For several minutes, I idly watch the field in the vision between my fingers. It hurts my heart to see it being so barren and destroyed, but I have absolutely no clue how to even start fixing it.
This is going to be one of those things that is more complicated than I wanted, isn’t it? I think to myself, mildly frustrated that I just ‘answered’ one question and immediately fell into the trap of not being able to interpret the answer while simultaneously having another question to ask.
I make the decision to try to figure this out seeing as I was already stuck in some weird state of timelessness— and I already had the hand sign going. Immediately, I will for myself to know how to nourish that broken piece of land inside my body.
The answer comes, and it hurts!
All of my focus is immediately wrenched into the space between my fingers as I once more look at the field inside my body. At first, it is exactly how I last saw it. But before too long something changes. A drop of something foreign falls upon the dirt and briefly nourishes it before the effects dissipate. Then, light from the hand sign in the middle of the field falls upon the dirt and an almost non-existent blade of green pokes through the dirt.
Over time, more and more drops of the first liquid fall upon the field in a steady downpour and the destroyed earth starts to look healthier. The light coming from the hand sign in the center of the field becomes brighter and brighter and, as it does, more green blades pop up from the soil until the earth is covered in a blanket of green.
It doesn’t stop there. Soon, the earth is too saturated with the liquid to take any more of it in. As such, the liquid begins pooling and forming small ponds. As the ponds grow, so too does the variation of greenery and the bright light put out by the hand sign. Grass soon becomes bushes and then trees, ponds spill over and became streams, and the light blooms into a sun casting its brilliance down upon the small field.
Over time, something odd happens. The light that was the hand sign changes. It is as though something was added to the sun that made some sort of difference, but what that difference is, I can’t tell. All I can see is that it changed everything in turn. Instead of more greenery growing, the land itself pushed outward. What was once a field became rolling hills with a lake growing in the center being fed by a river of liquid and feeding streams as the liquid left.
More and more happens, but it happens so quickly and it makes so little sense to my mind that all I can see is growth. Soon, strange powers descend upon the place and the limit of my ability to comprehend what is going on is far surpassed. Where I was once a bystander watching growth, now I am an outsider staring at a master drawing a painting. A world grows where my tiny field once was, but whatever this world was is so far removed from me that it means nothing.
As the changes inside my vision come to a close, I feel as though my head was shoved through a hole ten sizes too small. I can feel one hell of a headache coming along but before it strikes I decide to ask one more question. After all, I’m going to a physician right now.
Focusing harder through the pressure that exists both in my skull and somewhere seemingly closer but more distant, I will for one more answer. I know there were three things inside of that vision. The light, the liquid, and everything that rose from the earth. I needed to know what those things were.
A sense of gloomy finality drapes itself across my shoulders as I ask the question and a tingling sensation fills my stomach with the phantom of pain. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it is noticeable and not exactly pleasant. Something similar to pushing your finger against the tip of a nail without breaking your skin. And the gloomy feeling doesn’t actually bother me as much as it feels like something giving me a warning. It’s weird and I probably should have paid more attention to the warning if this hand sign is enough to influence me physically, but I don’t actually feel as though I’ve done anything wrong. More like whatever is attached to that gloomy feeling is distinctly annoyed.
Does this heavenly will thing actually exist in more than a rhetorical sense?
That slight pain doesn’t increase nor does it go away as I ponder upon the significance of the ‘will of the heavens’. Instead, the answer to my question comes and I can feel it as it pushes itself inside my skull. I see the image of myself standing naked and unblemished in front of a dark background. I can clearly see the youth in my features cast in a shadow of that vague sense of maturity you get when you’ve reached a certain age but have yet to come to terms with why everyone wants you to behave more responsibly when they’re so miserable themselves.
Surrounding and emanating from my body is a trinity of overlapping somethings. They are distinct, but operate together in such a way that the difference between them would be impossible to see if not for the fact that the vision was clearly showing me three distinct somethings. None of them have clear colors. Or rather, two of them have so many colors that they are incomprehensible while the third cannot really be described even in the abstract.
I’m fairly certain what it is, even if I don’t understand it, and that’s because it feels like me. I’m looking at my soul, and that is only one third of what I am.
It feels so weird coming from America where the soul is described as being who you are and basically everything about you that matters, yet as I look upon myself in absolute clarity I can see that my soul is only one component of what I am. It may even be the most important to my identity, but I feel as though I would lose that same identity if I lost either of the two other things that made up me.
The guard’s words and the words on the website come back to me as I realize that. While I can’t exactly figure out which of the two is which because of how they are interacting, I’m pretty sure the other two somethings are my body and the energy it has as well as the essence surrounding me.
My focus waivers as the vision ends and I stumble forward as time and my headache catch up to me. The guards glance at me and I quickly mutter, “Sorry, tripped.” Most of them just shrug their shoulders while Sergeant Lin takes a long look at me before continuing on.
I breathe out my jitters at having looked like an idiot before returning to my ruminations.
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So, question answered. I finally have a foothold to understand what’s going on in this strange new place and all it took was that pinching feeling in my stomach and a headache. I may not know the worth of cultivation yet, but I can tell from the conversations I’ve had so far that it is a pretty important topic around these parts. Was the tiny bit of pain in my stomach worth having an introduction to this topic? Probably. At least, I would like to think so.
I remembered the feeling I had as that barren field of mine was brought to life inside of the vision and I knew without a doubt that I wanted that. I don’t know why, but that was something that called out to me with such a loud voice that I’m pretty sure it was Earth’s population’s greatest folly to neglect something so important to who we are.
So, even if I learn absolutely nothing else from this Physician Bing person, I’ve already decided that I need to do something to grow my dantian from the horrendous state it is currently in. I even have an idea of how to do that already: cultivation practices.
Even better, I have two ways to find one. The first is the Omega Browser, though with how much information it has I’d be loathe to use it. I can already imagine just how many cultivation practices I would find. In fact… I run a quick search of ‘human cultivation practices’ and am left with, predictably, trillions of results. I don’t even want to try narrowing them down right now as, even though I have an idea of what I need, I am lacking enough foreknowledge to separate the good and bad cultivation practices. After all, there are apparently plenty of people around and if one cultivation practice worked for everyone then there wouldn’t be trillions of results.
The second method of finding a cultivation practice would be through using the Heaven’s Gaze hand sign, but I have the distinct impression that I would be missing out on a lot of very important information if I did that. For example, even though I was able to use it to interpret that I would need to nourish my essence, body, and soul in order to fix the state my dantian is in, I have absolutely no knowledge of how to apply what I learned.
Presumably, it has something to do with my lack of ‘qi fluctuations’ that Sergeant Lin mentioned earlier, but that will take time to uncover. Sure, I could just use the Heaven’s Gaze hand sign to slowly uncover exactly what I need to do without needing to know the words to type into the browser, but with the headache I’m already feeling and the length of time that would take, even if time is frozen during the process, I’d rather put that off until a little bit later.
Despite time stopping during my ‘research’, there was very little of it left before we arrived at Physician Bing’s. I had wasted most of the quarter hour looking through TheDaoGuru.Omega and now there were only a couple of minutes left until, hopefully, I met someone who would be willing to answer my questions. That being said, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. This would likely be a very weird conversation.
***
When we arrive at Physician Bing’s I don’t even make it through his yard and into the front door. Sergeant Lin goes ahead to inform the physician of the situation and I wait for several minutes twiddling my thumbs and wondering what I should check up next. Eventually, I lose my patience and start searching for cultivation practices, but after looking through several dozen that only covered energy cultivation, I knew that I would have to refine my search. Instead of trying to figure out anything else, I decide to take in my surroundings.
Physician Bing’s neighborhood seems pretty nice. Much like many of the homes I’d seen on the way here, the houses were more like compounds. Inside of Physician Bing’s compound, the yard was nice and well kept, evenly split down the middle by a paved path, while the house was fairly large but not overly ostentatious in what I could only describe as an ancient Chinese style.
There were also several buildings off to the sides that served some unknown purpose. Outside of everything being immaculately clean, the only weird thing about the place was the smell of sweet smoke lingering in the air. Whatever this guy was burning left a pleasant fragrance that far exceeded any candles or incense I had ever come into contact with back on Earth.
What’s more, the road outside was in much better shape than the dirt house neighborhood I’d arrived in, and none of the walls surrounding his yard were covered in mud. The same could be said for the other houses in the area.
In its own way, this place was significantly better in quality than many of the houses I’d seen in suburbs back where I’d grown up. I’d yet to see any electrical posts which would signify electricity, but it really wasn’t bad.
Several minutes later, an older man with salt and pepper hair wrapped in a bun atop hid head exits the building followed by Sergeant Lin. He has a mustache and a short beard and was dressed in gray robes with white hemming. Without bothering to introduce himself, the older man walked up to me and demanded, “Give me your hand.”
I was confused, but I had no reason to reject so I lifted up my hand and presented it to him palm up. The man then put two fingers on my forearm for a second before turning around and addressing Sergeant Lin. “Take this boy to the baths down the road. If you have any trouble, tell that old fogie Madame Fei that she still owes me for that acupuncture. Tell her to get him clean enough that I don’t smell shit every time I breathe!” He pauses and then adds, “And get him a robe. A simple one will do for now. After he’s bathed and dressed, return him here and you can continue your work.”
Sergeant Lin blinks, obviously a little overwhelmed with how he is being addressed. “S-sir— er, Physician Bing,” the man swallows, “with all do respect, this man is an outsider to our city. Now that you’ve checked him and he’s obviously in no immediate need for medical attention, I will have to—“
Oh boy. I really should have figured that Sergeant Lin would want me to talk to one of his supervisors. After all, I was in this city without identification and I had, even if they don’t know it yet, damaged someone’s property.
Physician Bing scoffs. “What? Take him to captain Lu? That worthless fool with an artificial cultivation base? He’ll see this boy as a threat even without a good reason for it simply because of his looks.”
“Physician Bing, I understand that you might disagree with Captain Lu, but it is my job—“
“It’s your job to protect the damned city and prevent criminal activity. You,” he turns to me, “have you commit any crimes since you arrived?”
“Er… I did kinda slam into a wall pretty hard. Left a dent in it…” I blush as I shift my gaze away from the old man.
Everyone looks at me with peculiar expressions on their faces before Physician Bing smirks and asks, “You were found in the eastern slums. I assume the dent you left was in a mud hut, hmm?”
“Yes,” I nod my head. “I didn’t mean to damage someone’s house and then run away, but I had absolutely no clue where I was and the neighborhood kinda creeped me out. I promise I’ll repay them for it, I just need time to make some money… and a job.”
As soon as I finished speaking, Physician Bing tossed three coins to Sergeant Lin. I briefly glimpsed two flashes of silver and one flash of gold. “Those two silver are for the home owners with damaged property. The other one is for the young man’s bath and robe. After he’s back, you may keep the change.”
Sergeant Lin stared at the coins in his hand with wide eyes as Physician Bing walked back into his house. I looked at Sergeant Lin and the rest of the guards who watched him curiously before the Sergeant said, “As Physician Bing has decided to compensate the home owners for the damage to their property, there is no reason to investigate Lan Jin’s actions any further. Since the Physician has asked me for a favor, naturally I will follow through. After the favor has been accomplished, I would like to take my brothers out for a night of enjoyment. What say all of you?”
A few cheers accompanied by chuckles fill the yard as the guards nod their heads and leave to do other things with one of them calling out “See you at the usual place,” before he left.