Day two began with ditation.
Which was Han’s polite way of saying "I’m going to wake everyone up at ass o’clock and make them sit on the ground while contemplating existence."
Hunter watched from his bedroll as Han moved through camp. Quiet. Patient. Sohow more terrifying than yelling. People just obeyed like he had so kind of invisible authority radiating from his very presence. Got up. Sat down. Ford a circle. No complaints. No argunts.
Maybe he did have a technique for that. Cultivation was weird enough that Hunter wouldn’t be surprised if there was so obscure manual titled "Supre Art of Making People Do What You Want Through Vibes Alone."
"You too," Han said, looking directly at Hunter.
"I’m Foundation Realm. Pretty sure I graduated from ditation 101 when I skipped through Body Refining like it was on fast forward."
"Your foundation is terrible. You advanced too fast without proper tempering. Like building a house in a week and wondering why it has cracks everywhere." Han’s tone allowed zero argunt, the kind of voice that made mountains reconsider their geological positions. "Sit."
Hunter sat. The "Han voice" had spoken. Resistance was futile and possibly life-threatening.
[LUNA] HE’S VERY BOSSY (◕‿◕✿)
"Just noticing this now?"
[LUNA] YOU’RE VERY OBEDIENT
"He has a spear and I’m tired. Pick your battles, Luna."
[LUNA] WISE CHOICE ♥
The ditation circle ford around them. Everyone looking confused but willing, like students at a pop quiz they hadn’t studied for and couldn’t cheat on. Han walked around, fixing postures with gentle taps of his spear. Teaching mode fully activated.
"How do you breathe from your dantian?" Little Sparrow asked, his voice carrying genuine eight-year-old confusion. "That’s not where lungs are. Lungs are up here." He gestured at his chest.
"You’re not breathing air. You’re circulating qi through your ridians." Han paused, actually considering how to explain sothing that felt obvious to cultivators but mystifying to everyone else. "Think of it like water flowing through channels in the ground. You’re not pushing it with force. You’re opening pathways and letting it move naturally."
"I don’t feel water. I feel sleepy and my butt hurts from sitting on rocks."
"Then sit quietly and practice discipline. Cultivation is consistency over ti, not dramatic breakthrough monts every five minutes."
"That sounds boring."
"Cultivation is frequently boring. That’s why most people quit."
Hunter closed his eyes. Tried to ditate properly. His qi moved easily now, flowing through his ridians like it had always belonged there. Foundation Realm perks kicking in automatically. But underneath the smooth flow, his ridians felt rough. Unrefined. Like roads with potholes that worked but made the ride uncomfortable.
Luna’s fault. Rushed him through Body Refining in weeks. What should have taken years of careful tempering happened in "let’s speedrun this entire realm because deadlines are a thing and survival doesn’t wait for proper cultivation technique."
His cultivation base was functional but janky. Like a car that ran fine but made concerning noises when you accelerated too hard and probably shouldn’t be trusted on long trips.
[LUNA] YOUR RIDIANS ARE HEALING NICELY (◕‿◕✿)
[LUNA] SOUL DAMAGE FROM ALPHA FIGHT IS RECOVERING
[LUNA] CURRENTLY AT HALFWAY RECOVERED
"That’s because I stopped using techniques that nearly destroyed my soul, Luna."
[LUNA] SMART CHOICE ♥
[LUNA] MOST CULTIVATORS HAVE IMPERFECT FOUNDATIONS
[LUNA] YOU JUST HAVE YOURS EARLIER IN THE PROCESS
[LUNA] PLUS YOURS IS HEALING
[LUNA] THAT’S ACTUALLY IMPRESSIVE
Hunter wasn’t sure if that was comforting or depressing. Probably both. The story of his entire cultivation journey summarized in one confusing emotional state.
Twenty minutes later, Han called ti. "That’s enough for now. You won’t feel dramatic changes after one session. Cultivation is a marathon, not a sprint. Small daily progress compounds over months and years into real power."
"How long did it take you to reach Peak Body Refining?" Chen Lao asked with genuine curiosity.
"Twenty years."
The number hung in the air like a physical weight. Twenty years with a trash manual he didn’t know was trash. Hunter felt that knowledge sitting heavy in his chest like a stone he couldn’t swallow.
How do you tell soone they wasted two decades following bad instructions? That their failure wasn’t their fault?
You don’t. You fix it quietly later and never ntion the wasted ti. So wounds don’t need salt poured in them.
Qiu appeared with breakfast, manifesting like a rchant ghost. Dried at that tasted like regret and poor life choices. Hard bread that required aggressive chewing and possibly jaw strengthening exercises. Water that was just water but sohow felt disappointing after everything else.
"Eat fast. We leave in ten." Qiu sat beside Hunter without asking permission. "Sleep well?"
"No. Kept waking up. Forest feels wrong sohow."
"It is wrong." Qiu gestured at the trees with a piece of bread. "Listen carefully."
Hunter listened. Heard nothing. Wind rustling leaves. That’s it. Just wind.
Wait.
"Where are the birds?" Qiu asked, reading his realization.
Oh. Right. No birds. No insects buzzing. No animal sounds at all. Just empty forest silence pressing in from all sides. Like walking through a museum after hours where everything was present but fundantally wrong in ways that made your skin crawl.
Yesterday there had been distant calls. The normal sounds of wilderness existing. Now? Nothing. Just silence and wind.
"Animals avoid corrupted areas," Qiu continued, rchant instincts reading territories through experience rather than qi sense. "They’re smarter than us. We walk toward danger because we’re idiots with goals and destinations. They just leave."
"That’s depressingly accurate."
"Been a rchant thirty years. You learn to read territories without cultivation senses." Qiu pulled out his ledger, the worn pages covered in decades of notes and observations. "Empty forests an sothing scared everything away. Sothing that kills or corrupts or just makes the world itself sick."
"What scared them away?"
"Sothing that kills. Sothing that corrupts. Sothing that poisons the natural qi flow." Qiu’s expression went serious in a way that made Hunter’s stomach drop like a stone. "I knew a rchant once. Good guy. Ignored the signs because his schedule was tight. Found his caravan three days later. Just wagons and blood and things that used to be people."
Hunter’s stomach dropped further, hitting theoretical basent levels. "What happened?"
"Demonic cultivators. Used them as cultivation resources to boost their own power." Qiu’s voice went flat, emotionless in the way that ant too many emotions to process safely. "Sect found the camp eventually. What they saw..." He shook his head. "So things change you. Seeing that changes you permanently."
"You saw it yourself?"
"Helped identify bodies. rchant guild duty when mbers go missing." Qiu t his eyes. "That’s when I learned the most important lesson. Information is currency. Rumors save lives. And when the forest goes quiet, you run away from whatever made it quiet."
"We can’t run. Waystation is straight ahead."
"Then we walk fast and hope we’re dealing with old corruption instead of active threats."
"What’s the difference?"
"Old corruption ans sothing terrible happened here and left or died. Active ans it’s still here sowhere. Waiting. Hungry. Looking for new victims." Qiu stood, dusting bread crumbs from his robes. "Either way, we move quickly."
The conversation settled in Hunter’s gut like lead weights. Great. Walking through murder forest that might contain active monsters who used people as living batteries for power. This was fine. Everything was fine. Nothing to worry about except literally everything.
Han called for departure. Formation assembled. Fifteen people ready to move. One direction. Three days to safety.
Assuming safety existed at the end. Big assumption.
They moved out.
The forest swallowed them imdiately. Thicker today. Darker. Less light penetrating the canopy, like the trees themselves were closing in deliberately. Hunter’s spiritual sense stretched automatically. Foundation Realm instincts searching for threats.
Found sothing worse. Found whatever the opposite of threats was. Anti-threats. Negative space where life used to be. Absence that felt like presence.
His spiritual sense touched the ambient qi and recoiled instinctively. Like sticking your hand in sothing cold and slimy and wrong on levels that bypassed logic and went straight to primal revulsion.
What the hell is that?
"You feel it?" Han asked quietly from beside him.
"Hard not to. Feels like... I don’t know. Bad. Everything just feels fundantally bad."
"That’s corrupted qi. Natural energy that’s been twisted for purposes it wasn’t ant for." Han’s voice shifted into teaching mode. Patient. Explanatory. Like he was describing sothing he’d heard about rather than experienced directly. "Close your eyes. Try to sense it more clearly. Not aggressively. Just let your spiritual sense observe without forcing it."
"While walking? That seems incredibly unsafe."
"I’ll guide you. Trust ."
Hunter closed his eyes despite every instinct screaming this was stupid. Imdiately felt vulnerable. Exposed. Like walking blindfolded through a knife factory.
"Don’t search for anything," Han said, voice calm and steady. "Just open your senses. Let the qi co to you instead of chasing it."
Hunter stopped trying to actively find anything. Just existed with eyes closed and spiritual sense open and receptive.
Then it hit him like a physical blow.
Cold that had nothing to do with temperature. A feeling like touching at that had gone rotten but looked fine on the surface. His ridians contracted instinctively, trying to protect themselves. His dantian went cold. Physical revulsion to sothing spiritually wrong on levels his Foundation Realm senses could barely comprehend.
But there was sothing else underneath the corruption. A presence. Like predator scent marking territory. Sothing that said "I was here. I killed here. This place belongs to now."
His eyes snapped open. "Okay. What the fuck was that?"
"Demonic cultivation. Blood Path techniques, probably." Han’s expression was grim. "Soone’s been using human victims nearby. Draining life force or blood qi or worse. Their corrupted energy stained the area. Left a mark that doesn’t fade quickly."
"A stain. On reality itself."
"On the qi that flows through everything, yes." Han paused, uncertainty entering his voice. "At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Peak Body Refining doesn’t give you the complete picture. I’m just repeating what I heard from sect cultivators passing through. Higher realm cultivators probably understand the chanics better. But from what I know, the killing intent and corrupted energy soaked into everything. Trees. Ground. Air. Animals feel it instinctively even without cultivation. That’s why they fled."
Hunter’s brain tried to process that information. Failed. This world kept getting worse in new and creative ways that violated everything he thought he understood. "Killing intent can do that? Just soak into the environnt?"
"When it’s strong enough and concentrated enough, supposedly." Han’s voice stayed uncertain, like he was sharing rumors rather than facts. "From what I’ve heard, Blood Path cultivators leak corrupted qi constantly. Can’t help it once the corruption takes root in their cultivation base. The tainted energy changes them physically and spiritually. Makes them crave violence like an addiction. And the more they kill, the stronger their intent becos. The stronger it becos, the more they need to kill to feel satisfied. Vicious cycle that ends badly."
"That’s absolutely horrifying."
"Yes. It is." Han glanced at him. "Though I’m just guessing based on stories from sect mbers. Could be more to it at higher cultivation realms. Foundation Realm and above probably sense these things differently with stronger spiritual senses."
"Great. So we’re walking through murder forest with incomplete information and no real understanding of what we’re dealing with."
"Welco to cultivation. Nobody tells you everything. Information is hoarded like treasure. Knowledge is power, so sects keep it locked away."
They walked in silence. The forest got progressively worse with every step forward. Trees looked diseased. Bark peeling off in long strips like dead skin. Leaves the wrong color, brown and black instead of healthy green. Like soone had turned down the saturation on reality itself.
The wood had black veins running through it. Not natural black wood grain. Wrong black. Corruption black. Like infection spreading through living tissue, poisoning everything it touched.
"See that?" Qiu appeared beside them again. "Black veins in the bark. Spiritual corruption seeping into the roots through the ground. Kills trees slowly over months. Poisons the soil."
"How do you know that? You’re relatively new to cultivation."
"Recently gained cultivation, yes," Qiu corrected patiently. "But before that, thirty years as a rchant traveling everywhere. Information is survival in my business. These signs..." He gestured at the diseased trees with one hand. "This is what demonic cultivation does to the natural world. Poisons it. Corrupts it. Leaves scars that take decades to heal if they heal at all. The traders who survive these areas tell stories. I listened. Information saved my life more than once."
"Comforting to know we’re in the ’leaves permanent scars’ zone."
"I don’t do comforting. I do ’still breathing and planning to stay that way,’ which is objectively better than the alternative."
The air slled wrong too. Sweet and tallic mixed together unnaturally. Like copper pennies dissolved in sothing rotting. Hunter’s stomach turned. He’d slled blood before during fights. This was blood plus sothing worse. Blood plus the mory of screaming. Blood plus lingering terror from people who died badly and slowly.
His throat felt tight. Hard to breathe properly. "Is it always this obvious when areas are corrupted?"
"No. This is bad. Prolonged exposure over ti. Multiple victims probably." Qiu’s face had gone tight and pale. "Whatever happened here, it happened repeatedly. This wasn’t one incident. This is systematic operation. Soone set up here deliberately."
Systematic. Clinical word for sothing horrific that Hunter’s imagination was supplying images for. Images he desperately didn’t want. People in cages. Cultivation techniques that required screaming victims. Blood arts that needed fresh sources constantly.
Stop. Don’t think about it. Keep walking. Focus on survival.
But the corrupted qi pressed in from all sides. Thick. Oppressive. Like walking through invisible sludge that clung to spiritual senses and wouldn’t let go.
His Foundation Realm cultivation protected him sowhat. Kept the worst effects at bay. But he could feel it trying to seep in through tiny cracks. Trying to find weakness. Trying to corrupt anything it touched.
This was going to be a very long day.
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