“So, um…why’d you bring me all the way out here, sir?”
Siyuan and the mysterious, blindfolded cultivator walked out onto an empty flower field far from the village that Siyuan had woken up in. It was sunset. The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon, dyeing the sky a bright, golden orange. Looking back, he could see the village they had departed from, but it was just a small speck in the distance.
“Oh please, don’t call me ‘sir’, you’re gonna make me feel old!” the cultivator said. “You ought to call me your sensei now!”
“...alright, sensei…”
“Anyways, as for what we’re doing here, we’re gathering resources! There’s this pill that I need to make someone as a favor and this field just happens to have exactly what I need.”
Siyuan stopped as he looked down at the grassy ground. It seemed normal enough, with flowers of various colors dotting the grassy hill. Their petals were a bit sharp, sure, but Siyuan had seen many flowers like that before. Oddly enough, Siyuan could just barely feel an aura of…qi emanating from them?
“If you hadn’t guessed by now, it’s these flowers,” the cultivator said. He walked up to a red one, its sharp petals swaying slightly in the breeze. “They’re pretty hard to find, but they usually grow in patches so once you find one, there are many more nearby. They’re a pretty important ingredient in making pills.”
Siyuan raised an eyebrow as he looked down at the seemingly normal flower.
“Hmm, I’m having a bit of trouble pinpointing the flower’s exact location,” the blindfolded cultivator said with a smile. “Could you pluck it for me, Siyuan?”
Siyuan stared at him for a moment. Then he scoffed.
Like hell you can’t pinpoint it. If I can feel its qi, than you definitely can…
Regardless, Syuan approached the small flower and crouched. He moved his hand forward to pluck it.
Just as he pinched his fingers around the stem, he suddenly witdrew his hand as pain joled up his fingers. He hissed as clutched his hand, his fingers steaming where they had touched the flower’s stem.
“Oh, I forgot to mention that the flower’s body is covered in a thin layer of highly powerful toxins,” Siyuan’s new sensei said with a chuckle. “My bad. You might want to protect your hand with some qi before you try for a grab at it.”
Siyuan cursed the man under his breath, still clutching his hand as the pain began to subside. Once it did, Siyuan closed his eyes, gathering his concentration. Qi flowed from his dantians towards his hand, where he projected it in a thin layer over it, much in the same way he had not much earlier when he had handed Siyuan that cooking pot, still scaldingly hot from the fire it was taken from. His hand glowed slightly as he reached for the plant’s stem.
Just as his fingers neared it, however…
The flower’s petals suddenly went rigid before angling themselves right at Siyuan’s head. Then, they shot upwards right at his nose. All in the blink of an eye.
Siyuan’s eyes widened just as they shot upwards, right at his head. The blindfolded cultivator grabbed Siyuan’s shoulder and shoved him backwards right before they could spear right through his eyes, one of the petals just barely grazing the tip of his nose.
Siyuan fell backwards onto his bottom as he stared, wide-eyed, at the flower that had certainly almost killed him. The flower acted as normal in front of him, swaying in the slight breeze, albeit without its sharp, colorful petals.
“Not like that, Siyuan,” the cultivator said, crouching towards the now petal-less flower. “These are sharpshooter flowers. Their petals are valuable to alchemists because it is where the flower stores its own unique kind of qi, which is rich with the earth element. However, they are somewhat difficult to harvest. They are extremely reactive to any amount of qi that so much as comes near it and once they do so, they will shoot its petals towards the source of that qi, aiming to kill the source of the qi before it is plucked. However, as I have mentioned before, they are also coated in a powerful toxin that makes them impossible to hold with an unprotected hand.”
“I…see,” was all Siyuan said as he continued to stare at the de-petaled flower.
“Flowers that have already launched its petals are worthless,” the blindfolded cultivator said with a sigh and a shake of his head. “The petals are what gives it its value, after all.”
He turned towards another of the flowers, a blue one this time.
“Watch.”
Siyuan did so as the cultivator opened his hand, nearing the flower. His hand seemed unprotected as it neared the flower’s stem. It slowly creeped closer and closer, almost as near as Siyuan’s hand had before…
The cultivator’s hand blurred as it swung over the flower. The next thing Siyuan knew, the cultivator had the flower tightly pinched between his fingers, the entirety of it having been plucked out of the ground.
He was fast. So fast that Siyuan hadn’t even seen the motion even though he had been paying close attention. But he knew that. The cultivator had demonstrated that earlier when he snatched SIyuan’s sword out of his hands before he could even draw it. What really surprised Siyuan was the thin layer of light blue qi that the cultivator’s hand was suddenly enveloped in.
It took him a bit, but he eventually understood what had just happened.
It was qi control in a way that Siyuan wasn’t too familiar with. His sensei put a lot of priority in the ability to control qi well, but hadn’t emphasized the pace of which to do so.
Coating his hand in a thin layer of qi was something Siyuan could do with relative ease, albeit with more than a slight bit of focus. Plus, it was a bit of a slow process.
This cultivator had done this very thing. Except, he had done it so quickly that the flower hadn’t even had time to register his qi before it was plucked. It was the only explanation that Siyuan could think of.
“Thankfully, these little things’ defense mechanism becomes no longer usable when they’re not rooted into the ground,” he said, his tone casual as if completely unaffected by the display. “You understand what happened, do you?”
Siyuan just nodded with a muttered “yes.”
“With these little things, you’ve gotta be fast,” the cultivator said. “Very fast. It’s a bit difficult for someone in your realm of cultivation, but I think it should be possible for you concerning that you’ve got the basics of qi control down. I hope that tonight, you’ll have at least three flowers plucked for me.”
“Alright, I’ll do my best…”
With that, the cultivator promptly stood up and began to walk away.
Siyuan watched his back for a bit, then back down to the flower. Then his head snapped back up towards his sensei.
“Hey, aren’t you at least going to give me some tips?!” he exclaimed. “This is my first time trying something like this!”
“Tips? What tips?” the cultivator said, turning back around. “It’s very straightforward. It’s just the same thing that you did before, just a little bit faster.”
Siyuan scoffed at “a little bit faster.”
“Well, best of luck!”
“Hey! How-!”
Before Siyuan could finish that statement, his sensei promptly disappeared, leaving him by himself. The cultivator raised his hands exasperatedly at nothing in particular before looking back down at the flowers in front of him.
Well, might as well get started then…
He crouched towards one of the flowers, staring at it as he replayed the man’s action in his head. Siyuan still had no idea how he had managed to do that. He said that it was just simply a matter of being fast, but there had to be some kind of method to it.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Siyuan looked down at the flower, then at his open hand.
Maybe it would be a better idea to just see how fast I can let my qi flow before trying my hand at snagging a flower.
The next several hours went by quickly, with him pulling qi in and out of his hand. A repetitive, tedious activity, but one he was very used to by now as this was how he honed his qi control in the first place. Except now, it was a great deal harder for a couple of reasons.
The first was obvious: trying to force qi to move at a quick speed was actually fairly hard. He anticipated this, but it was still disappointing how unsuccessful he was so far. The second was that apparently, physically moving while simultaneously gathering qi at a specific body area was harder than he thought. He was used to simply moving qi around his body before moving.
Numerous times, he swiped his hands through the air, imitating a quick grabbing motion while trying to focus qi towards his hands, but each time, he couldn’t manage more than an insignificant amount of qi into a protective layer around his hand. Even when he slowed down the motion, he had a lot of trouble even moving qi down his arm.
No matter how discouraging his limited success was though, he kept trying, repeatedly waving his hand through the air.
He didn’t deign to return until very late that night, well after the sun had fully descended and the stars took its place in the dark sky. When he arrived back at the cabin, his master was meditating on a qi cushion in the center of the room. He stopped meditating when Siyuan stepped into the cabin though, inquiring about his progress. Predictably, he made fun of Siyuan upon hearing that he hadn’t gathered any flowers, but didn’t really sound surprised or disappointed.
Siyuan barely got any sleep that night, staring up at the ceiling and grabbing at the air above him.
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A week would pass in the blink of an eye.
Siyuan’s days became one of the same cycle of events: wake up early in the morning, go to the flower field, and try snagging a flower.
Thankfully, they were abundant at the field he was currently at. Otherwise, he would have exhausted the entirety of it in the blink of an eye.
The cultivator, Siyuan’s new sensei, had ways of compelling Siyuan to keep trying. It was mostly just offering to help his cultivation along as long as he went to the field every day, but it would occasionally be things like extremely well-made food or stuff like that.
Siyuan’s cultivation was progressing fairly quickly thanks to the cultivator’s help. He was about three-quarters the way to progressing to the next realm, around two months of cultivation being completed in the span of just a week. The cultivator had faintly commented at one point on Siyuan’s strange body once again as they did some simple dual cultivation, but told Siyuan not to pay it any mind.
The week went on with minimal progress. Sure, Siyuan was getting faster with every passing day, but he still wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to consciously grab a flower.
It was the end of the last day of the week. Siyuan, like he had for every day that week, trudged back into the cabin he and his master stayed. It was late at night, the sun retreating completely to give way to the stars. He was exhausted, more mentally than physically, but still happy that one thing had gone right for him.
“Welcome back, my pupil!” the cultivator exclaimed in his usual jovial tone, turning to “look” at him from the cultivation cushion he was meditating on. “How’d it go? No near-fatal injuries, I hope!”
Siyuan just grunted. He held up a single orange flower, all of its petals still in-tact.
The other cultivator just “stared” at it, his jaw dropping.
“Whoa! You mastered this already? In just a week?” he asked.
“No, it was a complete fluke,” Siyuan said. “I’m not sure how I manage to make it happen. In fact, it happened so fast that I didn’t even get a good grasp on how it felt like.”
“Oh.” The cultivator just shrugged. “That makes a bit more sense. A week on something like this is way too fast. But still, the fact that you were able to pull it off, you’ve made some very good progress during the past week. You were definitely some kind of prodigy before I came around and swooped you up.”
“Well, if you say so…”
“I reckon that you’ll have it down by the end of the month,” the cultivator said. He shifted away from the cultivation cushion he was on, patting it in offering to Siyuan. “I must admit, it is quite fast compared to what I had initially expected, but that just means we can get back onto the road faster, which is good for us.”
Siyuan just nodded. He assumed a meditative position.
“As for your cultivation…”
The cultivator pressed his hand to Siyuan’s back.
“It seems you’re nearing your breakthrough,” he said. “At the rate we’re currently going, you’’ll be able to breakthrough into the next realm by the time you master speedy qi control.”
“And if I do not?”
The cultivator just shrugged. “Then you’ll continue as you usually do. This isn’t the kind of thing that will improve just by moving up a realm of cultivation. Let’s get to cultivating then, shall we?”
The night passed on fairly uneventfully.
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Another week came and went.
Siyuan’s training wasn’t really yielding much results, but he was getting faster. A lot faster. His sensei once threw a scaldingly-hot rock at him and, although he was startled, Siyuan managed to coat his hand with protective qi in the span of time it took for the rock, which was already in the air, to reach his palm. It still wasn’t fast enough to grab one of those flowers, but it still meant he was making good progress.
Speaking of which, he had even managed to snag another flower. It was still a fluke, but this time, he was at least somewhat conscious of what had happened.
It wasn’t exactly as his sensei said. There was a trick to it, but, well, it was kind of like using tricks to lift a heavy weight. Even if the lifter employed every trick imaginable, they still had to be strong enough to lift the weight in the first place. Siyuan’s only choice really was to just keep trying until eventually, his speed had reached an optimal point.
It was a fairly mundane schedule that repeated without fail over the last couple of weeks. Siyuan’s wounds, so critical not long before, had almost completely healed by this point, to the point where he could move around as he was able to before his fight with the tier 5 demon without risking any of his wounds reopening. He had, essentially, made a full recovery, though his new sensei didn’t spare any time complaining about how many expensive pills that required. It definitely helped improve the flow of his qi, if minimally.
Little did he know, however, was that that mundane schedule would, one day, be upheaved.
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The mysterious cultivator was in his cottage, silently reading from a book he had propped open with one hand.
It was well into midday. His new disciple was at the flower fields once again, trying to grasp at flowers. The boy was, seemingly, blindly grasping at them, only to have to dodge at the last moments as flower petals were sent shooting towards his head.
The cultivator chuckled slightly. It amused him somewhat to see his frustration, but not enough to keep him there for more than a couple of seconds.
His progress really is amazing, though… he thought. He’s getting so close after just a couple of weeks. I wonder if that is due to his intuition or his potential. Or maybe it’s both. Oh well…no matter what, it seems I came across a good one this time. Just as good as the one I found a few years ago. I wonder how she’s doing…
He shook his head. He had stuff to focus on, after all. He went back to “reading” his book.
He flipped the page, “skimming” the page.
Ah, here we are.
It was the recipe for a pill. But not just any pill, an extremely complicated, yet valuable pill.
I’ll practice my alchemical skills, then when the boy is finished collecting the flowers that I need, then I will begin refining this pill. With it, that man will have no choice but to hand me that sacred weapon of his. That will make two out of the five I need. Just three more…
His head suddenly jerked up as his senses picked up on something. A feeling of qi entering his perception, foreign qi. It was weak, but definitely there. Almost inconsequential.
He sighed.
Bandits? Ah, looks like they’re coming from the direction of my pupil’s flower field. I should go deal with them.
He stood up. But then he stopped.
Or, I could let him handle it. From what I’m feeling from them, their cultivation is very low…equal to his, about. But there are like a dozen of them. There’s no way he can take them all on. Not on his own at least.
He smiled.
Good. Maybe a near-death experience will help him reach a revelation of sorts. That’s how I went about learning things his age~.
With that, he turned to the door. But as he began his way towards it, he stopped again.
Wait a second, did he bring his sword? I don’t remember if he brings it with him to training or not…
The cultivator “turned” back to the inside of the cottage. He skimmed the inside of the house with a bit of his qi before…
His senses picked up on a sword sitting against the side of the bed. A sword relic.
…oh.
-----
What the…what’s that?
Siyuan turned to the sound of thundering horses that had just suddenly picked up in the horizon.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head upon seeing the dozen of horses, all of them carrying a rider. They were all dressed in simple robes of various colors, not unlike the clothing he had seen the villagers wear.
He rose to his feet.
Visitors? Are they returning villagers? But I didn’t hear anything about that around the village.
It wasn’t until they got closer that he saw weapons on them. A variety of swords and spears strapped to their hips and backs.
Now based on that alone, Siyuan immediately knew something was wrong. The village had a militia of sorts to fend off against wild animals or bandits, but they almost always stayed inside the village unless they had to go hunting or foraging for food. Their “armory” consisted of several sabers and farming tools.
But Siyuan had sensed something more alarming.
This is…qi? Are those culti-?
At that instant, a red-orange spark appeared right in front of one of the still-faraway bandits.
Siyuan’s eyes widened as on the next, a flaming arrow was sent soaring right at his head.