Chapter 33

Tren grinned as he strode through the ever burning ashlands. It was good to not need to rein in his power for once, and he was enjoying flexing his literal and metaphoric muscles. The Qi in the ashlands was thick and turbulent, and although Tren shifted through it like a rock thrown into a lake, causing waves and disturbances, the environment was full of such waves and disturbanes and the majority of the world did not even notice his presence.

Except for that Gnasher-Cobra, he reflected, grinning. It had been a while since he’d had a good fight, and he’d rather enjoyed the combat against the Demon-Beast which had attacked him in the night after he had made camp. He looked down at his ring, a spacial tool which contained the beast’s corpse, preserved and frozen in time moments after its death. While it was mostly fire aligned, perhaps Wensho would have some use for its hide.

He would feed the meat to the children, when he returned. The venom sacs he had carefully disposed of already, rendering them inert with his Qi before burying them in the ground carefully. The meat itself was mostly fire aligned, but it was just the sort of thing to help the children’s spirits burn away any lingering impurities in their bodies. Won in particular would benefit, but all of the children would get something out of it, he was certain.

He grinned and took another step, crossing a thousand yards with each footfall as he employed the Titan’s Walk technique. He reached out with his senses, searching for the fire spirit that he would give to his daughter. He knew that it was in the ashlands, where its previous partner had died two centuries ago. Unfortunately that was all that he knew, and it might take him some time to locate.

He heard a sudden rattling, and another snake with the head the size of a horse snapped out of the ground, looking at him.

Tren looked back. It was a good thing he hadn’t brought the children, he grinned wryly. He flexed his power, tugging at his Qi.

The snake abruptly vanished back into its burrow.

Tren blinked in surprise. He wasn’t expecting the reptile to have such a strong sense of self-preservation. He considered cracking the earth and driving it from its home, but decided that would just be rude. Nobody lived in the Ashlands, and the only humans who visited were cultivators searching for resources, looking to challenge themselves, or seeking cultivation spots to advance through one bottleneck or another.

If the snake were a threat to people, Tren told himself, then he would have killed it. But the spirit-snake was just peacefully living its life in the Ashlands, part of the ecosystem. The Cobra had attacked him and paid for its mistake, this snake was avoiding him. He gathered his Qi, and took another step, moving a thousand yards in a blink.

When night fell on the third day since he had parted with the children, he made camp and scratched a small formation into the dirt. It was a fire-Qi finding formation, and it gave him a magical map of the ashlands for thirty miles in each direction. He looked at the highest concentrations of fire-Qi and sighed. The spirit was not close by, or it would be much brighter than any of the spots he saw on the map.

Well, it had taken two months to find Zephyr. He had promised to be back in two weeks, but he was confident that Zenith would watch over the children however long it took Tren to find his target.

Rather than gathering firewood, Tren carved another formation into the ground. Then, grinning, a spark flew from his hand, a small burst of fire Qi from the earth cultivator to start the ever-burning focus. Pulling a pan and a slice of cobra meat from his spatial ring, Tren cooked his dinner, then finished making camp once he had eaten.

Even if he found the spirit tomorrow, he reflected, he’d continue to ‘look for it’ for at least the full two weeks. The children needed time with the other masters. He was very much looking forward to seeing their growth when he returned.

~~~~~

Tan sat on the wheeled platform, and he flexed his Qi. The simple cart-like structure weight close to a ton, weighted as it was with bags of sand. Zenith watched the boy work his magic as the wind in the world around them began to shift and come together in a coherent pattern.

A steady wind began to blow, catching the massive cart’s sails, like that on a ship, but there was no ocean nearby to practice on, but the principals of force were the same whether you used sails to power a cart or a boat.

The wind began to blow in a unified direction as the child directed its flow. At first nothing happened as the wind strained against the weight of the cart. The boy shot Zenith a frustrating glance, then glared at the sandbags weighting down the cart. Then he stubbornly set his jaw and put more effort into the casting, drawing out more power from the air.

Zenith watched without comment, even as he saw several mistakes that the boy was making. That was fine, the casting didn’t have to be perfect. He would let the boy do it the hard way first, then educate him in easier methods to illustrate the difference. Sometimes the hard way was the correct method. Overpowering the ambient Qi and claiming it for yourself, as the boy was doing in his casting, was exhausting and taxing compared to simply guiding it. There was usually no reason to do it that way …

Unless you were combating another wind cultivator, of course.

The boy had the power. At the ninth stage of the initiate’s realm, the boy could control a significant bubble around him if he wanted to. Moving the air in unison for a purpose like this wasn’t a difficult exercise. In fact, it was easiest to do with a formation that would require only a bit of power behind it to work.

Tan was doing it the hard way to develop the skills needed to become a proper Wind Cultivator, and as the cart began to move, Zenith cracked a smile.

“Keep it up, boy!” he called. “Don’t give it any slack now that you have it moving! Push it all the way to the finish line!”

Tan grinned and pushed with his power, driving the wind to drive the cart through the courtyard. Once it reached the line scratched in the dirt to mark the goal, the boy let up and the wind died down. He turned to Zenith, who nodded at him with a proud expression on his face.

“Good job. Now put it back where it started!”

~~~~~~

Ko, dressed only in simple modesty cloths, stepped nervously out onto the water, reinforcing the surface with her Qi and willing it to support her weight. She felt the wet surface beneath her bare foot and expected, despite the exercises she’d been doing, that her foot would simply pass straight in.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It did not.

The water churned beneath her as the palace children continued to play in it, ignoring the cultivator on the instructions of her master, who insisted that the distraction of the screaming little brats was good for her.

Balance.

That was the insight that she had come to, what lesson she had taken from the Mystery of the Strangled Flame.

While flame represented change, and earth represented endurance, and air represented adaptation, water represented balance.

When the world was out of balance, water corrected it. She had shared her insights with her new master, Rainard, who had nodded and sipped a drink of wine.

“So that’s the focus you’re working on now? Good for you,” he said. “You’re right of course. And also wrong. Water changes. Water can endure. Water can adapt. But water also balances the other forces. Let’s focus on this lesson for a while by working on your balance.”

And so he had casually walked out onto the water, his foot stepping on the surface as though it were as solid as earth. “Let’s see you do this,” he had challenged.

She had splashed straight through the water the first hundred times she had tried. Rainard had provided guidance along the way, watching with one eye, the other on the snack cart, as she made steady progress in the mental exercises, breathing patterns, and Qi movements.

When her foot did not pass through the water, she nervously began putting some weight on it. For a half a second the surfce bowed beneath her, and her foot sank a quarter of an inch. Then she refocused her intention and it firmed, and she sank no further.

She took one nervous step onto the foot, and then she had her whole weight upon it. She put her other foot down on the water and focused on keeping that foot from falling through as well.

Slowly, so slowly, she began to walk on water.

~~~~~

Won focused a bit of Qi before his finger, and he ignited it. It burst into light and heat, just like he knew it would, but the flame lasted for only a second.

He did it again, for the same result.

He frowned. Despite his recent insight, despite his recent advancement, he still couldn’t figure out how to make a self-sustaining flame. As soon as his fire Qi had expended its power, it changed into air and water Qi.

His senses over the other elements was weak.

He complained about this to Pyter, who shrugged. “So improve them,” the man had instructed. “And do not neglect the earth in your studies. There are four elements. Not one, not two, and not three. Your insight that fire is a state of changing and becoming was profound. Now you must study what becomes what.”

Won sighed and closed his eyes, expanding his senses. The sources of fire Qi in the room were so bright to him that it was hard to sense the air and water. And the earth was dimmest of all. But he focused.

He slipped into the Sublime State of Clarity by accident, the first time, and suddenly the room was much brighter. He lost focus and slipped out of it again. He blinked.

And he began working on doing it again, trying to maintain it for longer this time.

He had been told to work on his senses, so he worked on his senses.

When he had reported his progress to Pyter, the man had nodded. “Excellent job. It’s quite unusual for a child your age to enter that state on their own. You should be very proud.”

Won was, with those words of praise, very proud of himself. He thought about mentioning that Pao and Tan could both enter that state as well, and do it easier than he had managed, but he kept that to himself.

It wasn’t his job to sing their praises, after all.

He grinned, and he went sublime, then he lit a candle and watched it burn.

He focused on the candle as the earth became fire became air and water.

When he finally saw what he’d been missing it was so obvious that he slapped his forehead.

The fire burns the earth, and becomes air and water. The everburning focus worked by pulling earth Qi into its crucible and burning it.

Once more he relayed his findings to his new master, who once more praised him.

“But what am I going to do with this insight?” Won had complained. “I have a fire spirit, I can’t control earth Qi.”

“Not with that attitude,” the fire cultivator had said. “But I think that is enough profound wisdom for you today. Tomorrow, I will show you how to enhance your body using your Qi without harming yourself.”

Won blinked in surprise. “Do you think that I am ready for that?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t teach you. Don’t worry. But eat an extra large meal tonight, and a large breakfast in the morning. Your body will need the fuel.”

~~~~~

Pao blushed as Mistress Nora massaged his back. Her Qi went deep into his body, exploring and measuring as she evaluated him.

“An earth cultivator’s greatest weapon is their body,” she explained as she contemplated the weapon that the boy had been making of himself. “You can fling a rock with your magic, but compared to simply throwing a punch? Why make things more complicated? Become the rock. Become your own weapon, and you will never be disarmed.”

“How do I make my body into a weapon?” he asked when she finished her evaluation and he put his shirt back on.

“You’re already on the path. Allow me to show you a few secrets.” She brought him out into the courtyard, where a stone the size of a horse rested on the ground.

“Lift that over your head,” she instructed.

Pao blinked in surprise. Then, without questioning her advice, he enhanced himself with earth Qi and began to try.

Nora watched with amusement as the boy struggled to find the handholds. That was another lesson.

Sometimes in order to move the earth, you needed a fulcrum. But that would be an isight that would be best if the boy found it on his own.

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