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Chapter 17: "Double Blind Luck."
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Shae woke up that afternoon because the sunlight broke through the treetops directly onto her sleeping face. Eliciting a series of groans and at least one "Five more minutes, please."
She was surprised to find she wasn't quite as sore as she expected. Very sore, bruised and generally swollen. Yet, it felt like she had been injured about a week ago, instead of less than two days.
With that thought in mind, she acknowledged that she was making very poor progress down the mountain. She had wasted two days and could have been at the road by now. "No!" She contradicted herself, "I'm being too harsh." She had left in the evening, made good time while running and stopped at night. Little progress yesterday and none today, yet. She looked at the sky again, midday? early afternoon? She couldn't precisely determine the time.
She could call it a day, maybe a bit more, spent recovering and cultivating. Progressing her qi path, if not her path down the mountain. That was still progress.
She could make good time again today, but that would be risky.
Her stomach grumbled. First she needed food, and water. Her pack had more bitter root, a miserable thing to eat while thirsty, more miserable was the smoked meat, now very dry. But she still ate her fill of both. Her last few ember cherries provided some liquid, and she ate them last.
Finding water would be tricky. Head downhill, obviously, but she was on a mountain, so downhill could be very far. It was consistently sloped enough that water wouldn't collect except in things like crevices, forming narrow streams.
Her memory flashed back to a similar problem before the old monster found her. However, at that time she was near the base of the mountain.
She wondered if she could use qi to find her way to water. Not actively, but maybe checking the local density, she thought it out. It would be like a painfully slow hot-cold game, but she pledged to do this as quickly as she could.
Plopping down to meditate, she found a tiny bit of peace, her recent sleep keeping her mind clear. Then she called to the water qi around her. A slow mental chant, something new that she could pace out and keep time with. So that she could easily repeat it later.
After three repetitions a trickle of water qi arrived. She drew it in and tried to measure it, water should have been more measurable, but she didn't have a reference point. She brought it to her Dantian and held it near the surface, where the formation of partial symbols and lines had absorbed other water qi. She felt this gave her a small idea for how much she had, then she let it absorb into her Dantian formation.
Leaving her brief trance and looking around for what to do next, she made a decision. She needed high ground, or open sightlines, at least. She needed to regain her bearings and it might help her find a gully or other landmark indicating a stream.
Once she got moving she found that the demigod qi still in her system was urging her forwards. Its lightning aspect was reflected as an energetic and impatient feeling throughout her body. She would have started sprinting again if not for the incident with the cliff. She nearly ran off without her bag and had to retrace a dozen steps.
Of the qi she collected yesterday, she felt the majority was still in her system, and still balanced equally between neutral qi and her demigod qi. She attributed her swift recovery to this new qi, and just holding onto it. Even if she didn't know how to speed up her own healing, she expected that being charged up with life energy would let her body work at peak efficiency.
An hour or two of swift hiking and swifter descents brought her to a stone outcropping. Few trees were near as it had jutted up from the ground, leaving rocky terrain, and a jagged fall. This vantage point was exactly what she wanted.
She looked down the mountain and out over the forest landscape. She spotted the mountain range in the distance with the sect mountain prominent as it was the closest.
Sweeping her vision closer, Minlin city didn't stand out immediately, but a short time scanning where she thought it was found a discolored blotch. A gray and brown lake on the ocean of green forest. She recalled the old monster calling it a village, it wouldn't have been visible as just a village.
From the city she followed where the road should be, and found a few disconnected lines where it ran near the mountain's base. The long line of cleared trees meant the two horse-cart wide road was visible from overhead, even at an angle.
She picked a few hypothetical landmarks. Everything looked a little different now than it had before, from higher up the mountain, or from the base. She shifted her target path slightly to the left because she still remembered Elder Ngoc's warning of spirit beasts. She hadn't said what they were, but pack wasn't usually used for docile animals.
Switching her focus to finding water, she considered that maybe she should have started there and not bothered with the road, her thirst roared at her. She spotted several low points tracing down the mountain. The best and closest of which was to the right, probably towards those spirit beasts, and if her earlier luck was anything to go on... she sighed dramatically.
Before she set off, she considered her earlier water qi test, if it was worth the time to repeat it. There was a small chance she could get a decisive answer, and it was fast, so she decided to try it again.
The results were inconclusive. She had hoped beyond hope that there would be an abundance of water qi here, suggesting a hidden spring or stream she missed was very close by. Instead the timing and collected qi bubble were indistinguishable.
She continued her trek, climbing down the right hand side of the outcropping, towards the nearby gully she had spotted.
As the sun was setting, she found it. A tiny stream of water, nearly hidden in the undergrowth. It was so thin that she had to lay her waterskin on its side and let the water slowly trickle in. It was a terrible way to collect water when one was very thirsty.
After a few disappointingly small sips, she set it down and decided to distract herself. Now that she had found a water source, she could retry her water qi experiment. Quickly flowing through the same pattern again.
"Good results!" She shouted. It wasn't a lot, but there was a change. The same amount of water qi arriving in just two mantra chants instead of three. She was very pleased with herself, she had done science!
Yes, the results were very predictable, and barely needed confirming, but she still felt validated in using the scientific method.
Those last words itched. No, that wasn't the scientific method, wasn't even particularly scientific. She sighed. She would need to repeat the test, probably several times. With different qi types, preferably with fewer variables, since she could have introduced bias by knowing the stream was there. She had traveled down the mountain, so the increase could be from that. She could have naturally gotten better at drawing in water qi with the practice of the chant.
She sighed dramatically. Science was hard. Do I even want to focus on science? Make that my path through cultivation?
She scooped up her waterskin, now nearly full, and drank heavily.
She took in the scene around her, wilderness and nature, more beautiful in the waning light of a sunset. Brilliant colors and fresh air. Does science have that? Science from earth was lab coats and paperwork in offices and sterilized labs and glassware. Science kinda sucked.
She relaxed, discarding that path. Maybe she would do a little test once and a while, as it caught her fancy, but she would carve her own path, not follow one from Earth.
She returned the empty waterskin to the stream. Looking around and enjoying the sunset, she felt glad she took the risk of coming this way.
Then she knew that she had made a mistake coming here when she heard the howl.
"wolf" She whispered to herself.
Shae jumped her way up a tree so fast she forgot her water skin in the stream and her pack on the ground. Her pack with smoked meat in it.
Looking around briefly, she climbed back down thinking she was safe. The howl must have been a long distance away.
She collected her pack, emptied her water skin into her stomach, returned it to the stream and climbed back up the tree. All while forcing a relaxed place.
She tried to relax in the uncomfortable tree. There was no way she was letting herself fall asleep on the ground tonight.
She considered running, or continuing moving, in some way. The uncertain part in her mind was where are the wolves? The single long howl had received a few replies and none came from a clear direction. She reasoned this was because of the gully and the trees all around. The sound could echo and bounce.
She imagined a wolf up on the rock outcropping that she found earlier, howling at the moon. She wouldn't be surprised if that was where the first was, calling to its pack.
Adjusting her clothes for comfort in the tree, she looked herself over. With dirt from days of travel and blood from her injuries she would be a distinct scent trail they could easily follow. Unless, by some fortune, they recognized the smell and didn't like human meat. That seems unlikely.
She guessed that she would be easier to find if she moved, and she would be unable to get water faster unless the stream joined another. Thus, she decided to stay here for now. She wasn't so tired that she needed sleep, but she did need water. She planned to drink herself sick then start moving downstream. She hoped to find a larger stream to bathe in. Washing away most of her scent before she was found.
She snacked on the remaining smoked rabbit, but couldn't finish it. She hadn't stocked up on that much, yet it was just too dry to get through quickly. On considering her food stores she thought of how late she was. The trip to the city should have only been a few days. She figured she had already lost out on the bonus for delivering Elder Ngoc's message quickly.
After eating she jumped down to drink water again. She would have to keep going up and down, for a while longer.
She sighed, What can I do while waiting?
Cultivating was usually a large time commitment. She wasn't sure she could just dip in and out for a few minutes at a time. Which reminded her she hadn't had a slice of ginseng today, she might just eat it later without cultivating. It was better than the dried meat.
She didn't really have anything to do. The only book she had was the old monster's formation notes. Up in the tree, she couldn't do her Tao Yan practice. Oh! But maybe some body weight exercises.
She spent some time moving around in the tree. Chin ups, weirdly angled sit ups, and leg lifts were the simplest. She jumped down between sets to grab water, and did one or two exercises on the ground.
She wasn't working herself tired. She was actually struggling to do so, her partially lightning cleansed body and demigod qi giving her far too much energy. Normally, when one was surviving on limited food in the wilderness, wasting calories on exercise was a very wrong choice. Yet, she found she was full of energy, and she might even be having fun climbing all over the tree. The only thing slowing her down was the occasional twinge of pain from her injuries.
After the fifth trip down and up the tree while exercising, she realized something was off. She just wasn't getting tired, and the tasks were not difficult enough. She hit her palm against her forehead in realization. She was stuffed with qi, half of which was her new demigod qi.
Aside from the demigod qi wanting her to keep moving, the whole setup made her much stronger than she was used to. Even beyond her previous state a few days ago. She even found that her unbalanced strength had... not quite balanced, but it had reduced the gap somewhat.
She started to scold herself for the rookie mistake, then stopped, she had actually become more accustomed to her enhanced body in that time. So she couldn't think of it as a complete waste. Even burning off some of her qi, she assumed she was using some of it, was probably a good thing in the long run.
Now nearly at her fill of water she decided it was time to get moving.
Moving at night through a forest was an exercise in frustration. Within the hour she had tripped four times and stepped in the stream twice, soaking her left shoe. This was only partly because she was still trying to move quickly.
She made a mental note to look for a seeing-in-the-dark technique when she got to the sect. Eyes of Night or Wise Owl's Sight maybe? She joked to herself.
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Her mind drifted thinking about other cool super powers she wanted. Flight being the obvious one, it would have solved all her current problems. Okay, just most of them.
She recalled Elder Ngoc's entrance. Did she fly in? Shae wondered. Maybe she was leaping and jumping her way up the mountain, which could be why she landed in a cloud of dust.
Shae tripped again. Face-planting into the stream.
As she picked herself up, she heard a growl. Instinct and adrenaline took over as she bolted away from it. The growl had come from behind her, keeping her general direction the same, down the mountain.
A smaller stumble later, she found its source. A lone wolf stalked her. Its dark coat blending into the night quite well. It seemed in no rush to catch up to her, simply following her through the woods.
She grinned, foolish wolf, humans are the endurance hunters.
An hour or two later Shae discovered the real problem. The Wolf could see fine at night and she couldn't. She feared that it might have even been herding her somewhere. Though, she would have expected to see other wolves by now if that was the intention.
The real issue was that she kept falling, tripping and catching herself on obstacles in the dark. If she had been mortal, she might have broken her ankle or wrist several times over.
She had sped up to lose the thing, but it kept up, and slowing down too much caused it to growl and snap its jaws at her. A scare tactic to be sure, but she wasn't scared, she was cautious, both had the same outcome, she was still running.
Shae was sure she could keep this up for much longer. She wasn't flagging, she didn't feel tired. Yet, she could still see the final outcome. She would get stuck, fall, break something, or fling herself off another cliff and then become wolf-supper.
Her mind made up, she picked the next suitable tree, it was well lit by the moon and large with high branches. She swerved towards it and scrambled up it. With her heart pounding in her chest, she found herself grateful for the rest, even if she hadn't felt tired.
"HARF, HWARF!" The wolf barked and growled at her, then howled a few short yaps into the night.
She would wait for daylight.
Well, maybe that was a bad idea, more wolves could show up. Maybe it would get impatient and leave.
She exhaled slowly, trying to relax and settle into the high branches for the rest of the night. She slung her pack over a nearby branch.
Starting to fall asleep and nearly falling out of the tree was her warning that she did, in fact, need to sleep. Mediation and cultivating also seemed like valid options to her. Either way she would need to safely affix herself to the tree.
She had rope, of course. It was keeping her pack together, and she might need to leave suddenly. Which she could do easily if she left the golden larch branches behind. She didn't want to do that.
Perusing her pack, she found an option. The iron hairpins. She could use them to pin her clothes to the tree, supporting some weight. Hopefully enough to not topple her over when her head sagged from sleep.
Setting the pins took some effort. She had to use her stronger cleansed hand to slowly force them into the tree.
When she felt secure, she opted for cultivation instead of sleep. Reasoning that she might need the extra strength the qi provided. A slice of ginseng and some deep breathing later and she was under, within her mindscape.
At first she was a bit disappointed. Her qi was still flowing through her channels the same as she left it yesterday. So, she felt she didn't have much to do.
She could collect more neutral qi and convert it to keep the half and half balance, or convert what she had to see if anything happens when it was all demigod qi. The latter seemed risky, it would probably be harder to get the balance back. For the former, she wasn't sure if holding it like this for a long time was good for her. It definitely wasn't cleansing her properly like she expected.
Oh, yea! Cleansing. She decided to try cleansing again, taking a new strategy. She focused on where the divine lightning qi had cleansed her last.
The boundary between divinely cleansed flesh and regular flesh was underwhelming. She could sense very little different, and very little at all. She wanted a microscope, but here, senses were not the same. Any visual representation was created by her mind. It was all about what she could feel within herself.
Thinking about it, maybe she could work on that. Considering Elder Ghon's words from weeks ago, cultivating in dense qi is bad, she paraphrased. He hadn't fully explained why. She knew it would affect her control, supposedly a loss of precision. Maybe that was also true for her senses? Maybe the ginseng could help too?
She moved some neutral qi to near her mouth, or where she thought it was within her metaphysical domain.
Nothing really happened, she thought. Maybe there was a slight change, but she knew she was biased by expecting it. So probably not, or the ginseng was just too young to have a seriously impactful effect.
She moved on. Bringing that qi and some demigod qi to the cleansing boundary that she had been focusing on.
After some negotiation, brainstorming, contemplation, and patience she found something new. Her channel walls were there, but also not. They were part of her metaphysical being, so they didn't act like solid physical walls.
She found that she could soak her qi into the walls slowly; eventually working its way through. She figured this was how cleansing worked, but it seemed too slow. The lightning had done a much faster job.
The neutral qi was still kind of useless, but it could work along with the demigod qi by being caught in its wake and dragged along.
Like elemental qi, her demigod qi could be influenced by her, taking hints from her emotions and intent. So, suggesting it soaked into her flesh worked, and suggesting it gave her better feedback on the state of that flesh also worked.
She had a theory that the feedback was based on the nature of the qi. So her part purified/ part lightning qi's feedback was mainly, this isn't moving and this isn't pure. She took the latter to mean not cleansed, which made sense with where the qi was in her body.
She hesitated at the next step of trying to cleanse the flesh. She tried to sense what or exactly where the impurities were, but she made no progress.
She delayed a bit longer, letting the qi soak through her channels, spreading it along, across the small area that she could pay close attention to. She also pushed it into the nearby cleansed flesh for good coverage and to check the difference.
Then she pulled the metaphysical trigger. Focusing on the movement aspect of the lightning and the purifying aspect of the divine qi, she set off a chain reaction. Grab the impurities, the toxins, and move them out, purify the flesh, cleanse it to match this part that is already complete.
She thought she did a pretty good job in maybe getting about a third of that idea across to the demigod and neutral qi mix.
It started pretty well, tingling a bit, especially along the border of cleansed and normal flesh. Too late she remembered the old monster saying that the first cleansing step should probably just be her skin, and she hadn't been specific when instructing the qi. The real movement started as a pulling feeling, like someone pinching your skin and pulling, but without the pain of the pinch, a very odd and disconcerting feeling. Shae started to lose concentration on her meditation. The repeated very odd sensations dragging her out.
As the cleansing spread, the pulling pressure was spreading and increasing, the tingling feeling growing to a near constant electro-static-like pain. She broke out of meditation to an assault of smells. Not just the noxious smell of the impurities escaping her skin, but also other smokey burning smells.
The first few she identified as burning cloth, wood, hair, and probably skin. A slight ozone smell signaling the lightning was doing a bit too much work. The last she didn't notice right away as she was very distracted by what was going on just over her shoulder.
She hadn't been particularly specific about what part of her body she was cleansing, she was sure it was attached to her arm, as that was the cleansed region she had spread out the most while under the old monster's care. It turned out it was on her back, around the top edge of her right shoulder blade.
The demigod qi had mostly converted to lightning, or had the purifying half used up, so was just lightning remaining. It sparked out of her skin, burning through her travel clothes and sparking to the iron hairpins she had spiked into the tree. The tree charred there too, and her hair was a bit too close to avoid any damage.
Nothing had burst into flames yet, which she would later be very thankful for. She still pulled away from the tree quickly, ripping the hairpins out of her clothes on that side. The single pin on the other side hadn't charred the cloth around it, so it was torn out of the tree instead.
She felt the pull of the pin and reacted by grabbing for it, but stopping herself before she stabbed her hand with it. She also had to steady herself in the tree as the quick movement disrupted her balancing act.
Once steadied, she retrieved her third hairpin from over her left shoulder. Barely caught in her clothes, she didn't want to lose it if it fell out.
The qi was still escaping her back, and bringing black impurities with it. It arced around in more of an impressive light show than dangerous sparks of lightning. Most of it arced into her right arm, its unique nature attracting the qi. From there it tingled across her skin, slower than electricity really should move. Then found the iron pin she was holding.
It is worth recalling all that is going on, and even some new things that were happening below the tree. Because even with all that, Shae's attention was focused solely on the hairpin. The leftover half-lightning qi had grounded into it, charging it with a power that caused it to glow white hot. Not actually hot, she noted, but bright with stored energy.
As soon as she could rip her eyes away, she looked at the two pins still stuck in the tree. They had undergone a similar change, though much less significant as their energy slowly drained into the tree, charring the bark around them.
Lightning. Iron hairpins were charged with lightning. Her mind reeled. Not just iron, iron blood creeper wire. "My wire rope!" she shouted. These weren't just any pieces of wire, they were from her rope, the one she used to ground out the tribulation. Three strikes, three hairpins. "Hahaha! Elder Ghon, you tricky old monster-bastard!" She laughed and shouted.
"HARF!" A wolf bark sounded below her and nearly knocked her out of the tree.
When she looked down at it, the large gray wolf went back to rummaging around on the ground. Pushing something around with its oversized snout. It was quite a large wolf and dwarfed the pack it was pushing around, that it was trying to carefully tear apart to access the contents. She also spotted a pile of familiar golden larch branches strewn about.
She slowly glanced beside her where her pack was supposed to be hanging. It was missing, the whole branch it was hanging from was missing. On closer inspection, the break had a few very suspicious claw marks, large ones.
"What the fuck." Shae whispered in disbelief. She looked down again, "Did you... climb up here and steal my pack?" She was horrified by the other option, that the wolf had some kind of ranged claw attack.
It looked up with the bag over its snout.
"Hey!" She shouted and pointed. "No doing cute shit!"
It responded by making something like scooby-doo noises through the bag over its nose and wagging its tail.
For a brief moment, Shae had a wonderful vision of having her very own huge wolf best friend. He'd be so soft and cuddly and protect her from all the bad shit in the world. They'd play all day and go for walkies-
The wolf crouched down, sticking its rear up in the air and wagged its tail more, ready to play.
"No." She whispered under her breath. She was a cat person, dogs were way too needy.
Then she threw the hairpin at it and screamed, "No!" It was already wrecking her stuff, that couldn't be untrained easily.
The hairpin flew directly down, a streak of light in the dark night. The gray wolf dodged, leaving her pack behind. However, it didn't dodge fast enough. The lightning discharged right before it hit the ground, arcing to the tree, the ground, and the wolf. It yelped and dashed away further.
A standoff started as Shae stared it down. It was about fifty paces out, nearly deep into the trees, but she knew it could cover that distance in a flash. She had to stand her ground, not let it approach again.
She calmly stood, grabbed her two other hairpins out of the tree and dropped down. Landing in a cool superhero pose where she punched the ground, which hurt a lot even with her stronger arm. Her own surprised yelp was covered by another large discharge of lightning as it arced off her cleansed arm and into the ground around her.
When she looked up, the wolf hadn't moved, it was in a more cautious stance, ready for action. It wasn't growling yet, but it was showing a sliver of teeth that shone in the darkness. Most concerning was that it was releasing a small amount of killing intent. Shae wondered if she had made a mistake as she noted it wasn't doing that before, even when chasing her through the forest.
Having bought herself some temporary respect, she picked up her thrown hairpin and poked all three through her sleeve, just on the outside of her right bicep, making sure the metal contacted her skin. Her cleansing demigod qi was still working, making the whole situation fairly uncomfortable or outright painful sometimes. The leftover lightning qi should ground into the pins, and not go down her arm or shock whatever she touched with her hand, probably.
She collected her pack and rooted through it quickly to see what the damage was.
Almost everything was covered in a layer of wolf drool. Some more than others. The two worst packages were the ember cherry flowers and the remaining smoked rabbit meat. As soon as she opened the smoked meat package, the wolf barked at her and started wagging its tail again. Though, it did so without lowering its killing intent. Shae thought its intent and qi pressure might have even ticked up a notch.
Since the two packages were ruined anyway she mixed them together, being sure to really mash the spicy flowers into the meat. With the juicy mess the cherries had made of the flowers she ended up with a spicy sticky ball of jerky. Which she proceeded to throw at the wolf, hoping to teach it a lesson with the spice, that much really should give it some trouble, like eating a handful of ghost peppers. She reconsidered, maybe only one ghost pepper? She had never had one before.
She couldn't help but crack a grin as the wolf jumped at the meat ball, instantly dropping its killing intent. It landed in a roll, now too distracted by the chewy treat.
It made some curious noises as it tasted it, pausing, jumping away, then diving forwards at it again. Shae almost burst into laughter as it was clearly having a hard time deciding if it liked the spice or not.
In the end it seemed to really enjoy the treat, which disappointed Shae on a parental level. It was supposed to be a lesson in stealing food, not a treat, she thought to herself.
She tried to use the food wrappers, the waxed cloth, as napkins to get the ember cherry jam off her fingers but had very little success. Even using the wrappers as makeshift gloves when she made it wasn't enough to save herself from the sticky mess.
Finished with its meal, the wolf lay down and watched her, seemingly content to not fight or try to harm her. Shae tried to keep her guard up but had a hard time staying mad at the big dog-like thing. It even managed to have a stupid expression on its face.
The tension of a possible fight against a wild animal gone, Shae relaxed for the first time in a while, a huge weight lifted from her shoulders. She felt so much better. She looked up at the night sky from under the tree and leaned against it.
Right before she hit the tree, there was a little tingle in her arm. The next thing she knew she was a few body lengths away from the tree, lying on the ground with a ringing in her ear. Her right bicep smoldered as the cloth had been partly incinerated.
"Ah." She said groggily, "the lightning pins." Stunned, she stayed on the ground.
A few moments later, a wolf head appeared in her vision above her. Inquisitive curiosity in its eyes. Then it sat on her, pinning her down so it could clean the spicy cherry jam off her hands.
She flailed at it a bit. It did nothing, it was larger, heavier, and clearly more durable. She thought it might even be in the core formation stage, or whatever equivalent spirit beasts had. She was disappointed that she wasn't throwing lightning anymore, and realized that the huge weight lifted from her shoulders was the literal feeling of the qi cleansing ending.
Then the wolf went to sleep, and she was stuck. Exhaustion kicked in, plus the large warm fur weighted blanket, and she said "Fuck it." and also fell asleep.
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