CHAPTER 4: CHANNEL BUILDING

Dan woke to the twittering of doves and the crackling roar of a rune-etched stone.

His father called the little device a rooster, and of course, its only purpose was to wake him at dawn. Every, single, day. It was the single most despised item Dan owned. Beside it sat an unfamiliar box. Small, worn, and wooden. Once Dan shook himself of his sleeping fetters and pulled himself into his signature grey robes, he couldn’t help but open it.

The box was deceptively rich within. Soft, cushioned silk ran the inside of simple wooden walls. Within the small space, stood a wooden vial with a cork lid. His carefully cultivated spirit energy, which he kept in the space he hoped to one day open his dantian, madly spun about. Dan flinched in his surprise, and the lid fell shut.

Obviously, it was the Spirit Gathering mix.

Also obvious, Dan didn’t spare a single thought to breakfast. He ran straight to the cultivation chamber with a gusto unusual for a sleep-addled boy, skipped past his amused father in the lounge without even saying hello, and burst open the heavy door to the cultivation chamber in record time.

Ch-clunk.

Breathing hoarsely, Dan settled into the cotton cushion and tapped the incense vase. It took over an hour to calm himself. Too many times, he’d almost reached for it regardless. When he finally felt ready, he unclasped the box’s simple copper mechanism.

Ch-clunk.

His eyes darted open in a rush, only to meet the exceptionally serious visage of his father.

“Did you think I’d let you do something so important on your own? Silly boy.”

Dan was surprised, but he didn’t argue. As he had two months ago, his father settled on the stone floor and placed a hand to his back.

“Calm yourself. I can’t do that for you.”

Perhaps in his rush, he hadn’t quite understood the gravity of what he was doing. It hit him all at once. Stress piled on Dan’s shoulders, and his heart threatened to beat his sternum into fragments. His head lowered of its own volition, Dan’s hands shook and his breath rattled.

“Dan.”

It was as simple as calling his name and a reassuring squeeze of his shoulder, but it worked. Dan’s panic receded, and impatiently, without saying anything about what had happened, he withdrew into meditation.

All told, it took three hours to mentally prepare himself. A short time compared to the rewards he would expect to come next, but even his father would lose his cool if Dan took any longer.

“To the current you, this elixir will feel exceptionally potent. It will seem powerful and endless. You will feel a great deluge of spirit energy descend into your flesh from within, and you will have to remain cognizant to filter out the elements amongst it all. Some of the absorption process will be automatic, but everyone has infinitesimally small affinities to every element; after all, you wouldn’t survive in this world without it. A flood of fire, water, earth, metal and nature energies will flow into your system.

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“The nature energy will be the brightest to your senses. It is, after all, your element. But, nature energy will be engulfed by fire energy, and water energy will feed your nature energy. Additionally, metal and earth energies will be counteractive. You want as much water energy as possible, but you can’t drown your nature energy; you need more nature than water. You want as little fire energy as possible, but it will also feed the earth energy, which will feed the metal energy, which in turn feeds the water energy that feeds your nature energy…

“In other words, you want a little of everything, but a lot of nature and water. You can only take so much. Are you following?”

Dan felt lead around in circles, and he wouldn’t be able to say he wasn’t confused without lying through his teeth. And yet, he nodded nonetheless. He couldn’t delay this again.

“Take it when you’re ready. I’ll help you sort the energy if you desperately… need…”

Dan hadn’t hesitated. The cork split from the wooden vial as if oiled, and the tasteless green fluid slipped down his throat. It was exceptionally cool, but also warm, yet simultaneously nothing at all.

Once it reached his stomach and the alchemical liquid started dissolving into its baser components, Dan paid it every shred of focus he could scrap together.

From his father’s permission to the current moment, it had been a mere second. Dan’s rapid digestion was not the focus of his father’s attention.

It was the obscene matter with which the elixir behaved after-the-fact.

Dan began sorting through the pill’s energies from the moment the first of it appeared. It was exceptionally easy, because for whatever reason, there was nothing but a surprisingly pure stream of nature energy that resonated strongly with his being. It barely needed his guidance at all before rushing toward his dantian, where it gathered with the results of his previous months of cultivation and peacefully settled.

It became increasingly clear that his father was trying to scare him. The man, however, was certainly right about one thing. The elixir, even when it had barely had the chance to spread, continuously spat out unbelievable quantities of spirit energy. The quantity was so overwhelming that, if he hadn’t been warned, the shock of it would have ended his meditation prematurely. That it was nature-aspected was, at this time, less important.

Sweat drenched Dan’s forehead as he mentally ordered the energy spawning in his belly to his dantian.

That’s when he felt it. The gentle thrum in his abdomen. The sudden disappearance of his energy. The rapid, spectral formation of his dantian. His excitement threatened to put an end to his meditative state, but the calm press of his father’s hand to his back pulled him back into mode.

Energy continued spilling from the remnants of the elixir that had, by this point, dissipated by less than half. It was in such grand quantity, suddenly, that the previous expulsion seemed like nothing in comparison.

Instead of gathering in his dantian, he followed the sudden guidance of his father’s energy in his body. His mind’s eye traced a particular path through his limbs and organs, and with an utterly focused mind, Dan’s rapidly gathering energies flitted across this path, before it eventually reached his dantian. Rapidly afterward, the energies would emerge from his dantian and trace the path on its own.

He had formed the spiritual channel leading to his first meridian, Dan realized with sudden clarity, and the thought of it nearly knocked him senseless.

An urgent pressure to his back barely reminded Dan to keep hold of himself. If it weren’t for the soothing effects of the incense sticks that filled the chamber with esoteric smells and the calmed senses wrought by the freshly activated runes that littered the chamber walls, it wouldn’t have been enough.

Seemingly, the spirit energy of an elixir knew no bounds. Clearly, Dan hadn’t quite understood the level of gift that his father had presented the previous day. There was no possibility that an elixir this effective wouldn’t have been useful for his father, and the thought warmed Dan until he abolished it. He had to retain his focus.

The elixir continued to generate an untold amount of nature energy, and Dan eagerly absorbed every whit of it.

Time passed quickly. Unbeknownst to Dan, the day was already near the end of its cycle. The large brick and mortar home, atop a stout hill, was decorated in a variety of reds and oranges born of the edge of the sun’s glare.

“Finally.”

Dan slumped forward, head to his ankles, and his father harrumphed drily.

“Four meridians,” his father stated. “Do you know how long it took me to connect up four meridians, Dan?”

Dan was tired, but he was still curious. “How long?”

“It took three years, son.”