Year 658 of the Stable Era,
Fourteenth day of the fourth month
“You’re all done now,” Senior Instructor Lan Han announced, “now leave so that the next group can come in. Behind him the disciples began restock the stalls, as the uniform began to stuff itself back into the box by his feet.
Yeung Lin gave him another courtesy bow, which the applicants hurriedly copied, and without much further ado began leading them to the assembly hall. As they left the pagoda Chao Ren saw that there were at least another three groups of applicants waiting by the door, their respective guides doing their best to herd their young charges.
He also realized that the disciples thronging around the assembly hall had only grown in numbers, though their activity was much clearer now. The initial group seemed to have been constructing a series of wooden booths and stalls, which upon their completion, were now being surrounded by a raucous crowd. As his group approached, the crowd went silent, only to burst into even more furious motion seconds later.
Teams of calligraphers began furiously sketching on wooden slats, and as he watched, a slat with Min Huan’s face, along with the number on the back of his test uniform was passed to the adjacent stall, where it was placed at the top of a large board. The throng immediately began screaming at the booth, their intensity growing with each new name added.
“10 taels that he doesn’t make it!”
“11 taels that he does!”
“He looks like a body cultivator, so he’ll be fine. I heard the test favors them this year. 2 spirit stones on him passing.”
“Says who? Your brother? Last year you told me he said the test would be about talismans, and I lost 15 spirit stones betting on that Zhao kid! 3 spirit stones against the big guy, and 10 stones says the test isn’t going to be favor body cultivators!!”
“You’re on, I’ll match you.”
The disciple at the booth calmly nodded as she took the odd wagers, exchanging each of their bets with a wooden chit as the disciple next to her jotted down the amounts. A third disciple in a white headband quickly collected the money and deposited it in the large chests behind them. The entire process was incredibly efficient, and within moments they were already taking new bets. As more names soon joined Min Huan’s on the board, the shouted bets grew more specific.
“100 taels on the Bailong kid!”
“That’s a poor bet, the odds are ten thousand to one that he fails.”
“I know, that’s why I’m also putting 1 tael on him failing!”
“…”
“5 spirit stones on applicant 6, and 3 taels of spirit jade against applicant 17!”
“8 spirit stones that 15 makes it, and 3 that 14 fails!”
“Two marrow refining pills against 14!!”
“12 vouchers for a plate of shrimp dumplings at the Crab’s Den on number 7!”
“My spiritual ginseng on applicant 9.”
The assortment of items being wagered astounded Chao Ren, as it seemed that the brokers were willing to accept anything as payment. Well, almost everything.
“One lesson with a senior disciple that number 3 passes!”
“Fuck off Ying Chao! You know the rules!” A knuckle rapped one of the gambling booth’s signs, which read ‘no loitering: leave once your bet is taken’. When Ying Chao cocked his head in bemusement, the disciple looked behind him and rapped the appropriate sign instead. ‘Bets taken only in money and goods’.
“That wasn’t there last time I was here.”
“We’ve had it for a decade and a half, ever since you tried to pass rambling about the virtues of ‘great mountains’ for two sticks as a ‘lesson’.”
“Well, I thought it was enlightening.”
“Cash or get out!”
“Fine, fine… 2 taels on number 3.”
“Next!”
Ying Chao, satisfied with his bet, began making his way over to the opposing food stalls as the betting continued.
“20 spirit stones that number 14 fails!”
“Do you take artifacts? Ok, three jade slips on number 5, and 2 against number 14, and also-”
“-3 stones against number 14! And 15 stones that-”
“-that 14 fails, and another 5 that he’s the first to-“
“-and uh, let’s put 3 more taels against number 14 for an even 20 spread-“
“5 against number 14-”
“-applicant 14-”
“Number 14”
“-14-”
“-14!”
“-14!!”
Chao Ren shut the sounds of the betting out of his ears. He just couldn’t take hearing his own number anymore. The enhanced senses that he had just been beginning to refine had let him hear almost every utterance of it, a veritable death chant praying for his failure.
He was glad that the listening technique he was practicing was the sort that he could control. He’d heard horror stories of aspiring cultivators driven mad by their newfound sensitivities, unable to stop the deluge from overflowing their minds. Still, it continued to echo inside of him.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
‘14’
‘fourteen’
‘four-teen’
‘four’
‘four’
‘four’
Death.
Why did it have to be that number? There were so many others it could have been! Eleven, eight, eighteen... Three even! But of course it had to be an accursed number like fourteen. Just like the day, just like the month. Four, four, four, four, four. If only he had chosen the stall to the right! Then he could be number twelve. That was an excellent number! The zodiac number! Ancestors, why did he have to leave his socks behind? But no, he was stuck here with these stupid sandals, with no socks, on this unlucky day, of this unlucky month, with this unlucky number, everyone hoping that he failed, just waiting for him to-
“-stop.”
“Ah?”
“I said ‘can you stop that’, we’re here.”
“Oh, sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,” Chao Ren apologized. Without realizing his feet had taken over, and they hadn’t stopped until they’d walked him all the way to the main hall. And the applicant in front of him. Who was also Bailong Shen.
When it rained, it poured.
“My sincerest apologies, senior,” he stammered out, “this unwort-”
“It’s fine.”
“Huh?”
“I said it’s fine. Is your hearing alright?”
“Oh,” Chao Ren flushed with embarrassment. He was still partially suppressing his senses, wasn’t he. Slowly, he loosened his mental grip, opening the dam an inch at a time. The murmur of the hall slowly filled his head, a calm creek rather than the raging flood that had overwhelmed him.
“Nervous?”
“Yes senior, I apologize for raising my voice like that.”
“Senior?” Shen chuckled, “Senior? I doubt that the two of us are separated by more than a year or two! And we’re both applicants right now, so neither of us is superior to the other.”
“Of course, Senior Shen.”
“Just Shen will do.”
“With respect, I could hardly show you so little deference. Would Bailong Shen suffice?”
“I suppose,” he sighed. “Look, it’s fine to be nervous. Plenty of the others are.”
“You’re not.”
He laughed again. “I doubt there’s anyone else like me here.”
“What about Lee Han?”
“Let us not talk about Lee Han.” Shen said firmly. “Look, if you’re nervous, let me teach you a technique that has helped me out in the past.”
“Are you sure? I doubt that I would be able to learn a technique of your level.”
“It’s nothing so complicated. If you’re feeling nervous, simply take a moment to focus on your qi circulation. An imbalance can cause your emotions to run out of control, especially during the Qi Gathering stage, so it helps to keep yourself centered.”
Chao Ren nodded at the wisdom of the advice. Closing his eyes, he felt inwards with his limited qi sense. He breathed deep, feeling the sensation of qi, the lifeforce of the world flow into him.
Here, so close to one of the peaks of the Teal Mountain Sect, it was much richer than it had been in the lowlands, dense to the point that he could almost feel it tickle his tongue as he drew it in. It had an indescribable flavor to it; a subtle mix of loamy grasses, clear rivers, and rough stone. Not quite a taste or a touch or a smell, but more a sensation of increased closeness the essence of the mountain. To the fundamental elements of the world.
He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed it before, but he pushed those thoughts of distraction aside as he focused on the feeling of the breath, on feeling the qi of the world flow through his lungs and into his dantian, the spiritual organ that was the focus of his cultivation.
There, he felt the beginnings of disarray. Where there was supposed to be a gentle swirl of energy, there was an erratic vortex. Qi was still flowing to the rest of his body, but it was erratic, more sloshing out when it overflowed the limits of his dantian.
How had gotten so bad? He felt like he had only lost focus for a moment or two, but those small mistakes had already compounded upon themselves without his notice.
Letting out the breath, Ren took another one, this time focusing on how he drew it into himself. Again, he drew the qi into his dantian, but now he guided it further, reforming the calm current that it should follow. He drew the flow out through his meridians, creating a path for the rest of the turbulent qi to follow. Through his chest, out towards his arms and legs, all the way down towards the tips of his fingers and toes.
The pressure in his core began to lessen, the qi within now spread throughout his body instead of being bottled up. As he focused on the breath, he drew it back towards his core, back into the calm, circular current. What he could hold, he let circulate. What he couldn’t, he let go, breathing it out as easily he had breathed it in.
After all, there was no shortage here. If anything, his inability to recognize his newfound embarrassment of riches had lead his body to its current state.
Drawing in another breath, he focused on reasserting the control over his body. Qi flowed through him like blood; its path different in interval and passageway, but similar in nature and purpose. With each new breath he took, the flow grew more and more rhythmic, the cycle reasserting itself.
Chao Ren’s constitution made it easy, as he possessed a Five Elements spirit root. Rather than aligning itself with a single element or two, his body was predisposed towards balance, much like the primal elements that sprang forth from the primordial Yin and Yang when the world was new.
Wood burned to fuel fire, which in turn burned down to nourish earth. From earth, metal was drawn and shaped, guiding water to grow wood and beginning the cycle anew. Round and round the elements spun, their minute minuet guiding the qi through his body.
With each rotation, a fraction of the breath taken into his dantian was kept. Not in great greedy gulps but in small subtle sips. Filtered through the cycle of the five elements, it was no longer the indomitable qi of nature, but rather a soft qi of his own nature. Every breath, expanding his dantian and meridians. It felt less than a hairs breath each time, but any step forwards was a step towards the next stage of his cultivation.
After he had grown accustomed to the sensation, Chao Ren opened his eyes, trusting that the subconscious control he had cultivated from the first steps of his Twin Minds technique would be able to carry on in his stead now that the crisis was over.
The hall had filled while he’d been preoccupied with pursuing inner peace, with the other groups filling the hall in neat rectangles. It had felt like he had only closed his eyes for a minute or two, but it had to have been at least dozens assuming they had all taken the same amount of time his had at the storage pagoda.
Time sure passed faster while you were cultivating which, he realized with a start, was what he’d been doing. He’d gotten so carried away with fixing his qi circulation that he’d lost track of where he was entirely.
“Did I miss-”
“No, just a lot of standing around while we waited for the rest of the groups to file in,” Bailong Shen whispered back, cutting him off again. “Are you feeling better?”
Chao Ren felt his eyebrow attempt to twitch, but he caught it before its minor sedition betrayed his emotions too much. As calm as he seemed now, it wouldn’t do to poke a resting dragon. Especially one that was taking such a keen interest in him.
“Yes, Bailong Shen,” he replied, keeping his voice calm.
“I think our guide just wanted to get here early so he could get us out of his way,” Shen continued, nodding his head towards one of the mezzanines at the sides of the atrium. Indeed, their guide Yeung Lin was there, sitting among a group of identically robed peers.
A large platter of steamed bao buns was placed between them, though Ren noticed that Yeung Lin had secured a small pile of them for himself on a personal plate. As he watched, one of the adjacent guides attempted to swipe one from the plate for herself, only for Yeung Lin to smack her hand aside before returning to the conversation. Whatever it was about seemed to be of great interest to the participants, as it was accompanied by a lot of enthusiastic hand motions.
Before he could figure out a way to subtly ask Bailong Shen if he could hear what they were talking about, a loud THUMP rang out through the hall. Abruptly, the murmur of the hall went silent, as all eyes turned towards the now filled podium at its front.
There, an elder of the sect stood, his pale robes gently flowing to rest against his hammer arm. He spoke, with a voice that carried across the hall, clear and strong despite being spoken with no great volume.
“Welcome applicants, to the Teal Mountain Sect!”