Lin Songmei wondered if the blindfold was expensive, if she had to bet, she would’ve guessed that it was. Alas, there was no invisible person who she could make bets with.
Songmei tied the blindfold around her head, replacing her vision with a dark void. The blindfold was comfortable at least, a silky material that also didn’t let any light through.
“You two okay?” Liu Xueli’s voice rang out as she moved around to adjust their blindfolds. “It’s not too tight is it?”
Songmei gave her affirmation that it was fine along with Yan Mingqing. They sat there in the darkness waiting for Liu Xueli’s next words.
Silence.
Just as Songmei was beginning to think she had zoned out and missed something, Xueli began to laugh, causing Songmei to lurch slightly, her heart rate skyrocketing.
“Ahh... I didn’t mean to scare you two, my apologies.” Xueli murmured, an apologetic tone clear in her voice. “This is how people used to do things a long, long time ago though. You’d just sit here and maybe you’d see it, maybe you wouldn’t. Obviously that’s not what we’re really striving for, for people to sit here for days, weeks, or months. Therefore, we do something different now~ Hands out please.”
Extending her left hand as she was on the right, with Mingqing on her left, Songmei felt her hand get grabbed by Xueli’s. As she felt her hand get grabbed, Songmei felt an ice cold, yet refreshing feeling seep up her arm into herself. At the same time, instead of just seeing a pitch black void, Songmei felt as if there was a haze in front of her.
“You see a haze, yeah?” Xueli asked, eliciting a nod from both of her disciples. “Good... Good, we would’ve had a big problem otherwise.”
“From here,” Xueli explained, squeezing each of the hands she was holding a touch, “I’ll just be sending some Qi through you two. It helps speed the process along for reasons that are... too annoying to get into. Instead, I’ll just explain the three energies, Jing, Qi, and Shen. While I do this, just listen along and concentrate on seeing that haze more clearly.”
Getting another nod from her two disciples, Xueli was ecstatic, look at her! Her disciples were so obedient and mature, she really chose well! Maybe she could start calling herself heaven’s favored teacher or heaven’s favored older sister.
“Alright, you two keep quiet and just... focus, but not too hard. It’s hard to explain but you want to give it just the right amount of attention. Too much and you’ll start overthinking and that will cloud your vision, while too little and you’ll... fall asleep.”
Giving the two slow-breathing, half-meditating disciples a light handshake each, Xueli began her explanation. “So to start, the basics. I’m sure you know this, but it never hurts to repeat. There’s a hierarchy of sorts to these three energies. Jing is the lowest, Qi is the middle, and Shen is the highest.”
The strategy was quite simple, it had been used by countless masters, a common yet subtle tactic they used in the Starlight Lake Sect. Give some explanation of concepts that are important, but not critical to fully comprehend, allow the disciples to learn while also helping them divert just a touch of focus to each thing.
Jing, Qi, and Shen were abstruse concepts to the extreme so it was fine to not understand them in the beginning. Intuitional knowledge would work for the most part.
Sending a careful stream of Qi into the two disciples, Xueli continued her explanation. “Jing is the first energy. Jing is like... an invisible energy that is the basis of matter. For our purposes however, we focus on Jing’s other purpose, it's the basis of life energy, the basis of vitality.”
Xueli grinned, everyone always perked up when they found out Jing was the energy that really helped them live longer. “Additionally, Jing is also, to put in simple terms, your sexual energy. It’s strange but yes, sexual energy. It and life energy, if you think about it, are related.”
Moving on before the two in front of her could dwell on it too much, Xueli began to explain how the energies were used in cultivation. “So for Jing, more Jing means you’ll live longer. It also means you’ll have a stronger body. However, with this life energy, how are you supposed to direct it? That’s where Qi comes in.”
“Qi is the middleman, the driver for everything.” Xueli surmised, her tone of voice becoming grandiose before returning to normal. “You can train Jing by working out and stuff, but you’ll reach a limit. That’s where increasing your Qi comes in. Qi is in the food you eat, the liquid you drink, and the air you breathe.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Xueli let out a small sigh under her breath, she felt bad she had to bore her disciples now, but it was critical to expose these concepts to her disciples early.
Making sure her Qi stream was smooth, Xueli also hoped Mingqing’s family had enough sense not to expose Mingqing to those concepts early, as a child with as much talent as her trying to mess around and start cultivating could ruin their future.
“Qi is sort of like this magical force, with it you can control more Jing and have a much stronger body and live longer. Additionally, you can use Qi directly to manifest fancy techniques.”
Of course, it went further than this, it was more intricate on how that happened, but Xueli felt like there wasn’t a need to drown the two in too much information at the current time.
Listening to this information, Songmei was amazed, all the texts that she had read were... vague as hell with such convoluted language with descriptions such as “The driving force behind your locomotive movement.”
Xueli continued, thanking the cultivation association and sects in her head for their underhanded business in keeping detailed guides on Jing, Qi, and Shen out of the market.
“Qi is what we primarily cultivate to become stronger. With more Qi we can control more Jing. However, you may ask... what controls Qi? Well, that’d be Shen of course.”
“This is where it gets more annoying and convoluted,” Joked Xueli, a bit of a lamenting tone also creeping into her voice. “The most common descriptor of Shen is that it’s the manifestation of your experiences, memory, wisdom, and understanding of the world and its laws.”
“Shen is not something that you can just sit down and cultivate like Qi or go outside and workout to gain like Jing.”
“Shen is something that will naturally grow, from you adventuring outside, to life-or-death situations, to just maturing as a person. With more Shen however, you will be able to control more Qi and know the way to move forward on your cultivating journey.”
Seeing the faint nods from the two in front of her, Xueli continued without missing a beat. “Therefore, we encourage you to go out and adventure, hunt demons, hunt beasts. With that your Shen will grow more quickly, you’ll be able to increase your Qi and Jing, and lastly, your cultivation as a whole.”
“We measure cultivation mostly based on what stage of Qi you’re at, since that’s the most dynamic, Jing and Shen more often than not only go under changes in quality, denseness or amount.”
Looking over at a clock to see how much time she had spent sitting there sending Qi to her disciples, Xueli shifted her sitting position a touch. “Now, it’s unproductive if I just sit here and give you two Qi all day, so I’ll go over one last thing before I get going.”
“The last thing I want to mention is cultivation deviation. There are a few ways that this can happen.” Xueli began, her tone much more somber than before, “and each is quite... sad.”
“The first is a problem with the Shen, this is the most troublesome I’d say. Most of the time we refer to this as an internal demon or tribulation.”
“This is when your Shen goes awry. Most of the time this might occur after traumatic events or getting your mind corrupted. The effects of this vary if not solved, sometimes you just lose your cultivation, sometimes you mutate into a demon, sometimes your personality splits and so on.”
“The second way would be where you have too much Qi and not enough Shen to control it.”
“Most of the time this will create problems in that you’ll start leaking Qi, getting worse would be that when you use your techniques you won’t be able to control the power. The part that can really kill you though is if it gets too bad and your Qi starts to rip through your body.”
Shuddering remembering someone who had suffered that fate, Xueli wrapped up with Jing.
“The last category of cultivation deviation is when your body has too much Jing.”
“With this, you might start getting random growths, bone spines, or other stuff along those lines. However, go too far in that direction and you’ll turn into a mindless beast. On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes people instead experience the loss of the use of their limbs, and eventually become statues.”
“As you can see... really not stuff anyone would want to go through.” Xueli sighed, lamenting the human experiments that had been done in the far ancient times to try and control cultivation deviation.
“Anyhow, it should be much more clear now, right?” Asked Xueli, who began to taper off the flow of Qi once she saw the two had nodded. “Alright then, now try and do it without my help~”
Standing up with a laugh as she saw both of her disciples frown, Xueli booped both of their noses, leaving a tiny mound of snow on both. “My advice, as vague as it is, is try and begin peering through the haze by looking within yourself, instead of, for example, squinting at the far-ass menu in the canteen to order, look into yourself, your memory of the menu because they never change it.”
Ruffling the two’s hair, Xueli walked out, closing the door with an inaudible click while leaving them to it.
Sitting down in the courtyard where she’d be able to greet them when they came out, she reclined into a chair, feeding her koi.
Life was good.
She was such a good teacher!
Dayum... maybe she could ask for a raise or some more sect resources.
As Xueli basked in her own ego though, Songmei and Mingqing sat there, both confused beyond belief. First, the energy descriptions were... convoluted and hard to take in all at once, and this whole look into yourself thing was confusing...
And what was that menu analogy... Did the canteen wrong their master?