The Door To All Marvels

The Boring Part of Their Legendary Journey (5)

The transformation was instantaneous— from the bitter chill of the outdoors to an almost balmy warmth, from bustling streets to a placid lobby filled with a bunch of people moving around from various wings, carrying boxes or folders or just walking, their every step purposeful. A long line of desks filled one end of the hall, each of them marked with the characters for overtop them and manned by a receptionist.hey bantered a little longer, until— after a while, the receptionist returned alongside a far more noble-looking elder. She wasn’t sure if he was just affecting the style to look better, or if he actually believed he held that sort of position, but he like what she’d imagine a manager of a cultivator’s association would— voluminous robes, a long white beard, a stern expression… the only thing that broke the illusion was the dataslate he was carrying in his hands instead of, she didn’t know, a supreme cultivation scroll or something. That’s what she’d have expected an elderly cultivator to have.

“Customers, young lady and… cat.” He gave a brief nod to both of them— not so deferential as to imply any sort of subservience, but still polite. “Junior Member Lin here informed me of your request. Typically we don’t deal in the information trade— understand, this is entirely for the best. Our members are trained in both wilderness survival and conservation techniques, to protect the mountains they harvest from. The other Associations are much the same. However…” for a brief moment, he let his cultivation level show— not pressuring them, but merely the whole world abounding around, a heavy presence of . Late Foundation Establishment, she was . “Perhaps we could make a compromise. Follow me.”

So she followed him. What else was she to do? Try her luck with one of the other associations? Junior Member Lin had already made it plenty clear that they all had communication between one another— and if they had Foundation Establishment members, they clearly weren’t a faction to scoff at. Even in East Saffron, the capital of cultivator power on Ca Cao, Foundation Establishment cultivators were the very cream of the crop. Out here? They might very well be the overlords of Chongtian.