A week slipped by. Good Chip and Fay healed clean, and it even favored Good Chip, his meridians scoured and opened like clogged channels after a flood.

Radeon had handed them a task, and the sutra itself sat in their stomachs like grit between teeth.

The group of Tiyanak drifted past from time to time, the ones who wore children's skin and were tasked with making a stone.

Eager to please Radeon, they had gone too far, packing the pillar dense and hard, proud of how it resisted the chisel.

Now, Fay and Good Chip stood before a massive stone pillar made of plain, stubborn rock. All without using qi.

The system had marked the sutra for them line by line, and they were to carve the exact words into the face of it until the pillar carried every stroke.

[Task: Write the Penitence Sutra of Ignorance into stone, then into your heart.]

[A full belly does not chase flavor. It waits for need. A guarded mouth tastes best when it must.]

[When the road is strange, ask the one who knows it. If you lack the world's ways, borrow your master's eyes.]

[A quick yes makes a long burden. If you do not know the work, do not claim the work.]

[If doubt speaks, listen. Ask for help or step back. Unease is a warning. Heed it before it turns to a wound.]

[Failures can be many. Life is only one. You can retry a mistake. You cannot retry a life.]

[Click to +99 Sutra below.]

When infant minded ghosts understood what the work was for, they froze, then broke into loud, delighted laughter that rasped at the ears of two disciples already short on patience.

Worse, they would wander close, read the lessons aloud, and laugh again. Each visit brought a fresh, mischievous line, sharper than the last.

"Oh, oh! I'm Fay." The Tiyanak wore the face she'd had as a little girl, and put on a prim little tone besides. "I'm Lord Radeon's disciple. I shall say yes. Yes. Yes, to everything he says."

"This is ever so like mining," said the other, brisk and pleased with himself. "I'm Good Chip. Very good at carving stone."

The Tiyanak even stopped, as if considering the matter most seriously. Then his grin returned.

"Look. Look, big brother Chip Chip isn't taking the lesson to heart. Master Radeon, look," the child shouted wildly, loud enough for everyone to hear.

The two disciples' cheeks flushed in each visit, yet they did not complain. It was their fault. Both of them tried to etch each lesson into their hearts.

Off to the side, Gauge Point and Spice Cure could only look on with pity, and even that they kept hidden.

Further down, in the herb plantation, Eldric, Radeon's incarnate, could be seen with a watering can in hand, moving row by row.

He tended the plants with the same calm care a monk might give to prayer beads, patient, unhurried, letting the water sink into dark soil and thirsty roots.

Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, Ewan, and Calyx made sure the sight did not stay a private mercy. They passed word along to the other ghosts, and to the refugees from the Ironbuck Mine.

There, Tiyanak and children played ball in the open paths, laughter rising and falling between beds of green.

Everyone who had visited Cairnlight Barterhold looked at the children's smiles. For them, this was an indicator. This place was safe. This place is where one should be.

They were Radeon's living propaganda of peace and life. It worked. It drew tens of thousands of inquiries from people hunting jobs and a foothold.

Radeon had trained the ghosts to answer with only one line.

"For now, we are currently operating finely. However, once we expand, it would be best you return."

More than that, Radeon chose his leaks with care. He released certain words on purpose, and he let the ghosts murmur a little louder.

He let the miners talk a little louder too, as if they had simply grown bolder with time.

The intelligence scalpers heard, and this time Radeon did not clamp them down. He let them carry it.

The Peak Master intended to open a school, and a premium business area in the higher reaches of the peak.

Serious crafters and merchants watched without expression, and stored the thought away for later.

When the time came, they would remember where to go.

It offered hope with one hand and took it back with the other. True in the narrow sense, false in the way it landed, because Radeon had not yet measured the battle that was already creeping closer.

In the pavilion, Radeon sat with the five wraiths. Tea steamed between them. They wore satisfied faces and sipped in silence, the quiet itself feeling earned.

Then Radeon opened his eyes. Myridion Seersight coursed through him, reading the subtle drift and tug of energy. Chains and myriad colors hung in the air.

Someone was coming. A man with tens of thousands of lives reaped under his name.

Heaven's movements around him churned, and divinations struck and slid away from him in the hundreds, unable to bite.

For Radeon, that was enough. He did not need to look longer.

The cadence of the carriage, the firm rhythm of its approach, told him everything.

The Cairnlight Barterhold was the man's destination. And the face that rode with that weight was familiar.

Jekyll. The blood chancellor. He wore a different face, yet Radeon could never forget what came off him. Madness sheathed in calming wood, ready to erupt at any moment.

He alighted from the carriage, his eyes already roaming the mountain peak. He paid three copper at the entrance, then began to observe each shop in turn.

Each row held different kinds of wares, arranged so the stalls could sell with clean efficiency, no two vendors pushing the same goods.

Jekyll even haggled over a simple porcelain cup, sighing and complaining as he paid with an aggrieved expression.

Yet Radeon and the five ghosts were not deceived.

He was measuring the white robed ghosts who had guided peace into Cairnlight Barterhold.

Jekyll frowned when he felt no blood within them. Gathered intelligence had claimed these white robed cultivators carried aura obscuring artifacts.

He looked closer and understood it quickly. They were tied into a large array.

Jekyll wanted to ask for a spar, to test one and learn their limits, but he remembered the mission from the higher ups. He decided not to make trouble for now.

When he entered a noodle shop, the sight still surprised him. Even on the first layer of the peak, the class of the place could not be denied.

The meals were displayed with striking realism, the sort of work only scholars or artists would bother to hone.

More than that, the servers were all mortal. They had no cultivation at all. In three hundred years of living, he had not seen such harmony between mortals and cultivators.

He watched the white robed men trade banter and small schadenfreude with the servers like equals.

An old man interrupted his watching.

"Young gentleman, might I take your order?"

The old man was Shears, a manager here, a merit he earned after the week-long training, honors and all.

The man in front of him looked regal even with his aura drawn in, a gentleman trying to keep his presence thin.

Jekyll smiled and glanced at the display. He pointed to noodles topped with ham shavings.

"I would like that one. How much?" His fingers moved for three spirit stones, then stopped when he heard the price.

"Two silvers for that one, young lad. That is on our premium side."

Fair prices. That was something to note. He did not carry such small bills, so he handed over a spirit stone instead.

"Keep the change. A tip."

Shears bowed, then set down five small dishes of spices, chosen to suit different tastes, and turned away.

Jekyll ate in silence, letting the noodles settle his mood more than he wanted to admit.

After he finished, he made his way toward the peak's second layer.

There he found a half-full tea house, and he felt it at once. Only cultivators sat within.

At the entrance, a young mortal hostess presented him with a small wooden carving of the building, its rooms and platforms marked like a map.

"Sir, please pick what ambiance you would like to have."

He was offered views. An overlook that could watch the carriages and the gate from afar.

A terrace that put him in plain sight to anyone passing. And another seat turned the other way, facing upward toward the cloudy peak above.

As Jekyll sat and worked through the three sets of tea served to him, he felt the place settle under his skin in the right way. Not something to seize, but something to stay in.

His expectations for whoever had shaped such an atmosphere climbed a few notches.

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