Hudson continued following the path upwards, curving around the open pit. He met individual silverines and small groups of three or four, and dispatched them all. The leather armor pieces on his arms and legs took the brunt of any damage, suffering only a few knicks and scratches.

The ledge he was walking on and the circumference of the open hole in the center were decreasing in size. The ledge was down to two or three feet, barely enough for a silverine to easily walk on. He assumed the decrease in size was because he was reaching the top.

Before reaching the end of the circular path, a large tunnel opened on his left. The circumference of the circular path was also small enough now that he could see the other side with the dim light of his claw, and he could see this large tunnel continued on the other side as well.

The new side tunnel was at least 10 feet across, squarish in construction and had wooden beams supporting the ceiling. It looked like humans had built it.

The branch to his left appeared to slope down, so he quickly but carefully walked around the narrow ledge until he reached the other side. If he had to guess, he would have said that the human-made tunnel had been dug first, and the silverine’s circular mine had been dug after and intersected this tunnel.

Hudson hurried up the much wider corridor, increasing his speed. After one switchback, this tunnel intersected with yet another corridor, this one even wider than the one before it. Even better, Hudson could faintly see a light at the end of this tunnel.

He sped up even more, hope rising in his chest at finally being free from the dark underground that he had been trapped in. He was only twenty feet away from the entrance when a figure jumped out of the shadows to his right.

With the light from the entrance positioned behind the figure, Hudson couldn’t see who it was, and could only see that the person was wielding a spear and thrusting it at him.

The tip of the spear was pointed at his chest and closing quickly. Hudson threw out his left arm in a hasty block, taking the sharp point on his vambrace and deflecting it to the side. As he jumped back, he heard a familiar voice yell out.

“Stop!” Cor said. “That’s Hudson.”

“What? How?” The woman who had just tried to stab Hudson was none other than Clara. He dropped the spear he had tried to stab Hudson with, ran up to Hudson and grabbed him by the shoulders, staring at his face.

“You survived,” Clara said, before clapping him on the back in a brief hug. “I am sorry for attacking you. I thought you were… well, I didn’t think it could possibly be you.”

The jolt of adrenaline at being nearly impaled faded away quickly. Clara and Cor were alive, and he’d found them! He felt an intense pressure give way and release, a pressure he hadn’t realized was there. A few tears slipped out as well, and his throat clammed up.

“I am, uh, very happy to see you guys,” he said when his emotions were under control. He followed Clara back into the dark entrance of a side tunnel. He hadn’t seen this side tunnel before Clara had jumped out to challenge him, due to the harsh glare from the cave entrance just a few yards away. The light was much brighter than the star-filled night sky that he had been expecting. The temperature here, closer to the entrance, was also much warmer than it had been deeper in the cavern.

He stopped short when his eyes adjusted and he was finally able to make out Cor. He was sitting on the ground, back against the tunnel wall, facing so that he could see down into the cave. His faced was pinched, sunburnt, with dark circles under eyes and dry, cracked lips. But much worse than that – his left arm hung limp at his side, a mass of blood and rough bandages.

“What happened to you?” Hudson asked.

“Good to see you too,” Cor responded. Gesturing at his arm with his chin, he said, “Had a choice: stay pinned under a giant boulder and roast alive under the wrath of multiple suns…or this.”

“I had to pull us out of a rockslide,” Clara said. “We were fortunate, and only caught by the very edge of the blast.”

“Oh yes, very fortunate,” Cor said drily. “Clara here just about ripped my arm off. She was fixing to saw it off with the edge of that spear too.”

“If you want to be treated gently, then ask your nursemaid to save your life next time, hmm?” Clara said good-naturedly.

“I’m sorry,” Hudson interjected. “This was my fault. If I hadn’t struck the wall of the ravine…”

“We’d all be dead,” Cor finished for him. “Decisions were made. No use Monday-morning quarterbacking right now.”

“How do you know it’s Monday? And what does ‘quarterbacking’ have to do with anything?” Clara asked, confused by the idiom.

“Hoo-boy, if you don’t know about football, you have definitely been missing out,” Cor asked in response. “When we get back to earth, I’ll take you to see a few games. We’ll go tailgatin’, the full experience.”

Hudson ignored the back and forth and pulled the rucksack off his back, grabbing the water bottle to pass to Cor.

“I have a little bit of water, and some preserved fruit left,” he said. “The med kit had two healing pills, but I lost one and had to use the other.”

Cor greedily drank from the water bottle before passing it to Clar. “Ah, that hits the spot. We’ve been collecting moisture with a damp cloth. It’s nice to drink from a bottle.”

“We’ll get you back to the trial grounds and get you fixed up. Remember Clara? Passed out and bleeding? She was fixed up the next day, no problems.”

Clara nodded. “The trial director can provide healing pills. Just don’t – what was it – start giving daisies? – before we get back.”

“Pushing up daisies. Pushing. Anyways,” Cor cleared his throat weakly. “So… after you destroyed the cliff wall for fifty feet in either direction, causing a landslide of massive proportions and burying anyone and everyone… Clara woke up from her nap, we dug ourselves out…–”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I dug us out,” Clara interjected. “Not ‘we.’”

“–and retreated to the cave here to look for water and avoid the suns,” Cor continued without missing a beat.

“So how ‘bout you fill us in on how you survived, and how you ended up with uh, that glowy claw sticking out of your hand? I’m actually pretty curious about that part.”

…..

Hudson sat down and explained to Cor and Clara how he had escaped from under the pile of rubble. Cor interrupted a few times with questions, while Clara simply listened, with a bigger and bigger frown on her face.

When Hudson finished his story, Clara finally spoke up.

“You are very strange,” she said. “And I don’t understand your cultivation at all.”

“What do you mean?” Hudson asked.

“You don’t smell bad,” Clara said simply.

“Uh… thank you?” Hudson was confused.

Cor started laughing. “Is this how S.E.C.T. cultivators flirt?” His chuckles turned into a dry cough, and Hudson passed him the water bottle again.

Clara ignored Cor. “If what you say is true… then somehow you have advanced past the Qi Gathering stage of cultivation, and yet not…

“Normally, a cultivator will start their path through the first three minor realms, purifying their body with the concentrated qi they pull into their body. This starts with a breathing technique; there are good ones and bad ones, but they all do the same thing: bring qi into your body, and flush out the toxins and imperfections.”

“The black stuff?” Hudson asked.

“Yes. The ichor. By all rights you have been performing your cultivation technique almost non-stop for hours, maybe days.”

Hudson nodded.

“But there is no ichor on you, nor the smell of it. Am I right?”

Hudson hadn’t noticed, but she was right. He sniffed his armpit – he couldn’t even detect a whiff of body odor. Every other time he had performed his technique, black sludge had leaked from his pores.

“What is your cultivation technique called?” Clara asked.

“I call it the Engine Breath technique,” Hudson said.

“Never heard of it. Only a child or an idiot would call the foundation of their cultivation journey something so…so…

“So what?”

“So boring.” She sighed.

“So what’s your technique called then?” Hudson asked.

“It’s called ‘Split the Heavens, Seize the Earth,’” she said proudly. “It’s a mid-tier technique with slower advancement speed but greater long-term potential. It’s one of the techniques that we received from our patrons, the Disciples.”

“That’s… an ambitious name,” Hudson mumbled, exchanging a glance with Cor. He’d managed to catch himself before saying something else.

“But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and your weirdness. If you no longer produce ichor, then you’ve reached the peak of the Qi Gathering. Which is impossible, considering you only just started cultivating a few days ago.”

“What’s this Qi Gathering stage again?” Hudson asked.

“How do you cultivate and know so little? It’s literally in the name,” Clara rubbed her hands on her temples before continuing, her voice taking on a didactic tone.

“The path of the immortals begins at the Qi Gathering stage. Within this major realm, there are three minor: Breath, Blood, and Bone. At each minor step, your body is further cleansed by the qi you are gathering and condensing within your body.

“The Breathing stage is focused on learning your cultivation technique, bringing unfocused qi into your body and expelling the impurities within. At the Blood stage, the organs, viscera, blood and other tissues are cleansed as well, as you gain enough control to consciously push qi through the remaining parts of your entire body, and the dantian becomes strong enough to begin to hold reserves of qi. And at the Bone stage, concerted efforts and meditation will cleanse the bones as well as begin opening the body’s meridians.

Clara squinted at Hudson, as if he were a problem she couldn’t figure out. “Based on how long you’ve been cultivating, you should be at the beginning of the first minor stage, but you’re not there any longer. I don’t rightly know where you’re at. You don’t hold any qi in your dantian, but you also have an open meridian, if what you say is true. You shouldn’t, not if you can’t really control your flow of qi yet.”

“I never said I knew what I was doing,” Hudson said defensively. “Just trying to survive.”

She shook her head and continued her lecture.

“A peak cultivator at the Qi Gathering stage has a pool of qi within their dantian, and if they are a genius and a half-step into Foundation Building stage already – like George Adams – then they can manipulate their qi into the resonating patterns that form qigong techniques.”

“Is Foundation Building the next major stage after Qi Gathering?” Hudson asked.

“Yes. Once a cultivator has tempered their body and prepared their mind for the journey ahead, they attempt to break through to the Foundation Building stage. There are three minor stages within this realm as well.”

“Break through? What does that mean?”

“Advancement within a realm is mostly continuous, at least at the Qi Gathering stage. The progression from minor stage to minor stage typically requires only time, and effort, if the cultivator does not experience blocks or bottlenecks. But the path of cultivation goes against heaven’s will, and crossing each major realm is both difficult, and dangerous.

“And before you ask… We are warned most strenuously against learning too many details about breaking out of the Qi Gathering stage; it is apparently better to know little ahead of time. Foreknowledge carries more risks than ignorance.”

“After Foundation Building, I know fewer details, but most of the Elders within S.E.C.T. are within the Core Forming stage. And our Patrons… they are beyond that.” Clara’s eyes took on a far-off gaze.

“Each major stage is an exponential increase in power. A Qi Gathering cultivator has the strength of several men. A Foundation Building cultivator is impervious to bullets, can punch through walls, and run as fast as a horse. A S.E.C.T. Elder in the Core Forming realm can withstand a missile strike and eliminate a small nation’s army, all by themselves. Fights between Elders have created massive swaths of devastation on Earth.

“But the Disciples… They are on a different level. I’ve seen one, you know. One glance was all it took, to understand truly what strength can be. A single, full-power strike from one of them?” Clara shuddered.

The level of strength that Clara was talking about was difficult for Hudson to fathom. He would have to experience it himself to understand fully.

“But back to you and your strange, broken cultivation… I have an idea. I want to test something.”

“Sure,” Hudson said. He was learning more about cultivation from Clara than anything he’d heard from Chiang-sensei or in the trial so far.

“Go ahead and take off your clothes then.”