She woke early the next morning, as sunlight streamed through the window of her room and caught on the wood, warm-brown tones almost chocolate alight beneath the first radiance of a new day. Groaning, she shuffled off her sheets, bonelessly flopping out of bed onto the cold floor and letting that very cold slowly rouse her to wakefulness. She hadn’t even drunk anything, and still she was feeling this groggy…

Pulling herself upright, she leaned against the window, and looked out over the valley landscape of emerald-rich grasses, almost heath-like breaking through the still mounding snow, of hardy pines and sloping walls ascending to scrape at the heavens themselves, beyond which radiated the daylight’s coming… And, thought back on her conversation from the night before with the hunter. It had been a disquieting sort of conversation, she could readily admit— and not at all the sort of thing she’d expected from a small village so far up in the mountains. Then again, there was the trope of random hidden masters crouching beneath every rock and stone…

She giggled to herself at the mental image of the diminutive man, clean-shaven and still looking more like he was in his early thirties wearing the robes of a stodgy old cultivator and sat out lotus-like, contemplating the deep secrets of heaven and earth. The image was only funnier when she envisioned him holding his absurdly massive cannon of a gun— the thing was longer than he was! She very much did not envy whoever was on the wrong side of that thing.

She’d have to put up some sort of protection array for Avyr, whenever she got back— to make sure that he’d be able to survive an attack from a Foundation Establishment beast. That was easier said than done, though… it wasn’t like it was easy to make even a single-use talisman that could unleash an attack on that level, much less something permanent. She’d have to put a lot of thought into it, and—

And, she was just avoiding the actual thought that was weighing on her. His comments had been cutting, the night before, and she couldn’t help but hold onto them, wondering… as she looked out over the mountain expanse, she wondered why.

What a frustratingly cliche question to worm its way so deeply into her psyche. Why did she cultivate? Because of what her parents had given up? Certainly. Because the people who’d taken everything from her were still out there? That too, also. Because she’d put in far too much effort, traveled to what felt like these desolate ends of the earth, spent all day, every

day learning as much as she could, training and practicing and pushing— come too far, too close, to give up now? That too…

They were all reasons for why she so desperately wanted to join the Bloody Saffron Sect and become a cultivator in truth. She wasn’t sure they were good reasons, though— and that couldn’t but disturb her.

Sighing, she shouldered Avyr’s bag, glancing one last time at the mountainscape beyond the village, to where she would soon return… and stepped out into the hallway, putting it all behind her. For the moment, at least. She had some tasks to do, some meat to buy, and then…

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Maybe later, she’d allow herself to worry about that sort of thing. At the moment, though, she just needed to get a move on. Out of thought, out of mind.

Definitely. That would totally work…

………

It was actually easier to get the meat than she’d expected. Apparently, Foundation-Establish-level formations masters who could carve semi-prementant inscriptions onto essentially whatever material they wanted didn't come around Tanghuocun all that often, go figure. Nobody wanted her protection talismans that she’d thought would be the big seller— surprisingly, given how much the Association elder had gushed over them— but she supposed it made sense. A village up in the mountains would probably be willing to shell out the exorbitant payment for some sort of proper protection. A farmer to store produce overwinter, though? Not so much.

It did delay her rather fiercely, but with a bit of help from the farmers to drag the stones over and a set template in mind— and the fact that she was most certainly not

going to make another full bi and cong formation— she managed to get it done before noon. They gave her almost more meat that she could carried, and promised that they’d not even begun to approach repayment, and—

She set off into the forest.

It had been fun. A challenge, to make a real formation in the time constraints that she’d been laboring under, certainly, and with the variable shapes of the rocks that had a rather larger effect on the qi flows than she’d thought…

She’d have to find some actual jade, sometime. It’d be expensive, but maybe if she promised to carve a formation for some rich customer? She chuckled to herself as she hopped over a glen, realizing that if it weren’t for the animosity between her and Xinshi, she’d have probably been able to get a really cushy contract from the Councillor. That…

A frown drifted across her face as she remembered something that Master Mingtian had told her a long, long time ago— that no true formation master sold their formations. Or was it formation knowledge? She wasn’t sure, and the difference was kind of immaterial, wasn’t it? There was a deeper root within it, coming back to the cut-heart of the matter— it would be so easy, wouldn’t it to settle into selling formations forever. Except, a cultivator was not a merchant…

She sighed. She was overthinking things, and with that, her good mood had fled— mists beneath the winter-harsh sun of her own doubts. The hunter’s words had gotten to her more than she’d thought…

She tried her best to put them out of her mind, but thoughts had a way of just… coming back to her, regardless. So, instead she pushed— turning her leisurely walk into a jog, bounding over leagues and leagues as she further fled far to Avyr’s retreat, those springs and shattered mountain—

As cold clouds slowly gathered overhead, she returned, to continue again. As long as they could, in that one moment, one month of theirs divorced from the constant vivacity of East Saffron—

Further.

Again.

She strode through the cold to the roof of the world.