Chin sat opposite of me, legs crossed and arms together. There was a small wooden platter with two cups of tea and warm buttered bread, courtesy of Medin Chin. We were sat on top of a small hill a mile or two outside of the village.
It was a bunch of hustle and bustle out there. During this rainy season, approximately a hundred thousand merchants would tread through the village over the next few weeks. That was one of the reasons Chin was so obsessed with farming. He not only had to feed the village but also all the tradesmen who’d come through once a year. It was the only external economic investment this place ever got, and it was inarguably the most important part of the year.
Millions of merchants crossed the Great Desert Strip every year, and few had to time it for the rainy season, but to those small merchant clans that did have to travel through this method, this oasis was their main resting point. They were mainly mortal traders, traversing on huge spirit beasts that could cover hundreds of miles in a day, but there were the occasional cultivators who chose to stop by as well. Either way, this was the busiest time of year for the town, filled with strangers and eager merchants.
And Chin hated that. He was always there, of course, managing and watching as things went on, but he hated the influx of people and change that came through the place. I can’t say I blamed him either. I’d caught a few egotistical cultivators trying to run off with a village boy and maiden or two over the years. I’d stopped it of course, but still, wasn’t the best experience for those young boys and girls, no matter how early I interfered.
Either way, nothing to worry about this year, at least not for villagers. I told the girls to keep an eye on the villagers, and the array would also watch over them as well.
And Chin, well Chin clearly didn’t want to be here. He was frowning, more than usual. It was a perpetual curve of sadness on his old face.
“Aren’t you excited?” I asked. “Cultivation, mystic magic martial arts to master both the heavens and the earth with. You going to learn about the secrets of the existence-”
“Get on with it,” Chin grumbled, taking an angry bite of his bread.
I sipped on my tea.
“Okay Chin, to understand cultivation, you first have to understand existence itself.”
Chin’s frown deepened.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Chin shrugged.
“Do you find learning about the secrets of existence boring?” I asked.
“No,” Chin replied. “Just useless.”
“You can do so much with this information, create, destroy, fight, protect. You can understand reality and everything that composes it.”
Chin's facial expression didn’t change, and he seemed to slouch in place with an uncaring expression.
“You can surpass death!” I added.
Chin shrugged again.
“You can also farm much more efficiently,” I finished.
“I have you for that,” he replied.
Now it was my turn to frown.
“You can learn more about farming, more than you ever knew before.”
At this point, Chin’s scowl turned into a slightly upset face, which was about as close to a smile as Chin could give, and his back straightened up in attention. His hands clasped together and interlocked.
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“Well, let’s get on with it then.”
This guy. I sighed.
“Okay. First thing to know, everything is Qi. Understand?”
Chin nodded.
“You, me, the ground, even empty space is made of Qi?”
“Empty space?” Chin asked.
I nodded.
“But empty space is nothing.”
“No empty space is empty space,” I replied.
“Explain.”
I grabbed a pebble and put it on the ground.
“What’s here?” I asked pointing to the pebble.
“A pebble,” Chin replied.
I picked up the pebble and asked again.
“Now what’s here?”
“Nothing, just the ground.”
“So there is something there then?”
Chin stared at the ground for a moment.
“Are you saying space is like the ground?”
“In a way,” I replied. “Space is a place that allows for things to exist. The ground stops the pebble from just falling through, and space stops us from vanishing into the void.”
“The void?”
“True nothingness.”
Chin looked at me and frowned.
“When you plant your crops, can you just throw the seeds on the ground and expect them to grow?” I asked.
“Depends on the seeds,” he replied. “But no, generally not. You’ve got to till the land and make sure everything is properly irrigated. Then you’ve got to keep an eye on them for bugs or insects as they grow-”
He stopped talking and looked back on the ground in wonder. He stared at the pebble then the ground, then the pebble again, and then nodded.
“I see,” he finally mumbled. “So ‘empty space’ is something constructed out of qi?”
“Yup.”
“What exactly is that?”
“Well, that’s where things get complicated, but I guess I can give you an explanation.”
I drew a circle on the ground and threw in a few more pebbles of different shapes and variants.
“Just like how you have to till the ground and water your crops, empty space also has rules and behaviors it must follow.”
I snapped my fingers and the pebbles started to float.
“You need things like gravity to keep objects together, otherwise they’ll fall apart. You know what gravity is?” I said to Chin.
“Things go down?” He inferred.
“Sort of,” I nodded. “But basically things attract other things. Every realm has it’s own version of it, though the rules and specifics can differ from realm to realm. Things attract things. The bigger things are the more things they attract.”
The stones started to dissipate and dissolve into shiny star-like dust. I snapped my fingers again and the pebbles reformed and settled back down into place.
“Basically, qi is the most basic form of everything, but it builds on itself. You need lower laws to build higher laws. You need things like gravity, time, and space in order to have things like fire, earth, and life.”
“And all of these things are made out of qi?” Chin asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“But then. Where does the qi come from?” He asked.
“Well that’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“You don’t know?” He asked.
“Yes and no,” I answered. “Living things make qi and that includes certain higher realms-”
“Realms, as in worlds?”
I nodded.
“Worlds can live?” He asked incredulously.
“Yeap,” I replied.
Chin stared at the ground in bewilderment.
“How?”
“Well, they’re sort of like cosmic plants, except they don’t need anything else except for some small bits of qi and law at their beginning. There are also certain orders that go around planting universes throughout the multiverse, but that’s a whole separate thing.”
“Strange,” Chin commented. “Are they farming the universes?”
“In a sense, but we are not going to talk about that today. Let’s get back to humans for now.”
Chin nodded, but there was a gleam in his eye that told me he wouldn’t let the subject go. I pushed forward nonetheless.
“Now living things create qi. That is the most accepted definition of living in most realms.”
“Most re-”
“We’re not talking about it,” I cut in. “If I keep explaining every errant detail we’d be out here for thirty years and your crops would wither.”
Chin nodded.
“Now, like I said living things create qi, but living things also consume qi as well.”
“Food,” Chin said with a hint of pride.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Not food. Food feeds the physical mechanism. It gives you physical energy, not qi. The qi most living beings consume is the qi that they are born with. Their ‘innate qi’ and that’s what determines lifespan.”
“And cultivators make more of this innate qi?”
“Kind of,” I replied. “Everyone is always making this innate qi, but the problem is they’re not making the qi at the same rate they’re consuming it.”
“The crops can’t feed all the people,” Chin mumbled.
“Yeah, you’re always making innate qi but you’re also always using innate qi, but you’re using more than you’re making, and eventually you will run out. Cultivators increase both their innate qi consumption and their innate qi creation, and they achieve immortality when they can produce as much innate qi as they consume.”
Chin nodded while stroking his beard.
“So it’s like farming,” he replied.
“In a way,” I sighed.
“Well then,” Chin said after a moment of thought. “Let’s get farming.”