A week passed, during which Lu spent almost every hour of the day doing one of four things: enhancing his spiritual veins, cramming as many spells into his head as he could manage, bartering for-slash-with various organs and cores to fill in the few gaps that remained in his resources for the next realm, and concocting a lesson plan for Bo and his compatriots.
The latter three took some time away from the former, but as the penultimate month reached its second half, Lu prepared to become an inner disciple.
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It was deep into the evening when the time came. Not quite nearing sunset, but decidedly past afternoon.
Lu carefully packed away his scrolls, and tidied his room. He debated whether to wear his magical undergarments while ascending, and eventually concluded it would be wise, soul irritation or not. He set out his good scented candles, and positioned them for maximum ambience before lighting them with a snap of his fingers. He cured his light hunger with a late evening meal.
And then he ran out of things he could reasonably procrastinate with, and finally sat down.
Ah, it’s going to be fine. Absolutely fine. My stomach didn’t hinder me at all on the way up, so why should that change? He took a deep breath, not to cycle qi but simply to calm down. Just do it. Don’t even think about what might go wrong.
A small spirit stone, almost entirely used up, appeared in his right palm. With his eyes closed, Lu’s attention drew inwards as he began to pull the last of the qi into his body.
His internal landscape appeared slightly different from how it had been at the bottom of the realm… but only slightly. Looking at it as a whole, there was a slight fuzzy quality to his spiritual veins that hadn’t been present – it was only when he looked closer and deeper that the complex capillaries he had added to his spiritual circulatory system became visible, the sub-cellular veins supplying qi to each individual cell rather than simply allowing it to diffuse through his tissues naturally.
It looked correct; as perfect as he could make it with his spiritual stomach taking up a chunk of his midsection.
Lu breathed in one last time, and began the cycle. His dantian spun, stirring up a whirlpool as it had a thousand times before, and the spirit stone’s qi adhered to the surface. With a subtle kneading motion the qi became part of him, and in that moment he finally broke through.
A tremor in his chest caused Lu’s eyes to fly open as he coughed out the few loose dregs of qi, and for a moment he feared he was having a heart attack – but no, it was almost the opposite. An intense, tight feeling followed by relief as his dantian swelled before compacting, the motions following his rapid heartbeat; each expansion compressed his lungs, putting a strange-feeling pressure on the inside of his ribs, but it never reached the level of actual pain.
For a minute Lu struggled to breath in time with this second heartbeat, before giving up and simply holding his breath. Ten contractions passed, and then ten more, and with each one the feeling of pressure lightened slightly. By the time he counted a full hundred, it was barely noticeable from outside.
Another few minutes, and finally the contractions stopped. Lu looked inwards to find that his dantian was tiny – though not quite the grain-of-sand-sized crystal one started with in the very beginning, it definitely appeared to be well within the size range of a first realm disciple’s.
Letting out a shaky sigh, Lu smiled. While it looked small, the amount of qi contained within was actually exactly the same… meaning that he was now an inner realm cultivator. All the nervousness he had inside transformed into elation, and as he sprung to his feet he let out a whoop of joy.
“HA! Take that, doubters! This Lu has finally surpassed all your expectations!” Faces flashed in his mind’s eye, dozens of them in quick succession. I’m now higher realm than half the people who’ve mocked me over the years. Oh, I’m going to rub this in all their faces! In fact, I’m going to do it right now!
Halfway through the door Lu acknowledged that he was having some sort of manic episode brought on by ascending a major realm for the first time, and restrained himself slightly – but then he kept going out the door anyway. I have to celebrate! I feel so full of energy – it feels a dozen times better than going from second to third! In fact, it was slightly hard to walk; he kept bouncing up off the floor, his footfalls more powerful than his muscle memory was accounting for. Qi thrummed through his veins, its circulation through each of his muscles no longer a conscious thing he had to focus on, but rather simply a background process. His muscles felt loose and jittery, and as he gripped the doorknob of the entrance to his building, the metal actually deformed under his hand.
Ow-! What in Hell’s name is..? Lu looked down, turning his hand over and flexing his fingers. There didn’t seem to be any visible damage. What was that? He clenched his fist, but the flash of sharp pain had entirely disappeared. His hand felt perfectly healthy. The knob, on the other hand, was basically destroyed; it had split like the rind of a crushed melon under the pressure of his fingers and palm.
This… isn’t normal! Shouldn’t his physical dexterity and grace have increased along with his brute strength?
The shock of pain had cleared his head slightly, and Lu looked inwards. Something’s gone wrong. Why is- holy shit, my heart! Immediately, Lu’s attention locked onto the frantic beating in his chest – he didn’t know how he hadn’t realised it, but his heart-rate was dangerously fast. Is that… fifty beats a second? Even more? But I feel fine!
Gingerly, Lu moved to the side of the door and sat. Okay, calm down. I’m obviously not dying or anything. Taking a quick inventory of his body, it seemed that everything was running incredibly fast; not only did his blood thunder through his veins with a speed exceeding a raging river, his other organs were keeping pace. His lungs were sending oxygen into his bloodstream, his digestive tract had already dissolved his earlier meal, and his nervous system was coordinating everything without any visible issues.
He swallowed, and watched as the saliva was reabsorbed by his body in an instant, the water and nutrients routed around as the glands in his mouth immediately refilled with liquid. Okay. Okay. I’m, I seem to be… under something like a permanent movement art? That explains my issues moving around. But what’s causing it?
His sense moved to his stomach, but the organ failed to become miraculously penetrable. Frustrated, he moved to his ki channels, and they appeared to be fine but for that same increase in speed – but feeling the ki rushing through his system sparked off a lead to follow. The Quickening, the Junk Dog baseline movement technique. Is that what this is? The Quickening was activated in a basically identical manner to standard muscle reinforcement, just pushing Ki into them and moving. My qi reinforcement has become close to automatic. Is that the issue?
Squeezing his stomach, he attempted to manually slow the flow of ki – no change; energy continued to bloat each of his cells, the ki following the lead of its earthly counterpart in perfect lock-step.
Damn. Do I need to stop my qi flowing as well?
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Lu’s tenement was as boring as it always was. If he didn’t visit it so often, Bull was convinced it would disappear from his memory without the slightest sign of its passing.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
At least its quiet in the halls, unlike my building. He hadn’t encountered other disciples more than a handful of times over the years he had been visiting, and when he did they were generally there for Lu as well. Ah, the benefits of living in the cheapest place in the sect, I suppose.
Unlike the rest of the building, Lu’s door was immediately recognisable by the dents in its surface. With a smile, Bull reared back his fist to complete his occasional ritual, but as his he swung forward the door opened inwards.
“Bull!” Stopping his fist was easy; he hadn’t been putting in even a fraction of his strength, the lengthy windup entirely for show. “Here, take this. I need you to buy me some groceries.”
Bull reflexively caught the tossed object – Lu’s expanded purse, what the Hell? – before fixing his friend with a questioning stare. “Pardon? Do I look like a servant to you?” He tossed the purse back, which Lu caught without looking.
He was dressed in an oddly slapdash manner, his robe hastily done up and wrinkled. He smells odd, too – is that blood? Ah, cooked meat, I must have caught him in the middle of breakfast. That explained the disgruntled look on the man’s face; despite it being the case for months now, he always hated it when anyone acknowledged his need to eat. As though it isn’t a common hobby.
“Please, Bull. I…” The disgruntlement grew more pronounced. “Can you do this as a favour? Just grab whatever’s available, as much as you can get. I’m… It’s for a thing.” His voice was strange, as though he was deliberately speaking slowly.
Bull cast out with his sense, and a moment later the smile he had dropped returned. “Fourth realm! Lu, why didn’t you say it right away? Congratulations!” The man’s eye twitched. “Come on, we need to celebrate! I’d offer to pay for everything, but since we’re both filthy rich at the moment…” Belatedly some other details of the man’s condition filtered in, and Bull stilled. His brow furrowed. “Lu, why do you have blood under your nails? You’re sweating.”
The man’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged for almost a full second. When he finally spoke, his voice was filled with feigned nonchalance. “Ah, well you see… I wanted to prepare a celebratory feast myself, but wouldn’t you know it, I ran out of ingredients.” He held out his purse, beckoning Bull to take it. “So would you please help me out and fetch me some things from the market? Seriously, anything.”
Bull readied a reply, but the words died as he watched Lu casually reach into his purse with his other hand, draw out a cut of spirit beast meat, and put it into his mouth. In the ensuing a moment of silence, during which Bull’s expression became more and more incredulous, his friend continued to devour the entire slice of raw, bloody meat.
“…Is this a prank?” If so, then further congratulations, because you got me.
As if Bull’s words had broken an illusion, Lu suddenly seemed to realise what he was doing and looked down. “Damn it, not again!” Once more he tossed the purse, this time with a fierce overhead throw. It impacted Bull’s chest with a sharp sound, managing to sting his chest a little. “Take it! Take it away! Please Bull, I’m asking you for a favour here!”
For the second time in the same minute, Bull had no words. The moment his attention wavered, Lu began licking the smears of blood from his hands, again with seemingly no conscious thought at all. “…Alright, but first I want an explanation. What the Hell is going on?”
“N-nothing! I’m-”
“Lu, you are the worst liar on the planet, a mean feat given that we’re sharing a mountain with Bo and Cobo.” Bull fixed him with a stern glare. “This is obviously something strange. Is your consumption acting up?”
The sect’s newest inner realm disciple looked to one side and then the other, as though searching for eavesdroppers, before gritting his teeth in an expression of indecision. Finally, he sighed. “Fine, come in. But I expect you to bring me groceries in return!”
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“So this is the same thing that happened to Jiendao?” Most of Lu’s explanation had been so technical and idiosyncratic, using words the man invented to describe other words he invented, as to fly over Bull’s head – and it didn’t help that half his sentences were at double-speed. But that part, at least, he understood.
Lu popped a strip of steak – normal beef, not the precious pill ingredients they had spent two weeks harvesting – into his mouth, chewing for a fraction of a second before swallowing. “That’s what you got out of it?” Bull replied with a raised brow, and Lu sighed. “In part, yes. But mostly it’s just my body stacking the enhancements; my mind and soul are fine.” His plate was empty, so Bull swapped it with the next one, a rice and egg dish that Lu basically inhaled. “I’ve already figured out how to stop it, but if I do that now, I’ll be hit with-” he gestured to himself “-All this the moment I need to use the combined enhancements in battle. Better to ride it out in a controlled setting.”
“And you’re certain this is temporary? You seriously freaked me out back there, Lu.” The man disliked eating at the best of times. Raw meat? It already seemed like something out of a strange dream, his brain looking at the singular memory that didn’t fit and trying to label it a hallucination.
“Absolutely.” A pause. “Probably. It feels callous to say, but I’m glad Jiendao’s accident happened when it did; if I had to work this out from complete scratch I think I’d go mad.”
Bull continued to man the stove as his friend ate. It was an incredibly surreal experience, and somewhere along the line they both agreed to hold off on any celebrations until Year’s End.
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Lu licked his lips. Although his unnatural hunger had petered out after about twenty hours, he still got pangs of it occasionally. Nothing serious, at least in the past two days – the longest attack had lasted a handful of seconds, occurring right after he tested his stacked enhancements for the first time in a spar – but their continued presence told him that just like his need to eat at all, this probably wasn’t a problem that would go away on its own.
Is my consumption trying to mutate me? Is that what this is all about? His explanation to Bull had been… creatively enhanced, where the exact bounds of his confidence were concerned. And he claims I can’t lie. Bah! I lie just fine, when I’m fumbling about in the dark! Despite his Comprehension helping him along, the processes continuing to occur in his body were largely mysterious.
That’s why I’m doing this. I need to examine a broader range of consumption, not just my friends.
Four warriors were lined up before him, standing in a mostly-cleared field. Unlike their antics in Persimmon’s foyer, today they seemed focused and sharp. It was a bit unsettling; the way their eyes followed him reminded him of a group of predators, ready to pounce on any perceived weakness. Maybe I should have brought my human students along after all?
…No, no, that’s definitely something that should wait until at least the second lesson.
“Greetings, students. Why don’t we start with some basic information: my name is Lu, as I’m sure you recall, and I am a cultivator of the fourth realm.” It sent a little shock down his spine to say it, complications be damned. “For reference, that means I am very roughly equivalent to a strong Raidboss.” I think. Honestly, those titles are really more of a distinction of responsibility than power, at least as far as Junk Dog was concerned. “I will be thirty-two years old in the spring, and in addition to cultivation I practise the consumption of space.” A small ripple passed through the tree unfamiliar men as they heard that last sentence. Probably my age. I’d be considered an old man by their species' standard.
“I will be your instructor for today, and perhaps going forward as well if I like the look of you. I am here to teach you cultivation, and you are here to learn it. Now, let’s hear your names, consumptions, and something you know about cultivation.” He gestured. “You on the left, start us off.”
Bo smiled, seemingly enjoying Lu’s instructor persona. “I’m Bo, son of Moe. Consumption of water. And…” He thought for a moment. “It’s good at doing a lot of different attacks, but takes forever to learn.”
Lu held in a sigh at Bo’s barely-acceptable answer, nodding to the next man in line.
The man made a hesitant sound. “…Eighteen-Coloured Entrails.” Of the four, he deviated most strongly from the standard Horrible Swamp template; his skin was mostly normal rather than translucent, coloured dark peach with a slight orange tint, while his body was thinner than the others’ bulky profiles. He had hair, though only a dusting of short bristles, and a pair of tusks protruded from his lower jaw.
“I consume poisons, green matter, water, and mud.” Oh, four different consumptions? That’s interesting. His teeth ground for a moment. “My understanding of cultivation is that it focuses the energy of this place into a space in the chest, forming a second stomach.”
That answer is… again, I can’t call it incorrect, but surely if he knows that much he could be bothered to ask the name? The word dantian isn’t exactly a secret. “Good to meet you, Sir Entrails.” Bit of a morbid name, but such is life.
The next man spoke without needing to be prompted. “Name’s Fourth Rodriguez by the Light of the Cloud. You can just call me Rod, though.” He smiled, showing off sharp teeth. His skin was an oily black with shocking splotches of yellow, almost like abstract lightning bolts against a midnight sky. “Mine is the consumption of water and reflection. As for cultivation…” A sharp laugh. “I can’t say I know anything about it! But Still Water wants me here, so I’m all yours, boss!”
Lu’s frown deepened further. “…Understandable, Sir Rod. I’m sure you’ll learn something today, at least.” He turned to the final warrior. “And you?”
“Big Dick Yon,” the man said, pointing to his chest. “Consumption of the self.” He threw his chin, which made the rooster-like crest going across the top of his head wobble, its scaled surface reflecting the sunlight.
He continued to speak, but Lu missed whatever his consumption fact was.
Ah, there it is, the regret. I was bracing for it, and yet it surprised me anyway. I understand now, why Elder Persimmon made that face when saying his name…
The man waited, and Lu cleared his throat. “…Yes, quite. I’m sure we’ll get along, Sir Yon. Now that introductions are over, I suppose I’ll start with the very basics…”