Chapter 43:

Chapter 43

~~~~Bao Xiaoli~~~~

There was a tension in the air, all of us could feel it.

We walked without any small talk, our eyes alert to our surroundings as we prepared for a surprise that never came and yet it felt ever closer. It was the sound of birds that was the most distracting.

Little chirps, the occasional caw of crows, all of them and more sounded sporadically around us.

All of us stopped as Tai raised one of his hands to get us to stop and pointed with his spear into the air once he brought the hand down.

In front of us, up into the air were two crows, one of them grooming to other. They stopped once they saw us, the two black birds looking at us from above before going back to what they were doing.

‘It feels unnatural.’ I remarked to myself.

I was considering whether or not to take my sling and kill them as they were not hostile, and wasn’t that the strangest thing?

Ever since five of us left the Outpost everything we’ve seen has been hostile to one degree or another. Animals, cherry bannermen and other aspirants, all of them had to one degree or another interacted with us with some level of violence or the threat of it. Now there was none of that and it felt wrong, peace and serenity were not wrong and yet they felt as if they were.

I have seen crows groom each other and ignoring me when I wandered in-between villages or spending time with Tai. I have seen wolves be less hostile when herding sheep then the squirrels in this forest, and now the sight of what was once normal felt wrong.

Things that didn’t care for us, untouched by the madness of Qi, just spending their lives freely without regard for the fact I was there and was thinking of killing them because I wanted to eat their meat.

Also, I’ve never worn black feathers, I wonder how they’ll fit?

“Do we bother?” I asked, my right hand already reaching for the sling rope tied to my hip.

My left hand was reaching for the pouch with the stone bullets too, it would not do to waste time if the crows were meant to die. The black feathers would probably not fit unfortunately, but maybe Mei Lin could make them work.

None of the others seemed willing to speak, too caught on in what this moment meant. The animals were normal here which meant we were far enough from the river for the Qi to not have turned them mad.

We are almost done.

“No, we won’t disturb the peace if we don’t have to.” Tai answered and lowered his spear.

I stopped reaching for my sling and bullets and started walking one step after Tai started walking. The others followed after us. Da Xiu and Yu were the next and they were followed closely by the Lins. The last one left was Ya Xue who was staring at the two crows for seconds longer than everyone else, before she too started walking.

Around us the forest continued acting like a normal forest and not the strange aberration we’ve spent weeks traveling through. I could hear the birds chirping, I saw some even eat insects and I even saw a rat scurry around and run when it saw us.

All of this put me on edge as the pressure kept on building and the minutes passed. All of the instincts that have been formed since I became a cultivator started screaming at me that this was not normal.

“What are you guys going to do once we finish the Trial? I know I am going to sleep on the first bed I can.” Cheng Lin asked jovially out of nowhere.

“I’ll go for a proper bath, using a wet towel is better than nothing, but nothing compares to a proper hot bath.” Haoran Lin replied, just as happily.

And just like that, the tension was gone and was replaced by giddiness.

A bath, it’s been weeks, ancestors I’d kill for a bath, which is not saying much these days, but I’d do it eagerly which has to count for something.

A dam broke and everyone started speaking of what they will do once we’re at the sect. Yu and Da Xiu wanted to make up for the ‘ time they lost’ while babying the civilians, Ya too wanted to take a bath and then find something to carve to commemorate the occasion, even Mei Lin said she would like to sleep under a roof for a change and each of us exchanged encouragement and well wishes now that we were close to the finish line.

“I am not going to stop you from talking, but please also continue to pay attention to our surroundings, the Trial is not over until we’re at the sect and the last thing we need is to get complacent when we should be the most cautious.” Tai said and cut through the chattering.

I blushed in embarrassment at his words. He was right we should probably not stop paying attention to our surroundings, we’re still in the forest after all.

Beasts aren’t the only dangerous thing here.

“Do you think something else awaits us here? Some sort of hidden test?” Yu asked what all of us were thinking.

Tai chuckled mirthlessly, his voice echoing through the forest. It felt as if the forest itself responded to it as all sounds ceased when Tai started to speak.

“I have taken two written tests in this life, one to become a first tier scholar and the second was the written trial. In both of them the last question was always the hardest and this entire trial is too a test. No reason it won’t follow the same logic.” Tai answered with a wry smile.

“The last question is always a trap question in every test.” Mei Lin said and nodded sagely.

My brows furrowed in concentration as I tried to remember if that was true. I’ve only ever taken one written test in my life, but that last question did not feel like a trap question.

“How is the question ‘What is a spirit root’ a trap?” I asked everyone.

That was the final question of the written trial and while it was something I’ve never heard of, it didn’t sound that hard. I knew what roots are, I knew what a dantian and meridian were, and I knew that anything related to the soul meant cultivation.

“Spirit Roots are something nobody knows about, because it’s not written anywhere, I don’t know if they’re even real, as they are meant to do the same thing as Meridians and Dantian at the same time. It’s knowledge nobody is meant to know exactly what it is, but that you have to guess at. If you show too much knowledge of it, then it means you cheated and someone else gave you the answer, if you don’t answer correctly it means you just memorized answers and can’t think for yourself and if your answer is too different from the others then it looks suspicious. The written Trial always has such a question and most of us get used to them because the pre-trial examinations have similar questions that are a lot harder.” Ya Xue answered with a fond smile.

She was reminiscing about her old life, like she sometimes does. It was obvious in the way she spoke, even as my new instincts was to feel that I was being looked down upon by my junior.

These new instincts are tiresome things, they constantly seek slights, constantly looking for a hidden barb in every word even if it’s there or not. I don’t want to feel them, I would rather just look at what people say and take them at face value, because most people will speak like that.

It’s when they’ve proven themselves to be different than most that you must start looking for a hidden meaning. I suppose cultivators are different than most, but Ya Xue was not like that.

She was a friend and a good junior for me to look after.

“Why don’t city folk just go to the provincial examination then? I imagine it would be easier to just go there and not do the pre-trials.” I asked her.

The question was aimed at her and the Lins, they’re the ones from the Prefecture’s capital, while the rest of us are from provincial towns or the surrounding villages.

Ya shrugged and gave us a helpless look.

“I don’t know, I never thought about it to ask or find out.” She answered.

It was Haoran Lin that answered as his siblings looked towards him. It seemed like he had tried to find that out.

“Time. We are told told the exact day of the trial a week before it happens. We know the rough time it happens, once every few years, but the exact day we find out a week before and the exact hour the day before. Small towns and villages have a much longer time in-between the Trials to not depopulate them if they do manage to pass the written trial. Walking, riding or taking a carriage takes time and from the moment you hear of where the trial is held to the time you can get there it’s usually too late and if you want to try it you need to guess and you need to be between sixteen and twenty-two to take the Trials so you have limited chances to try.” He answered.

“How do you know all that?” Yu Zong asked curiously.

I was wondering that myself. The explanation made sense but I wouldn’t even know where to even get to learning this sort of thing.

“Cheng and Haoran got it into their heads to become cultivators, despite me wanting them to find a safe thing to do, like becoming a bannerman or something else like a baker. Haoran spent an entire year traveling to villages like a vagrant to ask them about how the trials are held there because Cheng realized that provincials don’t have access to the necessary knowledge to pass our pre-trials and thought they were getting something else to do.” Mei Lin answered, her voice thick with annoyance.

She still would have preferred that her brothers weren’t cultivators and neither was she. I could understand, I was certainly not fully convinced of it myself when I started training for it, but Tai convinced me that it would help our families if we do succeed.

Cultivators are powerful, wealthy and respected. A single one of them in our family would allow our families to live well and not have to work themselves until they died, because everyone has to work. The sheep don’t care for your bones creaking and the fields seem to feed on your suffering, from how much work they need put into them to produce food.

Power is appreciated, but the idea that my parents won’t just drop dead one day while working and instead might actually live a few decades more is the only reason I agreed to join Tai in this whole cultivator business.

“Yes, Haoran went to the villages and I spent the same year trying to scour libraries over any scrap of knowledge I could while also preparing materials for us to be ready for the preliminary tests.” Cheng Lin continue where his brother left off.

“And it was my duty to make sure you were fed, while the two of you did exactly what I did not want you to do.” Mei Lin interjected sourly.

The two men chuckled awkwardly at that and I decided that I wanted nothing to do with that conversation. There are family complications that are private even among family, things that you only discuss with your siblings and that your cousins or even parents are not to get involved in, and this conversation had exactly that sort of feeling.

Mei Lin is an ice blooded, even if she can pretend to be otherwise and Tai told me that she feels emotions from what he’s been able to see, or better say smell. I didn’t understand the explanation and I’d rather not bother with it.

She is kept loyal by Tai and he said he’ll look into fixing it and that’s all I need to know.

I decided to take my attention from the conversation and focus on my surroundings. I did not forget the fact that we were still possibly in danger, but I knew that the danger would be low most likely.

Tai and little Ya were the only ones with Water Meridians and the only ones with any chance of possibly evading Ya’s ears or Tai’s nose were those like them of which there were none in this trial. Beasts were also a non-issue, albeit that was a bit of a gamble, but the presence of normal animals did make it less likely, especially as the crows we found weren’t even startled by us.

The forest was the same as we walked. The same trees greeted us as we walked, the same birds continued to sing and insects buzzed. The minutes passed and the conversation around me started and died only to start and die again.

Yu looked around, her puzzled face turning into shock before she was gone and so was everything else.

I looked around frantically and found nobody. There was nothing but a gray world of mists.

“Tai!” I shouted.

Or at least I tried to, I couldn’t even hear my voice. I couldn't her my steps, the animals or even the forest.

I couldn't even hear my heartbeat.

“Tai, Yu, little Ya!” I continued trying to shout, and I heard nothing.

The world around me was gray and I… I was lost.

“Anyone? Is there anyone that can hear me?”