Chương 25: Test the Will

Paike was vaguely disappointed. Despite all his training in tactics, he had actually believed that Lan Zhu might pull out some trump card and turn the tide. That's what the cultivators he had always read about did. However, while Lan Zhu was an absolute monster, she was already struggling against him and his sister. With the addition of Guan Li and the return of Yixin's arrows, she didn't stand a chance. She quickly burned through her remaining qi as she fended off the attacks coming at her from all directions.

When she was wrung dry, Paike found himself standing over her kneeling form. It was a stark contrast to the regal image she'd struck at the beginning of their fight. Her emerald green hair was in disarray, and her robe was torn. The vines that offered such effective combat options had faded with her qi. She looked up to meet his eyes with a burning defiance rather than the calm blasé that she had started the fight with.

"Ready to surrender?" Paike asked, admiration for her tenacity staying his hand. Her lips formed into a smile that he couldn't quite call mocking. Almost as if they were sharing an inside joke. Like they were acting out a play that they both knew by heart. After holding his gaze for a beat, her head finally tilted down. With the noise of a clearing throat, Paike was barely able to move his foot out of the way of the glob of spittle that splattered on the cobblestones.

As he took a step back and let out a laugh, he caught his sister moving in the corner of his eye. A loud crack echoed off the buildings around them.

"That wasn't very ladylike of you," Liming stated in a deceptively calm voice as she rubbed the already reddening back of her hand. Lan Zhu just smiled. Pake looked over at the members of his team. What were they supposed to do? They couldn't just let her go without her surrendering. She would just recover her qi and attack them again. He also wasn't about to hold her captive and risk having her pull something at the last moment to steal their slot in the next trail.

"You don't have the guts," Lan Zhu stated with a clear voice. Paike looked back at her and sighed. They were both playing the role to perfection, hopefully the elders would be pleased. It was an obvious move that she was trying to pull. It could be very effective against most mortals and lower-level cultivators. But his family would never have sent someone to the outside world without being able to handle it. Liming's high, clear laugh echoed from behind him as he crouched down in front of their kneeling opponent.

If this was a story, Paike would need to lift her chin with a few fingers, but she was already meeting his eyes. Still, it was the perfect setup. He just wished he was better at remembering famous quotes; she would have to do with the jist of it.

"It's not a good idea to test the will of a cultivator. No one who gets this far will back down from doing what is necessary." When he stood up and turned away, her body fell face-first on the ground and vanished into motes of light.

"That was cold," Gaun Li told him with an approving tone.

"Brother won't make this harder for us," Liming chimed in.

"You have to remember that the elders are watching, and they won't let anyone die without truly extreme circumstances," Paike answered.

"If this was the real world, these fights would be nowhere as lethal. In fact, if we did this stuff in the sect, we would be kicked out at the minimum, if not executed." They walked the rest of the way back to the fountain in silence. Paike was lost in his thoughts and presumed that his allies were as well. The whole exercise was the perfect chance for them to play the roles of cultivators before the founding of the empire and the great sects.

In those days, the law was just whatever the strong decided, and cultivators ran around causing mayhem. As terrible as it was for almost everyone, it benefited the cultivators, who thrived. The first emperor and his dukes were all from that chaos. Now, cultivators were much more limited. Powerful families didn't want to risk their children, but they still needed experience if they were going to advance. Hence the creation of the great sects. It gave them a supervised area where they could compete and grow.

Given the freedom, many found that acting out some variation of the old stories put them into stressful enough situations to force the growth they were looking for. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. The Kong family generally found that whole thing rather silly. The advice was to play along with the children while you were finding your own path and achieving your goals.

They also hamstrung their children at every turn, making sure that every step forward was earned. Nevertheless, the sect system worked like a charm. Many promising candidates made it through the initial stages and even more reached their potential. The rare few who made it to the high third realm or just into the fourth were a bit more on their own. Many didn't get past that point. They could either work their way through the bureaucracy, cultivate in peace, or go to the frontier to fight the barbarians.

At least, those were the common options. Families like his did exist, and there were skirmishes all over the Empire. Still, they were much more formal than the pre-imperial chaos. Paike was pulled from his thoughts as they saw Yixin standing next to the fountain in the main square. He lifted his hand in a greeting that she returned.

It didn't take more than a handful of minutes before the sun finally set, and the team was transported to the next objective. Glowing light enveloped them, and the four of them vanished. When Paike could see again, he found himself alone. He was sitting at the crossroads of a pair of hard-packed dirt trails leading through a forest of evergreen pines. The scraggly trees were dense enough that he couldn't see more than a handful of meters into the dark forest.

But he was on enough of a rise that he could see a distance over the forest canopy. He fell into a combat stance, looking around carefully, making sure that there was no ambush set up. A quick scan of his surroundings confirmed that he was alone. It seemed this was an individual trial. All he could do was make it through himself and hope that his sister and friends could take care of themselves. Looking down the paths, he could see generally where they led.

The one to the farthest left led in the direction of a tall mountain. To the right, the trail went downhill, where a massive lake spread out as far as he could see. Straight ahead, over the edges of the forest, he could see the walls of a city. It was clear he was being given a choice. Paike didn't want to get anywhere near the water. There were many reasons, but his new affinity of a sort didn't particularly lend his thoughts toward getting wet. It seemed that would only hamper him rather than empower him.

Similarly, he didn't really want to deal with people and choose the city. There were too many variables, and social engineering had never been his strong suit. He imagined his sister would have made the opposite choice, choosing either the lake or the city. As he made his way up the mountain path, he reflected that everyone had different strengths and weaknesses. Of course, at their level, it was too early to really get set on your path. He was perhaps getting a little too far ahead of himself.

The general wisdom was to try many things in the early realms and then find what worked. Paike, though, didn't have that luxury; if he hesitated for even a second, he would be left behind. When it came down to it, he had to trust that luck would see him through. It was good to work with people who could cover your weaknesses. But even if the others picked their paths early, he couldn't be sure that the others would continue to fill his shortcomings. Best to keep an open mind.

Soon, the forest fell away, and he climbed up the mountain. The air was getting back to the familiar thinness that he was used to. The mountain took him several hours to climb, but that was fine. Climbing mountains had been a decent part of his training, and he knew how to pace himself. He was much faster now than he had been even a few days ago. The steady, quick walk along the ever-increasing slope took him about two-thirds of the way to the peak.

Looking down, he could see the forest stretch out to the edge of his vision, the lake and the city no longer in view. He wondered which of the elders was helping with this trial because this technique was fascinating. But, like most high-realm techniques, he had no hope of seeing through it or comprehending it. Paike couldn't help but feel wistful for the sheer power and command over the world. Surely, those elders never had to fear anything with all their power. The path led to a cave near the top of the mountain.

It wasn't a long, deep, dark, dank cave like the one he had found with his sister, but rather a large opening where he could see clearly. The cave's entrance was nearly fifty meters across and just as high, but only twenty-five meters deep. At the back was a carefully carved shrine to some ancient spirit. Paike couldn't sense any fluctuations or anything, but it was clear that this would be the site of trial. Stepping cautiously into the cave, he paused, waiting for something to happen.

But after several heartbeats, nothing did. If just climbing a mountain was the trial, well, that would be far too easy. Perhaps there was a choice between the paths taken, but even thinking about it in that light, Paike couldn't figure out what the correct choice was. Instead of despairing, he approached the shrine carved into the back wall and kneeled before the altar. He began to study the patterns carved there.

It wasn't exactly a cycling technique, but there was something, a diagram in the decorative carvings, that he eventually picked out, one piece at a time. It described a certain qi flow, but it wasn't internal. Paike reached for it, placing one hand on each side of the altar. With great patience, he slowly forced his qi through the membrane of his skin into the stone of the altar. With unblinking concentration, he began to trace the patterns he saw on the wall.