For a brief moment the old man posed with a vicious grimace showing all of his teeth, and Booker felt a brief flashing echo of a red-blue faced mandril, baring its fangs.
The old man seized Xan with either hand around the back of his neck and leapt up, using his grip and his push off the ground to hammer his knee into Xan’s chest with brutal force. Then he flipped up, rolling himself over Xan’s shoulder and dropping down to kick the back of his heel into the back of Xan’s calf. Xan screamed and sunk to one knee, lowering his head to the perfect height. The old man flickered, was gone for a split second, and then flickered back into place already moving – his leg spinning into a back kick that hammered into the side of Xan’s skull. Xan went down.
Booker was shocked to see him cough up blood a moment after. Much less being conscious, Xan should have been dead.
Fen shrunk back towards Booker’s side. “Do you see!” He hissed. “Do you see now?”
“I do!” Booker laughed.
For a second there, I saw a flash of a martial style totally unlike the Sect’s.
And I want to see it again.
The old man bounded like a dog, throwing himself forward. Booker stepped up, but the old man flickered and was suddenly in front of him Instead of bounding again, he flipped himself over and kicked off the ground with his hands, with what looked like another spear kick aimed for Booker’s jaw.
Booker brought up his arms in front of him, but at the last moment the man instead flickered out of place, and came back performing a completely different kick – this one a spinning kick that hooked around his guard and smashed into his ear with the heel.
Fuc-
For a moment everything went black.
Everything stopped and Booker didn’t notice because he stopped.
And then it started again, and he was on the ground.
I hope– I hope pills cure concussions.
Blood was dripping from his ear and he couldn’t hear too well.
Ahead, Xan and Fen were dancing with the old cultivator, desperately defending against a flurry of kicks. The man favored his legs heavily, but his stance didn’t make use of their reach, instead keeping his body heavily compressed towards the ground.
What he lacked in reach, however, he made up for with his incredible technique. The old man could simply stop being anywhere, then reappear a short distance. In that short time he could completely shift moves, striking out of the teleport with no warning.
But that was the old man.
Booker didn’t expect to imitate this technique, or even gain insight into it. His expectations were simply to learn – how do cultivators fight? How does the energy move in their bodies? What do they act like, how do they think?
What’s the difference between me and them? Fen and Xan, and especially him…
The strange thing is, if I was to look at how much qi I can feel from each of them… He’s the lowest. His martial intent is quietest, and there’s no sensation of qi in the air when he moves.
But his stances are the most fluid. Each one becomes the other without any resistance. He isn’t just arranging qi in his acupoints when he strikes a stance, then leaving it until he strikes another… He’s shifting it between the stances. Incredible. They’re all doing it to some extent, but him the most…
They must be totally aware of their bodies at the same time as they’re aware of the opponent.
That’s crazy.
Also, maybe soul cultivation helps you with concussions? Because I feel weirdly alert right now.
He forced a healing pill into his mouth and stood up by one hand, climbing his feet back under himself before standing slowly. His wounds were healing so soon after being inflicted there was a kind of ‘reverse’ pain, the feeling of going through the exact same process, but backwards.
“Rain! You wanted this, get in here!” Fen called.
“I’m coming, I’m coming…” Booker mumbled like he was getting out of bed. All his focus was on watching the fight, and he wanted to spend as much time as possible doing just that: observing as much as he could the way the qi flowed around each strike and movement.
It was something Xan and Fen had long ago grasped intuitively. It was something the old man could do in his sleep. And if Booker was going to be any good as a cultivator, it was something he needed to learn immediately.
But he had already delayed too much.
Lunging forward, Booker grabbed Fen and pulled him back from a near-miss of a strike. Xan grabbed the old man from behind, but an elbow caught him in the face, and the man swept his hand out to grab Xan by the hair, swinging up to grab the opposite shoulder. His knee rocketed up and his hand in Xan’s hair yanked down, bringing his face into the knee-strike nose-first. There was a gristly crunch and blood spewed across Xan’s face.
“Step back Fen. We’ll fight him two at a time!” Booker called.
“Ah, to wear him down!” Fen shouted back, thinking he’d grasped the plan.
“No, just watch!”
“What?” Fen’s voice faltered.
“Just watch him! His fighting style! Learn as much as you can, then swap in for Xan!”
Booker lunged forward, throwing himself shoulder-first at the old man’s back. It was best to move as hard as he could without holding back for control, so the old man couldn’t knock him out of the way with a light strike. Indeed, he finally connected: slamming the frail creature’s back. The old bastard went flying forward but flickered, and reappeared facing back towards Booker with his fingers scraping the earth to slow himself. The monster kicked off with two swift footsteps, and lunged back at Booker with a counter-elbow.
Booker ate it across the midsection, feeling his elk-meat dinner try to come up. He stumbled back, recovered, and tried to bring his knee up into the old man’s face as the vicious old coot simply– vanished.
The man reappeared inches away, dropped into a crouch on the back of his heels, with one hand behind him.
Booker lashed out from a rising knee to an extending kick.
His opponent spun around, dropped onto his hand, then kicked his heel up directly into the backside of Booker’s knee. Booker felt something go ‘pop!’ as the sky spun overhead and he went flailing back, doing an almost perfect head over heels.
Ow. Ow ow ow.
But Booker was smiling. In the moment before he’d hit the old man, he’d managed a clumsy transition between Soaring Cloud and Iron Wall. It was crude, losing almost all of the energy between stances as it sparked and broke apart in his meridians, but enough to feel like he had turned the key in another little lock of his cultivation.
He climbed slowly back onto his feet, taking another healing pill.
Xan was taking kick after kick to his legs as he tried to work his way around the old man, throwing out punches the monkey-like cultivator turned aside with slapping counterstrikes or dodged by vanishing. Xan was the best and worst equipped to fight with his heavy-footed style. He was chasing air with his strikes, but at least he wasn’t getting tripped every two seconds.
Booker threw him a healing pill as he rolled onto his feet. “Come on! Eat up, I’ve got plenty of healing! You get the next turn watching, so you’re almost done!”
Xan was halfway through a shouted curse when the old man abruptly did a handstand, hooked his legs with the feet locked over each other on the back of Xan’s neck, and did a curling pull-up to begin palm-striking him dead in the face, over and over and over.
Oh come on! What a show off…
— — —
Despite Fen’s hopes, they did not succeed in ‘wearing down’ the old man. And despite Booker’s best efforts, they barely managed to land a few hits on him every minute. He was just overpoweringly fast for how technical, controlled, and precise he could be. His intuition for the fight seemed to be supernatural, and there was no defense he couldn’t read a way through.
That, and he could teleport.
But Booker fought as hard as he could, got his hits in, and felt pretty satisfied with how much of a beating he took before he could finally stand no more.
When they finally turned in and ran, all of them were limping brutally, barely able to move without wheezing through a dozen swollen bruises dotting their torsos. They had simply been beaten to a pulp, and a human would have been dead a half-dozen times over.
But he doesn’t kill… although I feel like he came close once or twice.
When they finally got through the pines and could no longer see ‘his’ tree behind them, they rested, hands on their knees or collapsing back onto their asses.
“How…” Fen moaned, “How did I think saving you wouldn’t encourage you?”
“You get…” Xan gasped, “You get one. I got a tree, he got a tree, Fen, you get one.”
“I don’t want one!” Fen exclaimed, holding a hand against his face. “I really, really want none at all. If I open my eyes and this whole forest is gone, that is still too many trees!”
“Get up, come on…” Booker said comfortingly. “You got a masterclass…”
“Rain, shut up, please shut up…” Xan asked.
Booker put up his hands in a shrug, surrendering. Then he curled in over himself, face on the back of his knees, and just breathed slowly, letting his cultivation return. All his qi was spent. He’d truly never been so fucking exhausted in every way.
Eventually he uncurled and leaned back. “Let me cook you guys dinner then. I’ve got some really good herbs to add. I know… I know that was fucking brutal, but look, come on, we learned a lot.”
“We did.” Xan covered his face. “But it’s really easy to feel like a dead duck right now. And it’s soooo easy to blame you for that…”
“So easy.” Fen croaked.
— — —
While Xan and Fen went to the Lao-Hain camp for rice and other supplies, Booker found himself a nice quiet place in the woods, somewhere he could remember by oddly shaped trees and small brooks, but would be impossible to find if you didn’t already know where it was. He’d chosen a location hidden away and far from the caves so that the Lao-Hain wouldn’t have much chance of stumbling onto it, even if they moved their camp down to directly claim the caves and their writing.
There was no point in hoarding his materials boxes forever. While they were perfectly portable and impossible to discover as long as he kept them as ethereal rewards inside the book, they were also totally useless. Any step forward meant exposing the precious materials to the risk of being lost – but it was still a step forward, momentum he could use.
So now, Booker dug into the soil with Zhu-Zhu’s help. The little mole dislodged rocks and roots as Booker dug in until his fingernails were packed with dirt. Soon he had a cavity he could hide the boxes in.
From a golden light that sprang up where he laid his hand on the bare soil, two of his three boxes emerged. He was holding onto the last for an emergency.
Zhu-Zhu scrambled onto the edge as he lifted the first lid. Nestled within were countless medicines bound neatly with twine. Lying on top was a bundle
Spring-Herald Clover
Intact // Earth-Quality
Clover that has grown where a spirit of spring walked, bringing life to the earth.Possesses strong restorative properties.
Effects:
Moderate Healing 10% (-)
Qi Restoration 25% (-)
Cultivation Boost 10% (+)
Body Forging 5% (Water)
Invaluable. I have four elemental properties now: Water from the clover, Earth from the Mud-Realm Ferroflowers in the last box, and the Wind-Song Palace Razorgrass from… was it the first or second I opened? I also have the Petal-Child Lobelia, but that’s not quite right for this. The Ferroflowers want a complete elemental wheel to activate their Balance property…
Wind-Song Palace Razorgrass
Intact // Dull-Quality
Growing in delicate, glass-like stalks, this tough grass is sharp enough to cut through skin with ease. When the wind rises, it cuts against the grass and produces beautiful, mournful music.
Effects:
Cultivation Boost 10% (Metal)
Cultivation Boost 10% (+)
Sharpened Perception 25% (+)
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Toxicity 15% (-)
Mud-Realm Ferroflowers
Rare grasses made of living metal, which blossom only in vast chemical bogs where the very water will corrode mere flesh. They drink from this poison sea, absorbing the qi of dying life, and ultimately produce these flowers.
Intact / Earth-Quality
Qi Recovery 15% (-)
Demon Hallucinations 5% (Metal)
Corrosive Poison 10% (-)
Cultivation Boost 25% (Earth)
Additional Effect: Balance: Add 20% Potency. (If you have at least one complete elemental wheel for each ingredient with the Balance tag, you gain the Balance effect.)
So if I can assemble the other two elements, I’ll be able to make a top-tier pill.
He searched quickly through both boxes, and found another lucky hit.
Volcanic Opal Nectar
Extract // Earth-Quality
Geodes that have captured a tiny shard of elemental fire within them, slowly drowning in it. All that remains now is a burning-hot, mineral-rich water that has subsumed the flame.
Effects:
Body Forging 10% (Fire)
Fire-Proofing 25% (-)
Cultivation Boost 10% (+)
Potency and Toxicity 5% (-)
Ah, and if I’m working with an Earth-aligned Cultivation Boost, then I have something I’ve kept stashed for just this.
Concentrate of Stone Lion Liver
Extract // Earth-Quality
Produced from the organs of a mountain-dwelling stone lion, a powerful predator that consumes the power of earth.
Effects:
Body Strengthening 10% (-)
Additional Effect: Earth-Type Cultivation Boosts contained within this medicine also provide Body Strengthening equal to their full value.
If I combine this with the Mud-Realm Ferroflowers, which have a huge Earth Cultivation Boost, and with the Balance effect adding 20%... I’d be getting… 65% Body Strengthening and 90% Cultivation Boost already. And the pill would have at least six ingredients, meaning the end result would be a massive step forward.
All I need to do is complete the elemental wheel with one of each element – only the element with the most properties is active, so the most important thing is to cut the Metal property off the Mud-Realm Ferroflowers to balance them all at one. I could make use of the Petal-Child Lobelia, but…
Petal-Child Lobelia
Intact // Earth-Quality
Named for how its petals resemble a mother cradling a child, this herb has great effects on the unborn.
Effects:
Fertility 10% (-)
Neonatal Cultivation 25% (+)
Wood Root-Aligning 10% (Wood)
Potency 10% (+)
It’s a neonatal medicine for unborn children. Wood Root-Aligning might have a small effect on my innate elemental bias, but changing your spirit root truly requires a pill on the tier of the Seven-Times Refined Charcoal Pill. Simply tossing it into an unrelated pill… it’s a real waste of potential.
No.
I can definitely afford to wait a bit longer. If I find any other ingredient with a high quality and an Earth property, I can use refinement methods to change the property to better fit the pill, and maybe save this for either a high-tier root-changing pill or an expensive gift.
But stowing medicine for eventual incredible combinations is a strategy without a lot of short-term momentum.
Anything that’s lower-quality, I should use right away.
With this logic he hadn’t hesitated. Zhu-Zhu was rooting around in the boxes already, sniffing and chewing curiously. Booker had to continuously rescue medicines from his jaws, but he wasn’t too concerned with losing some low-quality herbs to the mole’s progression. Instead, he threw bits of medicine for Snips, Froggie, and Zhu-Zhu to catch as he began to work…
It took him several hours to break down the common ingredients, immediately processing them into whatever common and useful pills he could…
Death-March Cochineal Wing-Powder
x
Beast-Bone Meal
x
Seven-Year Flower Syrup
=
Tireless Beetle Pill (Dull)
11% Potency // 7% Toxicity
Effect:
Allows for multiple days of tireless work without sleep or exhaustion.
Ape Brains (Cut)
x
Sky-Bound Firework Poppy
x
Beast-Bone Meal
x
Seven-Year Flower Syrup
=
Fireblood Essence Pill (Dull)
18% Potency // 11% Toxicity
Effect:
Inflames the blood and induces a rage state that protects against fire.
Shadowbell Pistil
x
Hollow-Natured Cicada Shell
x
Beast-Bone Meal
x
Seven-Year Flower Syrup
=
Creeping Shadow-Insect Pill (Dull)
11% Potency // 9% Toxicity
Effect:
Summons forth concealing shadows in the shape of countless insects to blanket your skin, allowing you to blend into any darkened space with a skill that resembles invisibility.
In the end, Booker dropped six pills each into three different vials, labeling them carefully.
Binders like the bone meal and flower syrup are truly invaluable. I’ll have to replace them when I work with Earth-Quality pills, or the entire formula will be held back, but for these dull-quality pills there’s no reason not to pack them with cheap binder.
While it wasn’t the most efficient use in terms of raw ingredients, there were different kinds of efficiency. Booker was supplied with enough medicines via the book that his main concern wasn’t material efficiency, but time and portability. From that perspective, processing a few subpar pills out of the box’s less valuable herbs was a complete win. The pill vials sat easily in his bag and were ready for use.
And some ingredients didn’t require any modification to be immediately portable and useful. Nestled within the second box were two glass vials.
Lightning-Scarred Myrrh Resin
Resin // Dull-Quality
A gummy residue harvested from the bark of trees struck by lightning. Known for a fragrance that can be used to control storms in certain rituals, and for its power to relieve pain.
Effects:
Meditative Focus 5% (-)
Bone-White Lily Dust
Powder // Dull-Quality
Dust made by grinding the petals and roots of water lilies that fail to develop any spiritual nature after 100 years.
Effects:
Painkiller 25% (-)
Booker popped the corks – the myrrh resin smelled so incredible Booker struggled not to eat it immediately. The bone-white lily dust had no scent to gauge its power, but Booker was impressed how quickly it numbed his finger.
Painkilling 25% on a powder is fantastic for general doctoring. Not as powerful as a pill, but I can always use just the right amount. As for Meditative Focus, well, it’s useful in any amount.
Zhu-Zhu squeaked, struggling to get over the lip of the box as he dragged away a heavy green frond in the shape of a heart with a spiral-coiled stalk and long, scraggly roots. Booker reached out to help him and felt tiny needle-sharp hairs prickle against the soft leather of his glove, extending from the pad of the frond.
“Let me see, Zhu-Zhu.” Shaking off the dedicated mole, Booker examined the frond for a moment…
Nettled Swamp-Wyrm Frond
Intact // Dull-Quality
A mildly venomous swamp weed that grows nearby the lairs of lesser draconic creatures. It spreads rapidly, obscuring entire waterways and protecting the fish below from predatory birds, but will eventually kill the fish by leeching poison into the waters.
Effects:
Allergic Reaction 10% (-)
Beast Cultivation 20% (-)
Potency and Toxicity 10% (-)
Necrotizing Poison 20% (-)
He grinned. He’d been finding plenty of beast cultivation material lately, and he still had plenty of ironbody tree nuts: so many that he emptied many of them out of his bag back into the boxes, filling in the empty spaces he’d made with the cheap filler. Cracking one in his hand, he began to work…
Sour-Hearted Wolfberry
x
Webfoot Brittlegill
x
Ironbody Tree Nut
x
Swamp-Wyrm Frond
x
Beast-Bone Meal
x
Seven-Year Flower Syrup
=
Serpent Ascendance Pill (Dull)
33% Potency // 13% Toxicity
Effect:
Massively accelerates the cultivation of common beasts. Most suitable for the first stages of cultivation.
The results were five dull green pills with a lacquered surface that broke into rings of different oily colorations under the light.
He threw one each to his spirit beasts. Snips snagged his before it touched the ground, landing on a branch to tear it apart with his jaws, while Froggy gulped his down in a flash of pink tongue and a spray of slime. Zhu-Zhu took his, put it down, and sniffed about–
Zhu-Zhu’s nose swung left and right, zeroing in on the pills remaining in Booker’s hand.
“Ah ah ah…” Booker tucked them carefully into a vial. “Don’t be greedy. Eat up.”
Zhu-Zhu squeaked in protest, but Booker tapped him lightly on the head. Still grumbling, the mole fought the entire pill into his mouth and vanished below the earth, digging down into the soil to eat in privacy.
Booker turned back to the boxes.
By now, much of the easy pickings were gone. The powders were appreciable in their own right, the clover and swamp-wyrm frond could be useful for completing pills, and the common ingredients had become useful pills. What remained were mostly strange medicines with no clear use or duplicates he hadn’t had time to process into more common pills…
But he found two more useful prizes in the second box.
Atrophied Chimera Egg
Intact // Earth-Quality
An egg in which a duck’s embryo had partially developed, before the mother was replaced by a nesting toad. The result is a half-breed creature that never survived to hatch, but remains as a sack of malformed limbs within the shell. Such tragedies are a common result of chimeric magics.
Effects:
Potency and Toxicity 10% (-)
Necrotizing Poison 10% (-)
Beast Cultivation 5% (+)
Beast Transformation 25% (R4)
Reagent properties only activate if you have a full chain starting at Reagent-1, and they get rarer the higher you go. Low-level Reagent effects are bad, too, fully negative. Reagent-4 is just about where the effects start to be worthwhile at all. But if I can find a Reagent-5… I can use this.
Distant Nebula Lotus
Resin // Heaven-Quality
Named for its strange pattern of white dots that perfectly mimics the position of distant stars, this purple-pink lotus flower exudes a beauty not often found. They are most often found growing where a meteor has fallen.
Effects:
Severe Pain 10% (R1)
Cultivation Boost 10% (-)
Potency and Toxicity 20% (+)
Element Devouring 50% (R6)
Additional Effect: Add 20% Potency to any finished pill that contains no elemental properties.
Element Devouring. Whether it’s fire or ice, you can consume it as cultivation material. And at a full fifty percent, plus another forty from its own Potency effects… I could make years worth of progress in moments, or survive something impossible. It’s either a cultivation pill or a life-saving one, and at best, both.
This is the first Heaven-Quality medicine the boxes have given me, and it’s no small blessing.
— — —
Returning to the cave, Booker found Xan and Fen already there. And they had brought news.
“Brother, the valley provides!” Xan grinned. “A Lao-Hain hunter saw a sacred deer up in the mountains.”
“We came back to get you, but we don’t have long. They’ll be leaving for the hunt before the sun is down.” Fen added.
“Brothers, I have to say…” Booker shook his head. “You came into this expecting a short escape into the valley, and now we’re talking about visiting a holy land and resealing a demon. I seem to have dragged you into my troubles, and I don’t know when those troubles will end. Knowing my luck, the moment we defeat this evil thing, its brother, father, and grandfather will line up to be our next problem. All I’m saying is, if there comes a point where I have to continue alone…”
“Shut it.” Xan snapped. “I know where I’m going, and it’s the holy land! Eh, didn’t we discover a priceless technique, too? Is that the bad luck we’re talking about here?”
“No, clearly it’s the bad luck of being owed… oh, I think about ten or twenty favors from the Sect’s once-in-a-generation alchemy talent.” Fen sighed dramatically, holding a hand to his forehead in mock-pain. “And to think I was just recovering from the shock of winning at stone gambling...”
“Yeah! That too. Cheer your gloomy ass up, Rain.” Xan socked him hard in the shoulder. “I want to see this holy ground for myself anyway. Who knows what opportunities I’ll find – maybe I can get my own Lao-Hain beauty or two.”
Booker snorted. “Very well. I’ll somehow soldier on, through a heaven and earth that only shows me opposition.”
But… in the end, you both dodged the question. Someday, our ways will part, and the most likely reason is how I keep picking deadly fight. Do we just… not worry about that?