Chapter 32

Hoten stood unsteadily, dressing himself nervously. It had been a rough two days, but his fever had abated, and he while he wasn’t ready to travel, he was ready to make the preparations.

Except …

He sighed. When he’d finished shaving and washing the stench of his illness away, he made his way to the contribution shop, where he traded the rest of his contribution points for silver and gold and precious gems. The exchange rate between mortal currency and contribution points had made Hoten’s eyes bulge the first time he’d seen it, but it made sense.

The currency of mortals was largely irrelevant in the cultivation world. There were many things that gold literally could not buy. It was just as well that his parents had sent him away with just a small sack of silver; when he’d arrived he’d discovered that the family’s entire savings weren’t worth more than a handful of contribution points.

Wealthy mortals could purchase a leg up when they learned to cultivate, but it was expensive and would beggar most families. Moving in reverse, however, was very advantageous to the cultivator seeking to obtain mortal goods. He left the contribution store with a sack the size of his head filled with mortal currency.

He spent a while visiting some of his friends in the sect, then sighed at the advice that they gave him. Nobody questioned for a second that he was leaving and probably never coming back. It wouldn’t take more than six months to visit his family and return, but in six months they would all be so far beyond him that even if he returned, they expected they would have made three or four breakthroughs and a friendship with him would be worthless.

Disloyal bastards, he thought to himself. And as if they’d pull ahead of him in such a short time.

But they were right. Six months was simply too long to interrupt his cultivation. He’d just had a breakthrough, and he needed to maintain the momentum. Cultivators lived and died based on their momentum, and if he slowed down then …

His mother …

His cultivation …

He found himself standing outside Elder Yotu’s house, just as he’d once stood before the mansion waiting to be recognized for his admittance into the sect in the first place. He’d done everything right back then, he thought. Why was this happening to him now, right after he’d secured a line of one-of-a-kind cultivation pills tailored just for him? Why couldn’t it have happened six months from now?

Hoten sighed and knocked on the door. The mortal servant, a nervous young woman, answered and showed him inside. He found the kids lounging in Elder Yotu’s library. The man himself was busy responding to the cascade crisis, but that was over Hoten’s head and he knew nothing about it.

When they saw him, the children straightened up and set their scrolls down.

“Are you ready to go?” Tan asked.

“Here,” Hoten said, tossing the bag filled with coins and gems at the boy. It dropped, clinking to the ground between them. “Give those to my parents. Maybe with the money they can afford some sort of treatment for my mother. But I can’t … I’m sorry. Tell them that I … I’m sorry, I can’t come. It’s not a good time, I’m at a critical point in my cultivation. I’m sorry. I’ll visit her grave next year, but—”

His excuses were cut off when Tan suddenly punched him in the nose. The boy had moved so fast that Hoten hadn’t even seen him, and he hit hard enough that Hoten literally went flying into a bookshelf.

“I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say that, Hoten,” Tan said, his voice cold. “Are you ready to go, or do you still need time to recover from your illness?”

“I’m not going you little brat!” Hoten shouted. “I’m sorry but I just—”

Tan blurred again, and Hoten had the most humiliating beating of his life. When it was over, Tan asked one last time if the young man was ready to come with them.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Hoten said, his eyes swollen almost shut and his lip bleeding. “I can’t leave now. My momentum—”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Whatever he was about to say was cut off when Tan sucked him into his storage ring. Tan turned to his friends, who had silly grins on their face at the simplicity of the solution.

“Why didn’t we just do that in the first place?” Won asked.

“He’s really not worth the effort. I can’t believe that we came all of this way for that spineless cretin,” Ko commented.

“We didn’t come for him. We came for his mother,” Pao said. “She deserves to see her son one last time, ungrateful and unfilial swine that he is.”

“Right. Let’s get out of here. I’ll write a note to Elder Yotu thanking him for his hospitality, but now that we have Hoten there’s no reason to stick around,” Tan said. He did exactly that, and after going through their rooms and making certain they weren’t leaving anything behind, the children departed, rushing off towards home at the grueling marathon pace that Pao set for them.

~~~~~~

The cascade that started when an unusually potent gathering array woke an ancient and powerful spirit continued on. The spirit, grumpy and annoyed at being woken, considered what to do with the cultivators who had made its lands their home for weeks. As the old spirit contemplated what to do, it reluctantly accepted that the sect wasn’t entirely irresponsible.

They had noticed the old formations activating and gone through, deactivating and destroying the old power-drains that their predecessors had left lying about the mountain like litter on a highway. Once he accepted that the sect was lazy but not entirely worthless, the spirit calmed its rage a bit and considered what to do with a calm mind.

Hosting a sect wasn’t entirely to its detriment. The formations that they’d been using were poorly formed and not connected to each other, creating a disharmony and inefficient redundancy which had annoyed the spirit. A proper Qi-gathering formation, however, would greatly increase the spirit’s own cultivation while simultaneously benefiting the mortal cultivators who made their home on the peak.

The old spirit spent some time contemplating the matter, then decided that he had might as well make direct contact. He disregarded the most advanced cultivator on the mountain, a decrepit old man who hadn’t once stirred from his closed door cultivation. Instead he watched, waiting for the group of elders to convene.

On the third week of his wakefulness, he calmly appeared before them in the form of a swirling cloud of dust that took on the shape of a human face. The elders jerked and pulled on their Qi, prepared to defend himself, but calmed when he spoke one word.

“Peace,” he said.

The elders, wary but unwilling to be the first to strike, conferred among each other for a moment before their spokeswoman stepped forward. “Whom do we address?” she asked.

“The mountain. I sleep no longer. I have requests. Fulfill them, and I shall not evict you,” the spirit declared.

Lira continued to stand before the spirit, gathering her power to defend herself but making no offensive act. Spirits were tricky things sometimes, and the one before her was extremely powerful. Imperial class, perhaps.

“You have been activating all of the old formations and wards,” she said. “Why?”

“They bother me. Like a rash in an unpleasant location to have a rash, they irritate my Qi flows and aggravate me in ways that are not easy to explain,” the spirit answered honestly. “Do not think that you can hurt me with your pathetic knowledge of formations. Annoy me, yes. Hurt me? No.”

“I see. In that case, we apologize for our unknowing actions. We are nearly finished with deactivating the discarded and unimportant formations, leaving only those important for the functioning of the Sect. Will you accept this compromise?”

“No,” The spirit said bluntly. “Your warding systems are weak and inadequate. If you are going to live on me, then the formations you employ in your cultivation and defense must meet with my approval. Once you have finished disbanding the dross, I shall give your formation masters lessons on how to create the Perfect Mountain Array. Complete that, and perhaps I shall deign to allow you to remain.”

Lira barely contained her shock. The Perfect Mountain Array was an imperial secret, one that they guarded jealously. But if the Whispering Guides Sect developed it independently …

“We accept this bargain,” she declared.

“I shall contact you again once the last of the irritation subsides,” the mountain spirit declared. “Until then.”

“Until then,” Lira agreed.

The spirit vanished, leaving the elders to discuss this sudden stroke of fortune. There was some concern about the imperial monopoly, but Elder Yotu pointed out that the monopoly was tradition and not law, and that there were no legal penalties set down for the independent development of many traditional imperial secrets. Reverse engineering pills, growing the seeds of the imperial fruits, and many other examples were presented of instances in which the imperial family neglected to enforce their monopolies, and the elders nerves were reduced.

With renewed vigor, the elders of the Whispering Guides Sect ordered their juniors to completely deconstruct even the formations which had been previously marked for preservation. Within a month, the construction of the Perfect Mountain Array began.

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