The day after SuYin left, Mei and I went to the first floor of the Pavilion to requisition a carriage.

While there were a few other organizations that offered long-range carriage services in the city, and while the Blue Wind Pavilion was easily the most expensive option available, the Pavilion was the best. This wasn’t a matter of speed or comfort. It was a matter of safety. Plenty of bandit groups were willing to attack carriages belonging to local Lords and Kings, but few would risk offending a Sovereign-level force like the Blue Wind Pavilion.

As Mei approached the appropriate counter, I stayed one step behind her, letting her take the lead. I had told her that my ultimate goal was the Brilliant Sun Empire and that I wanted to use Eight Flower as my break-in point, but I gave her the freedom to work out the details as she saw fit.

The attendant waiting there bowed her head to us. “Miss Pei, Alchemist Su, how may I assist you today?”

Mei gave her a light smile. “Alchemist Su needs to charter a carriage for tomorrow.”

“Okay, a carriage for tomorrow. What is your destination?” The attendant’s voice was pleasant and cheerful.

Mei abruptly shook her head. “No, he will need the carriage in two days.”

“T…Two… days?”

Again, Mei shook her head. “No, Three.”

“Thr–”

“Four.”

Bewildered, the attendant tried her best to keep up. Eventually, Mei settled on a date for the following week.

“O… Okay, a carriage in eight days?” The attendant paused, waiting for Mei to contradict her, but when nothing else was forthcoming, she continued. “Where… Where do you want to go?”

“The Rising Sun Empire.” Mei’s voice was filled with absolute confidence.

The attendant looked around, worried. “So, Rising Sun… in eight days?”

“No.” Mei’s response was instantaneous. “To the territory of the Flowing Mountain Sect.”

“Flowing Mountain?”

Mei nodded confidently. “Yes, Flowing Mountain in eight days.”

I watched as they continued this back and forth for quite a while longer. In the end, Mei decided that we would be traveling to Dark Earth City in the territory of the Flowing Mountain Sect. It was a relatively small settlement on the eastern edge of their lands. From what I could tell, its only notable feature seemed to be a Blue Wind Pavilion branch location that we could stop at.

With our travel plans in place, the next step was to prepare for our continued cultivation during the trip.

We had decided not to advance to Grandmaster until after our departure, and without being a Grandmaster, I didn’t want to sell any Rank 3 pills. However, I still wanted to begin stockpiling them for my own use. However, purchasing ingredients myself risked throwing up red flags within the various factions within the Pavilion, so, again, Mei handled these transactions for me. I don’t know exactly how she did it, but she managed to procure enough herbs that I could make three pills for each of us. And, somehow, she did all this without causing any overly attentive Pavilion managers to start breathing down my neck.

Aside from these Rank 3 pills, I also concocted a variety of Rank 1 and 2 pills, including all the pills we would need for our breakthroughs into the Grandmaster realm. I also concocted a range of utility and combat pills for us to use during our travels. These included Explosive Pills, Fasting Pills, and other odds and ends that could help us out of a bad spot. I didn’t want to use them, but it was better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them.

For his part, WuJing was surprisingly supportive of our early departure. He provided me with a silver membership badge that I could use to prove my position within the Pavilion, and he assured me that he would take care of any problems that arose after we left. As he had told me before, as the guarantor of my membership, he would still get credit for my actions whether he was with me or not, so splitting up early didn’t bother him too much.

Eight days after making our travel arrangements, I met with Mei in my apartment.

For the first time, I saw her without the blue qipao or golden hair ornaments of a Pavilion attendant. Instead, she was wearing a rugged, brown hemp robe, and her long, black hair hung down to her waist in a loose braid.

Without the Pavilion’s heavy makeup on her face, I could see that, while she was attractive, Mei was no glorious beauty that people would write poems about. Her skin was a bit too dark, her chin was a bit too wide, and her single eyelids were not considered ‘ideal.’ Did any of this matter? Not really, but hopefully, it would mean I wouldn’t be forced to ‘defend her honor’ during our travels.

She smiled at me. “Ready?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes.”

Together, we went downstairs, got in our carriage, and left the Wastes behind.

Not long after our carriage departed, I looked at my travel companion. “Mei, I’m thinking that we should advance to Grandmaster during this ride. It would be good if we could break through before entering the Flowing Mountain’s territory. What do you think?”

“It would make acquiring Rank 3 ingredients easier.” She furrowed her brow. Then, after a short pause, she spoke with confidence. “No, not now. We need to wait.”

I nodded, trusting her judgment.

However, while I wouldn’t advance, I still wanted to make good use of my time, so I focused on my mental library and studied the Earth-Rank techniques that I had previously acquired from Secretary Jiang.

For the Grandmaster-level dual-element technique that I was planning to use, I needed to form three separate dantians: one for wood qi, one for fire qi, and one for karmic energy. This setup seemed unnecessarily complicated, and with the way everything was positioned, it hampered the flow of qi through my body. I needed to improve it, but I didn’t know how. So, since I didn’t have any better multi-element techniques to use as a reference, I could only look to these more powerful single-element techniques for guidance.

Unfortunately, when I tried to read the Rank 3 Earth-Rank technique manual, it was completely incomprehensible—I couldn’t understand a single word of it. This wasn’t a matter of the information being too esoteric. Some mystical property of the book was actively preventing me from reading it.

I wasn’t entirely sure what was causing this effect. In qi vision, the book looked like nothing more than ordinary ink and paper. I tried to ask the System about it, but as always, the only answer I got was that “the price can’t be calculated at this time.”

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This being the case, I could only step back and start my studies from the Rank 1 technique.

By the time we arrived in Dark Earth City, I had made little progress, but I was beginning to understand the barrier between the Profound and Earth Ranks a little better. It was clear that Profound Rank techniques were lacking something, but I was unable to understand exactly what.

“We’re here,” said Mei, breaking me from my research.

I wasn’t sure what she had been focused on during these weeks of travel, but she seemed eager to spend time outside the confines of our carriage.

The Blue Wind Pavilion in Dark Earth City was only a shadow of the one in Dragon Gate. The main office of the Flowing Mountain branch was nearer to the sect’s center of power, and this location was just a small-time operation.

The building was not a massive pagoda. Instead, it was a simple, two-story shop that resembled several others along the street. All that set it apart were the distinctive blue and red colorings of the Pavilion and the exquisite gold ornamentations.

Inside, only two young women were present, but since no customers were around, they were both available to help us.

I walked up to one of them and bowed my head. “Hello–”

Mei stepped in front of me to cut me off and gave the attendant a polite smile.

“We would like to purchase a selection of Rank 3 herbs–” At first, Mei’s words were smooth, but then, she paused abruptly. “They are for our master, and we cannot keep him waiting too long.”

“Of course,” the attendant replied, “which do you require?”

I silently observed as Mei handled this transaction with understated confidence. She already knew which herbs I wanted, and her blessing didn’t jerk her away from buying anything on my list. Then, once her purchase was complete, she turned away without even looking at me and walked out the door. I followed behind without speaking, putting her in the position of my superior.

As she walked down the street, she subtly swerved left and right as she spotted different people. This pointed her in the direction of various shops, inns, and side streets where others were present. After a long, meandering walk, we ended up in a modest inn where she reserved separate rooms for us.

Before we split up for the night, I looked at her. “How long are we staying here?”

She grinned at me. “You tell me.”

“One day?”

“No.”

“Two?”

“No.”

“More than a week?”

“Yes.”

After a long series of back-and-forths, we decided on a time of two and a half months.

While, intellectually, I knew that following the guidance of Mei’s blessing was likely for the best, something about this long stopover in a random small town irked me. If I knew the reason for this delay, it would be fine, but not even Mei knew the reason. She didn’t even know if there was a reason. Still, this was the course that I had chosen to follow, so I would see it through.

What was I supposed to do during this time, though? There was plenty that I could do, but what was the blessing’s plan for me? “Should I advance during our wait?”

“Yes.” After responding immediately, Mei took a moment to look at me and then nodded. “Yes, you should.”

Accepting her guidance, I settled in and got to work. I had not yet deciphered any new special ways to improve my Rank 3 technique, so I simply followed the same path that I had laid down in my last life. I made three beachball-shaped dantians and connected them together.

As I worked, random thoughts kept flickering through my mind. Was following Mei’s blessing’s guidance like this really what I should be doing? Was this really the right time for me to advance to Grandmaster? Should I wait? Had I already waited too long?

These decisions had already been made, so it was foolish to keep thinking about them, but alone in a small, windowless cultivation room, I couldn’t help myself. Because of this, my concentration slipped several times, and small errors crept into each of my three dantians. I tried to fix them, but this only made things worse.

I could have attempted to disperse these partially formed cores and start over, but that would have carried risks of its own. For example, if I lost control of my qi in the process, I could end up severely injured. So, I decided to just leave them be. These small mistakes wouldn’t be enough to stop me from advancing, and anyway, they were still better than the dantians of most Grandmasters I had seen.

After my successful advancement, I began helping Mei. Previously, I had been careful about not assisting her too much and allowing her to do most of the work. This was to prepare me for helping SuYin. However, this time I had no such concerns. We both concentrated and did our utmost to create the highest quality dantian possible.

Since she was using a far simpler technique than me, and since being around other people helped me suppress my self-doubts, the dantian I created for Mei was far superior to what I had made for myself.

When we were done, I studied Mei’s qi flows and inspected them for any problems.

What I saw almost made me wince. They looked far better than my own. This wasn’t even a problem of skill or the small mistakes that I had made. It was a problem of technique. Comparing Mei’s qi flows to mine made it clear that my multiple dantian setup was simply a terrible design.

One mass containing all the qi in a person’s body–that was what a dantian was supposed to be. How would that be possible when cultivating two distinct elements, though? They would naturally interact and cause countless problems. Before cultivating a dual-element technique again, I would need to figure this out.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” said Mei, breaking me out of my thoughts. “I’ve arranged everything. We’ll leave the Flowing Mountain’s territory through the southwest, heading into the Plum Blossom Kingdom, but we’ll just cut through it before heading southeast into the… Empire of Tranquil Springs. The total trip should be about two weeks. Our next stop will be the Capital of Spring.”

There was a hitch in Mei’s voice as she said this, but she didn’t look like she wanted to explain, so I just nodded and didn’t probe any further.

“Alright, sounds good to me.”

As it turned out, not probing further might have been a bit of a mistake.

This two-week trip was not done in a fancy, well-maintained carriage from the Blue Wind Pavilion. Instead, Mei seemed to have gone with the lowest-bidder approach. The wheels and axles of the carriage she requisitioned were in good repair, so we didn’t need to worry about them breaking during our journey, but that was about the only good thing I could say about that pile of sticks.

At some distant point in the past, the carriage had been painted, but only the gods would have known when that was. Mere flecks of green and black paint remained to dot the carriage’s bare wooden walls, giving it a rotting appearance. Holes had been punched through several boards, and while some had been replaced, the majority hadn’t. Worse, the seats inside were made from moth-ridden cloth and provided no cushioning.

I gave Mei a look of mixed confusion, disgust, and worry, but she just smiled at me and spoke in a chipper tone. “Our carriage awaits.”

Without waiting for a response, she jumped on board. When she did, the floorboards creaked ominously.

Shaking my head, I could only follow after.

We traveled this way for over three years, never staying in any place for more than a few months.

Sometimes, we would enter a Blue Wind Pavilion branch, and I would offer my services as an itinerant alchemist, but other times, we would stay in random, rundown, out-of-the-way inns. We didn’t know where we would be heading next, and neither of us knew what our final destination would be, but we continued heading in a roughly southeasterly direction, toward the Brilliant Sun Empire.

The long journey gave us both significant time for cultivation. Overall, the qi in the outside world was far denser and more abundant than it had been in the Wastes, but it fluctuated up and down as we journeyed. This didn’t affect either of us much, though, since we both had more than enough Qi Gathering Pills to support our advancement.

We both made rapid ascents through the Grandmaster realm. After each breakthrough, we only waited until the moment our newly condensed qi had thoroughly flushed out our meridians before advancing again. By the end of our long journey, we had both reached Martial Grandmaster Peak.

The end of our journey was the capital of the Eight Flower Kingdom, Hundred Flower City. The city that we had been planning to reach in only two months during my last life had taken us years to reach in this one.

I looked at Mei. “Are you sure this is the place?

“Yes.” Her face was filled with determination. “There is something here that can help us advance further. I can feel it.”

Outwardly, I looked at her and nodded politely, but internally, I was beginning to find it difficult to suppress my suspicions.

Three years. For three years, we had traveled from random cities to random towns, across all sorts of different landscapes. We had been in rich areas, and we had been in poor areas. We had traveled as nobles, and we had traveled as paupers. All of that–all of it–and not once did we run into even the slightest bit of trouble. No bandits crossed our paths, and no young masters stepped out to make our lives difficult.

This should have been fine. This was what Mei’s blessing was there for, right? To make sure that things went well? Yes. However… It made me ask an important question. Why had I been assassinated in my last life? If Mei’s blessing was this powerful, why hadn’t it done something to save me?

Yes, my death was likely the result of my own actions, but her blessing could have saved me. It didn’t.

Her blessings had wanted me to die. It had wanted to send me down this path. This knowledge chilled me to the bone.