It turns out that trying to cycle the Qi of an ancient spirit beast as a brand-new cultivator is a bit like attempting to fit an elephant through a mouse hole.

You will doubtless make note of the entirely safe-for-work simile that I used there, despite the obvious potential for a crass, sexual image and use that as a guide for how discombobulated the experience was leaving me.

You’d think that after all that time, alone, in a cave, waxing on and waxing off over and over again, I’d have learned to avoid such predicaments. Or maybe to listen, even slightly, to the voice of the undying expert warning me to go easy.

But, alas, here I am, feeling as if I was holding a hive of angry bees in my throat and trying to persuade them to settle down and be swallowed whilst delivering a presentation on appropriate insect behaviour.

The first indication I had probably made the latest in a long line of poor life choices was hearing Merlin say: Well, this will be interesting. I wonder if I can... Yes, I can. Incorporeal popcorn is the best. Salt AND sweet? Don’t mind if I do.

I did not take this as a supportive comment.

The essence surge from Vortigern’s Dragon hit me like a tidal wave of concentrated chaos, as if the universe had decided to play a particularly rowdy game of leapfrog with my internal energies. I felt my eyes bulge out of my head like a startled frog’s, and my hair stood up on end as if it were auditioning for the part of a lightning conductor in a particularly eccentric theatrical production. Having all this lovely, pre-Raphaelite knee-length hair made this an especially visual spectacle.

I gritted my teeth, determined to weather the storm—or, in this case, the tsunami—of Qi.

However, whereas the wolf’s essence had appeared in my studio as a small blob of red which was quickly absorbed into my broader palette, this was not working out like that.

The first issue was that this essence was a brand-new colour, and my poor purple Qi had no idea how it was supposed to absorb it. Every time my plucky little blob reached out to touch the dragon’s Qi, it started shimmering and flashing through the full range of rainbow colours. Basically, my internal artist’s studio was being lit up like the worst school disco you’d ever been to.

The second issue, and on reflection, I should probably have flagged this one first, was that there was an absolute fuckton of dragon Qi. Like, I’m stood knee-deep in my studio, nearly swimming through the stuff, and it was still pouring in.

Oh, dear. Look at that. It’s almost like it would have been better to do this a little bit at a time. Who would have thought this would be the outcome? Oh, yes. That’s right. Me.

The smugness in Merlin’s voice was considerably amplified by, in my view, an unnecessarily loud crunching of popcorn.

“I think we can take the ‘I told you so’ as read now, Big M. Anything more constructive to say? Like any words of advice at all?”

Silence, save the sound of popcorn munching.

The pain. Did I mention the pain?

The bees were now unionised and conducting collective action against my insides. My muscles were protesting in a symphony of cramps, and, most alarmingly, my bones were creaking as if they were auditioning for a role in a horror novel.

Sweat poured down my face, and I’m sure that the noises I was making would have earned me a significant living on a few of the more exotic OnlyFans sites.

In my increasingly delirious state, I vaguely recalled the words in one of those anime series that said Qi, like a river, should flow smoothly and without obstruction. Well, let me tell you, what was going on inside me at the moment felt less like a serene river and more like a rampaging lava flow incinerating everything in its path.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Then it hit me. No obstructions.

If the point was to have nothing in the way of the flow, then white-hot lava would probably get the job done more effectively than my pretty purple paint.

I turned the page to the image of me as Vitruvian Man. As before, I could see all my veins lit up with that soft purple glow.

With a flick, I started directing the undiluted dragon’s Qi straight into those channels.

This hurt. A lot.

Hang on a second, my dear. You need to assimilate that external Qi into your own essence before doing that. You risk -

But I wasn’t listening. Merlin had his chance to be the wise sage over all this and had chosen to be a dick.

The dragon’s Qi continued to pour into my studio; it was up to my waist now. If it carried on like this, I was in danger of, literally, drowning in it. My own blob of Qi had given up trying to assimilate it and gone to sit in the corner, continuing to flash and change colour as it sat there with, I imagine, a somewhat overwhelmed expression on its face.

I knew how it felt.

So I kept flicking that Qi like I had never flicked anything before. Again, please note the lack of smutty innuendo here as evidence of my level of distraction.

If cycling my own Qi pushed against blockages - hello, repaired liver function - then the dragon’s lava Qi simply scoured my channels completely clean.

This hurt exactly as much as it sounds like.

But in the midst of this agony—this cacophony of pain and misplaced essence—I could see that the flood of Qi into my studio was beginning to lessen

The more of the dragon’s essence I was able to flick into my channels, the perkier I felt my own blob of Qi became - I sensed if I could get the amount in the studio down to something manageable, with the rest flowing around me, there was a chance some absorption could take place.

Of course, all this indescribable colour blazing around my veins was absolutely ruining me, but I could only worry about so many things at once.

With this newfound perspective, I tried to relax my clenched jaw, loosen my tense muscles, and keep washing the alien Qi out of my studio and into the rest of me.

The pain didn’t vanish, but as I fell into something of a rhythm, it transformed into a pulsating symphony that, against all odds, started to make a twisted sense.

And so, there I stood, a baby cultivator caught amid an essence tempest, swaying and twisting like a leaf caught in a gale.

And if those tortured metaphors don’t tell what a shitshow all this was, nothing would.

Just so you know, I am doing everything I can to hold you together. If it wasn’t for all the tempering the boy had done to his, well, I guess your body, you’d be dead already, irrespective of anything I am doing.

“Can’t talk. Burning alive. Internally.”

Yes, that’s pretty much the guaranteed outcome from forcing thousands of years of spirit beast Qi down in one go.

“Really? You should have said something.”

I did!

I tuned Merlin out and looked back at my artist’s studio. The flood of Qi seemed much more under control now. In fact, my blob of paint was being quite the little Qi mop that could, soaking up the remaining patches of dragon essence. I noticed that as it did so, the seizure-inducing colour flashing was lessening.

And, unless I was quite mistaken, it was becoming quite the hench paint blob.

The pain was still there, but it had become strangely exhilarating, like riding a roller coaster through a lightning storm.

Again, I want it on the record as to the incredibly complex and complicated work I am doing here to keep you alive. You don’t need to be feeling you made a good choice here. This is literally the most stupid thing I have ever seen. And the prevailing worldview in this part of Britain is that trees can talk.

I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, but I could dimly sense how hard Merlin was working to keep me alive. The undiluted dragon essence may have cleared out every single blockage that existed in my channels. The thing was, it had almost entirely destroyed those channels too. To try to mitigate the damage, it appeared that Merlin was directing the flow to areas of my Vitruvian man that, up until now, had not had channels going to them.

This, by the way, is absolutely cheating. When I was alive, I would have ordered the execution of any apprentice that had tried this as a way to circumvent centuries of study and meditation to open up all these areas. I don’t want you having any illusions that this speed of advancement is in any way normal.

“Mate, is this your way of dealing with me progressing at a greater pace than you managed? Didn’t I crack the technique thing faster than you too?”

Everything I achieved was hard won by my own skill, ingenuity and effort. You’re skipping out on all of the things that cultivating is supposed to teach you. And I am not sure that is going to turn out to be a good thing.

“On the other hand, and I may be misquoting you, so please stop me if I am, I think the ends justify the means, right? Right?”

He did not seem to have much to say about that.