John opened the scroll to examine it. Over the fine vellum was a blocky dark calligraphy spelling out 'Butterfly Dream Scripture.'
The beginning script tells the tale of a man Zhuangzi who once dreamed he was a butterfly. In this dream he felt as free as butterflies surely do, pulled by the fancy of the breeze and settling on beautiful flowers to drink their nectar. This butterfly has no consciousness of manhood, or of Zhuangzi. When he awoke, Zhuangzi was suddenly himself again, in just the same assured way the butterfly was only a butterfly. It struck him then, that he did not know if he was a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. Eventually Zhuangzi recognized that there must be a distinction between the two, and that the distinction is called the transformation of material things.
John was puzzled, muttering to himself. Yes dreams felt quite real when he was in them, but they were also recognizable dreams when he awoke, while the reverse was never true. On the other hand, his apparent abduction into the Rainy Cloud sect felt much like a terrible nightmare when he looked back on it. His encounter with the great Wheel and the demonic transformation of the sect leader during his experience had a characteristic nightmare feeling. Only now he was sitting in a luxurious cultivation chamber, a prison cell by any other name. This too is dreamlike, for John's humble farm life to suddenly be dropped into the cultivation world.
The transition from mortal to cultivator is indeed the dream of many, and the reality for some. John wasn't sure if he had hoped to become a cultivator all those years ago when his spiritual roots were first tested, but his poor results had pushed him into the life of farming, just the same as his father before him, and the lifestyle shared by everyone he had grown up with and known. In this way, a mortal life felt much like the waking Zhuangzi, and the cultivation life like a butterfly free from and careless of mortals.
John recognized the distinction now, but he wasn't clear what the scripture meant by transformation of material things. He kept reading.
Zhuangzi elaborates on his point, the change in consciousness between reality and illusion was a change in the self. The consciousness in reality was aware of the distinction of things while the consciousness in the dream or illusion was unware of the distinction between the reality and the illusion, taking the illusion to be just as material as the waking world.
This explains why John had never felt a normal dream was particularly substantial after waking up. His consciousness was always aware he was in the waking world. That being said... his mind was drawn to the dreadful Wheel, crushing and creating reality for eternity. When he was in that space there was a similar transformation as from dreaming to waking. Moving from the normal reality to the hell world John had a sinking feeling that his life here was just as immaterial as any dream, a passing fancy of a powerless mote as it moved through a cycle, dreaming it was a human named John.
After the philosophical preamble, the scripture moved into some detailed explanations of common sense in the cultivation world and the beginings of a cycling technique.
John was still bitter about his treatment by the sect, and he fully intended to get proper conpensation, as his new common sense told him he was due, but the cultivation process was nonetheless fascinating. The scripture walked through the process of sensing qi in the surroundings and bringing it into one's body. Sitting in a lotus position with fingers loosely laced together below the waist, John started taking deep rhythmic breaths in and out. Slowly identifying and eliminating sources of distraction. Steady rainfall on the roof drowned all the external noise. The tidy rooms gave off an almost supernatural calm and quiet. Deeper in meditation, John could ignore the humid air touching his skin, the sound of his own heart beating, and even the sound of his breath. Suddenly his spiritual senses blossomed around him, and he could sense the rich qi surge into him with surprising ease. The shock of success startled him out of meditation.
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That was surpisingly easy, John thought. Wasn't cultivation a bit more... difficult than this? The scroll had said it may take days of effort trying for the first success. Even now, his spiritual sense surrounded him, as obvious as sunlight after stepping out of the shade. John once more studied the scripture. Simply absorbing the surrounding spiritual essence wasn't enough, he had to circulate it to refine into his own power somehow. Here the scripture got a lot less instructive. It once more referred back to the man who dreamt of being a butterfly, emphasizing the shift in perspective needed.
Shift in perspective? Taking several minutes to get back into meditation John pondered the dream parable. Spirit qi once more rushed into him, but just as quickly it sieved away through his shattered spirit roots. For a while, he sat and let the process go without touching it, observing.
Really, the qi was much like the rain outside. Endlessly it fell toward him, an endless abundance of energy, splashing uselessely against the roofs and courtyards of his body. Draining away as rapidly as its own momentum would carry it. Exerting force to hold it might let him grab a handful, but that was miniscule against the totality.
His consciousness was aware of the distinction between things... Yet his dreaming self lost the awareness and gained the ability to transform completely, from a man into a care free butterfly? That didn't seem quite right. John had experienced plenty of vivid dreams, he was sure, but none were so memorable as to stick with him all this--No, thats not quite right. He had an extremely vivid and terrifying nightmare to rely on. Keeping as still as possible, John tried to recall the first moments when everything had gone terrible wrong. The world around him slowed dramatically, until every passing moment was as a still image laid before him. Each barest moment flicked by at a snails pace, replacing the next liesurely. He was sure that some sounds could still be heard now, was someone speaking to him? Even in his recognition of this fact, the sounds were as unintelligible as the endless rain. White noise.
Now the images were passing by him so slowly, like the turning of a page in a book there was a glimpse of something more, something beyond the pages of a book bound only in this reality. John dared not look up and toward the monstrous artifice he knew awaited. Instead he turned inward and examined his spirit. A gnarled and broken structure spread from his dantian, breaking into a fibrous mess that engulfed his whole being. He could trace each mote of qi as it poured through his dantian and out the collander of his spirit. John realized the dantian was really a semi-spiritual organ, an interface for the part of the soul that had access to these spiritual roots. John found obvious holes along the structure that bled out spiritual energy, but he also found that he could smear them shut with the surrounding spirit.
With single-minded effort John began to close off each hole. He quickly met his limit. Trying to plug them wasn't working, remaining holes just experienced more force from the expelled qi. It was like trying to plug a hole in a dam with his fingers alone, and the flow of qi got spread unequally as well. If he really wanted to get an even spread, the best solution would be an even distribution of material around the inside of his soul, turning it into a huge cistern to contain the downpour. John frowned internally. He would need to shred the remaining roots into a fine paste to make that kind of solution work, but he could only barely smudge things around. He turned outward again.
Not daring to look directly at the great Wheel, John enticed a small portion of the chaos in that place toward him, and indeed a small strand of it danced happily toward him. He guided it through his dantian and inside him. Instantly the crushing, grinding, energy of the Weird qi rampaged inside his soul and pulverized his remaining spirtual roots. The energy burnt itself out quickly leaving behind a fine mush that had been tainted a faint scarlet umber color. Giddily he spread the substance around the surface of his spirit, creating his magnificent vessel. The qi rushing into him had nowhere left to go and was directly crammed inside of him, filling him to the brim with gaseous essence. Quickly the remaining taint crushed the gas into a liquid, condensing on the surface of his vessel and filling once more with liquid. Dense crystals of energy began to form, sinking like unnaturally heavy ice, before an equilibrium pressure was formed, somewhere around 20% solidity.
John had broken straight through to the early Solid Qi Condensation stage! He finally opened his eyes, only to see a group of extremely concerned sect members, including Elder Catherine and Junior Disciple Eli. Blood poured from his seven orifices in thick rivulets and a splitting headache like an axe lodged in his forehead attacked him. John was able to stay conscious for a few more seconds before directly fainting backwards.