A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay 37 (Patreon)

A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay
Chapter 37

-VB-

Thankfully, the little spat didn’t become a public scandal and remained an internal affairs issue.

What I am now worried about was that glare Sarah gave both her husband and her sister.

… It couldn’t be, right?

Nah…

Just … gonna put that thought out of my mind.

Now, what was I going to do?

Or right.

Work on my cultivation.

I would have gone right into that (I only had three hours to do so today before I started patrolling for four hours), but Vicky raised an issue that left me in another conundrum.

“I’m not leaving,” she objected stubbornly. “Not when mom’s like that.”

I couldn’t refuse her either.

“You do know that it’ll hurt her, right?” I asked her slowly.

She glared at me. “Then she shouldn’t have started attacking!”

‘But that’s what you would do,’ I thought without showing any of it on my face.

“I’m also mad at her!”

I raised my hands to block her attacks.

See, Vicky, despite all of her feminine appeal, worked out some of her stress physically. Usually, this meant patrolling and finding a vict- a villain and beating them blue and purple. Other times, she would go out on a shopping spree, which was not an option at the moment with the city in ruins. So she only had physical release as an option, and she was too worked up for sex.

That led to the current sparring session right now where I offered myself (without consent) to be her punching bag.

The ground shook as the impacts of her punches traveled through me and into the ground through my feet.

If I still had neighbors, they would have felt tremors non-stop.

“No one got hurt,” I laughed it off. I was, however, still concerned about how quickly Carol went from approving of me to homicidal. I still believed there had to be some sort of Shaker or Master out there.

“Mom’s a veteran, Alan! She could have killed you!”

I raised an eyebrow. “I may not be up to the Triumvirate level, but I know I’m pretty strong, durable, and quick,” I replied. Just to make a point, I parried her punches with the back of my hands to make them glide away from me rather than by striking her limbs away. She growled and started punching faster and faster.

And I continued successfully in parrying her.

She finally stopped and gasped as sweat poured down. “Damn it, let me hit you!”

And she punched.

I let her punch my chest. All it did was make the basement tremble worse than any of her previous attacks, but that’s all it did.

… Okay, it stung a little but nothing worse than that.

She paled.

“Does Vicky not like my hard chest? Am I too rough for you?” I cooed at her.

She blushed. “Argh!” She punched again. This time, it was her own shield that snapped and shattered. “Ridiculous!” she shrieked angrily.

“Your cousin said the same thing,” I chuckled.

To my surprise, she jumped me as her shield came back up. On instinct, I tried to catch her.

We fumbled before collapsing to the floor.

We laid there for a moment before laughing.

-VB-

I took a deep breath in and reached down.

From my Qi alone, I could tell immediately that my outer arts, my body, did not need to be trained. Rather, I could not advance right now because whatever had allowed me to breakthrough my previous limits had not occurred yet; I was stuck.

So now, I tried to train the inner arts.

I pushed and pulled, trying to increase the amount of qi I could use at any given point.

See, qi - as I felt it - wasn’t quite like an ocean that sent waves and waves when I demanded it. It was closer to bullets in a magazine. If the whole magazine was my qi capacity, then controlled shooting would be how much I could effectively use qi without causing undue damage to myself.

Right now, I could only do the equivalent of single-shooting while controlling the recoil and accuracy, but wanted to do tap-shooting. Faster and in burst. More without losing power and accuracy.

… All of this felt like a cycle. I kept coming back to do this, I did a little, but then fell into introspection about what I needed to do, what it was all about, and whatnot.

Was it because even while in meditation, my mind just kept wandering?

How horrible. My concentration was just that horrible.

Ugh.

I hastened the pull.

And then promptly grimaced as a stinging pain erupted from one of my meridian points from how too quickly I’ve pulled. I stopped immediately and gently coaxed the qi back in there. Once the pain receded and the qi stopped roiling, I tried again.

This time, I felt no pain, probably because I went just a tad bit faster but still slower than the speed that caused the pain.

… Nice.

How about the same speed as the previous attempt but with more qi?

… OW OW OW OW-!

I whimpered a little, pathetically, as the pain, not a stinging one but a full-blown stabbing and bleeding kind of pain, left me hunching forward. I shoved the qi back in there, and winced as the push ended up also causing me pain from my carelessness.

I stopped myself forcefully and then started again.

Slowly. Slowly. Little. Moderate. Slowly.

…

Okay.

I stopped all motions and came out of my meditation.

“Gah…” I mumbled in relief.

I’m just happy my outer art didn’t begin like this.

Speaking of which, if I had to “grade” my arts based on some of the tiers I remembered about cultivation, then I would have ran my outer arts at the high spirit realm and my inner arts at a pathetic middle mortal realm.

Yeah, such was the disparity between my two arts

I glanced over at Amy, who was sitting and meditating right besides me.

I wondered how her progress was -.

I blinked when I felt something surge inside of her.

… Well, shit. Did she just advance from middle to high mortal realm?

She opened her eyes slowly and let out a long stream of breath. Glancing over to me with her sweaty face, she grinned.

“Well, my lady wife knows the inner arts better than I do,” I grumbled half-heartedly and playfully.

“Of course, I do. I’m your better half,” she snickered.

I snorted.

“I guess I’ll be making lunch today.”

“Hey, what do you-?” she tried to stand up only to stumble. I stood up quickly and caught her before she could fall forward.

“That’s why. Advancements aren’t easy on the body, you know. A new vacuum of power and all that that needs to be filled up by your body.”

“Fine, fine. Go back whatever you want to make.”

“Spaghetti?”

“Ugh. Again?”

“Fried chicken?”

“Do we even have the equipment?”

“I can buy them, right?”

“With the city in ruin?”

And so we continued to discuss what we would eat.

Today was a good day.

-VB-

A/N: bit of a filler, info, and cultivation chapter.