"So, where do you get your salt from?" I asked.

My mother had died three days prior, and I needed a break. While I could function reasonably well again, far faster than I thought I would my current training was no fun. Controlling my own aura was hard, harder than I thought it could possibly be. Especially considering I already changed it. I thought it was similar, or that I could find a way around it again, like having my aura manipulate itself, but no. I did not find a way to circumvent training so far. Which really sucked.

“I buy it from a merchant coming from out of town.” He answered.

“Interesting. How they get that salt?” I continued on naively.

“Well, that's easy. Cultivators take some wooden chips or similar things and fill them with salt intent qi.” He explained.

Whaaat?!? They had a perfectly fine - and salty - ocean right next to them and ate salty wooden chips!

"You don't actually eat them." He said, seeing the look on my face. "Just break them over your meal, and the qi will flow into it."

Well, that was better, but still.

Was this world filled with idiots? Qi intent was something only people that had progressed pretty far along being a cultivator had managed. But perhaps that was only the optimal time to develop an intent for your qi, and you could do it earlier? To bridge the downtime to gather enough liquid qi to break into the third realm? After all if qi cost increased like it did before you'd need four hundred times more qi than you did for liquid qi.

That did sound logical. Something to think about later.

Well, no reason not to buy some salt.

"How much does it cost?" I asked.

I was short on money right now, after all my house was still locked. I'd be pissed if they stole it. Really pissed. Nearly all of my good memories in this world were in that house after all.

"Three silver for a handful." He said.

Damn, that was expensive. Still within the money the captain gave me yesterday, to 'buy myself something nice' but it would take most of my founds.

Could I afford to waste money like that? Not really, and my meals were already salty, so I couldn't even use them, but the chance was just too good.

I had never had the chance to study qi intent, and considering the power of the cultivators I had met so far, excluding a certain, currently absent friend, I probably wouldn't need all that much qi to open my dantian. If my assumptions were correct that is. They had a good chance of being correct though, after all they made a lot of sense.

"I will take half a handful then." I said.

The shopkeep nodded, and vanished into the back as I counted the coins. He gave them a once over, and handed me my newest toy … experimental substance.

"Say, are there any other types of salt?" I asked, just in case he used the good stuff. Or the bad.

"Of course. There's also spirit salt. It's found in and near mountains. It a weak spirit stone, too weak for even the poorest of cultivators to bother cultivating with, but quite the sought after resource for rich mortals, or cultivators in the mortal realm.

Spirit salt holds a little more qi than the ambience, but it doesn't even cleanse it, though it does taste far better than normal salt. It's significantly harder to transport though. Even a little water and the cargo is ruined. I don't stock any, it’s simply not worth the cost" He explained.

"Thank you for your information." I said with a small bow.

The shopkeep chuckled, before nodding to me.

"Good to see you little one. Don't let your mother's death defeat your thirst for knowledge, will you?" He asked.

"Of course I won't! Don't worry mister shopkeep." I said.

The shopkeep was a strange man. He knew just about anything murdane, but ‘knew’ nothing about cultivating. He was like a walking library, so just perfect for little old me. How did he know all that stuff? I didn't care! He was just a friendly old shopkeep after all.

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And how could he be a cultivator without having a name? He couldn't.

I once again congratulated myself to that perfect piece of flawless logic, and turned on my heel.

“Say you don't have a wooden bucket you don't need anymore’?” I asked.

“I do. What do you need a wooden bucket for though?” He asked.

“That's a secret.” I said.

He laughed, and soon came back with my second order.

About a quarter of an hour later I marched into the barracks, a bucket of saltwater in my left hand, a stick in my right and a pack of salt in my pocket. I got some strange looks, especially the bucket, but I didn't care. It was time to experiment.

I immediately retreated towards my room, ignoring the fire in the mess hall. People didn't need to know what I was up to! I pulled a string out of the mattress, secured it with the string, and lowered it into the bucket.

Now to see just how much salt I could get out of that.

That bucket would need stay there for the night, so I turned towards more interesting projects. The small packet in my pockets. Lots of wooden chips I had seen at home from time to time, apparently filled with salt intent qi.

I took one out, and focused on it for the first time in my life. Yeah, something different was in there. It didn't feel like real salt though. It felt like salt tasted, but had none of the characteristics of salt.

Still, I wasn't interested in how incompetent the people that made this thing were, I wanted to know how qi intent worked, and how it differentiated from just changing how my aura, and the qi behind it did.

First point of observation was the fact that it did, in fact, not lose the intent after leaving the creator’s aura. If the creator wasn't powerful enough for his aura to span a whole continent. To be honest that would be hilarious, but very unlikely indeed. I did a quick count, and saw I had a total of fifteen wooden chips in my possession.

Good enough, I could destroy one or two then. First I simply send in a weak tendril of qi, so see what happened.

Nothing.

The qi simply flowed past the intent qi, not ever coming into contact with each other.

Interesting.

Could I, perhaps directly influence the qi, it was created by a cultivator after all, and out of their aura. I extended my mind, in just focused on moving a little of the qi. Failure. It did not budge. Well, next try. I excluded a little of my own liquid qi though one of the pores in my hand, and moved it into the wooden chip, ready for the same thing to happen again.

But my qi brushed past the other qi, and took a little with it for a moment, before losing it again.

Interesting. Perhaps intent qi had more in common with liquid qi than the gaseous qi it felt like then? I tried moving it directly again, only this time without a void, but falling towards something. It worked, if a little bad. So it was a mix in between the two? Strange. I could see two reasons for that, that qi had not been cleansed by me, and thus wasn't really mine, even now, or perhaps something different. What if a little of the cultivators understanding of qi stayed with it. And he thought qi had to be forced to move, not compelled.

So I’d have to cleanse it again. Ew. That stuff felt really salty. Anyways, as always when I was cultivating I send the qi inside the wooden chip the feeling of getting observed, all the while constructing a mental crystal around it.

Well. It worked.

But slowly. Quite fascinating really. Also quite scary. Qi intent did not dissolve in ambient qi, and came under your control faster than it lost its intent. Which probably meant you had to cleanse all your qi of its intent before you could get one of your own.

And I shouldn't be eating salty food because that meant further taking in foreign qi intent. Great. Nope. I would not stop eating decently tasty food for a faster cultivation, where was the fun in that after all.

My eyes focused on the bucket of saltwater in the room, I really couldn't wait to get real salt out of it.

Now I had something to do when I wasn't waiting for water to evaporate at least. I refocused on the qi inside, and noticed it was nearly all cleansed, and already reacted much better to my commands than it did before. Good.

I stopped my cultivation, that stuff was fine as it was now, I didn't need it to cultivate. I took out another chip, and checked the qi inside. It was different. Now only the intensity of saltiness had changed, but the whole feeling of qi. So it was made by someone else. I checked every single one of the wooden chips, and not a single one was made by the same person.

Well, that made sense. If people specifically trained some people to produce these they’d need a lot of people to supply even a city, much less an entire region.

And if you needed to cleanse all your qi of other free floating intent, however it came there, then you’d be at an advantage the less power you had. So these salt workers probably were off worse than actual salt miners had been back home.

And salt mines had been brutal.

Anyways, qi all this intent seemed to be a little like a memory stuffed into the qi, only a little more vivid, and far more focused. It was also more, like it was the entire understanding this person had of salt, faulty as it might be, which made it harder to cleanse for me.

And probably even harder from all others, depending if they knew what they were fighting against at the time, or simply tried brute forcing their way through. … It would be brute forcing, like everything seemed to be for cultivators. Such a waste really.

Now did I have any intent qi integrated in my own cultivation? Time to find out. I sat down in meditation pose, something that I had been told meant I wouldn't be interrupted unless absolutely necessary, by anyone, and focused inwards.

Perhaps it was prudent to do this before I opened my dantian, so long as my qi was still static all the time, settled in my body right where I wanted it. That did seem wise, but created several more questions. Did I have enough to qi open my dantian? How long would it take to cleanse all my qi of any lingering intent? What happened if the original owner of said qi came into my presence, could they wrestle with me, and try and interrupt my qi control? Take back as their own?

All disconcerning, and none something I could really do tests with. Until I had my own qi intent. I already know what that would be though. Gravity. What else could it really be, nearly all my cultivation revolved around it, or its consequences after all.