Wei Zian froze when he noticed a swarm of hairless rats staring at him from the bottom of the stairs he was about to descend. Their behavior was strange enough, but his heart really started racing when he noticed their heads. Was that... were their brains exposed!? He swallowed hard and took a step back, slowly retreating from the stairs before turning around and running at full speed. He wasn't sure what they were, but those were definitely not normal rats.
He shouldn't be so shocked, though, a place like Celestial Peak Sect attracted more than just cultivators, spirit beasts of all kinds found such places just as irresistible. He was just glad the rats didn't chase him, because he had nothing in the way of combat techniques. The only technique he knew that might work in a situation like this was the "Spirit Beast Intimidation" technique, and he had no idea how effective it would be against such obviously demonic creatures.
Still determined to reach the spirit spring despite being a bit shaken, he tried to go around the rat gathering by cutting through the nearby spirit garden, but luck just wasn't on his side today. He immediately ran into a little girl crying her eyes out on the jade bridge he needed to cross, and it took him five minutes just to get her to calm down enough to tell him what happened. He supposed he could have just pushed past her and left her there crying, but not even he was that cold-hearted.
"T-the s-spinning disk!" she finally managed to say between hiccups. "It f-fell in!" she wailed.
Wei Zian blinked, trying to understand what she meant. Apparently realizing she wasn't making sense, the girl pointed toward the spirit creek flowing under the bridge. Wei Zian looked over the edge and, sure enough, there was a child's spinning top half-submerged in the muddy water.
"Huh," Wei Zian said. "How did that happen?"
"It fell in!" the girl repeated, looking like she might start crying again.
"Alright, alright, no need for more tears, I'll get it out," Wei Zian said, eyeing the spinning top.
"You'll get your robes dirty," she warned quietly, though Wei Zian could tell from her tone that she hoped he would retrieve it anyway.
"Don't worry, I have no intention of wading through that mud," Wei Zian said. "Watch."
He made a simple hand seal and cast a "Spirit Object Control" technique, causing the top to jerkily rise out of the water and into the air. The top was much heavier than the objects he usually practiced with, and he had to levitate it much higher than he was used to, but it was within his abilities. He grabbed the top when it was close enough and placed it on the bridge.
"There," Wei Zian said. "It's all muddy and wet, but I can't help with that. I don't know any cleaning techniques."
"O-okay," she nodded slowly, holding her spinning top like it might fly away if she let go.
He said goodbye and left, deciding his relaxing time at the spirit spring just wasn't meant to be. The weather seemed to be getting worse quickly too, dark clouds were gathering ominously across the horizon, signaling rain. He decided to simply join the scattered line of disciples walking toward the sect's inner courtyards.
It was a long way from the arrival pavilion to the inner courtyards, since the pavilion was on the outskirts of the sect and the courtyards were right next to the Spirit Vein. Depending on how physically fit you were and how much luggage you had to carry, you could get there in one or two hours of walking. Wei Zian wasn't particularly fit, with his skinny build and studious nature, but he had purposely packed light in anticipation of this journey. He joined the procession of disciples still streaming from the arrival pavilion toward the sect's inner area, ignoring the occasional first-year struggling with too much luggage. He felt sorry for them because his jerk brothers hadn't warned him to pack light either when he first arrived, but there was nothing he could do to help.
Despite the threat of rain and his bad luck, Wei Zian felt energized as he got closer to the inner courtyard boundaries. He was drawing on the ambient spiritual energy surrounding the Spirit Vein, replenishing the qi he'd used to levitate the girl's spinning top. Cultivation sects were almost always built on top of spirit veins for exactly this reason, an area with such high ambient spiritual energy was perfect for inexperienced cultivators to practice their techniques, since whenever they ran out of qi they could supplement their natural recovery by absorbing energy from their surroundings.
Wei Zian took out the spirit fruit he'd pocketed earlier and levitated it above his palm. It wasn't really a cultivation technique, just raw qi manipulation, a control exercise meant to help cultivators improve their ability to direct spiritual energy. It looked simple, but it had taken Wei Zian two years to master it completely. Sometimes he wondered if his family was right and he really was too focused on his studies. He knew for a fact that most of his fellow disciples had much worse control over their qi, and it didn't seem to be holding them back much.
He let the spiritual construct holding the fruit in the air dissipate and caught it in his hand. He wished he knew some kind of rain protection technique, the first drops were already starting to fall. That, or a rain talisman. Either would work fine, except a talisman didn't require several years of training to use.
"Cultivation can be such a rip-off sometimes," said Wei Zian gloomily.
He took a deep breath and started running.