“Is shaking the world a good thing Grandpa? Tian Zihao doesn’t know.” The boy looked around trying to find Grandpa in the heaps of rags, rotting food and broken pottery. “Grandpa, where are you? Tian can hear you and feel your hugs, but can’t see you.”
Ah, you can just call yourself “I,” you aren’t a baby any more. As for where I am, I’m on your finger. Have you ever noticed a tiny ridge of bone just above the knuckle where the finger joins the palm? That bone ring is where I live. You can think of me as a sort of ghost or spirit.
“Oh! What’s a ghost?”
I have a feeling I’m going to be answering a lot of “What” and “Why” questions in the near future.
The little boy nodded.
I promise to explain… well… everything I can. But I really, REALLY, don’t want you to die, which means that we have to make you stronger. And healthier. The Sunnyvale Retirement Community Calisthenics Routine For Active Senior Living has kept you alive so far, but the sheer quantity of environmental toxins it’s clearing out means that you have a brand new bone marrow cancer to go with the pancreatic cancer and leukemia. You have so few functioning nephrons left I can count them individually, and that fungal infection in your lungs is only biding its time, not gone. And those are just the more immediately fatal problems.
Tian could hear Grandpa sigh. There was a squeeze on his shoulder, and he instinctively put his mutilated hand over it.
Worse, you don’t have a spirit root, dao bone, double pupils or any kind of special meridians. In fact, some of your meridians aren’t just broken, they are gone entirely. Like you were born without them.
“Is that bad?”
Let us say that your life is a miracle, and that luck comes in two flavors. Let’s get to it, I only have a tiny bit of energy to work with here. Almost nobody comes into the dump, right?
“Yes, Grandpa. The people come and throw big buckets of garbage into the boxes at the edge of the dump, then the boxes walk in and dump themselves out.”
This was a reasonably accurate description. Giant dumpsters crawled about on hundreds of tiny legs, ignoring the animal life of the dump. Life that included the newly named Tian Zihao.
Good, good. This seems like the dumping ground for local mortals, not cultivators, so the odds of running into something really heinous should be minimal. I’m afraid that given the tiny amount of energy I have saved up and your… difficult… starting conditions, I can only provide you another bull- another very minor method for preserving your life and strengthening your body. It can’t make any really major physical changes, never mind the meridians and all that, but at least it can get you healthy-ish.
“You won’t vanish again, will you Grandpa Jun?”
Not this time, I think. Last time I had to immediately save your life and that was expensive. Don’t worry about that for now. Let’s focus on making you healthy!
“Yes, Grandpa!”
This is called the GVNRRCH Municipal Sanitation-
“Grandpa? I’m sorry, but there was a strange sound. I didn’t hear you.”
Hah. Foolish of me. This is a method used by… garbage collectors? In a far, far away place? This was how they stayed healthy and strong. More stretching and breathing, but this time, we are focusing on your digestion and then the rest of your internal organs. Let’s call it Gourmet. That’s a nice name for it that won’t get my energy stolen.
Tian felt a finger gently tap his forehead, and he suddenly knew. There was a certain way of posing your arms, swinging them down, then up again, holding your breath for the lunge forward, three quick inhales for the leg raise and stomp. It was all there and waiting for him. He just had to practice.
Oh you utter scumbag, it’s not even a cultivation art. Tian, I guessed wrong. Your true destiny is simply outrageous, and I’m getting killed for every little thing. Listen, stay away from the other humans, you hear me? Stay away! I’m going quiet for a while, but I’ll still be here with you. Practice well, and start with dirt under old piles. The faster you heal yourself, the faster I can talk again. You’ll see. I’m so proud of you, Tian. You are going to soar.
“Grandpa Jun?” Tian looked around then looked down at his left hand. He traced the base of his thin index finger with his thumb, not minding the ragged stumps where the other fingers should have been. He couldn’t remember a time when he had them. He had Grandpa here, with him. In that little ridge of bone just above the knuckle. Grandpa Jun might not talk much, but Tian was never alone.
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Things might hurt. He might be hungry. He might be scared. But he could always feel Grandpa Jun’s warmth. And that was enough.
He got started on the exercises. These came fairly easily. The poses weren’t too strange, the breathing patterns were odd but not awful and even things like contracting certain muscles in a certain order was finicky, not hard. The only problem was, after running through a single set, his stomach growled.
Tian took a long look at what he now knew was called a wolf, and dragged it away from his little nest in the rubbish heaps. If Grandpa said it couldn’t be eaten, then it couldn’t be eaten. He would bury it where other animals couldn’t eat it either, and find food along the way.
Tian didn’t get far before he remembered Grandpa saying- “Start with the dirt under old piles.” Start… what? Start why? He changed his destination. He knew a great place to both bury the wolf and find old dirt.
The trash heaps were a mix of rotting food, scraps of wood, broken pottery, bits of paper and cloth and bone. There was never anything intact. No iron pipes, no old chairs or a now unwanted book. Never any intact clothes. Only things that were ruined past any reasonable use. Now there would be a sick wolf buried under the heaps. It seemed right to Tian.
Tian had been watching the people outside the dump his whole life. They wore things to protect their feet, and wrapped cloth around their upper body and legs. When the rain came, they covered their shoulders with capes made of straw and wore big straw hats. The animals had their coats too. Even this wolf did. So he imitated them.
Bits of rag were knotted together with torn and mildewed blankets. Thumb and forefinger were strong enough to punch holes in the rotted cloth, and nimble enough thread broken bits of string and gardening twine through. A broken knife with barely an inch of metal still attached to the handle made an excellent fabric cutter.
He could cover his body from the sun, and it never got very cold. Other people’s worn out shoes could be repurposed into something that wasn’t comfortable, but was safer than walking on the broken shards of who knows what. Broken straw hats could be patched, though not mended.
This particular heap was a long way from where the dumpsters were filled, and they rarely added to these particular heaps. They were practically the second to last layer of trash before you reached the back of the dump. There were tall, barren hills along the back edge, but Tian stayed well away from them. He’d seen people walking on the top of them occasionally, and people meant thrown rocks.
Old dirt. This was just the spot. He found a good digging stick, and got to it. He dug deeply- he had seen the animals digging for food, and knew that they, like him, would go a very long way for a very small mouthful. Eventually the hole was deeper than he was tall. It took him a long while, but there were edible weeds that grew in the cracks of the rocks on the hillside, and grubs in the rotting food. It was enough. The big meal was coming. He tossed the wolf into the pit, then set to work building traps all around it. Animals would come following the smell. Then he would have a good meal.
His nostrils twitched. He drew a long breath through his nose. He could smell the dead wolf, and the garbage, but there was something else. There was a hint of something delicious. He looked around, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was strongest next to the pit. He sniffed around some more, and finally looked at the dirt pile. It was very faint, but when he lifted a bit of the dirt up to his nose, there was a wonderful smell.
Tian thought that he could eat almost anything thanks to the exercises, and it’s not like he hadn’t eaten dirt when there was nothing edible in the dump. He gingerly swallowed a piece. It tasted like dirt. But in that dirt was something else. It was a faint, elusive flavor, but it satisfied something in him. He contracted his stomach and flexed his muscles according to Gourmet's cycle. The wonderful flavor intensified. He ate a bit more dirt. And a bit more.
He still hunted the animals that came for the wolf, of course. You would die if you only ate dirt. But they had never tasted so good before. Skinned, gutted, and eaten raw with bloody hands. They were the most delicious thing he had ever eaten.
Tian didn’t know how to make fire. He didn’t even remember it existed.
A week later, Tian noticed that, for the very first time, he could pee without feeling a burning, stabbing pain running all the way up inside of him. He was bruising less easily. He wasn’t tired all the time.
Other things started smelling good, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Bits of some pots. Certain rotting fruits and vegetables moved seamlessly from nauseating to delicacies. Paper with smudged red ink was absolutely divine to suck on, provided one also kept a particular splinter of wood in your mouth.
Some things like the potshards and rocks were simply inedible. His already weak teeth would shatter if he tried to bite them. Instead, he ground them down with rocks, mixed them with water, and drank them up out of a bit of shattered vase.
His mother had loved that vase, once. Tian would never know.
He noticed the way he could take deep breaths now. Every now and then he would feel something bubbling terribly in his guts and he would puke out something so vile it etched rock, but other than that, he had never felt better.
One day, Tian managed to jump between two big heaps of garbage and landed steadily on his feet. It had been a trickly operation- he was jumping from a slippery pile of mixed garbage and landing on a slippery pile of jumbled together trash. He had to gather his strength, mentally prepare for the pain of a big motion, plan it out in his head. Then he exploded, pushing through th pain and clearing the gap. Landing like a leaping lizard.
There was no reason for it. He just wanted to try. It wasn’t often that he dared leap from the shadows, but something in him needed to know how far he had come. Here was the proof- he had come a long way. He looked up at the blue sky between the rotting piles and laughed for the sheer joy of it all.
Good jump.
“Grandpa!”
I’m back. I told you it wouldn’t be so long this time.
“Did I cure the whatevers?”
The several types of cancer you have, note-the-present-tense? I’m afraid not. But you have a big piece of your kidneys functioning again, and your cancers are in remission, both of which are huge. And did you notice the way your skin cleared up? And the way your bones are way, way less brittle?
“They are?”
You bet! I won’t be able to transmit anything to you for a good long while, but I can keep you company at least, and help you make the most of Gourmet. And I’ll start teaching you the basics of the basics of cultivation. The stuff you have to know before all the meditation.
“You don’t have to.”
Eh?
“Every time you try to help me, you disappear. It’s okay. If Grandpa can stay with me, it’s all okay. You don’t need to help more.”
Heh. I have a cute grandson. Cultivation is the cultivation of one’s self. Your character, your wisdom, the way you exist in the world. Some parts of that will be expensive. But kid, let me teach you something that doesn’t cost any energy. It’s not always about you. It’s definitely not about me.
“So what is it about?”
Becoming strong enough to save the world. Sounds nicer than “Killing God,” doesn’t it?