The next day was… slow. Much as she wanted to imdiately leap into working on the technique, there were so certain things that had to be taken care of— howork, of course, a deluge of different assignnts all coming together to form an imnse cyclone of bother that she could not, unfortunately, escape, other minor things, social obligations…
It was not unenjoyable, not entirely. That, she would not be able to claim and still remain honest. It was simply… tedious. They cleaned the house of all the little bits of dirt and refuse that had built up over the course of a week, sweeping it out and airing out the slightly burnt-sll, echo of acrid smoke from that one dish she’d burnt earlier; she scrubbed down the walls of the bathroom while Avyr put the clothes to wash, she took a mont to reinforce the various formations she’d emplaced around while Avyr, in turn, tended to the winter remnants of their little garden…
It was a comfortable way to spend the ti, but not what she wanted to do. And so, all the while, she found her thoughts distracted by the possibility of what could be. There was so much that she could be doing, preparing, making… practicing, swordsmanship or formations or simply cultivating, and yet the mundanities of life caught up to her regardless. In such, she found a certain sort of inevitability…
At least it let her forget the urgency that gripped the city, if only for a small mont. That was so small relief…
Finally, after they finished wiping down the tables and putting away the dishes they’d washed after lunch, she found a free mont to herself. There was still howork that they’d have to complete later, but for the mont… she nodded farewell to Avyr, who padded back up to curl beside the couch, and stepped out into the snow.
It was not quite so bitterly cold, at last— a warm spell had co over the city. As warm as winter could be, for East Saffron at least— it was no spring, the trees were still denuded of their leaves and the whole world was still clasped in the unceasing, unforgiving grasp of winter; the grasp of seasons that not even the most powerful cultivators could deny. For a while, tired, she did not even bother trying to start what would no doubt be a complicated and rather difficult process; she just slipped out of their courtyard and onto the path, past, frozen streams and boughs burdened beneath the weighty loft of snow, stark against darkness, dark starkly. It was an entirely different kind of subtle beauty to the vast and empyrean darkness of night over east saffron, but it was none the less real; perhaps less profound, yet it still existed in the quiet mont of peace…
She passed out of their little neighborhood and, following the winding path, slunk quietly towards the university proper. She didn’t dare go towards the teahouse, even though she could have used a good cup of tea then— no, her current mood was far too poor to bear having to relive that place again. Instead, she made her way to the forest— one of the most peaceful places on all of campus, where even the inexorable advance of East Saffron’s industrial march faded, at first to a sort of liminal parkland, and then to a slice of true wilderness. Preserved, just for a mont… indefinitely, for the purpose that it served.
She could sense it. The array… it was beyond her, but she could sense it. It was enormous. A flowing of qi so utterly vast that it seed more to blend in with the natural world around her than anything; in the sa way a river could keep out an army or a mountain could block the sea, so too did the qi of the University’s great array both embrace nature and flow forth from it. Unnaturally natural.
She ca to a stop in hidden glade, not close to where her Qi Theory class was held, not close to the edge of the forest, not close to anything of any importance… surrounded, by oaks so achingly old that their boughs were laden with moss and the decrepit echoes of their vast age. They were so utterly different from the usual sort of trees; almost unfurled, titan fellows to those street trees and cramped farm-trees, and… the only ti she’d seen their like, outside of this small patch of forest, had been when she and Avyr had made their way to the heights of the Dragonspine Mountains, but even the boreal forests of there had been of a different character…
She leaned against the trunk of one, no closer to comprehending its nature that she had been before— hoary moss brushing against her back and crinkling, in ever-present echo of the frost. The forest was silent— it seed, in that mont, to hold its breath in anticipation of whatever may be.
She had a task to complete.
In a way, she was lucky; she already had the perfect technique for what she needed. That wasn’t an altogether common occurrence in the spheres of cultivation, she couldn’t imagine. Sure, the last ti she’d used the technique it’d been for an entirely different purpose, but it still held so of the sa fundantal similarities— the sa nature— that ensured it would be useful for what she wanted.
She did not actually use it imdiately, of course. That would be foolish. No, furthermore, it would be impossible. What she’d co here, so far from anything, so far into the wintertide and peace for, was to determine if she even could. Lily folded her legs underneath her, breathing in— the cold, the loamy scent, the decaying of leaves and the hint of bark, of moss, of vivacity writ in the virtuous cycle of qi through the natural world—
She closed her eyes, and opened her spirit.
It appeared as it always did, more or less; hazy and indistinct, with a pool of bloody qi in her diantian and her whole body echoed, still faintly, in its shadow. For a short while she just played with her qi, pulling it forth and kneading it into whatever form fit her fancy at the mont, pushing it around her body lightly before letting it spill from her ntal grasp and fall forth once more into the center of her self. It was easier than even the easiest of the cultivation techniques she’d practiced the day prior had been, so she didn’t worry about potentially damaging anything.
Then, when she was done playing, she turned her senses to the wound.
It was a faint and hard to define thing, as so many spiritual matters seed to be. Invisible at first, yet under careful inspection made apparent— not closer inspection, or even deeper inspection, but rather a sort of… sideways inspection. Like— looking at glass from a different angle, or peeling apart the folds of so fleshy fruit to find the color within, so did the terrible force of it beco apparent in that mont. It was a gouge, a vicious strip ripped out of her spirit, and even the re act of looking at it caused it to twinge in a half-hearted echo of pain. Like opening a wound. Not exactly the sa, but the base concept— she was sure— was familiar.
It was, still, better than it had been before. It didn’t hurt half so much, even aggravated beneath her gaze, and it was healing well— just by existing, just by continuing to draw her qi and continuing to live as she normally did, it was slowly sealing shut. Not even scabbing— perhaps under so caustic elent, or so vicious force, it would have scarred more harshly, but it was a very simple spiritual wound; it would be… two weeks, perhaps, at the latest, until it was fully healed as if it had never been there in the first place.
Which ant she had two weeks until she could do it again.
The echo of that agony pulled at sothing deep within her, but she paid it no heed. It was a necessary sacrifice. The only way to figure out how to make a technique was to carve it into her spirit, and the only way not to leave a permanent wound on her spirit was to carve it into sothing else. Which ant, that this technique was the best way forward. It had to be. Otherwise…
She pushed aside those thoughts, focusing instead on tracking just how much the wound had healed since she’d first inflicted it on herself. The spirit was a remarkably malleable and vivacious thing, and it healed with a great rapidity… but even then, it was not instant. By gauging the decrease over ti, by prodding at it, gently, with her qi…
She figured that, over the entire course of the sester, she would have at most three tries to complete her great work.
Three attempts, on the strictest of schedules— or failure
And failure wasn’t an option. Three attempts?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
She’d do it in one.
………
Over the course of the next two weeks, Lily threw herself into preparing for her first attempt with as much fervor as she’d ever poured into anything. It helped that it was a genuinely interesting project— there was so much depth to each and every little bit of the art of carving techniques into the spirit that she could lose herself for hours in the simplest of aspects. The Farr-King’s Purple-Colored Herb Tract was particularly useful in that regard, as it carried in its depth a truly astounding amount of esoteric information about specific thods of spiritual manipulation.
Unlike the others— she could scant even rember them, but for the faintest of impressions— the Tract spanned a huge breadth of thods rather than going deep on a single one, which was just what she needed.
She spent every free mont making diagrams, sketching out formations, calculating… not just for the usual dinsions of formations, not even just for the rather atypical four-dinsional structures that seed to have a role in the highest tiers of the art, but rather even further, into the furthest reaches of the theoretical and the highest vaults of the possible. The spirit was just so nebulous, so charged with infinite possibility that she couldn’t help but think that there had to be sothing special about it…
Well, that was obvious to start out with. Even the most advanced formations work she knew did not comport entirely with the spiritual. She knew— she’d read Mingtian’s book cover to cover and delved into it thrice over the course of the week, trying to pry out so further secret to the nature of how formations could possibly work in such a malleable environnt, and found nothing.
It ant that there was sothing missing, and wasn’t that exciting?
Avyr seed to recognize that she was busy with sothing, not often stopping by to chat, but when his inputs were surprisingly insightful. He seed to understand the thought-world of the spirit far better than she did… which, neatly enough, allowed her to refine her theories…
Diagrams covered her walls; her notebook was filled with mad scribbling and mathematical formulae that chased themselves in circles, leaping up to the most rarefied of heights before plumting just as fast to the chthonic depths of madness. She wrote out formations of such laughable madness that it seed like they would do nothing at all, and then further— formations almost twisted in how perverse it would be to place them in a spirit. It was all just so fascinating!
As the two weeks ca to a close, though, from the morass of possibility she picked out a single, fierce technique that she thought had the greatest possibility of success. Built around the shape of the blood rune— twisted over and around itself in a complicated way that all but defied description, a thod that she’d gotten from the Tract— it should, in theory, be a very good shape to make a ridian out of. In theory. Just as importantly, the technique would also answer a few of her most pressing questions— it would, in theory, answer how qi was compressed by ridians, and also how it was aspected.
In theory.
As the last day drew to a close, and the presence of the wound in her spirit dwindled to nothing, she was utterly beset with nervous anticipation. She could hardly focus in class— Xinshi of all people called her out on being wrong about a certain formation, which was beyond embarrassing— so excited was she to finally see the fruits of what she’d worked so hard on. The mont her last class was finished, she raced back, skidding to a stop in their— at this point sowhat rather ssy from two weeks of mad preparation— kitchen, literally bouncing in earnest excitent.
Avyr glanced over from where he was stirring up the base of a… stew? Of a stew, an amused look on his face. “Finally ti?”
“Finally ti!”
“You’re still not going to tell what you’re doing?”
“It’s a surprise!”
The big cat huffed in amusent, flicking an ear. “Fine. Well, when you’re done with whatever it is you’re doing, I’ll have so soup ready for you. I got those starchy vegetables that you so very much liked, and I’ve—”
“Thank you!” She threw herself at the cat, sweeping him up into a hug— or trying to at least, more just sliding off his immovable body— giggling. Swept up in, at the sa ti, a relief… the worst of her worries faded away. Succeed or fail, she would still have Avyr waiting for her at the end. “Thank you.” Heartfelt, this ti, so much more heartfelt…
Avyr nuzzled against her for a mont, purring contentedly. “Go. I look forward to… whatever crazy thing it is that you’re up to this ti.”
Everything was ready. She was as ready as she was always going to be.
It was ti.
She gave Avyr one last pet between the ears, then slipped away, bouncing out the door and settling down in the courtyard. She’d have rather been on the roof, but if her experience from the first ti she’d tried the technique was any indication, she’d probably just fall off again. No, it was better that she stayed firmly planted on solid ground.
With a faint empowernt of qi, she swept aside the snow at the very heart of the courtyard, where the flows of qi were most at peace with themselves. It was the most auspicious location to cultivate, of that she was sure.
One by one, then, she set down the small tablets she’d prepared. It had almost felt nostalgic, returning to carving on stone— but this ti it was far more whole. Bright crimson youqi lacquer had been carefully filled into the swooping lines of each character and rune and formation-connection, the spiritual materials that had gone into the lacquer’s creation facilitating the transfer of energy and connecting it, if only faintly, to the concept of blood. To the deep yin connection.
On top of that, she carefully placed nine and one talismans, each positioned at precise points to order and by the spiritual energies of the ritual be ordered. Then, slowly, on the ground she drew an intricate web of interconnecting sigils and runes, a complex, modified three-dinsional rune that should make the whole experience far more stable than the ad-hoc scattering of different papers and talismans that the previous formation had been.
Finally, the last component. Herself. She settled down into the center of the ritual, adopting a ditative pose. Despite the cold, the next part she did carefully— precisely folding her fingers into the exact handseal that had first facilitated her spirit severing formation. She breathed in, and centered herself between heaven and earth, between fate and human effort, between past and a future of her own making. Then, she bowed her head, whispered a prayer to no immortal in particular, and activated the formation with a pulse of qi.
The pain was imdiate, and just as agonizing as the last ti. This ti, though, she didn’t have a formation to conveniently do all the work for her, so she pushed past it, grasping the tiny fluttering scrap of her spirit as it was severed from the greater whole, holding it close and marveling at the beauty of it. Like the most exquisite of butterflies, captured just for a mont.
Then, before it could dissipate and render all her efforts wasted, she struck.
The technique was one she’d practiced extensively. As much was physically possible, without actually having sothing to practice on. It was not quite second nature— no, two weeks was too short even for that lofty goal, but even with the clumsy control of a Shedding Cultivator it was simple enough to just— grasp the qi and thread it into the proper shape. As her spirit touched the not-spirit, freed from the difficulties of controlling qi outside of herself, it just— bored through.
Imdiately, she could tell that sothing was wrong.
She didn’t know what, but she could tell that it was wrong. Everything that she’d planned for had worked, more or less. It condensed the qi neatly enough, it aspected it well to that bloody-saffron bloody hue, it drew strongly at the qi of the world— but it just…
She couldn’t explain it.
It wasn’t stable.
Driven more by a sudden intuition of danger than anything else, just as the qi draw started to wobble, she cast it away from her— flinging it beyond the burning talismans and circle of the formation, out into the nothingness— where it exploded with a clap of sound and ethereal light. The impact of it, even separated by such a distance— punched her hard, knocking her onto her back and leaving her dazzled and dazed.
That had…
That…
Sothing had gone wrong, and she wasn’t even sure what. It was unexpectedly frustrating. For a long mont she just lied there, beneath the sunset hue, head still ringing in the aftermath of… that, just blindly groping for a reason as to why it’d gone wrong. Failing, still, to find one.
Finally, still stunned that it had gone wrong, she sighed and pushed herself up— wincing at the still sore wound in her spirit. What a ss…
At least she had a good stew waiting for her inside.
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