Chapter 24- Stepping out onto a broader stage

Tian felt the urge to do a dozen things at once. He forced himself to prioritize. Right now, mastering the basics of cultivating at the Heavenly Realm was the most important thing. Time had glossed over the difficulties of mastering Advent of Spring. The Vast Darknorth Sea might not require a genius to learn, but it was certainly enough to keep Tian fully focused.

Focus on mastering the basics of the art for now. I don’t want you running an improved version right where he can see you. This art is a little interesting. It’s clearly, well, it’s clear if you’ve seen enough of them, cut down from an art based on actual observations of a Kunpeng. Which are real, even if some of the details described are exaggerated. This art is really not bad. With some minor tweaking, it can easily be an upper second rate art, with potential for future upgrades depending on how things go. First rate is not impossible, but it would take some lucky breaks.

“What is it currently?”

I’m feeling a light to a solid upper third rate. It really might be on par with the Skytreading Art. Though, credit where it’s due, internal cultivation manuals paired with accompanying philosophical cultivation texts can have a remarkably transformative power. It’s hard to say for sure which is better in an abstract sense without having it in front of me. Still, the best art is the one you have. Get to practicing. It’s going to be hugely important later.

Every piece of the Vast Darknorth Sea art had its tricky bits. Just the application of vital energy to the lungs to prioritize drawing in water qi was completely novel to Tian. He felt a degree of indignation that no one had told him that such a thing was possible. Perhaps it only became possible at the Heavenly Realm, and no one felt it was necessary to mention it. Regardless, it was very fiddly.

He drew in long, deep breaths, and slowly nudged his lungs into doing what he wanted them to. Something he had never asked them to do before. The lungs were the organs most associated with metal, which meant precision and discrimination. Filtration was a big part of what they already did. Slowly, carefully, he tried to replicate what Voidcatcher had shown him. He didn’t rush it, sternly reminding himself that there was no benefit to rushing, and many dangers. He had to keep reminding himself of that after he completed the first cycle. Half an hour for a lung full of qi absolutely wasn’t worth it. By the time it reached the damp patch that was to be his qi sea, it was barely a droplet.

Slow and steady. In and out. Speed would come with mastery, same as everything else he ever studied. The second cycle didn’t go any faster than the first. The third nearly went wrong, as by that point he was hanging on to his patience with his fingernails. He let go of his cultivation with an explosive exhale, falling back on the ground.

“Welcome to cultivation the way the rest of us do it.” Liren said. Tian opened his eyes to see her mouth twitching at the corner.

“Have you started practicing that art you just happened to pick up somewhere?” Tian asked.

“Yes, it also, completely coincidentally, came with a powerful vision demonstrating exactly how to do it. I wish there was someone I could ask about some of the finer details, but, free is free.”

Tian nodded. No matter how lofty their new rank, there was no price like “free.”

“Did you wrap up your training with Venerable Merciless?”

Liren looked away towards the pond, then forced herself to look back at Tian. “I have the basic structure down. All that’s left is practice. That part will take… decades. Centuries, maybe.”

“You told me a little about it, but always skirted the details.” Tian smiled. “Is it something you can’t share?”

“No, it’s just hard to explain.” She started to look away again, then forced herself to look back at Tian. “It’s about understanding your emotions, specifically the emotion of anger and its variants. Rage, most particularly. Where it comes from, what it means, what it is useful for, and what kind of harm it does.”

Tian nodded. “Our sect teaches that our emotions are something we should carry lightly and discard easily. Becoming as still and indifferent as well water, I think I read.”

“Tepid, yeah. Which is great for meditation, and I suppose day to day emotional regulation, but how many people can really do that all the time?”

Tian thought he could, and then quickly followed it up with all the times he had spectacularly lost his temper and kept his mouth shut. Liren grinned at him, reading his changing expressions.

“Our emotions aren’t inherently bad. They might not be helpful, but they aren’t bad. Unless you are doing some extremely strict cultivation that needs to reach a place of no-thought, no-feeling, or no-self, but again, that’s not day to day.” She chopped time into neat parcels with her hands.

“Right.”

“So it’s not our feelings that are the problem, but how they drive our thoughts and actions. And that means understanding where they come from, and why they make us feel the way we feel. In my case, shame, grief, fear, outrage…”

“Yeah.” Tian closed his eyes in sympathy.

“So I interrogate those feelings. When I get angry, my first instinct is to do something about the anger, violently. The training, what I’m going to spend the next century or two practicing, is teaching myself to change that first instinct into a question.”

“‘Why are you angry?’” Tian asked.

“Exactly. And then I may still want to do something with that anger. The spell Senior Merciless taught me is a handful.”

“Oh?” Tian raised an eyebrow. She had been evasive on that for a year now.

“It lets me determine if someone is telling the truth based on a number of signals I pick up from them. At the highest level, it can even pick up on someone lying to themselves.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Oh neat!”

“By making me angry.”

“Eh?” Tian asked, with the wisdom of the Heavenly Realm behind him.

“The more they lie, the madder I get. Part of understanding my own anger is parsing out what about them is making me angry. So someone lying in a really blatant, cowardly, self-serving way is enough to send me into the kind of black rage that would lead to an exterminated bloodline. Without proper self control, I mean.”

“Ah.” Tian displayed the full flower of transcendent insight.

“Based on an inherent ability of his species, apparently.”

“Is it only when the spell is active, or all the time?” Tian asked.

“Strictly speaking, only when the spell is active. Equally strictly speaking, it’s designed to always be active. It gets exhausting, so I don’t leave it running most of the time. You can understand that senior’s personality better once you understand what’s going on inside of him.”

“It does explain his name.”

“Mmm hmm.”