The elders of the Hidden Heart sect sat like vultures or ravens at roost along two long tables at the head of the sect’s common hall half lost to the shadows that congregated where sect members would later gather for the evening meal. They sat still as stone, in perfect silence, as though time had stopped within the confines of the hall while the world passed by beyond its walls, keeping time with the wax and wane of sunbeams cast through narrow windows hidden in the rafters. Except for the occasional rustle of green cloth or the wash of aspected Ki, the elders might have been statues, or corpses, waiting there in the dark, until the door at the opposite end of the hall groaned and opened, silhouetting the boy who entered in a beam of sunlight before it closed once more. 

            Silence reigned in the hall. The boy stood where he’d stopped only a few steps from the massive doors, uncertain eyes trained on the twelve masters lined up before him in the green robes of the sect’s inner membership and the purple belts of their highest administrators.

            One of the elders cracked his lips. “Yi Cao.” He said. His voice rasped across the boy’s name as it came from his lips. One gnarled hand rose from the table and gestured for the boy to approach. 

            Yi Cao did as instructed, footsteps echoing in the long empty hall as he crossed it. He stopped when he was five yards from the line of elders, their eyes bright sparks in the darkness as they regarded him.

He bowed. 

            “This Yi Cao was informed that you wished to see him, honored elders.”  

            None spoke, and the silence seemed like a weight across his shoulders as he kept his bow. Sweat raised by his long run from the stables he’d been mucking out when the summons found him beaded on his forehead.

            “This Yi Cao apologizes if he has kept you waiting.” He said.

            “Yi Cao.” The elder who’d addressed him first rasped, an elder Guan. Elder Guan leaned forward slightly, gray beard sliding across the table as the seat beneath him groaned with the shift in weight. “Do you trust to fate?” 

            Yi Cao hesitated, then risked a glance up from his bow. “To fate? Sir?” 

            “To the heavens, boy.” The elder rasped. “To its decrees, on the outcome and coursing of your life, and that of our sect?” 

            Yi Cao’s mind raced as he stared at the elder. Abruptly he looked ashamed and turned his face back to the floor. “With respect, Elder Guan, Fate has never done much for me.” 

            Elder Guan sat back in his chair. “Nor, for this sect,” he whispered, “but that may be about to change.”

            A few of the elder’s stirred like birds in their roost as Elder Guan studied Yi Cao. “You did not have so bad a start.” He rasped. “The Cao family is not so poor, if isolated. They do not sponsor you, I know, but you have made progress on your foundation despite them.” 

            Yi Cao studied the floor as the elder spoke, then let the silence fill the room for several moments before he replied. 

            “It’s not… my beginnings… Sir.” 

            “Yesss.” The elder said it like a sigh. 

Yi Cao straightened, though he kept his eyes on the cobbled floor before him. He felt keenly, the rough material of his brown robes and the green string he used as a belt. The uniform of an outer sect member, and a junior one at that. 

Elder Guan reached into his robe and pulled out a Jade disc which he placed on the table in front of him. “The pieces, elders, if you please.” 

The others rustled like leaves on a dark tree, pulling jade tiles from hiding places and passing them down the line until each found their way into Elder Guan’s hands. He placed them each with care, the clink of tile on tile small but resonant in the comparative silence. He formed three rings of the tiles, going from dark almost black green at the center to a pale milk white at the edges, each ring wrapped around his first disc. When he was finished, Elder Guan removed a black stone from his sleeve as though from the air and placed it carefully at the front of the formation.

No one moved. Outside a cloud crossed the sun, dropping the hall even deeper into shadow. The voice of some crier in the street penetrated the inner sanctum, each distant shout of “Spiced meats! Spiced meats!” like an intruder in the silence. 

Yi Cao stared at the black stone in front of him. 

“Please,” Elder Guan said, “take the stone.” 

Yi Cao licked dry lips and studied the elder. “With respect.” He said, his voice no more than a whisper in that quiet place. “I still have a few more days, before the testing.” 

“A few days. Yes.” Elder Guan replied, not unkindly. He smiled sadly for the boy. “Time to cut perhaps a single channel, two, if you find a natural grotto beyond these walls, or are gifted a source. Even then, I think we both know what to expect.” He gestured once more to the formation and the tiny stone. “Come. Let us see how you have progressed.” 

Bright eyes watched Yi Cao from the shadows as he stared at the stone. He stepped forward like a man in a dream and lifted the stone.

The stone gleamed in the darkness, like some deeper shadow hidden behind a glass shell. Yi Cao held it before him as he pulled from his insides. Ki flowed from the foundation he’d fought to build over his twelve years as a junior outer disciple. He grimaced as his foundation emptied far too quickly, channels running dry of the ambient Ki and then twisting as he pushed against them to summon every drop of power that he could.

The stone gave no sign of the expenditure. It continued to gleam, black as utter darkness. 

When he set the stone on the central disk of jade the Ki he’d pressed into the stone flowed out in a swirl of pearlescent power. The disk came to life with light as hidden scripts channeled it out into the ring of tiles. Only three of the tiles lit up around the stone, each within the first ring, no more than the last time he’d done the testing at the mid-year review, or the testing of a year before. 

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The boy stared at the formation as the collected elders peered down the table and waited to see if any last drop of power would fall from the stone to ignite the fourth tile. None did. 

“First circle.” Elder Guan intoned as he reached for the bead. “And only three steps on the path.” The stone, utterly black, flared white at the elder’s touch, and the tiles pulsed in response. The elder’s power did not appear as a wispy pearlescence but a searing fog of Ki that poured into the jade, lighting each and every tile like lightning and in an instant before he removed the stone and tucked it back into his sleeve.

“No progress.” He whispered.

No one spoke as the elder disassembled the formation and passed the tiles back along the line of elders to their proper guardians. A tile to each, and two to some, each piece tucked back into robes or sleeves or pouches at their belts until all eyes were once more fixed on Yi Cao. On the boy. Who stood with his head bowed in shame before the elders of his sect. 

The clouds moved outside bringing the elders slightly out of Shadow. 

“Yi Cao.” Elder Guan intoned. “The boy has been with us for many years.” He said, addressing the other elders while his eyes remained on him. “If he has not been our most promising outer disciple, he has at least been a dedicated one.” One of the elder Guan’s fingers tapped on the table, ticking off some objects of an internal list until the finger stopped. 

“Would any add, or detract, from this assessment of the boy?” 

Silence, then, from the darkness. “Dedication can be its own kind of promise.”

Elder Guan nodded. “Indeed.” 

He regarded Yi Cao while Yi Cao studied the floor in silence. 

Elder Guan’s finger tapped the table once. “Most of the boys your age have taken up an apprenticeship among the sect’s craftsmen.” The elder told him. “Some of them even one or two steps ahead of you in advancement.” The finger tapped the table again. “We can surmise the cause for your delay, but these elders would hear your excuse for this delay from your own lips, Disciple Yi Cao.” 

Yi Cao did not look at the elders as he answered them. “This, Yi Cao, wished to request the test for inner discipleship… when he was ready.” 

“When… he was ready.” Elder Guan repeated. “When did you believe that you would be ready?” 

Yi Cao closed his eyes to stem the budding tears that pooled there. “No disciple has ever been elevated to inner membership without at least the first two rings of his foundation complete.” He said. 

“And often, not without some steps of the third as well.” Elder Guan added quietly. 

“And some steps of the third.” Yi Cao agreed. 

No one spoke and after a moment Yi Cao was forced to bow to hide the tears of shame that refused to remain behind his eyelids. “This Yi Cao has served the sect, all his life.” He said. “I… this Yi Cao, did not wish to leave.” 

“You would not have to leave.” Elder Guan said in surprise. “There are many craftsmen who are outer disciples of our sect. Craftsmen who do important work and who are always in need of young men of your age and your cultivation to serve as apprentices and learn their trade.” 

Yi Cao remained bent at the waist, hands locked into a single fist. “It has ever, been this one’s hope, to join the sect, not simply, to serve it.” 

“There is honor in service.” One of the elders whispered from Elder Guan’s left. 

“And in serving one’s family.” Yi Cao replied. He straightened, slowly, but still did not meet the elder’s sharp gazes. “If I cannot join the sect, I… this one, had determined to return home. To serve his family as best he can instead.” 

“You would not stay?” Elder Guan asked. 

Yi Cao looked up and met the elder’s gaze. He wiped at the tears that stained his cheeks but did not flinch from Elder Guan’s eyes. “To spend a lifetime, watching those I could not emulate?” His gaze moved along the row of shadowed elders then to the rafters before returning to elder Guan. “Every… achievement, of the sect, would be a bitterness to this one, were he forced to watch from outside.”

Elder Guan sighed and nodded. “It has ever been so for those who strived against fate.” He looked down at his hands and studied them for a moment. 

Yi Cao returned his eyes to the floor. “Am I to leave the sect?” He asked. 

Elder Guan tapped the table in front of him twice then looked up at the thin boy, a boy still, despite his age. No more than eighteen if even that. “After this testing?” The elder sighed. “Normally we would require such a choice. To leave or take up an apprenticeship, move out of the junior disciples barracks, but fate gives every man an opportunity to advance, if they are bold enough to seize it, and strong enough, or lucky enough, to survive the attempt.” He drummed his fingers then glanced at the elders to his right and left. 

“Are we still decided upon this course of action then, honored elders?” He whispered. “After hearing the boy’s intent.” 

Cloaks rustled as the elders indicated their ascent in nods or raised hands. A single quiet “Aye” from an elder towards the end of the row. Elder Guan turned back to Yi Cao. 

“You should know that you will not be the only Cao here for much longer.” He rasped. 

Yi Cao blinked.

“We received a letter from one of our outer members only a couple of weeks ago.” The elder went on. “One of your cousins has apparently opened a channel in the palm of his hand.”

Elder Guan raised his hand as though to examine the same channel in his own. “

Our outer member was shown when he visited the Cao compound on his way through the western wilderness. It is rare to hear of a single household without patronage which produces more than a single cultivator in a generation, then again, your family is large, and the western wilderness is infested with natural grottos and unbalanced creatures.”

He dropped his hand and looked back to Yi Cao. “The boy, the son of your mother’s niece as I’m told, will be accompanying your Uncle Bao when he comes to collect your family’s share of your income as an outer disciple during the festival of testing. If our outer member’s words prove true, this boy will be enrolled as one of the newest junior disciples. As his cousin, he will look to you for guidance in his cultivation.” 

Yi Cao nodded. “Of course.” He said.

“It will do your family little credit if on the arrival of one outer disciple, there is a departure of another.” The elder went on. “Or his disgrace.” 

Yi Cao nodded again but said nothing.

“We have a task for you.” Elder Guan said. “One that would involve considerable danger to yourself if you chose to take it, but one for which we are willing to sponsor you all the way to the second ring if you are successful. One that would require utter secrecy on your part should you choose to hear more.” 

Yi Cao stood silent as he processed the information. 

“Why me?” He asked.

Elder Guan was not the one to answer him this time, but the elder next to him, and elder Xia, younger than the rest, his topknot not yet gone completely gray, his thin mustache and goatee still lustrous and black.

“We require an outer disciple for this task. One with tight ties to the sect, and very little in the way of advancement. One who can go invisibly where an inner member, or a delegation of inner members, in this case, cannot go unnoticed.”

One of the other elders stirred in the silence. “We should extract a soul oath from him,” He said, “to guarantee his silence.”

Yi Cao shivered, but elder Guan interjected. “And who would accept this oath?” He demanded. He glared at the elder who’d spoken. “Would you accept the burden upon your cultivation? Any of you?” 

“A mortal, or an outer member.”  

“And include more in the scheme?” Asked elder Xia.

“Enough.” Elder Guan said. Yi Cao felt a pulse of Ki wash over the gathered elders, aspected with something cold as ice. The roost of elders shifted and stirred as though in a breeze but none spoke.  “We have decided.” Elder Guan whispered when the silence was re-established. He looked at Yi Cao.

            “It was decided, long before you were called here, that an oath upon your own reputation, would suffice. So long, as your cousin remained behind, as part of our sect.” He gazed levelly at Yi Cao, implying that far more would be at stake, Yi Cao realized, than just his reputation. “

Yi Cao hesitated, then thought of the gates where he would go out, disgraced, if he failed to progress in his cultivation, back to the home that was only a memory of a six year old boy surrounded by the family and extended family who had all become strangers to him in the twelve years since he’d entered the Hidden Heart Sect as a junior disciple.

He bowed. “What would you have of this Yi Cao?” He asked.

Elder Xia leaned forward, eyes bright as he intertwined his fingers in front of his lips and smiled. “We would send you offworld.” He said. “To the technomancer’s station in orbit beyond our sun.”

Elder Guan shot a glare at the grinning elder beside him. “After, you have sworn your oath.” He snapped, then looked at Yi Cao who stood staring at the grin plastered across elder Xia’s face.  “And after the festival of the testing.”

Yi Cao could only nod dumbly, and follow Elder Guan’s instructions through the making of his oath to before the gathered elders of his sect.