"Char Char Char Char!" Liam said, coming running in to the room at top speed while shouting my name.

I reached out and remotely turned on the silence seal. That thing had really come in handy in the days after István had installed it. He'd put in a few others that only him and I knew about, the sort of things that would come in handy should the Circle suddenly decide we weren't worth the expense.

Or Liam's constant shouting pissed them off enough to kick us out. One of the two.

"What, little man." I asked, looking at him still more or less saying my name continuously.

"Look at this!" He immediately plopped down on his butt and crossed his legs. He lowered his head and put his hands together, making the very familiar 'cultivation' meditation pose that meant he was working on his inner energies.

I saw his brow furrow, and looking at his aura, I could see the barest vestiges of Nebula circulating around. Steeve hopped into his lap, as if trying to help. He seemed annoyed that he couldn't manage to show me what he wanted to right off the bat, and I saw his brow knit together even tighter, like he was trying to squeeze the Nebula out via force.

*Brraaaaaaaaaap*

His eyes popped open as my jaw dropped. He'd farted so loud my ears were ringing. Seriously, even with the seal of silence I was certain that sucker had vibrated the ground below the building. Steeve was stumbling around, smoking, her fur singed and her eyes pointing two entirely different directions.

She fell over onto her back, bursting into flames before turning into a pile of ash. A single swirl of smoke rose from her cremains.

"Uh… excuse me?" He said, his face redder than a tomato.

"Well, that was quite the surprise you've shown me there!" I teased him, crying tears trying to suppress my laughter.

"Shut up Charley! That wasn't it!" He yelled, running out of the room. Steeve popped back into existence in my lap as I held my hand out to pet her. If I put some Nebula into my palm and held it over my lap she was there before the hand reached her every single time. Little fox liked her some pettins.

"You'll have to show me next time!" I shouted back, bursting into giggles.

My attendant Qīwù popped around the corner just after he left. "Is something amiss with the Little Prince?" she asked. She'd dropped the 'Venerable' after I'd started gluing her to the ceiling with my Nebula every time she said it, something Steeve was endlessly amused by. I realized that it went against the social rules of the Circle, but she was always with me, so I told her that she needed to stop when it was just the two of us. Eventually it sank in, which was good, because I was on the last sliver of my sanity about it all.

"No, he just really needed to vent to me about something," I said, somehow managing to keep a straight face through sheer force of will.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"I… see. Anything I can do for you?"

"Yes, actually," I said, finally having questions she could answer without me having to go poke around and be nosey about the whole thing. Her countenance brightened up significantly at hearing this.

"I'd like to hear from you how the members of my former sect are doing with their cultivation."

"Can you not determine their progress on your own?" Qīwù immediately asked, making me feel dumb. Apparently at higher cultivations, you had extended senses able to reach across the whole of the sect. I did not have that, instead having extremely precise senses in a limited distance. She didn't know that, though, and I wasn't quite sure how to react. I felt my brain tingle a bit as Celistar bailed me out.

"How able are you to meaningfully differentiate between two trees?" I asked, 'reading' the line out of my own head. "While they are different, could you identify them? Now… go and ask the botanist maintaining the Sect's fēngshuǐ. He will know every leaf, every stem."

What the hell, over? I thought internally. I didn't have a damn clue what it was I just said.

Qīwù looked like I'd just given her the moon. She slammed her fist into her palm, bowing very deeply, "Thank you for your teachings, Venerable." I briefly thought of what part of the ceiling needed decorating, but she seemed very sincere and I wasn't about to ruin that honest respect. I knew where the line was.

Most of the time, anyway.

"They all are taking to our way like fish to water. Gran has joined the sessions and has a very unique approach. Little Prince and Sister Falling Snow are taking their first steps. Elder Mountain and Elder Scholar are particularly adept."

There was something unique about Steeve's translation services that turned the words they used into interesting equivalents. I knew what they were saying wasn't what I was hearing, but it worked both ways. And yet, somehow Gran had persuaded everyone to call her Gran. No idea how that even worked. As in, it matched what was under the translation, something you could hear if you thought about hearing it really hard - another neat trick of Steeve's.

Sister Falling Snow was Alessa. I wasn't quite sure where the 'falling snow' came from. Probably some reference to her appearance. Now that she had regular, full-time meals she had become so damn beautiful it was disgusting. Perfectly smooth skin, silky hair, and a flawless figure. I even caught Celistar craning her neck once. I looked exactly the same somehow. No fair!

I probably don't need to tell you who Elder Mountain and Elder Scholar were. People just assumed they were Elders, although I am guessing Brother Chào knew better. That said, I was aware he was suitably impressed with different aspects of their mastery. While the two cultivation methods shared similarities, they weren't the same, and we weren't trying to make them so. It was supposed to be a hybridization, not a bastardization.

It was dumb, but I really wanted to go join them. I was kind missing my family because we'd spent so much time together. But it wasn't appropriate for someone with such a lofty station to be monitoring everyone rather than spend time 'searching for the peak', as Celistar had put it.

We still had our discussions, but the last one had been a bit weird. She'd suddenly peace'd-out halfway through, saying something needed her attention. I wasn't sure where she rushed off to, save that it was east of us somewhere. I could feel her general direction now when she wasn't in my Soul Sea.

Which kind of validated her whole mantra that I should be working on self-improvement. She'd been vague about why it was necessary – or rather, what enemies would make it necessary for me to continue to accrue cultivation. I wasn't sure she knew either, but apparently there was something like the "Will of the World" that she could hear that we could not. A spirit thing. Which made me wonder if Steeve and Yuèyīng the 'Exalted One' could hear it too.

Man, I was really collecting a lot of spirits for some reason. Gotta catch them all, I guess.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.