[Swear to the First Heaven]

"I swear to the First Heaven, that I, Van, will do my best to fulfil this request."

The ring was satisfied. It was nearly 99.9% sure that the young boy had no clue of the enormity of swearing this oath, but it was happy to keep it that way.

Van turned his attention back to their surroundings. The forest around them was filled with smoke, Van couldn't even see three metres in front of him. How was he going to find his way around the mountain, let alone resume his mission of gathering the Iron Gra.s.ses and Mooncap Mushrooms?

A thread of amus.e.m.e.nt leaked out from the black, metallic ring. It was silently disdaining his mission and the herbs it was collecting.

[Well, of course]

[Anyone can tell this so-called mission is just a blatant attempt at trying to get you killed. A kid with not a speck of cultivation to him, sent to a mountain filled with demonic beasts! And yet here you are, earnestly trying to complete it]

Van scratched his head.

"I have to. Finn and I, it's safest for us in the village – If I don't deliver the herbs, we'll be forced out."

[Hmph. I haven't seen your village yet, yet I doubt it's any better than just living in the wilderness on your own. I guess your little brother], the ring paused, [might have a tough time].

"Finn's a girl," Van rolled his eyes, "and some people aren't a bit of metal who can spend thousands of years in the stomach of a great big lotus without dying."

The ring considered that. Inside his mind, it floated gently downwards.

[I wasn't in the lotus' stomach...] it started, and then trailed off, as if unwilling to speak further.

Van wondered what unsavoury place the ring had been stuck in and thought it better not to ask. He changed the topic.

"So, uh... do you have a name?" he probed, "I can't keep calling you 'The Ring,' that's weird."

[It is?]

"Yes," Van said stubbornly, "People have names. It makes you a person, an individual."

[Am I a person?] The ring questioned. It suddenly fell quiet. Van felt the depressive silence and decided the rectify the situation.

"Yes. You are. You can speak, you have your own thoughts and memories. You are your own person."

The ring was startled. It had always just thought of itself as a tool, a means to an end. It knew its mission in life and was content with that. Now, it questioned its outlook on existence. It also felt, now, that it should have a name.

[One Ring...]

[to Rule Them All?]

Van took that in. He felt that name sounded funny, and a little familiar, but wasn't sure why. Well anyway, it was taking it a little too far, rule them all? Heh

In the end, he shook his head, "It still has the word, 'ring,' in it!"

"How about Jet, for your colour? Little Jet!" Van suggested.

[Master Jet] The ring pushed.

"Lil' Jet," Van said, straight-faced but sn.i.g.g.e.ring on the inside. He felt a great sort of superiority over the ring for the first time – calling a millions-of-years-old ring 'Lil' Jet' was rib-cage rattling fun.

[Master Jet], The ring insisted angrily, hopping up and down in Van's blank white mindscape.

[Don't make fun of me or I'll ruin your cultivation!]

"You wouldn't dare," Van said, cleaning his ear, "Otherwise you can't find the person you looking for."

With a nonchalant shrug, he flicked the earwax away.

Indeed, the ring would be hard pressed to find anyone with a const.i.tution as suitable for its habitat as Van.

[…]

[Jet is okay.]

Van grinned, "Nice to make your acquaintance, Jet!"

[Can't say the same, brat] Jet sounded peeved, but happy at the same time. It felt as if its millions of years, stagnating in the dark, feeling itself start to pull apart at the seams, its memories losing colour and substance…were almost worth it. It had come out of the other side, and become its own existence, a person, a Jet!

"So, when I start training?" The young boy eagerly asked.

Jet, still in a happy mood, responded thoughtlessly, [Well, your meridians are near-ruined by our little fun with the spiritual energy earlier, so not until they recover. Really, it's a miracle you're not on the ground, screaming and rolling around in pain! Remarkably elastic meridians for a mortal!]

"Ruined meridians?" Van's expression grew black, if he could reach into his own mind-s.p.a.ce and throttle the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he would.

[Yep, the meridians are the pathways that qi travels through, that's why yours are wrecked…but for a mortal who's never cultivated before, I expected them to be in a worse state. People with ruined meridians can't cultivate spiritual energy you know…oh], Jet paused.

[I wasn't supposed to tell you that].

Van smiled bitterly, "And how do we fix my meridians?"

Jet said slowly, [Since yours seem quite flexible and well-formed…a few weeks or so worth of rest combined with some gentle spiritual nourishment should be sufficient. Normally, this would be almost impossible, but no fear, Jet's here!] Jet was growing more comfortable in its name.

For Van, weeks were an agonisingly long time. The biggest factor in his impatience was the fact that he still had to complete the mission of collecting five-hundred Iron Gra.s.ses and four-hundred Mooncap Mushrooms! He needed to quickly get stronger, so he could travel into the deeper parts of the mountain and collect those herbs. He told Jet so.

[That's an easy problem to solve. You can still get stronger without cultivating internally.]

Van perked up, his dark eyes gleaming. If he had a tail, it would be wagging furiously.

[There's a branch of spiritual energy users who cultivate externally. They do not channel spiritual power through their meridians].

[Instead, they allow qi to permeate and penetrate their skin and muscles, to strengthen them. At the pinnacle, the strength of their bodies is enough to be undamaged by a hit from an equal realm, internal cultivator, and their fists alone enough to crush that equal realm cultivator underfoot!]

Jet heard Van's soft gasp of awe and continued, imperiously.

[Of course, reaching the pinnacle by external cultivation is manifold times harder!]

[Body cultivators grow more powerful by engaging continuously in battle and making their hearts indomitable. Not everyone has the willpower or temperament to become a body cultivator… Only time will tell if you do.]

Jet's metallic body shook in Van's mind, and a sloppy sheaf of notes materialised in his hands.

[What is this?] Van thought, staring at the poorly written notes. In the smoke, he had to lift the sheaf to just in front of his eyes, where he could see big, chicken-scratch writing slanting down the yellowed pages. Even he, with his rudimentary understanding of letters, and beginner's shaky handwriting could tell the situation with this sheaf of notes was not good.

[Fool. Don't be so shallow. This sheaf of notes contains the body tempering techniques of an unrivalled master in the art of body strengthening. He was acknowledged by G.o.ds and apostles as the foremost expert! If he wasn't tragically lacking in internal cultivation, he might have survived his Heavenly Tribulation and ascended to G.o.dhood. Alas.]

Eyebrows raised, Van peered down at the chicken-scratch and tried to think of it as being a heavenly gift, but still saw what could fool someone into thinking was a child's scribblings at school.

[That sheaf of paper is details that expert's development of the Thousand Saint Sacrifice body strengthening method. There may be better external cultivation techniques, but his one is most suitable for you, since he, like you, started life as a humble mortal].

All mentions of G.o.dhood and apostles flew right over Van's head. It all sounded so wondrous and fantastical that Van that is was just that, a fantasy.

"This can make me strong enough to defeat the demonic beasts in this mountain?"

Jet snorted.

[For the last time, boy, yes! Did not hear? He was unrivalled, unrivalled!]

Van rifled through the pages. Though yellowed, they were supple and flexible, not feeling like they had been written millennia ago. In those pages, he saw crude sketches of a naked man in many different poses.

Slowly, he pieced together the sentences. Luckily, the words were similar and the vocabulary simple.

"Through day and night stood on waterfall seven days, no sleep, no eat or drink. But due to dumbness, cannot find the meaning. Sat under falling water for sixty days, cannot think, forgetting life and death. Consciousness clear. Finally found the way! Too excited, lost balance. Twenty broken bones, bedridden for a year…"

Crazy!

Van's hands shook. This expert was obsessed, a lunatic! But Van wasn't a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t. He suddenly had a foreboding feeling and realised why the technique was called 'Thousand Saint Sacrifice!'

"Opened body and heart, qi follows the pain, pain follows qi! I name this the Thousand Saint Sacrifice technique!"

Head down, closely reading the papers, Van did not notice that Jet was unusually silent as if acting low key. Around him, the smoke started to clear from the area, revealing the shape of trees and shrubbery around them. But even as the smog faded, another one rolled in, slightly pink and sweet smelling.

The mountain around them showed signs of life again, not as deathly silent. Soon, the rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs was too close for comfort.

"Arooooo! Ao! Ao! Ao! AROOOOOOOO!"

Van jumped up in fright, almost dropping the sheaf.

A dozen, large, snarling wolves were running towards him through the pink fog.

Pink fog?

It seemed to be coming off from Van himself!

Inspecting himself, he finally realised that Jet had been secretly leaking the sweet-smelling fog into the air around him. Pink wisps drifted off the black, metallic ring.

Suddenly, Jet gave a 'he-he' laugh full of schadenfreude.

[Qi follows the pain, pain follows qi! Hopefully, the wolves won't chew you up too hard.]

Then, Jet went silent, and the little black ring in his consciousness dimmed as if it had gone asleep.

Van gnashed his teeth.

b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

The wolves howled, and chased after his fleeing figure.