Chương 6: The Stone

Rowan Rowan woke at dawn to a commotion. Outside on the street, his retinue was packing his luggage and the supplies they would need for the trip. They had stopped. Voices rose as the six of them argued with another man.

"What's going on?" Rowan asked from his window. The leader of the retinue, one of Uncle Bael's brother-in-laws, Jan Schuman, answered.

"Young master, please explain that six guards is more than enough protection for the journey!" The new addition cupped his fists in Rowan's direction. He was giant, tall and wide as a palace door.

"Good morning, young master! This one is called Aquino. The great patriarch himself sent me over to accompany you." Rowan snickered at Jan.

"You want to rebuff the patriarch? Be my guest. Just don't drag me into it." He closed the curtains to his bedroom, cherishing the extra few hours of sleep until it was time to leave. Patriarch Yarrow arrived to see him off.

"Have you selected a custodian?" Rowan knelt and bowed his head.

"If you have anyone you'd recommend, patriarch…"

"Your Uncle Bael has too much on his plate already. How about your Great-Aunt Iris? She raised your father more than his own mother." Rowan felt a cold shiver slid down his back at the mention of that woman. He hadn't seen her in years, only remembering her as a towering figure wreathed in tendrils of blue poison. The Silk Witch was the only Foundation Establishment cultivator in House Helsing, and she was rarely seen.

She went into secluded meditation for years, and when she finished, she was drafted by the Alliance of Earthly Harmony to be sent as human tribute to fight the demons that spilled out of the rift in the Southern Continent.

"This junior only fears that this small matter is below Great-Aunt's position…" The patriarch coughed.

"The only issue is that she doesn't have much financial sense. Likely, she won't touch a thing." Rowan's eyes widened as understanding sparked, gratitude flooding him. For him, wasn't a custodian like Great-Aunt Iris a godsend? Normally, he didn't have the station to even meet with her. Almost nobody did. Therefore, how could Uncle Bael and the others possibly pester her asking to borrow Rowan's money? Would they have any face left? Even by doing nothing, she would act as Rowan's shield.

Not only that, all the funds and items left were likely useless to her. Rowan knocked his forehead on the ground three times.

"Patriarch, this junior would be forever grateful if you could petition Great-Aunt for this favor." The ancient man smiled.

"Good kid." While they were on the road, Rowan had little else to do but meditate. Usually, he counted the beads of his mother's rosary while he did it, but this time he found himself reaching for the strange stone.

"Draw in the spirit energy of heaven and earth, circulate it through your meridians, condense it into a Qi Sea." Great cultivators were known to be able to do so without the help of spirit stones. Even without resources, Rowan could try to hone his skills. Rowan tried to follow the latent qi that existed in every living thing, and pulled on any loose strands of qi he could feel in the air as hard as he could.

A fly in the carriage buzzed and immediately exited the window, sensing it was likely under attack in some way. Startled, Rowan wondered if there was something not quite orthodox about this, and stopped. The stone in his hands grew pleasantly warm. The qi in his body seemed to start cycling faster than normal. Rowan opened his eyes, seeing a tongue of flame dancing deep within the stone. It had become blood red now, and grew heavy in his hand. The carriage jerked to a stop.

Rowan almost fell out of his seat, the stone flying into the air. He vaulted after it, the stone slipping out of his fist several times as he tried to grab it.

"What's going on? Why did we stop?" he asked irritatedly from the window. His progress had been going so well before it had been interrupted.

"Lunch break, young master!" It was the height of noon, the sun boiling and simmering in the sky. The carriage had stopped beneath the shade of a large banyan tree. Rowan left the carriage to stretch his legs. Rolling hills spread out before him, the grass yellow and dry. A few tiny villages dotted the distance, barely more than clusters of rundown shacks. An ox slowly passed them on the road, driven by a dark-skinned man so skinny Rowan could count his ribs, dirty white rags hanging across his frame.

Only a few withered vegetables knocked around in the cart behind them. Jan Shuman ran towards the old man.

"What do you think you're doing? This is an immortal's carriage! Scram!" Fear flashed across the old man's face, and he bowed his head deeply, muttering pleas for forgiveness.

"Wait," Rowan said. He handed the old man a meat bun from his sleeve, who refused to take it several times before finally accepting it. The man looked more afraid than grateful.

"You shouldn't have done that, young master," Jan warned lowly.

"What if he tells his pals in the village about your generosity? They'll swarm the carriage when we get a little closer, begging for food and blessings. This is how common villagers behave outside the cities."

"Mind your tongue. My mother was known for her charity with mortals. How can I stain her memory and forsake the poor during her mourning period?"

"I apologize young master, this servant is shortsighted. However, I'm still worried about the village. I know the lay of the land very well. There's a path around—" This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Rowan clicked his tongue sharply.

"Forget it. There's bandits about. You are not to leave the main road." With a dismissive wave of his sleeve, Rowan left to eat his own meal under the banyan tree. The seventh member of the retinue, a late addition from the patriarch himself, joined him. Aquino was a tall, heavyset man with an unkempt beard and a scar across his cheek with the air of someone who was easily confused but difficult to fool.

"If I may ask, young master, why do you hold food in your sleeves? Wouldn't that get messy?" The other guards formed a tight group further away, shooting them furtive glances. Perhaps wondering why he hadn't shooed Aquino off yet. Rowan chuckled.

"There's a spatial enchantment woven into the fabric. It can hold a couple of things, though not as much as a spatial pouch." To demonstrate, he pulled out the handle of the sword the patriarch had given him, since he didn't have a belt to hold it on yet. There was also a handful of cheap blood clotting pills he had bought after the incident in the Wilds, a half-finished essay on the attributes of water, and the snoozing Wandering Bulb.

Along with a half dozen meat buns and a waterskin, the storage space of his sleeves were maxed out.

"That sounds useful." Aquino hummed as he ate.

"Young master, I always dreamed of cultivating one day. Do you think you could teach me some exercises?" Rowan looked down at his meat bun. It was nearly impossible to develop a sense for manipulating your qi later in life. You had to start as a child, with someone to guide you. But he didn't discourage the man and offered him a few pointers.

"If you don't have big goals, you should try to find an elixir in the market. It'll create a Qi Sea for you, and you can use some basic techniques, but at the cost of severing your cultivation path. You'll never get past the first layer of Qi Condensation." Aquino chuckled.

"I'm not worried about progressing. Even just forming a Qi Sea and gaining a few extra years of life would be good." He paused, thick brows scrunching as he went over something in his head.

"Young master, if I earn the money, could I trouble you to buy the elixir for me? I wouldn't know what to look for. I'm afraid I'll get scammed." Rowan agreed readily, heading back to the carriage. They returned to the road shortly after. The guards were all mortals. Most people in House Helsing were, even though everyone technically had the ability to cultivate. If you asked the elders, they would say there simply weren't enough resources for every person to cultivate.

That wasting energy on talentless people just for them to tap out in the early stage of Qi Condensation was the height of foolishness. The truth was even simpler than that. Even before joining the sect, Rowan had spent years learning how to feel the qi in his body and in the world. How to coax his spiritual energy into cycling through his meridians. All cultivators needed to master this basic sense before even attempting to form their Qi Sea. But who could just sit around for hours every day meditating?

Most people needed to work to survive. This was the true barrier to entry for cultivation. Time. Rowan reached into his sleeve to touch the sword Patriarch Yarrow had given him. His fingers brushed against smooth, cold steel, only to meet a piece of paper sticking to it. A note? He plucked it off the sword, looking at it. Yellow talisman paper. A glowing character pulsed on its surface once before darkening like soot. The paper started burning without fire from the bottom up, ash disappearing into the air.

Rowan let the talisman go before it could reach his fingers. The rest of the talisman flaked to ash. Three spirit stones clattered to the carriage floor. Rowan picked them up, his eyes glittering. This was another reason why normal people couldn't cultivate - they didn't have a sentimental old ancestor with a habit of spoiling his great-great-grandchildren. He could give forming his Qi Sea a few more shots. Rowan picked the red stone back up, now thinking that it was quite beautiful.

It seemed to be helping him cultivate, so he naturally had a better opinion of it. This was how some of the wealthier disciples in his sect cultivated - with tools, or in special rooms heavy with ambient qi. Rowan was fortunate to have found this stone, and more than that, to have not given it up to the sect. With one hand he held a spirit stone, and with the other he held the bloodstone.

He closed his eyes, straightened his back and focused again, willing himself to drown on dry land, to deep his body into the qi that was everywhere around him but not his yet. It poured against him and into different apertures of his body. Cultivating was easier than the other times he'd tried. With the bloodstone, the qi didn't disappear and drift off. His heart pounded in his chest with excitement. A Qi Sea's quality was determined by three things: density, retention, and quantity.

It was common during the process for strands to vanish while one tried to wrangle them together, leading to a Qi Sea of poorer quality. Rowan himself didn't expect to form anything higher than a C-grade Qi Sea. Normally, his deformed spirit root would have ground down all the qi from the spirit stone. This time was different. Rowan, for the first time, was able to cultivate as though this deformity did not exist. It was… so easy.

He manipulated the strands of heaven and earth qi inside his body into merging together in a single point. As soon as he grabbed a few together, condensing them, he reached out for another strand. Seven strands. Fourteen strands. Twenty-one strands. Thirty-five strands. Forty-two strands… Finally, he had gathered every strand of qi he could sense together in a ball. Forty-nine strands. None of them had escaped, though his mental strength was draining fast. Sweat slicked his forehead.

He slowly exerted a consistent pressure around the collective, merging the strands. The ball began to spin wildly before slowly stabilizing. A refreshing power trickled through his meridians, but he ignored it, focusing on condensing it further. And then it happened. The ball of qi congealed into a unified mass, glowing softly. Rowan stared at it in shock, unable to believe his eyes. From Instructor Sutter's description, a D-Grade Qi Sea was a dim pinprick in an unlit world.

A C-Grade looked like a pearl, small but luminous. A step up from that, a Qi Sea so serious that calling it B-grade would be an insult - was the reflection of a lantern over dark waters, light with nothing to illuminate. Sutter had proudly identified his own Qi Sea as such, saying it was the best amongst the instructors of the sect, even comparable to the seas of the elders. This was a moon. Could this be… an A-Grade Qi Sea? A Perfect Qi Sea?

He wasn't even sure anyone in his class had one - surely they would have bragged about it, if so. Decatour's was only B-Grade. Rowan set the stone down with shaking hands, but contrary to his fears, his Qi Sea didn't lessen in quality. The great white ball hung inside of him without even minor fluctuations. Power flowed steadily through his meridians in a continuous stream. The fatigue he'd felt from the carriage ride vanished. Rowan marveled at it. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.

This was his. This was him. The carriage jerked to a stop again with a much harder jolt, distracting him from his success. He fought the urge to shout in anger. It was already dark out. He'd spent hours cultivating.

"Are we stopping for the night?" Rowan called out through the side of the carriage. No response. A clumsy thump against the shuttered window. A raspy whisper.

"Young Master. You must--""What? What did you say?" Rowan scooted over to slide the window open." Run," the voice insisted - sharp, loud, urgent. Before he could respond, there was an almighty crack, like a branch snapping. Rowan turned at the sound with a startled jump. The flimsy back panel of the carriage had splintered apart as the wide, rust-flecked face of a machete pierced through the spot he'd just been sitting for hours.