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Chapter 06: "The Fifth Element (swords)."
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They continued to exchange information like this. Every two or three days, the old monster would emerge from his cultivation cave, and they would continue their conversations, choosing new topics and probing each other for their interests or existing knowledge. The old monster provided the occasional book after the first one about meridians, and once he had confirmed that she could keep up with the more advanced material. However, he said he only had a few that were appropriate for an entry level introduction.
Similarly, a lot of Shae's knowledge of life science required a significant amount of establishing information, and some leaps of trust from the old monster that, yes, what she was saying was fact. And no, just because qi existed did not mean it must be used in all parts of life. They had quite a few heated arguments about established knowledge going directly against Shae's information.
It was this reason that they did not discuss anything on days that Shae went through tempering. Once a week, they would attempt more casual discussions, sometimes clarifying points that had been covered before. Then she would get to experience the full qi pressure of the mountain they lived on. The old monster had insisted on this, as he didn't want their arguments and discussions to influence the tempering. He didn't want it to be taken as him acting in revenge or punishment for some argument they had. Shae called him a hypocrite once or twice.
Shae had dismissed the breaks as unnecessary, but quickly came to appreciate the break from needing to teach something new to someone with an entirely different worldview every time they met. Occasionally he would even prepare some food the next morning. This became a more regular ritual after she devoured handfuls of raw rice flour when there was nothing else to eat. The old monster swore he had dropped off a batch of rice to husk. He claimed it must have been stolen by a mischievous spirit beast during the night.
As the selection of books was quite limited, Shae became bored and so the old monster guided her in improving her Tao Yan practice. He wasn't an expert, in his own mind, but having lived around martial cultivators for so long, he could still help her complete the basic practice. He also encouraged more cardio and a few other exercises to keep her busy.
She did not do as much cardio as he suggested. Mostly because it meant she needed to eat more carbs, which meant husking more rice. A task she was quite bored of.
Of their discussions, the most heated was about the elements. The old monster had offered a lecture on the qi elements, and how they cycle and interact. Shae had matched with the periodic elements, with less information on how they interact. This was one of the many times where she regretted not knowing more about a topic. Chemistry was a weak subject for her, not at all helped by the sheer complexity of the matter, and the massive number of elements she claimed existed, yet didn't have encyclopedic knowledge of.
"There are five core qi elements." The old monster had lectured. "These can be arranged into two primary cycles, a creative cycle and a destructive cycle. The names being quite literal in what the cycles do..."
Shae had listened patiently throughout, commenting where appropriate. "These are related to affinities, then?"
"Yes, exactly. The core five are the most common, but the five can be combined to secondary and even tertiary elements, with some odd ducks in the mix. Any of these could be an affinity. However, having an affinity does not always mean it will be found or identified correctly. Sometimes they are even confused for unique constitutions."
Shae perked up at this "Unique constitutions?"
"Ah, yes, we have not covered this yet. Hmm, well there is not much to say so now is acceptable. These are sometimes conflated with bloodlines. In either case, they dramatically effect how a cultivator uses or processes qi, how their physical bodies react to it, and possibly how their meridians are arranged. Ultimately, they require more specialized cultivation manuals, alchemy pills, and even unique techniques for managing their differences. But! They can have tremendous benefits, much more than qi affinities."
"Hmm, sounds more like having a rare disease. Guess I'll need to see it to really understand the difference and benefits involved."
"Sadly you are more correct than you could know. While most would be offended by the comparison to disease, for many others, the end result is the same. Poorly managed, they can end up in pain, their bodies slowly being destroyed from within. Even if the correct manual or pills are out in the world, there is no guarantee one will be able to find them. Some are simply restricted to the type of qi they can process, like a more extreme affinity."
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"Brutal." Shae exhaled.
"Yes, and that does bring us back on topic, the elements have largely been identified by their qi affinities. Even without an affinity, it is also possible to specialize your internal qi to a certain element. Once again, highly dependent on techniques and manuals."
"Hm, like sword qi? Is that an elemental affinity?"
"Sword qi? No, not at all."
"Eh? Not even an offshoot of metal qi?"
"No, completely unrelated."
"Wha- well. Really? Not related?"
"Yes, go talk to a sword cultivator about it." He waved dismissively. "Good luck with that though, they are a strange bunch."
That was the start of the old monster being a bit grumpy that day. His mood did not improve during Shae's lecture.
"So you are claiming the building blocks of the world are not the qi elements?"
"Not just the world, the universe!" Shae declared happily. "Though, there is always another layer deeper, if I had to name as few as possible, I would say the three subatomic particles." She was rambling now, mostly ignoring the old man. "Though there are also the antiparticles. And yet another layer deeper the quantum particles, quarks and bosons and whatever." A peal of thunder rippled across the cloudy sky, distracting her. "Huh, when did it..."
"Perhaps," The old monster looked warily to the sky, "perhaps I don't need to know all of the universe's finest secrets."
"Uh, right, that's okay, I don't know much about them anyway. I barely even know very many of the periodic elements, certainly not all the specifics of each." She caught the odd look from the old monster and mistook it for frustration at her explanation. "Well, for example. Take air. What is it made of? Air qi? Clearly not. It cannot be all qi. I'd guess there's not even an equal distribution of air qi in air. I think I would be right to say air qi and air don't have a particularly strict relationship with each other."
The old monster kind of just grimaced at this statement, but didn't refute it.
"So what part of the air do we breathe? Oxygen. A gas at this temperature and pressure. Two atoms of oxygen to make it stable, though it is still quite reactive. Oh, an atom is a single part of one periodic element. Like the finest piece of something you can have before it stops being that kind of thing. Iron is another base element, consisting of only itself. Oxygen, being so reactive, will combine with iron to create rust, the smallest part of which is called an iron-oxide molecule. When iron gets wet the same thing happens, because there is oxygen in water as well. Water is one part oxygen, and two parts hydrogen, another that is usually a gas. Yes, yes, two gasses making a liquid, very strange, I know.
"But I've side tracked. Back to air, it's actually mostly Nitrogen, another gas, and this one is much less reactive, harder to do anything useful with. So some plants and organisms spend a lot of time and energy trying to change it into something more useful. Because it creates a very strong bond in its two atom molecule, returning it to that state releases a lot of energy. And so it is a fairly common atom in things like proteins and plant biology. Artificial fertilizers make heavy use of nitrites to great effect. But that is about where my knowledge hits its limits on nitrogen. Hmmm, and I'm not even sure how clear I made all that, probably skipped around too much.
"Back to air! So the air we breathe is about 8 parts in 10 nitrogen, 2 in 10 oxygen, and the rest very small amounts of various other gasses, vapors or whatever gets into it, making up less than a fraction of a part. A careful balance, more oxygen and stuff starts lighting on fire, that is a primary fuel for fire, since nitrogen is unreactive. More carbon-dioxide and plants flourish a bit more, photosynthesis being easier. Yet too much and Humans and other animals start choking on it. The mortal ones at least. Did you know that our suffocation response is solely based on detecting carbon dioxide? Not the lack of what we need to breathe, but the excess of the poison we breathe out!" She finished excitedly, proud of her trivia.
"I see. Miss Shae you are a bit more scattered today. And I must say, if I read this in a book, I would burn it as heretical. The only thing keeping me from doing the same to you is that my Divine Sense is emphatically telling me that you fully believe what you are speaking is truth, and the truth of the world at that."
"Uh," Shae almost stumbled at the buried threat, settling on hopeful, "quite revelatory, yes?"
"Perhaps. However, I am uncertain. I honestly don't know what to do with this information. An air cultivator might find the specifics revelatory, or they might flatly deny your claims. Even with more specific examples, I'm not sure I can incorporate this into my Dao. Which is the ultimate goal here."
"Ah, right." She stated flatly. "How has that been coming along? Any more drops of immortality?"
While he refused to answer the intrusive question, this was the beginning of Shae considering that this whole ordeal of sharing what she knew could be a mistake.
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