With Brella’s help, Lya was able to read through the instruction manual a lot faster than she’d expected. It outlined various exercises to shore up and even out the Soul-Ward around the Soul-Space. An uneven Soul-Ward would cause the internal Qi to circulate erratically within the Soul-Space.

After learning to direct their internal Qi around their Soul-Ward borders, the two girls tried to continuously circulate their Qi as the manual instructed. It was important to maintain a steady, continuous flow of Qi. Brella mastered it almost instantaneously, but Lya really struggled with it and had Brella read the passages to her many times over.

Her Soul-Ward was so uneven and fractured that Lya was having a really hard time directing the energies around the rifts of her Soul-Ward. Every time she sat down and tried to rotate the energies within herself, the accumulated Qi would get snagged on the ridges and bounce off. In order to manage the energy better, she went against instructions and joined all the Qi she could together. It was hard to focus it all in one spot, it felt like it was always trying to escape the confines of her hold, but she eventually badgered it into submission.

As soon as she did the consistency of the Qi inside her changed by a fraction, and she was able to very, very slowly move it across the entire surface area of her Ward. Each revolution would take over an hour, Brella said hers took a minute, but with each revolution she felt the ridges smoothen. Each revolution felt slightly easier and slightly faster.

The two girls spent the next couple of days in this routine where they would go through the exercises described in the book, and reading the book. They’d already read it three times when they decided to move to the next book. Lya didn’t feel like she’d taken everything she could from it yet, but she could tell Brella had. Her friend was ready to move on to the next book, and so they did.

The next book outlined how to gather more Qi and how to then process it, store it inside the Soul-Realm and condense it. The Principles of Basic Cultivation it was called. Brella and Lya were practically watering at the mouth when they started making their way through it. Cultivating, they would finally be cultivating!

The manual detailed that in order to create Qi, one either had to steal energy from something else or to make connections of truth. Stealing basically meant you killed something and ‘inherited’ their energy, or you absorbed Qi storage ingredients like the Foundation Pill. The connections of truth were a lot trickier, as they involved a lot of introspection and understanding of things and aspects around the world.

Lya was unsure about how to proceed with this, but she thought to start out with the things she understood the most about. Her first attempt consisted of her thinking about gathering Spirit Leaves, so far it had been what she had most spent time on in her life. She figured if she was going to have some kind of truth revelation, it would be about something like that. Not having anyone walk her through the experience, she wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, so decided to first just think about the process of Spirit Leaf gathering.

In her mind she walked through each step, getting the basket, finding the leaves, the different sides of the mountain, the height of the branches, the motions she made in picking them, the leaves she gathered, their shape, their size, their texture, their smell, the sound the leaf made when it snapped off its twig, everything she could think of she thought about, making the experience as minute and detailed as she could.

Nothing happened.

Brella had the same difficulties and was also unable to bring herself to gather any new Qi. They both considered jumping to the Foundation Pills, or taking other mixtures of Spirit leaves, but the first was not recommended by the book and the second far too dangerous a prospect after what happened to Lya and brought her to the situation she was in. In the end they simply read the book again and tried in vain.

Stolen story; please report.

Lya could tell Brella was getting fed up with the exercise, and was getting snippy at her. Brella was always like this, so impatient. Ever since they were young, Lya could think of countless times when Brella would give up on something immediately when it didn’t go her way. She was thinking of a few of these examples, and how her friend had actually been quite patient this time when she felt something new stir inside of her.

Qi!

She had just Cultivated!

Lya was confused about what had just happened, she wasn’t sure how her musings about Brella could have gathered some Qi. And then it hit her. Of course. Lya knew Brella better than anyone, probably better than Brella knew herself. Her musings about her friend had actually been approved by the universe as a basic understanding of the girl’s personality. Lya wondered if she could do it again. She wanted to make sure she was actually onto something before she shared it with Brella.

Not sure what would be considered a universal truth, Lya figured she should systematize her friendship and memories of Brella. She began at the very beginning, about how they had met as orphan gatherers. They hadn’t been friends at first, but after they got through that they both realized they had just been scared. And instead of just using their rivalry to hide their fears, they became friends and used each other for support to get through the hard life they’d been assigned.

That revelation brought another sprinkle of Qi into Lya’s Soul-Space and she realized she was on the right path. Not wanting to break away from her progress, she continued focusing on Brella’s and hers long history together. Most memories didn’t bring any kind of great revelation, but she felt thinking about them helped her build a better visual image of who her friend was in her mind.

Slowly she felt her understanding of her friend shift a bit, seeing her as a flawed human, like Lya knew she was as well. Opening her eyes, she watched Brella struggle in her own attempts at Cultivating, but was caught off guard by the minuscule changes she noticed. Her friend’s frown reminded Lya of various occasions when she’d seen that same frown, it almost felt like she could see her friend’s difficulties. Brella was annoyed at not advancing, but she was most annoyed at not being singled out like Lya had been.

Lya felt a trickle of Qi go into her Soul-Space at the revelation.

Brella was jealous of Lya, extremely jealous.

More Qi flowed into Lya’s Soul-Space, a bigger trickle than she’d experienced in one go until now. Even bigger than the first influx of the Spirit Leaves. Blinking in surprise, Lya looked at her friend, trying to wrap her head around the fact that this jealousy her friend felt was such a big part of her.

What else would she discover about her friend in this careful analysis of her? Did she want to continue, with the universe confirming her conclusions? Did she have another choice?

Lya looked at her friend again, and suddenly realized she could sense the vague impression of her friend’s Soul-Space behind her navel. Lya gaped when she saw Brella accumulating more Qi. Like her, Brella had already discovered how to Cultivate!

Lya stopped cultivating for a bit and stood up, stretching out her limbs. “How is it going?” she asked when Brella opened her eyes.

“It’s not,” she said with frustration, which Lya immediately sensed was faked, “what about you?”

“I think I am starting to get the hang of it,” Lya answered, “but I don’t know if I can explain it yet. Basically… I think it has something to do with the analysis of the world around us… or our understanding thereof.”

Brella frowned slightly, before plastering a curious smile on her face.

Lya saw it now, clear as day. The jealousy was such a big part of Brella, how had she never seen it before? Is that what the Cultivator had hinted at so quickly? Were all humans so simple to Cultivators? What else would she find out if she spent more time on it?

Something snapped inside Lya. Unable to unsee her friend’s fake side, she sat down and closed her eyes again. She was being used for resources, so she would use Brella as well. They probably would never be able to go back to how things were before, but now she saw that Brella had already moved on. Lya was the only one stuck in the past.

Slowly through the night, Lya continued to think on her relationship with Brella. Every time she opened her eyes to check on her friend, Brella became more and more transparent for her to see. Her motivations, her difficulties and struggles… her humanity, but also her Cultivation. Her friend’s Soul-Space became clearer with each epiphany she had about her. It was a strange thing, and Lya wondered if she was just as transparent to her friend.