Soul Crystal Hall. Named such because of the many Soul Crystals within. It was not shaped like a hall, but was instead of massive room that contained many shelves and pedestals. Lined in neat rows were the many Soul Crystals that belonged to the members of the Wind-Lightning Pavilion.

Not every member had their own Soul Crystal. Only the sect master, vice master, elders, personal disciples, and core disciples were granted that honor. Soul Crystals were expensive to make, and so they were used sparingly.

There was always at least one elder attending to Soul Crystal Hall. They rotated duties here since no one wanted to spend their entire lives trapped within this dull place.

Huo Shui was currently in charge of looking after Soul Crystal Hall. He was a newly appointed elder who had only been promoted a few months ago. It was thanks to his meager position that he had been assigned this duty, which would last for an entire year.

But he didn’t begrudge the head elder for making him do this. It was an important task, and every newly appointed elder had to do the same thing. One could even consider it a right of passage.

Yet on this day, something that no elder wanted to happen happened.

Huo Shui was making his rounds like he always did. He used to dutifully check each Soul Crystal to make sure they were pristine, but he didn’t even bother looking at them now. The lack of anything happening had caused him to grow lax.

But just as he was nearing the pedestal where the core disciple’s Soul Crystals were, a loud cracking sound echoed around him. He spun around and his eyes widened as one of the Soul Crystals suddenly shattered.

“S-someone just died?!”

Seconds later, another Soul Crystal shattered.

“A-another one?!”

Huo Shui’s mind blanked for a moment before he remembered what protocols he needed to follow when this happened. He quickly hastened to the first shattered crystal and looked at the plaque on the pedestal. This one belonged to Xu Wen. He was not an elder but a bodyguard. However, due to who he guarded, he had been granted the honor of having a Soul Crystal linked to him.

The blood drained from Huo Shi’s face.

“If Xu Wen’s Soul Crystal shattered, then the other one must be… oh, no…”

Huo Shi hurried over to the second Soul Crystal, and like he feared, the man on the plaque was none other than Luo Dong’s personal disciple.

“This… this is bad. Someone killed the Sect Master’s personal disciple. I… I need to report this… but if I do…”

Fear permeated him as he wondered if he’d be punished for bearing this bad news. Surely, they wouldn’t take their anger out on him, right? They wouldn’t? But what if they did?

Huo Shi shook his head, rushed out of Soul Crystal Hal, and headed for the sect master’s headquarters. Even if they did, this couldn’t be kept secret. They would be even angier with him when they found out he had known and said nothing.

He was out of breath, but he didn’t pause and banged on the door several times.

“Sect Master! Sect Master, it’s an emergency!”

The door opened. Huo Shi was so surprised that he stumbled inside. Blinking several times, he saw that several other people were present, including the head elder and vice sect master.

He gulped.

“You are incredibly rude. Do you not understand decorum? You can’t just bang on the Sect Master’s door like an uncivilized barbarian,” said Mo Zhi.

“I… I apologize, head elder, but it’s an emergency! Xu Wen’s and Yin Xuefeng’s Soul Crystals have shattered!”

“WHAT?!”

The shout came from all three people present, but the first one to move was Luo Dong. He pushed Huo Shui out of the way and rushed down the hall. The elders all followed him as he barged into the Soul Crystal Hall and went up to the pedestal where the shattered remains of Yin Xuefeng’s Soul Crystal resided.

Huo Shui gulped when chi exploded from Duo Long’s body. Lightning skittered across the floor, wind created a tornado around him. This was rage made manifest. The rage of someone who was at the peak of the Human Limit Realm.

“Calm yourself, Sect Master! Lest you destroy the other Soul Crystals!” Mo Zhi admonished.

Duo Long took a deep breath and calmed himself. The lightning dispersed, the wind vanished, and all that remained was a deathly, stifling silence.

“You are right. Now is not the time to lose my head.” Duo Long placed a hand on the pedestal and closed his eyes. The pedestal glowed brightly as chi began flowing into it. “We must first find out who was foolish enough to kill Yin Xuefeng.”

It was impossible to know exactly who killed Duo Long’s disciple without having someone who was there to witness it, but a trace of the chi used to kill Yin Xuefeng remained inside of the Soul Crystal fragments, and Duo Long used his chi to gather them all together. He scooped up the remains of the Soul Crystal and turned to Mo Zhi.

“Gather the Hunter Squad. Give these fragments to them and tell them to locate and eliminate whoever this chi belongs to,” Duo Long said in a voice like ice.

“At once, Sect Master,” Mo Zhi said with a bow. He took the fragments and left the room.

Duo Long than glared at Huo Shui, who felt like he might piss himself. The man looked at him like he was looking at an insignificant insect.

“You are to tell no one about what happened. I will make the announcement myself. Keep your mouth shut on this matter. Am I clear?”

Huo Shui hastened to bow. “Of course, Sect Master. I will take this secret with me to the grave.”

“See to it that you do,” Duo Long glared at him for a little longer before stomping out of Soul Crystal Hall.

Huo Shui remained in the bowed position for a few seconds after the man left before sinking to the ground. His legs had given out on him. He’d never been so frightened in his life.

“I almost pity whoever killed Yin Xuefeng,” he mumbled.

***

Wu Jian and Huǒ Shuchang made good time. It only took a week to leave Mófǎ Forest. Just like Senlin Village sat on the border of the forest’s opposite side, another small border town sat on this side.

It was very different from the other one.

There was a startling shift the moment Wu Jian stepped outside of the forest. Heat bore down on him from the sun’s intense rays over head. Lush grass and plant life gave way to sand dunes that stretched out for who knew how many hundreds of lî. The change from lush forest to desert was so startling that Wu Jian needed a moment to get his bearings.

“So this is… the Qing Province?” he asked no one in particular.

“Yup,” Huǒ Shuchang said.

“Why would anyone want to live here?”

“Well, they say there are many secrets buried underneath the desert. I’m sure a lot of treasure hunters and cultivators came here to unearth those secrets. This nation is also home to the continent’s largest mercenary force. It’s ruled over by the Mercenary King. I’ve heard this province is also well-known for it's drug production and slave trade,” said Huǒ Shuchang.

Wu Jian wrinkled his nose. Drugs and slavery were two things he hated and just another reason to despise this country aside from the heat.

“Well, anyway, let’s get a place to stay. We’ve been traveling almost nonstop for a week. We’ve used too much energy to even consider crossing the desert right now,” Huǒ Shuchang continued.

“We should also consider looking at those storage rings we got from Xu Wen and Yin Xuefeng,” Wu Jian said.

“Right, though we’ll want to be careful. I don’t think the Wind-Lightning Pavilion has the power to do this, but some sects mark their storage rings with a blood seal that will prevent someone outside the sect from gaining access to its contents.”

“I didn’t realize that was possible.”

“There’s apparently a lot you don’t realize.”

“Are you still mad that I killed Yin Xuefeng?! I said I was sorry!”

The two continued bickering as they made their way into the border town, which was called Tager Village according to their map. It had even less buildings than Senlin Village. There weren’t many people outside, but Wu Jian saw quite a few people inside the buildings when he peeked in between the flaps covering each entrance. He found it odd that they used curtains instead of doors.

“It’s to circulate air. This place is so hot that keeping air trapped inside will only make it hotter,” Huǒ Shuchang said as though he could read Wu Jian’s mind.

“Ah.”

They searched the area and eventually found an inn. It wasn’t cheap to stay the night. One hundred silver would have been considered a ripoff anywhere else, but since this was a place where traders who wanted to travel through the established route between the Qing Province and Ming Dynasty frequented, demand for inns was always high. Wu Jian grumbled as he paid the man.

Their room was on the small side. It consisted of a single bed and little else. The floor was made of limestone. Wood wouldn’t last long in this heat. It would dry out and crumble before too long.

“All right. Time to see what we have inside of those storage rings,” Huǒ Shuchang said with glee.

“You didn’t want me to kill Yin Xuefeng, but you seem awfully excited to pilfer his belongings,” Wu Jian said dryly.

“Of course! Since we already killed him, we might as well reap some benefits from it,” Huǒ Shuchang’s words made sense, but Wu Jian still shook his head.

Since Wu Jian was the one who killed both Xu Wen and Yin Xuefeng, he held onto the rings.

He decided to check Xu Wen’s first. It contained five bottles of five medium-grade Chi Gathering Pills, robes that belonged to the Wind-Lightning Pavilion, and about two thousand spirit coins. That wasn’t a bad haul, though the robes were useless. The pills were, too, at least until he reached the Human Limit Realm.

“Now to see what Yin Xuefeng has,” Huǒ Shuchang cackled.

Wu Jian sighed as he unsealed the contents of Yin Xuefeng’s storage ring. There was definitely a lot more inside this ring than there had the other one. He counted at least one hundred thousand spirit coins, two hundred low-grade Chi Gathering Pills, and several alchemy ingredients that he didn’t recognize. There was a vibrant red flower with six petals, a clear monster core, ten seeds, some vines, a root of some sort, and a bottle of shimmering liquid. There was three of each ingredient.

“Oh… oh ho…” Huǒ Shuchang muttered.

“What is it?” asked Wu Jian.

“It seems Yin Xuefeng had originally been acquiring ingredients to create a Three Layered Red Yin Yang Pill. He was close to finding everything too. He’s just missing one ingredient.”

“Which is?”

“A Yin Flower,” Huǒ Shuchang gestured toward the red flower. “That’s a Yang Flower. You can see from the number of petals it has that it’s six hundred years old. He only needed to find a Yin Flower of equivalent age and he’d have everything he needed for an alchemist to refine the pill for him. I bet he was planning to find the last ingredient before he caught wind that the pill he needed was being auctioned off in Shēnyuān.”

There was a code that all cultivators must follow when hiring an alchemist to create a pill for them.

First rule among the code was that all the ingredients must be supplied by the cultivator who wants the pill.

The second rule was that cultivators must provide three of each ingredient. Alchemy was a difficult art to learn. Even masters occasionally made mistakes and failed to refine a pill. This was why the Rule of Three came into being.

The last rule was that the cultivator would not blame the alchemist if they failed. Even if an alchemist was given three chances to refine a pill, there was a chance all three attempts would fail.

Of course, even if the cultivator did not act against them, an alchemist who failed three times was considered a failure. The chances of that alchemist ever finding work again were slim to none. The Rule of Three was both a way to give the alchemist the highest possible chance of succeeding, but it was also used to either improve or destroy their reputation.

Speaking of, I wonder how far Zhou Lihua has gone on her path to alchemy?

Wu Jian looked out the window as he thought about the woman who had kissed him so passionately during their parting. He hoped she was doing well.