19th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  How did it come to this? Newt sat in the hot-pond with Obi and the girls, staring at the stars above. Everyone was decent, in their underwear, but decent, and the water was near boiling point, hot enough to relax a low-realm cultivator’s body.

  Newt hardly felt it. His physique was a realm higher than his friends, combined with his affinity for fire, made the water feel lukewarm. He never tried it, but given the state of his body, sticking his hand into natural, wood-fueled flames should only cause light sunburns, while even at the first realm Magmin Scales negated mundane flames in full.

  Still, it was a social event, and by staring up and away from Obsidian, he could delay the awkward conversation.

  “So you thought I was stupid?” The hurt was unmistakable in the man’s voice. Newt could only hope he was joking.

  “You are stupid, you dull kidney stone.”

  “Not now, Jas. I’m serious.”

  He might not be joking.

  Seeing that his evasion strategy was no longer working, Newt focused on his friend.

  “I didn’t think you were stupid. I just never expected you to be so knowledgeable about volcanoes.” Newt took a deep breath, collected his thoughts, and continued. “You mentioned how time was limited, how you had an overwhelming amount of things to do and learn, and you suddenly know everything there is to know about a completely irrelevant field.”

  Obi remained silent, but Jas jumped at the opportunity.

  “So, you’re saying he lacks focus. Learning about irrelevant things when he has cultivation to focus on?”

  You’re not helping, Jas!

  Then again, Jasmine rarely helped in social interactions. At most she resorted to physical force in a loving way. Roselilly, on the other hand…

  “Yeah, I think so too.” Rose’s brows were furrowed, her expression stern. “I mean, who has moons or years to waste on perfecting the art of grilling meat when time is inevitably moving forward, trampling us if we fail to keep up.”

  Rose!

  “And what does your skinny young ass know about the march of time?” Obi laughed, hopefully shrugging off the insults. “You’re twenty-nine years old. You’ve barely set foot on the path of cultivation, and what you think of moons, I think of years.”

  Rose cocked a brow. “And that’s precisely why our realm is the same, even if you are thrice my age.”

  Newt decided that sharp remark was the perfect time for him to dunk his head and escape the following barrage of whatever the two were firing at each other. The words sounded too sharp for a friendly banter, but there was no venom behind them.

  I hope they keep things civil.

  Newt would have stayed submerged had the water not turned turbulent a handful of minutes later.

  Attack! Angry that he got ambushed by mere spirit beasts while taking a soak in their territory, Newt was ready for a tough fight. His danger sense indicated nothing, but that was reasonable, third realm spirit beasts could hardly harm him.

  He jumped out of the water. Granite Crust and Magmin Scales crawled to cover his skin, but instead of a swarm of velociraptors jumping into the pool, he was met with two fully grown humans splashing scalding water at each other like little children.

  The water warriors ignored Newt, as did Jasmine, who moved away from the spraying kids. She settled in the furthest corner, closed her eyes, and let her body float on the surface of the pond.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Is this really what cultivators are like? Newt wondered before sinking back to the bottom of the pond. There, he closed his eyes and entered his realm.

  He vowed to himself he would refrain from cultivating and from making the side vents on the volcano of his realm, instead he would just check where and how he could add them. The whole thing was supposed to take a mere minute, maybe less, but then Newt searched for the locations where he forked the lava’s flow in two, three, or five directions.

  “I can restructure all of these. No, wait, can I use the rivulets of lava as giant runes? Even if I can’t, I can transform them into amplifiers for existing spell formations…”

  With a new direction, Newt was full of ideas, and they kept flooding his mind.

  “Wait, how long have I been at this?”

  He opened his eyes with a gasp, water rushing into his mouth before he closed it. He sprayed the water out, the rotten-egg taste matching the smell. Newt emerged from the pond, only to find his friends ashore, fully clothed, with Obsidian grilling raptor tails above the lava.

  The big man glanced at Newt and grinned, the reddish-orange glow making the face creepy.

  “I was joking,” he said. “I know you don’t think I’m dumb, and I didn’t want to push you into taking a break from people on the bottom of a smelly volcanic pond.”

  Newt gave a nervous smile. “I didn’t. I just took a bit of time to think.”

  “You’ve been thinking for two hours now,” Jasmine said. “I thought you were dumb enough to start cultivating in the middle of the Savage Wood, but taking two hours to think about something isn’t painting a much better picture.”

  “At least his senses weren’t sealed.” Rose said, and Newt kept his face straight. Fortunately, his teammates were mature enough not to tie him up, or do something else equally humiliating while his mind and senses were focused inward.

  He recalled Dandelion’s warning, and he already knew not to cultivate except when he was assured of his safety.

  “I think he was cultivating.” Obsidian pointed at Newt with the dagger he used for butchery and to flip meat. “Look at how he’s blushing.

  “I wasn’t cultivating!” Newt composed himself after the outburst and continued in a more moderate tone. “But I did spend time down there thinking about cultivation and the next steps I wish to take with my realm. What I’m embarrassed about is spacing out like that. I told myself I won’t take more than a minute, then got carried away by my train of thought.”

  “Yeah, you have those moments when you—” Obsidian suddenly stopped talking, looking towards the mountain’s summit.

  Newt snapped his head around, looking for danger when Obsidian continued talking.

  “—just stare off into the distance and space out.” The big man grinned again. “It sometimes even happens in the middle of your sentence. Then, there was that snake armband, and you spaced out in a cultivation chamber, nearly blowing yourself up.”

  Newt gulped at the mention of that incident.

  “All in all, Newstar, you have trouble focusing.”

  Newt wanted to punch that smug mug, but he decided to return tit for tat. “Are you calling me stupid, Obi?”

  Against Newt’s expectations, the man remained unflustered. “Now, I ain’t saying that. But now that you mention it, I’ve never heard of smart people doing stuff like that. Ever.”

  Rose burst into laughter, and even Jasmine failed to control herself, chortling as a tiny smirk twitching to life at the corner of her lips. A moment later, Newt realized his mouth was cracked open.

  “All right. I deserved that. That’s what you get when you try to outsmart old people.”

  Rose’s laughter grew louder, but Jasmine’s smirk vanished. She was just as old as her brother. Technically older.

  The banter continued, and the only warning they had was the too-loud rustle.

  “Watch out!” By the time Newt shouted, he was already jumping into the air, black scales covering his flesh. His danger sense failed him, because he found the velociraptors harmless, but the beasts posed a real threat to the rest of his team.

  A second realm one, with a red crest jumped at Rose, who screamed and soared into the air, dodging the monster by a foot as it snapped its jaw where her neck stood an instant ago. A third realm pounced on Obsidian, whose defense sprouted just in time to take on the brunt of the savage, fiery rend.

  Obi stabbed at it with his dagger, but the spirit beast twisted away from the blow, its jaw poised to bite his neck.

  In the corner of his eye, Newt caught Jasmine cleaving another second realm velociraptor with her sword, and he shot towards Obi to help with the most dangerous dinosaur. The beast saw Newt too late, a granite fist smashing into the side of its head, killing it on the spot.

  Two more third realms followed, attacking Newt and Obi, but Newt dispatched them with ease, and the pack withdrew again.

  The skirmish lasted a handful of seconds, produced three third realm corpses, and seven second realm ones littered the ground near Jasmine’s feet.

  “We got better meat for dinner,” Obsidian said with a heavy voice, “but I think we’ve been a bit too lax about this trip. The velociraptors around here can hardly threaten us in a straight fight, but if we let them ambush us, we could suffer injuries, or worse.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Keep your weapons close at all times,” Rose said, “and don’t drop your vigilance. We can have fun and talk nonsense back at the sect, or once we reach Newt’s clan.”