The Essence of Cultivation

It had taken a good thirty minutes of flying and searching before he finally spotted any sign of movement.

Sylar was thankful that the construct born of Divination was able to see even in low-light conditions. Now that it was well into the night, the chasms that lay some fifty metres below the flatlands above in its shallowest portion and well beyond several hundred metres in its deepest were caught in pitch darkness. It was only because of the enhanced vision of the Arcane Eye that he was able to pick out the humanoid figure traversing the winding and diverging paths of the chasms below.

Finally!

He flew in closer. She was deliberately attracting the attention of the Demonic Beasts, letting herself be seen by them for scant instants before retreating, leaping between outcroppings of stone that served as footholds. The Arcane Eye possessed no hearing, but Sylar could distinctly see the smirk of challenge on her face, and he could imagine her taunting the creatures as she lured them to her intended destination.

Drifting up close, he could see why the Demonic Beasts had earned their name. They were misshapen creatures with grotesque limbs, their bones bent at odd angles. Their appearances varied – some looked like giant insects, while others resembled canine forms. Others yet skittered on far too many limbs of uneven length. They came in all sizes, and from initial impressions alone, Sylar thought that they differed in their formidability. The commonality that defined them, however, were their eyes that blazed with a crimson hue, along with an unnatural smoky darkness that surrounded their form.

They were unlike any creature that Sylar had come across in Resham. Even the bestiaries he had read during his journeys had never bore any description of these beasts. They were currently mobilising in a wild rampage, chasing after their elusive target as she flitted seamlessly across the winding paths of the connected chasms, baiting them inward to her intended location.

He pushed on ahead of the pack, veering closer to Elder Hua, who had briefly stopped to antagonise the Demonic Creatures once more. The Elder was younger than Elder Yang – if Sylar had to guess, he would put her to be in her thirties, although it was hard to make estimates what with how cultivators appeared more youthful than they were in reality. She clutched a sabre in one hand, giving a confident smirk at the crowd of beasts as she paused with one foot set on an outcropping of stone.

Then, though Sylar couldn’t hear her while perceiving through his Arcane Eye, she laughed and extended a finger in a rude gesture at the beasts, before leaping from her platform and venturing into another portion of the chasm network. Within instants, all that was left was the sight of her wind-whipped hair trailing behind her as she narrowed a corner, a horde of Demonic Beasts stampeding below where he hovered as an Arcane Eye.

He could have matched her speed with a Haste or Flash Step, but clearly the powers that empowered one who learned to harness the power of qi were great indeed. He retreated, heading upwards once more into the sky, taking a global picture of the systems of chasms.

They were wide. The magics of Divination made the poor lighting a non-factor, but the actual limits to his vision were still roughly the same as his own eyes. For as far as the land stretched to fade in the distance, the chasms continued onward. They were not a single continuous network, he now realised – in fact, the one he was currently hovering over was among the smaller ones. Many more littered the landscape as scars upon the land.

He did not know whether the legends of the so-called Ten Immortals who had been the first cultivators of the Immortal Lands were true, but he could certainly imagine what powers they must have possessed, if their battle had sundered the plains to this extent.

Finally, he allowed the spell to fade away. He would have plenty of time to take stock of the Demonic Beasts himself once the morning came.

With a quiet exhalation, his senses returned to his body. Guanzhong was standing just a short distance away, quietly observing his remaining two juniors who still stayed by the location of their camp. Qin Shurui and Song Quanhao were seated with their backs to the rocks, a sheet of parchment placed in front of each of them. They had their eyes closed, their expressions contemplative, clearly in a state of meditation.

The slight shifting in Sylar’s posture had to have been picked up by Guanzhong’s keen senses, because he turned to look at him immediately. “You were gone for quite some time,” he commented, gesturing a thumb behind him lazily. “Quanhao wanted to poke and prod at you to see if you would awaken. I had to convince him otherwise.”

“How did you manage that?” Sylar asked curiously. “From what I know of him, he seems the sort to think and do as the moment requires.”

Guanzhong shrugged. “Told him about the final Spiritual Art you unleashed during our duel. He reconsidered, and in his exact words, he thought it best not to provoke the sleeping dragon.”

It was easy to see that Guanzhong had been close friends with those taking part in the Elder’s training exercise. Sylar had thought him to be quiet, calm, and reserved – though his recent revelations of once having been a firebrand among within his Sect had thrown Sylar for a loop – but he was clearly comfortable among present company, compared to the many junior disciples whose training he had been in charge of back in the Sect.

Sylar stood up, beginning to stretch limbs that had grown stiff after half an hour spent in the same position. He headed towards the two juniors, who did not respond at all to his approach. It was bizarre, seeing how focused Quanhao was, when just less than an hour ago he had been all fired up and energetic. Clearly, he was no stranger to discipline, having undergone the strict training that cultivators undertook from what he had seen of the Sect’s compound atop Penshan Peak.

“What are they doing?” he asked curiously, peering at the sheets of parchment each of them had placed before them. It couldn’t be a secret of their Sect, or Guanzhong would have made certain for it to be hidden away from outside eyes.

“Do you not engage in contemplation of the Eight Trigrams where you hail from, Sylar?” Guanzhong asked, with a hint of surprise. “I would have thought that given your mastery of the Spiritual Arts, you must have engaged extensively in the practice as you cultivated your spirit.”

On each of the sheets, one half contained eight symbols arranged circumferentially in an octagonal formation. Each of them was composed of three lines, that were either unbroken or divided in the middle. On the other half, those symbols became paired, each of them forming a series of six lines. Sixty-four combinations.

Pairs. Spiritual Arts. Spiritual Cultivation.

Essence.

… but why sixty-four? It didn’t make sense. Just a week prior, he had taught his new apprentice that there were ninety-one possible combinations of Essence. Moreover, the arrangement they had gave permutations of pairs, but a Fire-Order, for example, would be exactly the same as an Order-Fire.

And what reason was there to study them as such, when the theory of the possible pairs of Essence was easily understood? He tried to inch closer, craning his neck for a better look.

“Please do not approach any closer, Sylar,” he warned politely. “Quanhao and Shurui are in the midst of tandem cultivation. To introduce disharmony now would be an unsettling experience for them both.”

Sylar nodded slowly, obliging, though he knew little of the semantics of his terminology. It was a poor angle, but from where he stood, he could clearly see that beneath each of the sixty-four pairs arranged in a neat eight-by-eight matrix, three characters in the local script had been written, except for those along the diagonal, that each only bore a single character.

Tongues – the spell was now his constant companion – allowed him to decipher their meaning. Grouping, Holding Together, Alliance; one particular triplet of characters translated. Beneath another of those pairs, a separate triplet was written – Persevering, Duration, Constancy.

Now that he was actually observing, however, he could see that there was more. Within that matrix that held the sixty-four permutations of pair-wise combinations of the eight symbols, the diagonal that represented pairs of the exact same trigram cleanly divided it into two-halves – a triangle coloured black bounded one group, and one coloured white bounded the other. Along that diagonal line of reflection, for each of the two combinations made up of the same constituent trigrams, one half was written in white against the black, and the other in black against the white.

Why?

It made little sense to him. Quanhao was still burning Earth-Chaos, and Shurui channelling Water-Order, just as they had been during their initial meeting. Though he could not perceive the process as he could the Essences, he knew they were converted into Soulburn, one portion of the latent energy of Essence returning to the Planes Beyond, and the other being incorporated into their own bodies.

But there was more there going on than simply that, he realised. The rates in which the pair were burning up their Essence-pairs were perfectly matched. Even their breathing was synchronised. For all that their personalities had seemed opposites during their first interactions, the pair was now in perfect harmony.

Tandem cultivation. Were they drawing upon each other’s Soulburn, or the energy that came when Essence was converted? Was that even possible? What sort of effects would that even have?

He certainly wouldn’t be the best one to ask. If this were purely an issue of Essence, he might have some insights, but the newfound energies released in the instant that Essence became Soulburn was a completely new subject to him. As things stood, he was only just barely able to feel the sensation of Fate-Fate being spent within him at all, though from listening to the other cultivators’ words, it was clear that they could perceive this phantom energy released where Essence turned into Soulburn as the qi that was common knowledge to their cloisters.

This Eight Trigrams of theirs was unknown to him – but he wouldn’t make the same mistake of writing it off the way he did their constant burning of Essence. There was meaning there – and though it was unlikely Guanzhong would offer up answers soon, he would one day unravel this mystery for himself.

“I must admit to my curiosity, Sylar, but it has been plaguing me ever since our duel,” Guanzhong said, stepping closer beside him. He gazed at his two juniors, who never once halted in their state of deep focus. “Please, do not feel obliged to answer – but how is it that you are able to achieve the Second Comprehension of the dao, without having been enlightened of the First through bodily cultivation?”

He considered Guanzhong’s words. A few seconds passed.

And of course, try as he might, it meant little to him. What even was the dao? Had that ever come up in conversation before? What were these Revelations?

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” He shrugged, hands outstretched helplessly. “Where I come from, our practices are very different from those of the Immortal Lands.”

There was a rush of genuine surprise across Guanzhong’s expression. “You do not reflect upon the Eight Trigrams?”

“I can think of a close equivalent that’s probably the same as your system – but even then, the two are very different.”

For a moment, Guanzhong was silent.

“You really are strange, Sylar,” he said, smiling. “But I suppose that to you – we must be just as equally confusing.”

Sylar returned with a grin of his own. “You have no idea.”

They both wished to learn the secrets of the other. They knew that the other knew that. It was obvious.

But here in the Immortal Lands, there was propriety to be upheld, just as it was in Resham. No mage would willingly part with a truly novel spell of his own design for fear that others would plagiarise its matrix for their own use. Equally, no cultivator would brazenly ask for something of value to be given unto them without offering anything in return. During his brief time in the Immortal Lands, he could already tell it was inbuilt into the local culture.

He did not mind. He was a scholar. The fun of it all lay in pursuing the answers through his own efforts. The only truly reprehensible thing would be if he ever ran out of questions to ask.

Just as the secrets of Soulburn were slowly but surely becoming revealed unto him, these mysteries lying in plain sight would be unravelled soon enough.

-x-x-x-

Dawn broke.

“Alright, students! No more dawdling! It’s time to show off the fruits of your training! You as well, Spellsight!”

Sylar awoke from his half-drowsy state, a spell half-formed on his mind, before remembering just where he was.

Right. The Demon’s Pass.

Though he hadn’t heard Elder Hua speak while clandestinely observing her as his Arcane Eye, the booming, energetic, and careless tone with which she spoke was exactly as he’d imagined it to be when she’d been taunting the hordes of ravenous Demonic Beasts. She grinned good-naturedly from the large stone she was standing atop, offering a cheeky wave toward him.

Guanzhong was already there, evidently having awoken some time ago, giving a sheepish look of apology at him. The practice of the Righteous Heart Sect’s sword forms must not have done much to ease Yang Xingling’s poor impression of him, because she was glaring at him the moment that he approached.

“Good sleep?” Elder Hua asked, but didn’t give a chance for him to reply. “Well, I hope Guanzhong’s told you everything you need to know, because you lot will be heading down as soon as we’re done here. Sooner we finish off those beasties, the sooner we’ll get back home!”

He blinked. She was far more enthused than he’d expected, considering her status as one of the Sect’s Elders.

“You’re all going off in teams. Guanzhong, you’re with Yao. Xingling, Shurui. And you, Spellsight, will be with Quanhao,” she rattled off. “Now, I know what you’re all thinking – ‘Elder Hua, why are we in teams?’ Well, brats, the answer is that I spent a full three hours last night separating the herd into three groups, and I’m not about to let all that effort go to waste.”

Only then did she give the slightest hint of seriousness in her expression. “Do not expect any help from me, students. I’ve had a look at the Demonic Beasts, and none of them should pose any significant threat. Guanzhong, Xingling, as Ranking Disciples, this should be no trouble for you, even if you go at it alone. Spellsight, I haven’t seen how you fare, but Guanzhong insists that you will be more than a match for anything he can handle.”

“Um,” he said, finally having some chance to speak amidst the flurry of words. “Guanzhong did remember to tell you that I’m extremely fragile, right?”

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “I could tell that you are not practiced with cultivating your body without him having to tell me. That’s why you’re with Quanhao. Senior Disciple – I expect for not a hair on his person to be out of place. Am I clear?”

Far from matching her relaxed tone, Quanhao was now all formality, even though he had been the most casual of them all the night before. “Yes, Elder!”

“Alright, off you go! Shoo!”

And with that, she tapped her foot impatiently, and those of the Righteous Heart Sect had to know that was the appropriate cue, because each of the assigned pairs began to group up.

“Looks like we’ll be working together today.” Quanhao grinned as he neared. “I look forward to seeing what you’ve got! Show me some of those tricks you used to ignite this new passion in Guanzhong, won’t you?”

“I’ll probably have to.” He grimaced. Though the Demonic Beasts weren’t all that fearsome from what he’d seen, compared to the threats he and his party had fought on Resham, a clean hit without magical shielding would undoubtedly leave lasting injuries. And there were a decent number of them.

Quanhao laughed, and then gestured in the direction of edge that bordered the chasms. Already, the others were leaping from crevice to crevice, making their way down to the bottom, and toward where their assigned group of creatures were. “Shall we?”

As this was the very periphery of this network of chasms, the bottom wasn’t too deep here. Still, that translated to at least a fifty-metre drop – possibly survivable, but he didn’t want to test the waters.

“You go on ahead first,” he said, peering down from the edge. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

He seemed confused at first, but realised the issue quickly enough. “Right, right. Bodily cultivation. I could carry you down, if you’d like?”

Just as he had refused Guanzhong’s offer of what was equivalent to a piggyback ride of dozens of kilometres the day before, he had his pride as a mage to abide by. “I’ve got my own way down.”

Shrugging, Quanhao leapt to one rocky outcropping on the rocky wall that formed the opposite edge of the chasm, somehow balancing perfectly on just a small piece of stone, leaping deftly onto the bottom of the ravine.

Right, then. His turn.

With a running start, he leapt off the edge, and cast a spell derived of Form, Spirit, and Wind Essence.

Though he fell at the standard acceleration of free-fall, the impact as he landed was blunted to the point where it barely registered. Quanhao stared at him – probably wondering how he shook off a fall like that without having trained his body – but didn’t broach the question.

Feather Fall was truly a godsend.

“Lead the way.”

“Well, that’s something.” Quanhao appeared bemused, but shook his head. “Our group’s off this way. Should start seeing them after twenty minutes or so at a decent pace.”

And with that, he broke into a light jog. Hurriedly, Sylar followed along.

Strange. He wasn’t quite as tired as he would have expected, even if he factored in the exercises his party members insisted he carry out during his semi-retirement in Nimbria. Perhaps some of those exercises in Soulburn were paying off after all?

“So, I’m thinking that this is what we should do,” Quanhao said, speaking without the slightest hitch in his breath. “I’ll engage them up close, keep them from breaking through, and you show them some of the pain you dished out to the boss. Sounds good?”

Translation: slinging out spells from behind the cover of his more well-armoured or nimble-bodied companions. Just like the good old adventuring days. He smiled wistfully. How were they doing now, he wondered?

… were they even aware that he’d been transmigrated off to what was, apparently, an entirely different world?

Was anyone even aware of his disappearance?

Well, that line of thought had taken a depressing turn. Dwelling over the sad state of affairs that had been his most recent years spent fiddling over recovered magical artifacts could come later.

“Sounds good.”

“Right,” he said, then looked ahead. The passageways at the bottom of the chasms were narrow – barely three metres across at this section they were in. “Elder Hua had us map out this area while we trained over the last month. Boy, am I glad that Yao made sure that I took those exercises seriously, because we’d be completely lost otherwise.”

Well, he could offer some help of his own. Detect Creature was something he could cast indefinitely, with his current rate of Soulburn expenditure. It wasn’t much – the upper bound of its range was only about a hundred metres – but it was decent, especially since the chasms wound this way and that.

And so, temporarily bringing a halt to the burning of his Fate-Fate that had been his constant companion for the better part of a week, he switched to repeatedly using that spell every good thirty or so paces, defining the trigger of his search to be those creatures he had witnessed while flitting about as an Arcane Eye.

Just over ten minutes later, he felt the first of the monsters register. The direction passed straight through the wall to his right, but at least they were progressing in the right direction.

He pressed onward, until they came to a fork. As he had done back when the Spirit Wolves had been chasing Wenchai, he unleashed a Projection for a short-range scrying, scouting up ahead as the cleft veered to the right.

And there they were; thirty or so dark and twisted shapes.

“Careful,” he warned. “They’re just up ahead.”

“How’d you know that?” Quanhao asked, amazed. “You’re right, though. You want to kick things off?”

“Now you’re speaking my language.”

Hey, even scholars had to let loose every now and then, right? It had been the best of times, when he had laid waste to a good chunk of their enemies’ strengths when he had still been an adventurer braving the ills that plagued the Kingdom of Nimbria.

Quietly, so as not to startle his quarry, he crept out from the corner, eyeing the Beasts. Now allowed to glimpse them without the use of spells of Divination, he could see the Essences that clung to them – and that threw him off.

In the most cases, denizens that drew from where the Elemental or Transcendental Planes leaked into the physical realm were almost entirely composed of the corresponding Essence, that stuck to their physical forms. Unlike ambient Essence, this could not be drawn upon by a mage, until the creatures were slain and the parts in which the Essences were actually contained in were collected. In the case of the Spirit Wolves, Space Essence had been released upon their deaths, after he had obliterated them with Cloudburst.

Demonic Beasts were different. Just as their physical forms were twisted, so too were the Essences that made them up a mess. Death was mixed with Life, and Fire with Water, though the Planes from which they originated were fundamental opposites to each other. Even within the pack, ones that bore similar forms had completely different Essences imbued within them.

What were they, really?

Only one way to find out.

And so, holding one hand behind him, he slowly mimed counting down from five.

Elemental Barrage.

With that, as the volleys of elemental onslaught manifested from four separate screeching glyphs contained within a larger sigil, Quanhao laughed, leaping from out behind him, putting himself between him and the incoming horde.

The battle began.

-x-x-x-

Well, Song Quanhao thought, feeling the waves of blazing heat and arctic chill emanating in the wake of Sylar’s Spiritual Art. Now I see why Guanzhong’s all fired up.

For all that Guanzhong had been hot-headed in his younger days, that had come from him wanting to know more. Why was it that the technique was performed this way? What happened if he did this? Those were the driving motivations that Guanzhong kept in mind whenever he challenged Xingling or any of the other Disciples to duels and bouts. He was much calmer now, but whatever had happened in the duel Quanhao could only wish to have spectated had to have impacted him greatly.

But Sylar Spellsight was still lacking in many ways, that much was clear. For his help in getting the boss out of his self-imposed cage, Quanhao would offer a demonstration of what that was. A state empowered by the First Revelation was not something he could keep up for long, but it would be enough.

He breathed in, feeling for the energy all around him. He drew it in – tempering it, imparting it with the essence of himself, letting it mix with his yang qi within.

And then – as a torrential flood, from within the foundation of condensed qi he had built up over his long years in the Righteous Heart Sect, he released the refined energies through the meridians that coursed from out of his dantian, letting it mix with the raw and primal nature of the elemental forces he was simultaneously drawing in.

Solid, Unstoppable, Exuberant. That was the nature of his Foundation, upon which his journey of cultivation was set on solid rock. His personal First Revelation of the First Comprehension of the dao. His creed and path. He was a stone in motion, an unstoppable juggernaut that would pummel through anything in his way. More than just a stone – he was as a mountain, one that dwarfed the size of his actual body.

A tide of blackened shapes descended upon him, seeking to strike at the one that had laid waste to a good number of their ranks and left smoking chunks of blackened flesh or layers of rime upon many remaining ones.

A stone in the path of a river could stand firm, but still the river parted to its side, rejoining just behind it. Three months ago, he would never have been able to prevent their advance.

Now, after a full month spent in tandem cultivation with Shurui, whose Foundation was the complete opposite of his own, he was close to his Second Revelation of the First Comprehension. He could feel it. More than just his body, his very soul and spirit sang to him of such.

One from further back in the pack tried to leap overhead where he stood at the narrowest point of the pass. In that instant, still engaged in the Fist of the Steadfast Heart that he had known since he had been a Junior Disciple, the principle of his form changed. In the qi that enveloped him, he could sense that which was attempting to carve a path through the obstructive stone that was him. He leapt up gracefully, grabbing at one misshapen limb of the Demonic Beast, feeling the flow of its momentum as it continued to travel.

Then, he threw it back toward the hard earth with a resounding crack.

Without pause, he re-entered his stance.

Solid. Unstoppable. Exuberant. His own First Revelation, layered atop the Path of a Guardianhe had seen of himself in the moment he achieved the beginnings of the First Comprehension of the dao.

The merger was close. He could feel it. The half that came from Shurui still did not feel natural, but it was starting to blend with the nature of his path, as set by his Foundation. He would never be the same as her – his guiding principle was still his own – but some of her own First Revelation bled through to his. For all that stone was unyielding, a steady stream of dripping water could yet erode through it over the eons. It could not be static.

He was not like Guanzhong, who with his Four-Yin Tempering, was able to achieve a truly unique Second Revelation of his own that served as his guide. Still, he had his own path to follow.

A mountain that moved. That was Song Quanhao. That was what he would become.

When he finally achieved the Second Revelation, it would be more than just the sum of its parts. Solid, Unstoppable, Exuberant. The Foundation upon which his journey of cultivation was built would remain the same, but still there would be more.

-x-x-x-

How did he do that?

Even to the untrained observer like himself, it was obvious that what Quanhao had performed was anything but normal. One instant, he’d been ready to send the offending beast hurtling aside with a Lightning Lash, and in the next, Quanhao had zipped about where he had been contentedly keeping the monsters at bay, smoothly kicked off one of the near-vertical walls to grab and toss it to the back of the group, and without even a moment’s delay followed through with the action across the opposite wall to return to his stance.

There was power

there. A power he hadn’t recognised. Quanhao was still burning Chaos-Earth in droves, but after a full week spent continuously burning Fate-Fate, he wasn’t as blind as he had been during the duel with Guanzhong. A wave of energy – not quite heat, not sound, nor electricity – but an energy with presence erupted from within him, in the pit where the energy released from failed casting could be forced to coalesce.

It coursed outward, dissipating from Sylar’s senses almost immediately as its diffused outward, but in that instant, he had learned something crucial. There was a flow to it all. What was stored could also be released.

And the Essences were being swept along in its wake.

Though he could no longer sense the erupting wave of force save for where it emerged from within his core, he could sense how a small amount of Earth Essence was drawn toward him, but did not truly infuse his soul as one would hold them to be arranged into pairs for spellcasting. From within, Chaos Essence spiralled outward, joining the Earth Essence. A trickle of Water Essence looked almost swept along by the vortex gradually beginning to form. Yet, they did not exist as pairs.

What was this? Sylar’s physical sight and his perception of Essence relied on different senses, but juxtaposing the two, it felt almost as though the Essence formed a shell around Quanhao.

It was different from mere ambient Essence. There was a sense of physicality here, as though Essence was attempting to bleed into the material world as physical objects. What had been individual discrete units of Essence stretched out, their forms warping, blurring at the edges to his Diviner’s sight.

It went against everything he knew. Essence Pairs belonged in the soul, where they were fed in a matrix, to be made manifest as spells. Ambient Essence existed from where they bled in to the material world from the Planes Beyond, but there was a natural magnetismto the soul. Something like this… well, he had only glimpsed it among the extraordinary.

For Quanhao was no longer truly a material being in the conventional sense. No being – as far as he knew – held Essence attached to their bodily forms in such a way. The only exception were the denizens of the Planes Beyond, or those in the vicinity of such nexuses of power, whose very bodies were warped by the powers that originated from them. What was physical was ascending beyond, turning Transcendental, becoming elevated to a higher status of being.

In that regard, Quanhao was eerily similar to the Demonic Beasts they were fighting.

And it was glorious. He was an ordered swirling mass of Earth and Chaos, more and more collapsing inward toward him as he battered across the ranks of incoming Demonic Beasts, their material bodies haphazardly splattered with a mix of Essences that were not kept in any semblance of harmony as Quanhao’s was. One was dynamic, never once resting as the tempest enveloped Quanhao; the other was static, imbued within the flesh and sinew of the Demonic Beasts.

Had he completely missed this during the bout with Guanzhong? Had this been how he had suddenly gained a rush of strength, or put on a burst of speed back then? Sylar hadn’t been paying all that much attention. Compared to the Essence-Pairs used in spell matrices, the number that now clung to Quanhao’s body was far smaller. Essence, after all, was not meant to infuse physical objects like flesh and blood.

What truly caught his attention was this weight to the Essence being swept along by Quanhao’s release of stored power. There was something that felt natural, there. It struck at the same senses that had perceived that trickle of energy released when he burned Fate-Fate. Could he only see this now, after having just begun to condense this mystical force Guanzhong had termed the qi in cultivating his body?

Qi. Essence. Equivalents, but they were not truly equal. Cultivators saw it one from angle, and mages perceived it from another.

Well, well. He narrowed his eyes, as Quanhao continued to prove an impossible barrier for the creatures to break through. Can’t let cultivators have all the fun.

Another Sixth Level spell, unfortunately, was out of the question. Still, he had plenty of other alternatives.

Lightning Lash plucked one Demonic Beast straight between the ravenous jaws of its kin with a sickening crunch. Though crumpled, the body was still tugged along by the spell, hurling past the one that had already attacked it, toward a third Demonic Beast on the opposite side that had served as the other anchor of the spell. They met together, and with a thunderclap of energy of the collapsing spell, were sent hurtling back apart, their forms cracking against the walls of the chasm.

“Nice!” Quanhao praised. He was clearly in his element, laughing as he batted the beasts away. “Any more you can show me?”

Searing Daggers sailed from between his fingers, all three projectiles embedding into the flesh of one that had attempted sticking to crawl along the sides of the chasm. It gave a frenzied roar, crashing to the ground, the inky substance that made up its unnatural form burning.

Now satisfied that he was fully safe behind the wall formed by Quanhao, and though still amazed by what cultivators had been practising when he’d been too blind to see, he dedicated himself fully to his spellcasting. A Fireball here, and an Earthen Grasp there. One had managed to squeeze its way past Quanhao, but a quick Thunderclap sent it flying back where it came.

Not many were left. Between them both, they had to have cleared a full twenty of their number, and what remained were battered and broken.

If so – perhaps he might have a chance to experiment a bit.

He looked inward. Once more, he continued burning Fate-Fate, but now, as he claimed the power that was released from its improper casting, he followed the trail onward, focusing on where it funnelled into.

There you are.

He tried to reach it, to unleash it as Quanhao had done, but found he could not draw upon it. There was a resistance there. A pressure – and the more he tugged, all he felt was a sense of compression, but not of release. There was no outlet for it.

Quanhao must have somehow been able to perceive what he was doing, because he whirled around immediately, astonishment and surprise apparent in his gaze. “Hey! What are you –“

In that moment of distraction, his form slipped. Through the senses of a Diviner, there was a sudden sense of stillness to the Essence coursing around his body. Quanhao tried to correct, regaining control of that flow, but the Demonic Beast had broken through, heading right toward Sylar.

In the instant that he braced himself, readying for an Earthen Shell to be erected around him to soften the strike, he inadvertently clamped tight on that strange power within, gathered over a week of non-stop practice that only a trained mage could perform.

With that sudden burst of pressure, there was no more room for compression within him.

Like a balloon finally forced to its breaking point, the power burst forth, seeking the most natural paths out from the prison it had been caged within.

Conduits of power sprouted forth from it. They were narrow – so narrow – just barely what was necessary to provide enough flow for release of the pressure within. It was nothing compared to what he had felt emanating from Quanhao.

He couldn’t harness it in any way – but this was proof that it was there, that his past week of constant practice hadn’t been for nothing.

And rather than shielding himself with magic as had been his initial thought, an odd instinct sang to him. Caught within its enthralling whispers, he followed as it demanded.

A single step off to the side, and the charging Beast missed him completely. It slid against the earth, howling in rage.

He reformed the spell, turning Earthen Shell into Earthen Grasp, and with a quick Earth Spike, ended the creature’s life.

“You’ve achieved the First Comprehension?”

Was that what this was?

It was an apt name for it. There was a vibrancy to the world. Things he hadn’t yet noticed suddenly stood out to him. The Demonic Beasts, for example, were vastly different from the denizens of the Planes Beyond that he knew of from bestiaries. In the moment that they were destroyed, their Essence didn’t slowly fade away into the Planes Beyond as the Spirit Wolves he fought had. Instead, they just remained there, static and unmoving.

Patterns were making themselves known to him. He could see how the Demonic Beasts were fanning off to opposite sides of Quanhao, attempting a coordinated attack, and could see how he, in turn, was subtly repositioning himself, driven by his own instinct. The vortex of power that suffused Quanhao ebbed and flowed, pulsing in unison with his movements and intent.

There was so much more. It was analogous to his Diviner’s Sight, earned through repeated usage of Divination magics that had permanently addled his soul, only this strange energy pertained to what was physical.

And he knew this was only just the beginning. The power that flowed from the newly-formed channels that existed in a state between the physical and Beyond was but a trickle compared to what Quanhao was unleashing. What could he achieve, if he continued dedicating himself to this half of Essence Theory?

As things were now, he had none of the grace and power that Guanzhong possessed, nor did he have the overwhelming presence with which Quanhao prevented all foes from advancing past his guard. Perhaps he might feel just a little stronger, or more durable, but it was nothing compared to what they possessed.

Still, he felt he had the greatest gift of all; eyes with which to perceive the world. To observe, to measure, and to conjecture.

With a heavy fist, Earth Essence concentrated just at the fore of his arm as he still continued burning Earth-Chaos, the skull of the last of the Demonic Beasts caved in with a crack that resounded across the chasms. The power that surrounded Quanhao receded, and now that he was personally aware of it, could see the pathways with which the storm returned back to its source. The Essences that had been dragged along by the power dissipated away.

Quanhao was panting, having exerted himself to achieve the state he had been in that went beyond the physical. Still, his eyes were wide with elation and excitement, and more than a little respect.

Sylar didn’t know what the mechanics of that tiredness entailed – was that an exhaustion similar to that which came with physical exercise, or was it more akin to the sensation of Soulburn? Was it something else entirely? He would come to understand that in the future, he supposed.

“Guanzhong wasn’t kidding at all, huh?” he said, impressed. “Reaching the First Comprehension in the middle of battle? Managing to condense enough qi to open your meridians in a week?” He whistled. “I think that makes for a new record.”

“It’s not much, compared to what I felt from you,” Sylar replied. Even the Soulburn felt more bearable, though he thought his capacity for it remained unaffected. “I still have a long way to go.”

Quanhao shrugged. “Hey, at least it’s something, right? Don’t get too cocky now, though – getting to the First Revelation is much harder than just achieving the First Comprehension.” He paused. “Bah, you probably already know that, anyway. No idea how you’ve managed the Second Comprehension before the First, but I guess that’s what got Guanzhong so enthused, huh?”

Words, words, words; too many words. He needed time to reflect on what he’d just achieved, and then he could come to appreciate the grander meaning of it all. Already, patterns were singing to him, though he knew not of their meaning.

Sylar gestured toward the direction they had come from. “Shall we go back?”

“Yeah. The others will probably be finishing up any time soon, anyway.”

He knew little of cultivation. He could only read between the lines of what this dao and the layers of Comprehension one could glean from it entailed, as well as the Revelations that stemmed from each degree of Comprehension.

Though a mage by training, and a fledgling cultivator by accident, the new course ahead of him that had arisen simply because of a happenstance of magic belonged to neither. It had been there before he had ever been either, before he had even been an adventurer, charting his path forward.

That was the nature of his First Comprehension. His grander purpose in the universe. It was not a word with a representation along the diagonal of the combined Eight Trigrams he had seen yesterday, but he knew it nonetheless.

His path and calling.

The Scholar.