Soft white woven mats spread out under Kasri’s feet in a stark contrast to the dark wood that it had just been. The carriage had at least tripled in size, and now had amenities he hadn’t noticed were missing. Three chests inscribed with glowing symbols, a small room off to the side with an empty bath in it, and an entire wall dedicated to books, games, cooking utensils, and a lot of other stuff Kasri didn’t recognize.

“So that’s why it felt big and small at the same time.” Kasri said to himself, removing his makeshift shoes before putting his feet back down. Even the roof was a few heads higher; enough that he could stand without bending his back. “Is it safe to stand?”

“Probably safer than outside. Just be careful about touching the things on that wall,” Dahlia gestured at the wall decorated with stuff, “since some of it is really dense with chi. You don’t want to overload your mind.”

“You’d basically be having a chi-induced stroke.” Lillian chimed in. “I can help you a little bit, but if you go snooping while we’re asleep, then I might not get to you in time to heal everything.”

Kasri gulped. “You made your point. So how do we start?”

“We start with getting you ready.” Lillian said excitedly. “Your body isn’t exactly in the best shape, but your chi concentration is phenomenal. So we can skip that step until you burn out what you’ve got stored up. So… step two. Concentrating chi in your mind.”

Lillian tapped her finger to her temple, then traced it down her face until she reached the bottom of her throat. “There are quite a few ways to take in chi. Eating chi-rich food, being in a chi-rich environment, reading empowered scriptures, and using drugs specifically made to grant you chi. Of course there are other ways, but we don’t have any of them in the carriage with us.”

Dahlia snorted and stood up. “I’ll be relaxing in the bath. Come get me when it’s my turn to help him.”

“You got it!” Lillian waved, then proceeded to ignore Dahlia as she opened the one door that didn’t lead outside of the carriage. “Okay, just you and me, Kasri. If you want to concentrate chi specifically in your mind, you need to get it into organs that connect directly to your brain. The ears, eyes, and nose are the easiest, but we can get it into your spine and skull if we need to. I don’t really want to do that, so we’re going to start with your eyes.”

Lillian stood and walked to the wall of things, perused it for a few seconds, and grabbed two items before returning to her seat. One a scroll on coppery paper tied with a bright blue rope and decorated with red and yellow jagged lines; the other a small wooden box carved to look like a ripple in a pond. She placed the scroll in Kasri’s hands, kept the box to herself, and looked at him expectantly.

Kasri stared down at the scroll with absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do.

“Um, it kind of feels like we’re skipping a few steps. I don’t even know how chi works.” Kasri reached down to untie the rope around the scroll. It opened to reveal a simple drawing of a young tree annotated with letters that Kasri couldn’t read and a mass of roots descending until he reached the end of the scroll.

“Didn’t your parents teach you anything?” Lillian asked, then sighed when Kasri shook his head. “My, they really didn’t push for you to succeed. I might be a little rusty on my explanation, but I’ll try my best to paint you a proper picture.”

She tapped Kasri on the back of the neck, but he barely felt it. His eyes were utterly focused on the scroll and he felt a pressure slowly building behind them and on the back of his head. He barely noticed her nod, but he could somehow give his full attention to Lillian’s words and the scroll at the same time.

“Chi is the invisible connection between the material realm, which is where everything exists, and the overlaid realm of pure potential that exists just beyond our perception. When there is harmony between the two realms, more chi can pass through them. That is why inanimate objects give off so much more chi than living, thinking things; they have one function. While thinking things take in more chi than they give off, creating a sort of vacuum between both realms that brings our ‘soul’ closer to us.”

The words on Kasri’s scroll were slowly turning recognizable. But not in any order he could make out. The pressure behind his eyes grew by the second, but no matter how strong it got, it was never unbearable.

“A stone gives off chi tinted with the aspects of a stone. Durability, weight, earthen, and a lot more in trace amounts. A cultivator can glean the aspects they need from the stone while scouring the others clean as raw fuel.” Lillian continued. “That raw fuel feeds symbols, scripts, and weapons while the aspected chi is used for techniques, advancement, and cultivation. But chi itself can’t do anything; it is a byproduct of existence.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Lillian tapped Kasri on the back of his head again, and his focus redoubled. Had it faded that much in just a few seconds? Countless droplets of sweat pitter-pattered down to the scroll in his hands before being whisked away to the white mats below. But it was coloured wrong and too thick–like milk that had been in the sun just a little too long.

“You’re seeing the effects of chi saturation.” Lillian explained. “Your mind is trying to take in more chi than it ever has, so your body is trying to filter it out. I just dispersed the chi throughout your brain instead of it collecting in your vision center. I’ll have to do this a lot more, and you’ll feel like your head is swimming by the end of it. Don’t be scared; this is normal.”

“Mm.” Kasri mumbled understanding with the slightest nod.

“Good. You’re doing very well so far, so keep it up!” Lillian said encouragingly. “As you use more and more chi to saturate your body with more and more chi, your body will start to naturally draw more and more chi. You’ll eventually feel the weight of your soul settle on you, and that’s when you’ll start saturating your soul with chi. We’ll need some different treasures to get that working for you, but that’s a few days away at least.”

Lillian gently pressed her hands on Kasri’s ears, ran her fingers along their length, and placed something behind them. It felt like warm honey at first, but then she spread the warmth further. All over his ears, completely coating them in a film that slightly muffled all sound.

Then they started vibrating. Like the ringing of a massive glass gong. Kasri winced as the sound reverberated through his entire body before coalescing in a cacophonous mass in his skull. His focus almost slipped, but Lillian tapped the back of his head and held her thumb to it this time. The chi diffused, but the pressure mounted nonetheless.

“If we had more time, I would let you use these one at a time. Get you used to them, and move on to the next one when you’ve had time to recover. But we don’t have that luxury.” She whispered, or at least that’s what it sounded like through the incessant ringing in Kasri’s mind. “Chi is the energy of existence. It can be as lethal or benign as you wish it to be. Don’t focus on how it makes you feel. Focus on what it feels like.”

Kasri tried to breathe, but his lungs wouldn’t draw anything in. They were already full. He exhaled, watching the scroll flutter under his breath. Everything sounded wrong thanks to the ringing in his ears, but in that wrongness, he could fully feel his body working for the first time. Every creak. Every pulse. Every contraction, every expansion. They all made sounds that his mind had told him to ignore.

He saw his nose. All the little things in his eyes that his brain had tuned out. The slight blur to his vision that a doctor had said was from a bump to the head as a young child. Everything wrong with his vision was as clear as crystal. But also everything his mind did to correct those wrongs. Putting everything into razor-sharp focus, without any kind of regulation to keep him sane.

But that wasn’t what Lillian asked him to try. Those were all the things he didn’t feel, dragged into the light by unnatural means. So how did the chi actually feel?

“Miserable.” Kasri murmured, his word echoing around in his head until it was a constant whisper in the back of his mind. Lillian said something, but it bled away to background noise. He focused on the chi in his mind, on the thing that didn’t belong, and tried to open himself to it.

Everything changed. His mind accepted the wrongs without a second thought. So what if he could hear his body working? His mind would quiet the sounds for him. So what if his eyes saw a little too much, and couldn’t focus quite right? His mind would make him see properly. His body was a strange biological contraption that worked with a million moving parts, and somehow only a few of them were slightly off. That in itself was a miracle of nature.

But what if none of them were off? Would he be able to handle perfection? Would his ears be able to handle absolute silence, his eyes be able to handle seeing clearly into the horizon’s horizon? His mind compensated for so many of his body’s motions, and unconsciously did so much for him. Was he right to try and tell it what to do? Was he so arrogant that he thought he would breathe better manually? That he could adjust himself by the slightest margins and do everything himself?

No. That was wrong as well. His body and mind weren’t two separate entities. He was the combination of everything he’d ever felt, thought, and done. Kasri was the mind and body working in harmony and through the moments of discord. The cultivator he would become would add his soul to that equation, and grow… somehow. But he would be one. Not two or three.

The discomfort fell into the background as Kasri trusted his mind to handle the chi. It was no longer a struggle between the sensations and the thoughts, but a union of purpose.

“Wow. You took to that better than I thought.”

Kasri blinked for what felt like the first time in forever, tearing his focus away from a now completely blank scroll and feeling lukewarm putty roll down his shoulders. Lillian’s voice sounded wrong. He turned to see Dahlia sitting beside him, then looked down to see her fattest specter resting on his lap.

“When did–” Kasri coughed, his throat so dry that just talking felt like he’d inhaled sand.

Dahlia reached down and pressed a waterskin into Kasri’s hands. “Drink slowly. You’ve been at it for ten hours, so your throat must be completely raw. Is your brain filtering out the sensations from chi now?”

After a long, slow drink, Kasri sputtered and pounded his chest. “I–ack–I think so.” He hacked out. “But I don’t feel like killing anyone for insulting me.”

“That’s because you haven’t gotten to that part of the training yet. Until you become one with your soul, you won’t feel any of the benefits or negatives from having chi.” Dahlia explained, gently urging Kasri to take another drink. “We’ll give you a few days to recover from this, then try to get you to feel your soul. If Lillian picked the right things, you should be able to just barely see it when you close your eyes and focus on what it feels like to be you.”

Kasri nodded and closed his eyes. But before he could focus on anything, Dahlia wrenched his eyes open.

“No, not right now.” She said seriously. “Take a few days to rest. Your mind’s chi is still volatile, and if you’re not careful when you look at your soul, you could undo all the work you just did. You don’t want to have to go through that again, do you?”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Kasri shrugged, then completely lost control of his arms. They slumped down at his sides, then came the pain. Shooting and in waves and dull and intense all at the same time. “Whuh?”

Dahlia winced in sympathy as everything in Kasri’s body began to ache at once. “Yeah, Lillian’s techniques are wonderful for repairing the damage as it happens. But if we want the chi to stay in your mind, you’re gonna have to suffer for a little while. I’ll get you some painkillers.”