Yerin tuts softly and casts her spiritual senses outward, looking for signs that would rule the trees around them in or out.

"Second half's our path name, Path of the Endless Sword. Sage... means he's got the kind of storied insights that make Jades look confused."

Is he a Gold!?

No, no, he couldn't be. They wouldn't be keeping wherever they're from secret if he was. There wouldn't be any need. If you're a Gold you don't need to keep your home secret for fear a bunch of Jades will cause you problems. So, just a Jade who is powerful enough he gets an extra title, a bit like Elder but more.

And either way, he shouldn't ask. He either looks like a fool or asks about a Gold's secret. Unwise.

It's easy enough for Yerin to tell which trees definitely can't be ancestral even from a distance. You can't quite see a veil, but if you focus quite clearly you can see the absence of one unless it's quite a good one, which only a very old and thus already accounted for ancestral tree would be able to manage. So, she can rule out trees Lindon would need to spend a minute checking in a bare second at a hundred paces. They go much, much faster than he was going on his own.

Yerin's glad to point out the trees she's not sure of, in pursuit of spiting the cracked fools who'd waste his talent like this. It'll be something she can laugh about with her Master when she gets back from her wander, a bit of cheer to shine up their smiles in wake of how backwards the people here are.

It's still hours, before they find the tree. But hours, not days.

The first hint is that Yerin can't quite get a sense for its power when she scans it. The second is the sense of peace that falls over them under it's branches. The third is the script circle Lindon scratches into the bark glowing white.

At the top of the tree, dozens of feet in the air, a single white orus fruit rests. It's hard to sense exactly how much power is contained within, but it is the only fruit on the tree.

"Aha."

Yerin leaps five meters up, hooking a hand around the first branch and swinging higher, then loops around on top of a branch to jump again in a sharp lunge, bounding up higher and higher until, at the crest of one jump, the fruit is in easy reach.

She whips a hand out to grab it, then kicks off the trunk of the tree, soaring out past the branches and dropping to the ground in a crouch.

She holds the fruit out to him, grinning. "Your ticket to spiting the cracked fools bent on wasting you. Don't split it with anyone but your sister."

He stands there for a long moment, staring at the fruit in his hand.

"Thank you."

A Jade, dropping a spirit fruit into his palm. Who is so, so sure he can be something, some day. So sure that she looks down on his clan for not pushing him to Copper. It's been a long, long time since anyone thought of him that way.

"Thank you."

Yerin waves a hand and scoffs. "Thank me by rising higher and faster than they imagined and rubbing their noses in it."

"I will."

With this he might be able to hit Copper in just a year. Less, maybe.

"Now I just need a way to convince my parents a Jade told me to eat half myself. It's probably not a good idea to just have you walk into clan lands without some sort of pre-existing arrangement with the Elders..."

"Oh! Forge me something. Just needs dense enough madra in it that it can't plausibly be something an Iron put together. I can't believe I didn't think of that earlier."

Oh. "Good idea."

She focuses carefully for a moment.

It's easier to forge a thing you understand well. Something you know. 

She holds out a hand, and sword madra coalesces into it, sharp and ready to bite, tracing out the lines and edges and point of a tiny sword, gleaming silver and modeled after hers. She packs it dense with madra, tight and solid enough that no lesser Sword Artist could've created it.

Then she holds it out to him, eyebrow arched. "That oughta convince them. Still rattles my gourd that Jade is convincing to them, but no less than a Jade could've made this."

That Jade is convincing.

That Jade is convincing.

"Your master's a Gold. Where you come from there are enough Golds that Jade isnt even impressive."

Yerin shrugs. "True and fair, but things are harder, there. The beasts are bigger, the petty, chipped fools are meaner, and the challenges steeper. It's fly or fall."

This boy would do so much better out of this backward valley, finding his own way, learning how high he can really climb, but she's not going to let him run out blind to the danger.

All those things, and he's Unsouled. Yeah, he- he couldn't make it out there, could he? Not alone. Not at Foundation. But Copper- maybe?

"What if I was at Copper? Or- do you need to be Iron to make it in- whatever other pocket of civilization exists out there, buried in some other part of the trackless wastes-"

He sighs, cutting himself off.

"I couldn't get there at Copper, though, so I guess it's a pointless question."

Everyone knows Jades go hunting outside the valley, sometimes. Sometimes they don't come back.

"If you had people at your back, if you had people you could trust, you could make it out there as a Jade, or maybe Iron. On your own, you'd be feeding yourself to the dogs."

"Oh. Gold isn't Jade wherever you're from. It's Iron. The thing everyone worth anything hits by the time they're an adult."

He almost can't believe it. Literally. It's difficult to believe. Is she lying to him? But what reason could she possibly have for that? Could she be wrong, somehow?

"Truly said. There's more to see and climb beyond this valley than the fools you call Elders can imagine."

A place out there where Jade isn't even special. Where Gold isn't.

"What is it? Another valley? A city on the plains, somewhere beyond the mountains? More than one place, even?"

"All and more, but so far beyond your valley that the wasteland between you and the world dwarfs your whole valley several times over."

He knows the wasteland is big. The thing he didn't know is that it ended. 

"A world with enough aura anyone can hit Gold. I'd give up my left arm for something like that."