Of all the places Seth expected to find himself, Elise's home was at the bottom of that list. Yet here he was, drinking tea at a small sitting table in her spacious quarters. She was preparing something for dinner. Seth wasn't sure what it was; smells of herbs and fruits wafted through the air, making Seth's mouth water.

  While he was sitting there, he looked around at the various odds and ends in the sitting room, keeping his eyes away from the two closed doors. There were various plants in the room. An eight-petaled purple flower mounted three-quarters of the way up the wall kept drawing his attention, but he wasn't sure why. He also wasn't sure if it would be rude to use his qi sight here.

  "Alright, meal's ready. Sorry it ain't much; just what I have left stir-fried together," Elise said, exiting the kitchen with two bowls.

  "It smells amazing, thank you."

  They ate in silence for a while. While he wished there was a bit of meat in the dish, the wide assortment of vegetables, fruits, and herbs left him satisfied. He felt a warmth rush through his stomach and looked inside; the food had qi in it? His eyes shot open and looked at Elise.

  "You like it?"

  "Yeah, but are you allowed to—"

  Elise barked out a laugh before saying, "Relax. All outer disciples are keyed into the karmic magic, so I'll know if I go too far."

  Seth breathed a sigh of relief, but then returned to eating, taking his time to enjoy the food. It felt like it was warming him up both inside and out. His eyes drifted to the eight-petaled flower.

  "Are you watching the qi in this room?" Elise asked.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Thought it would be rude."

  Elise released a raspy chuckle before saying, "It's not rude to look. It only gets rude if you start touching."

  "We're still talking about qi, right?" Seth asked. How does one start touching qi?

  "Of course. Look already."

  Seth opened his qi sight, and his eyes widened. All the plants in the residence were taking ambient qi and ordering it, creating a stable cycle of qi centering on the eight-petaled flower, which processed it, doing... something. The flower was then releasing the processed qi into the room.

  "Are the flowers..."

  "A natural formation for gathering aspected qi to cultivate with. It can be re-aspected by switching out some plants."

  "I've never seen anything like it. It's incredible."

  "There's a lot of the world you haven't seen, young man," she said, the right side of her face twitching up into a lopsided smirk.

  "Young? I'm not..."

  "Yes, you are," she said with a laugh. "How old do you think I am?"

  Seth took a careful look at Elise before answering, but he couldn't find a hint of a wrinkle or blemish on her skin, nor a single gray hair on her head.

  "In your twenties, maybe thirty?"

  "I just turned eighty-three a few months back."

  Seth sat back to process what she had just said. She's almost twice my age? How?

  "And now we get to the primary purpose of why I invited you here," she said, her face settling into a serious expression.

  "Because I'm clueless about how this world works?"

  "Correction, you're dangerously clueless. And until you fix that, you're going to get used and taken advantage of. Right now, the karmic seal is preventing the sect from robbing you blind, but it won't be around past the initiation. You need to get your act together."

  "I know, but—"

  "No excuses, Seth. Do you even know what the next realm of cultivation is? What it entails?"

  "Um... foundation establishment, I think?"

  "Amazing, you know the term. Do you know what it means?"

  "Not really. I know it has something to do with attuning various organs with qi, but—"

  "No. The qi attunement describes the end result, though the process does significantly more. Do you even know how to cross over to foundation establishment?"

  "There's a process? I thought it just happened once you compressed enough qi."

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  Elise groaned and put her head in her hands.

  "Why would you think that? It's almost like you saw illustrations of the..."

  "That's pretty much what happened. I got diagrams with no actual explanation."

  "Well, foundation establishment is about reforging organs with qi. A rather unpleasant but necessary process. Do you know which organ typically gets reforged first?"

  "No, but I'd probably go with the eyes myself. It seems like you can launch attacks I couldn't even see without it."

  "Haha, that's correct. Most cultivators already have their eyes planned before they even break through so they can get it all done in one go. Being a blind foundation establishment cultivator is practically a death sentence."

  "May I ask a personal question?"

  "You may ask. I may smash your face in if it's too inappropriate," she said with a toothy grin.

  "What does any of this have to do with the spar we had earlier?" Silence hung in the air between them for a few seconds, though those seconds felt like minutes.

  "Seth, open your qi sight again and look at me."

  Seth did, and at first he saw the normal nothing he saw when looking at anyone above his level. However, as the veil dropped, he saw a fountain of qi erupting forth from her dantian. This fountain of qi cycled between her eyes, skin, heart, stomach, and lungs, changing hues all the while. He was entranced by the cycle, though something about it felt... off. A memory sprung to the front of his mind. It was one variation of the foundation establishment process. One that ended in destruction.

  "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but something seems... wrong with this cycle."

  "What kind of qi sight technique do you have? Have to be careful around you. Short answer is yes, there is something wrong. However, seeing something about the techniques you use and how you fight gave me a clue."

  "How?"

  "It gave me inspiration."

  "And you set up the spar because you... guessed this would inspire you?"

  "Not guessed, divined."

  "Divined, how does that work?"

  "That... is a bit more than I can explain to you without risking the karmic seal," she said, slightly bowing her head in apology.

  "Well, glad it was of some use to you," Seth said, still a bit put out by the admission that she had been chasing a flash of inspiration. If she hadn't gotten that flash, would the fight have kept going? No, that would have killed me.

  "Although I can give you one more little hint about something else. Open your qi sight and watch."

  Seth opened his qi sight as she summoned a small swarm of purple gemstone spikes. The qi began swirling, and the spikes organized in a rotating circle, all of them pointed at his head. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck, and he swallowed. While keeping his sight open, he saw another transformation, where all the qi wove together into a complex lattice. The spikes, as if following the lattice, melted and merged into a solid purple wall. The qi of the wall began oscillating back and forth in micro-patterns he could barely see, and the surface rippled as if it were water. Finally, she let the technique go, and the gemstone wall shattered into dust and dissipated.

  As he watched the small demonstration end, wheels began turning in his head. Have I been overlooking the power of the techniques I currently have?

  "Just want you to see that there's more you can do with your current techniques, so don't waste anymore contribution points on inferior techniques. Master what you already have," Elise said, smiling at Seth.

  "Thank you. Say, I may be asking to get punched for another personal question, but how did you end up joining this sect?"

  Her smile dropped into a slight frown, and her brow furrowed. "No punches this time. It's a fairly common story where I'm from. Father is poor, has an extra daughter he can't afford to feed, so arranges to marry her off. Rather than get married, she ran off and joined the first sect she could find that was accepting initiates."

  Seth almost asked a follow-up question, but something about the look in her eyes told him it would be an incredibly bad idea. He swallowed his question and plastered a neutral smile on his face.

  "Sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked."

  "No, it's fine. We're probably going to be working together for a while, so may as well get to know each other. That being said, what's your home like? You said you stumbled through a portal, so."

  "Very different. No cultivators or cultivation, for one thing. No free qi to cultivate with."

  "Is it possible for things to live in areas where there's no free qi?"

  "Last time I checked, there were roughly eight billion people on the planet I'm from. "

  "And none of them could...?"

  "No. Plenty of people claiming they could give you magic powers, but no actual magic powers."

  "That explains so much. Someone in their eighties..."

  "Would be old. If they were still alive."

  "I thought it was weird that you looked old, but some choose to allow some aging."

  "I wish that was a choice," said Seth, laughing at the thought of him choosing to look like a beaten old man.

  "So, did you have a family, or...?" she asked.

  "None that wanted anything to do with me," Seth said, more heat in his voice than he intended. "Sorry, I guess I still get emotional about that."

  "It's fine, though you're not allowed to hold it against me. I didn't get too mad when you asked about my family situation, remember?"

  "Yeah," said Seth, pulling out his wallet and flipping to a photo of his kids. He felt his vision blur, and he blinked to clear his eyes.

  "What are you looking at?" Elise asked playfully.

  "Photo of my kids."

  "But I thought—"

  "Doesn't mean I wanted to be cut out."

  An awkward silence hung between the two for a few minutes. After some time passed, Elise clapped her hands together and pushed a smile onto her face.

  "Anyway, thank you for your help today! I want to get some cultivation done before the night passes, so I think it's best we call it here."

  "Yeah, thanks for the meal. And the help," Seth said, trying not to awkwardly stumble over his words. Part of him wanted to offer to help clean up, but the part of him that just wanted out of that awkward situation won, and he was out of her living quarters in less than a minute.

  On his way back to his quarters, parts of their conversation replayed in his head. Shouldn't he have asked those questions? Or was it how testy he was when she asked questions of her own? Who knows, maybe I'm just overthinking... His thoughts didn't slow one bit even after he entered his room.

  [Food?]

  "Why is your first question always food?"

  [You had food. Why not me?]

  That... was a fair question. He checked his cultivation technique, and it was operating smoothly. Still, as smoothly as it ran on its own, it was even more effective when he concentrated on it. So, with a sigh, he sat down and started "cooking" for his passengers.

  Maybe I should have talked more about these guys. Would have been—

  Seth forced that thought down and threw himself into cultivation. Time had flown by, though it was still light out, so not that much time could have passed. At least, that's what he thought at first. When he stepped outside for some fresh air, he noticed the sect was unusually quiet for that time in the afternoon. After a few moments, he realized that it wasn't the afternoon. He had cultivated all through the night into the next morning.