The stone pulsed in his palm, soft blue, and the three of them leaned toward it like he’d produced a winning lottery ticket.
“Is it candy?” Tao asked.
“It looks like candy.”
“No, Tao, it’s not candy.”
“Can we sell it?” said Xuan.
“If we split it three ways,” Lex said slowly, his business mind already at work, “would there be three times as much?”
Hunter closed his eyes briefly.
“Nobody is eating it, selling it or splitting it.
It’s a spirit stone.
It’s going to make you cultivators.”
That stopped them cold, and Lex’s mouth opened and stayed open.
“Master,” he said at last, very quietly, “the old master took six years to reach the first level.
Six years, with pills.”
“Well, you’re doing it tonight.” Hunter set the stone down on a flat rock between them, where it brightened at once, as though it had noticed the company.
“You’ll be stronger, faster and harder to kill, and you’ll stop needing me for everything.”
“Will it hurt?” Xuan asked.
Hunter remembered the cave floor: his soul microwaved from the inside, frozen and set alight at the same time.
“Define hurt.”
All three faces fell at once.
He did explain it, more or less.
The stone was full of qi.
They were to breathe it in and move it through their meridians.
Meridians were channels in the body.
Qi was life energy.
And circulate meant to move around in a circle, Lex, the way blood does.
In the end he gave up on theory.
“It’s like steering a horse.
Only the horse is inside you, and it’s made of lightning.”
All three nodded, as though that settled it.
“And when the impurities come out, don’t hold them in.”
“Master, what does that—”
“Trust me, you’ll know.”
They sat cross-legged in a ring around the rock and closed their eyes.
Through the sense he felt the qi in the air shift and gather, circling the three of them like something deciding where to bite.
“Remember,” he said, “this is real cultivation.
Not a thirty-year employment scheme.”
Lex opened one eye.
“The scheme was foolproof, Master.”
The qi found its way in.
Hunter felt it find the closed channels in their bodies and push, and then push harder, like water finding a crack in a dam.
Tao’s eyes snapped open.
“Master, I feel—”
Then he screamed.
He went rigid, arched, and fell sideways, and the slope did the rest.
He rolled, still screaming, off down the bank toward the lake and fetched up against a tree.
Hunter took three steps after him and fell over Xuan.
Xuan had chosen that exact moment to begin.
He was laughing, high and wild, with tears running down his face.
Lex took one look at the two of them, drew one breath of the air, and fainted flat on his back, which started his own breakthrough where he lay.
[LUNA] LOOK AT THEM GO!
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ
They’re screaming like someone’s stealing their souls!
[LUNA] TECHNICALLY THERE’S SOME MINOR SOUL RESTRUCTURING
[LUNA] KIDDING!
PROBABLY
Then the smell came.
It was nothing like his.
Gray rather than black, a thin oily film on their skin instead of a crust.
But it was three men at once in a small clearing, and the smell of it hung over the camp for an hour.
Xuan, still laughing, threw up, and even that came out gray.
Tao lay against his tree and sweated sludge.
Lex twitched in his sleep with a look of mild surprise.
Hunter sat down on a rock a safe distance upwind and watched them.
He had done this: he’d put the stone down and told them to breathe.
They hadn’t chosen cultivation, and they hadn’t chosen him either.
They were slaves with a seal in their heads, being rebuilt in the dark because their master needed them to stop being useless.
Their master had taken the stone off a man on his knees to do it.
He looked at the water, where two moons lay broken into pieces, and felt a thing he hadn’t let himself feel since the gate.
He wanted to go home.
He wanted it so badly he could taste the burnt coffee in the break room.
He opened the claim again.
He hadn’t touched it since the hillside, and it seemed only fair to try.
Claim, return user home.
Resubmitting, with new circumstances.
The window thought about it for longer than last time.
[SYSTEM] CLAIM: RETURN_USER_HOME (RESUBMITTED)
STATUS: DENIED
ADDITIONAL: HOST_CLASS = BANDIT (VERIFIED)
He read it twice, the way he’d once read denial letters from underwriting, looking for the loophole, and there wasn’t one.
The first time, they’d turned him down because he wasn’t the man they’d ordered.
Now they had a second reason, and he’d supplied it himself.
Clearwater was the paperwork.
Around him, the screaming thinned.
Tao went quiet first, and then Xuan’s laughter ran down into hiccups and then into breathing.
Lex sat up, blinking, and looked at his hands.
“Status,” Hunter said.
It came out in his old Monday-meeting voice.
“Everybody.
One word.”
“Wet,” said Tao.
“Hungry,” said Xuan.
“Taller?” said Lex hopefully.
“No,” said Hunter.
“But wet and hungry are real, so that’s two out of three.”
They looked different, though not by much.
Their shoulders sat a little squarer, and there was a new solidity to them in the sense, like the difference between a candle and a lamp.
Between them the spirit stone had gone dull and gray, a pebble.
Ten silver, the head had said.
Two years of bread.
Gone in a night, and three men who’d been nobody were now something.
“Master,” Lex said, staring at the dead stone, “they say sect immortals spend those like copper.”
“Do they?” Hunter said.
He thought of the village head on the flagstones.
The wife with her hand over her mouth.
A grandfather who had put everything by so his grandchildren would have one piece of luck in a bad year.
Somewhere out there were people to whom all of that was loose change.
He hoped very much that he never met one.
[SYSTEM] FOLLOWERS: BODY REFINING (1ST LEVEL) ×3
[LUNA] CREW LEVEL UP!
AND YOUR CLEARWATER REWARD IS READY.
CLAIMING NOW
[SYSTEM] SKILL DOWNLOAD INCOMING: SHADOW STEP
Now?
Hunter thought.
Wait, what do you mean, down—