Book1: Beginnings

Chapter 3: A Mother's Regret

"What are we doing, Harrison? I know that I banished him to his room, but he has to come out sometime. It's been three months!" Vera whined as she hit a pillow from their bed with her fist.

"What else is there to do other than let him be? He's eating. The food left outside his door is gone when the maid collects it." Her husband consoled. "Stop blaming yourself. Other than dragging him out, he'll come when he's ready."

"Don't think I haven't thought of it!" She snapped. Falling back onto the bed she muttered to herself. "Ugh, he keeps pulling away."

"Vera, he left a note. He just wants to be alone."

"What kind of reason is that? 'Mother, I'm taking your lesson to heart and embracing the opportunity to better understand the Mysteries of Silence. Please do not disturb.' Who is putting these ideas into his head?" She said shaking her head. "I should have never let him leave my room and go into your study. That book must have addled his brains when it fell on him."

Harrison agreed, then quickly corrected himself when he noticed her glare. "I doubt it was the book, honey. Growing up, I always heard my tutors say, 'genius can't be contained.' I had thought they were being sarcastic when they gave that as the reason to my father if he didn't find me studying. Now, I believe that they must have seen something in me and didn't know how to properly nurture it. It's genetic."

A reflecting silence filled the room. "Yes, dear. You must be right." She agreed slowly. "Regardless, something has to change or we're going to lose him. If this continues, I'm afraid he'll start acting like your brother and looking down on us."

Fire lit in Harrison's eyes. "Anything but that!"

~*~

Navin's parents weren't wrong. He did come to regard himself as superior. How could he not? It wasn't malicious, he had just witnessed far too much to view them as anything other than adorable children. Tall children, in comparison to him, to be sure. But children, none the less.

That is, until nearly a week into his seclusion. At the time of their conversation, his ego had thoroughly deflated.

When Navin had returned from his lair in the woods, he had successfully imploded that little speck of pure inner energy. By this point, all were in accordance with his calculations. As he sat down in his room to start the process again in his middle major energy pool, a smug grin could be seen on his face.

The force he had created that formed a pulsing, circular movement proved quite beneficial in pulling in the world's elemental energy through his palms. He directed it down to his abdomen and let it enter and feed the black hole-like structure, purifying it and sending back out the discarded impurities. When he deemed he had enough, and not wanting to grow his lower major energy pool beyond the initial state, Navin began sending streams of this energy out to begin opening up his other acupuncture points.

This process took several hours.

Once all points were open, a refreshing feeling enveloped him. Sending back the energy to the abdomen, he began drawing in the elemental energy surrounding his body and circulating it along his energy channels towards the middle major energy center near his heart. The same filtering and condensation method was done.

All according to plan.

Just as the newly formed pure speck of condensed energy was imploded, pain filled Navin's body. This was beyond all expectations. He had expected such a reaction once the black hole-like formations grew in strength, but not after first being created. A fierce battle for control of his body began.

For three days he battled with himself. Navin first considered using some of his spiritual energy to offset the churning forces inside him. He didn't want to risk it getting sucked into one of the holes, and quickly discarded this idea. The next was to restrict movement between the two energy pools along the connecting meridians and feed each pool with different meridian channels. This was also discarded as a solution due to it not scaling as he grew in strength. What would happen when he did the same to the pool of energy in his head?

Finally, he mentally slapped himself and noticed that the forces at play were that of attraction. He would change one of the pool's rotation and let it repel the other's energy. Another day passed before he managed to turn the middle major energy pool's rotation into a clockwise movement. It took another day before the forces in his body stabilized and Navin passed out on the floor, exhausted.

The following days were spent carefully repeating the process with the last major energy pool. If anyone were to see him during this time, they'd immediately embrace him when they saw his skittish and disheveled appearance. This was because he knew just how close he came to losing everything he had.

After three weeks, Navin had finally succeeded in placing a black hole-like movement of energy inside each major energy pool. The head and abdomen rotated counter-clockwise, with the heart counter-balancing in a clockwise direction. This setup was actually more beneficial than he had planned. The abdomen's movement was initially set on a whim, but it pulled the world's elemental energy in quite efficiently. The same for the head's pool.

Navin's center major energy center did not pull in energy on its own. The forces at his head and abdomen seemed to create a polarized field that prevented it. There were two other unexpected benefits to this arrangement, however.

The first benefit was a neutral area that made controlling energy even more efficient. Since Navin now only had to focus on absorbing energy if he desired, he could use all his concentration on directing the accumulated inner energy. With no forces at play in the center pool, this was ideal.

The second benefit played heavily on making the first benefit feasible. This was due to how the center pool actually filled itself with energy. Becoming frustrated at unable to get energy into the center pool, he couldn't figure out how it grew along with the other two. They were all progressing equally. So he watched.

Navin noticed a very peculiar effect. Roughly 66% of the accumulated energy that went into the head and abdominal pools remained after being consumed. So where did it go? The answer, it suddenly popped out of the center of the hole in the heart pool and drifted into the rotation ring of energy surrounding it. So a third of each of the other two pool's accumulated energy was directed to the center one.

Deciding to test how far this sharing went, Navin found that by drawing solely on the center pool any expended energy was replaced by the other two, depleting them all equally. From his observations, Navin could only conclude that the black holes must function in a similar fashion as nature's equivalent. The hole must exit somewhere and the center pool was that exit.

The remaining two months were spent in contemplative meditation while he focused on absorption, purification, and compression of energy. Through this time, he tested hypothesis in how he could better refine the accumulated inner energy and disperse it through his physical and spiritual body to strength and hone it. The unique effects of the forces emitted by the black holes were one way of indirectly refining the body, but he wanted another.

Navin's body was still growing and he didn't want to unknowingly imped this by overzealous training. So, he came up with a passive body-refining method that focused on cellular longevity. This would work by using energy to prod the body's cells into constant optimization. It would be done slowly for the rest of his life once the first few generations of cells were born with the imprinted instructions.

This was not a new concept. Cultivators are always concerned with lifespans. It's one reason they are so viscous in pursuit of new techniques and the guarding of their own. Few cultivators, however, incorporate medical and alchemical knowledge with their cultivation techniques. Most longevity techniques are variations on flooding the body's cells with inner energy. Navin was doing this as well, but taking it several steps further by understanding how they operating, their goals, and how to direct them to do it better.

Cell membranes will strengthen in a new manner, incorporating natures most efficient shapes to resist outside forces. Telomeres will lengthen to reduce cell decay and increase longevity directly. Waste will be flushed more efficiently by conversion into spiritual impurities. The ideas Navin had were thousands. How they would hold up against future cell generations and how they would improve themselves without he direction he did not know. Which is why it was going to be a gradual process.

With this, Navin was done. Meditation and his energy circulation and physical movement exercises would resume as normal. Any future training would continue once his body was mature enough.

~*~

Vera had always thought of herself as a strong woman. She'd have to be to keep her household together once she was forced to leave this pitiful village in shame with her husband. But, these last few years after the birth of her son were daily exercises in futility and depression.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

She couldn't keep up with her son. Whether it was her frail body being unable to move as quickly has him, or how to communicate with someone so young that seemed to be at the same intellectual level as her. She was at a loss. Gradually, and most likely by her own pride, a wall had developed that she couldn't cross to him.

She was afraid that before long, he would just walk off and leave. So, after her conversation with Harrison she had determined to change and try a new tactic. She'd treat Navin as an equal and start taking an interest in his pursuits. This way, she could at least have something to talk to him about.

Just as she was ruminating on these thoughts as she gazed from the house's porch and into the forest, a small hand touched her shoulder. Looking up, she saw her son's eyes smiling back at her. Making the first attempt, she decided to tease him. "Three months, what mysteries did you find in Silence?"

Guilt. Vera could see that on his face as Navin was deciding how to reply. "I learned that if you listen still enough, you could hear a heart's troubles."

"Profound," She nodded. "You could give some of the ministers at the capital a lesson with a statement like that. And who's heart was troubled?  Did sneaking off for a day didn't require three months of penance?"

"Yours, mother. It's always been yours. I just never knew how to fix it. It was never the right time."

Stunned, "It is now?" She she asked.

"I think so. I realized that I have been a little arrogant and you've suffered because of that. In trying to keep you from worrying about me, you worried about my actions that I took to keep you from worrying." Navin said while shaking his head in shame.

"I don't understand." She said, puzzled.

"I've been working on something for you, a surprise, but I need a promise before I tell you."

"This isn't making me worry any less, Navin. Are you in trouble?"

With a pensive look, he replied, "Right now, no. You telling someone might cause indirect issues, however. Either from aggravation in people requesting the same done for them or in someone lusting out of greed."

Seeing that his explanation only increased the worries in his mother's eyes, he added, "It's better if you see. Follow me to my room and promise you won't tell anyone. Not even Father. You know he can't keep a secret."

"Okay, but I'm only going along with this for now. It must be something bad if you had to hide in your room for three months." She chided him.

"Mother!"

~*~

After considering the matter again, Navin redirected their clandestine meeting to the bathing room and had his mother sit in the empty tub in a robe. This required some reassurance that he hadn't been spying on some of the farm laborer's drinking discussions, nor was he having inappropriate thoughts about her. Who asks that of child less than four years of age? He thought to himself.

With a mischievous glint in his eye, he looked into his mother's eyes and said, "Now I'm going to show you a secret. Once I do, you'll be filthy. That's why you're in the tub."

"I thought you said you weren't having naughty thoughts. What happened to my little boy?" She grumbled.

"Mother! Just trust me." Navin whined.

"It's hard. If you weren't so young, I'd never allow you in the bath with me. It's not right." She reaffirmed.

"I'm going to heal you, okay? That's the secret." He said, exasperated.

"Your father said that, too. 'It won't be a minute, Vera, and you'll be feeling much better!' He used to say."

Navin stared wide-eyed at his mother. "For someone not wanting to encourage lewd thoughts, should you really be telling me that at my age?"

Realizing what she said, she blushed. "Heal me how, then?"

When planning this conversation, Navin thought of many scenarios. In all of them, he absolutely didn't want to reveal the depth or origin of his knowledge. So he needed a scapegoat. "I've always be smart, right?"

His mother nodded.

"Since I can remember, I've always felt bad that you were stuck in bed most of the day. If it wasn't for how I was born, Martha would have healed your body and you'd be fine now."

"You can't blame yourself for that!" She said emphatically.

"And you can't blame yourself for me being the way I am. I know I cause you trouble and you don't know how to handle me. This is part of the reason and I hope to change that." He reassured her. Seeing that she was listening again, he continued. "So I've been reading a lot. I thought about herbs, even the nearest city doesn't have a decent enough selection of medical texts. I did learn that even if we had the proper herbs, it'd require equipment only the most elite have. It'd raise too many questions even if we had the money to get them."

Vera agreed. Part of the reason for her husband's banishment here involved an elite alchemist backing his brother. His family would surely notice the request.

"Then I thought of Martha."

"Martha? She never mentioned you talking with her about healing me."

"I didn't. But she is a healer. Using energy to heal wouldn't draw attention and offers a more focused way to do it than herbs. Only, the library doesn't have much on such topics, either. So, I was spying on Martha as she healed for the past couple of years. My body was far to frail until now to even attempt it." Navin said quickly.

Not the least bit reassured her son was telling the truth, she pressed, "Didn't attempt it, huh?"

"Only once." Seeing her raised eyebrow, he continued, "Maybe a few more."

"This is what you're going to do to me now?" Vera asked, with a snort.

"I've watched her carefully. I can perceive energy, Mother. So I studied hers as she used it. The past few months I've been training my body to get the result I want." Navin reassured her.

Rolling her eyes, she pressed. "How would this knowledge getting out cause issues for the family? Every village has a healer. Some are much better than Martha. She's only mediocre talent. Even with your age, it'd only be another peculiarity for you."

Agreeing, Navin pointed out the clincher. "Mother, if it was just healing then maybe I'd get some advanced schooling or minor clan invitations once word spread. However, if anyone came to check and they witnessed the process, they'd steal me and kill you and father to silence your claim. I don't just work with inner energy, or life elemental energy. I've found a way to encompass all types."

Slowly, realization dawned on her. "That's only legend. No one can do that."

Navin agreed. Before incarnating, no one on this world could. The main development focus was on magic and martial arts. Engineering and Science was quite lacking. "I can hide it when it exits my body. Even control was enters. However, if someone stuck around long enough they might begin to take notice. Eventually they might draw a conclusion that was just as dangerous. You don't have to know what's going on to be dangerous. It only takes a careless word to the right ear."

Seeing that his mother was thinking of the implications of this, and long having gotten use to his well-reasoned arguments she was silent. He lay his left hand on her forehead and grasped her right hand with his own. Vera closed her eyes as she realized that the warm touch of her son's hands were slowly spreading throughout her body.

Over the next hour, Navin's energy spiraled along his mother's meridians. As each particle passed something that Navin didn't like, it attached and dragged it along. On each full circuit, the impurities were excreted out of the body. Once the channels were clear, Navin sent the inner energy deeper and into her body's cells. Similar to how he was influencing his own cell's longevity he began to strengthen her body.

Vera's frail body was a symptom due to not having the energy to exercise. The true culprit was a cancerous action of her body's cells during pregnancy. This tied along with being cut open led to such a long recovery. Her body was fighting on multiple fronts. Navin's energy was working through those cells and removing what it couldn't repair. Giving new instructions to her body's immune system where it could, and monitoring to see how those changes affected the rest of the body.

By the time for dinner, Vera's robe was completely covered in sweat and muck that was excreted. However, she could finally breathe freely for the first time in nearly four years. "You are a little miracle worker, Navin. Mother is proud."

Smiling, Navin was quite pleased that it worked out. "Do you think Father, Reginald, and the maids will notice?"

"I'll wash the robe in the bath with me. They won't notice. Each day, I'll walk a little further outside and make a big show of it. In a few months, I won't even have to hide my improved health." Vera conspired to her son.

"I like it. I must get my mischievousness from you." Earning him being hit with a bath brush on the bottom as he ran out of the room.