Up, down, left, jump the sweep. Grypha moved backwards, her sword moving, enwreathed in the reddish glow of her qi, the stilltrunk blade technique. The technique was formed from wood qi which increased her blade’s presence, allowing it to hit harder, like a falling trunk crashing down to the forest floor in the midst of a storm. It pulled from all of Grypha’s insight into the wood element, achieving impressive strength, even when using minimal amounts of yin qi. The true trick to the technique though was her incorporation of her stilldeath qi. This was what kept the blade in one piece, allowing her to contain the weight of a falling tree without being constrained or overwhelmed by momentum. It also made blocking against most opponents of her stage of cultivation a simple matter. The blade stayed still, holding, locked in her hand even in spite of great blows.

  Right now, though, Grypha was struggling to hold onto her blade. Her opponent was much stronger than her and leveraged all of that strength into a massive great sword. It was a rendition of some fantastical demon covered in an insectoid carapace, an unpopular illusion from one of the sect’s leaves, one still attached to the tree, as high as he could climb in the canopy. It had only been cleared by only a small handful of the more daring disciples, each much stronger in cultivation than she. Their names were inscribed on one of the many plaques that hung next to each and every leaf on the tree, a longstanding tradition in the sect.

  She built a second technique hastily, knowing that if she didn’t manage to form it in a breath, the fanciful demon would cleave her in two…again. A feint from the left. Grypha moved, burning qi for the strength she needed to repel the blow. The demon was overwhelmingly strong, but having fought for the whole morning, she knew its tells. The foresight let her last a little longer with each battle, her movement, down to even the nuance of her qi honed for the one fight.

  The blow knocked her back slightly, just as she’d anticipated. Grypha swept her sword to the right then the left, releasing the technique she’d been building to: petrified bone vine. The technique used more of her stilldeath qi than the stilltrunk blade did. Vines, conjured into being with her first technique—life was always interconnected, death more so—came to a complete rest in the air, a trap her enemy, being far smarter than the illusionary elementals she’d fought to gain entrance into the sect, would not walk into. They would spend effort to break through or dodge around. In either case, it bought her time, time she extended by using her qinggong technique, drawing impressions of fallen leaves around her feet.

  The technique, waltz of the crisp leaf, relied on the feel of a dead but not yet withered leaf falling from a branch, whisked around lightly on the wind. Grypha used it to put a few seconds reprieve between herself and the illusionary demon which was hammering away at her petrified bone vines.

  The time was all she needed to activate her fourth and final technique: bloom of death. It was the most complex and qi intensive technique she had by a large margin. Grypha pictured what she’d see, passing along her knowledge of both wood and stilldeath to her qi and the world around her.

  Her thoughts turned to a petrified vine, one already existing in wispy form around her sword, diving into the ground, moving, growing. She pictured a raging scourge of twisted vines and one central trunk, growing tightly around each other, a corkscrew emerging from the earth beneath the demon she faced down. She pictured the petrified state she’d always found fascinating coming to be even as the trunks grew into the air, the sharpened tips turning a telltale shade of white, hardening into a dozen spears carrying the might of life and the larger spear formed from the central trunk, the finality and firm permanence of unending death.

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  Grypha’s qi trembled in her grasp. No. Not again. Her technique collapsed as it always did. She tried to rebuild it, but the demon was not to be dissuaded, swinging its sword before she could react. A moment later, the illusion vanished around her, the leaf just a leaf.

  A familiar voice struck Grypha like a whip before she could get back up and restart the illusion. “What, exactly, do you think you’re doing here? You should be in a lecture right now if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Eder Ming.” Grypha bowed low to her sponsor in the sect. She kept herself from wincing, the bruises given to her by Gorance yet to completely fade, even two weeks after they’d been given. “I was working on my techniques.” How had she found her here? Hardly anyone bothered climbing so high up.

  “I could see that.” Elder Ming walked forward, pulling Grypha up gently with a tug to the ear. “I could see that you were indulging yourself knowing full well you have not solved your qi problem.” Her glare intensified. “Heard it too, I was told you’ve been working on your techniques quite a lot recently.”

  Grypha dropped her head. The elder was right. She wasn’t going to learn her bloom of death technique like this. It was the epitome of her path manual, an item of importance, passed to her by an ancestor who’d once followed a path not unlike her own. It gave her foundational techniques, some place to start. How could she learn such a technique when she was so far from the person she wanted to become. How could she grow as a cultivator at all. Really, she was just avoiding the lecture, blowing off some steam. It was the action of a child, not a cultivator, not the person she wanted to be.

  Elder Ming gauged her, seeming to understand she’d evaluated her own actions. “A punishment is in order, I think. Something that may teach you the value of these lectures you so disdain.”

  Grypha looked at her sponsor, uncertain. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Your efforts in herb gathering have been noticed by Rak Ulvax. He wishes for you to take to the field, so to speak, on your first assignment.”

  “Truly?” Grypha leaned forward, eager. A moment later though, she realized the implication. If she was to gather herbs, it probably meant another excuse to travel to the frontier again. She needed to uproot Sumoon city. She didn’t want to though. In her brief time there, she’d seen enough to hate the idea of what she needed to do. Lata’s life was on the line though. She didn’t have a choice.

  “I think a search for a more esoteric herb is in order.” Grypha noticed the look in her sponsor’s eye and cringed. Elder Ming was an apothecarist of some considerable skill and liked to dabble in experiments with herbs that most considered useless. No doubt, this was for one of her projects. “As it happens, a rather peculiar specimen of which I was unable to identify was recently brought into the sect. However, one is too few for proper experimentation…”

  Grypha bowed low. “You would like me to go to where this merchant found the spiritual herb and search for others.”

  Elder Ming’s severe eyebrows narrowed. “How would that help you understand the value of your lectures? No, I need you to identify the herb, research likely locations where it may grow, and only then will I allow you out of the sect to pursue more specimens.”

  Grypha froze at that. Research? She was supposed to do research? If there was one place stuffier than a lecture hall, it was the sect’s library, and if even elder Ming hadn’t seen this herb, she’d need to delve deeply, to go in search of the most stuffy and pretentious of bookshelves, where only the most boring of scholars would possibly bother to venture. After all, who would have made record of a seemingly useless spiritual herb that was also more-than-likely, exceptionally rare.

  “Yes, elder.” It was the only response Grypha could give. Here at the sect, she was beholden to her sponsor, and to make matters worse, it sounded like Rak Ulvax was involved in this. She’d have to actually do the research, if only to ensure that shark didn’t catch a scent from her that led back to the Meiryu clan.

  “Good.” Elder Ming gave a genuine smile, producing an odd, stunted-looking brown sprig that contained only the slightest amount of qi. “You’ll need this.”

  “Of course, elder.” Grypha took the sprig, carefully handling it as she’d been trained to keep it as alive and preserved as a dead cutting could be. She’d have to dive deep, that was for sure. She could already imagine the pain she was in for. Unfortunately, she doubted the elder would change her mind if she told her she was already wishing for a lecture that could give her all the answers she was looking for.