pills would have any greater effect.

Even as a child, his family had had to use expensive reagents and pills to awaken his dantian and despite nearly twenty years of cultivation he was still behind his juniors.

The disciple returned with his token and two small bags with the strong herbal scent of alchemical reagents wafting off them. He cleared the counter, grabbing his token and the bags and began making his way back to his residence.

He strode through the sect, ignoring the sidelong glances other disciples gave him as he passed as well as the loud “whispers” they passed to each other. Surprisingly no one got in his way as they usually would, pointing down at him and declaring him useless and weak. Perhaps the rumor of his engagement had already leaked or maybe the elders simply didn’t want anyone to “break the merchandise”.

He sighed and shook his head to clear those thoughts away.

He arrived at his residence in the outer sect, the ramshackle house looking to have been abandoned for years at this point. Sun had stopped trying to repair and maintain the house after one too many disciples had “accidentally” burned it down while practicing a new technique.

Sun pushed open the door that was barely hanging onto its hinges, it creaked loudly as if the wood itself was about to give out. The small room inside was barren and dirty, with empty and dusty shelves and gaps in the wood that let in a cool draft from outside.

He moved to the cold hearth on the side of the room and pulled one of the clay bricks out of its place to reveal a small hidden satchel. He pulled the satchel free and replaced the brick, the bag’s contents jingling as it was freed. He opened it to see the thirty-seven silver tael he had carefully saved and hidden from the others.

It was hardly a fortune, even by mortal standards, but it should buy him some small parcel of land somewhere. Enough for a small farm or tavern on the road, he could even offer to work on someone else’s farm as even his meager cultivation granted him great endurance and strength to make up for his lack of agricultural skill.

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He set the satchel down and stepped outside, grabbing a handful of cut logs which he threw on the hearth. Crouching down, he took a deep breath, letting out a small shower of sparks and heat as he exhaled. The sparks caught the tinder began to burn, spreading to the logs and wood chips within the hearth.

He sat and folded his legs as he stared into the growing fire. He began to mentally chant the sutras of Scorching Flame Cultivation Method and channeled his qi throughout his body.

It would be hours until nightfall and there was no way he was getting out of the sect in the light of day, so he decided to cultivate while he had the time. He figured it would also have the benefit of convincing any minders observing him that he did intend to cultivate in seclusion like he’d said.

The sutras and chants flowed through his mind with the ease of years of practice and repetition, and he felt it as the subtle warmth of his qi moved through his body. He traced the path it took through his meridians, down one leg, then an arm, through his bones and arteries, purifying and slowly refining his body to an impossible ideal. He controlled his breathing in time the flow of qi, as he had been taught and had been beaten into him until he’d perfected it, supplying fresh air and ambient qi to his inner fire.

He turned his inner eye inside himself and observed as the ambient qi he had inhaled seemed to pull away from his qi channels, with only a small amount getting caught in the flow. This was the source of his misery, a phenomenon none of the sect physicians could explain and with no record of ever happening before.

The world itself appeared to reject Sun’s efforts to reach for the heavens and actively denied him swift progress. His entire life had been one long bottleneck, where others might encounter one or two in a mortal lifetime.

He caught himself in his thoughts, he was doing that too much recently. The mind affects one’s qi and one’s qi affects their mind. If he wasn’t careful with his thoughts he could form a heart demon, which was the last thing he needed right now.

Sun continued to trace his qi through his meridians until the process retreated to the back of his mind and he could afford to let his thoughts wander.

Sun seethed as he remembered the arranged marriage that had been forced upon him by the elders and his family. All his life he’d been given no help or consideration by those above him and now they were tossing him away for their own greed. Well, he wouldn’t let them.

He was leaving. Tonight.

The only problem was where to go.

Long ago, in the days of his great grandfather, the sect had retreated deep in the wilds beyond the bounds of proper civilization. For hundreds of miles in all directions was nothing but forests, mountains, and hungry spirit beasts waiting for a weak cultivator like him to offer himself up.

A handful of minor villages had been established around the sect before all communication with the rest of the world had been cut off, to supply the mortal needs of the sect as well as for new recruits.

Safe to say he couldn’t go to any of those villages unless he wanted to be found in less than a week. Many sect members and disciples stayed in those villages on a regular basis to make sure they were protected. Good for the villagers, bad for someone trying to hide from the sect there.

Sun’s thoughts turned to the old maps he’d seen in the archives. He’d spent half his childhood escaping into the many books and scrolls in those shelves, and among them he’d once found a map of the southern region. The map was almost five hundred years old, yet carefully preserved by the wards and formations present throughout the archive.

He remembered that a city was marked out far to the south, a trade hub between the western continent and the east. He considered it. The city was far outside the range of the sect and would have to be very large to have been marked as it was on the map, meaning it would be easy to lose any pursuers in the crowd. And access to trade caravans meant he could catch a ride to pretty much anywhere on the continent, or purchase travel to the Tiger Lord continent to the west.

He made his decision. Albeit, there weren’t many other options. Smaller villages are more likely to have dispersed or migrated because of droughts or natural disasters. And the next big city was far to the southeast with many mountains and dangerous spirit beasts in between there and here.

Sun cracked open his eyes and saw the slowly lengthening shadows on the ground, estimating another hour or two before night fully took hold and he could begin his plan.

He closed his eyes again and settled in to cultivate until that time, feeling the beat of his heart match the pulsing of qi coursing through his body. A sense of excitement and liberation overshadowed his anxiety towards the coming challenges, as he would finally be free of his tormentors.

However, even as the sutras of the Scorching Flame Cultivation Method filled his thoughts, an idle worry quietly scratched at the back of Sun’s mind. Villages and small settlements might come and go with time, but so did big cities, and for all the longevity cultivation grants cultiva

tors, five hundred years is a long time. How much has changed?