The line moved painfully slowly, an endless crowd shuffling along zigzagging paths marked by dark blue ribbons. The air hummed with the indistinct buzz of a thousand conversations, occasionally punctuated by loud, futile protests or the (very) rare whoop of joy.
Through half-lidded eyes, Calvin watched the trio of harried-looking inner disciples in their gray-blue robes work behind the high counter that ran all the way along the Contribution Hall’s far wall. He’d long since given up on accomplishing anything useful while he waited. He’d spent his first hour in line idly cycling his qi, but now his reserves were mostly full and there were so many people around that it would be nearly impossible to filter out all the interference. He’d waste more proper meditation time later purifying his meridians than he’d save.
For what must have been the thousandth time he glanced down the line, recounting the people separating him from the break in the ribbon that allowed access to the exchange counter. There were nineteen of them now, down from the twenty there had been the last time he counted. Depending on what exactly they were here for, that meant he could be waiting here for as little as ten more minutes or, knowing his luck, a couple of hours.
He groaned internally and suppressed the urge to rub at his face. There were a lot of people here with nothing better to do than look around and gossip, and he had a reputation he was trying to restore. Well, more like establish. Restore would imply he’d ever had a good reputation. Getting visibly agitated in public would only make him look more like the impatient, ignorant bumpkin too many people saw him as already.
A spark of hope ignited when one of the clerks waved for the next person in line, only to die an ignoble death when the disciple in question withdrew a very familiar wooden box from his pack as he approached the counter. More fucking spiritual herbs. It wasn’t really a surprise—turning in spiritual herbs for contribution points was the most common way for outer disciples to hit their quotas—but it also took forever. Every single herb had to be individually examined and assessed, then checked against the most up to date value table.
The disciple set the box down on the counter and Calvin’s heart fell as the clerk opened it to reveal an entire bundle of the sect’s most commonly cultivated spiritual herb: the meridian stalk. Spiritual grass. An entire heaven’s damned bundle of it.
The girl before him in line, an outer disciple like him in a worn robe with rolled up sleeves, swore under her breath and Calvin was right there with her. Meridian stalks were worth at most a single contribution point for a perfect stalk, but they still had to be individually counted and examined. That bundle was probably worth ten or so points in total, but it would take the clerk as much as half an hour to establish that for sure. Usually that wouldn’t be a big deal, but usually there were at least a dozen clerks on duty. On a day like this, with the end of the quarter and thus the contribution quota coming up in just a few days? There should have been twice that number on duty, and probably one or two specialists on hand with appropriate techniques for cases like this one.
Instead there were three. Three! He’d thought it was bad last year when there had only been five on duty when he’d come by, but this was something else. He’d deliberately come early in the morning and several days before the deadline but even two whole hours before sunrise there had already been several hundred people inside. Some of them had been waiting since the day before, unwilling to lose their spots even though there had apparently only been a single clerk on duty overnight.
He understood why it was, no matter how stupid the result. The inner disciple tournament had begun just two days ago and just about all of them were competing, leaving only a tiny number of disciples available to man the counter. Usually the pay for Contribution clerks was attractive enough that there were plenty of qualified people to fill up the rosters, but entry into the tournament was perhaps the biggest benefit of being an inner disciple and few were willing to waste valuable last-minute preparation time. The sort of disciple with the broad expertise to work the counter also tended to be knowledgeable enough to have a real shot in the tournament. Things would normalize in a couple of days when disciples started getting eliminated, but at the same time thousands of desperate disciples scrambling for last-minute points would descend upon the hall and the lines would get even worse.
Calvin shuffled a few steps forward, closed his eyes, and focused on his breathing, not cycling but just looking inward. He did his best to block out the noise of the crowd and the chaotic currents of qi lapping against his skin like technicolored waves. One clerk was now counting grass, a second was identifying and evaluating a fancy looking spiritual lotus with sapphire petals (almost certainly a very nice find for an outer disciple—he was set for at least the next year of quotas if he was frugal), and the third was assessing a full pouch of tiny, malformed beast cores. It would be at least ten minutes until he needed to move again, longer if the boy with the lotus contested the clerk’s initial evaluation.
In his mind’s eye he could faintly see his spirit, a constellation of shining stars with faint, silvery lines connecting them. As he focused on it the image solidified—a hazy outline of his body with nodes and channels glowing brightly within. The entire system pulsed regularly, nodes brightening and dimming as barely perceptible sparks flowed through the channels.
For a moment he just admired it, feeling the telltale warmth of the qi circulating within his body in time with the pulsing of his spirit. When he cycled deliberately it was like having streams of heat running under his skin, but even when he wasn’t focusing on it his qi continued to move. It was like a second heartbeat, a soothing rhythm that declared that he was alive. Even after several years at the sect it still sent a little shiver of delight down his spine when he woke up each morning and felt it; undeniably proof that this was real, that he was a cultivator now.
Then he moved on, a silent twitch of his lips calling up his biggest secret and the reason that he, a young, penniless orphan from a town so small it rarely made it onto real maps, had been able to join one of the three great sects of Vivid Rainbow Cliffs (if admittedly the one with the loosest entry requirements).
“Codex,” he subvocalized, the subtlest way he’d found to call up the wondrous inheritance. The image of his spirit faded into the background, replaced by an ethereal, ancient-looking scroll of yellowed parchment. The scroll floated in his mind for a moment, so real that it made the physical world around him feel like an illusion, and then it snapped open. Strange script that he’d never learned and corresponded to no language he knew covered the scroll, and yet somehow he could understand it easily, the meaning of the symbols pressing itself into his mind at a glance.
Though the information on the scroll looked simple at first glance, over the years Calvin had discovered that in truth it was profound beyond his comprehension. The strange script had seemingly endless layers of meaning that took great focus and meditation to unravel, and he felt as though he was still only scratching the surface of what it was capable of.
For example, on the surface the Scroll simply said that his Node Quality was simply Average—a feat which had taken years of hard work to achieve. However as he focused further on that part of the Scroll, the script’s meaning expanded. The overall quality of his Qi Nodes was Average, but that was because most of his nodes were of Moderate quality, a single one had reached High quality, but two—the newest ones he’d formed—were lagging behind at Low and Modest quality respectively.
If he looked even deeper, focusing on one node in particular, he could even see more specific information. Why was the node in his left foot Low quality? The purity and density of the qi in it was in line with the rest of his nodes, but he hadn’t had very much time to work on it so its size and depth was lagging behind.
If he really focused, he could even get further details beyond that, information about flaws in the structure of the node that he could barely comprehend or perceive under normal circumstances. Such detailed information had allowed him to refine the first node he’d created, the one in his head, beyond what any normal cultivator with his talent and resources could have achieved, and he fully intended to do the same to each of his other nodes.
Similarly, when he focused on the Methods recorded on the Scroll he could see everything he knew about the method—lessons he’d attended, scrolls he’d read, tidbits he’d overheard from others—in perfect clarity. When he focused on the quality of the method the Scroll revealed to him flaws and shortcomings in the method itself, while focusing on his comprehension level showed him areas where he was lacking and sometimes even ways to improve!
However, while those abilities alone marked the Scroll as an artifact of incalculable value, even that was only scratching the surface of what it was capable of. This was no place to focus on progressing his cultivation nor comprehension, so instead Calvin mentally directed the Scroll to unroll to a different section.
Random Reward Tokens. Just thinking those words practically left him salivating with anticipation. He’d learned over the years that the Scroll and he had very different perspectives on the value and quality of things. To him even the Extremely Low quality tokens he received four times a year after paying his dues to the sect and whenever he formed a new Channel or Node were priceless treasures, providing him with spirit stones, valuable herbs and pills, and even the occasional treasure.
And the higher quality tokens? He’d only received a tiny handful so far but they’d already exceeded what he imagined was possible a dozen times over. The Yin-Yang Dantian Vortex Elixir he’d received from a Modest quality token was a treasure coveted by Core disciples and the children of elders, catapulting his progress through the Gathering realm forward by months.
The singular Average quality token he’d used had given him the knowledge of a Method so profound he didn’t dare let anyone know he possessed it. The Nine Revolving Gates Method was a Very High quality martial art, the highest quality anything he’d ever seen. Unless he was way off the mark, he doubted even the Core disciples and Elders had access to something like that.
It only took a moment to review his progress and active goals. Unlike some of the first few quests he’d received, most of his current objectives (not to mention the quests themselves) were tasks measured in months, years, or even centuries, not the measly few hours since the last time he’d looked at them. But he couldn’t help it. He was so close.
He only needed a few more hours of meditation to finish forming his twenty-fourth channel and stabilize his foundation, which would finally complete a quest he’d been working towards for the better part of two years. In just a few more hours he could receive another Average quality token and instead he was wasting his time here, standing in a stupid line so he could give a stupid clerk a stupid bag of stupid plants for a handful of contribution points!
Calvin took another deep breath, calming himself.
He was here for a reason. Maintaining his place in the sect was absolutely critical, both because of his Quests and because getting kicked out of the sect would be…bad for his future prospects. Being a member of a sect, especially a Great Sect, offered absolutely critical protection, as well as access to techniques and resources. The Scroll could mostly replace the latter in the long run, but it would do nothing to stop a passing Soul Realm cultivator from squashing him like a bug because he looked at them funny.
That meant he needed to pay his dues to the Sect and his current reserve of contribution points was a little bit short of the mark. He’d heard horror stories about—and seen first hand—what happened if a disciple didn’t have enough to cover their dues. The sect enforcers were utterly ruthless and well known for their brutality.
First they’d ransack your home and any herb fields or workshops you rented from the sect, searching for anything that could be exchanged for points and confiscating it at a tiny fraction of its value. If you had family outside the sect they might go after them too, stripping family homes and businesses down to the bedrock. If that wasn’t enough to cover what you owed they might offer you a horribly lopsided deal to cover your debt—practically slave contracts, though they didn’t call them that—or they’d decide you were a lost cause and use you as an object lesson, shattering your cultivation and expelling you from the sect.
Not even inner disciples were exempt. In fact it could be even worse for them since their dues were ten times that of an outer disciple. It didn’t happen often—most inner disciples had powerful families or sponsors supporting them, or were capable of earning more than enough points to cover their dues themselves—but most years at least one got so caught up in other matters that they let their balance lapse. It had happened just last quarter and, last he’d heard, the once proud peak Foundation Realm girl was scrubbing the floors of a Core Disciple’s manor.
Calvin wasn’t too worried about that happening to him—even at bottom of the barrel prices he had enough miscellaneous resources stocked up to pay for a year of dues or more—but he certainly didn’t want anyone riffling through his things and picking what they wanted to take. Plus, he’d accumulated a number of resources that would be very hard to explain. For instance it would raise some very uncomfortable questions if anyone knew he had half a bottle of Jade-Glazed Impurity-Attracting Water; a rather valuable body tempering resources that the Jade Pool Sect reserved solely for the use of their Core Disciples.
Knowing seeing the reward in front of him was only going to make things more frustrating, Calvin opened his eyes and the Scroll vanished back into the recesses of his mind. Little had changed in the past few minutes. The leftmost clerk was delicately sorting the stalks of grass, diligently examining each one before setting it into the appropriate spot on his silk cloth. The middle clerk sat with a polite smile as the lotus’s owner argued at him, his voice shrill and much too loud. At least the final clerk was almost done, helping the disciple pick out a few cores he wanted to keep for his own use.
Calvin sighed softly, then nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise when the female disciple in front of him laughed and addressed him. “I know, right? They always tell us in lessons that it’s important for us to budget our time properly so we can focus on our work and our cultivation, but then every other month I’m stuck standing here for an entire day because the inner disciples can’t be bothered to do the same.”
He looked around, but there was no one else she could have been talking to. The disciples in the line on his left were clearly facing the other way and the ones standing behind him in line were gossiping about some inane romance among the Core disciples.
He refocused on the girl, looking slightly down at her to meet her gaze. “Ah, senior sister, is—“
She laughed again, “Senior sister? I guess you don’t remember me then, do you?”
Calvin wracked his memory, but she didn’t look particularly familiar. She was slightly shorter than him, with honey-blonde hair and a slender figure—both common in the foothills surrounding the Eight Peaks Sect. She wore her dark blue Outer Disciple robe—slightly worn and frayed in places, but clearly freshly cleaned and well cared for—open over the practical work clothes sold for a single point per set by the Mortal Market Hall, a loose beige shirt and matching pants made from iron flax.
“I’m…afraid not, sister,” he confirmed awkwardly.
Thankfully, she didn’t look mad. He’d gotten into a lot of trouble during his first few months at the Sect for not knowing the names and faces of every vaguely-important disciple. Most of them he’d never even met previously and they were still upset with him when he didn’t recognize them on sight!
It sounded like he had met this disciple at some point, though he had no idea when. The Eight Peaks Sect had a lot of Outer Disciples, more than both of the other Great Sects combined, but most of them never progressed further than the early stages of the Foundation realm. Calvin was friendly with a handful, casually knew a few dozen more, and could name another hundred or so—the ones who’d be upset if he didn’t recognize them on sight mostly. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands that the Sect maintained at any given time.
She waved dismissively. “It’s alright, I didn’t really expect you would.” She smiled tiredly, “I’m Gwen. You were the disciple who showed my cohort to our huts and explained the contribution point system to us when I joined the sect. I was just another face in the crowd, but I thought it was funny to hear you calling me senior sister.”
Calvin blinked, looking closer at the girl. He had done that once, and only once, during his third year at the Sect. Apparently he’d been too negative and had ‘discouraged the new disciples’, so he’d never been allowed to take that mission again. That had been annoying—it had been a very cost effective mission in terms of time to contribution points.
Looking back, this girl very well could have been part of that group. The group he’d been given had included mostly locals who had been admitted primarily because of their longstanding relationship with the sect—children of flunked out former disciples, mortal merchants, and the like—but weren’t talented or well connected enough for more senior disciples to want to forge connections with.
He focused on the memory, circulating his qi in one of the most basic patterns he’d learned from the Nine Revolving Gates, and then it came to him. He snapped his fingers. “Oh! You were the girl with the celeste blue dress.” The resemblance was there, but she’d gained an inch of height and lost some baby fat since joining the sect. Plus he didn’t think he’d ever seen her in a disciple’s robe before—his duties had ended with guiding them to their new homes.
Her smile widened slightly, some of the exhaustion visible in her eyes and the set of her shoulders vanishing. “You do remember me!” She pressed a fist against her chest and bowed, a few strands of hair escaping from her ponytail to hang down in front of her face. “Thank you for your advice, senior brother. Your guidance has served me well.”
“Oh, uh—“ he swallowed his first response, trying to think what a disciple with a proper cultivation background would say in his place. He didn’t really remember giving anything he would call guidance, just a few tidbits about life in the Outer Sect. Oh, and he’d advised her in particular not to wear that dress again. The Core Disciples wore robes only a few shades lighter and they could easily take offense at an Outer Disciple seemingly trying to ‘steal’ their prestige.
“I’m glad I was able to share my wisdom, though your gratitude is unnecessary. I only did my duty to the Sect.” She straightened and he decided to change the subject to something safer. “How goes your cultivation, junior sister? I recall you had only recently ignited when you were accepted into the sect?”
One thing he’d learned very early into his time at the sect was that everyone liked to brag about their cultivation, even if they had nothing to brag about. Even the most hopeless older disciples, the ones who’d made no progress in years and were just living out the days until they were released from the sect to live out the rest of their lives, were happy to reminisce about how outstandingly talented they had been in their youth and how tragic it was that they’d never been given the chance to shine.
The last of the exhaustion in her posture fell away for the moment as she flared her qi. Calvin was only in the Foundation realm, without the spiritual sense that allowed Core realm and higher cultivators to sense qi outside their body in detail, and the number of cultivators in the hall made the ambient qi turbulent and tainted with too many aspects and signatures to count, but he could still feel the unmistakable pressure of a near peak Gathering realm cultivator rolling off her.
“I advance by leaps and bounds!” She declared proudly. “My heart dantian is nearly full and I’ve already started laying the foundation of my first meridian. By this time next month, I’ll be in the Foundation realm like you!”
He nodded appreciatively. “Very impressive, junior sister, but you should not be so wasteful with your strength at such a critical junction.” Until they formed their first qi channel and stepped into the Foundation realm, cultivators couldn’t generate their own qi and had to either use elixirs or absorb what they could from spiritual herbs, natural treasures, and the environment. The first three options were very expensive, especially on an outer disciple’s budget, and the final one rather slow and time consuming. Flaring your qi only consumed a tiny quantity of energy, but even that much could delay her breakthrough.
She immediately stopped flaring her qi and looked away, blushing brightly. “Of course, you’re right senior brother.”
He smiled at her warmly. “It is only natural to want to show off your progress.” He found the constant preening and jockeying for imaginary position exhausting. At the end of the day, they were all just Outer Disciples. Unlike in the Inner and Core sect, your positions on the Outer Disciple ranking boards did not affect your monthly resource allocation nor offer any real tangible advantages beyond seeding for the Outer Disciple tournament each year.
He’d heard rumors that Elders sometimes looked to the boards when searching for new personal disciples or when they had special missions to assign, but had seen no real evidence to suggest that was actually true. Just something spread around to keep the peons motivated. “You are right to be proud. Three years from Gathering to Foundation is a very respectable pace, and you are several months ahead of that.”
That was definitely the right thing to say. She looked back up at him, cheeks still tinted pink but a spark of intensity in her eyes. “Thank you, senior brother. I couldn’t have done it without your guidance.”
She kept saying that, but he still had no idea what she meant. It might have been just an idle comment, a way to stroke a senior’s ego, but she sounded serious. “Oh?” he asked curiously, not really expecting an answer but not having anything better to do.
Conveniently, she seemed happy, eager even, to share. “I did exactly like you suggested during your tour, senior brother! I saved as many points as I could during my first year while I didn’t have to pay dues yet and used them to reserve one of the herbalist huts and purchase alchemy lessons. Then during my second year I could cultivate herbs, turn them into pills, and exchange them for contribution points, and like you said the qi-gathering formations around the herb plots are perfect for meditation!”
She looked up at him expectantly and he stared back, desperately trying to remember what exactly he’d been talking about during the tour. Even with qi-enhanced memory, it was hard to recall one specific moment from several years in the past, especially if you didn’t know to deliberately preserve it at the time.
He did remember talking about the herbalist huts, growing spiritual herbs, and how lucrative even a basic understanding of alchemy could be, as well as some basics about the sect’s internal contribution points economy, but definitely not as a step by step plan the way she’d put it together.
And it really was an excellent plan, assuming she had any talent for alchemy and cultivating spiritual herbs—not everyone did. All disciples received a small hut to live in, but if they wanted something better it cost a yearly fee of contribution points. Most of the options were total scams—yet another of the many ways the sect separated disciples from what little extra wealth they might accumulate—but the herbalist huts were one of the few options he considered to be worth the price. The accommodations were only slightly finer than the regular huts, but each one came with several small plots designed for growing spiritual herbs. They were almost identical to the much larger fields where disciples could reserve space, complete with the same qi-gathering formations, but unlike in the fields there were no rules against using some of your farmland as a makeshift meditation chamber.
Furthermore, like the fields, the plots were just large enough that, when used carefully, you could grow just enough spiritual herbs to pay for the land with a handful of points left over. On its own, that wouldn’t be enough to also cover the quarterly dues, but if you could convert cheap herbs into slightly more valuable pills and elixirs…
Calvin clicked his tongue, genuinely impressed. It had only taken him approximately a year to reach the peak of Gathering after he’d joined the sect, but he’d had the support of the Scroll’s rewards and guidance to do so. Counting the time between finding the Scroll and igniting, and joining the Sect, she might actually be advancing faster than he had and solely through her own hard work and talent at that. Sure his first Qi Node had probably been of higher quality when he’d broken through then hers was now, but at that stage the difference was minimal. From the brief glimpse of her qi she’d given him, he doubted she’d have any trouble breaking through.
“Very well done. I’m glad at least one of you was listening and thinking.” He gestured to the qi-stabilizing box she held cradled protectively under her arm. “Your latest work, I presume?”
She nodded enthusiastically, her ponytail whipping in the air behind her. “Yes, senior brother! I finished refining them last night.” She carefully shifted the long, narrow box into her arms and opened it, revealing two neat rows of bottles, each one wrapped in a soft strip of cloth to keep from breaking. Half contained pills, three per bottle, each one a pale blue-green sphere roughly the size of a plump blueberry. The other half were filled nearly to the brim with a dark amber liquid that moved with the viscosity of a thin syrup.
“The first row are all Skin Cleansing elixirs. They’re a little tricky to make but the sect buys them for five to ten points a bottle depending on quality. The pills are the sect’s standard Meridian Cleansing formula. I usually get three points a pill for them, but I think I’m getting better so I’m hoping for four this time!”
Fifteen of each, three pills per bottle. He did the math. That was anywhere from two hundred and ten to three hundred and thirty points, probably somewhere in the middle. Enough points to cover her dues and leave her with a little left over.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the box.
“Go ahead.” He reached for one of the pill bottles. “Carefully, please,” she added after a moment.
“Of course.” He picked up a pill bottle, the glass sliding smoothly from its fabric armor, and raised it to his face, wrapping his fingers around the outside of the bottle. The pills inside looked almost exactly like the ones sold by the Outer Sect’s Alchemist Hall for fifteen points a bottle. Better even, their surfaces smooth and shiny in the sunlight streaming through the hall’s windows.
He felt the Scroll react, knowledge subtly flowing into his mind. Eight Peaks Meridian Cleansing Pills, Very Low quality.
The ones the hall sold tended to be Extremely Low.
He returned the pill bottle to the box. “I see you’ve made great strides in your alchemy as well as in your cultivation. Did you have any training before coming to the sect?”
She carefully adjusted the packaging, fiddling with the fabric until the rows were once again perfectly even, then shut the box. “No senior brother. My father is a cobbler and my mother a farmer’s daughter. I’m the first to ignite in seven generations.”
“Even more impressive. So you grew the herbs for these all yourself as well?”
She nodded. “You can’t earn very many points if you need to buy the right herbs from the sect too. The seeds are much cheaper, and I made sure to focus on herbs that can self propagate. It’s more work keeping them from crowding each other and growing healthy, but much cheaper and, well,” she looked down at the ground, “I’ve always liked gardening.”
The disciple with the cores finished his transaction and was replaced by a female disciple with a bag of spirit stones she wanted to convert to contribution points—a common practice among disciples with powerful connections outside the sect—and one of the faster items for the clerks to deal with. Calvin and his junior sister both moved forward, and this time he came to a stop standing side by side with the Gathering disciple.
“Have you had much success with other elixirs or have you primarily focused your efforts on refining these?”
“Some?” she said hesitantly. “I mostly just grow the herbs I need for the pills and elixirs, but I have a small plot I use for other herbs and sometimes I buy herbs to work with from the sect. I wish I could do more, but practicing alchemy is expensive. Even if I get the recipe right the first time, the quality usually isn’t the best and high quality herbs are expensive.” She sighed heavily. “And that’s assuming I can even get my hands on the recipes. I got some from the Sect included in my lessons, but anything beyond the most basic ones are out of my price range. I really want to try my hand at five-element qi refining pills, but the recipe is eight hundred points! That’s a whole year of saving.” She sighed again. “Maybe once I reach the Foundation realm.”
A whole year of savings? Presumably she meant after her dues and the fees for her hut. Had she earned two thousand contribution points this year or was she being hyperbolic? She seemed honest enough. That was…rather a lot of contribution points.
“You know,” he told her conversationally, “I’ve always been interested in learning more about alchemy, but I never seem to find the time. Now that I’m nearly done establishing my Foundation, I expect I’ll have some more time on my hands while I work to refine my dantian. Would you be willing to answer some questions for me, perhaps over tea? I’d be happy to offer you some advice on your upcoming breakthrough.”
“Ah, ah me? I don’t know how much I can—I mean, I’m only a beginner, but I’d be happy to—“ she stumbled over her own words, her cheeks rapidly regaining the flush that had slowly faded as they spoke.
Calvin mentally slapped himself. She was reading into things too much, but that was fine.
It took a few moments, but she finally got herself back under control. “Yes! Definitely! I mean,” she cleared her throat, “I’d be happy to answer any questions senior brother has, though I fear my knowledge of alchemy may not be as sufficient to do so. And of course I welcome any advice he can offer me on my advancement.”
She looked around self consciously, nervously fidgeting with the hem of her open robe, but no one was paying them any particular attention. At the counter, the boy with the lotus stalked off, the clerk carefully packaging away the expensive herb. He was clearly unhappy with the price, but likely needed the contribution points and had nothing else to offer. The girl, now without her spirit stones, finished her transaction in much higher spirits, clearly happy to be done with her errand.
The line advanced, and they with it. One of the disciples, an older man likely nearing the end of his time at the Sect, presented a large herb storage box, which turned out to be nearly half full of meridian stalks.
Calvin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Gwen swore just softly enough that Calvin was probably the only one close enough to hear her, then blushed when she realized he had indeed heard her. “I hate meridian stalks,” she mumbled. “It’s a nightmare getting them to grow properly without each stalk crowding the ones around them and ruining the whole patch.”
Calvin frowned. “I thought meridian stalks were supposed to be one of the easiest spiritual plants to work with?” He’d never tried himself, but had seen entire fields of the herb and had heard many older disciples recommending it to their juniors as a good way to dip their toes into cultivating spiritual herbs.
Gwen scoffed. “Maybe if you don’t mind ending up with a whole bale of compost.” She waved towards the counter, “Why do you think they spend so much time going through all the individual stalks? A perfectly matured meridian stalk is worth a lot more than the one point they’ll give you for it, but the rest of that is pretty much rubbish when it comes to alchemy. I doubt there are more than one or two good stalks in that entire box—assuming he didn’t manage to ruin them with his shoddy harvesting.”
“Then why is it so popular?”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “The sect sells the seeds at a hundred per point. That's cheaper than any other herb because you can harvest the seeds from otherwise useless stalks and the sect doesn’t buy stalks without the seed pods still intact.”
Calvin considered her words, then nodded slowly. “Ah.”
They stood in silence for a long moment, watching two clerks pick through bundles of fancy grass.
“I think I hate meridian stalks too.”
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