Alexander Douzheng woke up feeling refreshed, as if an emptiness in his soul had been filled, mostly. Not just that, but it was as if energy was flowing through his body for the first time.
He searched for some clothes in his size and brought them to his new room, after beating some of the dust off. He got changed into the red monk robes. They were much less restrictive, and they seemed to breathe better.
Alexander had light skin, black hair, and green eyes. He might be considered a jade beauty from some xianxia novel if he wasn’t a man, and if he didn’t have such a hairy chest, and forearms, and legs. But then, that goes with the territory of being a man. At least, for him.
He’d taken a dna test a few years ago. He was a quarter Chinese, not shocking considering his last name, a quarter german, and various other ethnicities from Europe, and a few from South America. He wondered what the people around here looked like. Was he in the equivalent of China in this world? Was he actually in some weird faraway place in China, with some strange dialect only spoken here?
Either way he wouldn’t know until he saw something that made it more obvious. He tried sitting in the meditation room and giving it a try. Sitting on a pillow, trying to empty his mind of everything else, and focusing on his own energy, he began to feel his body and soul fill up with energy, or rather recover. It was like it was filling the emptiness he hadn’t noticed before, that had slowly begun to refill on its own while he was sleeping.
Even now though, it seemed to be going slowly, and he found it hard to continue focusing. He’d read that some people, especially new disciples, can sometimes find it easier to cultivate their chi through stances, and gentle training, going through various forms. That it could also be a good way to improve both soft and hard cultivation. Whatever that means. He’d guessed it had something to do with more physical and spiritual things. But he wasn’t an expert on the subject.
Alexander brought a basic training scroll and laid it out in the training room. There was an angled table made to do so. He tried the various poses, trying to raise his chi, but the one he found the best results with was the horse stance. There were a few clocks in the temple, or at least rune formations set in a circle that seemed to tell the time, with different runes and segments on the clock lighting up as time passed. It was around 10 am when he started training in horse stance.
He stayed in this stance as long as he could, only moving between legs, doing squats and calf raises, and pacing around the room when he needed to get the blood flowing in his legs more, and when he needed a break. But he didn’t let himself rest. Most of the time he stayed in the horse stance, and when he broke it his chi regeneration slowed down. It took a while to start up again after he got back into a mostly correct position.
By the time he was done, he was sweating, and his legs felt like they were destroyed. He needed to strengthen his legs anyway, so he thought this was a good method of chi cultivation. Even the normally cool room seemed to be warm and stuffy, as if from his own body heat. When he left the room and checked the time, it was 4 pm. He’d lost track of time, getting lost in the physical effort, and the feeling of energy flowing into his body and soul.
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He took several long drinks of water, which seemed to stay cool in the pot, and started cooking some more rice. Aside from the dwindling supply, he would also need more nutrition for his training. At least he assumed it was still needed, unless chi can do everything. But considering the monks who’d lived here seemed to need it, he assumed he’d need it too. If there were any techniques that could convert chi into nutrition or calories, then he didn’t know it. That seemed pretty advanced anyway.
He went to get more water, while it was still early, and while his legs still weren’t too sore. He may not have fully noticed this, but he was using some of his chi to amplify his strength and stamina during his training, otherwise his legs would have never held out. And while this was the most efficient way for him to gather chi, at his level, there was a tradeoff.
He had worked his muscles so hard, far beyond the normal limit, that the only way he was even still walking was by channeling chi into the muscle fibers that were still working. It was a process he was becoming more aware of now that he was no longer meditating, and now that he needed to use more and more chi, with finer control to keep walking.
He became very actively aware of his chi use as he was walking back carrying the water, and his legs felt like led while he climbed up the steps, even as he actively poured chi into his legs. He barely got into the temple and locked the doors behind him before he collapsed. Thankfully he managed to set the water down too, but that last squat was too much for his legs to handle.
He needed food and rest. Alexander crawled to the kitchen and dragged himself up to the counter. He managed to stabilize his legs enough to put the food on the table and pour some water. He began to eat and drink as much as he could.
There was no way he could even get into a proper meditation pose like this, so he slowly walked down the halls to the library and sat down, choosing to read while his legs recovered.
He tried reading whatever he could about speeding up muscle recovery. Ultimately, his best bet seemed to be rest, and something similar to tai chi. It was just gentle movements and stretches listed in a beginner manual, not even a real sort of kung fu, but if you tried to let the chi gently flow through your body, it could help you recover from injuries and severe training.
After slowly walking back to his bedroom he laid down and napped for a few hours. Then when he got up, his legs felt a bit better, and he tried doing basic stretches and movements in the training room. He tried to relax and focus on the movements, and it seemed to be working at least half as well as meditation for recovering his ki, which itself wasn’t as good as his horse stance meditation.
But more importantly, his legs seemed to get less heavy, and the soreness seemed to be reduced. He ended up doing this for several hours until he got tired again, took a drink of water, and went back to sleep. This method went on for two more days, stretches and basic movements, a break to read, eating a big pot of rice, drinking almost a bucket of water, the movements again, and then sleep. The next morning he could actually stand on his legs without actively using chi, though they were still a bit sore.
He was down to his last bag of rice, he’d only had two left at the start. And more importantly, he needed some protein, and maybe some fruit. He could try hunting animals in the forest, catching fish in the stream, or some lake downstream, or finding some fruit in the forest.
He hadn’t seen any fishing poles in the temple, or even any spears or sharp weapons. The only knives seemed to be for cooking, and the only weapons were some sort of bo staff made of a light brown wood. He took a sturdy looking, long bo staff, and set out in the morning.