Sailing down the river was so peaceful and beautiful that it felt like an entirely different world from the one where the fight in Zaotong had taken place. The crew had quickly disposed of the corpse on the deck and within a day had scrubbed the bloodstain out of the wood.

Slipping smoothly downriver, they passed picturesque terrace farms that sparkled with reflected light, stunning lowland farms laid out in massive tracts stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, and population centers of all sizes. They saw innumerable small farming villages, several sizable towns, and one large city on the scale of Jidong, which was the only large city Ji Kang had ever seen so it was his only point of reference.

All in all it was exactly what Ji Kang needed to regain his mental equilibrium. He had dealt death to his fellow human beings for the first time in Zaotong, but he knew that it had been necessary and what's more, he knew that it wouldn’t be the last time. This boat ride through the proverbial rice basket of the Nation of Zhu was an opportunity to recenter himself, to think about his goals and reaffirm his resolve.

He also spent an absurd percentage of his time cultivating. He spent twelve hours out of every day and night cycle in two meditation sessions. What time he didn’t spend meditating, eating or sleeping he spent sparring with Lu Wu, Yu Shuren, and Jin Xun.

Although Yu Shuren no longer had a weapon, it gave the two boys incentive to practice unarmed combat, a section of their martial arts manuals they hadn’t spent much time on previously.

This intense singular focus caused his cultivation to advance even faster than it had when he was back at the sect, but he needed to make up for lost time as well as prepare for the future when he might lose time again due to his sect mission.

Ji Kang’s feeling of urgency was shared by Lu Wu and Yu Shuren. All three of them had discussed the reason for being sent on this mission by Geng Yazhu, every day in the back of their mind was the awareness that this mission was meant to handicap their cultivation relative to their peers back at the Azure Grove Sect.

The first four days flew by like the scenery, but on the fifth day they ran into trouble.

In a secluded strip of wilderness between rural areas they encountered a group of fire tongue tortoises. These tortoises were a special kind of wild animal, they possessed the ability to breath out gouts of flame when they felt threatened.

Wild beasts with mystical abilities like this weren’t uncommon in the wilderness. This world was an incredibly dangerous place for all of the organisms living in it and humans were by no means the only species to have found ways of utilizing Primeval Qi to help them survive.

Many species of wild beasts had developed limited repertoires of unique abilities under the intense competition to survive, generation after generation becoming more and more specialized.

This was very different from human cultivation however. For humans, the individual learns how to sense and interact with the Primeval Qi all around them and then slowly over the course of years learns to harness all kinds of powers.

Beasts on the other hand were born with a particular set of mystical and non-mystical abilities and were stuck with what they gained at birth for the entirety of their lives. That wasn’t to say that beasts weren’t capable of growing in strength however.

Beasts were able to accumulate power over time, since many mystical beasts had life spans thousands of years long they were able to go through their own slower version of cultivation. Rather than gaining new diverse powers and abilities like humans, they refined the ones they were born with and were often able to reach incredible heights of power.

Faced with these fearsome beasts, in ancient times generation after generation of humans had struggled to barely carve out room for humanity to live. Most of this world was at that point uninhabitable by mortal humans, but hundreds of thousands of years ago Nascent Soul level cultivators had joined hands to establish and defend a wide and fertile area where mortal humans could live and prosper.

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Over time, with more mortals being born there were more humans with the talent for cultivation. With more cultivators humans’ foothold had stabilized and then grown. In the present day humans had gone from barely defending their pocket of territory to having taken over a majority of the world, pushing the remaining truly dangerous beasts into enormous tracts of perilous wilderness.

That history of conflict had led to the situation Ji Kang and the others found themselves in now. A group of unintelligent tortoises had started living around this section of the Nanbei river, defending their territory from any invaders.

Usually the emperor was in charge of maintaining the safety of the roads and rivers to prevent dangerous beast groups like this from blocking travelers and commerce, but recently the Nation of Zhu had been rife with civil unrest. The current emperor had risen to the throne rather unexpectedly two years ago.

The previous empress had many consorts and even more children and was a strong unifying figure within the Nation of Zhu. The current emperor was her oldest son, but it had been understood at court that the empress thought little of him and planned to make her second child, the princess Zhu Song Qing her heir.

The empress died suddenly however, and the current emperor had seized power before imprisoning and then executing his sister as well as any of his other siblings that he could get his hands on.

But his plan to execute all of his competition for the throne before they could rally support had failed. Now there were three other claimants to the throne, who were each backed by factions of nobles. The situation was beginning to deteriorate and to most people civil war seemed inevitable.

The Azure Grove Sect didn’t want to get involved, but since their mountain was within the Nation of Zhu they could not completely wash their hands of the situation. It was imperative that they gain a reliable intelligence network so they knew which way the wind was blowing.

Being a daoist cultivation sect they could mostly stand away from such secular conflicts, but they couldn’t afford to offend the eventual winner. They were currently in the awkward position of not knowing who would win and therefore attempting to avoid offending every faction, which was an untenable long term position.

Hence the sect mission Ji Kang, Lu Wu and Yu Shuren were on now.

Ji Kang had a loose understanding of the general political situation, but that knowledge wasn’t practically helpful and didn’t alleviate the current crisis one iota.

On the fifth day out of Zaotong they were drifting downriver, getting closer and closer to a group of over a hundred fire breathing tortoises while riding in a wooden boat.

“Hurry! Draw as much water into these vats as possible! We’ll need every drop we can get to extinguish fires!” The captain shouted orders from the wheel, organizing the crew into an intricate and disciplined machine. “Wet the sails! Make sure to get every scrap of canvas and rope wet!”

The four cultivators were huddled together trying to stay out of the way of the crew while they made their own preparations.

“We largely lack long range offensive options to deal with the tortoises, so we need to focus on defending the ship until we can get through the group and out of their territory. Does anyone have any methods?” Jin Xun asked.

“My strongest elements are metal and fire, I have some personal defensive spells, but nothing that will protect the boat.” Yu Shuren shook his head.

“Same for me, I have nothing that would be helpful at this scale.” Ji Kang turned to the only member of the four of them who had yet to speak, Lu Wu.

“I know a ritualistic spell that will create a wall of water around the ship, but it will take all of us working together to cast it and even then it won’t last long enough to give us full protection.” Lu Wu assumed the position of leader quite naturally, offering a solution with confidence.

Ritualistic spells were a stopgap measure for cultivators. By stretching out the activation time and including the usage of precious material components and additional chants, hand seals, and sometimes diagrams it was possible to allow Qi Condensation cultivators to cast spells that would otherwise be too powerful for them.

This method of casting spells was also used by higher rank cultivators to achieve incredibly powerful effects, but they were rarely used in combat due to their long casting times and stringent requirements.

Because the lookout in the crow’s nest was able to spot the fire tongue tortoise group very early, they had barely enough time to set up the water wall ritual.

After drawing a complex diagram on an infrequently used corner of the deck, Lu Wu led the other three in pouring in their qi. By combining all of the qi of all four cultivators, they were able to gather enough to barely activate the water wall spell for a short time.

They would need to pick their timing well in order to make it through to fire tongue tortoise group with their boat in one piece.