Jiang’s shoulder hit the frozen earth hard enough to make his teeth rattle. He spat out a clump of snow and dirt, glaring up at Mistress Bai, who stood over him looking completely unimpressed.
“Again,” she ordered.
“What’s the point?” Jiang grunted, pushing himself to one knee. “I’m clearly too slow at using this technique. I could’ve hit you twice over if I wasn’t busy folding my Qi into knots.”
Mistress Bai flicked her wrist. A small orb of pale light leapt from her palm and struck him cleanly in the chest. It didn’t hurt much, but it was enough to make the point – the technique had been formed and fired in the space of an eyeblink.
“Hitting me ‘twice over’, as you put it, is pointless if those strikes do nothing,” she said. “Speed with techniques will come with practice. Try again.”
He grimaced, settling back into the stance Li Xuan had been drilling into him. “Why not let me actually practice, then, instead of hitting me every time I get close to using this stupid technique?”
“You think an enemy will wait until you are prepared before attacking?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “Besides, this way I get something from this training as well. Namely, enjoyment.”
Jiang would have complained again, but the last time he’d tried that, she’d just shrugged and sent him over to be smacked around by Li Xuan some more, claiming he wasn’t ‘mentally prepared’ for her instruction.
It seemed to be a favoured tactic of hers whenever she wanted to avoid difficult conversations. She still hadn’t answered his question about why she was sticking around, and he’d quickly learned there was no point in pushing the matter.
He gathered some Qi from his dantian, pulling a thread of it through his meridians. The pattern of this technique was simple enough – three turns, one compression, one release – but his mental grasp felt clumsy and the pattern kept slipping through his fingers whenever he lost even the slightest bit of concentration. It was like the usual ease with which he controlled his Qi escaped him as soon as he tried locking it into a structure – and even further, it felt almost like the Pact was working against him when he did it.
Frustrating didn’t even begin to describe it.
Fortunately for his dwindling patience, Mistress Bai seemed content to hold off on randomly attacking him to ‘test his concentration’ this time.
A wobbly light blue orb of Qi formed, hovering above his hand. It was clearly unstable around the edges, but depressingly enough, that was still an improvement for him. Jiang pushed it forward. It drifted off-course, missing her by a hand’s width before fading out.
He sighed, letting his shoulders drop. “I still don’t see why I can’t use my actual affinity for this. What’s the point of using ‘unaspected’ Qi if it just makes things harder for me?”
“The point is to learn how to fully control all aspects of your Qi,” Mistress Bai rolled her eyes. “Trust me, having a rare affinity sounds good until you realise that nobody has bothered to make any techniques for it. Learning to strip your affinities from your Qi will allow you to use techniques designed for different Qi types – though, of course, it will be significantly less efficient and powerful.”
Jiang grunted. He hated it when she made sense. It made it much harder to complain about the work.“What affinity do you have?” he asked, curious.
Mistress Bai laughed. “You don’t honestly expect me to answer that, do you?”
Jiang shrugged. “Why not?”
“Knowing my affinity allows you to roughly predict what kinds of techniques I could have. It means you can prepare things in advance to use against me.”
Jiang resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It seemed a little paranoid to him – knowing her affinity wouldn’t change the fact that she could likely squash him flat without breaking a sweat – but he didn’t actually care enough to argue the point.
He let the unaspected Qi dissipate, the wobbly sphere vanishing into nothing. “Fine. Keep your secrets. But answer me this – why does it feel so unnatural to keep the Qi static? Is that just a Pact thing, or is it normal?”
“Define ‘unnatural’,” she said, settling back onto the log.
“When I watch ambient Qi – in the air, in the ground, whatever – it’s always moving. Flowing. Even when it’s pooled somewhere, it has a… current. But these techniques you’re trying to teach me, they all require me to lock it down. Freeze it into a shape. It feels like fighting the tide.”
Mistress Bai nodded slowly. “An astute observation. Most disciples don’t notice that until they hit the Core Formation realm, if they ever notice it at all. To answer your question: no, it is not just a ‘Pact thing’. It is a human thing.”
Jiang frowned. “What does being human have to do with it?”
“Everything,” she said. “Look at a spirit beast. A Flame-tailed Fox doesn’t need to learn ‘techniques’ to breathe fire. It simply does it. Its Qi channels are formed from birth to allow that specific expression of power. It is instinctual, fluid, and perfectly aligned with its nature. It is, as you say, moving.”
“So why don’t we just do that?”
“Because we aren’t beasts,” she said simply. “We are born blank slates. Our meridians are adaptable, but inefficient. If a human tried to move Qi with the same raw, instinctual force as a spirit beast, they would likely burn themselves out from the inside before they ever managed to manifest an external effect.”
“Wouldn’t that mean it feels more natural to keep our Qi static then?”
Mistress Bai chuckled. “Not at all. You see, it isn’t just keeping our Qi static that feels unnatural. Affecting our Qi in any manner feels unnatural – but natural Qi is never static, so it feels slightly less unnatural to move it around. That’s why it’s so difficult to become a cultivator, why we struggle so much to advance. Humanity was never meant to use Qi. Why do you think we call cultivation ‘defying the Heavens’?”
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Jiang just stared at her. The words hit him with a weight he hadn’t expected. He thought back to right after he’d ignited his dantian, all those months ago.
It hadn’t felt like a fight. It had felt like... breathing. Like something he’d forgotten how to do. Even now, moving his shadows felt as natural as flexing a muscle.
“It doesn’t,” he said, his voice quiet.
Mistress Bai raised an eyebrow, her expression unreadable. “It doesn’t what?”
“It doesn’t feel unnatural. Not for me.” He looked down at his hand, where the shadows were already starting to stir again, reacting to his stray thought. “It’s the Pact, isn’t it?”
She nodded, a faint, almost clinical smile touching her lips. “Exactly. In that, you are far more like a spirit beast than a human. Your connection to your Patron... it bypasses the fundamental barrier. The ‘unnaturalness’ of it all. Your meridians are already attuned, your Qi already knows its purpose. It’s why you advance at a rate that others find terrifying. It is an advantage so profound most cultivators cannot even comprehend it.”
Jiang frowned. “You say that like it’s a good thing, but Li Xuan said it was a leak, a lack of control.”
“It is both,” she replied patiently. “You have the instinct of a beast, but not its inherent limitations. As other cultivators advance, as they spend decades, even centuries, mastering their own power, their Qi slowly attunes to them. It becomes an extension of their body. A cultivator at my realm, or Li Xuan’s, can begin to use free-form manipulation because our Qi has finally, after a lifetime of effort, learned to respond to our will. You... you are doing at the first realm what most cannot even attempt until they have formed their Core. And you are doing it by accident.”
“But that is only half of the equation,” she continued, steepling her fingers. “Spirit beasts have this instinctual power, yet they do not rule the world. Why?”
Jiang thought about it. “Because they... don’t work together?”
“Partially. But mostly, it is because they cannot learn. Not in the way we do. A beast’s knowledge is born and dies with it. A human’s knowledge can be passed down. Written. Refined.”
She held up her hand again, and the small, pale orb of light reappeared, stable and perfect. “This simple, weak technique is the product of ten thousand years of refinement. It is the accumulated wisdom of countless cultivators, all building on the work of those who came before. That is the human advantage. Structure. Discipline. Legacy.”
“A truly powerful spirit beast,” she said, her gaze turning sharp, “one that lives for millennia, might learn to fight with a power and skill that dwarfs any human. But it is one beast. Humans have millions.”
She let the orb of light fade. “You, Cultivator Jiang, have the best of both worlds. You have the raw, instinctual attunement of a beast, and you have access to the structured, refined legacy of humanity.”
She stood up, brushing a stray leaf from her robes. “To rely only on your instinct is to be nothing more than a clever animal. To disdain structured techniques... is to waste the single greatest potential of your Pact.”
Jiang looked back down at his feet, where his shadows were already beginning to stir again. He was getting the sinking feeling that his advantages wouldn’t let him avoid hard work nearly as much as he’d hoped. Not that he was averse to hard work per se, but having the opportunity to avoid it would have been nice.
“Now then,” Mistress Bai said brusquely, glancing over at Li Xuan, who was looking back at them. “Li Xuan and I are going to leave you and the sect pup to deal with the cultivators approaching the camp. Good luck.”
Jiang blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
— — —
Wen hated the outer reaches of the province. The air was thin, the Qi was muddy, and the people were crude.
Senior Brother Chen Lu, unfortunately, was loving this. He thrived on the authority, on the way mortal townsfolk bowed when he walked past, on the fear in the eyes of wandering cultivators who knew what the Thousand Petal Grove banner meant.
Behind them, the other two Thousand Petal Grove disciples murmured quietly, their words carrying faintly through the trees. Wen tried not to listen. It was always the same – complaints about rations, about travel, about the pointlessness of this search.
He agreed with them, though he would never say it aloud. Ever since Qinghe, the sect had sent out dozens of such patrols, each ordered to “seek out suspicious cultivators” and “assist the righteous in the aftermath.” Which, in practice, meant wandering through half-frozen forests and bothering anyone unlucky enough to be nearby.
They pushed through the last of the pines and stepped into a small clearing. Two young men were there, standing near a low, smoky fire, their Qi matching the signatures they had been tracking for the last half-hour. One was dressed in rough, patched leathers, a bow slung over his back. The other wore plain, but well-cut, robes. Both looked up as they entered, their hands dropping to their weapons. They both looked tired and bruised – had they been fighting recently?
“Well, well,” Chen Lu drawled, striding into the camp like he owned it. “What have we here? A pair of lost lambs?”
The one in the leather just watched him, his expression flat and unreadable. Wen didn’t like it; he looked too calm.
The robed man, however, stepped forward slightly. “Can we help you, gentlemen?”
“We are disciples of the Thousand Petal Grove Sect,” Chen Lu announced, puffing out his chest. “We are on official Sect business, investigating the attack on Qinghe. You will answer our questions.”
The two men exchanged a quick, unreadable glance.
“We heard some rumours,” the one in leather said. “A fight. Sounded bad.”
“‘Bad’,” Chen Lu scoffed. “It was an act of war. Which means we are treating everyone in this area as a potential suspect.” He gestured to their meagre camp. “We’ll need to search your belongings. See if you’re carrying anything... suspicious.”
The man in the leather actually looked like he was about to shrug and agree, and for a brief moment Wen allowed himself to hope that this would be easy — not clean, exactly, but quick. If they played it right, the travellers would relax, let their guard down, and then Chen could make his move before anyone had time to react. No struggle, no shouts, no witnesses.
It wasn’t that Wen wanted a fight. He just knew there was going to be one either way — better to catch the strangers off balance than risk Chen losing patience and turning the whole thing into a bloodbath.
Unfortunately, Wen had never been particularly lucky.
“You have no authority to search our belongings,” the one in the robes said, his voice clipped and cold.
Chen Lu’s smile turned into a sneer. “Don’t I? We are investigating the murder of five Sect Elders. That gives me all the authority I need.” He took a step closer to the robed man. “Or perhaps you have something to hide?”
The robed man’s hand dropped pointedly to the hilt of his sword.
Wen took a half-step forward. “Senior Brother,” he said, already resigned but for some reason trying anyway, “Maybe we should—”
“Quiet, Wen,” Chen Lu snapped, not even looking at him. His gaze was fixed on the robed man, a mean sort of amusement in his eyes. “Answer the question before I render you incapable of doing so.”
“I have nothing to hide,” the robed man said, his voice tight with anger. “I just don’t appreciate being treated like a common criminal.”
“And yet, here you are, camping in the dirt like one,” Chen Lu retorted. He gestured to the other two disciples. “Check their things. If they resist, they’re obstructing a Sect investigation.”
The other two disciples, always eager to follow Chen Lu’s lead, grinned and started to move forward, their hands dropping to their own swords.
The younger man in the leather finally spoke. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Chen Lu tilted his head mockingly. “Oh? And why is that? Last time I checked, there are two of you and four of us – and we are Sect cultivators, not wandering trash like you.”
“The odds seem fair enough to me,” the robed man said. He drew his sword, the sound of steel a sharp, clear note in the quiet clearing.
Well, Wen thought, so much for that.
The other two disciples drew their own blades instantly. Chen Lu hadn’t moved, but his grin was wide and victorious. He had his excuse. “An unprovoked attack on Sect disciples during an investigation,” he said, his voice full of false regret. “A pity. You should have just kept your mouth shut.”
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