Tui crawled out of the stream feeling much better than when he crawled in. His skin was soft and wrinkly after so much time in the water, but at least it was clean.
He was surprised that it was still so early in the day. It felt like an eternity since he'd rolled out of bed. A breadfruit lay where he had tucked it next to the fire, and Tui was famished. He sat on a log and rested as he ate it. Roasted breadfruit tasted so much better!
Tui had been wearing his robes during the eruption of stink, and now he wasn’t sure if they were salvageable. Everything that had been touching his skin was coated in black goop. He didn’t have any soap. All he could do was swish the cloth in the water and beat it on a rock until all the nastiness was gone.
The robe was too far gone to wear, so he resorted to cutting a loincloth from the least gross part of the cloth. He laid the rest of the robe on a rock, hoping that some time in the sun would have a cleansing effect.
A violent tremor shook his whole body, clearly a reaction to the ordeal. He hoped it would go away soon. Aside from that, he felt that he had recovered from his ordeal.
The Empire had been very tight-lipped around any details regarding spiritual cultivation. Still, it wasn't hard to determine that he had advanced his cultivation. His dantian had completely changed. He now had a great, glowing, ball of fire instead of a collection of sparks.
He felt no desire to play around with his fiery qi. That could wait for another day when he was no longer trembling like a newborn lamb.
His body almost felt like it belonged to someone else. The soles of his feet had toughened after days without shoes but were now as soft as a newborn’s. It hurt to walk.
The bruise on his hip was gone. It was as if he'd never encountered the angry pig. Even all the usual sore spots and twinges common for a middle-aged man were gone. His knee no longer popped when he bent it. His habitually sore ankle had a full range of motion. He felt like he was 17 again! What a feeling!
He had only been on the island for a handful of days and had accomplished something he never expected to achieve in his lifetime. Even among The People, not many advanced beyond the novice stage of cultivation. He was probably one of a few thousand in the world to reach this level.
Tui went to the beach. He hoped a walk would settle him down. The ocean was a startlingly clear blue, and the waves played like puppies on the beach. The smell of salt in the air reminded him of his childhood home. The peace was a balm for his soul.
Any dreams of returning to his old life as a bureaucrat were ash now. If the Imperial authorities discovered someone with advanced cultivation not belonging to The People, they would hunt him down and snuff him out. They did not tolerate competition. They would see him as a threat.
Tui found himself unphased by this. The thought of returning to his old life no longer attracted him. The cultivation level was only the last straw. He was not going back.
In a way, it was liberating. He could not return home, but he was free to go everywhere else! He felt like he was continuing the tradition of his tribe, exploring the world.
He walked along the beach looking for a particular tree. It needed to be tall, straight, and near the water. He walked for an hour before he found a stand of teak trees. One of the teaks was a giant, towering eighty feet into the air. This was the one.
At the base of the tree, he started a little fire with his firesticks. He encircled the tree with firewood and worked carefully to prevent the flames from traveling up the trunk.
As the base of the teak tree burned, Tui swam in the surf. His reborn body felt so strong and light that he felt compelled to play in the water, swimming and frolicking in the waves.
The restful day was entirely soothing for his shattered nerves. When he left the teak tree, he carefully extinguished the fire, estimating he would need about three more burns to get through the entire trunk.
Back at the camp, Tui regarded the remaining breadfruit in the trees. He needed to find an alternate food source soon. It would be a month or two before the buried breadfruit was fermented and ready to eat, and he only had about a week's worth of breadfruit remaining on the tree.
That night he slept in his waterproof shelter, feeling delightfully tired from his exertions. He was fully recovered from the explosion in his dantian. Even the tremors had stopped.
It did not rain that night.
Morning dawned and Tui retrieved the crystal from the sadly depleting waterfall. He entered a deep state of meditation and examined the ball of red flame in his dantian. The energy in the qi was on a completely different level than the sparks had been.
Tui gathered some essence from the crystal and fed it to the flame. It did not seem to have much impact at all. He streamed all the remaining energy from the crystal into the flame. In the end, the flame might have been a tiny bit brighter? Tui wasn’t sure.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He could not move the fire in the same way as he had the sparks. He couldn’t pinch some flame off and carry it around. It did not separate into chunks. It did not bead up on a thread. He did not know how to use this qi at all.
He knew it had to be possible. He had witnessed cultivators with advanced qi abilities doing amazing things like flying on swords. This flame was so tricky to figure out. It was almost funny, he had advanced his cultivation level, but lost the ability to use it.
Tui spent half the morning trying different approaches to bring qi into his meridians, but it was no use. Rather than let himself get increasingly frustrated, he stopped for the day. He ate breakfast and walked to the teak tree to continue working on bringing it down.
Three days passed in this manner. The breadfruit became sparse, with only a handful remaining on the trees. To round out his diet, Tui ate more fish and started eating coconuts.
The waterfall diminished to a trickle. It still delivered some essence to the trap, but it was a pitiable amount compared to what it had been giving.
There was plenty of work to do. He trimmed a large pile of green branches from a hibiscus bush and soaked them in the stream, weighing them down with rocks. The running water was important. He didn’t want the branches to rot, just the bark to soften.
The teak tree was taking longer than he expected. Firewood was not abundant, and it was a pain keeping the fire burning at the base of the tree.
It was also a pain that he could no longer use his meridians. It made such a difference to have mental clarity, enhanced perceptions, or strength available whenever he needed it.
Every morning Tui collected the essence from the trap and added it to his dantian. Then he meditated and tried different ways to bring qi to his meridians.
On the fourth day, Tui was stumped. He sat in lotus position, meditating, simmering. He was so frustrated with trying and failing to move his qi.
Aside from the lack of qi manipulation, having an advanced cultivation level was wonderful. A small cut healed in minutes. Sunburn was a problem of the past. It was only when it came to using his meridians that the higher cultivation became an issue.
The smoothest, most used conduit belonged to the fifth meridian, at the base of his skull. Today, Tui's approach was to run a thin thread from the flame to his meridian, trying to guide the flame. The flame followed the thread for a short way, then stopped.
He tried a thicker thread, willing the flame to move further, but the flame retreated slightly.
Tui pictured his spiritual sense as a thick rod running from his dantian to the meridian. The flame retreated back into a perfect ball of flame in the center of his dantian. It completely ignored the spiritual shape.
Tui felt a wave of frustration. He had tried over and over to move the flame. The flame completely disregarded his attempts.
He caught a glimmer of an idea, something he had not tried before. He approached the rod from the flame end and pushed a hole into it. He pushed all the way to the meridian in one smooth movement. The flame was drawn steadily along behind the deepening hole. It followed the push all the way through and into the meridian. The flame gushed out into the meridian, flooding it with qi.
Tui had always loved engaging his mental qi abilities. The clarity and visualization it gave his thoughts allowed him to picture problems and apply creative and simple solutions. When the qi hit his meridian, it felt the same as it always had. Except more.
It felt like a bright light was shed on his mental process, like he had been looking at the world through a filthy window that suddenly was wiped clean. Tui had never experienced such clarity of thought. It was wonderful.
Tui’s eyes sprang open, jubilant that he had solved the puzzle. At last, he was able to use his qi!
As his concentration wavered, the difficulty in maintaining the tube shape increased slightly. This was something he would need to practice.
He let go of the tube to his fifth meridian and tried to draw a new tube to the third meridian at his heart. This conduit was not as refined as the previous one, and he was unable to draw it out smoothly. The moment the tube began moving erratically, the flame collapsed and fell back into his dantian.
Tui wished he had spent more time smoothing the pathways with sparks. It was much harder to draw a tube along the conduit than to bring sparks. However, the principle remained the same. The more convoluted the path, the greater the difficulty to activate the meridian.
He played with his new qi process until hunger drove him to find food. Using a sharp stake in the ground, Tui stripped the tough hull off a green coconut, exposing the brittle shell of the nut. He poked his knife into one of the three eyes on the nut and drank the flavorsome water within. Then he cracked it open and feasted on the tender, rich meat of the coconut itself.
Sometimes letting go of a problem and focusing on something else allowed his mind to work unconsciously. Halfway through eating his mid-morning snack, he had an epiphany.
Tui dropped into meditation and smoothly drew a tube of fire into his fifth meridian. Instantly, his focus sharpened, and his visualization abilities improved.
Tui visualized the pathway to his third meridian, seeing the conduit with all its twists and turns. Concentrating heavily, he drew a second tube from his dantian. He brought it through the conduit, focusing on being smooth and deliberate. Doing this with his mental abilities engaged was much easier.
He managed to activate the heart meridian on his third try. Raw, brutal strength flooded into his body, and heat flared from his skin. It was way beyond what he was granted from the sparks. He wanted to break something, to smash. It was an intoxicating rush.
He leaped to his feet, ready to run and try out his new strength, but it wavered. It required far more concentration to maintain two spiritual pipelines simultaneously. He had to focus and move deliberately to avoid accidentally deactivating his meridians.
He grabbed a coconut from the pile and dug his fingers into the hull. Without even a grunt of effort, he ripped the hull off the nut inside. This was strength, this was power!
Over time, Tui noticed that his ability to concentrate began to diminish. The new form of qi was so much more intense than the sparks, but it was hard work to maintain it.
He noticed an important difference in the consumption of qi. Before, the sparks of qi would be consumed as he activated a meridian. He had not noticed any sign that the flame was diminishing. It seemed like the fiery qi cycled back to his dantian instead of disappearing after being used.
The pipelines to his meridians collapsed along with his concentration. His mind felt sluggish and weary, weakened from prolonged strain. He felt tired, but Tui’s heart was joyful. He was back on the path to thriving!