Jin raised his sun stone to project a wider beam of light for the others, who were busy painting markers on the ground with glow-in-the-dark ink. It was customary for cave explorers to leave behind temporary signs so as to not get lost or trapped in the tunnels. More than once, they came across old animal carcasses and human bone fragments, a testament to the unspoken dangers under the mountain.

The two teams had already split up at an earlier junction; Jin’s team pursued the left tunnel system whereas Mei’s team ventured right. During the first two hours of exploring, Jin and the others had little luck finding herbs, which caused some tempers to run high. The bald and chubby ex-monk, Taobao, had a bad habit of spewing profanities as he grumbled.

“You’ve got to be sh*tting me! How are we so unlucky?” Taobao loudmouthed, the tunnels faithfully echoing his expletives. “F**king monk saints...they told me I was blessed with good fortune.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something soon, Mister Taobao,” Yuri tried to placate him. Despite her positivity, the ex-monk continued his low-key grumbling, that was until Jin sent a warning glare that properly shut him up.

Taobao swallowed his pride, helping himself to one last profanity. “F**king sh*t-tastic,” he muttered, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

When the ex-monk quieted down, Jin returned his attention to the matter at hand. He was tense and alert, his mind preoccupied by the eerie silence. Ever since they entered the caves, it bothered him that they hadn’t come across another living thing - not even a stray rat. It didn’t make sense for these tunnels to be completely devoid of life.

Convinced that retreat might be their best option, Jin was about to call it quits when someone suddenly spotted a section of the tunnels glimmering in the distance. Ling’s and Taobao’s faces melted into relief, seeing that their trip wasn’t all for naught.

“I take it back. Praise those fatass monk saints!” Taobao exclaimed, almost skipping in joy as he hurried to extract the nearest batch of blue candle weeds. Unlike the monk, Jin, Yuri, and Ling took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the scene. In the dark, the tips of the herbs expelled an exotic blue neon glow like small candles, as their namesake suggested.

“It’s amazing how something this pretty can survive here,” Yuri commented. “Breathtaking, really.”

Jin patted her shoulder in agreement, feeling a pang in his heart. Tian Long used to say the same thing - that nature had a way of nurturing beauty even in the toughest environments.

“I wonder why blue candle weeds only come out at night though?” Yuri continued. “It’s obvious they don’t need to absorb sunlight.”

“The plants primarily feed on qi, but they’re often a basic food source for many herbivores during the day. Some alchemists think that the plants evolved over time to feed at night when most animals are sleeping. Probably safer that way,” Jin cleared up her confusion.

Ling jumped in on their conversation, saying, “I see you know your stuff about herbs, Jin.”

“A bit,” he humbly admitted, despite his knowledge surpassing the herbalist’s in all probability.

“I’ve been studying herbology for ten years, but plants like these never cease to awe me. One thing I’ve learned is that mother nature loves to create vibrant and complex ecosystems where life continually learns and adapts,” remarked Ling, showing her scholarly side.

They spent another minute in idle chat as the ex-monk scurried about hard at work. The weeds were just sitting there in large quantities, as if asking to be plucked by lucky adventurers.

“Yuri, why don’t you help Taobao with that patch over there?” Jin advised. “He looks like he could use a hand.”

“Yessssir.”

Yuri diligently went to work, as did Jin and Ling. Like everyone else, she was elated by their fortuitous discovery. However, like everyone else, she had also failed to notice the faint tremors emitting from deep beneath their feet.

“Here’s to one hell of a profit!” the ex-monk Taobao celebrated, passing around bottles of rice wine to the group. His remark was met with enthusiastic cheers around the campfire.

Both teams had safely returned to base camp after a long night of exploration. Jin’s team came back with a bountiful harvest while Mei’s team was less fortunate and had returned empty handed. Nonetheless, there was obvious cause for celebration. Plenty of unextracted herbs remained in the caves due to the fact that the teams had to split supplies and manpower on the first run. This limitation wouldn’t be an issue for the second run - on the next night, they planned to go in as one big group to maximize the harvest.

The overall mood lightened. Even Gaebuk, the usually grim cultivator, smiled politely as Taobao pushed a bottle of sake into his hands. The prospect of a fat bonus gave them all reason to let loose some built-up tension.

At some point, Mei and Taobao began engaging in a friendly banter about who was the better drinker, which quickly ended up devolving into a full blown drinking contest. Mei’s alcohol tolerance was greatly enhanced by her supernatural physique as a cultivator, but Taobao, relying on two hundred fifty pounds of body mass and a good liver, was a freak of nature. Both had met their match, neither being able to outdrink the other. Grandpa Kang started a small betting pool, which Jin and Yuri saw as a good chance to excuse themselves.

The two found a secluded tent to continue their one-on-one cultivation lessons. Even though the explorers had all safely made it back to base camp, Jin couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. While in the caves, he had been periodically casting short-range echolocation sweeps to scan for trouble. Nothing had come up.

Sensing his brooding, Yuri asked if there was something bothering him, to which he replied truthfully. She then offered to help in whatever limited capacity she could. At first, Jin rejected Yuri’s offer but then gave it some more thought.

“Now that I think about it, there might be something you can do to help. Perhaps I should teach you the basic concept of qi echolocation tonight,” Jin said, rubbing his chin. “You see, usually it’s impossible for a typical cultivator to learn it on such short notice, but I know you’re a monster when it comes to learning on the fly. Maybe you’ll perform another miracle and blow my mind.”

Although Yuri laughed at his statement, Jin was actually quite serious. He wasn’t one to give high praise unless he really believed she deserved it.

Yuri nudged him with a finger and teased, “Jeez, I sure hope ‘monster’ isn’t your idea of a compliment. I’d hate to hear your criticisms then.”

“Well, would you rather I say...you’re a divine talent blessed by the heavens here to cast awe and wonder upon us unworthy mortals?” joked Jin. For some reason, Yuri had a talent for bringing out the playful side in him - Tian Long had the same ability.

‘Dammit, Jin. Stop conflating them together. They’re not the same people. He’s not coming back,’ he silently reprimanded himself.

Oblivious to Jin’s somber thought, Yuri pretended to gag. “Ew. Not when you say it like that. Anyways, I’m ready to try the echolocation technique whenever you’re ready.”

They both put aside their light leather armor and sat across from each other at arm’s length. Jin began showing her the steps: first, she needed to circulate qi from her core; then, she needed to generate a spherical pseudo qi field. An hour passed quickly, and Yuri had begun grasping some of the subtleties of the motions.

“I can consistently cast out the echolocation spell, but I can’t interpret the signals that I receive,” Yuri expressed. “It feels like a garbled mess. I don’t know what anything means.”

“That’s because your pseudo qi field isn’t uniformly propagating the spell. The internal qi from your core must push evenly on all fronts, or at least as near perfectly evenly as possible. That way, when the spell detects aberrations, you can rule out it’s not from the noise generated by a poor echolocation spell.”

Jin asked her to clasp his palms. “It will definitely help if I show you what this feels like. Maybe you should try imitating the feeling instead of the theory.”

The training session took up most of the night. Time passed in the blink of the eye, and dawn had almost arrived before Yuri began to see noticeable changes in her performance.

“Whoa, whoa. I think I’m getting the hang of it,” she gushed. “I can feel your presence through the qi field.”

“Already? Very good, keep at it,” Jin replied. Had Yuri been paying attention to Jin’s eyes, she would have seen his mark of approval.