A Plan, A Goal

When she was getting close to being ready to step into Neidan Forging Yun decided to contact Elder Lei and see if he had any suggestions for her. After contacting him she continued strengthening her foundation at the Ninth Change Meridian Opening, further expanding and firming her meridians to give her room to grow in the future. In the past two years of being in the Hunting Hall Yun had not stepped out of the Sect building once. She continued doing menial tasks for Sister Rong and spending her mornings on studying more information about her future cultivation path. As she grew closer to Neidan Forging she began to look over many different cultivation techniques that were available to Inner Disciples to read. After reviewing nearly all of the hundreds of techniques available to her she still hadn't found one that felt right.

She had been experimenting with elemental energies and knew that she had an affinity for lightning and fire energies, but as of yet she hadn't located any cultivation techniques that would let her create a base for both of these elements. After another month she finally received a reply from Elder Lei informing her that he would like to look at her current cultivation. Elder Lei would come visit her tonight after her tasks for Sister Rong were finished. That day she worked double hard after being assigned her tasks by Sister Rong, but it seemed like something was bothering her Senior Sister because she had assigned her more tasks than usual to complete that day, and far more of them were physically exhausting as well.

After spending nearly two years in the Sect doing tasks Yun had learned a few things. She knew where people liked to gossip, and she had made friends with a few others who were similarly being oppressed by their seniors. While doing her tasks she made sure to spend tie in the areas where she could find information, and she began to hear things that made sense of the sudden change in Sister Rong. Over the past two years Sister Rong had broken through from the Eighth Change of Meridian Opening to the Second Change of Neidan Forging, but now she had reached a bottleneck and already failed to break through before. It was common knowledge in the Sect that a Core Disciple could lose their spot easily if they failed to break through a boundary, and everyone also knew that it was extremely dangerous to fail to break through a third time in the Neidan Forging realm.

The Neidan Forging is an extremely important foundation realm where you layer Heavenly Qi over and over to form a metaphysical object within your core, when you attempted to break through to a new realm it took a great deal more energy and formed a thicker layer, almost like the rings of a tree, but if you failed to break through you would also damage some of the layers underneath your failed 'ring' when the energy went out of your control and wildly escaped. One time was easy to fix, but a patch was never as good as the original, two times would take a good deal of effort, but could still be patched, but a third time was extremely risky and could cause a crack to form in your Neidan that extended deeper into the layers you had formed. Yun learned that Sister Rong had just failed a second time to break through into the Small Success stage of Neidan Forging and was on the brink of losing her Core Disciple spot to another upcoming cultivator who looked to have more talent than her. That night, as she was waiting on Elder Lei to meet with her, she was thinking about this problem up until the time when he showed up at her door silently.

As she pushed open the door and entered, Elder Lei silently greeted her before closing the door and sitting down on her desk chair. "Hello again, little one. You've been keeping rather quiet since I brought you here, the other Elders are beginning to doubt my choice. Give me your hand and let me see your current cultivation." At this Yun sat on the edge of her bed and held her hand out to Elder Lei, who grasped her wrist gently and curled his fingers over her delicate arm and placed them on some of her primary meridians. After grasping her wrist he began to examine her meridians with his Spiritual Qi, taking care not to probe beyond her meridians as that would be inappropriate.

After a few minutes of examination, Elder Lei's sparkled and his ears twitched excitedly. "Child you've really brought this old man a good surprise. Six Changes in two years, and with such a stable foundation as well. You are truly ready to begin Neidan Forging at any time. Seeing as your Senior Sister is failing in her breakthrough, how about we make you a Core Disciple in her place for the time being?"

"Elder, that's too kind of you. Are you sure you can treat me so nicely?"

"Don't be silly little one, Sects favor the strong, and seek to raise those with the potential to be the best. The other elders will certainly agree that someone at your age stepping into the Neidan Forging realm deserves this. You're just barely eight years, while your Sister Rong is already twice that and only trying to break into the Third Change. By the time you're her age I also believe you'll be at least at the Sixth Change, and even at the Second you'll be significantly stronger than her."

As they spoke about her promotion Yun also thought about how she wasn't ready to break through yet, and eventually decided to ask Elder Lei about cultivation techniques. She explained that she'd looked through all the techniques available to Inner Disciples and didn't discover any that suited her elemental affinities. Hearing this, Elder Lei stared at her silently for a few moments before he recovered his composure, "Yun, did you say you have an affinity for fire elemental energies as well as lightning energies?"

"Yes elder, I've been doing a lot of studying and already tested my elemental affinities multiple times."

"In this case, come with me. Put on your official Disciple Robe first."

At this moment Yun could tell that something was exciting to Elder Lei about her statement, but she wasn't sure why she needed to get dressed. He had already stepped out into the hall to wait for her to don her robes.

The robes for the Hunting Hall's disciples were very loose fitting, the upper portion consisted of wide bell-shaped sleeves on a cover that overlapped in front and was held in place by a belt, the bottom portion was a loose pair of pants that cinched closed just above her waist and allowed her tail to be out as well, the bottom of the pants fitted closely around her upper ankles and left her entire foot available. Each Disciple robe was specifically adjusted to indicate their status with a colored insignia on the chest, the Outer Disciples were emblazoned with an orange insignia, the Inner Disciples with red, the Core Disciples with brown, and the Direct Disciples with a forest green insignia.

Typically, within the Sect hall, nobody wore their disciple robes and chose to only wear them for official business and journeys outside the sect. Following Elder Lei further down the stair, they soon stopped passing floors all together and just went further and further down. At some point it became much warmer when suddenly they came to a large open floor with a few dozen rooms set into the walls.

When they walked out into the room Elder Lei gestured Yun to say in a small patch of multicolored stone before he proceeded a few more meters forward. There he bowed and called out respectfully to the other elders, "Elder Lei requests these honored Elders presence to test a disciple."

As the moments passed and his voice stopped echoing another Elder appeared beside him, then another, finally after a few minutes there were 18 Elders in the room, standing around Yun. After silent consultation with the other Elders, Elder Lei spoke again, "Little one, you do not know how much impact the things you told me have. We Elders will use this array to truly test your affinity and determine what we decide. Are you prepared for this?"

Slightly taken aback, Yun didn't have time to process everything and just decided to trust the Elders this time. She bowed deeply and told them she was ready.