“Come along then”
Xu Long watched his mother’s graceful turn as she started walking out of the grove. He was feeling a little silly that he even contemplated for a second that Old Wu was upset about losing to him. His mother escaping his hug when he was elated and spinning around was one thing, but that flick to the head, she was standing right in front of him, he was paying attention to her completely and she moved slowly and deliberately as she stepped inside his guard and flicked him in the head. And he couldn’t do a thing about it.
Shaking these thoughts out of his head as he jogged to catch up to his mother, he then followed alongside her as she made her way towards their destination. He didn’t know where exactly they were going, but he knew he had been waiting to get there for 9 years now. It only took a few minutes before his mother stopped walking, when she did, Xu Long looked at their surroundings, trying to figure out where he would be Awakening. What he saw was entirely ordinary for the valley, they were standing not far away from the bank of the river that ran down the center of the valley. It was at its widest here near the middle of its journey so it was flowing past them with a gentle current. They were in a small clearing, trees all around, looking to encroach on it. Xu Long for the life of him could not figure out what was so special about this place.
“You can stop puzzling over it Long’er, there is absolutely nothing special about this place. While your peers will fret over the location they cultivate and have to rely on their cultivation technique, perhaps with the help of a focus, to filter the particular type of qi that they need to cultivate, you needn’t bother. The neutral qi that you seek is everywhere, it permeates the entire realm, the Clear Spring technique obviously still has mechanisms to ensure that you only absorb neutral qi, but they are barely necessary and before long it will be to the point that you don’t even have to think about it.”
Xu Long looked to his side at his mother. “It sounds like the Clear Spring technique is incredibly easy.”
“There is a reason that the simplified version, spread far and wide, to allow as many people as possible, regardless of talent, to cultivate is based on it. Remember Long’er, the path of a Sword Immortal has only a single focus, your cultivation technique is largely incidental, obviously you are required to put the effort into cultivating it and I hope that you put the extra effort in to cultivate it to perfection, but at the end of the day, all that matters is your sword.
“This is part of the reason that Sword Immortals are often, not always, weaker than their peers in the early realms, especially in Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment. While your peers can focus on their cultivation technique and derive comprehension of their chosen qi and thus gain additional strength and progression in their arts from it. You have only yourself and your sword to derive comprehension, your cultivation technique is just rote steps that you must walk to advance.”
Xu Long looked skeptically at his mother. “If I didn’t know better I would think that you are trying to dissuade me from the path of the Sword Immortal.”
“But you do know better. The reason Sword Immortals are so rare is primarily because history is littered with those who destroyed their prospects and stagnated chasing that path. I have complete faith that you will not be amongst their number, but I still think it important that you be as informed as possible about just what is ahead of you.”
Xu Long smiled at his mother. “So I just pick a spot?”
His mother gave him a sly grin, then clicked her fingers. There was a slight rumble in the ground in front of them near the riverbank, and soon the dirt and the grass started to give way to a circular slab of stone, the slab had a very simple looking formation etched into it, in the middle of which there was an empty circle. Once the slab had finished moving and the grass had rearranged itself so as to appear as though the stone had always been there, she walked up and waved her ringed hand over the center of the slab and materialized a simple looking meditation mat.
As he walked up to the stone slab, Xu Long couldn’t help but ask. “What is the formation for?”
“It is a standard Awakening formation, it will make it easier for whomever is inside to see and feel the qi around them.” Stopping to look at her son. “Before you ask, you are not getting special treatment because I am a master of formations, in fact it caused me no small amount of discomfort to create such a grossly simple and inefficient formation. This is universally used the realm over, from the highest clans and sects to the remotest of settlements in the mortal lands, for one simple reason, it works well enough to provide aid without working so well as to hinder what needs to be learnt during the Awakening.”
Xu Long looked away from the formation to his mother. “Which is?”
“It can’t be taught Long’er, you need to feel it for yourself.”
Xu Long nodded his head and looked back at the formation. “Ok, any advice for me?”
“You remember the steps from the Clear Spring Manual?”
He nodded.
“Then you don’t need any advice. You are ready Long’er.” She held out her hand in front of him. It took him a moment to realize what she was doing, then he had to smile that he had completely forgotten that there was a small spirit fox sitting in the V of his robe. He gave her a scratch behind the ear before picking her up and handing her to his mother.
“Wish me luck Xiao Xing.”
He received a loud yip in return.
Taking a deep breath, Xu Long proceeded to step onto the circular slab and sat down in the lotus position on the meditation mat, the Clear Spring Manual called for him to close his eyes and start breathing in a specific pattern, but given how Xu Long had spent the last 6 years he decided to do something a little different. He unwrapped the blindfold that was tightly wound around his wrist and placed it over his eyes and tied it up. He was greeted with an all too familiar total darkness, something that was far less taxing to him after such a long period of relentless training.
As soon as he placed the blindfold on, he unsheathed his sword and laid it flat across his lap, a hand resting on the grip and the fingers of his other resting on the flat of the blade. Then he started breathing in the way that the manual described. It felt a little unnatural mixing short and long breaths at varying intervals, but he got into the rhythm fairly quickly. Once he was comfortable with the breathing he started to focus on the familiar feeling that he would tap into in his spars with Old Wu, he melted into his surroundings, feeling as if one entity with the sword in his hand, and paid attention to the unknown around him.
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After that, it happened rather quickly. He felt as if the usual unknown around him that he had become so accustomed to was behaving in quite an odd manner. He was used to the unknown being blackness and stillness, punctuated by sharp spikes in his intuition that warned him of movement and danger. Now though he felt a constant reverberation like waves on the water and yet not, like wind blowing about in large gusts from random directions and yet not, like the ground was pulsing at a steady rhythm and yet not. There was no sound and yet he felt it a cacophony.
He did what he had learned to do in the face of the unknown, he was calm, he was still, he watched and he waited. As he watched and grew accustomed to what he was experiencing he had an epiphany, this was simply the hum of qi in the background that he had been completely blind to his entire life. Knowing what was required of him now, he focused on his breath and the drawing in of the cacophony and the directing of it to the spot slightly behind and slightly below his navel.
Even though he had little conception of time in his current state, the process felt painfully slow in the beginning, so much would dissipate before reaching the point he was directing it to. That was until he passed some kind of threshold previously unknown to him. He felt it, for the first time in his life, he felt his dantian, previously he knew intellectually where it was supposedly located and that allowed him to direct the qi to the right area, but now he actually felt it. It was a somewhat bizarre experience, he also knew from his lessons with his mother that the dantain and meridians were not actually physical organs in his body but spiritual ones, it was a very peculiar thought to him that he could feel this organ was there, but if he made an incision were he thought it to be located, he would find nothing.
These distracting thoughts were short lived though, as he knew he had more work to do to complete his Awakening. Now that he felt his dantian, it was child’s play to direct the qi he absorbed from his breathing directly to it with an ever diminishing amount of waste as he grew more comfortable with this new experience. Still, he decided he would heed his mother’s warning about patience and thoroughness when cultivating. He slowed down, concentrating on his control and wastage, making sure that he had every advantage for what was to come next.
By the time that he felt his dantain was full to bursting he was very much in full control of the qi that he absorbed, there was no wastage to be seen with each breath he took the qi would find its way to his dantain. At this point he knew he was ready, he stopped his breathing routine and transitioned his breathing to deep and slow as he sat and calmed his mind before he proceeded with the next step. As he did, he noticed to his slight shock that the unknown around him had changed quite a bit in the time that he had been intensely focused inward. While before the unknown around him was riotous and more than a little confusing, now it was far less so, it was still confusing but it no longer felt overwhelmingly so. He felt the flows around him, and they no longer seemed alien and disparate, they felt connected, connected to each other, and connected to him.
As the calm washed over him, Xu Long realized that his dantian no longer actually felt full anymore, as if the calm in his mind had overlaid itself onto the previously disorderly qi contained in his dantian. A small smile appeared on his previously stoic and concentrating face. He began to absorb qi once again. Given that his dantain was previously thought to be full, this top up obviously did not take very long, within a few absorptions of qi he was once again at that now familiar feeling of a full to bursting dantain. As soon as that feeling arose for the second time this session, even though Xu Long was not exactly sure why, he felt with certainty that he was ready, so without bothering with the same break as previously he continued to the next and final step.
He began with care, feeling the qi in his dantain in totality and then pushing slowly outward with all of it at the same time. He knew from the Clear Spring Manual that this was a delicate balancing act, too much force and the qi would burst out of your dantain and most likely dissipate into your body and the air around you, too little and the qi would not have the force necessary to be able to flush the clogged meridians throughout your body. Xu Long worked in increments, as he watched the qi in his dantian slowly find all the passages leading out to his body and start to worm its way into them and then start to pick up speed. As he felt the qi running through what he assumed were his meridians he reveled in the feeling, it was like his whole body was numb his entire life and was only now waking up as the qi made its way through his body.
He felt as if in a trance, but he also felt that none of what was occurring now was placing any stress on his body or him, so he continued to incrementally speed up the flow of qi through his opening meridians. If before the feeling of pushing qi through his meridians was a joy to be reveled in, now it was a feeling of exhilaration, one that he was wary of. The last thing he wanted was to fail right as he was approaching the end, so he shrunk the increments even further as he continued to test for his limits.
In the end he was very glad that he had as he felt those limits very shortly after that feeling of exhilaration tried to enthrall him to keep pushing, they came upon him very abruptly as well. Xu Long immediately put an end to his incremental approach and dialed the force back one notch and held it there. Then he watched and he felt, as the qi charging through his system unearthed meridian after meridian. Awakening was an utterly perfect name, it felt like his entire being was waking up from a prolonged sleep.
With the force that he exerted on his qi dialed in, the process became a lot more passive than previously, Xu Long was simply watching the process unfolding before him. Now that he was more focused he noted some peculiarities, the qi that was rushing through his meridians disappeared as it did so, it almost looked like the qi was building the meridians. From what Xu Long had learnt from his mother he didn’t think that that was correct and thought it more likely that the qi and the blockage somehow canceled each other out. Whatever the case may be, it all resulted in the fact that his dantian was quickly running dry. As he was watching his qi reserves drop precipitously and wondering what would happen when they did, the unblocking of meridians suddenly ended, his qi was still being pushed outward as it was not quite empty, but the qi rushing through his meridians was no longer finding any meridians to unblock and thus it was not disappearing.
Just as he was about to start drawing all the qi left rushing through his meridians back to his dantian he heard his mother’s voice in his mind.
“Continue pushing out all the qi you have and cycle it through your meridians, you will feel it when you can stop.”
Not about to disregard his mother’s instructions, considering all the help that her teachings had just provided to the success of this rather intense experience, he continued pushing the remainder of his qi out of his dantain, after which he focused entirely on circling the last of his qi around his meridians. At first he was a little confused about the objective of her instruction, but then as he watched the remainder of his qi flow throughout his meridians he noticed a small, almost imperceptible decrease in his qi, it was clearly not a lot but it was near constant. That is when he realized that whatever mechanism was using up his qi in the unblocking process was still continuing here, only this was more like a final polish. As he watched this happen and thought more about his previous actions he felt that he needed to truly internalize his mother’s lessons on patience and meticulousness when it came to cultivation. The only reason he had to stop circling his qi and not do a thorough check of his newly unblocked meridians with the remainder of his qi just now was impatience and excitement over the prospect of having succeeded in Awakening.
After many revolutions he finally felt as if his qi was no longer decreasing at all, he cycled it one more time to make sure then drew what was left of his qi into his dantian. When he was finished he let out a deep breath before reaching up and untying his blindfold, blinking a few times as he reacquainted himself with the bright midday sun, his eyes finally focused on the scene in front of him, his mother standing there with a big smile on her face and a small spirit fox perched on her shoulder.
“Congratulations, Long’er. A perfect Awakening.”