DC 3.5 (Another Backfill)

2k words to make the story seem less creepy and hopefully contribute a bit to world building. The amount of holes I'm patching makes me wish I had some flex tape man, I tell ya.

Chappy should also slightly contribute to my attempt to characterize Feng Lou, the cousin, rather than just have him appear and be out of nowhere in the future.

* * *
The town they were setting out to was called Willow Mountain City. From what he’d gathered, Feng Jiao found out that it was one of the larger gatherings of humans around the area and had semi-annual awakening ceremonies for the surrounding area. When asked why it was that people had to travel to one location for their awakening, Feng Jiao’s father said that it takes a set of specialized knowledge to properly conduct an awakening.

There were, apparently, traveling agents that would conduct awakenings in remote and isolated villages, but they were usually either sect recruiters, looking to make a profit, or con artists. It was generally safer and cheaper to travel to one of the cities if one could afford to. Although there was an entrance fee when entering the city, the awakening ceremony itself was freely conducted as the city gained their revenue through other means during the increased traffic twice a year.

Luckily, their village and the surrounding villages already had dozens of children ready to go through their awakening and all Feng Jiao and his father had to do was tact themselves onto the caravan. By grouping together, they would be able to pay an entry fee based upon the amount of goods being brought to market for sale rather than by the number of people. Considering that it was a tax that would have to be paid regardless, the merchants tended to go twice a year if their goods permitted it.

“Alright, go over there with the kids and play, Feng Jiao.” Feng Zhipei shooed his son away the next morning when they got to the caravan. Letting out a sigh because he knew that his information gathering exploits were at an end for the time being, Feng Jiao wandered over to where the other children from his village and the surrounding areas were already talking. He heard a few whispered conversations and snickers from the village boys that he’d beaten before, but they quickly silenced when he looked over.

His eyes raked the crowd, looking for the few familiar faces that he’d been left with a neutral or good impression of. For the most part, it was the girls in the village that he found more bearable to hang around with. They were less loud and rowdy, and seemingly far less inclined to try and pick a fight with him. By the time they had all reached the double digits of age, they’d even been able to have a decent conversation, entertaining if not enlightening.

Unable to see any of the faces that belonged to the children of his family’s servants, as that was who he’d been interacting with for the most part, he wandered over to where he saw his cousin. Although his cousin was in no way polite, he was older than some of the other boys there and tended to be a bit more mature due to his upbringing.

“Little Cousin Jiao, what brings you over to my gathering today?” Feng Lou, the son of Feng Jiao’s second Uncle, asked with a bit of glib attitude. He likely knew that none of Feng Jiao’s usual playmates were present and was poking a jab at his lack of friends, eliciting a few snickers from some of his hanger-ons.

“Why would I need a reason to come talk to my older cousin? Surely your maids taught you the importance of family.” A jab at the fact that Feng Lou’s mother had left his father and the village years ago. Feng Jiao and his cousins didn’t really get along, but Feng Lou was the most bearable of the bunch. They tended to verbally spar from time to time, but he’d never maliciously acted against Feng Jiao.

Sure enough, the boy simply smiled in response and patted the ground next to him. Feng Jiao sat and listened while the boys gossiped about which girls were turning into young beauties, what they planned on doing when they got to the city, and what sects everyone wanted to join.

“Don’t be stupid, Yun Rhuleh, the Immortal Sword Sect wouldn’t send recruiters to Willow Mountain City. They are far more powerful than even top tier sects, you should set your expectations on something realistic.” Feng Lou snapped to one of his followers who wouldn’t stop ranting about how he would be the next great Sword Immortal. They then started yelling and shouting about who was more powerful, whether or not Yun Rhuleh would be able to sheath a sword without sitting on it, and so on and so forth. Feng Jiao found the entire conversation to be annoying and useless, so he tuned it out.

Eventually, the rest of the carts had arrived and the caravan started moving.

There were several carriages and carts, pulled by large beasts down an even larger road. Feng Jiao saw his own town’s merchants tending to their goods, occasionally shifting a bale or tightening a strap, and looked at the others. For the most part, they were surrounded by other farming communities, but there were a few covered carts that smelled of livestock and others that seemed to be large shipments of ores and coal.

After getting off the mountain, Feng Jiao was surprised about just how quickly the trees thinned out. Grasses taller than their carriages flanked the road on either sides, with the occasional tree tall enough to poke its crest above the plains high enough to make itself known. Feng Jiao could see large birds in the distance, circling areas or diving into the grasses, and knew that if they were close enough they’d likely be large enough to snatch him away. Luckily, the large gathering seemed to keep them away.

Although they had predators in the forests on their mountain, the Crouching Grass Village, which was the name of where Feng Jiao lived, frequently sent out hunting parties and had systematically made the area safer for inhabitation over the years. Feng Jiao had personally never seen any of the beasts wander out of the forest, which he’d always considered strange since his family’s manor was set against the forest high upon the mountain.

Eventually, Feng Jiao started trying to reach out to the plants surrounding him. The summer solstice was approaching, which was the date that the awakening ceremony was set as, and he planned on trying a few rituals from his past life. He’d already managed to recreate some of the reagents he needed through cross pollination and cultivation of his garden over the past few years, and had found substitutes for those he couldn’t find or fix on such short knowledge. It had to be known that plants took thousands of years to become what they were, and he was unable to get everything the way he remembered it in only a few generations.

To do some of those rituals, however, he needed more essence stored up in his Qi pool. Mentally interfacing with the tall grasses on either side of him, he managed to start leeching away at the essence to continue refining his newly carved channels and expand his storage of refined essence.

On a couple of occasions, he attempted a discrete cantrip from his previous life when the other kids were not watching. Unfortunately, the essence he was absorbing seemed to be far more chaotic and unruly than the mana of his past life. He could feel the essence travel through his channels and begin forming the matrix for the spells he wanted to cast, but the energy seemed far more willful and unwilling to bend to his demands, quickly unraveling itself and dissipating into the air.

Although he found it bothersome, Feng Jiao knew there was nothing more he could do apart from practicing his control. The mana in his previous world had always bent to his will, but he had some sensations in the back of his mind that told him that it was not the same for most that practiced magic. It took some years to even begin drawing in mana, and some even longer to perform even the most basic of spells.

Luckily for him, Feng Jiao was surrounded by grass that was full of life and older than that in his mountain, having never really been trimmed or cut down beyond the occasional campsite being set up. It was a bounty of plant essence just waiting to be reaped, and so he did. He continued refining his channels and filling his appendix, occasionally dispelling most of what he’d gathered in an attempt to cast a cantrip.

Several of the children from his village knew Feng Jiao had always been an odd child, less inclined to socialize and prone to long bouts of silence. Him seemingly napping the day away meant almost nothing to them as it was well within his usual habits to ignore everyone around him, so they did not bother him. The same did not apply, however, to the kids from surrounding villages or those from the Crouching Grass that had never interacted with him before.

Many saw what they believed to be a young girl, cute for her age, bored out of her mind. The more attentive ones would see that ‘she’ was occasionally scowling and muttering under her breath, so she wasn’t truly sleeping. The only thing that kept them at bay was Feng Lou and his cronies who would scowl at anyone unfamiliar approaching them. That, of course, changed when the caravan stopped moving for lunch.

Feng Lou and his ilk wandered off to get something to eat, and a steady trickle of the braver boys began to wander up to Feng Jiao and try to make conversation. Feng Jiao found the situation annoying, and dismissed the children outright and not always with the kindest words. He hoped that if he were rude enough, they’d just leave him alone.

Unfortunately, he ended up gathering even more attention as the kids began to whisper about the ‘Ice Princess’. The kids changed their conversations from bragging about joining the most powerful sects and becoming the most powerful cultivators to being the one who would win the ice princess’ heart. Regardless of how many times Feng Jiao insisted that he was a boy, or not interested, kids would continue coming up to bother him.

When the time for sleeping arrangements came around, Feng Jiao was annoyed to find out that there were only four large carriages for the children to sleep in. He was not allowed to sleep in the same area as his father or the other adults due to the way their sleeping arrangements worked. He ended up setting his bedroll up on top of one of the carriages after being harassed by the same children from the day before. He was convinced at that point that most of them had accepted that he was a boy and were only bothering him because they found it funny to bully him. He’d even beaten a couple of them up, but it was to no avail.

His eyes snapped open in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy wings beating down on the campfire the adults had set up beside the gathering of carriages. Whispered shouting, weapons clanging, and the cries of a beast. In the campfire’s light, Feng Jiao could see some of the men who he believed to be merchants moving faster than he’d ever seen a man move before. Leaping through the air like birds and having intense battles with the wildlife who seemed to be offended by their intrusion.

Eyes wide, Feng Jiao realized just how dangerous it was to sleep on top of the carriage when any one of the birds he’d observed earlier in the day would be large enough to snatch them away. He thought that the caravan had scared them off, but seeing just how bold they were at night, he knew he wasn’t safe. He rolled down from the top of the carriage and thought to himself intensely for a few seconds.

Eventually, he turned and walked over to the girls’ carriage to sleep. ‘Hopefully they’d be less bothersome’, he thought to himself.