Primordial spark

“Why are we still staying here? Shouldn't we return to your sect.” Dave asked.

“We have to wait for your companion to reach qi gathering, otherwise we will devastate the landscape simply by walking through it. We cannot pay off every farmer whose crops you ruin.

Had you come here a few months later, I would have already taken you to the sect.”

“We are overstaying our welcome with Li.”

“He earned more than twice as much as he would normally earn, I can assure you that he prefers to have two cultivators guarding him, twice his harvest, in return for a slightly longer winter.”

“There's something you aren't telling me.” Dave narrowed his eyes.

“I did not consider it worth mentioning it. I cultivate while you sleep, the ice qi in combination with the waning fall-qi mixture is advancing my cultivation by leaps and bounds. Since I started living with you two I've advanced six minor realms. I'm currently at the ninth level of foundation establishment.”

“So you have no plans of leaving until we've both become useless to you.”

“I would not say useless, you are being crass, we simply help each other out.” Xun smirked and wagged his finger.

“I'll go and check up on Lydia.”

Lydia had been hunting small rodents in the area to keep herself satiated. The sudden winter had caught them all by surprise and a lot of them froze to death after repeated super-cooled rain showers. She had been naughty a few times and had ran to the edge of the ice-field thereby cold-shocking creatures in the surrounding area. Then she dragged their frozen corpses back, along the top of the ice-layer.

Xun had told Dave that monstrous beasts would get smarter as they grew and aged, both in wisdom and intelligence. Eventually, at the nascent soul realm they would become able to take a human form.

When Dave found Lydia she was laying on her back having a seizure. He grabbed a stick and shoved it in her mouth. She bit straight through it like it was nothing. He could only stand and watch as his dear companion twitched in agony.

A few minutes later she stopped. She whined and he rubbed her belly, until she stopped.

“She also advanced to foundation establishment, just like you. You are one odd pair.” Xun said from behind Dave's back.

“Yeah, I guess we are.” Dave said quietly.

“We should set out tomorrow. We need all the daylight we can get.” Xun said as he walked away.

They all returned to the house, with Lydia trailing a little behind.

“Thank you for the hospitality Li.” Dave said.

The snow and ice had melted overnight, everything was sopping wet outside, with a little leftover slush remaining behind.

“It was my pleasure Da-veh it is always a pleasure to house you cultivators.” Li said.

There was no real road to Li's hut, only a little strip of flattened grass that was hard to pick out until they left the massive circle of destruction their arrival and stay had caused.

“Are you just having me fill all these spirit stones for your own pocket or is there a reason behind it?” Dave decided to finally ask.

“It is better for you to arrive as a low foundation establishment cultivator, it raises less eyebrows and it fits with your age. You look in your mid-thirties, which is perfect for low foundation establishment.”

“I already advanced two steps by accident, while asleep.”

“Never utter that sentence again. Some cultivators would slaughter you in envy, or for the disrespect.”

“Why, my situation can't be that special. Why isn't everyone cultivating by the way? It seems to greatly increase endurance. I'm not even tired and we've been walking quickly for hours.”

“Normally people can only draw in and filter qi as quickly as their spirit root can handle. It is the deciding factor for a cultivators talent. Not everyone is a monster like you two who generate enough qi to blanket a region. That probably was not even the entire effect of your physique and just a side effect.”

“So these spirit roots are the deciding factor. Are they inherited?”

“No, there is no connection between a child's parents and their spirit roots. Which is why we have to regularly test the children of everyone under our influence. Some people theorize that spirit roots are tied to souls or karma, nobody has any proof however.”

“Sounds wild... wait, souls are real?!”

“What do you mean real. Of course they are real. Nascent soul cultivators can supposedly remove their soul from their body, move it into an object or even use it to fight. Surviving after the death of their body.”

They were still walking along the great plain Dave had originally arrived on.

“Why was Li farming wheat or some other crop all they way out there by himself?”

“That was spiritual wheat, it needs untainted spiritual energy to grow. Farming it near human habitation is not possible.”

“Huh, hope we didn't ruin that for him with three people living there for that long.”

“Ly-dih-a would have countered the effect of our presence by establishing her domain overlapping with us.”

They arrived near a large homestead built in a square and there was finally a real dirt road leading away from it.

“That was a massive gate what are they protecting against?”

“Bandits mostly, those gates exist because they only need to hold out until a cultivator arrives, they do not need to fight back.”

“How do they signal you when they're under attack?”

“They have in their possession a linked talisman, they merely need to burn it for us to immediately know that something is wrong. That is also why I arrived at Li's house. He burned the talisman when the weather became dangerously strange.”

In the distance the plain seemed to rise upwards in a small hill. With farms and farmhouses scattered across it.

They reached beyond the hill and in a small valley, a little hamlet was lying with a creek running through it.

“This is Shadowfall, it is called that because the shadow of our sect reaches here during spring or fall. It is also the closest mortal habitation to our small sect.” Xun said.

The lone mountain sect was looming in the distance, a gigantic volcano standing alone on the plain.

They walked towards the center of the little hamlet and stopped in front of a two storied wooden house structured as an apartment complex.

“Hong Ma, get out here.” Xun called.

One of the doors on the second story opened and a gruff-looking fellow with bed-hair sleepwalked out.

“Xun it is midday. Why do you have to wake me?”

“It was noon when you went to sleep it is afternoon right now. Come down and meet Da-veh he is a rouge cultivator that wishes to join the Lone Mountain sect.”

Hong rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and walked down the stairs towards. He tripped on the last few steps, tried to catch his fall with an outstretched leg, failed and instead tumbled down at Dave's feet.

Dave offered him a hand while Xun laughed out loud.

“How are you already in the ninth layer of foundation establishment, when you left a month ago you were only in the third layer?” Hong asked.

“I had a fortunate encounter.” Xun said and failed to elaborate.

“Damn, you are way too lucky.”

Dave tried to extend his senses towards Hong and felt that he was roughly the same strength as he was himself, at the second layer of foundation establishment. Hong looked in his late twenties.

“Is there a reason for last names both being Ma or is that just coincidence?”

“We are from the same clan, east of here.” Xun answered.

“Hong can you continue to watch over my territory while I escort Da-veh to the sect and have him tested?” Xun continued.

“Sure, what is with the dog?”

“That is a tamed monstrous beast belonging to Da-veh, try to be a little on guard next time. If she had been hostile we would all have been dead, at the speed you noticed her.”

“Oh shit, she is at the sixth level of foundation establishment. Good doggy.”

Lydia let out an offended-sounding huff and ignored him.

“Well we will be off now, see you later Hong.” Xun said and walked away.

“See ya.” Dave said and gave him a little wave.

They walked out of the hamlet and reached the foot of the volcano, as the sun began to set behind it and colored the sky in orange and pink. A small village was set there. With several large buildings made from igneous rock and wooden roofs. Trees grew in a glade further up the mountain.

“Want to go for a bath, we both smell terrible and your test will be tomorrow at the earliest?”

“Sure.”

One of the buildings had steam coming out from under the roof, Dave guess that it was a covered hot spring being fed by the volcano. They walked inside, undressed, handed their clothes to a woman waiting at the door and got into the water.

“You know, this spring is older than our sect. Wandering cultivators would gather here, play games and form friendships and eventually that evolved into this sect. We still have dice competitions and sparring tournaments established back then.” Xun elaborated on the history of the sect.

They got out of the water, dried themselves off and put their cleaned clothes back on.

As they walked to the Ma clan residence Xun asked: “Were you a noble where you came from, your clothes are very finely made and even the cleaning lady was giving you shocked looks.”

“No, we all had clothes like this or better, they're not out of ordinary where I'm from.” Dave answered.

“What an odd place.”

Dave was assigned a guest room and went to sleep in a hammock.