DC 55

“Hello, my name is Tan Sai, pleased to make your acquaintance.” The girl yawned at Jiao and Fu after the baldie had taken his leave. Feng Jiao looked down at his mentor, looking down being something he didn’t do much since he wasn’t particularly tall, even as she looked up at Jiao and Bai Fu through her half-closed eyes.

The girl stood about as tall as Aideen’s human form had, nearly a head shorter than Feng Jiao, but her wild looking brown hair made her seem a few inches taller. It wasn’t that she’d spiked her hair up or anything, it just went this way and that and looked like it hadn’t been brushed in ages. Her eyelids covered the top half of her irises and dark lines under her eyes made Jiao wonder if she’d just woken up. Even as Jiao was taking his measure of her, she yawned again, stretching her arms overhead and causing dust-like debris to fall from her robe. 

“Feng Jiao.” “Bai Fu”

“What cute names, I wonder what you two did to enrage Feilong.” The girl tilted her head, as if getting a new angle on them would actually allow her to see how they’d annoyed him.

“Is that the baldie?” “Pfft!” “We never actually got his name, but he seemed to just be annoyed by our presence.” Bai Fu was quick to respond to her question and cast the blade back onto the disgruntled man. “Why do you say that we enraged him though?”

“Oh, well because he saddled you with me. Don’t worry, I’m not so bad. I just have a certain reputation. Fufufu.” The little girl walked away snickering about the baldie comment. Her cowlicks swayed in the breeze and Feng Jiao and Bai Fu simply made eye contact before starting after her.  

“Feilong told me while we walked over that the two of you are both at the peak of awakening, and I heard from your own mouths that you’re eleven and thirteen years old, is that right? In any case, that is a monstrous talent or an amazing cultivation technique. With such a speed, it surprises me that neither of you received an inheritance.”

“I keep hearing that phrase, what exactly does it mean, Senior Tan?” 

“Fufu. Not many people call me senior, I kind of like it. As you should realize by now, after reconnecting every meridian back to your dantian, the next step to your cultivation is to aspect your Qi. It isn’t enough to just stuff your dantian full of essence, at least for most people, and you need to refine it and make it uniform so that it can condense into a liquid form. Of course, like most things with cultivation, there are other ways around this thanks to countless years of research and experimentation. That doesn’t change the fact that aspecting your Qi is the most efficient, effective, accessible, and reliable way of liquifying your Qi and progressing along your path. 

“That, or purifying it to be pure Qi, but that comes with its own slough of disadvantages. It is well known that a fire cultivator will have trouble working with water type arts, but that doesn’t stop it from excelling at things like alchemy and fire arts. With pure Qi, you won’t be worse at anything but you will never excel at anything either. Anyways, I’m getting off trail here. For most mortal grade cultivation techniques, that being techniques that work for the three stages of the mortal realm, they are split into three parts. 

“Nobody really needs a technique for the awakening stage as it is just accumulating Qi and forcing open meridians, but that didn’t stop several powerful families and institutions from forming techniques anyways. It usually isn’t anything groundbreaking, just optimal breathing techniques, stretches, and mental imagery that help accumulate essence faster. Some god-like techniques even help to pre-aspect the Qi as it accumulates rather than having to wait until all the meridians are connected and the dantian engraved. Of course, those are just rumors and nobody thinks that they actually exist, at least not outside of the imperial families.

“The term Inheritance usually refers to families who pass down their own aspecting techniques to their children and disciples, or techniques that are discovered in ancient ruins and abandoned lairs of experts. With cultivation speeds like the two of you had, I would have assumed that the both of you had techniques. Then again, I guess it isn’t rare for a para elemental not to have a matching family technique or for a bastard to be born. For example, the royal family of this kingdom are water type practitioners but the third prince is a fire cultivator. In most families, they’d only have a water aspecting technique, and the prince might have had to join a sect to learn about fire. Mm!” She nodded her head and kept walking ahead of the two new disciples.

“I’ll be honest, that was a lot more detailed than I expected you to be for a flippant question, but I really appreciate the lesson.” Feng Jiao wondered if the Feng family had a wood aspecting inheritance that they usually passed down and decided he’d ask Feng Lou if he remembered the next time, he saw him. 

“There are no flippant questions on the pursuit of immortality and knowledge, Junior Feng. Just based on the fact that you had a question you wanted answered and asked it, you should be able to recognize that your heart desired the answer. That is what researchers thrive for, to answer the questions that would otherwise become heart demons for them.”
 “Right. So, without an inheritance, how will Bai Fu and I learn to aspect our essence and form it into aspected Qi?” 

Unlike Feng Jiao’s plant dantian which was filled with pre-refined plant Qi that he absorbed from the wild fauna, most disciples would only be able to absorb true essence from the air. When his father had explained it to him, he’d said that ether was the building blocks of all things, the energy of the heavens, and true essence was the energy of earthly constructs, with Qi being the energy refined by cultivators. Everything in the universe had essence, and when the ether in the air brushed up against them, small amounts of it would be released for cultivators to absorb. To make it their own energy, cultivators had to refine it into their own cultivation base through the process of making it Qi.

“That is what the Aspect Hall is for, Junior Feng. Whenever one of the researchers discovers a new pattern to aspect Qi, through experimentation, of course, they will log it and place it in the Aspect Hall, one of their many seats of power in the sect. All disciples of peak awakening are authorized to choose a cultivation technique from their halls, which allows them to track usage and effects of the various techniques. 

“Many more of the techniques are also submitted from fellow disciples, gained through raids, interrogation, or exploration. In short, there are many techniques, some of them legally obtained, for you to peruse. That’s actually where we are headed now as I figured it would be better for the two of you to make your choice before retiring to our quarters for the night. There are also some free materials for you to pick up from Allowance, it’s a building nearby. Anyways, just tag along and we will be there shortly.”

Just like Tan Sai said, nearly twenty minutes later their path ended in a small town--esque shopping center. There were several buildings with varied architectural styles and colors. It was almost as if the buildings had been stolen from various countries and plopped down beside each other there, but that was crazy. Most likely, each of the buildings had different functions and therefore had to be built to match specifications. 

The trio ended up stopping inside of Allowance first, a large wooden building with several arches and a line in front of it, where Tan Sai sponsored the two of them as newly admitted disciples of the nominal variety. They were given a small bag of goods as new disciples as well as a smaller bag of cultivation supplies and told that they could return monthly to collect an allowance.

They were also given the spiel about it being an allowance, not an entitlement. If they failed to meet their work quotas, which as peak awakening was near nothing, then they would not receive an allowance the next month. Allowances could be increased by turning in surplus or working extra hours, being promoted to an outer disciple, or could be supplemented by doing jobs from the mission hall. It was about what Feng Jiao had been led to expect from his father and he had his own plans to rack up cultivation supplies.

Included in the starter bundle were a few bulk-printed manuals for common skills a cultivator would need. With this, they wouldn’t need to spend their hard-earned contribution points or trade away their allowances to learn how to conjure a light, or start a fire, clean a robe, or several other utility abilities. Truth be told, most of the abilities in the manuals were impractical until one reached Mortal Condensation as, until then, it was too difficult to work essence into arts outside of the body. It needed to be a liquid, unified Qi to be worked with easily. 

Still, there were a few techniques that caught Jiao’s eye. The first and foremost being ‘150 Tips and Tricks to use Qi to aid Crop Yield! Must Read!’. Whereas he found the title to be very abrasive and annoying, the content in the thin book was a very useful read and went over various ways to use Qi to supplement the growth of a plant. There were even several theory craft articles included from various disciples and elders on why one couldn’t just force the accelerated growth of a plant instantly using their own Qi, most it boiling down to not understanding how the internal cultivation structure of a plant worked as well as several other complicated intricacies. 

Jiao theorized he’d be able to use his own knowledge from his previous life as well as his somewhat unique nature sense to piece together a working growth ability unlike any seen in the sect. Honestly, ever since Tan Sai explained what an Inheritance was only moments before, Feng Jiao had been enthralled with the idea of developing his own branch of techniques and cultivation to pass down to his descendants, should he ever have any, as well as his own family. All he needed to do was read a few dozen current cultivation techniques to try and discover if there was a way to replicate his nature sense, or develop a hallowed technique to do just that.

As he stewed in his thoughts and daydream, Tan Sai finally stopped Bai Fu and himself in front of a large building shaped and colored like an egg. It had a simple entrance of a wooden door engraved with several markings that Feng Jiao did not recognize, each glimmering slightly. Jiao could see a few of the other peak awakening disciples who’d arrived with them today exiting the eggshell but couldn’t identify where they had their cultivation manual. Some of them even carried nothing at all and Feng Jiao didn’t believe that storage treasures could be that common.

“Alright you two, let's head in.” The sleepy looking girl with wild hair, Tan Sai, grabbed each of them by a hand and started tugging toward the open doorway.