Al­though Ki'el had wor­ried some about ask­ing Broth­er Du for ad­vice on find­ing an Al­chemist, the man had not let her down. Du had led them to a pri­vate place, where she talked about the ton­ics, in­gre­di­ents, qual­i­ty lev­els, and her bud­get, and the man had stu­dious­ly con­sid­ered them all, be­fore rec­om­mend­ing two al­chemists, one for each of the ton­ics, and one herbal­ist al­ready fa­mil­iar with prepar­ing the Thou­sand Mile Wa­ter­fall Flower for use.

"I imag­ine, young Ki'el, you are pre­pared to spend what­ev­er you must to see these pre­pared prop­er­ly," Du con­tin­ued. "In truth, there are bet­ter al­chemists--but they charge more for their ser­vices than the im­prove­ment war­rants. None of these three will be sat­is­fied pro­vid­ing some­thing of less than Un­com­mon qual­i­ty, and Sis­ter Mai, the herbal­ist, is more se­ri­ous than most when it comes to in­sight-grant­i­ng herbs, ow­ing to her own bad ex­pe­ri­ences in the past. Es­pe­cial­ly for a ju­nior, I ex­pect she will pro­vide bet­ter qual­i­ty than what is paid for."

A day lat­er, Ki'el re­ceived no­tice that all the al­chem­i­cal in­gre­di­ents were ac­count­ed for, and with the as­sis­tance of Broth­er Du, gath­ered the al­chemists and herbal­ist, along with her friends, at the Hall of Earth­en Recita­tion. Du was wait­ing with them out­side by the time those from the Less­er House ar­rived--all four of them wear­ing the robes of In­ner Sect dis­ci­ples, and Ki'el not­ed with some alarm that at one of the al­chemists seemed dis­pleased.

"Young Sis­ter Ki'el," Du in­tro­duced as she ap­proached, ges­tur­ing with one hand. "Broth­er Prang, Broth­er Hong, and Sis­ter Jian."

"It's been a very long time since I had to work in the Earth­en Hall," Prang said, his voice as bit­ter as the look on his face, as he stared at the large build­ing. "If this wasn't a re­quest from Broth­er Du..."

"It does you good to get out," the herbal­ist, Sis­ter Jian, said, with a mock­ing smack to Broth­er Prang's shoul­der, though the man jerked like he had to hold back a vi­o­lent re­ac­tion. "The Heav­en­ly Hall may be bet­ter, but the air there is so stuffy. Too many of the peo­ple who work there hard­ly ever leave, ex­cept to eat and sleep."

The oth­er al­chemist, in con­trast, seemed with­drawn--though Broth­er Hong was ac­tu­al­ly quite large, Ki'el im­me­di­ate­ly got the im­pres­sion he wouldn't speak much. But... she im­me­di­ate­ly did her best to calm them, giv­ing them all a salute. "I am hon­ored for your help. I apol­o­gize if the Hall of Earth­en Recita­tion seems be­neath you, but..."

"It's fine, it's fine," Sis­ter Jian said, her voice slight­ly rough de­spite the cheer in her tone and words. She was al­ready turn­ing to­wards the hall, and ges­tur­ing for them to fol­low. "But the longer we stand here, the less time you'll have to get ac­tu­al work out of us. Come along, boys and girls!"

"The paid time has al­ready start­ed?" Mian's voice sound­ed both du­bi­ous and alarmed.

"You'd bet­ter be­lieve it," said Broth­er Prang, with a sneer, but he was also walk­ing into the Hall. "Our time is pre­cious, and if you waste it with idle ban­ter--then it's bet­ter you waste your mon­ey than ours."

Broth­er Hong, for his part, kept pace with Broth­er Du silent­ly, though Ki'el thought he saw the man's eyes flick­ing around, notic­ing the de­tails as they went.

Though Ki'el had done noth­ing to arrange it, each of the three seemed to know ex­act­ly which of the many work­ing rooms of the Hall they need­ed to pick in or­der to find the in­gre­di­ents that had been pre­pared, and each got to work with in­tense fo­cus. The were, re­gret­tably, not ad­ja­cent to one an­oth­er; Mian, Xam, and Chi­an each fol­lowed the per­son prepar­ing their own med­i­cine, leav­ing Ki'el to stand with Broth­er Du as the scat­tered.

"I sense you have im­proved your abil­i­ty to use your Qi Turn­ing Cy­cle," Du said af­ter a mo­ment. "Un­less I am mis­tak­en?"

Ki'el turned to look at him, sur­prised, but nod­ded, shy­ly. "Un­til now, I was main­tain­ing it only with my own spir­it, but since we are in a rush, I am hav­ing Kuli as­sist me. I would not dare to do less, when every­one else is prepar­ing for their own or­deals."

"I imag­ine that with the ex­tra qi, you will con­tin­ue your body tem­per­ing." Du's voice was not judg­ing, and might have even been ap­prov­ing, though it was a lit­tle hard to tell, since it was not silent in this part of the Hall. "If you can tem­per your­self enough, even be­fore reach­ing Ti­ta­ni­um Qi, then I imag­ine that the tribu­la­tion will be easy for you--far eas­i­er, per­haps, than it will be for your friends."

Ki'el nod­ded, vague­ly. "When my mas­ter reached ...a tribu­la­tion, with his knowl­edge and pow­er, he sim­ply took a walk, faced it, and came back as though noth­ing of note had hap­pened." She hes­i­tat­ed. "It changed what I un­der­stood, though I had un­der­stood very lit­tle. My grand­moth­er told me sto­ries of men who chal­lenged the gods and were struck by light­ning, only to sur­vive, re­cov­er, and grow stronger. But I do not be­lieve she un­der­stood, as no one in my vil­lage was ever a pow­er­ful qi user. I be­lieve that she thought it was luck, or some mas­sive bat­tle be­tween men and gods."

Broth­er Du made some­thing of a hum­ming laugh, clos­ing his eyes as though en­vi­sion­ing it. "That is cer­tain­ly one ver­sion of the tale. When I was a young boy in the city--long ago, and far from here--I was once told that in or­der to cul­ti­vate past a cer­tain lev­el, you had to slay a god in a duel and steal their god­hood. Those who nev­er pass the Gold­en Wall can only imag­ine the truth." He re­opened his eyes and looked down at Ki'el, and she thought his eyes had some­thing to them, though what, she wasn't cer­tain.

"Though... for those who are un­pre­pared, fac­ing a tribu­la­tion can be as dan­ger­ous as fac­ing a god in com­bat. Nor­mal­ly, I would not sug­gest that any­one who has just reached the peak of Gold do such a thing. You... I firm­ly be­lieve are more pre­pared than most. Your Sis­ter Xam, in con­trast, has pre­pared for a long time, and I be­lieve that with this as­sis­tance, she will be fine. Even young Sis­ter Chi­an seems like­ly to be ad­e­quate to the chal­lenge. Your Broth­er Mian..." The doubt in Du's voice gave away his next words long be­fore he was will­ing to voice them. "...I still doubt his abil­i­ty, even with help. For that rea­son, I asked Broth­er Prang to pre­pare a Greater qual­i­ty ton­ic for him."

"Greater qual­i­ty? As in... above Un­com­mon?" Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed. She... had not ex­act­ly de­mand­ed to know what they would charge her, and she trust­ed Broth­er Du, but she had only been told a few of the Alche­my grades, and Greater was the sec­ond high­est that Chi­an had told her. Was that... tru­ly with­in her bud­get, un­be­liev­ably high though it may be?

But Broth­er Du sim­ply nod­ded, not look­ing at her. "It is a more com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter than you might be­lieve, young Ki'el. I would not have al­lowed it if I didn't be­lieve that you would be by his side. Your qi pu­rifi­ca­tion and your... aether rings, I be­lieve will be enough to sta­bi­lize him if he should have a bad re­ac­tion to the ton­ic. And high­er-grade ton­ics will not only have few­er side-ef­fects, but height­ened ef­fects. I be­lieve that as long as you can sta­bi­lize him, a Greater ton­ic will tem­per him enough to get through a tribu­la­tion on his first try."

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, but looked up at him. "You have ex­pe­ri­ence with the Hun­dred Hearts Ton­ic, Broth­er Du?"

"I con­sid­er my­self a teacher, young Ki'el," Du said, glanc­ing in her di­rec­tion, but still not mak­ing eye con­tact. "I have done a num­ber of things in my time, prepar­ing to lead and teach peo­ple. The Hun­dred Hearts Ton­ic is a sober­ing re­minder of how many dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences peo­ple may al­ready have had, be­fore they reach the Sect. I have tak­en the ton­ic sev­er­al times over the years, when I feel that I have tak­en on a stu­dent who I can­not un­der­stand. Af­ter tak­ing the ton­ic and speak­ing with my stu­dents again, I of­ten find my sym­pa­thy for their plight is far greater--or else I find that they tru­ly are self­ish, or fool­ish, and I need not con­cern my­self with them."

Ki'el swal­lowed. Sis­ter Be­nai had said that for some, the ton­ic was tor­ture--and Broth­er Du took it sim­ply to un­der­stand his stu­dents? Sev­er­al times?

"In con­trast, young Sis­ter Chi­an's ton­ic is some­thing I will nev­er be able to take, and the Thou­sand Mile Wa­ter­fall Flower would pro­vide me no ben­e­fit, as Wa­ter Na­ture Qi is not close enough to my Path. But Broth­er Hong has many sym­pa­thies for peo­ple like Sis­ter Chi­an, and Sis­ter Jian has long been a firm be­liev­er in care­ful­ly prepar­ing med­i­cines for spir­i­tu­al in­sight, and where pos­si­ble, ad­just­ing the dosage for the per­son re­ceiv­ing it. I be­lieve that each of your friends is in good hands--but to an ex­tent, Broth­er Mian will be in your hands." His voice was be­com­ing qui­et, as though re­flect­ing, al­though it still car­ried per­fect­ly well. "As a per­son who has tak­en that ton­ic, I would ask that you are there for him on his jour­ney as only a sis­ter can be."

Ki'el swal­lowed, but nod­ded. When Broth­er Du said lit­tle else for a time, she spoke up. "Do you have any ad­vice on ...tem­per­ing the body?" She was com­ing to ac­cept that Broth­er Du's word for it was bet­ter than Sobon's "ac­clima­ti­za­tion", if only be­cause it felt more nat­ur­al. Like many of the words her mas­ter used, it was prob­a­bly cor­rect, but... awk­ward.

"I sus­pect your Kuli knows it as well as I do," Du replied, af­ter tak­ing only a mo­ment to clear his head. "Most peo­ple I have known tem­per their bod­ies af­ter de­ter­min­ing their qi na­tures, and they tem­per them­selves with their in­com­plete qi na­tures, not tem­per­ing un­til they are cer­tain that they want to keep that na­ture as a part of them. The process caus­es our bod­ies to nat­u­ral­ly gen­er­ate that na­tured qi, which en­hances our abil­i­ty to per­form re­lat­ed tech­niques." His face shift­ed as Ki'el watched, and he fi­nal­ly turned to meet her eyes again. "If you have any in­tent, in the fu­ture, to pick a qi na­ture, you will def­i­nite­ly not want to ful­ly tem­per your body be­fore form­ing that qi na­ture. I can only imag­ine that tem­per­ing with pu­ri­fied qi is as dif­fi­cult to undo as tem­per­ing with a spe­cif­ic na­ture... but it is be­yond my knowl­edge."

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Ki'el frowned, con­sid­er­ing that. In truth... she had done very lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion of qi na­tures, in part be­cause she most­ly ex­pect­ed to fol­low her mas­ter's route of us­ing knowl­edge and tech­nique to draw scripts in the air. But... Sis­ter Xari per­formed such scripts while also hav­ing some form of moon and thread-na­tured qi. She... was most­ly sure that she would not re­gret at­tun­ing much, per­haps even most of her body to pu­ri­fied qi. Was there a rea­son to also have parts of her spir­it that pro­vid­ed qi na­tures? She was sure that Kuli had some­thing to say on the top­ic, but the aug­ment seemed to not wish to speak on it here and now.

So Ki'el looked away from Broth­er Du, her own thoughts go­ing to what Sobon had taught her. "My mas­ter spoke of... tem­per­ing, as a process where the body grows used to hav­ing qi, or aether, with­in it. He spoke of ter­ri­ble things that may hap­pen if we pos­sess great qi with­out ever tem­per­ing. That... the self­ish­ness of the body de­stroy s it from with­in."

"De­stroys... yes, there are qi sick­ness­es that warp the body, if you go too long with­out tem­per­ing," Broth­er Du said, slow­ly. "Self­ish­ness of the body... is an odd phrase. Is my skin self­ish? My bones? Do they not ex­ist only to al­low me to live?"

Ki'el found her­self clench­ing her jaw slight­ly. Is my skin na­ture self­ish? As soon as the ques­tion was asked, she knew that it was, or close enough. "Your skin only knows its task, its world. There are times when it, if it were giv­en pow­er, would be­have as it be­lieves it should, and it would be wrong. If you were cut near the mouth, and your skin was giv­en un­lim­it­ed abil­i­ty to re­grow, might it cov­er your mouth by mis­take? Or even a small part of it? What if it made such a mis­take and you could nev­er con­vince your skin that it was wrong? Would it not stub­born­ly at­tempt to re­main whole and in­tact even if you could not eat or breathe? Your skin may be a nec­es­sary part of you, but it does not ex­ist while know­ing your form and pur­pose. It only ex­ists to ful­fill its pur­pose, to be what it is." With some parts of that, she thought she felt Kuli di­rect­ing her thoughts slight­ly, but... most­ly, it was all things that she al­ready felt were right.

She could see Broth­er Du re­act­ing some­what to that idea, one hand drift­ing to­wards his face, al­though he caught it and low­ered his hand a mo­ment lat­er. "I... hm. You do pose raise strange thoughts when­ev­er we speak, Sis­ter Ki'el." He con­sid­ered that for a mo­ment. "And bones... when bones break, they re­grow stronger, but this is only a virtue if the bone is set and can heal in its prop­er place­ment. I have seen heal­ers re­break bones which were... stub­born­ly healed be­fore they should have been, lead­ing to a tru­ly ter­ri­ble state. But sure­ly, bones that are in­tact can do no harm, if giv­en pow­er?"

"I am ig­no­rant of such things," Ki'el ad­mit­ted. "I only have thought about my skin be­cause it is part of my spir­it. I do not like when things at­tempt to get in­side of me, change me, af­fect me. It is a self­ish urge that some­times caus­es is­sues."

"I see," Broth­er Du said, and turned slight­ly. "It seems Sis­ter Xam is done."

Ki'el looked past, and no­ticed Xam and Sis­ter Jian walk­ing and talk­ing. She could not see Xam's med­i­cine, but then, the woman had her own space ring--which re­mind­ed Ki'el that she could now af­ford one for each of them. "It seems so," she said, watch­ing them for a mo­ment, be­fore re­lay­ing a thought from with­in. "Kuli says that bone mar­row is also where blood is pro­duced in the body, and that such can eas­i­ly go wrong if they are giv­en too much pow­er, among oth­er things."

"Hm? Oh. I have heard that, as well." Du, for once, sound­ed a bit flus­tered. "I... sup­pose I will con­sid­er the top­ic more lat­er, but..."

Ki'el laughed, qui­et­ly. "It seems I have found a top­ic that up­sets Broth­er Du?"

The man turned and gave her a look, then glanced past her. "Broth­er Hong and Sis­ter Chi­an are also fin­ished."

Ki'el turned to look, but the large Al­chemist avoid­ed her gaze and Chi­an's as they walked, and Chi­an seemed cha­grined or flus­tered. Ki'el turned to look at the work­room where Broth­er Prang and Mian were... but the man there still seemed hard at work, and deeply fo­cused.

"That ton­ic should take time, and know­ing Broth­er Prang, he will pace his work to take the full al­lot­ment of time you have paid for."

"Then... I should at least pur­chase an­oth­er space ring for Broth­er Mian." Or take a re­place­ment for one of the ones in the for­fei­ture, as be­fore. She looked over at Chi­an as she moved, find­ing that the girl did have one on her hand--though she was not sure she had no­ticed it be­fore. Then... as para­noid as she and Sis­ter Be­nai were, they might have a way to con­ceal it, nor­mal­ly.

Du ges­tured to the line cur­rent­ly wait­ing for the El­der. "It will be luck to find which is fin­ished first, but... go ahead."

In truth, Ki'el had won­dered if she would be able to sim­ply sig­nal the El­der and con­tin­ue to wait... but the tone of Broth­er Du's voice sug­gest­ed that she could not. So she went in, and when she was as­signed a place in line, med­i­tat­ed, re­in­forc­ing her ac­clima­ti­za­tion... her tem­per­ing with the help of Kuli. Some­thing about the way Kuli helped her ma­nip­u­late the qi, along with some of her Right­eous aether, was sublty dif­fer­ent, and Ki'el did her best to study the dif­fer­ences un­til the mo­ment when she sensed El­der Gol's at­ten­tion.

[ Xoi Doua Ki'el. Af­ter pay­ing the al­chemists and for your in­gre­di­ents, your Points to­tal--ad­just­ed for your po­si­tion in the sect--stands at two thou­sand, one hun­dred and fif­teen points. ]

Ki'el swal­lowed hard. Out of ten thou­sand? Be­nai sug­gest­ed that the cost of in­gre­di­ents might be a thou­sand, plus any fees to go fetch them, that fee be­ing dou­bled for ur­gency... and the al­chemists are In­ner Sect dis­ci­ples, but work­ing out of the Earth­en Hall... Al­though Kuli made a few sug­ges­tions of the ra­tios, it still worked out to the time of each al­chemist be­ing worth more than a thou­sand points per hour. In all these mat­ters, she hadn't spec­i­fied... and El­der Gol and Broth­er Du had spent her points freely. Of course, from what El­der Gol had said, she had more than this many points strict­ly from the for­fei­ture, but would only be al­lowed ac­cess to the rest af­ter pass­ing her tribu­la­tion. And... it wasn't as though she wasn't in a rush.

But the idea that they had made no ef­fort to help her un­der­stand ran­kled her. Did they think of her mind as in­fe­ri­or? That per­haps she didn't need to make her own de­ci­sions?

[You seem dis­turbed, child.] El­der Gol's men­tal voice was as sol­id as ever, and Ki'el took a breath, let­ting it out, and ig­nored the thought--for now.

In­stead, she fo­cused her in­tent on the El­der. [ Would like space ring. Con­tin­ue to hold ones from for­fei­ture. Would like re­place­ment for one un­til mat­ter re­solved. Like last time. ]

El­der Gol's re­ply in­tent wave back seemed slight­ly off, per­haps con­fused. [ All the con­tent of the rings, but es­pe­cial­ly the con­tent of Kem Jee Sai's, be­longs en­tire­ly to you. I don't mind hold­ing the rings in es­crow, but would it would be sim­pler if you sim­ply take that one. ]

But Ki'el only nar­rowed her eyes in re­turn, form­ing the re­turn thought pack­et. [ Don't know re­la­tion­ship to mas­ter. She may want his items, and I don't care. Would pre­fer peace. ]

El­der Gol wait­ed a mo­ment be­fore re­ply­ing. [ A re­place­ment ring will be fur­nished for you, ] he said, with no ob­vi­ous emo­tion­al tones to the mes­sage, and then he re­treat­ed to the space ar­ray, or what­ev­er it was, that con­tained the Sect's stor­age.

Ki'el fin­ished re­liev­ing the pres­sure and re­ab­sorb­ing her qi from her ef­forts at tem­per­ing just as the El­der re­turned, and she took the space ring glad­ly, bring­ing it out to where all the oth­ers were gath­ered around Broth­er Du. Mian's eyes shot up with sur­prise when she hand­ed him the ring, and al­though he put it on, he seemed to have al­ready giv­en his med­i­cines to some­one else, pre­sum­ably Xam. Broth­er Du nod­ded to her, and then glanced around at them.

"I would like to in­vite you all to a pri­vate spot for these kinds of med­i­ta­tions," he said. "Nor­mal­ly, it is re­strict­ed to the Out­er Sect and above--"

"And what of the fee?" Ki'el found that there was a hard­ness to her voice.

Du turned to her, look­ing some­what sur­prised. "I be­lieve you still have enough re­main­ing."

"Per­haps. But I do not like that nei­ther you nor El­der Gol gave me any no­tice or in­for­ma­tion about the costs of this. It is ur­gent, and I do ap­pre­ci­ate the ad­vice. I do not wish--"

"Ah," Du gri­maced some­what at that. "I... apol­o­gize, Sis­ter Ki'el. I for­get, again, how dif­fer­ent it is be­ing at the bot­tom of the Sect in­stead of the top. And El­der Gol... is in­fa­mous for not giv­ing in­for­ma­tion un­less it is asked." He fold­ed his hands and bowed in what Ki'el thought was an apolo­getic stance. "The fee would be one hun­dred Points per per­son per hour, and I would ex­pect that the three of you act­ing at once, and Ki'el there to as­sist... would take no more than four hours, cost­ing six­teen hun­dred Points to­tal."

Six­teen. With the help of Kuli, Ki'el un­der­stood that to leave them all just enough points to make a sin­gle at­tempt at the Gold­en Wall each by the end... and a small bit more. "That leaves lit­tle mon­ey to pay for heal­ing or med­i­cine if there is a mis­take," she said.

Some­how, Ki'el thought, it didn't fit her im­age of Broth­er Du that the man seemed sur­prised by the idea that they might fail and re­quire heal­ing. Or... was it that he was sur­prised that Ki'el ex­pect­ed to pay for it? Or some­thing else?

"...The lo­ca­tion is known as the Less­er Gale Pavil­lion," Du con­tin­ued af­ter a mo­ment, a strange dis­tance in his voice. "It is one of the three ar­eas in the sect where the Moon­stone Is­land Sect's wards chan­nel the pur­er qi from out­side the Sect, the oth­ers be­ing the Greater and Peak Gale Pavil­lions. It is con­sid­ered a bet­ter lo­ca­tion for gath­er­ing qi than any but the spaces re­served for the El­ders and Core Dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cial­ly when un­der the ef­fects of med­i­cines that im­prove your gath­er­ing abil­i­ty."

"You can choose to gath­er qi at an­oth­er lo­ca­tion with­in the sect if you pre­fer... and you can cer­tain­ly ask my­self or oth­er Sect Dis­ci­ples to help de­fer the costs, but un­der the cir­cum­stances, I would con­sid­er it the best use of your re­main­ing Sect Points which I can fore­see... bar­ring, of course, the need for med­ical treat­ment."

Ki'el bris­tled, but Mian spoke up. "I'm ob­vi­ous­ly the weak­est here," he said, into the at­mos­phere that Ki'el hadn't even re­al­ized was get­ting tense. "And I trust that if some­thing does hap­pen, Ki'el will help, even if she has to ad­vance into the In­ner Sect to gain ac­cess to the rest of her funds. If this is the best op­tion, I for one am not wor­ried... for my­self." He glanced at Xam, who looked back, and Ki'el re­al­ized that she did look dis­turbed... but per­haps not as up­set as Ki'el her­self felt.

But Ki'el breathed in, and out, and con­sid­ered it only for a brief while be­fore open­ing her eyes again. "Fine. We will do it. But I do not like this." There were so many things that could go wrong--

A cool sen­sa­tion on her shoul­der sur­prised her, and she turned to find that Chi­an had laid a hand on her, and was smil­ing. "Sis­ter Be­nai has talked to me of these Gale Pavil­lions as well. I think this is the right choice. And... I think we can trust our al­chemist Broth­ers and Sis­ter to have giv­en us the best pos­si­ble chances, as well."

We cer­tain­ly paid a great deal for their help, Ki'el thought, with a bit­ter­ness that sur­prised her, but she nod­ded to Chi­an. "Do you wish Sis­ter Be­nai's help with your own cul­ti­va­tion?"

"Ah..." Chi­an gave her a look, but with a smile. "No. She is on a very dif­fer­ent path. I don't be­lieve her pres­ence would help, ex­cept in spir­it."

Not the same kind of spir­it beast? Per­haps that is not sur­pris­ing. Ki'el sim­ply nod­ded, and with an un­steady breath, looked to Broth­er Du. "Then... I sup­pose we will go."

Du sim­ply nod­ded, and be­gan to lead the way.