1. Chapter 5

Three years passed slowly. The children all grew bigger and stronger. Safron learned to walk and talk and was soon following her big brothers (she didn’t understand at all that Pao wasn’t related by blood) everywhere. The cultivator children grew in other ways which were not so readily apparent to look at them, but were significantly more profound.

Tan could enter Sublimation without effort now, slowing time to a crawl and enhancing his senses to the degree where they almost became painful, if he wanted to. If he wasn’t so active he might have been in danger of getting a pot belly due to his tendency to sublimate while enjoying his mother’s cooking. He became faster than ever before, and could travel between the village and back within five minutes if he was so inclined. A journey which had taken an hour before he’d become a cultivator.

Pao grew strong. He hit an early growth spurt and was almost as tall as a man, and just as muscular. He was broad and heavy, but all muscle and no fat. Even though he was only thirteen years old, he could crack rocks with his fist and lift wagons out of the mud with ease, even while they were fully burdened.

Of course, with that last trick, he cheated a little by getting the mud to ‘unstick’ and become firm where he wanted it to.

Magic was handy.

Safron was insanely jealous of her big brothers’ abilities and couldn’t wait for her fifth birthday, which was when she was told she’d be given her own spiritual stone to begin her path of cultivation. Tren had promised to take Tan and Pao on the journey to capture the spirit for Safron this time, and the boys were greatly looking forward to it. However, their household suddenly grew once more unexpectedly before that journey could take place.

It was Tan who noticed them. He’d been enjoying his mother’s eggs over grits when his nose suddenly curled up. He smelled two things that were truly awful smelling. One that was burnt ash, and the other rotten garbage. He quickly let go of his sublime state and turned to his parents at the breakfast table.

“Something stinky is coming,” he said. “Two somethings.”

A subtle shift of Qi as both of his parents entered their own sublime states, and they both grinned.

“I told you,” Wensho said.

“Yes, well, fine. You get to name the next one,” Tren admitted.

“Name what?” Tan asked.

“Your next brother or sister,” Wensho said. “I bet your father that the twins would awaken on the same day. He bet me that they would awaken within weeks of each other, but not at the same time. I was right and he was wrong.”

“Yes, well, how was I to know that they’d both be so diligent?” Tren said defensively. “Pao, would you do us all a favor and show them where to bathe in the stream before they get any closer? They’re old enough to know better. Honestly, why does every child who awakens as a cultivator run to our house first thing to brag instead of bathing off their impurities? They should know better.”

Tan’s scrunched his nose as he parsed the conversation. The twins? There was only one set of twins in the village. Ko and Won. Ko was a girl, with pigtails and freckles. Won was a boy, with short hair. And freckles. And aside from being boy and girl, they otherwise looked almost identical. Which is why they kept their hairstyles in a way that very clearly defined which one of the set they were.

There had been some embarrassing mistakes when they were younger.

The twins were eleven years old, making them two years older than Tan and two years younger than Pao. He did some math in his head and quickly realized something.

“Where are they going to sleep?” Tan asked.

“We’ll figure something out,” Wensho said.

Many of the village children who had sacrificed to attain a stone had quit shortly after Pao had gone to live with the Shen household. They either grew frustrated with the world of cultivation, or they decided that leaving their family wasn’t worth it, or they sold their stone to Hoten, who thought that he’d found a way to circumvent Tren’s threat of punishment if he acquired the stones second hand through trade.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He was right, Tren didn’t go after Hoten. He simply severed the binding that kept the spirit locked to the stone in Hoten’s possession, releasing it back into the world. Hoten, with enough spiritual sense to match his common sense, was none the wiser.

The two who had remained dedicated were Ko and Won, and their dedication had paid off. Ko had described the spirit she had bound as cold and flexible, while Won said that his spirit was hot and unpredictable. But they had both succeeded. It was only when they had announced their success that they realized that they had bound completely different elements.

Ko had a water spirit that was closely aligned with ice, while Won had a fire spirit. Neither spirit had revealed that they had a name, but Tren said that was to be expected. Only one spirit in ten thousand had a name that it could remember while it wasn’t attached to a person. Many people gave their spirits names, but he said that if they named their spirit they should keep the names private.

Naming a spirit gave one power over that spirit. If a spirit told someone its name, that meant that they were strong enough not to be afraid of someone taking control over them without their will. Gaia, Rudeus, and Zephyr fell into this category.

The three spirits of Pao, Ko and Won, however, fell into a second category. Naming their spirit would increase the affinity between the cultivator and their spirit, while simultaneously giving outsiders a wedge to drive between the cultivator and the source of their magical powers.

Naturally the three children immediately named their spirits and vowed to never tell a soul what they had chosen.

Also naturally they told everyone before the end of the week.

In order to accommodate the two new additions to the Shen household, a shack was built for the twins to share. It was during the construction of this shack that Tren was informed in no uncertain terms by his wife that it was time to upgrade their house. It was simply too small to fit their growing family and the live-in cultivators/field hands that they were acquiring.

Fortunately this decision was made in the spring, and there was plenty of time to order building materials to be delivered from the nearby town in order to build a proper manor.

Unfortunately, when the local lord found out about the amount of materials that were being shipped into a small end of nowhere, he saw fit to investigate.

He arrived at the house, where a small stack of lumber was being set aside, next to a pile of shingles and a bunch of stones to go in the foundation. The construction hadn’t started yet, but he frowned when he noticed that the cordoned off construction area was larger than his own hall. Who was this farmer to upstage his own lord in such a fashion?

Tren did not even leave the field to meet with his lordship, and the lord angrily marched out to speak with him.

Fortunately, before he could make more of a fool of himself than he already had, a nine year old boy suddenly dropped down from the sky and landed in between him and the farmer.

“Father, I’m done cultivating for the day,” Tan announced. “I’m going fishing in the lake.”

“The lake is fifteen miles away. Make sure that you rush the entire way and try to make it in less than twenty minutes,” the farmer said.

“Twenty minutes?” the boy chewed his lip. “I’ll make it in ten!”

Then he flew off towards the house to gather his fishing gear.

The farmer finally looked up at the lord who had come to see him and smiled. “Hello, your lordship. Pleasant weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

“Th-that boy, he is your son?”

“Yes he is. Fifth stage of the initiate’s realm at age nine. I’d like to take all of the credit, but his mother had a hand in raising him as well,” the man said evenly.

“But we live in a Qi desert,” the lord objected.

“There’s no such thing,” the farmer said. “Oh, there was a snafu a few hundred years ago where someone got greedy with the land and sucked out a bit more than they should have. Yes it led to a famine, and it’s taken a while for nature to recover. But I’m here now, and you should have already noticed that the crops have grown more bountiful and the animals are stronger, healthier, and larger than they were before. The children too.”

The farmer paused.

“You’re welcome, your lordship.”

The lord abruptly bowed. “This humble magistrate thanks the master cultivator for his bounty. This humble magistrate inquires if there is anything that the master cultivator requires.”

The farmer considered the question for a moment. “In the far west, they have pipes that deliver water. Copper pipes, not lead. I’m building a new house. I’d like for my wife to have to spend less of her time drawing water. Or myself as well, of course. We split the duties of the household fifty fifty, even if they’re not always the same duties every day.”

“Of course. This humble magistrate will look into acquiring plumbing for your new palace immediately,” the lord promised. Inwardly he cursed; he didn’t even have plumbing at his own hall. But he was but a lord, and this man was raising a child who could probably topple the power balance of the province on his own.

The lord didn’t want to question who it was he’d just met. He continued to sing the man’s praises and promised him plumbing and whatever else he desired, then at the first polite chance he saw he fled on his horse and never looked back.

He did deliver the pipes, and a plumber who knew how to use them. It wasn’t wise to break promises to a cultivator.