The Reliance Sect sat atop a mountain that was, Meng Hao observed, entirely too high. The climb had taken three days, and his legs had stopped speaking to him somewhere around the second switchback.

He was not the only new recruit. A dozen others had been collected from various families and villages — all of them debtors, orphans, or disappointments, the kind of people society wouldn't miss if cultivation turned out to be fatal. An old man with a long white beard and eyes that seemed to be looking at something slightly to the left of reality greeted them at the gate.

'Welcome to the Reliance Sect,' he said. 'We are a righteous sect. Mostly. There was that incident in the Year of the Black Tiger, but the survivors were compensated. Partially.'

Meng Hao decided he did not like the old man.

'Cultivation is simple,' the old man continued. 'You absorb spiritual energy from the world, refine it within your body, and use it to strengthen your physical form, your spiritual sense, and your connection to the Dao. The first step is Qi Condensation.'

He demonstrated by gathering a ball of visible light in his palm, compressing it into a marble-sized sphere of spinning energy, and then casually flicking it at a boulder the size of a horse. The boulder exploded.

Everyone gasped. Meng Hao took a step backward and began calculating the fastest route back down the mountain.

'Meng Hao,' the old man said, and his eyes, which had been looking at nothing, suddenly locked onto Meng Hao with unsettling precision. 'You will begin immediately. Your family's debt is substantial.'

'What happens if I can't condense Qi?' Meng Hao asked.

The old man smiled. It was not a reassuring smile.

'No one who comes to the Reliance Sect fails to condense Qi,' he said. 'The mountain has many ravines. Accidents are common. The survivors are very motivated.'

Meng Hao began cultivating the next morning, and he discovered, to his considerable surprise, that he was actually rather good at it.