The next few days pass by in a blur. Sparring with Qen Hou and Hao Nera goes well, and the hills regrow gradually, day by day, with the exception of the training circle she carved out. She makes sure to water the pond every day with a few drops of her blood, infused with vibrant raw Qi, as thanks and as food. Li Shu makes notes and theories, a weird mix of writing more and more pages and then spending a few days reducing those back to something actually manageable. Occasionally they take a night off for the trio to get familiar, or for Li Shu to workshop new ideas with the crew, but for the most part, the days fall into a routine.

In the mornings, Raika gets up and cooks everyone breakfast. Jin and the trio wake up after, and she sets Jin to run his laps while she beats the shit out of her fellow martial aspirants while Li Shu writes. After their training, she makes everyone lunch. In the afternoon, they go their separate ways to their own pursuits. Qen Hou cultivates, Hao Nera goes off on his “errands”, Li Shu goes back to her projects, and Raika… wanders.

She grows her bone trinkets, sits out on the porch, walks through the valley. She has a little cave, barely as deep as her arm, where she’s growing the moss she uses for her smoking, though she’s still stucking using a pipe without any rolling papers. Other than tending to the plants and their supplies, she spends some time on the plants and surrounding areas in the bamboo perimeter.

Jin has changed that schedule a bit with his presence. Slowly, he’s starting to get used to his runs, at least enough that the latter half of the day isn’t spent too tired to do anything. He’s still not strong enough to actually exercise, nevermind spar, but he is in her care, and… well, she did promise to teach him. He’s yet to get any true oath out of her using Truespeak, at least for now, but so long as they have yet to leave or establish a “true” master student relationship, she thinks that’s fine.

He’s an avid learner, and he’s asking to learn. It reminds her of an old saying, back from her sect days: what good teacher complains of an eager student?

Only problem is the kid fucking sucks at cultivating.

“No, you’re- kid, come on. What in the world is going on with you? That’s not it at all!”

Jin throws his hands up. “Well then what is it! You suck at this! You’re not telling me anything useful!”

“You already have Qi, kid. You need to absorb the Qi around you, move it into your Dantian and through your meridians in a pattern that feels right, and it’ll turn into more of your Qi. You’re just pulling it in and washing it around!”

“Well how am I suppose to know what “feels” right?? I’m trying to move it as naturally as I can!”

“Yeah, and it’s totally messing up what you’ve already got! Your Qi smells like a dark room with people in it, some of them laughing. The stuff you’re absorbing and the way you’re circulating it is making it feel like weird grass and hungry rocks!”

“That makes the least amount of sense I’ve ever heard!!!”

Li Shu idly laughs off to one side, shaking her head as the two of them go at it. Raika grumbles something, but then groans as she gets up and walks over to the kid.

He shrinks a bit as she absolutely towers over him, but she kneels down to put them somewhere near eye level. Once again, she accesses all her systems at once, activating all her subminds, all her senses, synesthesia, and higher processing.

“Here. Give me your hand.”

He hesitates for a bit, which is why she waited so long to do this. He looks ready to bolt, as if waiting for her to hit him- but he doesn’t back down. After a few seconds, his pulse trembling with repressed anxiety, he holds out his hand.

She holds it gently in her own, adding touch to the sensory package and getting a much clearer internal image.

With her senses alight, she can see any part of him she pleases. Feeling his pulse and the shift of his muscles translates into visually watching that same movement through his skin. Smelling the scent of fear and sweat, mixed with hearing the tiny movements inside his body, means she can literally feel the pulse of hormonal glands in the back of his head, track the movement of his saliva production, watch his stomach digest their morning meal.

And as she holds his hand, the last piece of the puzzle appears; his meridian system.

It mirrors and matches both the circulatory and nervous systems, but at different points. There are several places where they overlap directly, with the soul-organs existing in the same physical space as the “mundane” organs, but it follows its own path, with far more loops and far less branches, making something like a complicated string. At the top and bottom of the Dantian, said string reconverges, many strands becoming one again and meeting in the center, where an almost perfectly round organ sits, glowing slightly to her senses with the Qi inside it.

“Ok. Now try to absorb some Qi again.”

He does. It’s painfully slow, taking almost a full minute before she can even feel it happening. Her nose starts bleeding pretty quickly, but she holds on. Pretty soon, she starts noticing the change;

She can’t sense Qi directly: only through her own enhanced senses can she smell it and feel its effects in her body to be able to track it. Even now, with all her changes, it’s only barely perceivable in the environment without her sense of smell- but there it is. Small, miniscule eddies, flowing through physical matter, past the boy’s skin, in towards his Dantian. They are absorbed easiest through the lungs, as he draws in air with Qi in it and absorbs it while its in his body, but the intent to drink it in moves all of the Qi he can touch nonetheless.

It makes a liquid spark in the core of him, a new, brighter shade to match the volume swirling about inside the organ already-

Ah. There’s the issue.

Raika sighs, then snorts hard as she tastes her own blood in her mouth. She shakes her head, pushing through.

“Alright. Now, start to circulate. Try to use the pathways that Li Shu showed you.”

Slowly, he starts to move what little Qi he has around in his body. Some of his own reserve mixes with the new supply and is pulled into his meridians, slowly beginning a pathway through his body, highlighting certain points…

Fuck.

She can’t detect blockages or impurities like she’d hoped. There’s some, she can feel them there, little points of inert matter and gunk clogging some of his pathways… but most of them are clear. She didn’t expect impurities; they haven’t really been a thing since a few millenia ago, when the Empire cemented its expansion, though she has no clue why. Some drivel about the mercy of the Emperor’s might or whatever. But if it’s not blockages, then…

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

She hones in on the Qi itself as it struggles to change. Using her synesthesia, Jin’s Qi looks like a smoky cloud, half shadow and half fog, like incense filling a dark room. The environmental Qi he’s trying to absorb on the other hand, while mostly the clear “raw” type, has bright notes of strange light, of growing things, of hungers and ever-crackling roots floating in with it.

She shuts down her senses, letting out a heavy breath that stinks of blood and bile. Jin blinks, coming out of his meditation and looking at her with concern.

She wipes some blood from her eyes and reabsorbs the rest. “I’m fine, kid. Bad news for you though.”

He doesn’t say anything, but she can hear how his breath freezes in his lungs, see how his muscles lock up in a sudden fear.

She snaps her prosthetic fingers, loud enough to startle. “Yes, you can still cultivate. Relax.”

He immediately lets out the air he was holding, some of his tension leaving, though it’s clear he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Trouble is, you can’t cultivate here. If you were stronger, it would be fine, useless, but fine. As it is, cultivating here will just fuck with you.”

“What? Why?”

She shrugs. “Same reason an ice cultivator doesn’t start cultivating in a house fire. If you had so little Qi that it had no real effect, then your Qi would change to match the ideas and energies you’re drawing in. If you had more Qi, you could force the Qi you’re absorbing to lose the old qualities and gain yours, which is what’s usually the case, though it wouldn’t be as efficient.”

“You said it’s usually the case. Why not this time? Is something-”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, kid. It’s your Qi. It’s got some notes of… not death, but mourning? Or something like that. Your scent is like incense in a dark room with people you can’t see. It’s peaceful communion with the immaterial. The Qi here, especially with how rich it is, tastes like fleshy roots that are always hungry and growing things. Let’s say you’re Qen Hou: for him, his Qi tastes like magnesium fire and pure, focused heat, with hints of maybe pretty colors to it. He can “burn” the idea of fleshy roots and turn it into fire, changing concepts “naturally”. Or, if he needs to, he can just cycle it with enough of his Qi that it gets drowned out. It’s inefficient, but the Qi is rich enough here that it’s a net win. This is why cultivation technique, Qi density, and your environment all play a factor in your growth as a cultivator. If you’re strong, you can force the Qi you absorb to become yours even if it has nothing to do with your technique or self. You’re not.”

Jin sits still, and Raika realizes that Li Shu has been listening intently as she speaks. It’s sometimes easy to forget that for all her tremendous theoretical ideas, Li Shu actually hasn’t been a cultivator for all that long.

“So… what do I do?” Jin asks. “Do I try and pull in less? So I can cycle it with my Qi?”

Raika shakes her head. “Nah. Maybe if you were six months ahead of where you are I’d say it might work, but as it is, that’ll mean you advance at a snail’s pace at best. If you’re going to cultivate, we need to find you resources that will shape the Qi around you or have their own supply of it.”

Li Shu blinks, then laughs. “Raika! That’s it!”

Raika turns to her, frowning. “What’s it?”

“You said he had some sort of death-aligned Qi, right?”

The frown deepens. “Ok, it’s way more detailed than that. It’s got all sorts of nuances and-”

“Oh, stuff away the chef’s hat and let me finish. You said the ghost attacked him instead of you when you met, right? He probably already had some ghost-y Qi back then, and then he got stuck with us near the ritual with the Cold Sun. Maybe he could try to use some Blacksteel to cultivate?”

Raika tilts her head, the Mask especially making use of her new sub-mind to look at it from whatever angles she can. That’s… frustratingly obvious, actually.

And apparently the Mask needs her name changed, because Li Shu reads her expression clear as day and laughs.

“I would’ve gotten there eventually!” Raika grumbles.

“Well of course. It’s just that I got there first.”

Raika grumbles and growls, but even turning back to the kid doesn’t stop her senses from literally feeling Li Shu’s smug little grin.

Sighing, she flexes her prosthetic left arm, forcing her will onto the eldritch material. Her third, currently unformed Truth stirs, hums a bit, and Dink sends a little trill through her sternum as if saying hello to it. A spike of Blacksteel shoots out from the arm, though it takes… a surprising amount of effort. Is it because it’s not shaped like a tooth or claw? That… feels right, in a sense. There’s something predatory to her version of Blacksteel, more a biological End than a “mineral” End.

Breaking it off with a grunt of effort (shit’s hard, even with her strength and actively weakening it), she puts it on the ground in front of the kid. The grass it touches begins to wilt and darken visibly. Jin stares at it, a little awed and a little horrified as he looks up at her entirely Blacksteel left arm.

“Alright. Don’t touch it, I’ll get you a cloth to wrap it in. I tried to make it duller than normal but it’s like obsidian, it can’t not be sharp, I think. I want you to do what you were saying earlier: take a small amount of Qi from around it. Not all around you, just around the spot sort of in front of you. Once you have a little bit, I want you to cycle it thoroughly; don’t stop until it feels completely yours, or else it might change your Qi to match it rather than vice versa. Clear?”

Jin nods, swallowing a knot of tension. He’s nervous, especially staring at the impossible material in front of him (and she wonders idly if maybe she can sell this instead… but nah. Too much hassle), but his determination is clear.

“Do I have permission to hold your hand again?” Raika asks.

He nods, already sitting in lotus position and starting his breathing.

She watches carefully, noting that despite him clearly trying his best, some motes of the general Qi around them flow into him… but he does manage to make over half of what he absorbs come from around the Blacksteel.

It’s nowhere near a perfect match, as she feared. Sharp, predatory death, the rending of claws and teeth against life itself, leaving behind only food that is cold and still… it’s nowhere near the almost polite Qi the kid has. But there’s much more similarity between this other view of death than with the strange, wriggling life of the valley around them. He takes in an amount that is barely anything, but is also somehow nearly a fifth of his current reserve, and begins to circulate it.

At first, she thinks she sees the hunger seeping in, tainting his incense-smoke smell… but by the third cycle, it’s faded back into the background, and by the fourth, it’s gone entirely. What’s left is a slightly larger Qi pool than before, one in genuine alignment with itself.

She smiles, and only as she refocuses on her body and surroundings does she feel Li Shu’s aura washing over her. Was she that distracted? How long has it been? The kid is brand new to this, so he’s slow- how long did it take for those four revolutions? The sun seems much lower in the sky than she expected.

Something to work on, maybe a new submind to track things she’s subconsciously blocking out? The soft blanket of scentless, delicate flowers and sharp steel washes over her, unable to penetrate her curse but knowing its contours enough to seep in, just a bit, and lessen the bleeding.

And Raika has been bleeding. There is a small puddle of brilliant, near-neon crimson on her lap from where it’s drooled out of ears, nose and eyes as she overheats her brains using them all at once.

The kid blinks, opening his eyes in time only to see Raika wiping her face clean with a scarf.

“Not bad, kid. Not bad at all. Just remember- small bites at a time. This thing in particular tries to eat you back.”

Jin nods, his eyes wide. For a moment, she thinks that’ll be it, and gets ready to head inside to make dinner (and it’s going to be a late dinner at that. Fuck, how long was she out?).

Abruptly, almost scrambling to his feet, Jin stands and faces her, his standing height only barely above her seated height. He smacks one fist into his palm (the fist is on the wrong side, but that’s fine) and bows so low he actually goes a bit past his waist, his face turned straight to the ground.

“Disciple thanks generous master,” he says in a rush.

She smiles, and rewrites the veins in her face that tried to make her blush. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks received. Out of my way, kid, I gotta go make dinner.”

But she does ruffle his hair on the way back towards the cabin.

And she pointedly ignores Li Shu sitting to one side, smiling like she just saw a pile of forest animals learning to be friends.