David

David, Alice and the rest of the new disciples descended the meter high steps. David thought a lot could be told from the way the disciples landed.

Kanhu jumped from step to step in a crouch, while the twins and Qitai landed with their knees straight. Feiyan tried her best to imitate them, but by the third jump, she was huffing and puffing.

Alice, ever the showman, walked off of each sheer drop and continued to walk as she fell from step to step, looking as bored as possible. When David saw that some of the outer disciples were, in fact, impressed, he emulated her - trying his best to put forth the illusion that he was walking down normal stairs.

Fairy Guan smiled at him and shook her head slightly. David felt a bit of heat in his cheeks.

Alice slipped her arm into his elbows. "Copycat," she whispered accusingly, as they arrived as six at the sword platform.

Six bundles of bamboo had been placed along the edge of the platform - one for each of the new disciples. David stepped forward, looking more confident than he felt, and took one. The rest of the disciples followed, each taking their own copy of what, presumably, was the Skybound Scripture.

The hall was silent.

"Bold," said Fairy Guan. Her voice echoed very lightly over stone. "What if the Scripture was meant to be earned and not taken?"

No one spoke, so David felt he must - he took the first bundle, after all. "Then they wouldn't have been lying there, and we wouldn't have been told to approach."

The fairy laughed, a tinkling sound. Then, she breathed in.

Three exhales.

The stone of the Sword Platform came to life, exhaling with her, and David heard the sound of flowing water. The smell of lavender was suddenly overwhelming to his nostrils and he blinked rapidly, but it faded just as suddenly.

There was no grinding sound, no mechanism as squat stone plinths rose into the air from the platform, two pairs of three, on both ends of platform, waist height - and a waist length apart.

David almost recognized the design of the plinths - from the mandatory art history class he'd taken as a freshman in high school; the design was not Chinese in origin - but he didn't quite remember what the style was known as or where it was from. The columns were ornate and lined and the tops of the plinths were flattened stone. Immediately beneath those flattened tops, however, were carvings.

He could see the three aspects of the Skybound Scripture in each of the identical plinths - swords pointed skywards, hammers swinging, palms clashing with weaponry of all sorts and the disciples and their enemies wielding these weapons.

Again, there were six - so David walked towards the cluster of plinths to his left and took his place behind the one direct center. Alice detached from him with a quick wink and chose her spot across the platform from him, with Fairy Guan between them.

The fairy's eyes were closed and she was breathing softly. David didn't think, however, that summoning these plinths had been any great effort - she was concentrating on something else entirely. Her lips moved rapidly, so rapidly that were she speaking it would have been nonsense to his ears.

The hall stayed silent.

Fairy Guan didn't wait for the rest of the new disciples to scramble into place behind the plinths. The twins went right, to either side of Alice, as Feiyan and Kanhu followed David to the left. In an instant, Fairy Guan knelt - her bare knees touching the platform delicately, elegantly. She brought her right hand to her waist and drew a sword from nowhere at all.

"I deliver unto you, my dear disciples, a means to reach the Sky."

She stood and plunged the sword into the Sword Platform in a single, smooth motion. It slid a meter into the stone, and suddenly, she was perched onto it. The tip of her bare left foot pushing against its hilt. Her hands were clasped in prayer, her eyes closed, her face pointed heavensward.

"I hope my disciples will join me," she said as she began to recite words that David knew could only be the Skybound Scripture.

"Open the doors and walk the plains," she began.

The silence broke as the gathering of Outer Disciples, some of the Inner Disciples and even the still men and women who could only be searching for their Nascent Souls joined her, in shout or whisper - some with their solemn eyes wide and fervent, reading from their bamboo sticks, some with their eyes closed, wearing little smiles. "By light of sun and moon - make them your own."

And then the fairy drew the sword from the stone of the platform and began to dance.

"Close your eyes and feel the heated promises of sky and stone, fulfill them when you're grown..."

Alice

The dance had seemed almost sinister at first, as the whispers of qi floated in from the audience to the center of the room and Fairy Guan took them in one after another. But she had made good on her promise - and returned it to those who had contributed, more robust and louder.

David was reading from his scroll across from her, following along, but his words were inert - something that convinced Alice to be cautious too.

But it did seem quite harmless to her - even though in her eyes, Fairy Guan was more Principle than person, the elder took special care not to color or taint any of the qi with that idea of severcleavecutsword.

A shiver, partly of fear and partly of anticipation, roiled through Alice. Would the fairy be able to cut every person who she was returning the qi to had she suffused it with her Principle?

The whispers grew as the silkworms told her to challenge this force of nature because they were hungry.

Fairy Guan turned to her sharply and shook her head.

Chastised, Alice pulled back on her qi, tamping it down.

The final stanza of the Skybound Scripture rose in a boom that made the hairs on the back of Alice’s neck stand. It was only proper, because according to Daoist Liang, these were the only words that everyone in the Ascending Sky subscribed to - regardless of how they’d come to their Foundations.

“Rain falls from the sky, as mankind strives to fly.”

A deep silence fell over the room again.

“Thank you,” said Fairy Guan, even though it was the audience that should have been thanking her. “Those who are not in the process of forming their core are dismissed.”

The disappointment in the air was almost a physical thing as the vast majority of the cultivators in the chamber made their way to the exits. The twins beside Alice left without a greeting. Interestingly, one of them was flushed and sweating, as if he’d run a marathon.

Alice realized after a moment that this wasn’t uncommon. Nearly a third of the audience looked physically spent. Across the platform, Kanhu showed an uncharacteristic caring as he pulled Feiyan, who was slumped against her plinth, to her feet. He patted David on the shoulder and helped Feiyan up the steps.

When the disciples were mostly gone, only three other faces remained in the audience. To her surprise, Alice actually recognized one - the man with long hair who had hit on her when they were headed to the admissions office in Earth Peak.

“Come closer,” said Fairy Guan. Even with her ethereal chirp, she sounded annoyed with the disciples who had not moved from their places.

Now that the chamber was empty, the movement echoed heavily as the other outer disciples hurried down towards the sword platform.

The man with long hair took his place next to Alice and gave her a wide smile. Alice rolled her eyes and crossed the sword platform to stand beside David. The man glared - not at her, but at David, who pretended not to notice.

As they settled into place, Fairy Guan addressed the man with long hair. “Junior Hua.”

“I’m Disciple Hu,” corrected the man, blushing slightly.

“Whatever,” said Fairy Guan breezily. “Where are the rest of the core formation disciples, Junior Hu?”

Alice gave the man a bright smile behind Fairy Guan’s back.

“There were only three of us before today’s class,” said the man.

“I asked you the same question a month ago, didn’t I?” said Fairy Guan, giggling lightly.

Disciple Hu nodded. His blush deepened. “Senior Brother Hua formed his core and became an Inner Disciple a month and a week ago. These disciples apologize for being less than memorable.”

“Worry not,” said Fairy Guan. “That has come to an end. Observe our new members!”

She turned to glance at David and Alice. The moment her back was turned, Disciple Hu glared at Alice, folding his arms.

“We’ll start the lesson today as usual,” said Fairy Guan. “Do you have any questions for me?”

David nodded. “What exactly is a core and what am I meant to do to form one?”

There was a smattering of chortles from the other disciples.

“A good and valid question, despite the laughter,” said Fairy Guan. “A core is an organ that your body does not currently possess.”

Alice frowned.

“Unlike a foundation, it is not conceptual in nature. It is not guided by biological impulses, but by your cultivation.”

“If it’s not conceptual in nature, where do you fit it?” asked Alice.

Fairy Guan nodded at her, smiling. “A good question indeed. Last I checked, my body is quite full of organs already. Yet, I’m in possession of a core. How is this possible?”

She didn’t wait for a response. “Seeing as I’m not a demonic cultivator, I haven’t removed any of my organs, and I haven’t moved any of them out of the way. The trick of the tale lies in the idea of boundaries. There are boundaries everywhere - and the primordial dichotomy is between what consists of you and the world.”

Fairy Guan paused. “As I understand, the pair of you are only seventeen - and from the Southern Continent, where the standard of education is notoriously bad. Please stop me if I’m using words you don’t understand. There is no shame in that - you have all of eternity to pursue scholarship and literacy.”

Alice didn’t like the look of compassion that Fairy Guan wore, but she couldn’t bring herself to be annoyed - it was too considerate of the elder.

“I think I understand,” said David. “While our foundations are built purely mentally, a core occupies the space between the mental and the physical, letting it exist within the bounds of our bodies, but not in conflict with what our bodies are.”

“Smart boy,” she said, giving him a smile that Alice heavily misliked. “But I still haven’t answered even one of your questions, even if knowing where a core lies is, in itself, an answer. Tell me, what is the strongest shape?”

David tilted his head to the side slightly, biting his lip in thought, which Alice found cute. “A triangle?”

Fairy Guan chuckled lightly. “You are a cultivator, not a construction worker.”

“An octagon,” tried Alice.

“Correct,” said Fairy Guan. “That is why a Foundation is known as the Eight Pillars. But in forming a core, you must go past the idea of these eight pillars. I’ll tell you now - a core is round-rotund-spherical like the earth.”

“But the earth is flat,” said Alice, who had no self control. David glared at her.

Fairy Guan found it funny, at least - giving her a brilliant smile that made her impossible to dislike. “You would be surprised as to how many disciples I’ve taught who did believe that. When you open your sanjiao, it is customary to fly in a single direction until you’ve arrived roughly where you’ve begun.”

She paused. “But it is impossible to hold any but a specific discrete shape when it comes to forming a core. Mankind must always have a starting point. As for this lesson - I’ll leave you with one verse of the Heavenly Questions carved into the bottom of a little lake in Jiangxi. These are questions that even Immortals have never answered, but should give you an idea as to that very starting point.”

Fairy Guan took a deep breath. “How was the Cord tied to the Hub? How was the Heavenly Pole added to them? What did the Eight Pillars hold up?”

It seemed as if the temperature in the room had lowered.

She looked Alice directly in the eye, suddenly desperate and hungry and hopeful. “And why was there a gap to the Southeast?”