Jintian spent the next couple of hours performing the breathing exercises that Kang Shanxi taught him. His teacher had left once he was certain that Jintian had the form memorized to take care of Xiyun. He had told Jintian to continue the breathing exercises until the incense had cleared from the air, but to take breaks if needed.
He took no such breaks. He had pushed the anger into a corner of his heart, instead allowing a cool stillness to rule his mind while using that burning hatred as fuel for his resolve. As he breathed in, and out again, he felt waves of pain pulsing through his chest, causing sweat to soak his skin and his jaw to clench.
It only served to sharpen his will further.
The air began to clear nearly two hours after he had started. When he finally took a breath without the tang of herbal incense in his nose, he opened his eyes.
The cave was just as it had been before. The moss, he noticed, was glowing ever so slightly brighter, while the mushrooms and other herbs looked richer in color by a fraction of a shade.
He slowly rose to his feet, groaning as his muscles ached from the exercises and sitting in one position. His joints popped crisply, and using his cane he stepped over the spring, and slowly climbed the stairs upward.
Jintian grunted as pushed open the hatch, and closed it behind him. He sniffed the air, and his stomach rumbled as the smell of grilled meat and vegetables replaced the spice of smoke in his nose.
He followed the scent into the dining room and saw Xiyun sitting at the table with Kang Shanxi, grabbing bits of rice and meat with her fingers and chewing them slowly. She even seemed to be careful about not making a mess, and Jintian furrowed his brows.
Was his less than a year old sister perhaps a genius?
Kang Shanxi glanced upwards, before gesturing for him to sit. He shuffled over, and was just about to sit down when Xiyun slowly patted the seat next to her. Smiling brightly, he plopped down next to her, placing a hand on her head.
She pushed it off, too focused on eating to give him a glare, and Kang Shanxi cleared his throat. "So, young Jin, have you made any progress?" He asked lightly, and Jintian sighed.
"I don't know, Elder. I didn't feel anything like what you described." He replied, grabbing a pair of chopsticks and filling his plate with food. He then blinked, rolling his shoulders and then moving his elbows, looking at his own body incredulously. "Except… I was sore, but not any longer."
Kang Shanxi nodded. "That's normal. Spiritual energy will always replenish you more than it takes away. And as I said previously, it can take quite a while for those who are just beginning to feel spiritual energy." He said, and they ate the rest of their dinner in comfortable silence. Jintian, despite not being sore, was still exhausted, and Kang Shanxi seemed understanding of that.
They all retired for the night, and Jintian, as usual, had nightmares of Wu Mingjie.
When he woke, he wordlessly went down to the cave, and began practicing again.
-
The days blurred together for Jintian, eventually turning into weeks. He woke, practiced his breathing in the cave, ate and played with Xiyun, and then returned to the cave for more practice, but with an incense stick lit.
The evenings were then spent with Kang Shanxi, who helped him develop his calligraphy, and made him study ancient philosophy, and at times play Go. He claimed that doing so would help him in the future, but at the moment all they did was make his head ache. He would also explain to him the various intricacies of the cultivation world, and it was during this time that he learned that there were several stages of cultivation.
"First," Kang Shanxi had said during one of their games of Go, placing a white stone in the upper corner of the board with a tak, "is Qi Condensation. Qi Condensation is broken into thirteen stages, called Circles. Each Circle is explosively more powerful than the previous one."
Jintian nodded, placing a black stone of his own across from Shanxi's. The game had been underway for only a short time, so he was attempting to corner off his development before Kang Shanxi managed to break free into the center.
"Those in the First Circle are only slightly stronger than mortals." He continued, calmly rebuffing Jintian's attack by dancing around his stone to threaten a capture. "In fact, your strength before your injury was equivalent to those in the Second Circle, perhaps even close to the Third."
"They seemed surprised that I drew blood from one of them." He recalled, frowning as he connected his piece diagonally in an attempt to enforce it.
Shanxi nodded, once again calmly bringing another piece in for the attack. Jintian had a foreboding feeling as he reinforced it again. "The two servants with Wu Mingjie were each in the Eighth Circle. That is a level of power capable enough to destroy a city of mortals the size of Chenghe, though it would take time. To them, a mortal wounding them would be as ridiculous as an ant drawing blood from a human would be to you."
They exchanged a few more moves, before Jintian realized too late that he was in a ladder, and only one move away from atari. He gritted his teeth, and then resolutely gave up the pieces he had laid down to focus his offensive elsewhere. Shanxi smiled, capturing his pieces and scooping them aside.
"When you eventually succeed in feeling spiritual energy, you can then begin to gather them within your dantian. Your spiritual center, your core." He said, beginning to encroach upon Jintian's territory. "When you gather enough of it, you can form a lake of it within yourself, and can be considered to have reached the First Cicle. How are you progressing, by the way?"
Jintian sighed, beginning to reinforce his territory before realizing that doing so in the way he had planned would allow Shanxi to sever his lifelines. Instead, he began to build a double eye within his territory, as a bastion of defense.
"I'm close to feeling it, I think." He said, scratching the back of his head. "I don't know how to describe it. It's like there's a vapor in the air, or a stream of water I can smell but can't quite hear or see yet."
Kang Shanxi smiled, patiently building a line of stones just outside of Jintian's borders. "You truly are close, then. Most describe it similarly to that. I suspect by as early as tomorrow, and no later than in three days, you shall feel it. After that, you should reach the First Circle within the same day. It comes swiftly once you can sense it."
Jintian nodded, sighing in defeat. He had spent so long defending his own position, he had allowed Kang Shanxi to isolate him from the rest of the board. Any venture he could make would be dealt with faster than he could breach outwards.
He admitted his defeat, and they scooped their stones into their bowls. "What about the other stages, Elder? What comes after Qi Condensation?" He asked, and his master paused. Jintian then winced as he remembered that Kang Shanxi had failed to go beyond Qi Condensation.
Worried that he had touched a sensitive subject, Jintian was just about to apologize when Kang Shanxi chuckled and waved his hand. "I am not so ruffled about it, young Jin." He assured him. "I was only reminiscing. I remember this is exactly how me and my master discussed matters of cultivation."
Kang Shanxi then stood up and carried the Go board away, while Jintian followed behind him. "After Qi Condensation, there is Foundation Establishment. Unlike in Qi Condensation, there are only six stages of Foundation Establishment, which involve combining your Circles together to form a sea within your dantian. They are broken up into the First Fiord, Second Fiord, so on and so forth, until the sixth stage, which is also called the Great Sea of Foundation Establishment. However, that is not what is truly special about it."
Jintian tilted his head curiously as they came to a stop outside of his room. "And that is?" He asked, and Shanxi chuckled.
"The quality of one's foundation is determined during the Foundation Tribulation they undergo. While you are years away, at least, from worrying about such things, just know that after the tribulation, you will have either an Azure Sea foundation, a Violet Sea, or… a Heaven Sea foundation!"
Shanxi spoke those last words imperiously, and Jintian was overcome with wonder. He could not fathom what such words meant, and Shanxi must have noticed the look in his eyes. He chuckled, before stroking his beard.
"In truth, the reason I failed my Foundation Establishment was because I got too greedy, and attempted to form a Heaven Sea foundation. It simply wasn't my destiny." He sighed, before shaking his head. Jintian wondered what exactly the process could be to form such an imperious sounding foundation.
Deciding to put such matters from his mind, he bowed to Kang Shanxi. "Thank you for your lessons, and for the game, Elder Kang. Tomorrow, I hope to see you again as a member of the First Circle."
Kang Shanxi smiled, and returned his bow, and the two retired for the night.
The next morning, Jintian resolved not to exit from the cave until he had formed his first Circle. Kang Shanxi had long since started simply leaving the incense Jintian required with him, and he grabbed three sticks to bring with him.
Once he was inside of the cave. Jintian settled into his sitting position. He was just about to light one of the incense sticks, when he hesitated, staring at them all.
His teacher had always only ever instructed him to light one. He could guess why, as if he could not even sense the energy, lighting more would not help him. But he was now on the cusp of sensing it, he could feel it and his teacher had confirmed as much.
He nodded resolutely and lit all three. Then, he settled into his meditative pose on the stone platform, taking a deep breath. Just like his teacher had instructed, and just like he had done thousands of times now, he guided the breath through his body, focusing on the way it filled him. Eventually it reached his core, and he slowly breathed out.
He continued this process for nearly twenty minutes before his muscles finally began to feel fatigued, and the excruciating agony in his chest blossomed outward. The weeks spent doing this exercise had made him a little stronger. Although walking without his cane for too long was taxing, his gait had become far more stable. He had even regained some of his weight, though he was still far skinnier than he used to be.
Most notably, however, was the increase of time it took for him to begin feeling sore while meditating. When he'd first begun, it had only taken him a couple of minutes before his muscles began to ache. But now, after twenty, they were only beginning to show signs of fatigue.
Jintian continued to breathe. There was something that he could tell lied just beyond his senses. The sensation was endlessly frustrating, like music that was played just softly enough for him to be aware of it but never loudly enough for him to listen, or as he'd described to his teacher, like the barest scent of a river that he could neither see nor hear.
He pushed his impatience away, focusing entirely on his breathing. It filled his ears, his mind, his very essence. In. Hold. Control. Out.
In. Hold. Control. Out.
In. Hold. Control. Out.
In…
In…
And after an hour, he finally felt it. It was like… a golden wisp, a stream of curling smoke consisting of golden energy that felt both grandly wonderous and delicately beautiful. And as he slowly guided it toward himself, breathing it in, he gasped as a sensation so breathtaking it could barely be described filled him.
It was like drinking the sweetest, purest spring water after wandering in a desert. It was sumptuous fruit filling a week's long empty stomach. It was air breathed after drowning, the warmth of a fire after freezing, the embrace of family, laughter after hardship, the world itself cradling him in its bosom as the symphony of creation resounded in his ears.
It was… life.
He shivered, his awe pulling him out of his meditative state and cruelly separating him from that wondrous feeling. He wept as it left him, the feeling similar to being pulled from his mother's embrace as a child.
When he finally gathered himself, he once again began his breathing exercises. This time, he was able to sense that wisp of spiritual energy immediately, curling through the air around him. He forced himself to be patient, breathing it in and gathering it in his core.
Then, strangely, he felt it settle there. A sliver of heaven itself, living within his body. He had learned of this from his teacher, as with his next breath he added to it another curling trail of misty, golden energy.
As he continued to breathe in and add to the energy filling him, he simultaneously willed the energy to condense, to gather within himself into a drop of liquid. The energy, to his surprise, obeyed him immediately. He had been told by Kang Shanxi that controlling spiritual energy was normally difficult, at first, as it took an immense will to force spiritual energy to obey.
And yet, as he focused inward, the spiritual energy practically leapt into action. It swirled inwards, at first slowly, but rapidly gaining in speed and intensity. Slowly, it began to condense on itself, forming a drop of spiritual energy the size of dew in the early morning.
As that drop sank inward, it was as if something unlocked inside of Jintian. He trembled violently, as he suddenly sensed spiritual energy everywhere around him. The sensation caused him to gasp, his heart lurching painfully in his chest.
He was bathed in energy. It blanketed his senses, swirling past his skin and soaking into his body. Lighting three of the incense sticks had flooded the cave with energy, and now that he was able to sense it, it seemed overwhelming.
Jintian felt the spiritual energy surge towards him, every breath seemingly accelerating the process. The pain in his chest was overwhelming, but so too was the bliss of being connected to spiritual energy in this way. There was a vortex spinning within his center, the slowly forming drops eventually becoming a stream, and then a small river that was filling a bottomless cavern inside of him.
And then, he felt the energy begin to surge through his body.
It flooded through him, and he gritted his teeth as he remembered what his teacher had said. He needed to focus it along his Qi passageways, his meridians, otherwise it would damage him. Screwing his eyes shut, he focused completely on the boundless energy inside of him. He commanded it to follow channels he could instinctively feel inside of him, and as he did, the pores of his skin opened as more energy was pulled inward, purifying his body and expelling the filth of his mortal form out of him.
When the flood reached his heart meridian, he forcefully redirected it, only allowing a small portion of it through. Kang Shanxi had warned him that with them severed, if he did not strictly control the flow of energy that passed through it, it could very well stop his heart at any moment.
Soon the flood subsided, and once again flowed into his dantian. Soon the river became a pond, and then, the pond became a lake.
As the lake formed, he felt a small rumble within his body. A surge of strength filled him, and he snapped open his eyes, laughter spilling from him unbidden. The lake inside of his dantian stilled, the surface of it as smooth as a mirror. However, he sensed the water lapping outwards at the very edges, and it radiated a sense of power to him.
Jintian slowly came to his senses, and the first thing that assaulted him was the stench of his body. Gagging, he hurriedly rolled sideways, plunging into the spring at his side. While not very wide, it was deep enough to reach his chest and shockingly cold.
He furiously scrubbed himself, grateful that his mentor had advised him to practice this cultivation session naked. He shuddered to imagine trying to rid the filth from his clothes.
When he was clean, he climbed back onto the stone platform, and looked around in a daze.
The moss seemed far brighter than it had before, the cave no longer as dim to him. Furthermore, the colors of the herbs seemed deeply vibrant. His sense of smell and hearing had been heightened as well, but by how much he wasn't able to tell yet. Smiling, he then inspected his own body.
His hair had grown to hang just above his shoulders after his months spent unconscious, but now it had grown to hang just slightly below his shoulder blades. His nails were long and unkempt, but both of those were dismissed as he felt his skin.
It was smooth. While not as smooth as his friend Li Liuwen's had once been, his long years working on a farm had seemingly been erased. He scowled as he realized most of his calluses were gone, but then accepted it with a sigh. He was, after all, no longer a farmer.
He was a cultivator.
The thought surfaced to his mind, and he let it stay there for a few moments, before sighing and moving past it.
Now that he was a cultivator, he could innately sense the spiritual energy that curled through the air without needing to meditate. It was heavily diminished now that he had absorbed most of it for his breakthrough to the First Circle, but it still tickled the edge of his senses.
He took a deep breath, and let it out. The pain was still there in his chest, but rather the ever-present, stabbing agony he had grown used to, it now throbbed as a dull ache.
Jintian shook his head, and slipped on his tunic and trouserswhich he had laid to the side. He frowned as his heightened sense of touch made him more sensitive to the rough scratchiness of its material, fighting the urge to itch where he could feel it pressed fully against his skin. He realized, now, why Kang Shanxi always wore those soft looking robes.
He looked once more toward the stone platform, where the last moments of his life as a simple farmer, a simple son, had been spent. His eyes closed, and he smiled as the memory of his family's laughter, their warmth and love and life, played within his mind.
And then he let the memories fade, his smile dimming as he opened his eyes once more. He bit his lip, his heart aching in his chest, and then bowed deeply to the platform.
"Mother, Father, Chengcheng." He whispered, his voice trembling. "I hope you do not begrudge me my choice, to turn away from the life you once wished me to lead. I will have my vengeance, but I know it will not be for you. I can only hope that someday, I will meet you all again."
He stayed like that for a few moments, before slowly straightening from his bow.
And then he turned around to walk up the stairs, towards the rest of his life as a cultivator.