Year 658 of the Stable Era,

Fifteenth day of the tenth month

Thankfully, the Teal Mountain Sect had had the foresight to include a fresh pair of undergarments, and Chao Ren carefully donned them before turning to the rest of the uniform. Undershirt, pants, sock, inner robe, inner belt, outer robe, and outer belt all followed in short order. Chao Ren took a moment to luxuriate in the sensation of his first fresh clothes since those many months of monotonously wearing the same outfit.

The sect had made sure that the applicant’s clothes had been durable—an essential trait for enduring months of intense training as easily as they had—but they hadn’t put the same consideration towards comfort. There was a certain pervasive quality to its coarseness that he was only able to recognize by its absence, and he felt himself relax just a little more now that he was rid of it.

Glancing to the grimy uniform piled on the bed next to him, Chao Ren apprehensively turned his gaze to the box containing his belongings.

Six months was a long time, and he remembered building up quite a sweat running around the mountains after his then-guide now-mentor. He had taken the occasional break from his diligent cultivation to clean his uniforms at least a few times during the exam, but his former clothes hadn’t shared that privilege. He dreaded the smell they’d probably acquired sitting in that enclosed box for so many months.

But he did need his belongings.

And so, after a long moment of hesitation, he inserted his marker into the groove in the top and flung it open. The smell was surprising. Pine, without even the slightest hint of sweat or other bodily odors. He wondered if perhaps the sect had included a cleaning charm of some sort on the box, but after contemplating the symbols on its interior, another memory struck him.

Senior Instructor Lan Han’s cleansing charm! The senior cultivator had foreseen the need to preserve their belongings in a pristine condition and had taken the appropriate actions. He silently thanked the Senior Instructor as he traded the sect’s provided socks for his lucky red pair. They were barely visible beneath his robes, and while they might not quite conform to the sect’s dress code, he felt naked without them.

Besides, he could always plead ignorance as a new member if they were.

He removed the rest of his belongings. The amber-trapped cicada of his lucky necklace disappeared beneath his undershirt, while his knife and talisman found a place in the recesses of his robe. Lastly, his storage ring—a band of yellow jasper bearing the Chao Clan’s mark of a morning sun cresting a hill—went on his left hand.

By all standards it was a paltry artifact. The space within was barely a foot on its longest side, and it had always taken intense focus for him to access anything in it while he was at the Qi Gathering stage. It hadn’t even been particularly cheap for its size, as it had cost him 126 spirit stones to buy it off of his cousin.

But it had been a good investment for his future.

It allowed him to store his valuables while minimizing the risk of theft or detection. And depending on the path he chose for his cultivation, could even be used for storing vital tools or even other artifacts that he might acquire down the line. A small spatial pouch might have been a more efficient alternative for the price, but all true cultivators owned storage rings.

And he was a true cultivator now.

Besides, now that he was at the Qi Refining stage, he could finally use it without breaking a sweat.

Taking a moment to access the ring’s contents, he checked that his remaining fourteen spirit stones were still in it before depositing Instructor Yeung’s gift. His brush set followed soon after, as his new robes lacked the pocket-space to hold it. He’d have to look into finding a tailor to let them out.

He packed his dirty clothes into the box the uniform had come in, and prepared himself to leave before pressing the brass plaque. Gang Guanxia was well and truly asleep by the time the walls receded, while Li Peizhi and Tang had started another game of Go.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tang asked, turning to see the pair of boxes that Ren was carrying under his arms.

“Apologies senior, but as I have recovered, I thought that it would be best for me to find my dorm.” He made sure to not use her name, as he was unsure of her relationship with Gang Guanxia. They seemed close, but he was unsure if it was to the point of using each other’s given names. As Ren was barely acquainted with her himself, it would be quite an offense to presume the same familiarity. So, until he was certain whether Tang was her given or family name, he would avoid building any animosity by referring to her solely by honorific.

Li laughed a bit at his response, but upon seeing the expression on Chao Ren’s face, he quickly stopped.

“Oh, you’re serious,” he said, with a look of concern. “You must be worse off than they thought if you think that you’re in any condition to go anywhere.”

Chao Ren cocked his head in confusion at this remark. “What do you mean, Senior Li?”

“You should see for yourself,” Li replied. He reached into the pocket of his robe for a small palm-mirror, which he tossed to Chao Ren. Ren dropped his boxes as he scrambled to catch it, only for his body to betray him.

His arms were slow to rise, like he was trying to lift them with chopsticks. His eyes couldn’t follow the mirror’s path, and his barely-spread fingers missed it by a li. But before it could begin its descent and shatter, it halted in midair, caught by the same unseen force that had prevented his boxes from clattering to the ground.

Li sighed as he gestured with his mitted hand, Ren’s luggage depositing itself on his bed as the mirror turned its face towards him.

“You see? You’re really in no condition to go anywhere. Your body’s still exhausted from a lack of sleep, and your mind isn’t much better. Your meridians are strained from overuse, and you’ve lost an alarming amount of weight from abusing food pills. You do know that your body stops being able to digest them properly if you take too many at once, right? You’re lucky that you didn’t ingest enough of them to cause a toxic buildup in your intestines! Do you know how serious that can get? You need at least another two, three days of rest to fully recover.”

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Chao Ren stared at his own reflection, shocked at his own appearance. His shaggy hair aside, his cheeks were gaunt, and his eyes were dark and sunken. His skin was also incredibly pale. Not the prized hue of a scholar, but the near-white of the paper that one would write upon. He looked like a hungry ghost made flesh, and the very thought of the word caused his stomach to rumble.

So this was the skill of a fourth-grade alchemist, he thought, as he looked at Li in awe. He was just like one of the miracle doctors in the stories his teachers had told him.

“Amazing,” he gasped. “So this is the skill of a fourth-grade alchemist, to be able to tell my condition at a glance!”

“He heard most of it from the nurses when they brought you in,” Tang said, cutting off Ren’s praise and Li’s board.

“I still had to extrapolate the complications it could have caused,” Li protested, frowning at her. “They would have forgotten to check his intestine if I hadn’t reminded them.”

“You mean if the head nurse hadn’t told them to,” Tang corrected, taking yet more of Li’s pieces.

“I told them that first!” he exclaimed, desperately trying to counterattack. “They just didn’t want to listen to me!”

As the two of them began to bicker over the order of the events, Ren took the moment to stand by the window and take in the noon sun. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel its warmth against his skin. It felt like being enveloped in a warm blanket, and his complexion could certainly use it.

It also provided an excellent view of the sect.

In the distance, he could see the twin peaks of surrounding mountains, one covered in tan-roofed buildings, the other in massive cracks and wilderness. It almost looked like a dropped teapot, the way that the shards of broken gray rock and green woodland stuck out against each other. He could make out several flying ships flitting between them in the distance, their bright sails more colorful than any bird's.

Turning his gaze down to the mountain beneath him, he could make out several large clearings and a few clusters of buildings. Some, he assumed, were the sect’s gardens, if the clumps of brightly colored trees were any indication. Others seemed to be for either training or recreation, though he couldn’t quite make out enough of the people milling about them to tell which. He wondered which, if any, of the buildings were his new home. Or if it was even on this mountain at all.

Following the faint threads of paths and stairs up the mountain, he spotted the distinct shape of the Fifth Storage Pagoda towering over the treeline next to the assembly hall. The hall was hard to spot for a structure of its size, as its green roof blended into the surrounding vegetation surprisingly well. As Chao Ren tried to spot where the exam had been held, his stomach rumbled, and he wondered when lunch would be. Or if it would even be food, and not just more pills.

“No, it’s real food,” Tang replied, and Chao Ren flinched, before whirling around to face her. Had she read his mind? He knew that mind cultivators could perform such a feat, but given her physique, he had assumed that she was a body cultivator.

That had been careless.

Too careless.

He should have known better than to assume a cultivator’s specialty based on appearance. If she’d been able to hear his thoughts this entire time, even now, then than meant… Tang interrupted his thoughts before he could spiral further.

“No, I can’t read your mind,” she said, “but I can read your expression. And hear what you’re saying.”

“You know, talking to yourself is another side effect of closed-door cultivation,” Li added. “You get so used to the solitude that you start to subconsciously verbalize your thoughts to have something to hear. To keep yourself from going insane. You should be careful about that. Could be bad if you accidentally said something more embarrassing than that aloud.”

He placed another piece on the board as he spoke, only for Tang to counter by taking more of his pieces. He grumbled, sifting through his bowl of go stones in frustration. “Lunch should have been here by now. I bet Old Chow’s making them late by begging for extra desert again.”

“I just hope it’s something with some real meat in it,” Tang said, “I need something I can really sink my teeth into.”

What followed was a long conversation between the Li and Tang about what they thought the day’s lunch would be. Chao Ren sat, listening, as they went through a seemingly endless lists of foods, ranging from simple dishes like fried rice to more exotic fare like stuffed duck and thrice-cooked spirit boar. Occasionally, Ren would dare to ask a question about a particularly unique dish, but for the most part he was content to listen and learn. Especially as the conversation turned to other, more interesting, topics.

For one thing, he learned that all of his companions had been sharing the room for quite a while.

Li Peizhi had been injured in a pill explosion eight months ago, when his cauldron ruptured during an attempt to refine a Threefold Marrow Refining Pill. He’d only been able to fully protect his face—supposedly because he couldn’t live without his handsome looks—though even that hadn’t been perfect. Some strange quirk of the reaction that caused the accident had permanently burned his eyebrows off, and he’d been trying to regrow them for months to no avail.

Gang Guanxia and Tang—Huanlu Tang it turned out—had arrived only five months ago. The two were part of a beast hunting or subjugation group of some sort, and had almost died when their squad encountered a spirit beast far above their level.

The average spirit beast was no threat to a cultivator of a similar stage. Their improvised cultivation methods were often rough, lacking the knowledge to truly overcome the obstacles inherent to self-developed techniques. However, as they got older, they became immeasurably more dangerous. Nature was a gu jar of immeasurable size. A crucible that refined the few that survived its trials into their most lethal and cunning forms.

They lurked in the wilderness between civilizations and around the Immortal Scars, growing powerful off the abundance of natural qi treasures. Some were content to simply exist as they were, forming their own domains that they rarely ventured beyond. Others would become more curious as their awareness grew, and would seek to join sects and kingdoms, often shedding their animal forms in the process.

But for some, the bounty of nature could never be enough. They would turn their hungry eyes towards civilization and become demonic beasts: wild creatures that sought only to devour all that crossed their paths. Building their cultivation on pillars of blood and slaughter.

Because of the threat of such catastrophe, it was the responsibility of the sects to patrol the wilderness. To put a halt to such ambitions before they could turn the fringe villages into bloody fuel for their growth. Before their appetites grew to the point that even cities could not sate them.

Gang and Huanlu’s team had arrived to answer the reports of three missing children. What they had found was a missing village; its fields overflowing with grain and its houses with blood. They’d been ambushed in the dead of night as they made camp, by a Frost Ferret approaching the peak of the Core Formation stage.

The pair of cultivators on watch were the first to perish, their screams frozen in their throats by arctic fangs. If not for their failsafe tokens alerting their allies of their deaths, they all would have shared the same grisly end. Three of their fellow cultivators had met their end as they mounted a counterattack. One pincushioned by icicles, another shattered like a pane of glass, and the third simply eviscerated by brutal physical strength.

Guanxia had detonated his arm as he grappled with the beast, filling the stone with so much of his qi that the resulting explosion felled every tree in the clearing. As the beast reeled, the remaining squad members had unleased their strongest techniques, putting everything on the line to take advantage of Guanxia’s act. And as the beast responded in kind, readying to reveal a hidden technique to turn the tide, a bell that Chao Ren hadn’t noticed rang above the door.