[New Quest: Survive.]

[Objective: Escape the sect grounds without being captured.]

[Description: The Phoenix Clan has sent a retrieval party. They are here for your Divine Fire root. If captured, you will not be leaving on your own terms. Escape the gates close.]

[Time limit: Two hours.]

[Reward: Passage to the next arc.]

[Failure: You die. Also your brother dies.]

I stared at the last line.

"You fucking bastard don’t you dare touch my brother."

"Zhen."

"Did you get something annoying this time?....How long have we had?"

"Not much."

"Let’s Move."

***

The next morning the sect felt different.

Not visibly. But there was alertness of a place that was pretending to be normal while being aware that something was coming.

I noticed it at breakfast.

The senior disciples were sitting differently. Not together they were distributed across the hall in the usual pattern.

Zhen noticed it at the same time.

She chose to be visible to me and invisible to everyone else simultaneously,

Which produced the interesting effect of my appearing to be having a quiet conversation with empty air at the breakfast table.

"Something is happening," she said.

"I know."

"It started last night. After your core is established."

I looked at my bowl. .

"You ate my breakfast again."

"You were going to???"

"I was going to eat it. That is the point. The point is that I was going to eat it and now I cannot because you did."

"You can get more."

"That is not the issue and you know it."

She licked the spoon.

I got up and got more and came back to eat it, while watching the senior disciples watch the gate.

***

I found out an hour ago.

Leo found me after the morning session.

He did not call me over in front of everyone. He waited until the training ground had emptied and then appeared beside me as I was walking back toward my room.

"Walk with me," he said.

We walked not toward the dormitory but toward the outer edge of the sect grounds.

"Three carriages arrived at the outer gate this morning," he said. "Before dawn."

I kept walking.

"They carry the Phoenix Clan crest."

"The Phoenix Clan," Leo said, "is the ruling clan of this region. This sect operates under their authority."

"Why are they here," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"The Phoenix Clan sent representatives," he said.

"They arrived this morning. They are requesting to assess all current disciples with pure spiritual roots."

"Why?"

"There was a reading last night," he said. "The atmospheric array the sect maintains it had monitored unusual mana signatures in the surrounding area."

He paused. "Last night it registered a different kind of signature."

I thought about Zhen’s voice: A very small atmospheric disturbance.

"A pure fire root signature," I said.

He looked at me.

"Foundation Core establishment from a pure root," he said. "The last time that was registered in this region was forty-three years ago. The clan came within two days."

"What happened to the person?"

He was quiet.

"Leo," I said.

"She was taken to the main clan," he said.

"To cultivate under their supervision. To contribute her bloodline to the clan’s long-term cultivation lineage." He stopped walking. "She did not come back."

"The sect advisor has already agreed," The sect advisor was that girl’s father.

"He is meeting with them now," he said. "The meeting will last at least two hours. These negotiations are formal. There are protocols." He looked at me. "You have two hours."

"To do what."

He said nothing.

***

[EMERGENCY QUEST ACTIVATED.]

[Survive and Escape.]

[Description: The Phoenix Clan has sent a retrieval party. They are here for your Divine Fire root. If captured, you will not be leaving on your own terms. Escape the gates close.]

[Time limit: Two hours.]

[Reward: Passage to the next arc.]

[Failure: You die. Also your brother dies.]

"...."

I had gone back to my room and found Zhen already standing in the center of it with her tail puffed and her ears flat and the look of someone who had been listening to everything.

"They are here for you," she said.

"I already know," she said.

"Not for a general assessment. Specifically for you."

"The atmospheric disturbance from your Foundation Core formation was visible two days ago. Someone was watching it."

She looked at me. "I told you the ripples would start."

"You did," I said. "That was very accurate of you."

"This is not the time for sarcasm."

"I am going to bite you," she said.

"Later," I said. "First we need to not get taken by the Phoenix Clan."

That was an hour ago.

Now the quest was active and the two hours were already shorter than they had been.

****

We went out the window.

My window was on the top floor. The drop to the ground was not small. I looked at it and then at Zhen.

"I have a Foundation Core," I said. "I cannot fly."

"You can fall correctly," she said.

"That is a very different thing."

"Mana reinforcement," she said. "You have a core. Use it. Flood your legs before you land."

"I have had a core for two days."

"Then this is good practice."

She stepped out the window and dropped without any particular concern, landing on the ground below with ease.

I looked at the door, where the people from the Phoenix Clan were moving through the sect and Leo was probably running interference for as long as he could before the sect advisor overruled him.

I stepped out the window.

I hit the ground and flooded my legs with mana the way the theory said to and the theory was correct in that the impact did not shatter my bones, which was the relevant benchmark.

It hurt anyway.

"Good," Zhen said, looking at me on the ground. "You did not die."

"Very encouraging."

"Get up."

I got up.

We moved along the base of the building, staying close to the wall, in the direction away from the main gate.

The main gate was the obvious exit and therefore the one that would be watched first.

"Other exits," I said.

"The eastern wall has a section where the stone has deteriorated," Zhen said.

"I had seen it when we came in. A cultivator with a Foundation Core could break through it without difficulty."

"Breaking a wall is not subtle."

"Subtle is for people who have time," she said. "Move."

We went east.

The sect grounds at midday were not empty. Disciples moving between buildings,

The theory instructor crossing from one hall to another with her arms full of books, two sect guards on a patrol route that was about to take them past our current position.

I stopped.

Zhen grabbed my arm and pulled me sideways into the shadow of a storage building.

The guards passed four feet from us.

I was invisible to them because Zhen was projecting something.

The guards’ eyes moved across the space we were standing in and kept moving.

They went past.

"You can do that," I said.

"I can do many things," she said. "I was in a cave not a jar."

We kept moving.

***

The eastern wall was as she had described had a section roughly three meters wide where the stone had gone soft, the mortar between the blocks crumbling, the whole thing looking .

I put my hand against it.

The stone was cold and slightly damp and I could feel through it, the way the Foundation Core let me feel mana in my surroundings,

That there was nothing structural holding this section together except its own stubbornness.

"How hard," I said.

"Hit it like you mean it," Zhen said.

"But why me? You can do it with ease."

"I don’t want trouble so be fast."

I hit it and the wall cracked.

"Run," Zhen said, which was the least necessary piece of advice she had ever given me.

We were already running.

***

The forest outside the sect wall was not the same forest as the one with the cave. This one was thinner, the trees not yet old.

We ran through it.

Haa...

Hah...

[1 hour 31 minutes.]

I was breathing harder than I wanted to be. My legs held. That was the main thing.

Zhen ran beside me without apparent effort. She was not breathing hard.

She was a divine beast who had been sealed in a cave for three hundred years and running through a thin forest was not a significant challenge.

I thought briefly about how unfair that was.

"Where are we going," I said, between breaths.

"Away from the sect first," she said. "Direction after."

"That is not a plan."

"It is the beginning of a plan."

"Those are different things."

"Meow," she said, the conversation was finished.

We ran.

***

We stopped when the sounds from the sect had faded to nothing.

I put my back against a tree and breathed.

Zhen stood in the small clearing and looked back the way we had come, her head slightly tilted. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Are they following," I said.

"Two people. Moving fast. Phoenix Clan cultivation signatures." She turned back to me. "They will reach this point in approximately twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes."

"If they are moving at their current pace. If they increase it, less."

I thought about what I had. Foundation Core, two days old.

One month of a broken bed and a broken locker and a girl who stole my uniforms and a bald instructor who had pulled me aside to warn me because it was the only thing he could do.

"Zhen."

"Yes."

"The people following us. Can you handle them."

"I was sealed in a cave for three hundred years," she said.

"I was not weakened by it. The sealing simply prevented me from leaving. My cultivation was not affected."

"So yes."

"No."

"But why?"

"We have to form a bond."

"And when were you planning to tell me that?"

"When it became relevant."

"It’s relevant now."

"Yes."

"How do we do it?"

Zhen looked away.

"There are several methods."

"Good. Pick the fastest one."

Silence.

"Zhen."

"..."

"Zhen."

Her ears twitched.

"The fastest method is physical contact."

"Handshake?"

"No."

"Blood?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Zhen looked at the ground.

"I dislike this conversation."