Chapter 13: Steps

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Every step is pain.

Every breath is agony.

Every second a new torture.

Liu Jin is barely aware of where he is. Is he still in Poison Fang Canyon? Is he close to Eastern Port City? He does not know. The only thing he knows right now is his master’s back. As long as he follows that back, he should be fine. The alternative is death, and death is not acceptable. Liu Jin has only seen nine springs in this world, and he’d rather see many more. Thus, he follows his master.

Step by step. Breath by breath. Second by second.

As he does, the rest of his being focuses on a much more critical task. Keeping the poison under control.

Liu Jin cannot explain what Nine-Headed Snake God did to his body. Regardless, the result is clear. His body now produces a deadly poison, seemingly without end. The poison flows through his body using his Qi, his own lifeforce. In a way, it is a betrayal of the highest order. His own energy has been turned against him.

Without the dragon bone needles his master gifted him, Liu Jin would surely be dead. If he hadn’t figured out he needed to divert the flow of his Qi to isolate the poison and expel it from his body, the poison would have undoubtedly left his body a rotten husk by now.

The poison would have rotted his body… and his master would have let it happen, Liu Jin realizes. His father warned him. Old Jiang is a harsh teacher. Even Old Jiang warned him and gave him many opportunities to turn back.

Back then, Liu Jin thought he understood all those warnings. He thought he understood what he was getting himself into, the danger he agreed to face. He really thought he understood.

Only now, as the poison tortures his body, does Liu Jin realize how naïve he was.

The realization causes him to lose control for an instant. The poison spreads, introducing new kinds of pain to Liu Jin’s body. He bites his tongue. The taste of copper fills his mouth, but it’s nothing compared to what the rest of his body is feeling. Liu Jin would like to say his body feels as though it is burning from the inside, but there is no way fire could ever be this cruel.

Before a full second passes, Liu Jin forces the poison back to its proper flow. The dragon bone needles vibrate inside of him, but he wills them to stay inside his body.

“We are almost there. Keep going.”

His master says something. Liu Jin vaguely hears the words. His mind is in no state to process them. Just walking after his master is taxing enough. The bulk of his mental faculties is dedicated to keeping the delicate balance that is preventing him from dying on the spot.

There can be no more miscalculations, no mistakes. Liu Jin needs to keep doing this again and again perfectly for three years. He needs to repeat the process until it becomes as natural as breathing. Until Liu Jin reaches that point, he cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He cannot rest.

How long will that take?

Weeks, Liu Jin realizes. At a bare minimum, it will take weeks for his body to get used to repeating the process, weeks until he can do anything else. Can his Qi sustain his body until then? People who have reached high levels of cultivation can go without food or rest for long periods of time. Xiao Nan once told him he could go for over a year without eating if he wished to.

However, Liu Jin is not Xiao Nan. Liu Jin is but a child in the Inner Realm, the second realm of cultivation. Even calling him a proper cultivator is too much at this point. Can his Qi really keep his body alive until he is able to eat on his own?

Liu Jin is not sure.

The realization opens a pit in his stomach, but he does not let it destabilize him. Either way, the path forward is clear. His Qi will have to last. That is all there is to it. The alternative is death, and that is something he does not want to dwell on.

“We are here.”

The words barely manage to pierce his consciousness. Where is here? Is he home at last? Has he walked all the way back from Poison Fang Canyon? Liu Jin barely feels his body being pushed down into a bed. There is something in his neck.

“You did well, disciple. Rest now.”

His master’s words reach him this time. Knowing he is in a safe place, Liu Jin’s focus fully turns inward, and the outside world vanishes from his senses.

~~

Time goes by. Liu Jin remains deep inside his own mind, his body unmoving and barely breathing yet alive. Occasionally, Liu Jin feels someone pouring something down his throat. Someone is trying to keep his body hydrated. His master? His father? In any case, those are but small moments scattered between eternities, so rare and brief from his perspective that Liu Jin wonders if he isn’t just imagining them.

How long has it been now?

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Months? Weeks? Days? Perhaps, it has not even been an hour. His sense of time is yet another thing Liu Jin has discarded. It has no bearing on the task at hand. Sights, scents, and sounds also do not exist for him as he is now. There is only the Qi flowing through his body and the pain the poison causes him. There is only the process by which he slowly purifies his being.

Liu Jin purges the venom without end. Each time, he tries to refine the process further, to make it faster, more efficient, easier. Each failure brings agony. Each success eases his burden.

Liu Jin fails many times.

Liu Jin tries to keep count of his failures if only to keep track of time in some way. He manages to do so until he hits quadruple digits. The number is lost soon after that. His successes are fewer, yet with each one Liu Jin gets closer to fully refining the process. Not by much. Not by 10%. Not even by 5%. Perhaps not even by 1%. He might as well be an ant trying to climb a mountain.

However, Liu Jin does not stop.

With 523 successes, Liu Jin can take back control of 6% of his body.

With 1355 successes, Liu Jin can take back control of 31% of his body.

With 8753 successes, Liu Jin opens his eyes at last.