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Mei negotiating our destination was like a strange form of dowsing.

“We want to charter a carriage for tomorrow,” she said to a Pavilion attendant.

“Okay, a carriage for tomorrow. What is your destination?” the attendant responded with a pleasant tone.

“No,” said Mei quickly, “we need the carriage in two days.”

“Two days?” asked the attendant.

“Three,” said Mei.

“Thr—”

“Four.”

This continued until they finally settled on a date for the following week.

“Okay, a carriage in eight days,” said the bewildered attendant. “Where do you want to go?”

“The Rising Sun Empire,” said Mei with confidence.

“Rising Sun in eight days?”

“No,” responded Mei instantly, “to the territory of the Flowing Mountain Sect.”

“Flowing Mountain?”

“Yes, Flowing Mountain in eight days,” Mei nodded.

I watched as they continued this back and forth. Finally, Mei decided we would be traveling to Dark Earth City in the territory of the Flowing Mountain Sect. It was a relatively small settlement on the eastern edge of their lands, but it still had a Blue Wind Pavilion branch location we could stop at.

With travel plans in place, the next step was to prepare for our continued cultivation along the trip.

We had decided not to advance to Grandmaster until after leaving, and without being a Grandmaster, I didn’t want to sell any Rank 3 pills. However, I still wanted to begin stockpiling them for my own use. Purchasing ingredients myself risked throwing up red flags within the various Pavilion factions, so again, I had Mei handle these transactions. I don’t know exactly how she did it, but she managed to procure enough herbs so we would have three pills each, and I didn’t notice any overly attentive Pavilion managers breathing down my neck about it.

Aside from these Rank 3 pills, I also concocted everything we would need for our final breakthrough into the Grandmaster realm. I also made some supplemental pills for us to use on the road. Neither of us was a fighter, so I prepared explosive pills, fasting pills, and other odds and ends that would help us out of a bad spot. I didn’t want to use them, but better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them.

WuJing was surprisingly supportive of our decision to leave early. He provided me with a silver membership badge I could use to prove my position within the Pavilion and assured me that he would take care of any problems that arose due to our swift departure. As he told me before, as the guarantor of my membership, he would still get credit for my actions whether he was with me or not, so splitting up didn’t bother him over much.

Once our preparations were finished and the day of our departure arrived, we said our final goodbyes to people in the Pavilion, and Mei and I boarded our carriage.

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“Mei,” I said once our carriage had departed, “I’m thinking we should advance to Grandmaster during this ride. It would be good if we reached it before entering the Flowing Mountain’s territory. What do you think?”

“It would make acquiring Rank 3 ingredients easier,” she said with an uncertain tone. She paused for a moment, then spoke with confidence. “No, not now. We need to wait.”

I nodded my head in acknowledgment. While I couldn’t advance, I needed to make good use of this time, so I began studying the Earth Rank techniques Secretary Jiang had provided me with in my last life. They contained a variety of profound mysteries that I wouldn’t be able to grasp until after I had cultivated them myself, but I was looking for ways to improve my Rank 3 cultivation technique.

Currently, the Grandmaster-level technique I used formed three separate dantians. One for wood qi, one for fire qi, and one for karmic energy. This seemed unnecessarily complicated to me, and it felt like it hampered the flow of qi in my body more than helping it, but I wasn’t sure how to improve the situation. I needed more inspiration from other techniques to try to find a solution.

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The Rank 3 Earth Rank cultivation technique was incomprehensible to me without a strong foundation in its preceding stages, so I started my studies from Rank 1.

When we arrived in Dark Earth City, I had made very little progress, but I was beginning to understand the barrier between the Profound and Earth Ranks. It was clear to me that Profound Rank techniques were lacking something, but I was unable to determine exactly what.

“We’re here,” said Mei, breaking me from my research.

I wasn’t sure what she had been focused on during the weeks of our travel, but she seemed eager to spend time outside of the carriage.

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The Blue Wind Pavilion in Dark Earth City was only a shadow of the one in Dragon Gate. The main office of the Flowing Mountain branch was nearer to the sect’s center of power, and this location was just a small-time operation.

The building was not a massive pagoda. Instead, it was a simple two-story shop that resembled others along the street. The only things that set it apart were the distinctive blue and red colorings of the Pavilion and the exquisite gold ornamentations.

Inside, only two young women were present, but since no customers were around, they were both available.

“Hello,” I began, but Mei stepped in front of me to address the attendant.

“We would like to purchase a selection of Rank 3 herbs,” Mei said smoothly before pausing abruptly. “They are for our master, and we cannot keep him waiting too long.”

“Of course,” the attendant replied, “which do you require?”

I let Mei handle the transaction. After it was complete, she turned away without even looking at me and walked out the door. I followed behind without speaking, giving her a position as my superior.

As she walked down the street, she subtly swerved left and right as she spotted different people, this pointed her in the direction of various shops, inns, and side streets where others were present. After a long, meandering walk we ended up in a modest inn where she reserved separate rooms for us.

“How long are we staying here?” I asked.

“You tell me,” she said with a smile.

“One day?” I asked.

“No.”

“Two?”

“No.”

“More than a week?”

“Yes.”

After a long series of back-and-forths, we decided on a time of two and a half months.

“Should I advance during our wait?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, before confirming again, “yes you should.”

Taking her guidance as gospel, I settled in and got to work.

I had not yet deciphered any new special ways to improve my Rank 3 technique, so I simply followed the same path I did in my last life. I made three beachball-shaped dantians and connected them together.

After following Mei out of the Wastes, my feelings of detachment from this life had grown into a sense of transience. In this life, I was only a passer-by. Because of this feeling, I had a hard time concentrating when forming my dantians. The mental effects of my cultivation technique kept me focused enough on advancing, but advancing from Master to Grandmaster was a process that required countless hours of meticulous work, and I didn’t have the drive necessary.

Since I lacked the necessary focus on concentration, several small errors crept into my dantians. This wouldn’t be enough to stop me from advancing, and most cultivators had worse dantians, so I decided to leave them be and use them to learn what effect they would have.

After my successful advancement, I began helping Mei. Her dantian was simple, and the quality she ended up with was far superior to what I had made for myself. Last life, I had been careful about not helping her too much and having her do most of the work. This was to prepare for helping SuYin. However, this time I had no such concerns. We both concentrated and did our utmost to provide her with the highest quality dantian we could create.

Looking at the flow of qi within Mei, it made me feel that the multiple dantian setup I was trying to work with was going in the wrong direction. One mass containing all the energy of the body, that was what a dantian was supposed to be. How would that be possible when cultivating with two distinct elements, though? They would interact and cause countless problems.

“We are leaving tomorrow,” said Mei, breaking me out of my thoughts. “I’ve arranged everything. We’ll leave Flowing Mountain territory through the southwest, heading into the Plum Blossom Kingdom, but we’ll just cut through it before heading southeast into the Empire of Tranquil Springs. The total trip should be about two weeks. Our next stop will be the Capital of Spring.”

“Alright, sounds good to me,” I said, not caring about the details.

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As it turned out, I maybe should have asked for a few more details about how we would be traveling.

This two-week trip was not done in a fancy, well-maintained carriage from the Blue Wind Pavilion. Instead, Mei seemed to have gone with the lowest-bidder approach. The wheels and axles of the carriage she requisitioned were in good repair, so I didn’t think we would need to worry about them breaking on our journey, but that was about the only good thing I could say about the pile of sticks she led me to.

The carriage had been painted at one time, but only the gods would know when that was. Only flecks of green and black dotted the bare wood, giving it a rotting appearance. Holes had been punched through several boards, and while some had been replaced, the majority hadn’t. Worse, the seats inside were made from moth-ridden cloth and provided no cushioning.

I gave Mei a look of mixed confusion, disgust, and worry, but she just smiled at me.

“Our carriage awaits,” she said in a chipper tone.

Without waiting for a response, she jumped on board. When she did, the floorboards creaked ominously. Shaking my head, I could only follow after.

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We traveled this way for over three years, never staying in any place for more than a few months.

Sometimes, we would enter a Blue Wind Pavilion branch and I would offer my services as an itinerant alchemist member, but other times we would stay in rundown out-of-the-way places. We didn’t know where we would be heading next, and neither of us knew what our final destination would be, but we continued heading in a roughly southeasterly direction, toward the Brilliant Sun Empire.

The long journey gave us both significant time for cultivation. Overall, the qi in the outside world was far denser and more abundant than it had been in the Wastes, but it fluctuated up and down as we journeyed. This didn’t affect either of us much, though, since we both relied entirely on Qi Gathering Pills for our advancements.

After each advancement, we only waited until the moment our newly condensed qi had thoroughly flushed out our meridians before advancing again. At the end of our long journey, we had both reached Martial Grandmaster Peak. I considered attempting an advancement to False Lord to lock in my credits and learn more about that stage, but I listened to Mei and desisted.

The end of our journey was the capital of the Eight Flower Kingdom, Hundred Flower City. The city we had been planning to travel to in only two months in my last life had taken us years to reach this time.

“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked Mei.

“Yes.” Her face showed a determined look. “There is something here that will help us advance. I can feel it.”