It took another two hours to reach the front of the line, but they didn’t feel nearly as long as the hours before had. As much as the rigors of cultivation trained a cultivator to sit motionless for long hours at a time while maintaining constant focus and awareness, it didn’t make doing so any less boring. Calvin generally enjoyed cultivating, even the terribly tedious, repetitive parts. Standing in line? Not so much.

  Gwen’s presence as more than just ‘the girl standing in line in front of him’ made the remaining time pass much faster. She was a good conversationalist, generally cheerful and enthusiastic with a sarcastic wit, though she did have an irritating tendency to get flustered whenever the conversation turned to her own work and achievement.

  They spoke mostly of inane things—rumors going around the sect, which Core disciples had made breakthroughs or encountered bottlenecks, how the inner disciple tournament was going, and the like—but Calvin quickly got the sense that Gwen was badly starved of social connections. She could rattle off the top ten favorites for the inner disciple tournament, but didn’t know about the unofficial gambling ring run by some of the older outer disciples. She knew more about the lives of Core disciples than she did her own cohort, and hadn’t heard months-old gossip.

  He even began to suspect that Gwen was secretly a Core Disciple masquerading as a member of the outer sect for some purpose, but then realized a sudden commonality in what she did and didn’t know. If it had come up in the weekly newsletter put out by Internal Affairs Hall, she knew about it. If it was something she needed to have heard from another member of the outer sect, she had no idea.

  That didn’t necessarily disprove the idea that she was a Core Disciple, but it did raise another option. It was possible she just didn’t have any friends.

  Unfortunately it was very hard to prove that someone wasn’t secretly a Core or Soul realm cultivator masquerading as Gathering realm, especially since he was only in the Foundation realm. He made a handful of comments that maybe could have tripped her up, but nothing that could reasonably slip by a centuries old actor pretending to be a teenage girl.

  However he didn’t think it was likely. He’d spent the better part of three years after joining the sect jumping at shadows afraid that someone had discovered the Scroll and would try to take it off his dead body, but eventually had relaxed. It didn’t seem like anyone had sensed anything unusual about him, even when he’d occasionally been in the presence of some of the sect’s elders. He still tried to be subtle with the Scroll’s rewards, but the inheritance itself seemed immune even to the casual senses of Unity realm elders. And anyway, if a Core disciple or Elder wanted something from him, they didn’t need to be subtle. A proper peak Foundation cultivator could probably snap him in half like a twig, much less someone one or more full realms beyond his own.

  Eventually however, Gwen was called up to the counter, and him soon after. They parted in high spirits, both glad to be nearly done with their ordeal, and Gwen promised to come visit him in a few days. She planned to spend some of her newly acquired points on seeds she intended to try her hand at growing and wanted to get those in the ground as soon as possible.

  He ended up meeting with the clerk who’d been forced to spend the better part of an hour searching an entire crate of low quality meridian stalks for hidden gems and clearly hadn’t enjoyed the process. The inner disciple was already frowning when Calvin stopped in front of him, a frown that only deepened when Calvin set his cargo—a wooden box nearly identical to the one he’d seen filled with grass just hours ago—down on the counter before him.

  The frown vanished, replaced by keen interest, when Calvin opened the lid, revealing not grass but a rough, oblong chunk of spiritual jade bigger than his two fists pressed together. It was pale green like the first buds of spring and translucent, revealing specks of glimmering gold trapped within.

  Calvin had received it—Budding Gold Spiritual Jade, Very Low quality—from his most recent reward token and had very carefully verified that, while rare, this kind of jade was not unknown to occur in this part of the empire and was not too valuable for an Outer Disciple to possess. He hadn’t been able to figure out what it was good for, but it did exist in the sect’s extensive catalogues and he had no real use for it—he wasn’t an artificer by any means—so it seemed like a good way to get some points. If it wasn’t valuable enough to cover his dues, he also had some spirit stones tucked away in his robes.

  The disciple donned a pair of pale blue silk gloves and carefully lifted the jade from its box, setting it down on the countertop. “A curious find,” he remarked, “just a moment, junior.”

  He stepped away, walking briskly half way down the length of the counter and stopping in front of a large cabinet set against the back wall. He rifled through it for a moment, then returned to his seat carrying a jade slip.

  Calvin waited patiently as the clerk examined the jade chunk, prodding it with inscribed metal rods and paper tags, and consulting the jade slip labeled simply ‘Spiritual Jades’. The process took the better part of ten minutes and Calvin entertained himself by watching Gwen squirm out of the corner of his eye, shifting from foot to foot and tapping her fingers against her leg with nervous energy as her pills and elixirs were carefully assessed by the clerk. After seeing her pills he doubted she had anything to worry about. The Sect exploited its disciples by offering rock bottom prices and through mandatory fees, not by lying about pill quality.

  Eventually, the clerk set his tools down and folded his hands. “I’ve identified this as Budding Gold Spiritual Jade—“ Calvin could have told him that much if he’d asked, though he still would have needed to confirm for himself, “—and of respectable purity. A fortuitous find, junior. For a raw chunk this big I can offer you one thousand nine hundred and thirty seven contribution points.”

  That was…a lot of contribution points. Nearly two years worth of dues for an outer disciple. Suddenly Calvin felt a lot worse about revealing the jade chunk. He’d been careful to never sell anything nearly this valuable to the sect before, lest someone start asking questions he couldn’t answer. Oh well, it was what it was. There was no point holding onto it now that he’d shown it to the clerk.

  “Okay, that sounds good. Thank you, senior.” There was no negotiating at Contribution Hall, though that never seemed to stop people from trying.

  “Of course, junior, and my congratulations on your bounty. It is my pleasure to serve the sect.”

  Calvin bowed briefly, then extended his left hand, around which was clasped a bracelet with a jade charm marked with eight mountains arranged in a ring, towards the clerk. It was his sect token, functioning as a form of identification both within the sect and to outsiders, and linked with his contribution points balance. The clerk pressed a finger against a silver disk on the counter beside him, then raised the disk and tapped it to the jade token.

  “There you go. Your new balance is two thousand eighty seven points. Thank you for visiting Contribution Hall.”

  “Thank you for your time, senior.” He bowed again, took his box, and hurried out of the Hall. At the very least that should cover him for the next year. Maybe he’d even splurge a little. Hopefully it would be a good long while till he had to come back. And when he did, he’d make sure not to put it off till the last minute.

  The street outside the Hall was nearly as packed as the inside had been. Turbulent rivers of men and women flowed along the thoroughfare, most wearing the dark blue of outer disciples though he could make out a handful of lighter colors amongst the crowd. Though the outer sect of the Eight Peaks technically encompassed all the land stretching from Earth Peak to Metal Peak and into the foothills of Yang Peak, the vast majority of disciples lived here, in the creatively named Outer Village.

  It wasn’t anything like the villages where Calvin had lived for the first decade of his life, though his memories of that time weren’t as clear as they had once been. Still, he was pretty sure that most of Duck Lake Village—streets, houses, and all—could have fit comfortably into just the main square, and it could have easily housed the whole mortal population of the Six-Swan Pond region. It was more like a small city—not that he had much experience with cities—and this street was in many ways its beating heart.

  All the stores, restaurants, housing, and just about everything else you could think of in the village was owned and operated directly by the Sect and the only currency they accepted was contribution points. Some amenities were provided to all disciples as part of their quarterly dues—simple food, basic housing, an allotment of pills and elixirs, and limited access to the archives—but everything else had to be bought. If you needed a new robe, that cost points. Snacks or fine food? Points. A new technique manual? Points. Lessons? Points. Advancement resources like elixirs and cultivation aids? Points, and lots of them.

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  No currency used in the outside world—spirit stones, coins minted by the Imperial Ministry of Finance, sect bonds—could be used without first being exchanged for contribution points at a criminally low exchange rate. And since the nearest major settlement was a full day’s travel from the sect and outer disciples weren’t allowed to leave without a mission from the sect or a good reason, it was very difficult to get things without purchasing them from the sect.

  Thus, Contribution Hall—as well as Mission Hall and Job Hall, all located within a stone’s throw of one another—were some of the most important buildings in the Outer Sect. Disciples needed contribution points, and those were the only places they could get them reliably. The street on which all three halls lay reflected that importance. Dozens of shops and restaurants lined the wide street paved with slabs of silvery-white granite. Disciples moved about at every hour of the day, and qi-powered lamps kept it illuminated bright as day throughout the night.

  Calvin avoided it like the plague whenever he could. The brightly lit storefronts and alluring restaurants with delectable fragrances wafting through their open doors were traps that caught hundreds, maybe thousands, of Outer Sect disciples each day and night, rapidly burning through even a frugal disciple’s reserves. Some of the shops—those dealing in fractional contribution points that could be redeemed in the form of coins instead of paying with your sect token directly—were safer, but Calvin still tried to avoid spending too much time in their vicinity.

  The Sect was very good at separating disciples from their wealth.

  Calvin made his way through the crowd, flowing through gaps and moving in the wake of larger groups, until finally he was able to escape onto one of the narrower but much emptier side streets. From there his pace accelerated significantly as he headed towards the outskirts of the village.

  With as many disciples as there were, the vast majority of the village consisted of residential areas. They were scattered throughout the village, with finer, pricier manors and homes set closer to the village center while the huts given to new disciples covered great swaths of land on the outskirts.

  Calvin headed to none of those. Instead, he reached one of the roads leading deeper into the sect’s territory and set off at a run, cycling his qi to strengthen his body and quicken his stride. He moved like an arrow shot from a bow, running at a pace that would put a galloping horse to shame. It was early in the afternoon and the road was mostly empty, with most disciples either cultivating, working, or, if they could afford a ticket, watching the Inner Disciples compete.

  He did pass a number of disciples along the way, most heading back the way he’d come. A group of Gathering disciples pulled a heavy wagon loaded down with freshly picked spiritual fruits from the Sect’s orchards, another carried great slabs of stone from the quarry, and a third slowly made its way towards one of the fields with wheelbarrows filled with fertilizer. All three groups looked exhausted and worn down, and Calvin had to wonder when was the last time any of them had actually focused on their cultivation.

  It took a little under a quarter of an hour to reach the place where he had to turn off the road, and only a few more minutes until he began to pass modestly sized but finely built one-story homes, each one surrounded by extensive gardens, small fields, or even copses of trees. His was the fifth down the road on the left, divided from its neighbors by a low stone wall and a handful of old, broad-leafed trees. Like the others, it was surrounded by several hundred square feet of arable land and even included a small stream that could be heard but not seen from the road.

  The Sect categorized such dwellings as ‘Garden Villas’, and it had cost him a whole two thousand five hundred points to reserve for a period of five years—a sum nearly unattainable by most members of the outer sect even if they grouped together. It was considered to be on the higher end of available dwellings (though still much cheaper than the extravagant homes reserved mostly by scions of major families who ended up in the Outer Sect) and Calvin could have even paid an extra five hundred points for a live-in servant to attend the property.

  Calvin stopped by the gate, unsurprised to see a pair of figures in the same cheap work clothes Gwen had worn under her disciple’s robe kneeling in one of the garden beds as they tended to a flowering spiritual bush. “Hey Jane, hey Mei,” he called, hopping over the gate rather than dealing with the mechanism. The moment he did he could feel the difference in the air as he entered the range of the villa’s basic qi-gathering formation, already rich spiritual energy thickening until he could feel it tingling pleasantly against his skin.

  Both women looked up from their work and Mei, a slightly plump, middle-aged woman with red-tinged hair and bronzed skin, waved to him before returning to the bush. Calvin returned the wave and headed up the path towards his home.

  Calvin had inherited the two gardeners from the disciple who had previously rented this villa until he’d left the sect two years ago, and he was glad he had. Unlike many of the disciples who rented such homes, he wasn’t much of a herbalist or spiritual herb cultivator. He’d primarily selected the place because of its relative isolation, high quality qi-gathering formation, and availability at just the right time.

  Mei and Jane on the other hand specialized in exactly that field of cultivation arts. Both were disciples of the Outer Sect like him, but they had hit bottlenecks in their cultivation and had not made any serious progress in years. Mei had successfully broken through to the Foundation realm, but discovered too late that her first Qi Node wasn’t sufficiently developed to allow her to circulate her qi properly through her sole channel. She’d tried to advance too early and now she was stuck, unable to progress past the first step of Foundation without extremely expensive medicines or cultivation aids.

  Jane was in a similar boat, though she’d made it a single step further than Mei. She’d made a serious mistake while forming her third Qi Node and had permanently crippled her ability to form new Qi Channels in the process. It was a minor miracle that she’d survived the flawed process at all, and she would need another one if she ever hoped to cultivate seriously again.

  Surprisingly, neither was overly resentful over their failures, or perhaps they’d simply made peace with their mistakes. Perhaps it was because they were nearing the end of their time at the Sect. In the outside world, even a weak Foundation cultivator commanded some respect and lived for significantly longer (and in better health) than a mortal would. Calvin hadn’t asked, but he suspected that neither woman came from any sort of wealthy family. To them, trading a few decades at the sect for an extra hundred years of life and strength beyond the grasp of regular mortals was perhaps a reasonable exchange.

  And they certainly didn’t intend to leave the sect empty handed. They lived in the free housing provided to all disciples and offered their services to disciples like him, tending to herb gardens and fields in exchange for a portion of the spiritual herbs themselves rather than the contribution points they would have received working on one of the directly Sect-owned herb farms. It was impossible to exchange contribution points for more than a handful of outside currency without jumping through all sorts of hoops, but spiritual herbs were worth plenty of spirit stones when sold outside the sect.

  The arrangement was very much mutually beneficial. Without them, the land would have lost most of its value as there was no way that Calvin could care for it properly while also focusing on his own cultivation. This way, he could focus on the occasional herb he received from the Scroll in his private garden and receive a constant stream of fresh herbs to use or convert into contribution points. And they really were very good at what they did, often producing Low and Modest quality herbs with a handful of Below Averages sprinkled in.

  He’d be sad to see them go, though he hoped to have broken through and moved on to the Inner Sect by the time their time at the Sect came to its end.

  The moment the door closed behind him and the privacy formation kicked in, he shrugged off his robe and hung it from a hook by the door, leaving him in just a loose silk shirt and pants. The air was cool and a gentle breeze ruffled his hair, air kept constantly circulating by another formation. The qi in the air was thick enough that it almost felt like mist, the result of the house’s own qi gathering formation combined with a handful of potted herbs, a large qi crystal he’d received from the Scroll, and several minor treasures he’d purchased from the Sect or found during his two missions outside the Sect.

  Calvin sighed heavily, shoulders slumping and eyes slipping closed. Though as a Foundation realm cultivator Calvin was not truly bothered by regular heat and the strain of standing mostly still for hours at a time, he still noticed them. They reminded him of the bad days.

  There was a reason he kept the interior of his home cold enough to be uncomfortable for a mortal.

  He took several long, slow breaths, loosening the tight grip he’d been maintaining on his qi. With his next breath qi flowed into the two nodes he’d formed in his lungs and then filtered out down his channels and into the rest of his body. As qi began to flow, more energy filtered slowly through his skin to join the current, quickly replenishing the small quantity of energy he’d expended along the way.

  As much as he wanted to immediately get back to focusing on his cultivation, Calvin knew that having the proper mindset was just as important to a successful breakthrough as any other form of preparation. Speaking with Gwen had eased some of his frustration, as had finally getting home, but fragments of it still lingered in the back of his mind. Cultivating in such a condition would be much less effective than if he took the time to refocus himself. That had been one of the first flaws the Scroll had pointed out to him, and it had taken months to purge the spiritual impurities he’d introduced to his qi system by cultivating while hungry and in poor spirits.

  Thus, he spent an hour puttering around the house, letting the routine tasks and soothing environment settle his thoughts and emotions. He tended to the potted spiritual plants, ensuring they all had access to as much water and sunlight as they needed. He ate a small snack though he didn’t really need it, sweet and spicy nuts crunching between his teeth. He gathered the random objects that had become scattered throughout the building, returning books, empty cups, and a handful of spirit stones to their proper places. Only then did he finally head to his meditation room.

  Finally.

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