Vessel of Worlds

Over a range of icy hills somewhere in the Mystic Cold Realm, a man, a woman, and a python sped through the air.

"Can this ice python truly find the treasure?" The girl eyed the great serpent and its endlessly flickering tongue, doubtful.

"That I can't promise. But the two of us would only be searching blind anyway—might as well let it try. A beast's senses far outstrip a human's, and this one is an ice-attribute spirit beast besides," Andy said with a smile.

"Mm, fair enough. It's all luck regardless—one place is as good as another!" The girl smiled—then said, with sudden deep meaning: "A dozen years apart, and it seems Fifth Brother has taken a dual cultivation partner? Which beautiful cultivator had charm enough to win your eye?"

Any man or woman still virgin gave off a trace of primal yang or primal yin essence—vanishingly faint, indistinguishable to common folk, but plain at a glance to any cultivator of Foundation Establishment or above.

Thus, to such cultivators, whether another retained the primal yang or primal yin body was visible on sight.

When the two had met on Island Five a dozen years before, Andy had still carried the primal yang body. This time, the girl had noticed it was gone—hence her guess, and her question.

Andy colored faintly and smiled with difficulty. "A private regret of mine—the whys of it aren't fit for telling."

Seeing he would not speak, the girl tactfully let it drop, and turned instead to trading cultivation insights and comparing preparations for the assault on Core Formation.

To discuss the path openly with a peer, without guardedness—this was precisely what Andy had always craved. Word upon word, the conversation flowed warm and quick, and both felt richly repaid.

Before long, the python led the deeply engrossed pair threading through an ice valley walled on both sides by precipitous ice mountains hundreds of zhang high.

"People ahead—three of them. Two late-stage Foundation Establishment; one mid-stage," Andy said suddenly, low.

A moment later the red-dressed girl said: "Yes... I can just barely sense cultivators there, but I can't read their levels at all. Fifth Brother's spiritual sense is far beyond mine, it seems!"

"You flatter me. With that many ahead, by rights we shouldn't crowd in. But my spirit beast tells me it senses dense ice-attribute spiritual energy ahead—strongly. What does the Fairy think?" Andy asked.

The girl smiled. "They outnumber us by one mid-stage cultivator, nothing more. With Fifth Brother's full needle set, what is there to fear? Besides, we're only hunting treasure—there may be no clash at all. To simply turn away would sit too bitterly. Let's go up, exchange greetings, and then each search as we please. A valley this broad is more than three people can cover."

"Agreed—my thought exactly. Then let's go. Those three seem to have noticed us as well; they've stopped, as if waiting," Andy said after a moment's consideration, stroking his chin.

Two people and a python slowed slightly and continued some ten kilometers—and there indeed stood three cultivators in matching dress, one man and two women. The square-faced, sword-browed young man held the highest cultivation—peak late-stage, the same as Andy. Of the two young women, one was late-stage, the other mid-stage. Both were strikingly beautiful—especially the mid-stage girl, who looked fifteen or sixteen, her fine, delicate features touched with lingering girlishness yet set in an air of frost-cold remoteness: lovely and endearing at once, and untouchable.

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Andy's gaze lingered on the mid-stage girl—not for her singular air, but because her features tugged at his memory. He had seen that face somewhere. He could not place it.

"So you two have also chosen this ice valley for your search—we're fated to meet indeed. We three are of the Taiyi Sect, under the Orthodox Dao Alliance. May I ask where you both hail from?" the sword-browed young man asked courteously, having noted Andy's uncommon cultivation—though at the words "Orthodox Dao Alliance's Taiyi Sect," an unmistakable note of pride crept in.

Andy clasped his fists and smiled. "Cultivators of the Taiyi Sect—first sect of the Orthodox Dao Alliance! An honor, truly. We two cultivate in the waters of Penglai, without sect or school—mere rogue cultivators. We'll look to you for guidance!"

Hongchen and the two young women likewise exchanged salutes and courtesies.

The sword-browed youth had invoked his sect's name precisely to overawe; seeing the strangers tactfully take the lower place, he warmed. "Not at all, not at all. I'd wager you found this place by that ice-attribute python of yours!" A careful thinker, this one—a glance at the Ice-Wind Python and a turn of thought had given him the truth.

"Just so, heh." Andy smiled—then said abruptly to the mid-stage girl: "And you three surely found it thanks to this fairy of the mutated ice spiritual root."

The others stiffened—none more than the mid-stage girl herself, who stared at Andy in open shock.

A beast's root attributes could usually be read from its coloring and aura. But a human cultivator's spiritual roots could be determined only through physical contact and a testing thread of spiritual power—never by face or spiritual sense alone. That Andy had named her rare ice root at a glance startled every one of them.

"How does the fellow cultivator know of my ice spiritual root? Did your spirit beast sense it?" The frost had gone from the girl's face, replaced by astonishment and open curiosity.

The sword-browed man was shaken too—his cultivation matched Andy's, yet he had no such ability to read another's roots. Some strange and uncanny secret art, perhaps? But when he saw the mid-stage girl gazing at Andy with undisguised fascination, an irrational surge of dislike for the man rose in him.

"Heh—nothing of the kind. I simply met the fairy once, years ago. Forgive my boldness—might your name be Qianqian?" Andy said, smiling.

"Qianqian is indeed my name! But I truly cannot recall ever meeting you, fellow cultivator!" That he knew her childhood name astonished her further. She racked her memory—and could not, for all her effort, connect the refined purple-robed youth before her to anyone she had ever known.

Since joining the Taiyi Sect, prized for her superb aptitude, she had known little but diligent seclusion, rarely venturing out—and cool and proud by nature besides, she had made few acquaintances. Among the handful of cultivators she knew, not one matched the man before her.

Andy smiled mysteriously. "That leaf-shaped flying artifact of yours—discarded long ago, I suppose? And your honored grandfather, He Da—is he still hale?"

"You know about my leaf artifact—and you know Grandfather! Ah—you're that Senior!" At last the girl remembered: the senior who had identified her root attribute all those years ago, changed the course of her life, and gifted her a leaf-shaped flying artifact besides. He had shaped her fate profoundly, and she had thought of him often—but in those days Andy had kept his voice pressed low and worn a black bamboo hat, so she had failed to connect the two. The moment he named the leaf artifact and her grandfather, she knew him.

Her voice lit with excitement. "So it truly is Senior! Thank you—for that day's guidance, and the gift! Qianqian has never forgotten. Forgive me for failing to recognize you!"

Andy waved it away, smiling. "Enough of 'Senior.' We're both Foundation Establishment cultivators now—we speak as equals. What I did that day was the merest passing gesture; don't burden yourself with it. And your grandfather—how is old He Da?"

Every trace of ice had melted from the girl's face; she smiled brilliantly, warm as spring. "Grandfather is past a hundred and still sturdy—living out his years in comfort within the Taiyi Sect. He has spoken of you to me many times. If not for your guidance that day, Qianqian's road would surely have wound through many a needless bend."