"I finished carving my fourth meridian yesterday," boasts Kenae, a beaming smile on her face."

"That's awesome!" cheers Enea, giving her a slow clap. I look at her in bewilderment. She notices and glances at me. "What? It's polite to celebrate others' achievements."

Kenae gasps loudly with a hand to her chest. "Spoilsport!" she huffs, hitting me softly on the shoulder. "You don't care about me at all. Huh?"

"What? No, it's not that. I just never would have thought that a minor step inside a realm would be such a great deal." I try to excuse myself.

Kenae gasps again. "Not a big deal she says. Well, it shouldn't surprise us that the ranked girl would think that."

I blink. Okay, the girl is smirking. It's just banter. But I feel that there is still a hint of bitterness in her tone.

Is she still unconsciously blaming me for not being able to change rooms? I bite the inside of my cheeks. I'm not sure if there is anything I can do about that.

We sit in a lecture hall, waiting for the rest of the students and the instructor to arrive. None of them seems to be in a hurry.

It's supposed to be our first theoretical class about cultivation. I'm somehow excited about it. I look at the door, tapping my fingers on the wooden desk. Others seem to care less.

Sunlight filters lazily through the tall, arched windows, casting bands of warm light over a low stage in front of the class that smells faintly of beeswax. Dust motes drift through the air like flickering sprites, and from outside we can hear the excited chirping of the birds, taking advantage of the good weather to start building their nests.

"Do you already know which meridian you are carving next?" asks Enea.

Kenae taps a finger against her lips as if searching for an answer. They look strangely pink and glossy today. I feel the corners of my mouth tug upward. Someone is trying to impress the boys today.

"Well, I'm not really sure," she says. "Right now, I have got the two feet and two hand meridians. It depends on which techniques I can collect enough contribution points to afford in a reasonable time. Some of the best techniques require two or even more adjacent meridians if you want to inscribe them."

"Contribution points?" I ask, feeling a bit lost.

Both girls whip their heads around toward me.

"You didn't know?" asks Enea.

I shrug my shoulders. I should have stayed silent. Is this another of those things that everybody is supposed to know? I need to be more careful not to reveal myself as an outsider. I need to study harder at night to catch up before someone starts asking the wrong questions.

"You get them for turning in useful stuff you craft or find in the dungeons, or for doing jobs for the academy. There is a task board where you can check what is needed each week," explains Kenae. She doesn't sound suspicious. Maybe she just thinks I'm some rural bumpkin. "They are useful for almost everything: getting better meals in the canteen, better techniques than what they provide for free in the technique hall, private instruction time with some of the teachers, better gear, whatever you can think of."

"Oh," I mutter. Are there even better meals? I thought the free food was already delicious.

"That's one of the reasons everybody forms dungeon exploration teams and goes delving as soon and whenever they can," interjects Enea. "We should form our own team. We just need to find one more girl or boy to be a party of four."

Kenae frowns. "That… That isn't necessary. You can register a party with just three stable members." She glances briefly at the door. "I don't know if you noticed, but most of our classmates are kind of snotty brats."

Enea giggles, hiding her mouth behind her hand, eyes twinkling. "That's true, we could do that, but someone to complement our strengths would still be nice. I don't know if you noticed, but we all are some variant of stealthy damage dealers, like most of the students here. Something like a knight to divert attention and soak up damage, or a mage with a light or nature affinity and some healing techniques would be awesome!"

"Girl!" Kenae raises her eyebrows. "Keep dreaming. They are gonna snatch them up in the time it takes you to snap your fingers, like hot buns."

"True," sighs Enea. "It's going to be like an auction house. They will be swarmed with offers before we even step off campus, like throwing meat into a kennel of starving dogs. None of us is wealthy or can afford to give up a significant amount of our shares of whatever we find to compete with that."

"Yeah!" agrees Kenae. She glances briefly at my ring and opens her mouth as if to ask something, but then closes it again.

"Hmm. If we are going to explore dungeons, I have an idea about which Meridian would be useful for you to have," says Enea, tilting her head and running her fingers through her lush hair. She glances at Kenae as if hesitating between telling her or not.

"What is it?" asks Kenae, sounding curious.

"Well." Enea lets the silence linger for a few heartbeats. "I know it isn't the most popular choice. But, if you are confident in your skills at meridian carving, you should think about opening your mind meridian next." She glances at me. "Both of you should."

Kenae frowns. "Why?"

"There are a few reasons," explains Enea. "First, it will improve your mental attributes. All those hotheads always forget about them because they don't seem to make you immediately more powerful. But, more strength and speed are useless if you can't process what is happening during a fight."

"I can see your point," I mutter.

"And, on the other hand, it will let you connect mentally with your status whenever you are inside or close to a dungeon if you learn how to. My aunt says that it is a must to have because it will let you detect possible flaws in your cultivation and correct them before it is too late, without having to pay for your status to be analyzed, risking third parties getting access to that information."

I jerk my head around. "Wait, what?"

Enea chuckles. "Well, you know that dungeons are ancient artifacts, right?"

"Yeah." I'm not an ignoramus at this point.

"Well, apart from being designed to control dangerous mana spikes and fluctuations and convert them to something useful, they were designed to help us grow," she explains. "They analyze you all the time whenever you are anywhere close to them and freely share that information with you. It's just that a mortal's mind can't receive or interpret the signals they send, thus they created tools from dismantled dungeon-cores to do it for them."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

That changes everything. "How would that even work?"

Enea chuckles. "They say it's different from person to person, but once you learn to interpret it, it forms an image inside your mind, whenever you want to check it. It's like," she rubs her chin as if to find the right words. "Like seeing the page of a book about you, or reading a jade tablet, I guess."

Her words echo through my mind in the sudden silence. I try to wrap my head around the idea, feeling like someone has pulled the world inside out. I nod, dumbly, my mind whirling with dozens of thoughts and theories. How would that even work? We are people, not artifacts. Is it because of some parallels between the runes dungeons use and our meridians? Meridians are kind of like a network of runes inside our bodies.

Whoever created dungeons must have been a heck of a runemaster, and they put a lot of thought into their creation. It's like realizing the stars aren't just lights in the sky, but have a purpose; to watch you, and guide you through the night. How many other marvelous technologies have gotten lost to some random war over the ages?

Opening the mind-meridian next does sound like a good plan for me. I should be able to finish the one I'm currently carving in a couple of weeks, at most three, if I work on it whenever I can and don't make any mistakes I have to rectify on the way.

Somewhere distant, almost in another world, I can hear footsteps echoing, getting louder.

The door jerks open with a heavy groan. A group of boys galumph in, chatting and laughing. The noise pulls me out of my musings.

The boys freeze briefly, seeing us, then glance around the empty classroom.

"See, I told you we wouldn't be late. There's nobody here!" one of them jokes.

Excuse me? And what are we? Furniture?

Kenae and Enea straighten their spines, trading final glances—the half-wicked kind that means that we will continue our discussion later without prying ears.

The boys walk past us. I hear them sag into the chairs in the back row.

"It will be like this all year," comments one of them. "As long as this stupid succession war continues."

"Yeah!"

"I thought it was almost over."

"Yeah, everybody thought that Turstan's faction was about to win. My dad says that a lot of the old ministers supported the idea. Because, you know, he is way too young and weak to matter. It would have been a puppet-emperor, easily controlled from the shadows. And they say that boy would have been too stupid to notice. They say he lost his place as the Mountain sage's disciple to some Lin clan brat."

"What a loser!" I hear someone spit on the wooden parquet. "Fucking Lins!"

"Well, I'm grateful she did," interjects someone in a joking tone. "It made those misers freak out and bring over an almost Dao-seeking realm expert from the eastern continent. We will enjoy the privilege of a better education because of it. Can you guys imagine it? It's almost as if one of the clan patriarchs decided to instruct us himself."

"I heard she looks like a fairy," says someone in a dreamy voice. "Lush red lips, skin like fine porcelain, and the presence. You know?"

Someone snorts. "Keep dreaming! Almost every high-ranking cultivator looks like that. It comes with purging out your impurities." Some of the boys chuckle. "None of them will notice you, though, unless you advance to their stage."

"Yeah!"

"Sadly."

"You break my heart!"

"Why is this Turstan's faction not winning anymore?"

The boys fall silent for a few heartbeats.

"Err," starts one of them. "You guys remember those pesky rebels?"

"Sure."

"Nasty folk, impossible to root out, worse than bandits."

"Well, they say that one of the contenders made a pact with them. Promised to hear them out, a place in his government."

"What!" yells one of the boys. "He can't do that! It's treason!"

"It's not treason if there is nobody to judge you for it," scoffs another. "Nobody says he will actually do it once the war is over. He could just double-cross them, use them as a tool. They are too stupid to notice."

"True."

I wince. A pact with the rebels. That smells fishy, like the Crow's work. I hope my old boss' faction doesn't come out on top.

The door opens again, and a group of girls enters. The boys fall silent.

"That's Han Linea," whispers Enea at my side.

I glance at her, my target to get friends with. She is a petite girl with a doll-like face and eyebrows so fine that they look as if painted with a brush. Her skin is pale, almost sickly. It's the kind of color you only get by never allowing the sun to kiss it.

For some reason, she looks my way and scoffs. Then she turns her nose up and struts over to the opposite side of the classroom, followed by an entourage of sycophants, like a famous artist.

Most of her fans glare at me. Their eyes aren't just looking—they are measuring, seizing me up. There is quiet calculus behind every glance, every tilt of a brow, every smirk. I feel my skin prickle under the hostile attention. I have stepped onto a stage I never auditioned for. Am I imagining it? Am I paranoid? I feel as if there were razor-sharp blades in the air I breathe. Even their hushed gossip sounds off.

"I think she doesn't like you," whispers Enea at my side. "This was supposed to be Han Linea's year, her great debut in society. And you have overshadowed her with your fight the other day."

I groan. That's exactly what I needed! The plan was to become friends with her, not a rival.

It may be too soon to discard it completely, though. The Crow taught me that teenage minds are fickle and almost impossible to predict. They can change their opinion and behavior toward you from one day to the next.

I still may need to start looking for alternative options to get into that clan compound, just in case.

Kenae shifts subtly away from us, her eyes darting between me and the noble girl, as if reassessing her choices. Then they land on the ring on my finger, and I notice her tense shoulders relax. Does she think I'm some hidden scion and that associating with me over the obvious choice could bring her benefits?

I'm learning that cultivators are calculus bastards, worse than merchants.

The last stragglers are trickling in, sitting on whatever seats remain available. There is still no teacher in sight.

We wait, glancing at each other in silence, watching the birds flutter past the windows.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm late," yells a high-pitched voice from the hallway.

The door opens, and a fairy steps through. The room freezes mid-breath. Half-spoken whispers hang unfinished in the air, and even the dust stops dancing under the sunrays filtering through the windows.

A hush settles over the classroom, not forced, reverent. Those boys are right, she is a mythical being. She doesn't walk, she glides. Her black hair flows behind her like a gown, shimmering like dew catching the first light.

"I'm sorry for being late. They needed my help to repel some blumen raiders, pesky little buggers. I can't understand how you haven't eradicated them yet. We would never allow something like that to dwell on the Eastern continent."

She giggles. It's music, tiny bells ringing at dawn, dispelling the cold night.

Her teeth, pearls in the ocean of her lush lips.

I don't even swing that way, and I still feel pulled toward her, like iron to a magnet.

I frown.

Something is wrong.

Bae and master Wen are Immortals, a higher cultivation rank than this woman, and I never felt like this at their side.

Something in my perception shifts, an invisible mirror breaking. The pressure I hadn't felt until now disappears. I gasp. What the heck was that?

The woman in front of the class smiles at me briefly, as if acknowledging me for the first time. She is still beautiful, but normal now—a regular human who looks not much older than me. But I know that looks can be deceiving when dealing with cultivators.

Why did I ever think differently? Her gaze wanders over the rest of the students with serene indifference, eyes luminous and unreadable.

I look at them too. They stare at the woman, dreamy eyes unblinking. Some of the boys are almost catatonic, drool dropping from the corners of their mouths.

Han Linea scoffs.

Huh? She is awake, too. There is another one unaffected. A guy in the back, picking at the dirt under his nails, utterly indifferent to the glamour. But the rest are trapped.

I see only three of you can resist my presence, huh?" The woman sighs. "I see that we have a lot of work before us."

Han Linea whips her head around as if not having expected that there could be others apart from her. Our eyes meet, and I see her pupils widen, before she turns away with a huff.

The woman chuckles, watching our interaction, then she snaps her fingers.

People gasp, some of them lose their balance and almost crash their heads onto their desks before jerking straight.

I feel as if I'm watching one of those hypnotism shows some charlatans always performed at carnivals to swindle people out of their money, only that here the hypnotism was real.

I glance at the woman, feeling wariness creep up my spine. She is dangerous. It's terrifying how easily perceptions can get manipulated.

People blink and rub the dizziness out of their eyes as if waking up from a long sleep.

The woman taps a rhythm with her foot on the wooden parquet. Waiting.

"Let me present myself," she says, reclaiming their attention. "I'm Mo Melea." Some people gasp, but I don't know why this time. "You can call me Mistress Mo, or instructor Mo, however you prefer. Let's not waste any more time and get started."

"Did you hear that?" whispers someone behind me. "The new teacher is from the Mo clan."

"Yeah!"

"Who are those?"

"Are you an idiot? That is like the second strongest clan in the east. They say they have more immortal cultivators than in our whole continent combined."

"What? Really?"

Okay, doubt resolved, somewhat. I hope that is a synonym for the quality of this woman's instructions.

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