After about 20 minutes the feeling of elation had mostly subsided and Xu Long was still leaning back in his chair looking at the sky, except now he was reflecting on his actions since he had broken through to Rank 2 of Qi Condensation. He was more than a little unsettled. He let the front legs of his chair hit the ground and straightened up his posture, looking at his mother, he had to ask. “Is that normal? I just strut out of the river stark naked right in front of you without a care in the world.”
His mother chuckled at his question. “The feelings of euphoria and erosion of inhibitions are routine and near universal, but the way they manifested with you are certainly unique, maybe you have a streak of exhibitionism in you Long’er.”
He could tell by the mischievous glint in her eyes that she was winding him up. “Is that going to happen every time?”
“The first time is always the most extreme, but that feeling of euphoria never really goes away after a breakthrough, however, as the spirit grows with further and further cultivation, your control over yourself, even when experiencing such a state, becomes far greater, and thus the lowering of inhibitions is strictly a foundational realm occurrence.”
Taking one last look at the sky, Xu Long sighed, before he unwound his blindfold from his wrist and placed it back over his eyes and looked in the direction that he could see a strange anomaly in the surrounding qi that was his mother. He had come to learn the anomaly was the result of high level cultivators restraining their qi and aura, something that his mother had informed him was standard fare for all high level cultivators, except in the case one is showing off or trying to intimidate lower level cultivators.
Somewhat disconcerting to him, however, was when his mother demonstrated to him her ability to completely blend in with the natural ambiance of the qi in her surroundings which would render her completely invisible to his current method of seeing the world around him. When he had voiced his concerns though, she had merely chuckled and assured him that any cultivator at her realm or higher, possibly a decent number in Nascent Soul Realm cultivators as well, could walk right next to any Qi Condensation or even Foundation Establishment cultivator completely unnoticed.
“I had better go and cultivate to solidify my breakthrough, thank you for not allowing me to make too much of a fool of myself Mother.”
“It was no trouble at all Long’er, I am going to have to take Xiao Xing off your hands though, considering Wu Zhong’s scheduled arrival tomorrow I will be spending the rest of today and tonight making sure that she is ready to follow you out into the world.”
Xu Long looked down at the fox in his hands and although he couldn’t actually see, he was sure she was looking back at him with pleading eyes. All he could do was shrug his shoulders. As she was jumping to his mothers outstretched hand he was pretty sure that the understanding he had come to with Xu Xing was null and void after all of 20 minutes.
Xu Long heard his mother walking off after a little scoff at the two’s silent conversation. “We will talk tomorrow Long’er.”
“I’ll see you then…or you know, I’ll hear you then.”
He heard a slight chuckle at his lame joke and then he started walking to his grove.
The next day Xu Long awoke to the feeling of a sleeping spirit fox splayed out on his chest, as he was contemplating how to move her without waking her up he heard a very familiar voice.
“She is dead to the world, kid, you can move her as you please and she won’t wake up.”
From the direction and what he could feel in the surrounding qi, Old Wu was sitting at his table, and from the smell, he could tell that he was partaking in spirit liquor. Xu Long placed the apparently comatose spirit fox on her fur rug and then got up to grab his robe that was, as usual, slung over the privacy screen near the end of his bed. Except it had been moved from the corner of the screen to draped across the center. Xu Long, having been training to be constantly blindfolded for a month with his mother, found locating most objects or people with qi signatures that he was remotely familiar with to be very easy, thus he found his robe and had to chuckle at the old man’s prank.
“It would be a little ridiculous if a mere 3 months changed you overmuch…considering your advanced age, but I still find myself happy that it didn’t.”
“Hey watch that talk kid, you should respect your elders.”
“Even when they act like children?” Xu Long asked in the middle of sitting down as he readjusted his trajectory to sit in the seat that had been slightly moved out from under him when he was mid-sit.
Old Wu laughed at that one. “Especially when they act like children, they are generally the elders worth listening to, except maybe the petulant ones.”
“Sure thing old man, so have I passed your little tests?”
Old Wu scoffed. “Kid you were right the first time around, I was playing around just now, the actual test starts when we leave here. The enrollment for the Academy is in 2 months, the reason that I had planned for us to leave early was to throw you right into the thick of it in the Endless Forest before you entered the Academy, teach you a few things etc. etc. Now though, it is going to be something a little different, if you actually want to go through with this, you are going to have to convince me that you can pull it off.
“Speaking of playing around though, how about a little spar?”
Xu Long smiled, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Their little spar turned into a spar that lasted half the day. Old Wu had to adjust how much he suppressed himself near constantly, Xu Long had improved in basically every aspect except his swordsmanship as he had been forced to focus elsewhere ever since his Awakening, however, now that he was finally able to fight with a sword in his hand again, his swordsmanship improved at a rapid pace right before Old Wu’s eyes. The Old man was mildly shocked as he watched the kid, who seemed to be improving by the second, his control over his body and qi were superb, and the addition of his viewing the world through qi was a potent complement to his previous reliance on his intuition.
However, Xu Long being somewhat of a freak prodigy when it came to the sword was nothing new to Old Wu, so he was only mildly surprised as he watched the kid be the freak he expected. What truly shocked him even more than the swordsmanship progression that was happening in real time right in front of him was the ‘sight’ that he and his mother had developed, which if his mother was to be believed, was accomplished in a single month. On the surface it sounded and appeared to be a lot like spiritual sense, which allowed one to view the world around them through their spirit, discounting the fact that developing functional spiritual sense before Core Formation is basically unheard of, what Xu Long was doing was actually quite a bit different, more raw.
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All cultivators could feel qi to varying degrees. Cultivators less far along their path interact with their perception of qi almost universally for the sole purpose of cultivation, while those in higher realms with well developed spiritual sense could use it to ‘see’ qi. However, they could also ‘see’ everything else with their spiritual sense, thus, their view of qi was like an overlay on top of the world and they interpreted the flows of the qi that they saw based on the physical world underneath it. What Xu Long was doing, however, was taking that overlay by itself, albeit a very imperfect one given his lack of functional spiritual sense, and interpreting the world from that. Old Wu, quite frankly, thought it was an insane thing for a Qi Condensation Realm cultivator to be doing, but he had to admit that it appeared to be working.
Xu Long, no longer having to rely solely on his instincts to substitute for his lack of vision, had shed his passivity completely. However, Old Wu felt the substantial incongruity in Xu Long’s swordsmanship as the sparring continued, on the one hand, he felt attacks coming like a cultivator several realms higher who could utilize their spiritual sense to perfection, and on the other he fought like an exceptional mortal swordsman, one who was so new to cultivation that they hadn’t even learned any arts yet, both of these things were true, and yet it should not be possible for them to appear in the same person simultaneously.
While Old Wu was concentrating on constantly tweaking how much he suppressed himself and analyzing Xu Long’s fighting style, Xu Long was in a trance-like state. When they had begun their spar he was slightly overwhelmed with joy and relief, he hadn’t realized it at the time, but it felt like his three months spent without fighting with a sword in his hand had been building a kind of pressure within him. Now that pressure had been released and all was right with the world. After that feeling had passed however, and he had started to get back into the swing of things, he came to realize just how monumental of a change his qi sight was having, and could have in the future, on his swordsmanship. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t completely blind anymore, when he watched the qi flowing around him and Old Wu as they sparred he could start to pick up on cues in the qi that hinted at his opponents actions. For instance, say Old Wu was placing more weight on a certain foot in preparation to move a particular direction, the qi in the earth under his foot would subtly react in kind, so even though Old Wu’s qi was even more restrained than his mothers and was thus of little help to him, the same could not be said for the world around him.
He wasn’t sure how long they had been going for when Old Wu suddenly grabbed Xu Long’s sword between his fingers and stopped it dead in its tracks, Xu Long almost immediately snapped out of his trance and looked at Old Wu in confusion.
“Let’s have a little break, also take that blindfold off, I’ve got something to show you”
Xu Long nodded and untied his blindfold and tied it around his wrist as he let his eyes adjust, it was only when he looked back up that he realized that it was well past midday, they had indeed been at it for hours. As he turned to follow Old Wu towards the table, he noticed his mother was sitting there with her tea cup in hand and Xu Xing sitting on her shoulder completely focused on said cup.
As he walked over and sat down across from her, he couldn’t help but ask. “How long have you been here Mother?”
She smiled at him. “A few hours.”
“You should have said something.”
“It’s fine Long’er, besides, I didn’t want to disturb your fun.”
Just when he was about to retort about his mother’s insinuation that he was just playing around, he was distracted when Old Wu plonked a bottle of spirit liquor on the table and poured himself a drink. As he remembered what Old Wu said he decided to let his mother’s jab at him slide. “So what did you want to show me, old man?”
“Long’er, try not to talk to Wu Zhong like that when you are out in the world, you could get in quite a bit of trouble if anyone saw you even slightly disrespecting the ‘Thunder God’.”
Old Wu immediately spit out the liquor that he was in the middle of savoring. “Li!”
Xu Long was looking at the two of them slightly confused, his mother had a slight mischievous grin while Old Wu was staring at her disbelief written all over his face.
“Long’er needs to have at least some idea of who you are outside of the valley, Zhong.”
Old Wu just rubbed his face with his palm. “That does not mean that you need to bring up that ridiculous name that few even remember anymore.”
She just chuckled at him. “I know, I just thought it would be funny to see your reaction.”
Old Wu grumbled under his breath before turning his attention to Xu Long. “First of all kid, you never heard that name and if I ever hear you speak it I’ll show you how I got it. Are we clear?”
Xu Long tried really hard to suppress his grin, to little success. “...What name?”
Old Wu squinted his eyes at him for a second before nodding. “Good. Now as for who I am outside of the valley, I am merely a rogue cultivator, which has all kinds of connotations but at its core just means I am not affiliated with any clans or sects, who is at the peak of the Dao Seeking Realm.”
Xu Long looked over at his mother when he heard her scoff from the side. “What he is leaving out is that he is one the oldest and most powerful Dao Seeking Realm cultivators in the realm, who also happens to have powerful friends and former disciples all over the realm, most of whom owe their lives or their current realm to him, or both.”
Xu Long looked back at Old Wu extremely confused and wanting to ask the burning question on his mind.
Luckily Old Wu took one look at him and voiced his unasked question. “So what is someone like me doing here, spending almost ten years training you?”
Xu Long just nodded, confirming that was indeed his question.
“What your mother just described is just what everybody outside the valley knows about me, what none of them know is that I am a secret disciple of your father.”
The shock of the revelation washed over Xu Long, and yet the more he thought about it the more everything made so much more sense to him. He looked at his mother. “That’s why you have no fear of anything Old Wu does outside being traced back to you, as if there is no connection between you at all and yet your trust in him is absolute.”
She just smiled and nodded her head. He then looked back at Old Wu. “You said ‘a secret apprentice’, are there more?”
He smiled and looked up for a moment like he was remembering something. “There were 5 all together over the years, your mother would have been the 6th, if, you know, she didn’t seduce Master with her beguiling charms.” All of a sudden Old Wu caught a tea cup that came at his head at an unbelievable speed.
Xu Long looked over at his mother only to see her giving Old Wu the stink eye. He just chuckled. “That was for earlier, Li.”
He gently threw the cup back before he continued. “I was the first and I am coincidentally the only one left, two died on their path, the other two transcended.”
Xu Long was just about to open his mouth and ask a question, but he stopped himself, he could feel that it was a sensitive subject.
Old Wu saw his little struggle and guessed what he had stopped himself from asking. “Maybe I will tell you one day, kid, for now I’ll just say that while I am capable, I have no desire to chase immortality.”
Knowing that there had to be quite the story behind that, but also that it was probably not a happy one considering how few things Old Wu cares to keep to himself, Xu Long just nodded his head and moved on. “We seem to have veered quite off course, what was it that you wanted to show me.”
Old Wu looked at him with a big grin. “Kid, you are going to love this.”