When Physician Bing and I arrive back it his house compound, he walks me to one of the smaller buildings off to the side that I had seen when I first I arrived with Sergeant Lin earlier.

It is something akin to a smaller home, though saying ‘smaller’ is subjective because it is only small with relation to the rest of Physician Bing’s grand home. What he lends me, indefinitely, is a building of approximately two thousand square feet of interior space laid out in a strange manner.

The front door to the building is facing south as area the two bedrooms inside— both of which can be considered to belong to me for the indefinite future according to Physician Bing. The door to the kitchen is facing west, and the ‘cultivation’ room is facing the east.

Entering the building, I first find a smaller greeting room. It has a small table in the center and the walls are nicely decorated with simple scrolls depicting trees. Heading north through a close doorway, I find that the room connects to a hallway heading to the east and west with another section heading north to a larger reception room.

If I head east, I find the kitchen, a storage room, and a dining room. To the west are the two bedrooms, a small library, and the cultivation room. From the outside, everything appears to be perfectly symmetrical and held behind four walls, but between the walls I find that there are some small garden areas to the sides of the connecting hallways as well as a slightly larger garden just behind the reception room.

I couldn’t care less about most of the rooms at this point, I am dead tired so Physician Bing lets me go with some last words and my monthly salary.

“For the next few days, I intend to refine alchemical pills. The hat you are wearing will block anyone under the Mortal Gathering Realm from using their spiritual awareness on you. While I doubt you will come to any harm with or without the hat on, I suggest caution for the foreseeable future. At least until I am finished with the pills and can come to your aid if need be.

Between now and then, I have some suggestions. First, I recommend you purchase a low-grade spatial ring. They are expensive, but you will find that they are imperative for any cultivator. With one, you will be able to store many of your possessions on your finger.

Secondly, I suggest you source sustenance and additional clothing. I rarely eat or drink due to my advanced cultivation, so there has been little reason for me to have anything on hand. So, unfortunately, you will have to fend for yourself in this regard. As to the clothing, I simply believe you will want additional sets.

In addition, I believe you may find the services of the local bathhouse to your liking. The pond in your courtyard is full of fresh, clean water, but I find that there is little more enjoyable to life than a hot bath in a facility specializing in bathing.

Finally, avoid letting anyone know about your abilities. I’m afraid there are few people in this world who would not covet what you have— even to the point of depriving you of your life in order to gain your secrets. I may be an exception to this rule, but you will find that most cultivators care little for what we consider to be mortal rules.”

I don’t say it aloud, but I definitely think that Physician Bing ‘didn’t bribe’ a guard for my sake. I appreciate it, and I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth too closely, but I don’t think the exception is as clear as the physician might think.

“One last suggestion,” Physician Bing begins, “every evening before sleeping, every morning after waking up, and throughout the day when you have time, I would suggest cultivating in the cultivation room. It currently lacks qi crystals to improve your progress by a measurable degree, but I believe your ‘talents’ will overcome that deficit. Even still, be careful.

I do not know what insane manner of cultivation you found with your divination, but absorbing qi the way you seem to be doing… that is not natural for humans. Spend the time you require in order to fully understand how to control your qi and bend it to your desires. There is nothing more dangerous for a new cultivator than arrogantly believing you are in control. This thought will only last until the instant it doesn’t and by then it will be too late.”

He finishes off with, “Do you have any questions?”

“No. I honestly think you answered more than I would have thought to ask,” I reply.

“Very well,” he nods and then hands over a small bag of coins. “This is one hundred small gold coins. It is all I will give you for this month. It should be more than you need, but if you decide to buy cultivation resources you will find it is far less than you require. With that, I bid you good night. Good luck with your cultivation, and try to avoid interrupting my refining unless it is an emergency.”

“Alright,” I respond. “Thank you for everything, Physician Bing.”

He smiles slightly and turns around, not saying another word as he leaves. He’s not the most sociable person I know, nor is he the most endearing, but he seems like a pretty good guy. I don’t get any creepy vibes from him, and the weirdest thing about him is that he seemed to get a lot of joy from my dismal interaction with those two girls earlier.

My first action when I have the home to myself is to lean against the wall and sigh. Today had been one of the most exhausting days in my life. I don’t know whether or not I can easily classify it as being the worst day of my life, at least not since I am able to cultivate now and it’s absolutely amazing, but it sure isn’t the best day I’ve ever had.

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It takes me a minute to pull myself together.

After I finally stop moping, I force myself to stand tall and make my way into the cultivation room. I didn’t really feel like cultivating; I didn’t really feel like doing anything for that matter. But Physician Bing is the resident expert here and I would really rather not end my day on a low note.

I end up entering a room unlike any other I’d ever seen. It’s floors were all made out of a single piece of flat stone with slots around the same sizes as gems spaced evenly in growing circles starting from the center of the room where they surround a small cushion.

There are runes linking the slots in the circles as well as spiraling between the circles themselves to connect them all, but as of now all of the slots are empty and whatever the circles are meant to do, they aren’t doing it.

The walls are white and lacking anything else to distract me so I force myself to focus and sit down on the cushion in the center of the room.

I recall enough to the Divine Dragon Ascension to get me started, but it is much harder than I’d thought it would be. Unlike the breathing technique, the Divine Dragon Ascension requires me to understand it. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done when I’m dealing with something designed to turn someone into a literal dragon.

It takes me doing some more research into the Divine Dragon Ascension for me to uncover that I’m supposed to ‘commune’ with the dragon’s pride inherent within the egg. This will allow it to absorb qi from my surroundings. At the same time, I have to slowly inject my spiritual awareness into the egg to fill it with my presence.

Doing it like this, I will be able to cultivate my essence and soul, but for me to cultivate my body will take a large amount of snake essence blood that I don’t currently have access to.

Following the instructions closely, I focus on the spot between my eyebrows where I opened up the Dragon’s Third Eye. Technically, I shouldn’t have done that yet. I doubt it is a bad thing, but it’s supposed to be a later thing. I ignore that fact as I try to feel out my spiritual awareness.

On the plus side, I know exactly what my soul feels like. As such, it takes me literally no time at all to gather a tendril of my spiritual awareness, guide it from my forehead, and direct it into my dantian where it creates a tiny umbilical cord leading into the egg. Of course, the negative side to all of this is that my spiritual awareness is almost non-existent. I’ve seen angel hair pasta with thicker noodles than my spiritual awareness umbilical cord.

Sighing, I say, “This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.”

I gently coax as much of my spiritual awareness, or my soul’s energy, into the egg as I feel comfortable with. While that isn’t much, it does let me get a rudimentary understanding of the egg as well as a basic comprehension over what I need to do next.

What I lack with this cultivation method is understanding, but what I understand is that I have a very significant advantage in that I can already absorb qi with or without a cultivation method. As such, even though it is difficult for me to use my soul to begin cultivating the Divine Dragon Ascension, I can still follow all of the steps by injecting the egg with my soul energy and directing the qi from my body into the egg.

By doing this, I end up forming a second, essence umbilical cord that connects the dragon egg directly to the inner wall of my dantian. The cord wraps around the spiritual umbilical cord as they work together to feed the egg energy.

I yawn deeply while doing this. I want to make some progress tonight, but I’m so tired that it is hard to focus. Nevertheless, I push on.

After the essence umbilical cord forms, I can see as my body’s qi flows through it and into the egg. All of the five colors of qi within my body fill the egg in an unnatural manner.

Instead of flowing like I’m used to, the qi gathers around the symbols on the eggs and begins behaving sporadically. I have literally no clue what the qi is doing, but it doesn’t seem to care whether or not I know what’s going on in my own body, because it decides to continue doing its own thing the second it enters the egg.

I can feel the qi mixing with my soul’s energy within the egg, and I know it is still my qi and that I control it, but from the moment it enters the egg, it takes on an unnatural quality. It’s mine, but it lacks the fluidity and naturalness of the qi flowing through the rest of me.

“That’s just plain weird.” I mutter, not knowing whether to be pleased or displeased with my progress.

Not really knowing what to make of the situation in the egg, I decide to move onto the next step for now.

One of the most important, and most difficult, things I’m meant to learn with the Divine Dragon Ascension is how to use the five elemental energies of earth, metal, water, wood, and fire. What I need to do in order to accomplish that is to feel out the elements with the egg and bend them to my will using the energy within the egg. This is supposed to require a great deal of soul energy and essence being infused into the egg, after which you slowly build up an understanding of the elemental daos in order to gain control over them.

I focus on accomplishing that and quickly find that it may end up being impossible for me. Not because of difficulty or anything like that, but because I finally recognize what the different colors of qi within my body are and, as I try to control a single element, the qi in my body instantly responds.

“Am I doing this right?” I ask aloud, feeling concerned with how this is going. I can barely comprehend the Divine Dragon Ascension after reading all about it online, but I can do this already? Isn’t this supposed to be harder? Why am I so dumb at the simple stuff but so good at the hard stuff? Am I broken?

I soon find myself projecting tiny amounts of elemental energies across the tips of my fingers in varying sequences. It doesn’t matter how random I make the order, whenever I pull on an element, it just does exactly what I want it to… unless I send it into the egg. Then it does weird things.

“Aren’t you supposed to make cultivation make more sense?” I ask the egg. “Why are you confusing me even more than I already am?”

For several more minutes, I casually manipulate the elemental qi in my body while staring uncomprehendingly at the egg. No matter what I do, I cannot control the elements through the egg, but so long as I don’t try, then controlling them is no problem.

I can’t even rightly tell if this is a good or bad situation to be in. All I know is that I am going to have to do a lot more research in the morning before I try to do anything else. I really don’t want to lose control over my qi because I do something dumb.

“Okay, I have absolutely no fucking clue what’s going on right now, but I’m tired. I’m not dying, so figuring out whatever the hell is going on with this half-baked dragon egg can happen tomorrow… today? When I wake up.”