Tian charged the beast, and the beast met him with a lunge. Paws spread wide, sharp claws coming for his shoulders. Tian shifted right, then countered with an elbow to the head. The elbow landed on coarse fur, making the beast snarl but seemingly doing no damage. It hopped back, then forward again, swiping with a paw. He could hardly see the paw move, but the jumping games were carved into his bones by now- he kept moving. Every time his feet touched the ground, he shifted. It was giving the animal fits.
Tian shoved off his front foot, cutting an angle to the left, then with an explosive shove from his back foot, kicked the beast in the ribs. A big stomp of a kick. This time he felt things break, like thin branches woven inside flesh.
The beast exploded with fury. Wide paws came smashing out, claws whipping at his face, the beast shifting even faster than Tian could manage. He could feel them raking along his flanks, trying to set themselves in his legs or guts. The boy pushed himself as hard as he could dodging, smashing out with elbows and knees, trying to get distance.
The animal whipped a paw around and caught the loose poncho Tian wore as both shirt and jacket, ripping it half off him. Tian slipped out and flipped the cloth over the animal’s head. In the moment it was blind, he darted in and got on the animal’s back. He got his arm around its neck, trying to choke it out like he did the wolf back in the junkyard.
This was no sick animal though. It rolled over, tried to twist in his arms, tried to claw at him with its hind legs and scored his thighs with long tears. The broken ribs were badly holding it back, the animal unable or unwilling to put pressure on them. And Tian was much, much stronger than he was a year ago. The python arms slowly tightened as his legs squeezed around the broken ribs. They tumbled over and over on the ground, sticks and rocks tearing them up. Tian didn’t let go. He was used to fighting through the pain. The beast wasn’t.
It just took time and a furious will. When the beast hadn’t twitched for a long time, Tian finally rolled off. He could withstand pain. But he was also in quite a lot of it.
Time to teach you how to make a fire and boil water, I think. Your body resists infection extremely well at this point, but it’s only a resistance, not an immunity. Let’s see if some of the plants around here can be used to clean wounds and heal you faster. Good job, Tian. Very good job.
“Thank you Grandpa. What was that?”
A cat.
“A what?”
A cat. It’s a type of animal. This one was on the bigger side of small, so locals might call it a bobcat or something. People keep smaller ones around the house to kill rodents or as a kind of animal friend. There are people who form bonds with much, much bigger ones and use them as battle companions. There are even ways to cultivate various aspects of a cat within one’s self, a sort of cat-body modification, or cultivation path, or summoning an ancestral spirit. Cats are popular, is what I am trying to say.
“Oh. Can I use any of that?”
Now? No. Also you can do so, so much better. I just thought you might like to know. Incidentally, grab that big leaf right there. No, the- yeah, that one. Alright, now, go over to that tree. I’m seeing some promising looking moss.
Tian was dripping blood everywhere, but there was nothing he could do about it. Grandpa Jun introduced all sorts of different plants- most useless, but some could be combined to make a blood clotting paste, or to clean a wound from infection. It was interesting, but he just wished Grandpa would stop going on and on about how terrible it all was.
If it worked, it was good. Maybe there was a divine nine-colored sunflower or whatever out there somewhere. But for right now, he was alive. And apparently, a combination of Iron Thread Grass and Bitterwort made an adequate healing salve.
It was a long process, but Tian wasn’t bored. The dripping blood and burning pain kept him motivated. Afterwards, he would have to butcher and skin the cat, then process it. No time to tan the hide- it would have to be abandoned. It felt wrong. The hide was in perfect condition.
Tian laughed a little, wincing. “Funny. I used to be the one amazed at what people throw out, and now I’m throwing out perfectly good fur and bones.”
Get used to it. We can’t hang around carelessly. Bigger predators will come following the smell. We don’t need to hide from humans out here and can risk a fire. I’ll teach you now.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Grandpa Jun taught Tian how to make a fire. How to make a bow drill and carefully, after many failures, nurture an ember. The tiny spark landed on some shaved wood and Tian’s gentle breaths blew it into a flame. The little flame was enough to light a tiny stick, and then a few more tiny sticks. Then bigger sticks. A steady fire, burning on a flat rock. Tian stared at it for a long time, feeling the heat of it. For some reason, the fire scared him.
You were very badly burned when we first met. You are still covered in burned skin. I don’t know what happened, exactly, but you were clearly in a terrible fire. But look- this is the fire you made. You control it. You breathed life into it, and without you feeding it, it will die. And you can use it to do magical things. Grab that big green leaf and some of the bark twine.
Tian hung the leaf over the fire and filled it with water from his water skin. Then he ground up the Iron Grass and Bitterwort between two stones, making a rough paste of it. Once the water started to bubble and steam, he added the paste to the leaf.
You would think the leaf would burn. If there was no water in it, it would burn. But now, the water boils first, drawing the heat from the leaf. It’s not magic. It’s the rules. A four rock rule, and you don’t even really need to understand the why behind the what. It works. And using that, you can take two things that don’t do anything much individually, boil them into a thick paste, let it dry into a cake, grind that cake as smooth as you can, mix with a tiny amount of water to make another paste, smear it over the tear in your side, and then your wounds are going to heal up well. Not perfectly. But well. And once you do understand the why behind the what, you can apply that rule to thousands of other things.
“Grandpa, is this what you mean by reforging my body?”
Sort of. It’s what I mean by “cultivation.”
Tian watched the paste bubble in the leaf. Thinking about his fight with the cat. It would be great if he could just poke things to kill them. It was hard for him to hold sticks and knives, so weapons didn’t do much for him. He had both his index fingers and thumbs and most of his right pinky and some of the stubs were around where the first knuckle should be, so that should be enough for a pokey-killy power. He rubbed his head. He might as well dream of being able to regrow his fingers. Maybe they would come back when he reforged his body.
The paste was processed and allowed to cool. It stung when it went on, but then the weeping cuts stopped bleeding and the pain eased. Tian couldn’t stop smiling.
And now that you have learned a little about boiling, let’s teach you the old camping classic- roasting meat. You can expect to burn it, and cat meat isn’t very nice, but… get ready for a lot of new tastes. You are going to love it. Cooked food is a whole new world.
Tian did burn the first few pieces, but he didn’t care. The smell drilled its way into his nostrils and started hammering nerves he didn’t know existed. It smelled delicious. Tian tore into it, his few good teeth ripping away the stringy flesh and his tongue delighted in the way the charred outside danced with the sour meat. Everything was new and wonderful and so, so filling. It warmed him up from the inside out, in a way that Grandpa’s hugs had only ever done before.
“Grandpa, can we do this with rotten plants too?”
Fresh is better. Welcome to cooking. I think you are going to love what you make. Grandpa Jun sounded like he was smiling and sad at the same time. Tian didn’t know why.
“Is this also cultivation?”
Yes.
“And killing the cat?”
That too.
“The jumping games? Elbow, Knees and Toes?”
All cultivation, as I define it. Almost nobody agrees with me, mind you. Some would even be very offended if you said it was. But to me, it’s cultivation.
“Why?”
Because there are ten thousand paths to The Absolute, so ultimately, what is the form? It is nothing. So if the form is meaningless, then what is cultivation? It is the cultivation of one’s self.
Cultivation is understanding oneself by understanding the universe. Flying swords, demon summoning, internal and external alchemy, formation mastery, martial arts, all are simply roadside flowers. To be studied and used, but never confused for the journey itself, or the destination.
“Grandpa… I don’t understand any of that.”
It would be strange if you did. But you will. Finish eating and clean up. It’s time to be moving. I was hoping to move at night, but we can’t stay here any longer.
The two set out quickly. Tian was shocked at how different everything looked in the daylight. All the greens and browns blur into the shade under the wide trees, then suddenly you were blinded by the sun in a clearing, surrounded by tall, wild grasses coming up where some mighty ancient of the forest fell. Then blinded by the shadows once again as you dove back into the land between the trees.
“Maybe this is cultivation,” Tian thought. He hoped it was. How wonderful must cultivation be if it was like this?
It was close to sunset when he heard a familiar “WAO!” Far louder this time, and coming from right behind him. He didn’t think. He just dove behind a tree and came up facing the noise.
It was another cat, but twenty times the size of the bobcat. Black and green stripes, and the character for King on its forehead.
Tiger! It’s too much for you. Run!
Tian kicked dirt in the tiger’s face, spun and ran.
The tiger roared, and he could feel the breath of it coming behind him. Tian zig-zagged between trees, trying to slow the beast’s charge. No use, the tiger was even more agile than he was. There was a clearing ahead, he could smell water. Maybe the tiger would be scared of water? He got his head down and squeezed every bit of speed he could out of his body.
The boy dashed into the sunlight and stopped sharp. There was a river- far below him. The clearing was the edge of a cliff. The tiger burst out of the forest, barely two seconds behind him. No time to think. He ran to the cliff’s edge, intending to climb down.
The rock crumbled under his feet. Tian felt the world slow down. He had lots of time to feel himself spin around, clawing at the cliff, as the Tiger slammed to a stop. Its wide paws kicked up a wave of dirt as it slid forward. And then Tian’s eyes slid under the cliff’s edge.
A frantic second of scrabbling at the cliff face. Thrashing wildly in the air, clawing for a miracle. Then a brutal hit, knocking the wind out of him.
When Tian came to, he was hanging like a towel over a little tree trunk growing out of the cliff. Something smelled amazing.
With agonizing care, Tian climbed onto the thin tree. It was a tough, scraggly thing, twisted and gnarled by its living conditions. The smell was coming from near the roots. He climbed over and gently parted the dirt. The smell got stronger and stronger- earthy, rich, organic in a way he associated with meat more than plants. He reached into the hole and pulled out a black, rough sphere half the size of his fist. It felt alive, almost like it was throbbing in his hand.