My body felt like it was floating in a sea of pain, all emanating from my stomach. It branched out from my stomach and traveled in a straight line up to my head and down my legs before moving down my arms into my hands. The pain pulsed along this circuit while a feeling of emptiness radiated from the path and my stomach.
What happened? What is this? Why am I in so much pain? These thoughts drifted through my head between the pain the pulses caused. This pain was too much, and I drifted off again after one more pulse.
----------------------------------------
Coming to again, I can feel the pain in my body still, but it seems to have subsided some as I finally can open my eyes. As I open them, the ceiling is blurry before I can blink away the crust around my eyes and slowly sit up. As I sat up, there was a slight crunching noise as I apparently pulled my back out of something. Looking down at my body, it was easy to tell what that crunch was as I was covered in blood, and the pot I was holding was beside me, the lid still on it. Carefully I rose to my feet as I looked at the table and noticed ten bowls of food just sitting there, ready for me to eat them.
It looks like I was out for five days, and this is the fifth night, meaning I am behind compared to everyone else, and I’ve also lost a lot of blood, judging by my being covered in it and the dried pool on the floor. How am I not dead? Grabbing the bowls, I force myself to swallow it down before drinking all the water available before moving back down to sit on the floor. I only have one bed, so I won’t ruin it with my dried blood.
Wait…lid?
Moving over to the pot, I examine it and find that not only is there now a lid on it, but also it has lines that pulse with gray light, and it no longer looks like it was made with no regard to quality. In fact, it looks like a professional made it from real clay that dried into a nice terracotta color.
It worked! Is that what that ripping noise was and all the pain I felt? Did it rip my Dantian out and put it into the pot? Is that why I’m covered in blood? Shrugging it off, I try to pick up the pot but struggle to lift it onto the table. Without a doubt, my Dantian is now within the pot, and I have officially become a cultivator. Now I just needed to put an animal into the pot so that I could begin truly cultivating and improving myself.
----------------------------------------
I barely slept last night due to trying to sleep on the floor, so I was more than a little tired when I dragged myself outside to the river to clean off. I decided to use the river's end that flows out of my clearing so that my blood and whatever else doesn’t contaminate where I drink. Scrubbing myself off completely and cleaning my blood-soaked boxers revealed the red lines flowing out from where my Dantian used to be in the same pattern as where I felt the pain when I woke up the first time.
When I moved it into the pot, did the process take more than just my Dantian? Were these where my meridians were supposed to be, and now they’re in my Forge? I’ll have to figure that out later when I open the pot and put something into it. Climbing out of the river, I’d go over and grab a stick to wack a snake or fish with and head over to the river's entrance to begin my hunt.
Today I would put my condensed twenty-three years of living in the South to use. This means I will probably catch nothing because I was a city boy and only caught fish with a modern fishing pole. I only knew how to make the mod pot due to the random videos I’d watch in my spare time.
Right now, I saw three snakes and seven fish, and I only needed them dead for my cultivation journey to truly begin. I could hopefully catch a snake since that should give me a leg up in the offensive department and maybe a defensive technique. After thinking about it for a moment, I decided to go to my rocks and grab the biggest one I could find in my pile. I’ll just drop a rock on them and hope for the best.
As I hoisted the rock over my head, I aimed at the snake I wished to capture. I stood there waiting for the clouds to cover the sky before launching the rock. So I stood here for six hours, getting a tan before my time to strike came. As the clouds blocked the sun, I lifted the rock above my head before throwing it at the snake to kill it.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
As the rock flew towards the snake, I held my breath, hoping it would connect and let me finally start cultivating for real. As it continues forward, something truly unexpected happened. The snake leaped out of the water and knocked the rock out of the way before turning towards me and rushing me down. As quickly as I could, I turned away and ran for my life as the snake continued to slither towards me at a pace faster than my walking speed.
Oh, I can outpace it, so I should be able to kill it if I just kite it and wack it with my stick, hopefully.
Running over to my stick pile, I grab my beating stick before waiting for the snake to get in range and swinging my stick down at it, where I could hit it on the head once. The snake recoiled some before coming to slither back at me, and I think it's angrier after that hit.
I run around it in a wide circle before waiting for it to once again get within range, sending a blow at its head again. This time it was prepared for me and swiped its tail at my stick, knocking the blow off course before it could land. Seeing this, I abandoned the stick and ran back to my rock pile, where I believed I could perform a devastating blow on the snake.
Quickly grabbing the largest rock still in the pile, I run with it briefly before positioning myself for the final confrontation with the snake. Raising the rock, I prepare to slam it onto the snake and crush it beneath me. The snake, wary of my plan, slowly approaches me while eyeing my rock as if it figured I’d throw it again. Deciding this was my chance, I rushed the snake down before jumping a little and slamming down the rock with my full weight behind the strike. The snake tried to use its tail to knock it away, but it was to no avail as the rock crashed into the snake, crushing it beneath.
I leave the rock pinned there for a few minutes before lifting it a little where I last saw the snake’s tail. Seeing that it was kinda flat, I quickly flipped the rock off the spot where the snake was while also jumping back to gain some distance and prepare myself to run away. Seeing that the snake was making its best impression of a pancake let me know that I had won my first fight against what I could only assume was a Qi Gathering snake. Given that I was even able to kill it, it means that it was most likely only in the first stage, which means it had only just stopped being a regular animal allowing me to actually fight it somewhat evenly.
Peeling its body off the ground, I rushed back into my house before anything else could be attracted to us and locked the door. Now was the moment of truth where everything would all click, and I could finally make some progress in my fight for survival, and it all started with putting this snake into my Dantian Forge.
Opening the pot lid, I briefly look inside to see what I’m working with here. Inside was a gross-looking, blue flesh that pulsed in time with the lights on the pot. I guess that was my Dantian, and it was never meant to be outside of a body or whatever metaphysical space it resides in. I was slightly grossed out, so I quickly dropped the snake's body into the pot and then closed the lid.
With the lid closed, the pot released a flash between the seams before it sealed shut and began to slowly spin in place. Curious, I looked underneath to see what was happening and if it would scratch the table, only to see that it was floating maybe a millimeter off the table. While this wasn’t in the book, I wasn’t going to question it as I was now officially cultivating my way to survival.
----------------------------------------
It's been a few hours, and dinner had come and gone while I was waiting on the pot to finish its conversion of the snake into a Phantom for me to use. It seemed like if the animal was stronger than me, it would take much longer than the four hours the book told me it would take. So I was laying in bed since I wasn’t going to just sleep and wait for it in the morning I was going to just wait for my Phantom to be ready.
----------------------------------------
I think I nodded off for a bit, but I was awakened by a sudden jolt coming from my stomach as if a void I had recently gotten was filled. Looking over to the pot, its gray lights were now green and pulsed in a rhythm of two pulses every second. Along with that, a flash of near my stomach caused me to look down to see that the image of a snake curled up where the scar of my Dantian being ripped out was.
I was now officially a cultivator and could now better protect myself against future threats. Now to call out my Phantom, the book said I had to will it out, after which it’ll follow any verbal commands I give. Concentrating, I call out my Phantom and watch as it materializes in front of me in the air. I should’ve expected it, but it seems my Phantoms can already fly, meaning I could’ve just grabbed a fish and not risked my life against the snake. Well, hindsight is 20/20, after all, so I’ll keep that in mind for future captures on my journey.
Looking it over, it didn’t have any patterns and was simply solid green and slightly ethereal, given its energy-based existence. It was about seventy cm long and probably seven centimeters thick, with a little point at the end of its tail that might grow into a spike if I let the pot refine it. It didn’t appear very strong, but I’ll have to deal with that by pumping it full of more Qi by simply existing. Now to name it.
“Let's see…you were pretty aggressive when you fought me and showed some intelligence. Although you also were pretty cocky, thinking you could stop my rock at the end there. Hmm, how about I call you Coral? I think it’ll fit nicely since I found you in the water, you were a living creature, and you died to a rock.”
My Phantom didn’t respond and only kept staring at me.
“Ah, don’t worry, you’ll grow used to it in no time Coral. Now come on, let's sleep until morning, then we’ll catch some fish, okay?”
This time I got a response in it hissing at me before flying back into my Dantian Container, where I could feel its Qi flow through me. Well, at least I knew I could talk to my Phantoms, and they’ll probably respond.
Climbing into bed, I curl up and let my tiredness carry me off to dreamland.