The Toll-Road to Immortality - Volume 2 Chapter 18

Well, depending on time zone its been just about a week. That's not half bad!

Unfortunately, the highly anticipated Calvin hair color reveal has been pushed back to chapter 19 ;)

Enjoy!

Hours later as he headed towards the training ground he shared with Lulu and Wallis to meet his friends, Calvin was still thinking of his conversation with Ariadne.  Well, rather he was thinking about it again. He was feeling a lot better after his midday nap, his stabbing headache reduced down to a dull pressure.

It was a simple enough plan, though one he honestly doubted he would have come up with. It did make a number of assumptions he wasn’t fully convinced of, but Ariadne seemed confident in her assessment of the situation and she was far more knowledgeable about this sort of thing than he was.

In essence the plan relied on the simple fact that, while the Vane family collectively was an entity that Calvin had no hope (at least for the time being) to contend with, Aeolus Vane was only a single small part of that family. More importantly, grabbing Gwen the way he had was, in fact, against the sect’s rules. There certainly were procedures for directly recruiting promising talents from the Outer sect, but it did not seem as though Aeolus had used them—likely fearing someone else swooping in with a better offer if he revealed Gwen’s value.

Thus, they didn’t necessarily need to actually oppose the Vane family. They just needed someone with sufficient influence within the sect to apply the right pressure. If Calvin tried to complain to the sect enforcers, his complaint would inevitably vanish beneath the Vane’s influence and he might even face backlash for trying to besmirch their reputation. If, say, an Elder lodged the same complaint however…

Well, the very Vane clan elders Calvin was worried about would quite likely take care of the problem for them before the sect’s enforcers were forced to take action themselves. Gwen would likely even be ‘compensated for the inconvenience’, Ariadne’s words. Calvin translated that as ‘bribed to keep her mouth shut’.

Calvin wasn’t entirely sure that would really work, but he was willing to give it a chance. He was worried Gwen’s gift was special enough that the Vanes would not so easily give her up, but Ariadne had been dismissive when he’d brought that up. No Foundation realm herbalist was worth a citation from the sect or potentially even conflict with a fellow Elder, she’d said. 

Of course that then raised the question of how exactly Calvin was supposed to get an Elder to intercede on his behalf, and Ariadne had a solution for that too. By becoming their disciple, of course! 

Ariadne, for some reason Calvin could not divine, had some rather skewed ideas about his skill level and talent. She seemed absolutely confident—delusionally confident even—that with a little bit of advice and some elbow grease he should be easily able to secure himself a master powerful enough to give the Vanes pause. Then it would just be a matter of proving himself to his new master and asking for an itty bitty favor. 

Calvin once more doubted it would be nearly as easy as Ariadne made it sound. Especially since there was, in fact, a cost for Ariadne’s guidance. Namely, she also needed ‘just a tiny personal favor’ from a Unity realm expert. A favor she assured him would require very little effort from his future master and yet refused to elaborate on. 

And of course, when Calvin had asked why Ariadne herself couldn’t follow through with this extremely simple plan herself, she’d grown very quiet. If Ariadne thought Calvin had a good chance to attract a powerful master, Calvin was utterly certain that Ariadne could do the same were she to rise to the Inner sect. After all, she had it all. Connections, a powerful physique, a rather impressive spiritual root, and what Calvin suspected was a rather powerful Foundation that she was working towards.

When pressed, she’d told him that it wasn’t that simple and left it at that. Calvin really didn’t like that answer. Was it, or was it not, ‘that simple’? 

Eventually they’d gone their separate ways. Calvin needed time to think things over and Ariadne had to get ready for some social gathering. She’d invited him to come along, saying they could begin putting her plan into action, but Calvin had begged off. He’d been in no state to talk to more people and Ariadne had thankfully let him go with little protest. Perhaps for once she’d realized that her invitation was unwelcome.

In truth, having slept on the idea, Calvin was almost certainly going to go along with Ariadne’s ‘plan’. Not because he was particularly thrilled by it—showing off enough to attract a powerful master would require showing off far too many secrets for him to be fully comfortable with the plan, not to mention how much more difficult it would be to hide future acquisitions with someone constantly looking over his shoulder—but rather because he certainly didn’t have any better ideas.

He just hoped Gwen was doing alright. Every time he thought about her he couldn’t help but remember that horrible farmhouse basement the demonic cultivators had converted into a charnel house treasury. Ariadne had assured him that Aeolus wouldn’t dare go nearly that far, likely simply planning to put Gwen to work cultivating spiritual herbs, but what if she was wrong? 

He’d heard that some kinds of special physiques and other innate traits could be extremely valuable to demonic cultivators. What if it turned out Gwen had something like that? The idea of someone torturing Gwen to extract whatever trait made her so in tune with Spiritual Herbs and refining it into an artifact or elixir made his stomach turn and his blood boil. Ariadne had gone suspiciously quiet when he’d raised that fear.

If Aeolus Vane had touched so much as a hair on Gwen’s head, Calvin wasn’t going to stop with simply getting Gwen back. He wouldn’t rest until he’d paid the scum back ten-fold, no matter how many Vanes he had to go through to get there. 

He hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

Until then, Ariadne had promised to let him know if Yunfei ever left the sect. If he dared step outside the Peaks’ protection without a full guard of his family’s cultivators, Calvin would be there waiting for him. 

As usual, Calvin found Lulu and Wallis already there waiting for him when he finally reached the training ground. They weren’t sparring today (or even ‘sparring’). Instead, Wallis was slowly moving through the stances of the Eight Peaks Martial Arts with exacting precision, his body flowing from one position to the next with inhuman grace. He had his eyes closed and his face bore an expression of serene focus like something straight out of a painting. He wore only loose-fitting pants and his body gleamed in the late afternoon sun, metallic qi sheathing him from head to toe like a second skin.

Not far from him, Lulu was also focussed on her fundamentals. She wielded a plain-looking wooden spear with several paper talismans wrapped around its shaft, repeatedly executing a clearly well-practiced sequence of thrusts and strikes. Despite its appearance, Calvin knew that the spear actually weighed as much as a whole tree, the talisman’s increasing its effective mass for as long as she channeled qi into them. She too had shed her outer robes, leaving her in just short pants that barely covered her thighs and her chest wrappings. Wind swirled around her with every step, raising a cyclone of dust that circled her feet and tugging at the high ponytail she’d bound her hair into. 

Despite their seeming focus, Calvin had barely taken a step onto the training ground when Lulu finished a sequence of strikes and came to a stop, planting the butt of her spear against the ground and turning to face him. She smiled brightly when she saw him, waving broadly with her free hand. “Hey Calvin! Come on and get warmed up, we’re wasting daylight!” She looked around, adopting an exaggerated look of surprise. “What, no Gwen today?” 

She must have seen something in Calvin’s face because after only a moment her smile vanished, her expression turning deadly serious. “What’s happened?” she demanded. “Did something go wrong with her breakthrough?” Nearby, Wallis’s eyes snapped open, his technique dispersing into silvery sparks as Lulu’s tone broke him out of his meditative trance. 

“Her breakthrough went perfectly. It’s what happened after that’s the problem.” Calvin took a deep breath. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

He didn’t tell them everything right away. He mentioned that he’d spoken with Ariadne and the results of their investigations, but avoided bringing up the tentative plan just yet. He wanted to gauge their reactions first, not that he should have been worried. 

Lulu did not take it well. Calvin hadn’t really expected her to, but he was still surprised by the intensity of the rage that thrummed through her aura like thunder booming in a clear sky. Only Wallis’s gentle but firm grip on her shoulder had kept her from rushing off to impale Yunfei on her spear, though he didn’t look any happier about what had happened than she did. Gwen had spent a great deal of time with the three of them, and evidently she’d wormed her way into the hearts of Calvin’s friends just as surely as she’d found a way into his own. 

“That little rat!” Lulu raged, her clenched fingers threatening to splinter the wood of her spear. “He thinks he can just sell off our junior sister and get away with it? He’ll have to accept another duel sooner or later and when he does I’m going to shove my spear so far down his throat––”

Wallis silenced her with a gentle brush of his fingers against her cheek. “You’ll have to get in line, dearest. There’s no shortage of people looking forward to stomping his face into the dirt.”

“Ariadne says she has people watching him. If he ever risks leaving the sect outside of sect business…” Lulu’s grin turned positively predatory. 

“You’ll invite me along?” she asked savagely.

Calvin’s expression was equally vicious. “You’ll be the first to know.” Then he sighed heavily. “That can wait though. Yunfei’s going to get what’s coming to him eventually, no matter how long it takes. Right now I’m much more worried about Aeolus and getting Gwen back.”

Lulu’s face fell, and she and Wallis exchanged serious looks. “Calvin…” Lulu began, before her voice seemed to fail her and she trailed off with another backwards glance at Wallis.

Wallis smiled tightly, but took over for her without missing a beat. “We know you like her, but you said he’s a Vane,” he stressed.

Calvin frowned. 

Lulu bit her lower lip. “Like, the Vanes.”

Calvin nodded. “Yeah. Aeolus Vane. Young master of the Vane clan.”

Wallis looked like he’d bit into something very sour. “Exactly. A young master and a Core disciple to boot.”

Calvin nodded again. “Yup.”

Lulu and Wallis simultaneously turned to look at one another, then Lulu took a step forward and gently laid a hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “She’s gone, Calvin. I’m sorry.”

Wallis stepped up beside her, his larger hand clapping firmly down on Calvin’s other shoulder. “Don’t think about it like you’re abandoning her, but there’s just nothing you can do.”

Lulu smiled weakly. “And maybe she won’t be gone for long. I’ve heard that happens sometimes. Maybe she won’t be right for whatever job the young master wants her for and he’ll send her right back to the Outer sect.”

Wallis’s expression was stoney as he slowly shook his head. “Don’t let it get to you. Worrying about things you can’t change is just going to make it harder for you to focus on your cultivation.”

Calvin looked slowly between them, seeing the sorrow and conviction in the eyes of his friends. They were trying to comfort him, he realized. They wanted to talk him out of doing something stupid or reckless and getting himself in serious trouble. 

He rapidly shook his head. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. I’m not going to run off to confront him. Ariadne and I––“

“Calvin,” Lulu stressed, “please. He’s a Vane they’ve probably got Elders and Hall Masters and who knows how many powerful cultivators on their side. Ariadne’s family is powerful and wealthy. They can get away with shoving their noses in places they aren’t wanted, but cultivators like us? Normal Outer disciples? This is beyond us. It’s out of our league. I don’t know what kind of fluff she filled your ears with, but I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Or worse, someday realize that you’re just gone too.”

“Neither of us want that,” Wallis said softly, his voice slightly unsteady. “You know what kind of effect Ariadne can have on people. Do you really––“

Calvin cut him off, not wanting to hear it. “No, no, it’s not like that. We have a plan, a good plan. And I’m going to need your help.”

Lulu covered her eyes with her free hand. “Calvin, please,” she practically begged. “Listen to what you’re saying. We want to help you, we will help you, but you’re just throwing your life away. What are a handful of Foundation realm Outer disciples going to do against a clan full of Core, Soul, and Unity realm cultivators?” She balled her hand into a fist and tapped it lightly against his forehead. “Think Calvin, think! Please.”

Calvin hurriedly shook his head. “No, no, it’s not like that. We aren’t going to be fighting anyone.” He paused. That wasn’t strictly true, not at all actually. “Well, we aren’t going to be fighting any Vanes, at least.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled heavily. “Ariadne says that what Aeolus did is against the rules. Core disciples are absolutely allowed to recruit from the Outer sect, but not like that. She thinks that––“

Wallis cut him off. “That doesn’t matter. He’s a Vane, Calvin. A Vane. One of the founding clans of the Eight Peaks. You could spend the rest of your life complaining to every sect enforcer you meet and not a single one of them will ever take your side against them.”

“Exactly!” Calvin exclaimed. “That’s why it can’t be me doing the complaining. She thinks that as long as we can get an elder to lodge a complaint for us––“

Lulu rolled her eyes. “Calvin, listen to what you’re saying. How the hell are you going to get an Elder to take your side against a Vane?”

Calvin grinned. “By becoming their disciple, obviously.”

Lulu stared at Calvin. Calvin stared back at her. Lulu turned to stare at Wallis, who shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Lulu turned back to Calvin, eyes wide like she’d never truly seen him before. 

Calvin smiled tightly. “It’s not going to be easy, but I think it really might work.” He hoped it would work. Lulu and Wallis might be willing to write Gwen off as gone forever, but Calvin wasn’t ready to do that just yet. 

Maybe he was just being stupid. Maybe he was being too naive and optimistic. Maybe it would be better to stay under the radar for a few more years, maybe even decades. Even with the best methods and resources, cultivation took time, and his supply of truly useful cultivation resources was far less consistent than a monthly stipend. Someday, he truly did believe he’d be able to take on the Vane clan personally, but that day was centuries down the line. Gwen didn’t have centuries. 

Even if she was still alive, would she even remember him in a decade? A century? Longer? He didn’t know why, but the idea of her just forgetting all about him hurt. And anyway, his cultivation journey would be so much smoother with an impossibly talented herbalist at his side. 

He swallowed heavily, meeting Lulu’s silent stare. “You guys know I have secrets.” He turned to Wallis, who had an almost bemused expression on his face, though it vanished the moment their eyes met. “There’s more where that Foundation method came from. I truly do believe this is possible, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it without your support.” He took a step back, shaking off their slackened hands, and bowed deeply. “Please, will you help me?”

He closed his eyes, not wanting to just stare at the ground but unable to bring himself to glance up at his friends. He hoped they––

Lulu clapped him on the back so hard he was nearly sent sprawling face-first into the ground. “Of course we’ll help you. We want to help you. We were just worried––“

“Scared,” Wallis cut in softly.

“––scared,” Lulu amended, “that you were throwing your life away just because Ariadne fluttered her eyelashes at you or something.” Wallis stepped closer and gently pulled Calvin back upright. “But since it sounds like you really put some thought into this, of course we’ll do what we can to help you!”

“Though it sounds to me like Ariadne was the one doing a lot of that thinking,” Wallis deadpanned.

Calvin shrugged. “I’ll admit, it’s mostly her plan. I have no idea why she has such a high opinion of my cultivation talent, but I didn’t even really have to convince her of anything.” He mechanically brushed nonexistent dust off his robe. “Did you know she could temporarily suppress her physique? I didn’t. It was weird as hell to see her without going all loopy.”

“I…guess that would make sense,” Wallis said slowly. “Though I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about that before.”

“Yeah, apparently it’s pretty uncomfortable to do. She practically chased me out of her manor when we finally finished planning so she could stop.”

Lulu and Wallis looked at one another and Lulu shrugged, then shook her head furiously, her hair fanning out behind her. “Right. So. Calvin. What can we do to help?”

Calvin brightened. “Oh yeah. Okay, so the first step of the plan is that I need to do well in the upcoming tournament. Like, really well. Maybe not win the whole thing, but like…I need to get damn close.” He paused, suddenly remembering something else Ariadne had told him. “Oh and turns out there’s also like, a whole secret test I’m going to need to do well on too. That’s why not all of the winners advance to the Inner sect every year, though apparently the sect likes to keep that part under wraps.” He paused for another moment, thinking about what he’d just said. “Uh, don’t spread that part around, okay? I don’t know that Ariadne wanted me to tell anyone else about that.”

Lulu’s face was a frozen mask. “What?” she ground out through clenched teeth.

“Yeah it’s a whole thing. Kind of stupid, but there’s actually some mention of it in the guidebook, though they don’t state it outright. That’s the whole ‘qualified disciples who reach the final elimination round’ bit, not just any disciples. Sort of the same way they don’t really explicitly state that advancing to the Core realm gets you promoted up to the Inner sect.”

Lulu’s face was starting to turn an unhealthy looking color and Calvin suddenly realized that she probably wasn’t taking that whole revelation very well. She’d always been adamant about how she wanted to reach the Inner sect someday, and hearing that she’d been operating under faulty information was probably rather upsetting. He glanced over at Wallis, who just looked very, very tired.

“So…I was thinking we could do some sparring?” he tried. 

Lulu did not react. 

“Some uh, pretty serious sparring, even. I have some techniques and martial arts I really need to work on incorporating into my repertoire properly. Trade some pointers.”

Lulu still did not react.

“…Wallis?” Calvin tried. 

Wallis ambled over to where Lulu had left her spear, pulled it out of the ground, walked back to his dao companion, and shoved the spear into her hands. “You can scream as much as you’d like later,” he told her softly, then leaned in and whispered something Calvin couldn’t hear into her ear. She finally responded, snatching the spear with both hands, and Wallis kissed her on the cheek before withdrawing. “Have fun! I’m just going to be over here if you need me.” He waved generally towards the edge of the training ground and wandered off.

Lulu took several deep breaths, then twirled her spear between her hands until it came to rest across her shoulders. “You’ll tell me all about this…test later.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Of course.”

“Great.” She twisted her neck from side to side as though cracking it, and then a fierce grin spread across her lips. “Secrets or not, you’re going to need to do a lot of practicing if you want a chance to win the Outer sect tournament. I still kick your butt in most of our fights and I’ve certainly never made it past the round of thirty-two.”

Calvin nodded sharply. “I’ve never been one to shy away from a bit of hard work.” And he was definitely going to be doing a lot of training and cultivating and not much else in the coming weeks. He really hoped that weapon technique was going to be worth a damn. Or maybe the Knowledge Token. That would be very convenient. 

“Great. Then…start,” And then she was nearly on top of him in an instant, her spear coming towards him like a club. Calvin frantically blocked the first strike with his forearm and was sent skidding back across the ground by the force of the blow, his shoes leaving furrows in the sandy surface of the training field. He hadn’t had time to coat his skin with metal qi and his arm already ached where she’d hit him. That was definitely going to bruise, and it was probably only thanks to his special marrow that the bone beneath hadn’t cracked. 

“Good! Again!”

He had no time to think about that now however because Lulu certainly wasn’t giving him any space. She was holding her spear almost like a quarterstaff, hands nearly touching two of the talismans wrapped around its shaft. She swung at him again in a flurry of blows he struggled to dodge or block, each one hitting more like a charging bull than a precise, deadly spear thrust. 

Though she’d taken him off guard with her surprise attack and unusual strategy, he adapted quickly. Metal guarded his limbs and yang quickened his steps and his blocks as he fell back from her furious offensive. It took him only a few exchanges to realize what she was doing. Instead of constantly feeding the talismans qi to increase the weight of her training spear, she was pulsing it in only at the moment before impact. Thus, while in her hands it weighed little more than a stick and thus she could maneuver it with unerring speed and accuracy, when she struck at him she hit like she was wielding a whole uprooted tree. 

“Yes, like that!” she encouraged loudly as he slapped a strike away a moment before she increased the staff’s mass, allowing him to easily deflect the attack. Of course she then nearly cracked his ribs with a straight thrust that, with a regular spear, would have run him through. “Faster!”

Clever. Very clever. He wondered if it was something she’d intentionally practiced before or if she was just adapting on the fly? He’d certainly never seen her doing anything like it before, but that didn’t really mean much. After all, usually the blade of her spear was much more dangerous than its shaft. 

She hit him again, this time in the shoulder, and Calvin lost his footing. He turned the uncontrolled fall into a roll, tumbling away from another downward blow and springing to his feet in a shower of golden sparks that just barely got him out of the way of a wide sweep. “You can do better than that,” she declared, bringing her weapon down in another overhead strike that he had no option but to block with crossed arms, dust erupting around his feet from the strength of the blow. 

…he’d have to ask her about it later, when she wasn’t trying to cave his skull in with an oversized stick.