The Night Market was surprisingly convenient. On one hand, it was only open at night, which was a little bothersome when you didn’t sleep. But it was both primarily hosted and patronized by outer disciples, so it made sense. All of them needed to sleep, and since the outer sect was mostly nocturnal, the market was open when they were awake. I was sure there were better options for elders to get the things they needed, but for finding some low level healing pills for Su Li, it would do.
“Thank you for your custom, honored elder.”
I’d chosen which stall to purchase from by the smell. In stories, they always described pills as smelling ‘medicinal’. As a westerner, medicinal to me meant antiseptic, but I could see where they were coming from. The stall exuded a pleasant aroma, but a powerful one. It was herbal and earthy, pungent and musky all at once. It was like juniper berries and rhino musk, with a great helping of citrus and a small hint of the holiday spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, piled on top. Just being within a dozen feet of the stall would probably be enough to give some people migraines.
The young woman working the stall had been perfectly helpful. I’d explained what I was looking for, she’d offered up some boxes of suitable pills, I’d looked at them as if I knew what I was doing, and then chose a set with a waxy purple outer coating. It had been one of my rules in a past life, when choosing products from a foreign culture, or where I didn’t understand indications of quality, always opt for pink or purple packaging if it was available. It had worked for me with sushi rice, nori, and condoms, I saw no reason to deviate now.
I’d bought two dozen lesser qi and blood pills for a pair of spirit stones, and had half delivered to Su Li’s house. I didn’t even need an address, the young woman had been quite insistent that they could find her residence, I didn’t need to trouble myself with the matter.
“Elder?” The mousy attendant asked. “May we advertise your purchase of our pills?”
I thought about it.
“One purchase is taking a chance, two is an endorsement. You may relate the truth, but I ask you refrain from implying anything about my judgment of the relative quality of pills at the market.”
“Thank you elder, I understand your meaning.” She said, bowing her head. “I will see these pills delivered to your disciple.”
She gestured at a rather exhausted looking male disciple in the back of the stall, who took the box before setting off at a jog. I put the rest of the pills into my ring, before setting off to explore the rest of the market.
Most of the goods on display fell in a convenient mid-point between the mortal wares on sale in Dusk, and the more valuable items sold by the heavily secured Sleeping Fortune auction house. There were pills and weapons aplenty, as well as talismans and defensive treasures. Even a few natural treasures and cultivation manuals. All of them were on the cheaper and weaker side though, and few were suitable for anyone beyond the midpoint of qi condensation. Almost everything at the market could be had for fewer than ten spirit stones.
It struck me as being as much an actual institution as a way for outer disciples to dispose of unused resources and crafts. None of it held much interest to me.
Then I saw a familiar face. Qian Min had a stall, and it smelled absolutely divine. He was frying dumplings atop a flat iron griddle, then finishing them in a bamboo steamer. I wasn’t planning on taking a second disciple. The first had been a rushed decision, driven by fear and compassion more than anything. But if I did, Qian Min would be at the top of the list. Cooking was something I could actually teach, not just fake. With the right reading material, I had no doubt I could figure out immortal cooking too.
“I’ll take a plate.”
“Elder Hu!” He said with a big smile. “For you, it’s on the house.”
“I appreciate the thought, but I am perfectly capable of paying.”
“I must insist. Try them, and you’ll see why!”
Interesting. I refrained from objecting further, I could always pay the man later. A few moments later, he set a plate before me. The dumplings sat by themselves, with no garnishes or sauces. Eschewing chopsticks, I popped one in my mouth, and chewed.
Hot!
It was strange, how I could tell they were too hot for a mortal to eat, but the temperature didn’t actually hurt me anymore. Then the taste hit me, and I forgot all about that. They weren’t quite soup dumplings, but they were incredibly juicy, rich pork with chunks of onion, flavored with five spice and a hefty dose of rice vinegar. The texture was odd though, rather than the uniformity of ground meat, they were closer to pulled pork. It was a very non-traditional dumpling, as I understood it, but absolutely inspired. A Carolina pulled pork soup dumpling, but with five spice instead of mustard. Brilliant.
“I took your advice!” He chattered as I chewed. “Cooling the braise instead of heating it helped prevent the sun swallowing hog meat from toughening. It’s still not the most elegant preparation, it’s difficult to get the meat tender enough without it falling apart into shreds. I might need to look into using secondary immortal ingredients in order to achieve the texture I’m looking for. But the shredded pork makes for an excellent dumpling filling!”
“They are quite good.” I said calmly. Compared to the many more reserved outer disciples, Qian Min was almost shockingly gregarious, especially towards me. I wondered where exactly he stood in the hierarchy of the outer sect. Did he rely on his friendships to protect him, or was he the sort of fellow who used the cover of his chatter to acquire intelligence? Or was he simply powerful enough he didn’t fear to speak his mind?
“Do you think you’ll do any more culinary lectures?” He continued. “I rather enjoyed the last one, it helped me fill in some gaps in my wok technique. Gotta be more careful about how I sweat my onions. There’s only so much you can learn from recipe books, they always leave out the really fine points of the fundamentals. It took me far too long to learn that you can overwork wheat flour. My sesame pancakes came out dense instead of flaky for years!”
When he finally stopped talking, I answered his first question.
“I had not intended to do so. I had seen no evidence that many disciples gained anything from the last one.” I paused, thinking. “If enough disciples showed interest, I would not mind giving another to a smaller, more dedicated group.”
“I see.” Qian Min’s eyes shone with a hungry look that was concerningly reminiscent of Elder Liang. “Well then, I’ll have to see about rounding up some of my peers. I’m sure their eyes can be opened to the glory of cooking.”
Was Qian Min some sort of tyrant that was going to force people to pretend to pay attention to my lectures just so I would give them? Would that be good for my reputation? Did I care?
“We can speak of this later.” I said, rising to leave.
“Of course elder. Do give Disciple Su my best wishes, I had hoped to see her triumphant in her duel.”
“I will let her know.”
Picking a direction at random, I made to leave the market. I’d tarried here long enough.
Then I saw it.
The auctioneer’s block stood like a lone peak, every stall keeping their distance from it. Behind it sat ten cages of black iron, each wide enough to fit seven or eight men. Hints of rust suggested they’d seen long use. They could have been used only to contain beasts, I supposed. Somehow, I doubted that. Too many small details fit together too cleanly. I had no doubt that corpse refining was not the sort of process that most disciples succeeded at on the first try.
My fingers twitched. My stomach felt heavy. I breathed in, and my tongue pressed against my teeth. The formless churning anger that had become so familiar to me these last few days raised its head again. I wanted to kill something. Someone. To ram my sword clear through their gut, feel their warm blood soak through the space between my fingers. To watch, as in their final moments, the slaving scum realized what they visited upon others could be done to them in turn. I felt my will leaking out into the world, a lust for blood so intense I felt like it should tint the very air red.
I hated it. It wasn’t me, a foreign thing burrowing into my mind, a dead man’s last gift and curse. I loved it. It was everything, the exhilaration of a long night out, when all the world shines with possibility. The gentle curve of smooth skin, gleaming in the half-light. The absolute certainty of standing your ground, knowing that this is what you were born for.
My breath came in shuddering pants, ragged with anticipation. If the cages had been full, I was not sure I could restrain myself.
It was a futile fantasy. I couldn’t fight the sect. But it was not an unpleasant one.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw a few disciples were staring at me. Their faces were white as the moon above. I turned, and gave them a smile. It was an ugly thing, half manic, teeth peeking through my lips. I’d been acting reasonably for a while. A reminder, that I was supposed to be some rabid beast of a man wouldn’t go amiss.
I kept walking. It was a good reminder that every seemingly good person here knew what we were, what we taught and tolerated. Even Qian Min and Su Li.
I wondered how many people we auctioned off each year. I wondered where they came from. I wondered who bought them. How many elders practiced arts that relied on a fresh supply of bodies? How many were destined to end up as ghouls?
My body froze. I saw the death cultivator standing before me. Remembered the moment I met his eyes. I couldn’t kill that. I knew it in my bones. It had allowed me to walk away. If I ever defied the leadership of the sect, it would cut me down in moments.
How powerful could Meng Xiao be, that even that monster bowed to him?
Fuck it all. If the sect sold slaves, I would swallow my tongue and watch. I could do nothing about it. Nothing. Not as I was.
I couldn’t fix the world. But if I was to be trapped here, I would at least ensure that I would never again need to tolerate butchers and slavers in my sight. No matter how long it took. Even if I had to surpass the Hu Xin that was.
I’d been taking this too casually. Allowed fear to dictate my actions. I’d picked no fights I could avoid, taken no risks with my own cultivation. Relied on bluster and acting to protect me. When Wang Li had challenged me, I’d nearly run, even knowing he stood at least a full realm below me, probably more.
It was time to change that.
Now fully clear of the market, I started running, looking for an empty space to experiment. Even before seeing the auction block, I’d intended to finally attempt to cultivate today. But the reminder of what I was surrounded by gave that new urgency.
I had two more things on the list for today. I liked lists for productivity, they’d never led me wrong in my last life. The first was that I needed to be able to control my own cultivation. Specifically, feel and direct the qi within me. Almost every advanced technique I’d read about relied upon being able to do that as a foundation. Casting spiritual sense out at a distance. Reinforcing part of the body. Rapidly healing. The very act of cycling qi in order to advance. It was also a prerequisite to the second item on my list. Flying on a sword.
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I should be able to do it. None of the martial manuals I’d read had detailed how, only mentioned it in passing, but I’d focused my library time on technique and cultivation manuals thus far, and lower realm ones to boot. If I needed to, I’d consult the library again, but I wasn’t sure if a supposedly preeminent swordsman reading basic sword manuals would be suspicious or not. First, I’d try it blind. I’d managed Stormbreaker by instinct once, even if I’d never dared use it again. If I could create a hurricane with my sword, flying on it should be manageable.
Eventually, once I felt I was far enough away from any sect-related buildings, I found a nice spot. There were trees, and rocks. The grass was soft. There was nothing remarkable about it, which was precisely the point.
I sat quietly on the mossy earth for a while, letting my residual rage drain out. I couldn’t act on it, so it needed to go. Or at least, to sleep.
I’d never been a great meditator. Junior varsity at best, so to speak. I thought I might have reached the first jhana once, the sense of rapturous joy and contentment many meditators say mark the beginning of serious attainment, before meditation begins to get properly weird. That might just have been sleep deprivation though, I’d been awake well over 24 hours following a transatlantic flight at that point.
But, I could at least sit quietly and not think for half an hour without too much suffering. Stories always described cultivation as meditation, but I wasn’t yet sold on that idea. The outward similarities made sense, in both activities you sat down, closed your eyes, and directed your attention inwards. But cultivating, or cycling qi, seemed like a rather active process from the descriptions in the manuals. In my very unqualified experience, the two seemed like similar but unrelated activities.
I sat down. Felt the earth against my butt, through the thin film of my two layers of robes. I wiggled my toes in my slippers, feeling the way my socks caught against the stiff canvas of the shoe. I breathed in, felt the way my inner robe slid against my chest.
In, and out.
In, and out.
I never did get to eat at that restaurant. I’d traveled much of the world, but never actually visited California. Or China for that matter.
I let the thought go.
In, and out.
Was that the right word for a burger place, restaurant?
I let that go too.
In, and out.
In, and out.
I wondered how the three heads of the death cultivator worked. Did he grow new heads when he leveled up as a zombie? Or were they grafts? Did the center one command the others, or were they a true gestalt?
Not the time. I let those thoughts float downstream, to return at a more appropriate hour.
In, and out.
In, and out.
I felt something in the center of my chest. I’d felt my core before, but it was clearer now. I followed the sensation, straining towards it like how I might try to hear a conversation from across a room. It felt hard. Sharp, but somehow without edges. Or perhaps only composed of edges? It felt like holding a knife by the sides of the blade, you could feel the sharpness, but it wouldn't cut you unless you slipped. But somehow, it was also a sphere. A sphere composed of ten thousand edges.
No, more than that. It felt… mathematical almost. Like the platonic ideal of a shape trying to exist in the real world. It reminded me of those explanations of how integrals worked, from my college calculus classes. You took a curve, and put a series of boxes under it, then added up all their areas. As your boxes got smaller, became thinner slices of the curve, the sum of their areas would get closer and closer to the value of the integral.
The boxes in this analogy were blades. It was a series of blades of impossible thinness forming a close approximation of the surface of a sphere. And it was real, but it wasn't. Or perhaps it existed both in this world and beyond it?
I flexed my chest muscles, feeling how my core shifted in response. It moved a little, drifting upwards and outwards as I inhaled. I could feel my muscles sliding over it, my lung and heart pressing against it. But it did not cut them. Was that because it didn’t fully exist in the physical world, or because it was my core, and so I was protected from its energies? If someone ripped it out of my chest, would it remain solid? Would it cut their hands to the bone? Interesting questions I was not keen on discovering the answers to.
I focused on the sensation of sharpness coming from my core, following it to the qi it emanated. Like dew forming on a cold glass, droplets of qi steadily formed around my core, rapidly whisked away by the steady flow of qi within me. I tried to track one of the streams, but quickly lost it as it flowed into another, larger, flow of qi in my shoulder. I tried that a few more times, with similar results. I abandoned that tactic after, individual droplets or streams of qi were impossible for me to track, and instead I began trying to map the points where one stream flowed into another.
Two in the right shoulder, one rising from my spine, another spinning outwards along the top lobe of my lung. They weren’t quite symmetrical on the left, with a third confluence coming out from the core nestled against my heart. Unfortunately, when I went back to check the right shoulder again, there were three smaller confluences, in different locations. Even the places where streams met shifted on their own. If there was an overarching pattern to the flowing qi within me, I couldn’t see it. It was simply too complex a system.
I gave up on that for the moment, and focused on the qi itself instead. My qi had a certain quality to it that was consistent throughout. If my system of meridians was a body of flowing liquid, then all the liquid was of the same composition so to speak. It felt sharp, despite being a liquid, but it was not sword qi. I’d felt sword qi before, controlled it. When I swung, my qi and that of the weapon and environment mixed into a steel gray energy that existed only to cut. This was similar, but not that. If I had to describe it, I’d say my qi was wetter, and more colorful than sword qi somehow. I saw without eyes how it scintillated even in the lightless depths of my body. Compared to the lunar qi I’d seen Su Li cultivate, it seemed more opaque, and less reflective, while far denser and heavier at the same time. I wasn’t sure if it was what the manuals called true qi or not. Certainly, I consumed and expelled it frequently, which was a mark against it being my own innate qi. Perhaps the concept of true qi applied more to cultivators below core formation, and all mine was locked up into my core? Whatever it was, I decided to call it Hu qi for now. I'd have to leave piecing out exactly what aspects it contained until I had more experience with possible types of qi in the world.
That would be vital to know if I ever wanted to actually cultivate successfully.
I shuddered, and watched as my qi didn’t react in the slightest to the physical motion. It was now or never.
I had no idea what cycling technique would be appropriate for my cultivation, so I decided to try the smallest internal manipulation I could think of. I focused on the way the qi in my right shoulder spun in a gentle curl, near the top of my lung. I willed it to twist harder, spin in a full circle. It did. Qi spun in a circle with no beginning, a small cycle disconnected from the rest of my system. There was a mild stiffness in my shoulder where the little ball spun, but it didn’t feel bad, just odd. Gently, I willed the orb to move, to flow down the river of qi heading down my right arm. It did, bobbling along slower than the qi it floated amongst.
As I watched, it slowly began to spin faster, drawing in qi from the stream around it. It grew bigger as it reached my mid bicep, and a cramp shot through my arm. I tried to let it go, but the snarl of qi didn’t want to be unwound. I clamped down on it, compressing it. The orb shifted, its outer edge slowing even as the center sped up, like a great storm raging within a marble. The pain diminished, but the qi kept slowly being sucked in, feeding the raging storm at the center of the orb. I did not like where this was going.
Two words shot through me, and my stomach sunk. Qi deviation.
I didn’t have time to think, the storm in the ball was growing more violent by the second. It wasn’t a strain to control yet, but it was pushing back against my will harder and harder every moment. Panicking, I did what felt most natural, I simply pushed the dangerous snarl of qi away from me. For a moment, there was a sense of pressure, as the marble pressed against my skin.
The pressure broke.
I screamed like an animal, as my shoulder exploded.
Blood blasted out of my shoulder like a bullet, leaving a mess of flesh-pulp hanging to my bones by threads of tendon. My eyes watered, and through the tears I saw the stark white of my own bones. I ground my teeth and bore down as pain erased everything, the sheer intensity of it leaving me lightheaded. For a single immortal moment, there was nothing but the fire and absence and wrongness radiating from my arm.
Then finally, slowly, the pain receded. Fibers of muscles squirmed as they wormed their way back into position. The bleeding slowed, then eventually receded, flowing back into my arm. Before my eyes, skin regrew, and then blossomed into a bruise, which slowly faded away.
The whole process, once the pain receded enough to track the passing of time, didn’t take more than twenty minutes. It made me wonder, if the much slower healing I’d experienced on the road was because of lingering weapon qi in my stab wounds.
In any case, that was apparently not how my qi was intended to be cycled. I shrugged off the top half of my robe, letting the belt hold the garment up on its own. This one was a write-off, the right sleeve was barely holding on to the torso. At least I had plenty of spares in the sect colors.
Standing, I inspected the rest of the damage. One tree had a hole in it, blasted clean through. Along the flight path, there were small craters dotting the ground. Little gashes in the soft soil, as if droplets of molten metal had fallen, rather than human blood.
Well, if I wanted to incapacitate myself with pain afterwards, that could be a really terrible last ditch attack. Novices were taught to focus on internal qi manipulations before external ones, but they didn’t exactly write manuals for my situation. So perhaps I would change tack and focus on controlling my sword.
That at least shouldn’t end with me bleeding. Not unless I failed grievously at aiming.
I drew my sword, and placed it on the ground in front of me. I still found it odd, how little in the way of its own power I sensed from the weapon. It had to be something special, to survive my battle with Wang Li with nary a chip on the edge.
I let my qi-field drift out, enveloping the blade. Nothing really happened. I could feel it, sense that it existed, feel ghostly wisps of sword and metal qi emanating from it. I pulled at the field, dragging it in and out. I created little eddies like I had internally, throwing them out and letting them dissipate. I rotated the entire field, trying to blow the sword to the side. Nothing worked, regardless of what I tried, the sword stubbornly refused to move.
I was missing something. It felt like the answer should be right in front of me, but for the life of me, I couldn’t see it. I went over what I’d learned about qi in my head. Internal qi movement could influence external qi. Cycling. Internal qi movement could also influence the physical world. Internal techniques, like healing and bodily reinforcement. External qi could also affect the world. That covered sword qi and other techniques. I wanted to move an object. I was using qi externally, but I was using my own innate qi. Sword qi felt different, it wasn’t my own qi, but a phenomenon that existed on its own, something generated by the interaction between me and the sword.
That left me with two ideas. Attempt to directly manipulate sword qi in order to move the sword, or charge the weapon with sword qi, then use my field of external innate qi in order to manipulate the sword qi, and through it, the sword itself.
The first one sounded hard. I had no idea how to control sword qi. I just decided to cut something, and sword qi appeared. Method two then. I picked up my sword. I raised it high, and picked out a tree. I stared at my quarry, and imagined slicing that tree in particular into a million tiny splinters. That familiar sense of weight and intent gathered at the edge of my sword. I firmly grasped my external qi field, and in a tube around my sword, I pushed.
It went flying, rocketing forward out of my hand.
“Fuck!” I hissed. My grip hadn’t been quite loose enough, and the pommel had smashed my thumb on the way out.
Still, clenching my thumb, I was smiling like a lunatic. Finally, something just worked. Sure, I missed the tree. But I understood what was going on. Innate qi moved sword qi. Sword qi moved the sword. I raced off, searching for my sword. I eventually found it buried all the way to the hilt in a small mound of dirt. I picked it back up, charged it up with intent, and this time, I was gentler with it. I picked out a thin vertical slice of qi, and started rotating it counterclockwise. I was greeted by the magical sight of my sword gently floating just above my palm.
It was like keeping a feather aloft by blowing air at it from below, tricky to gauge, but incredibly intuitive. I played with my new toy for hours, trying out more and more complex patterns of qi manipulation.
Eventually, I got the hang of it.
I thrust a palm out, and my sword followed, dashing forward in a rapid thrust. I stepped back and spun, and my sword returned and whirled around me in a spiral, cutting down a dozen imaginary assassins. I flipped my arm around, pointing two fingers towards the heavens, and the blade spun upwards on a geyser of qi, flying out of my sphere of control. With careful focus, I grabbed hold of the ejected burst of qi and gave it one final command, sending the blade rocketing down to earth like a missile. It blasted straight through the tree I’d been aiming for, embedding itself in a large boulder behind it.
I’d learned after the first time I’d tried that, and spent fifteen minutes digging my sword out of the deep tunnel it’d carved into the earth. I still needed to touch it, to charge it with sword qi. It had taken an awful lot of digging before I got within arms length of the pommel.
It felt good, to finally succeed at something. For all the reading and experimenting to pay off in a technique that wasn’t just handed to me wholesale as a product of Elder Hu’s preexisting cultivation. At that moment, I actually felt like a cultivator, rather than some sort of supervillain granted their powers in an industrial accident.
A thought struck me.
If decisive thrusts and sweeping curves moved sword qi in the external world, perhaps my cultivation would respond better to a pattern based on them than it had my earlier, softer, attempts?