Chapter 14: Raw Channels

Chapter 14: Raw Channels

The pair of siblings made it back to the sect’s training ground just in time for the physical cultivation class to begin. As they walked, Paike acutely felt each one of his injuries. Every time he let his guard down and stepped wrong on his bad leg, he let out a tiny hiss of breath between his clenched teeth. It was a soft sound, but not soft enough. His sister heard it every time and shot him an increasingly worried look.

Briefly, she had tried to argue that he should skip the physical cultivation classes. He had vehemently disagreed. If he was late or didn’t show up for even one class, he wouldn’t receive further instruction. A little bit of pain wasn’t enough to make him give that up.

Liming offered to spend as much time as necessary coaching him through the cultivation as she learned it in class. It was a generous offer, and he would definitely take it if, for some reason, he literally couldn’t be there. But he was confident they could make it in time. Besides, if by some miracle he managed to awaken physically, he didn’t want Elder Ji’s opinion of him soured by disrespecting him and not showing up for a lesson when he could have.

It was because of this pure focus on just getting there that, when the lesson began, Paike hadn’t noticed the continual changes to his cultivation.

Elder Ji started the lesson off in a slightly different way than he had last time. Instead of beginning with physical exercises, he had them sit in rows.

“Physical cultivation isn’t simply letting qi reinforce your body,” he began with no preamble. “It’s about constructing your perfect form, layering qi down like coats of paint as if you were lacquering the most beautiful furniture, and doing this repeatedly until there’s nothing left but the ossified qi left behind from so many centuries before. This is the final stage of physical cultivation that almost none of you will ever achieve. It is important to understand this before you start on the demanding journey of physical cultivation. Even if the beginning is simple, do not expect it to stay that way.”

He went on to explain the method for spinning qi out of one’s dantian and layering it into the body, one tiny strand at a time, reinforcing bones and sinew, enhancing organs, and improving the flow of blood.

The class of new cultivators sat and listened, entranced. Paike was both relieved and frustrated at the same time. The exercises they had done last time were something he could do. He was good at that. It was one thing in his life that he had actually been talented in. He had always been physically fit and willing to push his body beyond what almost anyone else could.

Now, it appeared that physical cultivation would be just as hard for him as regular cultivation. If it involved moving qi around and layering it delicately like this, it wasn’t something he thought he could do well. Not compared to how he was at the exercises.

Still, once the Elder had finished explaining and answered a few questions, he began to take them through an exercise. With his first try, he didn’t move delicately enough. His qi refused to separate into anything fine. It clumped together, spread unevenly, and moved like molasses. Starting over, Paike attempted to spin out a strand of his qi even slower. It took him a while, but he eventually managed something passible, more like a strand of rough wool yarn rather than a fine silk thread.

It wasn’t nearly as refined as his instructor had described, nor was it as consistent as he would have liked. But when he went to lay it into his bones, it melded after some effort of aligning it properly. The qi dissipated slowly into his little finger along the bone as if it had always belonged.

Even as he layered the first strand in, though, he started to sense that something was wrong. Not that his qi was moving unexpectedly, but there was a different quality to it now. Upon closer inspection, it felt like a certain lingering taint from the ancient spirit.

He had figured that when he assimilated it and brought it into his dantian, it would passively purify. After all, he’d never had a problem with this when he brought in environmental qi in his quick and dirty way. Perhaps the standard cultivation techniques were there for a reason. There was always a heavy emphasis on purification and integration in all the techniques he had heard of. Something that he didn’t, couldn’t, do.

Still, he didn’t stop. This was simply something he would have to just push through.

As he laboriously started pulling the second goopy string of qi from his core, Elder Ji stopped his pacing in front of him. Paike looked up from where he sat cross-legged and studied the Elder’s face. In it, he found genuine confusion.

“How are you alive?” The Elder asked.

“Excuse me, Elder?” Paike responded.

“You have higher-order qi in you by at least three realms. The toxicity should be killing you.”

“Um…” Paike answered eloquently.

“Cycle your qi for me,” the Elder instructed.

Paike grimaced inwardly and slowly began a basic cycle. He had never actually completed one, in truth. Once, he had spent four hours trying; his sister could do it in under a minute. But the Elder sat there watching for several minutes before he huffed.

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Whether it was some sort of toxicity in his qi or simply an aspect of the spirit he was adopting, like how many cultivators added a flame aspect to their qi, he wasn’t sure. He would have liked to have chosen his first aspect, but it was very possible this new feature of his qi was utterly benign. Besides, if it were genuinely toxic, he would probably be dead already. The Elder seemed to think differently, though.

It was already in his dantian, and that was usually the end of every great story he’d ever read that involved a hero getting poisoned with qi. There was always a frantic race to destroy the invasive qi technique or poison before it reached one’s core. Paike could sense that his entire cultivation already had this shadowy essence meddled into its foundations.