Meditation was a necessary component to cultivation, even after eating a qi pill. It wasn’t like a magic potion in a game. It didn’t fill you like a glass of water did. Rather, it stimulated your soul and opened it up to becoming more receptive to the energies of the world. Yes, the pills contained their own nuggets of energy, but nowhere close to the ‘fifteen years’ that was advertised. The difference was taken out from the universe.
In my mind’s eye, I was within an unimaginably vast void, studded with small pinpricks of light. Stars.
A moment earlier, while Mei Ying was settling into meditation, Dong Ho had put a hand on my shoulder. “Before you start,” he said as he produced a scroll with two golden bulbs on either side, and paper that was ink-black, and studded with lights akin to stars. “This is the Starlight Sutra. It is not a technique that can be learned, but an insight, a piece of enlightenment bound into a stable form in the form of energy. By gazing into this scroll, you will gain an additional layer of closeness with the nature of qi, and it will greatly boost your gathering speed.”
I took the scroll gently. “Do I just unfurl it?” I asked.
Dong Ho nodded. “Go ahead, Li Tianming.”
I held the scroll with reverence, my fingers trembling slightly as I unfurled it. The ink-black paper seemed to shimmer with a soft glow, emanating from the golden bulbs on either side. I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe as I gazed upon the Starlight Sutra, its intricate patterns etched into the parchment like constellations in the night sky.
The contents of the scroll was nothing but scribbles. No, not scribbles. Diagrams. A 2D interpolation on the nature of qi, one that meant nothing to me at first glance. And then I felt it.
As I delved deeper into the scroll, a profound sense of connection washed over me, as if I were being embraced by the vastness of the cosmos itself. The wisdom contained within the Sutra spoke to me in whispers of starlight, illuminating the mysteries of qi gathering with celestial clarity.
In that moment of enlightenment, I felt as though I were one with the stars, each twinkle a reflection of the boundless potential within me. I understood now that the genesis of qi was not finite but eternal, a never-ending cycle of creation and transformation, much like the universe itself. Qi Genesis Infinitum was named so because the Abbott and I postulated that qi had the potential to be as infinite as the universe.
But that was a naive and overly religious take.
The universe’s fate was a mystery, our final destination clouded in darkness and uncertainty. And if qi was life, and life was destined for cessation at some point, then the same could be said about Qi.
All would come to an end one day. Either ripped apart by some uncertain dark energy, or crunched together by the very force that tethered us to the earth. Or it would end gently, with the death of heat itself: maximum entropy.
Qi Genesis Infinitum was wrong. The true ultimate gathering technique was Celestial Qi Convergence. And in practice, all it required was a subtly different intent and energy cycling path, but it made all the difference in the world.
The Starlight Sutra disintegrated into black smoke studded with stars before my eyes. Then I saw Dong Ho smile at me. “Thank you, Beggar Saint,” I said.
“Don’t thank me!” Dong Ho said. “Thank your benefactor, the Shaolin!”
I furrowed my eyebrows, but accepted the answer. “I will thank them in time, then. But thank you for your guidance. I am ready to take in the qi pill now.”
“Of course,” Dong Ho said, handing it to me. I took it in my mouth: it had a deeply pungent and unpleasant taste. “Now begin meditating.”
It didn’t take a second for me to zip out from the mortal world and into the void, where my view of my energy body was unmatched. I was a light of consciousness within a vast network of tubes and holes, all orbiting around a glowing sun. Unlike my expectation, my energy body did not imitate the shape of my body. And if my body was to imitate this shape, then it would be mutilated.
Regular projections of the energy body did indeed imitate the shape of the normal soul, with each equidistant point from the base of the spine to the crown of the head containing focal points of meditative achievement, or chakras.
Those focal points now became shells separating bits and pieces of the spirit in seven layers. This made the relationship between the chakras and qi clearer: they were roadblocks that inhibited control and efficiency, and only by mastering a chakra could energy flow freely.
That was odd. I wasn’t supposed to be able to see those quite yet.
What was odder was the fact that they were all mastered. My roadblocks were gone. How was that possible? Was it the Starlight Sutra? Or did my mind have a greater connection with my chakras? That could be possible. They were not stores of energy, and mastering a chakra required knowledge and insight, not power.
That being said, my conception and governor vessel meridians—the two most powerful meridians that separated First-Rate Martial Warriors with Peak Masters—were still blocked, and would continue to be blocked until I raised the prerequisite level of energy to do away with them.
At the very least, there shouldn’t be a mental component to that eventual breakthrough. I already had my enlightenments before after all.
Putting all of that aside for now, I focused on my current task at hand: assimilating the qi cultivation pill of fifteen years.
The stimulant was opposite to my energy body, not quite a sun, but a moon that reflected its shine.
With my will, I peeled out a sliver from its surface and led it towards my energy body. The goal was to lead it through my meridians, where it would have to arrive at my core safely, where it would then stimulate the core into gathering fifteen years worth of qi. The problem was the chakras in the way, any impurities I might still have, the strength and rigidity of my energy channels, and my own expertise in the task of leading it through the most efficient path.
Thankfully, I satisfied all the requirements to a near-perfect degree.
The sliver threw itself into my energy body, riding my channels to its final destination, my core, with a frightening speed and accuracy. Hardly any of it had degraded during transit.
Interesting.
I peeled off a larger sliver, and much the same happened. No waste.
I broke a chunk off from the moon and led it into my energy body. The increased width had promoted some wastage, but most of it had made it to my core. I learned my lesson. I pulverized the moon and kneaded it into a long thread, spooling it round and round. Then I shot it into my energy body. It unraveled from its spool at a perfectly optimal pace, and I did not waste any of its stimulating properties on the way in.
Eventually, the pill was fully digested, and it became time to cultivate.
Suddenly, I was one with the world in a way that was explicitly unpleasant. My consciousness screamed as the energies of the world crashed into my fledgling spirit, and it was all I could do to hold back the deluge. I reached for samadhi in panic, and all held still, as if the universe had held its breath.
I continued holding samadhi, and the universe obeyed without question.
This wasn’t so bad.
I started gathering qi, upping the rate until my spirit started to protest and I was aware that increasing the pressure would do more harm than good. The qi cultivation pill not only opened up my spirit to an enormous influx of energy measured in years, but it strengthened my energy body as well, made it resilient enough to handle this rapid influx—for a time at least.
The good thing was that I could accelerate my rate of intake. As I gained more qi, my spirit became more powerful, and therefore capable of handling more.
By the time I could feel a change in my spirit’s receptiveness to qi, I was sitting in the eye of a great cyclone of energy.
And ever so abruptly, my spirit refused to accept more. The pill must have worn off.
I opened my eyes to see Dong Ho holding his head, gaping at me.
“What?” I asked, looking myself over. I hadn’t just accidentally grown an extra three feet, had I? Hopefully not. I liked my current height. Didn’t much care for tallness. Tall people just seemed to naturally insist themselves on the world in a way that I didn’t envy.
“A hundred and twenty years of qi!” Dong Ho whispered. “With only one qi cultivation pill, you have reached the limit of what your spirit can hold!”
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“Oh,” I said. That was convenient.
Not really, though. It meant seven qi pills that I didn’t know what to do with. Donate them to charity, probably.
I stood up, and immediately felt something wrong.
Dong Ho was standing up as well, but the old man had always been my height, albeit while hunching. Now, I had to look slightly down at his eyes. What was this?
Three feet taller was an exaggeration, but the reality still baffled me. The undisputable fact, however, was that I was taller. Three or four inches taller only, thankfully, but that was still very tall. Especially in this world of poor nutrition standards.
Dammit.
Dammit!
It's In The Details: Interior Art for Kindar [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wEna6T86--o/UT-buNLIw9I/AAAAAAAAAz8/aZy5fbTUYUo/s1600/Interior+Art+Sword.png]
My height wasn’t the only thing that had changed. I had grown slightly wider, too, only it was all muscle. And not the impressive kind either, but the slightly gross, oiled-up man that hasn’t eaten in seven days kind. I wasn’t big and burly, but lithe and extremely well-defined, sinewy and cord-like.
I needed more fat to slightly cover up the muscles, soften the edges and turn me back into a regular person, albeit a remarkably athletic one.
Something that I was happy about was the feeling of standing up and moving. I was lighter on my feet, just like I had felt like in the past timeline.
No, not quite. Now, I felt weightless. I would even wager that when it came to pure physical strength, I was the more powerful one.
Was this thirty years of vital energy that I was promised? I closed my eyes and felt for the concentration of vital energy that existed inside of me in a dormant, fat-like state. It was gone. Just like my body bereft of all fat, my vital energy had transfused into every part of my body that it could, from my internal organs, both vital and not, to even my muscles and bones.
I made a few experimental jabs in the air. My body responded instantly, at a speed that completely surpassed human limits. Just with that punch, I felt that I could probably break an iron post: provided my fist was tempered enough to withstand the impact.
“You assimilated your vital energy as well!” the Beggar Saint said. “Surprising. Truly surprising. You break boundaries with your very existence, young man. You will go farther than all your classmates at this rate.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Now that I’ve absorbed this vital energy, when can I expect the Adamantine Bones Elixir?”
Dong Ho smiled. “I will have it once we have made our first trade.”
I nodded. It made sense that he didn’t have it with him at the moment.
Dong Ho looked to Mei Ying, who was still meditating, and then back at me. “While she remains busy, let us get started on your prizes. Firstly, the Monk’s Spade made of Starmetal.” Opening up a small coin pouch that had been on his side, he shoved his entire arm through the tiny container that could not conceivably contain it, and pulled something out. A metallic spade with a bladed end—and a blueish glint to it, that in the right lighting, would twinkle with starlight—was the first to pop out in his grip. The shaft that followed was also made with that same metal, and was bound in some places with leather for easier grip. The end of it had a two-pronged spearhead meant to resemble a crescent. Another name for the monk’s spade was the crescent moon shovel spear.
It was an instrument of gentleness. The spade end could be used to dig holes to bury the dead that a monk may encounter on the road, and the crescent spear end could gently hold back predatory animals by their neck.
Dong Ho put the spear on the ground, and it clanged loudly. I looked to Mei Ying to see if she had woken up from that, but she was still deeply concentrating.
But this monk’s spade was Ahimsa alright—one of the Shaolin three great arms.
“A remarkably expensive tool,” Dong Ho said, looking at it consideringly. “An almost perfect replica of one of the great orthodox sect’s strongest weapons. Take it,” he said.
A replica, huh? I considered that fact for a moment as I approached it. Right. That made more sense than the Abbott just randomly giving me one of his sect’s strongest weapons.
Then I made contact with the starmetal shaft of the polearm and felt a resonance.
The Abbott of Shaolin led me through his treasure hall, a space beautiful in its austerity, eschewing form for function, except for the way that its treasures were arranged: weapons, armor and works of art were clustered in complementary categories and color, satisfying to behold to the extreme.
“Do you know, Li Tianming, why we keep weapons?” The Abbott asked as I followed behind him. The old man was tall and wiry, with a long beard and a shiny bald head without a single wrinkle, all of those being concentrated on his face.
“Because we’re a martial arts sect,” I said. I had long-since run out of patience for his word games, and I found that it was easier to give a wrong answer right off the bat than think for ten minutes and then give another wrong answer.
“You’re not even trying anymore,” the Abbott said with a disappointed huff.
“You’re the one trying to make me assume some subtext or context to your question,” I defended. “Since what you’re getting at probably won’t be very fascinating to me, I’d rather we just skip to the explanation.”
“Very well,” the Abbott said with a defeated tone. “I have been bested by your youthful impatience. What I meant to say was that we are a martial arts sect that advocates for peace, and yet we have put our arms up for display in such an obviously aggrandized manner. Can you make sense of this?”
I sighed, but decided to give this answer some thought. “We’ve lost our way,” I said. “Our actions go against our creed. Our culture has become too mired in violence to see any other reality beyond its supposed necessity. The weapons are meant to inspire a feeling of motivation to protect the weak on paper, but really it just glorifies the act of violence.”
“That sentiment, that we have lost our way and things need to get better, is actually quite a common one for us,” the Abbott said, and I raised an eyebrow at that. “We all look to an ideal of life and practice that will absolve us of our mortal poisons, and the purpose of keeping our weapons in this way is not to inspire motivation, but guilt. Look there,” the Abbott stopped walking, and I stopped next to him to see where he was pointing at.
At the end of the hall were three weapons tied to the wall. A black metal shield that bore the likeness of an asura at its center, an enormous butcher’s knife could promise nothing else but violence, and a Monk’s spade at the center, the gentlest weapon the Shaolin had, but no less capable of deadly force despite that.
“The Three Guilty Pleasures,” the Abbott said. “They are not free for just anyone to take, but you will find that most no one would even want to if given the opportunity. These are powerful implements, and can only be used to enact violence to a greater degree. Nothing more.”
I shrugged. “I’m sure they could be used to till fields. If they can cut through people, they should be able to cut through soil. And that shield can defend people, no?”
The Abbott clicked his tongue. “Shut up, you shitty brat. Can’t you tell I’m trying to make a point here?”
“Right Speech,” I said, and the Abbott just growled at that.
“R-regardless,” he said. “What if you had to choose one of them?”
I looked at each weapon. “It would probably be the Monk’s Spade. The shield is a close second, but the spade is prettier to look at.”
“Alright then, it is yours.”
“No,” I said, knowing this to be some kind of test.
“This is not a test,” the Abbott said. “You are destined for greatness. This can be your advantage over your classmates.”
I shook my head. “There are several classmates of mine in Shaolin more talented than I am. Why me?”
“Because you don’t want it enough,” the Abbott said. “You actually don’t want it. And that is the only person that should bear Ahimsa: the one that considers violence the last resort.”
“So I can become a better weapon.”
“Do you consider yourself to be a weapon?” the Abbott asked.
“A blunt one,” I said. “A bad one. But one nonetheless. This is my purpose in this world. And I would rather spite it. The Promise allows me to, and so I will. I’ll leave all the glory and fighting to Wenhao and the others, but I never wanted this to begin with.”
“What if I told you that if you held Ahimsa, the world could become a better place? And that it was true?”
Who are you to say that, I wanted to ask. But that went against the spirit of the question. What if it was true?
“I would take it,” I said. “Take… Ahimsa. But you can’t say that. You can’t say that and be truthful.”
“I know,” the Abbott replied sadly. “I cannot make you fight either. But hear me, Li Tianming. You are a human, not a weapon. And in your hands, Ahimsa could truly become an instrument of peace. What do you say?”
I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. “Violence only begets more violence. I trust that my classmates have things well in hand. I need not meddle. Things don’t hinge on my involvement.”
“Maybe not,” the Abbott said. “Then let us cast the dice. Either way they land, you should not regret your decision today, for it was informed and made from a good heart.”
“You shouldn’t be using gambling metaphors as a man of the cloth.”
“You always have something to say don’t you, shitty brat?”
“Right Speech.”
“Urgh!”
I looked at Ahimsa one last time, took in its features, and felt an otherworldly calling for peace.
The road to it?
A mountain of corpses. Rivers running with blood. An act of brutality and violence so masterful, so wide-spanning and so absolute that it left no room for opposition. No room for anything but tranquility.
Nonviolence.
I scoffed at it. Who would want something so ugly?
I took the spear in hand and felt its yearning for nonviolence, no different from the feeling I got from it all that time ago. Such a naive request hiding the brutal methods that it wished to employ to achieve such an end.
The weight of this feeling was emotionally taxing to me. It couldn’t brainwash me, I could tell as much. Only if I started mixing up its impulses with my own, but that could be easily overcome with samadhi.
The emotional weight was manageable.
The physical weight? Only a little less so.
This thing had to weigh a good ten or fifteen kilograms. At least, that was what the past me would say. The current me, stronger in every way, had no good frame of reference.
“Heavy,” I muttered.
“That’s right,” Dong Ho said. “It weighs one shi.” Sixty kilograms? Surprising in two ways, that I could just carry that around, and that a weapon so heavy even existed. This thing was impossible to wield without a good foundation for external martial arts. Even as I currently was, I’d have to train up considerably to be able to swing this thing around for a minute without exhausting myself, and eventually my qi. “Your greatest challenge will be training your body to handle it. The Adamantine Bones Elixir will come in handy for that, but only in mitigating the blowback of its strikes. That being said, you’ll have your work cut out for you.”
I looked at the spear and sighed. I guess the abbott was right in the end. It was all up to me.