Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

She still can't feel Qi. She may never feel Qi again. There is every chance that she will be as ruined today as on her last breath, and that in all that time, she will not feel Qi, not touch it, not feel it slip and fold and move against her, inside her, a thing burning with heat and solid as steel, yet somehow soft to the touch, molded by will and by intent, by technique and with patience. She may very well die without feeling it even once more.

She might also die without getting laid again, and the similarities between the two thoughts, while one is an order of magnitude lesser than the other, is almost enough to make her laugh. It is enough to make her cry.

But beyond being mad (and Raika knows she is mad, how could she not be? Some of it is even on purpose!) she also still has those truths she found before. The one that stands out most to her now isn't that Qi still exists in her, or that it can be influenced; what stands out most is how.

Her thoughts circle back around to the idea of natural formations again. Unlike an artificial formation or an array, constructs made by someone knowledgeable in the arts, only natural objects are relevant. A concentration of Qi, even a default amount of it, is influenced by the shape of a river, or the random order of rocks nearby, or a tree growing just so as the wind passes through it, and behind to feed into itself and change the environment. Some consider it a blessing of Heaven's will, others a simpler matter of the wonders and intricacies of Qi and all its forms, but in the end the truth is the same; Qi, touching only naturally occurring formations and minor curiosities, does things. It is influenced by its environment, and influences it in turn.

Now, starved of all cultivation, is Raika not as Heaven intended? A dying, fleshy thing, which exists barely higher than an animal, and lower than most?

And if she squints really hard (and uses some of those tasty little nuggets of madness she's been holding back for a rainy day), aren't her insides an environment? She's not a medical specialist, but parasites can live in her, and her blood flows like rivers, her organs like lakes, her bones like stones, her breath like wind. It's a stretch, but it holds one crucial fact that means it must be (is, has to be, can only be) true; she just needs to change enough to make herself interesting to Qi.

Dink helps. What she's figured out helps more.

Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Bo-boom. Boom-boom.

Again and again, always and forever until she is no longer there to listen to it anyways. Each and every moment, it pumps blood through her body, from ruined leg to ruined ribs and up to barely-sane mind and back down again, every inch and place and moment of her touched by it. It beats unevenly, pressured by wounds and scar tissue and poorly healed bone, and every time it does, her existence is prolonged just a bit more.

She's done letting it freeload around and waste her time.

Like with Dink, she starts to meditate, letting her imagination run wild and then viciously leashing it to her purpose. She pictures the mist again, flowing unimpeded through the environment and her flesh, neither absorbed nor maintained, only the bits of it floating in her of any use. She feels her heart pulse, and with each beat, she focuses on her skin, feels it vibrate and ripple, feels the sound of her life tremble through it, and pictures the mist beginning to swirl, pictures it responding to the physical influence. Outside of her it flutters away, pushed aside by the movement, the minor vibration just barely enough to move something lighter than air out, and on the other side of that barrier, keep it in. It's flowing limited, she pictures it fluttering, becoming a breeze, moved and trembling in tune with her heart.

Focus.

Dink, goes her companion, adding its measured rhythm to her meditation.

My skin is mine. My body is mine. It's under my control, and I'm under its.

She might not have the proper organs for Qi manipulation anymore, but those selfsame spiritual organs don't work without willpower and focus.

Dink.

She pictures it. Her blood, holding material it's unwilling to absorb. Her bones, saturated with vital energy and flavoring the Qi around it, attuning it to life, to her life. Her skin, a barrier that breathes alongside her, pulling in what is useful, over and over, and vibrating in tune with her heart and Dink to keep it in.

It's… it's almost there. She can picture it so, so clearly. If she can just-

Dink.

Agony.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raika spends a week in some of the worst pain she's ever felt.

It feels like embers are moving through her, the sensation of pins and needles touching every part of her, inside her body, in places she never even thought of or considered, so much she is squirming and writhing whenever she can move because even the pain is better than the constant background scrabbling and scratching and poking and heat. She vomits even with her belly empty, barely able to hold down melted snow, breath hitching like she has hiccups and a cough and a blockage in her throat all at once for days. Her heart stutters and hurts in her chest and flutters with that same pins and needles sensation and she catches herself bleeding from her eyes twice (turns out the inside of her skull doesn't hurt! Just every other part of it!), spitting up red and bile and blowing a runny nose with snot and crimson in equal measure more than once.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

It's the best feeling in the world, because it means that it worked.

Every single moment she feels the full-body ruin and the impossible, pervasive feeling of something she does not understand, she feels like she could laugh, like she could scream at the heavens, could roar in victory. She wants to pin someone down and bite or hit or grind or just hug their flesh to pulp, she wants to scream until her voice breaks, she wants to scratch and claw and hit something because she was right. It is the worst week of her life and it is her fault and what a joy that is.

Something she does not understand ravages what's left of her, and she trembles from joyous adrenaline because she is what has caused it. Her will, her imagination, her idea and her heartbeat brought this about somehow, whatever the fuck it may be, and when she survives it, she's going to do it all again.

And then she's going to find a way to pay back JiaJia, because she owes that kid.

He comes back two days later. She thinks he says something about having trouble finding his way back, or maybe something about not being able to come earlier (plenty of guys would be jealous, she thinks, and maybe says, and as distasteful as the joke is, it makes her giggle instead of cry for a bit). She wasn't exactly in the best state to receive visitors, even compared to normal, but… he came back again after.

When she couldn't speak, her companion came to her rescue once more. For yes, one Dink. For no, two. He brought her some scraps, mostly old bread and some fish on the edge of going bad, and clean water every now and then.

He helped her go to the restroom. A stranger, a ruined nobody in the street. Fuck, the kid's life must suck.

Still, she stops going at all after day four; no food to shit and mostly just blood all around, dribbles here and there. In her delirium, memory twinges of old stories, of how cultivators in the olden days before the Empire had to mutilate themselves to remove impurities as they cultivated, before proper methods and the grace of the Emperor were instituted.

The comparison makes her smile.

Eventually, the week does end. The pain starts to subside. Her body remains both numb and as hypersensitive as a newborn, every move making her tremble and wince, but it no longer screams bloody murder at the fact that it exists. She feels weaker than since before she met Dink, and nearly as hungry as when she bought it.

And with a lack of pain, she decides to get up and go find some food.

She places her hand on the wall.

And she gets up.

One hand. Not her full body leaning against it. Not an agonizing, inch-by-inch crawl up the brick and wood.

She places her hand on the stone, places her left leg beneath her, and then she is standing.

JiaJia looks genuinely terrified as he turns the corner at just the right time to see the smile on her face.

She puts it away a moment after. There's being happy, and there's being happy at another's expense, and while teasing the kid is fun, the fear there isn't something she enjoys. Instead, putting more weight on her right leg than she's been able to for months, she gives him a bow. As close to a proper one as she can, making it most of the way to the 90 degree angle of utmost respect, back as straight as she can hold it.

"Thank you," she says simply.

Jiajia gulps audibly, but… he does calm down again. He rubs the back of his head, seemingly more embarrassed at the genuine thanks than at helping her piss. "Well it's… it's fine, old hag. I didn't-"

She glares at him so hard he immediately apologizes again. "It's- not that it's not- thank you too?"

She sighs. The kid's an idiot.

She grabs her crutch, leaning against it again but marveling at how much lighter it feels. It's less a cudgel she's wielding (it was never a cudgel, the damn thing weighs less than four pounds), more something like its intended purpose, something easier to move than ruined limbs. She smiles again, softer for the kid's benefit, but the joy, as savage and wild and hungry as it's ever been, is right there, bright and loud in her mind.

"Come on, brat," she rasps. "There's trash I haven't dug in in days, and I'm starved."

JiaJia nods, then realizes what she says and laughs. "Well, sorry my fine cuisine isn't enough to satisfy this strange old wall lady I found," he says with a cheeky grin. "I suppose if one wishes for a return to normal fare, this one won't stand in the way!"

"Yeah, yeah," she rasps, hitting him in the forehead with Dink as she walks by. "How're the whores? Happy enough to keep you around?"

He shrugs, catching up as she starts to shuffle, both of them outlined by the stark white of fresh snow which has barely stopped in weeks. He walks a bit ahead of her, cutting a bit of a path through some of it, and she marks it down in her mind as another thing she'll pay the brat back for. "They like me enough, I guess," he says. "Said I ain't tough enough to act as the security, like you suggested, but I still know the books better than anybody but the boss." He shrugs again. "Dunno why, but it's good for me."

"Lazy people make for sloppy work," Raika rasps. "Probably got used to you and let her effort fall apart. Idiots are as they are, and no more."

He seems a bit uncomfortable at calling his boss an idiot, but he doesn't refute her, so at least he's smart enough for that. "Well, either way, I still have a place. Some of my elder sisters are even acting nice to me now, so I guess you were right about how bad he was too."

"Don't feign ignorance," she snarls. "Don't pretend. He hit you and he did it easy. Means he did worse before."

He goes to say something, some heat coming to his cheeks, but then he does actually stop and think. Yeah, kid's got brains, even if he is an idiot; lords know it's rare for someone to listen when they should.

Eventually, he nods. "Yeah," he says quietly. "I don't think anybody's sad he's gone, but… he was like an uncle, I think. Never had one before, but he'd let me hang around him sometimes. He used to give me some of the best crispy bits whenever we had a better meal. Didn't start hitting me till a few years back. Just hurts, I guess. Makes it easier but… also harder? Easy and hard if I think of him like my uncle, easy and harder if he was just… bad."

"Few things worth much are easy," she rasps. "Find out how it makes it harder. Understand it. Use it, if you can, and make sure whatever comes next is something you will allow."

He looks at her. "You talk a lot more now, huh?"

She gives another shark grin. "Yes."

"Well… sure, why not," he mumbles. "Just don't go acting like you're all wise, granny hag. I've had to watch you piss way too many times to take any "old sage" crap from you."

The brat has the cheek to dodge when she swings Dink at his head, but he doesn't quite manage to dodge the crutch to the forehead smack that comes right after.

"Respect your elders, shithead!" Raika rasps, half-smiling as she does. "I'm not even thirty, either!"

He laughs as she hobbles after him, doing a terrible job of disproving the granny-ness of her age, but she feels so good she'll probably let him get away with it. He better not let all this obvious mercy get to his head.