Several months passed, with both Shen and Ponma getting a year older. Shen, now fourteen and slightly more developed, was starting to draw the attention of many of the younger men of the sect. While not outright driving them away had first started as a way to just be nice to them, she soon discovered that it was good enough to draw them to the Relic Shop.
The store had greatly changed over the last few months. The armor improvements had brought in a huge amount of business and Master Chen had been forced to bring in two more apprentices who both showed an interest in relic crafting. The first was a girl named Breen. She was fifteen and loved the idea of single use formations like talismans. As she was a much more social person than the rest of them, she was the one who mainly worked with customers, the other three spending all of their time making items. She only made talismans when they had no customers for her to deal with, but it still resulted in them keeping the talisman stock almost full from her work alone.
The second was a boy name Timp, twelve years old. He had seen the glowing necklaces and immediately become obsessed with the possibilities of formations. He had read several fantastical stories about moving objects which could do work, and wanted to learn relic crafting so that he could one day build golems and puppets. For now, however, he was mass producing swords like Shen once had, and occasionally making utility items like the necklaces which had drawn him in or magic pots for brewing tea when they ran low on stock. The last item used gathered chi which was converted to Fire chi to heat water, but was unable to boil it due to its low power.
Shen and Master Chen were both working on armor, though the occasional special order for weapons work also went to the master. They had both bought a copy of the Intermediate guide and started making items from it, such as weapons that could throw their effect, similar to how Danka had thrown Sword Chi at her during the tournament. Shen, however, preferred the effect which recharged the wearer’s mana. She had imbued over a dozen pieces of armor with that effect and, as such, learn much about how to improve it, as well as several safety features that could be added. This directly went into creating a new bracelet from the white jade bracelet she had purchased, one which safely fed her chi twice as fast as the other pair at an improved nine percent purity, being able to reach ten and a half if left to purify her chi long enough. They now took more than half as long to refill her reserves, though, at four hours, as she had been hard at work strengthening her cultivation base and expanding her chi reserves.
The two bracelets which she took off were given to Danka. He seem embarrassed to accept them. It was just because he needed them the most, as his training exhausted his supply faster. At least that’s what she told herself. She wasn’t sure why, but recently she had been thinking of him occasionally, for some reason thinking about how well his body cultivation was going. She had no idea why.
To keep things fair she made a copy of her bracelet for all three of them, allowing them to also recharge their chi faster. For Danka, however, who had the benefit of the armor and the other two bracelets, it wasn’t needed, but he seemed to keep the other two bracelets on him, even when he wore the superior white one. Most of the time, however, they were in his bag.
The Water Blossom business was also thriving. Now that the spring was here more children and adults were willing to work for them, and several outer disciples had transferred from jobs they disliked to working for Shen and Ponma, bringing jars back to the warehouse several times a day. All of these were sold at least twice a week to the sect, who had the large number of apprentice alchemists turn them into water chi pills, which were then shipped to the war front. The increase in sunlight, both in intensity and length, had almost doubled the Water Blossom harvest, and now the adults she had hired were bringing them in even easier.
Occasionally Sho would show up at Fisher to collect jars of Blossoms and, while she and Shen would exchange pleasantries, they never brought up that one incident that had caused them to split apart. Shen had secretly told Ponma about Sho’s real identity and that she had agreed to sell Sho jars at one stone each, and he allowed the business to continue. That trade also brought in a few rare spirit plant parts from the mountain, as many of the dragons preferred to barter instead of use money like stones, so they were able to complete a few missions for the sect as well, selling the ones that weren’t being hunted for to the alchemist sisters Mae worked for.
As the herbs outside had started to grow Mae was spending all of her time in the gardens around town tending to the spirit herbs that were grown there. While they didn’t technically require an alchemist to grow properly, an alchemist was able to fine tune their growing conditions to make them grow properly and become whatever would be most useful in alchemy. This had resulted in Mae coming home late every day, usually leaving the fields shortly after sunset after double checking the growth of the nocturnal species then returning to the alchemist’s shop to report in. Because of this, they had seen little of each other over the last month.
“Are you okay?” Shen asked an exhausted Mae, temporarily taking a break from her latest attempt to incorporate her Dragon Scales ability into a protection amulet. Mae looked completely exhausted.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” she said, flopping onto her bed without bothering to even remove her shoes first. “We just had a harvest today. The spirit grass came in strong enough that I could do the first harvest of the year. Tomorrow I’m going to spend most of the day making pills instead of working with the herbs.”
“Is spirit grass that useful?” asked Shen. “I thought it was only useful for removing toxins in the Cleansing stage.”
“Oh, it’s much more than that.” she said, barely keeping her eyes open. It was odd to see a twelve year old that was this tired. “It’s used in those because it removes a wide range of impurities. But when you mix spirit plants together it creates impurities. So, you have to remove them during the Blending stage of pill creation, or the toxins will go into the person that takes them. Sure, a cultivator’s body will remove them, but that could take hours, and if too many build up it will make them sick, and might even start restricting chi flow in their meridians or even blocking them altogether.”
“So, you mix spirit grass in so that the toxins are removed during the creation process rather than after they are consumed?”
“Yep. Got it right. It’s not quite perfect, but you can get the pills above 90% purity pretty easily, which lets you use some tricks to make the pill even more effective.” For the last few sentences she had her eyes closed, so Shen took her shoes off and put her in bed properly.
“I’ll let you get some sleep then,” she said, covering Mae up. She then turned off the light and left the room.
Shen left the Earth district and wandered the town, looking at the various shops that were spread around. In the last few months thousands of new people had moved into the city in order to work, and to help the sect in its quest to reinforce those fighting on the front with supplies that were made here. Many new shops had sprouted throughout the city, causing the price of rent for shop space to drastically increase. As Ponma had predicted, the value of stones had increased to seven points, and there were rumors that the sect planned on increasing the price even further. Stones, after all, were useful in making talismans and other relics, as ground spirit stone was part of the formula for talisman ink. Furthermore, they could be used to rapidly restore a person’s chi reserves, one stone being able to almost completely restore the energy of some early Gathering cultivators. While the energy it contained was neutral, those that were in the Foundation stage could simply rely on their dantian to turn it into the proper types of elemental chi, and those in the Gathering phase could simply learn to convert it as it was needed.
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Though all of the goods sent to the front were given to the nations and sects for free, there was such need that the armies of the various nations which faced the demon armies competed for who would receive the supplies. The great value of these supplies also resulted in an increase of bandit activity along every road which lead into the disputed territory, resulting in thousands of escaping refugees dying daily and requiring that every shipment be protected by a large number of cultivators. For this reason, the sect had hired the Soul Blade mercenary group to protect their caravan, and many of them now stayed in the outer city at any time.
Shen noticed a new restaurant that had opened up in the Water district near the border with the Wood district. It was advertising a new type of desert from the Lake region, though it was made locally. It was called ‘Ice Cream’ and was apparently some type of frozen milk product. She wondered what it would taste like and soon found herself sitting down at a table inside the restaurant, ordering the treat.
As she waited she overheard one of the groups at the nearby table. The men there were complaining about the long trip they had just returned from, having just escorted one of the caravans heading to the front and only having a few days of down time before they had to leave again. Shen noticed that all of them had a tattoo of a glowing orb with a sword through it on their arm. This was the symbol of the Soul Blade group, though she had never heard of them tattooing it on themselves, only leaving it on their equipment.
“Excuse me.” she said, trying her best to be nice to them, but she had wanted to ask questions about the war for over a month and they would be an excellent source of information. “Can you tell me what it’s like on the front?”
They looked at her, a bit surprised that someone had interrupted their meal, and their leader spoke up. “Depends on if you can make it worth my while.” He eyed her up and down like he was inspecting livestock.
Shen immediately pulled out a spirit stone and placed in on the table in front of him. He looked at her, then at the stone. “Eh, I suppose you’re a bit young for my tastes.” he said, then pocketed the stone. “So, what do you want to know about the front?”
“What’s the war like?” she asked. “I heard that thousands of soldiers and hundreds of cultivators were dying every day.”
The man nodded before taking a swig of ale. “At least that many. It’s no place for a little girl.”
“And the Demons? What are they like?”
The man smiled. “You really want to know?” he asked, and Shen nodded her head. He giggled. “They actually look a lot like us. Some of the smarter people at the front even think they might be humans, but just twisted. Like Demonic cultivators, but with even less sympathy. I’m not sure about that, but I do know that every one I’ve seen looked like a normal person, except for the blue, purple, or red skin tone and the red or yellow eyes. In fact, I reckon that with a simple illusion they could be hiding among us. Who knows, I might even be a demon.” He looked at a concerned Shen for a few seconds before laughing loudly, his men joining in. “I’m just messing with you. They do look a lot like us, but from what I can tell, not many of them have the skill to use illusions, and I doubt any of them have learned proper shifting like spirit beasts do.”
“Not strong enough?” Shen asked.
“Hardly. Even the weakest of their soldiers is Foundation, and I’m not talking about the weak version that passes for Foundation this far from the front. I’m talking about the kind you get after decades of body tempering and base building. I’ve seen them take on a dozen guys that were at the Foundation stage and win, and barely be winded from it. Some people have even started saying that maybe demons don’t have a limit on their chi reserves. Of course, I know that ain’t true, as I’ve seen them get worn out, but it’s hard to do that. We have them outnumbered ten to one and they are still pushing us back.”
“Then why wouldn’t they be able to learn shifting?” Shen made her hair green and eyes red just to demonstrate.
“Not bad, girly, though that isn’t actually shifting, so much as an illusion. To answer your question, though, they don’t have the patience for it. I bet it took you weeks or months just to learn that little trick?” Shen nodded. “Well, to them, that’s a week or month that they wasted which they could have spent training. From what I can tell, their whole structure is based around the strong being able to do what they want, when they want. Though that might just be their military. In a society like that, you spend every waking moment trying to get stronger so that there are fewer people that can step on you just because they like to hear you scream.”
Shen nodded. “Thank you. That is all I wanted to know.” She put an extra Stone on the table and went back to her table. The Mercenary nodded and pocketed the stone before going back to his drink and the large steak in front of him which was likely from some local spirit beast. After all, it was a cheap source of food when the Mission Hall was already sending people out to kill the creature.
The waitress brought over the ice cream and Shen looked at it. It was a full bowl, with bits of dried fruit around it and with a spoon of some sort of ground nut on top, something they called ‘nut butter’, though it seemed more like nut paste. Honestly, it was too much for one person to eat, especially when they had already eaten Last Meal. Next time she would have to invite some of her friends to eat it with her. That would at least justify the one stone cost of the dish. She scooped some onto her spoon and put it in her mouth. It was sweet, but not too sweet, like a fruit almost, but far smoother. It melted on her tongue, making the experience even more unusual, but more interesting. She quickly tried it with a bit of the nut butter and found that it was even better. The fruit also gave it a good, but different, flavor. She would definitely have to return here to eat it again later. As she ate the roof of her mouth started to hurt, feeling like it was freezing, but she simply spent a few seconds cycling Fire chi through the minor meridians near that location to prevent the effect, allowing her to finish it quickly.
Shen gave the waitress the stone and got up slowly. She had just eaten enough for at least two people, and felt like she was going to be sick. She continued her walk and, as she did, thought about what the mercenary captain had said. If demons were that strong, how would they be able to take them on? This at least explained the extremely high death counts she had heard about. If they could fight for so long while using so much chi, then the people of the sect would need to get stronger, quickly. Maybe that was why the elders had decided to change the rules and allow the use of more relics, as well as bringing in the two new books. Shen had read them both, and from what she could tell they were two different but complimentary paths to improving one’s strength. Through Body Cultivation one could improve their body so that the chi which flowed through it was even more effective at increasing the cultivator’s strength, endurance, reactions and perception. And by working on your base you could ensure that you had the energy to make the most of those improvements as well as the ability to last far longer in battle and make extensive use of your abilities.
Soon Shen returned to her room. Tomorrow she would swing by the Library before going to work, getting a book on Illusions. She needed to know how they worked so she could see through them. She wasn’t convinced that no demon would learn to do it. Such abilities would simply be too useful to a spy, and she couldn’t think of any reason an invader wouldn’t have at least a few spies.
When she returned to her room, Mae was asleep so Shen didn’t bother producing any light. Instead she sat down on her bed and started to meditate. While before she had thought that cultivating for an hour or two per day was enough, now that she heard what the demons were like, she knew that her efforts were effectively worthless. She at least had a proper goal now. She had heard similar descriptions of the Dragons, as they were also in possession of vast reserves of chi. So they would be her goal. She decided that every day she would spend at least two hours in meditation trying to reach their level, though she would spend more time whenever she had the opportunity. Besides, she was part dragon, and it wasn’t unheard of for people to unlock new bloodline traits through meditation. Maybe one day she would be able to do the same.
She pushed herself to meditate even deeper than before and started cycling chi through her meridians as quickly as she could, letting it reinforce everything it went through. Eventually she found herself getting sleepy, but she simply sent some Wood chi into her brain and cycled it through the meridians there. Soon the sleepiness went away. She knew that one couldn’t completely negate the need for sleep before Foundation stage, which was one reason that was considered the point at which one became a true cultivator, but for one or two nights it would be fine.
She didn’t know how long she had been meditating until she felt a quake. She concentrated on it and realized that someone was shaking her body. Right. A body was a thing she had. She had gotten so deep into meditation that she had only been able to see her meridians, chi, and dantian. She noticed that the minor meridians were less dense than she wanted, but couldn’t fix that without returning to the Cleansing stage, so she simply reinforced the ones she had instead.
Right, body. She had let herself return to that space inside herself. She willed herself to come out of meditation and, after feeling like she was swimming to the surface after being at the bottom of a lake, she opened her eyes. Bright light came in through the window and on the desk was a note from Mae. “I tried to wake you, but you seemed to be too deep in meditation. I’m going to the cafeteria. Join me if you want. Mae.” The ink was already dry which meant that she had written this at least a few minutes ago.
Shen changed her clothes and went to the cafeteria. The meal had just finished and they were cleaning up. That meant that she was supposed to be at work already. She Released a bit of chi into her legs and started running, making it inside a few minutes later.
“Oh, there you are.” said Breen. “I guess you overslept.” She handed Shen a chalk board. “Here are the armor orders for today. Master Chen is off in the Fire and Metal districts getting more weapons and armor to work on, so, for now, you won’t have him looking over your shoulder.” With that Breen once again picked up her paint brush and started writing on the talisman paper, making yet another basic attack talisman on her grind to be the best talisman maker in the Sect.
