Unseen Cultivator

The first two realms of cultivation were focused on improving the body, primarily through the creation of networks through which qi flowed. By the time this process reached completion upon reaching the seventh layer of vitality annealing, a cultivator had transformed into a superhuman entity. Strong as an elephant, swift as a cheetah, sturdy as an ox, and more. This was not, of course, the limit of qi's ability to enhance physical achievements, but it was a barrier nonetheless.

Specifically, this state brushed against the edge of what a mortal mind not yet integrated with the flows of qi could control. Additional power, without that development, would simply result in the cultivator tearing their own body apart.

In order to advance further, the internal qi network, and control over it, needed to expand beyond the simple bounds of blood, bone, muscle, and organs. It needed to move into the distinctively more complex terrain mapped by the nervous system and the brain.

The process, as described in both Orday's Celestial Infusion Method and countless memoirs written by legendary cultivators regarding the means to bridge this first critical gap, was not, fundamentally, different from prior advancements. Qi was extended up into the brain, beginning at the base, and refined into ever-expanding circuitry as it increased thinking speed, sensory intake, motor control, and more. This would, in turn, induce biofeedback that allowed further enhancement of the body and make ever-greater physical feats possible without self-harm.

Simple, at least in theory. In fact, it was even said that, unlike previous increases in cultivation, which were characterized by immense physical agony as qi was forced into quiescent regions of the body, this process was entirely painless. The brain, apparently, could not feel physically. At least, not until after this realm reached its apex.

Many cultivators had speculated, at great length, on the philosophical implications of that unusual observation.

Qing Liao found he had absolutely no interest in such pondering. Instead, he worried as to the other risks. Dumping massive quantities of qi into the brain had to be handled with incredible delicacy. It was, as Grand Elder Itinay explained tersely, weaving a tapestry out of the threads of one's own mind. Any missed piece would result in erased memories. A skipped string could alter fundamental judgments. And failure to reach a stable state would do far worse.

In the old world, without access to proper protective pills, cultivators who failed in the attempt to enter the vitality annealing realm would burst their hearts and perish with blood streaming from every pore. No one died trying to enter the thought weaving realm, but many came out gibbering, drooling, and insensate.

The Celestial Origin Sect had pills for that, and a ritual hood of tightly woven lace covered with tiny topaz crystals designed to absorb any errant bits of overflowing qi before it could cause harm. It was supposedly very effective, the grand elders claimed no one had gone mad in over five hundred years.

Liao believed that much.

He also accepted the claim that, should he complete the process successfully, he would not emerged unchanged. This advancement represented the first, admittedly nebulous and tenuous, step by a cultivator to align their existence to a personal dao.

Liao found that a terrifying prospect. He wrestled with it for over a year. Though he took counsel with Fu Jin, Su Yi, and most importantly Sayaana, his trepidation was not easily overcome. Qi filled his body and dantian, more than sufficient to the task's requirements, and the combination of fine manipulation tasks Sayaana and Fu Jin demanded of him by ordering him to use his qi to manipulate sewing needles and arrow fletching had provided him with the fine motor skills the nerves required to handle the flow.

But still he hesitated.

Until he went and visited his mother.

She was old now. Sixty-five years, and she struggled to walk even on the flat ground of the city streets. Long decades bent over cookfires and tanning vats left her hips stiff and weak. Chen Chao, once his maid and now his mother's caregiver, was herself aging past late middle age into older years herself. She protested, but Liao knew he would soon need to hire a young servant to care for them both.

He had passed fifty himself, just recently, but still appeared no more than twenty-five. A cultivator in the seventh layer of the vitality annealing realm could expect to live several decades into their third century if not slain by accident or battle. Advancement to the thought weaving realm meant stepping up to a fourth century.

Those numbers meant little to him, yet.

Liao's mother had never seen the ocean, a truth that applied equally to everyone born in Mother's Gift, mortal and cultivator alike. Not even the native immortals could achieve that.

Something Liao could change. He could journey there, over a thousand kilometers distant, dozens of times beyond what any protective formation could sustain. He could simply walk all the way to the ocean. That was something his gift made possible.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And, once there, he could bring back a piece of the sea for his mother. One last gift from a son to his parents, to the only remaining family he possessed. Family deserved far more, but that little fragment was the best he could offer.

Yet, in order to do that, to journey beyond the gateway and into the Ruined Wastes, he must advance to the thought weaving realm. Grand Elder Neay demanded it as a condition of her support for his training as a scout, and the rest of the elder council had sided with her. Even once he managed that advancement, Liao knew it would take some years more before the elders deemed him sufficiently trained and trustworthy to travel all the way to the ocean. Years he, watching his mother hobble so frightfully slowly and weakly, now realized he no longer had to spare.

The day following the equinox he went to the textiles pavilion and told Elder Fu Jin that he intended to attempt breaking through at the beginning of next week.

Fu Jin, duly assessing that he was ready to make the attempt, secured the required pills and protections within a matter of hours. She asked only to know the location Qing Liao intended to utilize for closed door cultivation so his actions could be monitored. After all, it would likely take the better part of a month to achieve success.

Liao knew where he wished to go. He had decided on a clearing, high in the southern bamboo forest, some time ago. This time, he did not bother with any construction. Clearing the brush sufficed. If it rained, or frosted, that no longer mattered. He could resist such things without measurable effort. The animals would instinctively leave him alone, and the few local foresters could easily be warned to avoid this place for however long was necessary.

He knew it was a strange choice, by sect standards, to avoid construction of at least some form of channel for stellar qi. Mirrors were popular, as were houses made of glass. Su Yi had used one of the latter to advance to the spirit tempering realm, though it had been shattered by heavenly lightning in the end. Liao had been granted a set of specialized suggestions by Elder Fu Jin, but had declined them all.

Beyond that, he made no provision, whether physical or formation based, to wall out the ambient qi sources that flowed through the bamboo forest. Those essences were deeply familiar, transformed into old friends by many years. He could not draw upon those sources for fuel, purified stellar qi was required for the breakthrough, but their presence no longer served as a distraction. The forest, after all, drank in stellar qi on its own, the source of all plant growth. That which it radiated back was simply a transformation of the origin.

That process, though it was widely recognized, remained understood by no one. Not even the grand elders could grasp the processes that governed the transformation of qi forms. Such things, and the power to manipulate the fundamental nature of reality that followed from them, belonged to the realm of the sages. Still, even though the method was an opaque jewel, a young cultivator could still recognize that nature did this, continually, through hidden means.

"Different kinds of life perform different transformations," Sayaana's explanation reached as far as anyone knew. "Animals eat, that's their method. So does the fungus that consumes the fallen tree or the lichen that chews through stone over centuries. They take essence that comes from plants. Only plants drink stellar qi. Such a powerful truth, that. Amazing, isn't it, that it was not known until the end of the old world. Thousands of years, millions of cultivators, and Orday was the one to figure it out. Wish I knew how she did that."

Liao wished to know that as well. The Celestial Origin Sect recorded the techniques passed down by the Celestial Mother in incredible detail, with commentary from each of the Twelve Sisters and a number of immortals of the old world. How she'd devised them, however, that was a topic where the library shelves stood empty. The same was true of much of her early life. All that had happened prior to adopting Iay as a disciple, most of it was lost to the devastation of the Demon War.

If the Twelve Sisters did know more of their master's past they were not telling. As far as the official stories were concerned the Celestial Mother might as well have fallen out of the sky fully formed and already immortal when she adopted Iay as her first disciple. Those who might have known more were long dead. Five thousand years in the past predated even the birth of Sayaana's lost master.

Such mysteries were a source of considerable worry to a cultivator about to breach a dam in his consciousness and flood qi into his brain. The very clearing he'd chosen, the circle of rich and towering bamboo poles that surrounded it and barred the sight of the rest of the forest, it spoke to his deviation from the traditional path walked by cultivators of the Celestial Origin Sect. Others did not keep plants around.

Liao recalled the mountaintop where Su Yi had faced the tribulation to enter the spirit tempering realm. She had cleared away everything, plants, soil, debris, and more, until only bare rock remained beneath her meditating form. Nothing green had obscured her vision when seated atop the boulder from which she faced down the Heavens. There had been only stars on all sides.

For his part, he could observe the stars only directly above his head. Green surrounded him on all sides in a near-perfect circle and grass filled the clearing. The open space had itself been created by the rooting action of boars, only lightly refined by Liao's gardening. The earth beneath those roots swarmed with countless tiny sources of qi, and the verdant blanket cast outward by the respiration of the bamboo filled the air. Despite this decidedly emerald deviation, everything felt right to his sensibilities. This was the way it ought to, needed to, be, for him. A sterile tower room formed of stone and metal and covered in glass would have, he was somehow absolutely certain, left him feeling trapped.

"This is your influence," he murmured to Sayaana's projection as he took a seat, legs crossed beneath his body. He had put himself in the absolute center of the circle, though saying such a thing would offend any mathematician or a perfectionist like Grand Elder Itinay. He'd placed the essential pills and protective hood on a leather mat, deer hide, laid out in front of his knees. That, and the wolfskin blanket upon which he sat, were of his own manufacture. "All this green."

"Yes," the remnant woman acknowledged. Her true core, lodged in the turquoise jewel on his brow, revealed her emotions through the empathetic link that flowed through their qi. There was neither regret nor hesitation there. "But not just that. You, you did not choose your sect. No one here did. This path, you were set on it. Maybe, if they'd been able to let you choose, you would have picked a different one."

Those words drew a narrow nod out of Liao. He wondered, if there had been a way to choose, if he'd lived amid the ten thousand sects of the old world, what path he might have taken as his own. The Celestial Mother's teachings were powerful, efficient, and intuitive. Their superiority to most other paths was not in doubt. Even Sayaana freely admitted it. It was unlikely that he'd find another teaching to carry him so far.

Still, that was not enough on its own. He could feel that truth deep down.

Techniques were not the dao. He'd found those words buried deep in the library, in a record of lesser sayings attributed to Orday not included in the core of any method or teaching. Having departed from the straight road to the stars, he clung to that phrase tightly. He needed, desperately, for them to be true, for it to be possible to use the tools left by the goddess to chart a path she'd never walked. That truth, and it must be a truth, offered reassurance in moments of doubt and served to banish hesitation.

That aid was needed now, more than ever, as he swallowed the series of pills according to the directed sequence, pulled the hood over his head, tied it in place, and let the qi flood out from his dantian to rush into his brain.