The Third Realm - Chapter 17 preview (Patreon)

Late at night, under the crescent moon, the desert canyons were a stark gray and white painting. Deep shadowy canyons a steep drop along the unmarked pathway they strode upon, beasts prowling along the edges. Not many – the desert was too stark, too difficult to survive to be replete with animals and monsters. Not, at least, in comparison to the bountiful southern kingdoms and forests Wu Ying was used too.

Even so, he heard the little skitters as scorpions and other nocturnal animals crawled across the ground, the beat of wings and then the silent glide of a nocturnal flying predator seeking its dinner. Sparse clouds, too wispy and bare to offer rain crawled across the horizon, the temperature lowering quickly as the wind danced across the sky.

When Wu Ying turned to the edge of the canyon, taking a steep and narrow path, he stopped at the edge. Turning a little, he eyed the boy stumbling after him and gestured him closer. A hand reached out, touching the fur as he drew the pair of animals into his storage ring, forcing the boy’s weak aura aside to take control of the animals and pull them in.

Shi Min let out a loud gasp of relief, his back straightening abruptly at the sudden release of weight. He nearly stumbled off his feet, so great was the alteration in weight. For a long few seconds, he concentrated only on breathing, on empowering his body. Wu Ying waited, till the boy was ready before he turned down the trail and walked down it.

Another twenty five minutes and finally, they reached their destination. A cave, expansive in size and warmer than the chill of the surroundings. Once, it had been used by a bear, and previous to that, by a cultivator seeking solace. Now, with the trail to it treacherous and mostly hidden, it lay abandoned.

Standing in the entrance, Wu Ying looked upwards, watching as Shi Min, his face hugging the wall shuffled his way downwards. Never once did the boy look down or aside into the canyon itself, at times half his feet hanging off the wall. The stink of fear surrounded the teenager, even as he shuffled resolutely towards Wu Ying.

Only when the boy was pass the most dangerous passages, fingers gripping tight against the cracked wall did Wu Ying turn into the cultivation cave. He summoned spirit lamps from his ring, directing the wind and his spiritual aura to place them against the wall, lighting the area.

Another gust of wind, more controlled, pulled at the dirt and refuse. He sucked it towards him, storing it all in his World Spirit Ring, for the droppings of the bear that lived here before, strong and powerful in its primacy would provide much for his ring.

Cleaned and illuminated, Wu Ying regarded their temporary abode. The floor was mostly smoothed, a cleared area near the front and center of the sloped ceiling dug deep into the earth where the remnants of old ash and dung were to be found. The rusted remains of a spit lay fallen by the side, indicating the use of the cooking fire.

Deeper within, a pair of stone beds had been carved into the side of the cave while a natural depression collected water further within. It was only quarter-filled at this time, long stalactites hanging above where moisture collected and dropped downward as temperatures changed.

There was no remnant smell of fresh dropped guano within, the cave having been left alone by the bats that occupied many other such locations. It was a bare bones location, but for their purposes, more than suitable with the large open space near the front sufficient for the boy to train. The pool of water sparked further thought from Wu Ying.

As Shi Min finally shuffled in, his breathing easing the moment he was away from the deadly plunge, Wu Ying walked over to the entrance and extracted a wolf corpse. He held the beast aloft as he drove a spike deep into the ceiling, hanging the beast on it a moment later.

“Butcher the beast,” Wu Ying said. “I’ll prepare the rice and water.”

Shi Min licked his lips, attempted to reply and then croaked, his throat dry. Frowning, Wu Ying shook his head and pulled out his water bottle, handing it to the boy. He wandered over the fire pit in the meantime, cleaning out the pit with his spiritual senses and wind before embedding new metal stands. From within his spirit rings, he also extracted batches of dried wood and the cooking implements he required. All the while, he paid attention to the boy as Shi Min began the slow process of skinning and butchering the beast.

“Stop cutting the bones,” Wu Ying spoke up, as he worked. “And sharpen your knife before you begin. Pay attention and focus on the empty spaces, the places where the body desires to be cut apart, rather than focusing on where you want to cut. In the gaps, the voids, that is where your blade should go.”

“Like here?” Shi Min asked, slicing further up at the shoulder joint.

“Better. Remember to cut gently, hold the joint apart if necessary. In the space between, there are tendons and ligaments but those will part with ease. Remember how the beast moved, the angles and direction of its movement,” Wu Ying continued. “Follow those lines, and in so doing, save your energy and your weapon.”

Shi Min nodded, pulling at the leg, watching the line of muscle on the animal. Occasionally, Wu Ying would reprimand him again, asking him to cut with more firmness and less hesitation, to shift the angle of his blade or turn it slightly. By the time the first haunch was separated, the fire was burning well and coals were ready on one side of the larger fire pit.

Taking the meat with him, Wu Ying set it on the spit and began the process of cooking their meal. Vegetables were easy enough to extract from his World Spirit Ring along with some heating rocks, all of which he added to the pot and fire.

In the meantime, he wandered over to the pool of water, bending down to taste it. He nodded to himself, grateful to notice it was not diseased though it was stagnant. Probably best not to consume it, but he had other uses for the pool anyway. Lowering his hand beneath the pool, out of sight of the boy, he began the process of extracting water from his World Spirit Ring.

“Expert, is a bath truly the right choice right now?” Shi Min asked, pausing in his butchering and wiping at his face. “Hot sand and a bucket would be sufficient for me.”

“You will be using both,” Wu Ying said, the small bubble of air he had used to keep the smell around the boy away still in place. Scoured clean with hot sand or not, he was still dirty. “Then, you will be soaking in the bath.”

“Expert…” Seeing that Wu Ying had turned away and refused to answer, he sighed and focused on finishing up the butchering. “As you say.”

Wu Ying snorted a little to himself as he added more spiritual herbs to the bath water, letting the herbs soak within. He would need to warm the water with the stones and his chi – aspected to the flame variant – or else the entire process would be of little use.

If the boy was not going to be particularly strong as a soul cultivator, then Wu Ying would find another path for the child to cross the distance between him and his opponents. He would show the path, but it would be Shi Min’s choice to walk it.

***

“And all I’m supposed to do is soak in here?” Shi Min said, later that evening. Dinner had been finished, the meal consumed with the remnants set aside. Wu Ying had cautioned the boy to eat lightly, but young as he was, he had chosen to ignore that. Now, replete with nourishment, Shi Min stared at the pool, herbs and flowers floating within, clouds of steam rising.

“Soak and cultivate.” Wu Ying replied. “Just a little differently. You’ll be pulling the energies within the bath into you, pushing further impurities out.”

“Body Cultivation,” Shi Min replied. “I heard it’s… it’s…”

“Painful?”

“Agonizingly. That you can be driven mad by the pain, as the process pulls you apart from within.”

“It can be.” Wu Ying offered a scroll to the boy, Shi Min taking it after a second. He unrolled the scroll, frowning as he read it over. “The Immortal Mortal Body Cultivation technique rewrites you from within. It is the most expensive technique, and it only has a dozen steps listed in the scroll you see before you. There is, rumored, to be more; but that was all I found.

“It does have one advantage though. It will work with any elemental type.”

Shi Min looked over the scroll for a moment more before he offered a tight smile. “Let me finish reading this?”

“Oh, no need.” Wu Ying waved his hand at the pool. “The first soaking will just accustom your body and pull out any surface concerns. You won’t be able to cultivate anyway till you are used to it.”

“I’m stronger than you think.” Shi Min’s chin rose, mulish stubbornness of a teenager rising to the fore. “I can do it.”

“Then show me. Get in, and cultivate. Once you are able to do so, then ask for the scroll again.”

Chin jutting out, the boy disrobed to his underclothing, the threadbare and ripped peasant clothing barely hanging on anyway. He climbed into the bath, hissing a little as his feet entered the warm water, his breath held as he sunk all the way to his upper chest. He stayed inside for a moment, before looking up at Wu Ying triumphantly.

“See, it’s not so bad.”

Wu Ying just continued smiling, waiting. He watched as the boy shifted a little, as the herbs seeped through his skin, acting on his nerves and tendons, burrowing through his muscles. The boy’s breathing grew a little constrained, his eyes pinching in pain.

“It only gets worse,” Wu Ying murmured, kindly enough. “Cultivate if you can, focus on breathing if you cannot. Eventually you will need to do more than just soak. The exercises to pull chi through your body, to energise the herbs and make full use of it will happen.

“For today, bear with the pain. If you fail, you will die.”

Shi Min jerked a little, his only acknowledgment of what had been spoken. His mouth opened as he let out an agonized whimper, and Wu Ying stepped away, extracting and tossing silencing talismans around the stone tub.

Leaving the child to scream his head off, a sound that was muffled but not entirely robbed of its volume by the talismans, Wu Ying returned to the front of the cave.

The boy would have to choose now, if he was willing to do what it took to grow strong. He had no talent, but that did not matter. Not in the beginning stages anyway. Hard work, discipline and a willingness to face the hard choices and sacrifices were what was required to succeed to begin with.

Well, that and a little luck.

Now, Shi Min had it all. Whether he walked the path was his to choose.

***

The morning sunlight was beginning to peak around the horizon, lightening the sky in the varied orange and red colours of the morning. It was not a spectacular morning, as compared to other sunrises Wu Ying had watched. Yet, as before, whether he was working the fields or sitting at the edge of a former cultivation cave, he took the moment to acknowledge and savour its unique beauty. Every sunrise the same, every sunrise different – just like humanity.

A small gesture and a coaxing of the wind drew the boy from the tub, the child senseless, his skin wrinkled from soaking in the water for such a length. The body bobbed and weaved as the wind carried it over to the Core Formation cultivator, depositing its heavy burden with a sodden thump on the cold stone floor. Senseless, water pooled on the ground under the body.

For a second, Wu Ying considered trying to guide the water in the tub into his ring but discarded the idea almost as fast as it arrived. His control of the winds had grown, but it had not done so sufficiently to guide unwilling water across the cave to his World Spirit Ring. That level of control was something a water-aspected cultivator might have for a similar task. Or perhaps one in the Nascent Soul formation stage.

Eyeing the still senseless boy, Wu Ying wandered back to the tub, sticking his hand into the concoction and beginning the process of draining the water into his ring. The impurities the boy had expunged would not be added directly to a field, but he had a number of settling ponds and other sections where such impurities could be broken down by the earth and turned into fine fertilizer.

It would be a poor showing to turn up his nose at such a bounty, especially when it but required a little additional time.

As he processed the water, Wu Ying played with the wind, feeling his control and his spiritual aura extend around him, coating the surroundings with his understanding and his own chi. It had been a task and a half, learning to work with the wind; making use of it for more than carrying or containing scents.

There were two portions to his control, in truth. The first was the soft power, the indirect control he exerted. It was what had come to him naturally when he had begun this journey, as the winds laughed and danced around, speaking to him as one of themselves. The dao, the integral connection of his Wind Body and the process of imbuing it into his very essence had given him the senses to hear them.

And in so doing, the ability to speak with them. To request their aid, to build upon their strengths. The results in the beginning had been elusive and troublesome, only as Wu Ying truly began to understand the winds did his entreaties bear fruit. One did not ask the North Wind for warmth or mercy, nor the South to blow steadily.

Even with understanding though, such entreaties might fall upon death ears, for the winds were fickle at the best of times. Even for a sworn brother, they might turn a death ear, listening instead to the keening of the midnight ghost or the wail of a newborn.

It was there that Wu Ying’s second portion of control came forth. One he had built upon from his studies, of his aura, his development of his spiritual sense – and desperately did he need a proper spiritual exercise for that! – and the projection of his chi.

There, his studies with the blade had borne the most fruit. His Wandering Dragon strike had been based upon – in part – his projection of wind chi. An exerting of his own cultivation and understanding upon the world, and the winds themselves.

Wherein the first part, he asked, in the second, he demanded.

But such demands were only as strong as his control and the energy in his dantian. Such wilful twisting of the world required him to exert his force fully.

And so he studied and explored both. It was not enough to control the wind direct or entreat its help, but to learn when and how best to do either and both together. In such a way, the Seven Winds manual spoke of twisting the winds together, to tie them tight and truly be a paramount strength.

His fingers touched the bottom of the tub, Wu Ying having leant over and lost track of time in his contemplation of his own path. The wind – the winds – were laughing at him again, he could tell, tugging at stray locks of hair, at the edges of his robe. Controlling such a force that even the Heavens only laid the barest of precept upon?

A foolish thought.

Good thing he was a fool.

Standing, Wu Ying returned to the boy to find him not at the entrance but near the fire, tearing chunks of cold meat from the roast and stuffing it down his throat. He ate greedily and with little manners, not even noticing Wu Ying for long minutes in his hunger.

“Expert!” Shi Min said, popping to his feet when he finally noticed. “My thanks for the… bath.”

Wu Ying inclined his head. “Do not forget to finish the exercises before you rest.”

Enthusiastic as the boy might be, exhaustion was tugging at the boy’s control. He swayed a little on his feet, only hunger having abated his weariness for a little. Shi Min managed a nod, wiping his hands on his grubby pants that he had put back on before stumbling to the front of the cave to begin the series of physical exercises that would help disperse the nutrients from the bath deeper through his body.

Wu Ying watched for a time, choosing not to correct the boy’s form. Not today. Sloppy as his movements might be, there was little point in doing so, as the boy stumbled through each motion half-asleep. Thirty minutes later, Shi Min finished the routine and collapsed into his bedroll, snoring loudly the moment his head hit the bedroll.

Walking to the front of the cave mouth, Wu Ying set up a few simple talisman formation markers to alert him if anyone attempted to enter the cave. Then, finally, he closed his eyes. Tomorrow would be the start of the real training.