Waterstrider

Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS

I smiled as I looked at my disciples. Each of them had acquired their miasma without any major issues, as I had anticipated. They were still basking in the glow of their advancement, though a number of them were also visibly exhausted. Qian in particular bore thick bags under her eyes. This did not surprise me, given how early she had shown up outside of the room. It seemed that she had been unable to sleep the night before, out of anticipation and fear. This struck me as a reasonable reaction.

The first step into the martial path was the most impactful of all the stages except for ascension into immortality. One moment the practitioner was a mere mortal performing glorified exercise routines, and the next, the energies of heaven and earth entered their body. It was a sublimation of existence, a fundamental shift.

To someone who had expected to spend their entire life in poverty in the slums, it was incomparable. My experiences had been much the same.

I stretched my arms out as I addressed them. I couldn’t help but copy my own master’s mannerisms whenever I dealt with my students. It was simply the only way I knew for handling and instructing one’s personal disciples.

“You should all take pride in yourselves,” I said. “Most mortals will never have the opportunity to step onto the path, much less with a perfect foundation like you have.Now that you have taken this first step together, your paths will slowly begin to diverge. Each practitioner’s path is subtly different. They use miasma in different ways, and choose to learn different techniques. You all will soon do the same yourselves.”

Blake and Lin were both quietly listening, the two of them being the most disciplined of my disciples. The others bore varying levels of distraction, still slack jawed by the experience of tapping into such ethereal energies. I raised my voice slightly, bringing their attention back to me.

“I have learned a great number of formless techniques in my time. The lower level among these techniques I will teach to all of you. These will serve you well through the foundation refinement and meridian establishment realms, but they will prove lacking in the core formation realm, and will not be sufficient foundation to become a spirit refiner.”

I paused, looking my disciples in the eyes to ensure they were listening.

“Will you also teach us the higher level techniques?” asked Shadowblade. The glow in his eyes spoke of his deep interest.

“Once you show me that you have mastered the basic techniques, I will let each of you choose one technique that you wish to learn. Any further techniques I will teach only if you have acquired enough merits for sect benefit. I will allow you to exchange these for them. Remember that it is impossible to follow all paths. It is better to focus on the direction you wish to walk than to try and walk in two and fail to do so.”

The disciples nodded. It was no surprise to any of them that they would need to serve the sect- such would have been their responsibilities anyway. It was not as if I taught them purely from the goodness of my heart. They were to become part of the sect’s backbone in the future, the foundation of its strength. This was something I had made clear to them from the start of their training.

The disciples still looked bright and excited, but they were more exhausted than they might realize. Taking in miasma for the first time was a process which strained the soul itself. They had not yet developed the senses of their souls enough to notice, but it would greatly impact them if they strained it too much. They needed a few hours of rest before the next stage of their training began.

“There will be a training this afternoon at the usual time. Restrain yourself from using your miasma before then. Eat, sleep, rest in some way. Your souls need to recover before you take the next step.”

My disciples bowed to me.

“Yes, master.”

I nodded approvingly.

“Good. I will see you then.”

Catching my hint, they filed out of the room, still awed by what they still felt. For several moments, I basked in the falling water. I glanced up at the ceiling, which was pockmarked with holes from which the ‘rainwater’ was dropping. Similar holes pocked the floors, acting as drains.

This room was my favorite in the entire headquarters, solely due to the nostalgia it brought me. It had been designed by Rachel, and we had invested into its construction to build a meditation room designed to match with my path and my nature. I was able to truly calm myself in this room, and it aided in my efforts to understand and refine my own soul. I had spent the entire night meditating on the connection points between my body and soul, and was nearly ready to initiate the refining process. In just a few days I would begin.

As I considered my preparations, I basked in the feeling of the cool rain pounding down on my body. It brought clarity to my mind, and brought a thought to my mind.

“Rachel?” I asked, my words spoken into empty air.

Though it had been days since our discussion in the aero, Rachel and I had yet to properly reconcile ourselves. She did not take the initiative to speak with me outside of sect business, nor had I with her. During this time, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had made a mistake in how I had addressed her back then.

I felt that I had. While her attitude was indeed hypocritical, this was not a major issue. What mattered more was our relationship. I needed to avoid giving her the impression that it would be better to leave and join another force. Without her assistance, not only would the clan be in more danger from its enemies, it would likely collapse entirely. Faced with this, the annoyance brought by her attitude was nothing. Her words had even caused me to arrive at a better understanding of myself due to my introspection.

Rachel appeared before me again. Once more, she was in the dark hair and blue eyed form she described as her true self. The droplets of water fell through her, and her still visibly dry body was almost unnerving in a room filled with this much water. As she appeared, she scowled at me as if I had interrupted something.

“What is it?” she asked.

I sighed, having decided that I needed to be the one to take initiative.

“First of all, I apologize for my words the other night. They were tactless.”

Our eyes met, and she broke contact first.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve been trying to think of how to broach this topic myself. I believe that you weren’t wrong about me. But it’s natural for a person to care less about aliens than for their own people. After all, I’m not a saint. I’ll do what needs to be done. Still, our relationship should be different, since we’re equal partners. Ultimately, neither of us can force the other into anything. As for the rest of what I said…”

She paused, rubbing her chin with one of her hands and shrugging with a cute smile. The look was not only out of place within the rainy environment, it also was ill-matched to the mood the two of us had been in for multiple days now. As always, it seemed, Rachel was both the shameless and adaptable type.

“I think I associate you too much with characters in novels,” she explained.

I raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

She repeated the gesture with a chuckle.

“You’re much like the protagonist of a story, Cyrus, and I’ve read millions of stories. I believe I might have gotten caught up in the idea of what such a protagonist should be like. You know, you’re quite inconsistent in that regard. At times, you make a perfect hero, and at others you act more like a villain.”

I narrowed my eyes, starting to be annoyed at this discussion.

“There are no heroes or villains in reality,” I told her. “All that drives action is the search for benefits.”

She sighed.

“Ultimately I do agree with you. I haven’t been an idealist in a very long time. Even if there was such a man, I wouldn’t have chosen him over you. What I need is not a man who is morally outstanding.”

I had to agree with her assessment. In a place such as the underworld of the Pantheonic Territory, righteousness was simply not a successful lifestyle. It would find one dead, penniless, or shipped off to the prison moon. Here, as anywhere else, ruthlessness was the only way to survive.

“Anyway,” I said, bringing the conversation back towards an important matter. “I want to know if you can feed me data on the state of my soul while I inspect it and try to refine it.”

This idea had seemed obvious the moment I thought of it. As a Terran, Rachel was a being who existed entirely within the spirit world. She could easily see and even interact with my soul, as she had when she held it to prevent the shroud’s collapse on multiple occasions. With pointers and visuals created by her, the process of refinement could be done with far greater precision than was normally possible. I almost felt as if this method was cheating.

Rachel blinked for a second, and then nodded.

“Right, that might increase your success rate. Of course I can. I can probably render it out in a visual format for you.”

“Much appreciated.”

Without hesitating, I sat down in a lotus position, preparing to meditate once more. The rain continued to pound on and around me, my hair and clothes hanging off my body sopping wet. Before me, an image suddenly appeared, revealing to me for the first time the appearance of my soul.

The Natural Conduit: [For any sapient mortal race, there is an element which binds one’s soul to their body. Souls only form around gestating consciousnesses, but if nothing prevents the ashata composing the soul from drifting off, the backlash will cause the emergent consciousness to suffer extensively from the backlash. While this does not always cause the death of the organism, it certainly prevents it from achieving sapience. The factor which ties the physical body to the soul is known as the natural conduit, as no other types of conduit form naturally. For most species, this is the brain or brain-like equivalent organ. For humanoids alone, it is the blood. The reason for this remains currently unknown to the modern science of races such as the Staiven and the Celans.]