Rubbing my temples after the vision, I groan in discomfort. Using the Heaven’s Gaze is really a solid kick to the head. It’s not quite at migraine levels, but my head, and even the rest of my body, is experiencing an ache unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.
Calming myself with a splash of hot water over each of my shoulders, I stretch, rub my neck, and then return to the position I was in when I was watching the vision.
I replay the process of cultivating qi in my mind a couple of times before attempting to feel it in the air around me. Even knowing exactly what it feels like, there is a distinct disconnect between what happened in the vision and reality.
It takes me several minutes before I am finally able to feel something and another three or four before I am able to breathe in any of it, despite trying to replicate the exact same feeling I had when I was experiencing the vision.
Another five minutes pass and I finally feel the effect of the qi going down my throat and it feels nice, but out of place. As though sweet water is slowly being fed to me after running all day long.
Five minutes later, the qi finally reaches my dantian and enters. For a single moment I can feel a rush of something euphoric. The vision let me understand the process of cultivating qi, but the process of cultivating qi lets me feel something. I wish I had always known.
It is incredible!
As the qi leaves my dantian, the sense of euphoria ebbs and I struggle to make it flow down the other paths. It is not as simple as just willing it to happen, I have to guide it gently so that it doesn’t stop early. Then I have to nudge it in just the right direction so it slides smoothly down the parched path.
And I have to do this for twelve different paths at once!
It is not easy, and I struggle with it for quite a while before I take in enough qi that some tipping point is met and it finally begins to flow in all directions.
I feel the paths taking route inside my body and focus on them for several minutes to make sure I got it right before I switch my focus to taking in more qi.
With each breath I take, another small stream of qi enters my body and I guide it in the same way I had previously.
With every small stream of qi that enters my dantian, I feel more and more alive.
With every little bit of qi that exits my dantian and flows down all twelve routes, strength seeps into my muscles and I feel stronger and healthier.
This process goes on for half an hour before something clicks and, instead of me trying to forcefully guide the process, it starts working on its own. At first, this just means that I’m breathing in qi without having to work for it. Of course, I do work for it because it feels amazing.
But as the process begins to pick up speed, I can feel my pores open up and begin to take in qi on their own. The only difference between this process and breathing is that the qi runs to my dantian starting from one of my limbs instead of from my head.
Finally, content that nothing will break when I stop, I open up my eyes and flinch back as I see the old man, Physician Bing, in front of me.
“With that reaction, you either have zero spiritual awareness or are an amazing actor. Which is it?” He questions me with a half scowl, half frown on his face.
“Uh… What’s spiritual awareness?” I ask him.
He ignores my question and instead mutters, “Hmm… No pulse fluctuations. And you only just entered the first stage of the Mortal Foundation Realm despite having connected all twelve of your meridians.”
His eyes meet mine and he begins to grill me, “Sergeant Lin told me you hadn’t even heard of cultivation earlier and you were telling the truth. Then he said that you remembered something about cultivation and you were lying, yet you managed to tell him things he wasn’t aware of, but I know they are factual. When I checked your qi earlier, your body had none. No cultivation, parched meridians, and a dantian so devastated that it shouldn’t be possible to heal. How did you go from knowing nothing about cultivation and being completely unable to cultivate to accomplishing something someone at the Mortal Core Realm would find difficult?”
“Uh… I just—“
“Before you lie to me, boy, know that I will know. I am at the ninth stage of the Mortal Core Realm and have half a foot into the Mortal Gathering Realm. There are less than a dozen people in this city with a higher cultivation than mine, so I dare say you would be a fool to try and turn me against you.”
Physician Bing’s gaze is cold and I absently note that he has pale green eyes under his thin, gray eyebrows.
I clear my throat and decide that trying to bamboozle old men was hard enough. Trying to bamboozle old men who could apparently figure out I was lying? Maybe later.
“I used divination,” I respond, answering only part of his question.
“Divination? In the middle of a group of guards walking down the streets of a city, you performed divination?” On the old man’s face is a look of bewilderment and disbelief, but also a sense of shock.
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“Yes.” I nod my head.
“Show me. I want you to find something for me that you have no way of knowing about.” He reaches his hand out and lays it palm up. “Give me your arm.”
Hesitantly, I lift my arm out of the water and put it in his hand. A strange sensation starts from where his skin is meeting my own and I feel a thrum of energy racing down my arm and through the rest of my body.
“Now then, what do you know about pill refining?”
“I only know that it exists. I saw a brief mention of it when I was trying to figure out cultivation.” In fact, I’m pretty sure I only saw a mention of it on that very first website I went to. Or was it the second?
“You’re telling the truth.” Physician Bing nods his head. “Now I want you to use your divination to tell me the ingredients for the Foundation Building Pill. Is there any special process you need to perform to do this?”
“No, I don’t think so. I should be able to—“ I mutter while opening the Omega Browser and searching for the ‘Foundation Building Pill’.
“Uh… I found it, but can you give me more details? There are more than ten thousand recipes.”
“Ten— impossible! No, maybe not. Hmm,” the old man seems to be caught up in an internal struggle so I wait with the browser open for him to finish his thought process. Finally, he says, “Choose any one of them. I am aware of seven different recipes for the Foundation Building Pill. Each of them contain similar components but differ in supplementary ingredients that give them slightly differing efficacies. As long as you can recite anything that I recognize as a viable recipe for the Foundation Building Pill, I will believe your claim.”
“Okay, then one of them requires Three Tail Cattail, Willow Root Orchid, Saber-Leafed Tulip, Aged Oak Sap, and Jade Water. You take the four main ingredients, slowly boil them in the Jade Water until all of their medicinal essence has been extracted, then you let that boil and condense in a pill furnace until it has formed a pill.” I close the browser and look back at the physician. “Is that good?”
The physician stares up at the ceiling, the index finger of his free hand waving around in ways I don’t understand as he mutters something under his breath. It takes two or three minutes for him to finish before he finally says, “Yes, that should allow you to condense a Foundation Building Pill. But the use of Jade Water to seep the ingredients? Hmm… Can your divination tell you the efficacy percentage of that recipe?”
“I will look.” I try to avoid giving any affirmative response to that question because I don’t believe that my Omega Browser is a form of divination and I highly doubt the Heaven’s Gaze comes with a convenient function for me to know the names and efficacy percentages of medicine.
The Heaven’s Gaze might not have that function, but the Omega Browser does! I relay the information from the website directly to the physician.
“If you do it properly and don’t allow any foreign contaminants, including those of the four main ingredients, into the pill furnace, the pill has a medicinal efficacy of one hundred percent.” I feel the physician’s hand clench on my arm as I continue, “But depending on the amount of contamination is transferred into the pill furnace, the final product will have anywhere between one hundred percent efficacy for a perfect quality pill to seventy percent for a high quality pill. A medium quality pill will have thirty percent efficacy and a low quality pill will have ten percent.”
“Is that good enough? Can I get dressed now?” The physician seems lost in thought as I ask my questions, but he nods his head and briefly hooks his free thumb toward the stone bench where a towel, some clothes, and a pair of boots lay. Then he drops my hand and leaves the room while rubbing his chin and muttering some more.
“Weird guy,” I whisper under my breath.
I wait for a second before hopping out of the bath and quickly grab the towel and begin drying off. I remember it being under the brazier, but I guess the old guy must have moved it for my convenience? But… wasn’t it supposed to be Sergeant Lin who brought me clothes? Did something happen?
I brush off all of my errant thoughts and begin dressing as soon as I’m dried. For a moment, I’m confused how to dress myself. There are two pairs of pants on the bench, a black sash, and then a larger brown robe with black hemming.
Taking a moment to examine the clothes, I determine that one of the pairs of pants, a tan pair, is thinner so I decide to put those on first. They’re soft, so I treat them like underwear.
Then I put on the second pair of pants and note that these ones are brown like the robe. This gives me some confidence in my dressing choices. Following the second pair of pants, I put on the robe and that’s where I get stuck. I have no clue how to tie this thing!
“What is this bullshit!” I grumble as I try and fail several times to use the sash to tie my robe closed. “It shouldn’t be this hard!”
Eventually, I give up and tie it as best I can. It leaves the top half of my robe open, but at least it won’t be flapping in the wind.
Finally, after everything else is more-or-less done, I put on the boots. I’m irritated that there aren’t any socks, but the boots are nice even if they weren’t made for me. I doubt I’ll get blisters wearing them for a little while.
For a brief moment, I consider washing my clothes but, as I look around, I find that they aren’t here. Neither are my shoes. Even the bucket and used rag are gone.
My clothes and shoes were ruined so trying to recover them was probably a lost cause, but my wallet had a picture of my family in it.
Thinking that I might lose my last real connection to them, my heart clenches in my chest and a cold sweat slithers down my back.
I run to the door only for it to open before I can reach it and a small velvet bag hits me in the chest and slides down into my loose robe.
“Your clothes, footwear, and that piece of leather inside of your pants were all ruined and had to be disposed of. But the things inside that piece of leather were safe save for a few pieces of paper that had to be tossed out. I presume that is why you are panicking?” Physician Bing looks at me with a knowing gaze as I reach into my robe and pull out the bag and look inside.
The picture, my credit card, driver’s license, and even a couple of Lincolns are all safe. My social security card is missing, but I can honestly say that it probably didn’t matter.
I sign in relief and nod my head. “I was worried that I lost the picture of my family. I think I could see them in other ways if I had to, but this,” I say as I hold the picture in my hand, “is from home. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Good,” Physician Bing states with the hint of a smile on his lips, “anyone who cherishes their family can be redeemed, regardless of their other flaws. It’s when you’ve lost touch with your roots that you can no longer adapt to new environments. Let’s go.”
Physician Bing turns around and begins to leave but I call out, “Go where? I still have no clue what’s going on!”
“And I will tell you everything you need to know, but over tea. Some conversations can’t be had in a bathhouse, boy.” Physician Bing scoffs as he leaves my eyesight and I shake my head in frustration.
“At least he’s promising me answers.” I quickly run out the door and catch up to Physician Bing so I’m not left behind.