I know what I must do.

I must take the next step.

I am mentally prepared to take the next step. I am ready. I am willing. I am no longer afraid.

That being said…

I still have no idea what I’m doing.

This is not an excuse this time, not something I’m saying just so I can put progress aside and procrastinate some more. I really don’t know where I go from here. Shatter the Void, I guess? Merge the physical with the metaphysical to refine my body, mind, and soul? That seems about right, but I still have no idea how to even begin such a grand undertaking. Body refinement would be something like what happened in Taddy’s Spiritual Baths, just dialed up to eleven, which at least seems somewhat manageable, but how would I go about refining my mind and soul?

Dunno. So I do what I always do when I’m stumped for answers. I turn to outside sources for help, but here in my Natal Palace, I’m not exactly swimming in options. There’s Buddy, but while he has many amazing qualities about him, I would never in a million years call him smart. I can’t even honestly say he’s smart for a dog, because I’m pretty sure Mama Bun knows more tricks than he does, and she’s dumber than a bag of rocks. Doesn’t mean I don’t love them both to bits, but I can’t lie about their intelligence either, mostly because I think being dumb makes them that much cuter.

Granted, there are diminishing returns on the dumb/cute scale, as evidenced by sweet, simple George, but that’s fine. Still cute, and cute is justice.

The other option for assistance is Blobby now that we’ve been reunited once again, but even allowing for the fact that he’s an amorphic, quasi-sentient, non-carbon-based metaphysical entity, Blobby is… kinda really weird. Maybe it’s not fair to judge an Elemental Spirit by human standards, but in my defense, I don’t have any other standards to judge by. There’s also the fact that I’m someone who anthropomorphizes most things in life, whether it be my pets, my weapons, or even a font of Heavenly Energy condensed into a drop of water, because that’s just who I am. In that sense, I suppose I’m the weird one, but seeing Blobby make a beeline for the Healing fountain while emitting a general impression of serenity as he sets the Keystone to flowing is strange, yet also somewhat understandable. I mean, he’s an Elemental Spirit of Water, so it shouldn’t come as a big surprise to discover he derives something akin to satisfaction from behaving like water, and I get the sense he’s intrigued by the sensation of flowing in what seems like an unnatural manner, yet is wholly natural in the sense that it adheres to the laws of physics.

It's the upward motion that does it, the feeling of being sprayed up into the air only to come cascading back down, a novel experience to a Spirit of Water that’s never evaporated or seen a motorized pump. I suppose it’s the same sort of feeling you’d get from running on a moving sidewalk, a sense of moving faster than you should be without actually being responsible for the increased speed. It’s amusing to see Blobby so drawn to something I find utterly banal and mundane, but also enlightening to watch as he bursts out of the spigot and flows down into the basins, only to be pumped back up to do it all again in a continuous stream.

Technically, one purpose of this Keystone was specifically to hold Heavenly Water, so it’s good that he feels right at home in the Healing Fountain. When you look at things like that, then Blobby doesn’t seem all that weird anymore, though I’m still not sure if he actually has these thoughts and emotions or if my perceptions are colouring how I translate his… impulses? I dunno what other word would fit here, because what do you call the thoughts and feelings of something that doesn’t think or feel? Blobby isn’t sentient. When water flows downhill, it’s not doing so because it wants to, but because the laws of physics have made it so. Blobby is the same way, except he’s driven by laws beyond my understanding, which might be why I feel a sense of purpose hidden deep behind each and every one of his actions, a driving force compelling him to act in the manner that he does. He’s not just water, but Heavenly Water, except what does that really mean?

The memory springs forth without any bidding, and I see Taddy’s contented smile as he gestures wildly at the dirt, stones, trees, sky, and everything else in between. “Heavenly Energy is all around us. It is invisible, intangible, inexhaustible. It comes in many natural forms, bursting up from Heavenly veins in the earth, or spewed forth from Heavenly fires, spread by Heavenly winds, or congealed into Heavenly waters. It enters our world and fills it, a constant source of power from the Heavens!”

I remember being so amazed at the prospect of using Heavenly Energy to rain down fire and lightning upon my foes, which Taddy said was possible but exceedingly difficult, even more difficult than Healing. I understand now that he was referring not just to the difficulty of learning such a skill, but also the extreme luck required to Awaken to the Blessing of Lightning, an Auxiliary Blessing which would have given me access to Fire and Wind. Alas, all I got was a Primal Blessing of boring old water, which isn’t even one of the cool Blessings either. Seriously, Earth, Wind, and especially Fire would have been so much more impressive, but it is what it is.

Anyway, the important takeaway from all this is that Blobby is a drop of Heavenly Water, or more specifically, he is Heavenly Energy that has been congealed into a droplet of water. A difference without a distinction as far as I know, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, and it’s always important to get the details right to avoid later misconceptions. Being a droplet of Heavenly Water, this means Blobby is a font of Heavenly Energy, a source unto himself. That being said, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another. I’ve seen this in action firsthand, as Blobby ‘eats’ Spectres and ‘poops’ out Heavenly Energy. Pong Pong does something similar, except he eats shrimp and whatever else his turtle heart desires, and his poop is actual poop containing Heavenly Energy, as opposed to pure Heavenly Energy like what I get from Blobby.

So what does this tell me? Many things, but what’s relevant here is Blobby’s penchant for Cleansing Spectres. Why Spectres? Well, my recently departed Natal Soul General called Blobby an agent of Balance, and he was right. Not an agent in the professional sense, like Blobby’s acting on behalf of the Mother or some Deity or another. He’s no angel or Chosen One here to bring Balance to the Force. No, Blobby is an agent in the chemical sense, a substance that brings about a reaction or effect, namely taking Spectres and turning them into Heavenly Energy. When looked at it another way, Blobby is merely one part of a larger system, the system of Balance. Humans generate emotion to draw upon Heavenly Energy to form Spectres, or what could be described as ‘negatively’ charged Heavenly Energy. Then we have ‘positively’ charged Heavenly Energy in the form of Elemental Spirits, which are drawn to the ‘negatively’ charged Spectres and consume them to produce ‘neutral’ Heavenly Energy. Boom. Balanced. It’s no different from water evaporating into vapour to form clouds which eventually precipitate and drop water on the world below, a series of reactions that form a natural, endless cycle, one that is essential to life as we know it.

There’s probably a lot more steps that I’m missing out on regarding the Cycle of Heavenly Energy, but as far as I can tell, I seem to be on the right track. The real question here is how does any of this help me? Well… it doesn’t, not directly, but it does tell me I need to work within the rules of this system, and it also raises some interesting questions and implications. If Spectres are ‘negative’, Elemental Spirits ‘positive’, and ‘true’ Heavenly Energy is neutral, then where does Pong Pong sit along this scale? More specifically, is his poop positive or negative? I doubt it’d be ‘true neutral’, because experience tells me that almost nothing in nature is so… pure, I guess. You don’t find pure water, or pure air, or pure anything in the real world, because everything is a mix of something or the other. Water isn’t even just one thing, nor is air just air, because air is just what we call the whole mixture of invisible gases hanging out in our atmosphere. Earth is more or less the same way, because you can’t really say dirt is one thing either. If we’re talking about earth in the sense of soil, well, soil can be made up of so many different things I wouldn’t even know where to start listing them. As for fire? That’s even dumber, because fire isn’t even really a thing in the sense of a physical object. It’s the result of a reaction, namely combustion, with fire being the visible part, while heat and light make up the other common by-products.

…

Hang on just a fucking minute.

This is some important fucking information.

I know it is, but I don’t really know why, yet I feel like I’m on the cusp of an incredible revelation. Okay, okay. You explained air, earth, and fire, so what is water? You said water isn’t even one thing. What things? Water is… Water is wet. Then again… is it really? What does it mean to be wet? To be covered or saturated with water or another liquid. So… can you really say water is wet? You get caught in the rain, you’d say, “Ah, my hair got wet, I gotta go get it re-did,” or, “Ah, my shoes got wet, now I gotta let ‘em sit outside and dry,”. You don’t say that the ocean. Gets. Wet. It’s just water.

Why am I enunciating like this? What is wrong with me?

Calm down. Don’t get caught up in the memes. Just relax. Head upstairs to your room, and sit down to meditate. No, scratch that, you have a bed. Lie down. Chill out. Take a moment to cuddle Buddy while you rest and reorganize your thoughts. Yes, that’s it. Pet the doggo. Give him a light scritching. Stroke his whiskers and boop the snoot, because you know you want to. Run your fingers through his soft fur while matching your breathing with his, and smile as he closes his big brown eyes in bliss. Forget water for a bit, and just focus on breathing.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Good air in. Bad air out. What is the good air? What is the bad air? Air is a mixture of different gases, but what gases specifically? Oxygen! That’s a thing. I know oxygen. That’s the good air! We breathe oxygen into our lungs where it’s picked up by our blood and delivered throughout our bodies. Once this precious cargo is delivered, our blood carries away waste carbon dioxide (the bad air!) to be expelled when we exhale, with measures in place to shut things down and keep us alive for as long as possible if we should ever run low on air.

Okay. Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide are two parts of air, with many more that are just sitting on the tip of my tongue, so close yet so far from mind. I remember contemplating this exact process in a bout of post-nut clarity after my wedding night with Yan, but how do I know this? It’s not something I learned in this life, but my past life, and herein lies the key to my success. I know things, and even though I don’t know how I know them, the knowing has helped me stand out from my peers. I also don’t know how knowing about Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide can help me, but I was able to create Panacea because I knew something about how the human body works, and I used that knowledge to my advantage. I knew teeth weren’t supposed to grow back, knew it in my heart of hearts, so I followed that hunch to study how we regrow teeth and found Panacea at the root of it all.

Panacea. Right. Panacea is important. I know this because I remember it being involved with Ping Ping’s ascension in some way, but I never did figure out how. I do remember I called Panacea by another name, a name I thought was incredibly important but promptly forgot. I thought the Heavens provided me with this important name, but now that I’m going over everything in my head, I’m not so sure about this anymore. As the Abbot pointed out, names are a human contrivance, in that the Heavens don’t care what you call something. Pour water over tea leaves and you have tea, and whether you leave it for a second or an hour, you get weak tea or strong tea, but to the Heavens, the tea just… well, it just is. To paraphrase the Abbot, names make the simple complex, when instead, we should be taking the complex and making it simple, except I never agreed with his take on this. Names are important, because it allows us to differentiate between things. Strong tea or weak tea or sweet tea or bitter tea, all are still tea, but the details matter.

What I’m really getting at is that even though names matter, the Heavens don’t care about names. I know this because I experienced it firsthand in JiangHu. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t explain it even then, because in open defiance of math teachers everywhere, the Heavens simply refuses to show its work and jumps straight to the answers. That’s how it was working with limited omniscience. Every time I considered a new problem, I was provided with an answer, and useful as that might be for getting things done, it leaves me more or less useless without the Heavens to guide me. I provided direction and intent, while the Heavens did all the rest, and I have no earthly idea how I did what I did.

So… if that’s the case, and the Heavens doesn’t care about names, where did I pull an alternate name for Panacea from?

Probably my past life’s memories.

And why was the name even important?

I don’t know. It made sense, I remember that much, so much sense that I felt silly for not realizing it sooner. If only I could remember what the name was, and maybe it’ll all come back to me…

No sense griping about it now. Maybe if I go over my memories, something will jump out and make sense. Let’s start with Panacea. What is it? Well, it’s my method of Healing, but what makes it special? It’s easy to use. Why? Because it requires no technical knowledge on my part to Heal. Regular Healing is difficult because the Healer needs a deep understanding of human anatomy and biology in order to guide the Healing process. The reason for this is because each person has what I been calling a ‘natural’ state, a baseline of who they are in a physical sense. For me, it’s a short, youthful twenty-something year old with boyish good looks and a complete lack of facial hair, while for Husolt, it’s him minus an eye. If you were to try and Heal something in a manner that deviated from someone’s natural state, the best thing that can happen is nothing, as their own body resists the changes, while the worst would be a massive explosion of fleshy tumours that will grow without limit, cannibalizing your body until there is nothing left to fuel the growth.

This is the result that comes from defying Heaven’s Will and using the Energy of the Heavens to go against nature. At least, that’s how I’ve come to see it, a means of maintaining Balance and preventing stuff like Demons springing into existence. Zhen Shi obviously found a way to work around those limits, seeing how he’s gathered a veritable army of Demons and Half-Demons, but that’s another issue altogether.

Anyway, the beauty of Panacea is that it does away with the requirement of understanding, because it heals in a more ‘natural’ way, with an added emphasis on the lower-case h. When a Healer uses the Panacea method to treat a patient, they’re not injecting some magical cure-all solution that will do away with all their wounds, they’re merely stimulating the patient’s body to create something it already knows how to create, the substance I’ve taken to calling Panacea. This seemingly magical tooth-growing substance is actually naturally produced by the body, just as it produces sweat, urine, blood, or tears. The only difference is that the body only produces Panacea naturally when regrowing teeth. Why? No idea, but what I do know is that teeth aren’t supposed to grow back. You get two sets, baby teeth, and adult teeth, and that’s it. Knowing this to be true, we can then extrapolate that Heavenly Energy is the reason why people in this world can regrow an infinite number of teeth.

This is the conclusion I arrived at after pulling an ungodly amount of my own teeth and watching Tokta Heal them, but regrowing teeth is not the only thing Panacea is good for. I followed a hunch and discovered that Panacea can actually help Heal all bodily injuries without oversight, something I’ve always felt was totally normal and expected, but I never really figured out why. What is it that makes Panacea so great at healing all manner of injuries? Well, let’s look at teeth again. A tooth is not just a piece of solid bone, but a complex structure complete with roots, nerves, blood vessels, pulp, enamel, and so much more. The details aren’t what we’re after here, but rather the fact that a tooth is not simple. Skin is simple, in that it’s just a soft, flexible layer of protective tissue. Skin on your foot is the same as the skin on your hand, but your back molar isn’t the same as your front incisor, and in fact fairly different all things considered.

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So what does this tell me? Panacea is a singular substance that can transform into all the different building blocks required to grow a tooth. This doesn’t sound all that impressive until you really think about it, because doesn’t your body already do that? Not really. Just look at the process the body goes through just to heal from a regular old cut. First, a clot forms at the site of the injury, a rapid response meant to stop bleeding. Assuming this is successful, the clot will quickly dry and eventually form a scab. A scab isn’t skin, but it serves a similar purpose, in that it’s a protective layer meant to protect the wounded tissue underneath, mostly from germs and whatnot. That’s what’s happening underneath the scab, your body fighting off possible infection. It’s why cuts become swollen and tender, or sometimes ooze with pus, because your body is getting rid of any and all foreign material introduced by the cut. Then, over the next few days or weeks, your body mends the broken blood vessels and regrows the missing tissue, but again, not in one go, as anyone who’s ever peeled a scab could tell you. A layer of whitish scaffolding grows first, followed by a sort of quasi-tissue that’s rough and granulated, then new skin forms over top only to tighten with time and pull the edges of the cut inward to shrink the wound. A scar might form for a particularly bad cut, a region of denser, tougher skin in response to the injury you took, and eventually, the scab falls off and all you have left is a marked discoloration to show where you took your injury, if even that.

And all this just to heal a simple cut. How many different stages and materials was that? A bunch, but with Panacea, you get to skip all the incremental steps and go straight to mending the injury, because Panacea can do it all. Anything your body needs, Panacea can provide, or more specifically, can become. That’s why it’s so effective, because you no longer have to wait for all the pieces to come together one by one. Panacea just floods in to form the clot, fight infection, mend blood vessels, lay down scaffolding, grow tissue, and more, all as needed in the moment. This is also why Panacea can fix injuries that have been ingrained into a patient’s natural state, because it doesn’t care about what the Heavens thinks is a person’s natural state. All Panacea knows is to become that which is needed, and that’s exactly how Taddy Healed Grandpa Du’s bad knee. The Heavens decided Grandpa Du’s missing ligaments had always been missing, but Panacea knew differently, knew what was missing and filled that void, and I think it’s because Panacea is how we became what we are in the first place.

That sounds weird. What I mean to say is, I think Panacea is how we go from sperm and egg to a full-blown human baby, a wholly normal, yet entirely magical part of life.

I don’t know why it makes sense, but it does, and I just know it must be right. I haven’t done much research on the subject, but I doubt mothers are putting babies together piece by piece in the womb, starting with the skeleton and working your way outwards from there. No, that would be horrific, which tells me I’m on the right track, though I should probably look into the miracle of birth some more. That’s for later though, because now I’m pretty sure Panacea is the answer to all my woes.

See, my issue is that I don’t know what to do next. I know what needs to be done in a general sort of sense, namely a refinement of the body, mind, and soul, but the problem is the same as it’s always been. How? The obvious answer would be to study the body, mind, and soul until I possess a superlative grasp of all their inner workings, the same way a Healer understands the body. From there, I could then use the Energy of the Heavens to improve my ‘natural’ state in a variety of different ways, but all this sounds boring, tedious, and totally not my speed. Look at how many steps I had to go through just to explain healing a cut. How many variables would I have to account for in order to refine my physique? Too many, that’s for damn sure, and there’s no way to know if I’ve covered all the angles without testing my theory out on myself. Which would be exceedingly dangerous seeing how your body jumps into overdrive to produce an endless mass of tumours whenever you Heal something incorrectly, so I’d hate to find out firsthand what happens when you make a mis-step while making modifications to your mind or soul.

Luckily for me, all paths lead to the Dao, which means there shouldn’t be any issues with taking a shortcut. I once proudly declared my ignorance of many things, saying I didn’t know why the sun was hot and ice cold, or what made the wind blow and water flow downhill, but my ignorance can’t stop me from using sails to propel a ship or a waterwheel to power a sawmill. I don’t know how to Heal a tooth, not manually at least, yet I can regrow teeth all day if necessary, because I know how to stimulate the creation of Panacea. So why am I agonizing about all the details when I know Heavenly Energy works the same way? Much like Panacea, the Energy of the Heavens already knows what needs to be done in order to carry out any specific task, which is similar to the limited omniscience I experienced in JiangHu. If that’s the case, I don’t really need to know how to refine my body, mind, and soul, so long as I get the Energy of the Heavens to do it for me, right?

…

Maybe? I dunno, this seems like the right track, just not entirely right, because leaving things up to the Heavens feels… wrong. Wouldn’t that just restore me back to my ‘natural’ state? Yea, I’m trying to improve my body, mind, and soul, not just fix whatever it is I break, but seriously, how? The answer is sitting on the tip of my tongue, yet I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is I’m supposed to do while also considering all the pitfalls I might come across along the way.

Like… if I were to intentionally refine my body, mind, and soul, the Heavens would interfere via tumours and who knows what else. That being said, given what I’ve seen of Demonic births and the visible results of Ping Ping’s ascension, it should be possible to exert my seized authority and defy Heavens’ Will to refine my body, mind, and soul, so long as I hold fast to my Will and purpose. In theory at least, though I might not even run into any resistance so long as I go about things in the right manner, seeing how Taddy’s Body Refining baths didn’t invoke any heavenly wrath and I don’t recall experience any such resistance during Ping Ping’s ascension. What that right manner might be is another thing altogether, and there’s still the minor issue of how I’m not entirely sure how to consciously and deliberately manipulate the Energy of the Heavens to carry out my Will. I did so in JiangHu, but I’m none too keen about recreating those same conditions, since I wasn’t in the best state of mind at the time. At least I have a somewhat viable option to explore now, and Blobby should have enough Heavenly Energy to spare after his big buffet in the Void, but I would need to hammer out a few details first, as there are many doubts and uncertainties I need to address before I get started.

First on the agenda is to figure out how to control Heavenly Energy. Hypothetically, the answer should be simple enough, because as the Abbot would say, Chi and Heavenly Energy are one and the same, a difference without a distinction. All I need to do is exert my Will and make it so, but this is easier said than done. It’s not just thinking really hard about how I want this one thing to happen, because sometimes, you think too hard about it and it doesn’t work. Take Guiding for example. I throw a sword, it hits things. That’s my thought process, which is what drives me to Guide it using Chi, except when I try to consciously Guide things, I don’t understand how it works, and everything falls apart. Then, I get into a fight against sixty odd Wraiths and set Peace flitting about like a bird as I kill from afar without even having to lift a hand. Inconsistencies like this leave me apprehensive about refining my body, mind, and soul because I’d rather not have to deal with the consequences of failure. So how do I reinforce my Will to ensure the greatest chances of success?

Well… I hate responding to my own questions with another question, but what is Will? To me, it’s a combination of Visualization, Intent, and Emotion coming together to manipulate Chi, but I only recently discovered not everyone controls their Chi in the same way. After sending my Natal Souls out in Meng Sha, they reported back en masse to bitch about one thing or another, but they also made sure to Send me everything they experienced along the way. It’s taken some time for it all to sink in, but as the various memories of my Natal Souls seep into the back of my mind, I’ve come to realize there is so much more to Will than I initially believed. Take Yan for example. She doesn’t Visualize anything at all, to the point where her Natal Palace doesn’t even have a discernable landscape. Instead, she controls Chi through concepts and sensations, wherein she breaks down what she needs her Chi to do and how it feels in order to emulate it on command. I always thought she just waved her Battle-Fan around because she liked how it feels, similar to how someone would stick their hand out the window of a moving car and ‘ride’ the wind, but I was wrong. Yan does that to better capture the sensation of the flowing wind and recreate it using her Chi. The Wind travels down the edge of her fan like a sword against a whetstone, ground and sharpened to a Honed blade of moving air that sweeps around armour and scythes into flesh. This is how she Wills her Wind Blades into existence, and she is not unique in this regard, for there are many Warriors who fight through concept and sensation just like her. Wang Bao for one, a man wholly lacking in style and substance as he swings his battle-axe wildly about, but woe betide the Defiled who dares stand against him. Ral for another, a simple-minded man who can’t answer even the most basic questions regarding combat theory, but in the midst of battle, he empties his mind, goes with what feels right, and his battle-staff comes alive in his hands.

Then there’s Li-Li, who primarily directs her Chi through sheer focus and conviction. I’m not talking about just regular concentration, but intense fixation on the matter at hand, to the point where anything outside the scope of her focus is handily ignored to the point where it might as well not exist. This is a result of having been a slave for so long, this ability to set her mind to a single task at the exclusion of all else. Her quick-draw attack is the perfect example of this concept, because it is a high-risk high-reward gambit that she pulls off time and time again, in spite of so many people having seen her use it. We’re talking about a full-body strike that pushes her body to its utmost limits and places every iota of strength and speed into an offensive slash, one that requires perfect coordination of her toes to her fingertips and everything else in between in order to pull off. It really shouldn’t be all that difficult to counter, block, or throw her off her game, but Li-Li has taken this one singular Movement of the Forms and elevated it into something magical.

All in all, I count two-hundred and twelve instances of Amplification taking place before her sabre even leaves its sheath, two-hundred and twelve perfectly timed exertions of Will to turn her quick draw attack into something more than a mere slash. Without every last instance of Amplification, Li-Li’s strike might well have landed late or failed to kill Yuanyin in a single blow and she would have died to his counter-attack, but she didn’t fail. A single instant of distraction, a momentary lapse of focus, a minor flash of hesitation, that’s all it would’ve taken to change the outcome for the worse, but Li-Li did not fail and never will because she cannot envision an outcome in which failure is an option. She sets herself up for success by literally Willing it into existence, because in her mind, she will succeed because she must succeed, and everything else follows from there.

On the outside, it looks so simple and effective, Li-Li drawing her sabre and cutting her foe down in a single strike. When judging by the outcome, you always think her sabre was just faster or she caught her foe off-guard, or maybe she made her opponent hesitate because not everyone is willing to trade a life for a life. All valid points that might well explain her victory, but I see now that it’s so much more. It’s not just about the movement of her body, but the flow of her Chi, which she timed perfectly to her delivery of the poem ‘Clear Temple’. This adds an element of explosive speed and power that goes beyond mere Amplification, one I lack the tools and frame of reference to understand. I don’t think there’s anyone in Meng Sha who fights like Li-Li, though I suspect Fung is similar in several aspects. At the very least, his penchant for spouting poetry makes a little more sense now, and I wonder if this is also how Akanai directs the flow of her Chi, through controlled breathing by way of diction.

These are but two examples of unfamiliar Will, but there are many more variations which I’ve never really considered before. The experiences of my various Natal Souls show me just how high the Heavens truly are, for there are a myriad of different ways to control Chi. Arrogance is a form of Will, ability derived from sheer bluster and braggadocio, as I saw from one fop of a Captain. So too is passion, most commonly seen in love of one’s friends, comrades, family, or whatnot driving someone to greater heights. Habit is another form of Will, an action ingrained into the body, mind, and soul through sheer repetition, like the fisherman turned soldier or Lang Yi and Lang Er. Mila draws on all of these forms of Will and more, which is part of the reason why she’s so outstanding, a woman whose Will remains firm regardless of what trial or tribulation she’s facing. She’s even got the breathing down without the need to even think about it much less recite any poems, her Chi flowing so smoothly, naturally, and orderly she can direct it with minimal focus and effort. My beloved Mila is the perfect blend of instinct and training, cunning and intelligence, strength and speed, fortitude and flexibility, and so much more, a Warrior destined for greatness thanks to talent, hard work, and phenomenal guidance.

There’s one more variation of Will I have yet to touch upon, because it’s a topic I tend to avoid at all costs. Mostly because I get irrationally angry whenever it’s brought up, but in my defense, I have my reasons. Specifically, I’m talking about the Martial Warriors who control Chi through faith, which I’ve always dismissed out of hand. I don’t like faith, and don’t trust it, because when my faith was strongest in my time of most dire need, faith failed me in the worst way possible. There are nights when I close my eyes and find myself back in the mines, hurting and crying as I pray for deliverance which I know will never come, because it never did. No higher power came down to spare me from my misery, no angelic beings rescued me from my deepest despair. After months of torture and torment, I had to almost die and crawl my way out of a pit of bodies to finally be free, and even then, I walked for hours without any hope of salvation in sight.

Yes, I was most fortunate to run into my sister in the end, and I count myself blessed for having done so, but it was not the Heavens which got me there, but my own dogged determination. I should have died in that pit, or countless times before, but I endured and persevered to get there. If all that suffering was the cost of extracting me from a hell they dropped me into in the first place, then I want nothing to do with any God who would demand that of me.

In my eyes, faith is a sham, a scam, a crutch for weak-willed people who refuse to take their fate in their own hands, but my bitter take on faith is not entirely correct. Faith in a higher power can do wonders when combined with the Energy of the Heavens, because faith is belief without confirmation. Faith is by far the most predominant form of Will in Meng Sha, and I would hazard a guess that it’s the same with the rest of the Empire. How many soldiers were my Natal Souls able to contact because they had faith in the Heavens above? Far more than the ones who had faith in me as their Legate, that’s for sure, despite everything I’ve done for them. On the topic of faith, I have no personal experience to draw from, but I do remember Gerel explaining his take on the subject. “The Dao is everything,” he began, struggling to come up with the right words to make me see things from his perspective. “And the Martial Dao is merely the means through which we explore it. This is a calling, one bestowed upon us by the Mother Above, for we are Her Chosen, Her conscripts, Her appointed defenders of humanity. With Her blessing, we wield the Energy of the Heavens, the power of Divinity itself, against the Father and His minions most foul. These are our trials and tribulations, given to us so that some day, one amongst us might rise above mortality and soar into the Heavens to join hands with the Mother Above, where together, they might topple the Father once and for all.”

I was predictably dismissive of Gerel’s take on faith, but who can say he’s not right? I certainly can’t prove him wrong, though in the absence of any and all proof, I can’t really claim he’s onto something either, but why should it even matter if it’s true? In the context of the Martial Dao, the only thing that matters is that Gerel believes it’s true, and that makes it real to him, the same way Baledagh was real to me, despite not being real at all. This is what it means to have faith shape your Will, and that’s what he was trying to tell me when he said my problems stemmed from a lack of faith. It wasn’t a verbal jab to try and convert me into a Mother-loving Chosen son like him, it was a statement of fact, one I dismissed out of hand because I’m averse to religion. The truth is, I do lack faith, not just in the Mother Above or any other higher power, but in anything and everything besides what I can see and understand. No, I don’t even need to understand something to believe it, I just need to believe. Either I believe something, or I don’t, and if I don’t believe it, I won’t until I see and acknowledge the proof with my own two eyes. For all my love and praise of science, nine times out of ten, I will go just with my gut because that’s easier than trying to puzzle out the truth. I love science and it fascinates me to no end, because I love the concept of breaking down the rules of the universe into small, easily digestible parts, but I am no scientist.

I’m a dumbass who believes in what he wants, when he wants, and will wilfully ignore anything that goes against my core beliefs.

That’s me in a nutshell, and what Gerel was trying to tell me, that I myself am a contradiction of belief. I demand proof, except when I already know something to be true. Not so terrible when I’m actually right, but I’m wrong more often than not, yet refuse to accept it, and instead continue believing something I know deep down is a lie. This is why I am so wildly inconsistent when it comes to using Chi.

This right here, this glaring contradiction of belief, that’s what keeps fucking me over, and it will keep doing so until I rectify this flaw. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and my lack of faith is mine.

Having acknowledged my greatest flaw, I sort of understand what everyone was going on about when they tried explaining the concept of cultivation to me. I always thought it was silly to call Martial Warriors ‘cultivators’, because what does that even mean? You can cultivate a plant, cultivate a friendship, you can even cultivate mass, but how do you cultivate the Dao? This statement right here is where everything went wrong, and only now do I realize how much trouble the language barrier has caused me, even after having everything spelled out plain and simple. Cultivation is written Xiu Shen (修真), which means ‘nurture truth’. It can also mean to seek or pursue the truth, with the truth being the Dao.

I long since realized that there is no immutable truth, because what is true for me might not be true for another, but the core concept of cultivation still escaped me. I mistakenly believed that Cultivators cultivate the Dao, and thus equated cultivation to progressing along the Martial Path. Only now realize how foolish I’ve been, because cultivation is not about achieving milestones, nor is it about amassing strength, skill, or any of the other concepts I associate with the Martial Path. Cultivation is not about refining one’s body, mind, or soul, nor is it about finding enlightenment about the Dao. All this is tangential to cultivation, benefits we accrue during our pursuit of the truth, but these benefits should not be our end goal or motivating force in cultivation. At the end of the day, what we are cultivating is not the Dao, but ourselves, as we go through a journey of self-discovery to observe and identify who we are and what we believe in.

Which in the end is a far more noble pursuit than mere Martial strength.

This isn’t some mind-blowing revelation I couldn’t have seen coming. I should have figured this out long ago, especially after repeatedly progressing after various sessions of self affirmation. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone else already knew about this self-discovery business except me, and they didn’t tell me because they just assumed I knew it as well. Or maybe they didn’t know how to say it in so many words, or in a way I would accept and understand. Even I think it still sounds a little off, but I know it to be true, because only those who truly know who they are can understand how their perspective changes the Dao, and in doing so, perhaps even work backwards to see the Dao in its pure, unaltered form.

So…

Who am I?

I’m the juggernaut, bitch!

Kidding.

According to all the data I’ve recently gathered from the fresh perspectives of my Natal Souls, I am an idiot, an asshole, and a grating jerk to boot. I’m also a man out of my own depth and a fish out of water, a cocky, presumptuous, egotistical coward with an overly active sex drive and a massive hero complex. I am hesitant and indecisive when left to my own devices, yet under stress and pressure I turn impulsive and violent. I have abandonment issues and severe mental trauma, but I hide my pain and fear with stupid jokes while collecting a whole host of adorable animals who I ensure can never leave me. I do this thing where I like to pretend I’m smart, but if the answer doesn’t come to me immediately, I just sort of laugh it off and move on, because admitting I don’t know and giving up is easier than trying and failing. I work hard so long as the end goal is easily attainable, and I usually have good intentions, but I’m also really good at being stubborn and willfully ignorant about issues I don’t want to think about. I am a reluctant leader, a Warrior by necessity, a grateful son, terrible husband and brother, an okay uncle, a doting floof father, and that’s about it.

Oh.

I’m also mildly enamoured with the thought of death, while remaining wholly terrified of actually dying.

And I hate myself. That too.

Well then… this was a depressing journey of self-discovery. So glad we did this.

One more thing to add to the list. I use sarcasm to cope with my crippling depression. It’s worked wonders for me so far.

Chapter Meme