It was the rain that first called John to consciousness. The ever-pounding white noise from the entire sect and the flowing water in his abode stirred his mind from its fainting episode. No concerned sect members in sight and fresh clothes told him he had been asleep for a while.

John simultaneously felt as weak and as strong as he'd ever been. Just pushing himself up from his supine position had shot him a foot into the air, but he quickly got his feed underneath him. His physical strength, agility, and balance far surpassed the strength he'd once had as a plain mortal, but his spiritual strength felt shockingly low.

Peering inward, Johns dantian was gone... in its place was a large dantian-like space that spread to every corner of his body, almost as if he was a hollow shell. He still had organs, bones, and blood, but the spiritual overlap had clearly complicated. Instead of a pile of sand-like grains of solid qi, his entire dantian-space was covered in long strands of solid qi like a mess of cobwebs. John had the absurd impulse to brush them away and was shocked when the strands of qi followed his command.

The strands of qi flowed into a streamer of unwoven silk that bundled itself into a neat skein that settled in his legs. Somehow that felt awkward, so he pulled it back up to his waist and stuck it where a normal dantian would sit. Normally, new disciples would gather gaseous qi until they reached a sufficient density to condense liquid qi on the walls of their dantian, precipitate that liquid qi into grains of solid qi, and then enter foundation establishment--optimizing their physical bodies until they were ready to melt all the grains of qi into a solid core. For John at least, this process was going to be extremely different and unusual.

After centering himself, John was ready to step outside. He was immediately greeted by Eli and two of his peers, he had never learned their names. Eli was huddled in the corner of the eaves with a shaken look. A young man about John's age had a broad and friendly smile, a young woman stood next to him with a more flirtatious smile.

"Welcome back to the living, John." The man spoke. "We're all very excited to hear the results of your enlightenment."

The woman stepped in close and grabbed his hand. "He did say that you were the best of us, I'm Chloe by the way"

"I'm Mark," the guy said, "none of the others have had any breakthroughs besides you, care to share the secret?"

That was going to be complicated... John remembered slipping into the trance described by the Butterfly Dream Scripture but everything after that was a fuzzy mania. The difficulty must have shown on his face because Mark gave a wry smile and said:

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"You don't really have to tell us--"

"I'm willing to help, its just a bit complicated, I don't know if what I did will work for everyone?" John interrupted. "At least I can help you understand the scripture better."

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And so it was that John spent the next two weeks recovering from his intense breakthrough by helping others in his cohort understand and enter the correct mindset needed for cultivating Weird qi. Mark and Chloe took it upon themselves to be his unofficial liasons to the rest of the group, and John was fine with that. Everyone was friendly but there was still a barrier of estrangement between John and the rest of them that he couldn't quite identify. They seemed to take him as their natural leader but John had no inclination to humor them.

Mark was the second person to make any progress, quickly entering the liquid stage, but without any fanfare. It seemed to suit his steady image. Chloe was fourth or fifth, John had been avoiding her as much as possible and didn't know the exact timing--her advances were much beyond what John was able to handle right now.

He still intended to find out what happened at his home village, but the elders were absent from the weird disciples' courtyard. Things moved slower in a sect than the rest of the world. Otherwise John was mostly preoccupied by fiddling with his new qi abilities.

The threads of qi inside him moved mostly to his whim. They could twist and form freely to his imagination but were limited by his focus. The clearer the image in mind the sturdier the threads would hold, but the more he split his attention, or the more complex his demands of the substance, the easier it would fall apart. It also seemed steadier in cloth-like shapes or amorphous solids. The most interesting thing it could do was leave his body.

John watched as blob of his qi danced in front of him loosely. It was completely invisible to normal sight but John could still sense its shape and position readily. It also didnt interefere with the rain unless he held it completely rigid, though he would sometimes do so to stop from getting wet. Where the rain passed, his qi would soak up the environmental water qi present in the rain. When it was fully saturated he would bring it back into his body and dump the environmental qi inside, where his dantian-space would slowly corrupt it, spinning new threads of Weird qi. It was easiest to drain the ever present water qi this way, but John figured it would work with other varieties.

Actually this was the only way John could figure out how to cultivate, normal practitioners were able to convert environmental qi directly, while he had to drain it like some kind of sick spider. It worked for now.

Eventually Elder Catherine showed herself once more, and John was able to ask her about visiting his home. He was free too, if only he had sufficient contribution points to pay for the leave of absence. Ten of them, not too many but he would need to do some things around the sect besides 'laze around.' John was a bit miffed about that particular allegation, but he was ready to take some action regardless. Elder Catherine had just the task for him, certain plants in the outer sect garden were underperforming, and Weird qi was the primary suspect. Tomorrow morning he would be paired up with a regular disciple to investigate, and if possible, heal the plants.