Upon returning to the Inn, I finally sat down to learn how to cultivate. Fingers crossed this technique would even work for me. First, I copied it down. It wouldn’t transfer the knowledge right into someone’s brain, but with some instruction and the written information and diagrams I could teach Yandel. Me first though.
The real struggle was opening the meridians. I tried various things. First, I had to feel Qi. That only took me a day. Something I knew from the knowledge in the book was quite fast. My Earth genes were putting in work! It felt like vanilla smelled when I noticed it touching my skin. Like you wanted whatever that was inside you. Unlike vanilla once it was in me it felt AMAZING! Yes, the vanilla taste test is traumatic to everyone. Not just you. I instantly tried to feel for more when that faded into my muscles. I felt more about 10 minutes later. This time I tried to guide it into the meridian I wanted it too go to. That was harder at first. Another day was spent trying to move it how I wanted. I could absorb it. That wasn’t a problem. It was pushing it to my meridians instead of it fading into my body that was the issue. Really even if I didn’t try to absorb it, it would enter me sooner or later after it touched me. All cultivators passively absorbed Qi. Regular folks didn’t.
It turns out I wasn’t thinking right about this. I had a technique I used all the time that moved Qi. Time Return. The reason I didn’t think of it was I hadn’t really learned it. It was pushed into my head by Morgianna. Once I remembered that, I tried the same method for moving Qi. Qi enters like a string. I was trying to hold the whole thing with my minds eye. What I needed to do was focus on just the end and it would follow my mind’s eye to wherever I wanted it to go. After that revelation it took me 10 days, even with a liberal use of Time Return (so really more like 13 days,) to clear out the first meridian. After that I wanted to jump off a tall building, I was soooo bored. I felt amazing while doing it, but you can only sit in a room looking inward for so long before you either go crazy or become a narcissist. I was in no danger of the latter, but real danger of the former.
Yandel had kept working at the Happy Cat, the restaurant she started at. It was something for her to do and I told her she could do whatever she wanted with her wages. Considering I was covering room and board that left her with more money than she ever had before. I asked her if she could take a day off and go around town with me. She enthusiastically said yes. While we were getting a bite to eat for lunch she asked me
“how is cultivation going? Have you made it far?”
“it is ok, but very slow. As soon as I figure it out, I will teach you.”
“Really? You were serious about teaching me cultivation?” She looked at me incredulously. “who teaches their slave cultivation?”
“I guess I do? Look, I told you I wouldn’t treat you like a slave. Haven’t I spent every morning teaching you to fight?”
“Yes and I feel much more confident. Thank you.” The last was said so softly I almost missed it.
“All that said I can’t teach you if I can’t open up my meridians. It is soooo slooow!”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Your money isn’t any of my business, and I know buying a cultivation technique must have cost you a fortune, but if you have any left over what about going to an Alchemist?”
I spun to look at her closely. “What’s an Alchemist?” I had a bad feeling I was about to feel very dumb.
“They make all kinds of potions, powders and elixirs. People say they can even help you open meridians. You have a tougher time clearing out impurities later I hear, but…”
I stood up with a crazed look in my eye. “Up Yandel! We’re going to an Alchemist!”
An hour later I was skipping on my way home with several bottles and five crystals. It had all cost me a 1000 gold, but I didn’t care. I even bought an elixir that would clean me out the impurities I was about to flush from my meridians. Once we got back to the Inn I sat on my bed and looked at Yandel. “Here we go, bottoms up!” I said and downed the first bottle. It was like liquid fire. This may have been a mistake. That Alchemist had undersold how rough this was going to be. I focused and pushed the fire into my meridians. I could direct it because I knew how to direct Qi and this was blended with Qi. That is why it took a Cultivator to be an Alchemist and why it was so expensive. It worked... Like Draino on a clogged drain. After just a few minutes, years of impurities clogged up in the meridians were burned out. I had bought enough to do all my meridians. Much to the delight of the Alchemist. I guess usually people only buy them for the last few stubborn ones due to cost and probably the pain. Not me though. If money and a little discomfort could keep me from going crazy it was worth every copper.
Once I was done with the meridians I went out back to the well. I then downed my cleansing elixir. I thought the fire was bad? This didn’t hurt, but it pushed everything out of my body that had come out of my meridians. I had things coming out of… everywhere. I smelled worse than the worst thing I never want to smell. The imagination pales and words fail in description of this filth. It took me two hours to clean myself and then the back yard. I was afraid we were going to get kicked out of our room for this. I don’t care what happened from now on. Morgianna didn’t need to limit me anymore. I would not be Time Returning earlier than this point EVER.
I dragged myself back upstairs and sat on my bed. As horrible as that had been my felt amazing. I could see better, breath better, I could even hear better. I got out one of the crystals from the Alchemist next. These were condensed Qi from deep in the earth apparently. You could tap into them and the Alchemist said after opening up all my meridians at once if I didn’t fill them with Qi quickly I might get sick. I held the crystal and it just looked like crystal to me. I held it and closed my eyes and focused on where my hands were touching the crystal. There… was… something there. I tried to pull on it like I did Qi and it flooded into me. This wasn’t one whisp of Qi. It was like someone turned on a faucet and a stream of it was coming into my body! I was shocked at first and then realized I was letting it fade into my hands. I quickly started to direct it into my meridians. When I was about a third of the way full the crystal started to fade and was then just gone. I grabbed another and continued. 3 and part of a 4th were used before my meridians were full. I stopped to just take a breather. I currently had enough Qi floating around in my just my meridians to use Time Return to take me back 4 days at least. Most of the time, Time Return used the little bit my body could hold onto in the bones, muscles and organs. Both in the body I started Time Return in and the body I was returning too. This was like a new storage place for it and extended my range quite a bit. Keeping a couple of the crystals on hand might be a good idea for emergency Time Returns. They weren’t cheap though. This was the smallest and a cheapest grade crystal yet still, at 100 gold a pop I couldn’t just go crazy with them.
I could now start to cultivate. This would be permanent though. If I wanted to change cultivation methods, I would need to Time Return to this point before I utilized it. This meant I wanted a method to go further than 4 days. I played around with some things and came up with an answer. When I hopped back using the Qi in my meridians, the body I returned to was then low on Qi. I couldn’t go any further without accumulating Qi again. Fine if I was able to cultivate quickly. Not so much if I had to rely on normal absorption. If I then used a crystal, I was carrying with me to refill my meridians, when I hopped back I still had those same crystals. This meant I could use just 4 crystals to go as far back as I had the crystals. It was a way to hack Time Return to go further back than the point I learned cultivation.
With that in mind I had a few things to do that I didn’t want to have to do over and over again. First, I bought a house. Nothing huge, but big enough for us and maybe 4 more if we packed them in. There was also a secret room for records that I built and hid. Then Yandel finally quit her job. She would be protecting this house while I was gone. I gave her a salary of a gold a week. This once again shocked her and we had another conversation about our relationship. I would be Time Returning to this point many times in the coming days, months and (hopefully not) even years. My plan was to go to a large city and then from there to other cities to find as many cultivation techniques as I could. Then jump back to this month and record them.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
I did also take a month’s time to teach Yandel how to cultivate to open her meridians the slow way along with some of the finer points… ie dirty methods… of fighting and home protection. The reality was I would be Time Returning to before she got to practice any of this, but even if she wouldn’t remember that time, I wanted to start to keep my promise to her. Stupid maybe. I still did it. It certainly couldn’t hurt and for my plan to work I needed a month of time before I left anyway. This would be the time I jumped to and recorded what I found. Then rinse and repeat until I had as many as I could find. I made a mental note of the date and time. I had everything ready and began the next phase of my plan.
After saying goodbye to Yandel and leaving her 12 months worth of gold to be paid out weekly from an exchange company that acted like a bank, I loaded up into a wagon. I was joining a merchant’s caravan as a passenger. I intended to focus on cultivation during the trip. We were heading to the largest town within a thousand miles. At least that was what I was told. Supposedly this country was a small one and took up the same square milage as my entire old world. I was pretty sure there was a communication error going on. If this world was the size of Jupiter we would all be dead from gravity. That said, Chunwa, the town we were going to, was huge compared to our current town and rich with cultivators. That is exactly what I was hoping for. I needed to find more cultivation techniques for the people I would be training. I also wanted to find the ideal one for me. That meant searching all over. The rumor was that there were over a thousand techniques for cultivation. I was going to find as many as I could.
As I sat in the wagon bumping along I used my cultivation technique for the first time. It was a technique that by flowing through my meridians in specific patterns it would draw in more and more Qi. At first it was very slow. This technique required me to spin the Qi through first my yang or light meridians and then through my yin or dark meridians. It was all about balance. Forced balance. I felt for the first time how it changed the soul. My soul, it would seem, didn’t really love balance. It fought tooth and nail against me. This was the only technique I had though, so I pushed it. I forced it to happen. I would then decide if it was bad for me. I knew though, that if this was it and I didn’t have the option of reversing this with Time Return I would have stopped and abandoned this. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t crave balance. No Purple laser sword for me I guess.
That said I could fake balance so I made it work. It felt like it was twisting my soul. Like I was trying to fool myself. Even with that, I suddenly understood why there were cultivation techniques besides just passively guiding the wisps of Qi in. As I spun through in the pattern indicated, the Qi in the area started to whirl and spin towards me. It felt like it was a tornado and I was the eye of it. Not quite like pulling from a Qi Crystal, but maybe about a quarter of that? And it didn’t cost me 100 gold. I also noticed, for the first time, subtle differences in types of Qi. There was Yin and Yang Qi… or at least Qi that had their own… affinity maybe? The yang affinity Qi was drawn in my yang meridians and then yin Qi through the yin. This was all part of the cultivation technique. My meridians were already full so the extra started to strengthen my body. I knew this was the second step in Cultivation. The first was clearing out the meridians. After that you could pull in Qi in amounts large enough to strengthen the body quickly. Instead of guiding the Qi into my meridians it spun in and then the excess was pushed into the bones of my body.
This was the first area that had to be strengthened. Bones, then Muscles, then Organs. I wasn’t sure what happened after that. This second stage was called Body Cultivation. You went through three rounds of ever increasing strength of the body. Each round had two levels, one for each; Bones/Muscles and then Organs. Then you repeated the process three times. When you were done with the first round of strengthening the bones and muscles you were a level one body cultivator. When you finished the first round in the organs you were level two. By the end of the third round you were level 6. I had cheated with the first levels of cultivation, which was clearing the meridians. This was called Meridian Cultivation and didn’t strengthen the body, but helped by preventing illness as there were fewer toxins in the body afterward. It also gave some protection from poisons. The meridians were supposed to get progressively harder to clear and take real effort. I had blown from level 1 to level 6 (2 per paired meridians) using the potions, elixirs and crystals. Haha! Body Cultivation on the other hand made you much stronger. The peak of human strength was passed by Body Cultivation level 4. You were stronger, faster and harder to injure.
I knew there was much more after Body Cultivation as well, but it was knowledge that was kept away from non-cultivators. I had no idea what to do after I was finished with Body Cultivation. You learned that upper level cultivation in sects. For now, this was enough. I focused on this. My Bones and muscles started to shine as more Qi flowed into them. Just after they started to shine, I noticed we had stopped. I opened my eyes and saw it was starting to get dark. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Had I really been focusing for that long? It felt good to stop though. I felt the need to move. Run, jump, fight, yell. It was like I was being forced too. Like the desire was coming from my sou…l… Ahh… meditation was yin. The cultivation technique now required I do yang activities. It was how it was trying to change me. My soul was being forced into a way of living that didn’t fit it. That said it was hard to resist. I got up and went out to find the guards. They were standing around watching the various merchants set up camp.
I walked up and said “Hey guys. Anyone fancy a spar? I need to move after sitting for so long.”
They looked at me like I was crazy, but then one of them shrugged and said
“If you want. My name is Grave. How shall we fight? Hand to hand? We have no training equipment here. It is all for battle.”
“Hello Grave. Name’s Frank. Hand to hand is fine. We can just grapple. Tapping on the ground or anywhere on the body to signify we lose… that or if we are choked into unconsciousness. Sound good?”
“Tapping, huh? That would seem like a good way to do it if you are being choked.”
We walked off to a grassy area and then after nodding to each other he came in fast. First, he tried for my legs, but I didn’t practice kick-boxing and everything else for nothing. I spun around him fast and, as this wasn’t a kickboxing match, passed on kicking him. I just stepped away. I wanted to see what he would do next. He turned and this time came in slower. Not over-committing this time. He tried to hook my legs with his hands, but my feet were to fast to block and then push him away. When he tried to grab my arms to pull me in and down I gave him some. He thought this was it and tried to go for my neck, but I shot under him and grabbed his knees and drove forward landing on top of him. I then tried to push him over to take his back, but he tried to push me off with his legs so I did an ankle grab and got it. As I arched back his eyes got big and he said “STOP, STOP!”
“What happened to tapping?” I said as I smirked and let off about half way.
He looked at me and smiled. “Oops” and then started tapping me as hard as he could.
I laughed and let go and said “Good match! Care to go again?”
By this time a few others who had joined us in cheering their friend on were staring at me in confusion. There was also a woman watching and she asked
“What did you do to his foot?”
Grave interrupted “Sorry this is my sister and she knows better than to interrupt a spar.” Staring at his sister obviously trying to get her to back off.
“It’s ok.” I said. “I don’t mind.” I had her come over and showed her on her. After that instead of matches everyone was rolling around trying to figure out different ways to use my ankle lock. Grave’s sister Fey was the quickest to catch on so I showed her several other techniques that didn’t take a lot of strength or used the opponent’s strength against them. The men showed me the variation they knew of a foot lock. I saw this was immobilizing, but wouldn’t stop a fight if you didn't have absolutely crushing strength. When I mentioned that they said “Yes. It is a Cultivator’s technique. They have the strength to make it work that way. We can’t use their method to win a fight, but your way works with our level of strength.” That got me thinking about how martial arts would change based on how my strength changed. I realized I would have to continue to tweak my skills as I gained in power.
Soon we were all sweaty and tired and my soul felt that I had paid my dues in Yang activity so we separated and I went to get something to eat and retire. The days repeated like this for a week. Camp clean up, load up, cultivate while traveling, spar or strength games with the guards or farmers and then sleep. It wasn’t unpleasant. I also enjoyed teaching Fey. She, like her brother, loved to fight. No one wanted to teach her though so it was like a moth to a flame whenever we stopped. She came wherever I was.
I was getting board of cultivation again even though I would get lost in it to some extent this time. I wasn’t sure why I could get into a flow state and lose myself cultivating now when I couldn’t before. Another way the cultivation technique was changing me? I really didn’t think I liked this. It was unnatural.
On the 10th day of our travel we had our first problem. It was a beast hoard. This was only about 50 and there weren’t any mutations. Mutations were beasts who ate the cores of other beasts to get stronger. Like cultivators they were rare, but very dangerous. Our travel route was often picked just to avoid known areas of such monsters. As there weren’t any we just circled the wagons and used spears to kill or drive off the beasts. That night was quite the meal.
On day 13 we hit something we couldn’t handle though… a bandit ambush.