“Clement, are you ready?” I asked. He had been eager to take part in the Spirit Contracting Ritual. I wasn’t sure why, but I thought it might have something to do with his age and Cultivation Realm.

For someone who had lived as long as he had and reached the Immortal Realm, new experiences that might give him a significant power boost were something that was rare to come across.

Concentrating on his profession as a negotiator was his way of fighting the boredom that would accumulate over the years. Each negotiation was a fresh challenge, with new opponents to contend against.

And although the problems he worked to solve may become rote, each person he negotiated with would have a fresh perspective. And occasionally, those differences were something new, something he’d never seen or expected to counter.

Those moments of delightful enlightenment helped keep the ennui in check.

The building I’d had built to perform spirit contract rituals was ready. It wouldn’t exist for long. Once Bob was able to integrate the new structures into the Dojo, this building would be repurposed.

I wasn’t sure what it would be used for, but I saw no reason to destroy a newly constructed building. Maybe I would use it to continue observing those non-cultivators eating the awakening food Lin Li and Bao had discovered. It should be easy enough to convert into a small eatery. It was isolated enough that no one but Cultivators or those non-cultivators the two women invited would stumble across.

I had Aki research the disparate cultivation techniques we had, including the libraries that I had looted from the Mystic Realm, to see if we had one that better than the basic technique the Empire gave to school children. That technique was good enough to allow a person enough control over their Qi to activate household devices, but it didn’t allow for any growth.

It was good enough that a person without a spirit root could practice and gain some basic Qi control, but I hoped for something better. Something that would allow them to process past the beginning step of Body Refinement. If we could find a way to get these new faux Cultivators a chance to advance, then what they had discovered would be earth-shattering.

“I am,” Clement assured me as I felt the smallest fluctuation in his aura.

Toi had explained the process to him. It was a straightforward application of Dharmic intent funneled through the soul-summoning array I had inscribed with her direction. I’d made sure to teach the method we had used to Ming so that she could teach our method and that the ritual circle could be added to the expansion beginning of the Dojo.

This array would not need to be inscribed often. There would be no further need once the four soul-gathering buildings that Bob was adding were completed. I didn’t plan to share the knowledge of how spirit contracts were formed with the Sect.

I would make sure to have Toi oversee their creation to ensure the arrays were created perfectly, but I needed people able to siphon soul energy and energize the batteries we would use until the spirit plant gardens were established. I would not offer this service to non-cultivators if I were the only one able to power and conduct the ritual.

Clement was a Cultivator, so he could provide the Qi and Dharmic soul energy to perform the ritual himself. For those without that ability, I would have trained Arrayists available. Individuals that would be able to serve as a bridge between the paltry amount of Qi a non-cultivator’s body contains, with their own deeper reservoir.

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It would allow the Spirit that answered the call of the summoning ritual to form a contract with either party. Those trained who had been trained and were conducting the ritual would refuse that contract, leaving only the non-cultivator as an option.

We had not tested that idea yet, but we would as soon as Clement finished. My parents had been eager to try, and I had readily agreed. There were perks to being the ruler of a territory, and giving my family a leg up was harmless enough, even if I did have moments of doubt. Feelings of unease that allowing my family to benefit from my position, to gift them a home and business, was no different from how the families of those young masters I despised were treated.

I also ensured both parents received enough of the awakening meals using the powdered core to bring their cultivation level up to the first stage of Body Refinement. If they were able to cultivate enough Qi to power the ritual themselves, they might not need me to serve as a bridge.

We hadn’t found a cultivation technique for them yet, but they were able to create a loop across the chakra points that was working for now. They had broken through and had Qi built up and running through their seven meridian points. Each chakra point formed a meridian that they could use to cycle Qi.

I knew when Clement had established a connection and expressed enough Dharmic power to connect with the ritual circle. His expression of soul energy rising and casting out an offering of power to draw the attention of a spirit. The hairs on my arm began standing, and I felt goosebumps forming as the atmosphere within the building became charged.

Clement was powerful. So powerful that I suggested that he speak with the triad of spirits that protected Xiwang and see if they might be interested. I had no idea how those three spirits had been bound, and I worried that they had been forced into servitude.

If that were the case, they might be fighting whatever chains bound them. A fight for freedom that might succeed at the most inopportune moment. What that would mean to the city was worrisome, completely discounting my feelings concerning slavery. If they broke free and rampaged against the city they had been enslaved to protect, everything might have been lost.

It was safer to have Clement speak with them, find out the nature of their binding, and, if necessary, negotiate a way to free them without risking the survival of Xiwang. Clement was uniquely suited to open discussions with the triad because of his cultivation realm and his long career at negotiating, allowing his mind the flexibility to understand divergent points of view.

The array Clement was sitting in began to form an opaque membrane, a kind of window between realms. I was able to watch as more and more sparks, sparks that represented spirits, gathered, each the embodiment of a soul curious enough to venture close and try to understand what was happening.

I watched as Clement sent an aether cord, an astral construct spinning out from inside the array towards the location where the Triad of Spirits rested. Not long after, pulses of light began to flow along the cord. The cord seemed to work like part of his nervous system, sending and receiving information in packet bursts of ectoplasm.

It took over an hour before the cord that Clement had to extend from within the array returned. The threads wrapped around him like a cocoon, each merging into another until an aura of shifting colors surrounded him.

At that point, the sparks that had gathered began vying for his attention, those that seemed interested and had remained. For a good portion of them, they had retreated over the past hour. As they exited the array, the sparks seemed to shatter, exploding in what appeared to be a pyrotechnic display of fireworks. Toi had assured us that each spirit was fine, but outside of the ritual pool, they returned to the spirit world.

Each spark took on the form of the person, animal, or beast they were based on. I wish I had thought to have a recording crystal handy. The sight of fireworks reshaping into three-dimensional images of souls fading and returning to the aether was a sight I would have loved to share with my brother and sister.

I would make sure to have a jade token prepared once I’d spoken with Toi and made sure that it was possible to record what might only be visible to my Dharmic sight. If it worked, I would record my parents’ ritual. It would be something we could share and discuss before the decision was made to allow my siblings to attempt to form their own contracts.