NOVEL NEXT 14 - Cultivation Time
The room itself is like a simple one-bedroom apartment. Immediately inside is a small kitchen, or at least what looks like a kitchen, with a small table and four chairs, and there's another door on the far side. The counters are made of polished gray stone, and there's a sink and what looks like a gas stove. I can sense ki within, rather than gas, and the sink seems to be powered by ki as well, but the effect is probably the same. It's much more modern than I was expecting.
Through the door on the far side is the bedroom. The bed is even bigger than king-sized, and the sheets look incredibly soft, but I have to restrain myself from jumping straight onto them. My clothes are already ruined; I can't ruin my sheets too.
The entire wall of the bedroom is a section of sliding doors, leading to a large closet. I peek inside to see that there are some robes inside, then turn to the opposite side where there's a door that hopefully leads to a bathroom. The kitten explores a bit on its own, but always turns to follow me when I move. It reaches the bathroom door before I do.
I push the door open, and the kitten immediately darts inside before I can stop it. I consider grabbing it and tossing it out and locking myself inside, but that seems a bit risky. Based on how attached it's been to me so far, it probably wouldn't be happy, and it has enough ki that it might be able to break through the door. I'll just leave the bathroom door open and hope it loses interest and goes away without bothering me.
The bathroom is similar to the kitchen in its modernity. There's a vanity right in front of the door with the same gray stone counter and another sink with a mirror hanging over it. On the right, there's a large bathtub, almost the size of a hot tub, and above it, there's a wide stone spout where I assume the water comes from.
The kitten runs forward to explore the tub while I stop for a moment to look at myself in the mirror. I am filthy. On top of the impurities being excreted through my pores, I also have black blood splattered all over from my fight with the wolf, including a bit on my cheek that I failed to fully wipe off. Only my bright ginger hair looks clean, and even then, it's still all tangled and messy. I let it grow a little bit too long because I was too lazy to get it cut, so it was hanging down to my waist, and got some grass tangled in it when I was sitting down in the first trial.
I strip off my clothes, trudge over to the tub, and step inside. The kitten is sniffing around the handles that control the water, and jumps back in surprise when I reach to grab them. When I turn the handle, it squeals and leaps into the air, kicking off the wall and landing on the ground on the other side of the room with its back arched and its fur on end. I smile slightly as it maintains its distance, staring at the water like it's a monster. Now I won't have to deal with it bothering me while I'm showering.
The water coming from the spout right now is frigid. I'm standing directly under the spout, so the water flows out over my head without touching me, but I still feel goosebump-inducing splashes when it hits the ground.
I immediately turn that handle back and turn the other, which produces steaming hot water. Out of curiosity, I keep turning that handle, and surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a stop. I turn it a full circle around until the water flow is torrential before I stop. Thankfully, the spout raised its angle so it's not shooting across the room and is still hitting roughly the same spot on the ground.
I reach out my hand to feel it. It's scalding, probably beyond what most people could handle, but that's just the way I like it. Even better, it's coming out at such high pressure it feels like a waterfall, which sparks an idea. Cultivating under a waterfall is a useful practice for mid-stage ki practitioners, as it drowns out the world around, and forces them to shut off their senses in order to focus. For me, it's not useful anymore, but I still enjoy the peace that comes with water hitting my head so hard I can't hear myself think. However, I don't like the cold, and most waterfalls are cold.
This waterfall is not cold. I don't know if hot springs with waterfalls exist anywhere on Earth, but if they do, I haven't seen them. If I had known where one was back when ki still existed, I would have spent every day there. And this shower is just as effective.
I take another step forward, letting my arm pass through the torrent. Because of how high the water pressure is, I don't even need to scrub, and the blood and filth is already being washed away. I go forward until my entire body is underneath, letting the water scrub me clean, then reach for a bar of soap that rests on a ledge on the side of the tub.
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The whole time, the kitten never approaches closer. It paces back and forth, and it looks like it occasionally whines, but I can't hear anything over the sound of the water, so I ignore it. Once my body is clean, I sit down on the floor of the tub and close my eyes. Almost immediately, I'm able to enter a full meditative state and sense my ki. This hot spring waterfall is perfect.
I start by finishing the purification of my meridians. As expected, it only takes about an hour to finish, and I don't even have to clean myself off afterwards. I should probably reapply soap before I get out, but for now, I can just move on to actual cultivation.
Forming a ki center is a fairly simple process. Anyone could do it with enough time and effort. Forming a good ki center is a bit more difficult, but still achievable for anyone with a bit more patience or a guiding hand. Forming an excellent ki center is something only those with a firm understanding of meridians and their connections can do. Forming a perfect ki center is something that can usually only be achieved upon reaching the Life and Death stage of cultivation, also known as Renewal, where the body is reformed through ki. The level of precision and control required is far beyond what beginners can achieve, and once a ki center is set, changing it before the Renewal stage is nearly impossible. But of course, I am no beginner.
An ordinary or good ki center is more or less just an amalgamation of ki in the center of the body at the confluence of the meridians. Just gathering the ki in the right place will be enough to get a basic one, and its quality is determined by the purity of the ki. An excellent ki center is one that takes into account the meridians, and makes deliberate connections between them within the center, allowing for more efficient ki circulation. A perfect ki center is one where every meridian is connected in the proper orientation.
It's been thousands of years since I've cultivated, and my ki control is definitely rusty. A perfect ki center is going to be difficult at this stage. I have a good memory, but I still haven't even thought about meridians once in my past couple dozen lives. I'm going to have to go for it anyway though. An excellent ki center would be passable, but in the long run, it would still cost me months to years of cultivation speed. I won't settle for that.
I focus my attention right behind my navel and start tracing the meridians and their connections. It's not an easy process. The reason that the navel is the place at which the ki center is formed is because that is where all the meridians converge, creating a complex Gordian knot of energy. The standard approach for beginners creating their ki centers is to just merge them all together into one ball of dense ki which supplies the meridians. This approach isn't necessarily wrong, and it doesn't cause any problems for the practitioner, but a more delicate approach is still preferable.
Once I've traced each one and have a better picture of how they all connect, I get to the real work. I gather the ki flowing through my body, and start forming a shell around the meridian knot. It takes time, since I need to gather all the ki externally, but since it's just a thin shell, it's only a few minutes before it's ready.
Next, I do the same for each and every meridian. This part takes much longer, and is much more mentally taxing. It's hard to tell exactly how much I'm sweating, but I periodically make sure I look up and open my mouth to drink some water to keep myself hydrated before moving on.
I don't know exactly how long it takes, but when I'm done, my stomach is growling like a wolf, and I realize that I haven't eaten since breakfast. I can't go just yet though. I still have the most important step.
While the shell and the meridian outlines are complete, if I stop now, they'll simply dissipate, and I'll have to do it all over again later. It will be faster, since I've already done it once now, but I'd rather at least stabilize it right now before I eat so that I can come back and finish afterward.
Normally, the stabilization would take another six hours or so, but I have a way to get around that. Or, more accurately, Organa has given me a way around that. The ki construct she gave me is tiny, but it's very dense. If I can dissolve that into my own meridians, I should be able to get enough to solidify my foundation. Depending on exactly how dense it is, I might even be able to shave days off the ki center formation process.
I take a few deep breaths to ready myself, then reach my consciousness inward to touch upon the minute construct. I poke it gently to make sure there's nothing in it to protect against tampering, then I wrap it in my own ki and start trying to dismantle it. About a millisecond later, I realize that I have made a mistake.
Whether I underestimated Organa or overestimated myself, I'm not sure, but the result is the same. That thing was way denser than I thought it would be, and there is now a huge amount of foreign ki running rampant through my body.