CHAPTER 6: SPECIAL PHYSIQUES
Later the same day, his father dragged him into the study. It wasn’t unusual at first, but when a thrice-locked iron-lined box was dropped onto the prominent center-placed table, Dan was taken aback.
“What are we doing?”
His father placed a finger to his lips and undid the runic latches. The symbols shone to life momentarily, before unclasping with a soft click.
Dan watched all this with wonder. After all, this box held his father’s most prized treasures. The one thing that, if his father ever went missing, Dan was supposed to run off with. It was a lesson drummed harshly into his head.
He hadn’t ever seen inside it.
When the lid lifted, his father wouldn’t have been able to stop him looking, and the old man didn’t even try.
“That’s it? More books?”
A bout of loss wracked Dan’s mind as the ‘treasures’ ended up being notes and papers, three books… even an off-colour quill and a half-emptied inkwell, which his father carefully brushed aside.
He watched quietly as a suspiciously thick leather-bound book was eventually removed.
Click. Clunk. Click.
The locks and latches were replaced within a blink, and the box was stashed back into a hidden space behind one of the two bookshelves.
Instead of sitting at his neat, tidy desk in the corner of the study, Dan’s father kneeled by the low centered table and gestured him to his side. Dan, of course, acquiesced.
The pages, wide and covered in scrawling illustrations, unfolded onto the table. At first, the illustrations detailing human bodies surrounded in elements and elemental aspects, Dan thought it might be about cultivation aspects. Maybe a large collection of information related to meridians and affinities, or elements and cultivation techniques.
But it was far too large for something like that. It was only made clear when his father flicked to the front of the book.
“Special physiques?”
A nod followed.
“Good. You can read.”
Dan cleanly ignored the typical jab and focused as his father spun to the contents page. It was more-or-less a long, long list of ‘special physiques’, which by the way, Dan had never heard of.
His father’s thin finger traced the page to a certain point, before the literature was nothing but a disturbed mess of dishevelled page-turning. As if they were reading naturally, the mess smoothed into a simple turn of a page, and an illustration of a man pinching a pill between his index finger and his thumb filled their eyes. The illustration’s other hand held the stem of a detailed blue rose. Green decal covered the page, settled into the images of leaves, shrubbery, and a solitary tree behind it all.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Dan’s eyes gravitated to the underlying text.
Supreme Medicine Physique
Amongst the rarest of the B-tier physiques. The possessor of the Supreme Medicine physique needs a tenth of the cultivation resources. All types of pills, elixirs and any rank of spirit-plant’s energy are converted to the nature aspect and filtered into pure essence. All immortals of the supreme medicine physique carry a nature affinity. The average medicine provides quintuple the nature energy and twice the effectiveness. Ordinary cultivation, however, is stinted.
Relatively little application. For those with abundant resources, the Supreme Medicine Physique sees some advantage. For those without resources, the Supreme Medicine Physique is a bane. Unlike most special physiques, there is no inherent advantage to battle or technique efficacies.
The book snapped closed, and his father laid upon Dan a peculiar gaze.
“This, I suspect, is what is wrong with you.”
And wrong, indeed, it seemed to be.
…
The next day, Dan sat in a closed carriage as a family servant drove into the next town over. His pockets jingled with more coin than he would dare carry before he’d broken his mortality, and the lacquered wood would have driven his new sense of smell mad if not for the open window shutters.
Bluetop Ravine, as its name implied, nestled comfortably between two long, twisting and turning cliff faces. When the woods turned to stone and they entered the ravine surrounds, Dan shook himself awake.
Truth be told, he imagined coming upon a troupe of bandits, perhaps lead by a wayward cultivator, or even a fierce beast galloping by the road.
But it was a well-travelled route, and Bluetop Ravine was only half a day’s travel from Bluecorn Hamlet. When nothing of the sort happened, Dan was simultaneously disappointed and relieved. While he hadn’t had any form of combat training, he still desired an outlet for all his new and freshly pent-up energy.
“Master Dan?”
He startled. The driver, a polite thirty-something male with well-kempt hair and a clean robe with polished buttons, had taken to poking his head into the carriage cabin. A very ordinary member of his family. Like most, Dan thought, except for he and his father.
Dan put on a polite smile and rubbed the back of his head bashfully. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”
“Aye master. We’ve arrived. If you like, I can show you around after tending the horses?”
It would be nice to have a guide, but was it strictly necessary? His father’s face flashed in his mind. There had been a warning of some kind about going off alone, but… He was stronger now.
Dan clenched his fists. His dantian, spurred by intention, circulated his spirit energy to his limbs. The soothing flow of power passed his arms before it rushed down to his feet, leaving a calm feeling of absolute strength behind.
He sighed, and whisps of green energy flittered through the air.
No, he certainly didn’t need a guide. Dan’s mission wasn’t extremely complicated.
He only needed to find some cheap medicine for the long-term. Or failing that, just something that he could afford now. It all depended on how absurd his physique was. Specifically, he was chasing something cheaper than an elixir or a pill intended to raise cultivation by an entire level. Something cheaper than the Spirit Gathering Elixir.
Maybe a simple cultivation aid like a small qi pill, or – something his father was most insistent for – trash pills. Those pills that failed in the end of the refining process or otherwise. Pills with a chaotic composition, whose function could only be guessed – something vaguely similar to the original intention, maybe. These pills were extremely risky to ingest, and honourable alchemists wouldn’t even sell them.
They were sure to be dirt cheap. The composition of elements also wouldn’t matter, no matter how mismatched or explosive it should be. After all, if he truly had the Supreme Medicine Physique listed in that, that codex… every scrap of energy in that pill would become nature-aspected. It should be enhanced further too.
Or at least, that was his father’s theory. Dan kind of just nodded his head to keep the old man happy. He found himself doing that more often as he got older.
…Oh, and he was meant to buy a plant too. One that wasn’t popular for alchemy, just so that it would be extra cheap.
The driver looked relieved when Dan told him he’d be going alone. He didn’t think too much about that and left the carriage, his sandal-clad feet stepping on a foreign settlements’ dirt for the first time.
Winds tickled his shoulder-length hair, and Dan tightened the scarf around his neck.