“I have to use Gourmet. I can’t do the body movements. I don’t know if I can even breathe. But I have to use it anyway.” Tian tried to force his body into motion by sheer force of will. It didn’t work. The venom of the Three Poisons Seven Deaths Adder was not so merciful.
Tian had carefully manufactured his own destruction, setting the remains of the snakes and the lotuses against each other within his fragile body. The seeds and gallbladders were both potent tonics, but when consumed together, their effects were magnified. Both the good, and the bad. The same was true of the mash of snake meat and lotus root, or the lotus flowers he poured onto and into himself. And circulating all through him was the dreadful venom.
His body was breaking down. It was dying- not in bits and pieces, but comprehensively. Every nerve, every blood vessel, every organ. His bone marrow turned urine yellow, then brown, then black and liquid. His bones, supposedly strengthened by years of using Gourmet and the calisthenics, began to crack and flake. Even the lingering strength of the Stormborne Pine Truffle seemed to sublimate into the Tian Soup.
Perched at the far end of all this destruction was the remains of Tian’s brain, desperately trying to use Gourmet. Trying to turn carnage into creation. He could feel his mind going hazy. The forces battled within him, the necessary destruction was occurring, but the last step couldn’t be reached. It wasn’t working!
Through the pain and rigid thinking, a memory wormed its way in. It was when he was clinging onto the tree as the Truffle strengthened him. He had the herbs, the water, and the cooking vessel. But the fire? That was his will. That was his determination. Tian tried to scream through a ruined throat and force his body to move.
He might as well have tried to pick up the sky. He could be as willful as he wanted, but there was nowhere for his ruined fingers to get a grip. Tian refused to care about that. He demanded that his lungs breathe. Demanded that his limbs move. That the destroyed nerves once again spark with life and command his flesh. Tian strained against his corpse-body, furiously bashing it with his will. He would live. He would live!
Tiptoes on the razor's edge, swaying and getting a clear view of the heavens above and the abyss below. Tian threw all his determination upward. To soar.
Had Tian asked, Grandpa Jun might have told him that Stormborne Truffle can be grated over certain soups, resulting in remarkable transformations.
It started with his brain. His brain had been patched up by Grandpa years ago, but it was still in rough shape. Now? Each little cluster of light, each intersection of axions and dendrites, each fold of the brain and twist of nerves was remade with spooling threads of vital energy. And this time, made right. Then the organs grew back, glands reforming, lymph nodes smoothing and refilling. The nerves stretched outwards and down as the spinal column reformed. His heart rebuilt itself. His lungs grew and filled his chest.
On and on the rebuilding went. From his very core to his outermost skin. The disgusting muck seemed to boil around him, clearing at visible speed. Even the mud settled out and down, quickly leaving an ugly boy floating naked in the puddle. But his transformation was far from complete.
Inside of him, invisible networks of meridians and acupoints formed. Twelve major meridians ran up and down his body, twining through his organs, then spreading through the rest of his body. You could see, with very special eyes, that some of the meridians struggled to form. As though some intangible force was keeping them suppressed. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to stop the medicine bath from doing its job. When the Governing and Conception vessels finally formed, there was a burst of lotus fragrance, with something meaty underneath. And very, very faintly, if you had the most exquisite of divine hearing arts, you might catch the sound of a distant bell.
The moment is now! Here, good grandson, before you draw your first breath, cultivate this! AHAHAAHAHA! FUCK YOU, YOU RAT BASTARD! DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING DID YOU?!
Tian felt Grandpa tap him on the forehead, and as the information rushed in, he thought he could feel Grandpa shouting at the sky. But that was soon brushed away by the images rushing through his mind.
It was a way of breathing without breathing, using your pores to supplement your lungs and draw in ‘undifferentiated’ Qi. Tian didn’t know why it was so important, but he trusted Grandpa so he tried it. Breathe through his pores? It sounded patently impossible but he visualized energy flowing through his body just the way the pictures showed.
Something changed on his skin. It was suddenly sensitive to every movement of the water, every vibration sensed through the earth. And at the ragged edge of his endurance, he felt a wisp of cold air enter his body through his skin. It was pulled into his meridians and cycled through his body as the art taught.
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It was a brand new body. Its heart hadn’t had its first beat. And it was already getting stronger. Much, much stronger.
Biology, at this level of cultivation, could be deferred but not denied. His heart started pumping, and Tian sat up in a spray of crystal clear water. His breaths were deep and gasping, his lungs working like bellows.
Ahahahaha! Oh well done. Well done! Three cheers for my grandson! Three cheers for his Dustless Physique! Three cheers for his Natal Qi reinforced meridians and Daitians! Three cheers for his python muscles and lotus breath. Three cheers for his Stormborne Endocrine system and his fully revitalized body! Three cheers for the generations he will father on this earth, and three cheers for the heavens he will pierce!
Tian looked around and then shut his eyes hard. He covered his ears too, trying to limit the sounds. There was suddenly so much information pouring in. His brain was hammered with signals he didn’t understand.
“Grandpa?!” His own voice was deafening, bouncing off his bones and rattling his head.
Easy, easy. You are okay. For the very first time in your life, you are okay.
“Light. Noise!” He tried to quiet his voice, but it still sounded deafening.
Easy, easy, now. Really, you are okay. Remember the calisthenics routine? Let's do it together now. Up, up, up on your toes and stretch like you were grabbing the sun. Carry the sun to the right as it sets, down through the House of the Dead, then Up again with the dawn on the left and put it back in the sky. Breathing, one, two, three. Yes, just like that.
Grandpa Jun led Tian through the routine, the familiar movements and steady breathing comforting him. It had never been so easy. His body moved and nothing hurt. He twisted, and no tendon pulled him, stabbed at him, made him flinch. He could tell all the burns were gone. All the kinks in his bones had smoothed. The knots in his muscles had untangled. He didn’t know about his organs, but nothing hurt. Nothing. He flexed his fingers. Still missing, but more of them had grown back, maybe?
He was… better. Much, much better. He was barely warmed up after a full set.
Now, about what your eyes and ears are sending you. Remember the people on the edge of the dump?
“The rock throwers!”
Err. Yes. Them. Well, you wondered how they could always see you? It’s because of this. Your body now has meridians. OH DOES IT HAVE MERIDIANS! AAAH HAHAHAHA!
Grandpa Jun really sounded creepy sometimes. “It must be hard, being a ghost,” Tian thought.
*Cough.* Ahem. Your body is now let's-just-call-it enriched with vital energy. Vital energy is related to qi but not quite the same, you will learn about this later. Everybody’s body has vital energy in it unless their meridian network is broken. Vital energy reinforces your muscles, your organs, glands, senses, brain, everything. For most people, more than ninety nine percent of people, that’s it. It’s a passive thing that just happens. It doesn't get much better or worse until your body starts breaking down and you die.
The other fraction of one percent are cultivators. People who bring in more vital energy into their body and run it through their meridians and flesh using special breathing and meditation techniques. Eventually transforming that vital energy into qi and… other things. Not everybody can do it. Most can’t, in fact. You need an extra something. A special physique, meridians that absorb the world’s undifferentiated qi at a certain rate above normal, a spirit dozens of times more powerful than normal, SOMETHING.
“My meridians are better, so… I’m hearing and seeing more? Because I’m a cultivator now?”
Oh you managed more than that. You gave yourself a Physique AND natal qi reinforced meridians. And dantians too, but that’s a conversation for a much later day. MoohoohahahaHAAA-
“Grandpa, I’m glad you’re happy but the laughing is getting… are you okay?”
Oh, I’m sorry Tian. I have a lot of resentment built up and today you helped me vent some of it. Right now, we just screwed over someone I really don’t like, and that makes me very happy. The short answer is that your brain and nerves and organs have been damaged your whole life, so you have no idea what the normal human baseline is like.
You got a dose of the good stuff on the qi and vital energy front, which does, technically, kind of, make you a cultivator as the locals would define the term. Let me explain some things very simply, and you can slowly experience them for yourself.
Meridians- you have them now. A bare hint of python essence and a touch of lotus spirit went into their creation. Individually, both are quite common elements to a physique. Having both together is not unique, but certainly quite rare. It makes your meridians very resilient, while being very responsive to qi. They even have a slight filtration effect, keeping out more of the mortal air than most meridians do. But, because I’m a sneaky old man and my grandson is very smart, very brave and very tough, at the crucial moment you learned the absolute worst breathing technique I know that doesn’t have negative side effects.
“And that's… good? Somehow?”
Energy cost, remember? Everything costs me insane amounts. Hell, making you practice a technique intended for prison laborers should earn me energy, not cost me a fortune. That technique is practically crippled. Don’t be fooled by the breathing-through-your-pores thing, at your level, that’s not a sign of quality. It’s a sign of “There is no way you are going to get enough qi with just your lungs.” BUT.
If you have never used your meridians before. If you have never taken a single breath of the mortal air. And if you then cultivate, creating a qi vacuum inside your body and drawing in qi from the air through your pores, what you will get is some extra pure qi reinforcing your meridians and baptising your dantians.
Natal qi is the stuff that babies are supposed to have in the womb. A sort of near-immortal qi that you lose as you scream and breathe for the first time. Having natal qi as a cultivator means that your meridians will draw in more pure vital energy and qi from now on, and will actively resist contamination by mortal qi. Qi and vital energy are different things, but you do have both. Actually, everyone has three types of energy in them but I REALLY don’t want to get into that for now. Just… this is a good thing. Be happy.
Breakthroughs will be easier, spells will be more powerful, and best of all, body refinement will be way, way better. And we aren’t remotely done cultivating your body.
But, uh, don’t bother cultivating using what I just taught you. Ever. It’s absolute trash. So much so that it would actually slow down your future developments if you started practicing it now. So… please forget it immediately.
“What about the energy you spent? Isn’t that a waste?”
Oh Tian, you are going to be reaping the benefits of today for the rest of your life. The natal qi alone would make you a favored son of any house this side of the Imperial Palace. And because of your ruthlessness towards yourself, you forged your own Dustless Physique. Natal qi, and a body that resists being tainted by the mortal world? I told you the first day we met. You are going to soar. You are going to pierce the heavens themselves.