After a free lunch courtesy of Greg, I dropped him off at his truck to wait for the tow he'd called during lunch. With a quick goodbye, I headed home—$100 richer for my trouble. I was anxious to return to inscribing the rings, but I couldn't shake the eerie feeling lingering from Greg's unsettling client.His sharp smile had felt distinctly... predatory. Maybe my imagination was just running wild. After all, what were the chances of meeting two mysterious old cultivators back to back after going my entire life without ever running into any before?Before I knew it, I was back at my apartment complex. I pulled into the crowded lot and lightly jogged up the stairs. My body felt lighter than usual, almost like my physical constitution had improved without any extra effort on my part—well, any physical effort anyway. It's not like I had started working out. Was it all thanks to meditation? It was hard to believe that sitting still could be this effective. I could practically imagine the jealousy from all those people sweating their asses off to lose weight, while I was slimming down without any effort at all.As I made my way to my apartment, I suddenly got this nagging sense of unease, like something was off. Am I losing my mind, or did something change during my walk to the apartment? It's only about 150 feet from my truck to the front door, but why did I feel such an odd sense of urgency getting back home? It's not like me to jog up stairs, even if I suddenly became fit—I've always been a slow walker, so why would that suddenly change?I turned around and started walking back to my truck—almost without thinking. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off, though I couldn't quite put my finger on why. But the closer I got to my truck, the stronger my unease grew, as if this gnawing sense of danger began to creep back into my chest.Frowning, I paused in front of my truck, looking for anything out of place. "What am I even doing right now?" I muttered to myself, seeing nothing unusual from the outside. Purely out of instinct, I opened the passenger door and started rummaging around, and suddenly came across a curious little brooch, sitting in the door compartment.A brooch? I don't remember driving any grandmas around lately, or anyone for that matter, really. It's not like I have some popping social life, and I'm constantly jetting around town with passengers—passengers?And then it hit me: when Greg and I were loading that dresser into my truck, one of the drawers had slid open. I remembered thinking he was lucky it didn't slam into the side of my truck—his buyer wouldn't have been very happy about that. Greg had reached over to close it, and at the time, I hadn't thought much of it. But now I remembered—his hand had dipped into his right pocket just as he shut the drawer. Had this brooch fallen out of the dresser? Greg must have forgotten to check the drawers before he loaded it into his truck.But then how did it end up here?It must have slipped from Greg's pocket while he was climbing into my truck. That would explain how it ended up in the passenger door compartment, I guess it really doesn't pay to wear baggy old cargo shorts hanging off your ass huh Greg? As I held the brooch, something about it just felt... off. It was heavier than I expected, and the dark stone in the center looked very—lifelike, almost alive even. I don't quite know how to explain it, I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination, but for a brief moment, I swear I had seen faint swirls deep beneath the surface.The silver edges around the stone twisted into strange, intricate patterns—almost like coiled serpents. The longer I held it, the colder it got—I'm definitely not just imagining it, this thing has been sitting in a 90° truck for a few hours, but it feels like it's been sitting in an ice box!A chill crept up my spine. This brooch—felt similar to the rings I had just spent all morning refining. Similar, but a lot... deeper, I guess is how I'd describe it. If the rings I made were as deep as a kiddy pool, this brooch felt more like a lake.I could tell this was something special, maybe even something related to cultivation, an artifact of some sort—but I couldn't help feeling creeped out too. How could a piece of jewelry feel so damn sinister?I wasn't sure what to do. I mean, it's not like I can just toss this thing out. After all, it practically fell into my lap just as I started cultivating—and I've read enough novels to know not to look a fortuitous encounter in the mouth... err, well, something like that anyway.And I'm sure as hell not returning it to Greg just so he can hawk it for a couple of bucks at the flea market. I saw the zeros on that check—he made out like a bandit selling that dresser to that creepy old geezer. He didn't even know this thing existed a couple of hours ago. Besides, finders keepers, right?Well one thing was clear—there's just too much that I don't know. To be completely honest, I don't even want to take this thing inside my apartment. Call me paranoid, but this feels like the kind of thing that is going to end up haunting my dreams. That's a hard pass from me. But I feel weird leaving it out in the truck too. I've seen more than one homeless guy creeping around out here after dark. Somehow with my luck, this would be the night someone finally breaks into my truck, so that's out too.Wait, I know what to do with it—I totally forgot about that! Walking around my truck and towards the side gate that led to a small walkway between the block wall that divided our apartment complex from the neighboring lot, I started walking toward the back. It's not exactly private, but it's not public either. It's basically just wide enough to walk through. I can't imagine it's used for much of anything, other than possibly serving the AC units of these apartments on the bottom story.Call me paranoid, but I always liked the idea of having a few ounces of gold on hand, but given the astronomical prices, I ended up settling for silver. At roughly $30 an ounce, it was a hell of a lot more realistic for me to grab a coin or two every paycheck than it was to buy any real amount of gold. I managed to put together 40 coins, which just so happens to be how many quarters come in a roll—before I started worrying about where to put them.I mean, it's quite a lot of money—to me at least, ~$1200 in silver, as long as prices didn't fall. A nice chunk to have on hand in case of a rainy day, but at the same time, between the fact that the apartment manager has a spare key to my place—not to mention the possibility of my apartment simply being broken into—I wanted to think of a better place to store it. But after reading all the horror stories online about the ironically very insecure nature of those safety deposit boxes at banks, at the few banks that even offer that service anymore—not to mention the fact that it's just one warrant away from being seized—I came up with more... unconventional means of storage.A very realistic-looking, hollowed-out rock, sitting out back behind my apartments—if, somehow despite all the trouble I went through to make it look inconspicuous—hell, I even go back here under the guise of "smoking" and I don't even smoke! If despite all that, it somehow still gets stolen, well I'll just call that my bad luck then.Making sure the coast was clear and getting out my decoy cigarette—like I said, paranoid—I quickly opened up the secret compartment, and after happily confirming the silver was right where I left it, I tossed in the brooch and put everything back into place.Maybe it was just my imagination, but I felt a certain sense of... relief after sealing that "rock" back up, almost as if it was acting as a barrier between me and that brooch. Yes, you read that right, a grown man is scared of a brooch. Sue me—my head's been a mess ever since discovering this whole cultivation thing. I mean, hell, if magic is real, why can't evil soul-sucking brooches be too? All I know is I'm not touching that thing until I know what I'm doing.And what better way to learn than by doing? I feel like refining those rings really opened up my mind and changed the way I was looking at cultivation. When I was imagining those rings as an extension of myself while refining them, maybe because they were so much simpler, it was just way easier to really understand what I needed to do to clear away all those blockages and form a core to house the mana.But the more I thought about it, I'm really not that much different from those rings. If I stop looking at things in the macro, and just focus on the micro, one step at a time—this cultivation thing really isn't all that complicated at all. Really it's just a matter of patience.It was already 3:00 PM, and ideally, I'd like to have that all done by tonight. I feel like finishing those inscriptions will give me even more insight into this whole cultivation thing.Returning back to my apartment, I set to work. I had been thinking about how I was going to tackle this all day, but it was surprisingly much easier than I thought it would be. Refining the rings proved to be the difficult aspect of this, but inscribing the spell? Honestly, it was even easier than programming—with that, there are all these rules you have to keep in mind, all these pre-existing structures and concepts you have to learn, not to mention syntax.But with this? It's just pure, unadulterated intent—I don't want to oversimplify it, but if you can clearly form the intent in your mind, and visualize what you want it to do... no, command it what you want it to do—and it does. I thought back to the night with the candle, with the flames, how exhilarating that had been. No more holding back, no concern over what others thought about things. I didn't need anyone else's opinion, and I didn't want it either. This was all about me, and what I wanted—and what I wanted was for the ring—or rather, the mana inside it—to obey, and it did.I wordlessly commanded the mana inside the ring to be beautiful, and so it was. Perhaps I had gone completely insane—but in that moment, I felt like a God. I could feel the structures of a spell click into place as my intent flowed into the ring, as a formless, unseen inscription appeared within the ring.I've never been a particularly religious man, but suddenly a passage from a book I had barely even skimmed came unbidden into my mind: 'And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.'And just as suddenly as that pride had come into my heart, it fled, scared by the sudden looming shadows cast by the perpetual monument that is my self-loathing. Me, a god... as if. What's wrong with me? Some minor success managing to come up with that inscription, and all of a sudden I think I'm untouchable? I don't even know where that came from... it's not like me at all.But maybe that's a good thing. Do I even like who I am? Is that even who I want to be? Isn't the whole point of cultivating to better myself, to go against the heavens, to eventually become a god? So what if I'm cocky, so what if I'm proud? That old me is dead. I've been living after my namesake for far too long—perpetually unchanging, like a stone.While everyone around me grew up, got married, had children—lived their lives—all I've grown, is older. What have I ever been doing all this time? What have I been making of myself? When was the last time I even dared to try? I'm tired of making excuses, tired of putting things off, of leaving it for another day.Today is that day. Suddenly, I finally understood—this is what I had been waiting for. This is why I had been biding my time. Somehow, I knew, deep in my heart, this is what I was always meant to be. This is what I had always been meant to do.To cultivate!