Lya woke up in her bed with a moment of absolute clarity. Brella was laying at the foot of her bed with a tear-streaked face. Her friend must have gotten her unconscious body here somehow, probably with the help of other gatherers. Lya smiled sadly, she had a good friend, but they would never be in the same world again. She’d just lost her cultivation potential the night before, but it had already changed everything.

Lya sighed in a mix of desperation and resignation.

She was going to be a gatherer forever. All of her chances of getting out of servitude had flown out the window with her broken Soul-Space. Hesitantly, she reached her conscience into her Soul-Space. It wasn’t a place she would ever have been able to reach on her own, but after the Spirit Leaves had shown her the way she couldn’t understand how she’d never come across it before. The door was right there, behind her eyelids, into her brain and then further down her body into the very being of her Soul.

Her Soul-Ward was ravaged. It felt like many people described, an impenetrable wall. Hers had been obliterated, it was a hand span wide still in some places around the outline of her body, but in most places it was just a finger’s thickness. There was one particular spot by her elbow where it was paper thin, it scared her for some reason.

She felt the Qi her body had accumulated through the Spirit Leaves the night before. Without guidance it swirled around the vast space of her Soul-Space and bounced off the edges of the Soul-Ward before continuing their aimless perusal of the large vaccuum inside her. Every time it approached the paper thin region of her barrier a feeling of ominous premonition assailed her, as if warning her off.

She sighed again.

The energy she had absorbed the night before had felt like a maelstrom of forces, but now inside her it was barely a wisp of existence. Her cultivation really was ruined, how could she ever condense anything inside a Soul-Space so large. She’d never be able to gather enough Qi in a lifetime to fill her vessel up, let enough condense the Qi into any kind of solid Core.

Rubbing her face, she was about to sigh again when Brella cut her off, “Stop it,” the tired girl said dully, “Stop feeling so sorry for yourself, there’s gotta be something we can do.”

“We? We!? There is no we. Unlike ME, you HAVE a cultivation base!”

Brella’s eyes softened before she looked down, unable to confront Lya’s eyes.

Lya pursed her lips together, already regretting her snap.

“I-Im sorry Brella… It’s just… pointless. You know that. We both knew that. It was always a risk. It was a risk we were willing to take.”

“Yes… I know. But now I’m… And you’re not… This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

There was a moment of silence, and nothing to be said that could fix anything.

The door banged open, crashing against the wall with force. Brella jumped up in surprise.

“They’re here! The cultivators are here! The Gazing Seers have come!”

“Already?” Lya asked in confusion, “Weren’t they here just a week ago?”

“They were,” Jenner said, “turns out some Elder is doing some kind of experimentation on Foundation Pills though, and they ran out of Spirit Leaves.”

“…Oh,” Lya said. For a moment a part of her almost thought that she had something to do with their arrival, it seemed like the whole world had changed, but only her whole world changed. The world itself kept going the same as always, she was and now, would always be, insignificant.

“Lya, I’m glad you’re awake. You had us for quite a scare there.”

“I know… and thank you. I don’t know what I would do without you guys…”

Lya didn’t think she imagined the slight flinch from Brella’s position, her friend must be aware of what was coming too.

“…Should we go?” Lya asked, not wanting to prolong the inevitable.

“…Let’s.” Brella said.

They all knew it, but no one had the heart to talk about it. Now that Brella had successfully broken into her Soul-Space, she’d be snatched up by the cultivators. Lya wouldn’t.

—

“I really don’t care about equal parts Yin and equal parts Yang right now,” the robed young man said with authority as Lya, Brella and Jenner walked up to join the accumulation of gatherers gawking from the side of the storehouse.

“We just need to take your entire stock. It doesn’t matter which aspect the leaves possess, just throw them together. We will sort it out later!”

“But Sir, the regulations state that we must—“

“Screw the regulations! I made half those regulations! Do I look like an initiate that has a hard time telling apart Yin and Yang aspects? Please!”

He looked pretty young to Lya, but from his manner he must be some hot-shot to be talking to the Gathering administrator like that. Garmin, the poor old lady looked as pale as snow-peach jam.

“Immediately, Sir. Yes, Sir!” Garmin squeaked after a few more cut downs from the young Master.

They’d arrived late for the conversation, but half the other gatherers in the building had arrived even later. They were standing in the first row, and Lya had understood the gist of the conversation. The young Master wanted his leaves as quickly as possible, all together because he’d apparently come by himself… and Garmin wanted to make an accounting for the Sect of all the leaves because they hadn’t been entered into the ledger yet. From the looks of it Garmin would potentially and probably get into a lot of trouble with the official expedition of the Sect that came by in a few weeks, but she was too afraid the Cultivator would suddenly decide to kill her off to get what he wanted.

In the end, all that mattered in the mortal world was what a Cultivator wanted. Lya sighed and looked at Brella who was clutching her hands anxiously, looking at the Cultivator but not daring to approach the man who had been yelling so vehemently seconds before.

Lya glanced back at the Cultivator who, as if on cue, looked at Brella with interest. Lya pursed her lips and was about to look to Brella to see if her friend had noticed the Cultivator’s attention, when the man’s eyes landed on Lya herself.

He was looking directly at Lya when he raised an eyebrow and smirked.