After work she went to the inner city library. They, however, required at least an Inner Sect identification from the person to sell to them, so Shen left and went to the registration office. They were open late, in case any newly advanced disciples needed to come by after work, so Shen walked inside. After the worker verified her identity and had her touch her divine sense to a testing stone, just to prove she wasn’t artificially increasing her chi pressure, she was registered as an Inner disciple and lead to an armory room. Inside were dozens of swords of every element, and she was told to take any of them that she wanted.
There were a few of unusual elements, like a Lightning one, an Ice one, and one which used Sword chi, but Shen went to the Fire section, as that was her best element. There were swords there from Early to Late Foundation in quality, and Shen could see Master Chen’s maker’s mark on most of them. She smiled and the registration woman came over.
“See something you like?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, but I was smiling at the fact that my master made most of these.”
“Oh, you are a student of Master Chen?” the woman asked, then realized something. “Oh, are you the one that made the formation fields in the outer city?” she asked.
“Well, I designed it, but most of the time other employees paint it these days.” Shen responded.
“Oh, that’s fine. I knew one of his apprentices did it, as my son and grandson told me that they talked to one of the ones that were painting it one day. They visit the field almost every day to compete against each other.” The woman looked to be in her early forties at most, but with cultivators that wasn’t the most reliable way of telling someone’s age. After all, Shen only continued to age normally because she wasn’t fully mature yet. Sometime around sixteen or eighteen years old her own aging would drop to a quarter of the rate, or an eighth if she manage to reach Nascent by then.
“Your grandson is the same rank as his father?” Shen asked. That was unusual, but perhaps the father lacked the talent his son had.
“Oh, no. My oldest son is Middle Foundation and works here in the inner city. My youngest is the one he’s competing with. His uncle is only 22, and he’s 18, so they have been more like brothers growing up than Uncle and Nephew.”
Shen nodded and looked back at the swords. One of them was a standard straight design, but late Foundation in quality, so Shen picked it up, along with its scabbard, and put it in her belt. The woman nodded and took a box out of a shelf, at which point she pulled out a Medium Female ring and handed it to Shen along with an instruction manual for how to use a storage ring. Shen thanked her and the woman offered to help her find a better home in the Inner City. Shen turned her down for now, as Mae would have to take on a different room mate if she moved out, and the woman said that she could come by at any time if she changed her mind.
Once the conversation was over, Shen said goodbye, then returned to the Library. As they would close soon, Shen didn’t have much time to shop. Still, she found a book on Divine Sense, one on better materials, so that she might be able to make better relics, and a movement technique called ‘Explosive Steps’ which basically just let you move more quickly in bursts by creating small explosions under one’s feet with Fire chi to push off of the ground. She paid the twenty stones each for the basic books and left just as the woman was locking up.
Shen went to the cafeteria and showed everyone her new ID, then ordered a round of Spirit Juice for everyone. While most people would celebrate with alcohol, none of them were sixteen yet and therefore weren’t allowed to drink. Instead she bought them the juice of a type of spirit fruit which contained enough neutral chi to completely refill the dantian of an average Gathering phase cultivator, as well as caffeine, and would release it over the next hour. As they now had too much energy and needed to burn it, they went to the nearest Formation Field and Shen rented them all a spot for the next hour, after which they competed to see who could do the most impressive trick with their chi.
While Ponma was able to throw five water balls at once with enough force to damage the steel armored dummy at the end of the field, Shen was able to throw eight fire balls with even greater force, and Mae was able to target all of the most sensitive areas on a person thanks to her medical training, Danka was the best at the game by far. He drew his sword and, with a series of movements that looked more like a dance than a fighting style, threw over two dozen Sword Chi strikes at the target, cutting it deeply with every swing.
When they were out of time they all decided to compete with weapons, as Danka had already done so, and moved to a different field where the weapon training happened. Shen used the Chi Throwing technique she had learned for swords, but the others called her out for doing so. After all, this was a weapon contest, not a chi contest. If that counted as a weapon skill, then Danka’s impressive sword technique from earlier did as well, and they had already agreed to count it as a chi technique for this contest. Shen nodded and drew her new sword, but because she and Danka were the only ones with real weapons the other two insisted on practice weapons.
So, she and Danka grabbed wooden swords while Mae grabbed darts made of Spirit Hedgehog quills and Ponma grabbed a bow. The first two charged their target and managed to dent the armor greatly, but then Mae and Ponma stepped up to their firing line. Ponma fired several arrows and Mae threw several darts for each arrow he shot. With each dart, however, Mae hit close to a critical point on the dummy while Ponma managed to hit the dummy in several openings in its armor. Shen and Danka were both surprised and tried to use both weapons, but, while they did manage to hit the target with the bow a few times, they were only good enough to get a few darts to stick to the target, and those barely stuck.
Both Mae and Ponma had been coming to the practice field occasionally to practice their combat skill, which gave Shen an idea. “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” said Shen after they were tired. “What if we form a party and go hunt a spirit beast?”
“I think you forgot that we aren’t allowed to do that kind of quest.” said Danka from where he sat beside Shen.
“Actually,” said Ponma. “Shen is right. We only technically need an Inner Disciple on the team to accept and turn in the mission. There isn’t a rule about having Outer Disciples on the team. In fact, most of the teams these days will occasionally hire mercenaries to fight with them, and they aren’t even members. They just have one or two Inner Sect disciples to handle the missions and the teams can do more missions with less sect members. That practice allow the sect double the number of teams it can send out, and has allowed the mercenaries to find work here.”
Mae nodded. “In that case, what roles are we doing? Traditionally, the roles are Frontline, Defense, Ranged, Healer, and Stealth. Danka is clearly the front line fighter. I would be the Healer, though as I’m not Foundation yet I can’t heal without touching you yet. With his Archery skills, Ponma is ranged. So what are you going to be, Shen?”
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Shen thought about it for a little while. “I can fill the Frontline, Defense, or Ranged roles, so I guess I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”
“In that case, I’ve got a suggestion.” said Danka. “Do you remember that awesome shield you made for that mercenary? Well, I’ve been practicing with a shield recently in the Guard. Do you think you can make one of those for me?”
“I think we charged something like fifty stones for it.” Shen said. “Can you afford that?” Danka nodded, so Shen agreed to take his order. She had already done his armor, so he removed it from his backpack and she reimbued the symbols, improving it to Late Gathering quality.
Ponma didn’t own a bow but Shen didn’t know any effects for one, so that didn’t matter. She would look over the formations she could do and see if she could make him arrows or a bow. If not, he would have to use one with no special effects.
Both Danka and Mae had a day off in seven days, so they agreed to go on the mission then. It was getting late, though, so they said goodbye and Shen and Mae returned home, with the boys presumably doing the same.
The next day Shen had reached the end of the usefulness of the Body Cultivation bracelet she had made and gave it to Mae before heading into work. There she asked her boss about making shields and, after getting permission, she used one of the round shields to make one for Danka. It had the defensive capacity of a Middle Foundation barrier, but was the best that Shen thought she could do using the materials she had.
Master Chen had no formations for bows, so Shen asked for permission to go buy one and went to the inner city library. She spent an hour looking for bow or arrow formations and was considering creating her own formations from bow techniques when she found a single book that covered formations for various ranged weapons. She also got a book on basic space formations, which included the formations for storage rings and magic bags, as she wanted to make storage rings and boxes, and the Foundation level talisman book. The sect had few other books on formations, but she made a mental note to return when she could to buy all of them, just in case there was something useful in them.
She returned to the shop and read the Ranged Formations book for the next hour before it was time to eat. After eating she asked for permission to leave again and went to the training field where she learned the ‘Power Shot’ technique which accelerated an arrow after it left the bow and the ‘Accurate shot’ technique which let one guide arrows to a target. The second one was Foundation, as it required Divine Sense to target the arrow, but by using the part of the Gathering phase Flying Sword formation which let you control a nearby sword with chi she could make arrows which could be guided up to five or ten human-heights away. That would be good enough until Ponma reached Foundation and could use the Foundation realm ones.
After practicing the techniques for an hour she bought a bow which was meant for disciples in the Middle Gathering phase, thirty arrows, and a quiver. She returned to work and immediately added the Power Shot technique to the bow before starting to modify the Accurate Shot formation, unsure whether she should put it on the bow or the arrows, as it would work on both. The modification proved more difficult than normal, so she didn’t finish by the time work ended.
That night at Last Meal she explained to them what she had done. Danka’s shield was done, and had turned out well. She was working on Ponma’s bow and arrows, but she wasn’t finished yet. She wasn’t sure if she could make a weapon or armor for Mae, but decided that, if she had to, she could add at least an Early or Middle Gathering quality barrier to a robe for Mae to wear. Mae’s weapon of choice was thrown needles, after all, and they were too small for most formations. At best Shen could add the arrow formations to them, though they might be too small for that too.
Mae mentioned how expensive pills were, so Shen gave her twenty of the last thirty stones she had. Mae complained at first, thinking that Shen was paying for her share of the equipment, but Shen explained herself. “Like relic crafting, the cost of pills is more labor than materials, due to it being harder to do and having a risk of failure. I’m just paying for the materials. If you do the work to refine them, then you have put more towards the cost than I have. Also, the pills are team supplies, as you will be using them on us, so it makes sense for us to contribute as well.” Mae accepted the argument and said that she would ask the sisters about borrowing their backup cauldron when she went to work tomorrow.
The next day, when she arrived at work, Shen was surprised to find two other people there talking to Master Chen. They were teenagers. Master Chen introduced them as former apprentice Artifact Crafters of the White Ice Spirit Sect. Artifact Crafters made relics from more mundane objects, but they also had the ability to create objects out of rarer materials. This allowed them to have higher quality goods and, in some cases, use the abilities inside the material. They had come here as refugees and he had decided to hire them. Of course, the shop here was too crowded, so he had decided to buy a workshop in the Metal district where they would make armor, weapons, and other objects so that they could be turned into relics there. This shop would only handle some of the business, such as the talisman creation and making the formation fields, and other than that would return to just being a shop.
He then surprised Shen by offering her the position of manager of the workshop, as she was the second best crafter there, even surpassing him in some ways. Shen wasn’t sure if she wanted to be in charge of people, as she much preferred inventing and making relics, so she asked if she could appoint an assistant manager to handle the personnel. Master Chen agreed, and Shen became the manager of a workshop, with Don acting as assistant manager. Either of the other two adults could have done the job, but Larl was more used to dealing with customers from their old shop, and needed to watch See during the day. Don, on the other hand, had made most of the relics they sold, so he was a better fit for the workshop.
Shen stayed at the shop until Middle Meal while Master Chen took the two new people out to look for a workshop. Just as she and the others were finishing their meal he returned and took everyone except Breen and Larl to the new building. Apparently the sect had several abandoned workshops in the area due to people leaving to work other jobs and the less skilled shops merging into the ones with more skill, so they quickly brought out the paperwork for Master Chen to sign.
This building used to be a smith’s shop, so it already had the forging equipment needed. Shen talked to the two newcomers. The two boys were named Lao and Su. They were twin brothers, nineteen years old, and had been working in their previous shop for five years.
Once all of the work stations were finished they returned to the shop to collect all of the materials they would need to run the workshop, and by the time the sun was setting they had finished moving everything over. Tomorrow they would start making all of the goods they could, now without being distracted by the customers, and would be able to accomplish more.
That night Shen read over the Materials book she had purchased. Now that she knew someone that could make items for her out of the new materials, she would be able to use the materials inside of it, whereas before she would have had to find someone else to do the work, making it cost more.
The next morning she opened the shop and greeted everyone that had arrived. The two twins were there so, as they brought the forge up to temperature to deal with the small amount of scrap iron that was left behind by the shop’s previous renter, Shen watched them to make sure they knew what they were doing. They were going to use it to make a few small objects which they would then imbue and, after seeing Su make an iron ring, Shen left them. She started to work on the armor and Don, Timp, and Lin started modifying large numbers of bracelets so that she could finish the formations later.
By the end of the day they had turned all of the scrap iron into jewelry, and had even added protection formations to some of the pieces. The next day Shen use some of the money which they had been given for supplies to purchase a wagon load of iron ore and a wagon load of charcoal. Shen was surprised that they still needed to use charcoal in the forge, and couldn’t just use fire chi, but they explained that, while that worked on the small scale, a full scale furnace required too much heat to gather it from the air.
“So, have any of you ever worked with exotic materials before?” Shen asked them after they had started the smelter and were taking a break while it heated up.
“You mean rare minerals or beast parts?” asked Lao. “I’ve done both, but mostly spirit beast parts.”
“How about refining monster parts?” Shen asked, and pulled out her book on materials. “This book lists several metals that can be refined from various spirit beast parts, like Blood Iron, Blood Steel, Dragonscale Steel, and Ironbone.”
Su shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve worked with Blood Iron before. It works well with some effects, like Life and Death, is neutral with most, and is terrible for anything that uses Wood chi.”
“I was thinking of making some.” Shen said. Blood Iron was refined from the blood of spirit beasts and could even store small amounts of chi depending on the realm of the beast the blood came from and how well it was made. This made it quite valuable in any situation where you wanted a relic to store its own chi. “If you guys can use it, I’ll go buy the supplies right now.” The two agreed, so Shen left for the mission hall.
The hall had about half a jar of blood from various Gathering realm spirit beasts whose corpses had been brought in, as it could be used to make certain special types of talisman ink, but most of the teams slaughtered the beasts in the field so that they would only need to carry back the useful parts, and didn’t gather it, so there wasn’t much. Shen bought the blood, however, and some of the internal organs of the beasts that would just be sold as spirit-beast food. She also asked that they save the rest of the blood for her, divided based on both minor and major realm. As it was just an extra stream of income for the butcher, they agreed.
Shen then went to one of the supply stores and bought a basic cauldron. While it didn’t require the same amount of skill as pill refining, the production process for Blood Iron was technically alchemy. Thankfully, though, the Materials book contained a basic technique for refining most of the materials which could be turned into metals.
