Leo decided to check on Kevin before he left. The guy had sent him a message via communication talisman asking for help, so Leo found the three on the other side of the confounding formation.

  "Leo!" Kevin spotted him and pointed the shovel. "Tell me the truth. Does it hurt?"

  "Does what hurt?"

  "Whatever's in there." Kevin jabbed the shovel toward the wheat fields. "These two have been giving me the runaround for twenty minutes."

  "Kevin, look at this trench. Look at it." Arthur swept his hand across the excavation like a real estate agent. "Leo, Mike and I built this. You know what this trench represents?"

  "Lots of deaths."

  "Progress. Against a Deity Transformation profundity. You know how many people in history have resolved a Deity Transformation profundity while at Foundation Establishment?"

  "I really don't."

  "Me neither. But I bet we're the first. And we're saving a spot for you."

  "So it doesn't hurt, right?" Kevin looked between them. "You guys have been in there. You're fine. Totally painless right?"

  Mike put a hand on Kevin's shoulder. "It's fast. You won't even have time to process it. In, dig, and respawn. You'll wish you had more time inside."

  Arthur walked over and stood beside Mike. They both looked at Kevin.

  They smiled.

  Kevin took a step back. "I know that smile. That's the smile Arthur gave me before we robbed the Iron Rhinoceros Sect. The 'Kevin is about to have a very bad time' smile."

  "Kevin," Arthur said.

  "It hurts, doesn't it. It hurts a lot. And now you want me to go in so I can suffer too."

  "When have we ever lied to you?" Arthur spread his hands, the picture of wounded sincerity. "We've been completely trustworthy. In fact, we saved this wonderful profundity so you could share in the glory. So we can all earn merit stamps together. As a team."

  Kevin's eye twitched.

  Arthur leaned in. "Deity Transformation, Kevin. Deity Transformation. Imagine what that merit stamp looks like. Nobody has one. You'd be the first Foundation Establishment cultivator in history walking around with one."

  "I tried showing off my merit stamps on my journey to the central continent," Kevin said. "All I got was dirty looks."

  Mike stepped in. "Kevin, the reason you weren't getting any attention is because Shen Tianyi was standing right next to you. Gold Core. Obviously from a great family. Same cultivation stamp as yours but with lineage behind it."

  Kevin's grip on the shovel loosened. "That's true. He was standing right there the whole time."

  "Tianyi is from a wealthy clan. Women see you both have the same stamps, they're going to look at the pedigree. But a Deity Transformation merit stamp?" Mike paused for effect. "You walk into any city on this continent with a Deity Transformation merit stamp and every jade beauty in the room is going to introduce themselves to you."

  Kevin was quiet for a moment. His eyes drifted to the wheat fields, then back.

  "But," Kevin said, raising one finger, "what's the actual plan? You dig up enough wheat to weaken the border. Fine. But what happens when you clear enough stalks that the rest of the field is covered by the Monarch's divine domain? You just going to walk in and fight it?"

  Arthur waved a hand. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, we do what we can. Dig, remove, repeat. Shovelful at a time."

  Kevin nodded. He adjusted his grip on the shovel. Took a long breath. Squared his shoulders.

  "Alright. Let's do this."

  He walked to the edge of the trench and dropped in. His boots hit the packed earth at the bottom. He walked the length of it, shovel over one shoulder, until he reached the far end where the exposed roots of the wheat stalks glowed faintly gold through the dirt.

  He turned around.

  Arthur, Mike, and Leo hadn't moved. Each of them had one foot planted firmly inside the fog wall.

  "Why aren't you guys coming?"

  Arthur gave him a little wave. Mike raised a hand too.

  "Remember to dig after you get teleported," Arthur called down.

  The color drained from Kevin's face. "What do you mean teleported? Teleported where? Where are you guys going?"

  The three of them had stepped back, fully covered by the fog wall. And without someone watching him dig, Kevin was teleported away.

  A beat of silence.

  Arthur and Mike started laughing so hard they had to hold each other up. Leo tried to keep it together, but Kevin's face in that last instant broke him and he lost it too.

  Somewhere deep in the wheat field, Kevin was having a very bad time.

  ---

  Leo left for the Western Seat soon after to find the Shen clan branch.

  The Great Divide Mountains fell away behind him within the first hour, their dark granite peaks shrinking along the horizon. He rode his Moonrider out of the range and into the High Marches.

  The province opened up beneath him. High steppe stretched in every direction, scrub grass bent flat by the wind. Leo bundled up against the cold and flew low, thirty feet above the ground, divine sense spread wide for patrols.

  He tried matching landmarks to the map Tianyi had drawn him, but everything looked the same and he couldn't find any of the rivers Tianyi had marked as reference points. By the end of the third hour he gave up and followed his compass southwest.

  At least he didn't need to worry about the return trip. His Otherworldly Demon Summoning formation was set back at their hideout in the Great Divide Mountains. If something killed him out here, he'd wake up right back in the cave.

  He spotted his first settlement around midday. A walled town, maybe two thousand people, with terraced fields on the slopes of a low hill. Soldiers drilled outside the south gate.

  The advantage of the game pod was that he didn't need to stop. His real body lay in his dorm at Exeter, sustained by the pod's life support. When his Qi ran low, he'd log off for twenty minutes, eat a quick meal, recover his spiritual energy, and log back in at the exact spot where he'd left off, some anonymous stretch of frozen prairie.

  Tom caught him during one of his breaks in the real world. Leo had been trying to figure out how to tell Tom he was thinking of quitting the Flying Aces, but Tom spoke first. He told Leo he'd done a great job, and that the fans were astounded he'd managed to score a point under Mateo's divine domain.

  Coach Williams had told the team Leo was in secluded cultivation and would return for the conference championships. Leo didn't know what to say. Tom was already grinning at him, eager and expectant, and Leo found he could only agree.

  By the second day, Leo began to see signs of war. Watchtowers stood on hilltops, signal fires ready. Twice he saw columns of soldiers marching west along dirt roads, supply carts rattling behind them, banners he didn't recognize snapping in the wind.

  He gave them all a wide berth and kept moving.

  On the third day, the terrain changed. The steppe buckled into foothills that grew steeper with every mile. Valleys between them filled with sparse juniper and birch, branches bare and black against patches of snow.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Leo spotted something dark on the horizon. He climbed above the cloud layer to get a better look.

  The Great Barrier Range stretched across the entire southwestern sky. Glaciated ridges and sheer rock faces plastered with ice, so massive he'd been looking at them for hours without realizing it.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  The range dwarfed the Great Divide. The peaks climbed far into the sky, trailing plumes of snow from their summits. The whole thing looked deliberate, like something waited on the other side and the mountains were the only thing holding it back.

  He tried to climb high enough to see what was on the other side. The air thinned until his vision blurred and his lungs burned, and he dropped back down before he blacked out.

  On the way back down he caught himself staring at the slopes. Miles of unbroken powder, steep couloirs funneling between rock faces, natural halfpipes carved by centuries of avalanche. It would be incredible skiing. Next time he came out this way, he'd ask Mike to make him a pair of skis.

  He followed the range west, weaving between peaks, staying below the ridgeline. It took many days before he began to see signs of civilization. Switchback roads carved into the slopes, monasteries built on exposed spirit veins, and guard posts with talisman banners snapping in the wind.

  Then the valley opened beneath him.

  A great river cut straight through the Barrier Range, carving a gap wide enough for a city. And someone had built one.

  Leo had seen pictures of the old European and Chinese legacy sects. He'd seen the formation-reinforced walls of Garrison Boston and the skyline of New York from the air. This was something else entirely.

  The Western Seat filled the river gap from cliff face to cliff face. Walls of white stone rose hundreds of feet, layered with formation scripts visible even from this distance. Towers climbed above them, connected by covered bridges spanning the gap, and a central spire of pale jade rose higher still, its tip lost in the haze of concentrated spiritual energy.

  The Tier Five Immortal City. Capital of the Western Provinces. The face of the Deity Transformation.

  Flying boats moved in designated lanes overhead, funneled into strict corridors with military discipline. Catapult formations and cannon emplacements lined the upper walls, barrels tracking the sky.

  The outer districts sprawled beyond the main walls in concentric rings: wooden buildings, market stalls, and makeshift refugee camps spreading across the valley slopes. Smoke from cookfires and industry rose in thin columns, smudging the air grey.

  Leo watched the traffic patterns from a ridge overlooking the valley. The flying lanes were monitored. Anyone in the sky would be tracked and checked. He stored his Moonrider back in his dantian and descended on foot, joining the trickle of low-level cultivators heading for the outer districts.

  ---

  Leo smelled the outer districts before he saw them up close.

  Cookfire smoke. Animal waste. Something sour that he couldn't identify and didn't want to. The road narrowed from a dirt track into a muddy lane pressed between wooden structures that looked like they'd been thrown up in a week. Makeshift shelters crowded against the bases of the outer wall, some stacked two high, their frames sagging under the weight of uncleared snow.

  Families huddled around fires built in pits dug straight into the frozen ground. Children sat in the mud with empty bowls. Old men and women wrapped in quilted robes that had been patched so many times the original fabric was gone.

  Nobody looked at him. He was just another low-level body moving toward the gates.

  Leo kept walking. He kept his divine sense pulled tight, just enough to watch his surroundings without drawing attention. A man with a missing arm trying to split firewood with a hatchet. Two boys, maybe eight or nine, fighting over a frozen turnip with genuine desperation in their eyes.

  He watched the two boys and something shifted in his chest.

  A few days ago he'd been flying back to Exeter, feeling sorry for himself because his coach wouldn't file a complaint about a rigged college sports game. He'd flown over Boston staring at the dark spot and thought about how unfair his life was. How the adults had betrayed him. How the lights were for everyone else.

  These kids didn't have lights. They didn't have a bed to rest their heads. They didn't have a stadium full of people cheering for them. They were fighting over a root vegetable in the mud outside a fortress that didn't want them, and tomorrow would be the same.

  Leo had lost a game. These people had lost everything.

  He stopped the boys and passed them a few spirit stones discreetly before moving on. The self-pity he'd been carrying since the Harvard match felt suddenly very small and very stupid.

  ---

  The architecture changed within fifty feet of the outer gate. Muddy lanes gave way to cobblestone streets. The makeshift shelters disappeared, replaced by timber-framed buildings with proper foundations and tiled roofs. Shops displayed talismans, pills, and low-tier spiritual weapons behind glass windows. Tea houses and noodle stalls sent steam curling into the cold air.

  The people changed too. Foundation Establishment cultivators moved with purpose, their robes clean, their bodies well fed, and their spiritual signatures steady. Soldiers in matching armor patrolled in pairs, eyes scanning the crowd with practiced boredom.

  None of them looked toward the outer gate.

  Leo bought a bowl of noodles from a street vendor. Three tier-one spirit stones. That was insane. A bowl of noodles back in the High Marches cost mortal silver. But the vendor's expression said this was normal, and the line behind Leo said people would pay it, so Leo did.

  He ate while watching the flow of traffic and tried to do the math. If a Qi Refining refugee earned maybe one or two tier-one spirit stones a day doing manual labor, and a bowl of noodles cost three, then these people couldn't even afford to eat inside the walls.

  The inner wall was thirty feet of white stone inlaid with formation scripts. The gates were flanked by guards in ornate armor, and traffic slowed to a crawl as each person was inspected, identity tokens checked, spiritual signatures scanned.

  Leo didn't try to enter. He stood on a raised stone platform near a tea house and looked through the gate while he ate.

  Beyond the inner wall, the city transformed again. Wide boulevards. Spirit-lit lanterns. Multi-story residences of carved white stone and dark hardwood, each one radiating the dense, saturated Qi signatures of Nascent Soul cultivators. Courtyards with actual gardens, green and alive in the middle of winter, sustained by the spirit veins running beneath them.

  Back at Garrison Boston, the Nascent Soul cultivators had better quarters. Better food, private training rooms. But you had to go looking for it. The privileges were tucked behind unmarked doors and keycards. The privilage existed, but it stayed out of sight.

  Here, the hierarchy wanted to be seen. The residences faced outward, their balconies oriented toward the lower districts like viewing platforms. Leo counted at least a dozen from the gate, each one sprawling across enough ground to house hundreds of the refugees camped outside the outer wall. He could see the spiritual qi flowing upward through the stone like veins of light, displayed in a show of wealth.

  The message was clear. Look up. Know your place.

  And above everything, at the highest point of the city directly over the pass where the river gap entered the Great Barrier mountain range, a palace of pale jade dominated the skyline.

  It sat on a platform of living rock that jutted from the cliff face, connected to the rest of the city by a single bridge. The jade caught the light and threw it back in soft green, and the spiritual pressure radiating from the structure was dense enough that Leo could feel it from the outer district.

  That must be where Monarch Cloudpiercer lived. The overlord of the Western Seat. Leo had heard the name back during his time at the Ammo Sect. A cultivator strong enough to decide the fate of the two western provinces alone.

  Leo looked at the jade palace, then at the refugee camps stretching along the outer wall, and the picture completed itself. Monarch Cloudpiercer lived above the clouds while children fought over frozen turnips at his gates. The cultivation world's version of the dark spot in Boston, except here nobody bothered to pretend there was some semblance of equality.

  This was the immortal path. This was what cultivators built when they had millennia, unlimited power, and zero obligation to anyone weaker than themselves.

  He finished his noodles and set the bowl down.

  He noticed the recruitment camps near the entrances to the inner city. Canvas pavilions at regular intervals along the main road, each flying the Western Seat's banner. Tables staffed by Foundation Establishment soldiers in clean uniforms. Lines of people waiting.

  Leo drifted toward the nearest one and found a spot against a wall where he could watch.

  Two men stood near the back of the line, close enough for Leo to hear. The older one had the look of a man who had seen fighting. Weathered skin, a scar that ran from his left ear down to his jaw. The younger one beside him was maybe nineteen, thinner, with similar features. Father and son, both Qi Refining.

  "Look at this," the son said, reading the posted notice. "Foundation Establishment advancement support. Spiritual medicine included. Body refining manuals and resources, military grade." He turned to his father. "That's a decade of saving. Maybe more."

  The father scratched his jaw along the scar. "Keep reading."

  "Multi-year contracts. Regular wages. Food and board provided."

  "Below that."

  The son's eyes moved down the notice. He was quiet for a moment. "Dao heart oath of loyalty to Monarch Cloudpiercer."

  "To Monarch Cloudpiercer," the father repeated. "To one man. You ever heard of a dao heart oath sworn to one man?"

  "It's just..."

  "Oaths go to temples. To sects. To the Western Seat itself, maybe. An oath to a single cultivator means you belong to him. Break it, and you lose your cultivation."

  "So don't break it. We serve loyally, we get the resources, we advance. What's the problem?"

  "The problem is you don't know what 'loyal' means until he decides what it means. A temple has doctrine. A sect has elders and traditions. One man has whatever he wants on any given morning."

  The son looked at the line ahead of them. A young woman at the front pressed her palm to a jade tablet and winced as the oath formation activated, light flaring briefly around her hand.

  "They're taking all cultivation levels," the son said. "Even Qi Refining."

  "Now why do you think that is?"

  "Because you can't hold thousands of li of frontline with Gold Cores alone. You need bodies for supply lines, watchtowers, fortification work, garrison duty."

  The father raised an eyebrow. "Been studying?"

  "My friends sent word from the barracks." The son gestured at the drilling fields past the pavilions, where fresh recruits were already running formations. "This is preparation for something long. Something big. And when it comes, what happens to every Qi Refining cultivator in the outer district who didn't sign up?"

  The father said nothing.

  "They'll draft us. You know they will. And drafted men don't get Foundation Establishment spiritual medicine. They get a spear and a direction to march."

  "You don't know that."

  "You fought in the Western Spines campaigns. Tell me I'm wrong."

  The father was quiet for a long time. He watched the line move. More people joined behind them.

  "You're not wrong," he said.

  "So we walk in now. On our own feet. With good terms and good compensation. Before they stop asking and start telling."

  The father rubbed the back of his neck. He looked at the oath tablet at the front of the line. He looked at the refugee camps visible past the end of the street.

  "Fine," he said. "But you keep your head down. Don't reach for meat that isn't on your plate."

  They stepped forward in line.

  Leo watched them go. The son was making the smart play. Leo recognized the logic. It was the same logic that sent convoys of teenagers like Matt and Vivian into the catacombs. Volunteer now, earn merits, and purchase your draft exemptions.

  He stayed against the wall for a while longer, watching the line grow. Then he pushed off and turned toward the inner gate.

  Time to try his luck at the checkpoint.