Habits resume, and the world goes on. Two months asleep, and now just over six out and about. More than half a year since she lost everything, and Raika honestly could not be happier.

Oh sure, she misses her boytoy- sorry, partner, she misses the fights and arenas, she misses the travel, she misses her strength, she misses how violently and beautifully she used to move. She misses the world that used to be, of course.

But it doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer joy she feels at the world that will be.

Raika, of course, will be the first to reaffirm that she is, in fact, still a cripple. She can now walk almost thirty minutes, heavily assisted by a cane, before she has to stop, and not much has changed in application about having to manage energy levels, or starving, or being desperate, but they have all changed in scale. If she had to measure it (and she can’t, and is highly biased, and definitely shouldn’t be doing comparisons yet) she might be just below an infant in terms of cultivation, or at least its effects on the body. She is sleeping eleven hours a night, not fourteen; she eats and feels hungry and not starved; she actually sometimes can feel herself relax and recover some energy when she sits, rather than just mustering her will to keep going. Whatever she did to herself with her heartbeat and meditation, it shifted something.

So she hasn’t stopped doing it, obviously.

It took some trial and error to figure out, and a lot of help from JiaJia, though it’s only been as bad as the first time a few times. As far as she can tell, she isn’t actually sensing Qi, isn’t able to see it in her mind’s eye as it truly is. Rather than wielding Qi through her heartbeat to control more, she only really has control of the heartbeat itself, and even then, not a ton. Still, between Dink, breathing exercises, and focusing on and flexing in time to her heartbeat, the changes in her body and its moving rhythms and flows is enough to affect Qi as well. From what she’s figured out, the pain and tingling isn’t an improvement in the literal sense, some tribulation given to her as a cultivator; she literally just gave herself an incredibly mild case of qi poisoning, like one might get a 24 hour cold or a cough, and it almost killed her.

That’s right; Raika can give herself Qi poisoning!

Which means she can do other things too!

There’s limits; she’s found a rhythm between heartbeat, breathing, movement, and Dink that seems to still cause the tingling, but not as intensely and with less diarrhea involved (she was very relieved when she found out how to more or less stop that from happening). Still, she has no idea what might actually help her. She felt the most effect when she focused on her skin that first time, the least when she focused on her bones; she’s pretty sure she can just sorta keep casually drifting Qi where it is, which, left wild and outside one’s meridians in one’s body, can wreak havoc.

It’s actually quite lucky that she can’t move more than the Qi already in her, nearly non-existent as it is. Qi poisoning, proper Qi poisoning, is as potent as an assassin’s dagger, and one of the most common and dramatic ways that overzealous cultivators end their journeys. She’s seen some before; younger or more brash cultivators assuming they had what it takes to enter secluded meditation in one of her sect’s high-concentration Qi rooms, only to be brought out later on stretchers or already dead, leaking blood even from their skin.

If she ever starts bleeding out of her skin, she’ll know she’s on the right track.

The winters are long in Paleblossom city, and its spring short. Even so many months into the cold, it’s only now reaching its deepest levels, and Raika has been using her new energy to make sure she’s moving whenever she can be, flexing muscles and stretching subtly when she can to work out kinks that have long ago taken in residence and moving her body in ways she hasn’t in a while. She’s pretty sure the movement, while the Qi is being “held” in place by her focus and heartbeat, either keeps the Qi quasi-circulating or helps it soak in properly rather than just wreaking havoc wildly, and she takes the excuse to range further and further from her home, despite the cold and the ankle-high snow occasionally turning to patches of ice amidst the quiet city.

“So,” JiaJia asks after she wacks him with her crutch again for improper form, “got any plans for the Cold Sun festival?”

She frowns at him. His stance is all over the place, and the idiot can’t hold his focus for more than a few minutes at a time, and her crutch-wacking muscles are getting a workout trying to keep him from wasting both of their time.

“You should be focusing,” she rasps.

“Well, you aren’t, so why should I?” He answers. He does adjust his footing like she showed him, though, so that’s nice.

“Dink,” agrees Dink. She’s raising such a fine apprentice! Honestly, he’ll carve up the heavens in no time at his pace.

“Shut it, ya lump,” she hisses at the tuning fork, ignoring JiaJia’s look. “And you, don’t waste time talking. I am focusing, I am just better than you. Now get your breathing right. Eleven counts breathe in, ten counts breathe out.”

Cultivation practice. Stupid, considering she can’t see his Qi or correct him, but he accepted when she offered. It’s all she really has to pay him back, and maybe the knowledge she holds might be useful to him, as person or security guard to a whorehouse.

He’s taken to it like a sparrow to a river; flapping about and making a big mess every time he fails to take off.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He does as instructed: eleven counts in, ten counts out, once, then twice. Then-

“I just mean there’s more guards than normal,” he continues, “but there’s going to be tons of goodies. Good place to beg, if you can get there early and no one knocks out your spot. Just don’t stay right too much in the middle of things, you’d be great!”

“Not going,” she rasps. “Trash is there tomorrow, people aren’t. Hiding from the cold like babies.”

“Oh yeah, real dumb of them, huh?” JiaJia says with a roll of his eyes, to which he receives another crutch-wack. “Ow! Listen, it just might be nice, alright? You spend all your time sitting in the snow and walking between trash bits, isn’t it better to take a break sometimes? Hang out near the fires, watch the lights?”

“Maybe,” she rasps, “but not as nice as you sticking! To! Your! Form!” Each exclamation is followed by a whack.

“Ow, ow, ow!” he yelps. “What’s even the point!” he yells. “It’s not like I should be taking advice from you anyways, I have chores and work to do.”

“Then go, idiot child, I have better things to do than give you some of the most important knowledge any human has!” Raika shoots back. “This is cultivation, ya dipshit! You wanna crush rocks, spit stars out of the sky, fuck better than any man has ever fucked before? Then get in your stance, take your fucking breaths, and use your damn dantian!”

“I am using my dantian!” he whines. “It feels full and this is stupid, you’re just making me feel sick!”

“Well if it’s full, then you start moving it around!” Raika exclaims, coughing a bit. “That’s what the meridians are for! You think those little tubes are made to sit around empty? Take the Qi from your dantian, flow it around. People disagree, but I think the best pattern is up to heart meridian, up to mind meridian, down to gut, then fill out the rest in the order that feels right.”

He stops, blinking, before resuming his stance, almost properly. She refrains from further whacks; if he’s actually listening, now’s the time for him to focus, stance proper or not.

“I… can feel it,” he whispers, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. “It’s like… it’s like spring. It’s slippery, I can’t-”

“Focus”, she hisses. “Breathe as you go. Even breaths, in slow, out slow. Wait for it to settle, then find what it needs. Soft touch, firm grip, mantras, it can be anything; just do what feels right, and when you find it, do it well and do not stop doing it until you feel it move as you will.”

She wipes her chin, looking at him. For all she knows, he’s just standing there like an idiot, eyes closed and staring at nothing. This is all wrong, of course; a teacher should be able to sense one’s student, detect deviations in their cultivation or their Qi, be able to reach in and offer corrections as needed. All she can do is watch and talk. Even if her cultivation method is right for him, the kid is obviously in the first steps of Qi gathering realm, nowhere near Foundation stage like where she got her technique. All she can do is wait, and hope he doesn’t fail here, doesn’t set himself back.

The kid was kind. He helped her. If the most she can do is talk and make sure he’s standing properly then that’s what she’ll do, as hard as she fucking can.

Then she blinks. Something moves in the air.

It’s a smell. Not a smell; an impression, or a touch. It’s like when you know you have smelled something, but have no idea what it is.

JiaJia exhales, long and slow, his stance shifting unconsciously to a better form, his whole body untensing, and Raika can’t help but hold in her breath, can’t help but tremble across her whole body at what she feels.

She can smell tangerines. In the dead of winter, standing next to a blossoming cultivator taking his very first steps, she is hit with the tiniest, faintest hint of tangerines.

JiaJia opens his eyes, letting out a deep exhale that immediately turns to a cloud of steam in the cold, even warmer than normal. He smiles, a grin so deep and so wide that it alone would be worth this entire exercise. “I… I think I did it!” he yells. He whoops, short and bright, jumping a solid five feet straight up, laughing harder than she’s ever seen him. “I got it! It fit, it moved a lot and it kinda hurt to touch but it shifted and it all connected, they’re full! Granny, they’re-”

He stutters to a complete stop when he looks at her. At first she blinks in surprise, assuming he was used to the scars by now, but then she realizes she’s smiling and crying both, which makes more sense. She laughs too. “Good for you, idiot,” she rasps, quiet. “Good job. Make sure you keep filling your dantian and circulate in that pattern, and it’ll keep growing.”

In the silence, he tears up a bit too, like an emotional little idiot. He bows, still like an amateur, but so deep his head passes his waist, as low as he can go without losing his balance.

“Thank you, master,” he whispers.

So she whacks him on the back of his head with her crutch.

“OW!” he yelps, falling face first into snow and shooting up way faster than he ever used to. “What was that for!”

“For being an idiot, idiot boy,” Raika rasps with a smirk beside a soft smile. “I’m no one’s master, and I won’t have you calling me that. Do better for yourself. You’re a cultivator now, so you better not waste it on fucked up old ladies like me.”

His mouth flops open and closed like a fish, idiot brain trying to puzzle through what she means before eventually clicking shut. Then, the smile comes back.

“You called yourself old,” he says in his brattiest smile.

“Older than an acorn like you, anyways,” she mumbles. “Get out of here. Go solidify your foundation, make sure that you feel comfortable with your Qi and can move it, slowly, without discomfort. It should feel natural, like it was always there and you’re just remembering who you are now.”

He bows again, though only half as deep this time. “Yes, old master shitty grandma!” he says, grinning at her and sprinting back through the snow before the crutch hits him on the head again. Any composure his escape might have had is ruined when he slips and falls in the snow, but he’s back up, panting for breath and laughing, before she could even start walking, taking off down the street like a rocket.

She doesn’t try to follow anyways. Even if she could keep up, she’d still be distracted.

When he got up. When he ran just now, faster than before.

She smelled tangerines again.

She smiles, as sharp and happy as she’s ever seen.

This has implications, she thinks.

“Dink”, agrees Dink, with what feels less like spineless agreement and more like concern and hunger both.