A huge lake stretched out in front of them, the surface of the water drenched in perpetual shadow. Jungle surrounded the lake, going right down to its very shore and dipping into the water.
Dave looked up and saw why the lake’s water was dark even though it was morning. A large island of rock and dirt was floating in the air above the lake, with large boulders floating a bit away from the main body. It was as if the lake had been created by levitating the ground into the air and then leaving it there as if gravity was merely a suggestion to whoever had done it.
He looked up at it and felt an instinctive fear of it falling onto him.
“Come, follow us,” Jin said and waved for him to fall in behind her.
They slowly increased in altitude, until it became possible to see what was on top of the flying plateau. A mountain extended even further into the air.
The smoke from a sprawling city wafted into the air at the foot of the mountain. There were no mountains in the surroundings. While the jungle did not seem flat, there were cliffs and other rock formations hidden by the greenery, there were no massive mountains anywhere nearby, although they had flown over some on the way here.
Large pillars of rock which had been nearly vertical, but this mountain was rising much more gradually in elevation. It looked like someone had taken the mountain from somewhere else and put it on top of the soil and stone that had been levitated from below. Small houses dotted the side of the mountain.
The peak of the central mountain in the sect was covered in hazy precipitation, it was impossible to see through and determine if something had been built at the summit.
They came in low and slow, to not startle the defenders of the sect.
Dave saw a few people wave at them as they crossed over fields of medicinal herbs and other types of crops.
There was no wall around this sect, they had probably determined that the large elevation difference would be enough to deter most beasts and cultivators would not be stopped by a wall anyway.
Farmers milled around and worked the fields. Their flight was almost over. They slowly descended to a small square covered in cobbles.
“What is your business in the sect?” A man in deep blue robes asked the three of them.
“We are returning from being guest elders in the Lone Mountain sect,” Jin said.
“Our records say that we only dispatched two elders to the Lone Mountain, who is this?” The man in the blue robe asked.
“I’m here to investigate what caused the Moonless Pond to degrade into an orthodox sect,” Dave said with a raised chin. He had seen how orthodox sects operated from his encounter with the Deep Verdant and he was not impressed.
“Why you- I am going to teach you some manners. We did not ‘degrade’ into an orthodox sect, we simply saw that it was more effective to rule the mortals than guiding them from afar.” The sect dean or elder said incensed, then he launched into a long lesson on why orthodox sects were better than righteous sects. Dave stopped listening when he began espousing, what seemed like communism with cultivation characteristics.
Jin and Yin waited around patiently for the sermon to end. Dave was already mentally counting down to their first famine when a different elder with almost black robes arrived and interrupted the dean, “Welcome back elders and honored guest, it is good that you arrived unharmed. We have recently seen an increase in rouge cultivator attacks in the outer reaches of our territory.”
Jin said, ”Oh we would have been fine. Our friend here is in the wandering immortal stage, he would have been able to turn away any of our attackers instantly.”
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“I am certain that our sect master wishes to speak with such an honorable personage if you would follow me to a waiting area,” He led Dave to an adjacent building with a few cushions around a low table.
Dave sat down and waited.
After roughly the time it takes to brew tea, a man in black robes arrived, entered the door, and said, “Are you the guest that is in the wandering immortal realm?”
“Yes, that would be me,” Dave answered in a level voice.
“Honoured senior, what brings you to our humble sect?” The man in black asked.
“I came to visit, to hear your reasoning for why you decided to forsake the righteous path in favor of becoming an orthodox sect,” Dave said with a frown.
“I decided that just helping them when requested was inefficient when becoming rulers would give us a far greater benefit in both karmic energy, provides us with the ability to leverage our control to create public works and many other things,” The man in black reiterated.
“Anyway, my name is Dave and I would like to hear more about that,” Dave said.
“My name is Ren Peizhi and I am happy to tell you more about my sect,” Ren said excitedly.
“So, what brought on this change of attitude that caused you to flip the entire sect’s worldview on its head?” Dave asked.
It all started with a wild animal attack on one of our villages, not even a monstrous beast. Just a simple wild animal that plowed through half of this village's able-bodied population. Half a dozen dead and hundreds of wounded. As a righteous sect, we could do very little besides lending out our healers and providing some supplies to get them through the winter. The amount of able-bodied men who had been permanently maimed in that village was very high and most of them had lost limbs, so their ability to work was strongly impacted. Year after year we had to watch them fall behind in their harvest, they would have starved without our constant assistance. All of this happened because of a single animal, which could have been stopped by a sole body-refining cultivator. If we had decided to interfere a little more and had stationed guards at all of our villages, to at least prevent ordinary animals from going on a rampage, those men would have still been alive and we would not have needed to provide our food as assistance. In becoming an orthodox sect we are now able to do just that and raise a tithe to help any starving subjects. It was such an obvious choice in hindsight.” Ren elaborated.
“When I arrived here, the dean I talked with had a very different idea of why you were doing it, what was that about?” Dave asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, in our long lives, we have seen many of the constraints the righteous path puts on us and many of us have grown to loathe them. We all dislike them for different reasons, but choosing the orthodox path instead has made many remember our time as a righteous sect with overly critical eyes. I never explained in detail my reasoning for changing our path, so many of the young ones have made up their own rosy reasoning for the change.” Ren said.
“You should probably clear that up, otherwise a lot of terrible misunderstandings might happen, just based on what little I heard from that dean,” Dave said.
“On a different note, we would be very honored if you stayed for a few days and watched the tournament of our young disciples. The prize is entry into a small secret realm on our sect grounds that opens every few years,” Ren said with a smile.
“Of course, a secret realm, that sounds appropriate,” Dave said while having no idea what a secret realm was and how that could be considered a reward. He frantically searched his memory for any mention of secret realms, but nothing he could remember explained it. Guessing that it had something to do with the fact that they were ‘secret’ realms he just went along with it.
“I guess I’ll just take a look around your sect until then, this flying mountain really is a marble,” Dave said with wonder in his voice.
“My residence is at the summit of the mountain, if you wish to enjoy the view you are welcome to visit,” Ren said.
“I would be overjoyed to do so,” Dave said.
They stepped outside and took off on their swords.
Flying to the summit of the mountain he saw the sect sprawled out, all the way around the entire mountain. Houses creeping up the sides and having thin trailing paths back down into the city.
When they neared the summit, a large structure made from granite like the rest of the mountain came into view. It looked like an old temple carved into the top of the mountain.
They landed on a terrace in front of the building, the qi was incredibly thick up here. Not quite as extreme as in the volcano back at the Lone Mountain sect, but certainly not insignificant.
Dave was surprised since he had figured that qi would thin out the further into the air they went, similar to the ordinary atmosphere. Maybe it had something to do with the mountain obstructing wind and airflow or maybe it was simply due to Qi being fundamentally different from anything he knew.