17.1. Travel to the Capital

Foria hung around the mission hall, glancing from mission to mission.

Her brother had disappeared 3 months ago. He’d said he was going into seclusion.

Other outer sect disciples walked around in groups. She, however, had opted to do missions alone. Not by choice though.

Foria realised she was in a bit of an awkward spot as far as the social hierarchy went. She had no clan or family powerful enough to back her up, but she had Faust, who had a reputation in the sect. He wasn’t an ordinary Inner Sect disciple.

The first clue was the 12 Qi Transforms technique.

Foria had gone to the technique hall and asked the overseer who manned the counter, a much more approachable man than most of the other hall overseers.

She found out that the 12 Qi Transforms Technique required an immense contribution to the sect. The overseer had said it was a pseudo 4th level technique since it could —in theory— be used to manipulate Heaven and Earth Qi below the Golden Core realm.

It hadn’t reached that level yet. But the overseer encouraged her to convince Faust to make another iteration of it. He had submitted several to the Technique Hall. The 5 Qi Transforms, which upgraded the original 3 Qi Transforms technique to include the whole five elements.

Foria moved on from the mission board to another one.

The elder had said Water Qi nurtures Wood, which burns into fire, which settles into Earth that is crushed into metal. But that was the easy part, the elder had said. The hard part about making a 5 Qi Transformation technique was the Metal Qi into Water Qi transformation. Her brother had bridged that gap, making the technique a far cry from the original cycle of Wood Qi, Fire Qi, Earth Qi, then the Earth Qi nurtured more Wood Qi.

That was all in the elder’s words. And then, Faust had gone on to expand it further. Into the 9 Qi Transforms and then the 12 Qi Transforms technique.

Foria picked out a mission slip. A simple quest to kill a pack of 3 to 7 wolves at the body tempering equivalent. Low, first level beasts.

While waiting for the mission hall deacons to process it, Foria continued to think of her brother’s reputation.

The second clue that pointed out how unusual he was, was in how others talked about him.

“Who would win between Faust and Satheon?”

“Have you seen how Satheon fights? Faust, obviously. You can’t use body tempering very well in the air, but you can certainly bombard someone with every technique in the technique hall.”

Every technique in the technique hall. Was the line Foria focused on— Because that’s what the Overseer thought as well. Faust had more or less bought out every single technique on the first and second levels of the technique hall.

Foria took the processed mission slip from the deacon and wandered towards the Outer Sect courtyard. On the way, she stopped by the stables, where there was a permanent mission to take care of the spiritual creatures there. Horses with dark blue hair and flowing manes grazed happily.

One newer looking caretaker was looking around nervously as the horse he was trying to guide refused to let him brush their hair. One of the more senior disciples had to come over and take the brush from him, explaining that the horses remembered who was good and who was bad at brushing hair and wouldn’t let their hair be brushed by people they remembered as bad.

Thankfully, Foria didn’t have to worry about the horse’s maintenance. She paid a fee to the merchant who ran the stable with the sect’s permission and rode one of the horses out of the sect.

The third reason Foria didn’t think her brother was normal was how almost every disciple knew him. Sure, rumors could travel fast. But it wasn’t that kind of knowing. It was the kind of knowing someone that was usually reserved for the strongest or most important disciples, the kind people wanted to have a good relationship with. His name was spoken in the same vein as people like Rozaline from the Roze clan, Damarius and Qingyu from the Tang clan.

And the fourth clue was just how much the technique hall overseer knew about him.

The day passed and Foria brought the spirit horse to a rest for the night. She wasn’t quite ready to ride through the night. Not like Long Tao or Faust evidently were.

Foria looked around. It was an official road that led to a shipyard of the empire that stretched from the provincial capital, through the Clear Mirror mountains and all the way to the east coast. As such, it should be regularly patrolled by both imperial soldiers and sect disciples.

Rolling out a sleeping bag, Foria tucked herself in to rest for the night.

She sighed.

Faust had told her it was fine to take her time. And that she should. But Tao and Aneroze were already at the late stage of Qi Refining.

She rolled over and forced herself to stop thinking. She wished she could advance at the same speed as Tao and Aneroze, but her brother would probably tell her otherwise once he left seclusion.

Yellow light peaked over the horizon and Foria rose swiftly before mounting the spirit horse and continuing to the village in the Sunflower Plains.

She passed over a bridge that covered a large river and entered a farming village, which lacked any form of defence, even a small militia waiting at the entrances.

The people here didn’t bow or gasp in awe. They probably saw cultivators passing through all the time. Foria didn’t think the sect would tolerate bad behaviour so close either.

The village chief’s house was obvious, a two story house made of planks instead of logs or packed mud and straw. But a passing labourer had pointed her to one of the massive fields surrounding the village to find the man himself.

The village chief was a gray bearded man with a muscular physique. He spared no pleasantries and sent Foria south west to find the wolves. She did.

“Grrr…” One of two wolves in front of Foria growled, before shooting towards her.

Foria had her sword drawn. She heard another wolf shooting towards her from behind and adjusted her feet.

The wolves pounced and Foria twisted her body and swung her sword, keeping her feet rooted to the spot.

Zing. Zing! Two strokes of the sword decapitated the two wolves, sending their heads to the ground with a low thunk as they hit the dirt.

Foria turned to the other three, they stopped growling, looking between her and their companions, then chose to bolt away together.

Foria whistled loud, twitching her fingers. The spirit horse she had left a bit behind ran up to her and she mounted, urging it forward to chase.

“Neeeigghhh!” The horse cried, rearing up before thundering forward with heavy hoofsteps, breathing loudly as it rapidly gained on the pseudo spirit beast wolves.

Zing! Zing. Zinggg! Three more strokes of the sword killed two wolves and sent the last tumbling. The spirit horse turned around, coming to a stop and letting Foria dismount. The last wolf struggled to stand. It glared at Foria, growling. A few purple hairs that differentiated it from the other wolves began to glow as it snarled.

Violet arcs of lightning formed between the hairs, some tracing along the ground around the wolf.

Foria looked on calmly, her face unperturbed as she lowered her gaze slightly to meet the wolf’s.

“Awoooo!” The wolf howled and purple lightning struck out at Foria. She held her sword up loosely, letting the tip fall towards the ground.

12 Qi Transformations. Lightning Qi transforms from Sky Qi, then follows metal Qi to the ground, joining the Earth. Foria recalled one of the passages from the technique her brother had given her, which proceeded to go into the mathematics of that statement. A bunch of stuff she didn’t understand a word of and would need to make her own notes of to make any sense of it.

The purple lightning struck Foria’s sword, then flowed down it and struck the ground around her feet.

Foria watched it, then looked up at the wolf that was in the air pouncing on her— even as lightning poured out of its body.

Zing!

With another stroke of the sword, Foria created a small arc of blood that separated the wolf’s head from its body, dying some of the overgrown golden grass and sunflowers red.

Foria looked up for a bit, then sighed. She collected the heads in a bag and began returning to the sect.

Whenever she thought of being left behind by Tao and Aneroze, she felt sick in the back of her throat.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Faust twisted and pressed the Spirit Glazed Platinum’s Essence Qi into the third array inside his Inner Palace foundation. Once the Essence Qi was in shape, he poured one final thin layer of mixed Essence and Innate Qi, filling in the last centimeter of space between his already solidified spirit body and the boundary of the spirit body.

The mini Mountain Pressing Array did its work well, attempting to compress the Qi mix. Faust used his own Qi manipulation to further increase the pressure, matching the Jade Crushing Refinement Array.

Soon enough, there was no more Qi that Faust could fit and compress into his spirit body.

He exhaled deeply, before slowly inhaling again.

As far as most would be concerned, Faust could start working on the frame of his Inner Palace. Or rather, the various anchors he would have to create to fix his physical and spiritual bodies together.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Faust stood up.

The ground was caked with a light frost that clung to every surface, even the undersides of the metal braziers as their flames began to waver.

A chilly breeze blew across the yard, ruffling Faust’s robes and disheveled, slightly overgrown hair. He walked around the formations he had set up and checked the chest filled with spirit stones.

A thin layer of iridescent liquid sat in small droplets at the bottom of the chest. He had really been cutting it close.

Faust looked around, taking stock of the formation items, before meticulously disassembling each one. He wouldn’t need any of these again, most likely. He fully planned to design his own versions of each foundation while at the Grand Archive.

It took until the sun was high in the sky to stow away everything, and a few hours more to fix his appearance.

A bit past lunch, Faust found the overgrown stone dial that controlled the mansion’s formations, changing it back to the first position. Then, he pushed the doors open and left.

The sect was alive.

Walking from Starry Mountain to Diamond mountain, there was a relatively flat grass field before the markets and administration. Small piles of snow were starting to melt but walking into the market, countless Inner disciples and deacons were traversing the market. A rare sight compared to the only one or two Faust would glimpse on an ordinary day.

Evidently, he hadn’t been the only one who had gone into seclusion over the winter months. He had done it just out of coincidence, but he supposed most people didn’t like the chilling bite of the Frost Qi— Which gathered at the same altitude most people flew at.

Faust walked through the market, navigating the crowd with practice. He didn’t really have much to prepare. He would check on his sister first, make sure Long Tao wasn’t making moves on her and then almost immediately set off for the imperial capital.

After checking her residence in the outer sect and then the mission hall, Faust tapped his chin with a closed jade fan. The one he used to look like a young heir when he was bored.

He didn’t have a day-by-day timeline. He could wait.

“Hmm? My, my. Out of seclusion already Senior brother Faust?” Aneroze’s voice chimed from the entrance of the mission hall. A few other outer sect disciples were trailing behind her. Two senior ones who Faust recognised and a few newer ones, from more middling clans. Faust guessed by them still wearing the sect’s robes rather than their own, with only a few more ornamentations as earrings or hair pins setting them aside from the commoners.

“Mh.” Faust hummed in acknowledgment, “Have you seen Foria around?”