Chapter 40: Medicine
While Sen took a couple of days to recover, physically and mentally, from his time out on the mountain, he was amused to watch a quiet but persistent power struggle develop between Uncle Kho and Ma Caihong. The part that Sen found most amusing was that struggle was about him, while it didn't actually involve him directly. Both Uncle Kho and Ma Caihong wanted to take up the task of teaching him their skills immediately. For Uncle Kho, that meant formations and the spear. For Ma Caihong, that meant a range of interconnected medical skills and, to Sen's surprise, more jian training. While most of what they wanted to teach him made sense, that extra Jian training baffled him. He eventually asked Ma Caihong why she wanted to provide him with more training in that.
"Feng laid an incredibly strong foundation that will prove very useful to you over time. Yet, he is a true genius with the jian. He's passed many of his insights on to you, but it may take you decades, even centuries, to truly grasp all of what he has shown you. Until you do, his straightforward style of jian combat can prove insufficient if you face stronger opponents, which you assuredly will. Having a style that focuses on misdirection as an alternative may well save your life one day."
"I see," said Sen. "Thank you for explaining."
While it might not have been obvious to Uncle Kho, Sen could see that he was losing the battle. After four days, Uncle Kho announced that he would forgo teaching Sen for the time being. His stated reason was that wandering cultivators were often injured and far from convenient medical aid. Therefore, it only made sense to give Sen some extra time to learn what he could from Ma Caihong about it. In some ways, Sen's days didn't change that much. He practiced every morning in the courtyard. In the afternoons, Ma Caihong would train him in the jian for a couple of hours. The familiarity of that routine gave Sen a certain amount of comfort. Later in the day, though, things were much less predictable.
Some days, Sen would find himself wandering far from the house to retrieve some plant or root or mineral that Ma Caihong needed. As Ma Caihong's teaching style was subtle, it took him a while to realize exactly how much information he was absorbing on those walks. Sometimes, she would ask him to identify plants. If he got it wrong, she'd stop and examine the plant. She might point out some feature of the plant that would help him pick it out more accurately the next time someone asked. Other times, she'd ask him whether a plant had beneficial or poisonous qualities. She'd also ask him what kind of qi affinity a plant showed. At first, he hadn't even understood that question. He'd just assumed that all plants had a wood affinity. Bit by bit, though, she showed him how to extend his own spiritual senses to the plants.
He learned through observation and a lot of trial and error that plants were wildly diverse in their affinities. Even two of the same plant might show completely different qi affinities. Ma Caihong had actually laughed at his stunned expression the first time he found a plant with a metal affinity. She'd harvested the plant and then had him dig down beneath where it had grown. He'd eventually turned up a stone that had an odd orange cast to it. When he showed it to her, she'd nodded as though it was the expected outcome.
"The stone has a bit of iron in it," she explained. "When iron mixes with air or moisture, it breaks down. Then, you get that orange color. It's essentially degraded iron. Here, it leeched into the soil. The plant absorbed it along with nutrients and water, which let it take on a metal qi affinity."
As the warm weather gave way to the chill of autumn, though, they spent less time outside and more time creating things with the plants and other components they had gathered over those months. Again, it took Sen time to understand what Ma Caihong was doing. Sometimes, she would explain to him in extreme detail. For example, there were very specific ways that some plants needed to be prepared. Some could only be ground, while others could only be cut, and only cut in certain ways. At other times, she would ask him questions about the components. What affinities does it have? What other components did he think would work best with them? Why?
Sen quickly discovered that his understanding of how different kinds of qi interacted was simplistic. It was true that plants with air qi affinity and water qi affinity would work together, but only up to a point. Too much of a plant with a water qi affinity would disperse the air qi. Metal and fire qi affinity plants didn't mix well if mixed directly together. Yet, earth qi materials could interrupt the potentially damaging aspects of the fire qi affinity components and let them mix with the metal qi components. Sen would fall asleep at night sometimes while mentally mixing and matching components, only to wake up in the morning with a host of new questions. Eventually, though, Sen noticed a blank spot in the education he was receiving.
"Teacher," he said to her one afternoon.
"Yes?" Ma Caihong asked.
"I have noticed that everything we make is a poultice, lotion, or potion."
Ma Caihong lifted an eyebrow. "Is there a question hidden in there somewhere?"
"I am curious, why do we never craft pills?"
Ma Caihong straightened at that. "I wondered if you would ask me this question. First, pills are a very difficult skill to master. You can destroy literal acres worth of good materials trying to craft a pill and still fail. A poorly crafted pill is as likely to harm you as help you. It's often more practical and less costly to just buy the pills you need. Second, pill refining takes special tools. The tools are very expensive to buy and maintain. Even a small cauldron is more money than many people see in a year of labor. Finally, you don't like pills."
Sen blinked at the unexpected answer. "What?"
"I could teach you to make pills, but to what end? You don't like taking them. I can't imagine you'd want to spend your time making them. Besides, knowing how to make poultices, lotions, and potions has a lot of value for a wandering cultivator. As a rule, the only tool you need is one of these," said Ma Caihong, lifting a plain pot off a hook on the wall. "While you must show some care in mixing the components, there is simply more room for error. If you make a mistake, you're far more likely to craft something less potent than something lethal. If you do that, you heal slower, but you still heal. When you are injured and far from aid, better to heal slowly than not to heal at all."
Sen was surprised at the thoughtfulness that Ma Caihong had put into her teaching. She had considered what his life would be like. Master Feng had told Sen often enough that his path would be that of the wandering cultivator, at least for a time. Ma Caihong had used that as a baseline, focusing on materials that he could likely find and tools that he would have on hand. More than that, though, she'd recognized his disdain for pills and, knowing that, had left off teaching him a skill he would likely have hated. Something inside Sen broke then. It was a lingering resentment from their first encounter. It had made him distance himself from her in some ways. She had surely seen it, and yet she'd taught him anyway. Not only had she taught him, but she'd taught him what he needed to know, rather than what she thought he ought to know. In a flash of understanding, he came to see that while she had indeed been teaching him about medicine, the teaching itself had been a medicine for his very soul.
Sen bowed deeply to Ma Caihong. "Teacher, I am grateful to you for what you have taught me. I am also grateful to you for choosing the knowledge you shared with so much care."
Sen looked up to see Ma Caihong smiling at him.
"And now, Lu Sen, I think it's finally time for you to call me Auntie Caihong."
"As you say, Auntie Caihong."
As if something had been waiting for Sen to utter those words, he felt a block that he hadn't even known existed inside of him crack apart and qi flooded through him.
"Well, that's unexpected," said Caihong, who went to a cabinet and pulled out a stoppered bottle. "Here. You should drink this."
Chapter 41: Breakthrough
Sen intellectually understood what was happening. Both his master and Uncle Kho had spoken to him in general terms about five cultivation stages. They'd also been clear that there were smaller stages within the stages. When a cultivator transitioned between the major or minor stages, they were breaking through. Sen even understood that this was not his first breakthrough. Looking back, he could recognize several times that he had broken through while on the mountain. He had a small breakthrough while looking off the mountain and deciding that he would see the world. He'd had a breakthrough when he took that second cleansing pill and opened those extra channels. Although, looking back, he wondered if he'd somehow done that out of some kind of prescribed order. Those extra channels hadn't really done anything until after Auntie Caihong had given him that potion and he'd been facing down the goat. Was that also a breakthrough, he asked himself. He thought that perhaps it had been. Then, there was the breakthrough he'd had just now.
What he was less clear about were what kinds of breakthroughs he had experienced. Both Master Feng and Uncle Kho had broken cultivation into two strict paths. There was spirit or soul cultivation, on one side, and body cultivation on the other. While they seemed very certain that the two paths were distinct, Sen didn't feel as confident about it. He wasn't sure if that was because he just didn't have enough information or if his personal experiences were just so strange. They had told him that he'd started down both paths, which was a little unusual, but not unheard of. When he'd asked what the cultivation stages were called, though, both of the old cultivators had suddenly lost the ability to remember things. Master Feng waved it off, saying something about everybody always giving everything in cultivation a stupid name. Uncle Kho had seemed more hesitant about withholding the information. In the end, he'd left Sen with a somewhat cryptic statement.
"When you name things, intentionally or not, you can limit the ways that people think about a subject. Ming and I have decided not to burden you with too many names for the time being. Suffice it to say, you're in the first major stage of cultivation development. Your job during this stage is gathering qi in your dantian and learning to manipulate it."
"Manipulate the qi or manipulate my dantian?"
Uncle Kho smiled. "Both. Ideally, you'll expand the capacity of your dantian over time."
Sen had been so baffled by that idea that it was two full days later when he thought to ask Master Feng about body cultivation.
"Well, there's nothing really mysterious about body cultivation. Ultimately, it's just refining your body into something ever more perfect over time. At first, it just makes you stronger, faster, healthier, and even better looking. Your body tissues and bones become more durable. Take it far enough, though, and it gets a little stranger," said Feng, then he laughed. "I promise that you don't need to worry about that right now. Come and talk with me about it in fifty years or when you've progressed two full stages, whichever comes first. Then, we'll get into the specifics because that's when things start to get strange."
"How can I tell a spirit cultivation breakthrough from a body cultivation breakthrough?" Sen asked.
"At your level, there aren't a lot of good ways to tell the difference. Sometimes, it will be really obvious. Most of the time, though, you just have to trust your body and your spirit to guide you in the right direction. The good news is that breakthroughs of any kind at that level aren't particularly dangerous. Painful, sometimes, but not dangerous."
Despite Master Feng's assurances, though, Sen didn't enjoy going into a breakthrough without knowing what kind of breakthrough it was. Still, he didn't know, so all he could do is try to capture as much progress as possible while it was happening.
"Sen!" Ma Caihong shouted.
Sen snapped out of his mental daze. Auntie Caihong was holding the bottle out to him. He reached out and snagged it from her.
"What is it?" He asked.
"Just something to help the process along."
Sen sighed. "They got to you, didn't they?"
Ma Caihong snickered. "Yes, they might have. Just drink it and then cycle your qi."
"Yes, Auntie."
Sen went to open the bottle, but Caihong caught his hand. "You should go to the cultivation room before you take that. Quick. You don't want to waste any of what's happening."
Sen didn't need her to tell him a second time. He darted through the house and entered the room with the drain in the floor. He shut the door firmly behind him and swiftly stripped out of most of his clothes. Since he couldn't know for sure what was going to happen, he didn't see any reason to risk perfectly good clothing. Taking a deep breath, he popped open the bottle. Almost reflexively, he sniffed the air. The potion or elixir smelled strange to him. It wasn't a bad smell, just unlike anything he'd smelled before. Much more important to him at that moment was the knowledge that the liquid was bursting with all five of the major kinds of qi.
He could sense something else, some other kind of qi, just below the surface, but he didn't have the time to puzzle over it. With a swift motion, he tilted the bottle back and let the potion slide down his throat. It tasted sharp, bitter, and just slightly metallic on his tongue, but he pushed that thought aside. With nothing left to distract him, Sen began to cycle his qi. When the breakthrough first struck, Sen had thought he held as much qi as he could possibly handle. His dantian felt like it might rupture at any second. His channels, all of them, were packed solid with qi. To say that cycling was difficult monumentally downplayed the mental effort it took to get that energy moving. Yet, he did get it moving. As it moved, he could feel some of the qi seeping away from his channels and out into his body. It took a bit of the pressure off of his channels and his dantian. Sen gasped in relief.
Then the potion kicked in and Sen's inner world turned into a battleground. An entirely new wave of qi poured into his dantian, into his channels, into his everything. It felt like fire was burning him away from the inside out, consuming cells, muscle, bone, and organs. Yet, right behind it came air to blow away the cinders, earth to set the stage, wood to heal, metal to reinforce, and water to soothe away his agony. His dantian stretched and stretched until Sen knew, knew with absolute certainty that it could stretch no farther. He stretched out his will and seized not his dantian, but the qi inside of it, somehow reaching past the ephemeral, but all too real boundary his dantian presented. Barely coherent, Sen managed to decide that if the qi couldn't push any farther out, he'd have to compress it to relieve the pressure.
He imagined the feeling of packing snow in his hands, the way the soft powder gave and gave until it suddenly stopped giving and started resisting. He squeezed against the qi, a task made even harder by the fact that he was still cycling qi, still trying to think past the agony of a body on fire, still trying to decide if this was a spirit or body cultivation breakthrough. The qi tried to flow out of his will's grasp, but Sen redoubled his efforts. He squeezed and squeezed, certain that his dantian would explode if he eased up for even a second. He bore down on that qi even as more qi swirled past moving in and out of his seemingly newly made channels. He kept squeezing harder and harder, eventually forgetting even why he was doing it. It felt like he'd been squeezing that qi forever. He couldn't give up. Couldn't surrender. He had to keep going because, because, he didn't even know anymore. He just knew that he couldn't stop. With a final burst of willpower and desperation, Sen compressed the qi one last time.
There was a pop that Sen heard inside his body and felt inside his soul. The struggling, writhing mass that his will had held was abruptly gone. Sen looked inwards with his mind's eye. Where that mass of qi had been, there was now an iridescent drop of liquid. It floated for a brief moment in the center of his dantian, then the flow of his cycling snatched that droplet of condensed qi and drove it into one of his channels. The qi that Sen was used to using flowed through his channels. This tiny droplet shot through his channels like a crossbow bolt. As it did, he felt his body arch up off the floor. Impurities burst from every single one of his pores. Distantly, he was even aware of the rank stink of it. The pain of it, though, was indescribable. For a few seconds, that pain was everywhere inside of him. It was inside his bones, inside his cells, inside the very fragments of consciousness he clung to for sanity. Then, mercifully, it was done.
Chapter 42: Another Stage
"I feel strange," said Sen.
He stood opposite of Master Feng in the courtyard. Yet, Sen was looking down at his own hand as he opened it and closed it, over and over. He'd felt strange ever since he'd come out of the cultivation room. While Sen assumed he spent a few hours locked in the struggle to contain and compress his qi, he'd been stunned to discover that he'd spent three days in that room. His mind still reeled at the idea. It had been one thing when stood watch over Falling Leaf for days. Most of his time was spent waiting while the ghost panther healed, with only occasional bursts of brutal activity in her defense. The time in the cultivation room, though, had been a relentless, all-consuming struggle. He didn't know how he'd done it, or how anyone could do it. The problem was that he knew Uncle Kho and Aunty Caihong wouldn't lie to him about something that important. He tried to talk with Uncle Kho about how different he felt. The old cultivator had gently but resolutely told him that he needed to talk to Master Feng first.
"Don't misunderstand, Sen. I do want to talk to you about the changes you're going through. It's just inappropriate right now. This is a very important moment in your cultivation journey. It's Ming's place to guide you through it, not mine. Once you talk to him, once we both talk to him, I'll be happy to discuss the entire matter with you."
"Where is he? I haven't seen him in weeks?"
"He was troubled by your experience with the spirit beasts. Troubled enough that he went to speak with someone who knows more about them."
Sen gave Uncle Kho a startled look, which made the man laugh.
"What?" Asked Sen, not sure if he should feel a little offended or not.
"At some point, every disciple gets that disbelieving look on their face. All of us think that our masters are all-knowing. The first time we discover that idea simply isn't true, it shocks us. Even cultivators as old as Ming and I can't know everything about everything.
"Some of it is simple aptitude. Ming is adequate enough with formations. He's been using them for long enough that simple repetition has beaten the basic principles into his head. Yet, he has no natural inclination for them. I excel at them. In a pinch, I could probably put together a healing salve or a basic potion. That's only true because I've watched Caihong do it a few thousand times and had a lot of long conversations with her. If you want something truly powerful, though, you talk to her. She's a true master of alchemy and healing."
Sen thought about that for a moment. "What does Master Feng excel at?"
"I'd have thought you would have put that together by now. Combat. Ming's calling, his specialty, is combat. He knows more about it than literally anyone I've ever met. It's why I'm so grateful that his restraint is as well-developed as his jian skills, most days. There are a few of us old monsters around who can match his raw power, but none who can match the sheer depth of his experience and skill. Although, he's a very accomplished blacksmith as well."
"He is?"
"Indeed. He made that spear I gave you. He probably made the jian he gave you. You'll have to ask him to find out for sure."
"He never mentioned it," said Sen.
"I'm not surprised since we don't have a forge here. Forges are loud, hot, dirty things."
Sen nodded in understanding. Uncle Kho's home had always been a clean, tranquil place. A forge would have disrupted that.
"How do I figure out my aptitudes?"
"Experience in the world will eventually push you in a direction. It happens for every wandering cultivator at some point. For now, we're just laying some groundwork. Giving you a bit of training in a lot of things that you'll find useful. Once you figure it out, we can give you some more guidance. Speaking of guidance, I've sent word to Ming about your breakthrough. He'll return soon. That man can move very, very fast when he chooses to do so."
Uncle Kho's prophecy turned out to be accurate. Master Feng arrived the next day looking travel-stained but also excited. While Sen had been more than eager to get some answers, he let good manners guide his steps. Master Feng cleaned up and they all had a meal together. Master Feng and Ma Caihong had either patched up their differences or resumed a polite fiction that they had done so. Whatever way they had gone, it at least allowed the four of them to share a meal in relative peace, a fact for which Sen was very grateful. He had made his own decision about Ma Caihong. The rift between the two gave him pause whenever he thought about it. Neither would intentionally put him in the middle of a personal conflict. At least, Sen didn't think they would, but the possibility still haunted the dark, quiet corners of his mind. After the meal, though, Sen and Master Feng retreated to the courtyard where Sen made his proclamation that he felt strange.
Master Feng nodded, clearly undisturbed by the news. "Yes, it's to be expected with these kinds of dual breakthroughs."
"Dual breakthroughs?"
"It happens, occasionally. Most of the time, you either break through with your spiritual cultivation or with your body cultivation. You feel a little odd afterward, especially when you break through between major stages of cultivation. That feeling of oddness doesn't usually linger for too long when you only break through in one kind of cultivation. Your mind doesn't want to feel strange. Neither does your body. They want to feel balanced. So, after a day or two, they start to adapt. From what I understand about dual breakthroughs, though, that sense that something is off does linger for a while. There are simply too many changes inside you. The good news is that it will pass. It might take a week or two, but you will find your balance again."
Sen nodded, relieved to know that he would eventually be free from the feeling that he was a stranger in his own skin. Finally able to set that concern aside, he moved on to what was probably the more important question.
"Uncle Kho said that this is an important moment in my cultivation journey. Why is that?"
"Ahhh, yes. You didn't just break through. You broke through from the first major stage into the second major stage in both your cultivation paths. Honestly, I'm both shocked and relieved that you didn't face a tribulation. Maybe the heavens were distracted by something else that day, but you should feel blessed that they overlooked you. You might have survived the tribulation, but it would have been a close thing if you did."
Sen shivered at that thought. The idea of divine lightning crashing down on him from the heavens was the kind of thing that made him lose sleep sometimes.
"I will consider myself blessed."
"Of course, now that you're out of the first stages, I'll answer an old question of yours. The first stage of spirit cultivation is generally called the qi condensation stage. Granted, I have heard other names for it, the divine initiation stage, the mortal cultivation realm, but qi condensation is the most accurate name. Do you need an explanation as to why?"
Sen shook his head. Looking back on it, he was pretty clear on why it was called that. It was also pretty clear that, had he been given the name, it would have changed nothing. "I'm not sure why you withheld the name, though."
Master Feng smiled. "Because I didn't want you focused on condensing qi to the exclusion of learning to use it. The kinds of techniques you figured out aren't taught to sect members in the qi condensation stage. They don't even start learning to use them until they break into the second stage like you have. You are literally years ahead in that respect."
"I see," said Sen, his mind whirling. "And the first stage of body cultivation?"
Feng shrugged. "It's called the earthly transformation stage."
The name rang a bell. Sen searched his memory.
"Uncle Kho said something about that the first day we were here."
"I'm surprised you remember that. A lot has happened since then."
"So, what now?"
"Honestly, you'll continue on much as you did before with some minor variations. You broke through, so I assume you formed a liquid qi drop in your dantian. Yes?"
"I did, master."
"Now, in addition to gathering and cycling qi, you make more liquid qi."
Sen remembered the terrible strain of trying to form that first drop. He went to open his mouth but saw that Master Feng was already shaking his head.
"Master?"
"Forming that first drop is almost impossibly difficult. Making more will prove profoundly easier. You'll still have to compress your qi, but that droplet gives you a foundation to work from. As you make more, you'll break through the smaller levels of the second stage. That liquid qi is much more powerful than the qi you have been using. You'll see its effects in the power of your techniques. A word of caution, test that new power slowly and preferably outside these walls. Between your new stage and your killing intent, you shouldn't have to stick so close to the house. You can probably scare off anything that's too big or dangerous."
The ember an old wish roared back to burning life. "Can I go visit Grandmother Lu?"
Master Feng considered that with a deep frown for what felt like an eternity to Sen.
"I won't forbid it, but I'd caution you against going now."
"Can I ask why, master?"
"It's nothing sinister. There are just things I'd like you to learn before you leave this place. I fear that, if you go and visit your grandmother, you won't return. Unless I miss my guess, the lure of the wider world will prove too much for you to resist."
Sen opened his mouth to object, but the words wouldn't come. Master Feng was right. Sen would go with every intention of coming back, but he knew he wouldn't. At least, he wouldn't right away.
Now that you're out of qi condensation and avoided the worst of the traps, I'll tell you some things we've been keeping from you. You've entered into what is generally called the foundation building stage. Right now, you're what they call an early-stage foundation builder…"
Sen listened with rapt attention as he suddenly had words and phrases to go with things he'd had to feel his way through before. He learned that as people progressed through a stage, they were called early, mid, late, and peak. He heard tantalizing phrases like core formation and nascent soul. The discussion took hours as Sen asked question after question, reveling in the feeling that he finally, finally, knew what was going on. He had truly entered another stage of his cultivation journey.
Chapter 43: Knowledge
Sen's excitement about his new knowledge burned bright in him for a few days. Then, he came to, what was for him, a startling conclusion. While his new knowledge about the stages of cultivation had filled a deep-seated need in him, it hadn't actually changed anything. That knowledge hadn't made him any better at cultivation. It didn't alter his opinion of cultivation. It had no influence on how they trained him. Most importantly, it hadn't changed his goals in any obvious way. When Sen considered it deeply, he still just wanted to see the ocean and explore the world. He wasn't more committed to cultivation or to possibly, one day, ascending to immortality.
When Sen was honest with himself, that idea wasn't very real to him. He didn't think that anyone was lying to him. The stories all said that people had done it. Yet, Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Ma Caihong had all been chasing that goal for thousands of years, which he also had trouble believing. All of those years and they still hadn't accomplished it. Of course, Master Feng had said he wasn't sure he'd go through with it, and Sen hadn't asked the others about it. He thought they would answer if he asked, but it struck Sen as almost too personal a question. Sen liked the idea of immortality, but it was just too much like something that someone made up. If it was real, then that kind of ascension was for legends and heroes. Sen didn't think it likely that immortality was meant for someone who grew up eating trash in alleys.
No, the only real difference that his new knowledge had made was that he felt slightly safer about going out and doing that exploring he dreamed about. Sen was relatively sure that he could handle himself against any bandits he might stumble across, assuming there weren't too many of them. He also knew that there were other cultivators out there who were stronger and more advanced than him. They could pose a threat, but he didn't plan on fighting them. He wasn't even really all that interested in meeting them. Master Feng didn't seem to have a particularly good opinion of any cultivator other than Uncle Kho. Uncle Kho was outright hostile to the mere mention of cultivators from sects, at least ones who were still alive. When Sen had asked him about that hostility, Uncle Kho hadn't hesitated to tell Sen exactly what he thought of sects and sect members.
"They're a bunch of jumped-up, preening fools who think they have the corner on power and enlightenment. There isn't one in a thousand of them worth the dirt on my shoes."
Sen had decided not to pursue that line of questioning any further with Uncle Kho. He didn't know exactly what had soured the old cultivator on sects, but it must have been ugly to leave an anger that deep. Auntie Caihong hadn't seemed as angry about sects, but she wasn't enthusiastic about them either.
"Sects are," she said, pausing to choose her words, "tools. They serve a function in that they let people pursue cultivation. They can provide guidance, of a sort. The problem with the whole system is that sects are full of people."
"I don't think I understand."
"People, especially people in groups, tend to reflect and amplify what's around them. So, let's say that you get a few sect elders who are too arrogant for their own good. They pass that attitude on to core sect members, who adopt it and make it worse. Those core sect members pass that attitude on to inner sect members, who pass it on to outer sect members. It gets worse and worse.
"So, you end up with a sect full of unbearable people who take offense at everything. This is on top of any regular flaws those people have, like bad tempers or feelings of inadequacy. Then, some of those sect members go out into the world and behave in simply abominable ways. They abuse the mortals. They pick fights with each other and leave devastation in their wake. Now, not every sect is that bad. Some are committed to ideals, such as upright behavior or humility, but enough are that bad that it tends to give them all a bad name."
Curiosity got the best of Sen at that point. "Uncle Kho seems to hate them."
Auntie Caihong sighed at that. "Yes, he does. He has reasons, justified reasons at that, for feeling the way he does. I don't agree with his opinion that any sect is a bad sect, but he doesn't agree with me about everything either."
Sen frowned at that. "Doesn't that make things complicated?"
"It certainly does, but that's life for you. Here's a lesson that might not make sense to you now, but just keep it in the back of your mind. Being friends with someone, even loving someone, doesn't mean that you have to accept everything they believe. More to the point, you should run from anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. That kind of person isn't anyone's friend. Real friends, real loved ones, can disagree about important things and remain close."
Sen had tried his best to digest that piece of advice, but he struggled with it. After a while, he recognized that he just hadn't known enough people to understand what she was trying to tell him. Staying distant from other people had offered him a kind of safety, but he was starting to think that he might have missed out on more than he knew. Still, he dutifully tucked that bit of advice away to revisit in the future. Maybe when he had more than one friend. Maybe when he had a friend who wasn't a ghost panther. The closest thing to a disagreement he and Falling Leaf ever had was when he ran out of treats to give her, and he suspected that even that was almost all show.
What really drove home to Sen that his new knowledge wasn't the earth-shattering thing he'd imagined was that his routine didn't change. He still got up in the mornings and practiced. He still spent his afternoons slowly mastering a new Jian form and learning about making medicines with Auntie Caihong. When the truth finally settled over him, what Sen experienced was simple embarrassment. He'd built that information up in his head. He'd assumed that it was powerful in some way. Mostly, though, he'd just felt left out.
It had seemed like everyone was having a different conversation over his head. With hindsight in place, he understood that the other conversation had only existed in his mind. The older cultivators knew more than he did, understood things that he didn't, but aside from a few missteps by Master Feng early on, they had made every effort to give him the information he needed to succeed. They wanted him to succeed. Armed with that truth, Sen committed to doing the only thing he could to repay them. He committed to learning as much as he could, as well as he could.
Chapter 44: Year's End (1)
As the weather turned from simply chilly to truly cold, Auntie Caihong's lessons changed as well. Rather than learning about medicinal and alchemical plants in general, or how to make general healing salves and potions, Sen began learning about specifics. Ma Caihong pulled out charts that mapped the way energy should flow through the body that Sen was then bid to memorize. He learned about acupressure points and their uses in limiting pain and reducing bleeding. She started quizzing him about what he would use to treat specific injuries and why. Often these lessons became lectures that exposed why someone's first instinct about how to treat something was all too often the wrong instinct. She eventually provided him with a notebook to begin writing down recipes for different kinds of treatments, as well as observations about the components he used.
"One of the things you'll discover as you travel is that the local plant life is different, depending on where you are."
Sen was startled by that revelation. "Really? Why?"
Auntie Caihong pondered for a little while before she answered. "There is a very complicated answer to that question that I'll spare you. The simpler answer is the land and weather are different in different places. As you go south, for example, the weather gets hotter and it's often wetter. The soil composition is different. That lets different kinds of plants grow there. The notes you take, though, will often let you find substitutes for what you're used to using. If you can find plants with similar qualities, you can get by. If you're near a city or town, you talk with local alchemists, spirit doctors, or apothecarists. They can often supply you with the right substitutes or at least tell you what you can get in the area."
Sen could see the logic and began writing down key information about the components they used. As the weeks slipped by, though, he started fretting about the New Year. He needed to make or find gifts for everyone, yet he couldn't come up with any good ideas. He eventually cornered Uncle Kho to ask him what kind of gift Ma Caihong might like. That conversation led Sen to spend two full days away from the house and up near the very peak of the mountain. Falling Leaf tagged along, seeming very curious about what he was doing. Sen was relieved that the other spirit beasts on the mountain left him alone for the most part on that brief expedition. He was only forced to kill one, some kind of multi-headed bird that had taken nearly half an hour of intermittent fighting to finally put down.
He'd seen a fox with several tails. Yet, unlike many of the other beasts, it seemed to be more self-aware. It had sat down and regarded first Sen, then Falling Leaf, but it made no move to attack. If anything, the beast seemed to find them humorous. Falling Leaf had responded with wariness, but no outright hostility. Judging that she likely knew better than he did about the fox, he didn't attack. Sen and Falling Leaf eventually left with a lot of careful looks back at the fox. The fox watched them go without ever moving. Yet, for the rest of the day, Sen caught glimpses of the fox. Sometimes, he'd see flashes of its red fur moving through the increasingly thin covering of trees and dormant bushes. Other times, he spotted it sitting somewhere and looking at them.
"Should I be worried about that thing?" Sen finally asked Falling Leaf.
The ghost panther looked from Sen to the fox, which was perched up on a rock about fifty feet away, and then back to Sen. He struggled to untangle the mix of impressions that flowed off the big cat. He caught flashes of irritation, vague amusement, and still more wariness. The big cat took one last, long look at the fox and then actually shook her head. It was one of the most direct answers he'd ever gotten from her. He wondered if she'd broken through along the way as he had. He could swear that she seemed smarter and possibly even more capable than when they'd first met. When Sen was ready to set up camp on the second evening, the fox reappeared at the edge of the clearing that Sen had chosen. It gave Sen a long look and then trotted a short distance away. It looked back at him. He lifted an eyebrow at it. The fox came back to the clearing, gave him another long look, then trotted a little way off. It looked back at him again.
"I think it wants us to follow it," said Sen, feeling less than enthusiastic about the notion.
Falling Leaf gave the fox a baleful look, made a discontented noise, and then trudged after the spirit beast. Sen frowned, then he trudged along in the big cat's wake. The fox led them along for perhaps fifteen minutes. It looked back to make sure Sen was paying attention, then pawed at an innocuous snow drift. The fox backed well away and gave Sen an expectant look. Sen cautiously approached the snow drift, eyed the fox, and then used a bit of air qi to gently push aside the loose snow. When he saw what was under the snow, his expression turned from suspicious to incredulous. He glared at the fox.
"How could you have possibly known?" He demanded of the spirit beast.
The fox's mouth dropped open and it spoke to a flabbergasted Sen. "Tell Ma Caihong that Laughing River wishes her an auspicious new year."
It took Sen a second to realize that the fox hadn't actually spoken out loud to him. It had used some kind of qi technique to transmit the words to him. Sen wanted to just feel stunned and baffled, but he supposed that these sorts of things happened to cultivators.
"I will," he agreed. "Still, why help me?"
"Why not?"
Sen didn't have a good answer for that, so he offered the fox a bow. "Thank you for your assistance, senior brother."
That seemed to delight the fox, who immediately took on a playfully devious air. "Of course, now you owe me a favor. I'll have so much fun collecting on it."
Then, in a flash of red fur, the fox vanished. Sen realized he'd been staring at the empty space where the fox had been for most of a minute. He'd been trying to imagine what kind of favor he could do for a spirit fox. He hadn't come up with any answers. Then, a thought came to him unbidden. Sen spun toward Falling Leaf.
"Can you talk?"
The big cat had a very guilty look in her eyes. Sen heard a little whisper. "Yes."
"You can talk?! Why haven't you done it before?"
Sen heard her sigh.
"It's difficult. Usually isn't necessary."
Sen wanted to rant and rave at the big cat for not revealing that information. Yet, as he thought back about it, she wasn't wrong. Very little of what passed between them would have been made better or substantially easier with speech. Still, he didn't want to let her off too lightly. He narrowed his eyes at her.
"We're going to talk about this."
"If we must," said Falling Leaf, sounding dejected.
With that, Sen turned back to the treasure that the fox had led them to and began harvesting it. Sen let Falling Leaf stew for most of the morning as they made their way back down the mountain. In the end, though, he just wasn't that angry about it. It was even a little bit funny to him. He finally stopped walking and gave the cat a meaningful look.
"You should have mentioned it."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Well, just so long as you know," offered Sen, as he started walking again.
"That's it?"
"Did you want to talk more about it?"
Falling Leaf shook her head vigorously. Standing off where Sen and Falling Leaf wouldn't notice it, the fox laughed to itself.
Chapter 45: Year's End (2)
Sen had to seek out Ma Caihong's help to come up with a gift idea for Uncle Kho. Her recommendation had been so straightforward that Sen felt a little stupid for not coming up with it himself. He was very happy that it was something he could do without traipsing all over the mountain. Sen's recent advancement had gone a long way toward making time spent in the cold something he could handle without much thought, up to a point. A few hours, even most of a day, he could take in stride. Two days in the freezing misery of the upper mountain had informed him that he was still vulnerable to the cold if got cold enough for long enough. It might take longer for the cold to seep in and kill him, but it could still do it.
As for Uncle Kho's gift, it took him most of a week and several wasted scrolls, but Sen finally completed the project up to a level that he found satisfactory. He tucked it away in his storage ring next to Ma Caihong's gift. In the end, it was Sen who came up with the idea for Master Feng's gift. He had to enlist both Auntie Caihong and Uncle Kho to make it happen. Sen was glad, for once, that Master Feng was off on another one of his excursions to dig up information about spirit beasts. It gave him time to practice with Ma Ciahong and get feedback from Uncle Kho.
Then, the day was upon them. Sen spent his morning practicing outside, as he usually did. Master Feng came out and observed him for a while but didn't seem inclined to make any corrections. He only made one casual comment.
"I see that you've taken to Ma Caihong's jian style."
"It seems practical to have the option," said Sen, feeling a little nervous.
Master Feng nodded. "It is. I'd have encouraged you to wait a little longer before you learned a second style, but it hasn't seemed to hamper your growth."
"Thank you, master."
Sen completed his routines, cleaned up, and then banished everyone from the kitchen. He slaved over the stove for hours, obsessively checking and rechecking everything. He did let Auntie Caihong come and help him dish everything up for the meal. Then, they invited the others to join them. Master Feng stopped dead when he saw the food on the table. For a brief moment, Sen thought the man might cry. Then, Master Feng gave Sen a huge smile and sat down. They ate and ate until everyone was full.
"Thank you for the gift, Sen," said Master Feng.
Sen gave him a bow. "You are welcome, master."
"I suppose I have you two to thank as well?"
Uncle Kho waved it off. "I just tasted the practice runs to help them get it right."
"I have been teaching him to cook since the two of you certainly couldn't. I consider it part of that training."
Feng's eyes twinkled at their excuses.
"Since I've started, I may well as finish," said Sen, standing up.
He retrieved a scroll from his storage ring and gave it to Uncle Kho. The old cultivator lifted an eyebrow and gently unrolled the scroll. His eyes went a little wide and then his whole expression softened. Sen could see the artistic, or as artistic as he could manage, brush strokes on the paper.
"Do not let the mountain ahead of you distract from the road before you," read Uncle Kho. "One of my favorite sayings."
Uncle Kho shot his wife a sly look, but she sat there simply radiating innocence. With that, Sen retrieved his final gift. He'd had to get Uncle Kho's help to make the box because he needed something that would safely preserve what was inside. He held the box out to Auntie Caihong. She smiled at him as she took the box and opened the top. Her expression froze for a moment before she gave Sen a surprised look.
"A lunar winter's heart blossom," she said. "Is that where you went for those two days?"
"It is. I met someone up there who helped me find it. They wanted me to tell you that Laughing River bids you an auspicious new year."
Uncle Kho groaned, but Auntie Caihong let out a delighted laugh. "Thank you, Sen, for the gift and the message."
"I hoped that fox was dead," muttered Uncle Kho.
"Quiet, you. Laughing River isn't that bad."
Uncle Kho didn't keep going, but Sen thought he heard Uncle Kho muttering something about a red-furred menace under his breath. With his part out of the way, Sen settled back. Master Feng handed out his gifts first. He presented Uncle Kho with a scroll as well. Given the way that Uncle Kho gasped, Sen assumed it was something good. Then, he made a cauldron appear that he presented to Ma Caihong. She seemed genuinely moved.
"Ming, this is truly too much. It must have cost you a fortune."
Master Feng dismissed that with a gesture. "Nonsense. I couldn't find a good one, so I just decided to make it myself."
Master Feng didn't see the woman's jaw drop as he turned to Sen and held out a tiny box. "This is long overdue."
Sen opened the box and saw a dark stone ring. He picked it up and recognized it as the storage treasure it was. "Thank you, master."
"It's like mine," said Feng. "Not as big, but you can keep things like food fresh in there. You can even keep plants alive in there for a while."
"Oh, that's always helpful," said Auntie Caihong. "You really never know when you'll chance across some rare specimen out there. One time, I ran across a two-hundred-year-old ginseng plant that had an ice qi attribute. I'd never seen anything like it before. The ideal situation would have been to take the plant and replant it somewhere. Of course, I was nowhere near civilization at the time. I didn't have a good way to transport a live plant. Instead, I had to just harvest it. It still fetched a lot when I sold it, but it would have been worth so much more as a live specimen."
Sen promptly slipped the ring onto a finger, not willing to chance even the possibility that he might misplace or lose something so valuable. Master Feng gave Sen a big smile and sat down. At that Uncle Kho turned to Sen.
"Now that we're not hiding everything from you about cultivation stages, and you've solidified your gains at your current stage, I can finally give you this," said Uncle Kho.
He extended his hand and a small booklet appeared in it. Sen reached out and took the booklet. It looked old to Sen's eyes. In fact, it looked old enough that Sen had the sneaking suspicion that it might be valuable as well. He carefully leafed through the pages. Everything was hand-written and saw some familiar, if simplified diagrams of the body that highlighted the dantian and qi channels. He looked up at Uncle Kho.
"I'm not sure what I'm looking at," he admitted.
"It's a cultivation manual, Sen. Most likely, it'll be the first of many. This one is designed to help you form more of that liquid qi, but it has some other benefits as well. Don't worry, we can talk over all of the details later."
Sen was overwhelmed, but he shot a questioning look at Master Feng.
"We discussed it beforehand. It'll be a good approach for you at this point."
Sen offered both Master Feng and Master Kho a deep bow. "Thank you, Uncle Kho. Thank you, master."
Sen immediately started reading the manual, only to hear a loud cough from Auntie Caihong. He looked up to catch her giving Uncle Kho and Master Feng a murderous glare. The two men found interesting things to look at in other parts of the room. She took a deep breath and then focused on Sen.
"I can see now that I should have gone first. Oh well, I think you'll still like this."
She left the room briefly and came back with a small wooden case. She presented it to Sen, who took it and carefully laid it across his legs. He unlatched the case and opened it to find an inkstone, inksticks, and several fine brushes. Sen gently ran his fingers over the brushes. He could feel that they had been reinforced with qi. He didn't know how much life that would add to the brushes, but he expected that Auntie Caihong expected him to use this set for years to come.
"Thank you, Auntie Caihong."
"You understand that I expect you to send occasional letters back to let your poor old auntie and uncle to let us know that you're alive. Once you head out into the world, of course."
Sen laughed. "Where would I send them?"
"To your grandmother, of course," said Feng. "I'm sure she'd be willing to hold them until someone stops by."
"Of course," said Sen, although he doubted that was a real long-term solution.
At that, Auntie Caihong gave her husband another withering glare and said, "I'll go first this time."
She accessed her own storage treasure and removed a jian. Although, it was very different from Sen's jian. That sword came in a red-lacquered scabbard that looked like it was inlaid with gold. There was a ruby inset in the pommel, and the guard was carved to look like two dragon heads. As fine as the sword looked, Sen felt an almost instinctive dislike for it. There was something wrong with that sword. Something, Sen searched for a word that hit the right note. There was something corrupt about it. As for Master Feng, his eyes were locked on the sword.
"How did you get that?" He asked.
Ma Caihong smirked. "The old-fashioned way. I took it from his corpse."
"He's truly dead, then?"
"Oh yes, quite thoroughly and truly dead."
Feng reached out and took the sword. There was a look of such malicious satisfaction on his face that Sen was startled. Feng noticed the expression on Sen's face and sighed.
"The man who carried this blade was someone I wasted a lot of time trying to find. He spent most of his life doing whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was mostly to hurt and kill people. Of course, he knew I wanted him dead, so he ran and hid whenever there was even a rumor that I was closing in on him. He'd go underground for decades at a time," said Master Feng before turning his eyes to Ma Caihong. "How did you find him?"
She laughed. "I didn't. He found me. Except, he thought he was finding some lone woman in the wilderness. He was so surprised."
Feng snorted. "Yes, I'll just bet he was. Thank you, Caihong, for finishing my tasks and bringing me this. I'll take great pleasure in destroying it."
Uncle Kho gave his wife a pouting expression. "I suppose I know how you felt, now. Well, here you go, Ming."
He tossed Feng what looked like a storage ring. Master Feng held it in his hand for a moment before he gave Kho a little grin.
"Is this what I think it is, Kho?"
"Yes, and it wasn't easy to make. So, you'd better spread it around that that little miracle was my work."
Feng laughed. "Of course, all credit where it's due."
After that, everyone fell into conversation, although Sen mostly just listened. His mind and his eyes were consumed by his new cultivation manual.
Chapter 46: The Way of the Spear
Auntie Caihong kept teaching Sen for a few weeks after the new year, but he could tell that would soon change. She stopped introducing new things she wanted him to learn. Instead, she revisited everything that she had taught him. In some cases, it was brief enough that he could tell she was just checking that he remembered. She asked him some general questions about identifying medicinal plants and alchemical materials. She only got specific about a few of the rarer ones for which he could find buyers wherever he went. In other cases, she asked him in-depth questions about what to mix to treat a variety of injuries and illnesses. Throughout it all, he updated his notes. Mostly, he added to them, but he twice found places where he had to correct something that was simply wrong. They weren't catastrophic mistakes that would have injured him or anyone else, but those mistakes drove home just how important it was to make sure he got the details right.
"Well," said Auntie Caihong, "no one will mistake you for a spirit doctor, but you know enough now that you should be able to patch yourself or someone else up in an emergency."
"I don't think I'd dare try to treat anyone else," Sen said, shuddering at the very idea.
"Sometimes, it's that or let them die."
"Do you really think so?"
"Oh, I know so. The world has a way of making you do things you don't really want to do. Of course, I've found that people tend to find their nerve in those situations, more often than not. I did."
"How so?"
"The first time I was in that situation, I knew a lot less than you do about medicine and medicinal plants. Looking back now, it's a little horrifying how little I knew. When it was a choice between doing nothing and letting my friend die or trying to do something, though, I tried to do something."
"Did it work?"
"It did. I got a little bit lucky and found a few plants that helped a lot. After that, though, I decided that I wouldn't need to get lucky that way again. I really could have killed her with the plants I used."
"Like I said, I don't think I'd want to do that."
"You have one advantage that I didn't."
"What's that?" Sen asked, his curiosity piqued.
"You actually have some idea about what you don't know."
Sen laughed a little. "I don't know anything. That seems strange to say because my brain feels stuffed full. But there's so much I don't understand about qi interactions, injuries, and even selecting between plants and minerals to get the best effect."
"Some of it you'll learn through experience. Some of you can learn by studying. If you look hard enough, you can usually find someone to teach you some new things about medicine."
"I can always come back and learn from you."
Auntie Caihong's eyes glowed with affection. "I hope you do. In the meantime, though, poor Jaw-Long is ready to explode. He wants his turn."
"As you say, teacher."
***
"With the possible exception of a rock held in the hand, the spear may well be the oldest weapon in existence," said Uncle Kho.
Sen listened attentively as he tried to find the right way to hold the blunted spear in his hands. He'd spent so much time wielding a jian that he'd assumed that learning the spear would come, well, not easy, but a little more naturally. As soon as he'd picked up the weapon, though, that idea vanished from his mind. It was painfully clear to him that he was starting from scratch. The jian felt natural and balanced in his hands. Of course, he reminded himself, it didn't start out that way. Sen had worked hard at mastering that weapon. He'd made countless mistakes and been corrected hundreds, if not thousands, of times. He had to resign himself to the idea that this would be the same. Uncle Kho held his own blunted spear in his hand, but Sen was surprised to see the man looking at the weapon like it held every secret in the world. That was true reverence on the man's face.
Uncle Kho continued, "It's a surprisingly versatile weapon. You can use it up close, as many a fool learns the hard way. Yet, it provides you with enough reach that you can keep all but the most talented and determined sword wielders out of range, all while you inflict lethal damage. Your attacks can be swift and fierce."
Uncle Kho snapped the spearhead down in a strike that was so hard and fast it could have split a man in two without losing a bit of momentum.
"Your defense can be languid and graceful."
The spear moved around Uncle Kho in clean, fluid arcs.
"You can attack from above, below, or the sides."
The cultivator moved the spear through a series of strikes that flew at an imaginary target from a dozen different angles.
"As with all things, though, true mastery of the spear doesn't come through overbearing strength or impossible speed. Too much strength, too much speed, and the spear will break. The true heart of the spear, the true heart of mastery for any weapon, is balance. It is knowing when to strike and when to hold back. It is knowing when you must be as hard as steel, and when you must be as flexible as the wind. The way of the spear is the way of balance. If your heart is open, I will show you the way."
Sen gave Uncle Kho a deep bow. "I will strive to keep my heart open."
The old cultivator, who looked like he could be one of Sen's not much older relatives, smiled at him. "I know that Ming treats the jian as if it's just a weapon, which is strange in someone who uses their blade more as an extension of their cultivation than a martial form. Yet, that is how he sees it.
"I do not separate the two. To me, the spear and cultivation are inextricably, inevitably entwined. I owe most of my advancements to insights I gleaned while wielding this weapon. The good news for you is that I do not expect you to follow that path."
Sen tried to not let his relief show on his face, but some leaked through. Uncle Kho chuckled to himself. While Sen had experienced the occasional insight while wielding the jian, he didn't see himself as someone who could drive his advancement that way. At least, he couldn't as a regular practice. He didn't expect that the spear would prove any different. Of course, just because the spear wasn't a direct cultivation aid, it didn't mean there was no value in the weapon. Sen very much liked the idea of keeping his future opponents at a distance.
Equally important to his mind was finding balance. The desperate need for it was everywhere in cultivation. The constant intake of qi wasn't just grabbing whatever he could find. He needed to keep the attributed qi in the proper balance for him. If he ever let those bits of attributed qi grow imbalanced, he felt as though everything inside of him was out of step with the world around him. His timing was off. His decisions were off. His very techniques would fail. It went deeper than that, though. He had seen how important balance was with the medicines he learned to make. It wasn't that things had to be in equal measures. That was a simplistic notion of balance. No, it was that components needed to harmonize with each other and with the injury. They had to balance for a purpose, or nothing would heal. Sen believed that his advancement would come through finding the right set of components and letting them harmonize throughout his existence. If he could do that, he hoped, he could push forward.
Sen bowed again. "If you will lead me to balance, Uncle Kho, I will follow you into the way of the spear."
Chapter 47: Foundation Building
During the day, Sen was as diligent and driven as ever. If anything, he was even more diligent and driven. Most days, he was up before dawn making food. By the time Auntie Caihong or Uncle Kho drifted out for their first cup of tea, Sen had often been outside practicing for hours. Sen had found that he needed those extra hours just to get through everything. Between his unarmed combat forms and his jian styles, real practice could easily take up to five or six hours a day. Then, after he ate a quick meal for lunch, it was time for formation training. In its own way, formation training was as difficult as the medical and alchemical training that Auntie Caihong had put him through. In part, it was because many of the same concerns applied, if in different ways.
"A formation," said Uncle Kho, "is almost a living thing. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in the world. It moves through time with you. It has a lifespan. Just as importantly, it interacts with your environment. Try as hard as you like, you'll find that setting up a fire formation is all but impossible within a certain distance of any body of water. There's just too much water qi in the area. Even if you do make it work through sheer talent or luck, it won't last long. A good formation must take into account the flow of natural energies around it. It must work both with and within that existing balance."
Yet, for all those complexities, Sen found formations a much easier subject. He briefly wondered if Uncle Kho was simply a better teacher, but quickly dismissed that idea. Auntie Caihong had been almost infinitely patient with him and always geared her lessons to a level that he could understand. No, it was simpler than that. Medicine had to interact with a human body. Human bodies were messy, unpredictable things. No two bodies functioned exactly the same way and their qi energies could change in strange ways. Formations interacted with the natural world. Sen was experienced enough to realize that nature was hugely complex, but it also moved slower. If you examined the energy in an area in the morning, there was a reasonably good chance that those energic flows would hold true in the evening. You didn't have to adapt to everyone on the fly. You could make predictions and count on them.
Of course, that also made things harder to understand when things didn't work properly. Sen had seen Uncle Kho sigh more than once when Falling Leaf simply appeared inside the courtyard. Uncle Kho liked the cat just fine, but he'd also told Sen that he'd specifically set up formations to keep spirit beasts out. The big cat shouldn't have been able to come and go as she pleased. Yet, she did. Uncle Kho had checked the formations he built into the manor more than once. Every time, he said the same thing.
"There's nothing wrong with these formations."
Then, he'd usually turn a glare on the cat. Falling Leaf would yawn, or roll over, or simply go to sleep in the face of the cultivator's annoyance. Sen reasoned that she might take Uncle Kho a bit more seriously if he didn't give her so many treats. After a few weeks of formation training, when he understood the rules a little more, he asked the older cultivator a question he'd been hanging on to for a while.
"Uncle Kho, is Falling Leaf so powerful that she can just ignore the formation?"
"Hmmm. You know, I asked myself that exact same question when she first started showing up here. I thought maybe she was hiding her cultivation level. Maybe playing some kind of game with us."
"And?" Sen prompted.
"No, it's not a matter of power. Don't get me wrong, she has plenty of power. If she were human, she'd probably be in middle foundation formation or even brushing up against late-stage foundation formation. Once Ming cleared out nearly anything with a core on the mountain, that makes her one of the bigger threats up here. But that's not even close to powerful enough to just ignore one of my formations. No, something else is happening here. Something I don't understand."
"Do you have any ideas about what's happening?"
Uncle Kho laughed. "Oh, I have lots of ideas, but no good ones. My best guess is that she, somehow, developed a unique qi technique that lets her slip through gaps in my formation that other things can't."
"You don't sound convinced."
"I'm not. As far as I know, there are no gaps in my formation. There could still be a gap. One I don't know how to see. One that she's slipping through. Unfortunately, it's not very likely."
"Any other ideas?"
"She's a cat."
Sen frowned. "I'm not sure I understand."
"Cats go where they want. I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be a loophole in the natural order that facilitates that."
Sen frowned some more. "Sounds difficult to prove."
Uncle Kho gave Sen a morose look. "I know."
Sen found himself watching the big cat closer after that to see if he could spot her doing something special with her qi when she came and went. He didn't have any more luck than Uncle Kho did. Falling Leaf seemed to know what he was doing and acted particularly smug when she noticed him failing to discover her secrets. Despite training with the spear, and his interest in formations, and the ongoing mystery of the ghost panther's comings and goings, it was the cultivation manual that drove Sen's relentless drive. He wanted to spend as much time with it as he could, which meant he needed to finish everything else during the day.
That manual consumed his evenings. As soon as they finished eating and cleaning up after the evening meal, Sen vanished to read it. A part of him knew that his fixation on it was nothing more than it being the first technique he'd been allowed to see that he didn't come up with on his own. While Sen liked being creative and planned to keep building on that foundation of technique creation, it could be crushing work. After all, it was nothing but failure after failure until he succeeded. Then, after a few moments of pure joy, there was more work. He had to practice the technique, perfect it, and then start all over again. All of that failure wore him down after a while, even if he had found some shortcuts along the way.
To have someone simply hand him a technique felt so good that Sen was sure that there must be something fundamentally wrong with doing that. Still, he reveled in the pure luxury of having someone just tell him how to do something with qi. Although, he quickly discovered the pitfalls of a technique manual. Just because someone explained what to do and why, it didn't necessarily mean that Sen would understand it. He understood his own techniques because he knew literally everything about them. With the technique in the manual, he could follow what it wanted him to do with his qi. The cycling pattern was less complex than many he knew already. He felt less certain about the why. That uncertainty bothered him more than he expected it would. More to the point, he had a feeling that it was even dangerous for him to not understand the why of the technique.
It didn't help that the actual explanation was written in a way that Sen found frustrating and difficult to follow. Uncle Kho had declared that Sen's reading skills were more than good enough for any of his needs. Yet, he'd never had Sen read anything like the manual before. The person who wrote it seemed determined to make every statement as long and complicated as possible. Sen would spend entire minutes trying to figure out what just one sentence meant. So, rather than spending his time cultivating with his new technique, Sen found himself reading the manual over and over again. If he couldn't rely on simple comprehension to do the trick, perhaps repetition would serve him better. Even as he adopted that approach, he put himself on a clock. He would try to understand the manual on his own, but not forever. He gave himself seven days. If he couldn't figure it out after seven days, he would simply ask one of the older cultivators.
He knew that there was value in developing understanding on his own, but time had value as well. The time he spent trying to understand was time he didn't spend mastering something else. Uncle Kho had been teaching him about balance, and Sen was determined to find it in his life. He'd certainly learned his lesson about not asking for help in the past. So, the days ebbed away as Sen studied the manual. Understanding did not occur in a blinding flash, the way it sometimes did for him. Yet, it did come. At first, it was in small fits and starts. Then, bigger pieces slid into place. It took him five days with the manual before the why of the technique finally locked together. It also became clear to him why Master Feng and Uncle Kho had chosen this technique.
Master Feng had explained that many cultivators built their foundations around a single qi type. He even acknowledged the basic advantage in strength it would provide. Sen had experienced enough to know that he wanted to keep his access to many kinds of qi. He could see way too many advantages to having it to ever willingly give it up. Feng had encouraged that attitude. So, the old cultivators had gone out and found a foundational building technique that would let him keep it. The whole technique was designed to let him condense liquid qi that used all of the attributed qi he could access. It was basically ideal for his needs. That understanding did nothing to temper his frustrations with whoever wrote the stupid manual.
"You couldn't just say that's what the technique was for?" He demanded of the unknown writer. "No, of course not, because why do something so rational? No, you had to talk about the many-branched tree of creation. You ass!"
It wasn't until Auntie Caihong knocked on his door that Sen realized he'd been yelling at the manual for almost ten minutes in a glorious, rage-purging explosion of verbal violence. He'd opened the door with a rather sheepish expression.
"Is everything alright, Sen?" Auntie Caihong asked.
She peeked past him into the room, as if she wanted to make sure that some stranger hadn't snuck in and bothered him.
"Yes, Auntie. I just figured out what the cultivation manual was trying to explain."
"That made you angry?"
"No. That made me happy."
"So?" She prompted.
"I also figured out that the person who wrote it was…" he trailed off, not wanting to actually say it out loud to her.
"Oh, you mean that he was a tiresome buffoon who loved a turn of phrase more than being helpful?"
Sen was nodding before she even finished. "I just called him an ass."
She gave him a sympathetic smile. "It won't be the last time you say that about someone who wrote a manual." Sen groaned.
Chapter 48: Foundation Building (2)
Sen smiled to himself as he ran around the walls that surrounded the house. He remembered all too well the misery of that first run. The desperate gasping for air. The terrible burning in his legs and arms. Yet, as sharp as those memories were, Sen also felt oddly distant from them. Some of it was just the stark change in his body. Sen didn't dwell on it that much, but he was aware that the bony skinniness he'd arrived with had been replaced by hard, defined muscle. He'd grown taller as well. Where he'd once had to tilt his head back to see the much taller Master Feng's face, he could now look the man almost directly in the eye. He no longer stumbled or found himself bumping into things. He couldn't match the sheer overwhelming grace of the three older cultivators, who all made the most casual motions a thing of beauty, but he no longer felt embarrassed by how he moved.
He was also nearly certain that the running didn't do anything for him anymore. The years of training were part of it, but so were those bouts of body cleansing he'd endured. Every kind of physical effort became easier after that second pill. After breaking through, no amount of running taxed him. He'd tested it one morning by doing nothing but running. Around and around he'd gone for the entire morning. He hadn't slowed. He hadn't stopped. He'd just run. He'd exalted in that achievement. His speed was something he couldn't really wrap his head around. He'd been getting pretty fast before the breakthrough, by his own estimation. Now, though, he didn't think regular people could move as fast as he did. The benefits of body cultivation had shown themselves to be truly remarkable. Yet, it also left him wondering what it would be like when he reached the peak of foundation formation or core formation as a body cultivator.
As it was, he could carry out the task of running and practicing his new cultivation technique at the same time. It was a little taxing mentally, but not physically. He hadn't been doing the technique long enough to simply push it to the back of his mind the way he did with regular cultivation. Yet, even that seemed to come easier than it should. He knew that body cultivation refined the physical form. He wondered if spiritual cultivation refined the mind somehow. It wouldn't surprise him, but it left him a little edgy. Back when Sen had first been learning to read, Uncle Kho had also introduced him to numbers and basic math. Sen hadn't taken well to numbers. Yet, the old cultivator had insisted over Sen's many objections that the boy master the essentials, such as addition and subtraction. Since his breakthrough, he'd found himself far more capable with numbers. Yes, he had questions.
He also knew that he'd eventually ask Master Feng those questions, but he'd been finding excuses to put it off. In his heart, Sen was a little afraid to learn the answers. At the moment, he knew that he could basically pass himself off as a normal person, at least to normal people. Cultivators would sniff him out pretty fast unless he made a conscious effort to hide, and he didn't relish the idea of doing that non-stop. He wasn't even certain how long he could hold that technique before he'd have to stop. With a mental tsk, he added that to a growing list of things he needed to test. However, with a little care, nothing he could do would raise too many suspicions if he was getting noodles or simply walking through a town. Unless you have to fight, he chided himself. Fighting would expose him in a second because, if he had to fight, it would almost certainly mean fighting another cultivator. If that happened, he wouldn't, couldn't, hold back. Anything less than his all could easily spell his death.
Still, a part of him feared he would eventually become so different that everyone who met him would automatically recognize him as a cultivator. That was what had seemingly happened to Master Feng when first arrived in Orchard's Reach. Sen could hardly imagine the cultivator announcing that about himself. On the other hand, Sen had a hard time imagining Master Feng doing anything that people might describe as normal. Sure, he ate and he slept, but only out of habit or because he saw other people doing it. Left to his own devices, the man would spend days at a time in the library studying a scroll. Sen saw things like that and wondered if that was his fate. Would he one day lose touch with all of those things that most people considered basic human necessities?
Sen supposed thoughts like that one also made him feel a little alien to the boy who first climbed up the mountain with Master Feng. While Sen as he was now could recognize himself in that homeless child, he very much doubted that child could have seen himself in the person Sen had become. That boy worried about where he'd get food from and if Grandmother Lu would one day decide not to let him in when it got too cold. For the Sen who was sprinting laps around the manor with a gleeful Falling Leaf keeping pace, it was like he'd stumbled into some other world. Now, he worried about things like cultivation techniques, tribulations, and how best to avoid other cultivators out in the world. Perhaps, he mused, this is what growing up is. It wasn't so much a drastic change in personality, as it was a change in the scope of what a person faced. It was knowing that you might face problems larger than yourself, larger than everything you knew before, and even knowing that you were competent enough to face them.
Sen stumbled to a stop as something changed. He felt a stirring in the qi all around him and a sympathetic stirring in his dantian. Then, as if drawn to him by an inexorable force, all of that stirring qi contracted around him and was drawn into him. For a few seconds, Sen almost lost track of his cycling technique, overwhelmed as he was by that sudden rush of strength, power, and energy. He bent his will against that feeling, a will forged by years of constant discipline, and focused. That sudden rush of qi was an opportunity that he didn't plan to miss. He even knew what to do, having done it before in that cultivation room. Sen let as much of that extra qi as he could stand pool into his dantian. Then, he seized that misty churning energy and bore down on it, with the existing bit of liquid qi at its center.
While it took all his concentration, Sen discovered that Master Feng had been right. That one little bit of liquid qi seemed to act like a catalyst under pressure. As Sen crushed the misty qi into the liquid qi, it began to transform. Bit by bit, he gathered up that extra qi coursing through him and squeezed it down. It was slow work, and he lost himself in the process. Eventually, though, he was left only with the qi he normally carried. There was one small, but terribly important difference. The lone drop of liquid qi he'd had in dantian had grown. It was perhaps three times as large. It almost seemed a tiny improvement to him, given how much qi he had compressed. Yet, the difference was also enormous. He let that little bit of liquid qi make a single trip through each of his qi channels. He felt fresh power permanently suffuse his muscles and etch itself into his bones. His organs blazed briefly, his heart even pausing for one eternal moment, before they too were fortified. His body all but hummed with new strength. He was a step closer to middle foundation formation. It was a small step, but one he knew he could repeat. All he needed was time, and maybe the occasional bit of enlightenment.