4. A Business Arrangement
I awoke to someone pulling my foot. I wasn’t too alarmed, being used to my parents awakening me in similar ways at home, but I was immediately aware that I was not back in the village. I opened my eyes to see Pi Phon. He gestured me to be silent, and I realized that he was trying to rouse me without waking the other boys. A bit of consideration for his juniors?
I dressed in one of my two remaining clean robes and followed him outside. I noted that it was still predawn, but the sun was just behind the horizon, and the sky was beginning to turn gray.
“I’ll be waking you each morning at this time,” he informed me. “I expect you to be well rested. I don’t care when you fall asleep or if you nap, as long as it’s not on my time. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Elder Brother Phon,” I answered obediently. He seemed satisfied.
“Normally if an eleven year old joined our sect, they would already be in the body strengthening or perhaps the condensation stage,” he commented. “You’re a bit of an oddity. Normally the techniques I’m about to teach you are taught in groups and by scroll. You’re too old to learn alongside six year olds, and you can’t read. So you have me.”
He led me into a room, and it was like walking from water into molasses. The Qi density was simply absurd! I realized that the entire room was the focus point of a formation which was further condensing the already dense Qi in the atmosphere.
“You’re allowed two hours in here with me, which is why we’re up at this hour, and four hours throughout the day, although anyone with more seniority than you can kick you out of this formation at any time. You see those mats on the floor? Well, it’s one junior per mat. Once the rest of the sect wakes up there will be an attendant making sure that nobody double dips or stays past their allotment, but aside from that if the mats are full you have to wait for an opening or come back later. There’s about sixty of these lesser condensation buildings throughout the sect, however, so there’s usually enough room for all of our juniors to get their cultivation in.”
“The Qi is so thick in here,” I commented.
“Only compared to your village. When I first came here, I could barely sense a difference between this room and outside,” Pi Phon admitted. “Anyway, take a mat and I’ll talk you through some breathing exercises.”
I knelt on one mat near the door, and Phon took a mat nearby. He coached me on the correct rhythm of breath, encouraging me to close my eyes and really focusing on it.
“While you’re breathing in, remember that you’re not just inhaling air,” he encouraged me. “You’re inhaling Qi. That is how most of the Qi enters our body. It is inhaled, filtered through the heart, and brought to the stomach, where your core is. Your core generates it’s own Qi, but that’s a lesson for another day. As is the Qi from your skin. Focus on breathing. In and out. Feel the Qi in your breath.”
I could feel nothing else. It was so thick I was choking. While Pi Phon was encouraging me to try to sense the Qi in the air, I was struck by the realization that other cultivators struggled with this. He gave many different metaphors for what I should be feeling in the air, like it could be this thick and not be aware of it.
It was not a light scent, it was a choking perfume. It was not a spring dew in the air, but the overwhelming swelter of summer. It was not the taste of the ocean, unless you counted drowning in it.
I thought of saying something about this to him, but I kept silent. It was more important to master the breathing technique than to point out my discomfort. And I knew that being in the Qi dense environment was good for me. Even without my direct action, Qi at this level would enter my body and reinforce my system. Mastering the breathing technique would make that improvement several times more effective.
I was surprised when my teacher suddenly informed me that our two hours together was up. That passed much faster than I’d expected it to, but that was the way with cultivation sometimes. He gave me directions towards my next lessons. I was to learn to read and write from a scribe, who wasn’t very happy to have been set aside from his normal tasks specifically for the purpose of my education.
I continued to focus on my breathing throughout the lesson, and the rest of the day. I found that when I mixed it with my previous method of cleansing my body, which I did during my four hour period in the Qi rich concentration rooms, the efficacy was significantly increased. I mentioned as much to Hien Ro, who continued to pick my brain about body cleansing every chance he got.
Aside from cultivating with me, Ro would write down almost everything I said in a scroll which he’d acquired somewhere. He insisted on drawing pictures of men inside and making me draw lines of exactly how I was moving the Qi inside my body. Once again, I didn’t really think much of this matter.
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Time passed. Pi Phon was pleased with my breathing technique, but didn’t teach me any new cultivation techniques. Instead, he brought me into a courtyard and forced me to do a kata while maintaining my breathing technique. This was exponentially more difficult than the breathing technique itself, but he insisted that of the two, the breathing technique was most important to maintain. It was better to flub the kata than my breathing.
I was diligent in everything I did, but I was left feeling disappointed. I had known that I was different from mortals, but I had thought that once I was among other cultivators, I would find my peers. After spending time with Hien Ro and his friends, however, I quickly realized that I was simply too different. While it was pleasant to coach Ro and some others once they realized that my body purification method truly did work, the others were different. They laughed and made jokes. They talked about girls and spying on the woman’s compounds, including showing off the welts that they got on their bottoms when they were caught doing so.
For me, the spark just wasn’t there. Even when they tried to include me, I found myself more focused on maintaining my breathing and exploring my developing Qi channels. Together with my body purification, my Qi channels were truly opening up.
I quickly realized that, aside from the breathing technique, Pi Phon’s lessons were worthless. It’s not that he wasn’t trying, but that he was used to explaining things to a child who didn’t have my preternatural spiritual senses. He had been drilling me on breathing techniques for a week before he began instructing me on how to draw the Qi I was inhaling into my core – something which I had done naturally on my second day!
On the second week, he gave me a breakdown of the foundation realm, and I realized that my expectations were very different from the expectations others had of me.
Mastering the breathing technique was step one. Step two was drawing external Qi into my core. Step three through twelve would involve opening various meridians throughout my body. I would be examined in six months, and I was expected to have two or three of my meridians open. A normal child was expected to make this journey in three or four years. I was fairly confident that I was already in step three of the foundation stage, and could force open any of my meridians whenever I chose. I held back. I wanted to purify my body first.
It took me three days to master my purification technique from the time I first learned the breathing technique, developing my own circulation method on the fly which was, I thought, more natural to my anatomy than the one I was taught by Pi Phon. It wasn’t that the method taught to students of the Six Mountain Sect was wrong, but that it was simplified below that which I could manage, so I went with my more complex and difficult circulation method.
I even tried to incorporate it into the kata, although I quickly learned that was a little too much.
On the third week at the sect, I got into trouble. Hien Ro and I, actually. It turned out that Ro had been making copies of his notes that he’d been taking while we worked on body purification together and selling them to our peers. When we were caught, we were called before the elders, who read the scrolls with interest.
My friendship with Hien Ro had been remarked on long before, of course, but the assumption had been that he was teaching me body refinement, not the other way around. A second assumption was that I wouldn’t have the Qi capacity or control to actually manage it. The fact that, after three days in the sect, my impurities were no longer black rancid sludge added to the illusion. I still had impurities, but they barely made me smell worse than a normal boy as I worked them out of my body.
“Where did you get this information?” Di Ram, one of the elders asked me once it was clear that Hien Ro was a dead end. Hien Ro was honorable, insisting that the information came entirely from me, but it had been his decision to sell it, an act which he had not consulted me on, but he intended to split the profits with me.
“I made it up as I went along,” I admitted. “I wanted to get my impurities out, and I knew that I could do it with Qi, so I figured out the best way to do it based on what I felt inside.”
This caused a wave of consternation throughout the elders. It appeared that the technique that I developed on my own before even stepping into the foundation realm was far more advanced than anything they would ever consider teaching to a child. It was more along the lines of a technique that one of their bronze or silver path sect members would use before beginning a body refinement method.
That led to a closer examination of my progress, at which point it was discovered that I had leapt forward. As I had expected, I was in the third stage of the foundation realm. It was only my certainty that I needed to purify my body before proceeding which was holding me back from blowing through the foundation realm and entering the energy gathering realm, and I said as much to the elders.
Hien Ro looked at me with a slack jaw when he learned that I had been a mortal when he met me. He had thought that I had been recommended to the sect by a wandering master, who had given me some lessons already. He was on the eighth step of the foundation realm, which with the method taught at the Six Mountains Sect meant he had opened the liver meridian, which was viewed as the ideal time to begin purifying the body. He had assumed that our cultivation levels were equal.
“It appears that we have vastly underestimated your genius, Little Bug,” Di Ram said after questioning me among several of the notes that had been made on the master scroll confiscated from Hien Ro. “Why did you not ask for Pi Phon to increase the speed of your lessons? You could be receiving lessons alongside your friends in addition to the private tutoring we have arranged for you at this stage.”
I considered. “I hadn’t realized that. I think I would like that. However, the reason I did not say anything was because I was worried I would miss something important to my foundation. He has said already that I am receiving an accelerated course. To move too fast might mean missing an important detail which could cripple me later in life.”
“There is wisdom in those words,” Di Ram admitted. You will continue to receive the beginner’s courses in the morning, as well as attending me in the evenings for advanced courses. In the mean time, I am purchasing this scroll from the two of you for twenty gold pieces. Fifteen of those belong to Little Bug, the remaining five shall go to Hien Ra for taking these notes.”
And that’s how it was.