Chapter 41

The fox sat in the meadow, drinking in the sun. And the fire Qi of the sun as well. The subtle formation which had been scratched into the trees nearby caused a steady breeze to come in from some black rocks which had been laid nearby in a circle. It was a formation of all natural materials. Even the scratching of the formation lines had been done with a flint knife rather than metal.

The fox shuttered as it passed through the sixth stage of the initiate’s realm. It grinned. Cultivating in its natural form was so much easier, it thought to itself. It lingered for a few moments, then got up and went hunting.

Once more it wished that it could hunt the chickens of the Shen farm, but it knew better. It’s presence was tolerated, welcome even, by the Shens. But although he was a natural part of the land, the farmer killed the varmints that killed chickens. Even in the Before , the fox had known well enough to stay away from them.

It could just knock on the Shen’s family home door and ask for something to eat. They’d give it to him, he knew. But it was a fox, and a fox’s nature was to hunt.

Its cultivation meadow was to the south of the farm, and it continued going south until it reached a stream. It paused at the stream, noticing the tell-tale ripples of something in the water.

Faster than fast, it splashed into the stream, coming out with a small trout in its mouth. It grinned around its mouthful, dragging it to the beach and shaking it to snap its back. After it had died, the fox feasted.

With a full belly and its meridians as stretched as they could comfortably tolerate for the day, the fox returned to its den and took a nap.

Life was good for Ember, the spiritual fox of the Shen farm.

~~~~~

A few days later, beneath the hill that the children used to cultivate, a small rabbit reached the sixth stage of the initiate’s realm. Unlike the fox, its cultivation chamber was its den, but also unlike the fox it had not built its den itself. Rather, the small cavern that was large enough for a ten year old child to climb around in had been formed by the magic of a powerful earth cultivator.

So too had the lines of the formation deep within the earth been carved by magic into the basalt and the granite. The rabbit was the youngest of the four spirit beasts of the farm, but it had one of the best cultivation chambers, and it was eager to exploit it.

“Clover!” a child’s voice called. “Clover where are you! Come cuddle!”

The rabbit blinked. How long had she been cultivating? She’d reached the sixth stage minutes … was it minutes? Maybe hours ago. She had a tendency to lose track. Her stomach twinged, and she realized that she should go get something to eat soon.

“Clover!” the voice of the five year old girl shouted.

Okay, so first she would get some cuddles, and then she would go eat.

The rabbit hopped out of the cultivation circle and found the girl in the largest chamber of the subterranean den. She hopped into the girls arms and allowed herself to be cuddled by the girl who wore an uncut ruby around her neck.

Life was good for Clover, the spiritual rabbit.

~~~~~~

“Hah! Is that all you got!” the boy shouted, and the spiritual monkey screeched as a sudden gust of wind blew it from the side, knocking it out of the air. It struggled to reclaim the currents which had kept it aloft, but it found its powers suddenly locked down.

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It slammed into the muck below it. Yesterday’s rain had left the field muddy, and the Shens had just fertilized. The monkey spat out a bit of fertilizer that had gotten in its mouth and glared up at the child who was flying ten feet off the ground.

It screeched at the boy, but the boy responded by raising a hand and another gust of wind blew the monkey away.

The monkey cursed and fled.

It wasn’t fair, it reflected. It had thought that restricting the boy from using hands or feet would ensure a victory, but ever since the boy had entered the foundation realm, or what the master of the Shen family was calling the foundation realm at least, the boy’s magic was ridiculously powerful and the monkey, despite having reached the eighth stage of what the Shens called the initiate realm, couldn’t keep up.

Once it had gotten a fair distance away from the boy, the monkey leaped into the air and called on its own magic to allow it to fly up to the lofty tree house which the humans had built for it. It rummaged through the stuff strewn about the floor – mostly junk and old food – it finally found the spiritual stone that the Shen matriarch had paid it with last year.

The air spirit inside of it reacted with the monkey’s own. The monkey carried it with it to the top of the tallest tree in the forest and sat. Carved into the trees and the stones of the forest to the west of the farm were little pieces of a formation that, together, drew in wind Qi. This tree sat right in the center of the current that led to the cultivation hill of the children.

It was the monkey’s secret spot. Or so it thought. With the Qi current, the only place higher in wind Qi was the top of the hill itself. It could cultivate their when the children weren’t using it. But that would make it dependent upon the Shens, and although it admitted to itself that having a warm house to live in during the winter was nice, it wasn’t snowy out right now and there was no reason to pretend that he needed the humans.

It plopped the stone down in the little basket that it had found at the top of the tree and – wait, why had there been a basket at the top of the best place to cultivate the wind in the first place?

The monkey thought about the question for a minute, then decided that it was just luck. It sat on the highest branch of the tree in the lotus position and cultivated.

It didn’t break through, but it meditated on what it had seen the boy do with his magic.

If only he could do that, Thume, the spiritual monkey of the Shen farm thought to himself.

~~~~~~

In the pond to the north of the Shen farmhouse, children played in the pond, holding on to a giant carp as it raced around much faster than they could swim on their own. Like the other spiritual animals, its home had been modified to enhance the Qi that gathered around it, and like the others it had been making steady process since it had spoken to the humans and asked for help with its cultivation.

Unlike the other animals, however, it wasn’t expecting any breakthroughs anytime soon. It kept this from everyone except for the two masters of the farm who could see straight through him, but the carp was in the eighth stage of the foundation realm.

It was also two centuries old.

It smiled back to the day when it had sensed the boy fishing in the lake. Not the day that it had allowed itself to be caught, nor all of the times when it had cleverly taken the boy’s bate and left him none the wiser.

No, the carp had noticed the boy the first time he had arrived with his monster of a father to fish. That had been six years ago. The Carp had watched the boy grow, both normally and spiritually. The boy’s spiritual progress was prodigious, reaching a stage that many adults could be proud of within a few years.

And so the fish had taken a chance. It had asked the boy to introduce it to the boy’s master, who was also his father, in the hopes that the cultivation expert would be wise enough to see the benefits to raising a spiritual fish near his home.

And the gamble had paid off.

The children, screaming and laughing as they lost their slimy handholds, swam back to the shore.

“Elder Pike, we’re going inside for dinner now,” the children shouted as they dried themselves and dressed. “If you’re going to eat with us then Mom says you have to do dishes.”

The carp acknowledged their words with a sagely nod. It settled in the bottom of the pond to cultivate, but then its stomach got the better of it. With a “Pop!” it turned into a human and dressed itself in the clothes that were kept in a small cache nearby that kept them dry from the rain.

Pulling on his mustache, which drooped down to his shoulder blades, Elder Pike jogged to catch up to the children.

Life was good.

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