Unseen Cultivator

Weeks passed, then a full month, as Liao planned out and made practice versions of his bowcase-to-be.    Every time he produced a scrap version and took it apart the image held within his mind of the final project took on greater refinement. In this way it finally resolved into an object he envisioned manufacturing with true pride.

That was the easy part. Making the case would represent the true struggle. Liao gritted his teeth, knowing the road would not be walked swiftly and that the unseen and frustrating obstacles would be many. He could make a simple case with ease, but that was not the task Sayaana had set before him, nor the one he had committed himself to take on. To produce a true work, one that represented the pinnacle of his present abilities, demanded he draw out not only maximum effort, but also maximum difficulty.

"There are two ways to produce artifacts," Elder Fu Jin had explained cultivator artistry to him years before. "The first is to layer qi into an item using rituals and formations both during and following its production. This creates a qi reservoir within the object's matrix, allowing it to actively gain and release power according to the nature of the capabilities to which its essence has been aligned and bound. This method, though common, is unsuitable for you, as carrying such foreign qi compromises your abilities."

Liao had nodded at this, and later observed it in battle, watching the demons as they tracked the qi embedded in Su Yi's spear.

"The second method is to strengthen the item's fundamental structure by using qi to elevate it beyond the capacity of the base materials that make up all things." The elder had demonstrated this using several of her own productions, thread and yarn stronger than any ever drawn out on mortal spindles. "This requires control of every step of the process, the continual utilization of your artistry and qi to infuse the crafting, to elevate the production, the act of creation, to a higher stage of being. You have to cultivate the product itself, changing its qi from the simple to the sublime. It cannot be easily explained, but as you acquire ever expanded comprehension of your work, of its fundamental dao, the change will naturally reveal itself through endless effort."

A transformation Qing Liao would spend a great many hours scouring, stroking, and stretching pigskin until he felt it resonate with his every touch hoping to induce.

It did not come easily. Hunt a boar, skin the beast, cure and tan the hide, this was a mere first step. The resulting leather had to be scraped, treated, and cut to a proper shape using many varied blades. Folding, molding, and then boiling to harden the leather to proper consistency all followed that. Each of these steps were needed simply to produce the basic shell of the bowcase, and did not even begin to incorporate decoration, embellishment, or accessorization, all needed to produce a properly aligned aesthetic presentation. Failures ran rampant, for every step carried its own perils.

Many wild hogs died in the pursuit of this enlightened, perfected process. Liao left the meat for the wolves, lest they go hungry from lack of prey, and donated his rejects and wastage to the local trappers in the night. They could cut apart failed hides to make coverings, patches, and straps, all endlessly needed in rural existence. Nothing would be lost in this manner, a creed of use pursued by all who lived within the closed world of Mother's Gift.

One Liao knew a cultivator must exemplify, never violate.

Failed cases that were rejected near to completion were dissected, their destruction its own form of revelation. Their components were reused, first to secure the assembly of the next attempt, and then committed to cordage and scrap for use around camp. Anything that wore down past usability was either boiled in the pot to produce binders or added to the compost pile. Every time he took the pieces apart he measured how his qi had changed the leather, how attention aligned layered tissue, embedded pigments and oils, and acquired new properties. He could feel how the material gained superiority over its initial state in a manner invisible to the eye and barely perceptible to the most careful caress. Only when examined with inner senses, at the fundamental level of qi, verging on the dao, did the truth appear.

Exactly how this worked, Liao did not properly understand. No one truly did, not even the immortals. To know that, to understand the flow of qi and the bonds of the dao, was to reach an understanding that stretched beyond reality to the ascended realms of the sages. The shift, the result, that at least could be monitored by cultivators, and greater attunement to the dao refined this understanding. In the depths of their artistry, immortals could grasp changes so minute that the very structures they impacted lay beneath the resolution of even disciple senses.

"When it is done, you will find you already know," Elder Fu Jin had explained this while Liao remained a raw recruit. Only now did he begin to grasp the meaning behind her declaration.

Weeks passed, then months. Spring turned to summer. Summer turned to fall. He diverted from the wild to visit with his parents. Briefly, he consulted with both regarding the project, intrigued by the mortal perspective he could already sense he had begun to leave behind. This, unexpectedly, bore out useful insights. His father suggested a dual-layer construction, using two different hides, outside and inside. The advice provided by his mother proved even more pertinent. "Do not be your sole judge. Ask others, they may be right where you are wrong."

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It was a reminder he'd needed. The Celestial Origin Sect grouped its cultivators together by artistry, not martial path, for good and proven reasons. He, alone on a mountainside, had forgotten this. While his own dao must offer the ultimate determination, there was no reason not to use advice from others to narrow the path.

To that end, Liao crafted a dozen different combinations, each of dual-layering exterior and interior, using pigskins of different ages, sow and boar hide in varied combination. Knowing that Sayaana's mindset already influenced his own, he did not ask her, but instead put the question to the nearby community of herb gatherers, trappers, and charcoal burners.

He left the cases outside in the night, at a noted trail junction, with the instruction that, after three days of observation had passed, each family might take one for its own use. None possessed any embellishment, but no villager would balk at acquiring such a tool made by cultivator hands.

On the morning of the fourth day, Qing Liao watched, perched high up upon joined stalks of bamboo, and observed which of the options was chosen in which order. An old man stayed up all night long to claim the first prize, while a middle aged woman who rose well before dawn claimed the second. These two, picking for value, for an item they could sell, were not, reflections upon the dao made clear, revealing the path he was meant to follow. Instead, it would be the third to arrive, a tall young man with a strung bow attached to his back and the hands of a skilled hunter, who illuminated the route Liao needed to chart for himself.

Utilizing that base design, the next time he pressed the hides together everything went perfectly smooth. All doubts, all hesitation, had vanished.

During the tenth month, shortly before the solstice, Liao happened to shoot a young-of-year boar and his two-year-old mother on the same day. Recognizing the hand of the dao in this, he treated their hides in tandem from the very start. They were, he somehow intuitively knew, the ones he needed. Every part of the process was approached meticulously, but this proved unnecessary. His hands already knew what to do, the blades moved in patterns matched exactly to the vision of his mind's eye. The work could be allowed to proceed unhindered, vigilance delegated entirely to the anticipation, and thereby avoidance, of mistakes.

Swiftly, as winter settled over the bamboo forest, Liao knelt by his stretching racks and watched the bowcase take shape. Soft and supple leather from the sow on the inner lining, to protect the bow. Tough, strong encasement from the boar, though still youthful and lacking the creases and ripples of age, covered the outside and provided toughness. Hair-bearing strips from the neck and back were used to fringe the edges and form a bonding band across the mid-line. Designs woven using boar-gut thread and tying the tusks together in emblems across the wide central faces served to emblazon the case with the image of crossed arrowheads. White and shining, they splashed ferocity across the frame. Dye manufactured from ash, charcoal, berry juice, and bile was used to render the surfaces of the case a deep, steady black.

It would not be until the warmth of spring returned, and new bamboo shoots plied their pungent flavor upon his tongue once more, that Liao decided he was finished. There was no dramatic moment of accomplishment, no great announcement of completion. He simply put down his bone needle one early spring afternoon, picked up the case, and knew that there was no more work to be done. The qi of the container was no longer malleable. It had become whole.

A year had passed. The resulting bowcase, though all would call it finely made, did not appear outwardly spectacular. Despite this, the truth told the moment Liao strapped it to his back. He would carry the case for the remainder of his time in the wilderness. It endured beyond a quartet of self-made bows and a dozen makeshift outfits, and during all that time never suffered so much as a scratch. Only the dye, touched by the indomitable power of the sun that a cultivator of his attainment could never full match, faded slightly with time, but no berry, blood, or branch ever inflicted any stains.

Sayaana called it 'pretty good,' though she also mocked Liao's decorative preferences as excessively bland. They both laughed at that, a truth shared but viewed from opposite sides.

Having completed the bowcase, Liao felt confident he had learned all he could of the processing of pigskin leather, at least for his time in the vitality annealing realm. Continuing his life in the forest, he adjusted his targeting, moving on to new and different animals as the focus of his studies. He chose to work smaller next, focusing on possibilities for boots, gloves, and hats.

The ideal, and obvious, candidate was the bamboo rats, abundant burrowers who tunneled among the dense strands. These filled most of his available rack space, though he also extended his attentions to the hares found occasionally in the spaces opened by fire and cutting. Small and canny, these creatures took considerable effort to trap successfully, and their skins required careful, delicate effort to stretch and cure without tearing. This was very difficult to achieve using the limited endurance of stone blades. Perpetually in search of the perfect edge, he found he spent endless hours knapping and grinding at the chert retrieved from the highest ridges.

In this manner time passed. He worked, practiced, meditated, and visited his parents each equinox. It was not closed-door cultivation, sealed away to contemplate the dao above all, but it was closely related. Operating in isolation as he did, alone against the wild, he found that many insights unfolded. Slowly, one plant, animal, fungus, and stone at a time, all that had been foreign about the bamboo forest ceased to possess such a trait. He acquired total comfort with the environment, existing easily within it during every season and all types of weather. Its animals, plants, and soil yielded to his efforts, and though he made no further masterworks Liao came to be clad in fine furs and woven bamboo fabric layers that would have appeared exotic but never primitive to the eyes of city dwellers. He carried weapons of bone, stone, and tooth, but they were sharp and deadly as any steel, if not so sturdy.

Such achievements were not merely a curiosity. His cultivation advanced in tandem with such gains. The second layer of vitality annealing, filling the stomach and waist with qi, came about almost seamlessly, and he made steady progress towards the third. Concerns tied to the outside world faded away. He no longer worried about the sect, the city, and even demons as he lost himself in the focus on self-improvement. A useful interlude, isolated from distractions as the cultivators of the old world once lived, including the Celestial Mother herself, in lost era of her history prior to the adoption of Iay as her first disciple.

Time, other than the steady shift of the seasons, stood still. With no one for company save Sayayana, already a part of himself in many ways, Qing Liao could trap and cultivate unimpeded.

Such a state could not last. The impression of an unchanging wilderness is itself deception, and this interlude came to an abrupt end through perhaps the most potent reminder possible.

The descent of Heavenly Lightning.