And here we are with the start of Volume 2 of The Toll-Road to Immortality!
Sitting cross legged on a mat of woven reeds in the dimly lit converted cellar he called his meditation room, hair still slightly damp after a long soak, Calvin felt properly safe, clean, and relaxed for the first time in several weeks. His absence had given the formations set up around his home and the ones on the cellar trapdoor plenty of time to work, gathering and filtering qi from the environment until the air inside was rich with spiritual energy. It felt practically like a cool fog on his skin and spirit, a welcome balm after nearly a month of exertion in the comparatively barren lands to the south-east of the Eight Peaks sect.
Though they’d reached the sect nearly half a day ago, it was only now that Calvin could finally sit down and rest. He, Wallis, and Lulu had spent more than ten hours bouncing between Mission Hall, External Affairs Hall, and a half-dozen administrative buildings whose name Calvin didn’t know giving verbal reports, imprinting memories onto jade slips for further review, and filling out what felt like an entire tree worth of paperwork. It might have taken even longer, but the demonic artifact they’d recovered—along with the preserved severed head of the cult leader that still reeked of blood and death and the beast core that could not have belonged to any ordinary Foundation realm beast—helped lend a great deal of credibility to their words.
Eventually, someone must have grown tired of sending them running in circles and asking them all the same questions with minor variations. They returned their borrowed robes, submitted the spine-gripped dagger to a blank-faced sect enforcer with pale-blue trim on his grey robe whose cultivation Calvin could not get any sense of at all in exchange for a hefty chunk of points—a little less than a thousand each after it was split three ways—and then waited patiently in a slow-moving line to receive their mission rewards.
Despite the level of danger being much higher than initially expected, they only received a few hundred extra contribution points on top of the originally promised reward. That was the cost of taking emergency missions, they were told. The initial reward was already set quite high because it was difficult to truly judge the risks, time, and difficulty involved. The only reason they received anything extra at all was because the sect liked to incentivize its disciples to deal with rogue demonic cultivators. Calvin’s share ended up being another seven-hundred odd points, bringing his current savings up to a level they’d never reached before.
Only then did the three of them go their separate ways. They’d long since divided the rest of their gains from the mission and had agreed not to sell the beast core just yet. Calvin was holding onto it for now, with the understanding that if he sold or consumed it Lulu and Wallis were each owed a tenth of its value, and that if the pair urgently needed the points, he would either need to sell it then and there or provide them with an equivalent value of points and resources. Wallis had admitted that it was good to have a reserve that wasn’t quite so easy to spend, and such beast cores had a myriad of uses, many of which wouldn’t damage or degrade the core.
Now that he was back at the sect, Calvin had a whole list of things he wanted or needed to do. Near the top of that list was Gwen, whom he’d promised to help only to immediately rush out on a mission. He hoped she’d taken his advice to lie low and stay away from Cao Yunfei until he returned, and that she’d taken his absence well. She had the potential to be very, very useful to him, and he’d enjoyed the limited time they’d spent together.
And then of course there was everything else. Ariadne would need to be mollified after he’d skipped their luncheon even though he’d warned her ahead of time he couldn’t make it. He had his duel with Gwen’s exploitative tutor coming up in only a week’s time, and though he wasn’t overly worried, that wasn’t much time to prepare, especially since he was interested in picking up a new technique to cover some of the weaknesses he’d identified during the mission. And on top of that his qi was just about at the level of attunement where it was time to reintegrate it into his Foundation, a process he’d been told could take upwards of an entire day for someone at the peak of the Foundation realm.
Before all that however, there was something else Calvin wanted to do. A task that had been silently gnawing away at him throughout the whole journey from Nine-Pine Gulch back to the sect.
“Codex,” he whispered, voice tight with excitement, and The Codex of Orin the Wanderer unfurled before his eyes, an illusion so real it made the world around him seem like a novice’s painting.
Calvin wasn’t sure how many times he’d looked at this page in the past few days, wondering just what rewards hid behind such simple lines of text. The Foundation Manual token was only of moderate interest––he was quite happy with his Foundation, thank you very much––though perhaps it would be a useful gift for Gwen or any other promising Gathering realm cultivators who drew his attention.
Any knowledge of Foundations beyond the bare minimum was closely guarded and rarely shared with just anyone without an extremely steep cost. He had no intentions of sharing the Nine Rotating Gates with anyone anytime soon, but even a Low quality Foundation (by the standards of the Scroll) was probably miles beyond what most Outer Disciples––not to mention loose cultivators or ones from lesser sect––had access to, and there was every chance he’d receive something one or two quality levels higher than that!
Thinking about it now, it might even make a good gift to Lulu and Wallis, a way to repay part of what he owed them for keeping quiet about the capsule he’d taken from the cult leader’s body. He wasn’t certain of the precise state of their current Foundations, but he knew neither came from the sort of background that suggested they’d have access to a proper Foundation to work with. Most likely they were just working off the scraps of knowledge the sect provided to disciples, often at ruinous prices. It would likely be only somewhat useful to them––the process of tearing down and rebuilding incorrectly formed qi nodes and channels was both difficult and dangerous––but perhaps they’d be able to get something out of it anyway.
The tempering method on the other hand was of great interest to him. The Outer Sect version of the Eight-Peaks Tempering method was not terrible, but neither was it anything special. Calvin had heard stories of legendary tempering methods that could make their users utterly impervious to physical harm, granted myriad fantastical traits, and otherwise served as the backbone of their cultivation. Others transformed the body much like the elixir he’d consumed, converting flesh or bone or organs into superior versions of themselves that offered immense advantages.
How much of those stories was true, Calvin couldn’t say. He’d only ever read a little bit about tempering methods, enough to know that messing around with potent reagents like the Jade-Glazed Impurity-Attracting Water he’d received years ago from the Scroll without a compatible method would only lead to ruin. However he was certain there was some truth to them. The sect had a list of locations that could be temporarily rented for various reasons, and many of them were listed as being useful for different forms of tempering. Judging from the prices attached, they were primarily intended for Inner and Core disciples, those with the means and backgrounds to possess methods superior to those provided to ordinary disciples.
Without further ado, Calvin claimed both tokens, catching the wooden disks out of the air as they tumbled from the Scroll’s surface like oversized coins. He rolled them between his fingers, running his thumb across the slick wood, smooth as polished glass. On the Scroll, the ink outlining the quest turned runny as though he’d spilled water across it, blurring until letters became dark, indistinct shapes. Then it sank into the scroll, slowly fading until black splotches turned into spots and then disappeared all together. Above where the quest details had been, the number of active quests ticked down from four to three. He watched the Scroll for a moment longer, then brushed it away, the world around him coming back into full focus.
He briefly examined the tokens, tracing his finger across the faint symbols only barely visible on their glossy surfaces, then set the larger of the two––the Foundation Manual token––aside, and snapped the other in half.
The great wheel filled his vision, vast beyond comprehension. It was nearly impossible to truly judge such a thing for sure, but Calvin thought this one might be on the larger side of the ones he’d seen. Not as impossibly massive as the one he saw when he used a Minor Reward token, but certainly larger than the Gathering Elixir token he’d used years ago. Or perhaps he was just imagining a difference, his own preconceived notions of how relatively rare or abundant certain knowledge or resources should be onto a mechanism utterly beyond his current level of advancement.
As usual, he resisted the urge to look too closely until the wheel began to slow, his field of view shrinking to display only a tiny handful of the available options. Most of the names he saw were utterly meaningless to him, ranging in quality from Below Average like the token to a single High quality tempering method, The Nine Refinements of Jade and Iron, that flew past long before the wheel neared its final selection. He memorized them all the same. Who knew when a seemingly insignificant scrap of knowledge might come in handy in the future, and he could imagine scenarios where knowing what methods existed out there in the wider world beyond and their relative quality evaluation could be useful.
Soon, the last few choices began to tick past. Three-Sun Glass Body, Average quality. Blacksoot Breathing, Below Average quality. Windcut Gale Endurance, Moderate quality.
And finally, Stillwater Heart Immersion, Average quality.
Calvin had a moment to consider his new method, the name alone giving him pause. He was soon to be a proper fire-attuned cultivator, and even a mortal child could tell you that Fire and Water did not typically mix well. That was somewhat disappointing. That Blacksoot Breathing method was of lower quality, but perhaps it might have been more useful to him specifically. Oh well.
Then, the wheel vanished and Calvin staggered as a flood of knowledge crashed over him, a river streaming into his mind through a pinhole opening. It came in a jumbled mass, details of resources, training methods, and qi circulation patterns all fighting for his attention simultaneously. His hands flew up to clutch at his temples as it felt like his skull was going to split open, the space too small to fit the amount of information pouring into it in the space between one moment and the next. It wasn’t the gentle, subtle stream of understanding that came when he examined a pill or a spiritual herb with the Scroll’s analytical ability, but a flash flood overflowing the banks of a dry stream bed.
The flood passed as quickly as it came, leaving a dull ache in its place as individual pieces slotted smoothly into place. Calvin found himself slumped back against the cellar wall, neck at an awkward angle and a light stone digging into his collarbone. Closing his eyes he focused on the new method the Scroll had dumped directly into his brain, and the knowledge rose up like a faint memory. He could almost picture himself flipping open a richly decorated book, its cover a single panel of shimmering sapphire with letters of liquid gold flowing just beneath the surface. The author’s name was written just below the title, golden characters spelling out a name he couldn’t quite make out.
Set down your sword. Still the fire in your heart. Drink deeply from the fountain.
Have you never once heard the whisper of what carries you?
Sit. Listen. Bones remember what the spirit was too busy to learn.
The memories grew sharper as he focused, details slowly trickling to the forefront of his thoughts. A method to prepare a pool of stillwater if one could not be found naturally. Techniques and cycling patterns that had to be mastered before submersion. A carefully diagrammed chart of times and frequencies that scaled with cultivation level from the middle stages of Gathering up to the peak of the Soul realm. Another technique, this one meant to gauge progress and compatibility. A recipe for soup dumplings packed with spiritual herbs and infused with earthly fire to warm the body after submersion. A––
Calvin shook his head, clearing away the rising tide of information before it could overwhelm him once again. He’d almost forgotten just how unpleasant it was to have a whole method dumped into his mind all at once, though perhaps it was a small price to pay to not have priceless books and scrolls whose origins he could not at all explain lying around. At least this one hadn’t been nearly as bad as the Nine Rotating Gates had been. That had knocked him on his ass for several hours and the headache had lingered for weeks. That made sense though, not only had his cultivation increased significantly since then, but this method was also much less complicated and dense than his first martial art had been.
Taking several slow, deep breaths, he sat up and rolled his shoulders, then called up the Scroll once again. This time, instead of looking at his quests he unrolled it to the first section that detailed his own state of being.
Not much had changed on the surface since the last time he’d examined the full page. Despite the slow, deeply unpleasant progress of the Golden Marrow Tempering Jade Dew, his physique’s overall quality had not changed. He was pleased to see that his comprehension of the Nine Rotating Gates and Eight-Peaks Martial Arts had both increased a level, and of course the Scroll now showed him his new Tempering Method.
He was still apprehensive of how compatible it would be with his attunement, but the brief glimpse he’d seen of the method so far seemed promising. Despite the name, it seemed relatively attunement agnostic, instead focusing on spiritual stability and willpower via the attainment of the ‘Three Silences’. A strong fire attunement would potentially make the process longer and more difficult, but not impossible.
He would definitely need to investigate further in the future. That was alright however, because he certainly wouldn’t be able to begin using the method immediately even if he’d wanted to. Stillwater––the method’s namesake ingredient––required a lengthy and expensive alchemical process to distill if you weren’t lucky enough to have some on hand, and you needed a rather large quantity of it. He’d have to look into how difficult it would be to acquire. If he was lucky, the sect might even have a stillwater spring hidden away somewhere, though it would be a challenge to explain why he needed it. There were probably a lot of uses for qi-suppressing water, few of them good.
Calvin sighed, somewhat disappointed by the outcome. He’d been so excited to finally have a real tempering method, coming up with increasingly farfetched ideas for what the token might reward him with, and in the end it wasn’t really something he could make immediate use of. He silently picked up the second token, staring at it blankly for several long seconds.
His head still hurt. It would probably be better to wait a little, then use it.
He snapped the token in half.
Once again the wheel appeared, and Calvin watched it spin by with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Names and quality levels flew past, some of which were definitely stranger than others. Most were about what he would have expected; The Weight of Still Water, Modest quality and Ground-Laying Canyons, Low quality, but there was also Notes on Not Collapsing Your Meridians, Low quality and Five Things I Wished I’d Known Before the Core Realm, Below Average quality.
Eventually, the wheel came to a stop. Calvin tentatively braced for another wave of knowledge, but thankfully his expectations for this token were proven to be correct. After all, it had promised him a Foundation Manual, not a full method.
A weathered-looking bamboo scroll case fell into his lap, surface pockmarked and metal caps dull. Beneath a layer of grime Calvin could faintly make out faded colors, reds, whites, and greens, but there was not enough left to tell the full story of what had once been painted there. He carefully tested one of the caps and it turned easily, the metal threads within preserved even while the outside had degraded.
He removed the cap and let the scroll within slide into his hands. It was a single sheet of fine vellum, one side ragged as though it had been torn from a book. At the top, the name of the Foundation was written in slightly faded but still perfectly legible green ink––The All-Seeing Pillar. Beneath it was a Foundation diagram, along with several paragraphs of explanation. He skimmed it briefly, then turned the paper over to find more text, this one detailing a technique specifically designed with the Foundation in mind.
He flipped it back over, peering closely at the diagram. Both eyes, the tongue, the thyroid, the heart, the stomach, and the genitals. Seven nodes, concentrated in the head and chest. Modest quality, with a focus on sensory techniques. He wasn’t an expert, but it seemed stable to him. The technique too, [Eyes Held Above the Clouds], seemed quite reasonable, a versatile sensory technique that would only grow more useful once the user reached the Core realm and unlocked their spiritual senses.
All in all, a perfectly serviceable foundation.
Calvin rerolled the page and slipped it back into the scroll case, tilting his head to the side as he considered things. Sensory techniques, huh. Lulu and Wallis had never commented on his ability to locate and identify valuables during their missions, but he would not be able to avoid scrutiny forever. And while the technique would not be nearly as effective without the appropriate Foundation behind it, he didn’t actually need it to be good. He just needed a plausible excuse for the Scroll’s analytical capabilities.
This…could be more useful than he’d expected.
Calvin smiled. Not bad at all.