“Little Brother Shengfa!” Elder Mu greeted, arms spread out grandly as they stepped down from the carriage, junior disciples already hurrying to secure it and the horses before their feet even met the ground. “It has been far too long!”

Elder Mu was the youngest of the Five Elders of the Yangjian Sect, but was no less capable than the other four. His hair was greyed, but despite his age, he moved with a spring in his step, decades of cultivation of his internal energies keeping him perfectly healthy and more than able to engage in combat at any time. Down below, the people of Yunjiang Town adored him, as he and his fellow Sect members protected the mortals below from forces that sought to destroy them time and time again.

He’d known Huoyun’s father since the time that Zhang Shengfa had been a child, having been gifted the daoshi pill by Huoyun’s grandfather when he had been but a junior member of the Yangjian Sect. Over the years, repeated journeys up the mountain had led to Elder Mu Yanshen treating him as though part of his family, an honour normally only reserved for fellow members within the same sect, and certainly almost unheard of by someone with the Elder’s position. It was a sign of his respect and the close bond that the Zhang lineage had with the sect despite them being in the realm of mortals.

“You flatter me, Elder Mu,” his father said diplomatically, as odds with the shameless lecture he’d delivered over the past hour. He bowed deeply, and Huoyun copied him. “The honour is mine, Elder. Once again, we are privileged to serve the Guardians of Qingliu as our ancestors have for generations.”

“Bah, ‘Elder’?” he quoted derisively. “Please, I’ve known you since the time you were carried in Zhang Fameng’s arms! Call me your Elder Brother!”

He hesitated for a moment. “Senior, then,” he finally acquiesced, settling for a compromise. Huoyun couldn’t blame him – these were cultivators. Even the most junior members were a step above ordinary mortals, and Elder Ma was thousands of steps past that. “I am glad to see that you’re in good health. Are the other Elders well? I would like to pay my respects to them.”

“Cultivation has its benefits,” he said, nodding, patting at his abdomen playfully. “Brothers Jiang and Shu are out putting down evils in the land, I’m afraid. Sister Lin is currently meditating in Zeshan Valley, and Sister Yang is watching over her. I am the only Elder present on Mount Qingliu for now. Don’t worry, though; your Elder Brother will take good care of you.”

Behind him, Huoyun could see that though the junior disciples he had brought with him were standing at attention, paying their respects to the Elder and his guests, this side of the Elder wasn’t something they were used to. While Huoyun was caught in that temporarily moment of amusement, the Elder’s attention turned toward him.

“Zhang Huoyun! My, you’ve grown over the past year!”

He stiffened, startled at the attention by the esteemed Elder, and his father snickered. He shot him a traitorous glance, before quickly responding to the greeting.

“It is an honour to meet you once again, Elder Mu,” he said, bowing once more.

“Please, don’t stand on formality,” Mu Yanshen urged, before addressing them both. “You must have had a tiring journey. Shall we proceed for refreshments, and catch up over food and drink?”

Taking that as their cue, the junior members stepped forth, ones that Huoyun didn’t recognise. Each year, it was the same members that would be brought into the ranks of the inner disciples of the Sect and would receive the daoshi elixir that formed the congregation to greet the Zhang family. There were four this year, all of them looking to be older than him – probably somewhere between sixteen to eighteen, although with cultivators, applying mortal estimates tended to be grossly inaccurate. Three men, and one woman.

“Yangjian Sect greets you warmly.” The one in the lead spoke, and in unison, they bowed. “This way please, honoured guests.”

The one in the lead stepped over to Huoyun and his father. He spared a passing glance at the box Huoyun held in both hands that was likely worth more than his mortal life, but didn’t comment on it. Elder Mu nodded, leading the five-man group of the Yangjian Sect, and brought them through beautiful terraces carved out of materials that those of the mortal world below couldn’t compare to. Through winding corridors, and divine gardens in full bloom of spring, they finally arrived at a small banquet room reserved for guests of the Yangjian Sect.

Elder Mu took a seat at the table, and gestured for Shengfa and Huoyun to do so as well. Only once they had seated did the junior members take their own places.

Before, Huoyun hadn’t paid all that much attention to such things, but more recently it struck him just how deep the relationship between their family and the Sect was. Such honours extended to mortals by cultivators that were only a few steps short from the realm of immortality was nearly unheard of.

Elder Mu raised his hand, and a pair of disciples took their leave. From past experiences, Huoyun knew that they would return with food prepared by those even more junior in their training.

“Elder Mu,” his father said, taking the chance to speak. “Perhaps before we partake in the festivities, it would be best that you inspect the daoshi?”

“Business, already?” Mu Yanshen sighed dramatically, a teasing smile on his lips. “Shengfa, we’ve done this year after year – your brewing is flawless!”

At that word, doubt crept in yet again. His father cleared his throat, looking pointedly at Huoyun. “This year, I’ve decided to let Huoyun take charge of preparing the daoshi without my input,” he said.

“Oh?” Far from being insulted or otherwise slighted, Elder Mu merely looked surprised. “You’ve prepared it all by yourself?”

“Y-yes, Elder,” Huoyun said, flustered. Even though they weren’t making any overt actions, the two remaining disciples in the room had similarly reacted to his father’s declaration. Hurriedly, he presented the box with both hands, head bowed respectfully. “I can only hope that this humble one has not shamed his ancestors with his ignorance.”

“Bah, no need for such self-deprecating words,” Elder Mu dismissed, taking the offered box with his hands. “There hasn’t been a Zhang who’s made a defective daoshi since the time of my Elder’s Elders.”

He opened the latch, and as the lid lifted, the four pearlescent spheres laid atop pale yellow silk were revealed to those in the room. Mu Yanshen took hold of one carefully, raising it at eye level, before closing his eyes, as though in deep concentration. Then, he placed it back in the box, and took hold of another one.

Huoyun’s heartbeat quickened as nervousness set in fully. What if he’d failed? There had been times when he’d thought he should increase the duration of the flame, even if it meant he would need to later add additional steps to the recipe. With Zhang Shengguang’s teachings, there were just so many different combinations and permutations of the Twelve Processes that could be carried out on any one substance, that there were virtually endless ways with which what was called the daoshi elixir could be obtained.

In theory, at least. These were what later generations had conjectured based upon similarities and differences in other recipes, and were not grounded on whatever knowledge their ancestor had derived from wherever he had learned of alchemy.

The seconds ticked on. Sweat rolled uncomfortably down Huoyun’s back. Then –

“Very interesting,” Elder Mu finally said, expression initially unreadable, before a thoughtful smile grew on his face as he looked fully at Huoyun. “Very interesting, indeed.”

The seconds passed, but he did not elaborate further. Under his scrutiny, Huoyun felt too intimidated to speak. His eyes darted to his father, but he simply looked amused at the whole situation, and didn’t intervene in the slightest.

Finally, it fell to one of the junior disciples to broach the topic. Huoyun could have thanked the older teen.

“Elder?”

“Ah, forgive me,” he said, but didn’t stop staring at Huoyun. “Child, tell me – these pills; you did not make them all at once?”

Ah, crap. He’d failed, hadn’t he?

“N-no, Elder,” he said quickly. “I did not dare to create a batch of four at once, in case I ruin your gifts unto our family with my inexperience. I –“

“I am not berating you, child,” Elder Mu interrupted in a kind voice, sensing his growing fluster. “Quite the contrary, in fact. You altered the recipe for each of them?”

That caught his father’s attention, too. Huoyun had been adamant about creating them on his own, that he hadn’t let his father look at the pills as he’d went about creating them, or inspecting them after they had been finished. But if Elder Mu wasn’t about to kill him off and destroy the good relations that had been fostered between the Zhangs and the Yangjian Sect for generations, then what had caught his attention?

“I… adapted our family’s methods during the brewing process,” he said slowly, glancing at his father to make sure that it was alright to skirt around the topic of Zhang Shenggang’s teachings. Shengfa nodded fractionally. “Some, I left the heat for longer, and for others, I added more steps to account for differences as I prepared the daoshi…”

Hesitantly, he met Elder Mu’s eyes. There was a spark within them, as he nodded in encouragement for him to continue speaking. “Because the starting amount also differed slightly, I had to modify the recipe between batches as well. Elder Mu… if there’s any defect in the daoshi –“

“Not at all.” Elder Mu placed the final pill back into the box. “The daoshi is not defective in any way, Zhang Huoyun, but the four are not identical. Rather… perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it has been adapted?”

He blinked. That really revealed nothing about whether he should be basking in self-praise, or retreating from Mount Qingliu as quickly as he could and set up a new identity. “Elder?” he asked cautiously.

“The daoshi – as it name translates – initiates junior cultivators onto the Path. And that is the keyword – initiation. Were I to take the daoshi now, it would be completely useless to me,” Elder Mu explained slowly. “The first step is the cultivation of qi. Everyone’s qi has a different blend of yin and yang, and thus, each must find their own path to enlightenment.”

That statement was about as confusing as one of Zhang Shenggang’s passages. Still, though, Huoyun was paying rapt attention, since he was finally learning about exactly what cultivation meant, and could perhaps lend credence to his ancestor’s words. Despite that, a second thought nagged at him.

“Elder… with all respect, Elder Mu, is it really alright to tell me about this?”

“Alone, the principles are useless, child,” he said. “The real secrets of the Sect are meditation techniques, and the Yangjian Foundational Forms. Through those, the yin and yang are harnessed and tempered, made to develop, and brought into harmony that the cultivator may begin their first step onto the path of enlightenment.”

Ah.

Yin and yang were concepts he’d heard of, of course. Fundamental opposites, and yet never separate. Yin – the dark of the moon; the slow, soft, yielding, and passive, the grace of femininity. Yang – the light of the sun; the fast and the hard, the focused and the active, with the spirit of masculinity.

“The daoshi focuses the yin and yang energies of a cultivator, strengthened through years of training. But because each person’s energies are different, the efficacy of a pill depends both on the exact blend of their qi, and how well they understand their qi through meditation to allow the pill to work its function.

“What makes your pills interesting, Huoyun, is that they are not uniform,” he said, gesturing to the four spheres in the open box. “These two are suited for those with a predisposition to yang, while these two are perfect for the yin. And as it so happens, this year’s four disciples who will join the Sect as proper ranking members have two yin-dominant and two yang-dominant junior brothers and sisters.”

That sparked interest around the room. Shengfa was beaming proudly at his son, while the two remaining disciples in the room had glanced at each other momentarily. Huoyun’s interest, though, lay in what he had been told, rather than the indirect praise that had been afforded unto him.

Simply put, the daoshi, well… it sounded exactly like cibation, as had been described by his ancestor’s text. To add material to the crucible. And the meditation… that was similar to calcination, or perhaps conjunction, or maybe solution-dissolution, or even separation, or… well, many other processes, primary and derived. If he followed on along that analogy, how exactly did it work?

Alas, that seemed to be part of the Sect’s techniques. Even then, he had other questions that wouldn’t venture into the territory of guarded secrets. A little bit of breaking propriety, but Elder Mu seemed to be an in excellent mood.

“Yin and yang… how do they blend together?”

The word blend resounded in him. It was something he did on a daily basis – mix, dissolve, separate, only he dealt with the material. For the mystical qi that kickstarted cultivators on their path to behave in that way was difficult to wrap his head around.

“An excellent question,” Elder Mu said, nodding. He pointed off to the side, where a scroll decorated the wall. “Yin and yang. Dark and light. The qi is composed of two halves, the good and bad, male and female… the duality of everything in existence. They circulate, ever in balance, and even though no one ever perfectly keeps the duality of qi equal, they are in harmony.”

He gestured at the scroll, tracing a circle, following the curves of the symbol, emphasising his point.

A circle. Yin and yang.

Make of a man and a woman a circle.

Struck by the sudden association, his heartbeat quickened, pounding rapidly in sync with his racing thoughts.

Was this been what that first line of his cryptic message had been referring to?

But then what of the rest of his message, and all the hundreds of others in the text? Suppose yin and yang were to be made into the circle, what was the quadrangle, or the triangle, or the outermost circle? Making false associations and seeing things where there were none in reality were both dangerous. He couldn’t directly ask the Elder, either: there were limits to what was acceptable questioning, and he’d already spoken out of turn, really.

Elder Mu nodded kindly at him, closing the lid of the box, placing it in the centre of the table, completely unaware of what had brought on his silence. “Rest assured, young Huoyun,” he said. “Your actions have only strengthened the ties between the Zhang family and Yangjian Sect. Do not lower your head in shame.”

“T-thank you, Elder Mu,” he said quickly. Thankfully, at that point, the other two disciples returned, along with an entourage of other junior members, and their discussion was temporarily halted as the meal began in earnest.

Yin and yang. The man and woman in the circle. Salt, mercury, sulfur. The Stone of the Wise.

Somehow, everything was linked, but Huoyun couldn’t see why.

For now, he’d he happy with what he had. Come the evening, the induction ceremony would begin, and he wouldn’t miss that for the world.