Chapters 21-22

Thirty minutes later a panting, groaning, and profusely bleeding Jun would lie on his back, stare up into the void, and wonder if he was actually cut out for this whole cultivation thing after all.

Upon further reflection, it’d been a several fold lapse in his judgement that led to this unfortunate state of affairs. The first and foremost being his willful disregard of the novel concept that, maybe, just maybe, there was a good reason the cultivation manual had been so gods damned expensive. Presumably, anyone well positioned enough to afford such a text would also know how to use it responsibly. Perhaps even have the wherewithal to guide subsequent juniors along its convoluted, labyrinthine instructions, in a way that didn’t leave them a sobbing bloody wretch, writhing on the floor.

Apparently, two entire realms of cultivation weren’t something you could hop skip over, willy-nilly, just because you felt like it. Jun, in all his arrogance and stupidity, had made the cardinal sin of thinking “more expensive equals better.” A philosophy that may have applied to, say, buying a new mattress, or, going out to eat, but most certainly did not apply to breathing manuals. He honestly wasn’t sure how he knew he’d gotten himself in way over his head. Though, perhaps the bloody tears tracking lines down his cheeks were a clue? You know? He really couldn’t be sure.

It hadn’t just been that the breathing technique was extremely potent in its own right. He’d also somehow managed to screw up the sequence of steps. Not only that, but, in a moment of pure genius, he’d had the brilliant idea to set up his spirit condenser almost immediately after purchasing it, not yet knowing what exactly it was, or what it did. This had all culminated in his first taste of cultivation ending with a terrible backlash, as the energies he was increasingly unable to hold onto slipped away from his control completely. Said energies then proceeding to go on a thirty second rampage through his body, before they eventually slowed, and then dissipated completely.

He could only be thankful the chaotic energies hadn’t found his heart in their mad flight. Yet again, praise be to small miracles. After this humbling experience, Jun decided it might be best to stock up on a hefty sum of mending pills, just in case. If cultivation was going to be a daily occurrence, he’d need to be prepared for when things inevitably went wrong.

Despite his failures, he’d actually learned a lot from the experience. And while it was mostly what not to do, he felt that by acting upon the manuals instructions it’d actually helped him crystallize his understanding of the texts.

After convincing Ivory that he was well enough to continue—then convincing her that, yes, it was a thing worth doing, and, no, it was not an instance of hair brained foolishness, meant to get himself killed from the inside this time, since the outside, apparently, hadn’t seemed to suffice—Jun retook the lotus position somewhat indignantly.

Picking up the breathing scroll, he once more ran his eyes over its contents. According to the texts, the leaf on the winds breathing manual was a dual form breathing technique. This essentially meant that there were two paired breathing forms described—with each pair subdividing into two very distinct breathing states. States which both opposed and complimented one another respectively. It was all very confusing. There was both a passive, and an active state, though, since the active states were heavily tied to a set of martial forms, forms which the scroll hadn’t seen fit to include, he’d settled on mainly studying the passive states for each form.

The first was named the [Leaf Follows the Current] breathing form. Apparently, this form most closely resembled your typical method of cultivation, in so far as the scroll proclaimed. The form was first initiated by sitting just so, straightening one’s back and cupping one’s hands just beneath the navel. Then, through a sequence of deep inhales, deep exhales, and brief exhales, one is meant to guide their breath to their dantien—a metaphysical point just above one’s navel—hold it there for a time, before releasing all the pent-up breath at once and beginning again.

As far as Jun could tell, this cycle was supposed to be repeated ad infinitum. A fact which had made very little sense to him at the time. Apart from his lungs feeling close to bursting, he hadn’t actually been aware of anything happening. It’d been around then that he made his first major mistake. He’d tried to skip steps.

Instead of repeating the boring, monotonous breaths until he could “feel the ambient energy that was all around him,” whatever that meant, he’d tried a different tactic.

I mean this just can’t be right, can it? Cultivation isn’t supposed to hurt, it’s just breathing. And breathing’s the most natural thing in the world.

And if it felt unnatural, he’d concluded, it must have been because he was doing something wrong. Seeing it as a misinterpretation of the texts on his end, he’d figured that if he simply tried everything in the text, one thing after the other—threw everything at the wall just to see what stuck—he might eventually stumble upon the proper way of doing things. He was used to bumbling through multiple less than worthwhile iterations before he generated an idea or method worthy of implementing. He’d simply assumed that, if it worked in his everyday life, why wouldn’t it also work just as well here? In a strange way, he supposed that it actually had. It was merely that the lesson had come at a steeper cost than he’d been expecting.

Right off the bat, the second form [Leaf Rides the Gale] had been a different beast entirely. If the first form had been a strenuous, though ultimately controllable process, the second form had been a possessive animal that outright refused to relinquish its hold on his breath until it said so, and was good and ready. Making him feel a lot like a leaf might in a gale. He supposed, in hindsight, it should’ve been fairly obvious.

And the worst part was, he did know better. In any other circumstance he would have been the first to preach the wisdom of reading the fine print before committing to anything. But the esoteric and often contradictory descriptions the breathing scroll gave him utterly confounded his detail-oriented mind. If nothing else, that was another hard-earned lesson. And though he prayed there would come a time when straight forward answers and clear guidelines were the norm, he was already beginning to suspect that a lot of what cultivation was, had to be navigated more by feel than critical dissection.

With a sigh, Jun returned once more to the first section of the breathing manual. He’d already turned off the spirit condenser, bringing the spirit density around him back down to manageable levels. With how little his body could currently hold, having more of the stuff around wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Sitting up straight, he began the first form once more. [Leaf Follows the Current].

Inhale for six heart beats, exhale for two, inhale for eight heart beats, exhale for three, deep breath in for another six, and then exhale for five, followed by another deep breath in for six. This cycle then repeats. Thankfully, now that he knew that the stretching sensation in his chest was only natural, it became a lot easier to fully commit himself to the exercise. It wasn’t as if he were an impatient person at heart. It was only that he liked to make sure his time was being spent productively. And never had that personal truth been more aligned with his circumstance than it was right now.

Soon Jun lost himself to the cycling of his breathing, and only when he felt he was ready, did he begin the visualization aspect of the first form. He first imagined an immobile leaf, located within a void at the center of his dantien. Then, with every inhale he imagined the leaf shifting ever so slightly, just as, with every exhale, the leaf would be carried aloft on the current of his breath, before falling back down and going still once more. The more breath he held in, the more forceful the current that picked up the leaf on the final exhale. And every time this cycle repeated itself, the tiniest of currents would remain in the void—tugging futilely at the mostly immobile leaf between breaths.

After enough time had passed like this, the strangest thing began to happen. The vision seemed to take on a life of its own. The scene proceeding of its own accord, without much need of input on his part. As the cycling continued, for he didn’t know how long, the tiny currents left over in the void rapidly accumulated, becoming a light breeze which tugged the small leaf this way and that. And while the leaf was only moving in small, barely noticeable hops, it was a far cry from the initial stillness.

An unknowable amount of time elapsed like this, until Jun was yanked from his trance like state by the rumbling of his stomach. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to find that it didn’t take him a moment to reorient himself. Despite the uncomfortable breathing exercises, not to mention the mental strain of maintaining the image for hours at a time, his mind felt unusually sharp and clear. He understood immediately that the effects of the fasting pill must’ve run out, which meant he’d been cultivating for just under twenty-four hours now.

Your body has transcended its natural limits.

5 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.

Your mind has transcended its natural limits.

5 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.

Your spirit has transcended its natural limits.

5 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.

Waving away the system messages and their unknown implications—kicking that proverbial stone down the road for future Jun to decipher—as he had done ever since they’d first begun to pop up periodically, he took a moment to let the fact of the matter fully sink in. He’d barely noticed as time, apparently, flew by. He briefly marveled over the simple ease of it all, before he downed another fasting pill with a few large pulls from his flask. Punctuality was key when taking these pills, he knew. Not only for the sake of assuaging his hunger, but also to maintain some semblance of time passing. He had twelve fasting pills left, which meant he had a little less than twelve days before he needed to be above ground again. Hopefully in a position to enact the next part of his plan.

Having had his fill, Jun closed his eyes and envisioned his dantien. Using his mind's eye, he briefly caught the blurred form of what could’ve passed for a simple leaf, were it not for the way it streaked by like a restless woodland spirit. Ceaseless, ever flowing, it was carried at speeds that tricked the inner eye momentarily. Looking on in evident pride, he watched as his tiny leaf friend rode the unrestrained fury of a natural disaster. And all the while his dantien practically thrummed with the power held within that storm. Taking a good long look at all he’d accomplished; Jun couldn’t suppress a self-satisfied smile.

After a quiet moment spent watching the little leaf do its thing, he zeroed in his focus, allowed his face to go slack, and began to cultivate once more.

  ————————————————————

“Nine pills left. Nine more days to go,” he mumbled, downing the fifth said fasting pill that week.

It’d been four days since his first ever cultivation session, and he liked to think he’d made an impressive amount of progress in that time. First and foremost, there was his dantien. For going on two days now, the leaf had been reduced to little more than a greenish smear. A fact which both filled him with elation, as well as a deeper sort of melancholy. The reality that the gift of its delicate dance had now well and truly been lost to him, dampening any mood for celebration he might’ve otherwise felt. Though, seeing as his leafy green companion appeared more or less contented with their brand-new working arrangement, it wasn’t as if he could simply demand they go back to the way things were. A true bond of friendship had to extend both ways, after all.

His mental state was… questionable, to say the very least. Some might even go so far as to call it concerning. Although it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it right that instant. And to be honest, it wasn’t as if he even particularly wanted to. If he did, would he suddenly begin to despise his leafy green friend as opposed to adore him? He didn’t want that! Why would he want that!? The little green guy was just so darn cute! What in the world was he supposed to feel? He might have been a businessman, but that didn’t mean he was without a heart!

He wasn’t sure if it was the dark, the near total isolation—Ivory might’ve fallen off the continent for how absorbed she was in her books—or the excessive number of pills he’d consumed in so short a time that were effectively scrambling his brains. Or if, in fact, a touch of insanity was merely the mark of a true cultivator. It’d certainly seemed that way from the outside.

Actually? As a matter of fact, he liked the sound of that. That settled it then! Until further notice he would operate under the assumption that this was all some sort of unavoidable quirk, and not the first signs of drug induced hysteria.

Now. With that settled and well in hand, it was on to more important matters. Mainly being, his cultivation. A day of cultivation was all it took before he felt the need to turn the formation weave back on. The amount of “wind,” as he visualized it, or plain old spirit for the laymen, had begun to feel noticeably thin after only a few hours. Upon reactivating the spirit condenser, however, any misgivings he’d held about the poor spirit density were immediately assuaged.

 Actually, it’d been way too much spirit for the first couple of hours—reminding him, quite unpleasantly, of his very first traumatic foray into the art. Thankfully, he proved himself far better prepared this time around, and didn’t panic nor falter in his breathing even once. Staying the course despite the discomfort, it didn’t take long before the influx of celestial energy became manageable once more.

It wasn’t just in his cultivation that he’d made significant strides either. In the small breaks between cycling, he’d quickly skimmed through most of the books he’d purchased—discovering a number of curious insights in the process. One of the most infuriating of them all being on the nature of, well, insight. Essentially, what he’d learned was… well, technically? Absolutely nothing. It was to the point that he was tempted to believe that no one actually knew what the parameter did, regardless of whatever enlightened mumbo-jumbo they proclaimed. If they did know, he reasoned, surely it’d be easy to just outright say so in a way anyone could understand. Even after several very frustrating hours, though, all he’d managed to wring from the stubborn pages was an unhelpfully vague description:

“[…] if resonance is, indeed, the eye through which the cosmos perceives, and is, in turn, perceived by the soul, then it only follows that one’s insight value represents how lidded the connection therein.”

Fantastic. Really. Just… so helpful.

Much to his dismay, this sour trend largely tracked across all of his inquiries into the mysteries of enlightenment. Leaving him, at the end of it, no more knowledgeable about topics he knew existed, yet the book seemed patently unaware of. Things like, what it actually meant that he’d evolved from an “abandoned seedling” to a “blinded sapling,” or what the hell a mantra even was, beyond:

“[…] the daily carved recess into which resonant truths are guided, filtered, and subsequently stored; the cascade of the sodden and pernicious downpour into the well trodden furrow made for just such a purpose.”

Although, on that last count he felt that he at least had an inkling.

In fact, it’d only taken some brief experimentation to confirm that his [Cutting Hand] mantra essentially amounted to a kind of combat technique. With a thought he could wreath his hands in ruby red smoke, that smoke essentially transforming his hands into weapons. A few casual swipes at the sides of the pit were all the proof he’d needed as to the mantra’s lethality. They hadn’t been particularly large divots, but the fact that he’d been able to carve into stone with his bare hands at all had been remarkable.

Then there was the barrage of system messages he was positively bombarded with on the increasingly rare occasion he opened his eyes.

Your body has transcended its natural limits.

5 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.

Your mind has transcended its natural limits.

5 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.

Your spirit has transcended its natural limits.

5 CELESTIAL ESSENCE CONSOLIDATED.

It had been rather eye opening to realize what he now saw as unwelcome and unnecessary distractions, had in fact been a vital part of him for as long as he’d been alive. Like the slow growth of hair follicles or the deepening of his vocal cords, it was a process that’d previously operated solely in the background. Slowly strengthening his developing body as he grew to maturity. Only now highlighted by the system as in any way noteworthy due to its sudden accelerated growth.

Celestial essence, vital energy, spirit—all flowery terms that effectively referred to the exact same thing. The life force that flows through everything—both empowering, animating, and, in large enough quantities, allowing for the impossible to be realized. In effect, it was the bread and butter of cultivation. And as for what these specific notifications meant? Put simply? They were the visual representations of his slow but steady growth in body, mind, and soul—the body, mind, and spirit parameters respectively.

It would appear that every time he cultivated he would add to these seemingly limitless reservoirs, strengthening each aspect of himself in turn. It was why even a brat as young as Caspian was able to toss him around like a rag-doll. For your average non-cultivator, accumulating celestial energy was a slow and tedious affair. The body passively consolidating one celestial essence into body and mind for every two weeks that pass. That’s around twenty-six per year, or five hundred and twenty every two decades. At which point growth tends to drop off considerably. From one essence every two weeks, to one in every ten months or possibly even twenty. And meanwhile here he’d gained ninety nine celestial essence in just the four days he’d been cultivating.

I mean, no wonder I was so outmatched when it came to feats of strength. Hell, I’d never even stood a chance.

And, speaking of “CONSOLIDATION,” the book was actually surprisingly helpful when it came to how one might go about consolidating celestial essence in as efficient a way as possible.

“[…] for it is only through the compounding of stress—the impetus of heightened circumstance rife with genuine peril—that the celestial energies which permeate the body, mind, and spirit are allowed to commune with us fully. And, in so doing, join with one’s own being in perpetuity. To consolidate. As has ever been the case, strife and conflict breed rapid growth only as a matter of course. And though it is true that ease and passivity can pay similar dividends in the short term, let it never be forgotten that it was only through constant struggle that the greatest among us clawed their way to grand fame or vilest infamy.”

So, yeah. It wasn’t as if he were looking forward to throwing himself headfirst into danger in order to ostensibly improve himself. In all honesty he mostly hoped to find a cozy middle ground between doing nothing at all and outright throwing his life away. Anyhow, he could now comprehend why, even if he still didn’t really understand it, his step brother had gone to such insane lengths in that clearing. If essence gain was primarily dependent on how brazenly suicidal you were, then the gains of even such a failed attempt must’ve been massive. It was just the whole, “living to reap the benefits,” thing that he was so caught up on.

Anyway, moving on. As far as universal concepts were concerned, it was safe to say his goal of learning, step-by-step, how best to advance through the ranks had been a bust. His general understanding on the topic, however? Vague and haphazard as it still was, there had been revelations. The most helpful of which coming in the form of an actual, honest to gods, straightforward definition. Someone pinch him, he must be dreaming. Well, straightforward might have been a bit of a stretch, but it was coherent, at least, which he was finding to be less than a given where cultivation was concerned.

The book defined a concept as:

“[…] a segregate piece of the greater universe, condensed into an ideal that revolves around itself.”

Which… made a kind of sense. In essence, it meant that anything with enough universal weight could be considered a concept. Things like fire, space, time, or lightning. He wasn’t entirely sure why cutting or crushing were up there too, but he wasn’t complaining. After all, it amounted to the entirety of his offensive arsenal so far. And honestly, he couldn’t care less how much sense it made. He’d take every advantage he could get.

He also learned what Feathers had done for him in that clearing. Called an imparted ideal vision, it was something only very advanced cultivators, or he now supposed, spiritual beasts could impart. Acting as a shortcut of sorts, it’s typically used as a way to help juniors with potential get a foothold on the oh so confusing world of enlightenment. Taking all that into account, he supposed he’d been right to be terrified of Feathers at the time. What in the world had a beast like that been doing in the Kings Woods?

A sudden surge of memories flashed through his mind, and he physically jerked back in surprise. In an instant he recalled all the events shown to him in the vision, and he soon realized that, oh yeah, he supposed he knew exactly what she’d been doing there. So long as the vision she’d imparted on him was as recent as he suspected it to be.

And that was the other thing. According to the book, the visceral nature of an ideal vision isn’t supposed to last very long; an hour at most. Afterward, not only is the vision supposed to recede, but it’s supposed to then be forgotten entirely. That limited window the only time in which one has to consolidate their understandings before it all went away. This… this was not the case for Jun, and he honestly wasn’t sure why.

All he did know was that, while the intensity had lessened since the first time he’d experienced it, the actual contents of the vision were definitely still there. An errant thought often enough to drag him back into that chilly afternoon sky. Though, in a righting of the scales, there did appear to be limits as to what he could reasonably gain from watching an ideal vision over and over. He had this nagging suspicion that, in order to push his understandings further, perhaps even upgrade his mantra like what had happened in the clearing, he would need to put it into real world use. Something he anticipated with a healthy dose of trepidation.

Lastly, there was the question of cultivation realms. Back when he’d first committed himself to this course, he’d figured he would’ve absorbed enough of the basics through osmosis to at least know how to breeze through the first few stages. When he actually tried putting his “knowledge” to the test however, he’d found it to be… somewhat lacking. Which was why, when he found the section on realms of cultivation, he’d been so ecstatic. Concrete answers and simple descriptions… he’d promised himself he wouldn’t cry. It was just… so beautiful.

For the sake of his own sanity, he settled on an abbreviated list. The ranking system went as follows: from the Preliminary Realm, also known as the Mortal Realm, one advanced onto the |Spirit Condensation Realm|, more commonly referred to as the |Entry Realm| and also where he currently found himself cultivation wise. After that there were a bunch more realms—from the |Foundation Establishment Realm| to the |Core Formation Realm| and so on—but it all seemed so far ahead of where he currently found himself, that he mostly skimmed over those sections.

Description: In the Spirit Condensation Realm, cultivators learn to harness external spiritual energy (spirit) and internalize it, forming an energy reservoir within their bodies. This process involves cycling external energy and condensing internal spirit, enabling the cultivator to better perceive and manipulate their body’s spiritual energy on a very basic level.

The book also mentioned something about condensing one’s vapor spirit into liquid drops, and collecting said drops until they became a lake, but that didn’t make much sense to Jun. Wind couldn’t be a liquid. Wind was air. Add more wind and you just got more wind. Stupid book.

Instead, what happened when he reached a suitably high threshold had both shocked and delighted him in equal measure. He’d been in the midst of a rotation of [Leaf Follows the Current] when it happened. His abdomen had felt on the very cusp of exploding when, all of the sudden, all of the winds in his dantien died down. And from the event was born a tiny green figure—twirling lazily through the air on gentle wind currents.

When he reached a threshold in his spirit capacity, he didn’t condense any boring old drops. He made leaves, gods damn it! Leaves! Little green companions that were practically guaranteed to keep both himself and each other company!

And because so much wind had gone into its creation, at least for a brief while, he got to sit back and watch both leaves pirouette through the air, displaying that graceful poise which seemed to come so naturally to them. He couldn’t have been happier were he transported home that very instant. Well, no, not really, but it was definitely still up there. A close second maybe. Which was saying something, considering he’d been forced to use a corner of said pit as a restroom for the past five days now. A fact which made him very glad he’d stumbled upon the quick dissolving fasting pills as opposed to a more solid solution.

And that was it really. Supposedly he’d advance to the next realm when his condensed leaves reached that same, too full, threshold. Nothing too crazy by all accounts, though he had a sinking suspicion it wouldn’t always be this easy. Still, while things were still moderately simple, there was one last thing he needed to attempt.

Now that he was more familiar with cycling, he wanted to try his hand at the [Leaf Rides the Gale] form once more. And though a part of him still quailed at the idea of attempting what had already almost killed him once before, he just had this feeling. That if only he mastered this breathing form, it would make the ultimate difference in his cultivation.

No time like the present, Jun thought to himself, before he retook the lotus position and began with the first form: [Leaf Follows the Current].

After several hundred heartbeats of this, he smoothly transitioned from the first, to the second passive form of the [Leaf on the Winds Breathing Manual]. Now, instead of allowing his breaths to come and go without guidance or intention, he sought to direct the winds directly to his lower diaphragm. Leading it down and through his body on the twisting, circuitous route that the book had illustrated. He wasn’t sure what the pathways that his spirit navigated were exactly, the scroll didn’t say, but he had noticed them on his own quite some time ago. The strange set of paths that ran all throughout his body like a second set of veins.

With every breath, instead of his chest rising and falling, it was his diaphragm that slowly inflated, then fell. Meanwhile his inhales became deeper and lasted for many more heartbeats, while his exhales became strained—most of them resembling a short pant or a cough rather than an actual release of breath. Only one out of every three exhales released enough of the pressure mounting in his diaphragm to be noticeable, while every other came out as that strange grunting cough.

It got to the point that Jun was continually surprised at his ability to take in more air at all. And yet he knew intellectually that this wasn’t even the half of it. This went on for quite some time, until, after what had to have been an hour’s worth of cycling, Jun felt the sharp pain that signaled it was finally time for stage two. By this point a raging gale of impossibly dense and violent energies had taken up residence in his lower diaphragm—held tightly in check by only that of Jun’s abdominal wall and stubborn will. Sweat poured down his face in rivulets by this point, and his body visibly shook with the strain.

Now came the moment of truth. He knew that if he didn’t release some of this energy soon, the gale would eventually slip from his control. The only silver lining in that event being that he likely wouldn’t live long enough to regret his decisions. His body utterly obliterated by the insane accumulation of energy.

If there was one thing that could be said for his current predicament, it was that it certainly made for one hell of a motivator. Ever so carefully, Jun began the transition to the second hidden stage of [Leaf Rides the Gale]. Whereby, if the first represented the figurative inhale, the second represents the exhale. Likely a negligible process under normal circumstances, there was one major problem he was uniquely presented with. Primarily the fact that Jun’s body would pop like a soap bubble if he released all of the energy inside of him at once. Meaning he had to be extremely circumspect with how much he chose to let out at a time.

Add to that the fact that he couldn’t simply stop everything he was doing and focus entirely on this issue—there was too high a chance he’d disrupt the very careful equilibrium he had going—and he was given no other choice but to continue cycling as he had been, while simultaneously trying to slowly reduce the strain. It really put into perspective just why this manual was ranked uncommon—what likely amounted to a resource fit for a formation realm cultivator. He would have to let out only a little bit of pressure at a time, as not to die from the energetic backlash, but not so little as to make the breaths he took in cancel out the pressure he sought to release.

Jun decided to start with an exhale lasting for three full heartbeats.

PAIN.

A sharp pain assailed him, suddenly, and without warning—spreading its barbed tendrils through his veins like a fast-acting poison. It scoured his insides with each of its wicked teeth—feeling like a thousand hot knives digging into places he hadn’t even known he had. Experience was the only thing that saved him from falling apart then and there. All the same, he felt his blood turn cold when the storm in his gut shuddered ominously in response to his brief lapse in concentration.

What the hell?!!