Fates Parallel Chapter 280 - Lushan (Patreon)

The town of Lushan was smaller than Qinghe had been, but much more impressive. Built into the side of a small mountain, a solid wooden wall at least ten feet tall surrounded the entire area, including the fields. Li Meili was anxious as she approached the outermost gate, but it was entirely unguarded. The farmers tending the fields paid her no mind as she made her way to the second gate—another wall that separated the main residential district from the crops.

As the road winded its way lazily up the foot of the mountain, Meili marveled at the way the town had been built into it. The fields were carved into the mountain in tiers, forming bogs for rice paddies that were artfully separated from the road to prevent flooding. The road itself took a winding path up the mountain to control the angle of ascent, and had been paved with immaculately maintained brickwork ever since she’d entered the first gate.

By the time she reached the second gate, the view down the side of the mountain was beautiful. It looked more like a sculpted garden than a farm, and if not for the workers dutifully planting rice seedlings in neat little rows everywhere she looked, she would have thought it was entirely decoration.

“First time in a sect town, Miss?”

Li Meili turned towards the voice to see a man approaching from the inner gate. The man was unarmed, but if his immaculate sky-blue robes hadn’t given him away as a cultivator, then the aura she felt from him certainly would have. Li Meili bowed in greeting.

“No, I was born in one—but Lushan is much more impressive.”

The lie came easily to Li Meili. Thanks to the nature of her creation, her cover story was an intrinsic part of her identity. To her, it didn’t feel like a lie at all—just part of who she was. The man beamed with pride and returned her bow.

“You honor us! My name is Ren Hui, of the Gaze of the Everwatching Mists. May I ask who I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“My name is Li Meili, and I am not currently affiliated with any sect.”

Ren Hui’s eyes widened a fraction as the implication of her introduction set in. By describing herself as unaffiliated, she had tacitly announced herself as a cultivator. Li Meili had debated trying to conceal it, but chose not to for two reasons. First was the fact that she probably wouldn’t be able to hide herself indefinitely, especially if she ended up needing access to the sect, and it would only create more problems if she was revealed to be lying about it.

The second reason was much more selfish—a woman cultivator wouldn’t have to explain to everyone she met why she didn’t have a husband with her.

“I see. I can’t say we often get rogue cultivators as visitors here. I trust that you have no outstanding crimes that we should be worried about?”

Meili sensed some movement in his aura that indicated some kind of technique, but without a domain it was much harder to tell what he was doing. She pretended not to notice as she answered, but mentally prepared herself to react.

“No sir. I left my hometown’s sect on peaceful terms to search for my own path. I was only ever an outer disciple, and my debts were paid.”

The answer seemed to satisfy him, and he stopped channeling whatever technique he’d been using. The education that Yan Yue had forced on her was paying off—Meili knew that only inner disciples were considered fully inducted members of a sect, and given access to the kinds of secrets that would commit them to their sects for life. As long as an outer disciple had no outstanding debts to their sect, they were free to leave.

While high level rogue cultivators were often hunted down by the sects, lower ranked itinerant practitioners were often tolerated as long as they didn’t cause any harm. The expectation, however, was that they would eventually settle down and find a sect to commit to.

The man smiled as if he hadn’t been about to unleash his spiritual arts on her.

“Well then allow me to be the first to welcome you to our humble town! What brings you all the way out here to Lushan?”

Li Meili cursed internally—she’d rather not have had her first conversation in town with a cultivator, but she was prepared for it. Once again, Ren Hui was channeling some sort of technique, prompting her to tread carefully.

“As I said, I’m trying to find my path. To that end, I’ve been learning all that I can about every facet of cultivation. I have an interest in alchemy, but have yet to find a master who was willing to teach me. I was led here by local rumors that the Gaze of the Everwatching Mists Sect has a master alchemist of their own.”

Ren Hui’s technique stopped abruptly and he smiled.

“Aha! How rare! We do indeed have an alchemist, though I wouldn’t get your hopes up. A talented alchemist is rare and highly sought-after. I doubt he’ll be able to teach you much of anything unless you join the sect.”

“I understand, but I would like to meet him nonetheless.”

“Well, good luck! I don’t know the man myself, and I’m stuck here at the gate for another few hours yet anyway. You can enter, but you might want to declare yourself at the outer gate to be safe. Wouldn’t want you to get killed over a misunderstanding.”

Meili pursed her lips and tried not to comment on how casual he was about her chances of being murdered. She glanced back down the mountain at the gate that seemed so far away after her trek up. Ren Hui chuckled.

“No, not that one. I thought you said you came from a sect town?”

Meili blushed.

“I left home a long time ago...”

“Haha, fair enough. That down there is the entrance—it mostly just serves to mark our territory and keep mundane animals away from the crops. This is the village gate, where the mortals live—along with a few outer disciples who stay with their families. At the end of the plateau is the outer gate, which leads into the sect. If you kept climbing the mountain you’d eventually reach the inner gate—I don’t recommend it, the inner disciples won’t appreciate some rogue poking around. Then, of course, the shrine lies at the peak—not that I’ve ever been.”

“I see. Thank you for the information.”

Meili bowed, and Ren Hui matched her.

“No trouble, Miss. It’s my job, for the moment. Good luck!”

Bidding farewell to the surprisingly affable cultivator, Meili took her time to meander through the gate, making a show of how she was taking in the sights to excuse her slow pace. In reality, she just wanted more time to think—though as she looked around, she didn’t have to pretend for long.

Lushan was a lovely town. Unlike Qinghe, there was no apparent divide between the wealthy and the poor—every farmer in the village enjoyed the same luxury as the wealthier population in Qinghe. Each building was a work of art, neatly organized but uniquely built to stand out from its neighbors. It was a pleasant reminder of the academy dorms—which Meili now realized must have been following the same design approach.

The main road cut straight through the village—which as Ren Hui had mentioned was on a single large plateau—paving the way from one gate to the next. The so-called ‘outer gate’ was far more extravagant than the two that preceded it, stretching over twenty feet into the air, with gates that no human would ever be able to open by hand. No regular human, anyway.

Behind the gate, the rest of the mountain loomed, mostly green with a few structures sticking out of the foliage here and there. It wasn’t the tallest mountain she’d seen, but the range stretched on for what looked like miles, and whatever ‘peak’ the sect’s inner sanctum sat on wasn’t visible from the village.

As she strolled slowly through the village, Li Meili considered her next move. She’d been lucky that Ren Hui hadn’t asked too many questions. While she had a decent cover story, she’d be in trouble if she started having to name things. The only other sect town she knew by name was Nanmen, which was the border outpost they’d snuck past to get into the empire, and she didn’t actually know the name of the sect housed there.

She had papers that would confirm her identity—except that they were meant for mortals, and would immediately give her away if she tried to use them as a cultivator. Li Meili’s disguise was perfect—because she was exactly who she appeared to be—but her identity wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny if anyone decided to actually question it.

Meili sighed. She wished Rika was with her—or better yet, she should have formed a triumvirate with Rika to make her avatar. Either way, her skills would have been nice to have—she was good at this sort of thing. Not that Meili was powerless. Though she only had the approximate power level of a late first-stage cultivator, she had a few advantages.

Her cultivation was unified, for one—which meant that she could empower her body with ki and use the mana in her aura to directly fuel her spiritual arts. Obviously casting spells or using martial arts would be unwise if she needed to defend herself, but in a life-or-death situation it would be good to have options.

Unfortunately, that was a double-edged sword. While her low cultivation made her inconspicuous, it also limited her perception. She didn’t have a domain, which meant she had absolutely no way of telling whether she had the attention of a xiantian cultivator, and her senses weren’t as acute as she was used to.

It still bothered her that she hadn’t been able to tell what kind of technique Ren Hui was using, though she suspected that being able to sense it at all was a huge advantage.

Another advantage was the supplies that Jia had armed her with before she left. A pouch of gold, some of the pills from Luo Huang, her now-useless identification papers, several decent beast cores—though nothing extravagant enough to be suspicious—and some powerful talismans in case of emergency. All of which she had to actually carry, because of course Jia had not seen fit to trust her with the dimensional ring. Not that Meili blamed her—she would have obviously done the same.

The final and perhaps greatest advantage that Meili had was her techniques. Yoshika had a fairly powerful suite of spiritual arts—stolen fair and square from the scion of the most powerful sect in the empire—and Meili naturally shared her mastery over those techniques. While her power might be frustratingly low, the breadth and mastery of her techniques were far beyond what anyone would expect from a cultivator of her level.

Of course, if she started blasting out the Awakening Dragon Sect’s signature techniques without a care it would probably be quite suspicious, so she’d have to exercise restraint.

Meili stopped and gazed up at the intimidating structure before her. Her absent-minded contemplation had taken her all the way up to the outer gate and she still didn’t have a plan. Oh well, there was nothing for it. In the absence of any better ideas, she’d take the path before her and see where it led.

Nobody seemed to be stationed at the gate, and the massive doors were closed. With a shrug, Meili cupped her hands around her mouth and called out—empowering her voice with ki for extra volume.

“Hello?! My name is Li Meili, an itinerant cultivator. I’ve come to meet with the alchemist known as Luo Mingyu!”

There was a long silence as her words echoed, and a few passers by giggled at the spectacle, causing Meili’s cheeks to heat up with embarrassment. Just when she was about to give up and turn back, a shiver ran down Li Meili’s spine and she whirled around to see a man in bright blue robes standing behind her. His long white hair merged with his beard and eyebrows, and he stood with an imperious straight-backed posture with his hands tucked into his sleeves in front of him.

The whole look was uncannily similar to Elder Qin Zhao, though the hair and robes were the wrong color and his face was nothing alike. Did all elder cultivators do that? Li Meili knew that she should have probably been more frightened of the xiantian cultivator in front of her, but the more she compared him to Qin Zhao, the more he failed to live up to the standard.

Also, he wasn’t actually there. It was an illusion, and the fact that she could tell it was an illusion was pretty damning. Or maybe her standards were just too high. Either way—try as she might, Li Meili failed to be impressed by the display. Still, he could probably kill her with a thought, so she bowed respectfully.

“Greetings honored elder. My name is—”

“I heard you the first time. You may enter the outer grounds. Do not cross the first checkpoint, do not damage anything, and do not take so much as a blade of grass away when you leave. An escort will find you shortly.”

Li Meili opened her mouth to respond, but the man dissolved into mist before she could say anything. She pouted a bit at the rudeness, but took care not to comment out loud. For all she knew, he was still watching.

In fact, she felt a subtle pressure on her aura—the uncanny feeling of being watched. It was rapidly becoming clear where the Gaze of the Everwatching Mists got their name.

The gates creaked open of their own accord and Li Meili sighed as she trudged forward. She was going to have her work cut out for her.