Tian meditated on the day to come. Last night had been a triumph, but new days brought new challenges. Most of his problems didn’t have an immediate solution, so he focused on Han and his problems for now. Which were significant. How, exactly, did one optimize an art?
Grandpa ran him through what he called the basics of the basics: gathering energy, storing energy, transmitting energy and recovering energy. Everything was built from those things, apparently. Tian scratched his head increasingly hard as he thought about it. Mortals were not known for their ability to understand internal energy.
A mortal’s ability to sense the flow of energy is going to be limited, but not zero. Their end point is roughly equivalent to Level One of the Earthly Realm. Those grandmaster level people running around the city, for example. Or whatever they call themselves. Supreme Experts? Doesn’t matter. The point is that the boy has all three types of energy in him, and can slightly, indirectly, manipulate them. Same as everyone else.
“I don’t see how that helps, though. He still needs to gather the energy, move it around, all of that, and I don’t know how to cycle energy to make the body lighter. Which is kind of the whole point of the art. That, and becoming more flexible, I guess.”
A mortal light body art isn’t just about lightness. It’s about adding speed and elusiveness by changing the power to weight balance. Gross physical manipulation, not internal energy work. Add in feints or deceptive footwork, and you have an evasion art. Learn how to run soundlessly, or across rooftops, or leap over walls- you have a traversal art. At the mortal level, most of that is down to body control. They aren’t that much lighter. They just look, and move, like they are.
Tian’s shoulders relaxed, as he breathed out his tension. That made more sense to him. Gathering your energy to control your body and weight distribution, maybe a slight shift in actual weight at the highest levels of mastery, that all sounded doable. So the next thing to consider was… “What kind of conception should we use to build from? I’m not getting anything meaningful from his crappy movements. Maybe… something related to water? Or swaying? That could just be me thinking about Moon Crossing the Lake, though.”
He’s an urban kid. Bluestone city… that was on the Agate. Lots of canals too. We can keep the water and moonlight themes from Moon Crossing the Lake and tweak the kid’s art to get a bit of the flavor. How about calling it the River Treading Art?
“Too practical, and he can’t actually walk on water using it. Or… I don’t think he can, anyway. Twisting River Seven Steps?”
Are you planning on having seven fixed steps he needs to master?
“No. Damn. It sounded really good too.”
Eh. Oh! He’s a bastard, right? So he probably grew up in a rougher neighborhood. Winecup Moon- Light as the moon in a winecup, always moving, always at hand, never reachable. Not very mystical, but it’s got a lot of flavor to it. Make the steps light, but swaying. Illusory. Emphasis on evasion and controlling weight, so he can turn a dodge into a lunge quickly Whether it is with a spear or a sword. As may be.
“If it’s not a spear, he can forget me picking up his bones, let alone avenging him.” Tian grumbled. “Let’s see if we can’t adapt something from Liren’s yang high speed movement art, something more suitable for covering long distances or going over roofs and things. That can be a separate art.”
Doable. Focus on this first.
What followed was a great deal of grumbling and fussing, as Tian repeatedly tested ideas, discarding them with efficient brutality if they didn’t prove immediately useful. When something was useful, it was added to the “heap,” and once the “heap” was large enough, he started culling that instead. Routing vital energy through this acupoint added too much complexity for too little flexibility. Gone. This breathing pattern didn’t provide enough air, especially since Han would be using the art in a fight. Gone. Not illusive enough. Gone. Too rigid. Gone.
He grumbled, but he wasn’t really mad about it. This was a test run. His own arts would be infinitely more complicated to develop. Like everything else, learning to do the simple things laid the foundation. The hard things would come with time.
Han arrived mid morning to see an immortal glaring at a wine cup sitting on a battered, low, table. Not drinking it, just glaring at it like it had stolen the last pork rib at dinner.
“Student Han, get over here! Do you know anything about wine?”
The youth nodded, and trotted over.
“Is it supposed to smell like this?” Tian pointed to the cup. Han gave the immortal an odd look and gestured towards the cup. “Sure, pick it up and give it a sniff.”
Han did so. Only Tian’s sharp reflexes kept the cup from flying over the wall. Han staggered and stumbled onto the ground, eyes rolling up and a crazed smile plastering across his face.
“It suddenly occurs to me that having you sniff the wine I got from the storage rings of Heavenly cultivators might not be the best idea. Ah well, we needed to build up your yang qi anyway.”
Tian gently pushed Han into a sitting position, then sat behind him. His cool hands pressed against the sweat-soaked back of the swaying youth. Funny. Han was probably only four years younger than him, or something like that anyway. He felt much younger to Tian.
“I’m going to take all that excess yang qi and start running it through your body. Just try to feel it. Don’t try to memorize it, just feel the flow.”
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Tian cycled the yang qi along a route he was dreadfully familiar with, leading it through the three dantians and through the young man’s limbs. Nurturing yang, but carefully expanding the ability of the flesh and bones to utilize internal energy. The body had to explode, yes, but also relax and recover. Internal Energy, what immortality cultivating Daoists called Vital Energy, was just the thing for that. The baptism of Yang Qi couldn’t turn a mortal into a cultivator, but Han would be a remarkably resilient mortal.
A fact which irritated Tian, for some reason. Adding to his irritation was the fact that Han had a remarkably good body for martial arts. No missing limbs, no damaged meridians, dantians in perfect working order- other than his inability to speak, the young man was disgustingly healthy.
Han couldn’t cultivate, but under the circumstances it seemed a minor matter. His life would be a mortal one, but he would grow a root, and in his next life he would cultivate immortality. Tian could see it plain as day. Why that was so irritating, he didn’t know. Some part of him insisted that talented youths should start in a garbage heap, or on fire, or suffering some other immense tragedy. “Raised by a loving mother in a decent city,” just didn’t cut it.
Han was panting hard, flushed red, with beads of sweat the size of beans rolling down his face. He probably couldn’t stand any more. He was certainly sober.
“And rest.” Han fell flat, laying on the courtyard, his mouth opening and silently gasping for air in a remarkable impression of a freshly landed carp. Tian smiled. He had been a bit worried his teaching wasn’t up to standard, but his student was already looking the same way Tian did when Voidcatcher was teaching him. He would have to add “Excellent Teacher” to his list of titles, right behind “Excellent Schemer.”
“That was the energy cycle for the Dragon Suppressing Palms. Believe me, you will have the route memorized soon enough. I’ll give you some time to recover.”
The sounds of the city could be faintly heard over the walls of the City Lord’s compound. The crickets in the bushes were far louder. Han was panting like a dog in summer, not quite beating out the noise of the crickets.
“Now that you have recovered,” Tian said, exactly ten breaths later, “Let’s move on to condensing your physique. This will sting a bit, but I’ve repeatedly weakened it so the side effects should be manageable. Strip off your robes, please, so we can start applying the ointment. It will form a nice base for the Solar Orange and Waxberry ointment we’ll be applying from tomorrow on.”
Han did not look properly appreciative. He was also very slow about taking off his robes and trousers. Clearly he didn’t understand that good things have their price. No matter. Tian was a generous sort of teacher. He’d use lots and lots of the ointment. After all, he had diluted it very thoroughly. It would be a shame if it wasn’t potent enough.
“You have burned up an enormous amount of yang qi. Your meridians have expanded a bit, your dantians are well nourished, it’s going to be that little bit easier for you to gather vital energy and qi in the future. But now your fleshy body is depleted. This is normal. We shall nourish your fleshy body with yin qi. This will improve muscle density, bone strength, flexibility, and improve skin tone. This is a heavily, heavily, heavily, heavily diluted version of the skincare ointment used by my teacher, incidentally, so the quality is guaranteed."
Han relaxed a little. Tian chuckled and started spreading it on. He was quite good at therapeutic massage. Han was silently groaning with relief.
“Sure, some people would find Teacher’s appearance upsetting, even frightening, but none of us can help the way we look, right? Teacher proves that beauty and charisma are not necessarily the same things. The library of women who still find him charming runs to so many log-book entries, even navigating the index requires memorizing a few ciphers. Really, he showed me. Amazing thing, given the horrific- Ah, there we go. I was worried I had diluted it too far.”
The sloppy face of happiness had turned into a frozen rictus of suffering. Tian wondered what it felt like for the youth. When he tried it, he thought it was a bit like frozen needles being punched through every pore of your skin. Unpleasant, but hardly the worst.
Tian never wondered if his pain tolerance wasn’t a little unusual. If asked, he would have said it was quite ordinary.
“Once we have worked this into every, and I do mean every, inch of your skin, we’ll let it soak in for a couple of minutes then do a little light sparring. Just to see where your boxing is at, and to help with absorption. A nice, easy day of training. Oh, and do come back this evening. We have some extra training to fit in. It’s not so easy, living. You have to work hard at it.”
It was a productive few hours. Tian wound up finding a servant with a wheelbarrow who was willing to take the young man to his quarters. Hanshen and his retinue were on the other side of the Governor's fortified compound, so it wasn’t anything too difficult. His student would be well rested for the evening’s tuition.
Liren returned from her errands around the city to find Tian cheerfully mixing up another batch of ointments.
“It’s surprisingly tricky to get it thinned out enough to be safe to use, but still tacky and absorbent enough to penetrate the skin.” Tian smiled at Liren, enjoying the way the sunset made her look like a bronze sculpture. “It’s been a fun little problem to solve.”
“Speaking of solving problems, I may have solved a few of ours. Possibly.”
Tian frowned. “We have a lot of problems.”
“Yes, we certainly do. And as ascetic as you are, “Have more stuff” is the solution to most of them.”
“Disagreeable. That’s true, but shame on you anyway.”
“Why shame on me?” Liren grinned, shamelessly.
“Because. What’s your solution?”
She snickered and held up four fingers. “Other than us, there are four Heavenly Realm cultivators based out of Burning Flag City. Redspear and Stonesplitter are representing the Blazing Dawn sect, and nobody’s seen or sensed them since they chased after the Grand Shaman.”
“Ominous, but I’m with you so far.”
“I’m trying not to dwell on the implications. Moving along, there is Daoist Sweetdove, a member of the Myriad Waters sect, which I found out is basically a glorified artists colony, and the heavily-implied-to-be-a-heretic Daoist Lian.”
“Oh, I didn’t forget about him,” Tian growled. “I just don’t care to be set up.”
“Funnily enough, he might actually be a heretic, and the object of the setup isn’t even him.”
“Oh?”
“He’s a guard, watching over a warehouse and handling the highest-end cultivation supplies. This is the closest city to Black Iron Gorge in the Kingdom. Lots and lots of trade comes through here. Lots of merchants had to transition out of the salt trade and into other goods.”
Was it Tian’s imagination, or was there a halo floating over Liren’s head? It had vanished a little while after their breakthrough, but he was sure he could see it now. She must be a saint, spreading blessings and joy as she traveled.
“The Long Clan Trading company, by ‘complete coincidence’ now owns and operates the former Jin family mansion, with all its attached facilities. Including a warehouse, storefront and moneylender. Feel like bringing honor to your teacher and comfort to your Dao Companion?”