Chương 112: Chapter 101: The Missing Road

The caravan remained where it was for the rest of the day. One freight wagon had lost a wheel, another had overturned badly enough that its cargo needed to be transferred, and several draft animals were still missing. Those recovered from the forest were nervous enough that the drivers refused to harness them again before morning. The human losses were worse. Search groups went out once the mountains quieted. Most of the missing travellers eventually returned, some injured badly enough to require help walking.

Others came back carried between guards. A few did not return alive. By evening, the difference between the caravan's passage tiers required no further explanation. The protected section had suffered little, standard passengers had taken injuries and lost belongings, while most of the serious casualties had come from the followers along the outer formation. The company reopened protected-passage upgrades before sunset. People who could afford them paid.

One family could not afford protection for everyone and pooled nearly everything they had to move their two children into the protected group while the parents remained outside. Joe saw no reason to linger over the business model. The caravan company had not caused the beast tide, but it understood exactly what frightened travellers would pay once Greyspine demonstrated the value of stronger protection. After darkness settled over the camp and the repairs quieted, Joe opened the Montclair inheritance.

The difference from Blackwood's martial texts was immediate. This was not a collection of individual methods written by different people and preserved with varying levels of care. The inheritance had been designed as a continuous path. Circulation routes were explained in detail, warnings included the reasons behind them, and later stages repeatedly referred to foundations established much earlier. Joe went directly to the section he had only skimmed in the cave. Repeated Tempering.

Second tempering was documented as ordinary advanced practice. So was the third. Then the fourth. Joe read several pages before leaning back against the wagon.

"This would have been useful." For years, he had determined through experimentation that a completed layer could be refined again and that later layers eventually became constrained by the strength beneath them. The Montclair inheritance treated those discoveries as established principles. That irritation faded once he reached the requirements for advancing beyond Internal Organs. The first complete refinement of the organs created a true Martial Artist.

Further refinements deepened that foundation, but the manual identified the third Internal Organ tempering as the minimum condition required for the body to begin generating Acquired Energy. More importantly, reaching that point depended on preparation much earlier in the martial path. A practitioner attempting the third Internal Organ refinement needed at least two completed temperings of Skin, Muscle, and Bone.

The fourth demanded a stronger supporting foundation again, requiring at least three refinements of each earlier layer. Joe reread the requirements. The barrier to Acquired did not begin at Internal Organs. It began at Skin. That single fact explained much of the martial hierarchy he had already seen. A practitioner could receive a perfectly functional Skin method, temper it once, and advance. The same could happen with Muscle.

Bone methods were already difficult to obtain outside established families, while Internal Organ inheritances were guarded even more closely. Someone fortunate enough to acquire every method needed to become a true Martial Artist could still discover, decades later, that the path to Acquired had been closed by decisions made at the beginning of cultivation. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Not because he had cultivated incorrectly.

Because nobody had taught him that another route existed. That was a more effective barrier than simply hiding an Acquired technique. Joe looked back at the manual. His own situation was very different. Nine temperings of Skin, Muscle, and Bone placed his foundation far beyond the minimum described in the inheritance.

That did not guarantee he could repeat the same process nine times with the organs, whose refinement carried far greater consequences when something went wrong, but he no longer needed to wonder whether his earlier repetitions had been pointless excess. They had prepared more foundation than the documented path required. The later pages explained why that mattered. The third Internal Organ refinement allowed the generation of Acquired Energy.

Additional successful refinements improved both the quality of the energy the body could produce and the amount it could safely contain. The organs were therefore more than another physical layer to strengthen before advancement. They shaped the source of the next realm itself. Joe spent longer on those pages. A practitioner entering Acquired at the minimum requirement would still possess Acquired Energy, but someone who entered from a deeper organ foundation would begin with a stronger source and greater capacity.

How far that principle could be extended was not recorded. That question could wait until Joe actually began Internal Organ cultivation. He opened the second case. Root Kindling. The method resolved another misunderstanding quickly. Twenty-seven was not a universal deadline for beginning immortal cultivation. A person with a Spiritual Root could begin cultivating qi later if they obtained the proper method. Root Kindling was what carried the age restriction.

Before the relevant point in a rooted practitioner's twenty-seventh year, the foundation accumulated through martial cultivation could be consumed to improve the Spiritual Root itself. Joe read the explanation twice. That changed how he understood the Montclair inheritance. It was certainly an excellent martial inheritance, but martial cultivation was not necessarily its final purpose.

For a descendant with a Spiritual Root, the body built through Skin, Muscle, Bone, Internal Organs, and the higher martial realms could become preparation for the later immortal path. Repeated tempering therefore had value beyond physical strength. A stronger martial foundation offered more to Kindling. The difference between Blackwood and the Montclairs became clearer as Joe continued reading. An Internal Organ inheritance could represent generations of guarded knowledge to a family in Blackwood.

To a lineage connected to immortal cultivation, the same knowledge could be one part of preparing a descendant for something greater. Joe retrieved the dead man's surviving credentials. He had been twenty-six and possessed a Five-Attribute Spiritual Root. The surviving records also showed that his martial cultivation had gone well beyond the ordinary single-tempering path, although he had not yet entered Acquired. Joe studied the information for a while.

A Five-Attribute Root was still a Spiritual Root, but nothing he had learned suggested all Roots were valued equally. Whatever status the Montclair name granted the dead man, his talent for immortal cultivation had evidently not placed him among the family's most exceptional descendants. That was as far as the evidence allowed Joe to go. The six spirit stones, Root Kindling record, martial inheritance, and surviving medical materials suggested that the man had been preparing seriously for his future cultivation.

One medical note even described a rare herb associated with advancement toward Acquired, and a narrow container recovered beside the skeleton held old residue that might once have contained medicine. Might. Joe did not know whether it had contained that herb, whether the man had used it, or whether any of those preparations had contributed to his death. The skeleton offered no answer. Neither did the surviving records.

Twenty-six placed him close to the age relevant to Root Kindling, which could explain why he had been carrying the method and gathering resources. Beyond that, Joe had evidence only of intention, not outcome. He set the credentials aside. The dead man's story could wait until he knew more about the Montclairs and what had brought one of their descendants into Greyspine. Joe returned to the Root Kindling text instead.

The method repeatedly emphasized that the process improved an existing Spiritual Root rather than creating one. A stronger martial foundation increased what could potentially be sacrificed, but the transformation still depended upon possessing a Root in the first place. That made the Ashbourne test more important, not less. Joe picked up one of the wrapped stones. Even before removing the covering, he could faintly perceive the unfamiliar presence within it.

Once exposed, the sensation became clearer, dense and contained but still entirely unlike Blood Energy. He did not repeat the experiment from the cave. Sensing the stone was useful. Injuring himself to prove he could sense it twice was not. The more immediate limitation was knowledge. The Montclair inheritance could carry a martial practitioner through Innate. Root Kindling explained how a rooted martial artist could sacrifice that foundation to improve the Root. Neither document taught qi cultivation itself.

If Joe possessed a Spiritual Root, he still lacked the method required to draw spiritual energy into the body and begin cultivating it properly. That absence told him something about the value of what he had found. He had not discovered the complete road to immortal cultivation. He had discovered where the martial road connected to it. Joe wrapped the spirit stone again and returned it to his bag. Internal Organs came first. The Spiritual Root test would come in Ashbourne.

Everything beyond that depended on what the test revealed and what knowledge he could obtain afterward. For now, the Montclair inheritance had already answered one question that had followed him since Blackwood. Repeated tempering was not an accident of his talents or an unexplored deviation from the martial path. It was part of the path. Joe had simply travelled much farther along it than the inheritance expected.