The wind howled in her wake as Xiao Ying rushed through the surface town’s alleyways, charging past oblivious mortals, making her way toward the Pit.

  Learning that Elder Xi’s student had already interrogated the only witness who knew she’d stolen the treasure was a blow that almost drove her to suicide on the spot. Realising that a month had passed since and nothing had happened was nearly as shocking still, but whatever relief she felt quickly gave way to mounting anxiety.

  During these past few weeks, any time she didn’t owe to the Sect, she devoted to studying the treasure. Hidden in her cave, she meticulously transcribed the mystical symbols that constituted its essence, stopping only when her concentration faltered and she could no longer maintain the necessary focus.

  It was in those waking hours — when the mysterious aura of the treasure lifted and her thoughts became her own again — that the full gravity of what she had done, and what would happen to her if she was discovered, took shape in her mind.

  In a way, it should never have happened. A Sky grade treasure had no right appearing in a backwater like this. For two Sky grade treasures to appear at the same time — that was so preposterous that even someone as venerable as Elder Xi wouldn’t have been able to imagine it.

  That was the bet she had taken, and it had paid off.

  Stealing anything from right under the nose of one of the Sect’s Peaks was in itself an act so daring, it likely helped her escape notice by sheer improbability. Had the Elder questioned her — and used even a sliver of his qi while doing so — she would’ve been forced to admit to her sins on the spot.

  And yet, the venerable Elder hadn’t questioned her. Aside from receiving the treasure he’d barely even looked at her.

  “And that should have been the end of it,” Xiao Ying thought as she reached the the entrance to the Upper Pit and stormed right through.

  The sentries were mortals and haven’t even noticed her. Anxious though she was, she had the presence of mind to use her qi to mask herself. Immortals were not to be seen casually, and all the guards noticed was a sudden gust of cold wind — and a faint mist she left behind.

  Past the entrance, the Pit opened up before her.

  It was a vast, gaping hole in the earth, deep enough for clouds to form near its upper crust. It came into view so suddenly, just outside the town, with verdant plains and forests still visible in the distance, that it seemed like something foreign, carved away from reality itself.

  Some said that, in the beginning, a giant must have scooped up the ground, for not even cultivators could transform the world so drastically.

  Naturally, like all the disciples, Xiao Ying knew the Pit’s origin was nothing so magical. All it took was generations upon generations of miners, patiently toiling away, digging it out one cart of rubble at a time.

  The Pit’s tunnels — where the miners lived — were nothing more than these old shafts, long stripped of spiritual crystals. Below the Pit was the mine proper, separated by another gate.

  There, under a mountain of rock, beset by the chaotic energies seeping from the spiritual crystals they were excavating, Jin Sou’s crew was hard at work.

  Instead of waiting for the elevator, Xiao Ying leaped over the platform and ran down the steeply inclined ground. In her haste, she would’ve jumped straight down the Pit if she could, but even for her, such a massive fall would have been fatal.

  Still, she was only a little slower. The Pit had bridges connecting its distant sides and a spiralling road used by carts that ran from the very bottom all the way to the top. In her rush, Xiao Ying weaved between all of these as well as the exposed rock face, sending little slides of stone rolling down.

  As before, none of the miners were able to perceive her. But they looked on anxiously as pockets of rock and dirt suddenly separated and tumbled down, as if the Pit was shedding its skin.

  Meanwhile, Xiao Ying ran through all the possibilities in her mind once again, searching for that little detail that must have eluded her.

  It was futile.

  During these past weeks, driven as she was by dread and hope, she had pushed her imagination to its fullest — and yet, there was one scenario that always played out the same way.

  A mortal, when questioned by a cultivator employing their cultivation base, especially someone at the level of Hang Min, couldn’t resist interrogation.

  It was not a matter of will but the natural order things. Much like water held over a fire cannot refuse to boil, a mortal, when forced to bear the pressure of someone who had ignited their Immortal Sigil, could only obey. The difference in magnitude between their existences left no room for subterfuge, much less refusal.

  And yet, the miner had been questioned. A month had passed since, and she was still alive.

  It didn’t make sense.

  A different person might have accepted this as some inexplicable cosmic accident and left it at that — a situation best ignored, because prying too much could unravel the whole thing.

  Xiao Ying was not such a person.

  In her mind, there was a reason why things happened as they did — and why they didn’t. When something unexplainable occurred, even if it seemed to benefit her, it did not put her at ease. All it meant was that something unknown to her, something she did not understand, had interfered in the expected trajectory of her life.

  And that could not be tolerated.

  It had been bad enough to dread discovery when she had known the odds and merely waited to see which way the coin would land. But to live with this latent danger, one she knew nothing about, and could never prepare against, was something she would not allow.

  Finally, she reached the bottom of the Pit. The elevator platform was packed with miners, different crews were alternating nearly every hour.

  She rushed past them, ignoring the platform altogether, and jumped straight into the elevator shaft. The sun disappeared behind her as she fell freely into the darkness.

  Moments later, she burst out on the other side, already inside the mine, and charged ahead. A chorus of agitated fiends welcomed her as she stormed through the inspection plaza, and then she was in another shaft, falling through the darkness again.

  Her long hair fluttered in the wind as she plummeted, calmly counting down seconds in her mind. Abruptly, she mobilised the qi in her legs and kicked off the wall behind her. She propelled herself forward, straight into a solid wall — when suddenly, an opening flashed before her. She threaded the needle, swooping into a tunnel and landing with a soft thud. Before a second had passed, she was back on her feet, sprinting through the old ventilation shaft.

  In an odd way, returning to the mine calmed her. The darkness, the mass of solid rock entombing her from all sides, even the chaotic energies — all the things that oppressed her before — brought now a measure of security and relief.

  Soon, even though she hadn’t slowed down at all, her gait became more steady and measured. When she launched herself across another chasm, she landed with only a soft tap, about as loud as a normal footstep. And when she broke into a run again, there was no sound at all.

  By the time she reached the ventilation shaft above the tunnel where Jin and his crew were working, her heart was as calm as a still lake.

  Instead of jumping straight in, she paused, listening to the crack of hammers below. The noise was so powerful it made the particles of rock dust at her feet jump up with every strike.

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  She peered down through the ventilation opening. The miners were visible as dark silhouettes as they worked. The ground they stood on was littered with tiny spiritual crystals that glittered in the darkness like a starry sky.

  The sight was strangely hypnotic. The miners raised their hammers together, held them for just a moment, and then brought them crashing down on the rock chunks before them. Sparks shot out when they struck, a terrible noise boomed, and then the heavy hammers rose again.

  There was a rhythm to their movements, too, Xiao Ying realised, though they did not sing or hum, like the mortals she remembered from the secular world.

  She didn’t attempt to pick out Jin Sou. There was no point. Looking on from above, the miners looked like many limbs of a single beast, as much a part of the mine as the rock itself.

  Her mind calm, she stepped into the ventilation shaft’s opening and plummeted down.

  She didn’t use her qi to slow her descent. The drop wasn’t long, but when she hit the ground, the impact was loud enough to be heard over the crack of mining hammers. A curtain of dust rose up into the air, swallowing what little light there was.

  Hammers fell to the ground. “We greet the Immortal!” a chorus of voices exclaimed as she stood still, surveying the surroundings.

  Though you could still hear the fading echoes rumbling in the distant corridors, the miners were already motionless, kowtowing with their foreheads pressed to the ground.

  She walked among them. Despite the particles of dust swirling in the air, her white disciple robes remained pristine and spotless.

  For a moment, she worried she wouldn’t be able to pick out Jin Sou from among the people on the ground. Luckily, she was spared the trouble.

  There was one miner who didn’t kowtow. Instead, he remained standing ramrod straight, gripping his hammer in his hands. He stared at her with great intensity.

  Neither slowing down nor hastening, sometimes only stepping over a prone body on the ground, Xiao Ying walked up to him.

  She did not mind the boy’s breach of decorum. In fact, it felt right. After everything that had happened, putting on a charade now would only be an insult to their intelligence.

  Besides, it was clear that the miner wasn’t trying to be defiant. His eyes were wide with fear, his lips trembled, and the hammer that remained in his hands was not a weapon aimed at her but simply forgotten, much like he had forgotten to drop to the ground together with everyone else.

  It seemed as if he would shatter if she breathed at him too forcefully.

  And yet, she recognised him.

  Coming to a stop before Jin Sou, Xiao Ying frowned slightly. She already had a decent impression of him in her memories, and seeing him now, the sense of familiarity that struck her was strong and immediate.

  She couldn’t explain it.

  She had only encountered him once and that was at the moment when the treasure was completely unsealed. Back then, even if she’d tried to pay attention, the treasure’s pull had been at its most potent. Except for the crystal, which had imprinted itself deeply in her mind, the rest of her memories from that incident were hazy and uncertain.

  For example, she remembered there had been another miner present. She knew what she had done. But try as she might, she could not recall what he'd looked like. His image in her mind — if it could even be called that — was nothing more than a vague impression: a man, muscled, dirty with stone dust, with coarse features. It could be any of the miners kneeling on the ground.

  She turned to Jin Sou again, scrutinising his face with newfound interest.

  Whatever it was that made him so memorable, naturally beauty was not it. The young miner had neither the refined features of a noble nor the bold, sharp lines that marked the faces of natural warriors.

  From what she could make out from under a layer of dust and sweat, his face was gaunt but with subtle features. Wet, dark hair, a little too long, clung to his forehead. A short nose rested above thin, pale lips. The most distinctive feature were his eyes. They were naturally large, made larger with fear.

  She stared into them and saw him twitch. The boy was not yet numb with fear and he saw her too.

  Xiao Yin regarded him quietly. It was difficult to imagine that so much of her fate depended on someone so insignificant. A single thought of hers would be enough to extinguish every miner here.

  “I haven—“, the miner began.

  She grabbed him by the throat.

  The boy struggled as she took a closer look at him. She scanned him from top to bottom, searching for whatever it was that had drawn Senior Ming’s interest, but she couldn’t discern anything.

  “Clear eyes and skin. No obvious signs of corruption typical in miners. The bone structure—", she grabbed a finger and squeezed it tightly. The changes in older miners were often so great that you could tell how many years they had spent underground just by the feel of their bones, “—is without apparent flaws.”

  She continued her examination, nudging, prodding, and squeezing Jin Sou all over his body, but every test merely reinforced what she had surmised from the start.

  “His constitution has been rehabilitated. The fool didn’t lie — Senior Brother really expended a high quality medicinal pill on a mortal.”

  While it wasn’t quite the caliber of a treasure that could cure her fractured Immortal Sigil, it was likely of high enough quality to alleviate the worst of its effects. The type of medicine she beggared herself trying to trade for back at the Sect.

  She didn’t let it bother her.

  Instead, she continued her examination. A wisp of her qi shot out. It effortlessly bypassed the natural repulsion barrier that protected Jin Sou and infiltrated his qi sea.

  “Third layer. Higher than expected. And it’s stable, too. Another boon from the medicinal pill or did he benefit from coming into contact with the treasure when it was unearthed?”

  She couldn’t tell. Unlike the basic examination she’d just performed — something any decently skilled mortal physician could replicate — this involved deeper mysteries of cultivation.

  Even before she’d been expelled from the Outer Sect, she had never qualified for a master-disciple relationship. Her only master, a nominal one, had been the Sect Master — and she shared him with every single disciple in the Sect.

  The only guidance she had received from the Sect’s Elders came in the form of open lectures. The rest of her knowledge had come from hiring senior disciples for lessons and from countless hours of self-study and self-discovery.

  It was already good enough that she could determine the ‘what’ — the third layer. Discerning anything about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ behind it was beyond her capabilities.

  To wrap up the examination, she let the wisp of her qi run a complete circuit through Jin’s meridian system. Though she did not know the specifics of the cultivation mantra the miners practiced, so long as the pathways were constructed correctly, qi would follow its proper course naturally, like water in a canal.

  “The main meridian channels are unremarkable but sturdy,” she thought — then suddenly stopped herself.

  All this time, she had been instinctively measuring him against the only baseline she knew — that of the Outer Sect.

  In other words, this little miner, though unimpressive, would not be out of place in the Outer Sect. In fact, he would be a step above the bottom dregs who had no real hope of crossing the Immortal Gate.

  Xiao stared at Jin, his dust caked face, ignoring his clawing attempts to loosen her grip on his throat. “He should’ve qualified for the Sect.”

  It was a shocking notion.

  Though it could be said that the Sect was callous in casting the miners away, it never rejected anyone with a real chance of crossing the Gate. Their requirements, rather than stringent, could even be called lax. And yet, every year, many disciples with far better odds than any of those sent to the mines perished, unable to ignite their Sigils.

  The talent to cultivate was a rare thing. A blessing. As close to something truly sacred as a cultivator could recognise.

  To see someone who could’ve ignited their Sigil, who could’ve become real, deprived of that chance shook her.

  “Perhaps the miner’s mantra just happens to be very suitable for him…” she thought without much confidence. Then she added grimly, “A severed path…”

  As for the possibility that the improvement had come from Senior Wang’s pill, Xiao Ying did not even entertain it. To defy fate was naturally possible, but no one, not even Hang Min, would waste such a heavenly treasure on a mortal he had just met.

  Neither was it possible that his brief contact with the treasure had caused it. Even with the help of the crystal, it took Xiao Ying painstaking effort to even begin mending the fissures scarring her Immortal Sigil.

  To call the process slow would be an understatement. It took her several weeks to heal a single hairlike crack — one of thousands — and that was with the heavenly order actually assisting her, since her Immortal Sigil naturally strove toward completeness.

  For a brief contact to instantly accomplish something infinitely more difficult — to defy fate, go against the natural order, and change a preordained talent — was simply nonsensical.

  She withdrew her qi, her brows furrowed in thought. “Is this why he caught Senior Brother’s attention?” She couldn’t say.

  Though she had made some discoveries, they only led to more questions. She let out a small sigh. What came next would require the miner to talk, but she was not about to interrogate him in front of a whole crew of workers.

  She tightened the grip around Jin’s throat. The colour in his face steadily deepened, shifting from pink to red before finally reaching blueish purple, but she didn’t let go until she saw him stop clawing and his head lolled limply against his chest.

  She pulled him, hugging him tightly with one arm. At the same time, she mobilised the qi in her legs.

  When she jumped, not a single grain of dust rose into the air. The kowtowing miners heard only a distant, echoing patter as she scaled the vertical ventilation shaft. Still, even as the sound of her faded, for a long time no one moved.

  In the end, it was Hao — the foreman who took over after Lil’ Lu was killed — who was the first to rise. He got to his feet on trembling knees in spite of himself.

  What spurred him was the terrible realisation that if he didn’t move, neither would the rest of them.

  He turned to look where Jin Sou had been and confirmed that he was gone.

  He licked his lips. “Back to work,” he said to the silent shaft. “We’re meeting our quota for today. I don’t want no issues topside.”

  When no one answered and silence grew deeper around him, he felt a pang of anxiety. He didn’t command the same authority as Lil’ Lu, neither did he possess his strength — certainly not enough to dominate the whole crew. If they wouldn’t be moved to work, he would be in deep trouble.

  But he worried needlessly. A moment later the miners rose and picked up their hammers. They slotted into place like pieces of a machine, and the rhythmic sound of hammers striking in unison once again filled the mining shaft.

  Of what had just happened, no one spoke a word.