57:

Xiao Feng allowed himself a contented sigh as he flopped backwards onto his cushy bed. He had accomplished more than he had set out to do. A second iteration of his Masala Chai had taken form and even though it was as far as one could get from a commercial product, its taste surpassed anything he could have even dreamed of back on earth.

The forays he had made into understanding his own Dao seemed to be worth their weight in gold taels, if his predecessor’s reaction was anything to go by.

He still didn’t understand what exactly it was that he’d stumbled upon and trying to seek out an answer from inherited memories had only gotten him a garbled stream of memories that had elicited a physical response from him as his pulse thundered, a cold sweat beading his forehead as his muscles tightened. The telltale sign of adrenaline flowing through his bloodstream was clear enough, but Xiao Feng could not make heads or tails of whatever profound secrets those memories contained.

His predecessor had told him as much, but the temptation to try had won over him.

“Oh, right,” Xiao Feng muttered as he batted away the sleep weighing on his eyelids. As accomplished as he felt for the day, there was one more task he had to knock off before he allowed himself a nap.

The wardrobe door was pulled open to reveal a black egg that was resting upon a shelf’s flat surface.

Xiao Feng poured three Ge of Bi-horn milk upon it’s surface, watching as it sizzled away, consumed by the egg to sustain itself.

“Am I being selfish?” Xiao Feng asked the egg, even though he knew that there was no way it could understand him. “Lianhua has already refined one beast bonding pill. She could save you now, or at least give you the best shot we’ve got at it.”

Unsurprisingly, there was no response from the egg. The pulsing and dimming cycle was kept under check by feeding it bi-horn milk, though Xiao Feng could tell that its baseline shifted to a slightly faster tempo with every passing day.

The difference wasn’t too worrying, not just yet. The egg had survived this long on its own and now Xiao Feng was supplying it with Qi-rich milk on a daily basis.

He was pretty sure that what his essence cultivation art saw as a pulsing and dimming cycle was the egg instinctively cycling Qi across its being in an attempt to repair the damage to its shell before repeating the process repeatedly. It clearly wasn’t a matter of lacking Qi, because the egg refused to absorb bi-horn milk once its appetite was sated.

Xiao Feng wasn’t sure if that was because it couldn’t process Qi beyond a certain quantity, the Qi wasn’t concentrated enough or because it was simply too damaged to heal itself. The quickening of the pulsing and dimming cycle when it didn’t get sufficient Qi suggested that the egg was forced to work harder to preserve its integrity, perhaps from what reserves it built up from ambient Qi.

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If that was the case, the egg wanted to live. Xiao Feng just had to give it the right fuel to repair itself.

“Give me some time,” Xiao Feng offered. “If it looks hopeless, I’ll let Lianhua take care of you.”

Not long after, Xiao Feng flopped onto his bed and this time, he let sleep claim a hold over him.

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Xiao Feng greeted the next morning with a loud yawn, his arms splaying outwards as he tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes.

He had been more tired than he’d thought, considering that he slept straight through dinner only to wake up the next day.

Which was odd, considering that he was a foundation establishment cultivator. Even when he was sleeping, his body had been trained to fall into a rhythm of absorbing ambient Qi, if only in miniscule quantities before his dantian circulated it across his body through a network of meridians.

He shouldn’t have felt that tired, not unless he exhausted the entirety of his Qi reserves.

Xiao Feng hummed in thought. There was not much he had done differently yesterday compared to any other day, but there was something— he hadn’t just channeled his own Wind Qi, no, he had also channeled his Dao.

If my own strength is physical and my ability to channel and shape the wind comes from Qi, then the Dao seems to be a metaphysical force that bridges the two, Xiao Feng thought. It’s like that intent I was telling Alchemist Jun about, but there’s more dimensions to it. I’ll need to figure it out myself.

Surprisingly, Xiao Feng wasn’t opposed to the idea. Fighting wasn’t exactly his forte, that was true. But there was something more to the Dao, a breadth that encompassed the use of the Wind as a weapon and transcended it.

It had felt good to have truly commanded the wind to move in accordance with his will, to teach a wind that had never known anything but violence that it was capable of more. That it could protect as well as it could harm.

He wanted to know more. But he had also woken up with an appetite and breakfast was being served in the mess hall.

His hunger for scrumptious food temporarily overcame his thirst for knowledge, so off he was.

Any thoughts of a light breakfast were forgotten after he reached the mess hall, his attention captivated by a tray full of herbal flatbread that was folded near the center, its inner fold filled with chunks of saucy beast meat.

He considered limiting himself to two Duskcrest Pheasant Pockets before caving in and grabbing three. To his much expected annoyance, there was no chai station near the end of the buffet, only a single juice instead.

Grumbling under his breath, Xiao Feng cast aside his dignity and reached for a glass cup, before pouring himself a full serving. The Fuschia Blossom infusion was fairly unappetizing with its pinkish-purple hue, but he steeled himself and took a sip for science.

To his surprise, the liquid was nowhere near as overwhelming as he had expected it to be. The floral notes meshed well with a mellow sweetness as the liquid flowed down his gullet with a velvety finish. It would go well as an accompaniment to wash down the meat pockets, but that was all.

There was no masala, no juxtaposition of sweet and spicy, no personality to it beyond the miniscule amount of unattuned Qi that it had contained.

Sure, it had left him slightly refreshed, but even a rock could do that as long as it was steeped in enough Qi.

Fifteen minutes later, Xiao Feng washed down the last of the tangy meat pockets with what Fuschia Blossom Infusion remained in his glass.

Not long after, he left in search of Lianhua.

It was time to refine pills.