Hui Ming slammed her foot against the floor. I covered my ears reflexively. A hole opened beneath us and we fell into another dark box. It propelled us across the library and spat us out in the lobby.

“Welcome back,” the tower master greeted us. Her posture and the way she talked gave off an easygoing vibe. “Want to go anywhere else?”

Hui Ming politely said no and we left for home. I pushed the gate open for her and asked, “I need to be able to control my Qi. Help me please?”

Mark, one of my classmates, had gotten the same power as somebody on the ninth stage after only three months. It’s more difficult for natives of this world, but advancing stages shouldn't be too hard for me.

I pushed her inside the house and we went down to the basement. We sat on the seats in front of our cauldrons. “Will doing this mess up my plants?”

She told me it wouldn’t. I said, “Then let’s do it. How does this work?”

“It depends. Which Soul Cultivation stage are you on?”

“I don’t think I’m on any stage of anything. I’ve never cultivated my Qi in my life.”

“How do you have your plant Dao? And how do you release that pressure?”

“The plant thing’s not a Dao, it’s something else. I’m not sure what it is. I’m not sure how I use my aura. It just comes out when I want to.”

“I see. May I see your hand?” she said, putting her hand at waist level as if she wanted to shake my hand. I put my hand on top of hers and her aura enveloped mine. I tried pushing against it. It gave way with almost no resistance, like pudding. She smiled, “As I thought, you’re already at the first stage of Dao Formation. But you’ll need to enter the Qi space inside yourself if you want to control it.”

“And how do I do that?”

“You’d need to meditate for five days if you were on your own.” She put her hand on her chest, “but I’m here! I can help you do it faster. And we can put this incense to use as well.”

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“Cool, thanks. But, is it possible to do this without the incense?”

“It’s possible, but the incense makes the experience more potent. Are you sure you don’t want to use it?”

“Yeah, I’d rather not at the moment.”

With both our hands connected, she said, “Please don’t spend more than an hour inside. Time flows faster inside, and I might faint if I do this for more than a week in real time. Are you ready?”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be ready for, but I said yes anyway. Her aura pushed into me. I trusted her so I let it in. I began to feel dizzy, as if I had just stood up after sitting down for a long time. I still didn’t push her out. I lost track of time. I couldn’t think.

The dizziness got worse. I was drowning at the bottom of the ocean, the last bits of oxygen in my blood draining away. My consciousness returned to me the second I should’ve fainted.

“No way… that’s beautiful.”

I was surrounded by an infinite expanse of darkness, lit by enormous Illusions in the sky. They hovered in the sky like an aurora, before disappearing and being replaced by another illusion.

I looked up and spun in a circle. I fell on my back, my eyes large as watermelons. A wavering image of a giant twentytacle trap dominated the sky. Its light illuminated the everything I could see. That was my twentytacle trap. The one I’d designed months ago, when I was trying to create the perfect trapping plant.

I lie there, panting. The twentytacle trap broke into three pieces. Each piece turned into a herb I had copied. I watched quietly. The illusions broke and reformed into two more herbs. They kept changing, turning into every plant I had ever identified.

I could’ve lie there for hours, but I had time contraints. I stood. The soft trickling sound of a stream came from behind me. I turned.

An orb, about as large as a whale, hovered in the sky. It was big, but it was dwarfed by the titanic auroras so I hadn’t noticed it. It was dotted with holes like a showerhead. The holes varied in size. Some were plugged but the rest poured out waterfalls of a dimly glowing blue liquid.

The liquid splashed onto the ground and spread out in streams. The streams flowed in every direction around me.

I walked closer and dipped my hand in one of the streams. It was chilly. It had the consistency of syrup, but also slid off my hand like water. This was my Qi. I knew this stream of Qi was flowing to my left pinky. I don’t know how I knew. I just knew.

I willed the stream to merge with the stream for my ring finger. The streams merged. I willed them to separate and they separated again. I wanted all the mana to stop flowing. It stopped. I told all the Qi to form in a column and fly into the sky. The Qi from the streams and rivers gathered in one bundle. It flew into the air, twisting as my will desired.

It came down and returned to normal, flowing into their respective body parts.

“Wow,” I had no words. There was no chance I would’ve been able to gain this control over my Qi without coming to this place. Before, I could only vaguely sense it. Now I could see it, touch it, feel it.

But I remembered Hui Ming’s warning about time. One thought and I popped out of the space. I opened my eyes to see Hui Ming still holding my hands. She looked at me with wide eyes, “Master, you’re already finished?”

I could now feel the orb inside me, maintaining the streams of Qi. I couldn’t sense the Qi as well as I did when I was inside, but it was many times better than before. I made a strand of Qi come out. It was invisible in the outer world.

I made a soft Qi blast behind me. Our robes fluttered in the breeze. “I think so.”