69. Fellow Daoists, I Think Your Entire Magic System Has a Skill Issue

A few hours later, we are in a new room.

It is smaller than the last one. More expensive. And supposedly “better ventilated,” which I suspect is the innkeeper’s way of saying she wanted us as far from the ruined floorboards as possible. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the wall.

The past few hours pass through my mind in fragments. The innkeeper shouting. The old woman from the room below screaming that something black was dripping from her ceiling. The sound of her vomiting. Twice. Ling’er had vanished by the time the innkeeper came up the stairs. I do not know where she went, but I stood there, in the middle of the chaos, and explained with the calm dignity of a sect leader that I had taken a purification pill whose effects had been “stronger than expected.” The innkeeper stared at me incredulously.

I took full blame. I paid for the damaged floorboards, the cleaning, and the replacement bedding. And an extra low-grade stone for silence.

The innkeeper stopped shouting then. I stand in the new room, staring at the wall, and reflect that I have now dealt with gambling, manuals, spirit beast meat, and bodily impurities.

‘Truly, sect leadership is broadening my skillset.’

The door opens and Ling’er slips inside. Her hair is damp. Her skin is pink from scrubbing. She is wearing new robes; I recognize them from a stall near the inn. She must’ve bought it while I was negotiating with the innkeeper. She does not look at me. I check her concealment twice. Then a third time. Still perfect. Good.

She stands near the door, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes fixed on the floor. She looks like a child who has broken something expensive and is waiting to be scolded.

“I am sorry, Master.”

Her face is still pink, and her ears are red. I sigh.

“Ling’er.”

She looks up.

“Compared to the problems you could cause,” I say, “this one is refreshingly mundane.”

She blinks.

“You could have attracted the attention of a Core Formation elder. You could have broken through in the middle of the tournament and put every cultivator in the city on high alert.” I lean back on the bed. “Instead, you stained some floorboards and made an old woman vomit. I will take that trade every time.”

“I am still sorry, Master.”

The new room is quieter than the old one, though that might just be the absence of an old woman screaming about black tar dripping from her ceiling. Ling’er sits across from me on the smaller bed, her legs folded.

“… How do you feel?”

She takes a while to answer.

“Heavier,” she says finally. “And lighter. At the same time. My qi moves differently. Before, I had to think about where to send it. Now, my body knows. It knows where the qi wants to go before I direct it.”

“That is the refinement settling in. You’re now a higher stage than I am. It is an impressive feat.”

“Thank you, Master. But the breakthrough… it was not just from watching techniques. I understood a dozen of them. Maybe more. But that was not what triggered it.”

“Then what did?”

She is quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is slower.

“A shared principle.”

Ling’er purses her lips, scratching her head, as though trying to get the words out right.

“At Qi Condensation, most people’s qi feels like chaotic fog. Even the strong ones, they gather, shape, and expel qi in bursts. They manipulate outside things through force and practice. Foundation Establishment is different. Their qi isn’t fog. It is dense liquid. Heavy and deep.” She gestures to the ink bowl. “Like a… sea forced into a small pipe.”

I nod slowly. This matches what I know. What Frostheart’s journals describe. What every cultivation text assumes.

“If you put a hollow reed into a lake and drink,” she continues, “the water comes easily.”

She picks up a brush handle from the desk, gesturing to it. “But if the lake were honey, the same reed wouldn’t be enough. You would have to suck harder. Your cheeks would ache and your lips would tire. All the cultivators in the Foundation bracket have turned their qi into honey. They have trained their bodies to suck harder. That is why they are strong. But… they are slow.”

I pause. To me, the Foundation cultivators did not look slow at all. Their movements were faster than I could track. Their techniques landed before I could blink. She sees the question in my eyes.

“Not slow compared to mortals,” she clarifies. “Not slow compared to Qi Condensation. Slow compared to what their qi could be doing. If the circulation method were different.”

She looks at her hands.

“They made the qi thicker, then they trained their bodies to handle it. But the pressure circulation method you taught me does something different.”

The pressure circulation method. She had taken the idea further than I ever intended. I keep that thought to myself and let her continue.

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“I do not fully understand it yet,” she admits. “I only saw a clue. Watching them made me realize the flaw.”

“What flaw?”

“Their qi is dense. It is potent. It is cultivated to a level I have not seen before. But all of them are still obeying the same assumption that stronger qi must become harder to move. I think that’s wrong.”

I do not speak. My mind is already turning. Every cultivation path I know follows the same broad logic. Refine gaseous qi. Condense it to liquid. Compress toward solidity. That is the law. That is the way. But if what Ling’er says is true…

“Ling’er,” I say slowly, “what you are describing—”

“I know.” She looks at her hands. “It is not normal. I do not fully understand it. But I saw it. In the Foundation bracket. All of them. Even the monsters, like the monk. They are fighting themselves.”

Frostheart’s journal supported the conventional path. So did every manual I had ever read. Entire sects built themselves on those assumptions. Ling’er had been cultivating for months, and she was already questioning the foundation beneath all of it.

I almost warn her off immediately. Centuries of cultivation theory did not overturn themselves because a twelve-year-old watched one tournament bracket.

Then again, no one else could have seen what she saw. Not me. Not even the Gaze. It could assess techniques, not reinvent them. Ling’er could. It is why I cannot smother her idea so easily. Even if it was like telling a world that counted from one to nine that there had always been another number hiding between seven and eight.

“Ling’er,” I say carefully, “do not rush this.”

She looks at me.

“What you are seeing—it may be real. But it is also untested. You are one person, and you have been cultivating for months. The people you watched today have been doing this for centuries. What you’re asking is to disregard thousands of years of cultivation. Do you understand?”

She nods slowly.