15. Hien Ro

I stood on the top of the highest tree upon the highest hill, the wind whirling around me. It had already ripped leaves from the trees, and their edges were sharp enough to cut flesh, but I remained unsatisfied. After attuning myself to the earth, reaching a true attunement with the air would be difficult. Not impossible, despite common perception. Just very difficult.

Technically speaking, I could walk onto the bronze path at any time. If I were an average cultivator, I would have been content with my earth attunement and begun the process of refinement which marked the majority of the bronze path. I was complicating things by aligning myself to the other elements, and it would make my cultivation much more difficult.

More difficult, and more rewarding.

An average cultivator aligns one element, and that is typically enough to bring them to the silver or golden path unless they are untalented. However, few cultivators are able to reach diamond with a single element. They must realign their elemental affinity by picking up a second, or perhaps a third before they can surpass that bottleneck. Much debate exists on which elemental combinations are ideal and compatible, but they’re ultimately all wrong.

A neutral spirit is the best. Neutrality is a state of balance. It is a state of flexibility, allowing the most change and versatility. Most spirits begin in a neutral state and it is the state which they generate passively. Even once an alignment occurs, if the practitioner does not continue to draw in Qi of their alignment their spirit will eventually return to a neutral state, but they will feel weakened. This is why I was previously reluctant to align myself.

However, I don’t have the time to continue cultivating without being able to draw from the elements. So in order to retain my spirit in a neutral state, I must balance the elements with each other. The result will be that I should be able to draw from any source of Qi and use it for cultivation. Doing so will be hard on my body, however, which means I will have to reform and temper it to withstand the process of purifying even fire and lightning Qi.

At present, I had passable control over the air, but not a true alignment. I could control it, but I doubted that I could use it as a weapon. Sighing, I pulled the Qi that I had been using to generate the whirlwind back into my body and leapt down from the tree.

“That is incredible, Little Bug,” Hien Ro exclaimed. “Despite your alignment to earth, you were able to achieve an air alignment in only a few hours!”

My eyebrow twitched slightly at the false praise. “I have been working on air alignment all along, Brother Ro,” I corrected him. “And I have far to go before I will be satisfied. My control over the air is laughable at the moment. I can generate a swift breeze, but I will not be satisfied until I can use it to strike a cutting blow from thirty yards away.”

“I am certain that it will be just a matter of time before you achieve your goal,” Hein Ro insisted.

“I am not,” I admitted to him. “And if you knew what my goal was, the very scope of it, you would not be either.”

“Okay then, what is your goal?” he questioned.

“To kill the Empress of the Divine Fates Empire.”

He blinked. “But she is the one who fought with the lord of the heavens! They fought to a stalemate! You cannot hope to … oh.”

I nodded. “There are worlds beyond this, entire universes, where the level of cultivation is much higher. The lord of this realm is in the late Diamond path. The Empress of the Divine Fates Empire is in the late stages of the Mythril path. They are not equally matched, it is only because he fought her in his own realm that he was able to eke out a victory. If he had faced her in hers, he would have been utterly destroyed. But I must kill Empress Nadia all the same.”

Hien Ro was quiet for a moment, looking at the ground. Then he looked up at me. “I still believe you can do it. It might take you a few years, but she doesn’t stand a chance against the little sage!”

“Little sage?” I asked

“You didn’t know? Everyone calls you that behind your back. Ever since you started coming up with brand new cultivation techniques which were better than any of the manuals they had in the Six Mountains Sect, everyone figured that you’d end up being a sage at the very least. So we started calling you the Little Sage instead of Little Bug when you weren’t around.”

“I don’t think I want them to call me that.”

“Well, what do you want them to call you?” he asked.

“Little Bug,” I insisted.

He laughed. “You are so strange. What is your real name, anyway?”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“I remember so many, but I forgot the one I was born with this time. But I am Little Bug now.”

Hien Ro looked surprise, then he nodded. “Oh. That explains it. I should have realized you remembered your past lives.”

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“What about you, Brother Ro? What are your goals for this life? Why do you cultivate?” I asked.

“I started because my parents wanted me to,” he explained. “I know that’s not a very good reason, but they had me tested and the cultivators said that I had a passable talent, so they’d take me if my parents paid thirty silver coins. That was almost all of their savings, so I worked hard to make sure it was worth it.”

It was my turn to be surprised. When the cultivators had taken me to the sect, they hadn’t asked for any coins. They had given my family a significant sum instead. Come to think of it, it was strange that they had traveled so far to test me in the first place. “What sort of test did they give you?” I asked.

“The first man held up a finger and asked me if I saw anything. I didn’t, at first, except for his finger sticking up. But then he said to keep looking, and eventually I saw a light,” he explained. “Then they had me look at a bunch of seeds, but I just said that you should eat all of them because I was kind of hungry and don’t know anything about farming anyway. Then they gave me a rock to hold and told me how to use it to cultivate. I don’t know if I was doing it right, but they said that I passed, so I guess I did?”

“That’s the same test they gave me.” I didn’t tell him about the symbol made of Qi, nor the fact that only one of the seeds was alive. As for the rock … he could obviously cultivate. It’s not uncommon for children to not realize at first when they’re actually touching their Qi.

However, it was depressing. In my life as Elisia, I had taken a similar test at age four and scored significantly better than Hien Ro, but I had received the same grade. A passable talent. I had a feeling that in Elisia’s sect, Brother Ro wouldn’t have been welcome. Not for thirty coins at least.

The cultivation level of the world Elisia had lived in was considered low because the spirituality was too low to ascend past gold. Only the richest and most talented golds were allowed to travel to a more spiritual world. Compared to that, my present world was even lower, with few cultivators ascending to gold. When they did, they were expected to put their affairs in order and ascend to the heavens in order to continue their cultivation as part of the heavenly lord’s army.

I knew that the local lord of the heavens was mismanaging his realm. Not only was he removing from this world the exact cultivators he should be encouraging to found their own clans and have large families, but he was draining this world of far too much Qi. While a tax was to be expected for his protection, it was better taken in the form of treasures than siphoned Qi itself.

I brought myself back to the conversation. “So that’s why you started cultivating. Why do you continue? Why are you following me?”

Hien Ro frowned as he considered the question very seriously. It took him several minutes to come up with an answer. “I want to see how far I can go. I wouldn’t be satisfied with myself if I gave up. My parents paid their life savings to give me this opportunity, and I won’t go home for good unless I can look them in the eye and tell them it was worth it.” He paused. “You know, that’s why we’re friends.”

“How’s that?” I questioned.

“I was trash when we met,” he admitted. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to open all of my meridians and enter the energy gathering realm. That’s why I started purifying my body early. I figured if I could tell them that their coin guaranteed me a long life, maybe that would be worth it. But then I had the little sage teaching me, and suddenly things were easier. And more importantly, you didn’t mind me selling all of your lessons to the Sect, and because of that they gave me all sorts of pills and spiritual stones and stuff to help me advance as well. I never would have gotten this far without you, Bug.”

I considered his explanation. He was nervous; I realized he might have thought that he was taking advantage of me, but I didn’t see it that way at all. “You’re not trash, Ro. You just needed the right teacher. And it was a lot easier to explain things to you to spread my methods to the rest of the sect than it would have been to teach everyone myself. I’m satisfied with how things worked out.”

Hien Ro exhaled in relief. “I’m glad you think so.”

“You should know, Brother Ro, that the path you’re walking right now might not be the path to a long life,” I warned him. “As an Energy Gathering cultivator you could live one hundred years more than a mortal, even if you never spent another moment in meditation. But if you keep following me, there’s a chance we’ll face a threat that I can’t protect you from. I’ll do my best, but I’m not strong enough yet to assure both of us survive. I might not even be strong enough to protect myself.”

“You took care of that bronze path cultivator fast enough,” He reminded me.

“Only because I lured him into an environment where I had an advantage and then trapped him,” I pointed out. “In a fight of martial arts I believe he would have easily overpowered me. He was midway through the bronze path and had the bodily strength to back up his Qi. My Qi is dense and pure, and I know a thousand and one things that I can do with it. But when it comes to raw power, I’m still in the purification realm, and in the body of a twelve year old.”

“Yeah, but a big one,” he pointed out. “You’ve grown a lot.”

I nodded. “Back to the question. Why are you following me despite the danger, Hien Ro?”

“You said cultivators don’t grow in greenhouses,” he reminded me. “Well, I want to be a cultivator. Cultivators seize opportunities when they’re presented with them. That’s what this is to me. An opportunity to follow the little sage and learn from him and face the same trials. I know it’s dangerous, and I’ll be facing danger that I’d never face back in the sect. But maybe I’ll grow faster if I have to grow faster .”

I sighed. He had to come up with a good answer, didn’t he? “Are you sure that’s what you want? Forced growth?”

He swallowed, sensing danger in my question. He was right. “I was stalling out again when you changed. I guess you, um, woke up? Or something. Didn’t you?”

I didn’t feel the need to explain what had happened to me at the exorcism. “How many of those low grade Qi replenishment pills do you have left?” I questioned.

“Huh? Oh, well, to be honest I’m out,” he admitted. I looked at him sternly.

“Didn’t you buy one hundred of them before we left?”

“The trip through the spiritual wasteland took a full month! How was I supposed to replenish my Qi without them?” he demanded.

I covered my face with a hand. “Very well. I was going to tell you to take one and then spar. Instead we’ll spar until you’ve exhausted your Qi, and I’ll teach you how to replenish it with meditation.”

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