66 Chapter 64 - The Future

"I do have a serious question," Tang Jin asked as they prepared to break camp. "When we get home, how do I explain this? I'm… really different. Home feels different to go back to now, like… suddenly it's an old shoe that doesn't fit anymore." A few days ago it had been laughs and daring to challenge the Thundercloud Forest but now, between Ao Wen's shocking secret and his own transformation, he felt more than a little adrift. 

"I have an idea about that," Ao Wen said after a few moments of hesitation. She'd been thinking about this all morning herself and she had an idea but she hadn't shared it with Feng Xi yet. "The rainy season is going to get nothing but worse, and I'm not super excited about traveling in winter. After that though, when the snow starts melting, I was thinking about going to a sect," she said, throwing out the broad strokes of her idea to see how they'd react. 

The news landed explosively. Few people from Turning Leaf town ever had the talent required to leave their small town behind and join a mighty cultivation sect. Most cultivators who managed to awaken in Turning Leaf town never made it past the first stage of cultivation, gaining powers that overwhelmed mortals but amounted to very little in the vast cultivation world. To move past that required not only considerable talent but also several considerable portions of pure good fortune! Yet, looking at the three of them, all under twenty years old and already second-stage cultivators… perhaps a sect would be interested in them. 

"Do you have a sect in mind?" Tang Jin asked, feeling that Ao Wen had surely thought further ahead. His eyes shined with excitement at the idea as visions of elegant sword cultivators, handsome heroes, and elegant fairies in matching sect robes wandering through cloud-covered peaks among ancient pavilions filled his mind. 

"I do, it's just that it's going to be a very long trip. We may not even make it there by next winter. It's okay though because I'm sure that it's the right one, at least… it's the right one for Feng Xi and maybe me too. The Myriad Arts Pavilion," she said, finally revealing her intentions. She'd thought a great deal about the kinds of places that could let them grow the way the Sacred Flame Celestial Temple had supported Cong Daiyu and there weren't any she could think of that wielded as much power and covered as many disciplines as her former sect but there was a sect that wouldn't lose out to the Sacred Flame Celestial Temple in terms of expertise in what it taught and it happened that the sect's name contained a word that carried special meaning to Ao Wen.

Feng Xi's mouth opened wide in surprise. It wasn't that she had never heard of the Myriad Arts Pavilion, rather there likely wasn't an Artist in the entire Mortal Realm who hadn't heard of it! "Four Arts, Myriad Expressions," Feng Xi breathed, uttering the famous sect's motto. "In the Four Arts, there is no greater place to study. The best zither players in the world gather to learn at the Myriad Arts Pavilion. Wen… do you really think they'd take a nobody like me as a disciple?" Feng Xi's heart pounded in her chest, never in her wildest dreams having considered making the journey to apply as a disciple but with Ao Wen beside her, suddenly the journey didn't seem nearly so impossible to make!

"Xi," Ao Wen said, reaching over to place a hand on her friend's shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. "If I learned anything in the Sacred Flame Celestial Temple it's that sects care more about capabilities than background. We might all be nobodies from a nothing town, but in terms of talent, you certainly don't lose out to the most refined of delicate ladies cultivated in pristine glass garden houses. Truthfully, you likely eclipse most of them," she said, having seen no shortage of spoiled disciples with powerful families. The true pillars of a sect were always the ones who not only had talent but who worked harder than anyone to make use of it and Feng Xi had plenty of determination to do exactly that.

"But, isn't the Myriad Arts Pavilion a sect exclusively for women?" Tang Jin asked, somewhat deflated and not seeing how he fit into the picture at all. 

"That part I'm less sure about," Ao Wen said, being honest about the problems in her still-forming plan. "Not unsure about the all-women sect bit, that's known the world over," she said bluntly. "The truth is, I don't know that they'll let me in either. I'm not an artist, and even if I wanted to fake it, a dancer isn't in the same world as a zither player. I'm hoping that between now and then I can finish preparing for the Independent Alchemist exam to enter the sect with the status of a Guest Alchemist. Failing that, there's a sect nearby that should interest you a great deal Jin, and it's my plan for a backup if I can't find a way to enter the Myriad Arts Pavilion."

Tang Jin's expression showed he had no idea what Ao Wen was talking about but Feng Xi who obsessed over all things related to the mythic Myriad Arts Pavilion knew exactly what Ao Wen was hinting at. "The Divine Sovereign Blade Hall," she said in sudden understanding. "Jin, the Divine Sovereign Blade Hall might lose out to the Paragon Sword Sect for training pure sword cultivators but it's still a top five sect for sword cultivators and they also welcome people who cultivate the Saber, Knife, and other blades as well. You'd probably learn a lot there."

"More than that," Ao Wen said with a slight grin. "The Divine Sovereign Blade Hall sees themselves as something of Holy Warriors, they're all very upright people, but most importantly they have a special relationship with Light energy," she explained. "I was thinking about how Tang Jin's Radiant Mountain Lion bloodline may be finding itself struggling to keep up with the tyrannical energy of the Blood Rage Cougar and I thought that a bunch of self-proclaimed holy warriors might have solutions that could help Jin with the challenges he's facing now that I've altered his destiny."

"Altered my destiny?" Tang Jin said, his face suddenly pale. "What…"

"Sorry, blame my adoptive mother," Ao Wen said quickly. "Mother always said that Alchemists spend their lives at war with death and destiny. Every time an alchemist alters a person's cultivation potential with an elixir or pill, or they help with an awakening, or anything else they do… they're changing a person's destiny. It's not like we're all-knowing Mystics… even as a Mystic I don't know a single Flame Peering art. It's just that without alchemy, you'd never have acquired the bloodline of a Blood Rage Cougar, so now you have to figure out how to deal with a different destiny."