Storm eventually contacted me, letting me know that there were problems I needed to be aware of. Leaving the dampness of the cave and rift for the fresh petrichor, the smell of earthiness, and new beginnings that only happened when rain first started falling was a drastic shift in senses, I arrived in the real world to find what Storm was worried about.

There were none of the fluctuations in world Qi that I had come to identify as Storm’s signature when she created a storm, so the falling rain was a natural event or had been created by someone else. Following the bond to where Storm waited, I spotted the Roc nest immediately and guessed this was the reason Storm had tried contacting me.

It didn’t take long for both animals to share what knowledge they had about the cultivators that frequented the rift. The five individuals they showed me all wore masks, disguises that made it impossible to identify who they were. That they were so well prepared to hide their identities even in such a remote area was a further cause for concern.

They could be anyone, even an Elder of Four Element Sect. If the four still alive were as powerful as the cultivator that had attacked Xiwang, then I was in real danger. There was no way I could explore this rift by myself, not with four Nascent Soul Realm cultivators hidden within.

I agreed to Storm’s request to move the new hatchlings inside the torc. It took a bit of work, but I managed to convince the adult Roc that the situation was temporary and that he and his chicks would be safer hidden inside. That agreement was only reached after Storm promised to hunt and provide food so he and his hatchlings would survive. Rocs mated for life, or I might have attempted a bit of match-making between Pluton and Storm.

It would have been nice to find a mate for Storm.

There was one male hatchling among the three that we would be taking care of, but I doubted Storm would be able to develop a mate-bond with a Roc that she had stood loco parentis. It wasn’t impossible, and I would be careful who I selected to bond with each Roc, especially the male hatchling, just in case. In any event, I wanted Storm to be able to maintain a relationship with each of the hatchlings.

Rocs did not travel or congregate in flocks, but pair-bonds did form loose colonies. Each pair establishing a territory that the colony could be called on to help protect. If Pluton had that type of infrastructure in place here, his mate might not have been slain.

I would have to find a cultivator to bond with Pluton quickly, someone talented with an earth elemental affinity. The companion-bond was the only way to keep him from dying. The death of his life-mate had fractured the soul-bond they had created. Without the other half of his soul, he would slowly die. He would lose interest in the world, in eating, even in his hatchlings. A companion-bond was the only way to keep him from fading into oblivion.

He would live, for now, his instinct to see his chicks safe over-riding his grief. But the moment they left the nest, if I hadn’t found someone to bond with him, he would take his last flight, spiraling as high as he could before free-falling and crashing to his death. It was an ignoble death for such a noble creature, one that I intended to assuage.

With the family of Rocs dealt with, at least for now, I decided against exploring any more of the rift. Satisfying my curiosity was one thing, but there was no point in testing my luck. I had discovered as much about the rift as I could without a full delve. I had no way to communicate with the Elementals and wouldn’t until someone was able to modify the devices. We used to speak with the Hindel and advanced beasts. The buildings and community that I had spotted were proof that the Elementals were sentient.

I co-opted the nest the Rocs had created for my own use, sitting and working on my cultivation while I waited. I had almost completely eliminated the need for sleep by this point. My ability to cultivate and circulate my Qi allowing me to go without. Not needing to sleep was the only thing allowing me to continue advancing my cultivation and martial techniques now that I was busy with my duties as Baroness and learning new secondary professions. There was simply too much to do in the day to waste a third of it.

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I spent hours cycling my Qi, enhancing my Spirit Ocean, before I left meditation. I still hadn’t received a missive from the Sect, so I had decided to concentrate on my profession skill, runic creation for the moment. Arrays were useful, and I would master their construction, but I found runic enchantment to be more interesting. Using syntax and a runic alphabet, it would be possible to create enchantments or talismans like the translation device that allowed us to communicate with Hindel.

That skill seemed more in tune with what I hoped to accomplish for my territory. If I was going to create anything like a cell phone, it would need to be done using runic enchantments.

I had managed to get half a day of study done before the responses to my missives arrived, it was well into the night by this time. Elder Shadow and Shade arrived almost in tandem, even though they had arrived from opposite directions. They had barely arrived when Yvonne managed to catch up. I wasn’t certain how Elder Shadow traveled, but he was a Nihility Realm cultivator. The only way Yvonne could have arrived so closely behind him is if she had left hours before he had.

“Have there been any fluctuations in the rift at all?” Elder Shadow asked, ignoring the social niceties that a greeting might have demanded.

“No, and a Roc that has been monitoring the rift for the past couple of years has never noticed it wavering. It seems as steady now as it was when he found it,” I reported.

“A Roc?” Shade asked.

“A breeding pair that was nesting on that ledge,” I answered, pointing towards the outcropping. “The female was killed. The male, Pluton, still lives only because three hatchlings had survived. One out of a group of five masked cultivators considered hunting a sport and killed indiscriminately using the rift as the epicenter.”

I condensed some water vapor and manipulated that vapor to create full-scale replications of the five cultivators Pluton had shared with me. I felt my Dharmic body engage as I manipulated my Qi, adding nuance to my Qi manipulation of water by giving the images I had constructed a three-dimensional quality to them. The Dharmic added color and shadow to what had only been detailed black and white images.

The masks for each individual were works of art, each detailed and intricate. It was easy to identify what they were supposed to represent. A harlequin mask, a skull mask, a butterfly mask, a crow mask, and the simple mask of deepest black.

“This man,” I said highlighting the figure hidden by the black mask, “is the Cultivator that led the attack on my town. He was killed, but his body was destroyed when the Triad of Spirits contracted to protect the town destroyed him.

“The only thing I was able to recover was the mask,” I said as I withdrew it from my spatial device and handed it to Elder Shadow to examine.

“Pluton reported workers carrying the same type of boxes that I confiscated from the ship that attacked Xiwang. With a dock located near, evidence suggests the smuggling and point of origin for the Golden Lodoicea comes from within this rift.”

“What did you find inside?” Elder Shadow asked. There was no question as to whether I had entered the rift or not, he knew me too well. Even if my natural curiosity wouldn’t have had me slipping inside, my position as Baroness would have demanded I scout for potential threats to my new territory.

“A village,” I replied succinctly. “One built by and the home of a new species. They look like Earth Elementals. The individuals I observed came in two stages of growth, the young that formed a body out of two stacked stones, and the adults that added a third stone to add strength and weight to their shape.

“The village has branching tunnels and passages that lead down, but I wasn’t comfortable scouting out those side passages, at least not by myself. So, I have no idea where they lead or how deep they travel,” I explained.

“Why do you think I might find a Qilin inside?” Yvonne asked once she was sure Elder Shadow and Shade were considering the information I had shared and not interested in asking any immediate follow-up questions.

“The Qi within the cave was so dense that it was visible. Since Qilin are part of the dragon race, I wouldn’t be surprised to find they had made a home in one of the deeper caves. It is the perfect environment for advancing beast tiers, and if the cave system is as self-contained as I believe, it would give them protection from idiots hoping to claim their hoard.

“It won’t be easy. You may have to spend years searching the cave network, but if you have waited this long for a Qilin, the years it will take you to search shouldn’t be that onerous. More importantly, the cave system is another world. If you don’t find a Qilin, maybe there is a beast type inside, that is comparable to the Qilin.

“Something you are willing to claim, instead.”