Her fingers are splayed out in front of her, rays of moonlight shining through the gaps and unto her face. One by one she curls each finger, until her hand’s made a fist, then she squeezes. There’s pain there, and not an insignificant amount either, but she can move her arm well enough to fight if needed. She traces a line across the mass of scar tissue that the appendage has become. There are five ridges where muscle is repairing slowly, courtesy of being in purification, but otherwise it’s just a dark purple where flesh was torn from her bones.

She doesn’t like looking at it.

She takes her left arm and traces a line across her neck, feeling the old while looking at the new.

She’s quite ugly now, isn’t she? No amount of etiquette class can overcome the marks on her body now, unless she decides to dress like a nun, but all things being equal she’ll probably end up with a scar on her face as well. It…hurts, she stares at her reflection on the occasions they get to bathe in a river, and all she sees is something revolting. Her previous charm lost to the furrows of purple and marks of red/white.

But I’m still alive, a part of her thinks, better to be an abomination than to be dead.

It’s a bittersweet thought.

She doesn’t care much for it.

She takes a deep breath and forces Qi into her core.

It’s slower when she does it without meditating, but it’s still faster than the normal method. She just has to be careful when toeing the line, but right now she isn’t anywhere near it so it’s fine.

Apparently if she crosses it her soul will shatter.

A scary thought, so she just won’t cross.

Her willpower’s gotten stronger, not by much, but it has. Gathering in this way is less of a burden on the mind and soul the more days pass. She can see why Rakan considers this useless, the rate at which she’s growing is only marginally faster than gathering Qi the normal way. But the important part is the Qi itself, her connection is thin and brittle, meaning that she barely gets any of the Qi her soul produces. A day's worth might be enough to boost an appendage once, and considering her meridians, she can’t exactly be wasting it. She’s cleansed twenty three by this point, practically nothing, but more than when she started.

She scans the surroundings as Rakan does his burpees and the others sleep.

They’ve been on the road for…seven months now?

Not a single time have they been attacked at night, though they should be prepared to break that streak soon, considering all the mongrels and beasts spread out through the lands now. She’s not looking forward to having her sleep interrupted by some Qi infused jerboa looking to die.

Rakan stops his burpees and walks up to her side, “your turns over kid”

“How are you so good with time?”

He shrugs, “just learn to follow the moon, it’s not that hard”

“What about when the clouds get in the way?”

“Feeling.”

-

“How does compression even work?” Etra asks, “you’ve been doing it for the past few months but I don’t see you improving any faster.”

Tantra shrugs, “you know when I vomit blood doing the weaving exercises?”

“Yeah,”

“It’s the same principle but in reverse, essentially I’m substituting my will with my soul, which forces it to contract. Did I get that right?”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Rakan gives a so-so gesture, “mostly, it's more your soul is being compressed by the pressure of manipulating reality than it contracting though.”

“Does it make it denser?” Kisrin asks

“The sect master didn’t mention anything about that so I’d imagine not.”

“What if he just skipped that detail?”

“He wouldn’t do that, grumpy as that crotchety bastard is, he always gets into the details.”

“Weird,” Yorin says, “where does the soul stuff go if it doesn’t get denser?”

“Not how it works, the soul isn’t a physical object that follows physical rules”

Etra tilts her head to one side, then to the other, as though in intense thought. She brings a hand up to her chin and ‘hmmm’s’ then snaps her fingers as though she solved some great mystery.

“I’ve got it!” She declares.

“Got what?” Tantra asks.

“If our body is the physical part, and the soul is the spiritual part, then the core and meridians are a mix of both!”

“Okay?”

Etra sighs, “truly you are a fool, do you not know what this means Tantan?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please.”

“Can we get back to the topic?” Kirsin says, “I want to know what it is you’ve figured out.”

“Well,” Etra raises her nose high, “If the core is both physical and spiritual then it either works like both or it works like neither.”

Everyone just stares at her, waiting for some kind of follow up to that statement, but Etra stands proud and doesn’t say anything else.

“Okay?” Tantra says.

“Dumbass! Do you not see that I have just made possibly the greatest theory in all of cultivation?”

“It takes bits of both,” Rakan says blandly.

Etra stares at him.

“What, you think you’re the only one with a brain?”

-

Bison are one of the few naturally born spirit beasts.

Draped with a fur coat of deep black, possessing eyes that glow with a vibrancy that fluctuates between yellow and red, mostly settling for orange. Their hooves are a gleaming white alongside massive horns that curve up their heads.

There’s a whole herd of them grazing by the path, one that Rakan and Tantra walk without a care in the world.

“C’mon kiddos, it’s just a bunch of overgrown cows, what’re you so afraid of?”

“It’s thousands of spirit beasts.” Etra hisses

He waves her off, “they won’t do anything, watch!”

Rakan walks up to one of the bison and puts his hand on its head.

He starts rubbing.

The bison leans into his hand.

“See! You guys need to trust me more.”

The bison snorts.

“Me too buddy, me too.”

-

Walking is a very healthy form of exercise.

Step by step the journey of miles, each one a memory. Resai much prefers it over riding caravans, and she suspects the peasants do as well. Cultivators in general are intimidating things of little compassion and less remorse, she of course, is not exempt from this. She just has some self awareness to accompany the casual cruelty.

It’s fun really, to see how her lessers might squirm, she doesn’t tend to kill them, that would be no fun. But she does give the interesting ones a mark for later, so that fate might bring them together again and she witnesses how they’ve progressed.

Like right now.

“Disappointing,” Resai says to the man missing both arms, “this is what you’ve made of yourself, some kind of protector?”

The man can barely keep from falling, precipitous blood loss and a myriad of wounds pulling his conscience away slowly. But still he stands.

“They are my family,” he says simply, “I would never abandon them.”

Resai snorts, “cultivators have no family, such frivolities are tossed aside once we walk that path. I was honestly expecting more from you, your soul was shaped so…uniquely. Yet here you stand a disappointment. Shame, truly a shame.”

“I care little for your expectations, monster. I did what was right by my heart and that is all that will matter in the end.”

She quirks her head, “even when I kill you?”

“Even when you kill me,”

She gives a wide smile full of teeth and devoid of kindness, “at least you’ve got a cultivators spirit! If not the mind of one.”