When Darian woke up the next day, after the best night's sleep he had ever had, he had feared that the previous day's events had all been a strange dream brought on by his injured state and sleeping out in the woods. To his delight, when he opened his eyes, he found that none of it had been a dream. All of his injuries were gone, and he lay in a massive bed located in a luxuriously appointed bedroom. He spent the next few minutes just laying there, soaking it all in. A strange kind of giddiness filled him, and he couldn't help but let out a little laugh.
This place was like a dream come true, and he wanted to keep it more than anything. It would be his. No matter what kind of test Astra threw his way, he would pass. He would inherit the Immortal's legacy and become a cultivator. After years of pain and disappointment, he would let nothing stand in his way. A fire burned in Darian's heart. Unable to contain himself anymore, he jumped out of bed to get ready for the day.
The clothes he had worn yesterday were nowhere to be seen. Instead, Darian saw a new set of clothes sitting on a nearby dresser. It consisted of a red silk vest with gold trimmings, a pair of red silk trousers, and a pair of black shoes. While they wouldn't have been his first choice, Darian put on the clothes. To his surprise, they fit perfectly and were quite comfortable. He was a little worried about how much bare skin he showed thanks to the vest, but he decided he could live with it. The temperature in this secret realm remained perfect, and the only people around to see him were the snake twins and Astra. Once he returned home, that would be another story.
After he dressed, Darian left the master bedroom and walked around the estate. He had half expected to find Ellen waiting outside the door, or maybe even Elliot, but found no one. Good. This gave him some privacy to explore the estate. Last night he had been too tired, too focused on going to sleep, to give the place a proper look around. Like the master bedroom, the rest of the estate was opulently but tastefully decorated. The walls were a light hardwood and covered in silk tapestries. The tapestries each depicted various scenes and landscapes that Darian didn't recognize, and none were repeated. The floor was a darker hardwood, covered in rugs with intricate geometric designs. Darian found them pleasing to the eye.
It didn't take Darian long to figure out that the Immortal who created this place must have loved the color red. He saw it everywhere. All the furnishings and artwork were various shades of red, accented with gold or black or both. He also noticed a lack of windows. With the floating yellow lights, they weren't necessary to let in the sun, but he still found the lack a little strange. What he didn't find, however, was any clue regarding the Immortal's identity. There were no personal markings that he could find, and none of the artwork he saw depicted any of the same figures.
As Darian wandered around, an enticing scent reached his nose. His mouth watered and his stomach, which had been quiet this entire time, let out an audible growl. Hunger, the likes of which he had never experienced before, gripped Darian. He hadn't eaten anything since breakfast yesterday, thanks to Zayne, and now his body demanded that he rectify this state of affairs. Following the scent, Darian found himself in a dining room. Like the rest of the estate, it was well appointed and decorated with various shades of red. In the center was a rectangular table that could seat eight people. A bowl and some utensils had already been set at the head of the table. The enticing smell came from the bowl. Ellen stood next to the table, waiting patiently.
"Greetings, honored guest," she said, bowing to him. "I would have retrieved you as soon as breakfast was ready, but Astra said to let you find the dining room in your own time. Please, come eat."
"Oh, thank you," Darian said with obvious gratitude.
He sat down and was surprised to find that the bowl contained nothing more than a simple looking porridge. After a moment he shrugged and started eating. He was too hungry to care. The moment the food touched his tongue, however, he realized that this was no simple porridge. He didn't have the right words to describe how it tasted, only that it tasted…more. It was richer than anything he had ever eaten, and more nourishing, as if it fed his mind and soul as well as his body. After a moment, he realized that might actually be the case. While he didn't know the specifics, he did know that there were special kinds of plants that cultivators grew, which had to be grown in special kinds of soil and nourished with special kinds of water. It was quite possible that this porridge was made from such a plant.
Regardless of the specifics, this was the best meal Darian had eaten in years and he all but inhaled it. He would have enjoyed it more, however, if Ellen hadn't been standing uncomfortably close the entire time, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes. It was more than a little unnerving. When Darian had asked her to give him a bit more room, she took a single, minuscule step backwards. Rather than insist, he decided to ignore her presence and continued eating. He succeeded for the most part.
"Honored guest," Ellen said after he finished eating. "Astra has instructed me to take you to the courtyard after your meal. Please follow me."
With that, she walked off with Darian in tow. As they left, from the corner of his eye, he noticed Elliot slip into the room to clean up. Ellen led Darian to a stone courtyard situated in the middle of the estate. It was open to the sky, but the morning sun hadn't risen above the walls of the estate yet, so most of the courtyard still lay in shadow. Even so, there was still enough light to see by.
The whole place reminded him of the training courtyards his clan had back home, except this one was bare. The ones back home had weapons racks filled with training weapons located around the perimeter, while this one had nothing. Astra sat in the center of the courtyard, waiting with a patient expression on her face.
After Ellen led Darian to the courtyard, she stayed along the perimeter while Darian headed towards Astra.
"I hope you had a good sleep, young Darian," Astra said.
"The best I've ever had," he said. It was true, and a little flattery towards one's hosts never hurt.
The cat spirit beast seemed particularly pleased at that.
"Good." She then looked him up and down. "Now then, the first thing I need to do is to determine what kind of cultivation techniques you know, if any. From your looks, I assume you aren't from Clan Wind Dance's main family. A branch family maybe, or perhaps an even more distant relation. That means you likely haven't been taught that ridiculous dance they call a cultivation technique."
"Actually, I am from the main family," Darian said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. "Even if I weren't, I would have been taught the Dancing Wind technique. Unlike most clans, the basics of our main technique are available to all clan members, regardless of status."
In most clans, only the main family had access to the clan's main technique, while lesser clan members had to settle for lesser cultivation techniques. This disparity helped keep the main family in power. For Clan Wind Dance, talent and merit mattered more. Even the most distant relation could gain high status, as long as they were a clan member. As a result, while Clan Wind Dance was smaller than most of the other clans nearby, it was more tight-knight and saw relatively little infighting.
Astra blinked at him.
"Huh. That's unexpected."
Darian didn't blame Astra for her surprise. With almost no exceptions, every member of Clan Wind Dance's main family was tall, slender, and athletic. They tended towards blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. This included Darren Wind Dance, Darian's father. Darian, on the other hand, was athletic but shorter and bulkier than most of his kin. He also had black hair and olive-toned skin. He inherited these features from the mother he had never met, or he assumed he had. No one in the clan, aside from Darian's father, had ever seen her as far as he knew, and his father never spoke to him about her. Darian didn't even know her name, or if she was still alive. He had asked several times over the years, and received only silence.
At least he had also inherited his father's blue eyes and some of his facial features, or the clan would've called his lineage into question. When he was young, his looks hadn't mattered much, but when it became clear that he couldn't cultivate, they became one more mark against him.
"Hmm, in that case, show me this so-called Dancing Wind technique," Astra said.
Darian hesitated. All clans, sects, and schools kept the secrets of their core techniques, the source of their power, hidden from outsiders. This was to prevent outsiders from stealing their power, and it also kept them from studying those techniques in order to find weaknesses to exploit. Breaking this rule meant exile, or even death, for the offender.
"Don't worry," Astra said, as if reading his mind. "Believe me when I say that I am very much not interested in the Dancing Wind technique beyond what it can tell me about you. I don't need it."
The obvious scorn in her voice led Darian to believe that she was being genuine. After some more thought, Darian decided to go ahead with it. Besides, he only knew the basics. Demonstrating those wasn't a big transgression. Still, he would need to make sure no one in the clan found out about this, just in case. Given his low status, it wouldn't take much for him to get exiled.
Darian closed his eyes and started his breathing exercises. Meditation lay at the center of all cultivation, regardless of technique or style. It was through meditation, combined with proper breathing, that cultivators reached the mental state necessary to sense spirit energy and take it into themselves. While spirit energy wasn't physical, it was prevalent in everything, including the air. Taking in spirit energy through basic meditation and breathing exercises was the most common way to cultivate. However, just because it was basic and common didn't mean it was weak. There were plenty of famous cultivators who had achieved immortality doing little else besides meditating and breathing.
It sounded simple, but that didn't mean it was easy. Without any talent for cultivation, a person could spend their entire life meditating without making any progress at all.
When meditation was combined with certain other techniques, however, it had a greater effect on one's cultivation. In the case of the Dancing Wind technique, meditation was combined with a literal dance. This was much more difficult to do though, since maintaining a meditative state while moving around wasn't easy. It took effort and a lot of practice. Darian lacked neither, especially since he had spent almost every day of the last four years training in the Dancing Wind technique. What he lacked was talent.
It didn't take Darian long to reach a meditative state, clearing his mind of all extraneous thoughts. When he was ready, Darian began to dance. Thankfully, the courtyard was large, so he didn't have to worry about hitting a wall. At its core, the Dancing Wind technique was a dance where its practitioners mimicked the wind as it danced throughout the world, graceful and elegant, detaching themselves from all earthly constraints. In doing so, the dancer would become one with the wind, free and without restraint. At least, that was the idea. In all his years of training, Darian had managed to almost reach that point, always remaining one step away. That one step, however, had been impossible to surmount.
While the dance was physically demanding, Darian was in excellent shape. When he finished, he wasn't even breathing hard. A light sheen of sweat covered him, but that was it. He opened his eyes to find Astra, Ellen, and Elliot staring at him. Elliot must have entered the courtyard without Darian noticing. After a brief moment, Ellen and Elliot broke out into restrained applause.
"That was quite beautiful, honored guest," Elliot said.
"Yes," Ellen said. "It makes me wish to learn it for myself."
Darian smiled. Before he could reply to either of them, however, Astra burst out into laughter. She fell to the side, unable to hold herself up any longer.
"Oh, that was even more ridiculous than I had expected," the cat spirit beast said as she laughed. "I knew your clan liked to flitter about, but not like this. All that flouncing and twirling…" She laughed so hard that she started coughing. "…I can't stop laughing! My sides hurt!"
This went on for several minutes. During this time, Darian grew angrier and angrier. His face burned with humiliation. He clenched his fists, and it was all he could do not to storm out right then and there. Two things kept him from doing so. One, he didn't know if he could leave this secret realm without Astra's help. Two, he really wanted that Immortal's legacy. If he needed to put up with Astra's behavior to get it, so be it. He wasn't happy about it, but he would grit his teeth and endure. That was how he had put up with his clan for all these years.
It helped that Elliot and Ellen didn't seem to share Astra's opinion. The snake twins stood at the perimeter of the courtyard, wearing neutral expressions on their faces. They didn't rebuke Astra's behavior, likely because they couldn't, but neither did they join in.
"Are you done?" Darian said through clenched teeth when Astra's laughter died down.
"Yes," Astra said, sounding out of breath. The cat spirit beast then stood up, wiped her eyes with her paws, before smiling right at Darian. "Do it again."
Darian took a deep breath to keep his temper in check. There was a limit to his patience after all.
"I am not some dancing monkey for you to point and laugh at for your own amusement," Darian said with what he considered to be remarkable restraint. "You asked to see what cultivation technique I knew, and I showed you. I'm not going to do it again, especially if you're just going to laugh at me."
Astra snorted.
"While I admit that your…dance was amusing," she said. "There is a reason why I wanted you to do it again. You can't cultivate, can you?" She held up a paw before he could protest. "I saw it when I first met you back in the Silverwood, so don't bother denying it."
Darian, who had been indeed about to protest, decided to keep silent.
"I think I know why that is, but first I need to see if my suspicion is correct or not," Astra continued. "If I see you perform the Dancing Wind technique a few more times, I'll know for sure."
Darian eyed Astra, not sure if he believed her. Perhaps she was telling the truth, or perhaps she was just toying with him. The smile on her face did nothing to alleviate his suspicions. If she was telling the truth, however, and she could tell him why he couldn't cultivate, it would be worth enduring any amount of humiliation and laughter. If the problem could be perceived, perhaps it could be fixed.
Several elders and experts of his clan had examined Darian when his problem first became apparent, including his grandfather, the head of their clan, who was at the Golden Core stage. None of them had been able to sense what was wrong with him. He should've been able to cultivate, but couldn't. They had kept trying, until one by one they all gave up. One had even called Darian defective to his face. That comment had smarted at the time, and still stung now. Perhaps Astra would find what none of them could. Darian hoped so. At the end of the day, the only way to know for sure was to go ahead and perform the Dancing Wind technique again. Since Darian was unwilling to give up, he went ahead and did so.
It took longer to achieve a meditative state the second time, since Darian had to let his anger drain away first. At least Astra kept silent this time. In the end, he performed the Dancing Wind technique a total of four times before Astra called for a halt. By that point, Darian was thirsty, winded, and covered in sweat. While he was in excellent physical shape for a mortal, there were limits to his endurance. At least the clothing he wore allowed his skin to breathe easier. Ellen brought Darian a stone jar filled with water, which he drained in seconds. It tasted cool and refreshing.
"Yes, it is as I suspected," Astra said while Darian rested. "Your spirit root is blocked."
Darian gave her a confused look.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"It means what I said. Your spirit root is blocked. Did you not hear me, young Darian? Are your ears blocked as well?"
Darian resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"Well, what exactly does that mean? How can my spirit root be blocked? I didn't even know that was possible."
There wasn't much information on spirit roots in his clan's library, so Darian didn't know much about them. Perhaps his clan kept a secret archive that only certain members of the clan could access. Still, from what he knew, spirit roots were what allowed cultivators to, well, cultivate. From what Darian had read, while there was information on spirit roots and their characteristics, no one really knew what they were. The prevailing theory was that a person's spirit root was the core of the body, mind, and soul. The root of their being, so to speak. Like spirit energy, spirit roots weren't physical but could have an effect on the physical. Darian didn't know how something like that could be blocked.
"It is possible," Astra said, answering his question. "Though it is rare. More often than not, it occurs as a result of deliberate tampering by some external force rather than chance or happenstance." She tilted her head to the side. "Were you cursed as a baby? Or were you born from a cursed bloodline? That's the most common reason these things occur."
"No, I wasn't," Darian said, frowning. "At least, I don't think I was. If my father's side of the family had been cursed, I would have known about it. As for my mother…" He paused. "I never met my mother, and my father won't speak about her, so I don't know anything about her or her family. It's possible they were cursed in some way." When Darian returned to Mt. Wind Dance, he would have to ask his father again. Right now, however, he had to focus on this blocked spirit root business. "Are you sure my spirit root is blocked? I've had several people examine me, including a cultivator at the Golden Core stage. None of them ever found anything."
Darian wanted to believe Astra. If his spirit root was indeed blocked, then perhaps it could be unblocked. Yet, he was afraid to. If this turned out to be a false hope, he didn't know if he could handle the disappointment. He had already had enough of that, and it had worn him down over the years.
"I'm sure," Astra said with a chuckle. "I'm at the Nascent Soul stage. My perception is much greater than someone merely at the Golden Core stage."
Darian stared at Astra with wide eyes. The Golden Core stage was the fifth stage of cultivation, and cultivators at this level were by no means weak. The Nascent Soul stage was the one right above it, and those at this stage were on the verge of achieving immortality. If Astra was telling the truth, and Darian had no reason to think otherwise, then that meant she was one step short of becoming an Immortal herself. To say that this unnerved him would be an understatement.
He made a mental note to make sure he never offended her too much. Someone at her level of power could kill him with little to no effort on her part. It was like the difference between a dragon and an ant, the disparity between them was that wide.
"Okay," Darian said. "I believe you." He swallowed, still a little nervous. "Since you can see this blockage, does this mean you can clear it?"
"Yes," Astra said, her tone cheerful. "In fact, let me do that right now."
Before Darian could react, Astra disappeared from where she sat and appeared right in front of him, either teleporting or moving faster than he could perceive. With a casual movement of her paw, she tapped his chest. For a fraction of a second, nothing happened, before Darian felt pressure in the center of his being. There was so much pressure, it felt like he would explode from the inside out. And then it was gone, and Darian felt normal again.
"There we go," Astra said, hovering in the air in front of him. "All fixed."
Darian stared at the cat spirit beast in front of him.
"That's it?" he asked.
Astra nodded.
"That's it. Go ahead and try to sense the spirit energy around us." She held up a paw. "However, don't try to take any of it in. One of the conditions to receiving the Immortal's legacy is to follow the cultivation technique they left behind. Cultivating using any other technique will immediately disqualify you."
Darian nodded, before walking to the center of the courtyard and closing his eyes. After some time, he reached a meditative state once more. Before he could begin performing the Dancing Wind technique however, he noticed that there was something different this time around. There was something there that just hovered at the edge of his perception. It was as if he noticed something from the corner of his eye, as if he felt an itch that he couldn't quite scratch, as if he tried to grasp something ephemeral and elusive with his bare hands. Rather than try to force it, Darian sank deeper into meditation and then started to dance.
Unlike the countless times he had performed the Dancing Wind technique before, this time it felt effortless. Instead of trying to become one with the wind, gliding along free and unrestrained, he was one with the wind. It was a subtle distinction, but a very real one. His body felt weightless, and his soul soared. And then, halfway through the dance, everything became clear. He was like a blind man who could now see. The world had been covered in darkness, but there was light. The scales had fallen from his eyes. Spirit energy suffused the world around him. It was everywhere and in everything. Darian had known that was the case, but now he could perceive it, experience it for himself. It was the difference between having a color described to him, and seeing it with his own eyes.
A joy so strong it almost hurt filled him to the brim. He felt that he was overflowing with it. It almost caused him to falter, but he managed to keep himself in check long enough to finish the dance. He had been tempted to ignore Astra's directions and begin taking in the spirit energy so he could finally begin cultivating, but held off. There was an inheritance at stake here after all.
When he finished, Darian just stood there, panting and wearing a manic grin on his face.
"I can sense spirit energy," he muttered, almost to himself.
Ellen and Elliot, who still stood off to the side, gave him another round of restrained applause.
"Congratulations, honored guest," Elliot said.
"I can sense spirit energy!" Darian let out a whoop. He grabbed Astra, who had been hovering nearby, and started spinning the both of them around. Astra let this happen with a patient expression on her face. "I can sense spirit energy!"
Darian's vision grew blurry, and he felt something hot run down his cheeks. It took him a moment to realize they were tears of joy.
"All right, all right," Astra said. "That's enough of that. You can let go of me now."
He ignored her and kept spinning them around.
"I said that's enough!"
With a swipe of one of her claws, Astra scratched Darian. It wasn't a deep scratch, but the pain shocked him enough to let go of her. It did nothing to quell his jubilation. She remained hovering in the air where he had let go of her.
"I'm sorry," he said, grinning and wiping his eyes. "It's just that…You have no idea how long I've waited for this to happen."
Not to mention all the pain, frustration, and sorrow he had suffered along the way. All of that had been worth it, for this single moment.
"Yes, yes," Astra said. "Congratulations on finally being able to take your first baby steps into the world of cultivation, young Darian. Just be glad you're dealing with me. A less indulgent spirit beast might've already eaten you for your impudence."
That sobered Darian up.
"I'm sorry," he said again.
Astra waved it off with one of her paws.
"Don't worry about it." She then grinned at him. "Now comes the interesting part."
With that, Astra pulled out a scroll, seemingly from nowhere, and held it towards Darian.
"Now we see if you're a worthy heir after all. Or not. That will depend entirely on you."