Thirty minutes later we approached a clearing where hundreds of people were already waiting. Randy had followed us using his Slipstream flight ability. I truth, I would love to have flown here on my sword, even if I had to use Flight to fake it, but I simply couldn’t keep up with Golden Sky Lord’s speed, as he traveled at one thousand kilometers per hour, even faster than the speed of sound.

  Mike instructed GSL where to land and he turned slightly, leaning backward and flapping heavily when he got near the ground, then casually landing with little force. He had chosen to land on a rocky patch of ground, the dirt areas around here not being able to support his mass. He stretched out a wing and the disciples left the basket for the ground, several of them looking queasy. Apparently their first time flying hadn’t agreed with them. Mike jumped down and tossed GSL a storage bag, which he caught in his beak. The bodies of several large spirit beasts came out of the bag and GSL quickly threw them into the air with his beak before catching and swallowing them.

  Randy landed beside Mike and they took a few steps forward, greeting the approaching members of other sects. “Greetings.” said Mike. “I am sect master Mike Douglas, surname Douglas, of the White Tiger sect. This is high elder Randal Taylor, surname Taylor. We have brought a batch of thirty three disciples to enter and train in the hidden realm.

  Some of the elders there, in flame styled, azure, or chartreuse robes, had looks of distaste on their face, but a swordsman in a black robe and a Buddhist monk in an orange kasaya stepped forward to greet them. “This one is called Tiangu, from the Prajna Temple.”

  “And I am Swift Wind, high elder of the Golden Saber sect.” He patted the saber and sword at his waist to indicate that they were a sword cultivation sect.

  “Medium sect of sword cultivators.” Chu Van whispered into my ear. “The monk is from a Large Buddhist sect around one thousand five hundred li south of here.” Based on what I knew of the culture of this world, small sects, like the White Tiger sect, only have level four members at the top. Once someone reached level five, you would become a Medium sect, and once someone reached level six the sect would become a Large sect. There were also three Continental sects with level seven masters, but the closest was around twenty thousand li from here.

  Mike and Randy bowed in respect to the others. “Thank you for your kind greeting.” said Mike. “Is there someone I need to talk to about registering for this gate?” Sometimes the larger sects would claim a gate that was too close to their base and try to regulate who could enter, even charging an entrance fee if they did allow you to enter. With Mike’s sect being as weak as it was, he had no choice but to pay in such situations.

  “This gate has not been claimed,” remarked Tiangu, “as it is too far from any of our bases. You need only announce your sect name and your intention to send disciples through, which you have already done.”

  Mike nodded. “Good. The last gate that we sent disciples through was claimed by the Mythic Serpent demon sect, who demanded fifty stones per disciple.” While there were few demonic sects in the region due to the people’s distrust of them and their enmity with many righteous sects, the Mythic Serpent sect was a large sect, and therefore could protect itself from any righteous sect that chose to make war against it.

  “That is regrettable, but understandable. We can only be grateful that those that walk the path of evil were more interested in your stones than your lives.”

  Mike nodded. “They only had a few level four elders there, and there were too many elders from other sects for them to resort to violence.” He paused and looked at where a blue swirl was forming, a slight wind flowing towards it. “So, has the gate been analyzed yet?”

  The monk nodded. “Yes. They verified that only those below the third level will be allowed in, that it will be an Eternal Day type realm, and that the Gate will be open for approximately thirty eight hours, starting just over two hours from now. We cannot get more specific than that, so we cannot tell you if it is a realm we have been to in the past.”

  Mike nodded. “In that case, I will instruct our disciples to double check their supplies and prepare to enter.” He looked at Randy, who nodded before returning to where the disciples were standing.

  Upon receiving the command, everyone started checking their supplies and I realized that I hadn’t done so myself. Thankfully, however, I had food, medical, and camping supplies from my journey to High River, so I wouldn’t have any serious issues. Realizing that we could use some more variety in our group’s techniques, however, I walked over to where the junior monks and nuns of Prajna Temple were gathered. “Amitabha.” I said in greeting to the highest ranked monk there. “I am named Li Kev, a traveling talismonger in the employee of White Tiger sect. I come seeking trade.”

  “Amitabha.” replied the Peak level two junior monk, raising his hand in blessing. “This humble one is called Mishana. We can indeed engage in trade.”

  I withdrew all of my empty talisman papers from my bag, as well as the six leftover animal trait talismans I had made the night before. “While I can make other talismans if you wish, this is all I have on me at the moment.”

  Mishana looked at the demon papers with a look of concern on his face. “The malice upon these papers is antithetical to our ways, and cannot be used.” I nodded and put them away. “The ones made from spirit beasts, however, can be used by us.” He picked up some of the papers to look at them and several other monks did the same. “The quality is good, so you are not offering us the failed products of your labor as some disreputable merchants do. I believe we can trade.”

  I nodded. “These Demon papers were mostly created to practice the technique, but I have found they are only truly useful in creating attack talismans. As a result, I will likely limit my production of them in the future, relying on spirit beast hides instead, as they are far more versatile and safer to work with.”

  “That would be wise.” said the monk, and we started negotiations. Five minutes later we settled on me producing twenty level two metal and twenty level two fire attack talismans for them, as their own abilities focused on defense and mental effects, leaving them lacking in physical offense. In exchange I received forty level two Golden Bell defensive talismans, which could place a high strength but low endurance barrier around the user, blocking attacks up to one minor level stronger than normal at the expense of its ability to repair itself and therefore its durability against prolonged attack. They also purchased one thousand talisman papers, giving me a small jade taiji necklace in exchange. This necklace was a protective charm which many monks and nuns wore, which could balance the yin and yang of incoming attacks, weakening them. It was situationally useful, working better against strong yang attacks like Fire or Light or strong Yin attacks like Ice, Darkness, or Death. Unless we came across the undead, however, it would likely do no more that slightly lessen the injuries received by the wearer.

  I bowed and thanked them for the trade, then returned to the group of disciples. I gave each of them a barrier talisman, then spent the rest of my time meditating. For some reason I felt uneasy about entering the hidden realm, so I wanted to maximize the effects of my cultivation seeds before entering.

  Soon I started feeling large amounts of qi coming from the portal and heard one of the elders from the other sects speak up. “Listen up. We will enter the gate in order of the strength of our forces. The order will be as follows. Eternal Flame sect, Azure Cloud sect, Chartreuse Peacock sect, Golden Saber sect, Prajna Temple, White Tiger sect, Independent cultivators. As soon as the portal opens disciples from my Eternal Flame sect will enter, followed by the Azure Cloud sect disciples, etc. Make sure you wait your turn or your people may become stranded on their own inside.”

  Chu Van quickly explained to me that the gates somehow knew that groups entering together should be sent to the same location, but would send the next group to a different random location. Some people thought that it was because whatever deity set up the gateways, they disliked violence and so tried to isolate the groups from other groups which might be hostile. Regardless of where you went, however, the exit was in the center of the realm, and everyone would need to reach there before the gate closed, or they would be trapped inside and destroyed.

  About a minute later, the gate surged one last time and the swirling blue energy fully solidified. The elder of the Eternal Flame sect motioned for the group to head in and they all started walking to the gate. All of the people of the White Tiger sect gathered together as well, and we walked slightly towards the gate, careful not to get so close that they would think we were cutting in line. When the Golden Saber sect started going through we gathered behind the Buddhists and waited, and stepped forward when they started through. After they went through we waited a few seconds and started towards the gate as well.

  When I touched the gateway a shudder went through my body, unlike the slight tingling sensation I had felt when coming through the portal to this world. Somehow I knew that my cultivation seeds had been detected and that the feeling had been a warning. Apparently, whoever created this system had put systems in place to block people from cheating the restrictions, and building cultivation seeds which would be activated once inside was a common form of cheating at one time. I would have to be careful not to trigger them for a breakthrough without good reason, as the gateway might reject me if I did so, trapping me here.

  I stepped out of a gate into a large field of grass, flowers, and spirit herbs. I could sense many pure blood spirit animals around me, though none were particularly large or impressive, the best being a herd of deer half a li away. I held out my hand and a dragonfly landed on it, so I quickly attempted a servant contract with it. It accepted, and I ordered it to do a few loops around my head, then land on my shoulder. It followed my orders exactly.

  “There are much better animals for you to form contracts with, you know.” said Chu Van as several disciples fanned out to start collecting spirit plants, even digging out the roots in some cases. “Even one of those deer over there or a rabbit would be better than a dragon fly, even with its legendary bloodline.” The spirit dragon flies of this world were rumored to have actual dragon bloodlines due to the shape of their heads and tiny antenna that looked like antlers, but I doubted that was true.

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  “I plan on using it to scout, not to keep it as my main companion. That’s why I used the servant contract instead of the companion one.”

  Chu Van nodded. “Very well.” He motioned towards a cave that was half a li away. “That might have hostile animals in it. Do you think you could scout it for us, protector?”

  I shrugged. “I might as well. I don’t know anything about spirit plants.” I walked towards the cave and, about halfway there, I told my dragonfly to head towards the mouth of the cave. As it flew I tried to use the Shared Senses ability, which allowed one to use the bond with an animal to see what it was seeing or hear what it was hearing. Due to how new and weak the bond was I had to put a good bit of effort to just share its sight, and it took me a few minutes to get used to the compound eyes. Once I could tell that it was perched on the rock above the cave entrance I cautiously told it to go inside and it did a few loops before heading inside. This was probably its way of acting nonchalant, but I couldn’t be sure due to being unable to sense its weak emotions.

  It only got around thirty meters into the cave before there was a turn to the right and the light grew too dim to see. I switched to borrowing its hearing, which was considerably better, as its whole body acted as an eardrum, picking up on the tiny vibrations in the air. I only heard the sounds of dripping water and the squeaks of small rodents, so after a minute I allowed it to return to me. When it returned I gave it a bit of qi, and it quickly devoured the tasty energy, slightly refining its body closer to middle level one.

  I returned to the group and went up to Chu Van. “The cave gets dark about thirty meters in.” I said, though I used the local measurement system equal to one thousandth of a li. “After that it turns to the right. I could only hear dripping water and some kind of rodent, so most likely mice or rats are the dominant animal in there.”

  He nodded. “Fine. We’ll make our way over there, picking what herbs we can find in between. So far we have over twenty stones worth of herbs.” That would be over a week’s total salary for the level one cultivators here, so it made sense why they valued it.

  I nodded and started slowly going towards the cave, taking one step every few seconds, and the disciples quickly fanned out behind me, gathering hundreds of level one herbs as we walked. I could sense that the qi in the air was around ten times as high as the background levels of Ilarya, which likely lead to most or all of the plants and animals here being of the spirit variety.

  As I walked I pulled out a few of the early level one spirit beast papers and started quickly drawing suns on them, careful not to allow it to make much heat. I didn’t need the gathering formation like I had added to Five’s talisman, as these people were all cultivators, so they were faster and easier to create. By the time we had reached the cave I had created fifty three of the simple talismans, so I handed one to each of the disciples. I quickly explained how to use them, and told them that it got too dark to see after thirty meters. In response two of the level two disciples pulled out nocturnal predators, and Wood Owl and a Blue River constrictor snake. The owl’s eyes produced a bit of light, allowing it to see in the dark, and the snake had thermal vision, so they would be able to function in the cave if they got separated from us.

  We entered the cave, carefully putting only enough qi into our talismans to see, but not enough to blind us, as we held them in front of us. I tucked mine into the front of my robe, and several others did the same. Now that our hands were free, we were able to draw weapons, and did so.

  Ten meters from the bend the cave opened up to a larger room with a pond at one end. The floor there was considerably lower than the rest of the cave, and had apparently reached the shallow water table. When I shined my light that way, though, a large number of rats the size of medium dogs fled to area. I saw the mostly cleaned skeletons of two deer here. I had seen the antlers of spirit deer listed as an ingredient he wanted to buy when I visited the smith, so, seeing that these still held their spiritual power and were only lightly damaged, I broke them off and put them in my bag. They were likely only worth a stone at most, but there was no reason to leave them behind.

  The rest of the disciples ignored the skeleton, as the sect had more than enough bones, including those from beasts with naturally stronger skeletons. With nothing else of interest we continued to go forward. Every time we saw the spirit rats, however, they ran away. The path forked a few times, causing us to lose time, but we eventually went past the few patches of Glowing spirit moss and spirit mushrooms which grew down here and found the main nest of the rats. There was a fat female rat laying in the middle of the room, surrounded by many large male rats which brought her food and shiny black or green rocks from the walls of the room. The rats appeared to have grown glow moss and mushrooms here as well, and it even appeared that they had dug depressions into the ground to hold onto the water so that the moss and mushrooms grew better.

  “Spirit iron” I whispered telepathically to Chu Van, and he nodded. The light from the glow moss had thankfully obscured the light from our talismans. I stopped sending qi to my talisman and it turned off. Soon all of the disciples had done the same and the only light came from the large amount of glow moss in the other room, making it about as bright as a moonlit night where we were.

  Spirit iron was just iron that had absorbed a large amount of qi, causing it to glisten slightly in the light. That would be the black rocks, which were most likely magnetite. The green ones, on the other hand, were likely spirit copper, malachite rocks. Due to the rarity of metals in Ilarya, these stones were worth at least a few stones each, and there were dozens of them.

  We quickly made a plan, though only a few of us knew telepathy, so only those could speak up. The rest just tried to communicate with hand gestures and body language, like shaking their head if they disagreed or using the finger-across-the-throat sign to indicate that they thought a plan would kill us. Eventually we settled on a plan. I wrapped what talismans I had left around spirit stones, thus allowing them to keep working once activated. We then threw all of the spirit stones at the mother rat after activating them. A dozen bright lights flew into the room, ruining the rat’s sight from suddenly raising the sunset glow of the room to full noon. We then attacked.

  Most of us threw one or two qi blasts before running in with our weapon of choice, but Chu Van and I used elemental attacks, him causing the pools of water to hit the rats with jets of water that knocked them down and me throwing a set of five fireballs, causing several minor explosions that spooked the rats. In the chaos the disciples were able to render many rats unconscious, and the rest of the ones that attacked were quickly injured before running away. Most of the rats, however, ran away at the first sign of our group, realizing that they couldn’t fight us.

  ‘No kill’, I heard a weak voice say into my mind and many of the others paused as well, indicating that they had also heard it. The message wasn’t in words, the concept of negation followed by the concept of murder.

  ‘Did you say that?’ I sent to the rat queen, also in concepts, as best I could. Questioning, you, speak.

  ‘Yes.’ she responded. ‘We run because we don’t want to fight.’

  “Everyone stop fighting, and let the rats escape.” I said. “Their queen is Peak level three, and wants to call a cease fire.” The disciples stopped attacking and the rats grabbed what few items they had on them when attacked, then ran.

  ‘Why did you attack?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to eat my family?’

  I shook my head. ‘We don’t want to eat you. We want to take the ore.’ She looked confused. ‘The shiny black and green rocks. We thought your family had gathered here to prepare an attack.’

  She shook her head as well, trying and failing to stand on her hind legs. This failure wasn’t entirely due to her being overweight, though, as her right leg appeared to have been bitten by something. ‘Take the rocks if you want. They mean little to us. Decorations. Just don’t hurt us.’

  I nodded and walked towards her. She looked a bit scared, but I pulled out my old level one medicine kit. I handed her a low grade bone pill and a tendon pill. She was almost the size of an adult human, so I doubted a whole pill would be too much for her. ‘Here, this pill will fix the broken bone, and this will fix the damaged tendons. You should be able to walk after that.’ I also pulled out several skin and muscle pills and gave them to her, explaining that if her wounded men took half of one each, as most were smaller than her, they would heal more quickly.

  ‘You give us medicine?’ she asked, confused.

  ‘The rocks are worth far more to us then these few medicines.’ I answered, and she relaxed.

  She took the two pills I gave her and gave the rest to her men, letting everyone heal properly. Only a few of them could speak, being initial or early level three, but they gifted me seeds from a few spirit fruits they had eaten recently. Apparently the seed had the highest levels of qi and could be planted to grow more food, making them valuable trade goods. After notifying the disciples that I had made a deal with their queen they started gathering as many pieces of ore as they could. Once we were finished, we thanked the queen.

  ‘Do you truly not with to eat us? Even capture us?’ she said. ‘I have seen no beast like you, even among the other apes.’

  I shook my head. ‘We would take some of your family with us if you wish, but we normally only take defeated enemies away after they attack or those that aren’t yet smart.’

  She nodded. ‘Then follow me.’ She used a stick as a crutch and walked upright towards a side cave. Her one point three meter height was small enough that she could walk without crouching, but my one point seven meter height was a bit too much, so I had to crouch. After twenty meters the room opened up to reveal a large area full of young rats. While they were all born at level one due to being spirit animals, none of the ones here were old enough to have reached level two yet, the best of them being late level one. ‘These are the children of our clan. Most of them will starve before they grow up, though, as we cannot produce enough food to feed them.’

  I looked at her with a bit of ridicule on my face. ‘Forgive me for my rudeness, but don’t you eat more than you need to?’

  She nodded. ‘I eat enough for two or three adults, but that is not enough to keep more than one or two of them alive to adulthood. I needed to recover so that I could lead the hunt once more, but was injured before the oldest one here was born. My food was necessary.’ I could at least understand her reasoning. With more food she could heal faster, and thus collect more food for the clan. I wouldn’t have done things this way, instead giving the extra food to the strongest of the children, so that they grew up to be stronger, but it was a reasonable plan.

  I quickly got Chu Van, who was overseeing the last of the ore collection, and brought him back to the nursery. He thought for a minute before responding to her request. ‘We can feed them and raise them, but we don’t know your ways. We could only raise them as livestock or work beasts.’ Those two concepts were better translated as ‘food-beasts’ and ‘slaves’, as far as I understood the way the queen saw it. ‘If, however, you sent some of your adults with them, including one we can talk with, we can let them live as part of our clan. The adult will be their elder and we will deal with the elder fairly.’

  The queen nodded. ‘My sister and her mates shall go then. Most of them were made to sleep by your warriors, but some were cut and are recovering.’ We returned to the main cave to collect her family and then went back to the smaller cave to collect thirty percent of the children, careful not to collect any that were from the royal line. It seems that queen understood the idea of inbreeding and wanted to avoid it. We gave what food we could spare to the queen so that she could feed her people, and the four male adults and twenty three child rats willingly entered the beast bag that Chu Van carried, the female rat remaining out so that she could act as a guide.

  We thanked the queen for helping to expand our clan, then left, much richer and with a large number of rat companions as well.