21 Callousness

The next morning Jack woke up before the Sun rose, did his exercises, got dressed, and went out of the house and towards Elder Yu's estate.

When the door of Elder Yu's study finally opened with the dawn he entered it and greeted the Elder.

Elder Yu's eyes shined brightly from behind the stacks of scrolls as he said "Not bad, I estimated that you would need at least a week more to break through." He got up from his chair and walked towards the opening back door while saying "Follow me."

Jack kept his eyes down while he trailed behind Elder Yu in silence. From the study, they entered a long hallway which branched out into three paths. They took the middle path, and after passing through a few more crossroads stopped in front of large bronze double doors. Along the way Jack saw wonderful paintings decorating the walls, mostly depicting scenes of people engaged in battle among clouds, and various vases standing on pedestals.

Elder Yu placed a hand in front of the spot where the two doors connected and Jack saw light gray spirit energy flood out of it and into the doors. Strange symbols lit up all along the doors, and after a few seconds, Jack heard a soft *click* as the doors swung inward and revealed a huge room, filled with what looked to Jack like primitive lab equipment.

The right side of the room had shelves filled with all kinds of shining bottles, scrolls, potted plants, strange pickled animal parts, various tools, and other things Jack couldn't even begin to guess the function of.

On the far side of the room stood a few heaps of what looked like clay body parts to Jack. Some of them had half-finished bodies that had the clay-like body parts connected with some kind of metal with strange symbols etched into all of the parts.

The left side of the room held a few large complicated diagrams that depicted what Jack now understood as flows of spirit energy while it passed through the body. They looked nothing like the simple sketch that Du Angliang gave to Jack to learn how to cultivate; these had detailed markings of various meridians and ways to push spirit energy through them. Jack tried to remember as much as he could for later testing.

In the middle of the room stood a three meter long, and two meters wide metal table filled with various straps for tying limbs. Right in front of it, etched into the floor, Jack saw a very familiar circle, only this one looked just like someone did a carving on the stone floor, not emanating light or that strange attraction like the last time Jack saw it.

Even though Jack inhabited a body now he still circled warily around it as he followed the Elder towards the shelves.

Elder Yu stopped in front of a shelf containing various strange looking devices and picked out a wooden box. From it, he took out five throwing knives made of some bright metal that had strange symbols etched on both sides of the blades. He returned the box back to its place on the shelf and looked at Jack with a mischievous smile.

"Catch." Elder Yu said as he threw one knife at Jack.

Jack got used to the Elder's tricks during the past few weeks so he made a half-hearted attempt at catching the knife, and missed. After it clattered down on the ground and slid a couple of meters away Jack scurried after it and picked it up while saying "My apologies, Lord." in a slightly frightened tone.

The Elder had a small frown on his face, but it soon disappeared as he pointed at the knife and said "Imbue it until all of the sigils are activated."

Jack focused and pushed a strand of spirit energy into the knife. It took him a dozen seconds until all of the etchings on the knife shone a light blue color. 'No wonder the circle on the ground looks dead, it needs spirit energy.' he thought as he marveled at the glowing knife.

"Good, try the next one." said Elder Yu as he handed the second knife to Jack.

Jack gasped and stopped pushing spirit energy through his hand after failing to activate the fourth knife. He looked up at the Elder and said "I don't have enough energy for this one, Lord. I am sorry."

Elder Yu clicked his tongue as he shook his head slightly and said "I figured as much. I should not expect a lot from only the second grade." He took back the fourth knife and stored it while he said "Keep the other three, you will need them tonight."

He moved down the line of shelves and took out a glowing bottle. He turned to Jack and said "Do you know what spirits are, boy?"

Jack shook his head as he said "No, Lord. I only heard stories." while staring at the glowing bottle and trying to sound as sincere as possible.

Elder Yu walked to stand in front of the circle carved into the ground. He waved a hand and Jack saw gray spirit energy rush out of it and enter the circle, making it glow brightly.

The Elder upended the bottle and a viscous liquid slowly ran out of it and floated in the air inside the circle, the liquid took the shape of a slightly grey ball.

"This is a spirit." Elder Yu said as he pointed at the floating grey ball. "The ones that you will meet at night will not be as docile as this one, but at least now you know how they look." He turned back towards Jack and said "The spirits of cultivators do have a bit more power than this ordinary one, but not so much more that you should have a lot of trouble with them."

Jack stepped up to the edge of the glowing circle and studied the spirit. It looked just as Jack remembered the other spirits, and himself, looking. He felt a sense of relief as he concluded that this one didn't show any signs that it had some consciousness as it floated peacefully in the circle.

"Stab it." said Elder Yu as he studied the glowing ball.

Jack glanced at the Elder for a second, but then took out a still glowing knife from his belt, hesitated when his hand reached the circle, gulped, and thrust the knife into the grey ball.

For a second Jack imagined that he heard a soft howl of pain, but then the knife sucked up the gray ball into itself as the lights of the sigils turned from light blue to grey.

Jack removed his hand from the circle without issue and looked down at the knife in his hand with a slight frown.

"Good job!" exclaimed Elder Yu encouragingly as he smiled at Jack. He plucked the used knife from Jack's hand and held its tip above the entrance to the empty bottle.

Jack now saw that the bottle too had sigils etched into it.

The Elder did something with his hand and the sigils on the knife twisted a little before he imbued his spirit energy into the knife. Almost immediately the grey spirit seeped out of the knife and back into the bottle that once again lit up in bright light.

"There, all done." Elder Yu said as he handed the knife back to Jack and went to return the bottle back to its place.

Jack looked at the hundreds of glowing bottles on the shelves and felt cold sweat run down his back.

The Elder turned around towards Jack and clapped his hands twice. He walked to loom over Jack and said "That covers pretty much everything that you need to know about spirits. For every one you bring me I will give you one spirit stone." He looked at the incomprehension in Jack's eyes and asked "Do you know what a spirit stone is, boy?"

Jack shook his head and said "No, Lord."

Elder Yu sighed and said "A spirit stone is the currency we cultivators use in our transactions. They are a type of stone that absorb natural spirit energy through the years and have a lot of uses. If you want to know more ask someone else, I do not have the time." He looked up behind Jack and smiled.

Jack also heard something stomp its way to the doorway at his back, but he didn't dare to turn his head while the Elder instructed him. Now that he shifted his focus, Jack could also look over his shoulder and see a two-meter monstrosity. It looked like something that only some crazy bastard that decided to gather those parts from the back of the room into a person looking thing would make.

The aforementioned crazy bastard exclaimed with a smile "Ah, perfect timing!" He looked down at Jack and said "Follow the puppet and it will show you the way out. Do not take any other path or it will kill you." He looked back at the monstrosity and said "Servant, escort the child to the exit."

The puppet bowed down in jerky motions, straightened up, and turned on its heel to walk away.

Jack looked up at the Elder who made a shooing motion with his hand as he said "Go, follow it. Du Angliang will explain the rest to you tonight." Jack bowed and sped up his steps after the departing puppet. As he left the room he heard Elder Yu mumbling to himself "It spent its energy already. I should make a new one."

Once the jerky puppet led him to the exit Jack let out a sigh of relief and started walking towards the path for the town. Once he entered the forest his forehead furrowed more and more while he kept clenching and relaxing his fists. After a while, he stopped, looked around, climbed into a tree's branches, and started absorbing spirit energy.

'I won't have time to get it later, not in a place where no one will see me.' he thought as he felt his dried up dantian receive the new energy. 'That old bastard uses the lives of these kids to make servants and do experiments. He uses that graveyard like a garden to raise useful crops.'

The more Jack thought about what he found out in Elder Yu's lab, the angrier he got. When he filled up his dantian he saw that the branch to which he held on to had cracks running through its length. He looked at it for a second, sighed, took a tighter grip on his emotions, and jumped back to the ground.

This time when he went down the path to the Tranquil Lake Town, every now and then when he passed near a person he felt a certain something from them. At a distance, it felt like the feeling that he felt when someone stood behind him. Even when he closed his eyes he could feel some of the people around him. The more they neared him, the more real they became. 'So this is the sense that Bindun talked about. These people must have the same grade of cultivation as I do.' he thought with wonder.

Jack shook himself after a few minutes and stopped focusing on the people around him. When he did he could only feel the people that passed him on the road. If he chose to ignore them, then even they disappeared from his senses.

When he entered the Gravedigger courtyard everything seemed like usual. Jack nodded to a few people he knew as he walked to the back door and pulled Kuang Bindun away.

"What did Elder Yu say?" Kuang Bindun asked as he looked at the knife handles sticking out of Jack's waist.

"I'm going with the graveyard shift tonight." said Jack with a serious expression.

Kuang Bindun took in a deep breath, slowly let it out, and said "Well, we expected this might happen. He's having you catch the spirits?"

Jack nodded his head as he answered "Yeah, can't do more than three knives so I'll have to protect just you two until I grow stronger."

A smile stretched over Kuang Bindun's wide face as he said "Tank ju." in broken English.

Jack chuckled as he responded in the same language "You're welcome."