Hudson reached out to grab the dead body of the silverine and shifted it carefully to a different spot within his little enclosure. Hudson focused and was able to enter the special state of meditation again where he could sense the flows of qi.

He confirmed that the second clump of qi that he had perceived outside of his body was indeed the corpse of the silverine; within his new perception, it had shifted locations, and was now closer to his head. More of the energy was being drawn in now that it was closer to him, and less was drifting off into the inky blackness surrounding him.

Hudson’s first thought about discovering that he was absorbing the qi of the alien insect was one of disgust. He didn’t stop his cultivation technique, though. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t – not until he had completely absorbed the energy from the healing pill.

His second thought was more disturbing: this is how cultivators get powerful – absorbing the strength of their enemies. The law of the jungle: the strong consume the weak in order to survive.

Hudson pushed those distracting thoughts out of his head and focused on his cultivation technique.

Cultivation had a strange impact on Hudson’s ability to process the passage of time. When in a fight, when pulling qi out of the ambient atmosphere and into his body as quickly as possible, time seemed to slow down. Each tenth of a second ticking by slowly, his brain processing far more than he normally could.

When sitting calmly in meditation, time seemed to stretch the opposite way and lose meaning. A second was the same as a minute, or an hour; both impossibly long and impossibly short. It was a block of time that repeated to infinity and was simultaneously a single, minutely small moment.

Hudson had no idea how long he meditated, but he slowly came out of his meditation after the qi from both the pill and the silverine had been processed completely. He felt whole; his body was free from pain, his mind was rested and he was at peace in a way he had not felt in a long time.

Of course, he was still trapped in the dark, underneath a pile of rubble, on an alien world far from earth.

One problem at a time, Hudson told himself, before the anxiety could overwhelm him.

Feeling in the dark with his fingers, Hudson gathered all of the contents of his rucksack and broken pieces of the medkit. He was able to scavenge his vambraces, greaves, and gloves; a water bottle, his pack of preserved fruit (which he tore into immediately), some bandages, tourniquets, bone saw; and two glass bottles that he couldn’t identify the contents of in the dark.

He ate about half of the preserved fruit before reluctantly putting it back into the rucksack. He repurposed the packaging from the preserved fruit to hold the smaller items from the medical kit before putting them in his rucksack; he didn’t want them falling out of the many small holes and tears in the bag.

He wished he had a sledgehammer, or pickaxe, or even a shovel – some kind of digging tool. His faint hopes at being rescued were now effectively gone. He was certain the portal rift had closed by that point, and hopefully Cor and Clara had been able to get through it in time.

He could try to dig out with his bare hands, using the strength from his breathing technique. The boulders he was buried under were very large and heavy, and even with his breathing technique active he was unable to leverage his legs out from under them.

Technically, as far as resources went, he also had the dead corpse of the silverine. He looked it over, or perhaps more precisely, looked at the two wickedly curved forearms.

He had an idea. He took out the bone saw from the medical kit and cut one of the chitinous blades off at its joints. Even without the benefit of qi infusing the blades in a technique, the chitin was both incredibly hard, and incredibly sharp. He wrapped a few bandages around the base and secured them with a tourniquet to fashion a handle. The thick blade curved down and over his fingers in an upside-down “v” shape. He could easily punch forward, keep his fingers protected, and use the sharp, serrated edge on the outside like a chisel.

Very carefully, he leaned forward and chipped away at the stone in between his legs. With the power from his breathing technique, he could twist his legs a bit, but raising them or pulling them out of the mound of rubble was still impossible. There were literally tons of stone sitting on top of his shins, and he had no leverage.

If he could chip away at the primary boulder sitting on top of his legs, enough to get more wiggle room for his legs, he could likely pull them out. And using the silverine’s forearm was better than his fists.

Hudson continued to carefully chip away at the rock, and made significant progress within an hour. Enough that with a burst of strength, he pulled his right leg free of the rubble pile.

There was an ominous vibration as something heavy on top of him settled in a slightly different position. A potent reminder that while the rocks that surrounded him felt as if they were solid and couldn’t move… they certainly could move, and could collapse at any time.

Even more carefully than before, Hudson leaned forward and chipped away at the stone. Instead of trying to break through the rubble on top of his leg, he had a burst of inspiration and instead attacked the solid rock ground around and under his legs.

A few more hours, and he gingerly freed his left as well. His small enclosure felt even more cramped, now that his legs were free.

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The next step was to dig himself out, but his make-shift chisel was in poor shape. The bottom of the edge had broken off, and it was considerably duller down than when he had first started digging with it. The claws had glowed a silvery color when the silverine used them; it had to be using qi in a technique of some kind.

He had been half-hoping that just holding the silverine’s forearm would have activated the technique, similarly to the sledgehammer and pickaxe, but it wasn’t that easy.

Diving into his cultivation technique, Hudson probed his knife with his new sixth sense. The picture that returned was muddled and confusing. There was a little bit of qi in most things, but unless the amount significantly varied between objects, it was impossible to get a clear picture of an object. He couldn’t tell the difference between air or stone, at least not right now.

He held the blade up close to face and focused again on his new qi sense.

Held so close to his face, his breath washed over the silverine’s forearm claw. He could perceive the chitin much more clearly, this close to his body, and the ambient qi flowing from his breaths helped to contrast the details.

He was fairly positive he was seeing qi move both around and inside the forearm blade. There were grooves, or channels that the qi would move more quickly through, almost like a network of blood vessels. Except blood vessels would branch and split, to provide blood to further extremities; in the case of the swirling qi, it was outlining a network of channels that were shockingly precise and geometrical.

It formed a pattern. The shape of the pattern tickled at Hudson’s brain; he had seen a very similar shape in the trial’s visualization practice.

The silverine funneled qi through the unique channels in its front claws, creating a special effect, or a natural qigong technique. As the qi was used up by the pattern, it created the silvery light – or maybe the silvery light was excess or waste qi that wasn’t completely used up by the technique.

Hudson turned his qi sense inwards again, and observed the natural qi flows of his body. Could he do more than just observe the qi moving? Could he use his own qi to power the technique within the silverine’s claw?

His Engine Breath technique used a specific sequence of breaths and visualizations to get the qi moving through his body. He gradually increased the tempo of his breathing, and he saw the qi moving throughout his entire body move more quickly as well.

The route that the qi flowed through his body was roughly akin to arteries and veins, but the qi did not follow his blood vessels, not exactly. For one, they seemed to converge at a central place in his torso, directly above his belly button – not at his heart. The complex swirls through his body were also not exactly symmetrical, from one side of his body to the other. In fact, if he focused very closely, it appeared that the qi flowed more quickly on his right side than his left.

The key to qigong techniques appeared to be manipulating the qi into specific interaction patterns. If he had qi inside of him, and his cultivation technique could move the qi, then he should be able to do so, at a finer level of control.

He visualized moving the qi with his qi perception sense, but nothing happened. He willed the qi to move in multiple ways, but to no effect.

He clenched his right fist, and noticed how the qi flowed into his muscles, reinforcing their strength as they contracted. The flow of qi through his arm changed slightly, tweaked by his muscle movements. He then tried to visualize the qi itself flowing directly into his muscles, and still nothing happened. He felt like he was missing something.

He tried over and over, trying to figure out how to manipulate the qi inside of him. Eventually, Hudson gave up in frustration; he could sit under this pile of rubble for years and not have the insight he needed. It felt to him like trying to move a muscle he had never moved before.

Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. He couldn’t control his own blood flowing through his blood vessels; how could he control the qi flowing through his body? And he didn’t need to control it inside his body, he needed it outside of his body, to empower the silverine’s claw.

With a sudden inspiration, he pricked the end of his finger. Blood gradually seeped out of his finger, and he closed his eyes and “looked” at it with his qi sense. There was no leakage of qi out of his finger.

Sighing in exasperation, Hudson realized how valuable it would be to have an actual master or tutor for learning cultivation. He was literally fumbling about in the dark, injuring himself to try and advance his knowledge.

Becoming irritated and frustrated wasn’t helping either, and actively interfered with the concentrated meditation he needed to access his qi sense. He slowed his cultivation technique to purposeful, deep breaths and focused on his meditation, and the movement of qi through his channels. He idly followed a breath of qi as it entered his lungs, concentrated into his lower abdomen, and pushed through mysterious channels in his body in even pulses.

Taking the time to slowly watch the movement of qi through his body, dispersing into his organs, muscles and tissues, Hudson noticed that the flow was mostly uniform, but not exactly so. There were areas around which the qi… stuck slightly, or flowed around something, creating little eddies. Like water flowing over rocks in a riverbed. It was easier for him to follow when he was cultivating at a slower pace.

He focused even closer on an eddy located on his right wrist. He wasn’t sure… he increased the tempo of his cultivation technique, still concentrating on the same location on his wrist. As the flow increased, he lost perception of the block, or eddy, as it became completely covered by the roaring and rushing qi.

But he confirmed it… there was qi leaking out of his wrist at that point. A very tiny amount, but he was sure of it.

He increased the tempo of his breathing, and the amount leaking out of the point on his wrist increased. He identified a few other places around his body where qi was very slowly leaking out, and also confirmed that the same eddy effect occurred at those locations when there was a lesser amount of qi flowing more slowly.

If he could push more qi out of those spots, then he could push that qi into the silverine’s claw, and he would have a much more reliable digging tool.

Additional experimentation with flexing the muscles in and around his wrist and fingers showed that he could manipulate the location of the leaking spot on his right wrist, raising it or lowering it in the flow of qi.

He accelerated the flow of qi through his body gradually until the Engine Breath technique was pumping as fast as he could without pushing his body past its limits. The qi sped through its natural channels around his body at tremendous speed. Bracing himself, he quickly flexed many of his wrist and finger muscles, pushing the leaking area directly into the flow.

The added pressure pushed more qi through the tiny opening, ripping it open. A stream of qi flew out from the new hole as his wrist exploded in pain.