At the back of a now familiar grove, in a clearing next to a now familiar pond, a boy could be seen training with a sword with single mindedness. His eyes were closed, his shoulder length hair that was mostly pulled back into a ponytail in the middle of his head, save for a few unruly strands from his fringe, was swaying with gracious movements. The sword brushed mere millimeters from the side of his face as he rotated his wrist and spun the sword before trusting it forwards.
Then the blade stopped. The boy's eyes snapped open, only to see an old man holding the tip of his sword between his thumb and index finger.
“Not bad, kid. I am glad that you didn’t take my decision that you were ready for sparring as a reason to stop training your forms. Even if you didn’t have much, if any, room for improvement in my eyes, I can see now the fractional progress that you make everyday towards perfection. I suppose that is why I never took to the sword and walked the path of the spear, much more straightforward and to my liking.”
Looking at the old man holding his sword like it was nothing and yet feeling to him like it was stuck in a stone wall, utterly unmovable, Xu Long could only smile and shake his head. “I don’t do it to seek perfection, Old Wu, honestly, I just start feeling restless if I don’t run through the forms at least once a day.”
Xu Long looked from Old Wu to the tip of his sword, still inexplicably held there between finger and thumb, trying to get him to let go without having to say the words out loud. Old Wu chuckled and let go, receiving a self deprecating grin and a shake of the head in return.
“So old man, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Old Wu smiled at him. “Your mother asked me to fetch you, apparently our guest will be waking up soon.”
Shock written on his face, Xu Long had to take a second to process what he just heard, ‘it’s been three years already?’ Looking at Old Wu in front of him to make sure the old man wasn’t playing a joke on him, he saw the old man’s eyes and he knew. He took off at a sprint almost immediately, yelling over his shoulder, “why didn’t you tell me right away?”
Old Wu watched as the boy took off, his eyes focused on the sword as it went from held in his hand to sheathed at the side of his waist as he ran, sure that the boy had done the entire movement unconsciously, the old man had to smile. Xu Long had taken to wearing his sword at all hours of the day, every day. He lived and breathed the sword, much to the consternation of his mother who was still trying to fill up any real estate in his head that wasn’t taken up by the sword with knowledge. As he watched the boy run a little more closely he picked up on something rather imperceptible. “Huh, that is earlier than expected. I guess this is just a sign that the heavens want me to visit my drinking buddy. I wonder if he has added anything to his collection in the last couple of years?”
Laughing somewhat conspiratorially to himself Old Wu raised his hand and clicked his fingers which materialized a small blue bird that seemed to have sparks coming off it every now and then, after looking at the bird for a second it took off in the same direction as Xu Long, while Old Wu made his way to the entrance of the valley.
At his full speed Xu Long made it to the heart of the valley, or simply his mother’s garden, in around five minute, he arrived just in time to see his mother standing outside the octagonal border of the garden, she had a small blue bird perched on her finger and she was staring into its eyes. After a few seconds the blue bird winked out of existence in a small flash, Xu Long then saw his mother looking at him in an appraising manner. Unable to decipher what all this was about, Xu Long decided to focus on something he found far more important, something that he had been anticipating for three years now. He walked up to his mother who was still scrutinizing him and asked. “Is she awake yet?”
“Soon, Long’er, she is in the final stages.” She answered as she gestured towards the bowl in the center of the ponds.
For the first time since arriving Xu Long took a good look at the happenings of the garden. The jade bowl that he remembered placing the tiny fox in all those years ago had an elaborate formation glowing on its outer walls which continued over the lip to the inner walls and presumably to the fox within. Even more impressive was the incredibly intricate and massive formations that covered the four paths that met in the center of the garden, the two that ran North South were glowing a faint purple, the two that ran East West were glowing an almost imperceptible dark red.
“Wow, that is one impressive formation.”
“Thank you Long’er. Tell me, where do you think this formation is weakest?”
Xu Long almost wanted to roll his eyes at his mother, ‘everything is a lesson…’. But he stopped himself and started looking over the formation as a whole. It was very faint and he certainly was unsure of his answer, but he said it all the same. “The bowl?”
His mother smiled. “Close, it is the ring that directly encircles the bowl.”
“So, would you like me to explain this formation to you?”
Looking at her a little suspiciously, “broad strokes, right?”
Giving him a knowing smile. “Unfortunately we don't have the time before our little fox wakes for anything other than a general overview.”
After getting a nod, with a still slightly suspicious look on his face, she continued. “I know you had no way of understanding what I said at the time but do you remember what I told you the problem with our little fox is?”
Xu Long had to search his memory for a few seconds, but he found what he was looking for. “You said that the bear's malicious qi had flooded her body and gone very deep, and that she was only alive due to a ward from her mother.”
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“Good, I hope that makes more sense to you now.”
When she saw him nod she continued. “This formation, despite how elaborate it appears, is incredibly simple, fundamentally all it does is push stellar qi into and out of the fox, which very slowly erodes Old Yong’s qi, and then washes out the qi that has been sufficiently worn down. The reason that it appears so elaborate is because both the bear’s qi and the stellar qi are incredibly potent, not the kind of forces that a baby spirit fox can usually survive, and thus the formation must monitor the fox and then regulate extremely precisely the input of stellar qi.”
As he was looking over the formation and taking it in with the new context, he had a thought as he was looking at the East West paths. “What happens to the old bear’s qi?”
“That is no longer Old Yong’s qi, it is just qi now, well technically it is a mixture between earth, dark and blood qi, what has been worn away is the lingering intent. So to answer your question, it just dissipates into the valley and ultimately into the world at large.”
“Earth, dark and blood? That seems very…unfocused.”
“Do you remember me telling you how rare it is for cultivators to not only choose to face the Heavenly Tribulation but successfully pass through to the Immortal Realm?”
‘Always testing to see if I have been paying attention…’ Xu Long thought as he tried to remember. “I believe you said once every 2,000 years was considered a very fast pace of successful transcendence.”
Xu Long saw a small smile appear on his mother’s face like she could see what he was thinking. “That’s correct, well for spirit beasts that number is more like 100,000.”
“That…seems far too large.” Xu Long said, slightly bewildered.
“It does, doesn’t it, especially when you see how powerful spirit beasts can get. But Old Yong was a prime example of one of the major contributing factors, namely that it is rare for spirit beasts to even make it to the point of having to choose, because they tend to cultivate haphazardly and end up at a dead end on their path.”
Accepting his fate that he had been sucked into an impromptu lesson from his mother, Xu Long did have to admit that this was an intriguing subject. “What are the other contributing factors?”
“Of those that do make it to the point of having to choose, virtually all of them fall into two categories. Either they are spirit beasts with a powerful ancient bloodline who manage to unlock their ancestral memories or they are spirit beasts that have been raised by or have formed mutually beneficial relationships with humans.
“Now both of those groups tend to have different motivations for not choosing to attempt transcendence. Spirit beasts that are tied to humans tend to feel loyalty or attachment to said humans and take up a position of Guardian Protector of the clan or sect that raised them. Ancient bloodline spirit beasts with ancestral memories however share a motivation with a significant number of humans that choose not to attempt, they understand intrinsically what is waiting for them in the Immortal Realm, they will no longer be at the top of the food chain.
“That being said, these are simply motivations, what is at the heart of the rarity of spirit beasts attempting to pass through the Heavenly Tribulation is very simple, relative lifespan. Spirit beasts at the Dao Seeking Realm level of power can have life spans anywhere from 10 to 100 times that of humans.”
Xu Long was shocked, he remembered hearing 10,000 years and feeling that the number didn’t seem real, but a million years…no wonder they are in no great rush to chase immortality.
As Xu Long was standing there a little lost for words, his mother suddenly turned towards the garden. “If you would like to know more we are going to have to pick this up at our next lesson, Long’er.”
Snapping out of his absent-minded state Xu Long looked over at the jade bowl in the middle of the formation, as he did so he noticed quite the change in the formation since he and his mother had been talking. The East West paths were completely dead, while the North South and the bowl itself seemed to be pulsing with purple light that was getting dimmer with each pulse.
“Wait here, Long’er. I will fetch our little fox and bring her out, my garden will still be off limits to you for the next few months while the previous equilibrium is re-established, understood?”
Xu Long nodded to his mother’s question without taking his eyes off the formation. He had been anticipating this for 3 years, but now that it was finally here he had to admit that he was a little ambivalent. He knew from Old Wu’s discussion with the mother fox and his subsequent inquiries to his mother that he and the fox would be companions, on the one hand he was nervous because he did not want to let down the mother spirit fox who had entrusted her daughter to his care, on the other he was very excited to have someone even remotely close to his age to spend time with, he was hopeful that she would be his first friend.
He watched very closely as his mother walked slowly along the path, the pulsing seemingly getting dimmer with each of her steps. By the time she made it to the bowl in the center of the garden the formation had died completely, Xu Long could even see the lines that seemed etched into the ground and the bowl start to fade, as if they were never there in the first place. His mother bent over and gently scooped up the little fox with both of her hands, Xu Long was more than a little surprised, the fox had not grown at all in the past 3 years.
As his mother walked out of the garden, the little fox still looking as asleep as the day they placed it in the bowl, Xu Long couldn’t help but voice his confusion. “Is she ok? she doesn’t look like she has grown at all.”
With a gentle smile on her face over her son’s obvious concern. “She is fine, Long’er. She doesn’t look like she has grown because she hasn’t, I did tell you that her mother’s ward was spectacular, well our little fox here has effectively been in stasis this entire time.” Seeing the confusion on her son’s face she rephrased. “In other words, she was frozen, just without the ice.”
“Hold out your hand, Long’er.”
As his mother placed the little fox in his hand she continued. “Something you have to understand, Long'er, when she wakes she will have no idea that three years have passed, it will be as if her mother was battling the bear this morning and now she is here in the valley and her mother is gone. She is incredibly young, If I had to guess, less than a month old, so she will hopefully be able to adapt to her changed environment easier than if she were older. But there is only one way to find out.”
His mother reached out her slender hand and gently placed her index finger on the forehead of the little sleeping fox, she left it there for a few seconds and then retracted her hand. Xu Long was staring at the little fox with rapt attention, when he noticed the little one’s eyelids twitch a few times then slowly open. As they were opening she raised her head off her tail and pointed it towards Xu Long, when they fully opened looking straight at him, he froze. ‘What is going on?’ He was staring into the eyes of the little spirit fox in his hand, but staring back at him was the night sky.
Her eyeballs were pitch black with faint streaks of purple and a myriad of tiny stars. They both just stared at each other, without breaking eye contact Xu Long asked his mother, “ah Mother, are her eyes supposed to be like this?”
The little spirit fox tilted her head when he talked, but other than that they kept staring at each other as his mother walked to his side to take a look.
“Huh, would you look at that.”