Chương 26: Second Layer of Qi Condensation

Rowan Rowan settled into a comfortable position and closed his eyes. He hadn't fully mastered the Waking Spring Breathing Technique, able to use it while sleeping, but he had learned all ten patterns. It was enough for now. To break through, he just needed to be able to use it while cultivating. After a few hours of navigating his qi system, he was able to sense the five different elements cycling in his body. He also channeled his qi through the Bodhi Leaf in his hands, hoping for some kind of miraculous result.

But any attempt to interact with the Bodhi Leaf led to absolutely nothing. It was as if the leaf didn't exist. Everything in the natural world had some qi, and reacted in some way to cultivation. He'd even checked, with leaves he snatched through his open window. If anything, the way the leaf steadily ignored any qi Rowan tried to probe it with, and the way it provided absolutely nothing when he pulled at it, spoke to how strange it was." The Bodhi Leaf responds not to your cultivation but to your spirit."

Ostra refused to elaborate further. Night became day, and Rowan stopped cultivating to attend classes. He was tired and listless without any sleep, but his gaze was feverish with determination. He would get the leaf to respond to him. Rowan was so focused on his progress that after Instructor Sutter's class, he realized he hadn't been paying attention at all to the teacher. If he was this distracted, he might as well just go back to his dorm and cultivate.

Most of the lectures were on basic topics he had already been forced to memorize as a child - single-array formations, recognizing spirit herbs, and such. These lectures were for the sake of the merit students and first-generation cultivators - for noble cultivators like Rowan and even Damion Decatour, it was just a chance to solidify the lessons they had been taught at home, and make connections with the teachers.

Until he was assigned an inner disciple mentor at the end of their general classes, Rowan had little to learn from lectures. So, he ditched the rest of his classes. He would show up for practices. Back in his dorm, he began to meditate once more, choosing the familiar method of envisioning his Qi Sea with his eyes closed. After a few hours, he sank into a strange mental state. Rowan found himself circling his Qi Sea, which hung in dark waters, the gentle currents bending the pure white light.

When he moved, the light shifted. He followed the dancing beams of light, observed them from different distances, and changed directions from clockwise to counterclockwise and back again. Rowan was looking for some kind of pattern, but none seemed to emerge. He stood still. To his surprise, an old, haggard woman appeared, stepping into the white glow of the Qi Sea. Something about her seemed familiar, when it finally clicked.

It was the food vendor who had sold him a pancake, whose daughter had gone missing, though much older now. She smiled faintly at him - wan, but genuine. Rowan wondered why he was suddenly thinking of her. Then, she began to speak.

"Honored Immortal," she said, folding hands in her lap and bowing deeply.

"Thank you for informing the sect about my missing daughter. Many people had noticed that she no longer played in the streets with the other children, but none lifted a finger. You're such a good man. It's because of your actions that my daughter was saved and returned to me. She's married now, with children of her own. Her life is owed to you…"

"There's no need to thank me." Rowan stared at her.

"Simply alerting someone was the bare minimum. I'm glad Jenne was found safe." Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Honored Immortal remembers her name…"

"It's fine," Rowan assured. The old woman shook her head.

"I must give you thanks. That's why I'm here. I'm a vision from the future, sent back in time to give a piece of advice. Honored Immortal, promise me that you will focus on cultivation and reach immortality. Worrying about us common people… it will be the end of you. Leave these things to the Dao Court investigators and your sect elders. A great destiny is waiting for you, if you can ascend past the mortal realm. You don't owe us any more." She placed her hands on Rowan's shoulders and stared up at him hopefully.

"I can't promise that," Rowan said, as gently as he could.

"It's not about what's owed. It's about what's right."

"What a terrible burden to carry," she whispered.

"It's not a burden if it's what I've chosen," said Rowan. He began to walk again, moving around the lights of his Qi Sea. The old woman shook her head and sighed. As he stepped away from her, she faded into the darkness. Rowan turned away from the Qi Sea to look around him, for what felt like the first time. Where was he?

"But did I really give you a choice?" Rowan knew the voice from the first word.

"Mom," he muttered, turning around. Lady Iseult Brangaine, the late wife of Lord Pyrus Helsing - Rowan's mother - stood before him, lit in the warm glow of his Qi Sea. She was healthy, different from how Rowan had ever seen her. Except that once, when she'd formed from her rosary to fight Lieren Nostraga. The rosary was wrapped around her wrist and her neck and her waist, and she was counting the beads, pushing them one after another.

It was the same habit she had when she was alive, but now her fingers moved with the casual strength and precision of a cultivator - a sort of cultivator that Rowan knew, somehow, was beyond any he'd encountered before.

"Rowan," she said.

"Mom," he repeated. They stood in silence. It was enough in its own way, to be able to see her again. The counting stopped. Her fingers found a specific bead, and she held it still in her hand.

"Which one is that?" Rowan asked. It was a practiced question. But instead of telling him, as she had always taken the time to, his mother shook her head.

"It was a selfish thing, to tell you to watch. To forbid you from hiding your eyes. When I was young, I took a step on the Path, to create a world where that wouldn't be necessary." His mother's eyes had the same deep resolve, the same analytical calm as Rowan remembered, but gone was the lingering desper—No, his mother was not desperate, never that.

"Desperate situations make desperate people," she said, shaking her head. Her fingers moved again, counting beads, until she stopped on another.

"A decade to meet with desperation for the first time, another to unlearn it. And then I found desperation again in another ten, like an old enemy that wouldn't die." She met Rowan's gaze with steel in her eyes. Birthed in steel.

"I chose desperation. And I tried to make it so you didn't have to choose, by forcing it upon you. Karma stains those willing and not. And no matter how tightly the door is shut, the broom still produces red dust." Rowan did not understand most of the things his mother said when he was younger, and he still didn't quite. But they felt closer now. He thought in silence, as he'd been taught.

"You've been very brave," she said.

"If you were to leave my rosary at my grave, no one would think less of you. Not even my senior brothers." Rowan held the burning questions he had about his mother's past at bay.

"Choices are not made in the past. They are made in the moment. Some things are impossible to forget, but those things are usually foolish to remember." Remember what they do to us.

"Foolishness stands opposed to enlightenment." Rowan had complained so many times about how hard the shapes his mother drew were to remember when she'd placed them before him. Those shapes had, years later, shown him the points and contours that made it possible for him to form his Qi Sea. So he returned the words his mother had given to him when he was young." Forgetfulness stands opposed to enlightenment."

"When he sat beneath the tree, a single leaf drifted from its branches to land in his hands. His scribe noted that in the path to enlightenment, he could never walk alone, because where the leaf had found him was where he'd chosen to go."

"I don't understand."

"Forget it," she said, exactly as she used to say it.

"I don't want to."

"What do you want, then?" Rowan wanted to know what his mother had fought for, how the last of her qi had ended up in her rosary, what the rosary really was. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. He wanted to know if she would have said the same things as this image of her in his mind.

"Some things cannot be known," said the shape of his mother. Rowan began to walk, because he knew Mom would have found that sort of ignorance appalling. Rowan missed her, because he remembered who she was. There weren't many people Rowan missed, but he did miss them dearly. He stopped again, hoping his mother would return, even if it was just an apparition wearing her face, just so he could see her another time. This time, the figure of a young woman appeared, silver eyes alight with coy mischief. She didn't speak.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his like a cat, leaning up, slotting her lips against his. For a second Rowan was too shocked to do anything. Her lips were soft and warm. When she ran the tip of her tongue along the seam of his lips, he startled, pushing her back. His body felt hot, his lips tingling from the sensation of the kiss. Blaise wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, grinning at him, like she knew exactly the reaction she'd caused and was delighting in it.

"Miss me?" Rowan knew, of course, that this wasn't the real Blaise Bellacanicus - just a delusion his mind had conjured up. Similar to the old vendor woman and his mother.

"Haven't thought about you since we parted ways," he lied, still feeling uncomfortably warm. Even in his own mind, he wasn't going to admit how his thoughts strayed to her every now and then. It was a bit pathetic. He knew the real Blaise had probably forgotten all about him by now.

"Oh, bite me, Ro. You'll remember me until the day you die," she said.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that - you can't help it. Men are helpless against the allure of my peerless Extreme Yin Body."

"I see you still think very highly of yourself." She smoothed her long, very black hair, so black it seemed to gleam purple.

"You know… I'm not opposed to… being with you."

"Huh?"

"I- I haven't been able to forget about you either," she whispered, biting her lip slightly.

"I saw you in your most vulnerable state, I gave you my first kiss, and we share a bond of life and death. But even excluding all that… there's just something about you. I feel like we didn't meet by accident. Maybe it was fate. Maybe we belong together - us against the world." Rowan was at a complete loss for words. Even in his wildest dreams, he had never imagined her saying something like that.

"You're a demonic cultivator," he said faintly, those four words encapsulating both everything and nothing.

"So?" she said.

"I'm one of the good ones. You already think so."

"I can't."

"I thought only women played hard to get," she murmured before sighing.

"This is what I get for confessing to the boy I like, instead of waiting for him to pursue me."

"Blaise," he said, very seriously.

"I follow the righteous path. It's not happening."

"What - so you'll kill me?" She took one of his hands and wrapped it around her pale, slender throat.

"Sounds like fun. Want to give it a try? If you squeeze hard enough, you might break through. That's what happens when you dual cultivate with an Extreme Yin Body. You can show me how forceful you can be." No. He hadn't known that. Rowan yanked his hand back as though it had been burned. The back of his mouth tasted faintly metallic.

"I have a duty to my house. I have a duty to my sect. I can't gallivant around the world with you, Blaise."

"Will you marry for duty?" He paused. He thought of his father, who had broken his betrothal to another noble to marry a crippled commoner. He thought of his fractured family, generations of broken ties, his uncle who had never taken a wife, only concubines. His house needed stability. When it was his time to become the family head, could he afford to marry for love?

"If I have to." She flashed her teeth at him, her canines seeming strangely sharp. What made his heart twinge was the gleam of true hurt in her eyes.

"Fine. I'll just choose someone else to be my Dao Companion. When you're cold at night, I'm sure your ideals will keep you warm. Don't regret your choice!" The darkness dissipated and Rowan blinked, back in the real world. He couldn't escape the lingering sadness he felt from his conversation with Blaise. He sat back on his bed for a second before realizing the Bodhi Leaf was no longer in his hand. His blood went cold.

He patted the sheets around him, looking through his robes—"Faster than I expected," praised Ostra. A first.

"Good work. You are a true scion of the Bloodwood Helsings." Good work…? The lingering sadness still didn't go away when he reached for his Qi Sea, and found, instead of an orb of white light, a sapling that hung in its place. Its roots drew in the waters around it and its branches reached the different places his Qi could go - his meridians and his apertures. The pure energy of his Qi Sea had taken on the nature of Wood qi. On one of these branches, a single leaf grew.

It was a familiar one, and it was still wilted. He'd just been looking for it, a moment ago. Rowan reached out to touch it, but his fingers passed through it as if it weren't there.

"Should I be worried, Ostra?"" Why? You've successfully incorporated the idea of Wood into your Qi Sea. It's natural for it to take the shape that represents the element in your mind."

"But what about the Bodhi Leaf?"" What about the Bodhi Leaf?"

"Why is it the only leaf on the tree that represents my Qi Sea?" There was a long silence." I don't know," said Ostra, sounding almost gleeful." I wonder if it's parasitic, symbiotic, or representative. It might even be historic. What a novel occurrence." That was a response he hadn't expected.

"What should I do?"" Prepare your will and testament. Then find a jade slip, and in less than four hundred words, describe the conditions of your cultivation. Set up a mausoleum with as many esoteric traps as you can think of, and then lay in a coffin until some youngster discovers you."

"What?"

"Happens more often than you think."

"Is my cultivation ruined?"" Don't be melodramatic. It's just a leaf, at the moment. You won't know whether it'll cause trouble until you cultivate." Rowan made a sound of acknowledgement. Right - he was in the middle of breaking through. He had officially chosen a suitable stream. Now he just needed to leap the waterfall. He took spirit stone after spirit stone, draining the pure spiritual energy of heaven and earth into his Qi Sea.

After five spirit stones, Rowan thought he could hear the creaking of wood being strained in his Qi Sea. Rowan continued on with single-mindedness, grabbing spirit stone after spirit stone, uncaring of the wealth he was consuming. He only hoped he had enough. Ten more spirit stones and the stirring turned into a roiling. The tree bulged in his mind's eye, as if it were waterlogged. I'm close. Just a bit more… He was at the threshold of pushing into the second layer of Qi Condensation.

As he continued to use spirit stones, his veins pushed up against the thin skin of his wrists, thickened and gnarled like tree roots. His Qi Sea shook fiercely and then suddenly underwent a qualitative change. The qi became thicker, heavier. His Qi Sea was no longer the washed out imitation of a sapling, but the deep brown of oak. Torrents of light peeked through the grain of the bark - bright and green and healthy. Two flimsy branches sprouted from the bark.

One branch was completely bare, while the other possessed that single leaf. But this could only be considered a success. Rowan opened his eyes with a heroic and triumphant expression, his face covered in a sheen of sweat. He now had a Wood path Qi Sea. This would make learning Wood techniques and spells much easier.

"How picturesque - you embody the first sign of spring," drawled Ostra.

"A tree, forced into dormancy by the cold winter months, finally awakens and produces a single, hopeful leaf, starting its journey anew…"

"This one will accept the compliment, senior," Rowan said cheekily. His good mood didn't last long, however, when he looked in his sleeves and realized how many spirit stones he'd used. Twenty-five. His heart ached at the loss. Most cultivators wouldn't need more than two or three for a successful attempt. He actually needed so many. At least he had succeeded - there was always a chance at failure. The first big hurdle was in forming the Qi Sea at all.

Being able to sense, manipulate, and condense pure qi into your body was an exercise in skill. However, to achieve the second layer, it was just a matter of having a portion of qi aligned with your chosen path and spirit stones. Layers three, four, and five - the middle stage of Qi Condensation - would need some other insights, but Rowan knew that with a little bit of direction, they could be achieved as well. The failure rate however was much higher. Late-stage Qi Condensation was another beast entirely.

Even if you had enough insight and spirit stones, you still might not be able to climb. And breaking through to Qi Refining was even harder still. Many people were stuck at the peak of Qi Condensation, from the illustrious core disciples of his sect to his Uncle Bael. But for now, Rowan would accept the fairly easy, if costly, ascension to the second layer of Qi Condensation. He felt like he deserved it after struggling so hard to even form his Qi Sea.

He was also very pleased by his own genius in requesting spirit stones from Blaise instead of taels. Without that windfall, he wouldn't have been able to cobble together twenty-five spirit stones in even a hundred years. He idly wondered how much wealth she had to have, to be parting with spirit stones without bothering to count them. Now - the most exciting part. Learning a spell. Rowan took out the Ensouled in Wood jade slip and began to copy the first technique onto a sheet of papyrus.

He decided to only take out the jade slip when absolutely necessary, to reduce the chances of people happening upon him with it. If they found him with just a few papers, he might be able to weasel himself out of trouble somehow. Germination. The technique was explained in three ways. Germination was a sutra given in just four lines of verse. Rowan reproduced each word with as much care as possible. This was the most important part. Accompanying it was a dense, but plainly written short essay.

He chose to summarize the essay, but it was so barebones and to the point, he ended up writing most of it down verbatim. Finally, there was a diagram of a qi system, with the relevant apertures and meridians labelled. Rowan had seen a handful of sutra-based spells, but he'd never seen a chart like this before.

It indicated that the majority of the qi from the technique was produced by filtering his qi through the heart meridian to produce Greater Yang Wood qi, and it clearly marked the liver's meridian as a stabilizing source of Lesser Yin Wood qi, which had to be inverted from Bright Yang Wood qi in the stomach sourced through his Spirit Root. This was usually the sort of thing learned through cautious trial and dangerous error.

Rowan was beginning to believe that the true determining factor of a rank six scripture was its total clarity. He traced the diagram onto the papyrus with a knob of dry ink. Germination was far from a flashy technique, but its application was difficult. A person was supposed to mould a bit of their qi and fire it from their hand, quickly enough to embed it into an enemy and accurately enough to hit a receiving aperture.

Wherever the seed touched, their opponent's qi would be disrupted, but it would only find true effectiveness if it made it to a meridian. Or, better yet, the opposing cultivator's Qi Sea. When he finally finished, he hurried out of the room. He was late for class, but not late enough to miss the entire lecture. Rowan and the rest of his class were expected at the training field for pretournament evaluations.