Killing children is a line I will not cross. Thankfully my wild stab of metal qi missed the teenage girl's head and carried out into the street. It hit a withering pot plant and shattered the pewter to pieces.

The teenage girl did not have time to process the situation. She stood there in shock as I pulled her into the entry way and slammed the door behind her. She had some bread and cheese underneath one arm and a jar of pickles.

“How did you get into my house?” I growled.

The girl recovered from her shock and instead of the expected terror, she smiled, “Sun Wei? I knew you would be back for me. Old Chen said you would never be back, but I told him that my letter would reach you.”

At the mention of Old Chen, I relaxed and let the girl go. “So that old bastard gave you the key I left him. Cannot say I blame him for thinking I was long gone. I thought I would never be back too.”

My meridians were aching from the expenditure of qi, but I kept the pain off of my face. A skill I was becoming adept at recently. I started to drag the chair back to the kitchen and shouted over my shoulder, “come along girl. You have been living rent-free in this place for months. The least you can do is make me a sandwich with some of that bread and cheese.”

The girl started to say, “I…”

I interrupted her, “better yet I will make the sandwiches. The state of the kitchen makes me think that your cooking skills leave much to be desired. Also, before you start fawning over me, just know, that I did not receive a letter from you. The prick of a soldier who you paid to give it to me probably pocketed the money and threw the thing away.”

The girl deflated for a second but bounced back to bubbly excitement quickly, “Well I can introduce myself now that you are here anyway. I am Jiang Luli and I want to be your apprentice.”

I stumbled before laughing bitterly, “kid I have no idea what your story is, but I am not interested in passing on my jury-rigged mess of a cultivation system to anyone else.”

I moved over to the fire array and channelled a tiny bit of my Qi into the symbol. It started to glow red and released heat just like a stovetop. I dropped a spirit stone into the hollowed-out pocket at the centre of the array to keep it going without needing to feed my own qi into it.

I had used more Qi today than I had in weeks. I would need to recharge soon. I grimaced at the loaf of bread thinking of the pain that would cause me.

I could feel Luli scowling at my back from the kitchen table. She said, “Old Chen told me you were prickly, but he also said you help people.”

I pulled out a dusty pan from below the stove and blew the grime away with a qi-powered breath. I underestimated just how dusty my house had become because the air blasted a cloud of dust into the room, with grime coming off of the counter as well as the pan.

I heard Luli coughing and I smirked a little. I sliced up the bread and cheese with a thin metal qi blade, before placing them in the pan to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

“I am helping you miss Jiang I would not be a dutiful master. Besides my cultivation is self-taught. It is painful to practice, and I do not know what the path forward looks like. You would be better off with the Sun Gate Sect. They are pricks but at least they have an ancestral technique with the kinks worked out.”

Luli countered, “I know you chose a different way too. You are still a legend around here for rejecting them. Their sect members essentially have to sign away their lives for a taste of cultivation.”

I sighed and took the pan off of the heat. I turned off the fire array with a snap of my fingers and moved the pan to the table. Luli anticipated my actions this time and blocked her nose when I blew the dust off the table. I pushed out the two sandwiches on the table and sat down across from the girl.

“There are better sects out there. I could give you a recommendation to the army as well if your talent is good enough. At least in the army you sign fixed-term contracts of service,” I said.

Luli stubbornly shook her head and huffed, “stop trying to push me off. You know what a girl with no family background like me will have to go through in any sect or even the army.”

She blinked her eyes at me in a way that was probably supposed to be cute but came across as funny.

I threw up my hands. "Just do not become a cultivator then. Grow old and raise a family. I am sure that Old Chen will let you work in his shop. It is not my job to keep you out of the cycle of reincarnation.”

Luli shook her head and said “You don’t understand. I am just like you. The Sun Gate Sect will not let me get away.”

She splayed out her hand and a ball of bright qi shot out of her palm to hover in the air. I took in a breath and whispered, “shit.”

Luli smiled bitterly and said, “I have innate talent. The Sun Gate Sect does not let anyone with innate talent born in Asani go. Nobody except you.”

I bowed my head in defeat. This should not be my problem. This life was supposed to be a chance for me to live free. Unfettered by morality, fairness, or justice. Those concepts did not really exist.

I stared at the qi floating above Luli’s hand. I knew. They would take her by force if she refused them for too long. It was a miracle that they had not come for her already.

The thought of abandoning her to the Sun Gate Sect struck at my cultivation. The great Dao might encompass all thing and all acts, but I did not. I tilted my head to the sky and gave a dry chuckle at the irony of that thought. A memory of a stack of dollars in a brown paper bag gave the lie to that kind of self-righteous thinking.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I looked back at Luli and said, “fine I will teach you. Don’t call me master though. That title does not suit me. Just call me Sun Wei.”

Luli’s face lit up and she jumped to her feet and shouted, “Thank you teacher Sun!”

I rolled my eyes and snarked, “not a very good student I see. First things first go and fetch a few iron bars from the storage room in the back.”

I lit another cigarette before she came back while Luli went to fetch the metal. After thirty seconds Luli returned struggling to hold two metal bars of iron. The metal was the low-quality kind I used when I first started cultivation. At my cultivation, I would need more iron than this to recharge to my full Qi capacity, but this would do for a demonstration.

Luli placed the metal bars down on the table and then sat down to watch me expectantly.

I gave the girl one last warning, “my cultivation method is incredibly painful. I know that most cultivators train hard to develop their bodies and say that training is always painful ­— ­but my method is different. Training feels like running barbed wire through you veins. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Luli scrunched up her face and gave me a look of determination. “Yes. I am sure,” she said.

I nodded and then quick as a flash I leaned forward and forced a controlled burst of Qi into her eyes. Luli screamed and fell thrashing to the floor. I kicked up my feet and waited for her to quiet down.

Tears of blood were flowing from her eyes and as she blinked away the pain, I saw that they had adopted the same metallic reflective quality as my own. The sight made me melancholy. As if I knew I was contributing to the vicious cycle that was the world.

Luli had calmed down to the point of spasming instead of rolling around, so I explained the sudden maiming, “That demonstration served two purposes. First, that is what cultivation will feel like every time you do it. The pain never subsides you just have to learn to live with it. Second if you focus you should now be able to see the qi flows around us. Consider yourself lucky I had to learn to infuse my eyes from scratch. There was a lot of painful trial and error.”

Luli slowly rose to her feet and looked around the kitchen in amazement. I knew what she was seeing. Flows of multicoloured Qi were flowing around the room. To those that had never seen it the colours made for quite a sight. It lost its charm all too quickly.

I tapped the table to get Luli’s attention and started my lesson, “most people move on from infusing their eyes to meditation and mantras. My understanding is that they begin to pull qi into their body and temper themselves with training as they saturate their bodies in energy. They then slowly whittle away at the blockages in their meridians until they break through each one.”

I grimaced and continued, “traditionally this naturally leads to two initial stages of cultivation. Qi gathering and then foundation establishment. Qi gathering when you are saturating your body with Qi and foundation establishment for when you are working away at the blockages in your meridians.”

Luli frowned and asked, “But I thought people with innate talent already have their meridians open”

I shook my head and said, “no people with innate talent have some meridians naturally open. The advantage is that with some already open you can speed through the Qi gathering and foundation establishment stages. This allows one to tackle the energy storage stage while you are still young.”

I sighed and continued picking up one of the iron bars, “Now my cultivation method is different. I first cleaned out my meridians and then allowed the qi to saturate my body from the meridians outwards. I did this not because it was better but because I knew no better. This means that I cannot recover my Qi without active cultivation. Most people’s qi reserves replenish naturally after a time. There is one benefit to my cultivation style.”

I pushed out a little ball of qi above my index finger and asked, “Do you see anything different about my qi compared to natural qi around us?”

Luli squinted at the silvery orb and then ventured, “it is denser than the other qi.”

I nodded letting the qi sink back into my skin via a meridian in my hand. “My Qi is denser. This means not only can I store more of it in my meridians than most people of an equivalent cultivation level, but my qi attacks pack more of a punch. Now watch very closely while I cultivate.”

I closed my eyes and held the iron bar in my hands. Slowly I started to circulate the qi in my body. The metal qi swirled in me and started to tug at the iron bar through the meridians in my hands. I pictured pulling the iron apart one atom at a time and joining that atom to my own cultivation.

The iron came apart piece by tiny piece until eventually a stream of iron atoms rushed to join with my cultivation. It felt like sharp rocks were tearing through my veins and arteries but by now that pain was a familiar sensation. In short order, the iron bar was gone. Completely broken down into its essence and then fused with my cultivation.

I open my eyes to see a wide-eyed Luli. She asked, “how did you do that?”

“Qi makes up all things,” I said with a shrug, “most cultivators just pull in the qi in the air around them. Only taking in the by-product of the natural qi given off by the things around them. A wind cultivator might find that their practice improves if they cultivate on a winding mountain top. This is because there is more air qi naturally present on a gusty mountain. The qi he absorbed would be richer if he absorbed the wind itself and not the air qi that is lost to the surroundings.”

Luli’s eyes were bright, and she said excitedly, “will I be able to absorb fire?”

I nodded but burst her bubble when I clarified, “Technically I could use this method to absorb qi of any aspect. However, in practice terms the only substance that has a density of qi high enough to be practically trained with is metal. To breach through cultivation barriers with a less dense aspect like fire or wood you would need to absorb a volcano or whole forest at higher cultivations.”

To illustrate my point, I pulled the fire qi in my cigarette into myself and then expelled the fire qi to re-light it. “It is also far more difficult to do with things made up of various aspects. A burning fire in the fireplace for example is made up of both wood and fire qi. Enough theory for now. Pick up that bit of iron.”

Luli did so and I told her, “shut your eyes. Now, feel inside your body. There are tiny motes of metal qi in your blood.”

I could have tried to explain the basic physics and biology that I recalled from high school, but I did not remember it clearly enough to teach.

“Now that iron bar in your hands is made out of the same microscopic bits of metal qi. If you can feel both then try and pull a tiny bit of the iron bar into yourself.”

It took her several minutes of focused attention but eventually, a tiny bit of the bar broke off and shot towards the meridians in her hands. Unlike me her meridians were not yet unblocked so it did not flow seamlessly into her own cultivation. Instead, it hit a blockage and Luli cried out in pain as the qi chipped off a tiny bit of the blockage.

I relented and allowed, “That is enough for now. You will have to go through that training until the whole process becomes easy to do. Then you are going to have to chip away at every blockage in your meridians. Start with the meridians in your hands and arms. Once you have unblocked a meridian then you can store qi inside it, and the qi will start to seep outward and saturate your body.”

Luli was sweating but she still stood and said, “thank you teacher Sun. I will not let you down. Can you also teach me how to fight?”

I stood up and shook my head, “not right now. Just stay here and train. I have got to see Old Chen and go uptown. I assume the Marshall’s office is still up there?”

Luli nodded but said, “we haven’t had a Marshal in years though.”

I sighed and took out my new badge to show her. With a thin smile I said, “Well there is a new lawman in town. Come find me if you ever need a spirit pet pulled down from a tree.”