There was a celebratory mood on the air as Calvin made his way through Outer Village, a palpable sense of shared relief that made everything seem just a little bit lighter and brighter, if even just for one evening. The streets were crowded with disciples, rivers of dark blue robes interspersed with the occasional flash of bright color where a disciple had chosen to accentuate their sect robe with a scarf or wore it open over finery.

  The village’s main thoroughfare was just as crowded as it had been when he’d come to exchange his Budding Gold Spiritual Jade, but the atmosphere couldn’t have been more different. Laughter and boisterous conversation could be heard over the bustle, and the flow of people was far smoother as people moved in groups without the urgency that had carried them just days earlier. Disciples called out warm greetings to one another, united by the relief of making it through another quarter and the thrill of a sudden influx of wealth and resources, the potential for advancement.

  Calvin knew it wouldn’t last—it never did. Soon enough rumors would begin spreading about those who hadn’t made it and what the enforcers had done to them. Before long everyone would remember that three months really wasn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things and the rush to accumulate a new quarter worth of contribution points would begin again. Soon new stocks of pills would be used up, traded away, or sold for points, most disciples making little if any progress in their cultivation.

  But for now, that all seemed so very far away. The mood was infectious, the qi in the air practically vibrating from the excitement, joy, and relief of the crowd. Calvin found himself smiling without really knowing why, exchanging greetings with veritable strangers and chuckling quietly at overheard snippets of jokes.

  Though it took much longer than it would have on most any other day of the year, Calvin eventually reached his destination. The Elegant Pearl of Crimson Joy was one of the many restaurants on the main street of Outer Village, situated in an extremely favorable location equidistant from Contribution and Mission Halls and only a little further away from Job Hall. The building was a four story pagoda of rainbow wood and pearly-white stone with bright red tiles and accents, standing out even among the many splendid buildings that surrounded it.

  Owned and operated by the Redflower family, whose legacy stretched back to the very dawn of the Eight Peak sect, the Pearl was one of the top establishments in Outer Village, typically frequented only by the wealthiest segment of the Outer sect and even the occasional Inner or Core disciple. On a normal day Calvin wouldn’t have even given the place a second glance, completely unwilling to even consider the exorbitant prices the establishment charged for its cheapest drinks and dishes. A single meal there could beggar most disciples, including him, assuming they were even able to get a table.

  Today, a modest line stretched out the front door, disciples in pairs and groups standing in hopes of a spot opening up. Calvin recognized most of them by name and face—they were some of the cream of the Outer sect, many coming from wealthy and influential families and clans from throughout the province and beyond. Calvin rarely thought about it but for all that the Eight Peaks Sect was willing to accept all sorts of riffraff (like him) with the hope of finding hidden gems and exploiting all the rest for everything they were worth, it was still considered to be a Great Sect of the Empire. That meant something.

  It was prestigious to have a connection to a Great Sect, even if that just meant a single Outer sect disciple, and the Eight Peaks were a lot less selective than some of the other similarly notable Sects. While the quarterly dues for Outer sect disciples were enough to have disciples with little or no backing scrabbling in the dirt and letting their cultivation fall to the wayside, for a family with a dozen Core realm cultivators and a Nascent realm elder it was a drop in the bucket. It was easy enough to send a son or daughter with middling talent to spend a few decades at the sect, forging bonds with other movers and shakers of the Empire.

  And if they turned out to be talented after all? All the better! Inner and Core sect dues were certainly higher, but they also came with a level of investment from the sect utterly incomparable to the Outer sect. Calvin had heard that every week an Elder in at least the Nascent realm spent an hour lecturing any Inner sect member willing to listen. That on its own was worth every spirit stone and natural treasure converted into contribution points to pay dues.

  In all honesty, Calvin sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for him to join the Inner sect months ago. The Scroll had shown him four paths towards doing so, each with their own rewards, and while he wasn’t certain of his ability to reach the top eight of the Outer Disciple tournament nor impress an Elder into giving him an Inner Disciple Token, he could always just buy one. While the sect didn’t sell such tokens to just anyone, reaching the Foundation realm before your sixteenth birthday was already considered sufficient qualification, and he’d done so at fourteen. Ten-thousand points was a steep price to pay, but he was pretty sure he’d accumulated enough miscellaneous treasures to do so and have enough points left over after to pay one or two quarters worth of Inner sect dues. He’d need to start taking more missions or hope for some very good rolls to keep paying his dues, but maybe that was worth the exponentially superior monthly allocations, access to the Inner sect archives, far superior methods and scriptures, and actual guidance from high-realm cultivators.

  However each time he remembered the rewards the Scroll offered for the different paths, and each time his interest in moving up to the Inner sect prematurely died an ignoble death. After all, the reward for advancing by reaching the Core realm was simply too appealing.

  An Above Average quality random reward token. As far as he’d been able to tell, that was three full steps above the Modest quality Random Storage Artifact Token he’d get if he went through with buying an Inner Disciple token. Between Modest and Above Average lay Average and Below Average, a gulf as vast as that between Extremely Low quality and Modest quality. And it wasn’t just any Above Average token, but a true Random Reward Token. It could be anything. He’d seen some of what the scroll considered to be Minor Rewards—if those things were minor, he was itching to get his hands on some not-so-minor items.

  And thus he remained quietly in the outer sect, saving his points and cultivating with only a minor focus on other things. What was the point of learning anything beyond the basics of secondary skills like alchemy, formations, and herbalism when soon he’d be an Inner disciple with access to far superior texts and tutors in the subjects? The only exception was combat. It was simply too dangerous not to know how to defend himself, though even there he didn’t practice nearly as much as someone like Lulu and Wallis did.

  He pushed those thoughts aside, sidestepping the line and approaching the attendant standing on the opposite side of the Pearl’s double doors. She was a cultivator, probably somewhere in the early stages of the Foundation realm though that was just a guess, dressed in a gown of crimson silk that managed to be both seductive and somewhat conservative at the same time. Though it went down to her ankles and had a high neckline, it hugged her waist and thighs almost like a second skin and two slits along the sides went up from the middle of her thighs to above her hips, revealing a smooth expanse of pale skin with no strings or straps to be seen. Around her neck she wore a red ribbon choker on which was fastened a small medallion of dark red jade emblazoned with the blooming flame of the Redflower family, marking her as a contracted servant.

  Calvin’s smile dimmed slightly. More than likely, she’d once been a disciple like the rest of them. When she’d been unable to pay her dues, the Redflowers had swooped in and offered her a way out: a lifetime of servitude.

  Or maybe not. But it wasn’t an uncommon story.

  She looked him over, clearly judging his unadorned robes and lack of jewelry and finding him lacking. “Good evening, sir,” she greeted him, dipping her head in what was technically an extremely shallow bow. “I’m afraid the Pearl is quite busy today. If you could get in line, someone will be with you as soon as possible.”

  He ignored what was probably supposed to be an insult—it didn’t feel very insulting, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t part of the usual crowd that frequented the restaurant, but he knew plenty of cultivators who would have. “I’m afraid I’m running a little late. I believe my party should have the poppy room reserved?”

  A flash of panic crossed her eyes momentarily, and she bowed rather deeper than before. “Ah, of course. My apologies mister…”

  “Calvin.”

  “Yes of course, Mr. Calvin. You are on the list. Please go on in, one of the greeters shall lead you to your party. Welcome to the Elegant Pearl, we hope you enjoy your time with us today.” She didn’t rise from her bow until after Calvin had stepped past her and into the pagoda.

  The inside of the Pearl was lavish in a way that Jin’s House simply couldn’t be. Paintings, calligraphy scrolls, and tapestries each worth more than most cultivators would earn in a lifetime hung on walls of polished marble and gleaming hardwood. Expensive perfume scented air as rich with qi as his meditation chamber and faintly tinged with the dual wood and fire aspect that was the Redflower’s specialty. Dozens of waitresses and attendants, each and every one a cultivator, glided around like faeries in splendid matching red dresses, all but a handful wearing the same chokers as the woman outside had. Over it all loomed the faint but unmistakable aura of a powerful Core realm cultivator—a full member of the Redflower family watching over their territory like a guardian spirit—enough to deter all but the most foolhardy of disciples from doing something foolish.

  Another attendant approached him as soon as he passed through the door. “Greetings, good sir. Might I know where I can guide you?”

  “The poppy room, if you would be so kind.”

  “Of course, good sir. If you could follow me?”

  She led the way deeper into the pagoda and then up a staircase that spiraled around the outside perimeter of the pagoda. While the first two floors looked vaguely like countless other restaurants and taverns he’d come across, with tables of varying sizes scattered around the floor, the third and fourth were divided into private rooms that could be reserved for ruinous rates without even accounting for the cost of food and refreshments, but offered a degree of privacy and sophistication that regular seating at one of the Outer Sect’s finest restaurants didn’t.

  Apparently.

  On the third floor, she led him down a short hallway decorated in muted shades of red, the floor patterned with flower petals, and stopped at a sliding door emblazoned with a blooming poppy flower beside which stood another attendant. She had her hands folded behind her back and her qi flared, radiating the aura of someone at the peak of the Foundation realm, though Calvin guessed she’d probably only constructed a five or six node foundation. Unlike most of the others Calvin had seen, this woman was not wearing a choker.

  She looked him up and down in a brisk, practiced motion, then after a moment asked, “Young master Calvin?”

  He nodded.

  “Go on in, then.” She stepped out of the way, pulling the door open as she did, and Calvin moved past her into the room beyond. He idly wondered how the woman recognized him; they’d certainly never met. Perhaps a sketch, or an illusory image of some kind?

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  His first thought was that it was a lot less ostentatious than he’d been expecting. There weren’t nearly as many paintings and tapestries and whatever else, and the colors of the room were a more muted red than the downstairs. A scroll as long as he was tall decorated the far wall, depicting what he thought was probably Fire peak as seen from the Sect’s core territories rendered in splendid detail with only a few dozen branching lines of black ink.

  Small round tables were arranged on one side of the room, around which were gathered some twenty odd young men and women in disciple’s robes that looked pretty much like the ones he wore, but probably cost ten or more times as much. Several more attendants wove between them, carrying trays of small, elaborately arranged plates or refilling cups of tea.

  Though no one turned to look at him when he came in, he felt indescribably awkward. He hadn’t meant to show up late, but had completely lost track of time as he cultivated. Only his months-old promise to attend, and knowing what would happen if he went back on it, had dragged him up from his meditation chamber and out the door.

  He stood frozen for a moment in the doorway, trying to not let it show on his face just how out of place he felt. He recognized just about everyone in the room barring the staff, by description if not introduction. If the people outside were the cream of the Outer sect, these were the pearls that really didn’t belong in a bucket of fresh milk.

  The tiny, grey-haired girl with a high ponytail and an oversized saber at her hip could be none other than Yue Gwey, Lulu’s one-sided rival. The man beside her, nearly twice her height and probably thrice her weight, with a bald head and a small red gem gleaming between his eyebrows was obviously Garrion Ruby, second overall ranked disciple of the Outer sect and scion of one of the provinces oldest noble families. That almost certainly made the unassuming, black haired man speaking with them Orin, formerly of the Jade Pool, Garrion’s half brother who’d chosen to leave the Jade Pool sect over some grievance Calvin wasn’t wealthy enough to understand.

  And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

  At another table, a woman with slitted yellow eyes like a cat’s joked with a duo of young men with silver trim on their dark blue robes. Though both were members of the Outer sect, they were also descendants of current Sect Elders, granting them all sorts of special privileges. She on the other hand was from far further abroad, the daughter of a major merchant family in Flowering Waterfall Canyon that was looking to expand its reach into the province. Like with so many of the others in the room, Calvin had no idea why she was in the Outer sect of all places, but he certainly had no intention of getting on her bad side.

  Though he wanted to do nothing more than to fade into the background, Calvin found himself taking a step forward, and then another. At least that way he wasn’t blocking the door. Hopefully everyone would just continue to ignore him. He could grab a bite to eat, find a corner to lurk in, and leave as soon as––

  “Calvin! You made it!” a bright, cheerful voice called out, and suddenly a whole lot of people whose attention Calvin dearly would have preferred to avoid were looking right at him.

  Ariadne Locke broke away from the conversation she’d been having with several of the other partygoers and headed towards him, a wide, gentle smile on her ruby lips. It took every shred of willpower Calvin could muster not to fidget under all the eyes, but he forced himself to try and smile back. He bowed, “Of course. My sincerest apologies for my lateness, young mistress.”

  ––Ariadne had seen that he had in fact been there. Well, so much for that plan.

  “Oh none of that,” Ariadne waved her hand dismissively, her sleeve riding up to reveal a slender, pale-skinned wrist adorned with a silver chain bracelet. Stopping in front of him, she leaned over and poked him on the nose. “I told you to call me senior sister. There is no need for such formality.” Calvin could practically feel it as the gazes of the others sharpened, boring into him like spears and knives.

  “Yes, of course. My apologies, senior sister.”

  Ariadne giggled, and Calvin’s heart flip flopped. Before he could react, she’d grabbed him by the arm and was dragging him back to her table, an attendant already pouring him a cup of tea that probably cost as much as his dues (he really, really hoped he was exaggerating).

  “I’m so glad you could come. When you weren’t here half an hour ago I thought about sending someone to go looking, but I was sure you must have just been delayed. Is everything alright? Did you run into some trouble along the way?”

  “Ah, no, no trouble. I was um, cultivating, and… lost track of time.”

  She giggled again, and this time he kept a tight grip on his qi, not allowing so much as a drop of her flared yin qi to touch his spirit. “Oh, how very diligent of you. Only thinking of cultivation even on a wonderful day like this one!” They reached the table and she made room for him beside her, keeping a grip on his right arm as she gestured to the other three people who’d been standing talking around the table and were now staring right at him. “Calvin, allow me to introduce you to my friends Brice, Isadora, and Daiki. Everyone, this is Calvin, from ah,” she turned back towards him, “I’m sorry, remind me where—“

  “Just Calvin is fine,” he tried.

  “No, no, there are at least two other Calvins in the Outer sect. I’m sure you’ve mentioned it, but I’m afraid the name must have slipped my mind. Something about…wet birds?” Isadora—that was Isadora Valarie, whose family produced half the spiritual wine in the province—laughed briefly, echoed by the two others as though what Ariadne had said was the height of comedy.

  Calvin tried to keep smiling. “Six-Swan Pond.”

  “Yes, that was it! Calvin of Six-Swan Pond!” She turned back to the group, assuming an expression of wonder. “He saved my life. Imagine that.”

  And he regretted it every three to six months when she remembered he existed and tried to reward him with something or another. He’d have happily accepted a few thousand contribution points or even just some half-decent pills, but apparently that was too boring for Ariadne Locke! Thus, ‘rewards’ like this one—an invitation to a party where every single person could immediately tell he didn’t belong.

  She immediately launched into her own retelling of the story, and Calvin did his best to tune her out and ignore her tight grip on his arm.

  It was a simple enough story, all things considered. Ariadne loved to blow it out of proportion, the weight of his actions growing with every retelling. It had been during his very first trip outside the sect after advancing to the Foundation realm. He’d joined in on a mission with Lulu and Wallis, strangers at the time, a relatively routine patrol to check out reported bandit activity in a small town near the edge of the sect’s official territory. Normally three Foundation realm disciples would have been overkill for such a task, but the duo had wanted to feel him out as a potential new member for their already established team, and there had been suspicions that the bandit group might include a handful of former Foundation realm disciples from a minor neighboring sect.

  The mission had gone well. They’d found the bandits, and the bandits had included a single Foundation realm cultivator, but there was a reason he’d been kicked out of even a fourth-rate sect like the Glass Plum and survived by preying on mortals. His foundation had been a joke, a hollow shell. A half-decent Gathering realm disciple could have killed him with both hands tied behind their back.

  It was only on the way back that complications had arisen. Ariadne had also been traveling outside the sect, accompanied only by a handful of fellow disciples on their way to the provincial capital for some kind of auction—Calvin had never been quite clear on the details. However where Calvin and his team had not run into any trouble, Ariadne’s group had the misfortune of encountering a spirit beast with strength near the peak of the Foundation realm, and a particularly dangerous, wild one at that.

  The battle had still been raging when they came upon them. The spirit beast, a three-headed river hydra the size of a carriage with acidic breath and venom that could instantly kill a Gathering realm cultivator, had already eaten two members of Ariadne’s group and seriously injured two others including her. While Lulu and Wallis had instantly joined the last Foundation realm disciple still fighting the hydra, Calvin had hung back and gone to check on the wounded. There had been nothing he could do for the first man––Ariadne’s fiancé, he’d learned after the fact––who’d been cut nearly in half by a scything sweep of the hydra’s sinuous tail and had his face melted by acid, but Ariadne’s wounds had been far less severe.

  She’s been bitten by the hydra near the beginning of the battle, putting her out of the fight as she struggled against the venom rapidly spreading through her body. Her yin-aligned qi had helped slow the venom’s spread, but she’d only recently advanced to the Foundation realm and the life-saving treasures she’d been carrying had only been sufficient to deal with the most immediate problem––the giant chunk the hydra’s bite had taken out of her side—and not the venom it left behind.

  By all rights, there should have been nothing he could do for her but comfort her in her final moments. He was just a peasant who’d gotten lucky enough to open a dantian and become a cultivator, and had just enough talent to be worth having the Eight Peaks work him to the bone. He wasn’t a healer, nor a young master weighed down with all the resources and treasures he could carry. But Calvin had one thing that most peasant-born cultivators didn’t: the Scroll. And just a few months earlier, a Random Minor Reward Token had rewarded him with three Low quality Nine-Venom Shattering pills.

  He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to press the pill into her mouth, massaging her throat until she swallowed it, her focus utterly consumed by battling the venom tearing away at her spirit, but he’d done so. And when she opened her eyes in wonder a few moments later, her head had still been in his lap, one hand on her neck and another holding a water flask to her lips.

  The next few minutes after that had been a bit of a mess. The hydra had not died quietly, even outnumbered, and Calvin had joined the battle when it charged at him and Ariadne, spending more time keeping the beast away from the still-recovering girl than actually fighting. Though it had been his hand that had dealt the killing blow, the vast majority of the credit for killing the damn thing went to Lulu. Her techniques had shredded half the hydra’s body by the time he killed the final head, its regeneration so busy mending its other wounds that he’d practically just needed to give it a hard tap on the skull.

  In any case, once things calmed down, Ariadne had finally thought to ask him where he, a nobody struggling to scrape together enough points to pay his quarterly dues, had gotten his hands on a pill potent enough to near instantly deal with venom potent enough to potentially injure a Core realm cultivator. Put on the spot and unable to give a good answer, he’d made something up about it being a family inheritance, a gift passed down for countless generations from a long ago ancestor who’d done some tiny favor for a powerful cultivator and been rewarded. It had seemed like a good idea at the time––it wasn’t an unheard of story, the sort of thing that really happened and came up occasionally at the sect––but it had been the wrong thing to say.

  Ariadne had been over the moon about him using an ancestral legacy to save her life. Of course not so much as to actually financially compensate him for such a ‘priceless treasure’, but instead she’d decided that they were suddenly close friends and kept doing him ‘favors’. Specifically, she’d suddenly decide that he needed her to do something for him, and then do it without consulting him until after the fact.

  So far, he’d been on three extremely awkward dates with women he’d never met before or since, attended an auction where he couldn’t afford a single item, had a very strange meeting with someone Ariadne claimed to be a famous fashion advisor from the provincial capital, and been invited to five different private soirees like this one, two of which (including this one) he’d actually attended.

  Calvin honestly had no idea what was going through his ‘senior sister’s’ mind. What was the point of all this! He couldn’t tell if she just wanted him to die of sheer embarrassment or thought that he actually liked the things she was setting up for him. If she was truly trying to be friendly she was doing a very poor job of it because he saw her at most once a quarter, often less. He spoke to Uncle more often than he did with her, and Uncle most certainly wasn’t his friend.

  Eventually she ran out of steam, finishing her elaborate retelling of how he’d single-handedly rescued her from a beast swarm at great cost to himself. Or something like that, at least. It did include most of the key details. Just a lot of other stuff too.

  Isadora clapped, and the man Calvin thought must be Brice inclined his head towards him. “Your valor, selflessness, and quick thinking are to be commended. It is rare to find such qualities in cultivators, even in a righteous sect such as the Eight Peaks.”

  Calvin bowed back, “Thank you for your kind words, young master Brice.”

  Ariadne elbowed him lightly. “These are my friends, junior brother. I’ve told you a thousand times, there is no need for such formalities.”

  “Indeed.”

  “A friend of Ariadne’s is a friend of mine.”

  Calvin bowed again to the group, “Of course, my apologies seniors.”

  He thought he’d at least get a few minutes to chat with these…friends of Ariadne’s, maybe try some of the refreshments coming around, but she clearly had other thoughts. She began to drag him away, towards another cluster of cultivators. “Come along now, Calvin. There are a few more people I simply must introduce you to tonight.”

  “It was nice meeting you, seniors—“ he managed, and then they were moving on.

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