5. Mushrooms

My first lesson with Di Ram was more of an interrogation. He demanded that I go over every detail of my breathing technique and how it combined with my body purification technique. He then showed me a diagram with meridians drawn on it, with arrows going in different directions. He instructed me to try to cycle my Qi in that pattern. While maintaining my breathing technique, of course.

I tried, but quickly ran into several roadblocks. Literally, my pathways did not flow in the directions described in the scroll. However, after a few moments, I came up with a close approximation.

“Don’t move,” Elder Di Ram said once I managed to get my approximation working. “Incredible. After only a few moments.”

“The scroll is wrong,” I said.

“I know. But it’s the best version that we have. It’s a body enhancement technique, but everyone’s channels for the muscles involved are slightly different. It normally takes some experimentation in order to get it right. You mastered it in record speed.”

“Body enhancement?” I asked, my ears perking up.

“That’s why I told you not to move. While you’re under that technique, you are much faster and stronger than you’re used to. You’ll have to relearn how to walk, how to run, and how to throw a punch, before you’re ready to use it in combat,” he informed me. He passed me a bar of iron, which was about half an inch thick. “Try to bend that.”

I tried. It resisted. I tried harder, focusing on maintaining the technique. It bent thirty degrees. I focused, and it bent further.

“There are many versions of this technique, and it goes by many names. I call it the Iron Monkey’s Strength. You should note that it isn’t an armor technique. You are stronger and faster, but in a fight you’ll take just as much injury. And it’s a full body technique. It has many strengths and weaknesses in a fight.”

I nodded, barely listening to him as he lectured me on those strengths and weaknesses. Honestly, I could already figure out most of them just from the way that it was affecting my body. I knew that my skin couldn’t stop a blade, that my bones would crack if they were crushed by a mace, just as they were before. But when he suggested that I perform the Kata that Pi Phan had taught me, I immediately rose to the challenge.

And failed. Repeatedly. Comically, even.

He sent me home and instructed me to practice the Iron Monkey’s Strength while eating. And he cautioned me repeatedly not to poke my eye out when I tried it. He also suggested that I have many chopsticks ready, as I was likely to break a few dozen.

~~~~~~~

One of the duties of junior sect members was to gather mushrooms in the forest. The older children were also expected to gather herbs, but only after they had been thoroughly educated on which herbs to gather and which to ignore, which to mark the location of, and which were being allowed to reach maturity or reproduce.

Mushrooms, however, were a free-for-all. Everyone knew what a deathcap looked like, but even that had its purpose. You just had to be careful when handling it.

In the sixth week of my stay with the Six Mountains Sect, I was sent with dozens of other children out into the forests surrounding the sect, armed with a basket, a few rations, a gourd filled with water, and a pocket knife. It was a competition, with rewards for the one who brought back the most valuable mushrooms, as judged by the alchemists of the sect. Contribution points would also be awarded for locating any other valuable resources.

I didn’t particularly care, but I went through the motions. It was more of a chance to explore the forest than anything else, and I was eager for that opportunity, but my eyes were more focused on the trees and other green fauna than mushrooms.

I quickly realized that the various plants had different levels of spirituality to them. I was given eight flags to mark any herbs I thought were valuable. As I wandered deeper into the forest, I used each of them on particularly dense herbs, and once on a tree whose acorns were so laden with Qi that I could smell them from ten meters away.

The few mushrooms I did find were lacking any particular spirituality, but I pulled them out of the ground anyway and threw them in my basket.

After several hours of solitary exploration, I heard the sound of raised voices. I nervously approached, and I realized that one of the voices was Hien Ro. He was arguing with four other boys. As I approached, the argument devolved into a shoving contest, and Ro was outmatched.

“We’re not suppose to fight without an elder watching,” I said, coming into the small clearing where the altercation was taking place. The leader of the boys turned to me and sneered.

“Oh great, it’s your boyfriend! Perhaps he will pay us the money you owe,” the boy, whose name was Li Lee, said derisively.

I frowned. They were arguing over money? “Why is he in your debt?” I asked.

“They’re lying, Bug,” Ro said immediately. “They bought our notes on body purification before the sect made copies and gave them to everyone.”

I considered the problem for a moment. “I still don’t understand. You bought something so valuable that when the sect found out about it they made it part of the curriculum. Why do you think that entitles you to a refund?”

“Because we paid for a secret technique, not your personal notes!” a second boy, Ko Ton, exclaimed.

“I never said it was a secret technique, just that it worked,” Ro exclaimed. “Anyway, Bug, they’re full of shit. I already asked the elders if I should refund the students who bought the technique and I was ordered not to. I was told that the students got what they paid for and they should be grateful for the opportunity to learn from a genius.”

“A genius? He’s not even started opening his meridians yet, and he thinks that he can purify his body?” Lee exclaimed. “Anyway, I tried your stupid method and it doesn’t work. So I deserve a refund. And if you don’t give me back my five silver, I’m going to beat you and your boyfriend every day.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“You only paid a single silver for the notes!” Ro argued.

“And every day I’m not repaid, I’ll be expecting you to pay another silver for the inconvenience!” Lee shot back.

I considered how to deal with this situation. “If the elders said you are not to be repaid, then that’s the end of the conversation.”

“The conversation isn’t over until I get my refund!” Lee said. “Now hand it over! Twenty five silver, five for each of us!”

“I couldn’t even if I intended to,” I said. “All I have is mushrooms.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to punish you now, and collect thirty silver from you tomorrow!” he threatened, and the five boys stepped forward. They entered threatening poses; they were older than us and therefore bigger, and they brought their bulk to bear.

Ro fell back until he was beside me, the bullies looming closer. They had herded him towards me and surrounded us during the conversation, and now it was unlikely we’d be able to get away.

“What do we do?” Ro asked.

“Defend ourselves a best we can,” I answered. I entered the stance that they had taught us and prepared to fight for real for the first time in my life. This wasn’t my older sister picking on me; if I was alone I probably would have simply accepted a beating then solved the problem by confiding in an elder. Di Ram was very protective of me, and he would have resolved this issue with the wave of a hand.

“You really think you have a chance?” Lee asked. He didn’t bother entering a stance; he simply spat in disgust, then charged.

I would have lost, if it were not for my lessons with Di Ram. I was outnumbered, and the bullies were larger than I was, and I had only been training in the martial arts for a few weeks. I was expecting to lose. Which is why, when I activated the Iron Monkey’s Strength and punched Lee in the chest, I was surprised to feel his sternum break beneath my palm. He cried out and was knocked back, and he did not rise.

The others, who had judged Ro to be the bigger threat, stopped charging my friend and turned to me in surprise.

“Was that a Technique?” Ko Ton asked, his voice almost reverent.

“The Iron Monkey’s Strength,” I answered. “Elder Di Ram taught me.”

“Iron Monkey?” the bullies’ number two asked, looking nervous for the first time.

“We still outnumber him,” one of the others said. “I’ll distract him. Put the other boy on the ground, then we’ll gang up on the little one. Even if he has a technique, he doesn’t have the experience to use it well.”

Unfortunately, that strategy worked. Now that he knew I had such a weapon, Ko Ton wasn’t willing to make the same mistake as Li Lee and charge into my range. He stayed just outside of my reach, kicking and throwing rocks at me to keep me at a distance as the others delivered a beating to Hien Ro. I grew increasingly frustrated with the situation.

Once they had beaten him to the point where he wasn’t trying to get up anymore, the four older boys turned on me together. I held the Iron Monkey’s Strength, but I had only two arms, and I couldn’t defend against them as they used their superior numbers and reach against me, striking me with their fists and feet.

Finally I caught hold of one of the boys and I pulled with all of my might, dislocating his shoulder. He cried out in pain, and his friend called out his name. Enraged, the boy pulled out his pocket knife, lunged forward, and stabbed me in the belly.

“Yon Xian you idiot!” Ko Ton exclaimed. “Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in if we kill another disciple!”

Xian only grew more angry as I held my wound, looking down at the blood soaking into my robes. “We kill them both. The elders won’t be able to prove that we killed them. If we take their stuff and bury it where nobody can find it, they’ll think it was bandits!”

As though he had been waiting for this, Hien Ro burst from where he had been playing opossum, dashing through the forest and away from the older boys. Three of the boys chased after him. Xian remained behind, his knife in hand.

“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “When you get to the afterlife, try not to be too resentful. You don’t want it to follow you into the next life, do you?”

“Follow your own advice,” I said, and I threw the rock that I had picked up when Ro’s departure had distracted him. It brained him, and he collapsed to the ground. Unconscious or dead, I did not check to find out.

Li Lee was still alive, making sounds like he was struggling to breathe. I left them both behind, heading back towards where I believed the sect to be in order to get treatment for my wound and relay the story to my elders.

I very quickly became lost.

The wound to my abdomen wasn’t bleeding any longer. It had stopped on its own, but I was worried about infection. I knew, without knowing how I knew, that if it festered there was a fair chance that I would die, and the last twelve years would have been wasted. That was a bit of a strange thought. Not fear of death, exactly. But annoyance that some little shit could have upset something I was planning. Something which I wasn’t even consciously aware of.

I wandered the forest, searching for the path which would lead me back to the sect. I didn’t find it. Instead I found a stream. Uncertain, I took off my robes and used the water from the stream to wash away the blood that had gotten on it, and my skin, while avoiding the wound itself.

I carried my robes in my arms for a while, continuing to search. Eventually, I realized that searching blindly was an idiotic idea. The spirituality should be thickest the closer I got to the sect proper, right? So I would follow the gradient, moving in the direction of the strongest source of Qi in the area until I found the compound. With my keen senses, I quickly decided on the correct direction and set out.

Instead of finding the compound, I found a tree. It was, strangely enough, a peach tree. It was the only one I had seen in the forest, and it stood in a clearing. Several of its branches were low to the ground, and I squeezed one of its fruit to test its ripeness. It was soft to the touch, so I picked it, and when I bit into it the juice ran down my chin.

I ate three of the peaches then rest against the back of the tree. I had wasted the last hour in my search. The gradient had been leading me here, not to the compound. I didn’t know why, this peach tree had been drawing vast amounts of Qi to itself. Its fruit was ripe with it, and as it sat in my belly, I began to cultivate, thinking that purifying my body now would reduce the chances of my shallow belly wound festering.

I focused on my breathing. I focused on the flow of Qi in my body. I allowed my awareness to expand, and I became aware of the Qi surrounding me, and I pulled that into my breath. I focused on my breathing. I inhaled Qi, but I did not exhale it, forcing it down into my core. I concentrated it there and circulated it, as I was told to do before trying to open my meridians, but instead of attempting that task, I instead used my body purification technique. I focused on my breathing. Inhale. Exhale. The Qi comes in through my nose. It leaves through my skin.

I lost myself in cycling. When I finally opened my eyes again, night had come to the forest, and I was still alone. I had not broken through, I had not opened any of my meridians. I was still at step three of the foundation realm. Yet I had succeeded in completely purifying my body.

I returned to the stream to wash the impurities from my skin. Once I had bathed, I returned to the peach tree, ate another peach, and fell asleep. My wound barely bothered me at all.

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