Book 2: Chapter 34

THE SUN HAD barely touched the height of noonday by the time I reached the handler station back home. I was bathed in sweat and heaving huge lungfuls of air, but I had done it.I had made the trek in less than half the time as normal.

I’d left right at moonset, still under the cover of darkness and had pushed myself to the limit both physically and spiritually. I maintained both [Mark of the Giant] and [Mark of the Beast] the whole time without taking a second to rest.

When I had traversed the wild before, I would always run out of steam around the three-quarter mark and then would have to drag myself the rest of the way at normal speed. But now, after cultivating and perhaps exposing myself to the Bloodmoon day after day, my Dantian capacity had increased substantially. Even after feeding solid Frenzy to my body for four hours straight, I still had a little gas left in the tank. It was a testament to how much I had grown both internally and physically, with my body easily able to keep up with the rigors as well.

But arriving early brought about other complications now.

Normally I would arrive when everyone had already left for the day, but now the Imperial Guard and other clients were likely there as well. Plus, I had two monster cores on me along with Kelsey’s orb which I decided to take back home to study some more.

I’d have to trust Lee to cover for me somehow in front of the guard.

Once I had cooled down a bit, I steeled myself and casually strolled into the handler station and prayed Lee would see me through. He thankfully spotted me before the guard did and after a quick look of shock, he raised a brow in question. I showed him my bag full of my cores and he read the situation expertly.

“Ah, Master Chun!” he said with a bow as he rushed to me like I was some kind of VIP. “I forgot to enter your booking in the log this morning before you left. What time did you arrive again?”

The Imperial Guard looked at me oddly, clearly not remembering seeing me in the morning. I played it off with [Struggler’s Resolve].

“Sorry,” I said with a casual laugh. “Keep forgetting I’m not a handler anymore.”

“Hey, once a handler, always a handler,” Lee said with a grin. “You must have come around five this morning, just before opening, right?”

“I think so,” I said and then smiled at the Guard. “Did Master Lee tell you that I was a handler in a former life?”

The Imperial Guard, a stocky man, with bushy eyebrows, scrunched them together as he stared at me skeptically. “Wait just a minute…”

My heart skipped for a moment as he continued to stare, and I feared our impromptu ruse had failed.

The man then cocked his head to side. “Are you the Iron Bull?”

I breathed an inward sigh of relief. My reputation in the ring was paying off in dividends. “That I am, sir.”

His expression changed immediately to one of surprise and delight. “I thought so! I’m a big fan! I hope you dethrone those damn silver bird sisters this year.”

The statement came as a shock, but he said it while laughing, so I guessed none of the other patrons took it as an outright affront to the ruling clan. His subordinates clearly didn’t seem to mind either—the three Enforcers joining in with a laugh and one of them even asked for my autograph.

The rest of the process was smooth sailing after that.

The guard processed the duty for my cores, which he lowball estimated at around 60 spirit stones in value to give me a break on the tax.

“I hope you put these to good use before the match,” the Guard said, handing the cores back to me along with my imperial receipt. “You only have five days left… Are you ready?”

I grinned with [Struggler’s Resolve]. “Well, you can imagine what I had to kill to get these cores. You tell me?”

My bravado was rewarded with an outpouring of lemonade and the Guard and his enforcers gave me a cheer.

“Kick her ass, Iron Bull. My money is on you!”

* * *

Once we were out of sight of the Guard and enforcers, I could finally breathe easy again. The last thing I needed was to make headlines that the Iron Bull had somehow miraculously survived spending multiple nights out in the wild.

“Thanks for the save, man,” I said to Lee giving him a fist bump.

“Me?” he said with a laugh. “I think you saved yourself, Iron Bull. But where the hell have you been anyway?”

I still hadn’t told Lee about the community out in the wild. Not that I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t want to give him that kind of stress to worry about when it came to covering for me. I gave him something else to focus on instead, raising the bag containing the cores.

“Just playing amateur cultivator,” I said.

He merely laughed again, no further questions asked.

What a guy, I thought. You could always count on Lee to truly not give a shit about anything.

“Hey, can you do me one more favor?” I asked.

“Shoot.”

“Can you get a message to Mu Lin for me? She’s still at the academy, right?”

“Last I checked,” he said. “Why?”

I chuckled. “I need to meet with her, but I need to offload these cores and do a few other things first. Would you mind?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “What’s the message?”

“Tell her to meet me at the library in about half an hour. I need to pick her brains about something.”

“Half an hour? That sounds urgent.”

“Very,” I said and then added with a grin. “Tell her the future of mankind depends on it.”

* * *

I made a quick stop at the square before heading to Master Edrik’s to offload the cores and was mesmerized by the progress being made on the new building.

The site had been excavated and a solid foundation of stone had already been laid. Now over a hundred workers from the Loyal Prosperity Sect were busy erecting the wooden walls of the first floor, banging and hammering away. It was amazing to see everything happening without a single piece of heavy equipment in sight. No cranes, no forklifts, no jackhammers—everything being carried out by laborers who casually lifted even the largest pieces of timbers by hand.

“Wow,” I said to Jian Yi as we both watched the progress take place. “I’m glad I actually managed to bag some cores to pay for all this. I’ve probably got about half of what we need for the next payment already.”

“Not bad,” she said, raising her voice above the banging of multiple hammers. “But we’ve got more problems brewing now.”

“Oh?”

Jian Yi then went on to explain that two new writs had arrived while I was away and that several older ones still needed to be battled in court in two weeks’ time.

“Who are these new ones?” I asked.

“Former Iron Bracket contenders, I believe,” Jian Yi said. “Gui Zu and Zu Tien were able to stave them off, but it seems your notoriety has brought some negative attention as expected. They want an opportunity to fight the Iron Bull to launch their own fame and reputation by defeating you.”

“Well let’s hope they all drop the idea once I defeat Lady Silver Sparrow next week,” I said. “I’ll be in the Gold Bracket then.”

“True, but it will likely only get worse after that.”

I raised a brow. “What do you mean?”

“You would have won the Iron Bracket Tournament, which will lead to many of those Iron Bracket contenders staying away for sure, but then the low-rank Gold Bracket contenders will come seeking you out. Until you actually rank high enough in the Golden Bracket, expect these challenges to continue.”

I sighed inwardly. “This never ends, does it?”

“For you, perhaps not,” Jian Yi said. “But for the sect, it eventually will. Having a warden with a high enough Gold Bracket Ranking will certainly stop anyone locally from showing up to disrespect us. We only have so much caliber within our little population here in Jurin, after all.”

“So how high a Gold ranking do you think I’ll need to be to achieve that?”

Jian Yi tapped her chin in thought. “Well, the 20s and above would be the territory of 9th-Tier Core Realm and perhaps even a newly ascended Sacred Soul Realm cultivator. And the strongest cultivators in our city next to the Warden are likely to be 9th-Tier Core Realm practitioners at best, so if you achieve anything above 20 that would probably do it.”

My mind spun. “That’s the same as qualifying for Jade Bracket, Jian Yi!”

“Exactly,” she said. “You can’t do away with contestation from your current bracket until you achieve the next. Trust me, if you qualified for Jade, there would be few on the planet who would dare challenge us then, much less in little ‘ole Jurin province.”

What she said made sense, but damn…

“How the hell did this go from me reaching the Gold Bracket to now me having to qualify for Jade? This is nuts.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Jian Yi said with a playful eye roll. “It’s all just nomenclature. Gold Bracket, Jade Bracket, Core Realm, Sacred Soul Realm. They all blur together at the transition points. You just need to focus on winning in the ring and obtaining as high a rank as possible. When the writs and challenges stop showing up, that’s when you know that you’ve truly achieved top dog status.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who has to survive all this crap, you know?”

Jian Yi chuckled. “Speaking of which, how are your preparations for your next match going? Are you ready?”

I honestly didn’t know. I had made some advancements for sure, especially with my Body and Mental Refinement, but I was still yet to perfect [Iron Lightning] or evoke the [Soul Shield] technique to protect my Flame. Moving further into the Brackets would surely require both of those skills, not to mention when I would eventually have to face off against that Fire Bird Elder Hin Wu one day.

“Almost,” I said. “But I need to go see a spiritual expert first. There’s some insight that I’m missing.”

* * *

I dodged an offer to sample one of Yu Li’s latest concoctions before leaving the square and heading to Master Edrik’s to drop off the cores. I didn’t have the time to act as a shill to drive up the price this time, but I trusted Edrik to still land a decent sale at the auction.

From there I headed to the Judicial District to find Mu Lin.

It was early afternoon now with the sun still high in the sky. I passed through the checkpoint that was the gateway to the more sophisticated side of the city, using my B-class citizenship ID. The transformed old business center of downtown Chicago was now filled with towering structures favoring Yee architecture and above it all, hanging in the sky, was the Imperial city itself.

Skiffs flew back and forth from the base of the giant pagoda, dropping off passengers at designated landing points throughout the district. The last time I was here, I was dressed like a bum and people were staring at me constantly. But now they were staring for a different reason. More than a few gave me bows of respect, recognizing me as the Iron Bull, but I received a few glares of hatred and disgust as well.

I guess not everyone in this part of town was rooting for the Terran underdog, I thought.

But I grinned back at them all the same with a chuckle of [Indifference].

It drove them crazy.

I finally reached the multistory building of the central library and spotted Mu Lin right away. She looked the same, still the short Indian girl with the pretty eyes, only she had cut her hair short and was dressed in black robes with copper trim, the same as Xi Xha now. She wore a dour frown when I approached her, adjusting her glasses with one hand on her hip.

“You really are the worst friend in the world, you know that?”

I cracked a grin. “What? What I do now?”

“No contact for weeks and the first time you do it’s for a favor?” She rolled her eyes. “Nine hells, man, you’re lucky I like you for some unknown reason.”

I laughed again.

“Shut up and come give me a hug, you big oaf!”

I did so gleefully, picking her up off the ground and eliciting a squeal of protest as I spun her about.

“Stop, stop!” she said, trying to suppress a laugh. “You’re so damn embarrassing!”

I put her down and then handed her a small bag of persimmons I had picked up in the market along the way. “I know you can probably afford these all the time now, but it’s the thought that counts right?”

She snatched the bag from me and suppressed another little grin as she peered inside the bag. “This will suffice for paying your penance,” she said. “Now what the hell is so urgent that you had Lee come drag me out of a lecture to meet with you?”

“Need your guidance on a couple of things,” I said. “How much do you know about gaining power in the spiritual realm?”

Mu Lin was one of the smartest people I knew—a trained scholar who was now advancing her skills and abilities through a formal higher education degree at the academy. If there was anyone who would have the answer, or would know where to find it, it was her.

She squinted her eyes at me. “Spiritual realm? Explain what you mean exactly.”

I tried to think of a way to describe what I was trying to achieve without expressly mentioning the Berserker techniques. I thought back to the cultivation manual instead and likened it to the closest parallel I could find.

The formation of one’s inner soul.

“You know how to achieve breakthrough into the Sacred Soul Realm you need to cultivate a second soul? I need to understand what that means exactly. Like the actual mechanics of it. Is it different than normal cultivation?”

“Well sure a little,” she said, adjusting her glasses and she peered at me strangely. “But why would you even need to worry about that? That’s for people who are like… holy cow.”

Her eyes grew wide behind her glasses as she continued to stare at me.

“What?” I said.

“What the hell have you been doing, Chun? You’re at like 4th or nearly 5th-Tier Core Realm cultivation level now!”

“Really?”

She shook her head. “Geeze, you didn’t even know did you?”

I shrugged and pulled up the cultivation manual in my mind’s eye.

Core Formation

1st

Core Formation

2nd

Core Body Refinement

3rd

Core Mental Refinement

4th

Core Density Refinement

5th

Inner Soul Detection

6th

Inner Soul Focus

7th

Inner Soul Refinement

8th

Inner Soul Projection

9th

Secondary Soul Germination

Damn, I thought. I guess she was right.

I had certainly already maxed all my Core Body Refinement stages and was probably close to doing that for my Mental Refinement as well, barring that damn closed door in my mind. And my last trip across the wild definitely proved my core density had increased substantially. Perhaps I truly was on the stage of detecting my inner soul now.

Whatever that was.

“Well of course I knew,” I said with mock bravado. “Why else would I be asking how to achieve the next step?”

I laughed to let her know it was a joke and she merely shook her head. “You remain the mystery that is Chun, my friend. Although I have to say your body is matching your core. What the hell are they feeding you back home? You’ve got to weigh like 300 pounds!”

I flexed for her like a buffoon.

“But in all seriousness,” I said. “How do I progress to the next stage? Do you know?”

“Well, what have you been doing?”

I tried to give her a watered-down version of exposing myself to the Bloodmoon. “So I’ve been trying a new cultivation technique where I sort of expose myself to really potent and exotic sources of Qi.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve been pushing those cheap elixirs again.”

“Sort of, but they’re not cheap. I use monster core materials now.”

She frowned. “Well, I guess that would explain your cultivation progression, but inner soul progression is different. It’s spiritual insight that you need to germinate your Sacred Soul.”

Bingo! I thought. I’m onto something here.

“Right, so how do I do that exactly? Gain that spiritual insight?”

She pondered a little. “Well, it’s different for everyone. It’s a personal journey. You need to explore the spiritual root of your Dao. Whatever it may be.”

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She shrugged. “Experiences, meditation… you need to look within mainly.”

I supposed that was sort of what I was doing by strengthening my Flame by feeding it Dark Frenzy and facing I’xol’ukz each night. But while I had definitely increased my spiritual strength, I still couldn’t achieve the breakthrough I needed to scribe the orb.

“Okay so what happens if you encounter an obstacle?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like when I try to…do it…I reach this closed door in my mind that I can’t open.”

She frowned, furrowing her brow. “I’m not really following you. Can you show me what you’re doing exactly?”

I glanced about. There was a fair bit of people in the area, but no one was really paying attention to us. And what I was about to do probably wasn’t anything that would cause alarm for being illegal. I reached into my pocket and withdrew the orb.

“Ok, so I have this technique I’m trying to master that involves this orb as a focus,” I said. “Only thing is, I can’t seem to get it to work.”

“Is that that bocce ball?” she said, staring at it.

Her words surprised me. I’d nearly forgotten the lie Lee had told to get the original orb past the Imperial Guard that first night I had received it from Threja. “Damn, you’ve got a good memory, Mu Lin. Yeah, it’s the ah…bocce ball. So anyway, what do you want me to do?”

She adjusted her glasses. “Go ahead and try your technique, I’ll study your Qi to see what’s going wrong.”

“Okay,” I said and prayed I wouldn’t reveal anything that might peg myself as a Berserker to her.

I focused on the orb as I took it in my palm and once again summoned my Frenzy to apply the [Brand of the Frenzied Flame] technique. The orb heated in my palm as normal, but just like before I reached the point where I just couldn’t go any further, pushing vainly against the closed door in my mind.

I looked back to Mu Lin who was still studying me intently.

“Well?” I said.

“It’s definitely nothing to do with your Qi circulation,” she said. “The mechanics of everything seem to be working fine. But there is definitely a spiritual blockage.”

“You could sense that?”

“Not sense, but if everything else is working fine then it kind of points to that as being the problem.”

“So how do I clear it then?”

She shrugged. “Only you can figure that out. Like I said, it’s all very personal. Have you been really stressed or conflicted about something lately?”

“Stressed?”

“The spirit is a reflection of our true soul,” she said. “If our spirit is unsettled in one instance it will be affected in all others as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hmmm,” she said. “Let me try and think of an example.” She then snapped her fingers after a moment, coming up with something. “Okay let’s say you get angry with someone in the market and it puts you in a foul mood. That mood stays with you and can manifest itself in other relationships as well, even though it’s with someone else completely, like say a coworker or a friend. So if you close your spirit to one person it will remain closed to everyone else. Unless you deal with the original conflict that caused it to close, the corruption can eat away at your spirit and prevent it from opening completely. Even when trying to perform a technique.”

I thought on that some more. Was the closed door in my mind actually my closed spirit? And if so, what caused it? I had dozens of conflicts and stresses to worry about now. “How do I know what caused it?”

She merely shrugged again. “I can’t tell you, only you can. But you’ll probably figure it out eventually. Just give it time and look within.”

I nodded. “Thanks, that was helpful.”

“So was that it?” she said. “You mentioned a couple of things.”

“Oh right,” I said, nearly forgetting. I leaned in closer to her. “This one is a bit more sensitive. I’m seeking knowledge on something kind of specific.”

“What?” she said.

“Have you ever heard the name I’xol’ukz before?”

She shook her head. “What kind of name is that?”

I paused a moment, contemplating if I should even share, but I trusted her and needed to get the information somehow. “I think it could be the name of a god. Someone known as the King of the Moon.”

Her eyes widened. “Where did you come across all this?”

I thought quickly and gave the best answer I could. “It’s just something I heard those Fire Birds say once. Wanted to see if there was any truth to it or if it was just bullcrap superstition.”

“This goes a bit beyond me,” she said. “But stuff like that is probably recorded in the Histories of Mythos.”

“What that?”

“It’s a whole section of the library,” she said.

“In there?” I said, pointing to the library behind us.

Mu Lin laughed. “No way. Something like that is way too important to keep down here. I mean the grand library in the Imperial City.”

I pointed up at the pagoda. “There’s a bigger library up there?”

“There’s a bigger everything up there,” she said with a laugh. “But you know who can probably help you more? Xi Xha. She’s the ancient artifact buff. If there is anyone who might have heard of this King of the Moon character and can track it down in the Histories of Mythos, it’s her.”

“Great,” I said. “Can you get a message to her about it then?”

“Message?” She laughed again. “Please. Don’t you have a B-class citizenship now, Mr. Iron Bull?”

“Yeah.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Mu Lin said and then spun on her heel, heading for one of the landing areas with the waiting skiffs. “Let’s just go see her right now.”

“Right now?” I said, looking up at the pagoda. “You mean…?”

“Yup!” Mu Lin said with a mischievous grin. “It’s time you took your first trip to the Imperial City, Chun. The true heart of Jurin Province awaits.”