Book 1: Beginnings

Chapter 2: Cultivation Monkey

Crisp, cool morning air blows through the leaves of the tree. The tree had witnessed many seasons. Witnessed the forest's progression seeds were sent out and its withdrawal as those sprouted seeds grew and were then felled. Mornings such as this were witnessed before and it hoped to again. However, something in the aura of the boy currently perched along one of its bows made it feel otherwise. Perhaps not today, but in time.

Navin was free! Clad only in short breeches, he leaps from limb to limb through the trees of the forest. With each bound, he flings himself farther into the air. Each bound nourishes the grin that lined his face.

Had anyone bothered to look up and seen the boy leaped from tree to tree, they'd naturally panic in horror at his likely snapped neck should he fall. They'd then wonder why. The answer was simple, it was bath day.

~*~

It all started that morning. Like all mornings of great consequence, it began the same. There was no oversleeping, no little occurrences that altered his routine. At least, until breakfast.

Sitting down at the table, Navin smiled at the assortment of goodies. The village he lived in was rather poor. So such a breakfast would be the envy of most. His parents were well-off, in relation to everyone else. Such could be expected of a minor noble family, even if it was a pariah.

Navin neither cared about his family's status, nor the fall of his father that forced him to hide away in such a village. It was never spoken of. At least, not in his parent's presence. Which was why it was quite upsetting to his stomach when it played however an inadvertent roll in hampering his plans of devouring a thick, juicy slice of meat that he had his heart set on.

Snapping out of his fantasy of expectation of how a savory slice of wild pig would make his morning all the better, Navin picked up on the lack of sound in the room. He looked around the table at his parents and noticed the pensive expressions on their faces. "Is something wrong?"

They looked one another, as if passing thoughts back and forth on who would be the one to answer. The glare Vera had in her eye won the battle. Harrison replied, "Navin, we've been getting some complaints recently."

"Oh, what about? It's not about the work I did the other day with Old Turner in repairing his livestock pen, is it? I warned him that reusing the material he took from his roof after repairing it last week would cause problems." Navin replied as he leaned across the table to snag a slice of meat with his knife.

"No...it wasn't about that. I did get reports of a goat eating the drying sheets at the inn, though." Harrison became lost in thought. "I suppose I'll have to fine him."

"Harrison!" Vera urged.

"Right, complaints. People are becoming concerned with your recent behavior." Harrison said, getting back on track.

"Really?" Navin mumbled as he chewed.

"Of you running around covered in mud and grass."

"Oh, that." Navin nodded, finally understanding.

"That's all you have to say?" His mother cried out.

"I honestly thought we'd have this discussion weeks ago," replied as he stuffed another bite into his mouth. "No one said anything after the first day. After a week I assumed you were fine with it."

Navin watched as his parents looked back and forth and frowned. "At first we thought you were finally acting like someone your age. After a few days of you still covered in muck we thought Reginald might be punishing you. You didn't seem to mind. We asked him and he said it was a game."

Navin nodded. "That sounds about right."

"Honey, please go wash it off. It's not sanitary and people are starting to think we're abusing you." His mother pleaded.

"Why would they think that," Navin asked, confused.

She leaned in close and whispered, in spite of her husband's complaints. "It has to do with why your father moved us here."

"Oh," Navin nodded again.

His mother's face brightened. "I'm glad you understand. I've already had a maid run you a bath."

"Not necessary. I'm quite fine as it is." Navin winked at his mother as he ate the last piece of meat.

Vera loved her son, and had promised herself that she would never strike him. It was during conversations like these that she could almost sympathize with her own parents. "When?" She asked while gritting her teeth.

Looking up at the ceiling, Navin tapped his chin with the edge of his knife. "Tomorrow morning should be fine. I need one more coating in an hour and it needs to sit for the rest of the day."

~*~

This was, of course, a summation of the experience. They didn't believe him when said it a mystical detoxification regimen. Nor when he insisted that he was taking preventative measures against a horrific disease named eczema. His mother's eye started spasming when he offered to help her apply it to her own skin, insisting that all the ladies at the royal capital would envy the smooth skin she had afterwards.

All of those reasons were true, but not Navin's original intent.

On adventures with Reginald, Navin was picking up 'Essence of the Earth' and depositing it behind a shed his family had to store tools and other miscellaneous items. It needed time to ferment and settle, he told Reginald when asked. After a month of taking handfuls of dirt from various locations within the forest and around the village, he had enough.

They then moved on to chasing rabbits. Reginald originally insisted on trapping them with a snare over night and picking them up in the morning, but Navin pointed out that catching them wasn't the point. Only by chasing would the devious little beasts lead them to the real prize. What this was, Reginald never found out because they were too slow. Navin always jokingly replied 'Winds of Change'.

He did notice that Navin's pockets always seemed to bulge more after they returned home.

The last ingredient in what had been formally dubbed 'The Cure' was freshly cut grass. All of these were then mixed with water and had to boil for a week, cool for another, and then applied. None of this was ever actually applied to Navin's skin.

During the night of the first month, Navin would sneak out of the house and get the real ingredients. During these excursions, he would pick up what herbs he wasn't planning on grabbing while chasing rabbits. They would be needed to mix in with purified manure in a specific order and over a specific amount of time.

He was left with a paste that did look similar to what he made under Reginald's eye. However, if someone a keenly developed spiritual sense were around they could see something entirely different. When applied, it acts as a membrane and pulls the impurities outwards from the body. Not just those in the cells, but also in the soul, meridians, and other energy centers of the spiritual body.

This was all in preparation of beginning the process of opening the acupuncture points to draw in energy.

~*~

After promising his parents and Reginald that he would bathe this morning, but only in private, he slipped off into the forest. With no one watching, he climbed a tree and began jumping from limb to limb. Moving closer to his destination.

During one of his late night excursions, he had found a pseudo-grotto. It was a shallow cave recessed against a small stream that had been covered over with hanging moss. It was every boy's dream for a secret lair.

In his lair, Navin had set to work clearing the animal feces, bug and rodent corpses, and shed reptile skins. Once done, he brought in a cured hide that repelled water. With this he started building a pool in back of the cave and lining it with rocks and mud. It looked natural when finished.

This pool was filled with a medicinal bath. He filled it with ground herbs and boiled water and left it to ferment for a week. Today was the end of the week.

Arriving at the lair, he pulled off his breeches and slid into the medicinal bath. His eyes nearly burst out of their sockets when his nerves registered the frigid temperature. "Stupid Navin!" He muttered to himself through shivering lungs and chattering teeth.

Once his body acclimated, he sunk down into the mixture and held his breath. He would lie like this and surface for breath. This process continued for several hours.

By noon, Navin surfaced for the last time and reached over to the edge of the pool to grab a coarse sponge. With this, he slowly set to scraping the muck from his skin. For his hair, he used a knife. Navin chuckled at the comments his mother would have about that.

By midday, Navin was officially clean of the muck that was left of his body's impurities. He went to wash off the medicinal bath's residue in the stream outside.

This process was something that originated in a humble village much like his own. The herbs were all common and an aspiring apothecary noticed that when blended they had amazing detoxification properties. The woman found this out by accident when returning home and slipped in manure of a goat that had ate all of her herb garden. After washing the muck off, her wrinkles were lessened.

The village eventually became a mecca for the wealthy. The process was refined as scholars came to research the reaction it had with the physical and spiritual body. By that time, a medicinal bath was needed to safely break down the excreted impurities.

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This led to another discovery. Also by accident. When the residue of shed paste and medicinal bath was burned, the effect was beneficial to tempering a beginning cultivator's body if meditated and circulated energy in it.

The entire process was rather synergistic. At least for those who could spare the time and effort to complete it. Navin could, because he didn't want to risk damaging his chances as he opened the set of acupuncture points in his hands. They were essential.

After washing in the stream, he returned and set about laying a fire near the pool's edge and sat next to the cave's entrance where there was a slight inflow of air to keep him from suffocating. Once the fire caught the surface of the pool alight, the smoke began to work its way inside the cave to his location. Minutes ticked by as he let it caress his body.

Inside, Navin was focused on his circulating spiritual energy. His consciousness was working its way along the well-worn pathways in his body. He had tempered them over the past two and a half years, widening and strengthening them. This allowed him to also purify that energy and condense it by a large degree. The perfect foundation he needed in both control and stability.

Navin directed the energy slowly towards to the center point in both of his palms. This would be the first he'd open and allow him to directly affect the lower major pool of energy in his body around his navel. The energy was gradually building up pressure as he pushed it all up both arms. He worked the tip into a needle-like fineness and pushed.

Gradually, the resistance began to give. Navin bit his lip as the pain grew. He breathed deep with his diaphragm and continued to push, working the process into a rhythm. An hour went by before finally, the points were open.

With a sweaty brow, Navin reversed the flow and pulled the energy back into his soul. He wouldn't risk tainting it with incoming energy. With the two newly opened points, the mass of energy in the medicinal smoke began to feel absence of resistance and work its way into his body under Navin's direction.

Through his knowledge Navin understands that essentially all energy is equal when you know how to convert one form to another, there are three main kinds that concern a cultivator. The kind Navin was working with previous was spiritual energy that resides in the soul. What is being pulled into his meridians now was elemental, or World Energy. This is unpurified energy that is the amalgamation of the excess energy that all life gives off. This is then moved along and into his body's lower energy pool near his abdomen where it will be filtered into inner energy that will be circulated and strengthen his physical and spiritual body.

Unenlightened cultivators might filter out all but a single element to keep and store as inner energy. Mages are fond of this method on this world as it's easier to call related elements in the atmosphere when they direct their energy out. Navin was keeping all elements.

This concept wasn't unique. A number of martial schools on this world did the same, even some mages. If blended properly, multiple elements could complement one another quite well. Of course, it was easier for martial experts as they only used energy to reinforce their body or overlay their skin, so the control was better. Mages had to put quite a bit more thought and effort in how they mingled energy when it came time to access and direct outside the body.

Navin didn't plan on dealing with any single element. His filtering process was going to be divided into several steps. The first would act as a sieve and shift it around to make it an even mix inside the lower energy pool. Impurities would be held and sent out of his body. He'd then start attracting like-to-like in their own little energy chain and begin to circulate parallel of each chain. These chains would then being run through a sieve-like process again, followed by a spiral pattern as it passes through.

The goal was to start the energy blending and growing closer to each type.

The result started a chain reaction in Navin's lower energy pool. As each element began to lose its defining properties and be reshaped, filtered, and reshaped again, a suction force began to emerge. The more Navin filtered, the more the energy began to drift tighter together. This ended with a tightly-bound ball of black-colored energy.

Navin smiled to himself. They always did say black was the result of all colors blended together.

When this happened, Navin stopped pulling in elemental energy from the smoke. He needed an absence for the next step. On the edges of the ball of energy, Navin began creating opposing forces to work in six directions along a counter-clockwise circular pattern. The two and half years of energy control began showing its effect.

Gradually, the ball began compressing and melding into a liquid-like appearance. Navin continued to press and work the energy. Hours passed and it was now well-passed when he should have been home. He continued on.

Eventually, the opposing forces met. The energy was compressed into a little speck of energy. Surrounding the energy speck was a mass of impurities that Navin expunged from his body. Now was time for the last stage.

By this point, Navin could already have been considered at the prime of a cultivator's goal: total energy purity. Few ever reach this point, especially at the beginning of their journey. What he was planning he was sure someone had attempted before. He had never witnessed such training, but it was something he had often wanted to try.

The concept was based on a black hole. By imploding the most condensed form of energy, he'd have a self-sustaining suction force that would compress the energy even further than he could. That wasn't the end of his plan. There were still two other energy pools of his spiritual body he was going to repeat this process in. The chest and head.

Navin hypothesized that as his cultivation grew, the suction forces of the three black hole-like energy centers would begin to draw one another in. This would not only temper his physical and spiritual body continuously, it'd eventually merge them. Into what, he didn't know. But the thought made him excited.

~*~

Early the next morning, a freshly bathed and exhausted three-and-a-half year-old child walked in and sat down at the breakfast table. "Good morning Mother and Father. Any of that boar left over from yesterday?"

Silence reigned in room. Vera's opening and closing mouth was mimicked by her opening and closing eyes for a minute before her brain caught up to what her eyes were seeing. "Where...where have you been?" She screamed.

"Bathing, just like you asked." Navin replied innocently.

"I can see that," she fumed. "But where have you been for an entire day? It doesn't take that long to bathe. When you didn't appear anywhere in the house an hour later we started searching. We were worried something might have happened!"

"Ah, sorry about that. I forgot to mention that I was going to go down to the river outside town. I didn't want to mess up the towels and tub." He muttered as he scratched his head.

Harrison sadly shook his head in disbelief. He had often suspected that his son was doing more than he let on, especially with this 'running-around-in-muck-for-a-month' incident. His answers only strengthened this feeling. "From yesterday morning until now?"

"I fell asleep. When I woke up it was dark, so I camped in the woods. By then I needed another bath, so I came home after." Navin summed up.

"Grrr!" Vera grunted as her face reddened. "I can't deal with this anymore. You aren't going anywhere today, tomorrow, maybe even for the next six months."

"Mother! It was one mistake, I'll change. I promise!" Navin pleaded. Though, if one were paying attention, it was a bit forced.

"No, my mind's made up. I've been to lenient with you. Ever since you started talking, you sounded much more mature. I thought you had better judgment. But now I see, you're still just a three-year-old." She nodded, as if convincing herself. "I am your mother. I'm going to have to take a firmer hand to make sure you don't run off to become some brigand somewhere. And staying in your room for the rest of the day is going to be the start of that."

"Please!" He pleaded again.

"No, now eat your breakfast." She pointed at the empty plate.

"There's no food here to eat!" He whined.

"You should have been here when it was served, then." She affirmed.

"Ugh," he grunted. Then muttered, "I guess I'm finished. I'll be in my room."

Watching her sun get up from the chair and begin exiting the room, she noticed something. "Navin, I know it's been awhile since I've seen your skin, but I don't remember it looking as glowing as it does now. Are you sick?"

Navin turned and smiled at his mother. "Nope. I'm perfectly healthy. It was that paste I've been wearing. Don't my skin look great? I still have some left, want to try?"

She shuddered. "No. Go to your room."

Smiling when he was back in his room, Navin sat down and began meditating. Ensured peace and quiet, he began the process to finish opening the rest of his acupuncture points and priming his other two energy pools.