47th of Season of Air, 58th year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt and Elder Woodhopper entered a large room styled to emulate a hunter’s cottage. A large, stone fireplace stood at the far end, flames licking three logs inside. Dagger-long fangs decorated a wall, some blazing with residual spiritual energy in Newt’s third eye, while a modest-sized, hairy hide of some unknown creature decorated the floor in front of the fireplace.

  A feasting table large enough to seat twenty dominated the room, but Newt barely noticed it, his eyes on the woman before him.

  “Have a seat.” Elder Woodhopper gestured towards a much smaller round table in the corner of the room, just barely big enough for two. “I’ll bring tea.”

  Newt sat, blanket on his lap, his hands on the blanket, lavender fragrance conquering the room. With Elder Woodhopper gone and him sitting in a clean, empty room, he suddenly realized what he looked like.

  I should’ve changed my clothes!

  Elder Woodhopper left him to steep together with the tea. The three minutes felt longer than his entire climb as he sat on pinpricks, wondering what he was doing, why he was in Elder Woodhopper’s home at night, and whether he reeked of sweat and dirt.

  He was certain of the latter.

  The woman entered the room. She carried a wooden tray in one hand, topped with two white and green porcelain cups. For an earth-attributed cultivator, Elder Woodhopper moved with grace, especially compared to Newt’s master, who always looked like she was on a warpath. Her back was straight, a light, friendly smile on her lips, genuine benevolence in her eyes.

  She set a cup before Newt, then took a seat opposite to him and enjoyed a sip of tea. Newt mirrored the move. The tea may have been bitter, it may have been sweet. Probably somewhere in between, but as his mind spun an ever elaborate web of reasons and motives and possible futures, his tongue and sense of taste received little attention.

  “So, Newstar, do you know why I invited you here?” The cup clicked softly against the smooth, polished wood.

  Newt nodded, then shook his head. He had a bunch of theories, but he did not know which one was correct. They ranged from Elder Woodhopper giving free blankets to all core disciples to her proposing.

  Her lips stretched, revealing perfect, white teeth framed in pinkish red, and Newt’s mind blanked.

  In that instant, all sound disappeared. Newt’s heart galloped, and he was certain Elder Woodhopper could hear its thunder.

  “I am twelve hundred and thirty-seven years old,” she said with a straight face. “I reached the second realm when I was seventeen, the third when I was twenty-two, the fourth when I was sixty-three. Most of my twelve centuries I have spent inside my realm, cultivating and gathering spiritual energy. I thought about it a lot because of this conversation. I have spent close to a thousand years alone in my realm, and I am merely in the middle layers of the sixth realm.”

  She looked Newt in the eye, her smile brilliant.

  “Do you know why I am saying this?”

  Newt shook his head. He hoped he did not.

  “I am over fifty times your age. You have just dipped your toes into the world of cultivation and into adulthood.” She stated the fact calmly, the smile still lingering on her lips. “You’re maybe wondering why I’m saying all this.”

  Newt knew exactly why Elder Woodhopper said what she was saying.

  “I’m saying this because your feelings for me are too strong.” Newt’s heart sank. “I personally believe that admiring a higher realm cultivator of the opposite sex is natural and wouldn’t have said anything. We are a thing of beauty, each of us, in our own different way, we resonate with the world and with each other.”

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  Elder Woodhopper took another sip of tea.

  “Your master disagrees. She believes your fascination with me is detrimental to your development and asked me to talk to you. Under normal circumstances, following a more reasonable demand, I would have kept her request secret. Even if I disagreed with it.”

  Newt gazed at the woman, his heart plummeting.

  “However, telling a teenager I know about his crush and that it is misguided seems like asking too much.”

  Newt’s face burned, becoming redder than his hair. He wanted to say his feelings were genuine, but his mouth was full of rocks. Elder Woodhopper still looked at him kindly. She was worried about his injury when he left the Chamber of Healing. He knew she cared. But there was no way she would see him as anything other than a kid.

  “I think you should look for a woman closer to your age, if you really need a woman, which I think you don’t. Cultivation makes such things difficult, especially if you’re a top talent such as yourself. Even a single realm’s difference changes physical compatibility, you need to be gentle towards those weaker than yourself, treating them like porcelain figurines, and no matter how much you try a part of you will fear bodily contact with those who can crush you by accident.”

  Newt really did not want to listen to that lesson, but Elder Woodhopper kept going.

  “Then there’s a matter of life expectancy. Imagine falling in love and truly loving someone at the third realm. They will live no more than eight hundred years. That might sound like a lot to you now, but one day, when you’re at the sixth realm, you will enter seclusion, and they will be free of wrinkles, but when you leave it, there will be creases in their faces, hints of decades you spent sealed and alone. And what is that person supposed to do while you spend those decades away? Wait for you?”

  Elder Woodhopper shook her head and took a sip of tea.

  “That is why people have transient relationships with those of similar realm. You spend similar amounts of time in isolation, you can share missions and personal moments. And if you drift apart, it was what it was. Transient.”

  She looked Newt in the eye, smile disappearing and her face becoming more serious.

  “I will use the two of us as an obvious example. My next seclusion will be for twenty-five years. That’s longer than you have been alive. I will reach the seventh realm. No matter how much time and resources it takes. Same goes for my little Bronze. I will help her evolve to the seventh realm. That will take centuries of dedication, months of labor without pause just to help her refine a pill or herb I feed her. What do you think my significant other is supposed to do during all that time?”

  “Cultivate,” Newt blurted, and Elder Woodhopper smiled.

  “You can’t cultivate all the time. Some have tried, naturally, some were compatible enough to succeed. But waiting for another to match the periods of cultivation suitable for both parties limits a person in what is already a race against time.”

  She shook her head.

  “No. People settle down, they form families and clans only once they hit the plateau. For a cultivator, something mortals would consider real life starts once you hit your peak. Any distractions along the way will be just that, distractions. Masters don’t involve themselves in such matters of their disciples, believing strict and rigorous training regimens are enough to sap the will for such mundane pleasures, but that is not always the case.”

  Newt considered Rose, and Elder Woodhopper kept talking.

  “Your former teammate, Roselilly is a perfect example of this. She got involved with someone, her lover died, and she regrets it. She mourns his death, as she should if she is human, but a part of her regrets the time wasted, only now realizing all it had cost her. She is young, she can recover, but imagine if her lover had lived. If he had sapped her time for decades instead of a handful of years. Imagine if he had wasted centuries of her precious cultivation time.”

  Newt’s heart stopped.

  Did the sect murder Rose’s boyfriend?

  “But even those who reach the peak and start families face difficult times. Most of their children, and cultivators do have a lot of children when they have enough time on their hands, are subpar. If someone spends half their life reaching their peak, and most gravitate around that period of time, that means they will probably bury all their children and grandchildren, and even the generations after.”

  Elder Woodhopper took another sip of tea, but her hand trembled as she placed it on the table.

  “My mother was a fifth realm elder of the Chamber of Beasts. She was twenty-five hundred years old when she had me. I have had over a dozen brothers and sisters who have died of old age before I was born. I have had over a score of nieces and nephews before I was born. By the time I was five years old, most of my relatives were gravestones.”

  She looked him in the eye, her gaze icy.

  “That is the reality of cultivator relationships and families. That is why most sect elders are virgins thousands of years old, disinterested in the opposite sex. You are young, you are not ready for this, for what it implies. When our sect master goes to cultivate, he misses generations being born and dying.”

  Newt gulped.

  “That is your future. And even if it sounds scary now, it will be glorious, and you will love it.”