“Hey junior brother Little Snake, can you bring me a mat?”

There was a pause before Little Snake dropped down, carrying a rolled straw mat.

The cultivator glanced up to the announcer, who nodded. “Alright. Three hits, with the mat. No aiming anywhere else.” The cultivator rolled his neck.

Booker swallowed down the Iron Hell Crucible Pill as the world erupted into a gambler’s frenzy.

“Three hits! If the cripple is still standing, he wins! Three-to-one odds against the cripple!” The announcer cried out, as money changed hands at a furious pace. The crowd was pushing up against the edge of the VIP area, calling out bets, their roar filling the midnight air.

Three blows…

The pill was erupting into a fiery strength that poured through his frame. He felt himself coming alive after the last fight, focus returning to his mind, the vague edges coming off his vision. A full revitalization.

“Let my bet ride.” He called out. “One hundred on the fight.”

The announcer nodded.

Already, the stomp and beat of the crowd’s feet against the floor was forming a rhythm. A war drum sound. He smelled blood and felt sweat beading down his face, dragging heavy trails as it moved. The night’s cold air felt fantastic on his burning skin.

His opponent’s face was covered by a strange disbelief; he wasn’t sure if Booker was crazy, or worse, if there was something he didn’t understand going on.

Taking the mat, Booker squared up. His feet set and he balanced out his stance, trying to make himself unmoveable. Whatever’s coming next, I just need to roll with it. A human can survive being hit by a car. I can survive this. I can survive this.

The cultivator drew back his fist–

Booker exhaled—

The blow slammed into his chest through the mat. His feet skidded back against the smooth stone, and his muscles locked in place under the pressure. Even through the mat, he felt the bones of his arm shake and the muscles bruise, felt the impact lift him.

“Hhhaaa…” He let out a slow gasp. “That wasn’t so bad…”

“That was half-strength. Just to see if you would break.” The cultivator said. “Feel like giving up, cripple?”

Booker’s mind froze. That was half strength? He felt like he’d been run over. All the breath was gone from his chest, and his lungs hurt as he forced them to expand and draw in more oxygen.

“One hit! The cripple isn’t down!” The announcer yelled.

“Fuck you.” Booker breathed out.

“Suit yourself.” The cultivator just smirked, but Booker clocked the worry in his eyes.

He drew back. It was a punch that came low from the right, leaning down, almost scooping upwards to intersect with Booker in an upper right cross.

It collided perfectly.

The impact drove into him. Pain shocked through his system, drilling in through skin and fat, muscle and bone.

Booker’s feet fully left the ground. His whole body was frozen by brutal pressure lifting him from the center of his belly, right where the blow had collided with the mat. It was a sickly, tight sensation, every joint in his body pressed to its limit. The force with which he left earth behind was rolling through his entire body in shockwaves, making his stomach tighten up with pain, his lungs let go of their breath, the world spin.

His body slammed into the stone wall of the fighting pit and slid back to the earth. The stone felt cold, which was good.

His chest wouldn’t move properly. His lungs were supposed to lift and fall, but they were tight and getting air through them felt like torture.

For a long moment he lay there, until his hearing came back, the ringing scream in his ears subsiding to let him hear the count of, “ONE!”

Booker stood up on his knees. He clenched his fists – or tried to. His right hand was refusing to close. The fingers curled in so far, then met a paralytic wall, a numb inability to close any further. He looked down and the bone was broken, a strange bulge sitting about halfway down his arm.

“Oh…”

Standing up slowly, Booker let his right arm trail limp against his side.

The pain was something else entirely. The way his bone was pushed out of place felt primally wrong, a sick intrusion on the normal state of his body. Shockwaves of cold and hot ran through his spine, hot pain and cold wrongness.

But the pill was doing it’s job. A new sensation was replacing the pain, numbing it and making it bearable. It was a fizzy, uplifting buzz that was spreading throughout his chest and arm, where he’d taken the brunt of the blow. As he got to his feet he began to smile. A euphoric rush was coming on fast.

Well getting literally high off the pain wasn’t in the plan…

But being honest, it was kind of a stupid plan to begin with.

As his hearing blurred in and out, he realized the crowd was cheering for him. The night was in uproar with their chants and their yells. The sight of his broken arm was just blood for the sharks.

He gripped the mat awkwardly, picking it up off the ground with one hand and bundling it against his chest.

“Two blows and the cripple isn’t down!” The announcer called. “Lasts bets!”

“I think I’d like to… as they say, double down.” A soft voice rang through the crowd. It carried no power, but seemed to silence the world in front of it.

“Really?” Instructor Graysky raised an eyebrow. “Then I too will double my bet.”

“Doubled bets from both instructors!” The noise was the noise of a human sea. It sloshed back and forth, highs and lows, but there was always the dim rushing of voices blended together like the tide.

And the sea spoke his name.

“So…” He couldn’t help himself. For every time he’d had to turn his eyes down to avoid eye contact, or bow, or just tolerate these pompous pricks, he said, “Where are your fans, exactly?”

The cultivator’s eyes flashed. He stepped back, cracking his knuckles.

“To the mat, only!” The announcer called, sensing something foul between them.

“You cocky little defective.” The cultivator spat. “I’ll kill you with one punch!”

He reeled his whole body around the punch, winding back. His whole body fed power into the blow, the full twisting force of the forward punch coming from his hips, feeding into a lightning-quick forward step, pushing up from the ground to land a rising right cross.

Booker went into the air. His joints groaned like the creaking of old trees, his left arm fully snapping out of the socket. The world spun wildly, no sense of weight or momentum through the overwhelming pressure in his stomach, crushing him flat even as he flew into the air. Muscles, organs, bones… they were all bent and bruised under the force of the punch.

Straw rained from the sky. Broken straws…

The mat must have ruptured.

The sensation of spinning was so strong. All he could see were blurs of color, not quite solid, but broken apart into droplets that spun independently through a white haze. He didn’t even realize when he hit the ground, he only knew he was there because he could feel a cold smooth pressure against his jaw, his shoulder, his ribs…

It took him a second to realize it was the cold stone of the earth.

The fizzing sensation in his chest had intensified. He thought he might have laughed, but he probably only mumbled.

He tried to push his way up with his arm, and regretted it deeply. The sick pain located in the broken bone exploded and shot down his arm, up into his shoulder, where it burned like embers sinking deep into his muscle.

But slowly the pain transformed into more fizzing. It was like the pill he’d taken was eating up the pain and transforming it.

He slid his right knee underneath his body, and pushed up, forcing himself through a wall of pain that rose up to stop him from lifting his head.

Ribs are probably broken. Was probably the thought his brain was trying to put together.

Except he could barely think, so what he really thought was, oh shit rib bad.

He had to go by degrees. Straighten himself a little taller, let the pill slowly ease the pain until it became bearable, and then lift by another degree.

It felt like an impossible climb. Somewhere among the haze of pain, his mind came up with an image. An image of a man pushing a boulder up an endless cliff.

But there is an end…

I can beat this cliff…

It’s just ahead…

Just ahead…

Just…

The world seemed like it was trying to fall away beneath him, but his head was up. The world was oddly silent except for a dim ringing that was slowly growing louder, louder, louder…

He slid his other leg up, and got it beneath him.

Pushed up and stood at the center of a spinning world.

He felt triumphant and dizzily euphoric. The world was piecing itself back together, his vision returning. The crowd roared.

But as soon as that was done, he started to sag down again. Picking himself up had taken all his strength.

Passing out was as easy as closing his eyes.

— — —

The sound of a nurse walking past woke him up.

Rain woke up in a clean white bed, staring up at the fragrant pine timber beams of the Sect’s ceilings. He tried to roll over and found that pain spiked through him. His chest and his right arm were wrapped in bandages with a deep, bitter herbal smell. The whole of his body was aching, but the pain was definitely most fiery, most alive in his right arm. His left arm, at least, seemed to have survived relatively intact.

Snips was standing on his bedside table. He reached out painfully with his left, letting the mantis hop onto his hand. The nurse caught the motion out of the corner of her eye.

She turned. “Oh, you’re awake. You were given lily-draught to help you sleep… It usually doesn’t wear off so quickly.”

Rain must be resistant…

“I have a stupid habit of getting up when I should stay down.” He said. “Speaking of, did I…”

She raised an eyebrow, her lips pinching into a frown. “Did you win the street fight where you broke your right arm, bruised three ribs, and dislocated your left? Is that your first question?”

He sank back down. I got back up, I remember…

I won.

“Nevermind then. How long will I be down for?”

She walked over and turned the wooden shutters open. Light fell onto his bed. “The medicine will take three days to repair what you did to your ribs. The arm, maybe another two.”

“Can I have a book from the library brought here?” Booker asked.

“That can be arranged.”

“And… Do you know how Wild Swan is doing?”

“The master who came down from the mountain cured his injuries, but he’s still bed-ridden. The master said he had a demon in his heart that was causing seizures.” She helped him sit up, against a pillow.

“You seem to know what’s going on.”

“I do, and I know you’re trouble. Good day.”

“Good day. I’m going to lie back and think of my mistakes.”

He sank back down into the pillows, letting her leave on her rounds. As he lay there the first thought was…

What was that?

The whole fight. You didn’t need to do that…

So why did you?

He let the answers echo until he had an answer for them.

I could say I did it for purely logical reasons.

And that’s a part of it…

Getting beaten to a pulp helped the Iron Hell Crucible Pill work…

And hopefully it attracted the attention of that instructor…

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

But nobody lets themselves get beaten up just for logical reasons…

And even within logical reasons, you can find someone’s real motivations hiding.

What were his real motivations? What did he want from this world and his new life within it? He had worried about those questions at first, but as things to do and adventures to chase pile up, he’d become so preoccupied he forgot to ever answer them.

I did it because…

Every time I’ve been trampled, overlooked, or treated poorly by the cultivators…

I think…

Someday.

Someday. Someday I’ll have the power to change things.

Me and Rain aren’t so different, I guess. We’re vulnerable to making the same mistake.

Promising yourself something impossible, but letting the dream be enough… Letting the dream comfort you, even as you wander farther from making that future a reality…

I tried to keep my calm by promising myself that someday I would be strong enough to stand up to the cultivators…

And when that day didn’t come soon enough…

I got impatient. I started a dumb fight where I got beaten half to death.

He sighed. The reasoning really was that simple. Even though, walking into that situation, he would have sworn it was to feed the Iron Hell Crucible Pill and to win a sponsor… That was a cold reason without introspection, and it didn’t take much digging to unearth the fact he’d wanted to find a reason to fight. And now he was paying the price.

Book.

The green book flipped open in his head. The pages began to turn, and the open face landed on the pages for his quests.

Quest: Repairing Your Life

Goal: Create a Seven-Times Purified Charcoal Pill and use it to repair your poisoned body.

Reward: Materials Box

Quest: Wondrous Healing

Goal: Create a pill with a potency above 25%, a toxicity below 5%, and the Moderate or Great Healing property.

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: Theories of Medicine

Goal: Read and fully learn the contents of 1 (0/1) medical textbooks.

Reward: Page of the Apprentice Book.

Quest: Sponsorship

Goal: Impress and befriend a ranking member of the Mantis Sect

Reward: 1 Hour Practice Token.

Quest: Martial Basis (Complete)

Goal: Practice your martial arts for 10 hours.

Reward: 1 Hour Practice Token.

Right… Three days gives me time to finish Theories of Medicine, hopefully. Sponsorship and Wondrous Healing will have to wait..

But the big one…

I finally have my answer.

He watched as Snips buzzed around his fingertips. Watched the light shine off his beast’s translucent, glass-like body, and the sharp edges of his scythe-blades. The mantis was beautiful, his wings beating so fast they became a haze of pinkish color in the air.

Rain dreamed of it but…

I will become a cultivator.

In the end…

I can’t be who my master would want me to be.

Quiet and meek, keeping my head turned down.

That’s…

That’s not actually answering the question.

The question is, how do you cultivate and keep yourself good.

How do you prevent yourself from treating the people you could crush to dust like they’re second-class.

My master…

He thinks the only way to keep yourself good is to turn away from cultivation.

But good without power is just hopes and dreams without the willingness to chase them. Empty words.

Even my master is a hypocrite, in the best way. He learned the same alchemy that cultivators use, and he uses it to help people.

The tools of the cultivators…

You could do a world of good with them. And I’m not the first to think of that – I know I’m not. There’s nothing revolutionary about what I’m saying. If I were to leave the Sect, I could find another home. Someplace where the cultivators aren’t so brutal.

Even if I have to make that place myself…

In the wilds, a warrior who reached the upper stages of cultivation could become a chieftain of a clan, and that clan could someday hope to found a city, elevating their leader to a City Lord. All of the Mantis Clan’s great city was built in the lifetimes of two City Lords, the latter of whom was now an old man despite his cultivation.

If I could become powerful enough…

Fuck it. I could found my own civilization if I needed to. Perfect alchemy is that much power. I just need the cultivation to protect myself and avoid being enslaved the moment I reveal it.

And even if only for myself…

I need to cultivate.

There’s no other way to guarantee I won’t be wiped off the face of the earth at any moment.

No other path to survival, except maybe letting the reins of my life go and hoping fate steers me blindly in the right direction.

If I want to control myself – be something more than a slave to the whims of any petty cultivator –

I need to cultivate.

It’s what I said to Wild Swan…

The future is born from the present you make. If I don’t make myself stronger, now, I’ll just continue drifting along fighting to get by.

And if…

If that really does mean killing and someday dying.

I’ll save one more life than I take, always.

I don’t know if trading life for life is actual good or just a meaningless attempt to trade things that can’t be traded with. But when it comes to the end…

I’ll leave behind a world that’s glad I existed.

That’s enough.

That has to be enough.

But right now, if I died, so few people would remember my name in a year…

Except maybe the story of the time I stood up after three blows from a cultivator.

That’s why I did it…

That’s really why I did it.

I wanted to be someone you didn’t forget.

That’s pride, and I know it’s pride, but I also know it’s me.

It’s me all the way down.

So fuck everything else.

If I have to make my mark on the world, for pride’s sake, to die without feeling like I’d lost my chance…

Then I can try to make that mark the right way, and leave behind a world that’s glad I existed, in whatever small way, a world where I’m a legend.

Because I have the book, and the knowledge of two lifetimes.

Because with gifts like those… Then the least I could do is leave a legend behind.

Anything less would mean I’d wasted them.

So one last time…

For the gratitude of the gifts I’ve been given–

For Rain and the book–

I have to cultivate.

— — —

On the first day, Booker read the medical textbook from one end to the next, unfurling the entire scroll and reading over it twice to slowly to commit to memory. He asked for pen and paper and used his left hand to copy the text. On the next day, he read it twice more, and copied it out again. On the third day, he could remember the entire scroll, but continued to read and copy it out to make sure it was cemented permanently in his memory. At this time the quest had already completed, but Booker wanted not just the contents of the book, but the lesson to be complete in his mind.

The lesson was: When you’re surrounded by distractions, you feel like days go by in minutes, but when you really concentrate, when you’re alone trapped in bed with nothing to do, you find those missing hours. If you really concentrate – if you do nothing else – you can do things like memorize a book in a very short amount of time.

On the third day he asked for a candle.

The nurse brought him one and lit it. When she left, he snuffed out the mundane red flame, and replaced it with a blue spirit flame from his right hand. “Furnace.”

Waving his hand over the spirit flame, he saw that it didn’t move in the slightest. The edge remained straight as a razor.

He had learned to draw his martial intent into himself and disguise it totally. The only obstacle was, a sick feeling began to overtake him just when he was feeling the most focused.

This isn’t normal. This isn’t possible. Back on earth… You couldn’t focus all day. You got distracted. You got tired. You got bored.

Here it is. This is cultivation. This is cultivation, even if my body is ruined.

This is the cultivation of focus.

There’s a specific sensation…

It feels like I’m washing my mind, almost. Like clear, cold water is running through me, pushing out the impurities that would make my mind lose focus. My mind feels sharp and crystal-clear, like I pursue one thought with a total purity of purpose.

At first this sensation occurred randomly, and never for longer than a minute. During that minute, he felt like he could remember everything perfectly, and like his mind was a precise and nimble instrument that felt no distractions and never had to pause before answering a question. As long as he could ignore the overwhelming nausea his body felt in those moment, he could think through almost anything.

This was impossible back on earth.

This is a form of cultivation.

By the third day, he had managed to extend the duration to a minute and two seconds by slowly luring himself into the mental state where the sensation occurred, where he was at once relaxed, confident, and focused on the task at hand, then holding onto the sensation for as long as possible. Every time, sickness eventually shook him so hard he leaned over and retched.

I think all cultivators must find this state intuitively.

But because I come from a world without cultivation, I know this is magical, and I can find the language to express that magic. I can identify where human limits end, and magic begins.

I don’t think the Sect has a strong understanding of this magic, even though I imagine long-established clans must have discovered it. So far, this clans cultivators have simply been those who could intuitively find this focus state. Maybe some of them have described it to their disciples, but each disciple has to find it in themselves…

Leading to vague terms like ‘prana state’ and ‘meditation’.

Being able to find it this easily and understand it as something repeatable, concrete, and controllable…

Nausea spiked from deep within Rain. Pain arose, as if resisting the next thought….

Is a gift.

Gratitude. Gratitude is also possibly an element in the equation: It feels like as I gained gratitude and appreciation for this ability, using it got a little bit easier. It’s not about happiness or unhappiness exactly; even if you’re unhappy you can still be grateful for what you have.

Human nature is to overlook what you’re used to, familiar with, and have always had.

To keep the happiness and gratitude for what you have, even when the world is at its worst, is a way of making happiness within unhappiness.

It’s also a fight against human nature.

I’ll have to keep an eye on that one.

Booker noticed he was sleeping better since discovering the prana state meditation, or as he preferred to call it, focus. It might be possible I’m entering the state during my dreams, and gaining some benefit from that. Or it might just be that I’m exercising the same ‘muscle’ – expanding the same capacity. Some commonality between this meditation and sleep, so that enhancing one enhances the other.

But all the same…

Every time I do I feel sick. I feel overwhelmingly sick, the same way I would if a bone was out of place. It’s the fact that I’m crippled – that my system is poisoned by the drugs Rain took. That’s what I’m sensing…

I should have reached the first level of cultivation by now. If my system wasn’t clogged, I would have stepped naturally into cultivating the skin…

This weird state is a half-stage that exists because I’m a cripple. I can enter the focus state, but not use it to cultivate.

The levels of cultivation could be divided into: the cultivation of the skin, the cultivation of the muscle, the cultivation of the bones, and the cultivation of immortal self. No common person knew what remained past the stage of immortal self, except that the way remained, rising ever higher.

The longer these meditation sessions went, the slower Booker felt the passage of time within that minute was, but the more content he felt in each second. He knew that if he could have somehow extended this focus from one minute to being able to hold on forever, he would have been a born cultivator. But at the end of three days, his progress in holding onto the focus had bottlenecked at one minute two seconds.

For his last day in the hospital bed, Booker seemed totally asleep, except for a few moments when he was furiously active. In reality, he was spending entire hours seeking the focus state, then working while he could hold onto that state. In his mind, this was far more important than the actual reward for the quest, because the practice he was getting in achieving the prana-state was immeasurably valuable.

Because this is it.

This is cultivation.

If I can keep following this path, then with the medicine knowledge I have…

I can climb the mountain.

With the book, I can replace any weakness within me. I trust it to carry me as far as I can go.

Most people never get this chance.

Most people die like Rain did – still hoping – or worse, having given up hope long ago.

I have a promise of hope – the book.

I can keep going. I can climb the mountain, for Rain and all the rest.

I can cultivate.

I just need to finish this pill.

— — —

On the fourth day, they let him out of bed. His right arm was still bandaged, but he didn’t feel bothered by that. Rain had few enough enemies that he could probably avoid fighting for the next two days. His mental state was calm and cool, like a pond after a rain.

“Thank you.” Booker said to the nurse.

She tutted in annoyance. “Don’t thank us, thank your master. He insisted we use good medicine on your dumb ass.”

“He didn’t come to see me.” Booker said. “Is he angry?”

“He’s furious.” She said matter-of-factly. “And you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t have you whipped.”

“He would never.” Booker said, with immense fondness.

“Sad to say, but true. He’d never have your dumb ass whipped. Which is why you should be grateful and not make him worry so much.” The nurse said, irritated.

I wish I could say I would worry him less…

But the truth is…

I plan to worry him a lot, and make him proud even more often.

And I can live with that.

— — —

“Master, I’m sorry. But I have to become a cultivator.” Booker said when he and his master were alone, in the alchemy hall.

“Absolutely not.” His master said. “I will forbid you to the end of my life.”

“Master, it’s something I have to do.” He said, but the old man only walked away. “You knew I would say this. You had to know…”

I’ve been manifesting martial intent from day one. Maybe this isn’t even the real first stage…

Maybe the first stage was simply to unconsciously learn martial intent.

“You are not a cultivator.” His master replied. “You have a talented life ahead of you. You are good at alchemy. You will go far, but you are not cultivator.”

“I’m afraid that’s exactly what I am. I will try to be a better one.” Booker said honestly.

“Get out.” His master spat. “Let reality disabuse you of these foolish notions, then come back. I will not accept you until you are done with this bullshit for good.”

Booker left.

But as he stood outside the door of the alchemy hall he didn’t know exactly where to go.

How dangerous. A cripple with time on his hands.

New quests had appeared in his ledger:

Quest: Break the Thread

Goal: End Zheng Bai’s Influence Over You

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: A Birthright Recovered

Goal: Reclaim Rain’s heritage amulet at the auction.

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: Right the Wrong

Goal: Hunt the Murderer Behind the Boy in the Wall.

Reward: Materials Box.

Quest: Act of Charity

Goal: Cure or Tame Wild Swan’s Lightning Heart-Demon within 7 (0/7) days.

Reward: Nothing.

Quest: Purification of the Body.

Goal: Eat nothing but spiritual food for 7 (0/7) days.

Reward: 10-Hour Practice Token.