As the day wound down, and the sun vanished behind the mountains, Booker had exhausted himself at last. A cultivator’s endurance was enormous – but the strain of cultivating would eventually wear it down.
Still… What a joy it is.
Living in this body now, is a blessing. I have incredible strength and everything feels effortless. And this is just the start…
His hearing was sharper, and could pick up minute sounds like the distant movement of animals and the calls of birds echoing through the forest canopy. His vision pierced straight into the heavens, and he could see the stars above beginning to fade in as the daylight gave way to night. In fact, he could see more stars than he ever could before, distant nebulae and planets glowing in a night sky that was suddenly full of countless silver points of light, and deep abyssal darknesses between them. Even the cold air felt somehow more potent against his skin, even as its actual power to chill and hurt him was vastly diminished.
Booker had been drifting in a haze of bliss, drunk on the power of a newborn cultivator.
But I have to keep this going. Just normal cultivation… well, that doesn’t get you much farther than the Mantis Sect. I’m probably not a million-to-one golden child who can just leap the heavens by themselves. Even with my medicinal abilities, I might not be able to reach beyond the first three stages the Sect understands…
So it’s time to use the practice token.
The book flipped open, revealing a deep blue bookmark engraved with a golden dragon.
“Alright, book. I need a cultivation technique that’s good for talisman-craft. Beyond that… I trust you. Do your thing.”
And he settled back, putting his hands behind his head as a pillow. Darkness began to gather at the edge of his vision, narrowing his world down to a single point of light – and when that point of light began to widen back out into colors, shapes, objects, the world around him was completely different.
— — —
He awoke in a new body, lifting himself off a straw bed to discover he was shorter, skinnier, and younger. Maybe twelve or thirteen. His head was shaved and he wore simple green robes, tied with a rope belt. A wooden talisman hung from the belt, bearing the words ‘Quiet Reflection’ – perhaps the name of a Sect or a motto.
All around him, other disciples of a similar age were rising from the beds, lining up to wash their faces in a basin and collect a single pill from a bowl beside it.
Booker joined the line, following the herd with his head down and his ears alert for detail on his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was how the others chattered and spoke excitedly, laughter loud in the air. It was a good feeling and very much unlike the dour atmosphere of the cripple’s barracks in the Sect, where everyone was on guard against everyone else, like wild dogs turned against each other. Here there was no sense of waiting for the axe to fall. There wasn’t even a sense there was an axe.
The second was that the floor below him was alive. There were no boards or slats, only a wooden surface formed by numerous roots tangling together. The walls were made the same way, uneven and organic, with living sprouts of green leaves and crawling aphids. Here and there Booker could see underlying stone, as if the place had been built conventionally then grown over with living roots.
As he shuffled towards the front of the line, someone slapped him on the back.
He turned to see a young girl with a shaved head, who grinned at him in a way that suggested, to Booker, that she was both familiar with his host and used to teasing him, “So brother Pinecone, is today the day you finally confess to sister Sky Lotus? I heard you muttering her name in your sleep.”
Frantically searching his host’s memories, Booker found a name to the face: Sister Redfeather. Pinecone – who, Booker winced to discover, was exactly the kind of quiet and timid soul who would choose to title themselves ‘Pinecone’ as their daoist name – only thought of her as a friend, but Booker had a dozen more years of experience to read the signs that Pinecone had missed.
Poor Pinecone. Chasing after a beauty who doesn’t know he exists, ignoring the treasure in front of him. Maybe if I think confident thoughts, he’ll awaken from this dream with some confidence of his own.
“Sister Redfeather, I need to spend some time in meditation today. But once I gather my courage… today for sure.” He said, trying to imitate Pinecone’s elusive way of speaking.
The memories were flooding in now.
Pinecone… was far from the loser he feared he was, in his heart of hearts. Actually, Pinecone probably had cultivation talent that far exceeded Booker’s own. If he was in the Mantis Sect, he’d put any golden child of theirs to the test, because even at twelve he had reached the third cultivation plateau.
But in this place, talents that would be one-in-ten-thousand among the Mantis were commonplace. This was the Heavenseed Orchard Sect – a magnificent and benevolent cult that drew disciples from a land so vast the entire valley that Booker had walked wouldn’t be a single drop in the sea of territories. Knowing that he was somewhere in the past, it was even possible that the valley he knew was a territory of the Heavenseed, but a small and remote one Pinecone had never heard about.
As he reached the front of the line, Booker washed his face and hands in warm water, which was magically purified by runes on the basin no matter how many people used it. Next, he took a pill from the bowl. It was scentless and plain but the book still identified it with no trouble:
Blank Heaven Sustenance Pill (Dull)
5% Potency // 0% Toxicity
Effect:
Condensed out of a cloud formation using formations of runes, this pill is extremely difficult to create yet serves an extremely simple function, staunching hunger and providing the body with nutrients.
Ingredients:
Cloud Essence
Wow. Alchemy without any ingredients beyond clouds… that’s something that exists at such a high level I can’t even hope to begin.
This Heavenseed Sect really favors asceticism and self-restraint. Instead of eating and harming any living thing, even the plants in a garden, they produce these pills by harvesting the faint cultivation energies in clouds. I suppose it’s a good deal if you’re not a cloud.
This was only one of the Sect’s many miracles. It had running water from an infinite source, and heat from another elemental engine. In terms of medicine, it practiced healing arts that made the Sect a site of holy relief that was sought out by the sick and ailing for tens of thousands of miles.
So it’s everything I think a Sect should be. When I get back to my time, I should find out what happened to it. Maybe it still exists, even.
It wasn’t impossible. The Sect had stood for millennia, although in that time it had experienced change after change, such that you had to question whether a ship with every part replaced was really the same ship. Only one thing had remained constant: the tree.
As Booker made his way out of the barracks, he emerged onto a circular balcony that ran in around the edges of an enormous courtyard. And growing from that courtyard, towering up into the sky, was a tree the size of a skyscraper covered in alabaster bark. Every scale and platelet of that bark was inscribed with golden runes, and far above the tree’s branches expanded out to cover the sky, blanketing the Sect and the city below in a green-tinged light as the sun’s rays fell through its sail-sized leaves.
It was breathtaking. Mists gathered around the tree, swirling with its slow respiration. The air sparkled with droplets of moisture and flowers grew around the trunk, lattices of ivy wreathing the white bark.
The Sect itself had a stately beauty, too. The balcony was ringed by a red fence to keep unwary disciples from plummeting off the edge, and these railings were decorated by hanging talismans, each imbued with the energy of a disciple’s prayers to the great tree. All along the inner walls, between the doors leading to barracks, training rooms, and alchemy halls, there were books. The smell of their leather and paper and ink perfumed the air.
In terms of contents the books covered everything: scrolls on herbal medicine, tomes on cultivation, and countless accounts of cultivators, continents, and monsters in the lands surrounding the Sect.
Booker was deeply glad he had the apprentice page in his pocket. This Sect was a treasure trove of books to borrow from, and he didn’t intend to go home without a prize technique…
Yeah, this is great. If I spend my ten hours studying a simple technique, then I can use the apprentice page to take home a more complex technique. I’m essentially getting two for one.
Turning to a librarian who was passing by with a handful of books, he bowed his head and asked, “Can elder brother please recommend me some books? I need appropriate techniques for talisman-crafting, and for becoming ambidextrous.”
To his surprise, the librarian bowed his head back. Damn… this is the kind of treatment I could get used to. After ten hours of this place, going back to the Mantis Sect might sting a little.
“Junior brother should examine the Inkwater Meditations Technique, located in the Sunflower Section, and the Diatribes of the Sun and Moon, located in the Nebula Section.” He said briefly, before adding, “but the Diatribes are notoriously unreliable. I’d suggest simply practicing with your left hand until it becomes stronger, little brother.”
Then he was gone, and Booker was left to wander…
His finger ran along the spines of countless books, reading off grandiose names that made him want to rip every single one off the shelves and devour the contents. This place is a treasure trove… Cultivators would kill to stand where I’m standing, and spend their whole lives reading these techniques. It’s enough to make me worry that ten hours will feel like a heartbeat.
Making his way down the shelves, he found the two scrolls he’d been recommended. But as he made his way into a reading room with lecterns and small, glowing stones to use as reading lights, he discovered his first problem:
Both scrolls were completely impenetrable.
They referenced inner palaces, spirit, and eidolons. Nothing he read was understandable, and everything was written in deep jargon…
Looks like I’ll have to begin a bit simpler.
Putting both scrolls under his arm, he made his way out and went to join his fellow junior disciples.
Along the balcony ring, there were large pavilions. Each one contained a black stone obelisk etched with golden writing and numerous meditation mats facing this pillar. These were where the Sect’s cultivation was learned by countless hopeful students – and it was totally unlike the Mantis Sect’s preconceptions of cultivation.
As he settled himself onto a jade prayer mat, feeling a faint energy rise from the spiritual stone into his body to help him find calm and center himself, he began to read the words inscribed on the pillar:
“To humankind three gifts are given: Awareness (soul), Ambition (energy), and Will (body). These are the three innate treasures, and cultivation is broadly the pursuit of expanding these treasures to seek immortal wisdom. This pursuit is as tall as the heavens, as wide as the earth, and as unfathomable as the sea. Anyone can pursue this path, but few can master it, as if the path itself was an enormous mountain, wide at the base and narrow at the top.”
“While many Sects devote themselves to ambition, we of the Heavenseed find the superior and outstanding nature of awareness to be evident by these facts: no cultivation can begin without awareness, and the Divine Will born of this innate awareness is what guides the energy and body. In energy cultivation for instance, one cannot begin the path until they first achieve the Prana Awareness State.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Prana Awareness…
It was exactly what Booker had discovered for himself and named simply the meditation state. While for the Mantis Sect this state was simply a component of cultivation, and had no distinct name outside of cultivation, for the Heavenseed Sect it was its own path – a path they claimed could exceed all forms of qi cultivation. This path began with the simplest techniques, so simple that Booker had stumbled upon at least one of them instinctively, and been taught another by Fen…
The meditation state – or Prana Awareness – and control of martial intent.
But it didn’t end there.
“There are three stages to the First Realm of Soul Cultivation. Divine Sense, Divine Hand, and Divine Domain. Divine Sense is achieved when you can not only sense the martial intent of other creatures through your spiritual senses, but sense physical details of the world, gaining a sight which exceeds sight.”
“This gift is best trained by first practicing at achieving an exceedingly pure awareness of all things around you, and then transfering that awareness onto a mental canvas, etching your mind with every detail you have noticed. When this mental picture becomes more accurate and true than your own senses, you will have achieved the first stage of Divine Sense, where you can use it via intensive study and meditation. Then, you will progress naturally to the stage where you can extend it as a pulse around you. Finally, through constant vigilance, this gift can reach its most advanced state and become a permanent field of awareness around you. The extent of this field will only continue to grow as you practice. After this point, the next fundamental achievement is Divine Hand.”
But as for what Divine Hand meant, this obelisk had no more information.
Instead, there was a poem beneath, a meandering description of light falling on mossy stones. Booker instinctively skimmed through until the text began on a new track.
“The fundamental fuel of all Soul Cultivation techniques is named spirit. One’s spirit is gained and regained through setting one’s thoughts in order, being clear of purpose, and experiencing the myriad sensations of life. While only an exceedingly thin wisp of spirit exists in most uncultivated beings, once expanded it is a potent force. The following technique is most suitable among the Heavenseed’s many techniques for beginners looking to develop their spirit, and is named Grove Palace Soul-Cultivation Mantra.”
“The basic goal of this technique is to construct a mental model of a palace in which all memories and mental gifts reside. Begin by envisioning a single room, working to carve every detail into your mind with perfect clarity. Be attentive to all small details, such as the grain and origin of the wooden timbers, and make these details permanent, recalling them the same way each time. When this room is as fixed and solid as a real place within your mind, open the door.”
“From the first door, envision a hallway of many doors. Behind each door, place a memory. Lay out the memories in a way that makes intuitive sense to you. When you can recall any memory you wish by visiting the appropriate door, you have achieved the first step of the Grove Palace Soul-Cultivation Mantra.”
Again, the segment terminated in a poem, this time about a stream tumbling over a cliff.
Booker’s eyes flitted to the bottom, but there was nothing more. That was the whole of the technique.
There has to be more to this…
His eyes returned to the top, and he looked again at the poetry. This time he took the care to read each word, thinking about the meaning. While his worse instincts ached to break free of this chore, to explore the library, to gobble cultivation techniques like candy… He forced himself to sit still and truly meditate on the poem. After all, if it’s here among the Sect’s most vital techniques, it must have a meaning.
As he read through for the second time, something began to change. The way the words were sequenced, the lilt and cadence of their shapes, even the way the characters had been etched into the stone began to permeate his mind. It was like the poem was a spiral he was descending down, and his mouth began to murmur the words softly and silently as he allowed his mental vision to shift, taking on the scene depicted by the poem.
He stood in a grove of ancient trees, long ago petrified by time. Their stony branches held nothing but streamers of lichen now, but as the sun shone through their skeletal arms, it struck against stones rich with furred green moss, where aphids and small insects roamed. The way the sun ebbed and flowed, dimming as clouds passed before it, and the way the forest itself was a mass of shadows, uncertain and dangerous…
The stones resembled vast coins cast down by a giant hand, their false-gold turned green with age.
The thin water that pooled between them flickered with the motion of little insects.
He breathed in and truly tasted the deep scent of a distant storm, and in breathing, he realized his mouth was still murmuring the words.
With that realization, Booker snapped out of the vision and the trance it had induced. He looked up nervously to the light coming through the tree’s branches, and around him to the other disciples. It was later. Much later. Entire hours had passed, and most of the students had drifted away, leaving only those who had sunken into the illusionary forest of the poem.
Climbing to his feet, Booker grinned. This is the real technique. The words before… they explained what to do, what the destination is. But this is the road you walk to get there. These poems induce a kind of hypnotized state. And when my eyes opened… it felt like my spirit had been expanded.
Huh. And for me, this is a mental world within a mental world.
I wonder how far down you could go?
Standing up, he caught sight of a librarian moving through the shelves. “Elder brother, I was wondering if you could tell me about the origin of the poems on the obelisk?” He asked.
“Ah?” For a moment the woman’s face was curiously blank, and then she said, “We have a book on the subject. This way little brother.”
She led him into a reading room, which Booker was already beginning to sense wasn’t quite right. There were no books within besides the ones left on lecterns. And there were no people about either, leaving only the glowing stones that provided light to read by…
But he couldn’t have been prepared for her to turn around suddenly, face distorted with fury. Her hand lashed out for his throat, and while Booker tried to lurch back and evade, his body was soft and weak. Pinecone had not lived a life of martial training, and his body’s response to Booker’s instructions was to trip one foot over the other and fall on its ass.
She grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off the ground and shoving him against the wall. The crush of her fingers was inhumanly strong. It squeezed his breath to nothing, bruising his throat down to a narrow point where no air could pass through, only bubbles of compacted spit. Pressure pushed on the back of his eyes until they felt like they would bulge out of his face. This… This is still a dream, right? None of this should matter beyond whether I can spend the full ten hours… So why do I feel such a sense of threat?
He swung out a palm-strike, acting with a strange inadvertent strength – As a third-stage cultivator Pinecone was much stronger than Booker, but he had little in the way of control, and even Booker’s understanding of fundamentals couldn’t fully accommodate for the lack of muscle memory.
With a casual sneer she caught his hand. There was a sudden twist, and Booker felt the bone of his arm dislocated, break at the middle, and rip up through the skin. It was an oddly cold sensation – more shock than pain at first. But the pain was on its way.
His world was beginning to lose focus, but Booker pushed through and lifted his other arm. She slammed it against the wall, casually crushing his fingers with a vice-like grip, squeezing until they were breaking free of their knuckles. And with that, the pain was there. It surged over him, more than anything young Pinecone had ever encountered.
But not worse than what Booker had faced. He remained conscious, barely, although tears streamed down his face.
She lifted a hand to her eye, digging her fingers down between the jelly and the socket to pull out – a writhing silver maggot.
What– How did it follow me here!?
She reached out, the maggot coming closer and closer to his eye.
But as his hand dropped back down, broken at the wrist, he forced the mangled fingers to move as much as he could.
Dialyze!
The water disk formed, and with a single functioning finger, he directed it towards her throat. The disk spun in a lazy arc.
And lopped her head off entirely.
Booker dropped free, sliding down the wall as her body flopped forward onto him, blood splashing down his robes. Maggots swarmed over the woman’s collapsing body, stripping flesh from bone. Booker tried desperately to swat them away, to fight his way free of the swarm and crawl out from under the dissolving corpse. But…
Pinecone had lived a soft life. His body wasn’t ready to withstand this brutality. He took one good, desperate gasp of air – and unconsciousness claimed him.
As Booker screamed internally, feeling his host body failing all around him, maggots poured over him. He felt something squirm against his eye and start to slip inside.
No, I absolutely can’t allow this thing to corrupt me.
FURNACE!
With the last of his will, Booker lit his entire body aflame.
— — —
Booker blinked Pinecone’s eyes open, seeing green branches above him. But although the Sect around him was every bit realistic and detailed…
He somehow knew he was within a dream.
Leaves shook from the branches above, drifting down around him. A voice spoke: “You have been followed by an ancient and very dangerous foe. I was able to examine the demon’s mind while it fled, learning much of you and your enemy.”
Climbing to his feet, Booker said, “I seem to be good at making enemies. This one… it really wants me dead. And I didn’t predict it could follow me here, so… my apologies.”
“There is no need.” The tree replied, its voice bringing forth a gale that howled down the branches and stirred at his robes. “This place is only an echo of our shared past – no harm can be done to me through it. The only benefit or disaster from this encounter will be yours alone. When you depart, the portion of me that exists in your present day, be it my own continued body or a reincarnation, will blink aside a sudden recollection of a strange and half-forgotten dream. Maybe they will have a vague feeling of having known you, should we meet again on the wheel of reincarnation.”
So that’s the way this works. Not quite the past, but real enough for the people here to be effected in the modern day.
“I believe I was sent here to learn from you.” Booker said slowly. “I don’t know what happened to your Heavenseed Sect in my time, if they’re all long since gone or simply so far away I’ve never heard the name, but…” He bowed his head. “I have been looking for a place like this and a cultivator like you. Somewhere that protects and nourishes the people it relies on. Someone who made themselves a pillar to hold up the rest. If there’s any way you could give me something of this place to bring back home with me, I would be forever grateful.”
“I will answer this wish, but you must understand my reasons are selfish. The demon had never even heard of my Heavenseed Sect. This does necessarily not mean we have perished, but I fear we likely have. Our ambitions would have long ago reached the Mountain-Gate World otherwise.” The tree said slowly. “Make no mistake. From the highest heavens down, all is in conflict. That good or evil have presently won does not represent any universal truth whatsoever, only that they have won for now. Cultivators regularly overturn all orders when seen from the highest scale, and no truth reigns absolute for long. I have always accepted that my life would end in fire and so would my Sect. We stood tall regardless. And in this moment and our crossing of paths, I can impart upon you some echo of my Sect, which I hope will take root and flourish in your time and place. Are you willing to share this knowledge?”
“With anyone I can.” Booker promised. “It may be difficult, as I cannot reveal the source of this vision… but soul techniques are totally unknown in my time. Even if I only share what’s possible for one person to have invented or discovered, these techniques will be unrivaled.”
“Then I will give you a gift and a seed to grow. The poems of my creator.” The mist around his feet billowed back. “She possessed a book similar to your own, but containing the knowledge of spirit gardening. With it she brought forth many seeds into living beings such as myself, although she would not live to see her philosophies flourish. This is the simplest form of her technique.”
As Booker watched, golden runes swirled down the tree’s trunk. As they did, the runes broke free and drifted through the air, landing in his outstretched palm and forming a golden sphere the size of a marble – with each rune that was pulled into the sphere, Booker caught a scrap of poetry that brightened his mind with a faint music.
“If I may ask…” His mind was swimming with phantom images, beautiful scenes of quiet solitude, but Booker fought to remain conscious of the moment. “What became of that book?”
“It was lost with her death, in a distant land. But I still feel a faint connection to it… If you find what remains of me in your own time, I will guide you…”
The dream broke apart. Darkness followed.
And in that darkness, there were beautiful, melodic dreams, that fled away from Booker’s attempts to recall them in the light of day.
— — —
The taste of bitter medicine clung to his tongue.
When Booker opened Pinecone’s eyes, he was looking up into Redfeather’s face. She was shaking him in a panic, tears running down her face. “Pinecone! Wake up!”
He startled up, and she gasped, hugging him close.
Ahhh… It’s awkward to be in the middle of this… Booker winced internally. Poor Pinecone. Buddy, if you remember any of this? Remember to show this girl some love.
All around them were cultivators looking on in concern. Redfeather blushed and let go, remembering herself.
“What happened?” A man demanded, running two fingers through his pointed white beard. “A librarian is dead, and no trace of her body remains. You were surrounded by scorch marks, but unharmed.”
“He didn’t do it!” Redfeather insisted, although she couldn’t have known what the ‘it’ he didn’t do was.
“I’ll explain as soon as I get my breath back.” Booker conceded. “Did you find any scroll nearby?”
“One was burned to nothing. The other survives, but it’s quite an ordinary scroll…” The man said doubtfully. Behind him, the world was beginning to fade out of view. Everything was dissolving to a white blankness, and that void ate its way through the walls, expanding like fire burning through paper.
“May I see it?” Booker’s voice was urgent.
Reluctantly, the man handed him a scroll – nobody seemed to notice that the world was collapsing. They were oblivious even as the blank void devoured them. Hands shaking, Booker unrolled the scroll. Blood splatters obscured much of the writing, but he was confident that wouldn’t matter. Instead what he was concerned with was…
Which one is it? The talisman scroll, or the diatribes?
I’d prefer the talisman scroll, but in the end anything I can get is a gift.
As he read the name, Booker sighed. It was the Diatribes of Sun and Moon, a complete unknown. Truthfully, he had no idea what the technique was. But if it was here…
It has to have some merit.
Book!
The green book flipped open to a blank page, and as he concentrated, the words of the scroll began to write themselves across the empty space.
“What’s going on?” The cultivator demanded. “I don’t mean to frighten you, but this is a serious matter! The sooner you can tell us what you saw…”
“It’s simple.” Booker said. “This is all a dream.” The final word appeared in his book, and he dropped the scroll. It fell into the void and vanished. Nothing remained but a small spotlight, encompassing him, Redfeather, and half of the man. Without the cultivator noticing, much of his body was already gone, leaving his face floating decapitated in the air. His jaws moved but the sound was distant like a faded record.
Before he closed his eyes and waited for the world to vanish, Booker looked to Redfeather.
“If you happen to remember any of this when you wake up… You should tell him.” He said. His voice was no longer Pinecone’s. “I mean, I’ve been in his head. He’s not going to figure it out.”