A great wheel spun behind Calvin’s eyes, incomprehensibly vast and turning so quickly its outer surface was little more than a blur. Calvin could just barely make out endless rows of symbols as they flashed by, occasional fragments of names and meanings appearing in his thoughts in a headache-inducing flurry. Eventually it began to slow, and as did it also seemed to grow nearer, filling his vision until he could only make out a tiny fragment of the immense construct, so small he couldn’t even tell it was curved.

  Now he could actually make out names before they vanished from his vision. Crimson Jade Dragon Totem, Glass Eye of The Eerie, Eternal Planes Light Vein, and countless more treasures he’d never heard of passed by one after another. He could only get a vague sense of their quality, but even that was enough to fill him with anticipation and set his imagination alight.

  The lowest treasures were of Average quality, but though they appeared to be the most common they were far from a majority. Above Average, Moderate, High, Very High, and even a single Extremely High quality treasure—the Nine-Colored Radiant Crystal—went by one after the other, almost none of which Calvin recognized and whose value and power he could only guess at.

  The one or two names that were familiar only exited him further. An Ancestral Heavenly Crystal Peacock Tail Feather, a treasure he’d heard had sold for over a hundred-thousand spirit stones the last time one had come to auction in Rainbow Caldera City, was considered to be only of Moderate quality! And an Immortal Flame Volcanic Heart, a Very High quality treasure, was said to be part of the ancestral backbone of the Volcanic Heart sect, a sect only a single step removed from a Great Sect!

  Soon the wheel’s movement slowed to a crawl and it seemed to be so close to his eyes that he could only make out three names at a time, but clearly and easily. The process was nearing its end and as the final selection became imminent Calvin’s focus narrowed.

  Glacial Crystal Heart, Above Average quality. He would prefer something better, but he’d always liked the cold. He could see himself as an ice element cultivator.

  Miniature Turbulent Oceanic Bottle, Average quality. Vivid Rainbow Cliffs had many rivers and waterfalls but was otherwise a landlocked province and Calvin had never seen the ocean. He’d heard it was beautiful however, and there was always great demand for water aligned cultivators.

  Divine Gold Nine-Petal Yin Lotus, Extremely High quality. Calvin held his breath as it ticked by, eventually vanishing from his perception. Most pure-yin cultivators were women, but with a treasure like that in his hands he wouldn’t have minded the stigma associated with men who cultivated pure yin. And perhaps someday he might have found a Core or Nascent realm Yang treasure to complement it and become a true yin-yang cultivator.

  He was so distracted by the lotus that he almost didn’t notice when the wheel ticked forward one more time and came to a full stop. For a moment everything was still, and then most of the text vanished from the wheel, leaving only a single line at the center of his vision. He quickly focused on it, a wide grin spreading across his face.

  Figure of the Seventh Imperial Phoenix, Very High quality. The same ranking as his Nine Revolving Gates. It was not a treasure he had ever heard of, but how could it be anything but wondrous?

  The wheel vanished, leaving him back in the same cramped chamber where he’s begun. A moment later he had to squint as a brilliant golden light tinged with purple filled the space, so bright it was like looking at the sun. A figurine of a phoenix with its wings spread in flight, no larger than his palm but so detailed that it nearly looked real, floated in the air before him. Its body was formed of spiritual gold polished to a mirror-like shine and gleaming with an inner light, with blazing purple gems for eyes and tiny jewels, no bigger than a grain of sand but masterfully cut, of every color edging each and every feather, making them sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow and countless more besides

  More than light, qi flowed off the statuette in waves, rapidly filling the air with power more intense than anything Calvin had felt before. It crashed against him like the tide, battering his spirit and practically drowning him beneath its weight.

  Despite the brightness, Calvin’s eyes widened in horror. There was no way his basic formations could contain this pressure. In just a few moments they would shatter, releasing this aura into the outside world and broadcasting to every elder and Core disciple that there was something very special here. There was no way that he, a nobody, would be allowed to keep a treasure like this. And after that, he would forever be watched closely—or simply interrogated—to see if he had any more hidden secrets.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  Moving more on instinct than intention, Calvin snatched the figurine out of the air and slammed it against his chest, qi circulating rapidly. The gold burned his skin but he barely felt the pain as he frantically reached out to the figurine. If it was truly a Qi Attunement Treasure then…

  With a bizarre, oddly pleasant sensation of pressure, the figure slipped through his skin and into his waiting spirit. The waves of qi in the cellar immediately subsided, but only because they now radiated out to batter his spirit and body from the inside!

  Calvin blinked once, then slammed his eyes closed and focused on his cultivation. He could see the statuette right away, floating at the edge of his spirit and looking even more real than it had when it physically floated before him. It moved like a true bird, flapping its jeweled wings idly before folding them back, liquid flames of purple and gold trailing them like a comet’s tail. It cocked its head, seeming to regard his foundation with keen interest, judging its worth, and Calvin held his breath.

  Then, with a lazy flap of its wings, the phoenix flowed through his spirit and landed on his central qi node, perching on it contentedly and closing its eyes. Under Calvin’s amazed, shellshocked gaze, the great waves of qi subsided, replaced by a slow, steady drip of purple-gold qi that began to flow from the treasure into his core like water into a glass.

  Was…that how Attunement Treasures were supposed to work? He didn’t think so, certainly had never seen anything to suggest as much in all his reading. Then again, he’d mostly focused on much lower quality Treasures. He’d heard that after hundreds or thousands of years even spiritual plants and minerals could gain a level of awareness and consciousness. Why not a powerful treasure like this one?

  The feeling of rich, brilliant qi like liquid fire pouring into his foundation was indescribable. It hurt slightly, like lightning tingling beneath his skin and jumping between his organs, but it wasn’t truly painful—just odd. At the same time, his spirit ached like a sore muscle after a hard day of training and felt profoundly refreshed as though drinking cold water after many hours beneath the beating sun.

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  Slowly, carefully, tentatively, Calvin reached for this new power that was even now slowly filling the qi node in his heart and spreading through his channels. Contrary to how it had felt outside his body, within his channels he found it more cool than hot, smooth and slick like polished marble. He couldn’t get a proper grip on it like he could his own qi, the droplets of dense energy slipping through his spiritual fingers like water might.

  He wasn’t discouraged. That was what was supposed to happen. It wasn’t really his qi yet, after all, and his cultivation was far too low to directly manipulate foreign qi, even when it was in his own body.

  …Though he wasn’t quite sure why it was already starting to circulate through his channels before he could control it.

  He tried again, this time manipulating the dregs of his reserves and what little qi he’d regained since his breakthrough and using it to reach out towards the purple-gold qi. This experiment proved far more successful. He couldn’t control it directly, but by nudging it with bits of his own energy he could kind of sort of make it do what he wanted. Mostly.

  He tried to go one step further. He caught a droplet of qi as it passed from the seemingly sleeping golden phoenix into his qi node and wrapped it in a cocoon of his own neutral, comparably wispy qi. Then he gave the whole structure a push and a twist, spinning it around and around the droplet, moving in every direction and pressing tightly against the spot of golden power.

  At first nothing seemed to happen. Calvin narrowed his focus, letting his awareness of his spirit and body fade to the back of his mind and directing all his attention on his efforts. His qi moved in deliberate patterns, twisting and grinding and pressing against the foreign qi suspended within it like a whirlpool. Still nothing seemed to happen but Calvin did not give up.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the qi around the droplet began to change. First it grew gradually denser, changing from light and gaseous to a smoother, more liquid consistency. Then the feedback the qi gave him shifted slightly, becoming smoother and cooler, yet warming like being wrapped in a cozy blanket. Finally it began to change color, gaining a purple tint so faint Calvin could barely make out the difference.

  But it was there. It was definitely there. And even that single drop of the treasure’s qi looked barely depleted, having lost only a tiny fraction of its luster. Calvin could only really tell that there was any difference by comparing it to the other drops of qi slowly accumulating in his nodes and channels.

  Though there were more experiments he wanted to conduct, Calvin couldn’t help himself. He opened his eyes, tilted his head back, and began to laugh, the sound of his joy filling the closet-sized meditation room and echoing loudly in his ears.

  His spirit ached, his face and neck felt tender and tight like he’d gotten a bad sunburn, and there were blisters on his hands and chest, along with an accompanying blackened hole in his shirt over his heart, but none of that could possibly darken his mood now.

  He’d done it, and the Scroll’s reward was everything he’d dreamed it would be. Sure the Figure wasn’t a Divine Lotus, a treasure probably worth more than this entire province, but it was only a single level of quality removed from it! A second Very High quality reward!

  Calvin had no idea what exactly the qi attunement the Figure would help him achieve would do, but he was sure it wasn’t going to disappoint. In the moment he’d held the Figure in his hand the Scroll had given him some very surface level information, but he simply lacked the background to fully understand what Purple-Gold Imperial Phoenix Fire actually was and what it could do for him. Still, just the words Phoenix Fire were enough to excite him to no end. A spark of phoenix fire was a treasure that any fire-attuned cultivator would kill for, allowing them to incorporate aspects of healing and rebirth into their techniques, and this was something even better than that!

  Was he disappointed to suddenly be on the path of a fire attuned cultivator? Maybe a little. But it was hard to feel disappointed about anything when he could even now feel the immense power lurking within the tiny spots of purple-gold qi slowly spreading through his nearly empty qi system. Someday all his qi would feel just like that.

  Calvin’s laughter intensified. It was a giddying thought.

  Eventually his laughter tapered off. He coughed, his throat dry, and shifted his weight. Something rounded and hard dug into his side and he suddenly remembered the second token tucked into one of the inner pockets of his robe. Somehow in his excitement, its presence had entirely slipped his mind.

  He let out another burst of dry laughter. The idea of just…forgetting about a reward token…

  Progress truly was a drug like no other.

  He dug it out of his pocket and stared at it for a moment. Though the items offered by the minor reward tokens were never bad, it was hard to be too excited after seeing the scope of priceless treasures available from other, better tokens. The first time he’d used an Average quality token he’d had no real perspective of just how precious some of the options flying past on the great wheel were, but he’d learned and grown a great deal since that day.

  But a reward token was still a reward token. Calvin shrugged and snapped it.

  Instantly, the dark cellar around him was replaced by the sight of a great wheel, one even larger than what he’d seen from the previous token. His awareness of his body and spirit vanished entirely, the ache of his burns and his sore spirit gone the moment the two halves of the token separated. The wheel spun and this time Calvin did his best to not focus too closely on the symbols flashing past faster than he could truly perceive them. He knew from experience that in that direction lay only a splitting headache that would linger for days.

  Only when the wheel had grown much slower and closer, symbols flashing by at a much more manageable rate, did he allow himself to look closer. He’d probably still end up with a headache, but it wouldn’t be a bad one.

  Most of what he saw was nothing unusual. Spirit stones were common in various qualities and quantities, as were all sorts of talismans, herbs, pills, and elixirs. A little less than half of what he saw was of Extremely Low quality, and most of the rest was Very Low with a small handful of Low quality items standing out from the crowd. Once or twice a Modest or Below Average quality sped by, vanishing before he could get more than a brief glimpse at their names.

  A few items did stand out, though they spun away just like everything else. A Low quality Stoked Heart elixir—a very expensive medicine prized by fire-attuned cultivators for its body-refining properties—a Modest quality Granite Apple, good for body refining in the Foundation realm, and a Modest quality Conquering Butterfly Pin which he was pretty sure was a kind of hybrid between a defensive artifact and a flying sword.

  Eventually the wheel slowed to a stop, then vanished, and Calvin found himself back in the cellar, his used token replaced by his reward. A small pouch containing ten Calcified Lotus Drops, Very Low quality. He didn’t recognize the item but a quick check with the Scroll told him that, contrary to the name, the drops were a type of Foundation realm pills used to enhance the mind during long meditation sessions and provide a minor nurturing effect on new channels.

  Not bad at all.

  He opened the pouch to find each of the ten pills individually wrapped in small scraps of colorful paper, looking more like candies than pills. Looking deeper at what the Scroll was telling him made his already aching head start to pound, but did inform him that the pills were in fact extremely sweet and meant to be sucked on like, well, candies. And were commonly treated as such.

  …he’d have to try them and see the results on his cultivation (and their taste) before deciding what to do with them.

  But first a bath, a nap, and he had a handful of errands to run. No matter how much he wanted to immediately sit down and begin attuning his qi.

  His eyes slipped closed. A few minutes of cycling to kickstart his qi regeneration couldn’t hurt.

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