Chương 11: 10. Dark Petal Valley

Faust dragged Foria back to her own residence on Jade Road Mountain. The moment the door closed behind them…

"Why did you stop me! —" Foria immediately shouted, she raised her fists, ready to fight back. Slap! The sound rang out throughout the room.

"..." Foria looked at Faust, stunned. For Foria, this was a far cry from the older brother who spoiled her whenever he was able to make it home once or twice a year, buying her whatever she wanted and gently guiding her into cultivation until she entered the early Qi Refining realm. Faust exhaled heavily.

"Do you understand what you were about to commit to?" He asked. Foria looked down as Faust gaze settled on her. She held her slapped cheek, but ultimately, she said nothing.

"Haaah. I didn't think so." Faust covered his face with his hands, dragging them down before he looked at Foria, he raised his hand and Foria flinched back another step.

"Haaah… I'm sorry." Faust said.

"I shouldn't have hurt you." He bowed to her.

"Why…" Foria began, tears at the corner of her eyes.

"Do you hate Tao that much?" She asked. Faust stood back up, looking at Foria, then, slowly, deliberately, he shook his head.

"I'm sorry for how I've been acting." He said, before sitting down on one of the old wooden chairs, probably inherited from the previous resident. Faust gestured for Foria to sit down as well. She looked at him cautiously, then took a deep breath. Foria sat down and Faust took out a simple tea set from his spatial pouch, beginning to brew tea.

"Have you received the Clear Mirror Pupil technique?" Faust asked. Foria nodded.

"Good. If you want to know why I'm acting so strange, then train it until you reach some proficiency with it. Then, when you're with Long Tao, look up." Faust instructed.

"... Why?" Foria asked again.

"... Heaven's Gaze." Faust responded, the sound of water boiling as Spirit Qi abruptly turned into Fire Qi that heated up the tea pot in Faust's hands.

"Heaven's Gaze?" Foria repeated.

"Normally… You can't sense Heaven's Gaze until the Deity Transformation realm."

"What… But you said—""I know what I said."

"..."

"The fact that anyone can sense Heaven's Gaze with some ordinary pupil or sensing techniques… Only happens during ages of chaos."

"Age of chaos?" Foria repeated again. Almost everything she knew was about how she could cultivate and what she needed to do. She had never learned of anything outside of that.

"There have been fourteen recorded ages of chaos." Faust began, adding herbs and leaves to the tea.

"Do you know how many times the hegemony sects have changed? Do you know how many times the dynasty has changed?" Faust didn't wait for Foria to answer.

"Fourteen times."

"Each time," Faust continued, "The era was preceded by a supposed son of heaven. Or a daughter of heaven, heavens favoured, protagonist of heaven… It doesn't really matter what they're called." He explained. Foria nodded slowly.

"But… How is that related to Tao?"

"You still don't see where I'm going with this?" Faust asked. Foria looked down, fiddling with her hands on her knees.

"Long Tao is almost certainly this era's chosen son of heaven." Faust said it blankly.

"I'm scared." Faust admitted.

"I'm scared of the disasters the protagonist of heaven brings. Of the changes they bring… Of the strength they wield." Faust poured tea into two cups, pushing one towards Foria, who remained silent.

"I'm scared that you, who doesn't hold the heaven's blessing, is going to be harmed by the trials and tribulation Long Tao will go through." Faust looked at Foria, then stayed silent, sipping his tea to let her think.

"What about saying you won't interfere if he succeeds…" Foria asked.

"A moment of emotion. Besides, I suspect he will break into the Qi Refining realm soon. I specified he had to use his first realm Body Tempering." Faust responded, sipping his tea before pulling out several thick books. Foria looked at the books.

"These are?"

"Three Qi Transforms Technique, my notes on it and my modified Three Qi Transforms Technique, which the Technique Hall Overseer insists should be called the Twelve Qi Transforms Technique." Faust answered, taking another sip of his tea.

"Before you even think of going on a sect mission. Learn at least the Three Qi Transforms Technique." Faust ordered.

"... Why?"

"Turn Spirit Qi into Fire Qi to cook food and boil water. Turn Spirit Qi into Wood Qi to heal wounds and mend broken bones. Turn Spirit Qi into Water Qi to summon water to drink." Faust explained simply. Foria's eyes widened. She immediately understood the usefulness of the art.

"Also, the technique fundamentally allows you to control Qi better. Controlling Qi better is the basics of the Qi Refining realm." Faust added. Foria nodded slowly. Faust stood up.

"I'll be going on a mission for a few days or a week. Stay inside the sect for now and practice that technique. Don't forget to work on your body tempering as well. The Qi in the sect is better than outside so you should reach the first realm of body tempering soon." Faust opened the door, then paused.

"Also. Don't worry about Long Tao." Faust comforted Foria.

"He's the protagonist of heaven. He won't die so easily even if one of the hegemony sects abruptly decided to hunt him down." Faust stepped outside and closed the door. He guessed Foria would need time to think. He realised he had forgotten to warn her of the dangers of the specific mission she was trying to join, but he hoped she would learn to do her own research.

"Huuu…" Faust ended his meditation as the first beams of sunlight made it over the courtyard walls. Since he had been purging hidden toxins and waste Qi, he had chosen to meditate outside, at some random point on the edge of Purple Gem mountain, away from any of the Inner Disciple residencies. Checking his channels, nodes and spirit body for the umpteenth time, Faust relaxed. There didn't seem to be anything that would disrupt his cultivation anymore.

He could earn more merit to have an elder or overseer double check with divine sense— If he needed it. Afterwards, he could begin gathering materials and merit to form the next two layers of his Inner Palace foundation. Faust stopped by his residence and checked his spatial bag contents. After changing into the Inner Sect robes, Faust walked out, confident in his current preparations, heading to the Inner Sect Courtyard.

"Senior Brother Faust!" Sirius shouted, bouncing over to Faust from chatting with Satheon under one of the stone pavilions scattered on the edges of the Inner Sect Courtyard.

"Good morning junior sister, senior brother." Faust greeted back.

"Just waiting on junior sister Phalecia now." Satheon commented, walking over as well, a warm smile as he held a halberd against his shoulder. Before Faust could say anything, the group heard the zing of a flying sword and looked up to see Phalecia rushing over on a flying sword. Probably from her master's— the previous Overseer of the Alchemy Hall— peak.

"Here." Phalecia said as she touched down, stowing away her flying sword.

"We're all here!" Sirius declared, grabbing everyone and pulling them closer into a tight circle.

"Indeed." Satheon smiled, patting everyone on the shoulders.

"Has everyone made preparations for a black serpent?" Faust confirmed. Satheon tapped his halberd against his shoulder in response.

"Brought this specially for the occasion." He stepped back and spun it around rapidly before stopping it in an instant and smashing the halberd's handle against the ground. Faust assessed the halberd critically as an artifact refiner himself. It was tough and well forged, but that was where the quality ended. It was ultimately still made of mortal steel and was only held together by the reinforcing array engraved across it that had probably been fighting for its life in every Open Palace realm battle.

"I see." Faust prevented himself from commenting, simply acknowledging before turning to Sirius and Phalecia. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Poison." Phalecia said, showing several pills in one hand while flipping her palm to reveal poisoned daggers.

"For defence?" Faust asked, eyeing the items. Phalecia looked unblinkingly at Faust, completely silent.

"I thought so." Faust drew a small buckler shield from his spatial pouch.

"This is an old shield I refined as an experiment. It's a bit outclassed as a 2nd level treasure meant for Meridian Opening, but its reinforcement array is still among my masterpieces. Load it up with enough Spirit Qi and it can still take a few solid attacks from others at the Open Palace realm." Phalecia accepted the shield with a small bow. Faust turned to Sirius, "You?" He asked. Sirius grinned, pulling out her wide, double edged sword.

Unlike the rest of the group's equipment, she was the only one who had a 3rd level artifact suitable for Open Palace realm combat, with two arrays engraved across the wide blade, one on each side."

"I keep forgetting I need to upgrade Orion." Faust mumbled before speaking, "My understanding of techniques and spells was only limited by my realm before so, I already have techniques and spells suitable for the Open Palace realm."

"Impressive." Satheon nodded.

"As expected." Phalecia agreed.

"Then, let's get going!" Satheon roared, turning around, before ascending on his flying sword, closely followed by Phalecia.

"One thing!" Sirius said before picking up a large sack and then bounding to Faust's side to shove it into his spatial bag.

"..." Faust didn't resist. Sirius then ran off and jumped atop her flying sword, joining the other two. Faust also boarded his flying sword, but then paused as he felt a gaze on his back. Persius and Mue Dian were walking down the stairs and had caught sight of the 4 leaving.

"Ah." Faust had almost forgotten, he still needed to resolve the relationship between them… Later… Faust turned forward and shot into the sky with his flying sword, swiftly catching up to the rest of the group. The separation between Soft Meadows and the Dark Petal Valley was as clear as night and day. Quite literally.

The Soft Meadows was a sunlight filled patch of truly vast meadows that stretched tens of thousands of meters in every direction, nothing but low hills covered in yellow tipped ferns and some almost invisible lavender flowers here and there. Dark Petal Valley however was a sharp cliff drop from the meadows down into a gorge that was almost perpetually in shadow, filled with grey trees with leaves as dark as the trunks. Puddles and creeks rolled over blackened stones and muddy shores, dark and murky.

High in the sky, Faust, Satheon, Sirius and Phalecia stood on their flying swords. Faust was in the lead, holding a map as the most experienced tracker in the group.

"Hmm…" Faust cross referenced his own local map he'd gotten when he'd last been in the area with the provided map from the mission hall, then he looked down at Dark Petal Valley.

"Any ideas?" Sirius asked.

"I'm open to suggestions." Faust admitted. The original group of Meridian Opening cultivators had entered from " somewhere" in Soft Meadows, they had then followed a compass inside without mapping anything, then promptly followed the compass back out when they encountered the flood dragon. The only worthwhile information was that they encountered the flood dragon roughly a 2 and a half days journey directly away from Soft Meadows at a Meridian Opening cultivator's casual pace.

"If only two and a half days' casual pace by a Meridian Opening cultivator meant anything." Faust sighed. Satheon looked half dead, evidently dreading the searching part of hunting a spirit beast. Arguably the searching and tracking was 90% of hunting, but Faust stayed his stray thoughts. Phalecia didn't comment, simply looking down at the valley eyes wide. Faust led the group to about 200 kilometers from Soft Meadows.

The gorge was formed by an ancient fight with a demon at the Deity Transformation realm, a splotch of destroyed land about 600 kilometers in diameter, surrounded by Soft Meadows on three sides and Verdant Cliffs on the last. The group spread out until they could barely see each other, then they began moving in a rough semi-circle parallel to the sheer cliff of Soft Meadows. Each of them scanned the ground in their area for signs worth investigating.

A six hundred meter serpent flood dragon would undoubtedly leave tracks visible from the sky. Quickly, the sky began to darken, the warm sensation of sun on the skin being replaced by the chilling cool air of night. It had taken most of the day from the sect until the group had arrived at Dark Petal Valley. Faust raised a hand and a violent glowing ball began shining above his fingers with increasing brightness, signaling to the rest of the group to come over.

"Did you find something?" Sirius asked excitedly. Faust shook his head.

"No. It's getting dark and the forest is also dark, we won't be able to see anything so it's better to find a place to sleep and meditate." He explained. Satheon nodded along, agreeing. Faust led the group to the ground, through a thick canopy of dark leaves and branches.

"Wow." Sirius commented on the scenery.

"It's all dark grey." Phalecia completed the thought. Faust agreed with the two. The leaves and trunks of the trees were grey, almost black under the shade of the canopy. The dirt looked like ash and the mud was pale, closer to grey than brown. Even the vines and underbrush were pale, dull colours. With no convenient path to follow, Faust pulled out a spare, ordinary iron sword from his spatial pouch and controlled it with his flying sword technique.

The spare sword began spinning in place before Faust willed it to move forward, mowing down the thick underbrush and shaving off parts of trees to make a clear path forward. The group set about finding a place to rest, preferably somewhere where the ground didn't squelch beneath their boots and which wasn't visible from the sky.

"A spirit herb." Phalecia suddenly said.

"Where!" Sirius jumped her.

"I smell it coming from that way." Phalecia pointed. Faust changed directions towards the spirit herb. He wasn't surprised. The Clear Mirror Sect Territory occupied somewhere around 200 million square kilometers. Most of that area was uninhabited by humans. Mortals and those at Qi Refining or below more or less didn't travel outside of their region.

As such, most travel was done by flying artifacts, leaving a majority of land untouched, ripe with spirit beasts and spirit herbs that could only be discovered by walking along. The group quickly found a shallow pond that looked like black ink. A pale green plant with several thin stalks held glowing blue bulbs that swayed gently. Sirius poked the ink with her sword.

"Seems safe," she said.

"Thats why you need to learn some sensing or pupil techniques." Faust chided. Sirius shrugged, "I won't really need them once I have divine sense, no?" Faust raised a brow, "one way or another, you will eventually need to learn a sensing or pupil technique if you plan for your divine sense to be any good." Faust activated the Clear Mirror Pupil technique, dared not look up and peered into the inky pond.

"Iron Spine Crocodile?" Faust guessed, looking at the ink.

"Does it matter?" Satheon asked, stepping up to the edge of the pond, raising his halberd up high and pouring Spirit Qi into it.

"Are you using the Clear Mirror Pupil?" Faust asked, taking a few steps back with the other two.

"I don't need pupil techniques!" Satheon roared, "These muscles of mine whisper the beast's location to me!" He smiled madly as he swung his halberd down with brute force.

"..." Faust tried not to look exasperated. Was he the only person who had learnt even a single pupil or sensing technique? BOOOOM! The ink pond exploded. The ground shook, a beast's roar was cut short. Silence followed for a small moment. The pond's water began raining down, tip tapping against the ground and shrubbery as a nearby tree tilted and fell to the side, caught in the destructive shockwave born from sheer force.

Faust shielded the rest of the group from the inky water with a thin barrier of simple Spirit Qi. Looking at where the pond had previously been, Satheon yanked his halberd out of the crushed skull of a large black crocodile with a steel back.

"Hah!" With a grunt, the halberd was freed of the corpse.

"Poor early Open Palace spirit beast." Phalecia sighed regretfully.

"Is its corpse useful?" Sirius asked, stepping into the muddy former pond and poking the spirit beast corpse with her sword.

"Hmm…" Faust thought about it, then he stepped closer, running a hand across the steel spines on the creature's back.

"I guess the Living Iron would be useful in some artifact forging?" He guessed, pulling out a skinning knife and beginning to separate the back hide from the surrounding flesh.

"It's blood is heavy with Metal Qi, it could be a decent external item for some alchemy recipes." Phalecia poked a gloved finger into the crushed skull, rubbing the blood between her fingers as if she were inspecting a spice.

"Do you want to collect it?" Faust asked. Phalecia stayed silent for a few moments before responding, "Yes please, senior brother."

"Did you bring a container?" Phalecia produced a large silver flask from her own spatial pouch. Faust finished pulling off the Living Iron hide, then the spare sword he had been using to clear brush stabbed into the crocodile's tail with effort before lifting it up and hanging it above the ground. Blood began flowing from the open skull and Phalecia began using some technique or other to siphon the blood into the large flask.

"It's full." Phalecia commented, corking and stowing the flask away. Faust let the beast corpse fall to the ground, then yanked out the iron sword by hand before letting it float beside him. The group's attention turned to the spirit herb that had managed to survive Satheon's crushing brute force attack, apart from Faust who focused on scraping the flesh from the Living Iron hide.

"What is it?" Sirius asked, putting her face so close to the plant her eye almost touched it.

"Glowing Water Qi Berries." Phalecia answered.

"Is that what this specific plant is called or…"

"There can be tens of thousands of variants of the same herb. From the Qi and its looks, this herb falls under the Glowing Water Qi Berry categorisation."

"... What specifically is it?"

"I don't know." Phalecia responded flatly, "I know it's either a high second level herb or a low third rank herb."

"Well… Just collect it and let's go." Satheon hurried, wiping blood, fat, pieces of bone and other matter from his halberd with a cloth that he promptly threw on the ground without a care. Phalecia pulled out a handle with a small blade at the tip as well as a small spade, as well as a small wooden box. With delicate movements, Phalecia spent several minutes carefully excavating the herb without damaging its roots.

"Why are you taking so long to harvest a herb??" Satheon asked a genuine question, while Sirius watched happily from the side, poking at the dirt before her eyes lit up and she cut three chunks of meat from the crocodile beast, shoving some herbs into them and wrapping them up in some kind of special paper. Ignoring Satheon's question, Phalecia cautiously removed the dirt clumped up and trapped between roots and carefully placed the herb into the box along with some leaves from the surrounding trees as padding.

With practiced movements, Faust had also finished removing all the flesh from the Living Iron hide.

"Lets continue," Faust said, seeing the group was done here. Over two or so hours of trudging through the forest, the group took several detours for worthwhile spirit beasts or spirit herbs.

"This looks as good a spot as any." Faust tapped the ground, digging in a bit with his foot.

"Dry, covered by trees and flat." Satheon nodded.

"Then, let's rest until it's bright out before we continue searching." Faust said. Sirius didn't have her own spatial pouch, so she bounced up to Faust's side and rummaged through his spatial bag, retrieving a cooking pot and some bamboo containers filled with herbs and spices.

"A meal?" Satheon asked.

"Naturally!" Sirius cheered.

"You didn't cook in any of our missions?" Satheon looked downcast.

"Didn't have any good meat at the time!" Sirius claimed. Using one chunk of meat she had cut off the crocodile beast earlier, Sirius forced Faust to find a flat stone and heat it up with Fire Qi while Phalecia was forced to prepare a pot of boiling water. Half an hour later, the tantalising smell of herbed and spiced grilled crocodile meat wafted out. Faust quickly snapped a barrier of Spirit Qi around the group to prevent the smell attracting beasts.

Using some simple, tough stone plates and bamboo chopsticks that she had stuffed into Faust's spatial bag in the morning, Sirius served a full course meal with meat and rice.

"Mmhmm.. I could get used to this Junior Sister." Satheon savoured the food after tearing a piece of meat off his chopsticks. Even Faust and Phalecia ate with gusto.

"Hehe. Thank you senior brother Satheon." Sirius smiled before turning to Faust, "What about you senior brother Faust?" Faust wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, "what else can I say. It's incredible as always."

"Hehehe." After Satheon was somehow forced into cleaning up as the only person who hadn't helped with cooking, the group all sat in a circle and began light meditation to purge the toxins that built up in the mind without sleep and to recover their spent Spirit Qi while relaxing their bodies. They wouldn't dare sleep in this place or fall too deep into meditation.