“Concentrate.”

He tried. He tried to focus on the dark cloud of nothingness that shifted before him.

“What do you see, Disciple?”

He listened to the voice of his Master call out to him from the depths of the abyss, urging him forward in pursuit of that which you wanted – that which he needed – to know.

His physical body sat in the grove of Ai-Lee with Master Longhua beside it, while the piece of him that was of the spirit wandered the dark hallways of what Longhua referred to as Diyu – the barrier between oneself and the Universal Dao. He was guiding his newest Corporeal Temperer on the first step to rising through the ranks of the Cultivator. He was showing him how to reach the planes of nirvana – how to begin his first Dao Walk.

“To reach the Dao,” Longhua was saying. “Is to be one with the Qi within one’s body and the world. It is to see that which locks us to this earthly plane, and then it is to push through to wander in a world of pure, raw potential.”

XJ-V tightened his brow. His eyes remained firmly shut, trying to listen to the Master’s words, while the shapes he saw within his mind’s eye formed shadows beyond his ken. He saw the death of Hensha, the High Eagle with his flowing robes and hands composed of pure radiant light that sought out his heart, and then, beyond both, he saw a figure standing atop a mountain.

“What do you see, XJ-V?”

“I…a man.”

He moved closer through the fog and odorless air, his spirit-body gravitating up the mountain’s jagged side. It was not like his journey up Ramor-Tai mountain. That had been a contest of physical exertion. This was a contest of will. Of will, and of fear.

Because when the man turned his head and looked down at the figure of the Cog approaching him, XJ-V saw two blazing eyes. Eyes that burned with white-hot fire.

Eyes that belonged to him.

He gasped as the hands of his shadowed-self reached for his throat, and abruptly returned to the waking world with a yelp of pain.

“Master…” he panted. “I am sorry.”

Longhua looked at his panicked form with apparent disinterest, his eyes then focusing on the Qi pool that stretched across from them.

“You have come far already,” he said. “I wonder – is this the rock that shall cause you to stumble?”

The mischievous Huli appeared behind XJ-V’s shuddering back.

“Arha thinks Longbeard is too hard on XJ-V!” she said. “He has not been so with the other Disciples!”

Longhua directed an angered stare at the fox who shrieked and ran up to perch behind XJ-V’s neck, wrapping her long tails around him like a scarf.

“It is not I who push him, Huli,” he said. “It is this Man of Stone who throws himself too far into the depths of the ocean in pursuit of knowledge he is not ready for.”

“Master?”

“I have it on the good authority of a certain Guipo that you perused the tomes of our library yesterday.”

XJ-V bowed his head.

“That’s not against the rules!” Arha shouted. “Any Disciple can use the lib-“

Longhua’s furrowed brows stopped her tiny voice in her throat.

“Tell me what knowledge you found within,” he asked XJ-V. “Because I do not see the same Cog who first sat before me and demanded to know what he was.”

XJ-V looked out with his Master upon the pool of shimmering water that sparkled in the artificial sun of the Grove. He remembered the pain he had struggled through to get here on that fire-lit night when Longhua had sent him on his first trial. He remembered the words of the High Eagle, and those of the villagers whom had accused him.

A machine destined for war…

Just like the rest of his brethren.

“Master,” he said. “The Sundering was a time of weakness for my kind.”

“It was a time of weakness for us all, XJ-V.”

“The Cogs betrayed their Masters,” he went on with fury. “They took the side of the Old God Yuwa and almost brought humankind to total obliteration.”

“And now,” Longhua finished. “You see one of them staring back at you, blocking your pathway to the Dao.”

XJ-V let the silence between him and his Master hold. He was waiting for his will to contradict the old man. Yet, he knew he could never lie to him. It would be like lying to oneself.

“Do you know why Ai-Lee’s grove was created?” Longhua suddenly asked.

XJ-V answered as best he could. “To create a place of tranquility for mankind. A place where the Qi flow is strongest and where Cultivation may begin.”

“The Prophet could have created any place to contain the tears of Heaven,” Longhua replied. “He could have simply made the Grove a place to contain the waters and nothing more. Why did he create the forest? Why did he build the ornate bridges in the style of the Qingua? Why did he allow streams and branching paths and an ever-glowing sun to come into being here?”

XJ-V frowned as he turned the thought over in his mind.

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“Is it possible the Prophet maintained some nostalgia for the Old World?”

A pained grin broke over Longhua’s face. “What man does not long for the past?” he asked. Then, almost without pausing: “The Grove is often called an image of heaven itself. It is ironic, then, that it was formed as a mirror of what our world once was. The Grove was created as a reminder not of what was, but of what can be.”

He raised one robed arm gently and stretched out his charred fingers, letting a miniscule striped butterfly settle on his fingernails.

“Even as the world outside of Ramor-Tai is a shadow of what it once was, all things of the earth have the potential to change. To be born anew. To start again. That is why Ai-Lee created the Grove: as a reminder that we of the Sects are a force for change.”

To start again…XJ-V wondered.

“Boooooooring!” Arha shouted behind the Cog’s ear. “Why don’t you get to the point, old man!”

Longhua chuckled in his hoarse, dry way. “The first thing I would change about this earth is the presence of a spirit as useless as a Huli,” he said. Then, ignoring the creature’s indigent looks, he fixed XJ-V with his old eyes.

“You see a creature in your own image staring back at you, blocking the path to enlightenment,” he said. “It is a thing of the past. A thing born from your fear. A thing that, until you walked through my doors, I also believed was real. It is a thought given form – an old thing that has long since been freed of the shackles that once bound it to a one-dimensional existence as a tool. I ask you, my Disciple, how shall you contend with it?”

XJ-V watched the rippling waters with a morose expression, hearing his Master’s words, knowing they had the ring of truth to them and, yet, knowing they would not help him face down the assailant in his way. In the dark chasm between this world and the next, he was alone, and that eerie reflection was waiting for him.

“Master,” he said. “I do not know.”

Master Longhua stared at him long and hard for what seemed like a moment that would stretch on for eternity. Then, with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, he merely rose and retraced his steps back to the entrance portal at the other edge of the grove.

“Then I have no more things to say to you today.”

…

Breathe in…breathe out.

In…out.

Feel the Qi…feel it build…

Feel it flow through your veins…

“Feng-Lung, what is the point in these exercises?”

XJ-V asked his companion this question as they stood together in Dragonpyre hearth – the hallway adjacent to Longhua’s chambers where personal duels and training sessions utilizing the Earth Grade techniques of their Sect were held.

Above them both, perched on a wrought-iron fresco depicting the Eternal Dragon, little Arha sat, her eyes staring at the subtle movements of both men with quiet interest.

“To master the Dragon’s Tooth technique,” Feng-Lung explained. “A Disciple must focus on the Qi flow within their body, letting it pool in their Anima Cores, and allow their Chakras to open. Taking in the air, circulating it in the lungs, and letting the limbs trace the path of the spiral is the way our Sect has always done this.”

XJ-V smiled at his companion, standing beside him and copying the gentle fluctuations of his arms and wide, sweeping dances of his feet.

“You speak just like Master Longhua,” he said. “It is no wonder you are one of his best students.”

“Bah, XJ,” Feng replied timidly through closed eyes. “I am still the new-born here. Though I suppose now that you have been properly inducted and passed your Trial, that has changed. I suppose I shall have to be satisfied with being the quickest learning human member of the Eternal Dragon Sect!”

XJ-V smiled at his friend’s merriment. He could tell the boy was delighted to be training his Cog companion personally. In a way, XJ-V owed him everything. It was he who had shown him how to properly meditate, it was he who had shared countless nights with him through those long, arduous months of waiting at the Master’s door, and it was he who, this afternoon, had said that he would teach the most basic Earth Grade technique to XJ-V without hesitation.

“But I have not yet mastered the first rank of Body Tempering,” the machine had complained.

Feng-Lung had waved his concerns away. “XJ-V,” he said. “One does not expect to master anything in a day. But now that we know a steady stream of Qi flows through your body, that Qi can be re-directed as energy, which means you can conjure the Dragon’s Tooth. I will not sit idly by while your potential is being wasted here in mere meditation!”

XJ-V had at first begrudgingly accepted this generous offer, and in the few hours they had spent practicing the movements of the technique, his impression of Feng-Lung had only risen. The boy had spent but a few years here, and was already intimately familiar with the both the teachings of the Master and how he taught. This had served him well enough that he wished to do some teaching himself – something that wasn’t exactly common amidst the ranks of Cultivators, but something that at the same time was not strictly forbidden.

It was simply anathema to most that a student would wish to help another who might surpass him.

So XJ-V listened, mimicked, and followed Feng-Lung’s advice all afternoon. They worked till day slowly bled into night, and the boy, though clearly tiring, never once dropped his smile of satisfaction.

What is it you are getting out of this, Feng-Lung? XJ-V thought. Do you wish to go down in history as the trainer of the first known Cog Cultivator? Do you wish to see if I am a faster learner than you? Or are you simply satiating your curiosity?

XJ-V didn’t have much time to ponder such questions. Throughout the day Feng had halted their breathing exercises and told him to try projecting his Qi energy into a Dragon Tooth strike – the basic fireball projectile attack all Eternal Dragon Disciples learned before anything else. Fire, he said, was passion. Fire was desire made manifest. Fire was creation and destruction. Fire was holding energy within you that you knew could destroy you and then letting it flow out into the earth. It was an element that constantly affected the world for better or for worse. It was an element of change.

Change…

“Visualize the fire,” Feng-Lung told him. “See your blood – eh – oil bubble and boil. Feel it surge forth to the tips of your fingers. Then, curl them into a punch, and strike!”

XJ-V did as he was bid. He followed every instruction to a T.

His punches could summon nothing but smoke.

After his fifth or sixth attempt, Feng-Lung had simply stated they would keep trying. So, here they stood, breathing, moving, and throwing punches well into the night, until XJ-V let his arms fall to his sides in consternation.

“It will not come,” he said aloud. “I can imagine the things you say, Feng-Lung. But I cannot see them within my mind’s eye. It is the same problem I have with entering the Universal Dao. I can see the right path. Without exception, I can. But I cannot see a way through my own fear to reach it.”

Feng-Lung considered for a moment, snapping his fingers and jumping on the spot to keep his blood circulation going.

“You didn’t think being a Cultivator would come easy, did you?” he asked. “It takes one man decades to even pass into the third rank of Core Regulation, never mind master all the Earth Grade techniques.”

“Sometimes more than decades!” Arha shouted down at them. “Have you ever asked old Longbutt just how old he really is?”

Feng-Lung looked up at her and suppressed a boyish giggle.

“I really hope your spirit-friend doesn’t act like that in front of the Master.”

“Oh, she does, Feng. Believe me, she does.”

Both men shared a hearty laugh as the doors to Dragonpyre suddenly creaked open.

“More Disciples at this hour?” Feng-Lung asked as he turned. “Brothers, forgive us. I fear we have taken up too much ti-“

His voice stopped in his throat as he saw who it was leering at them from the doorway, throwing the shadow of a panting beast across them both.

XJ-V stepped forward beside Feng, all thoughts of his uselessness suddenly dissipating altogether in the face of the sneering figure that closed shut the great stone doors behind him.

“If you want forgiveness, Brothers,” Fai-Deng spat. “Then you’ll have to pay the price.”

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