For the first minute or so, Sen tried to answer questions. Unfortunately, everyone was so busy yelling at him or each other that his attempts at answering went unheard. For the next minute or so, he just gave everyone a generally annoyed look. That didn’t seem to dampen their enthusiasm at all. Sen’s frustration swelled as they continued their verbal assault and he cycled up air qi. When it became clear that no one planned to stop anytime soon, Sen wove air qi through the entire room, stood abruptly, and spoke.
“Enough.”
The air qi he’d woven throughout the room amplified his voice so much that it shook tables, not to mention rib cages, and brought the entire room to silence. He looked around at the stunned group of water cultivators. They seemed to realize what they had been doing and a few even had the wherewithal to look embarrassed. The rest, however, looked like they planned to pick up right where they left off if at a lower volume. Sen had no interest in that. He gave the room a bow.
“Thank you for the meal and the interesting conversation,” he said.
Then, with a burst of his qinggong technique, he was out of the room, down the hallway, and out the nearest door to the outside. It was late evening by then, so most of the sect members were holed up inside by then, which Sen saw as a small blessing. He’d had enough of other people for a while. Unfortunately, he also didn’t know the layout of the sect very well. That made finding a place to be alone a bit more. He wandered around for a bit, offering casual greetings to the handful of people who greeted him first. Eventually, he found himself out of a small walled-off area in the middle of the compound. He recalled that Chan Yu Ming had pointed it out and said something about the spring the sect was named for being in there. Shrugging to himself, Sen walked around the wall looking for a door or an entrance. He didn’t find one.
That struck Sen as very odd. He could understand why the sect might want to limit how exposure the spring got to the outside world, but cutting it off completely seemed like overkill to him. He supposed he could just fly over the wall. That would be a little ostentatious. Although, he supposed that would be one way to limit easy access to those who were core formation and above. He expected that only upper-tier inner sect members and elders could pull it off with ease. Still, he suspected that there was some other ploy at work. He walked another circuit around the wall, letting his hand trail against the rock. He let a bit of earth qi sink into the wall and had it follow him as he walked. If the wall really was solid, his earth qi shouldn’t disrupt it at all. He felt it the moment his earth qi slapped up against water qi. He stopped and considered the spot in the wall where he felt water qi. It looked like stone. It felt like stone. Yet, he was confident that his qi wasn’t deceiving him. If so, then that was a kind of illusion he’d never seen or heard about. He was impressed with how completely it mimicked the appearance of the rest of the wall.
He thought about it for a moment. This had to be some kind of test for the water cultivators. Given the illusion felt solid to his hand, he didn’t think he could simply walk through it. That was too simple if this was meant as a test for advanced cultivators. No, he suspected that he would need to manipulate the water qi. He sat down by the wall and cycled for water qi. He let tendrils of that water qi explore the boundaries of the illusion. There was an arched opening hiding behind it that would get him access to the clear spring itself. That left the question of how best to deal with the illusion. He was a guest here, so he didn’t think they’d appreciate him damaging their carefully constructed test. Nor did he think that a brute force approach was the intent of the illusion. The illusion was no doubt designed to test someone’s ability to manipulate water.
He understood at least some of what was happening with the illusion. He had experience hardening water with his own techniques, so he knew that it could be done. He’d just never expected anyone to do anything with this level of permanence or detail. It was one thing to harden an edge. It was another thing entirely, probably a whole order of magnitude more difficult, to shape and harden water into something that felt like stone. Of course, he didn’t need to replicate the complexity. This was a master-level work, so master water cultivators would maintain it. The part he didn’t understand was the illusion. Making the water feel like stone was accomplishment enough, but making it look like stone? How? The longer Sen sat there, the deeper his concentration grew.
He spent hours exploring the illusion, and then those hours turned into days. He was vaguely aware that people came and went around him. He dimly perceived that people spoke to him, a few jeered at him, but he didn’t react. He was too deep inside his own concentration. After three days of focused attention, the answer finally became apparent to him. He’d figured out how to pass through the illusion after the first few hours, but he didn’t care as much about that. With little to no training in illusions, this was a golden opportunity to study how one kind of illusion worked while not under stress or duress. Sen didn’t fully understand the mechanics of the technique, but he worked out that the water was capturing and reflecting light in some way. He expected that there was probably some bit of enlightenment he hadn’t gained about water qi and water cultivation that would make that part clear. Still, he understood the illusion well enough now that he thought he’d be able to spot a similar illusion in the future without much effort. Satisfied with his efforts, he finally stood up.
“Finally ready to admit defeat,” said someone from behind him.
Sen looked over his shoulder and saw the same man who’d been glaring with hateful eyes when Sen’s group had arrived. The man had a sneer of utter contempt on his face. Sen wondered at the fact that the water cultivator had been so consumed with trying to get some reaction out of him that he had seemingly ignored any and all other responsibilities. With his attention no longer being almost wholly consumed with the study of the illusion, Sen had time to review some of what had been said to him during the last three days. This man had been particularly obnoxious, if not very original, in his insults. Sen considered the man for a moment.
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“If your insults weren’t as weak and trivial as your cultivation, I might be forced to do something about them,” observed Sen.
The water cultivator’s face went red with rage as nearby people laughed at him. Before the angry man could think of something to say, Sen turned and, to any outside observer, appeared to walk straight through a solid rock wall. Sen heard gasps from some of the nearby people, and the despairing scream from the angry water cultivator.
“No!”
There was an impact and a cry of pain as the man threw himself against the stone-hard illusion Sen had so casually walked through. What a fool, thought Sen. If he’d spent all that time and energy on studying the illusion instead of insulting me, he might have figured it out for himself. Sen could hear a rhythmic sort of pounding as the furious water cultivator beat on the outside of the illusion. Sen ignored the noise and the man making it. If that guy didn’t have the sense to take advantage of all the information Sen had provided, such as the exact location of the illusion, and the fact that it took water qi to pierce it, there was probably nothing that would help him save a lot of time. A slap or ten to the back of his head might save his life, though, thought Sen. Turning his attention forward, Sen walked through an impossibly long tunnel. The tunnel was longer than the walls could possibly contain. Sen thought it was interesting that some kind of spatial manipulation was happening because that was well outside the domain of water cultivation. He wondered if the sect had changed over the long years since it was founded. He would have liked to study it, but he didn’t even have the rudimentary understanding necessary to glean anything of use.
After nearly ten minutes of walking, Sen finally emerged from the tunnel into a brightly lit expanse of meticulously tended grass and flower gardens. For a moment, he thought he might be in the middle of another illusion, but a quick examination with his earth, wood, and water qi revealed that where he was standing, it was all quite real. Sen found himself glad that he hadn’t simply tried to fly over the wall. He was willing to bet that there was a deeply unpleasant surprise waiting for any water cultivator who thought they could skip over the work of finding their way through the door. After taking a moment to examine his surroundings, the alchemist in Sen started frothing at the mouth in naked greed. Nearly everything in the gardens was useful in alchemy in one way or another, assuming you needed water-attributed ingredients. Sen’s hands twitched toward a flower before he stilled them. He wasn’t there to steal from this sect. He was there to see the spring.
Sen walked through the gardens for several hours -- constantly reminding himself that the plants weren’t there for him to harvest -- before he finally found the spring. It was massive. More like a large pond or small lake than what Sen typically thought of as a spring. It was also impossibly clear. He could see every rock and plant at the bottom of the spring. Most of all, he felt the qi of the spring. He hadn’t felt such intense levels of water qi since he was on the ocean. Yet, this qi was different, cleaner somehow, and he could swear that there was a kind of sentience at work. He couldn’t tell if there was something living in the spring, or if the spring itself had experienced some kind of an advancement. He wasn’t even sure if an advancement like that could happen. Spirit beasts advanced, so maybe springs could.
“Impressive, is it not?” asked someone who had stepped up beside Sen.
“Yes,” answered Sen absently. “It’s very impressive.”
“Almost as impressive as your own performance,” said the man.
Sen finally turned a suspicious eye on the man. He was a short man with a shaved head, some obvious lines around his eyes and mouth, and Sen couldn’t sense anything from him. The deeply suspicious part of Sen drew an immediate conclusion.
He offered the man a bow. “It’s nice to meet you, patriarch.”
The older cultivator smiled at Sen like he’d been caught out in a little prank. “It’s interesting to meet you, Lu Sen. Or, is it Judgment’s Gale?”
Sen winced. “Lu Sen is fine.”
“Very interesting. So, you draw a distinction? You don’t see yourself as this Judgement’s Gale character?”
“Not all the time, certainly. That name, that man, is a story that’s mostly been made up by other people. You can’t live up to other people’s expectations all the time.”
“Very true. Still, some of it must be true. Very few people pass the tests.”
“Tests? Plural?”
“Oh yes. The door is the first test. The gardens are the second test. Anyone who knows anything about plants, and you most certainly do if the stories of your alchemy are at all accurate, would find those gardens almost irresistible.”
Sen shrugged and admitted, “I was tempted.”
“But you didn’t take anything. Why?”
“None of this is mine. These aren’t the wilds where you can take what you wish if you have the skills to get it and the means to keep it.”
“One might argue that our sect owes you a rather substantial gift of medicinal plants and alchemical reagents for your services after the battle.”
“One might,” said Sen, “and I’ll gladly take anything you choose to give me. But it isn’t up to me to decide what those gifts should be. It most certainly isn’t for me to steal those things from this place.”
The patriarch nodded in approval. “So, you’ve simply come to abduct the lovely Chan Yu Ming and be on your way?”
Sen’s jaw dropped for a moment before he stuttered, “No, I, of course not.”
The patriarch let out a gentle laugh and patted Sen’s arm. “I know. You’ll have to forgive me. My position doesn’t allow me to play jokes very often.”
A wave of relief passed through Sen. “Of course, patriarch. But, how did you even know about that?”
“She might have made a few indiscreet comments where she shouldn’t have,” observed the patriarch with a bemused expression. “She seems rather taken with you.”
“I suppose she is.”
“And what about you?”
“Yes, I’m rather taken with me as well.”
The patriarch snorted. “Well played. It’s none of my business, really. Still, getting involved with her will inevitably mean getting involved with her family. That’s a complicated matter at the best of times.”
Sen frowned. “She hasn’t told me much about them. Just some implications that they’re powerful or important somehow.”
“They are, but I won’t speak of them beyond that. Those are her secrets to share, not mine. So, if you’re not here for her, what has brought you here?”
“I’m seeking a manual.”
“We have many manuals.”
“This one is special, rare. The Five-Fold Body Transformation manual.”
“Oh,” said the patriarch, looking startled. “I see. Hmmmm. Well, that is complicated.”
Sen felt his shoulders slump. “You don’t have it.”
“We do have it,” admitted the patriarch. “We just don’t have access to it.”