One chapter of the book of spells that Ji Kang thought would be particularly useful, which was unusual considering it had been included in this book, was a basic introduction on dealing with spirits and a spell to allow a cultivator to communicate with spirits. Or rather than “dealing with spirits,” making deals with spirits.

Any spirit of sufficient strength to be intelligent enough to be worth speaking to would be far too formidable a foe for a puny Qi Condensation cultivator to deal with in any manner other than negotiation.

Ji Kang had almost no contact or experience with spirits, but he knew they existed all throughout the natural world. ‘Spirit’ is a term that loosely covers all naturally occurring spirituality that accumulates to the point of forming a distinct entity.

Such a definition is so vague as to have no meaning, but the lines distinguishing between spirits and everything else were blurry. The difference between weaker spirits and the natural phenomenon that they embodied was so negligible as to be a point of philosophy, and the difference between the stronger spirits and any other form of intelligent life was similarly slight.

In general however, spirits could be understood as somewhat intelligent embodiments of natural forces and physical places, granted intelligence by virtue of having been bathed in enough Primeval Qi over time to enlighten them.

Typical examples of common types of spirits, going from weak to strong, were wind sprites, tree spirits, lake spirits, mountain spirits, river spirits, and ocean spirits.

Wind sprites were basically just gusts of wind that could enjoy itself. They were incapable of intelligent communication and only tended to exist for a few moments.

On the other end of the scale, the spirit of an ocean would gain intelligence not at all inferior to a human genius and would live for as long as the ocean they embodied was stable.

Although there is some confusion about whether major spirits truly exist at all outside of interactions with cultivators. Using an ocean spirit as an example, when viewed from the perspective of a passing human, an ocean can be conceptualized as a singular entity, and in fact the spell that allows communication with spirits will address and receive responses from such a singular entity.

But an ocean isn’t truly a uniform landscape, there are different regions, tides, and depths that separate the ocean as much as the land. And to add further confusion it is possible to communicate with the spirits that embody these lesser features within the ocean.

Scholars are divided on this topic, like they are on almost every topic having to do with the nature of spirits, but two main schools of thought are that the ocean spirit is akin to a monarch among spirits, a distinct entity that rules over the others, or that the ocean spirit is in fact the amalgamation of all these smaller spirits acting as one.

Asking the spirits themselves about the nature of spirits receives inconsistent and incomprehensible answers, but since agreements made with large spirits were able to somewhat bind the sub-spirits, the question was largely philosophical in nature.

Spirits exist everywhere, and societies the world over generally accept that it is the job of local cultivators, regardless of cultivation path, to prevent spirits from actively seeking to harm humans. This was typically done by appeasing the spirits.

Communicating with them, determining their wishes, and giving them what they want, were the general steps that Ji Kang’s spell book outlined.

The reason cultivators the world over, by definition arrogant and powerful people who were used to getting their own way, agreed appeasement was the correct strategy in most cases, was simple: it was impossible to entirely get rid of spirits. It was possible to scatter spirits, but typical of all things when discussing the spiritual plane and the spirits that resided there, the frameworks and concepts that humans were familiar with didn’t really apply, and that included death.

Anything that caused sufficient turbulence on the spiritual plane could disrupt the structural integrity of a spirit, scattering the entity that currently embodies the natural feature or force, but another spirit would be formed eventually.

Whether that new spirit was the same as the old is a matter hotly debated by philosophers, because although a reformed spirit wouldn’t have a clear memory of what the previous spirit had experienced, they would always have the same personality and traits, which made sense since they were formed from the same natural forces. But, worth noting was that a spirit born after the previous one had been killed by cultivators was invariably more hostile towards humans.

These factors led most cultivators to settle on appeasement. Generally local spirits had simple wishes that could easily be met by the mortal populations living nearby, such as occasional small food gifts, worship in the form of incense to be burned in a small shrine, or particular taboos the spirit would like the local humans to abide by. Some spirits even wished for local populations to hold regular celebrations and play music.

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All in all, the world was varying enough, with innumerable distinct sub areas within any given area that most spirits were small and their wishes were fairly easy to grant. However, for the more major spirits, like the spirit of a particular ocean, they were far too powerful for any but an immortal to subdue, and their wishes were usually proportionally difficult to fulfill. In those cases the best that could be achieved was for the spirit to ignore humans, and for the humans to stay away from the spirit.

When Ji Kang read the chapter on dealing with spirits, he was given the impression that spirits would be incredibly important and influential in his life going forward, however the last paragraph of that chapter cleared away this misconception.

The last paragraph explained that while dealing with the local spirits was incredibly important for local organizations or populations, in the current age thanks to the accumulation of progress by their ancestors, the individual members of those organizations or populations would almost never need to deliberately interact with them or devote any thought to them.

If a cultivator angers a pond’s spirit, they only need to leave that pond’s immediate surroundings in order to avoid all repercussions. However if an organization has a malicious spirit within their territory, there will be a continuous series of incidents caused by the spirit, it will assault passing humans without warning, and over time it will incite the neighboring spirits to do the same.

Ji Kang’s spellbook only included such an instruction manual and communication spell because Shen Lan thought it best for her disciples to have a well-rounded education.

He concluded from all of this that understanding the spiritual plane was perhaps impossible to the limited mortal mind, and perhaps the only way to get any true comprehension was to advance in cultivation and thereby gain a different perspective.

Having been distracted from his cultivation by this contemplation of spirits, Ji Kang abruptly realized it was long since time for him to go to sleep and so he decided to put the questions away for later consideration.

Such contemplations on the nature of the world around him would be very useful for when he was attempting to form his core by layering in his comprehension of the natural laws, but would be entirely useless for his more immediate goals.

The next morning during his movement technique practice, Ji Kang happened upon a small shrine by the side of the path and decided to give his newly learned communication spell a go and gain some practical first hand experience.

Worst case scenario was that he offended or angered whatever spirit the shrine was meant to honor, in which case one of the many senior cultivators in the sect could no doubt handle the situation.

Following the instructions in his technique manual, Ji Kang started stringing syllables into an arcane chant while forming hand seals and at the same time slowly utilizing the qi in his dantian.

As soon as he finished casting the spell he had a strong instinctive feeling that it would not work because he had failed to cast it properly.

It took four tries before Ji Kang was able to meet the precise requirements for success.

After completing the steps and having a strong feeling that the spell had taken effect he waited to see the result.

For several minutes Ji Kang strained his ears and eyes observing his surroundings, but nothing changed and he heard nothing that he wouldn’t expect to hear on a mountain path through a bamboo forest in the morning. Finally his patience wore thin and he decided to make the first move.

“Greetings, honored spirit. This one wishes to speak with you.” Ji Kang bowed towards the shrine and waited again.

For a moment he truly began to doubt whether his spell had truly succeeded, until he suddenly heard a voice that resembled the sound of bamboo creaking in the wind combined with rocks slowly grinding against each other.

“What do you want?” Whispered the unusual voice.

“I wish to ask you a question, and I would like to know the cost of an honest answer.” Ji kang replied.

Ji Kang heard a noise that distinctly resembled an exasperated sigh.

“I am bound by the agreements I made with previous cultivators of your sect to deal honestly with all juniors who come to speak with me, even the slow ones. If you have a question I will answer.”

“Then I will presume so far as to ask.” Ji Kang was more amused than offended by the spirit’s words and decided to get right to the question he had prepared as a pretext for this communication. “Is a small spirit a distinct entity from a larger spirit that embodies an area that contains the smaller spirit?”

Again he heard the same sigh.

“Why do you disturb me to ask such a tired question? I have answered it for many cultivators in the past in as many ways as I can think to explain it and never once have they been satisfied with my answer. Fine, I shall answer with some questions to help point you in the right direction. Is your hand a distinct entity from you? If I made up a magical spell that allowed me to ask your hand what it thought of you and it answered that it had never considered itself to be a part of a greater whole except in the obvious physical sense, would you think your hand was simply ignorant of its own condition? Can your hand be relied upon to be the authority on the nature of its existence or does it lack the necessary perspective to see the wider picture? What about your teeth? What about a hair that you had shed? Consider those questions on your own and don’t bother me, I am not your master.”

With that, the audience seemed to abruptly cease. Ji Kang had not noticed at what point it started, but once it stopped he realized the entire world around him had at some point harmonized, all the sounds of the forest seeming to sync up to become part of a grand orchestra that was only apparent when it stopped, and was replaced by the same sounds of nature, but which were now chaotic and disorganized.

Feeling much like a toddler who had interrupted his mother while she was cooking in order to ask her why objects fall when they were dropped, Ji Kang set off back to his master’s courtyard to get back to more productive pursuits.