Chương 36: Running

Five times four hours of spear training with group Lapis. Three times two hours on the fundamentals of cultivation. Two times three hours on the beasts of the Empire. Two times three hours on natural treasures. Two times two hours on the history of the Empire. Plus, two one-off sessions on their role in the sect. In addition, Jianyi planned five times two hours at the inner sect kitchen, and seven times two hours helping Minghao work for Elder Sun. 66 hours. Excluding the one-off sessions.

Excluding his meditation and qi control practice time, and excluding potential work at the sect tailor. His weeks were packed. Jianyi was not daunted. Quite the opposite. The opportunity to learn all that was to be learned was exciting. And everything else could be handled with discipline. Will. However, there was no reason to go overboard. So he decided to hold off on the tailoring until the one-off sessions about the sect were completed in two weeks. That sounded very reasonable to him.

Especially since he needed to squeeze in time to open his last meridians.

"What is cultivation?" Elder Zhang asked. She stood on the same stage that she had held the introductory session on, wearing a similar outfit. It was the first lesson on the fundamentals of cultivation.

"Cards? Techniques? Artifacts of mystical power? The rarest natural treasures?..." She looked into the audience of young disciples, waiting. But none spoke up, and when she continued with a small smile on her lips, Jianyi was certain that it would not have gone well for anybody who would have raised their voice unasked.

"Cultivation is about defying the Heavens. Defying the natural order. Defying what mortals here on this plane of existence should be able to do." Again, she paused, this time apparently trying to gauge whether what she had said had sunk in. A few of the disciples murmured at the mention of defying the Heavens. It was a dimension of cultivation that Elder Sun had not brought up so far. It resonated with the stories that were told among mortals about cultivators, though.

"To do that, to defy the Heavens, we strengthen our spirit and body with the help of qi, the life force that permeates everything.

"We differentiate between spirit and body cultivation; however, the boundaries are not as clear-cut as some make them out to be.

"Every spirit cultivator's body becomes unfathomably stronger than any mortal could ever imagine, and if you ascend to the highest realms of body cultivation, you can do things that look not much different from what spirit cultivators do. So there are similarities.

"Having said that, there are clear differences in approach and focus. I will touch upon body cultivation briefly today, but afterwards not so much, as we don't focus on it a lot here in the core sects for reasons that I will explain. That means that when we talk about cultivation here, we talk about spirit cultivation." It was an interesting aspect as Elder Sun had equally ignored body cultivation to a large extent in his explanations.

"The spiritual elements of cultivation are simple. You have gates, which allow you to gather qi from the environment. Pathways connect the gates to the third element, which are your dantians. Yes, plural. You have your lower dantian, in which you gather qi and which hosts the core card you received during the trial and all future core cards you will collect. The middle dantian, which hosts qi cards, and the upper dantian, which hosts your technique cards."

There were different reactions amongst the disciples in the room, and after a moment, Jianyi came to the conclusion that there were likely quite a few of them that had already opened their dantians, and therefore already stored some cards in them.

"The lower dantian is easily understood. You gather qi, and the core cards help you convert it into your affinity. The upper dantian is even simpler. The cards that will allow you to affect the world around you will be slotted in there. Where mortals tend to struggle is in understanding the middle dantian and qi cards in particular, because they do so little that is visible, and at the same time, they do so much to those who know.

"There are five cultivation realms. Once your gates and dantians are opened, you will be in the Qi Gathering Realm, then follow Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, and the Nascent Soul Realm. Each of those realms has five sub-stages. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"That is a lot, and the key enabler, beyond insights into your dao, is the amount of qi you can gather and store in your lower dantian. As you can imagine—or maybe not—this is slow. It takes hundreds of years to progress through the realms, if you even have the talent for it.

"There is, however, one way to accelerate this. Qi cards. They rest in your middle dantian and allow you to gather qi in larger quantities. Unfortunately, barring some very, very rare exceptions, you can only have two qi cards at the same time. And that brings us back to the point of why most people choose spirit or body cultivation, not both, because doing both means slowing down both, and maybe becoming too slow to ascend the realms that help you extend your lifespan.

"Now, let us go into more detail."

"Do you, by chance, have time tonight to discuss what we just learned? Maybe over dinner?" Tang Miyao had caught up with him after the session with Elder Zhang and, after an awkward greeting, had come out with the halting question. Jianyi was quick to respond.

"I am sorry, but I work in the evenings. I am afraid I do not have time tonight, or most other nights." Miyao blanched slightly, for reasons that Jianyi did not understand.

"Of course, I did not mean to impose," she said, leaving in a rush right after. He sighed; again, not handled well, and briefly, his mother's wish for him to make friends surfaced, but there was so much to do, and it seemed not worth the effort right now. He proceeded to the training field for the first spear session.

"There is no point teaching you anything about the spear until you have reached minimum standards of physical vigor," Ruolan said with clear condescension. She stood together with the second inner disciple allocated to the Lapis group in front of the close to fifty youths that had been assigned to the group, and apparently collectively decided to attend the lesson.

They had arrived at the training field and were standing in one corner, while the Jade group took up another corner, Elder Fang hovering in the background, while Fangyin gave them a hopefully more welcoming speech than the woman before Jianyi did.

"It has come to our attention that some of you," she looked pointedly at Jianyi, "have not even managed to complete the 'Everlasting Ascent' in the allocated time." A few of the disciples in Lapis had been part of his test group, so they knew about some of the things that had happened, but many were not and were looking at him with surprise.

"We will start working with the spear once every single one of you can finish 200 laps around the training field in four hours. Begin." There was a lot of murmuring amongst the disciples, and some of the surprised looks at Jianyi turned to anger. But, in fairness, more angry glances were directed at the inner disciples before them.

"Run!" Ruolan yelled, her cheeks flushed, eyes squinted. Many emotions burned in Jianyi's chest. First, shame. Shame for not having completed the challenge as required and causing his fellow disciples discomfort. Second, anger. He could not believe that the minor instance of perceived disrespect still caused Ruolan to want to punish him. And that's what it was. There might be merit to the requirement of physical vigor, but the way it was presented was clearly a punishment. Lastly, determination.

Determination to conduct himself with discipline and dignity while accepting the challenge presented by Ruolan. He was the first to turn and start to run. The others followed. He was slower than most in this group, but he pushed himself to the fastest pace he could sustain in his current state and ignored the world around him. 250 paces. 250 steps, that was the circumference of the training field. He counted them one by one. Fifty thousand steps in four hours was actually well within his reach.

Not even extremely hard. Normally. He focused on his breathing and pulled oxygen deep into his lungs. Ten rounds passed by surprisingly quickly. He saw the Jade group practicing the Rooted Stance, but stayed focused on his race. Fifty rounds, and the other disciples had left him behind. A hundred rounds and the pain started to grow. The first disciples lapped him, but he did not relent, kept his pace, got lost in the rhythm. Time had lost its meaning; only rounds counted.

164 rounds, and he noticed an obstacle before him. He shook himself to rise from the almost meditative trance he had fallen into and saw Ruolan standing in his path.

"Four hours have passed. You are a disgrace to this group," she moved away with purpose. A few of the disciples in his group were still around, sitting on the steps. A few nodded encouragingly to him, but there were also a number who looked at him with open hostility. He had 90 minutes left until he had to turn up at the kitchen. Enough time for 36 more rounds. He continued running.

Jianyi lay in his bed, immensely tired. A formation-fueled hot shower had helped him wash off the sweat from exercise and work. His muscles had relaxed somewhat. While the cause and context of the punishing run today grated on him, he thought that there was a chance that it would actually do him good. Since the incident with the failed gate-clearing attempt, he had regularly trained with Minghao, but those trainings, while valuable for his expertise with the spear, had rarely pushed him to the brink.

Maybe running like that would accelerate his recovery. Maybe it did the opposite; he shrugged mentally and decided to hope for the best. In the quiet of his room, he could also think about the leaderboards for the first time in peace. Of course, staying below the radar was what would be best; however, he couldn't deny that there was a certain level of competitiveness inside him. He had always been proud of being the best with the spear in his class in school.

Also, how would he realistically assemble a proper deck of technique cards—and apparently equally important, qi cards—if not with the help of the sect, and getting access to more powerful cards was a chance that he would be pained to let go. No, he would understand better what it would take to rise on the leaderboards and then do his best to see how far he could get. He also resolved to open his final meridians within the next week or two, which would unlock a whole new world, and it was time to move forward.