After leaving the scripture library, Ding Songyan followed the stone steps down. Just as he rounded a bend in the wooded hillside, the vast, mist-shrouded Peaceful Lake came into view.
The sun slanted westward, spilling golden red light that all but set the lake ablaze. "Flowing fire" shimmered everywhere, mingling with the clear reflections of verdant mountains and layer upon layer of trees, a beauty that scarcely seemed of this world.
A cool breeze arrived just then, carrying the fresh scent of grass and trees into Ding Songyan's nose.
His spirits immediately lifted. The fatigue and weakness he had accumulated seemed to ease considerably.
He descended to the lakeside step by step, took a deep breath, and strolled slowly along the shore, in no hurry to return to his quarters.
On one side stood small buildings nestled among flowers and trees, numerous courtyards, training grounds, and halls; on the other lay lake and mountain scenery, the setting sun and flying birds. Ding Songyan felt his heart opening wider.
Peaceful Lake was quite large, and the buildings stretching around it were numerous enough to make up a sizable town. As far as Ding Songyan knew, counting the buildings on the peaks, the Xiaoming Sect could house five or six thousand people, far exceeding his previous life's fixed notions of a martial sect's scale.
And this was not even one of the truly Great Sects.
Ordinarily, however, only eight or nine hundred Xiaoming Sect members lived in the mountains. The others either stayed in Flat Lake Town below and ascended only when duty called, assisted with patrols in prefectural and county cities, managed estates, ironworks, cloth shops, weapons shops, and various trading establishments, or provided protection for these money-making ventures.
Even so, second-year disciples had to carry manure down the mountain at