Silas slowly opened his eyes, blinking rapidly, trying to focus. A few faces were looking at him, one of which he didn't recognize. It was an older man wearing faded light gray robes and a conical farmer's hat that reached a point. He had a long white beard, and Silas could see bits of white hair with the hat the man was wearing leaning back. Kio and Maisy were close to the bed.

"Maisy?!" It took Silas a moment to realize it was her, the girl from The Dagger's Sheath, the brothel outside of Zhangshu. She was the girl who worked in the brothel and had grown a sort of friendship with Silas over the winter months when he was stuck in that camp.

The young redhead blushed a little and smiled, giving Silas a nod. "Yes, Silas. I was there doing some work for the Old Man here." Maisy then nodded to the older gentleman.

Kio smirked and folded her arms against her chest. "Maisy was charged for looking after The Initiate."

Silas looked at Kio now, narrowing his eyes. It was the second time someone called him that. "Initiate for what? When I was out, how long was I out?" All these questions flooded Silas's head, and he stumbled over his thoughts, trying to ask all the questions simultaneously.

Before Silas could continue, there was a slight noise, as if someone was clearing his throat. Silas looked, and it was the Old Man, and he was raising his palm in a soothing motion.

"Silas, you have many questions. I have some answers. I don't think I have all of your answers, though. Once you feel up to it, I will do what I can to help you." He spoke kindly and soothingly but had a firmness to his words. His voice was deep and he didn't match the man Silas saw. In his farmer's robes and hat, the weathered wrinkly skin was tanned like he was actually an old farmer who worked fields all day.

"Now that you're awake, you must eat and drink something. We've been feeding you elixir to ensure you didn't wither away, but nothing replaces actual food. Kio, Maisy…" and he gestured for them to leave the room.

Silas stared. He asked the Old Man once the girls were gone. They've been feeding him elixirs? "How long was I out?"

The old man came and sat on the bed, putting a hand on Silas's shoulder. "Physically, only a few days. There have been things going on inside you, however, haven't there?" He smiled down at Silas like he was Silas's own grandfather.

Silas spoke. He wanted to tell this man everything. All about this man Kenji and what Silas had learned about his new power. He also had more questions, though, as much as Kenji taught Silas, he opened more doors with many more questions. Before Silas could get a word out, the Old Man simply raised his hand and gave him that warm smile again.

"No, no. Not now." Old Man said, still smiling. Just then, the door opened again to his room, and Silas finally got to look around.

Silas was in a rather lovely bed, filled with the softest material he had ever felt under him. The room appeared to be a finished room in a brick building. The room was plain, and its walls painted an off-white color, and it reminded him a little of a patient's room in a healer's hall. There were some candles on the walls, and Silas, now able to look out the one window in the room, realized it was almost night.

With the door opening, he saw Maisy and Kio enter, carrying a bowl, cup, and pitcher. Old Man helped Silas sit up a little, and Maisy gave him the bowl and a spoon.

"It's just a rich broth to help even you out, and Kio has some water for you to drink." Maisy told him slowly when Silas took the bowl from her and Kio put the pitcher and cup on the table next to the bed, filling it up.

When he smelled the soup, he felt the hunger pains from days of not eating. He laid the spoon in his lap and forgot about it. Putting his lips to the bowl, Silas tipped his head back and started drinking the broth. He got some objections from the three other people in the room, but once he had started, he couldn't stop. He gulped it, leaving Kio and Maisy laughing softly and Old Man simply smiling his soft smile.

Once Silas drank the broth, he set the bowl on his lap, huffing. He even gave a soft belch, which sent him to look at the other three in the room, blushing slightly. "Sorry, forgive me."

Old Man chuckled, and instead of handing Silas the cup with water, he gave him the whole pitcher. Silas took and drank from the jug until it was empty. The broth was a little salty, so the water was suitable for washing it down. Little dribbles of water poured down the sides of his mouth and down his chin until he finally handed the pitcher back to Old Man. He didn't care for etiquette at the moment, only drinking.

"Thank you." Silas told him, wiping his mouth with what would have been his robes but was his bare arm. He looked at the Old Man questioningly.

"Your robes had to be burned. We'll find you fresh ones in the morning. Get some rest tonight, Silas. Tomorrow, I think everything will become clearer for you." The Old Man was standing now, grasping Silas's leg for a moment. "Sleep, friend," was the last thing Silas heard before he drifted off to sleep.

______________________

Morning came quickly, and he opened his eyes. The sun beat in through the lace curtains covering the window in the room, and Silas felt like he had slept another week. As soon as the Old Man told him to sleep, it was like all the lights went off in Silas's mind. He must be some sort of healer? Or was there something inside the soup they gave him to knock him out a little longer? Either way, Silas felt better than he had in months.

He climbed from the bed and realized once more that he was naked. He stayed sitting up, his legs out of bed and his feet on the floor. The blanket he was covering up with stayed in his lap to save some decency, not that he saw anyone in the room, but you never really knew. He looked around for a moment. On the side table next to the bed were some fresh robes. They also gave him a dish of rice, and some meat alongside the pitcher of water from last night. He saw it had been refilled when Silas picked it up.

When he went to dress on the bottom of the pile of clothing, there was an extra long and wide black scarf, Himari's scarf. On top of it was a note ‘we cleaned it as best we could.’ He recognized the handwriting as Kio's, and she would know the scarf and who it belonged to. He paused for a moment, thinking of her. How she looked and smelled. Lifting the robe to his face, he breathed in deeply. Silas was instantly taken back to the Kyoto fields he'd visited during her workday.

He dressed and wrapped the scarf loosely around his neck. The robes were warm and felt good on his skin. Judging from how they were, they felt even nicer than the ones he had gotten from the old seamstress in Zhangshu. He ate some meat and rice that they left for him. After drinking some of the water, Silas lifted the pitcher to refill the mug and look it over.

Near the rim of the pitcher, he saw a small script, and Silas grinned to himself, closing his eyes. His fingers traced the work slowly. He thought he knew the lettering, and while it wasn't his work, he believed it was a script to keep the water in the pitcher full. Silas nodded his head and still grinned, looking it over. After months in the wilderness, only talking to that man from the whorehouse. He was finally among sacred artists once more.

Wait, Maisy was here too? She was one of the working girls in that very brothel. What was she doing here? Was she a cultivator? Silas sensed nothing from her, but he supposed he never tried, and it was entirely possible he wouldn't have been able to depend on how powerful the woman was. He put the pitcher down, still admiring the work on the pitcher a little, before he heard a knock on the door. That's when he spotted the ring sitting on the table. Silas gasped and picked the ring up, sliding it on his finger. His storage ring.

The person who knocked didn't wait for Silas to answer. The older farmer man entered the room, giving Silas a soft smile from under his hat. He looked the same as he did the night before, the dirty gray robes.

"Come, Silas, let's go for a walk and work on answering those questions you have." He told him, gesturing towards the door.

Silas nodded and walked through the door, feeling happier than he was a few moments before now that he had his ring back on his finger. When he left the room, he saw it was just a one-room shack in a line of four one-room huts and a larger building just behind them. Silas looked beyond the medical facilities and saw he was in an entire village. It was a small village, more minor than Kyoto, and everyone he saw he could sense power from. They were all cultivators in this town. Sacred Artists were rare. There were only a few schools in the entire empire, and an entire village of cultivators was unheard of, even if it was small.

The Old Man looked at Silas and laughed softly. "Yes, it is something, isn't it? We have an entire village of cultivators enlightened on how the world operates. Not that your more traditional or mortal way of thinking is necessarily wrong. It's just incomplete."

The two walked along through the village. People were working on houses, fixing them up from the winter, and a few shops were selling some things. Silas even recognized a building as a Tong Xu Guild house with their crest upon it.

He stopped and stared for a moment. The village reminded him so much of Kyoto. Since Kyoto was small, it was saying something. Still, it was laid out about the same. They even nestled it into the bottom of a mountain. However, this one was more of a desert mountain. They were in The Desolation, after all.

The only other difference was that if you looked out past the village, you didn't see the fields of hay and grain. It was just desert. Then, way off in the distance, there was a lone enormous mountain. Silas was surprised he could see that far again. It seemed darker than the other mountains in the area. It seemed ominous.

Looking back into the village, he saw the rest of the buildings. He could see the people of Kyoto now, not the people of this place. Walking along doing their business, his eyes moved to one building, and he even gasped. It was an arcanist foundry. He could smell the fire from the forge, and looking inside, he could tell it wasn't a simple blacksmith's shop. He stepped towards the foundry when he heard a soft cough.

Silas turned and saw the Old Man standing there calmly with a soft smile on his grandfatherly features and raised eyebrows. Silas remembered himself and moved towards the Old Man with a sheepish grin. "Sorry," Silas told him. He then remembered where they had left off before Silas got sidetracked.

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"What do you mean by a mortal way of thinking?" Silas asked him. He had other questions, but with that statement, he couldn't help but think of Kenji and his own time in that void.

"So Silas, when I say madra, you think of the five elements, correct? List them for me. Also, don't call me Old Man like the others have referred to me. It's something of a joke among them. Just call me Elder." The Elder spoke, his arms behind his back as they walked. He always had that soft smile.

"Well, Elder. There is water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. I was always a metal cultivator." Silas answered the Elder's question and informed him.

The Elder nodded his head. They were on the outskirts of the small village now and walking around a large garden. "Does the word mana mean anything to you?" The Elder stopped and looked at Silas, turning towards him. Looking right into his eyes. The smile was gone now, and he had this intenseness to his gaze.

Silas stopped with him and matched the gaze, looking into the Elder's eyes, but he couldn't help but relent with a cocked eyebrow. "No, Elder, I have not."

The intensity was gone, and the smile returned to his lips. He gave a nod and even chuckled. "No, I didn't think so. So few cultivators know about it. Only the Sect and School Elders do, and so few of them don't see it fit to teach their sects about it. The Heavenly Dragon Sect knows about mana and uses it to create their illusions. The old ladies you call the mothers? They use it as well."

Silas stared, waiting for the punchline and what this mana actually was. He had seen the power firsthand of The Heavenly Dragon Sect, and he couldn't believe their power.

"It's from the Kami." the Elder told him, which only hardened Silas's blank look.

"The gods?" Silas asked him.

This drew another soft laugh at Silas, but not mockingly so. Elder shook his head. "There are no gods, Silas. There is only Kami. They are something more than gods, they are embodiments of ideas, and the Kami are mighty beings with their own realms. They live away from this world made from their power. Their power is known as mana, not of this world, but it can come into this world. Tell me, Silas, what brought you here to my humble little village?" They walked into the small garden with a bench and sat on it. Silas stared for several long moments before finally launching into the story again.

He told the Elder about Himari and Reiko, and he told him how he knew Kio though looking back, Silas supposed the Elder already knew of Kio and Silas's relationship.

Silas told the Elder about the Mother who came to the village and gave him that cryptic warning. Silas said the next thing he remembered was waking up on the beach. He told him all about the goo he had seen and those little monsters he had to fight. Then Silas told him of that vision he had seen where he had seen that young girl and the monster that had destroyed the village. Silas told the Elder about how he was sick and unable to cultivate or practice the sacred arts. He told him the entire story of the winter and finally how he came here.

The Elder sat there and nodded along the entire time, never interrupting. When Silas was finished telling his story, the Elder looked at Silas. He looked deep in thought as Silas spoke, as if he was trying to wrap the complete puzzle. Wrap it in a neat little bow, and solve all of Silas's problems right then.

"And what of when you were knocked out? When the dragon attacked the ship?" Elder pushed Silas for the bit of information Silas had left out.

Silas breathed in deeply and inspected the older man for a moment. There was no judgment on his face. "It sounds crazy." Silas told him, still looking for any reaction.

The Elder's expression never changed. He just stared at Silas, waiting for the story.

"Well," Silas paused, trying to gather his thoughts. "It was like I was somewhere but nowhere at the same time. It was all dark, like I was in some void, and that goop was everywhere. The goop that those monsters and the demon left in Kyoto. It kept shifting forms and moving. He taught me things, things I never thought were possible."

The Elder nodded at that. "Yes, he told you about the Kami, probably indirectly. Did this person have a name?"

Silas stared at him and nodded. "I'll never forget it. He sounded cold and kind of crazy, but he only allowed me to call him Kenji. Not master or teacher or anything. When I tried, he scolded me and told me he was definitely not my master, that some silly mortal could be my master."

The Elder lowered his head and stifled a laugh before nodding his head. "Yes, from what I understand, Kenji is a little unsociable. Tell me, Silas, what else did he tell you?"

Silas cocked his eyebrow, a bit confused by Elder's reaction, but he continued. "He told me what was going on with my madra. That it wasn't my madra anymore, but his."

The Elder nodded his head. "Yes, sort of. It's like what I told you before. The Kami has their own mana versus the traditional madra, you know, and I think I know what he was talking about. Your madra, well Silas." Elder paused here, looking right into Silas's eyes, the intensity from before returning. "You have no more, madra. You were so sick because you were fighting the change. If you had just let it consume you, things might have gone differently for you."

Silas stared blankly at the Elder, unsure what to say to him. The Elder simply continued.

"You now have mana, shadow mana from the sounds of things, which is quite rare here in this realm," The Elder told him.

They sat on this bench, and Silas felt like the bottom had dropped from underneath him. Learning all this about Kami and all new powers, and even that the dragon cults knew about it and actually practiced it? It was too much to take in at the moment. Silas lowered his head and closed his eyes. This wasn't how his life was supposed to go. Not at all. He was a child prodigy. He was on the cusp of reaching new heights and could become a Celestial for The Divine Body Sect one day.

The Elder held Silas's hand and looked at him somberly. "I know this is hard, but this is rather impressive. Kenji is known to not allow mortals to have his mana. He knows you do and has allowed it. He could easily have turned you into a husk and taken away your power together. The fact he didn't shows some promise. Even with the tournament, he picks no one."

Silas lifted his head and cocked his brow, looking at the Elder. "Tournament?"

Now it was the Elder's turn to look at Silas curiously. "You don't know?" Seeing Silas's blank expression, he gathered he didn't and continued. "There's a tournament every so often. Not held on any schedule, but whenever they feel like having one. It has been quite a while since the last one, I believe. Anyway, the Kami and Sect Elders hold a tournament, and the ones who stand out the most get an offer from a Kami.

Those people ascend to their plane, gain even more power and serve them and help them with their position. It is considered a great honor to be selected."

"So people know about the Kami?" Silas asked. Earlier, the Elder had told him they didn't, so now he was confused. He had never heard about anything called a kami, only the gods.

"Some, yes, but the tournament is tiny, and the people who get chosen give a soul oath not to tell about the tournament or why it's held. The only ones chosen are the ones the Sect leaders trust, the emperor, or someone the Kami knows. Also, as I said, it's been a long time since they've had one. I don't think any of the current Elders were around last they had one." The Elder sat there and put a hand to his chin in thought.

The Elder, seeing Silas's face, gave him a smile. "I am ancient."

Silas narrowed his eyes at the Elder and reached out with his spirit. He still needed complete control over this power, so it was clumsy, but since he knew how to do it, he was able. Silas reached and sensed the old man's spirit, trying to get some kind of reading on the man. How powerful he was, or what his madra was composed of.

He just sensed a pureness in this old man. There was no actual power level or type of madra, just a pure whiteness. Silas felt nothing blocking him either, so it's not like the Elder didn't want him to do so. He could have easily stopped Silas from sensing him. When Silas looked into the old man's eyes, the old man simply smiled and winked.

"You still have much to learn, Silas, and you don't want to learn too quickly. Trust me." The Elder stood from the bench. "Come now, you've met Kio and Maisy, and you may have to fill me in more on how you met Maisy. She's unclear where she's been the entire winter. She was supposed to watch after you, but she did not explain where she was. Come, it's time for you to meet the rest of our inner circle."

"Oh," Silas stood as well. He wasn't sure if it was really his story to tell where Maisy had been, but the Elder welcomed Silas into all of this and taught him so much already.

"Well, Elder Maisy was just working in an inn. She was stuck up in the mountains around Zhangshu. The snow kept both of us there. Do you know what the winters could be like up there?" Silas figured he'd keep the details of where Maisy was working and what she was doing. When he realized he had asked this old man if he knew what the winters were like in Zhangshu, Silas realized he most likely did.

The Elder simply nodded at Silas's question. "Yes, it can get rather brutal up there."

"Yes, she was working at the inn I went to for help sometimes so I could survive the season. The owner was a man named Leo, he ran it. He was from the Moon Lotus Pavilion. We trained together sometimes." Silas continued, probably offering more details than he should have.

The Elder gave a bit of a laugh when he heard the sect's name. The Elder frowned lightly for a moment but only for a moment before his smile returned. He was now leading Silas back through the little village, but away from the hut he was resting in when he slept.

"Those guys are a peculiar bunch," the Elder shrugged. "But I suppose it works well enough for them."

Silas just let the older man speak, since he felt the same way. They had gone in a complete direction now, away from those huts.

"There's a little tavern up here where the group likes to meet." The Elder informed Silas as they strolled along. Silas was still looking around the entire time as they walked. The village wasn't anything special by any means, but it had been the first village he had been to in months.