Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Fushuai's days were nights. Yin was more plentiful and easier to draw after the sun had set. The change in schedule made no difference to Goshung, who only seemed to sleep because he enjoyed it, and now only visited the shrine to eat whatever Fushuai had managed to cook.

Each day, he rose in the early evening and made his way to the crown of the colossal parasol tree for weapons training, arriving just as the sun set. Goshung gave instruction under the watchful gaze of a thousand blades, imparting as many cuts and bruises as he did words of wisdom. And Fushuai learned.

In this, as with their sessions in the glen, the object was less to adopt a particular pattern or set of forms than to learn to fight on the bare edge of instinct, trusting his senses, both spiritual and physical, to keep him one step ahead of his opponent.

Of course, he would never be anything but a thousand steps behind Goshung, but his ill-tempered mentor always applied exactly as much challenge as he could stand.

These lessons went on until Fushuai's qi became so thin that he could no longer support himself among the leaves and branches, and then a little longer. With nothing but his refined body to support his efforts, he would spend the last hour or so confined to the main branches, thick enough that he could put his full weight on them.

Jian.

Dao.

Qiang.

Gu-en.

Fushuai was not allowed to favor any one of the noble answers himself, and was as likely to have to contend with all of them at once as each on its own. His hands grew as hard as his heels, and his movements sharpened by degrees. Goshung did show him traditional forms, the martial methods aligned with each of the five elements, but not so that he could adopt them for himself.

Rather, he was meant to be able to recognize and anticipate the patterns in his opponents, presenting him with a further advantage whenever he came across someone too hidebound by perfect technique to fight on their feet.

"I'd tell you it's only young fools who abandon insight in favor of repetition," Goshung said one night. "But habits set in like a bone healed badly, and even core cultivators and higher can be found who wouldn't know how to swing a dao if they weren't allowed to swing it just so."

"Then how can they advance?"

"Depends on their Path. Either they learn better, or they hit a bottleneck. If their Path is something other than a weapon, it may not hinder them until after the core stage."

"Should I choose a weapon Path?"

He nearly lost his neck to a swordstaff as soon as he asked a question. Goshung growled at him.

"Didn't I tell you it was too early for that? Keep your mind where it belongs so your head stays on your shoulders."

Though the gu-en came most naturally to him, Fushuai found he could appreciate the other three answers as well. Each had its place and purpose, and he began to doubt whether the benefits of specializing in a single weapon could outweigh the advantage of choice. With a storage ring, there was no meaningful limit to the type or variety of tools a cultivator could carry with them. But common sense said that anyone who attempted to master every skill would die a master of nothing.

As the belly of the moon filled in the sky over the course of many nights, a worry nagged. He enjoyed combat training even more than he remembered. Goshung's disapproval was all-encompassing and did not represent judgment on him as an individual. Without Gao Ligang to frown at his back, he could train without reservation. That led to an exhilaration that quickly faded.

Even when a spearpoint pricked his side or a dagger pressed against his groin, he did not feel in danger, not truly. He could be wounded, and Goshung did wound him, but it was never anything that couldn't be healed in a day or two after a few bites of one of the Asura's unquestionably unorthodox jerkies.

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He found himself thinking back on the chimera attack with a fondness that unsettled him. He was not a killer; he had no stomach for blood. Why did he only feel alive when there was something sharp angling for his throat?

Whenever Goshung ended their training for the night, Fushuai would spend a few hours foraging. Bitter roots, prickly herbs, the occasional unlucky bird or rabbit. He was starting to have more success with his snares, but there was no joy in that kind of capture. The chase, when it could be found, was more enjoyable by far.

He caught a fox once, white furred and wide eyed. It yipped at first, and then met his gaze as if to say that it understood the situation perfectly and accepted it. Live by the sword and die by it. Predators knew that well enough.

He let it go.

As much time went to preparing what he collected as to the collecting itself. Meats needed to be smoked, seeds, nuts, and herbs ground or steeped. He wove himself a basket, baked lidded pots out of red clay from the riverbank, and collected fish scales and small bones in a pit.

While his hands were occupied, he cycled. Void Stirring became second nature, easier than even the simpler methods he had learned as a child. Yin pooled in his dantian, ready to be called on the next evening, or the next, if he did not exhaust it all during Goshung's lessons.

One night, tending to the smoke fires, he paused, realizing he had reached the next step in his advancement without any great fanfare or revelation. Qi Storing had come to him almost without effort. Pulling in more spiritual energy from the aura around him meant it had to go somewhere. The web of dark threads around his dantian thickened, and his Yin root was endlessly thirsty.

When the moon was full, he sat beneath its silver pall and dedicated himself to drawing and cycling. He filled the loose net of his dantian until the Yin was practically bleeding into his belly, and forced all that he could through his meridians.

It was more painful than any wound he had received at the hands of Goshung, broken ribs included. And yet, it felt right. If his master had been there to question, he would have asked him whether he was wrong to push himself in this manner. There were countless tales of cultivators who had sought to rise too quickly, who tested their limits again and again until they found a boundary that could not be crossed.

Such practices had their benefits, but they also resulted in deviations, spiritual scars, planting the seeds of bottlenecks that might never be overcome. As his energy channels protested, then burned, within him, he considered whether he was doing just the thing both his teachers had warned against.

This was not choosing a Path too early, but it was taking a risk. Still, he persisted.

The Heaven's Draw pill left the taste of ashes in his mouth. After he had taken the first three, the Asura had provided him with another set. Portioning them out as if he assumed Fushuai would risk sickness by taking them all at once. He was not so foolish, or at least, he hadn't been.

With the night deep and the moon full, surrounded by the bones and scales he had gathered over the last two decans, Fushuai took a second pill. Chewing it before he swallowed ensured faster absorption.

It was a block of ice in his belly, and then a blazing flame. If his masters had not wanted him to do something foolish, they should not have left him alone.

Along with raw Yin, he was learning to absorb other forms of aura. Earth was the most abundant for the obvious reason, then wood. Water was too weak away from where it pooled or flowed naturally, and he had let the fires die. The disruption they caused to the settling of Yin was more nuisance than the aura they produced was worth. There was hardly enough metal in his possession of any quality to be worth drawing from, but he had gathered his chopping knife and cookpots for that purpose.

When filtered through his root, all spiritual energy returned as Yin.

Did that mean he was already at the Purification step, or only courting it from afar? His body and mind were both narrowed to a razor's edge of focus. If another chimera had chosen any of these long minutes to attack, it would have surely been the end of him. But he had sensed no other corrupted beasts, nor found any new signs while foraging. He was as safe as he could be and still pursue his goal with a fullness of purpose.

His channels screamed, and his spirit trembled. Then, a change. There were tears running through his meridians, strains that threatened to unravel all his progress and leave him a crippled cultivator. Just as they seemed they would burst from the energy he was pressing through them, instead, he felt a pulse of pure Yin from somewhere deep within his root.

New threads extended, not channels in themselves, reinforcements sent to hold the lines steady on a losing battlefront. Energy swirled within him as he continued to stir, and gradually, the pain lessened. He could not hold all the qi the second pill was allowing him to draw, so some bled invisibly from his hands, his feet, and in his escaping breath.

His meridians stabilized, and his body shuddered with relief. A soothing cold washed over him. Not from the night, from his root.

When dawn broke over the mountain, he rose on unsteady legs and knew that he had attained the fourth step of the qi refinement stage. As far as he could assess, there would be no lasting damage to his internal architecture.

If only his master had been there to see it.