Less than two-hundred days. Probably closer to one. Disciple Lan had said that the exact date was yet to be settled, but that it would definitely be happening sometime in the summer. It was still winter, though the very tail-end of it, which meant he had at least one entire season to prepare.
Obviously, he wasn’t planning to go himself. But the way he planned for his life to go, and the way it actually went, proved to… Diverge, every now and then. I can’t be sure an Elder won’t strongarm me into the delegation without my consent – and given that I’m legitimately the most experienced person in dealing with the locals, I can’t even say they’d be wrong to. He would have to be a fool to not prepare for the scenario. And if it never occurs, all I’ve lost is a little time and effort.
So with that in mind, when Lu returned to his room the first thing he did was pack all his experiments away into a corner, pick out one of his more comfortable cushions, and settle in for a long session of channel carving.
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His spiritual stomach was still something of a mystery to him. Over time he had grown a little more familiar with its states; he could tell how much ki he had, how fast it was growing, whether a particular technique was used efficiently or not…
But the actual mechanics of it? Completely unknown. His imparted knowledge had little to say about biology, and what it did have to say seemed more philosophical than practical. Almost religious. If he wanted to know more, he would need to discover it himself.
So, when he was too drained of ki to continue channeling, he turned his experimental impulses inwards. My stomach can’t expel ki when it’s sufficiently empty, but it still squeezes itself in response to qi. And there’s some sympathetic response in my physical stomach if I keep poking it; nausea, cramping, an excess of bile. Can I get it to go the other way, sooth the spirit by calming my physical digestion?
Teas of soft-barked trees and ginger root saw little success. But when his mind turned to alchemical remedies, he realised something. I’ve been imbibing pills made from spirit herbs, pills with qi in them, without my stomach going wild. Not only his nourishing pills, but also the medicines he had taken in the days following his return. Why is it making an exception for the pills?
This bore further investigation. Lu gathered a few of the lowest-quality spirit stones he kept in his room, and set up his cauldron.
Qi-replenishment pills were the simplest type of pills to concoct. They consisted of nothing but spirit stones and water, both of which Lu already had on hand. Concocting them took only a minimal effort; he placed the stones and water in the cauldron, set it to simmer, and stirred. Then he drew the qi out from the stones, but let it sit in the water rather than take it into himself – quickly, the water became more and more saturated with qi. When it reached maximum saturation and additional ki just condensed back into crystal, he increased the temperature and boiled the water off. As the space it inhabited shrank, the qi crystallised, and Lu kept stirring. Like spun sugar, strands of crystal gathered into clumps, which he further compacted with his sense, leaving him with a handful of small pills.
Immediately, he took one and swallowed it. I haven’t had need of a replenishment pill since I returned – I’ve had plenty of spirit stones, and not much reason to cast. He scrutinised the pill as it went down, but the moment it entered his stomach, and intersected with his reservoir of ki, he lost track of it. But it should still release the qi. Any second now…
A replenishment pill was basically just halfway-refined qi, and the moment it entered a person’s body, it would dissolve and fill them with energy. It was a way to get a relatively large amount of qi into someone quickly – whether because you were running low in battle, or as first-aid to an exhausted companion. Lu could feel the qi in his stomach, in a muffled sort of way, and as far as he could tell it wasn’t being destroyed. Even though it’s literally inside my spiritual stomach, and being immersed in ki.
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…Or is it? I constructed my stomach using spacial ki… Maybe it’s functioning as a spacial purse? There wasn’t much in the way of evidence, but it was also the only explanation he had that began to make sense of the situation. A pocket that can only be entered and exited at specific points. If it’s something like that, then can I..?
He tried something he had never done before; he drew out a thread of his sense, and fed it down his esophagus. He braced for the pain of his sense dissolving in ki, but even as it passed into his stomach… Nothing. Huh. Hypothesis confirmed, I suppose? His stomach – the physical organ – was suffused with qi, the pill having dissolved. He felt around the walls, but as far as his sense was concerned, from this angle his spiritual stomach just didn’t exist at all.
Should I try..? He poked his sense out the side of his stomach – and it came out the side of his spiritual stomach. This feels bizarre. He could feel both the qi and the ki, occupying the same volume, but on different… Spacial planes, is that the term? Something like that.
He messed around a bit, finding that while he could extrude his sense from inside, he couldn’t withdraw it. The moment it started going back in, it started interacting with his ki and damaging itself. Can I also go in through the bottom opening? …Yes, it seems that the tube going to my entrails works the same way.
Hmm. Okay, this is interesting, but does it mean anything on a practical level? Presumably he could get at his stomach with spiritual veins now, though he would still need the channels to get around the organ. Gah, I wish it were the other way around. My stomach seems to be already tempering itself, I don’t need to double up!
…Ah, but wait! This means I can run the veins directly out of my stomach! That was a small relief; reconfiguring the circulation to temper himself while not crossing the boundary would have meant a lot of trial and error. So I can skip… A bunch of work I would have had to do months from now, and maybe not at all. Great. But still, this was a good discovery. And it implied that there were other mysterious properties of his consumption to uncover; he just needed to keep an inquisitive mind.
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Two weeks passed. Lu’s channels neared completion, and he could confirm that they worked as well as he had hoped. His stomach didn’t seem to react to qi inside the channels at all – whether because it couldn’t detect it, or because it considered it a part of itself, he couldn’t say. The circulation would still be less than perfect, and he might need to bang his head against that right at the end, but he was optimistic that he would be entering the second realm soon. Within a year. That’s about average; much better than my first time.
He was taking a short reading break, letting his stomach refill, when someone knocked at his door. “Ah, one moment!”
He opened his door, and… Well, that is a very, ah, festive garment.
“Happy Year’s End, Lu!” Bull was wearing robes in a more formal style than he usually preferred. They were very green, with white fur trimmings, and obviously sewn to fit on a wide variety of bodies – and therefore, not fit any of them particularly well. Festival clothes, one could say peasant’s clothes, even, symbolising the transition from winter to spring. “I haven’t seen you lately. You didn’t forget about the festival, did you?”
Lu waved a hand. “Obviously not! I’ve simply been cultivating, as a diligent disciple should.” Usually Bull retains a confident bearing despite his short stature, but right now he looks like a boy dressed up in his father’s clothes.
“Oh?” Bull raised a brow. He had the matching hat, a sort of floppy two-peak thing that Lu actually didn’t know the name of, and the eyebrow disappeared under the snow-white rabbit fur trim. “Hmm, you really did change over the last year. Usually I’d approve… But today’s the first day of Year’s End, so I think a lapse in diligence is only appropriate! Come on, Lu, let’s hit the town!” He raised a bundle of fabric, and Lu realised with dawning horror that it was a match for Bull’s outfit.
“No! Bull, don’t think I’ll- I am absolutely not wearing-!” His friend advanced, brandishing the vivid green ensemble like a wicked talisman. There were bells on the hat. “At least let me get a tailored- ack! Get your hands off me!”
Once more a familiar scene played out. Bu Guanyin carried another man through the sect, tucked under his arm like a baby, unheeding of his protests. To those who had seen it before, it was almost nostalgic; a sign that even in changing times, some things would remain exactly the same.