The first night passed uneventfully. Gyuvin was physically exhausted from the long journey and besides he wasn’t the sort to have difficulty adjusting to new sleeping arrangements, and he slept soundly till the chirping of crickets and the sound of a distant bell awoke him with the coming of dawn.
Daybreak was just beginning to light up the sky outside the window of his bedroom. A blue and white porcelain wind chime hung from a rafter just outside, tinkling softly as he got dressed in the usual training uniform he would have worn back at Meteor Court and pulled his hair back into a neat ponytail.
Jiwoong emerged from his own bedroom just as Gyuvin stepped out from his and slid the bamboo-paneled door closed behind him.
“Good morning, Jiwoong-hyung,” Gyuvin greeted. “Should we wait for Ricky, so we can go together?”
A blue signal flare had been sent up into the sky in the distance, just a while after the bell had rung, marking out where they were supposed to assemble.
“Good morning, Gyuvin. I’m not sure if he’s awake,” Jiwoong said. He was dressed more casually today, in a suit of dark armor that glimmered with woven silver and ink-black threads, cuffs shimmering with inlaid moonstones that caught the light every now and again. “Some people have difficulty adapting to a new environment, and I didn’t see him come back last night. Either he’d retired early, or he didn’t sleep here at all.”
“Oh. Do you think I should knock on the door, then? Just to see if he’s awake?”
Gyuvin stepped up into the entryway and knocked three times on the door. The room was silent, and a simple sensing incantation told him the room was empty.
“He’s not inside. Maybe he woke up even earlier than we did.”
“Let’s just go and assemble first. We’ll probably see him there,” Jiwoong said. “Come on.”
The corridor was milling with people all heading in the direction of the blue signal flare, albeit quieter than last night considering it was still early in the morning.
“Hyung, can I ask a question?”
Jiwoong looked over, smiling. “Sure. What is it?”
“Why do you wear those?” Gyuvin gestured to the energy stones lining the cuffs of his armor. “I noticed your headpiece from yesterday had them too.”
“They’re moonstones, for dispelling yin energy,” Jiwoong answered. “My sect is located in the heart of Lunar Valley. It’s very dark and we hardly see thirty days of sunlight in a year, so it’s easy for a person living there to accumulate yin energy. Too much of it disrupts the natural balance and can dampen our cultivation, so we wear moonstones to counter that.”
He paused for a few seconds, then continued. “I guess since I’m not in Lunar Valley for now, I don’t need to wear them. It’s just a habit.”
“That’s interesting,” Gyuvin mused, nodding slowly. “I wish my sect had an interesting uniform.”
“Yeah?” Jiwoong answered, grinning at him. “Tell me one cool thing about Meteor Court, then, anything you want. Since I told you one.”
“Hmm…” Gyuvin thought hard for a minute, falling silent. “The dining hall makes really good lotus cakes.”
The location the signal flare had been fired from turned out to be a massive hall with a platform in the middle. Most of the cultivators were already there, standing in pairs and threes and groups just chatting quietly with each other. The seniors were talking amongst one another nearer to the platform; Gyuvin could recognise four or five Meteor Court uniforms amongst them, though he couldn’t really tell who it was with their backs turned.
The gathering was called to order once the hall was filled with people. A short welcome speech was delivered to mark the official commencement of the Spirit Beast Hunting Festival Training Camp, and an outline of the day’s schedule, as well as a general outline of the training schedule for the next six months, was given. The gathering was to be adjourned for them to eat breakfast at the dining hall, followed by placement tests which would begin immediately after the morning meal. Cultivators would be called one by one to the test location, and a ranking board placed outside the Assembly Hall would be updated frequently after ten cultivators had gone through the test.
Jiwoong invited Gyuvin to eat with him and one of his juniors from Lunar Valley, and Gyuvin in return asked if he could introduce them to his senior from Meteor Court. Thus, Gyuvin, Jiwoong, Hanbin and a new cultivator named Park Gunwook ended up eating together for breakfast. Gunwook was a year younger than Gyuvin and he’d looked a little intimidating at first glance, but from the moment he opened his mouth he’d been nothing but friendly and efficaciously polite, and Gyuvin soon grew to realize his severe-looking facade was just a facade.
“Are you guys worried about the placement test?” Gunwook asked, between bites of food. “I wonder how difficult it’ll be. Gyuvin-hyung, I heard you have a holy weapon. Is that true?”
Gyuvin almost choked on his food. “Yes, I guess that’s true. Where’d you hear that from? Anyway, Hanbin-hyung and Jiwoong-hyung both have one too, so it’s nothing to brag about.”
Gunwook laughed. “I’ve heard talk that there was a cultivator from the East who mastered a holy weapon at the age of fourteen,” he continued. “I suppose the rumors must be true.”
It was not uncommon for stronger cultivators to own holy weapons, but Gyuvin’s tale caught the commoners’ attention because it was rare for cultivators to be able to grasp the techniques of using a holy weapon before the age of eighteen. Even those whose holy weapons were passed down from descendants usually took a couple of years of training till they could work in tandem with the weapon. Hanbin had gotten his holy weapon, an elegant longsword named Leiyu, meaning thunderstorm, through completing the Trial by Fire the year he turned eighteen.
Gyuvin didn’t know when Jiwoong received his weapon, but he had some vague understanding that it was a weapon more suited to stealth than a flashy weapon like Yuexi or Leiyu. The Lunar Valley sect specialized in training in stealth and concealment, known to be able to take advantage of every passing shadow. He supposed a weapon like a claymore or something would be cumbersome and not really of much help to a Lunar Valley cultivator.
They began sending communication arrays to individual cultivators towards the end of the meal, calling them away to conduct their placement tests. The order seemed to be random, not going by sect or age or any other discernible factor, and the four of them simply waited around to be summoned. Hanbin went first, then Jiwoong, then Gunwook; by the time the communication array was directed to Gyuvin, the dining hall had mostly emptied out, only a handful of people left behind.
Ricky was still there. Gyuvin caught a glimpse of platinum blonde hair so light it was almost white, from the corner of his periphery, though he was alone now, the rest of the Moonrise Palace cultivators already left. He waved in Ricky’s direction as he left the dining hall, heading through the open-aired corridors. The ranking board outside the Assembly Hall was filled with names now, one through seventy-eight. Hanbin was ranked second. Jiwoong was ranked first. Gunwook was ranked eighth.
As Gyuvin headed up the staircase to the room designated as the testing room in one of the high towers, he hoped desperately that he wouldn’t be seventy-ninth. Â
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