Over a week had passed and still Willow’s family was without a place to call home. Thankfully Bai hadn’t bothered her about binding Calypso again, but the search was wearing everyone down and tensions were running high among those who remained with their little group.

  Most places were just flat out uninterested in taking in another farmer and a huntsman. The forested region had a surplus of both professions due to how common spirits attuned to wood were in the area.

  The disinterest would sometimes even turn to hostility whenever they saw Bough in person. The prominent farmer families of a given village viewed the earth turtle as a potential threat to their livelihood, instead of a promising resource.

  The only time that wasn’t the case had been when the headsman of the village offered them a place in exchange for Yew becoming engaged to his granddaughter so the spirit beast’s power could eventually be added to his family. A deal that both father and son were vehemently against.

  Which just put them back to square one.

  All the while Willow continued to strengthen herself with her core training and learning various tidbits of knowledge. Though in the current session she was reminded of a question she’d meant to ask Mu a bit ago.

  “How do other binders get stronger?” She asked between topics, the question stemming from both curiosity and frustration with her own lack of progress.

  Mu puffed away on her pipe for a few moments before eventually replying. “That’s a bit of a tricky question as there are so many potential answers. However, the simplest and most common is that most simply bind stronger spirits to themselves.”

  Willow wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t make them stronger, it just means they have stronger friends.”

  Her teacher chuckled. “First, that’s a matter of perspective, some consider their allies part of their own strength. Second, most bindings have a component that passively strengthens the binder using energy from their bonded spirit or beast. It’s one of the drawbacks of your simple binding technique that you have to dedicate time for trainin’ and temperin’ yourself.” She gave her apprentice a pointed look. “Part of why I recommended you let your friends fight for you at the start.”

  “I meant what I said before, wouldn’t be fair to make them do all the work.” The girl grumped.

  “I’m sure you did, and it’s part of why I’ll be defendin’ you when we have to explain ourselves to the head of the Wanderers. He’ll hopefully appreciate an attitude like yours.” Though the undercurrent of worry in her mentor’s qi was not instilling confidence.

  The reminder of why she was working so hard really didn’t help to soothe her frustration at her lack of progress either.

  That still left one other question that Willow wanted answered.

  “Why do other people do core training if they just get stronger from their bond?”

  “Excellent question!” Mu said with a grin. “Simply put, the strength of the spirit determines how much of a passive benefit you can get from the bond. There are certain ways of optimising it so that you can do more with less, but generally there’s a ceiling no matter what you do.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  She flourished her pipe as she grew excited about the topic. “However, certain clever folk figured out ways to speed up the strengthening process by cycling energy through their cores and bodies in various ways. Not only that, it could even push them beyond the limits of their spirit, though the gains were much harder fought than those gained through their bonds.”

  “What do you mean, ‘harder fought’?” Willow followed up with. Though she suspected the answer.

  Mu raised a brow. “You should know this better than most. That crude core trainin’ of yours seems agonizin’, and I know you’ve been warned of the consequences should you lose concentration. Most of the more refined ones cut down on the bodily harm, but they’re no less uncomfortable to experience from all of the accounts I’ve heard.”

  Something her mentor said had made her more curious. “What makes my exercise cruder than others? Is it the way I push out my qi or something?”

  “Sort of?” She said while waffling her hand about. “It’s more the lack of pattern that reveals it as a crude exercise rather than the execution of it. You get faster initial results and there’s a potential for gaining a higher affinity for the energies used, but there’s a steady drop off in gains as time goes on and I’m not sure the potential for lasting harm is worth that particular tradeoff.”

  Wait. Did that mean she’d stop growing stronger from her core exercises soon? That was horrible for her future plans!

  Harmony harrumphed from her space in Willow’s crown. “Tell that ignorant teacher of yours there are patterns in the later methods, you are just not ready for them yet.”

  The girl’s eyes brightened. Right! She was still early on in the core training that her friends were guiding her on. In fact she technically knew the next step she’d have to do even if she was told she wasn’t ready for it yet.

  In fact… couldn’t she try and do it anyways?

  No, despite her frustration and impatience for results she knew better than to disregard Harmony’s caution for something as serious as this. She already felt bad enough that she was ignoring her concerns about the mental technique, but that was an urgent issue that needed to be solved as soon as possible. Whereas there was still time for the girl to grow in strength over the course of seven years.

  That was almost twice her age after all! Surely she’d get stronger as she got bigger.

  She noticed Mu waving a hand in front of her face, interrupting her train of thought.

  “You all right there, girlie? Spaced out on me for a time.”

  She blinked.

  Right, it was rude to get lost in thought in the middle of a conversation.

  “Sorry about that.” She said sheepishly. “Harmony told me there’s more steps to the training she’s having me do, but I’m not ready for them yet.”

  Mu let out a cloud of smoke as she considered this new piece of information.

  “Is that so? Might not be as crude as I thought if this is early days for this particular method.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Still not likin’ the strain it puts on you, but if that improves over time I can see the benefit to startin’ how it does.”

  Of course it was a good method, her friend gave it to her after all!

  Mentor and apprentice continued to verbally wander between topics as the lessons for the day continued. However they came to an early end as Maple caught up with them earlier than was the norm, the corona of light surrounding her less prominent in the afternoon sun.

  The small group looked at the young woman expectantly, but with a shake of her head their meagre hopes were dashed once more.

  Seeing so many people continue to suffer from a lack of a home, Mu clicked her tongue.

  She hadn’t wanted to do this, but this was her apprentice’s family and this continued uncertainty wasn’t doing the girl any favors.

  When everyone gathered around the cookfire for their evening meal she made her announcement.

  “There’s a place you could all live, if you’re interested.”