Later that night, she sat at the table and picked at her rice, left hand on the box, sitting on her lap placidly— unremarked on by anyone, even though everyone knew it was there. Every so often she’d get an intrigued glance from one of the other kids, eyes wide with expectation. Mimi was practically salivating as she stared at the thing… though maybe that was because of the salmon dinner the matron had made for them. Speaking of, even the Matron looked a little interested.
She fiddled with her chopsticks for a little longer, slowly grabbing some more rice— “c’mon, show us already!” She did her best to hide the smug smile on her face, but Mimi knew her well enough to tell she wasn’t being at all serious. “If you’re not gonna, I can do it for you—”
She snapped her hand down on the Mimi’s before she could reach the box, executing a textbook block— then blinked in faint surprise at herself. She guessed all the practice in their applied combat class hadn’t been entirely useless after all… “fine.” She sighed, pushing her plate away and setting the box on the table, the faint gleam of the images engraved onto its surface almost magical.
Mimi leaned in, her earlier animosity entirely forgotten, and a bunch of the other kids rushed up, pressing against the table in their eagerness to see a real cultivation treasure. A few of the younger ones tried climbing up onto the table itself, only for the Matron to put a swift stop to those antics— instead, they got to stand on the chairs, which was totally unfair. She’d never gotten to stand on the chairs as a kid…
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Carefully, she opened the lid, golden light spilling out across the table. Someone gasped. It felt almost odd, as she gently reached inside and pulled out that golden-fruit, bundle of light and glimmering gossamer thread that seemed so entirely supernatural— and the characters of Master Mingtian’s script, fuzzing and changing and dancing around the entire thing in swirling rings of golden power. How she’d done that, she had no clue— she almost felt as though she could just watch it forever, as the characters transformed from unknown to unknown…
“What is it?” One of the younger boys— who’d come only to the orphanage two years past, and who never smiled at anyone but his sister, whispered, eyes widened in nigh-rapturous awe. A grin touched at his face, rendering it almost unrecognizable— more magical than the formations that criss-crossed in front of her. “Could you use it… to become a cultivator?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” A small susurration, at that— “but you can’t eat it as is. The cultivator who helped me get it said that it’s full of impurities, and that eating it would be very harmful.”
“Oh… does that mean it isn’t a heavenly treasure?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. It’s more of an earthly treasure, if anything. Because I found it underneath the earth—” but the boy wasn’t listening. None of them were— really all too focused on the fruit and the shimmering bands of characters that wrapped around it.
She had to admit. It was a beautiful sight… and for a while she sat there, labor and fortune united clutched in hand, in golden light, in— the echo of burning light and terrible heat and the fruit of her efforts— and smiles.
It was nice.
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