83th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  Four weeks had passed since Newt got separated from his teammates. He had taken to meditation at the strangest of times, in the strangest of places. The fourth realm area of the Valley of the Lost was no longer a danger zone to him.

  He slept, ate, and meditated without a care in the world, often right next to his kills, relying on his ever growing danger sense to warn him in time, to snap him out of sleep or meditation. It happened once, and after killing the offending stegosaurus, which had stumbled into Newt’s hunting zone, he went back to meditate on that newfound insight.

  Even though everything was a realm above him, Newt considered himself the apex predator of the area he was currently in. He even figured out how to hunt pachycephalosauruses. The solution was stupid in its simplicity. If he approached them from the front, he would appear like a safe zone to them, and the valley’s beguiling effect had no effect when they saw the source of their unease.

  In the weeks of training, his danger sense had grown sharper, sharp enough to notice a swirl in the air. As the mists flowed, they carried something in them, the true danger. Whatever the energy or substance were, they somehow absorbed whatever it was that made danger dangerous and projected it through a counterpart.

  Newt understood little of the underlying mechanics, but the trip proved fruitful. While he failed to find more geysers, he had eleven cores tied up inside his sleeve. And more importantly, he had noticed another odd pattern three days ago. The mist swirled, true, but there was a sharp angle in an otherwise smooth flow, a break towards the periphery of the zone. It was impossible to see, but the minute distortion in the particles which shifted danger revealed the crack in the trap.

  Newt had been following the imperfection ever since he had noticed it, and for half a day he had encountered no islands of “safety” in his ever-expanding sea of “danger”. He was almost certain that meant he had somehow navigated his way back into the third layer, which in turn probably meant he was close to the exit.

  Suddenly, an overpowering feeling of imminent doom flooded his mind. Death awaited ahead, and taking one more step spelled his demise. He smirked, wondering what the exit felt to others who had not honed their sense of danger to the same point he did.

  He took a step forward, and the mist parted. Newt just looked up at the clear blue sky he had not even known he missed, when the back of his head tingled.

  He ducked as a hand flashed above his head.

  “You little rascal!” Greenbow shouted. “We were worried sick about you! Why are you shirtless?”

  Newt looked at his eldest sister and cupped his hands respectfully, the upper portion of his sect robe doubling as a sack.

  “Greetings, First. I’m sorry to have bothered you. How are the rest of my team doing? Did they safely exit the Valley of the Lost?”

  The woman folded her arms, pushing her muscular breasts up, her frown deep, her gaze glued to Newt’s eyes.

  “They are fine.” She scrutinized him, she could obviously tell something had changed about Newt’s bearing. He stood taller, more confident, but she did not know what gave him the confidence. She saw nothing to justify the change. Her youngest brother was still as scrawny as ever, his meager muscles like those of a malnourished child.

  “What happened? How’d you get out?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We’ve got time. A ship is waiting for us at the harbor, and once we reach it, we have a lot of sailing before we return.”

  What can I share? How does equivalent exchange apply with brothers and sisters under the same master? How do I evaluate the worth of the information? Will she get angry if I ask for payment or if I don’t tell her anything? Will knowing hurt her future progress?

  A dozen questions assailed Newt’s mind, but he filtered them by priority almost immediately.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “First, please forgive me, but I have to discuss what I have learned with Master first and ask her what I can share. If I can tell you everything without threatening your future progress, I will do so over dinner once we’re back, but if there are matters which might harm you, I’m sorry, but I won’t reveal them.”

  Righteous cultivators as old as Greenbow had their own sense of honor. She should offer him something she believed had the equivalent worth of the information he gave her.

  Greenbow pushed her chest higher, clearly insulted by the idea that someone at the lower realm believed they had information she would find valuable or detrimental to her progress, but she let out a breath and shook her head.

  “Fine.” She spat out in the tone that meant, ‘Silly kid.’ “I guess it’s better if you play things safe rather than carelessly spill whatever you think is so important. Can you at least tell me how you got separated from your team?”

  Newt considered the question and nodded. There should be no harm, or revelations one should reach on their own in the way he stumbled into the fourth realm area.

  “I was inside the geyser, gathering misterium crystals…”

  ***

  Sect master Greenthorn opened his eyes and stood. He stretched his back out of habit and stepped off his porch. His lips curled upward in a barely perceptible smile as he headed towards the inner elder residences. He kept away from the palaces and large, clear plots of land, preferring to walk through dense foliage, hidden from the eyes of the masses. Even the eighth realm elders stood no chance at seeing him if he did not want to be seen, but sometimes, simple solutions yielded the best results.

  He reached a cabin in the jungle, much like his own, but built in an even more ancient style, with a roof of bark covered in dirt, mushrooms, and herbs. The ceiling was low, the bounty growing atop the house accessible to mortals with stools or short ladders, not that mortals had seen the building in thousands of years.

  He politely stood in front of the door and revealed a fraction of his aura to make his presence known. The old woman inside turned her head towards the door, and Greenthorn took it as an invitation to speak.

  “Master, I come bearing news, may I enter your abode?”

  “Come in, Thorn. It’s been years since we last spoke privately.”

  Greenthorn opened the small door and stooped to enter, taking a step before sitting cross-legged on a mat woven out of pleasantly smelling dry herbs.

  “What is it? You didn’t talk to me during that solar flare, merely issued orders, so what could be so important now for you to suddenly recall you have a master?”

  “Don’t be harsh, Master. You were present during that incident, there was nothing I had to inform you of, but something else has happened. Something extraordinary, and the person involved is the same one from the solstice incident.”

  “Oh?” Greenthorn’s last living master said, waiting for him to continue, her eyes droopy, as if she was ready for a nap.

  “The person in question got separated from his fellows in the Valley of the Lost. His teammates had a compass and found their way easily, but he wandered the mists for three weeks before finding the exit on his own.”

  The old woman’s sleepy eyes shot open, her pupils going wide.

  “How did he do it? Did he make a compass?”

  Greenthorn shook his head. “He started hunting dinosaurs in the mists, stalking and hunting them from beyond the range of his normal perception.”

  “The only way he could do that is through precognition and using the valley’s distinct nature to navigate it.” She stared into the distance, Greenthorn giving her the time to reach her own conclusions. “Yes. That’s certainly possible at my realm. Maybe even as low as the seventh. But the seventh has the lowest spiritual energy purity, which would allow the mind to construct a possible future based on the assorted inputs from the ambient energy.”

  “The Heroic Tales of Steelraptor claims Steelraptor had developed an ability to perceive danger at the fourth realm.” Greenthorn offered, but the old woman shot him a stern gaze. “But I don’t think that’s what has happened here.”

  What he believed was even more preposterous, based only on myths and legends. He had no trouble sharing that with a sixth realm cultivator as a mere speculation, but saying nonsense before his master felt shameful.

  It’s been centuries since I surpassed Master, and I still feel like this. I need to meditate on it later.

  The old woman waited expectantly, and Greenthorn forced himself to speak.

  “He might be a reincarnation or may have experienced some other form of knowledge transfer from an ancient cultivator. His master told me that during the summer solstice incident he was in a trance-like state, feeling nothing, living through a vision about slaying the members of the Blood Cult.

  “Furthermore, when he first awoke, I spoke with him, and he told me he was a dragon fighting monsters. I didn’t pry, but I have run a background check on him. He hails from a clan which declined while searching for a mythical dragon’s core. Maybe they found something ages ago, and it merged into their bloodline, only manifesting in him, maybe he was blessed by the dragon or something.”

  Greenthorn shrunk under his master’s cold stare, realizing he was rambling.

  Is it really in human nature to set their relationships in stone? I thought I was beyond mortality, and yet, here I am…