David

It was an overcast autumn day in Tianbei. The leaves had changed colors entirely during the period of the polite, but enforced, house arrest that had resulted from the assassination attempt on Feiyan. If David had to guess, it was sometime in October, but he hadn't seen a calendar in a long time.

Tianbei was a different city in the autumn compared to late summer. The wind was stronger and a promise of chill whistled through the mountain peaks. In the far distance, the citizens of the city who weren't cultivators had begun the habit of wearing long coats when they left their homes and businesses. The disciples of the Ascending Sky looked slightly out of place, in their garments more suited to comfort, and late spring, year round.

David expected Small Wei's bare legs and billowy sleeves to look even more out of place in the coming winter. And she already looked ridiculous, hanging off the crook of Big Wei's neck like a bored parrot. When they laughed together, they shook like leaves in a rainstorm.

Against Tianbei Mountain, however, she looked perfectly at home. Like the cultivators of the Ascending Sky, the mountain remained unchanging. Earth Peak was still a vibrant green, Sky Peak was still the color of volcanic glass. Sword Peak remained grey.

"I meant to work on another verse of the Scripture today, but that can wait," said Big Wei. "We always have time to show our juniors around, and we're going to show you one of the sect's greatest treasures, a wonder of the world in its own right."

David frowned. "If it's too much trouble-"

Small Wei cut him off. "It isn't. When he says work on another verse, he means he wishes to lay about drinking tea and reading. Tell me, Daoist Ji, what do you know of our sect's treasures?"

David didn't know much, so he shrugged. "Would the Skybound Scripture be considered one of them?"

Small Wei shook her head. "Something that foundational to the sect couldn't rightly be considered a treasure, though from the outside looking in, someone might believe that. Treasures are more well hidden things, protected things even, that have garnered a reputation that have made them less so. They take many forms and shapes, as you could expect. Our most famous is the Skyforge itself."

David understood.

"Have you heard Fairy Guan's lecture yet?"

David nodded. "She was the first of the Peak Masters to have class with us."

"Class?" Big Wei queried. He smiled, revealing a row of well-kept teeth. "I suppose you'd see some similarities between our lectures and the schools all across the world."

"You must have heard her speak at the Sword Platform - that is another treasure."

"What does it do?" David asked, thinking of the way plinths had risen from it to the command of Fairy Guan's qi.

"If you were to challenge someone to a duel and have it on the Platform, it would null your karmic debt from murdering them in cold blood, if they accept," Small Wei said, rather seriously. "We haven't had such a challenge in my lifetime, or the lifetime of any of the Peak Masters, but everyone knows it's there for the greatest of disputes."

David's thoughts were of Sect Master Su and sabers.

David and the Weis had continued along the path back towards their lodgings for a while now. They came to the crossroads on the mountain that divided those of the elders and disciples.

"We're going further up," said Small Wei. "The third treasure is not quite as famous as the Skyforge and not quite as secretive as the Sword Platform and is here - on Earth Peak. They're the Yang Spirit Springs.”

David suddenly remembered that Feiyan had actually mentioned these to him once.

As they ascended further, the air grew inexplicably warmer and warmer. Little streams and ponds were shrouded in distorted heat and wrapped with rusted red silt at their banks. The trees grew more green and encroached more aggressively onto the path, sending vines with many strange fruits onto it. David stared at a particularly purple one on a green and red stem. It was shaped like a plum and twice as large. It looked sweet and ripe.

He wanted it.

Big Wei shook his head. "Never eat anything here that you don't recognize. Could be someone's life work, and that someone could be Daoist Liang."

David turned away from the fruit reluctantly, then realized it was far more emotion than he should have felt about something so mundane. Whatever the plant was, it was probably bad news.

The path narrowed even more as they approached the peak. Earth Peak, unlike its two sisters, did not reach past the clouds but stopped just short of them. The vegetation had given way to those ponds and streams lined with clay and stone. Some of them were steaming and smoking. The air smelled of sulphur and lime.

"So tell me, what do you know of cores?" asked Small Wei.

"Cores occupy the space between the mental and the physical," said David, reciting the answer he'd arrived at with Fairy Guan. "It exists within the bounds of our bodies and is formed off the foundations which are built mentally."

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Small Wei clapped. "You've told me exactly what a core was while also telling me you know nothing about them!"

She wrinkled her nose. "Your core is qi. Pure and simple. It is a reserve of qi within your body which you've made your own that you can employ to produce the miracles we are known for as cultivators. It is a site of alchemy, of conversion. What you have before you have a core is a stagnant pool. What you wish to have is a lake dammed on many sides, like a heart."

David still didn't truly understand - the Song was ephemeral, the Song was bright, like light, like heat. Alice had been able to attempt the creation of her core instinctively - why couldn't he? He thought of Jiang Tiankong, a man he had fought to the death. He had formed a core, it had clashed against the man's Song.

The Song present in the air, present in the world, grew louder and louder.

"I see," said Big Wei softly. "You are a natural when it comes to cultivation. With or without a foundation, you would perhaps come to the same conclusions. You are stuck on this step because you don't quite perceive qi the same way the rest of us do."

With a sudden movement, he slid Small Wei off of himself and sat down on the path with his legs crossed. His Song grew in rhythmic intensity to blot out some of the natural noise and drew a cupped hand into the air, then closed it into a fist. He brought his fist down, level to his chest. His wrist quivered as if he were supporting a great weight.

"What do you see?"

David didn't see anything. He heard, however, a cacophony of sounds from within the fist - it was something powerful, something hungry, a cadence of conquest. It was nothing like the weakness shown by Jiang Tiankong.

The energy, and its echoes, dispersed. The first opened and Big Wei stood. Small Wei hopped back onto his shoulder as if nothing had happened.

"I'm not sure," said David.

"But you did perceive a change. That much was clear from the way you reacted," said Small Wei. "Let's keep walking."

David nodded.

"That was the first form of the Star-Seeking Palm of our Scripture," said Big Wei. "Not something I practice personally - it is a specialty shared both by the Peak Master and by his named disciples."

"Can you show it to me again?" David asked.

This time, Small Wei was the one to demonstrate it, from where she sat, as they continued to walk up the path. Her small hands found the same relative position above her head as Big Wei had and she closed her eyes as she brought it down into a fist, slightly quicker than her companion had. It was significantly louder, but far less compact compared to Big Wei's. She released it sooner than he had.

David heard an audible pop.

"I'm less well practiced with it than-" Small Wei stopped speaking, because she'd noticed that David was staring quite intently at nothing.

In seeing the comparison, David had realized something important - the Song, qi, it left something of a mark around it, implying that it had some kind of substance to it that he could perceive further than just in musical terms.

He blinked.

The world came alive again, in a different way.

Noise, visual noise - it was everywhere. The Song was not just quantifiable by intensity but also by volume.

It was something everyone agreed on - it was about to explode. It was acknowledged, in the halls of the Sects across the world, across the universe. Just a moment ago it was repeated by the Daoists before him.

Scriptures spoke of it. Disciples drew up lists of it and diagrammed their bodies to it.

Noise, sound, but also Song.

It came and went. It carried on, it dispersed and taught.

David focused inward and felt out places where the Song interacted with the outside world - the apertures noted by Feiyan and Qitai when they'd explained it to him and Alice.

"We're almost there," said Small Wei, interrupting him. "I understand that you've come to a breakthrough of some sort, but you mustn't do this so immediately. Think."

But the word was not think, it was actually stop, from the sound of her Song. David pushed the notion away from himself instinctively, but it had the desired effect - he followed the two Weis up the path to the summit.

The Summit of Earth Peak was not truly such - it was the lip of a large crater. The ground beneath his feet was sand - pink with mineral deposits and coarse.

Behind David was the city of Tianbei, with its population of a hundred thousand beholden to the rule of law and the law beholden to the whim of less than a thousand cultivators.

These cultivators held the keys to the treasures of Tianbei - the Skyforge, the Sword Platform, and the Yang Spirit Springs.

Within the crater of Earth Peak were eight stones arrayed in a circle around it. It looked to be made by the hands of men. They surrounded an oblong pool no wider than David’s wingspan that gushed and spun and Sang. It carried in it countless tunes and rhymes and it was not water though it behaved like water, it-

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Big Wei was smiling, wide and open.

“What is it?”

“Something our current Peak Masters went to war over,” said Small Wei softly.

“War?”

“None of the current disciples are old enough to remember it,” she said. “But the spring is something that the Ascending Sky has always promised the use of to its disciples.”

“It’s unguarded,” said David, carefully.

Small Wei nodded. “It seems that way, doesn’t it? But I would challenge you to step between the stones. It will show us if you’d truly made a promise during the Lantern Lighting.”

With those words, David saw it - the not-water evaporated - no, sublimated into a Song that spread into those stones and each of them taught the Song a little lesson, changed it a bit. It circled around from stone to stone, learning these lessons over and over again. It was a constant process, forever happening. Even as the strength of it dissipated it was replaced with new notes of the same Song.

“Do you see it?” she asked.

David nodded.

“I believe you,” she said. “Your senses are remarkable, junior.” She suddenly sounded a touch wistful. “A generational talent for sure.”

“Do you know why an octagon was chosen to be the shape to defend it?” asked Big Wei.

David nodded. “The Fairy said it was the strongest of shapes.”

“Correct, and not,” he said. “Cores are often formed from foundations which have been divided into eight pillars - remember that,” he amended.

This too, was a lesson.

“Step into the spring, junior,” said Small Wei. “We will attempt to guide you.”