Hudson stood on top of the tower looking down over the lake. He was still drying off from his dives into the lake to rescue his fellow participants, and shivered a little from the bracing wind.

He had just finished tying up all three S.E.C.T. members in complicated knots. Against the protests of Cor and others, he had also given Eustace a bit of healing salve. Not much, but hopefully enough to keep him alive, if his internal injuries were severe. The other two were awake and struggling against the knots and spider webbing holding them captive, without success.

Each had multiple loops wrapped tightly around their diaphragm, squishing their waist in tightly – kind of like a corset. They could still breathe, but couldn’t breathe deeply enough and in the correct manner to cultivate.

“There must be something there…” Hudson muttered to himself. He had searched the fortification, top to bottom, but hadn’t found anything else worthy of note. The doors leading out of the formation chamber led to a stairwell that opened up on a mountainside path leading up. There were no other rooms or secrets that he could see or perceive with his qi sense.

After a quick glance at the prisoners, he jumped down the trap door and headed to the formation chamber, where the grasshoppers were collecting themselves and staging for the next push.

Cor was arguing heatedly with A-yi in one of the corners, their voices pitched low.

“And you! Look at you. You are in no condition to continue – you should stay here and wait for the trial to end,” A-yi was saying as Hudson walked up.

“It would be behoove you,” Cor replied, the fingers on his good hand coming together to form a knife hand, “to respect the chain of command. We all continue, together. And we ain’t leaving anyone behind.”

“Doug has two broken arms! Xinyi has a concussion, and Lee almost drowned. How are they supposed to keep going?”

“We’ll carry them up the mountain,” Cor replied.

“And when we run into George? Or some of the other young masters from S.E.C.T. I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned on us. Is the kid going to fight them off?”

“Ahem,” Hudson said, pulling their attention to him. “The ‘kid’ is right here.”

“Well hello there, Hudson,” A-yi said with a forced smile. “It’s rude to sneak up on people like that. You hold tight for now, sweetie, and let us finish our little discussion here.

“Look,” Cor said, clearly exasperated. “This ain’t a committee, and we ain’t got the time to sit around jabbing our jaws to death. We’ve only got about an hour and a half left at most in this trial, and we need to get going.”

“I hate to say this, but it seems like you won’t listen to reason.” A-yi stood up straighter and squared her shoulders. “I have a cultivation technique now, and I use it. You, on the other hand, refuse to cultivate, for some inexplicable reason.”

She paused and pointed her finger at Cor’s chest. “You might be a big shot from the American army, but when we get out of this trial, you’re going to have to start listening to the cultivators.”

Hudson winced and looked at Cor. He wasn’t sure how Cor would take that.

“You know as well as I do that if my arm weren’t busted I could still take you down, cultivation or not,” Cor replied calmly. “But I will give you this: we’re all going to have some new things to adjust to after this trial. That’s the truth. But simply having a cultivation technique doesn’t automatically make you a better person, or lead you to making better decisions – as you are showing us right now.

“We went into this sigil trial with me leading this group, despite your best efforts at insubordination, and you gave me your word that you would follow my direction.

“I ain’t using one of those daggone cultivation techniques, and I got my reasons for it. But are you telling me the first thing you do, as soon as you’re a cultivator, is to go back on your word? Is that your going to start your grand, majestic path to immortality?”

Cor let the questions hang in the air for a few seconds.

“Ahem,” Hudson interjected again. “Excuse me, um, hate to interrupt, but… maybe there’s a compromise here.”

A-yi stared daggers at him, while Cor appraised him coolly. “Whatcha got there, slugger?”

“In the forest I found this giant tree, and a fruit fell from the tree… it was, well, it’s difficult to describe, but eating that fruit… made me better? Like I can see things better?”

Cor and A-yi looked confused, but Hudson just kept forging ahead.

“Anyways, I’m fairly confident that there may be something similar hidden around here. Some kind of treasure. And if we can wait for a few minutes – maybe let the injured rest up, get some more healing salves or pills, pump some lungs out etc – then I can search for those treasures.”

“I want a split,” A-yi said immediately.

“No. Finders-keepers,” Cor retorted. “Fifteen minutes, then we all pack up and go up the mountain. Together.”

A-yi looked like she was about to start arguing again, but Hudson interrupted.

“There’s no guarantee of safety if anyone stays here. And I’m the strongest in our group, right? Or do I need to prove that to you, like the other S.E.C.T. muscle heads?”

A-yi shook her head, frowning sharply.

“Ok then. Well, I’m with Cor. And I say we do as he says,” Hudson said, slapping Cor on the back.

“Fine,” A-yi said. “Where are these treasures?”

“I’m not sure there are any, but if there are…I believe they are on the bottom of the lake.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Well that’s imposs-” A-yi started to say, when Cor cut her off with his drill-instructor voice.

“I need five volunteers! You, you, you, no Doug, you just sit your butt down. What do you think you’re going to do with those arms? And you two,” he said, pointing to five relatively healthy participants. Unlike A-yi, who seemed to be questioning Cor’s authority, the five grasshoppers jumped to and immediately trotted over to Cor’s position.

“Sit in the center of the formation and cultivate, hard as you can,” Cor said, looking over at Hudson. He nodded – Cor understood exactly what Hudson wanted to do.

“Three more volunteers! You three – make stretchers for those too injured to walk. Make sure we can strap them in good and they won’t fall out.”

“The rest of you – with Hudson. You’re going hunting.”

Hudson called out, “Follow me to the top,” then hustled over to the ladder. They didn’t have much time, although it would take a few minutes, even with five people cultivating, to fully raise the water out of the lake.

Hudson addressed everyone after they were all assembled at the top of the tower.

“Here’s the plan. I suspect that there are hidden treasures buried in the mud under the lake. I have sensed glimpses of qi, but they are hard to make out through the water. At first, I thought they were part of the trial – related to the illusory stone columns – but I don’t think so now.”

The water was starting to rumble behind him, and Hudson increased the volume of his voice to compensate.

“Before the water rises to the top, we’re going to jump into the lake. We’ll spread out – everyone take a different starting spot.”

“What do the treasures look like?” a voice called from the back.

“I don’t know. There may not be any. But if there are treasures, they are likely deep in the mud. I sensed multiple impressions as well, spread out across the lake bottom but concentrated near the fortress. They might just be part of the wave formation, but we won’t know until we look.”

Before anyone else could ask more questions, Hudson turned and jumped over the edge into the lake.

The water in the lake was already about one-third of the way gone – the standing wave behind him growing larger and larger. He had to start swimming forward to prevent being pulled by the current of the water. He heard and saw splashes to his left and right as the others jumped into the water as well.

Quickly enough, Hudson’s foot struck the muddy bottom of the lake and he stood up. It was eerie, standing at the bottom of the lake and looking up at the enormous standing wave, framed by the mountain fortress behind him.

Hudson quickly began searching, walking forward through the mud. He and the rest of the grasshoppers were spread out in a rough line, dragging their feet through the mud, searching through it with their hands and, when at least one person tripped over the uneven terrain, their face.

After only a few steps of fruitless searching, Hudson began to doubt himself. He had mobilized a bunch of people with the idea of treasures hidden along the bottom of the lake. What if there wasn’t anything? A lot of people were going to be muddy and upset.

He shook the negative thoughts out of his head, and looked closer at the area around him. Most of the water was gone – captured in the formation wave, but it pooled here and there in slightly deeper spots. One of the clues, if you could call it that, was the unnatural flatness of the lake bed. He would have expected one end, or the center, to be deeper than another.

As he gazed out over the mud, he noticed a peculiarity. He could see the tracks in the mud from people walking – or crawling – their way forward. But a few paces behind one of the grasshoppers, there was a gap in his trail: a circle of smooth, undisturbed mud.

“Hey,” Hudson yelled out, waving his hand. “Yeah, you! Red hair, beard.”

The bearded man with red hair pointed at himself questioningly.

“Yes, you. Sorry I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Schuyler. Cor calls me Skillet though.”

“OK, Schuyler, can you look behind you? See that smooth spot?”

Schuyler turned around slowly and looked back at his trail. His eyes lit up when he finally noticed the same oddity that Hudson had.

“Can you go back and check that spot?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Schuyler said. The other participants were watching Schuyler avidly. He dug his hands in around the smooth area and immediately was able to grasp the end of an invisible object sticking out of the mud. It was strange to watch, like he was miming holding onto a pole sticking out of the ground.

“I think I have something… it’s stuck…” Schuyler called out. He activated his cultivation technique and pulled hard. There was a large sucking noise, and his hands shot up. Unable to balance himself, he fell over onto his back, disappearing beneath the surface of the mud.

When he didn’t immediately come back up, Hudson grew worried. He rushed over to where he’d last seen Schuyler, hoping that he was ok.

When he reached the spot, the grasshoppers closer to him had pulled Schuyler out of the mud.

“Are you ok?” Hudson asked him.

Schuyler wiped the mud out of his eyes and face and spat to the side. “I’m… fine. Great even! But that was really weird. I pulled this root out of the mud, but then when I finally got it out of the ground, I just… ate it. Like, I couldn’t control myself. I think I ate a lot of mud with it too…. yuck.”

“How do you feel? Like your body or vision or perception? Any changes?” Hudson asked excitedly. He was right! There were special treasures hidden here. He felt a slight pang of loss for potentially missing others in previous parts of the trial, but the excitement of finding ones at this stage overcame that.

“Nothing with my vision, no… but my muscles and bones feel… more solid? I feel like I could bench a thousand pounds.”

“Let’s spread out again,” Hudson called out. “Schuyler here found one of the hidden treasures we’re looking for.

“These roots have some kind of camouflage, but it’s not very sophisticated. Let’s try and disturb the surface of the mud as much as we can, then see where the smooth gaps are.”

Most of the grasshoppers hadn’t waited for Hudson to finish talking – they had already reached the same conclusion he had come to. Hudson slogged back to his spot in the line, and began crawling forward on his knees, sweeping his arms back and forth over the surface of the mud. He activated his breathing technique to help him speed up his movements, sloshing the mud back and forth violently.

Each cry of “I found one!” ringing out from the others pushed Hudson forward more intensely. Finally, with one of his arm sweeps, the end of a white tuber appeared above the surface of the mud – but over ten feet beyond his reach. The white tuber disappeared after a second, and Hudson blinked. Had he actually seen that?

Walking over to that spot, the tuber reappeared when he reached his hand forward. It took a moment, but he connected the dots – whatever camouflage these roots had, it was disrupted by the raw qi leaking from his meridians.

Hudson grabbed the root and pulled it out of the lake bed. He was prepared for the feeling of intense hunger, but it still threatened to overwhelm him. He took enormous bites of the root, mud-covered and all. It tasted earthy and intoxicating, like a lotus root steeped in peat whisky.

An invigorating tingle surged through his body. The effect was subtle, but Hudson did feel slightly stronger. More than anything, though, he felt more… solid. More present in the world, or real, if that was possible.

Shaking off the after effects, Hudson got back to work looking for more.