Li Meili climbed the stone staircase leading up towards the outer sect. The path was flanked by well-kept gardens full of beautiful flowers and herbs, most of which were at least vaguely magical in nature. She was certain that the real treasures would be kept closer to the peak where they could be more easily tended and guarded, but it was still an extravagant display of resources. And this was a lesser sect—Meili could scarcely imagine what the great sects would look like.

She bent down to examine a particularly striking flower with bright blue and white petals when a woman’s voice called out from above.

“Don’t touch that!”

Meili looked up to see a girl around her age running down the steps, chest heaving.

“That’s...don’t...”

Li Meili stood to bow while the girl tried to catch her breath.

“I was just looking. I’ve already been told not to touch anything. My name is Li Meili, I’m a visitor. I take it you’re my escort?”

The girl returned the bow hurriedly, and Meili finally got a proper look at her. She had dark eyes and black hair, like most Qin people, tied into tight braids that wound elegantly around her head into an artful pattern that kept it all in one place. She was taller than Meili—not much of an accomplishment—and had a noticeably curvy figure even through the loose blue robes she wore.

“Yes! I am Pan Jiaying, of the Gaze of the Everwatching Mists. Sorry for shouting—Elder Qiao just showed up suddenly and ordered me to go meet a visitor so I came running as fast as I could. I wasn’t sure if anyone had told you the rules yet.”

Meili counted off on her fingers.

“Don’t break anything, don’t steal anything, don’t go past the first checkpoint. He did the same thing to me, I think—is that a common occurrence here?”

Pan Jiaying sighed.

“More than I’d like. I guess it’s a bit reassuring knowing that someone powerful is watching over us, but it’s a bit...”

She grimaced as she trailed off, and Meili knew exactly what she was feeling. She recalled how disturbed she’d been at the thought of Elder Qin Zhao spying on her while she was alone in her dorm.

“I know what you mean. Sometimes us girls need our privacy.”

“Yes! Exactly! You get it! It’s so nice talking to another girl. Come on, let me show you around.”

Meili fell into step with Pan Jiaying as they ascended together.

“I take it there aren’t many girls in the sect?”

Pan Jiaying huffed irritably and shook her head.

“Not many of us female cultivators anywhere, really. No future in it—that’s what my mom always told me. She thought I was insane, running off to join the sect, but what am I supposed to do? Get married to some boy and spend the rest of my life planting rice?”

“I’m guessing that if you asked her, your mother would say yes, that is exactly what you should do.”

Pan Jiaying giggled.

“She absolutely would—still does, every time I visit. It’s tempting, to be honest. Cultivation isn’t as exciting as I thought it would be—instead of planting rice I tend spiritual ginseng, and instead of having children I sit in a tiny room and meditate. Somehow I think I actually ended up picking the more boring path.”

“They don’t teach you any techniques here?”

“Tsk, no. Not me, anyway. Apparently my ‘yin physique is incompatible with the spiritual arts’ or some nonsense. I’m expected to gain insight into my own methods by watching the men do all the interesting stuff. From a safe distance. While watering the ginseng.”

Li Meili smiled awkwardly. It had already been hard trying to learn from a master who actually made an effort to help her develop her own techniques from the rather male-centric world of Qin’s cultivators. She could sympathize with Pan Jiaying’s plight.

Apparently not one to leave a silence unfilled, Pan Jiaying kept the conversation going on her own.

“So what’s it like being a rogue cultivator? Now that’s got to be exciting. It’s dangerous out there, right?”

Meili shrugged noncommittally—she couldn’t actually speak to the experience of a rogue cultivator in Qin.

“It’s not so bad. I mostly avoid monsters if I can help it, and I’m far beneath the notice of most other cultivators.”

“Do you know any techniques?”

“A few.”

Pan Jiaying squealed in delight.

“Lucky! I’m so jealous—maybe I should set out on my own too, once I pay back my debt.”

Meili wasn’t really comfortable advising the girl one way or another, so she changed the subject.

“So not breaking or stealing anything is pretty self-explanatory, but I don’t actually know where or what the first checkpoint is.”

“Oh! That’s easy, we’re coming up on it now. I’ll show you!”

True to her word, the two of them came upon a small plateau with paved paths leading left and right and a large ornate archway in front of them.

“This is the first checkpoint. As long as you stick to the paths and don’t go through the gate you should be fine. I’ll be with you too, so if you start to stray I can just warn you away.”

Meili looked up at the imposing gate. It wasn’t quite as fancy as the outer gate had been, and there were no doors, but she could sense a powerful qi radiating from it.

“I take it this isn’t the inner gate?”

Pan Jiaying shook her head.

“Nope! I know it’s a little confusing with all the gates and checkpoints and stuff, but this just leads into the training areas and stuff. They just don’t want you to go there and learn sect secrets for free by observing—though between you and me, I’ve been trying to do that for years and haven’t managed to learn anything useful.”

“I see. Where do the paths lead?”

“All sorts of places! Mostly the residential villages—there are a bunch of them littered around the mountain—but there are a lot of gardens, gazebos, and meditation areas as well. Take it from me, maintaining it all is a lot of work.”

Li Meili nodded along, but had a hard time staying interested in the minutiae of the sect itself—she was here for a reason, after all.

“Where should I go if I want to meet someone?”

Pan Jiaying scratched her head.

“Well, I guess that depends on who you’re meeting. Do you know someone in the sect?”

“Not exactly. I’m here to visit Luo Mingyu, but I’ve never actually met him before.”

“Hmm...Luo...Luo...I think I’ve heard that name before. Is he an outer disciple?”

Meili shrugged.

“I don’t actually know. He’s an alchemist, if that helps.”

“Luo Mingyu...alchemist...it really does sound familiar. I’m certain I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know him. If he’s an outer disciple, he’ll probably be in one of the villages closer to the gardens, and if he’s an inner—well, they’ll probably have told him you’re here and if he wants to meet you he’ll come find you eventually.”

“How will I know whether he’d decided to meet me?”

Pan Jiaying smiled sheepishly and averted her eyes.

“Uh...well, with inner disciples you just kind of have to wait and hope for the best. I once had to wait a week after paying credits for an inner disciple to tutor me before he actually showed up just to tell me he didn’t have anything to teach a woman. What a waste...”

Li Meili frowned—she wasn’t sure she had a week.

“I see. Well, I suppose we can cross that bridge when we get to it. The gardens?”

“Yes! Right this way—you’re going to love them, they’re the best part about this whole place!”

As Pan Jiaying led Li Meili through the sect, pointing out all of her favorite spots and telling increasingly sad anecdotes about her life in the sect, Meili began to understand why she’d been sent as an escort. It wasn’t that she was the closest, or that they thought Meili would be more comfortable with someone of the same gender—it was a message.

‘There’s nothing here for you but life as an errand girl. Give up.’

She hadn’t missed the roundabout ways of imperial cultivators. It was like she was back in the academy again, where half the students could pack a backhanded message into a simple ‘good morning.’ Small wonder she had only a tiny handful of friends from Qin.

Meili felt bad for Pan Jiaying, whose exuberant passion hadn’t yet been entirely snuffed out by the way her sect treated her. She didn’t even realize that she was being used as a warning sign.

“And this is my village—the one nearest the main outer gardens. It wasn’t easy securing a spot here—it’s prime real estate, not just because the gardens are so nice but also because they’re a great opportunity for us to earn credits.”

Meili cocked her head as she observed the small collection of buildings. They were as artfully constructed as any on the mountain, but clearly meant to be humble and subdued. Some of them were as small as her first dorm back at the academy.

“You keep mentioning credits—what do you mean by that?”

Pan Jiaying smacked herself on the forehead.

“Oh! Silly me, I forgot you wouldn’t know about that! The sect rewards disciples for their contributions. Maintaining the gardens is one of the most consistent and safe ways to earn them—I can get up to ten credits for a day's work on a good day. Oh, a low grade first stage qi crystal is worth about ten credits.”

Li Meili pursed her lips. First stage qi crystals had been the lowest denomination of immortal bartering currency she’d been aware of until that moment. Apparently the sect had managed to come up with a way to go even lower just to ‘pay’ their disciples.

“What can you spend them on?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. Qi crystals and beast cores, pills, private tutoring sessions with inner disciples, time in a meditation hall, and of course paying off your debts.”

“Debts? I think you mentioned something about that before—did you borrow from the sect?”

“Uh, sort of—yeah. Staying in the sect itself comes at a cost—a lot of outers just stay with their families back in the town because of that—and there’s the entry fee, plus rental for the special equipment we use for maintenance—”

Meili had to interrupt.

“Rental?! They make you pay them for the privilege to do the things that they will pay you for?”

“Uh...I guess it sounds a little bad when you put it that way, but it’s not that much, really. I only have to spend about a credit a day to do the gardening.”

So a tenth of her potential profits, not counting whatever she spent for the privilege of staying within the sect. Meili grimaced.

“And the entry fee? Your debt?”

“Right, those. Well, I was pretty young when I first awakened—you have to be, you know—but from what I can remember the entry fee is to cover the cost of qi crystals and stuff they used to help me find my meridians—plus the cost of training me in the foundation building technique itself.”

Meili didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was too ridiculous.

“How much did all of that cost you? In credits or whatever?”

“About ten thousand or so.”

Less than Meili had expected after everything else she’d heard. Doing the mental calculations—and silently thanking Dae for teaching her arithmetic—Li Meili determined that the debt should have taken around three years to pay off. She felt a pit form in the bottom of her stomach.

“Pan Jiaying, how long has it been since you joined the sect?”

She put a finger on her chin and looked up thoughtfully.

“Well, I joined right after passing the trial of eligibility when I was six, and my next birthday is in autumn so...oh, wow! Almost twenty years now!”

Meili felt like she was going to throw up. Twenty years. Pan Jiaying was older than she was—older than Jung, even. All thoughts of the alchemist fled her mind in the face of the insanity before her.

“How much of your debt is still left?”

Pan Jiaying wrung her hands together and stared down at the ground blushing.

“W-well, you know—inner disciples have their debts forgiven, right? And there are so many nice things that you can spend credits on that make it easier to cultivate, so if you’re going to be sticking with the sect anyway...”

Oh. Oh no. Li Meili wanted to go back to a world where she’d never started this line of questioning. It was too tragic. But it was too late now—the tiger was out of its cage.

“Putting it all together, my debt to the sect stands at twenty-three thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven credits. I uh...might have missed a few interest payments.”

Li Meili buried her face in her hands. She’d been completely wrong. Pan Jiaying wasn’t an errand girl consigned to a life of menial drudgery in a sect that didn’t want her. She was an unwitting slave with the promise of freedom dangling tantalizingly out of reach.

Perhaps it was unfair of her to cast judgment after only one visit, but Meili’s mind was made up. She hated the sects of Qin and everything they stood for, and she didn’t want to spend another second more than was necessary in that place.