Chapter 21
“Dad! Daddy! Daddy are you watching?” Safron demanded, bouncing up and down as she danced. It was one of the training katas designed for children to move their body and their Qi together. Tan, and the other children of the Shen farm, had grown up performing these simple but profound movements, and now it was little Safron’s turn.
“Closer than you can imagine,” Tren Shen answered.
“No you’re not, you have your eyes closed, I saw you,” she said accusingly, stopping to pout.
“I can see better with my eyes closed,” Tren said defensively.
“You mean like Tan with his blindfold?”
“Tan is just starting out with that talent. I’ve been mastering it for decades. My third eye’s sight is much better than his,” Tren answered honestly.
“What do I look like when you close your eyes?” Safron demanded.
“Like a beautiful fiery little girl shining brightly in the darkness,” Tren answered immediately. “You’re orange, and you have—”
“No. No I’m not orange,” Safron said.
Tren smiled. “Yes, sweetie, you are. But it’s a very—”
“I said I’m not orange. Pick another color.”
“Okay, fine. You’re pink, and very beautiful,” Tren said.
“Okay. Pink is better. And you said that I’m pretty?”
“You’re pretty to me whether you have your eyes open or closed,” Tren said definitively. “Now keep dancing until you’re tired, then go meditate. I have to talk with your mother for a while.”
“Kay.”
Tren left the girl dancing in the field to go sit by the fence, where Wensho was darning a sock in the sunlight. She, too, was absolutely beautiful to the eyes of her husband. She was decades older, but hadn’t appeared to have aged a day since he’d met her. She too had her eyes closed, but unlike Tren she wasn’t watching their daughter.
“How are they doing?” he asked her quietly.
“Their spirits are troubled, but they’re coping. It’s a good thing that we gave them those guardian weapons. You should berate your brother for allowing such a vile man to exist in his empire,” Wensho answered. “And now those innocent children have blood on their hands.”
“It was destined to happen sooner or later,” Tren said, sighing. He closed his eyes and focused, and he too saw the four spirits of the children he had been guiding for years now, his spiritual vision homing in on the trinkets they had given them before their spirit stone hunt. “We all have blood on our hands. Innocence is the price we pay for power.”
“Which is a lesson that they cannot understand until they’ve lost their innocence,” Wensho said sadly. “I still wish that we could have protected them from this.”
“I do too,” Tren said. He observed the trembling and uncertainty in his son’s aura, the guilt in Won’s, and the hesitation in Pao and Ko. “They were never in danger, but do you think they know that?”
“What do you mean, they were never in danger? That man was a monster, I don’t need to have known his crimes to have seen it in his aura,” Wensho said. “The world is a better place without him, and—”
“You know what I meant. Other children would have been in danger in their place. But we saw too it that—”
“They don’t understand the weight of what they carry,” Wensho said. “We designed it that way on purpose, remember? When we sent them to gather stones, we didn’t explain the significance behind the charms we gave them to wear around their necks beyond that they would keep them safe. And we enchanted an aura of forgetfulness around those trinkets. They’ve probably already forgotten why they wear them, if they ever understood at all.”
“Is it better or worse that way?” Tren said. “If they ever think that we sent them off unprotected when they face true danger—”
“One day they’ll face true danger that we cannot protect them from,” Wensho said, her eyes distant. “When that day comes, would you have them unprepared to act without a safety net?”
Tren sighed. “I love you.”
“I love you too. But you worry too much.”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
~~~~~~
Hoten made a face as he emptied the chamberpot. It wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if it were his own chamberpot. But no, he was acting as a servant to one of the elders. He didn’t have much choice, not if he wanted to reach the next stage of cultivation.
He was serving Master Argoth, the pillmaster, in exchange for a weekly supply of the Lofty Wind pills which were vital to his cultivation. While the pills were the same that he’d get on from the contribution store, the fact was that Hoten was broke.
He had first approached Master Argoth when the price for the Lofty Wind Pills had tripled due to a sudden increase in demand—spurred by Hoten’s own success with them—combined with a decrease in supply of some of the ingredients. While Hoten had scoured the countryside looking for the herbs that were needed, the gardens of Master Argoth remained the only reliable supply.
Hoten had been forced with a choice. He could either give up using the pills entirely—but if he did he had no idea how to continue to advance his cultivation—or he could find a way to earn contribution points to buy them from the market—but the ways which most of the outer sect disciples did that were fraught with danger and Hoten was a Coward.
However, Master Argoth had offered him a third option. He needed a servant. Hoten, as a common-born son of a poor merchant in an unknown village, had been seen as a suitable option. That he was a cultivator was of little matter. In fact, it was a benefit. While mortals did serve the sect, it was a status symbol among the elders to be served by the outer sect disciples instead.
Hoten was even able to leverage his position a little bit by putting in a good word for some of the other disciples and make inquiries to Master Argoth about which pills were about to be made so that those who would especially benefit from them knew when to save their contribution points.
He had tried to leverage his position to learn alchemy, but Master Argoth had laughed in his face. The elder had honestly believed that Hoten had been joking, and Hoten had been too embarrassed to press the issue further after that.
Hoten placed the lid back on the chamberpot after finishing with the unpleasant task of rinsing it, then returned to the estate. He returned the pot to the Master’s bedchambers, then returned to the servant’s quarters to continue the more pleasant aspects of his job. Mostly he was just there to clean and dust. He wasn’t allowed into the mixing chambers or the Master’s study.
He was in the middle of his duties when the bell of summoning rang. He sighed, placing his tools aside and rushing to find Master Argoth, who was munching on a biscuit in the den.
“Ah, yes, there you are Red Rooster,” Argoth said. “I have something for you.”
Hoten hated that name so much, but the more he tried to escape it, the more everyone seemed to rub it in his face. Argoth, at least, seemed to think that he was proud of the moniker, which was the front that Hoten was trying to present.
“You have something for me?”
“Are you a rooster or a parrot? Yes, I have something for you. It’s in the box on the table,” Argoth said.
Hoten blinked, then stepped over to examine an ornate box. He opened it, and the powerful aroma of medicinal pills roiled out. Hoten’s mouth watered as he realized what they were. Or rather, what they were not. These pills were not available in the contribution store.
“What … what are they, Master Argoth? I can smell their potency but beyond that—”
“They’re an experiment. A new recipe I’m trying. I’m not going to lie to you, I have no idea whether they’re my greatest success or simply another failure. They should be extremely beneficial to a wind or fire cultivator of your stage, but since I’ve never tested them on anything larger than a rat, I don’t know for certain that they’re not poisonous,” the alchemist explained. “So...it’s your choice. You can have them if I can study the effects that they have on your body. I’m not going to deny that they might kill you. But aside from turning your urine green, the Lofty Wind pills are no longer having any effect for you, are they?”
Hoten swallowed. “How likely are they to … I mean, can you give me any sort of odds on my surviving their use?”
“If they were poisonous I’d tell you. You should be able to survive ten doses for certain. The problem is the impurities they’ll introduce to your body. The more you take, the more they’ll build up. I’m uncertain, but I believe that they’ll effect your liver first, and then your kidneys. There are some exercises I want you to perform to see if you can purify your body of the effects once the toxins have reached a noticeable level, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Do you agree to be my test-rat, or shall I search for a new servant?”
Hoten’s heart sank. “My job here is … I have to choose between taking these pills and finding a new one?”
“If you’re not going to take them, then I’ll need your room for whoever does agree to test the pills for me,” Master Argoth explained. “I’m afraid that it’s either or, son. Either you take the pills, or you move back out into the outer sect.”
“I understand. Thank you for the opportunity, Master Argoth. I accept.”
“Good, good, good,” Argoth said. “I’ve prepared a cultivation circle for you on the roof. It should be most beneficial to you in conjunction with the pills, and it will also measure their toxicity and the effects on your body. You may begin whenever you wish, your other duties can wait.”
“Thank you,” Hoten said again, then bowed and retreated from the room, taking the box of pills with him.
He found the cultivation formation on the roof, leaping up there from the ground with simple ease. He couldn’t quite fly, but he could jump pretty well. He palmed one of the pills from the box, then popped it into his mouth, his eyes watering at the medicinal taste. He chewed, but that just made the taste worse.
He swallowed, and within moments he felt the roiling Qi of the pill unleash itself into his body. He sat in the lotus position and cultivated, a grin on his face.
It was ten times as potent as the Lofty Wind pill, and he was certain that a breakthrough was imminent. He’d earned this opportunity, and there was nothing that could possibly convince him to abandon it.