After the explanation, Joseph was ready to start. Mo Li Bei instructed him.

“Sit down in a lotus position. Yes, like that. Close your eyes and relax your body and focus on your breath. Breath in, then out.”

Joseph followed the instructions. His body felt initially heavy, but as soon as he started taking breaths in a conscious manner, his muscles started to untangle and limber. The previous exercise hadn’t been particularly strenuous, but it had elevated his heart rate. Now he was slowing down again, losing himself.

“You already know how your meridians feel. Now that they are full of essence, it will be harder to get the same kind of sense, since you can only feel them with your Qi. And since essence is the physical manifestation of Qi, the foreign essence in your meridians will stop your Qi from moving through. Your meridians are not yours right now. You need to reconquer them. But your lungs are free from impurities.

“Inhale the Qi of the world, and hold it in your lungs, making it yours.”

Joseph tried to feel anything when he inhaled. But it was just air. He tried to wait a few seconds before exhaling, but he couldn’t feel any kind of difference.

“Do not force it. The Qi is everywhere. There is no need to try and attract it. It is already with you. Let it come naturally.”

He tried to relax his shoulders and refocus on the exercise. Sitting still was hard for him. So far, his advancements had been through doing, not the absence of doing. He had forced his body to be cleansed in a grueling manner. He had slain a beast to get his meridians aspected. He hadn’t stood still. He had been moving.

Still, he continued. His foot itched. Was there a tiny bug on his arm? Or was it the wind? He wondered where the quiet sounds of thwacking were coming from. Was someone training somewhere else? He tried to refocus.

Minutes later, he gave up. This wasn’t working for him. He was a man of the twenty-first century. Sitting down and being completely still was anathema to his lifestyle all these years so far. The quiet was painful. He was used to something happening, some form of entertainment, any kind of external stimuli. Even in the basin, he had kept himself busy with crafts, the squirrels, eating. There was always something to do.

And now he was supposed to just sit down and keep himself focused on something that was so foreign to him? He could accept that Qi was real. Joseph had felt the slightest slivers previously and he’d seen other cultivators like Elder Te Hao vanish. He knew that it wasn’t something made up like astrology or healing crystals.

But it was still strange to him. He stood up in frustration.

“This isn’t working. How am I supposed to sit still for that long?”

“Brat, what are you saying? You gave up after minutes. What kind of weak-ass cultivator are you? The way to immortality is anything but easy. You think this is hard? I meditated for months on end without a break to get the slightest edge.”

“But why the stillness? I can accept the whole meditation part. But I struggle with the stillness. There is nothing for my mind to do! How am I supposed to concentrate on my breathing when it is so boring?”

Mo Li Bei just looked at him with disgust. “Back in my day, we were beaten whenever we slipped in concentration. We sat in rows, hours on end, with a senior cultivator walking in between. Open your eyes or scratch your nose? Bamboo stick on the head. And you want to tell me you can’t stay still for a few minutes? You are a failure of a cultivator.”

The ghostly head of the old alchemist vanished.

Joseph was frustrated. He’d need to learn quickly, or else he’d fail. But he knew he wasn’t in the right mindset for the moment. He decided to put the meditation off, focusing on other things first. Mainly, he’d need a meeting with Elder Te Hao. After all, he had an open quest he’d need to finish before he entered the death pyramid.

---

The hardest part had been to find the entrance again. He didn’t know which courtyard it had been, but after asking the servants and multiple tries, he was finally standing in front of the hole again. The flowers had been uprooted and replaced, but the rest of the garden was the same. The same carefully arranged streams snaking between islands of flowers and other beautiful plants.

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This time he had brought a rope. It was an absurd thing, at least two hundred meters long and thin like cable, but the servants had insisted it would hold him. He fixed one end to a nearby tree. Then he let himself down into the dark.

With proper padded clothing and a rope that would allow him to climb back up quickly, the whole affair was a lot easier than before. The ground was still slippery, but going down was faster than going up.

He felt like he was on a water slide as he slowly made his way down, losing meter after meter of rope behind him. While it turned out that the rope wasn’t enough for the entire distance, it ended about three quarters of the way, which would allow him to climb back up quickly.

When he finally made his way out of the tunnel and into the light of the basin, it was as if he had lost a huge weight. Even if it had only been a few days ago, it had been a much simpler time. All he’d worried was the dumb snake and his next meal. Now he was forced to enter some kind of murder dungeon and marry the equivalent of a cultivation princess.

He strolled through the forest. It still had the same kind of liveliness, missing larger natural predators. Trees were whispering in the wind. Insects were buzzing around, pollinating flowers.

It didn’t take long until he was spotted by one of the white squirrels. It still wore one of the nutshell hats, and as an homage, he wore his too.

Its eyes became giant plates as soon as they fell on him. It excitedly ran up to him, then started to pull at his pants.

“You want me to follow?”

The squirrel nodded.

Joseph was led through the woods. They soon arrived at a clearing close to the lake. It had changed a lot. The squirrels had been busy.

The trees were filled with dreys, the small round houses built by squirrels. But instead of random arrangements of sticks forming a roughly ball shaped object that the squirrel used to sleep, these were artful.

The randomness had been replaced with an artful architectural vision that could only be explained as Frank Gehry, but a squirrel. Walls swung in artful wave patterns, crashing into each other and integrating naturally into the existing structure of the trees. The sticks had been filed down to form proper flat surfaces and stacked so close that the houses looked like proper buildings. Instead of nails, the squirrels had connected everything using twine, forming complex rope arrangements like spiderwebs between domiciles.

The entire area was filled with squirrels. Some on the ground were performing katas, coordinated martial dances they executed with their bamboo spears. In the trees, they were running the ropes with perfect balance, getting from house to house, relaxing on porches like old men enjoying their retirement or worked on various tools like industrious little artisans.

They used knapped stones to flatten bamboo, sharpen spears and open nuts. Some squirrels were even grinding leaves, flowers and similar plant matter into a fine dust, creating what looked like basic alchemical salves.

Apparently, he had started a whole cultural and scientific revolution.

A small congregation of squirrels was coming up to him. In front was the squirrel with the scar, who Joseph had named Tiny. He wore something approaching a green robe and had his hands crossed behind his back. His nut helmet was richly decorated with paintings of flowers, suns and other nature motifs.

The squirrels bowed to Joseph.

“Welcome back, Master Jo. I greet you as an Elder of the Bamboo Spear Clan. I hope you had luck finding your brethren outside the basin.”

“Oh yeah. They were actually kind of right at the exit of the tunnel? You could’ve just told me that it ended in a garden. Also, the route is very slippery. I don’t know if you could even make your way up. I installed a rope, so it should be easier to climb now, but it ends right in a garden owned by my sect master, so you should be careful.”

“That is good to know. The emergency tunnel has not been used in a long time now, so we did not know if anything had changed on the outside. We have focused on developing our strength instead, as you can see.”

Joseph was impressed. He had shown the squirrels nothing more than a few exercises and how to use a spear. Either they were really fast learners or the advancement of Tiny and the other elite squirrels to the Dantian Cleansing Realm had made a vast difference in their approach to society and culture.

He fell into the role of the foreign master that the squirrels would expect.

“A lot seems to have changed in my absence. I hadn’t planned to come back that quickly, but a recent situation has forced my hand.”

“Come, Master Yo. Let us discuss these issues over nuts.”

The squirrels lead him to a seating area a few meters away. To call it a seating area was a slight misnomer. It was a flat stone that the squirrels had placed a few nuts on and one of his old cups that he’d left behind.

Tiny hopped onto the stone and snatched a nut for himself, while Joseph sat down next to it. Absentmindedly, he grabbed a nut, too.

“I am planning to participate in an event that promises great fortune for those who are ready to fight for it.” He tried to frame the situation in a rather positive light instead of stating that he was scared shitless about dying in some kind of death maze. “My preparations have gone well so far, but I need your help with one step.”

“An opportunity? Is there any possibility for some of our clan to participate too? My sons are growing restless and this might be the perfect chance for them to sharpen their claws.”

“It should be possible. If they are willing, they might help me with my current challenge.”

“What is it that you, the great slayer of the serpent, can’t do alone?”

Joseph smirked. He wished he had sunglasses right now.

“A job. I’m putting together a crew.”