Chapter 48- Unfortunate Strength

The six days passed in an odd sort of ecstasy for Tian. Odd, because he knew what he was feeling wasn’t entirely natural. Fire was the element of joy, red the color of supreme good fortune. Losing himself in the flames of his own fiery qi made everything a happy occasion. It became exhausting. Sometimes, you need to just be flat.

Tian healed and rested in the now pure-qi Fire Cavern, then experienced the element of fire within him in the Null Cavern. He would stand in the dark, admiring the lamp in his heart until his meridians screamed from the qi deprivation. Back and forth, as much as he could stand. His cultivation had never been faster. Tian felt like he was eating his way through Level Six. Just ripping big bites of qi from the air and chewing it down as his cultivation turned consumption into strength.

If the Water Cavern had been about flow and providing meaning to what was already there, the Fire Cavern was about illumination. About seeing yourself. Tian nearly laughed himself sick when he realized how much of his behavior was based on avoiding emotional pain by accepting physical pain. He couldn’t imagine changing, either. The rewards were just much, much too rich. His brothers and sisters brought him so much joy.

One interesting thing he noticed was that the bones in his storage ring did, in fact, come flying out and return to their resting place. They became quite hard to spot, then simply became part of the cavern floor. Not invisible, they were subtly covered and absorbed. The ring stayed. Which was odd, as it had been trying to leave before.

The sixth day came and Tian was once again launched through the wall. The ring stayed behind. Tian had no idea what to make of it all. The ring stayed then left. Maybe it didn’t quite get what it wanted. Just another mystery of the Six Turn Caverns.

“Oh, nice. Wood Qi ghhaaak. HSSGGKRK!” Tian fell to his knees, clawing at his throat. His lungs were filling with something, something that was blocking out the air and crushing his organs against his ribs. The wood qi was running riot. Something was growing in him, and he didn’t know what it was, or particularly care to find out.

Tian immediately threw his cultivation into action. The qi was first milled down by Advent of Spring, then again by the Hell Suppressing Sutra. For someone as strongly wood aligned as Tian was, it took an embarrassingly long time to bring his body back into order. It was stupid. It was so damn stupid that something as pitifully easy as Wood would nearly kill him!

“Of all the stupid fucking things! Wood! WOOD! Wood is nothing! Wood isn’t shit! I’m going to piss on trees every chance I get from now on!” Tian swore. Then took a deep breath for the novelty of it, held it for an extra moment, then explosively exhaled.

“Excess wood qi in the liver leads to anger, right Grandpa.”

That’s what your books said, yes. Admittedly, they were talking about diagnosing Virulent Blue Ring Orchid Rot.

Tian nodded and forcibly brought his temper under control. When Wood was balanced, so was the mood. Which, he realized, might pose some particular challenges for him.

There was a bamboo shoot in the middle of the room. Tian didn’t know why. Well, he did know why, it was the qi spirit. But why a qi spirit would take the form of a bamboo shoot in a cave deep underground, he didn’t know. Bamboo did grow awfully fast. Maybe that was the reason. He really thought it would be a dragon, though.

Wood’s one of the trickier elements, if you ask me.

“Why’s that, Grandpa?”

It’s a transition. A state of growth. A seed accumulates energy then there is a period of change where it transforms. It absorbs, then grows again. And again. And again. Until it reaches the height it’s going to reach and starts focusing on reproduction instead. Reproduction can be considered another sort of growth, very broadly speaking. Wood is a verb not a noun is what I am trying to say. More than just ‘is,’ wood qi is something that ‘is happening.’

“Huh. By comparison, the other elements are a lot more fixed and stable.”

Yep. Kind of. Maybe not so much water and fire. Look, Daoism gets really annoying when you get into the details, and even more annoying when you realize that the Daoists know that and are completely okay with it.

“Grandpa… I am a Daoist.”

I said what I said. Riddle me this, young Daoist- a bee and a flower. Which is yin and which is yang? Do keep in mind that worker bees, the ones doing the pollinating, and penetrating, are female. Do also keep in mind that flowers don’t always exactly line up with human reproductive organs. We aren’t even going to touch the insanity that is the life cycle of the fig wasp. That’s for ADVANCED daoists. Good luck, have fun!

Tian locked up for a moment. He was forced to admit that he didn’t even know where to begin with that one. The elemental alignment of specific plants, certainly. The interactions between plants and bees? And what even was a fig wasp?

“I have no idea. Sorry, Grandpa.”

Don’t be sorry, you haven’t done anything wrong. The correct answer is they both are both, depending on how and when you look at it. Any attempt to narrowly classify things runs into this problem really quickly.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Huh. What’s the alternative?”

Not a conversation for today. Or maybe ever. Focus, Tian. You should be able to get a lot out of this chamber.

Tian was less sure about that. If wood was about growth then he was already there. He was all about growing. He was all about stretching out and becoming something greater than he was before. Accumulation then birth? He was one hundred percent on board with that. No big revelation needed.