Tian felt the urge to do a dozen things at once. He forced himself to prioritize. Right now, mastering the basics of cultivating at the Heavenly Realm was the most important thing. Time had glossed over the difficulties of mastering Advent of Spring. The Vast Darknorth Sea might not require a genius to learn, but it was certainly enough to keep Tian fully focused.
Focus on mastering the basics of the art for now. I don’t want you running an improved version right where he can see you. This art is a little interesting. It’s clearly, well, it’s clear if you’ve seen enough of them, cut down from an art based on actual observations of a Kunpeng. Which are real, even if some of the details described are exaggerated. This art is really not bad. With some minor tweaking, it can easily be an upper second rate art, with potential for future upgrades depending on how things go. First rate is not impossible, but it would take some lucky breaks.
“What is it currently?”
I’m feeling a light to a solid upper third rate. It really might be on par with the Skytreading Art. Though, credit where it's due, internal cultivation manuals paired with accompanying philosophical cultivation texts can have a remarkably transformative power. It’s hard to say for sure which is better in an abstract sense without having it in front of me. Still, the best art is the one you have. Get to practicing. It’s going to be hugely important later.
Every piece of the Vast Darknorth Sea art had its tricky bits. Just the application of vital energy to the lungs to prioritize drawing in water qi was completely novel to Tian. He felt a degree of indignation that no one had told him that such a thing was possible. Perhaps it only became possible at the Heavenly Realm, and no one felt it was necessary to mention it. Regardless, it was very fiddly.
He drew in long, deep breaths, and slowly nudged his lungs into doing what he wanted them to. Something he had never asked them to do before. The lungs were the organs most associated with metal, which meant precision and discrimination. Filtration was a big part of what they already did. Slowly, carefully, he tried to replicate what Voidcatcher had shown him. He didn’t rush it, sternly reminding himself that there was no benefit to rushing, and many dangers. He had to keep reminding himself of that after he completed the first cycle. Half an hour for a lung full of qi absolutely wasn’t worth it. By the time it reached the damp patch that was to be his qi sea, it was barely a droplet.
Slow and steady. In and out. Speed would come with mastery, same as everything else he ever studied. The second cycle didn’t go any faster than the first. The third nearly went wrong, as by that point he was hanging on to his patience with his fingernails. He let go of his cultivation with an explosive exhale, falling back on the ground.
“Welcome to cultivation the way the rest of us do it.” Liren said. Tian opened his eyes to see her mouth twitching at the corner.
“Have you started practicing that art you just happened to pick up somewhere?” Tian asked.
“Yes, it also, completely coincidentally, came with a powerful vision demonstrating exactly how to do it. I wish there was someone I could ask about some of the finer details, but, free is free.”
Tian nodded. No matter how lofty their new rank, there was no price like “free.”
“Did you wrap up your training with Venerable Merciless?”
Liren looked away towards the pond, then forced herself to look back at Tian. “I have the basic structure down. All that’s left is practice. That part will take… decades. Centuries, maybe.”
“You told me a little about it, but always skirted the details.” Tian smiled. “Is it something you can’t share?”
“No, it’s just hard to explain.” She started to look away again, then forced herself to look back at Tian. “It’s about understanding your emotions, specifically the emotion of anger and its variants. Rage, most particularly. Where it comes from, what it means, what it is useful for, and what kind of harm it does.”
Tian nodded. “Our sect teaches that our emotions are something we should carry lightly and discard easily. Becoming as still and indifferent as well water, I think I read.”
“Tepid, yeah. Which is great for meditation, and I suppose day to day emotional regulation, but how many people can really do that all the time?”
Tian thought he could, and then quickly followed it up with all the times he had spectacularly lost his temper and kept his mouth shut. Liren grinned at him, reading his changing expressions.
“Our emotions aren’t inherently bad. They might not be helpful, but they aren’t bad. Unless you are doing some extremely strict cultivation that needs to reach a place of no-thought, no-feeling, or no-self, but again, that’s not day to day.” She chopped time into neat parcels with her hands.
“Right.”
“So it’s not our feelings that are the problem, but how they drive our thoughts and actions. And that means understanding where they come from, and why they make us feel the way we feel. In my case, shame, grief, fear, outrage…”
“Yeah.” Tian closed his eyes in sympathy.
“So I interrogate those feelings. When I get angry, my first instinct is to do something about the anger, violently. The training, what I’m going to spend the next century or two practicing, is teaching myself to change that first instinct into a question.”
“‘Why are you angry?’” Tian asked.
“Exactly. And then I may still want to do something with that anger. The spell Senior Merciless taught me is a handful.”
“Oh?” Tian raised an eyebrow. She had been evasive on that for a year now.
“It lets me determine if someone is telling the truth based on a number of signals I pick up from them. At the highest level, it can even pick up on someone lying to themselves.”
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“Oh neat!”
“By making me angry.”
“Eh?” Tian asked, with the wisdom of the Heavenly Realm behind him.
“The more they lie, the madder I get. Part of understanding my own anger is parsing out what about them is making me angry. So someone lying in a really blatant, cowardly, self-serving way is enough to send me into the kind of black rage that would lead to an exterminated bloodline. Without proper self control, I mean.”
“Ah.” Tian displayed the full flower of transcendent insight.
“Based on an inherent ability of his species, apparently.”
“Is it only when the spell is active, or all the time?” Tian asked.
“Strictly speaking, only when the spell is active. Equally strictly speaking, it’s designed to always be active. It gets exhausting, so I don’t leave it running most of the time. You can understand that senior’s personality better once you understand what’s going on inside of him.”
“It does explain his name.”
“Mmm hmm.”
The two settled into cultivation once more. The Myriad Colors Holy Land was exactly the kind of place Heavenly Realm cultivators schemed and murdered to have access to. Every minute here was a blessing.
“Still can’t believe we get to cultivate here because you lost an argument with a toad.”
“It was a draw.”
“You could go look for a rematch if you liked.”
“Shh. I’m busy.”
Progress was slow. Painfully slow. Every time he thought he understood where he was going wrong, something new went wrong. After a few days, he could proudly declare that all his original problems were solved, and he only had the new, more numerous, problems to sort out before he had the Vast Darknorth Sea mastered.
This cycle repeated for a week before he stopped running into new problems. It had just become achingly slow, and required his full effort and attention. Cultivation had been something he had done to relax. He could keep Advent of Spring running all day without needing to think about it much. Heavenly Realm cultivation wasn’t so nice.
Two weeks passed. Tian and Liren kept their mouths shut about it. The longer Senior Voidcatcher forgot about them, the better.
Three weeks passed. They had gotten used to living out of their tents a long time ago, and they had a year’s worth of supplies. This wasn’t anything terrible. They also noticed their appetites were very small, but they needed to eat an awful lot of food to sate their hunger.
“Lack of qi in the food?” Liren speculated.
“That’s my guess too. There really must be spiritual farmers on the mountain, or all the Heavenly People would have starved to death.”
“I don’t know why that’s hilarious, but it is. Congratulations on reaching the Heavenly Realm. Have you considered becoming a peasant? You can rent this hoe and straw hat for just one spirit crystal a month!” Liren waved a hoe and a hat she had kept in her ring.
“Spirit fields must be rented, of course. Rice seed would, naturally, not be free either, but you can cover the rent and grain with a loan against your first harvest. You can even borrow more to increase your yields with fertilizer and spiritually enriching whatevers.” Tian grinned, then shook his head. “Not for me, I think. I love our little home, but I’m stir crazy. At the very least, I want to explore the mountain more. Better still will be getting out from under the mountain sealing ward. Did Venerable Merciless mention anything about when the ward would come down?”
“He didn’t mention it at all.”
They shared a look, sighed, and went back to cultivating.
Another month passed. Cultivation was now less of a nightmare and more of a grim slog. His little damp patch was starting to resemble a fresh splash of spilt water that had soaked into your trousers, which, strictly speaking, was progress.
“Fair to say we are cultivating with what might not be the best arts in the whole world, but would generally be considered very high quality.” Lirens’ voice ranged between grim and vicious.
“Fair to say.”
“Also fair to say that we are cultivating in the best conditions.”
“Better than could possibly be hoped for, really. We are in a cultivation land intended for people many realms above our own.”
“And our progress has been pathetic.”
“Oh, I can’t agree there.” Tian shook his head. “I don’t think it’s good enough to be called pathetic.”
Liren didn’t laugh. Neither did Tian. They did, however, grin with all their teeth.
“The obsession with finding rare elixirs and natural treasures now makes complete sense.” Liren didn’t grumble or snarl. Her face was twitching, however.
“Don’t forget the obsession with finding and controlling prime cultivation ground. If our pace has been this awful here, can you imagine what it’s like in the Monastery? Or worse, in the low country? Those poor bastards in Mountain Gate City thought they had it good, and they were looking at all the other sects, loose cultivators and heretics for comparison. Just how miserable is it out there?” Tian asked. Then sighed and rubbed his forehead because he knew the answer before he had even left the Redstone Wastes.
“Bad enough to stab a good sister in the back over a single pill. Or a mace, or an axe, or a crown, or something that might help you get that next pill, natural treasure or whatever. Super cultivation manual that lets you cultivate ten times faster than before. Whatever.”
“I told you what happened to Martial Uncle… I guess he’s Senior Brother Gen now, didn’t I?”
“Yes, stabbed in the back over a damn guardian statue, by a four-hundred-year brother. Diabolical.” She shook her head. “And yet.”
“Now I understand.” Tian nodded.
They settled back into grim silence. Liren hung on for a while, then asked. “Zihao, what are we going to do? We can’t possibly cultivate our way through the Heavenly Realm.”
“We take advantage of every second we are in Teacher’s garden, and then we do what everyone else does. Go adventuring. I haven’t learned much about Heavenly Realm herbs, but what I have learned about Earthly Realm herbs, and medicine generally, will surely help a great deal. Combined with your new ability to sense lies, we should be in a strong starting place for newly ascended Heavenly Realm cultivators.”
“That can’t be it. For one thing, we are stuck behind the ward. How much adventuring can we do? There wouldn’t even be a greasy stain left if we went after anything really good. Remember all those local tyrants we flew over on the way to the Holy Land? That ape looked ready to box, and I don’t like my chances.” Liren shot to her feet and started stalking around the garden.
“We lower our ambitions to start with and begin our hunting around the middle part of the mountain. Endure until the great ones decide it’s time to open the mountain again.” Tian felt helpless and spread his hands.
“Well that makes me want to scream.”
“You should scream. Roll on the ground, thrashing your limbs, pounding the earth and crying to the heavens about the unfairness of it all. Really wallow in the physical sensation of the bitterness of the so-called Heavenly Realm.”
Voidcatcher and Merciless stepped through the empty air, descending on the garden.
“Really. It would do you some good to release those emotions.” Voidcatcher continued. “Alternatively, you could do a simple, easy, job for your beloved teachers. Won’t take much more than a minute either, and there might be some cultivation treasures in it too. Interested?”