kingdom falling | gyuricky

eleven.

The nine of them made the journey back through Aspen City and Raintree Town, boarding the enchanted elevators back up to the Sky-Ascending Peak as it was nearing evening. There was a small crowd of people gathered in the open courtyard in front of the Assembly Hall and Gyuvin headed over to see what they were looking at.

The ranking board above the entryway to the Assembly Hall had been updated, with new rankings just updated after the first two weeks of training and sparring.

1. Kim Gyuvin

2. Zhang Hao

3. Sung Hanbin

4. Ricky Shen

Some of the people gathered in front of the ranking board noticed him, nudging the person beside them and whispering behind their hands. Gyuvin turned and left, pretending not to see them.

People began to take more notice of him, in the weeks that followed. There were always eyes on him, when he was eating with Hanbin in the dining hall, when he was reading during the morning study hour, when he was practicing on the training field. They looked away quickly when they caught his eye, but he knew.

Gyuvin had habitually never been power-hungry or greedy for recognition. He wasn't here to outshine anyone or prove himself to be the best; he'd only been interested in joining the camp because Sect Leader Baek had told him he'd get a chance to meet people from other sects and get valuable training. To other people, he supposed things like this mattered. But Gyuvin didn't care much about how he was ranking, as long as he was learning as much as possible in the process. People would have expected someone like him with such a widespread reputation to be competitive and self-important, but the truth was that he didn't think very much of himself at all.

Meteor Court had always been more people-oriented than any other sect in the cultivation world. It was located at the intersection between a few densely-populated cities, meaning there were constantly requests for help being sent up to the Court and cultivators dispatched to deal with them accordingly. They didn't cultivate in pursuit of excellence or achievement like Moonrise Palace or Seven Star Manor, they cultivated in pursuit of the greater good for commonfolk. It was evident from the kind of training the disciples received daily and the kind of lifestyles they lived; Sect Leader Baek had always said ascension to heaven would come to those who deserved it and as cultivators their greatest duty and obligation would always be to help others who couldn't help themselves.

Gyuvin was raised under such a mindset, and it'd been embedded deep into the marrow of his bones from childhood. He didn't look down on other sects with different goals and priorities, but he lived his own life simply, passing from day to day trying to remember how to be so selfless it would come to him like breathing. To be able to project completely outwards and forget he even existed.

It was something he'd always admired Hanbin for. It just seemed like something he had been born to embody. But in the meantime, he couldn't shake the fact that his excellence was earning him enemies. And in the meantime, his sleeplessness wasn't going away, and he was beginning to get frustrated.

He'd tried almost everything at this point, from cinnabar sleep talismans to drinking hot tea to meditating before he slept, but nothing seemed to be working. He'd fall asleep perfectly fine, as always, but every now and then he'd wake up in the morning so completely exhausted of any energy, his spiritual energy reserves either dwindling or flat out empty, and he'd trudge through the day's training with his mind in a haze.

For someone at his level of cultivation, this shouldn't be happening. His spiritual energy reserves were supposed to be replenishing consistently, especially when he was resting at night. And it didn't help that there were eyes on him constantly, almost as if they were waiting for him to make the wrong move or slip up in any way. Gyuvin had always been the sort to leap before he looked and pick up the pieces after, but as of late he'd been more and more anxious about making mistakes, and he could feel it catching up to him. But short of seeing a physician to request a full inquiry into the state of his cultivation core, which he found a little too drastic a measure for his current circumstances, he was otherwise at a loss for what to do.

The new friends he'd made were still cordial to him, to his relief. There had been some commotion the other day in the middle of the lunch hour as the Dewspring Estate disciples were called away from the dining hall to receive something from the gates of the Peak. Matthew had come bouncing back into the dining hall five minutes later with a red fox curled over his shoulders, and Gyuvin and Hanbin and the others had hurried over immediately to take a closer look.

Dewspring Estate's cultivation path had always intertwined closely with nature. Disciples studied healing through medicinal herbs and natural remedies, and at the age of twelve they were given the option to select a spirit beast as their cultivation pet, either one the sect had raised or one they had captured or acquired themselves. They usually formed close bonds with their chosen spirit beast and relied on it often in their daily life, which was why Gyuvin had been a little surprised when all the Dewspring Estate cultivators arrived without them.

"They were doing the yearly wellness check on the spirit pets just as we left the Estate," Matthew explained, his fingers idly carding through the little fox's fluffy fur. "Besides, I wanted to come here and see for myself if the weather and environment was suitable for her. I had her sent over as soon as I could."

Gyuvin laughed, scratching the fox between the ears. "Aren't spirit pets supposed to be hardy and adaptable to all surroundings?" he laughed. The little fox narrowed its eyes at him as he spoke, almost as if she knew he was snubbing her.

"Well, yes," Matthew answered, bringing the little fox down so he could cradle her like a baby. "But I've spoiled her, so Kumi is a princess. She can handle most environments, but she'll probably throw tantrums if she doesn't like it."

Kumi batted at Matthew with her paw in retaliation, attempting to wriggle out of his grip. "She's cute," Hanbin cooed, leaning down till he was nose to nose with her. "Kumi, if you don't like Matthew, you can come be my spirit pet instead..."

Matthew and the other Dewspring Estate disciples brought their spirit pets along during training from then on, adding a considerable amount of fun to their daily schedules, especially when they came to sit in during classes. Gyuvin hardly held back his laughter as the senior lecturing about spirit foxes made Kumi walk to the front of the classroom so she could be held up for the entire study hall to see, to the little fox's great disdain. There were other spirit pets at the Peak too, like a twin-headed snake and a baby faewolf and even a silver-winged eagle, but none had so far proven themselves to be as much of a personality as Matthew's little princess fox.