David

After Elder Guan asked the questions, David felt a measure of relief followed by a deep disturbance. Despite the wrapping of the words in rhyme - four groups of four questions, in a single verse, they didn't make sense or song - not in the same way poetry, no matter the language, should have.

By any measure, it should have had the same resonance as the words that leaked into his ears from the world, that began castaway, should have had conflict with reality like the Iron Scripture and the poem of his own foundation. But it sat in the air, still and untouched - as if the words existed outside of the boundaries of reality.

He supposed that was why Elder Guan had spoken to them - all of the disciples had recognized something different about them, something beyond the world. It must have been an analogy to where his core was to be formed.

"Good," muttered Elder Guan. "All of you recognize what is the strange and what is the wonderful in the world. I've spent quite a bit of the alloted time for this lesson on your question. There is more to go over but it can wait for another day. I must open the floor to the others now."

She turned to Disciple Hu and the two other unnamed outer disciples - a man and a woman. The man had a mole on his chin and the woman's hair was done up into a pair of buns that were reminiscent of panda ears. "Do the three of you have any questions for me?"

Panda lady nodded. "Thank you, senior. Recently I have attempted to form my core but I have failed in a way that has me concerned that I might have left a change in my cultivation."

"What are the symptoms?"

The woman looked sheepish. "It's probably nothing - I'm not quite sure, but I have this feeling of dread - I haven't cultivated for two days. I've seen Elder Pang about the problem and he says he couldn't find anything wrong, but I still wanted your guidance."

Fairy Guan nodded carefully and David found his gaze fixed on the way her glossy black hair swam to and fro. Alice elbowed him lightly in the ribs. "Sometimes," said Fairy Guan, "we run into accidents that make us afraid of the power locked within our bodies. I believe this might be one of those cases."

"I'm not scared!" the disciple protested, then immediately realized who she was speaking to. She bowed her head frantically. "At least I believe I'm not scared. This disciple thanks you for your advice, wise fairy."

"Now, now, Junior... disciple. I've known you since you were a young girl, you need not be so formal with me," said Elder Guan, who looked as though she was struggling to recall the disciple's name. But the disciple didn't seem to notice, looking immensely relieved. Elder Guan drew herself up. "Unfortunately, I do believe we've run out of time for now. The Sect Master needs a bit of help with a problem he can't quite solve, so I must leave my dear students until our next date."

She turned to David and Alice. "That'll be three weeks from now, here at the Sword Platform. Until then!"

The scent of lavender intensified and then she simply disappeared - undoubtedly moving faster than David's eye could follow.

The disciples began to head as one towards the exit, hopping up the stone steps.

After several hops, as they approached the double doors, Disciple Hu rounded on David. "What brought it upon you to ask such a worthless question?" he hissed. Neither Mole nor Panda looked happy either.

Alice snapped back at him immediately. “Fairy Guan didn’t seem to think that it was a worthless question.”

Hu looked apoplectic but it was Mole who spoke up. “You’re new here, so you don’t understand,” he said. His voice was gruff and disgruntled. “The worlds that the elders live in and the disciples live in are not one and the same. Once a week, they give us their time to provide good, solid advice - and the advice from Fairy Guan is the most helpful of all.”

The man threw open the doors with a heavy huff. “None of them ever stay for long. I don’t know if you’ve realized but we are all at a critical juncture in our cultivation, and I won’t stand for some stupid village hicks ruining my good progress.”

“Mhm, yes, your good progress,” came a voice from beyond the door.

The mole on the man’s chin twitched as he recoiled. A delicately manicured finger held the door open.

“You wouldn’t want these juniors to hold you back, would you?” It was Daoist Liang. She addressed David and Alice. “Is Fairy Guan already gone? She must be, if the lifer here is kicking up a stink.”

The man with the mole clenched his fists. “Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t call me that what?” Daoist Liang said, her voice high and flighty.

The man looked at her, dumbfounded.

“Don’t call me that, senior sister,” she answered, looking supremely happy.

Mole’s fists clenched again.

“I’ll call it as I see it,” said Daoist Liang, suddenly serious. “If you think bullying your new juniors will advance your cultivation, then it’s a small wonder you’re stuck in core formation and have been for longer than I’ve been alive. Don’t you think I’ve forgotten how you’ve treated me in the past. I know who you are. I might have forgotten your name, but I’ll never forget how you castigated me for wasting your time.”

With that, she dragged David and Alice out into the open air. It was sunny out now and the signs of autumn were approaching - half the trees in Tianbei were evergreen, but those that weren’t had begun losing their leaves.

“Part of getting used to life at a sect is learning to ignore people like that,” said Daoist Liang. “I prefer not to talk to them at all, to be honest. Cultivation is a process that takes a lot of work and is, invariably, a lonely road. People are always looking for others to blame when it doesn’t go the way they think it’s supposed to.”

Liang guided them along the Skybound Path back towards Earth Peak. Tianbei was idyllic at this time of morning - with birds chirping and the contrast of architecture creating a sleepy suburban town with many faces.

They were approaching Earth Peak when Daoist Liang stopped them. “Have the two of you been to the bulletin yet?”

“Bulletin?” Alice asked, shaking her head.

Liang nodded. “It’s ridiculous to be honest, no one ever tells new disciples anything useful during the orientation period,” she said, as if she weren’t literally in charge of them during the orientation period. “First of all, are you aware of the four important dates for every outer disciple in a month?” She didn’t wait for them to confirm or deny.

“On the morning after the new moon, you will have a lecture with Peak Master Feng, after the waxing half moon with Peak Master Ling and after the full moon with Fairy Guan. On the waning half moon, you should be at your dormitories for distributions - you’ll get many cultivation resources - don’t miss it.”

David nodded.

“On every other day, you’re left to your own devices to cultivate. That’s where the bulletin comes in. Seeing as you’re not allowed to leave Tianbei as outer disciples - though that isn’t even true, really, no one cares - you’re supposed to spend your time in deep meditation or whatever, trying to ascend. But...” she trailed off.

“But?” Alice prompted her to continue.

“But for now, we’re only human,” said Liang, almost grudgingly. “And it’s human nature to be bored. So there’s the bulletin.”

They approached the entrance to Earth Peak, where an inner disciple was guarding the door while reading. He waved them in without a word.

The three walked down the hall silently when Alice stopped them. “What’s in that room?” she asked, pointing at Conversion Room Eighty Two.

“Storage, probably. All the rooms along this hall are generally used for storage, for the Peak Master’s projects,” said Daoist Liang, who didn’t seem the least bit interested.

Under the bright white light of the Yin Fire lamps and the disciples walking to and fro, it did seem quite likely that Alice had asked about the equivalent of an electrical closet.

The hall opened up into the main atrium of Earth Peak as David had remembered. He was still surprised at how large the room was - with its ceiling hundreds of feet over head and the length and width of a city block.

Just like their first visit, the atrium was filled with the steady buzz of disciples drinking tea, discussing cultivation and trading cultivation materials with one another. In the distance, Daoists Wei and Wei - Liang’s friends, waved at them, but didn’t walk over. They were standing together against the back wall.

As they approached, Alice pinched his arm, pointing to the Daoist Wei who looked like a young girl. “Look at what she’s drinking.”

Daoist Wei held a clear little carafe of glass full of tea, but a bloom of milk was clearly visible in it, dyeing it a familiar cream-coffee brown. But that wasn’t the only thing in the cup - little black pearls the width of a pinky nail dotted the drink.

“That’s tapioca tea,” said Daoist Liang. “It’s something of a specialty in Tianbei.”

David and Alice exchanged glances. Daoist Wei slurped up a tapioca bubble.

“It’s actually really good,” Daoist Liang said, almost defensively, as she had mistaken the look.

“Oh, I know,” said Alice. “We had that in… the village we came from,” she said. “I’m surprised that tapioca grows this far north.”

Daoist Liang nodded happily. “Earth Peak has many, many greenhouses - if you venture off the main road, you’ll see a lot of them. We grow foodstuffs in a few of them and exotic plants in many others. Some of these plants produce medicine, and some produce poison, which is - as you know - my speciality. The greenhouses are run mostly by inner disciples and I’m actually in charge of a few of them.”

“She’s awful at growing things,” complained the Daoist Wei who was a middle aged man as they approached. “She’s enlisted us to watch over her plants. Can you imagine being so terrible at farming that you have to stare at the crops to ensure nothing is going wrong?”

“Leave me alone,” said Daoist Liang, her lips turned upwards. But it gave way to a smile soon enough as the younger Daoist Wei offered her a sip of tapioca tea.

“So, where’s the bulletin?” asked David.

“You’re looking at it, junior,” said Daoist Liang, pointing at the wall behind the two Daoist Weis.

And then David realized that the wall itself was the ‘bulletin’. Hundreds of sheets of paper were nailed or stuck with some kind of adhesive into the stone. Each of the sheets of paper were divided by a thick black line of ink horizontally. The wall itself was a light, chalky grey, and David realized that half the lamps in the room illuminated the wall directly.

“There’s a bit of a system here - the elders are fond of hanging bamboo sticks, core disciples generally use colored paper, and inner disciples use white paper,” said Daoist Liang. “What’s being offered is up top, and what’s expected in return is on the bottom.”

A single slab of bamboo hung dead center on the wall, several hundred feet away, chipped and cracked and more grey than pale yellow.

“That’s from Peak Master Ling,” said Daoist Liang, when she caught David’s eye. “That’s for general work at the Skyforge. There’s another bulletin over at Sky Peak which is somewhat like this one, for specific jobs. Everyone in the sect has probably worked at the Skyforge before, if only just to be part of a Forging - it’s well worth your time.”

The dominant piece on the wall at the moment however, was a yellow piece of paper that was surrounded by curious disciples. David frowned at it - it was in a different format than most of the listings on the bulletin.

“Annual Autumn Festival Auction, treasures from all over the world, at the Sword Platform, three days after the Lantern Lighting?” asked Alice.

David’s frown slowly became a grin. “I’ve been looking to pick up a saber, recently."