CHAPTER 8: CHANNEL BUILDING COMPLETION
Dan didn’t continue shopping. All thoughts of looking for an alchemist’s stall were forgotten as he and his carriage driver trudged back to said carriage.
Naturally, Dan walked with exceptional deftness. His confusion was long forgotten, and only his eagerness to increase his cultivation was allowed his focus.
When the two emerged into the main thoroughfare, he actually had to slow down to keep his huffing driver in sight. Thankfully, nothing untoward happened and the two easily returned to their carriage.
With a palpable sense of relief, the middle-aged servant unabashedly dropped the heap of Blue Demon Grass onto the cabin floor before plopping to the earth.
“I’m going to cultivate. Don’t disturb me!”
The driver pulled himself to his feet and hastily bowed. “Of course, Master Dan! You will not be disturbed.”
“Good.”
That done, ten-year-old Dan manoeuvred around the veritable pile of paper bundles to his cushioned seat and pulled one to his lap.
It wasn’t his much-preferred cultivation chamber, but he would have to make do. This wasn’t ordinary cultivation anyhow.
It all started with shutting off the senses. Problem being, as soon as he unwrapped and tossed the paper, every nerve on his body sprung to attention and fought for the right to be the bite that disrupted his concentration.
But failure didn’t fit Dan’s aesthetic. Fresh memory of his father’s strict guidance rekindled the use of simple techniques to immerse into meditation. If he were burning incense sticks, Dan had taken less time to withdraw into his meditative state than it might have taken for one to burn.
It was for a pretty simple reason, the same which eliminated his father’s need for an isolated space.
His dantian, spirit energy and connected meridians, surging in wonderful ways that brightened his senses and tickled his spirit, were a perfectly acceptable medium for his focus. It was easier than ever to delve into meditation, and retaining it was much less difficult.
Focused, Dan brought the first stalk of demon grass to his lips and crunched.
He gasped… it tasted disgusting. Right then and there, he almost fell out of his meditation just to spit in regret at the absurd amount of terrible grass laid by his-
“Ohhhh okay…”
It had taken a few seconds for the grass to enter his stomach. But, once it started dissolving – with the conscious assistance of spirit energy drawn straight from his dantian – it did so rapidly.
Dan itched and shivered. The grass practically disintegrated in his belly, leaving nothing but pure nature-aspected energy in its wake. Urged by his own energies, it flooded his dantian.
But only for a moment. He’d only taken one bite, after all.
The gaze with which Dan observed the remaining half of the stalk in his hand was filled with a contradicting mix of emotions. Why oh why did something so amazing taste so terrible?
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He swallowed bile and yet licked his lips.
The sacrifices he had to make in the pursuit of immortality… he’d scrub this part from the history books.
Dan absorbed his being into chomping on grass and refining it. The repetitive motions gradually became fluid, and the taste stopping bothering him after the first full bundle of the stuff.
Like this, his cultivation progressed tremendously.
From connecting to the fifth meridian to flushing it clean. To establishing his sixth meridian and strengthening it. Then opening a path through the seventh meridian, and then the eighth. Until eventually, even the ninth and tenth channels were cleanly opened…
Dan felt profusely ill. The fifth meridian had required a full bundle of the spirit herb and connecting to the tenth required five. In the end, a single bundle of Blue Demon Grass remained on the cabin floor, and he barely repulsed the desire to stomp it beneath his feet.
An indescribable sensation flooded his gut, and Dan practically fell from the carriage in his effort to delay the inevitable.
“I-urk, this is so-ugh, gross!”
The driver, asleep against a wheel, woke to the sight of Dan falling to his knees and puking an endless sea of red, blue, and black grime. It splashed unpleasantly amongst the dirt and would have dyed his favourite grey robe in a myriad of bodily decor if he hadn’t shucked it off in a hurry.
“Master Dan, did-uh, is something wrong?”
Dan shivered and patently did not let the middle-aged man see his snot and tear-stained face.
“J-just get me home.”
…
The ride back wasn’t as calm as the initial journey. Even a safe transit like that of Bluetop Ravine to Bluecorn Hamlet had preferred travelling hours. Dan’s cultivation had been lengthy and combined with an uncanny desire to return home as soon as possible, it directly led to a return in the wee hours of the night.
But even the driver didn’t say much past his initial misgivings. Perhaps that was because he was afraid of offending the son of the family immortal, but after all, Dan was also an immortal. Kind of.
Okay, it had been a poor showing, but it couldn’t be said that he hadn’t made an incredible improvement!
The difference between four open meridians and ten was ridiculous. If his body weren’t so flush with the impurities cleansed from his meridians that he was stuck puking them out every so often, anyway…
Dan downed a bottle of water with the brevity of sipping a small glass. His heart beat loudly in his chest, but perhaps that was due of his newly enhanced senses.
Each connected meridian added a stacking layer of capability. Two meridians precisely doubled his body’s ability to transport a certain amount of spirit energy to a certain area of his body. It especially doubled the natural circulation of energies that soothed, healed and enhanced his fleshly body.
Not only that, but each opened meridian directly enhanced his dantian, and that in turn enhanced his spirit energies qualitatively. Each opened meridian was like adding an additional limb to his spirit, or stacking it with another set of muscles. The higher the quality of his spirit energy, the greater the upper limit that his energy would enhance his flesh.
In other words, from four meridians to ten, he was directly two and a half times more powerful, and quality wise, far superior.
But especially, he was still young. His ten years was nothing compared to the two-hundred-year lifespan he would have once he coalesced a spirit source in his dantian. One of those and he would directly breakthrough from the initial Channel Building stage – which his father matter-of-factly referred to as the trainee stage – into the Refining realm… That would be where the truly mystical aspects of cultivation would set in. It wouldn’t be as simple as an increase in physical might.
Dan dreamt of flying amongst the stars one day. A silly dream that would earn his father’s scorn were he to say it aloud. He smiled derisively.
The chill in the breeze that fluttered through the open window was vividly refreshing. Dan pleasantly relaxed, kicked his feet out and stretched longways across the door-to-door carriage seat. He started with counting the cracks in the carriage ceiling and ended with pondering his next step.
There was no doubting that his father had plans for him, and it could only be improved since Dan still had plenty of money. Now that his meridians were fully unblocked and his dantian was converting obscene amounts of spirit energy into his own brand, he shouldn’t be far off from having enough to cast a combat spell. Or at least, that was his wish. Dan resolved to ask for one as soon as they arrived.
The world darkened unabated, and the carriage’s wheels rolled perpetually. The grind of wood to dirt and the occasional pebble ricocheting against the cabin door were the only spurts that dared interrupt the sullen silence of the night.
Dan sighed. Despite the energies that flooded his flesh with newfound vitality, he was deathly tired. His eyes fluttered to a close, and soon, his senses shut down for the night.