Alice

Alice watched David walk off towards the exit corridor with the Daoists Wei with no small amount of displeasure. He'd really chosen to leave her waiting by herself, hadn't he?

There was a throng of people arrayed before her, but that wasn't too discouraging to Alice - until she began to count them. The Ascending Sky had split themselves into three distinct groups.

At the front of the line were five of whom Alice believed must have been the core disciples. Now that they were clearly separated from the inner disciples, Alice really saw the difference between them and the crowd. It was difficult to judge the weight of someone's Story in a room of many cultivators, but they were not from the same cloth as the rest - they were the special ones.

These were men and women with epithets, with history, who had seen the truth of the world, of the heavens and spat at it. There were many names for them and their exploits. They were finders, they were namers, they were searching for their Nascent Souls, they were laying siege to the gates of Heaven, knocking on its doors.

Alice examined the woman who was at the very first position in line. She was gorgeous, but not in the wispy, ethereal way that Fairy Guan was. Her limbs were long and sinuous. Her hair fell to her waist. She wore her skirt in the same length as Senior Sister Liang - higher than Alice’s own robes. She was politely ignoring the other core disciples, who were trying to speak to her.

The woman turned to look at Alice suddenly. Her irises were mismatched in color - black as ink in the right and the most stunning green in the left. Alice met her gaze unflinchingly. The woman gave her a smile that reminded Alice of something reptilian - cunning but lazy, then turned back to the unopened door quite deliberately.

Behind them were a collection of nearly thirty inner disciples, each of them with something to say to the Peak Master.

A touch of despair crept upon Alice. David had left her waiting here for who knew how long. It had been a few minutes already and Feng still had not opened his door to see any disciples. Sundown was in several hours and Alice was effectively at the back of the line.

The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. How was it possible that David didn't have his own questions to ask the Peak Master? Alice hadn't even seen him attempt to form his core - there was definitely something wrong or something he didn't understand about the process.

Someone gave her a light tap on the shoulder. "Why the long face?"

In Alice's defense, the reason why she didn't recoil and bat the arm away immediately was because she still wasn't used to how sheerly attractive cultivators were.

It was the man who had antagonized her from the moment she'd shown up in the sect. He was, too, in the process of Core Formation. Fairy Guan had gotten his name wrong.

"Disciple Hu," said Alice, who briefly considered getting his name wrong as well. But the man clearly wasn't here for a fight.

"You remembered my name," said the man. He inclined his head slightly, smiling.

"Strange. Last time we met, Disciple Hu," she said, running his name through her teeth like it was a curse, "you told me that the strong eat the weak."

"I would prefer it if you called me Senior Brother Hu," he said, still smiling. Today, his hair wasn't loose as it had been the last few times she'd encountered him. Instead he wore it in a style popular with the other cultivators - with a bun held together by a piece of white jade the size of Alice's thumb.

Alice gave him a smile that was as patronizing as she could make it. "Aren't we of the same generation of disciples?"

From previous interactions, she expected him to fly off the handle again, but he was surprisingly calm. "Not for long!" His smile widened. "Very soon, I will don the garb of the inner disciples. I've been working on my core for the last three years, and it is very close to how I want it. In fact, that is why I have to see the Peak Master today - I must ask for guidance from my honored elders!"

Despite herself, it was difficult for Alice to be anything but curious. "Close to how you want it?" she echoed.

Feng's door flew open with its doorknob banging against the wall. "One group at a time!" came the peak master's reedy voice. The line moved up ever so slightly.

Disciple Hu nodded. "Nine out of ten people who cultivate will never manage to establish their foundations. This isn't true, of course, for our august sect - the majority of outer disciples will generally do so at some point. Of those who do, nearly everyone manages to form a core. That is not to say that most cores are stable."

He blushed slightly. "I didn't realize that the questions that your companion had asked the Fairy would be helpful in the stabilization of my own core."

This was as close to an apology as she was going to get, and it wasn't quite good enough. "My boyfriend," corrected Alice, feeling both a stab of possessiveness and a need to remind the man of boundaries.

"Yes, of course," said the man with a slight scoff that Alice misliked.

The door opened again, and the woman who'd been the first to visit the Peak Master exited. She’d barely been in the room for a minute, but it was clear she’d heard whatever she’d wanted to hear from the Peak Master. She was beaming and dashing towards the exit tunnel, so elated, she was positively skipping.

Hu, and many of the other disciples on line, waved at her, but she ignored him, clutching a stack of bamboo sticks to her chest. Alice had the same, back at her room - it was the Skybound Scripture. Alice remade that patronizing smile.

Hu frowned. "Senior Sister Kong doesn't make much time for us lesser mortals," he lamented.

"Who is she?" Alice asked, more bored than curious.

"I'd forgotten how new you are to the sect," said Hu. "Senior Sister Kong is one of our core disciples; more notably, she is a named disciple of Peak Master Feng, the last he’s taken on this side of the past millennium, possibly longer. Core disciples are the inner disciples who have survived their first tribulation - their Ignition."

"How many core disciples are there in the sect?"

"Now that," said Hu, "is an incredibly depressing question." His fingers drummed his hip. "Less than a tenth of our inner disciples will move on to search for their nascent souls," he said. "We belong to the best sect in the Middle Continent, but less than half of our inner disciples - who number less than a hundred, even attempt to ignite."

"Why's that?"

Hu chuckled and tapped Alice on her nose, causing Alice to jerk away slightly. "Every outer disciple comes into the sect thinking that they're going to be the one who ascends," he said. "No one can fathom a world where they aren't successful, especially not those who form their foundations incredibly early in life."

Alice shrugged. "That doesn't really answer my question."

Hu sighed. "There are many conditions for failure when it comes to igniting. It is one of the more violent tribulations you can face as a mortal. Everyone here," he gestured to the crowd in front and behind him, "has lost many friends to this first tribulation."

The line moved up again. The three remaining core disciples entered the room, chatting gleefully, and loudly.

Hu looked at her with more seriousness than she'd seen from him. "If I were you, I wouldn't be so attached to that companion of yours," he said.

Alice frowned.

"Love and tragedy go hand in hand," said Hu, suddenly gloomy. Alice liked it better when the man was easy to hate, when the man was mocking her for losing her saber at the auction. But in an instant, the look was gone, replaced yet again with an assured smile.

"Anyway, back to your question," said Hu, changing the topic to something he wanted to discuss. "The stability of a core is measured in the number of revolutions it undergoes every time your qi circulates your body."

"Is that so?"

Hu nodded frantically. "It is difficult for those who have just finished Foundation Establishment to necessarily feel it, but you can think of the qi in your body like-"

He paused. "Are you studied in biology, junior sister?"

Alice gave him a dirty look for calling her such, but she nodded anyway.

"You're familiar with how the heart works, then? It pumps blood to each of your organs and to your brain. With every pair of thumps when your heart beats, you complete a cycle."

That was very basic biology. Alice nodded again.

"Qi works in the same way. Even now, prior to our cores forming, we pump our qi through our bodies as though it were already there. Before the core forms, your qi is diffuse and weak, and its reason for existing is simply to pass along your meridians and apertures to keep you alive."

Hu gave a laugh which was partly a stutter. "This is something that I've known since my Foundations were established, but something I'd forgotten. That is why the question your companion asked was of such great use to me - it asked of me to rethink what my core truly was and would be."

"And what would that be?" asked Alice.

"An organ which did not previously exist, as our esteemed Fairy said. It is not a solid conglomerate of qi as I had been trying to create for nearly three years now. It is something that both accepts and rejects qi, something which must circulate it through my body. And with that, I understood that the only way it could be a stable core..."

He paused for dramatic effect. Alice nodded along, still somewhat unsure if the man knew what he was talking about.

"... Is if I allow for it to spin with the qi that I've received and for it to let the qi go!"

"I see," said Alice, who didn't quite see what he meant.

"Thus, I've been able to use the momentum of my qi to move my core from twelve revolutions a cycle to sixteen!" Hu crowed, louder than before - with the intention of having the outer disciples around them pay attention to him, undoubtedly.

"Is that impressive?" asked Alice, as mildly as she could.

"Yes," snapped Disciple Hu. "That is very impressive, if-"

The door opened with a bang. "-if I ever see any of you again in the next century!" came Feng's scream. The door slammed shut.

The trio who had walked in earlier left with their heads down like beaten dogs. The vast majority of the inner disciples who were in line seemed to get the message and decided to leave as well. Most of them looked irritated.

"What's happening?" Alice's voice came out as a stage whisper.

"Well, the Peak Master appears to be in a bad mood."

Alice grimaced. "You don't say."

"Well obviously I don't know the specifics," said Hu, "but many of the disciples of Earth Peak like to present ideas about cultivation to the Peak Master. Usually when there is a dangerous flaw to their plan, he will make them aware of it."

The door flew open again. "Next."

An inner disciple walked into the Peak Master's office and closed the door gently.

"Personally, I think he does stuff like this on purpose," said Hu. "Feng's got a reputation for being overly harsh, but fair - as long as you have something of substance to show him. It's well earned, so when people have some crazy theory for him to evaluate..." he trailed off, undoubtedly lost in a memory.

The line had thinned dramatically since the Peak Master's outburst. Indeed, most of the remaining people were outer disciples.

It would be Alice’s turn soon.