After leaving the Elder’s office she returned to the outer city where she began looking for the three dragons. It was the last day of the festival and she was supposed to be at work, but the fact that she was injured in the competition might make a good enough excuse if Master Chen complained about her missing the day. If not, she would have to tell him about the situation with the dragons, even if it was embarrassing.
While she was looking around she happened to run into Ponma, who gave her the money for her Water Blossoms. He had convinced the caravan to pay them in spirit stones, one and a half per jar for the small blossoms and two for the large blossoms, as they would mostly be selling the blossoms to other cultivators and sects, who would pay them in spirit stones, so she received three hundred and seven stones after he deducted the thirty one he earned as a commission. If she was an inner disciple this would be more than enough to pay her expenses for the year, so she could spend the entire year in cultivation. As things were, though, she would still have to spend her time making flying swords and talismans.
After saying goodbye to Ponma she continued to look for the dragons, but it wasn’t until almost sunset that she found Sho sitting on the roof of one of the buildings. Without a flying sword she had to jump onto a nearby wall and push off to grab the roof’s overhang, after which she was able to pull herself up.
“Hello, Shen.” she said. “Come to watch the fireworks with me? Do and my dad decided to skip it. It’s hard to explain to someone how beautiful explosions can be.” Just after the sun had set on the last day of the festival the caravan and the sect both set off fireworks as a sort of competition, and almost everyone in the sect and caravan would pause what they were doing to watch the display. Shen, however, shook her head.
“I actually need to talk to you about something important.” she said, then told Sho about the request Cal had sent to the sect. “Do you know why he would do that?” she asked, just as the first firework was shot off by the caravan, starting the show.
Sho nodded her head. “I have an idea.” she said, ignoring the show. “Have you noticed how all of the men treat you different a few days per lunar cycle?”
“Yes, and I assume that my...time of the month is changing my smell, but I’m not sure why it makes them act like that.”
Sho sighed. “You smell like a female dragon that is producing an egg. Even though it shouldn’t happen for me for a few more years, my mother made sure to explain it to me before she left almost a decade ago. The brains of Male dragons are wired to try and please Female dragons that are producing an egg because it means that she might consider them for the one who fertilizes it. This is important for dragons because every egg that a female produces is a little less likely to produce a child, so they must produce children early if they want to have children. In fact, after seven hundred or so, a female dragon might never produce another child due to that low chance.
I came from my mother’s first egg. Even though my father was much older than her, he was the nicest of the men who courted her, and her mentor, so she chose him when it was time to find a mate. He probably thought you were in the same situation.”
“But, I’m way too young. I don’t plan on having a child for at least three or four years, maybe even five or more.”
“I know. In human society, women often wait until they are older. Humans don’t develop the mental maturity to look after a child until several years after they can physically produce one, so it makes sense. Dragons, however, develop that level of mental maturity far before they can lay or fertilize an egg. I reached that point in my early fifties, even though few dragons can produce an egg even in their early sixties. My father, however, doesn’t know about this. In his mind, you may look young, but everything he knows about dragon biology, as well as your business skills and diligence in training, tells him you are as mentally mature as a sixty year old, if not seventy year old.”
Sho stood up and stopped watching the fireworks. “I’ll go talk to him about this. Maybe I can explain things to him. Until he calls this off, though, I think you should stop coming to the village. Having you around will just make this harder for him to accept, especially if you come during the wrong time of the lunar cycle.”
Shen nodded. “I understand.” she said, a bit of sadness welling up in her and threatening to push out a tear.
Seeing this, Sho knelt beside her and gave her a hug. “I know you want to still visit us, but it just isn’t safe to do so right now. Though, what if I make you a deal? I will see if Do wants to come by occasionally so you can spar, and I’ll go to Fisher once a week to buy ten jars of Water Blossoms. I know the people in the village will want to keep eating them, and the people of Fisher love the money its making them. And, of course, I’ll be back next Caravan day and we can spend time together then, alright?”
Shen nodded, trying to stay brave. “Ok. As long as I get to still see you and Do, I think it will be ok.”
“Good.” Sho said, giving her another hug. The fireworks were reaching their crescendo’s peak in the background, drowning out their conversation and Shen’s tears.
Once the fireworks ended and Shen had stopped crying, Sho let go of her and stood up, pulling out the flying boat from before and ordering it to expand. “Well, I’d better explain this to my father, and hopefully convince him to call off the request.” she said, and Shen nodded. Sho then fed a bit of chi into the boat and ordered it to fly towards the dragon village, and it quickly accelerated to faster than a horse could run.
Once her eyes were dry and the cold started to set in Shen jumped off the roof and walked back to her room. Hopefully, this whole situation could be cleared up soon and things could go back to normal.
The next day Shen got ready and reported to work as normal. She apologized to Master Chen for missing work yesterday, but he said it was okay because she would have only been able to work half a day anyway. With that he handed her a stack of talisman paper and a set of instructions for creating defensive talismans. They would only be able to block a single attack, but if created properly were strong enough to block an attack one rank above them in strength, but not technique. Higher realms had tricks that lower ones didn’t, after all, and the talisman couldn’t block something that the creator didn’t know was possible.
It took her several tries before she was able to successfully create one of them, as she didn’t have much practice creating talismans, and even then it was pathetically weak. Still, she was able to make one every few minutes on average, including the preparation work, and by noon she was capable of making ones which could actually be sold, if only to the weakest outer disciples in bulk.
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Some time in the early afternoon, as she was hanging her latest batch up to dry, one of the guards came in the store. “Hey, Chen,” he said, walking up to the counter where Master Chen was also making talismans, though his were much better.
“Hey Lin. What do you want? I’m a bit busy trying to fill the new quota.”
“Did you hear? The library just got in two new technique books and are selling mass produced copies of them, even dusting off that old printing press to make as many as possible. They are even selling them for cheap at a stone each.”
“A stone?” Chen asked, looking up from his work. “Don’t you mean a point?”
“No, I mean a stone. I was confused too, but apparently they decided to sell these for spirit stones instead of contributions.”
“Maybe they made a deal with the merchants to sell copies?” asked Shen, walking to the front. “Selling them for stones would make it easier to deal with the merchants, as you wouldn’t have to hope that the sect has the stones to cover the payment when they show up next year.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Lin said. “Makes as much sense as any reason, I guess.”
“Any idea what the techniques are about?” asked Chen.
“One is about something called ‘body refining’. Essentially you are improving your body using chi. The other is something called the ‘Solid Base’ technique. Basically, it’s about strengthening the base of your cultivation so that your are much better for your level and can more easily advance to the next level.”
“Interesting.” responded Chen. “Though I’m not sure how some new technique would really benefit me. I’m happy staying at Foundation for the rest of my life, and I have more than enough chi to do my job. As for the body one, well, I’m not the best looking or strongest, but it’s enough for me.”
“Oh, it’s not just one technique, it’s a whole group of techniques in each book. Like the Five Elements techniques that they teach here, but they haven’t divided them up based on Realm. If you want a copy, though, you’ll need to put your name down. They are selling the copies on a first come, first serve basis, and the guards bought the first fifty copies, with the training field buying the next fifty. I signed up to buy a copy so I could read it when I’m not at work and I was number 517.”
To Shen, these techniques seemed quite interesting. She didn’t know if she needed to refine her body, as she didn’t have any particular weaknesses, but, as she was hoping to advance her cultivation quickly, being able to solidify her base more quickly would come in handy. “Master Chen.” she said, and he looked at her. “Can I have permission to go sign up?”
He shrugged. “Fine. But it counts as your break and if you think the line is too long you should come back immediately. I can’t have you standing around for an hour just to write your name down.”
Shen nodded and ran out the door.
---
Two days earlier Quan Xiu stood beside a table with Master Xing and the other elders that were invited to attend. “I have finished my assessment of your sect.” he said. “Besides the insistence that your people only use their own abilities, which has strengths and weaknesses, I have identified two main flaws in your people’s training which will negatively effect their ability to face Demons.
First, and most importantly in my opinion, is the fact that the ‘Five Elements Technique’ your people cultivate is an offshoot of the ‘Rapid Advancement’ technique. While that technique is powerful, it has one serious flaw. It can only carry you as far as your talent allows. That is why your people will rapidly reach their limit but then almost stop in their cultivation, with only a few of them managing to reach one realm higher and none of them reaching two. The ‘Rapid Advancement’ technique was designed to be paired with another technique, the ‘Solid Base’ technique. When used together they allow a person to strengthen their cultivation base to the point where their bottlenecks are capable of being defeated the first time they attempt them. They never need to face a tribulation because they will be able to see exactly how strong their tribulation is and build up their foundation to the point where it isn’t too much of a challenge to overcome.
Second, I have noticed a distinct lack of body cultivation, even among the fighters who consider themselves body cultivators. When asked how they cultivated their bodies I was told about a few basic body tempering techniques which, while effective, will only help them so much. None of them, even the Elder in charge of training them, knew the first thing about refining living tissue.” The Elder in charge of the training looked embarrassed. “I don’t think this is your fault, however. Master Xing has informed me that none of the original founders of the sect were body cultivators, nor were they aware of the ‘Solid Base’ techniques. All of them were magic or soul path cultivators who had natural immortal talent and dedicated themselves to a specific element. It was that which resulted in the building of the array which protects your city, and that array is what will allow us to hold the enemy here once they advance this far.
I can help you fix both of the issues with your techniques, however, so that you can properly face them when they arrive.” Quan Xiu waved his hand and two books appeared on the table, ‘Solid Base’ and ‘Basic Body Refining’. “Both of these are only the most basic form of the book, but they are easily available in some parts of the continent. I will leave these two with this council so that you can look over them and review them. I suggest, however, that you make copies of these techniques as quickly as possible and make those copies available to as many of your people as you can.”
--
Five days later Shen was allowed to take a day off of work, so she made her way to the outer sect library. Unfortunately they were only able to make one hundred copies of each manual per day, so, at number six hundred and ninety three, she wouldn’t be able to get her copy until tomorrow. She had paid in advance, however, so she was guaranteed to get a copy as soon as it was made.
As she couldn’t start practicing the new technique yet, she went by the talisman store long enough to get another wooden sword so that she could work on her own business. The demand for flying swords had greatly increased recently, as the sect had announced its increased support for the war, but so far she wasn’t good enough to make the medium grade ones that would be sent to the front. This had resulted in her practicing her engraving technique on seven or eight Wood or other elemental metal swords per day for the last four days.
She was able to double her production rate for two reasons. The first was that she had simply gotten faster with her tools, as she had gotten used to them, and therefore could speed up and still not make any serious mistakes. The second was the fact that she was allowed to use the entire element gathering formation she had produced and make whatever type of sword she wanted, therefore having full reserves of every element she needed when she started making the swords. This had greatly increased her skill in manipulating each element, as she never had to wait for her chi to refill, even if it wasn’t the purest chi she could make.
Five days ago, near sunset on the day she had reserved the books, the elders made an announcement. While they were not encouraging the use of relics, as they still believed them to be a handicap which limited your growth, they were now allowing all relics to be used by sect members, provided that you didn’t grow to rely on them. This had caused an increase in the demand for relics in the sect and, while Shen would love to make something other than swords and talismans now that she was allowed to, Master Chen had ordered her to make the boring things.
That didn’t mean that she couldn’t make them on her own, however. She realized this fact as she left the general supply store where she had refilled her bag with jars of vinegar. She made several trips back and forth to refill their supplies, as her latest flying swords could move almost as fast as her if she sprinted. She then made her way to the jeweler.
This store hadn’t really benefited from the new rules or recent shift towards greater war funding, and may have actually lost some business. After all, people didn’t really have the time or money to look good after those announcements, and no one on the front line cared about such things. This had lead to the woman who ran the place trying to learn a way to make her business flourish again.
As Shen entered the store the woman sat down the book she was reading. ‘Relic Crafting for Beginners’. She had decided that, as people were now allowed to use relics more freely, she would start turning the jewelry here into relics. “How can I help you?” she asked Shen.
“I would like to buy two Blue or White jade bracelets. Maybe a few simple pendants too.” Shen responded.
“Are you and Relic Crafter?” she asked, recognizing the use of such materials from her own studies. While jade looked nice, most people went for the flashier silver or gold jewelry.
“Yes, I am.” she responded. “I am actually planning on making myself a few relics to help speed up my cultivation.”
“Well, I hope you are better than me. I tried to copy a protection relic design last night and just destroyed the pendant.”
Shen nodded. “It can be tricky in the beginning. I actually destroyed several jade plates when I started, and ended up using dark green plates for my project, as I destroyed the good ones.” She told the woman about the gathering array she had made. “I think I’m good enough now to make a Gathering level relic, though, which is why I need blue jade.”
“Well, you came to the right place.” She lead Shen over to the area where the Jade jewelry was kept and showed her a box of bracelets. In the end, Shen bought four blue bracelets, one white, and five blue pendants. She planned on turning the pendants into protection relics for her friends once she had practiced on the bracelets. With her supplies now gathered, and it being late evening, she made her way home to start on her project.
