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4.13 - Return to the Sect
🕑 Added 2024-08-27 22:00:01 +0000 UTCAfter their stop at the wayside inn, it took He Yu and Tan Xiaoling another week to arrive back at the sect. From the time the tops of the mist-shrouded peaks came into view just over the horizon until they finally arrived at Xu Xiang. Approaching the base of the outer sect mountain, He Yu felt a rising sense of anticipation.
Most of it had to do with the fact they were bringing valuable information about the Sunset Court back to the sect. But he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t allow that a part of him was nervous about the possibility of following Tan Xiaoling’s advice about Chen Fei. Maybe they could go on a hunting trip together? She liked hunting.
Passing through the formation gate that marked the boundary of the inner sect, a disciple of the late Golden Core stage approached them. Much like the last time He Yu had returned, it was a simple, perfunctory message. First Disciple Yi required their presence. This time they were to meet her in a pavilion located on one of the higher inner sect peaks. One usually reserved for the disciples ranked three hundred and above.
Nobody challenged them on their way to the meeting, but they did receive more than a few questioning looks. Both He Yu and Tan Xiaoling were in the high five hundreds. Disciples of their rank normally wouldn’t have any business here. Still, nobody stopped them, and when they arrived at the designated location, He Yu was relieved to find that an obscuring formation ran along the pavilion’s perimeter.
Yi Xiurong awaited them just outside the pavilion, hands folded in the sleeves of her ivory gown. She was still an overwhelming figure, despite her restrained presence. Her face remained just as emotionless and cold as before, as if her features were carved from a block of white jade.
“Report,” she said once they’d passed through the pavilion’s formation script.
He Yu and Tan Xiaoling took turns recounting the events of their trip, relaying what they’d found. At the end of their report, Yi Xiurong motioned to a table and instructed them to show her the objects they’d collected from the overseer’s hut. Once the ledger, the herbs, and the pill furnace were on the table, Yi Xiurong spent a moment wordlessly examining them.
“Well done,” she said. That seemed to be the extent of any praise they might get. “The ledger will take some time to decipher. Hopefully, it will provide some leads. The herbs will likely prove far more immediately useful. I’ve never seen their like. After we’ve identified their source, that should considerably narrow our search for the court’s agents.”
“What about the furnace?” He Yu asked. “The metal isn’t like any I’ve ever seen.”
“Is it now?” Yi Xiurong’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “Explain yourself.”
“Well, I’m no expert,” he began, feeling a bit self conscious, “but my father was a blacksmith. That metal, it’s not anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“I see,” Yi Xiurong said, scooping the objects into her storage treasure. “I’ll have to have someone with the appropriate expertise examine it, then. Is there anything else that ought to be called to my attention?”
Both he and Tan Xiaoling answered in the negative. As the First Disciple turned to go, He Yu spoke up. “There’s one thing I’d like to ask, if I may?”
Yi Xiurong inclined her head in assent.
“The overseer mentioned something about a ‘Daoist Mind’ during our fight with him. What did he mean?”
The First Disciple spent far longer than He Yu was comfortable with simply staring at him intently. Finally, she said, “Come seek me out once you’ve finished dividing the spoils of your victory with Junior Sister Tan. We can speak more at length then.”
He Yu and Tan Xiaoling both saluted Yi Xiurong as she left.
“Well, that was a stroke of fortune,” Tan Xiaoling said.
“I guess,” he said. As grateful as he was for the opportunity to comb through whatever insights a Sixth Realm cultivator could offer him, he wasn’t strictly sure it was allowed. He wasn’t really supposed to learn martial arts from someone other than his own Master, absent as she was. Then again, Zhang Lifen was absent, and they were all part of the same sect, weren’t they? If there was a problem, he could always perform some sort of penance later, he supposed.
“Take the opportunity,” Tan Xiaoling said, as if she could read his thoughts. More likely, they were written all over his face. He’d always been bad about that. “Senior Sister Yi’s guidance will prove invaluable. Senior Sister Zhang doesn’t seem the type to begrudge you that sort of advantage.”
“You think?” he asked.
“I’m fairly certain. One doesn’t achieve what she has without taking every opportunity at hand.”
That at least made him feel a little better.
With that, they turned at long last to the spoils of their adventure. The first things they had to decide what to do with were the overseer’s sickle and mask, the latter Tan Xiaoling had picked up while He Yu was dealing with the miners.
“The sickle is probably worth more if we simply sold it,” Tan Xiaoling said. “It’s not suitable for either of us, really.” The formation script enhanced poison and metal qi. Although Tan Xiaoling cultivated some metal aspect—and poison was a metal subtype—she claimed it was too far removed from her primarily fire-aspected arts. For He Yu, the weapon itself was all but useless.
Not to mention the fact that it was apparently close to forming a spirit. Given what he’d seen of the overseer, any spirit such an immortal’s weapon formed wasn’t anything He Yu was interested in. They agreed that Tan Xiaoling would put the weapon up for auction at the inner sect market, and they would split the proceeds.
They decided similarly with the overseer’s mask. It was a minor treasure at best, and poorly suited for either of them. It appeared to be scripted mostly to aid in the production of pills and elixirs. Unsurprising, given the collection of herbs and the pill furnace Tan Xiaoling had found in the overseer’s hut. It seems the overseer was also interested in poisons not solely of his own techniques, given the specific nature of the script. It likely wouldn’t be worth an auction, given its fairly narrow scope, but they agreed it would be easy enough to find a buyer among one of the sect’s alchemists.
Next came the overseer’s storage treasure. It was much like He Yu’s—a dull gray ring, absent any real decoration or visible formation script. Tan Xiaoling pricked her finger and allowed a drop of blood to fall on the ring. Once bonded, she opened it and a treasure trove of elixirs, spirit stones, talismans, and more spilled out.
It took them the better part of the afternoon to sort through it all. The first order of business was the ring itself. They agreed the easiest way to deal with it was simply to give He Yu some spirit stones. He had no need of a third storage treasure, as the overseer’s was about as big as the one he had currently. Tan Xiaoling said she was simply going to sell it anyway if He Yu didn’t want it.
Next, they divvied up the spirit stones. A simple affair, all things considered. There was a fair amount of mid-grade stones, and even a handful of high-grade stones. Tan Xiaoling’s eyes had lit up when they fell out of the ring, and He Yu couldn’t blame her. The low grade stones were more or less worthless to either of them as anything other than currency, and the high-grade stones would be a boon to them both.
The talismans were a bit tougher to decipher. Much like He Yu, Tan Xiaoling didn’t really have much experience with formations. Most of them were fairly basic barrier wards. Which made He Yu wonder why a Golden Core had them to begin with. The ones they couldn’t identify, they agreed to have Chen Fei look at before they decided what to do with them.
Most of the elixirs would have to be sold, as they were only a step away from being poisons. There were a few that would help with wind, likely to aid the cloud-like techniques the overseer had used. A couple were suitable for Tan Xiaoling, given that they were meant to boost cultivation of just metal qi, and she could combine them with other elixirs already in her possession. There were a solid number of meridian cleansing elixirs, however.
“Useful for us both,” Tan Xiaoling said, sliding a handful of them over to He Yu. “The overseer likely had issues with poison build-up. A nasty side effect of cultivation that aspect. These would go a long way to helping him deal with it.”
“Neither of us has that issue though,” He Yu pointed out.
“Not from our cultivation, no. But toxins still accumulate in our bodies from medicines and elixirs. We can take these after cultivating to clear out the lingering effects of other medicines. Meaning we can take more, sooner.”
He Yu immediately saw the benefit and stuffed the elixirs in his storage treasure. Too much medicine in too short a time could cause a backlash. Even at his advancement, one that was severe enough could kill him. Given how difficult it had become to achieve even incremental gains since advancing to the Fourth Realm, the ability to take more elixirs was a valuable one.
The more general medicines they simply divided amongst themselves. They were the standard sort of qi-restoring pills that any cultivator kept a supply of. Of course, they were of fairly good quality, coming from a Fourth Realm opponent, and would have cost a decent amount of resources had He Yu needed to buy them.
Last, they split the spirit stones from the mine. It was an even mix of low and mid-grade, but the sheer quantity made the exercise worth it. It was easily worth several months’ worth of his stipend, and would go a long way to making up for the lack of funds coming in because of the difficulty he’d been having with sect assignments.
“Quite the windfall, all together,” Tan Xiaoling said once they’d finished putting their spoils away. “I’ll likely be in seclusion for some time, cycling the elixirs and the stones.”
“Same,” He Yu said. “Well, thanks for coming with me. I don’t think I could have done it without you.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit. Even so, I think this time we both would have been over-matched had we been alone.”
With the division of spoils finally handled, He Yu headed up the mountain to where he would find First Disciple Yi. Although he was still a bit apprehensive about asking for her insight, the more he thought on it, the more he agreed with Tan Xiaoling. Zhang Lifen wouldn’t object to him taking such an opportunity. Besides, she was away from the sect, and Yi Xiurong had said she would be overseeing their development in the mean time.
When he arrived at what he assumed was Yi Xiurong’s home, he found her sitting in the central courtyard with her hands folded on her lap. She fixed him with that unnervingly stern look of hers. He half expected her to start listing out all his faults and inadequacies right there, before sending him away and telling him to never waste her time again. To say that she radiated an aura of “disapproval” was almost an understatement.
“Tell me what happened preceding this overseer’s mention of the Daoist Mind,” was all she said when she at last spoke.
He Yu recounted the events, paying special attention to the overseer’s targeting of the mortal, and his own reaction to it. With an expression that was somehow at once intent and impassive, Yi Xiurong listened. When he’d finished, the First Disciple remained silent for a moment.
“The Daoist Mind, as you mentioned Junior Sister Tan explained, is the highest manifestation of a cultivator’s connection to their Way. You have not formed one. Why the overseer mentioned such, I cannot say. Although you formed your Wayborn Seed far earlier than is normal, it is still immature. What most likely happened is that you realized some aspect of your Way during that fight. This caused you to resonate strongly with your Wayborn Seed. Unless this overseer was an utter fool, he should have recognized that for what it was. Perhaps he was attempting to form his own seed? And his lack of connection caused him to overestimate yours?
“Regardless, it’s not something to concern yourself overmuch for now. In terms of aligning yourself with your Way, you’ve already met the requirement for breaking through to the Fifth Realm. From here, it’s a simple matter of cultivating to the peak of Golden Core, then pushing through the bottleneck. You’re much further ahead than many of your peers.”
“When do I need to form a Daoist Mind?” he asked.
“Not for some time,” Yi Xiurong said. “And perhaps my words mislead you. You do not form your Daoist Mind. It manifests out of your connection with the Eternal Dao. It forms by clearly defining your Way—your own personal path to the Dao. Something that you have yet to do.”
He Yu nodded. It seemed there was more to what she was saying. So he asked.
“How do you go from a Wayborn Seed to defining your own personal path?”
Her answer came more swiftly and simply than he’d expected. “Simply continue doing what you’re doing. Your decisions during that encounter clearly resonated with your path. You mentioned the outrage at the injustice, but also your insistence you had a duty to protect the mortals. Which was why you insisted on escorting them to safety, no? And also why your challenged the magistrate to ensure he’d let the mortals stay in his town.”
He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised she knew about that, seeing as they’d specifically sent word back to the sect via the Ministry of Information. “Is that it?” he asked.
“For now, yes.” After a pause, she seemed to relax fractionally. “I follow the Dao of Radiance. It is my Way to burn out the impurity of the world. Bring the light of order and justice. This is not a kind task, but neither is it a cruel one. It is simply necessary for the preservation of all that we have built. I spent a full sixty-year cycle discovering, defining, and refining my own Dao. I have yet to manifest my Daoist Mind but for every step I take, I take one step further along my Way.”
He Yu bowed deeply over a salute. “This one thanks Senior Sister Yi for her sage advice,” he said before he left.
It would take countless hours to sort through what she’d said. Years, perhaps. Decades, even. But she had given him valuable insights that all pointed towards something he’d already been circling around for some time. It was now time to start answering the questions he’d been asking. Time to start defining in no uncertain terms what a hero meant to him.
Comments
Dave32
Tftc!
