Kai fell into darkness, passing bands of colored energy as he descended deeper and deeper into an endless abyss. He had no body, just a sense of presence in continual motion, falling at first but after an eternity he felt like he was shrinking; growing smaller and smaller, again and again, becoming less. The repeated sensation created a gnawing harmonic in his mind that thrummed louder and louder.
Just as the thrumming pressure threatened to overwhelm him he awoke; his eyes flickered open. Sharp light stabbed into his eyes, he closed them quickly, but not before feeling the searing pain. He tried to move his hand to his eyes to shield himself from the assault and immediately regretted it. Pain shot through his arms, his muscles spasming, and his bones ached. Alarmed he noticed his hand didn’t move. He couldn’t move it.
Opening his eyes was painful, but he forced himself to. Streams of energy surrounded him, bright golden rivers of energy crisscrossing the air around his body. He tried to sit up, but again, pain lanced through him locking him in place. His arms ached, his stomach ached, and the muscles of his neck rebelled. His body was in pain, refusing to move, rebelling at every mental command. He was paralyzed. What is going on? I remember coming back from my bath and starting to cultivate.
“Relay,” Kai called out his voice cracked, the sound coarse and unrecognizable. “Can you… tell me what’s going on?” Every word felt like glass in his throat.
The phantom white fox, asleep at the end of the bed, woke with a start and looked over at him. Springing to his feet he jumped down to the floor.
“Are you doing that? Making the energy flow around you?” The fox asked.
“No, I….” his voice finally gave out. “I woke up like this. My whole body is in pain. I can't move.” Kai thought. Kai tried taking a deep breath but was only able to take a shallow breath before his chest seized in pain. The fox waited in silence, for the spasm to subside.
“I remember cultivating and trying to purify my energy. I must have fallen asleep but I wasn’t doing this, whatever this is.”
Bands of energy flowed from his fingers, his toes, his soles, and palms, out and through the air, coursing in arcing torrents that reentered at the crown of his head, chest, abdomen, or pelvis.
“Try to control it, to push it back into your core.” The fox paced in front of the bed.
“Right,” Kai closed his eyes and felt for his energy. With his limited awareness, he could only sense the rapid movement of his energy through every meridian, unable to isolate a specific flow he began pulling from his core, siphoning the energy into the core and rotating it inside his chest preventing it from going elsewhere. Slowly the energy bands around his body thinned before vanishing altogether.
He continued the cycling of his energy inside his core. The rotating motion pulled more and more from his body until after a few moments he’d contained it, save the single channel that went to his brain and back. With the energy firmly under control again he was able to look up at the ceiling. The same green beams he awoke to this world could be seen, only there were faint dark marks, he pushed his eyes as far as he could, to look out of the corner of his eye at the wall. Char marks covered the wall where his energy had branched out leaving gouges in the paint where they passed.
“Relay, am I burned? I can’t see. Wait, I can feel, I feel fried, every nerve is tingling and screaming at me. I don’t smell anything burnt….” Kai’s internal thoughts became more frantic.
“If you can’t see, I can’t see.” Relay whined. “I’m relying exclusively on your senses. Kai, this is serious. Cultivating is very risky. Exposure to spiritual energy damages your body; it is supposed to grow back stronger when it heals, but…” Relay’s voice also grew frantic. “Based on The God’s Eye Art, it is incremental and slow. Too fast and you can damage your meridians and cripple yourself, sometimes permanently.” The fox started pacing.
“When you fall asleep I can’t sense anything here. I get jumbled data that tells me nothing about what’s going on. Otherwise, I might have been able to prevent this.”
“Calm down. Panic will not help us here.” Kai closed his eyes to think. With his breath under his conscious control, he moderated his breaths, slowing them, and increasing their depth.
“I was able to cycle. Moving my energy didn’t cause any pain. Only trying to move did. That implies that my meridians are still fine and I didn’t cripple my cultivation. I can test that.”
Kai sent his awareness into the core, the center in his chest where every primary meridian was connected. With a thought, he sent flows of energy around his body, following the long path he’d established last night. The energy responded as before, easily flowing around his body before returning to rotate in his core.
“Meridians are not damaged. That means my cultivation isn’t crippled. My body though….”
“That’s good to hear,” the fox stopped pacing. He sat there for a moment without moving. After a moment he spoke more calmly. “We can’t see what the damage to your body is like. You need to proceed with the God’s Eye Art, to the awakening.”
Kai had almost passed out from the pain but opened his eyes at Relay’s voice.
“Right, the awakening of one’s spiritual awareness. I thought I already did that, it’s how I can move my energy around.”
“According to the manual, gifted cultivators can intuitively sense things, this is commonly mistaken for spiritual awareness. True spiritual awareness requires the formation of the A’nah Sea, located approximately in the area of the pituitary gland, according to the illustrations.”
Kai listened as Relay described the cultivation method. He’d read it briefly but Relay had examined it more thoroughly and between them could be considered the expert.
“The A’nah is referred to as the Sea of Awareness. Sea is the author’s term for what the other cultivation manual referred to as dantains, or that you have been thinking of as a core. You will have to establish another core there, and fill it with enough energy to activate it.”
“Sea. I like that. The energy moves like liquid. Okay… I’ll try.”:
Kai had already found one convergence in his brain, where he’d wired in the sensation data, but that was higher and back further than the pituitary gland. With some effort he sensed that convergence and followed it with a wisp of energy to find a natural flow down, flowing forward until he came to another convergence, this one larger.
“I think I found it, it seems about in the right place. I’ll try sending energy there now.”
He sent energy there in the same process he had with his chest core, cycling it around and around, moving energy from his chest there, and holding it there filling up the empty area.
“I’m filling the sea, but there’s plenty of room. This may take a while.”
“We’re skipping the step of condensing your energy. That suppose to make it easier, but time is of the essence so let’s proceed.” Relay reported.
Kai frowned at that. He had some experience in condensing his energy, the last time he tried he lit something on fire. Having condensed energy inside his body in large pools seemed not entirely safe. He continued to accumulate energy, the convergence continuing to fill.
“Oh, I see!” Kai exclaimed. “The sea is not as I imagined a normal sea to be oriented with the bottom towards my feet. It’s oriented in space irrespective of the body’s orientation, like a sphere of liquid that can flow in any direction. In that case, I need to compress the energy to the center.”
Kai pushed his energy closer together, leaving space around the sea where flows could stream out to all the connected meridians. This just felt right, to Kai. And he smiled as the flow continued to move in, and compress into a small sphere of dense energy. That’s when he noticed the small variations in the core’s energy flow. As he was watching how the flow seemed faster at the two edges and slower at the zones between them he felt a pulse vibrate from the core, through his body. It felt like the unlocking of a large lock.
Kai opened his eyes. The colors were more vibrant, every detail more pronounced. There was a tremendous sense of well-being that accompanied this new feeling. He stopped concentrating on filling the sea but the sea remained full. No energy left.
“I think I did it. I can see better.”
“That’s incredible. Based on the manual I expected it to take much longer.” Relay sighed. “All right, the next step is to attune your new core to the shape necessary for what you’re trying to accomplish, in our case we're just trying to see in the visible light spectrum.” The fox hopped back onto the bed and sat down at the foot of the bed, facing Kai.
“That’s more challenging because it means we have to project a field outward to detect it. Here I’ll show you the prescribed shape. Just look at the ceiling.”
Kai looked up at the ceiling, as he watched a golden line begin forming a shape. It was a diamond, turned on its side.
“This is the basic circuit shape, you need to find a symmetric set of meridians to create this shape in your body somewhere, energy should come from your A’nah Core and return to it, but the core needs to be along this shape, not attached via another meridian that disrupts this geometry. That’s important. After you create this shape perfectly, you can send other flows out to any remote portions of the body to receive the light.”
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“I can’t see my meridians Relay. I can only feel the energy as it moves along them. It will take some experimenting to see what I can use to create that shape.”
The fox lay down and waited. Kai got to work.
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It was a singular moment in Sun Kai’s young life; the ecstasy of opening his spiritual awareness to view the world around him, the horror of seeing his charred body. From the dozens of meridians, he sent to his extremities, to the shell of energy he was able to push out beyond, they all fed him the same picture. He was burned. Badly. His nose was a stunted crisp, his fingers charcoal stubs, and his hair burned away at the crown and down towards his forehead.
His only solace was that his nose was so badly burned he couldn’t smell the wreck his body had become, the stink of burned hair and flesh that filled the room. All his fingers and toes were burned beyond use, the fingers locked into a stretched position; the flesh melted down his palms, as though his body was attempting to slough off the skin.
Kai closed his eyes but that didn’t spare him, his new ability to see without eyes worked flawlessly to reveal his wrecked body. His abdomen was burned, as though a fire had raged from his pelvis to his throat in a straight line, occasionally spreading out in patches here and there.
Kai looked at the screen that displayed his charred body from the safety of his soul space. Sitting on the dais of the central hub he felt sick. He knew cultivation was dangerous, he’d been told it was. How had one night of careless cultivation resulted in this? How could he not have felt it in time to stop it? These were the questions that circled his mind as he fell into despair.
“The bad news first,” Relay hovered near the screen, “your body is dying. I’ve been monitoring your vitals and they are weakening.”
“Is there good news?” Kai spat out, rocking back and forth on the dais.
“Your meridians and cores seem unaffected by the damage, which is inexplicable.” Relay turned to him. “And the God’s Eye Art seems to work as the manual indicated it could.”
“What happens to this soul space if my body dies?” Kai blurted out. There was no reply, only silence.
“We can also appreciate that you can shift your awareness here, so you need not experience the pain your body is in. Which is no doubt considerable.” Relay offered another positive.
Kai rocked back and forth, his eyes closed tightly. He stopped suddenly and looked up at the board where his priorities were listed. At the top of the list was “Stay Alive.” He jumped up from the dais and started pacing the floors of the central hub.
“How much time do I have?” Kai said, a detached feeling coming over him as he began thinking logically about his situation.
“Difficult to say,” Relay sighed, “I don’t know much about the medical technology they have. Maybe they have a cure that could heal you instantly. Baring some miracle cure, four or five hours.”
“That’s our timetable. Let’s put up a countdown,” Kai waved and a timer appeared, starting at 400, it began ticking down. He looked at it quickly before going to the board.
With a shaky hand, he scribbled on the board: things I can do. He underlined it and looked at it for a moment in silence. He stepped away and refocused on it, his brow furrowing. After a moment he fell against the screen, slamming his hand down, splintering the glass.
“I can’t think of anything,” Kai’s voice quaked.
“It does look grim,” Relay hovered over beside Kai, he turned to the screen, reforming it smooth again. “But there are things we can try. We haven’t exhausted all our options.”
Kai watched as two lines appeared under his scribbled header.
Things I can do:
Cultivate the God’s Eye Art
Cultivate the Soul Shearing Art
“What good will that do me? I only have a soul of an emperor cricket and a lowly salamander. Soul fusion will hardly help in this situation,” Kai grumbled as he looked at the last entry, “And while The God’s Eye Art seems promising, it will take a lifetime to master. A normal length cultivator’s lifetime.”
Kai closed his mouth in a frown, his brow furrowing. After a moment he blew out a long sigh. “I’m sorry Relay, you’re right those are things we can do. Thank you for your help.” He returned to the dais and took a meditative position. He looked at his countdown timer; 398.
“I can’t think of anything else to try, so we might as well start. I will have to return to my body to cultivate The God’s Eye Art. I wish you could isolate the pain and suppress it.”
“I can try suppressing it, but have little confidence in succeeding,” Relay returned and began working at his control panel.
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With a wince, Kai felt his body again. It wasn’t as bad as he expected from the damage he saw. He focused on his meridians, pulling the threads of energy leading to his extremities back into the A’nah core. When those were done he dissolved the circuit for visual light.
“Okay, what’s the next stage, spiritual energy detection? If I remember correctly, that was shaped like a pentagon.” Kai worked his energy around his meridian's feeling for the correct pathway. Several times he made a nearly halfway when the meridian terminated too early or extended too far, breaking the simple symmetry of the shape. When that happened he worked backward and tried again. Once he completed the first half, he simply followed the same path back up on the other side, forming a perfect pentagon with his A’nah core at the top.
Spiritual energy sprang into his awareness, like visible light visible through his flesh and bones. Kai could see the energy flowing through his body, the gold energy cycling in a gentle wave through the pentagon coming from his A’nah core, the larger circuit flowing from his chest core, up higher to his brain, then back again.
“Are you seeing this?” Kai thought.
“I see it,” Relay confirmed, “Try cycling through all your meridians so I can capture a map.”
With a small mental nudge, his chest core sent tendrils of energy through the connecting meridians, at each intersection he split the energy, pushing more as needed until his whole body was illuminated in a complex network of meridians and convergence points that glowed in his awareness.
“Interesting pattern,” Kai thought, “And so much easier to find the correct path when you can see the meridians.” Kai continued to circulate his energy, examining his meridians. For the most part, the meridians flowed in straight lines, but some were arches or curves, in some cases a set of curves connected by nodes created perfect circles.
Between meridians were nodes, small spherical points where energy flowed into branching meridians. He looked at his two cores. Other than more meridians they looked just like oversized nodes. His chest core glowed the brightest, his energy moving smoothly. Only, now that Kai could clearly inspect it he noticed the space inside the absolute center of the core where there was no energy. It was empty space only visible through the occasional gaps in energy flowing.
He turned his attention to the newest core, noticing it rotated slightly faster; it formed a bright star in the center between his eyes.
“Going to try a combination of visual light and spiritual energy now,” Kai thought. He quickly found the visible light geometry and layered that shape over the pentagon connecting them both to his new core. Once done he sent a dozen filaments out to his extremities to act as light sensors.
The picture of his charred body came into his awareness, the room, the bed, Kai could see Relay again. Superimposed onto the image of his body he could see the pathways of energy glowing inside him. Being able to see it didn’t mean he could understand what he was seeing and he studied what he was seeing for a long time, shifting his visible light sensors in exploration.
“My energy is pooling at the crown of my head,” Kai finally concluded, “it seems to cycle there then return. It’s right where I was burned the most.”
“One minute,” Relay acknowledged, “completing my analysis. Okay, come back and take a look at what I found.”
Kai shifted his awareness back to his soul space, arriving on the dais. He looked at the screen, and instead of just seeing his body as before now he could see the complex symmetrical network of meridians flowing through his body.
“Based on the burn pattern, going off of the burn at the top of your head, I think there may be other cores,” Relay indicated with illuminated circles on Kai’s body. “We know about these two,” two yellow circles sprang up over his face where Kai’s nose was burned, and over his chest where burn marks spread out in a patch. “But there are similar burn patterns, here,” a circle appeared at the top of his head, where seven meridians fed into an empty circle.
“And here,” four more circles appeared in place. One was over his throat where a burn patch spread out, and three more went down his abdomen from his sternum under his chest core, to his naval, and lower to his lower pelvis. At each location, a patch of skin was burned in a pattern similar to those around his known cores. At each location, there was a circle-shaped hole where no meridian intersected.
“Seven cores? I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone mentioning more than three. I’ve heard of heart, brain, and lower abdomen.” Kai's face was puzzled as he looked at the display. “Should I try to awaken another?” He briefly looked at the countdown timer; 386.
“What have we to lose? Try the topmost one, that will be easier for me to monitor here.”
Kai nodded and disappeared from his soul space. Back in his body, he willed his energy to move into the crown of his head, pooling there. When he felt the strain of supporting more cores he willed the stream being sent from his soul space to increase, widening it enough to flood him with more energy. He watched the pool of energy condense into a small sphere at the crown of his head. The more energy that flowed there the clearer the shape of the core became. It was perfectly spherical but, as before, the energy seemed to flow around a central void, avoiding the absolute center. Kai was examining the irregular shape of the void when he was abruptly interrupted.
“Kai!” a shrill voice broke his concentration. He focused on the room, noticing the same girl as before. Mei panicked stepping forward into the room. She stared in horror at Kai’s burnt body. Panicking she dropped a set of green robes on the floor, then turned, and darted from the room, wailing.
“You really are a traumatic friend to that poor girl,” the fox jumped down on the floor.
“She’ll get help. She’ll bring a doctor. I’m saved.” Kai thought with some relief.