The Patriarch hit the ceremonial bronze gong, and the sound of the gong echoed through the entire city. It marked the beginning of the hunt, and the hunt would last for three days and three nights. 

The participants spread out into the Dragon Earthspine Mountains, in search of their prey, the spirit beasts. Tundra felt their spiritual energies fan out from the city, and into the mountains. 

In the meantime, Tundra and his entourage made their way to their little mountain outpost. A makeship place. The mountain was serene for now, they have not yet begun to make sense of Tundra’s presence. Spirit beasts may not have attained full intelligence, but their base instincts should warn them that something was around. 

In time, they would flee. 

The mountain outpost was unnecessarily lavish for its purpose. There were twenty assistants, eighteen sent by the Patriarch Eastheart, to ensure the Sect Master’s every whim or need was attended to. They would cook, make tea, dance, sing, and do anything if he so commanded them. The other two were his own assistants from the Verdant Snow, and they would actually help with the administrative aspects of the spirit hunt. They would record what each of the participants hunted, and store them within a special spatial pouch with segregated sub-compartments. In addition to the assistants, there were also six guards, disciples and minions of the Eastheart clan, all in the 3rd realm. Their presence is merely ceremonial, because with Tundra around, it was likely they wouldn’t be needed.

The participants were all informed of Tundra’s location. If their spatial pouches could no longer contain their harvest, they were permitted to drop off their haul here in their mountain camp. It was mutually beneficial, since Tundra could start work earlier. 

For now, Tundra relaxed. He would be busy once the hunt concluded. By his own estimates, he would need to spend an extra three to five days to deliver on his promises to the participants, and make cultivation pills from the spoils. His priority will be the hosts’ haul. For his disciples, they would have to wait a little more until they were back in the Verdant Snow to receive their share of the pills. 

“Sect Master, it’s been a long journey, this way.” A female assistant bowed and greeted him, and guided him to a large tent. The tent itself was made from dried spirit beast skin, dyed a plain beige color, and then painted with the Eastheart family’s sigil. 

Tundra gave the assistant a nod and followed her into the tent that was fully furnished with a bedroom, a throne room, and a general eating area. 

“We hope you find our simple accommodations sufficient for your needs. We will be available to attend to any of your needs, please just call us.” The assistant’s dress was unnecessary out here in the mountains. The skirt was too short, the slit at the side went too high, and there were too many holes for the dress to be anything but an intentional attempt at seduction.

Tundra met many patriarchs who hired such assistants, but he wouldn’t begrudge them. He even did the same tactic if he knew their guests were the lecherous kind. Their role was to placate the men with pleasure and company, such that they didn’t cause problems. It is ancient wisdom that even heroes have a weakness for the charms of beauty. Still, he found it amusing to be on the receiving end. Not the first, and won’t be the last. 

“It’s fine, you may leave.” The assistant bowed and walked out. Tundra’s senses scanned the tent, and then further beyond. He could roughly feel where his wives were, and found it quite amusing that they were quite near to each other. 

They must have decided to cooperate. He saw that as a good sign.

Two of his own assistants stood outside the tent. “Sect Master, we are here and we await your orders.”

The hunt’s detailed plan was already presented to him the day before. All he needed to do was authorize it. “Proceed as agreed.” 

It wasn’t anything fancy. They’d set up their part of the camp and do what they needed to do. 

They bowed and he felt the two of them leave. Once they were further away, Tundra sat on his bed and meditated. 

***

The spirit beasts were fairly harmless as Celestia deftly dodged a flying rock, kicked by one of many Stonehorn Grazing Bulls. A spirit beast in the 3rd realm, the three women stalked a group of ten bulls. 

They were just happily eating grass and the leaves from bushes. Then the three female cultivators came along, and ruined the day, as well as ended the rest of their lives. 

Marin was exceptionally eager to prove herself, something that made Celestia feel a little wary. 

She observed that the fifth wife’s cultivation method and combat techniques were all earth-element, and so her effectiveness against the bulls were fairly limited. Elly was of the water element, and water, depending on the aspect, could be either weak, or strong against creatures of the earth element. Unfortunately, she wasn’t familiar with the right aspect of Yin-Water, so she struggled to contribute and was forced on the defensive.

A set of unfortunate circumstances that made Celestia the main hunter. Her wood-energy cultivation techniques, such as the [The Cracking Roots] and [Cuts by Thousand Weeds] pierced their earth-empowered hides. 

But the battle was a sign of things to come. For every three Stonehorn Grazing Bull she defeated, the other two wives only defeated one each. The ten bulls died anyway, but Celestia knew things were not going to go well.

“We must move faster.” Marin vented while she got to work. She resisted commenting on how her work was inefficient. She could already feel Marin was agitated, and her complaints almost seemed like it was directed at herself instead of them. “This is taking too long.”

Elly didn’t understand why Marin criticized them, so she countered. “Celestia did the heavy lifting, Marin.”

Celestia squirmed at Elly’s response, and wondered whether Marin would retaliate. But Marin only glared at the senior wife, then she redirected her focus back to her work. The bull’s meat could be used as food, and some parts of its bones could be used to make tools, but Marin didn’t look interested. Victory in this event was defined by the number of Spirit Cores harvested. 

She only extracted the spirit beast cores. “I’m going to hunt some more spirit beasts, I’ll signal the rest of you when I find more of them.”

Celestia frowned, but decided to just collect the rest of Marin’s untouched corpses into her spatial pouch. The horns could be sold for a decent sum. The three wives all had good quality spatial pouches, so their capacity should be the highest of the participants. 

Elly’s annoyance was written on her face, but she too, said nothing as she watched Marin leave. 

“Would it be better if we just store them in the spatial pouches?” Celestia tried to mediate. “We can process them later.” 

Elly realized Celestia was right. Since they were all dead, they could collect the beast cores out of their corpses later. “You are right.”

***

Tundra’s attention shifted across the entire mountain, as he tried to monitor the progress of his followers, his wives, and also the Eastheart family’s participants. He felt them hunt the spirit beasts, and the strategies each of them took. Some moved alone, some moved as groups. There were no right or wrong ways to approach such things.

He then focused on his Core Disciples.

Among his Core Disciples, he had his hopes on Yavin, Julia and Agnia. The three of them were smart, hardworking, and talented. Under the right circumstances and resources, and if they manage to address the challenges of their breakthrough, they should be able to reach the fifth within a year or two, sixth within the next five to ten years, and seventh realm after maybe a hundred years. It may even be faster if he managed to get them powerful pills that bridged the gap.

His three elders, Jashen, Jon and Severian should be able to reach that level too, in time. The Sixth realm should be within reach, at least in the next three to five years. For them too, if he could get significantly higher quality materials, he could shorten that time to less than a year. 

They needed to be at least in the sixth realm, if he wanted to start monitoring the Zuja’s movement. Even sending someone in the sixth realm was risky. During the final part of the Zuja Plague, Zuja’s avatars were in the 10th realm, and even their lesser spawns could reach the 8th realm. 

In a way, without strength in the eighth to tenth realms, there really wasn’t much Tundra could do. He thought of bringing news to the great sects, but he understood the Great Sects well enough that reports from a mid-tier sect like the Verdant Snow would just be dismissed as pointless fearmongering. 

The Great Sects and their Patriarchs, like Patriarch Whitedragon, received reports of rising powers all the time. He also didn’t put it past the Zuja to have informants and spies within the Great Sects, and he personally didn’t have a good opinion of the Great Sects, even if he did hope to make amends with them.

Great Sects were all filled with power players, elders who created little fiefdoms and often just preferred to muscle each other out than working for the greater good. His own sect was like that, and unless he was the Sect Master, there really was very little way of trying to get another sect’s ninth or tenth realm elders to move coherently. There likely wasn’t much he could offer them that didn’t bring huge risk to himself. 

A Great Sect’s resources and knowledge would be fairly close to his own knowledge, even if he had an edge. 

So, with no other party to rely on, the best way forward was to build up his own strength. It’s definitely possible, and he believed he could even do it with less resources than before. 

In his opinion, there really were just four components to creating a Great Sect.

Individual talent, resources, cultivation methods, and the most important one of all, luck.

He didn’t lack cultivation methods. He remembered all the good ones, and many less powerful ones from his earlier life. Resources were something he could solve with pills and the various auction markets, or his knowledge of the major secret realms.

That left the last two. Talent meant recruiting the right disciples. Luck was being in the right place and at the right time, and praying to the fortune deities that the stars align. 

But even these problems can be fixed with enough time. With talent and luck, as long as he keeps trying and recruiting new talents, he will eventually land on a good one. Some things in life required nothing but persistence. 

So, back to his three Core Disciples. He saw potential in them. They could be his agents, and in time, he would like to trust them with the full truth of the matter. That he saw a future that was unlike the one today. 

The Zuja was a threat in the longer term. But Zuja’s true summoning required preparation just as long. It required hundreds of sacrifices, and the creation of tens of Tenth realm avatars in order to reopen the rift to Zuja’s own realm.

Zuja waited. Something must have caused Zuja to hesitate. Was there some kind of celestial alignment during that moment? Was it a matter of resources?

Was it a matter of threats from other 10th realm cultivators?

He was no master of the astronomical arts, but the Sky Watching Temple’s Ten Great Star Observers were. They should be able to calculate and project the movements of the stars 10,000 years in the future and estimate why the Zuja Cult waited for that particular moment. 

It would be worthwhile to visit the Sky Watching Temple within the next few years, and speak to the Star Observers. 

***

Marin was desperate. Celestia could see it in her eyes, and the way she attacked the spirit beasts. 

She had never seen her fellow wife this way. For the past two days they hunted and attacked every 3rd and 4th realm spirit beast they encountered. It was especially true when they happened to meet her brother, and found out she was about ten spirit beasts behind.

“Marin! Stop being so reckless! Do you think you are a youngling that was just born yesterday?!” Elly lost her patience as she nursed Marin’s injured hand. The healing pill worked wonders, but a cultivator could not overdo it. The body can only regenerate wounds through healing pills for a limited number of times before it experiences pill overdose. 

Each healing pill amplified the soul’s ability to heal itself, and naturally, there was a limit before the soul’s healing abilities were overexerted.

Marin looked away, but she wanted to get moving. “-I’m fine.” 

“No, you are not.” Elly said. The wound healed, but this was the 3rd pill she ate, and the speed of healing was slower than before. 

Marin never explained her relationship with her brother. All Celestia knew of them two, was from her own observations. She watched the way Marin conducted herself around her brother, and she could feel there was a kind of rivalry between them. 

“Do you hate your brother, Marin?” Celestia asked. Hate was a strong word, but she chose it intentionally.

Marin’s head turned, and her eyes glared at Celestia. “-no. Not like that. I don’t hate him. It’s- It’s complicated.”

“Then why are we throwing ourselves at the spirit beasts? You’re not behaving the way a cultivator of your level should.” Elly said. They may be 4th realm cultivators, but Marin and Elly were clearly out of their depths. They lacked finesse. They lacked technique. Celestia now felt the gap in their abilities keenly. 

The difference between them and their husband couldn’t be more profound. Their husband was one who felt more, who felt like he could go toe to toe with a strong seventh realm cultivator while he was in the sixth realm, and win. Celestia, on the other hand, felt like they could lose to a third realm prodigy. 

Marin felt insulted. “Celestia!”

“Celestia’s right, Marin. Look at you. Fourth realm, getting injured in battles against third realm spirit beasts. All because you wanted to go faster and overestimate what you are really capable of. ” Elly countered. 

The fifth wife’s face flushed. 

“What is it with your brother?”

“He’s not great.” Marin said. “He’s not worthy of being the heir. I can do better.”

“But you can’t?” Elly countered. 

“No. I- I’m just not prepared.” 

“Is it because of resources? Attention?” Elly asked. “Why do you care?”

Marin didn’t answer.

Celestia looked at Marin, and tried to understand what was the underlying misunderstanding between the siblings. ”“Does your family allow for female heirs?”

That made Marin stop. She shook her head. 

“But, if you were a boy, would you be a better heir?” Celestia asked. The nature of cultivation society was something many think about. There were some accursed cultivation methods that allowed for a change in gender, but as far as she knew, it’s a forbidden art. 

Marin froze, and looked at Celestia. She answered but her voice shook. “Maybe? No. Yes. Yes I would.”

Celestia knew she hit the spot when she saw the frustrated expression Marin tried so hard to hide. She saw cultivators like her before. Ladies who wished they were born a boy. Those that wished they had the resources of their male siblings, because of how patriarchal certain cultivator families were. If Marin was indeed a boy, she would be a better heir. In raw talent, she was perhaps a step or two ahead of her brother. 

But she wasn’t, and so her brother rose while she languished. She didn’t hate him, but there was resentment caused by the differential treatment. 

“The pills you received, it all went back to him.” Elly said, once she caught on. 

Marin sighed, and genuinely seemed defeated. “-yes. I thought- I thought that now I am in the fourth realm I could show him that I’m worthy. I’m just as good as he was. I should’ve kept those pills.”

Celestia shook her head. “You’re trying to catch up in months, when you’ve given up for the last, I don’t know, two centuries of your marriage?” 

Marin’s face was filled with bitterness. Her brother and the two elders practiced for years, decades, while she only recently continued her journey as a cultivator.

Celestia wondered whether she stopped trying to cultivate because she thought the marriage was her death sentence as a cultivator. Her father sent her away to be some strong cultivator’s trophy wife and breeding mare.  

Marin sighed, her face filled with defeat. She then hugged Elly and wept. 

Celestia sighed, and felt she had an inkling of where she should go in her cultivation. She wanted to be more like her husband. More than those within the same realm. She would stay back in the fourth realm a little more, and focus on her abilities.