As Joe made his way up the stairs he was munching on one of the little sour sausages oblivious to all and sundry as usual when he heard some voices at the top of the stairs.
"I pose to you the question Scholar White Tides if the Magenta Pine trees of Mt. Goshen are of a suitable age for cutting why can't we make tea from the needles?"
"Because It would give you terrible indigestion. I know that you want to drink something new and different but conifers are not the answer Young Three. Besides the permission needed to harvest a magenta pine would be a lot of red tape to go through. The trees have to be over 400 years old we need 6 elders to sign off on the forms and at least a 7 star axe wielded by a 5 star cultivator to cut down the tree. In short, not worth the effort, that is unless we were to make ghost killing blades."
That does sound like an awful lot of work just for a cup of tea thought Joe as he took another step. Then he thought more about it and realized that A. Pine trees are green B. Where's Mt. Goshen. C. Cultivators?
Ahh whatever none of my business also clearly these guys are either crazy or else they are writers which means the same thing. I best hang out on the stairs unless I want to get caught up in their craziness. So on the stairs he stood hoping for a chance to slip away.
"Scholar White Tides why are we even here? Shouldn't we be back at the sect? I need to be back in the garden harvesting the divine potatoes and feeding the demonic hogs."
"Long ago Young Three I had a friend who liked to roam amongst the normals he was a lazy, mischievous, and uncouth individual. He was shameless womanizer, a degenerate gambler, a glutton, and also a loan defaulter."
" How did such a man ever become your friend Scholar White Tide? Or become a cultivator for that matter? Aren't all cultivators supposed to be virtuous? Aren't all our actions meant to be chivalrous?" Asked Young Three with clear disbelief in his tone.
"He wasn't a terrible person nor was he a demonic cultivator; he followed his truth. His was the path of hedonism. It might be one of the easiest paths to follow but it's a short path and one that leaves you with few friends. I had heard that one of his children lived in this building and if I ever got a look at the face of the child I'd know without a shadow of a doubt whose child it was. I'd capture that child and teach him the proper way to live. I'd turn him into a responsible hard working member of society."
Fear entered Joe's heart after hearing the words that came out of the scholar's mouth so he decided to ease back down the stairs.
As far as he knew his father was a truck driver and was in Turkey right now working for an oil company. His mother was still a stripper at the I95 club. He just didn't want these crazy fools to have a chance of mistaken identity. He was too young to be a pillar of society. He still had many years to sow wild oats and sleep all day. He wanted to be mocked as a dirty old man one day. Becoming a monk in their cult did not suit him and his dreams of wasting his life whatsoever.