Elder Xia left them in the lesser treasure hall.

For a long time after, Yi Cao watched his cousin stare at the swords and collected treasures of the sect glitter in the Ki lights. Yue with sparks inching along their blades, spears that rippled like reflections in a pool, Jian forged from black volcanic glass, and a Gou that burped lightning into the glass every couple of minutes. Under other circumstances the weapons might have fascinated even him, but Yi Cao had other things on his mind, and he’d seen magic before.

The magical key Xia’d left with him felt heavy in the inside pocket of Yi Cao’s robes.

Eventually Yang Lei Cao became aware of his cousin’s eyes on him and tore his gaze away from the racks of weaponry to meet his face. Cousin Yi wore an odd expression that Yang Lei took a moment to study. He snorted and turned back to the swords.

“You look just like auntie Yinua.”

Yi Cao’s expression grew tighter. “Like what?” He asked.

“Like that.” Yang glanced at him again then smiled. “Like you’re contemplating whether I’m going to get hurt or not.”

The thought triggered something in the boy and his own expression of wonder faded as he glanced back at the lightning spilling from the sword.

“I’m never going to see her again… Am I.” The boy whispered.

Yi Cao was quiet for long minutes before he replied. “Not for a long time, anyways.”

The lightning spider walked across the scripted glass between them and the sword. Hidden runes etched in the glass lit with Ki light as it touched them.

Yang hesitated, then touched one of the glowing runes. “What makes it do that?” He asked.

“The lightning or the script?” Yi Cao asked.

Yang rolled his eyes. “The lightning. Duh.”

Yi Cao paused before he answered. “Probably a source. Some storm aspected treasure built into the blade. Power the sword and the cultivator at the same time, if they have the same affinity. I don’t really know. This is my first time seeing one up close, but I’ve seen them at the festival. You probably will two in a day or two.”

Yang turned to him. “You haven’t been in here before?”

Yi Cao’s expression soured and he looked around the lesser vault. “No.” He said shortly, then turned and nodded for Yang to follow him. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

Yang hitched his bag higher onto his back and followed his cousin out of the lesser treasure hall, once more passing underneath the moaning elemental chained above the inner doorway on their way out.

When they were back in sunlight Yang jogged to walk in step next to his cousin.

“Will I be sleeping with you?” He asked.

“Yes.” Yi Cao replied. He scowled at the ground as he marched ahead.

“Will there be others too?” Yang asked.

“Yes.” Yi Cao said again.

Yang had to step aside as they passed a cart full of casks and three laughing men regaling a blushing young girl at their center. Cousin Yi marched on, oblivious as his cousin jogged to catch back up.

Yang lifted the pill in his hand to look at it again as they walked. “When should I take the Mountain’s Recovery pill?” He asked. “Did the elder say?”

Cousin Yi stopped abruptly in the street and snapped around to curl Yang’s fingers over the pill.

“Be quiet.” The older boy hissed. He looked around, then back to the little cousin staring up at him in the middle of the street. “Do you want someone to steal it?”

Yang shook his head.

Yi Cao realized he was looming and stepped back. “Not yet… anyways.” He said, in some embarrassment, then turned to carry on. “Soon. Though.”

“That pill is valuable.” Yi Cao added when they’d traversed a couple of streets in silence. “It’s nothing for an elder of the sect to hand out, might even mean nothing to a cultivator of the second rank, but for us, for junior disciples and outer sect members?” He glanced sidelong at his little cousin. “It’s enough to change your entire fate.” His face darkened and he turned away. “People kill for that, all the time, apparently.”

Yang clutched the pill in a suddenly sweating palm. “I understand.” He said, but he didn’t, how could he?

Yi Cao collected one of three battered copies of the foundation scriptures used by the Hidden Heart Sect from a shelf in the lower floor of the dormitory when they arrived. He took the better of the three, the one with additional notes made by a student of some “Elder Wuxian of the Red Bear Sect” before the pamphlet found its way here amongst the odds and ends brought together by all the elders at the founding of the Hidden Heart Sect. It was missing one of its pages, but with three copies available for study, the notes from the elder still made this the most useful copy for someone just trying to grasp the intricacies of cultivation.

The lower floor of the barracks served as both a home for the master of the junior disciples, and the common room where they prepared and ate their meals, received lectures from the master and occasional elder on their cultivation, and witnessed the discipline exacted on the troublemakers. A night spent hanging by your thumbs from pegs stuck into the rafters meant there were very few troublemakers among them, at least, very few who would make trouble for outsiders to the barracks and draw the attention of the other masters. Inside the barracks there was no such restraint.

“This is where you’ll sleep.” Yi Cao said as he led his little cousin through the trap door to the second story. Pallets topped by crumbling rush mats filled the room from end to end. Twenty in all, with a single clay tiled fireplace at one end black with ash.

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Yang crawled up the ladder after Yi Cao and looked around at the beds. He shifted his pack uncertainly on his shoulders. “Do I just, pick a bed?” He asked.

Yi Cao shrugged. “Pretty much. Sometimes there are fights over who gets to use which bed, but mostly just in winter when you don’t want to be too far from the hearth.” He kicked one of the beds not far from the empty fire. “You can sleep next to me until then. Nobody fights with me.” Because they were four to ten years younger than him, he didn’t add, but frowned as he watched Yang drop his backpack onto the pallet next to Yi Cao’s.

The boy looked around at the other pallets, then looked at the pill still clutched in his hand and up at Yi Cao. “What should I do with this?” He asked. He hesitated. “If it’s so valuable…”

Yi Cao held out his hand and Yang hesitated again.

“I’m not going to take it from you.” Yi Cao said. “Not permanently. I’m just going to put it with my stuff so it will be safe. You need a day or two to get used to your new life here, and you need to know what to do once you take it so you don’t screw up your foundation.”

The boy hesitated for a moment longer, then dropped the little pill into Yi Cao’s hand.

The thing was brown, like dirt or a stone but nearly weightless. Against his palm Yi Cao could feel just the faintest hint of spiritual energy coming from it. The gentlest touch of Ki. It felt like nothing. Too small a thing against the balance he was expected to pay in return.

After a moment he realized he was staring and shook himself.

He reached into the rafters and pulled down the heavy bearskin blanket his mother, Yinua, sent with Uncle Bao the year before. “You’ll want to keep your things in the rafters.” Yi Cao said as he unrolled the blanket onto his pallet to reveal a hidden reed pouch at its heart.

“Some of the boys keep their stuff piled in a corner or tucked under one of the pallets, but the others almost always treat those as public property. The rafters is the only place off limits. You’ll get a coal tucked down your pants if anyone catches you going through stuff up there. Not fun. The only boy that ever tried it had to go home after the trauma closed up his channels. Ruined his cultivation and got him kicked out of the sect.”

He knelt to open the pouch and rifled through his few possessions then tucked the pill deep in the thumb of one of his winter mittens before tucking the mitten itself into a seam at the bottom of the bag.

“Got all of us in trouble too, but no one wanted to out the boy that did it, and the one he did it to didn’t see him in the dark. Just, felt the coal burn a line between his buttocks until it passed through a hole in his robes.”

He rolled his possessions back into his blanket then hoisted the whole thing back into the rafters. Yang held out his own bag to be hoisted alongside and Yi Cao slung it up beside his blanket.

“The pill will be safe there for now.” He said, wiping his hands and studying the bags to make sure they wouldn’t fall. “For a couple of days anyways.” He added. “By then it will be time to take the pill, whether you’re ready or not.” He snorted then looked down at his little cousin. “You’ll be ahead of almost every disciple here inside a year, if…” He looked away abruptly and had to take a breath as his hands curled and uncurled into fists. “If Elder Xia… wasn’t lying… about the pill.” He turned back to Yang.

They were both quiet for long moments and when the whispering of the willows finally faded enough from Yi Cao’s mind for him to realize that neither had spoken, he found his little cousin staring down at the bed that would be his for the foreseeable future, a lost expression on his face.

“Is it… a bad place? The sect?” The boy asked after a while. He turned to Yi Cao with all the fear and anxiety of his new home warring with the hope and excitement on his face.

Yi Cao heard the rustling of the trees and the thrashing beneath the bridge, and tried not to imagine his little cousin felled by a single blow.

Cousin Yi’s scowl darkened perceptibly at Yang’s question and the boy felt the fear he’d kept locked away and let out, just a little bit, with his question, shiver at the dark look on the older boy’s face.

“It is good,” Cousin Yi told him, told the ground, more like, jaw tight and eyes boring holes into the wooden floor, “for some.” Cousin Yi looked up and met Yang Lei’s eyes. “For some, it is good.”

Two days later Yi Cao sat next to his cousin at the exhibition tests of the festival while honored guests and itinerant merchants from across the Sect’s sphere of influence cheered from the sidelines as Bao Goa and Zihan Beigao bowed once more to the honored elder Xia above the dais and turned to make their way out of the arena.

His cousin turned to the boy who’d explained Bao Goa’s past and pointed. “If Bao Goa is a veteran how did the other boy win?” He asked.

“Zihan?” The boy asked. Surprise tinged his voice like the fire Ki that suffused the air around them. The boy leaned closer. “That’s the Young Master of the sect.” He said in a low voice barely audible over the cheering crowd. “He’s a talent from the empire. A prodigy. Rumors say that his parents sent him here when he killed an entire gang of assassins sent to kill him when he was ten years old, but other rumors say he’s the illegitimate son of some imperial sect leader or one of the immortals themselves. He’s been in the node forming stage for as long as I’ve been here, and Xian the woodcutter’s apprentice told me that he heard Yu Xi, the herbalists wife telling the woodcutter’s wife that she’d overheard the herbalist tell the alchemist about a rumor amongst the inner disciples that he’d undergone the first trial of his ascension.” The boy’s eyes shone. “That’s half an immortal. Of the first rank anyways. Half a ascendant.”

Yi Cao scowled as he watched Bao Goa and the Young Master make their way towards the edge of the arena reserved for green robed inner disciples of the sect to the continued cheering of the crowd. A woman at the front of the crowd threw something towards them and Zihan’s hand blurred as he caught it. He lifted it to examine a thin piece of paper wrapped around the stem of a rose.

Laughter rippled through the cheering crowd as Zihan looked to the now blushing woman. She smiled and waved to him but the Young Masters cold expression barely changed as he tipped the flower in his hand and let it fall to the dirt.

Men jeered as the flower began to smolder on the hot sand but the young master just turned and vaulted over the arena’s fence to share a few words with the his opponent before they separated to take their seats.

“He’s doesn’t look that much older than…” Yang’s face turned red and he glanced towards Yi Cao.

Yi felt his jaw tighten. “Not all of us got pills to help us advance.” He spat, then reigned himself in. He looked down at his hand and uncurled the fist he’d made over the course of Elder Xia’s speech. He took in a breath, let it out, felt the fire Ki tingle in the air on the back of his tongue. “Zihan had all three circles of his foundation completed when he got here.” Yi Cao said. “At the age of ten.” He looked at Yang who just looked at him blankly until Yi Cao looked away, back to the Young Master as he accepted the congratulatory shoulder pats and shouts of the inner disciples around him without expression.

“At least, so I’ve been told.” He turned away, back to Yang and the other junior disciples who’d all turned at his earlier outburst to listen in. “I don’t know what kind of pills it takes to get all the way to the third circle of their foundation at the age of ten, but I know it wasn’t done naturally.” He flexed his hand, the one he’d been working to cut channels in during his own cultivation sessions over the last couple of days. “No one who’s ever tried will disagree.”

Many of the boys around him nodded, those who’d tried to push for advancement and seen the reality they faced without more serious support.

“With the right backing, any of us could be in his position.” Yi Cao glared at his hand as he thought of the rose in the lesser treasure hall and Elder Xia’s parting promise, and demands. “Fate just hands the heavens to some people on a platter.” He looked up to glare at the Young Master across the arena. “The rest of us have to risk our lives for half of the same opportunities.”

As the criers stepped into the arena to shout the names and accomplishments of the next two inner disciples who would be called upon to demonstrate their advancement in the ring Yi Cao thought he saw the Young Master’s eyes swing to meet his own across the gulf in space, and power, that separated the two. The older boy might even have nodded, before the young master closed his eyes and ceased paying attention to the exhibition, or any other thing.