Vessel of Worlds

Three hundred kilometers—for mortals, a full day's voyage by boat. For Andy, less than half an hour passed before he found the barren island and the cliff of old Zhang's account.

Sure enough, the clifftop measured only a few dozen zhang across, ringed on every side by sheer, glassy precipices several hundred zhang high. No mortal could ever reach such a place.

Atop the cliff was a boy of seven or eight, red-lipped and white-toothed, a certain fineness of feature still showing through his grimy face. At that moment he was digging up a nameless wild grass and stuffing it into his mouth against his hunger.

Only those stubborn wild grasses survived on the barren clifftop—had it been otherwise, the boy could scarcely have lasted until rescue came.

Andy drifted down and landed before the boy, smiling and saying nothing.

The boy caught sight of Andy sweeping in from the sky's edge and cried out at once: "Immortal, save me!"

"Are you Zhang Mo's grandson?" Andy asked with a smile.

"Yes! Yes! Ah—Grandfather asked you to come save me! You're an immortal master!" the boy said with delight. Quick-witted indeed—he had guessed Andy's origin in a breath.

"Come." Andy said no more, took the boy's hand, and stepped onto the Wind-Treader Dragon.

"Oh?" The moment his hand closed on the boy's arm, Andy discovered to his surprise that the child possessed spiritual roots. He hadn't examined the boy before; only through touch did the latent aptitude register of its own accord.

He fed in a trickle of spiritual power and carefully read the roots' attributes.

"All five elements save wood—a four-root pseudo spiritual root. Not especially good," Andy murmured. Four roots and five roots alike were called "pseudo roots" in the cultivation world, marking their bearers for slow cultivation.

He said nothing further, tapped the Wind-Treader Dragon with his foot, and shot off toward Luojia Island.

The artifact flew tremendously fast, wind screaming past—but shielded by the spiritual light Andy raised around him, the boy felt none of it, and instead gazed about in unrestrained delight. To fly through the open sky—a thing he had daydreamed of times beyond counting—was actually, truly happening!

Wait until his playmates heard about this—how they would burn with envy!

The boy even felt that flying like this made the past ten-odd days of hunger and cold, of grass meals and dew, entirely worth it. He found himself half wishing Luojia Island were farther away, so the flight might last longer.

All too soon, though, Andy descended from the sky with the boy before the three anxiously waiting figures, who watched their return through a storm of mingled feelings.

The three naturally poured out thanks beyond counting, kowtowing without pause—but Andy kept his face cold throughout, and said flatly: "Tell me yourselves—for disturbing this island lord's cultivation, what should your punishment be?"

"This humble one will bear it all! My worthless life is nothing—only spare these two, immortal master!" old Zhang said without an instant's hesitation, having settled it in his heart long before.

"Let this humble woman bear my father's guilt! I beg the immortal master's grace!" the young woman cried, knocking her head against the ground.

Even the middle-aged man launched into a storm of urgent gestures at Andy—who found himself quite speechless.

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He swept a hand to cut off their babble and spoke in a voice drained of all feeling: "Your lives are worth nothing to this island lord—I haven't the least interest in them. But you dared disturb the quiet of my dwelling: the death penalty is waived; the living one you will not escape. The three of you will leave Luojia Island at once, and never set foot upon it again for the rest of your lives. You will tell the other mortals plainly: whoever repeats your offense dies without exception. And as for my saving the boy—not one word of it, ever."

At those words old Zhang felt the ground fall from beneath him. Banished from the Luojia Island where he had known such glory—between that and death on the spot, which was crueler was hard to say.

The two younger ones kowtowed in flooding gratitude—the sentence was far lighter than anything they had dared expect. They had never tasted an immortal master's wrath, but they had heard of it; to be dealt with as Andy had done was luck of the highest order, the mildest of punishments.

The three took the boy, bowed their farewells, and turned to leave Luojia Mountain. Only old Zhang seemed unable to gather himself, leaning on the middle-aged man's arm and glancing back again and again.

Andy sighed softly—then suddenly said to the old man: "You and this island lord share some measure of fate after all, so I'll grant you one final illumination. Your grandson possesses spiritual roots. Don't let them go to waste."

One light sentence—and to those four it was thunder from a clear sky.

"Shuo'er has spiritual roots!" the old man and the young woman cried out together.

"Indeed. His aptitude is ordinary, but he can truly cultivate the immortal arts," Andy confirmed with a nod.

The little group's faces ran through a whole spectrum—shock, joy, excitement, disbelief. A windfall dropped from heaven like this was not something one adjusted to in a moment.

Andy's form flickered, on the verge of leaving—when old Zhang suddenly called out: "Would the island lord take Shuo'er as a disciple?"

Andy froze, his brow creasing. "A disciple?" he murmured.

In truth, since entering the cultivation world he had kept his head down except at direst need, thinking day and night only of survival. Taking a disciple—building a following of his own—had never once crossed his mind. Yet he was a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator now; should fortune carry him one realm higher, he would stand among the Core Formation cultivators.

In the present age, a Core Formation cultivator counted as a senior figure of real standing. In the Star Sea, such a cultivator—if not an elder of some sect or head of a clan—could at the least hold the lordship of a mid-sized island, with anywhere from dozens to thousands of cultivators under his hand.

Even rootless rogue cultivators like himself, upon reaching Core Formation, generally began building influence—joining a sect as an elder, or gathering disciples and founding something new.

For cultivating alone carried real disadvantages: contact with the wider world grew scarce, information scarcer still—and thus opportunities slipped past unseen, treasures that might have been one's own handed to others by default.

After all, past Core Formation, meditation alone could scarcely force further breakthroughs; chance and fortune came to weigh enormously in the balance.

Treasures useful to Core Formation cultivators, especially, tended to be carved up the instant they surfaced—latecomers got nothing. Even in the markets it was the same.

Andy had considered all this before, and had loosely planned, after forming his core, to join some small sect as an elder—not for the sect's protection so much as for hands to use and a share of favorable resources. But with Core Formation still distant, he had never thought it through.

Now, with the old man offering this four-rooted boy to his door, it all came back to him. Weighing it over, taking the boy seemed to cost him nothing at all.

There was nothing for the boy to do at present—but some use would surely arise in time.

All it required was a technique and its formulas, plus a scattering of pills and artifacts—enough to occupy the boy's cultivation for years—at almost no expense of Andy's own time.

And even if the disciple never proved useful at all, the loss amounted to some Qi Condensation pills and a few artifacts he didn't care for—for Andy, a loss beneath counting.

At that thought his brow smoothed, and he said to the boy with a smile: "What is your name? How old are you? Do you wish to learn the immortal arts?"

The boy answered with quick, clear fluency: "In answer to the immortal master: this disciple is Shi Shuo, eight years old, and I wish with all my heart to follow the immortal master and learn the arts! I beg the immortal master to accept me!" And with that he knelt of his own accord and knocked his head to the ground several times. Among his playmates, no topic was more worn than how mighty the immortal masters were, how inconceivable their powers—and now came a chance to become one of those legends himself. How could he not leap at it? No adult had to prompt him; he begged for the apprenticeship himself.

Andy made no move to stop him, still smiling. "Your aptitude is ordinary. The cultivation ahead will be bitter and slow. Can you bear it?"