"Sect Sister Jay?" A voice called, trying to get my attention as I exited Contribution Hall.

Negotiator Clement had been more than helpful when trying to discover what the real requirements were to help my people and my Fief. He had been insightful and thoughtful, as well as blunt. It hadn't taken him long to point out that the largest lack of assets I was missing wasn't resources, land, or arrays. It was people.

I needed people to serve as instructors, people willing to train and guide non-cultivators, people willing to spar and train with the new cultivators I had recruited as they learned to master their techniques and learned to fend for themselves. And people to help me organize, prioritize, and govern.

The lack of instructors was vital to address, otherwise, anything I might accomplish would be window dressing at best. How to do that became a more monumental task, something I should have realized would be an issue when it came to the House I had formed and the Clan I hoped to create. I didn't have a library of techniques, a treasury of artifacts that had been collected and could be shared, or a depth of Elders to teach those I had adopted. And I was only one person. I couldn't do everything myself.

He had some ideas on how I might solve some of those issues. Recruitment from among the servants and non-Sect members was one of those options. The other was to require the Sect to send members to act as teachers and trainers, the amount of time they would volunteer their services commiserate with how long people spent inside the Rift.

"Yes?" I said, answering the young woman, ignoring for the moment the discussion Clement and I had, and how to hire the people I would need to help make my goals a reality.

"Patriarch Umbra has sent me to escort you," she replied. "She is meeting with a few Elders and hoped that you could speak with them?"

"I can," I agreed. "They aren't in the Sanctum?"

"No," she replied. "The Patriarch is dealing with an issue with one of the lower mines. They are currently examining one of the caves that was recently discovered, which is why she tasked me with serving as escort."

I gave little thought before agreeing and following the young woman. I knew the Patriarch was busy, and to assume she would drop everything to meet with me, even over something as important as the Rift was a height of hubris that I hoped never to reach.

It was something I planned to guard against. I knew that as I advanced in Realms, I would become more detached from the world around me. But I hoped to minimize that disconnect between cultivating and living a life that was filled with appreciation and respect for non-cultivators.

My cultivation technique should help with that aspiration. I cultivated [Transcend the Heavenly Path], a technique that required precision and a methodical approach for safety's sake. The repercussions to my cultivation level were horrendous if I made a mistake while practicing this technique, and so I had decided right from the first that slow and steady was the foundation I would build my cultivation on.

For this one part of my life, I allowed myself to form a sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior mindset. I would not risk meridian burn and a loss of tiers because I rushed a technique that had come with so many warnings. I would not suffer Qi deviation in some misguided race to reach a Realm that no quantifiable evidence proved existed.

Something existed beyond the Immortal Venerable Realm. But who was to say what that was? Or that transcending the Mortal Realm and reaching Heaven was a step forward. I'd thought it more likely that ascending to the next Realm would place the cultivator on the bottom tier in a new race to ascend to a Realm beyond Heaven.

And what did it matter if it took five thousand years or ten thousand years to ascend past the Immortal Venerable Realm? Why cultivate so that I could live forever if I never spent any of that time living?

These types of questions might have been profound if I didn't have the experience of a past life to draw on. And the mistakes I had made living that life.

The young woman I was following led me unerringly into one of the deeper tunnels, one that seemed rarely used. That should have been my first warning that something was wrong. That and the fact that she had never given her name or introduced herself, a fact I had realized too late.

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She had done an admirable job of obscuring her Realm, and because I believed her to be an associate of the Patriarch, I'd assumed she was at least at the Qi Gathering Realm. It was only when she motioned me forward with a small bow that is when the alarm bells should have begun ringing in my head.

No Sect member would be so lax as to allow anyone near the Patriarch without first entering and getting permission. Unfortunately, I forgot about this piece of Sect minutia until it was too late, and I had taken that fateful step.

Whoever she was, she was more powerful than a Qi Gathering cultivator, which was clearly evident I discovered when she triggered a Qi construct, bombs that had been planted along the cave walls. A construct that was primed with fire and earth and was probably the same type that Shade had discovered and deactivated in the Rift.

My affinities were water and air-based, both worked well to combat or control fire, but had almost no effect, at least in the short term, with earth.

I was barely able to create a pocket of air to protect myself from falling debris before the entire tunnel collapsed on top of me, trapping me with no way of getting a message out. Storm felt my distress through our bond, but there was nothing she could do in this circumstance.

I had left her outside to fly and hunt, but she hadn't evolved far enough to communicate with anyone else but me. She could make her anger and fear known by her actions, but there was no way for her to lead Sect members to where I was or that someone ambushed me.

My control over air meant that I wouldn't suffocate, and I had enough food in my storage device. I wouldn't starve, but that just meant I would survive as I tried to dig my way out. At least it gave me time to pause and figure out what I could do to escape.

I finally realized there was a way forward, one that no other cultivator was likely to have. One that those that had hoped to murder me had no way of knowing about. It would be a time-consuming process, but by moving the stone and earth from the tunnel into the inner world of the torc that housed Storm's Aerie, I would succeed eventually.

The pocket of air I had created to protect myself from being crushed hadn't given me much room to maneuver, not enough for any of the martial techniques I was proficient with to be used, but there was enough that I could equip my Tessen and use it as a focal device to control water, creating a type of drill.

Even that would have been impossible if I had to rely on the moisture in this part of the cave system. Whoever had set this trap knew about my affinities and had made sure the location was near a lava tube. The heat and fire from the outcropping of magma that ran parallel to this tunnel was so high that any available water vapor simply didn't exist.

I had never realized how dependent I was on the environment when channeling my water affinity, not until I was cut off. That flaw in my understanding of my elemental affinities would need to be addressed. This trap would have resulted in my death without the torc I had found by chance. But the unique properties of that inner world meant escape was possible.

I was able to transport the excess dirt and rock inside, clearing the tunnel I would need to create to free myself. Additionally, I was able to withdraw enough water from the lake within the torc to power the water whip I had devised. I had quickly replaced the high-pressure water construct I had first created using my Tessen with a whip of controlled water. By spinning it fast enough, I was able to create an opening large enough for me to walk through.

I was going to have to spend weeks burrowing my way out. The woman that had brought the ceiling and walls down hadn't been happy with just collapsing the tunnel I was in. As I extended my perception back the way we had come, I found she had been methodical about destroying as much of the tunnel system as she could as she retreated.

Her attempt to kill me, had been well thought out. It had even been well executed. If I hadn't had the torc to collect water and store stone, it would probably have even worked. I had already noticed that my perception was limited, that there was something in the walls that blocked how far my sight could reach.

I knew there were Sect members with perception more powerful than my own, but they would have to know to look to find me. The Patriarch would have been powerful enough if she realized I was missing, or that I had gone missing in the Sect. But I had only spoken to Clement. No one else knew I was back.

Elder Shadow was still assessing the Rift, even if he, Shade, and Yvonne knew I was planning on returning to the Sect, there was no telling how long before they would notice I was missing.

Perhaps, in this case, my foibles and independence may be a bonus for my survival as well as a hindrance. If anyone had known about the Torc and its unique properties, they would have made certain I was dead and used the collapsed tunnel to hide my body.

I did wonder why the woman who had triggered this cave in hadn't just killed me. She was at least at the Nascent Soul Realm. In order to disguise her Realm, she wouldn't have had any problems killing me. I didn't have the Triad of Spirits to rely on for protection within the Sect.

The only explanation I could come up with was connected to her and the smuggling operation in some manner. They had to have known that the Nascent Soul cultivator that had guarded their ship had died. Maybe she didn't want to risk combat. Worried that if I had a part in his death, I might be able to replicate that success and deal with her in a similar manner.

Whatever her motivation, my route forward was clear. I would escape, and this was just another mistake on their part. Honestly, at this point, I was beginning to question their intellect. And mine for continuing to act as if the world wasn't a dangerous place.