Ashes Of Heaven Book 1 : Solar Calamity

The pill sitting atop his hands rubbed Xuhan the wrong way for some reason. It was a dark blue, standard capsule-sized object, and it made no sense to him how this pill could actually make his damaged body recover to nearly 80 percent of its original healthy state.

In the end, he could only justify the logic with phrases like 'cultivation magic pill' and swallow it down with a gulp of the catalytic solution that the healer had handed him.

Out of curiosity, he had asked the healer whether there were pills that could directly advance his cultivation base too.

The answer he got was a lengthy, aggressive lecture on how using pills to advance one's cultivation was an absolute taboo. It went directly against everything orthodox cultivation stood for. Not just that, such foundations built with artificial forces and resources were so weak that the practitioner would never even survive the first round of heavenly tribulation, rendering the whole endeavor, as well as the resources piled on him into waste.

The process that took place following his consumption of the pill was not as unpleasant as he had thought it would be. The healer used some sort of a technique to keep his sensory nerves dulled down to a minimum and guided the pill's reactions inside his body. The only thing Xuhan could feel during that process was that his internal organs were moving around like crazy.

Once the whole ordeal was over, the mirror in the room displayed his old self once more, albeit looking like he had come out of a famine-themed painting.

After the slight nausea had worn off, Han Xuhan asked the healer about the therapy sessions for defense against mental demons.

"The therapy? That's still a pretty experimental project. Are you sure you want to attend? I wouldn't honestly recommend it if you aren't desperate."

Hearing the healer's ambiguous tone, Han Xuhan immediately gave up on therapy sessions for now. The fact that the people who ran the sessions were so uncertain about the project was a red flag, especially in this sect where even the featured cultivation techniques in the archives felt like scams.

Before he could gather some proper, trustworthy information on the project, Xuhan would definitely do his best to avoid it temporarily.

Thanking the healer for his kind intentions (with some extra spirit stones), Han Xuhan returned to his hut on the Black Sheep Peak.

It had been three days since Xuhan and his siblings had returned to the sect. Setting apart the process of gaining a certain notoriety for what they had managed to accomplish in the mission, life had been relatively peaceful. He had taken care of most of the issues that needed an outsider's help; for example, getting his dao base examined by the elders, all sorts of anti-tracking spells to avoid the detection of anyone they had encountered during the mission, checking for hidden injuries to body, mind, and soul...

While for normal disciples, this would have been an exceedingly difficult feat to manage, Xuhan didn't have to suffer much.

For the second time since he had entered the Crimson Snow Sect, Xuhan was once more a disciple loaded with spirit stones. The first thing he had done after getting his payment for the Force-type law manual was spending a handful of it to deal with the messy aftermath of their mission.

With a bank balance of 5000+ spirit stones, Xuhan looked forward to where he would end up by the time he went broke again.

Sitting down atop his bed, Xuhan entered a meditative state and focused on cycling the qi brimming inside meridians, guiding it into forming the familiar path of the Skeletal Monarch technique.

Roughly seven seconds later, the cycle was completed, a vast improvement compared to his performance in the past. The completion resulted into the familiar red skeleton leaping out of his back, landing smoothly on the ground in a practiced manner.

It had been a hassle to manage Zhanxian initially. But being in the presence of Elder Kong had helped immensely. The elder had drawn up some esoteric equations and modified small portions of his qi cycling diagram to strengthen his control over Zhanxian, all the while Han Xuhan had done his best to appease the skeletal bastard with bone nourishment treasures.

Han Xuhan had a sneaky suspicion that only the latter of the actions had actually worked.

"What are we doing today, boss? Hopefully nothing that involves violence in any form, because in that case, this summoning would be pointless." The skeleton looked around the room cautiously.

"Oh come on, man. You enjoyed scamming those poor idiots outside the portal, didn't you? Don't deny it! Your face is totally red, ahahah..." Han Xuhan dragged out a laugh.

"Boss, my entire body is red ."

"I know that. why are you telling me something so obvious?"

". . ."

Zhanxian instantly gave up on trying to win the argument.

"Aha, I knew it! You were just anticipating our next adventure! But worry not. I, your boss, am a magnanimous man. Seeing how you're always this afraid of danger, I have decided to entrust you with something new this time around. Something totally not dangerous and easy to accomplish. Hell, you don't even need to step out of the house to complete the task, so cheer up!"

Listening to Xuhan's righteous speech, Zhanxian suddenly felt a chill travel down his spine. If he had hairs, he was sure they'd all be standing up straight right now.

"O-okay, and the task is ...?"

With a beaming smile, Xuhan took out a stack of documents from the bedside desk and dropped it on Zhanxian's arms.

"This right here," he pointed at the stack and met Zhanxian's eyeless sockets with a smoldering gaze, "is a cultivation technique! You'll be practicing it!"

A pause followed Xuhan's announcement as both man and skeleton of a man stared at each other.

"Boss, you are aware that I don't have meridians, right? Surely, your knowledge of cultivation is not that shallow..."

"Of course! Trust me, I'm your boss. I know what I'm talking about. Go for it!"

Zhanxian plopped down on the ground and sighed in defeat. Han Xuhan followed suit and started to explain the whole manual to the skeleton patiently. Zhanxian had some trouble reading the texts. Apparently, academic achievements were not his strongest suit. Being an undead whose memories had likely been tampered with probably had something to do with that.

But Xuhan persisted, dragging his undead minion through the ordeal cheerfully. It was the same cultivation technique that Qian Yun had given him in the land of laws, a technique which that guy had gotten from martial sister Zhou. Although Xuhan trusted them both to not backstab him for no apparent reason, it was still safer to first observe the effect of the technique on a guinea pig. Zhanxian filled that spot up nicely...ahem.

As the evening approached, dyeing the sky red, Xuhan and Zhanxian finally took a break and decided to give it a shot for the first time.

"Alright, now it's time for the first step," Xuhan muttered as he took out a sharp knife from his collection.

"According to the manual, since you do not have meridians, we will need to create artificial channels to enable you in cycling qi according to the diagram."

Zhanxian knew what to expect by now and stretched out his red, bony arms. Han Xuhan took a deep breath and picked the right arm first, poking its middle finger with the tip of his knife.

Under Zhanxian's expressionless gaze, Xuhan held the hand by its fingertips and started carving out a long groove from the tip of the middle finger.

From phalanxes to carpals and metacarpals, then past the joints in the wrists and to the radius, ulna, and humerus, the right hand took an entire hour of thoughtful carving.

Of course, there were mishaps. Often the groove cut a millimeter too deep and created cracks. Some of the bones were too easy to break, forcing him to change his routes.

Han Xuhan had to make sure the grooves wouldn't be in danger of being affected during a physical brawl.

In the end, it took Xuhan the rest of the day and the entire night to cut a rudimentary channel of qi across Zhanxian's body. After connecting the final two grooves that met behind Zhanxian's atlas, Xuhan took a step back to admire his handiwork.

In the light of the rising sun, Zhanxian honestly looked...intimidating.

The skeleton's bones gleamed with a red sheen, violet specks of color glittering in the joints.

Unless one focused intentionally on Zhanxian, they'd miss the tiny grooves spread all over his body, usually in inconspicuous parts of his bones. In retrospect, it made sense that this was a demonic technique. Would a normal human even dare to mutilate themselves like this to cultivate? Would they even survive?

Satisfied with the work, Xuhan nodded to himself and took a small cube of frozen qi out of his pocket, holding it in front of Zhanxian's face in one hand.

"Look at it, this is qi. Now, due to the absence of natural meridians in your body, you cannot establish any sort of mental control over it. And that's what we are going to remedy now," Xuhan explained, determination seeping into his tone.

Giving the documents on the ground another glance to make sure he wasn't missing anything, Xuhan directed his thoughts at the qi cube, establishing a mental command over it. Then he willed the qi into a liquified state, from where he directed the floating colorless liquid to slowly drift over toward Zhanxian.

The skeleton stood stock still as Qi touched his bones and began to fill up the artificial grooves on its bones, reaching into even the tiniest channels and joints and finally forming a complete passage full of Qi.

Beads of sweat crawled down Xuhan's face as he pushed all of his concentration into managing the qi on Zhanxian's body. The amount of qi he was trying to manipulate was nothing to scoff at, almost enough to surpass his own meridian's maximum qi capacity.

"Time for the next step, Zhanxian. You know what to do," he finally spoke through gritted teeth after applying the finishing touches.

Zhanxian nodded solemnly and took out the spell formation that Han Xuhan had bought the previous day for his expensive cultivation sessions. It was shaped like a very large ring made of terracotta, its rim full of unrecognizable texts. The formation was designed to constantly attract qi from a large surrounding area and trap the qi within its boundaries where only the owner of the formation would be able to use the qi, regardless of their cultivation base.

Most orthodox cultivators looked down on this type of formations. Such gadgets were for children to have fun with qi, not for real cultivation sessions. Wouldn't a cultivator who relied on it become useless in any unexpected situation?

Relying on external help in regular cultivation was almost a taboo of sorts. But Xuhan frequently used gadgets like those...because he didn't really have a choice as a semi-cripple. Having some experience in helping its boss, the skeleton knew how to operate it.

A few seconds later, with a small nudge of qi from Xuhan's own reserves, the formation was activated, instantly creating a circular area that encompassed their hut and attracting qi from every direction like a sinkhole.

"Final step," Xuhan announced grimly as his eyes met Zhanxian's sockets. This was it. The most important part where it would be determined whether the technique was worth their effort or not.

His back drenched in sweat and veins throbbing in his temple due to the pressure on his mind, Xuhan split half of his focus on keeping the qi attached to Zhanxian's body while he directed the rest of his focus on manipulating a significant amount of his own qi into fiddling with the control center of the formation.

For this moment alone, Xuhan was grateful to Mu Ran and his obnoxious antics. The card game that guy had taught Xuhan, named 'The Immortal Slayer', was actually pretty useful in training his control over qi, especially while repeatedly playing against someone whose control of qi could be called mechanically precise. The sheer adversity he had faced in those games was enough to give him some pointers on how to be a better loser.

Now his control over Qi was almost as good as his talented, hardworking peers...almost.

"Get Ready, Zhanxian. Here it comes!"

Half shouting, Han Xuhan used his own qi to wipe off the proof of his ownership from the formation's control center. Then he turned the default owner search mechanism on and leaped away as far as he could in the next second.

It was a simple mechanism, usually used by new cultivators with a low cultivation base. The formation would immediately seek out the closest living creature around it by following qi signatures. Any creature with the tiniest amount of active qi in its body could become the owner of the formation this way.

The moment the search mechanism located Zhanxian standing next to it, it identified the skeleton as its owner, and subsequent effects took place in the blink of an eye.

Han Xuhan lost control of his own qi, as well as any bit of qi around him since he was within the boundaries of the formation. Instantly, the qi he had glued to Zhanxian's body began to drift away.

But the formation also gave Zhanxian the power to command the qi within its area of effect. And Zhanxian did not waste a second of the precious window of opportunity.

Sitting down in a meditating pose, Zhanxian began to command qi for the first time in his undead life.