With no real cultivation being possible at the moment, other than maybe creating various types of elements or creating bolts from neutral chi, which would slow her dantian’s expansion, she left her room and decided to walk around town. She knew that Mae had been caught entering an apothecary’s herb garden without permission, but because she was there to try and learn about the plants they made her an unofficial apprentice. They weren’t allowed to take a child as an actual apprentice until the child was ten, but they could send her on errands, have her clean, and teach her about plants before then. This earned her one contribution per day. Once she turned ten she could then become an official apprentice, get paid three per day, and learn the basics of alchemy.
Shen strolled around the town to familiarize herself with where everything was, as she hadn’t had much of an opportunity to study the layout yet. According to one of Teacher’s lessons, this city had been build five hundred years ago by the Five Immortal Founders when they decided to build a sect here. Each was a master of a different one of the five elements, Master Xing being the water master, so after they flattened the top of a mountain, giving themselves an area over one li across at the narrowest point to work with, they started building an array.
Arrays were a type of formation that had the ability to not just use chi, but to gather and alter it. The masters collected jade from a deposit down the mountain as well as the small amount of jade that was here when they flattened the mountain. On top of being able to store memories, and therefore information like alchemy formulas and techniques, jade could conduct chi energy and was useful in the creation of formations and arrays. They then started building arrays of their preferred element to gather elemental chi from the environment.
Master Xing built along the river which flowed down the mountain and the few ponds it created. The Fire Master built on the volcano next to this mountain. The Wood Master built in a wooded area on the side of the mountain, then started building terraces at the bottom of the mountain so that people could farm there, placing more arrays near the fields. The Metal Master found iron and copper deposits in the mountain and, using his power to dig deep tunnels into both of them, placed several arrays in each. The Earth master had the easiest time with his arrays, as they had already located a Jade deposit where he could build several arrays.
Each of them used the jade they had gathered to build pathways back to the location of the future city, the pathway from the farming village quickly becoming the main way to visit the sect, being the widest and using no steps, and therefore allowing carriages and riding animals to use it to reach the top of the mountain.
At the top of the mountain they laid out an outer circle, inner circle, and connected them with five spokes, laying jade blocks into the wall to form a giant defensive formation. This formation reproduced the Five Elements Barrier, a powerful defensive spell which was said to be able to block even an Immortal’s attack. Each of them led their lines of elemental chi down one of the spokes to five special arrays which were built in the center of the circle. There secondary arrays were created which purified and crystallized the elemental chi, creating 99% pure elemental chi crystals on the surface of the arrays using the elemental chi that was being gathered from the area. The ability to condense elemental spirit stones was a Foundation level ability, but the five of them had worked together to design the most powerful version of it that they could.
Should the area come under attack, they would be able to feed that energy into the main defensive formation and protect the city, the effect being greatly amplified by the purity of the energy. Once they were done with this step and crystals had started to form on all of the crystallization arrays they started building a city. Each one designed the district clockwise of their elemental chi channel, producing an area which could perform a specific function and adding additional arrays to gather the elemental chi which would be produced in those areas.
The Fire district was dedicated to training fighters to defend the city. The Earth district would contain houses to shelter them. The Metal district would produce weapons, armor, and the other metal goods the city might require. The Wood district became a location to farm spirit herbs and to refine them into pills and elixirs. The Water district had the least to do with its element, but became a home to parks and trade. It had many ponds with aquatic life in them, and tiny streams connecting them. It also housed what industry didn’t fit in the other areas, like clothing production and soapmaking, which both used water.
Within a year of finishing it they had started to accept disciples and bring in workers from the area, mostly refugees from far away lands which were at war, usually with the demons. The Grand Library in the inner city and the smaller library of the outer city were filled with all of the techniques that the masters had collected over the years, and they made an effort to purchase more techniques from traders or other sects and cultivators if they could. All of these became available to everyone who lived in the city and soon most of the people in the city cultivated in some way rather than simply overlooking their cultivation as most people did. After all, even if you didn’t intend to reach Foundation and be considered a true cultivator, the health and physical effects of cultivation made it worth practicing to some degree.
Over time they brought in more disciples and filled the inner city. After two hundred years, however, the disciples held all of the land in the inner city and most of it in the outer city. That was when the rule was made that only inner sect disciples and above were allowed to live in the inner city, and that outer sect disciples could only enter the area during the daytime without an escort. Those that weren’t part of the sect or were outer disciples could only live in the outer city, and non members could only enter the inner city with a member escorting them. Those rules had continued into the present, despite the fact that only one of the masters was still around.
On the way there from the dorms, situated in the outer city Earth District, Shen cut through the Fire district on her way to the Wood district where the Apothecary was. She passed one of the martial practice fields and was about to ignore it when she saw Ponma enter the sparing ring with Dan-something. She really needed to learn his name. He was the third best out of the recruits, after all, and was ten years old like her.
‘Dan’ squared off against Ponma and, when the signal was given, ran at him, swinging. Ponma leaned to the side and Dan’s fist missed him. This repeated several times before Ponma flicked his wrist and a small blue ball flew out of his hand, hitting the top of Dan’s foot. He let out a slight yelp and Ponma swung at him, hitting his face but doing no actual damage. This scene repeated itself several times, with Ponma switching between the blue balls and throwing water in his face to distract him. Eventually the master of the field stopped them.
Ponma technically won, as he was the only one that actually landed a blow, and earning a contribution point, but the master warned him that this was a martial arts competition, not a magical duel. He should use magic rarely, if ever, and attack spells were frowned upon. The point of this combat was to develop fighting skills, after all, not magic skills. If he wanted to use magic, he should learn to use spells which would speed up his dodges or enhance his fighting ability or striking power. As he was using Water chi, the master recommended the ‘wet palm’ technique, which basically just made slaps hurt a lot more, and would be close enough to the ‘ice knuckles’ technique that he could easily transition to it once he reached Gathering stage and could store water chi instead of making it as needed. The master also suggested that both practice the Release technique, Ponma so that he had the strength to do actual damage and Dan so that he could move fast enough to hit him.
After the fight the two boys came over to where Shen was standing. “Hey.” said Ponma. “did you come to watch us?”
“I was just going for a walk when I saw you two. Good job beating Din...Dan…uh, that guy.” she pointed to the second guy.
“My name is Din Danka.” he said with a bit of annoyance. “It’s not that hard to remember.”
“Sorry, it’s just that it has too syllables, which makes it a bit weird.”
“What’s weird about two syllable names?” asked Danka. “All the people in my village had them. You are kind of weird for only having one. I keep feeling like ‘Shen’ is short for something. Like maybe it’s ‘Shenai’ like my cousin. Ponma’s the only one with a proper name.”
Ponma held up his hand to stop the discussion before it turned into an argument. “Danka’s from Blue Lotus village, like my parents. The people there traditionally have two syllable names. That’s why my dad named me Ponma instead of Pon like my mom suggested. It’s all because the ancestors of the village come from the Jungle Region to the east two hundred years ago. You see, there was a war between two powerful sects which drove them from their homes. So they came to this region and asked the Jade Dragon sect to protect them, becoming the seventh village….”
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Shen held up her hand. “I’m not really interested in a history lesson right now.” Ponma looked a bit dejected from her response. “I just wanted to say hello before I continued.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t cultivating.” said Danka. “You seem kind of obsessed with that.”
“I’m actually using ‘restrict’ right now, so I can’t really use any chi without working against that. So I decided to go for a walk.”
Danka nodded. “Wish I could take a day off to do that, but Field Master says I should work on my fundamentals first before I start improving my strength. He says things like ‘with proper technique even a squirrel can beat a wolf’. I’d like to see that squirrel, through. I bet it’s a cultivator and the wolf isn’t.”
Shen giggled. “Yeah, I don’t think it was an actual squirrel, just a metaphor. To really beat it the squirrel would have to be either really smart or really strong for a squirrel.” Danka nodded.
“So, are you doing anything to earn Points?” asked Ponma. Shen wasn’t sure why he was asking, but answered that she wasn’t. This was probably just a result of being the apprentice of a merchant, his father, before being recruited. “Well, in that case, do you have any left from the ones we were rewarded? I have an investment opportunity if you are interested.”
Shen wasn’t planning on doing anything with the points in her account until she had mastered both of the techniques she bought yesterday, so she decided to hear him out. Apparently, he had learned that in three days a merchant caravan would come to Jade Dragon Mountain. They would be selling rare and hard to find magical and alchemical ingredients and buying the same from this town. After all, this mountain had many ingredients that were harder to find elsewhere, and the sect sent out many members to hunt monsters near this town and the villages/towns it watched over. This meant that the forgers, leatherworkers, and alchemists always had more ingredients than they could use. The local merchants would often purchase these ingredients for contribution points and sell them to the caravan for money, donating some of the money to the sect to restore the contribution points that they had spent and earning a profit.
Ponma had been listening to them, and had worked out a plan. The mountain beside this one was a dormant volcano. This meant that there were five heated lakes or ponds on it, as the water was heated from underground by the lava. The one at the top of the mountain was inhabited by water dragons, most of the adult ones being Foundation level monsters and their elders being Nascent level. There was even rumored to be one or more Immortals sleeping at the bottom of the lake. The young dragons would swim on the surface, the only place that was cool enough for humans to swim, as the water there was only hot enough that it would turn your skin red. Beneath them lived the higher level dragons, and if anyone disturbed them, they could attack. That, combined with the few jade deposits around the mountain is where the mountain got its name, the sect being named for the mountain rather than renaming the mountain after the sect like most sects did.
This meant that the caldera lake was off limits to human, but not the other four. Those four were all good sources of fish for the town, but one was more popular than the others. This lake stayed at a comfortable temperature all year, even when the ground was covered with snow and ice. In fact, that made it a popular destination during the winter, with it being widely used as a bath, with designated family, men, women, and couples areas.
The unique conditions of this lake also meant that it was the perfect breeding ground for a type of flower known as the Water Blossom. The Water Blossom was like duck weed, floating on the surface of the pond and spreading quickly. For this reason the sect had teams constantly removing the plant from the water so that it didn’t choke out the fish. While the fish could eat it, they had to eat other plants as well, and the Water Blossom would spread so thickly if not removed that it would block light from the other plants, causing them to grow more slowly and lowering the fish population.
The plant wasn’t just a weed, however, despite the fact that the vast majority of the time it was thrown out. The blue flowers for which it was known actually contained a good amount of water chi at a decent purity. Depending on how old the plant was that produced the flower it could be used to produce either Cleansing or Gathering level water chi pills. For that reason the apothecaries in town would sometimes gather it and pickle the buds, as storing them in vinegar or strong alcohol was the only way to keep them from losing the water chi inside of them. The lake just produced so many of these plants that they could never all be used by the village.
Ponma had talked to the merchants and learned that they had considered gathering and selling the Water Blossom buds, but that they had decided that there wasn’t enough money in it. After all, the buds could only be sold for about one copper each, and the exchange rate between coin and Points was one hundred copper per point. At twelve copper per silver and twenty silver per gold, it would take eight and a half silvers to earn one point by selling them. It simply cost too much to gather them for resale.
Ponma had an idea, though. If he paid the kids in the town one Point for every five hundred buds they collected and preserved, or the same for every two hundred large buds, with him providing the jars and vinegar, they could still make several points per day, and he would have thousands or tens of thousands of buds to sell to the caravan. He had already invested the seventy five he still had, and was heading up to the lake now that practice was over, but could use more points to pay more kids for their help. Mae had already taught him how to preserve them, and he had verified the end product with her bosses, even taking care to preserve the older buds first, so he knew what to do.
Danka hadn’t donated any points, but he would be going with Ponma to help preserve the buds. Shen decided that this would be a good thing to waste time on, as it didn’t require chi, so she agreed to help as well. She wanted to trust her friend, but knew nothing about business or alchemy, so she only gave him twenty five points. She was willing to lose the cost of a Cleansing scroll to show her friend that she trusted him.
Ponma used the points to buy more large jars and vinegar, and he and Danka carried the two jars of vinegar on their backs, saying it was strength training. Shen only carried the two empty jars. She hadn’t lost all of her strength, as she wasn’t able to completely close down the flow of chi into her body yet, but she wasn’t strong enough to carry a full jar that was big enough for her to climb in. These jars were all in the form of a backpack, and were the type that villagers might use to carry water to a village from the river or lake when the well was dry.
When they arrived, there was a hill of flowers stacked in front of them. The children of the fishermen had really liked this job, so they had gone a bit overboard with today’s harvest. Thankfully they knew enough to put the larger ones in a separate pile. They set down their jars and the boys started picking up any of the large flowers that didn’t look too damaged and putting them in one of the empty jars Shen had carried up here. This filled one and a half jars, which were filled with vinegar to above the buds, and the jars were stacked to the side. They then did the same with the normal sized flowers, filling up all of the jars they had up there. Each of the jars required around a third of a jar of vinegar, so when they were done they had six jars of buds, a mostly gone pile of buds, and a little bit of vinegar left over.
Ponma did the math. They had preserved seven hundred and fifty large buds and around six thousand small ones. This, combined with the fact that they had credit for an extra seventy large buds from yesterday meant that they had earned four points from the large buds and twelve from the small ones.
After storing all of the jars in a large shed that the fishermen lent him, the three of them went to one of the houses. A twelve year old boy answered the door and Ponma thanked him for his help before giving him sixteen Points. Tomorrow, the day before the caravan showed up, would be the last day that they could gather buds. The fishers had agreed to bring all of his jars with them when they came to town, so he wouldn’t need to worry about getting them down the mountain. The kids of the fishing village were happy to help out.
With that, the three of them returned to town. It was almost time for Evening Meal by the time they got back, so they went straight to the cafeteria. Mae joined them and Shen asked Mae about the flowers. Apparently, they were edible, and were sometimes used as a food source when food was scarce, but, as it resulted in the person having a lot of water chi inside of them, sometimes getting sick from the imbalance, it wasn’t used very often unless the village was desperate or had foods from the other elements as well, to balance it out.
When she got back to her room Shen Released the chi in her dantian, pushing some of the toxins from some of the larger chi pathways, and realized that her dantian had gotten just a tiny bit larger.
The next day she did the same thing. First, she meditated to close off some of the chi that was entering her body from her dantian. It was a little easier today, probably because her chi pathways were a bit cleaner, and she closed it off a bit more. She knew that this would result in a higher pressure and would make her dantian expand a bit more than it did yesterday. Teacher had warned that if they let the pressure go too high it would start hurting, then at a higher pressure than that it would tear the dantian, requiring time to heal, time in which you couldn’t cultivate aside from a few minor exercises like the Cleansing meditation. She knew she was no where near that limit, though. She simply wasn’t good enough with the technique.
She ate Morning Meal, got a loaf of bread for later, as she had skipped Noon Meal yesterday, and went to the training field. After the boys were done practicing, the three of them went to buy more jars and vinegar, then they went back up the mountain. As it was the last day they could earn money this way, many of the children were still cutting buds off of the plants and throwing them in the pile as they arrived.
The three of them got to work collecting the undamaged buds and pickling them as the kids brought more and more flowers. The boys had to go back to town to get more vinegar after a few hours, but Shen kept working. The Fishermen had hundreds of jars they could use, as they were used to preserve fish, so Shen didn’t have a shortage of jars. They would just need to pay the Fishermen one point each, as that is what they cost in Town.
As the sun touched the horizon they finished up the last of the pickling and figured out how much they needed to pay. Ponma was a bit short on points, so Shen had to give him another seventeen, mostly to cover the cost of the jars. After paying for everything, they thanked the people and left.
As they didn’t need the leftover flowers Shen took a sack out of her pocket and filled it full of the biggest flowers she could find. As they walked back to town, she ate one of them. It was slightly sweet and, as she walked she could feel a small amount of water chi forming inside of her. Before it could leak into her dantians and be purified she pulled it into her hand. “What do you think, Ponma? Three percent? You are the Water chi expert.”
She handed the ball to Ponma and he looked at it. “Maybe three point two, three point three. Not bad, but only really enough to make one ball out of it.” He moved his fingers a bit and it turned a bright blue, then he threw it at a tree. He told Shen to touch the spot and she could feel that it was cold. It wasn’t cold enough to freeze the tree, but was noticeably cooler that the bark around it. “Water to ice.” he said. “That’s what I used on his foot yesterday, if you remember. I’m not that good yet, though. I lose about half the purity when I should only lose ten percent.”
“You want to practice?” she asked, and held the bag of flowers out to him. “Take as many as you want.”
By the time they got back to Town Ponma no longer had an appetite, but had gotten quite a bit better with his ‘water to ice’ technique. He was now up to 70% efficient with the conversion, making himself an even bigger threat to Danka.