Another piece of perfectly fine fabric made its way into his bag. Really, was a small grease fleck that hard to wash off? Serkel stopped the inner diatribe right there, before it really began. All in all, he should have gotten used to finding perfectly serviceable objects in the trash mountain that was Beggar's Town long ago. He was actively searching for them after all, but it still managed to upset him anew every time.

Serkel spotted something shiny in a heap of particularly disgusting garbage. He used his trusty companion, a stick with a hook (which he lovingly dubbed “hooky stick”) to pull it out. It was the head of a spoon, with half of its grip seemingly melted off.

Probably a fire-based cultivator angry at the fact that his soup hadn't been prepared to his liking. It was still usable. Instead of putting it in the bag, he put it into a small pouch that Jean had sewn into his pants.

The pouch was a precaution. If someone tried to rob him, the valuables would be in the pouch, and he could hand over his bag instead.

The spoon jingled as it hit against a coin in the pouch. Should have thought of that. Serkel pulled the fabric he'd previously thrown in the bag out, and trying to not let others see him, used it to pack the two objects so that they wouldn't come into direct contact with each other. Wrapping them up completely also meant he could add another jingly item in the pouch without bothering all over again. It was getting kind of full, though.

He took out another piece of fabric, this one completely unblemished but for a hideous stitching design covering its surface, and used it to bind his slightly-too-long hair into a very short ponytail. Serkel pondered if he should just leave it at that for the day. He didn't pick through trash because he needed the money, but because he enjoyed the prospect of hidden treasure. He simply wasn't strong enough to go out and explore the ruins of some fallen civilization. Nor was his body old enough yet. Who'd heard of an eight-year-old treasure hunter?

Serkel startled as the choice was abruptly taken from him by the sirens starting to sound. The shrill sound lasted for about five minutes, the loudness of it enough to coax even the most deaf beggars out of their ragpicking.

Serkel ran over trash mounds and the cracked ground that served as a border for the mountain. He turned back just in time for the flying carrier ships that looked too much like demented grey whales for it to be a coincidence, to open up their bellies and spew forth an absolute deluge of garbage. The things were modified to hold much more than was physically possible.

It wouldn't be wrong to claim that the Empire produced a biblical proportion of waste. The scene itself, thousands of grey whales flying in the sky and opening their stomachs to spill their innards onto the ground, was something that could have come straight out of the bible. Though the moral of the possible story eluded him.

Not that Serkel was very religious. It had just been an interest of his a long time ago, and so he was more well-read in that area than most others. That not being particularly hard since most people were atheists, or rather, agnostics.

Serkel disrupted that thought process and started walking away faster. There were several small settlements surrounding the trash mountain. Their inhabitants only living here to sift through the waste of the kingdom. And since it had just been dropped, well, that's when they would all come crawling out like ants out of an anthill.

This of course wasn't in any sense a dream job, and as one could probably imagine the people who didn't have any other choice to survive but to become an ultra-rag picker weren't very happy with their lot. They were also quite desperate.

As if on cue, Serkel heard the first scream. He didn't turn around and continued walking. He'd turned around once. The sight of a man getting stabbed to death wasn't something that he would like to see again if he could avoid it.

Desperate people, well, they occasionally got violent.

Serkel had the potential to cultivate, enough of it to even be termed above average, he wasn't willing to risk his life for the sake of others before he even got the chance to begin his ascension. The time before he could safely start was quite close, and to be felled so close to the finishing line would just be a tragedy.

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Well, the metaphor wasn't really fitting. The finishing line implied that something was done, but things were only starting. A more fitting one would be that Serkel had just managed to close his hand around a doorknob and was about to press forwards. The rest of the world outside his room was still open for exploration.

Speaking of rooms... He'd arrived at his house, which coincidentally had rooms inside of it. Even though calling it a house was a bit of a misnomer. It was definitely leaning more into the shack category. Emphasis on leaning. He opened the door and what greeted him was a flying drop-kick impacting directly into his face. Before he could fly back any great distance, he was grabbed by the lapel of his coat and spun around so the momentum of his flying body changed directions.

Serkel hit the mattress leaning on the wall adjacent to the entrance, blood dripping from his nose. He'd dropped his guard. Something that you really did not want to do when even entering a kilometre radius of Jean.

“Fuck yo-” A tooth falling out interrupted his cursing slightly. “-u.” They were just milk teeth, but still.

Jean had, after his actions at the door, taken up position by the window and was peering through the shades. Once Jean noticed Serkel in a condition capable of talking again, he spun around quickly, basically teleported over to him, and hoisted him into the air. Sweaty strands of black fair framed his gaunt face.

“Were you followed?” Then, seemingly noticing the blood flowing from Serkel’s face, he let him drop, only to start fretting. “What happened? You're bleeding! Are you alright?” Jean babbled at a rapid pace as he tried to press his hand to Serkel’s forehead, only for every attempt to be slapped aside.

Jean tried to get through Serkel's defence a few times before he succeeded and promptly received a kick between the legs. Serkel had managed to propel himself upward with his arms, amplifying the force behind the kick. “You fukin wanker,” Serkel said as Jean crumbled to the ground clutching Jean Jr.

“Sorry.” Serkel sighed at the whimpering twenty-five-year old. He grabbed onto Jean’s arms and dragged him to the bedroom, a room cordoned off from the rest of the living room by some rice paper. He laid Jean down and started stroking his hair as his brother stopped whimpering and entered full-blown crying mode.

It was one of the bad days, then. You never quite knew with Jean. Sometimes he acted normal, and other times he became slightly unhinged. Rarer still, he became completely unpredictable. Serkel laid him down and hummed him to sleep, covered him with a blanket, and started cleaning up the room.

He sighed. Some items just weren't where they were supposed to be, and his guardian wouldn't be able to find them when he fully recovered from his bout of mania. So he started putting things back where they belonged. They didn't have much so the task was easy. A drawer with all their clothes had to be picked off from the ground and set aright. The chest filled with the items he'd pilfered from the trash mountain had, as always, remained untouched. Some cooking utensils had to be sorted anew and some food thrown out due to prolonged contact with the ground.

He liked the shack, only two rooms. The living room with the aforementioned drawer, several knick knacks, weapons, and scrolls lying around. And the kitchen, a hole dug into the ground to act as a fire pit and a cooling box with some perishable ingredients. The pelts hanging there had been left completely untouched. Might have been Jean's subconscious trying to avoid messing the things that made them money.

When Serkel was done, he went outside, sat down and started meditating. He'd been practising the discipline for quite a while, so it was easy to slip into a state of not-thinking. He embraced it, let it wash over him for what felt like an eternity. But by the shadow of the sun clock he'd built, it had actually been closer to fifteen minutes.

He had come perilously close this time. He had breathed in the smell of the energy so deeply he was able to taste it. It tasted purple.

It wasn't safe to start cultivating yet. His body needed to be strengthened, the symbol engraved into his mind, branded onto his brain. He wondered how others did it, before chuckling. He knew how they did it, but Serkel wasn't interested in branding his body as well as his mind, no matter how close of an association it would bring.

“You're thinking again,” Jean muttered from where he leaned on the door frame, previous episode probably completely forgotten. “You can do that while training,” the older man continued.

“I think the quality of thought might be affected by the body working at the same time,” Serkel said while rolling his eyes, making Jean snort.

“Think of it this way. Training is a numb action, which means thinking is possible during it. Therefore it’s more time-cost-efficient to do the two together.”

Serkel sighed. It made sense… as long as you looked at training the purely physical body, not the muscle memory or technique of whatever you were doing. That training was, of course, inferior to one which you gave your full concentration.

Another issue that Jean probably had in mind was that people needed to be able to focus on their symbol while doing any sort of activity. He would train while trying to meditate. It would settle Jean and give him a bit of an earlier start on the eventual focus & moving thing everyone needed to learn anyway. That didn't mean it would be fun, though.

Standing up he nodded at Jean, signalling he would do as said.

Serkel started running while trying to clear his thoughts and ran head first into a wall. He lay there for a bit, feeling the smooth-stomped cold earth pressing against his cheek. Or more like his cheek pressing against the smooth-stomped cold earth.

Since when had that wall been there?

A snort from Jean made him slowly stand up, glaring at the shoddily-constructed wooden wall he'd ran into.

Ah. The neighbours.