Chapter 9: Before Others Realize

Chapter 9: Before Others Realize

Paike left his spiritual class the next day and immediately headed towards the sect library, his jade pass tucked into his belt. He was relatively hopeful after the morning’s instruction. They hadn’t had another cultivation session, so he hadn’t had to feel the disapproving gaze of Elder Chu nor the weight of failure. Instead, they had talked about the qi channels he had already carved, and he found that he hadn’t done as horribly as he had thought.

Sure, around the more delicate parts like his hands, fingers, and feet, there was a tangled mess he’d have to eventually fix. But the core of it wasn’t so bad. It seemed like he’d done slightly above average for a first attempt. Unfortunately, they hadn’t gotten to the corrective measures that class, only mentioning that it was possible to fix them and that constantly improving the shape of one’s qi pathways was an important part of cultivation. That had given him hope.

What they had talked about, though, was carving meridians, which had sent him to the library with his jade pass. To carve a meridian, one needed to have a technique in mind. Most students didn’t have access to the library yet. Later, they could earn access, but it was still early, and no one had the power to do sect missions. So, for the most part, the class had been spent just reviewing the theory.

If Paike could learn something now, he would get a head start on everyone—or almost everyone. Many had some instruction from their family. It depend on how early in the year they had awakened. That wasn’t something he could afford to worry about, though; any advantage now would help him keep up for as long as he could.

His actions went against the elder’s advice to not rush choosing techniques. Meridians were complicated things, and they were particular about how they were made and what they were made for. But he didn’t think that it applied to him. Meridians had several different variables, but what it came down to was that meridians were the path between the spiritual and the physical, allowing one’s qi to affect the world through some sort of technique. Not every art needed them, but most of the superhuman feats did.

Meridians were paths carved from one’s dantian to some part of their body, whether it be the arms, the spine, the heart, the head, the legs, or any other dozen parts. The location determined the purpose of the technique. Attacks typically came from the arms, enforcement from the heart, and so on.

That wasn’t the only thing to consider, though. There was also the attunement of the meridian. It could be attuned to any one of the five primary elements. Many people preferred a water-attuned meridian for healing, or maybe a fire or wood meridian would be better for attacking or reinforcement. But that wasn’t to say that attunements were limited to those. Rather, those were just the most popular. Nearly endless attunements existed as some variation of them. Things like a wind attunement, or even stellar or moon attunements to certain meridians, were entirely possible, if slightly rare, in early realms.

The meridian was a fascinating concept to think about, but it was also practical. Meridians formed a connection to the world that would allow one’s qi to flow out with an attunement. The pattern the qi made would create a technique. Just like the fire he had blocked that first day with his clumsy dispersed mist of qi.

He was going to the library to get an art—some sort of art usually used as a combination of one or more techniques, which would form some fraction of a fighting style. It wasn’t necessarily always fighting; cultivating crafters was in high demand as well. Someone had to make the pills and refine the natural treasures into something usable.

Whatever kind of meridian he wanted to experiment with, though, his level of talent forced him to pick the easiest path. This vastly limited his options. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had much of a choice if he wanted to keep up as best he could. There would be no avoiding risks for him.

Right now, he didn’t expect to get anything more than a single-technique art. Hopefully, he could find one unattuned because the process of attuning sounded extremely tedious. He’d have to force his qi along the meridian over and over again while holding certain concepts in his mind to force the attunement. This could be overridden later, but with his sluggish qi, he could expect it to take months to attune a meridian where many people could do it in a few hours. So if he could find something unattuned, that would be best.

It might not be possible for him to maintain this strategy going forward, but for now, it might be his best bet.

For now, Elder Chu had suggested that they use the shortest and thinnest possible meridians when they were still learning how to carve them. When they added more, they could get more complicated and maybe even restructure old meridians at higher levels of cultivation. But if they ever reached that point, their initial choices wouldn’t have nearly as much effect anymore.

Guan Li stopped them after class to ask a question. If their initial choices didn’t matter at all because they could always change things, what did it matter what they were doing? Liming and Paike explained that there were several reasons.

One was that the vast majority of cultivators never made it past the next stage. Less than 10 percent of Ruby cultivators ever made it to Topaz, and similar percentages from Topaz to the next stage, and from the third stage, even fewer made it to the fourth stage or beyond. So it was best not to make a choice assuming you’d be able to overwrite it later because you might be stuck with it for the rest of your life.

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Guan Li hadn’t seemed very receptive to that idea, and his unshakable confidence that he would make it past Ruby made those concerns relatively inconsequential. Of course, Paike had to agree that Guan Li’s chances of getting past Topaz were much, much higher than average. A natural cultivator like him would be a disappointment if he stalled out anywhere below the Fourth Realm at a minimum. Paike, though… Well, if he didn’t take every advantage he could, he was unlikely to make it to Topaz, let alone past it.

The second reason, though, was that not only would you be stuck with your meridians, but these choices now were what you used to grab the advantages that would push you to those higher realms. So even with all the potential in the world, a person who squandered it and chose frivolous or poorly matched arts might never actually make it to that point. Those mistakes could be the reason for a person stalling in the first place.

This made more sense to Guan Li, and Paike was relieved to see that his new friend was taking the classes seriously. But he had explained that he wanted to check something out and left his friends behind, heading to the library.

When he entered through the doors, he found an older outer sect disciple waiting to greet him. The bookish young man didn’t match the image that Paike had of a cultivator at all. The glasses and slender build made Paike think that he could take him in a fight, even being a realm below.

This was someone who had given up on moving past the outer sect and had decided to take a full-time position rather than a learning role. Despite the lower station, the disciple seemed entirely content, being a keeper of knowledge for the sect. He guided Paike through the library, enthusiastically explaining the layout as they walked.