“I’m just passing through,” said Cyril, attempting to keep his voice neutral.

As much as he despised the sight of one of the cultists, he had no desire to ruin the tranquility of Granny Jasmine’s abode. He cursed at the unfortunate turn of fate, but decided that it was best to leave and continue heading northeast. Eventually, he would discover his answers.

Cyril walked past the newcomer. The cultist adjusted his position on the path in order to intercept him, and found himself knocked aside with ease. Cyril continued walking in a straight line down the path while the other man stumbled away, barely managing to stay on his feet.

“Wait!” shouted the cultist.

The full weight of his spiritual aura washed over Cyril, crashing into his back. It broke against his body and bifurcated, like a river diverting around a giant boulder. Out of respect for Granny Jasmine, Cyril continued walking away as if nothing had happened, ignoring the cultist’s increasingly obnoxious cries.

“Stop, or be stopped!”

That one made Cyril pause. He gave the cultist a look over his shoulder, and something in his eyes frightened the man into summoning an icicle of qi. It hovered next to his outstretched hand--which, Cyril realized, was shaking.

Don’t these water cultivators know a different offensive technique? he thought.

The projectile looked rather feeble; the cultist’s foundations were atrocious, at least when it came to the art of violence. Ripples and eddies distorted the length of the ice qi construct. A simple twist of Gravity would be enough to unravel the sad excuse for a technique. He bit back the urge to put the cultist in his place--it wasn’t the time or place to display any Dominion that could link him to Behemoth. The icicle wouldn’t do anything even if it struck him head-on, though he didn’t plan on giving the cultist the opportunity.

“If you don’t put that away,” said Cyril, “I’m going to make you eat those pavestones.”

The cultist bared his teeth, wavering between his options. Before he could respond, the door banged open. Granny Jasmine stepped out, holding the hand of the blindfolded young woman as she guided her outside.

“Edan.” She spoke the cultist’s name like it was a curse. “What are you doing here?”

Edan lowered his hand, and the icicle melted away into a swirl of cerulean motes. “I received word this suspicious man was seen entering your home. He matches the description of the renegade cultivator exactly. What were you thinking?”

Granny Jasmine rapped her walking stick against the ground several times, venting her frustration. “What are you thinking, boy? This here is my grandson you’re accusing. He wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Lady Xincha,” he responded, “now is not the time to be…troublesome. You call everyone your grandchildren besides your actual flesh and blood.”

“That’s because I’m not your grandmother,” she said. “I’m your ancestor. Your granny returned to the cycle of souls many years ago, but you better not forget her, boy. That one looked nothing like me.”

“Be that as it may--”

She pointed her walking stick at Cyril. “This young man is my guest. You may have signed up with the Sect of Sacred Tears, but your true duty is to respect your elders and bring honor to the family. You’re under no obligation to report baseless suspicions to some faraway superior who doesn’t give a damn about any of us. Now, come in and join us for some tea.”

Edan helplessly bowed over his hands and joined the women at the entrance of the home.

Cyril shook his head and kept walking. More than a few onlookers in the central square tracked his movements. Most were merely curious, but a few struck him as predatory. His hostile little exchange with Edan hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“You too, boy,” called out Granny Jasmine--or Lady Xincha, as her descendent had called her. It meant ‘Heart Tea’ in the language of spirits.

Cyril stopped and pivoted to face her. He was tempted to display his true might as a warning not to attempt to ensnare him, but he doubted she would be too impressed.

“I apologize for disturbing the tranquility of your home,” he said. “I’ll be moving along now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Granny Jasmine cleared her throat and spit a wad of phlegm off to the side. “I swear an oath on my bloodline, neither me nor mine will reveal any of your secrets. As long as you stay within my home, you’ll be treated as an honored guest.”

Tension thrummed in the air as her words formed a contract with reality, witnessed by three other cultivators to ensure it was truly binding.

Edan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lady Xincha--”

“What, boy?” She tapped his shin with her walking stick and snorted. “Going to curse our entire family because you want to gain a bit of merit with your foreign god? Maybe the reward would be enough to repair your shattered foundations. Let the rest of us rot--is that your plan?”

Edan remained silent, eyes downcast.

Cyril sighed, but Granny Jasmine’s solemn oath convinced him to return back along the path. He stopped a comfortable distance from the others and crossed his arms. He tilted his chin toward the blindfolded woman. “What about her?”

“That’s my granddaughter, Milena,” said Granny Jasmine. “My only apprentice at the moment. She falls under ‘neither me nor mine’. Don’t worry about her. She’s clever and loyal. Born blind, and deaf, too. Taught herself how to understand the world through vibrations, if you can believe it.”

Milena lowered her head in Cyril’s direction respectfully. He returned her demure gesture with a deeper bow, his curiosity piqued. Her self-taught ability had an obvious parallel with his vague seismic senses, though he doubted he was anywhere close to her level of comprehension. Mastering such a difficult concept without the benefit of speech or sight required a tremendous degree of talent and innate intelligence.

“Alright,” Cyril conceded with a smile. “But only because I can’t resist the company of a beautiful older woman.”

Milena frowned, as if attempting to figure out if he was referring to her, while Edan stared at him in mute disbelief. Granny Jasmine understood his flirtatious intent immediately; she ran forward, beating at Cyril’s feet with her walking stick.

“Aiiiii!” she said. “Back when I was your age, thousands of you smooth talkers made the attempt. Don’t think my standards dropped in my old age!”

Cyril forced himself to chuckle, and found that his laughter came easier than expected. Keeping as far from Edan as possible, he collected a handful of tea leaves from the garden. They were a vibrant emerald green, laced with a network of white lines. As Granny Jasmine had claimed, they emanated the soft, golden glow of sanctity. Touching them sent a familiar tingling down his hand. After a moment, he realized it was the same sensation he felt whenever he added a new material to his list of Transmute options.

Sure enough, a new entry had been added to the bottom: Spirit Tea Leaves (E-grade). It had been a while since he had skimmed through all of his available materials. It had grown to unwieldy proportions, most of them useless variations of base stone or metals. As far as he could see, this was the first plant that he could create. He idly wondered what had triggered the random breakthrough, and what else it applied to.

He brushed his hand along a few other plants from Granny’s garden, adding them to his list of options. Desert marigold and desert bluebell in particular struck his fancy, though nothing but the tea leaves possessed innate spirituality.

Pleased with his new breakthrough, he smiled as he stepped back into the house. At Granny Jasmine’s prompting, he tossed the tea leaves into the cauldron. Though it had spent several minutes at full boil from the tiny Flicker’s heat, none of the pure water appeared to have evaporated.

The steeping leaves immediately released a fragrant cloud of spirituality, turning the one-room house into a sauna. The miasma invigorated Cyril, sharpening his vision and his sense of smell. The tension seeped out of his body, and his mind went pleasantly blank, as if he had slipped into a trance.

The others, even Granny Jasmine, visibly relaxed under the effect of the spiritual steam. While Cyril appreciated the medicinal benefits, he remained focused, particularly on Edan. Someone else’s oath and a nice tea hardly redeemed the cultist in his eyes.

He had to resist the urge to speak up during the rest of the ritual. Silence reigned throughout the house, save for the burbling of the tea. Over the next five minutes, the spiritual leaves dissolved completely into the water, suffusing it with their golden warmth.

Granny Jasmine finally broke the silence. “You can stop the fire.”

Cyril snapped his fingers, dismissing the Flicker. A physical handsign was hardly necessary for him to control his Sun qi, but his paranoia demanded he obfuscate his true abilities. Better to be underestimated.

Without any apparent cue, Milena walked over and selected four porcelain bowls from among the junk piled along the walls. She dipped them one at a time into the cauldron, filling them two-thirds of the way with spirit tea. The first went to Cyril, delivered into his extended hand with precise efficiency. Her ability to detect and navigate the world around her through vibrations was truly remarkable.

“Thank you,” said Cyril, lowering the scalding bowl to his lap. His innate resistance to heat dulled the temperature to a pleasant prickling against his skin.

Milena ignored him. She passed a bowl to Edan, then Granny Jasmine, then finally claimed her own before settling at her master’s side.

Cyril stared down at the bowl of tea. “There are no traces of Leviathan’s qi here.”

“Of course not,” Granny Jasmine scoffed. “I never joined up, and they’re happy enough to leave me alone as long as our interests don’t compete. I let Edan convince me to put the symbol up on the door. He seems to think it gives me protection from potentially violent strangers. Wouldn’t believe me when I said it may do the exact opposite.”

The lip of her bowl failed to hide her smile as she lifted it to her mouth and drank deep. Cyril, Milena, and Edan followed her lead, sipping the sacred brew in unison.

Magma poured down Cyril’s throat, but surprisingly, it was a pleasant sensation. His entire body teemed with hearty warmth. The remnants of the cracks in his spirit smoothed away. Most impressively of all, the edges of the devastated channels in his right arm mended, restoring several inches of spiritual network along his shoulder and upper arm.

After the heat faded, the true flavors of the tea blessed his tongue--a blend of aromatic herbal notes and tart citrus. He sighed in pleasure, his thirst thoroughly slaked for the first time in days. The single sip had also cleared his mental exhaustion from lack of sleep. Cyril closed his eyes and leaned back, content. He hoped he could convince them to give him the rest of the brew, and that his own Transmuted leaves would have a similar benefit without the catalyst of Granny Jasmine’s sacred water qi.

“Now,” said Granny Jasmine, her voice suddenly serious. “It is time to discuss some matters of importance. You came seeking knowledge, young master.”

Cyril forced himself back to reality, shedding the tea’s warm embrace. “Yes, that’s right. My first question is simple: what year is it?”

Granny raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by the simple request. “It’s year 3175 of the New Era. Have you been in secluded meditation?”

Cyril let out a deep, shuddering breath. It was both worse than he hoped and better than he feared. “For a little over a decade, then. I had suspected as much.”

“You have a nice face, so the first question is free,” said Granny Jasmine. “What is your second?”

Cyril narrowed down his concerns in light of the knowledge of how much time had passed. After a minute of silence, he asked, “What has happened in the desert recently, that the Cult of Leviathan--or the Sect of Sacred Tears, as you may know them--have expanded so deep into our territory?”

Edan choked. Even Milena shifted slightly.

“You really don’t know?” said Granny Jasmine.

Frowning, Cyril shook his head.

She took another sip of tea. “Twelve years ago now, Leviathan’s Vessel revealed himself to the world.”