“That’s it!”

I stood up too fast and nearly lost my balance as the blood rushed from my painfully crossed legs to my head. The damn skeleton made it look so easy cause it was so thin.

“…Cultivate…”

I flinched at the skeleton's haunting voice and hurried to sit. I didn’t know if mimicking the skeleton’s meditating form did anything, but in Grandma Sylvie’s stories, the people always sat cross-legged to cultivate. It couldn’t hurt, right?

Anyways, that wasn’t the most crucial part! After much trial and error, I've had a revelation.

“Cultivation is like eating,” I murmured to myself.

It sounded a little weird aloud, but the idea stuck with me.

All I had to do was eat a bunch of Qi, or whatever the energy on this world was called, to gather it and then condense it inside me. I would keep condensing and gathering until I eventually broke through the bottleneck to the first realm! Usually, the first realm was called the Qi Condensation Realm.

And if my guesses were correct, I had the perfect way to do it: The violet water!

After some careful inspection, I realized a few things about where I was.

Firstly, the violet water in the pool wasn’t regular water. Go figure, hey? It was Qi that was so concentrated that it took on a liquid form.

Secondly, the violet water was incredibly calm with everything but me. I was like a magnet for the water; no matter what I did, it seeped into me, replacing discomfort with energized healing. Even the scars from when I was a kid were healed to flawless skin.

Thirdly, and this was mostly a guess, the violet water can propel me into the Qi Condensation Realm.

I closed my eyes and tried to feel the sensations of Qi around me. I felt the violet waters around me ripple inwards as the energy seeped into me like it did when it made my spit disappear. I tried to feel the strands of warmth seeping into my body as it flowed up my arm. It took a few minutes, but the heat weaved across my shoulder, arcing alongside my back and then naturally back around to a point just above my navel.

And that was just one way the energy travelled. Hundreds of tiny streams were all collecting into one natural point.

As I felt the energy circulating from the pool into my body, an image began to form inside my mind. I reflected on the peach tree sapling's vision as Lyfe fused the planets. The way that the cosmic energies swirled around each other in perfect balance, one constantly pressuring and relieving the different energy as it combined.

Yin and Yang.

I was far from being at Lyfe’s level, heck, I was only using a single type of Qi that seemed impossibly gentle towards me, but the image helped me visualize how to gather energy and possibly the next step of condensing it all.

A sudden pain jolted me from my revelation, and I felt the warmth in my body dissipate as the gathered Qi fled from my body. My eyes opened in a frown, and a sigh escaped my mouth.

“Of course, it isn’t that easy,” I spoke with annoyance as my hand held my grumbling stomach.

I hadn’t eaten in hours, possibly longer. I couldn’t tell an exact time from the darkness of The Pit, but my stomach told me I had missed more than one meal.

Stubbornness flashed in my eyes, and I felt the violet water swirl around me in response.

“I’m going to get this.”

I remembered how Grandma Sylvie worked in her gardening fields without a break. She would eat breakfast and then continue until it was nearly dinner before she even thought of stopping. I would do the same with cultivation.

I wasn’t leaving this spot until I reached some sort of result.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

*****

“You’re staring.”

Abby opened and locked eyes with Gou Jia, who lazily sat on his cushion.

“You should be able to cultivate despite me watching you. Blocking me out is the key to effective meditation.” Gou Jia countered.

Abby’s eyes thinned.

“Why are you so obsessed with me?”

Abby saw the shift in Gou Jia’s eyes as he switched postures to face away from her.

“Because you have a great aptitude for cultivation, enough to lead us to a new future. Maybe one day, you and I could even lead the sect together.”

Abby’s fists clenched as she choked down her immediate response.

“I would never do it. Why don’t you get Megan to help you lead it? She seemed eager to give in to your every demand on the way to the sect.”

There was an unexpected flinch from Gou Jia, and after a few moments, he twisted back around to stare at Abby. The silence spoke volumes as his eyes gradually floated to the ceiling.

“You likely won’t see her anymore. But you’re right. She told me a great deal about many things. She told me about your village and the others. And something far more interesting.” Gou Jia reached out toward a cup.

Abby watched with amazement as the water flowed from the cup, forming a sphere with little outdents.

“Earth sounds like quite an interesting place. No Qi. Wars with weapons that can cross continents. Sects, or as you all seem to call them, governments. Some places have royal families in power, while councils of regular people lead others. Martial Arts are simply an activity for most, with few that ever fully embark upon the Dao.”

Gou Jia spun the sphere around his hand before crushing it back into the cup below.

“The most interesting thing is how you all appeared here. She never could give me an answer to that question. How did you get here, Abby?”

Gou Jia looked at Abby with a gaze that pricked her skin. Summoning her courage, Abby closed her eyes and took on a meditative posture. She felt Gou Jia’s stare linger on her, then the feeling disappeared.

“Blocking me out… I guess that is what I asked for.” Gou Jia whispered. Then, with a more confident tone, Gou Jia announced his leave.

“Cultivate here. I should deal with Gou Hui’s wake. He leaves me with no small number of problems to fix. If you leave, there will be consequences.” The sound of shutting doors echoed out in the room, then silence.

Abby peeked one eye open.

“He really left….” She whispered.

Abby looked around the room and quickly got up. Without hesitation, she ran to the doors, peeked through them for anyone on the other side, and then left Gou Jia’s private courtyard. She was confident in her ability to sneak out of houses. She had done it countless times for parties.

Right now, that ability needed to be used for something more important: finding Arden. Who knew what Gou Jia would do to him? Or what did Gou Da or Gou Hui already do to him while she was away?

She was worried.

*****

Gou Jia nearly chuckled atop his courtyard roof as Abby tip-toed into the sect streets. She was straightforward and guided by her desires, just like Gou Jing was long ago.

Gou Jia hurriedly waved away the thought of Gou Jing and watched Abby flit through the Bloodthorne Sect’s complex streets and alleyways. She met with little trouble due to the specially hemmed robes reserved for inner disciples, which Gou Jia had given her himself. She needed to change after the first body cleansing that Qi Condensation provided her. It had left her a smelly mess of blackened sweat.

“Is it because you’re siblings?” Gou Jia questioned into the wind. He watched Abby weave through the sect pathways, asking other disciples where a ‘drunken bastard’ lived. Gou Jia followed, jumping between rooftops and alleyways to stay out of sight.

“Is that why you will go to such lengths for him? Even against the threat that I gave you?”

Gou Jia flitted from another rooftop, landing gracefully atop a courtyard wall that seemed ready to collapse beneath him. Below was Abby, who was trying to find an opening to peer into the ruined courtyard that held two hard-headed men. When Gou Jia looked inside, he saw one young man attempting to attack the other middle-aged man.

“Come back here!” Arden yelled.

A drunken laughter echoed out as the middle-aged man with rosy cheeks swayed out of the way of Arden’s punch. The drunk man jabbed Arden’s side with circular movements, causing him to shift off balance and fall.

Hiccup!

“There’s no hope for you. You can’t even get my bottle!” The drunken man taunted Arden by waving his wine bottle in front of him. Gou Jia watched as Arden leapt towards the bottle, only for the drunk man to elbow Arden back to the ground with deft, swaying movements.

“He, he, he, hiccup! Don’t forget about me~” The drunk man laughed.

“Sun Cai is the same as ever, it seems.” Gou Jia watched for a moment before returning to Abby, who watched through a rotted hole in the courtyard doors. Gou Jia saw Abby’s eyes sparkle before shaking her head with a smile. She even mouthed the words, idiot brother.

“Oooh, no, that doesn’t count. Those are empty!” the drunk man proclaimed as Arden picked up some of the many empty alcohol bottles lying around the courtyard.

“I’ve got you now!” Arden shouted as his arm slung an empty bottle at the drunk man, Sun Cai. It launched at a fitting speed for a baseball player and forced Sun Cai onto one foot. Another thrown bottle made Sun Cai switch to his other foot, even as he took a sip from his own wine bottle. Sun Cai’s body twisted as the last of Arden’s bottles whizzed past his face.

“You won’t do any good like that~” Sun Cai mocked and watched Arden reach for the bottle in his hand.

Suddenly, Sun Cai’s eyes sharpened.

From the tip of Arden’s reaching hand, a small flame flickered into existence and launched towards the bottle in Sun Cai’s hand. Sun Cai’s body twisted again, lighting the crimson marks around his collar, and the bottle narrowly missed the minor flaming attack.

“Oh?”