It was nearly as dark as night. Residual light reflected down from places he could not see allowed Hao to see. There was no vast void above like the sky to swallow any light, just a stone of gray shifting shades.’

  Hao didn’t want to enter the trial, or enter the mountain, where he presumably was. The pass that gave him access made his skin crawl. The place it took him to could only be worse. Being forced to enter only served to bother him a little more. Now all he could do was endure.

  All things considered, Hao didn’t think his situation was so bad; unless an underground demon came from the shadows, he had this space in the mountain to himself. He didn’t have to worry about rain or any weather. But that also meant missing out on cultivating during those opportune times.

  Still, there was far more good from being isolated right now; he got a fire going as quickly as he could and threw meat on the burning wood itself. Listening to the sizzle, Hao tended himself in a more proper manner. Splint on his left arm. Restitching his right arm, he had to break another flint first to create a sort of needle. If the opportunity came around, he would buy a sewing needle when he got the chance. I owe Zhengqi for insisting on teaching me all this.

  He had the spores on his hand, too. They were reacting heavily this time compared to when he harvested them. His best guess was because of the noon sun. The Mushrooms had a lot of Yang properties, if they grew more aggressively during noon because of the extra exposure to the sun, plus them being spiritual and parasitic by nature, they would burrow into his flesh seeking World Energy. The last thing he wanted to find out was the effect of their long-term growth on or in his body. Still, when locked in the jar, it was curious; they grew fine in the dark jar, inside the Spirit-Holding Bags space. They were dominant, in a sense. Just a soft, warm, musty-smelling orange powder.

  He used a mixture of jam and stone dust to make a sticky paste. Letting it cure on his hand, and anywhere he could feel the warmth and itch of the spores. He didn’t want to look like Swordface even if there was no one to look at him. Once it cured and hardened, he peeled off most of the spores, and a fair amount of skin came free.

  Clean up, he didn’t hold himself back any longer, meat went onto the fire, then came off, he downed it, ash and all. He felt like Dong Lingli, grease on his fingers. He didn’t bother to wipe it off as he reached for the next piece. A small draft tickled his ear like it was trying to whisper, but he only turned his head; it must have been a draft from the fire pushing the cold mountain air.

  Full and hydrated, Hao was going to rest his head, instead, he crossed his legs, going into a modified lotus position. The back of his hands rested next to his semi-formed Vital Core. The palms faced each other. He focused on healing first; it was worth a try. Yang is in the Sun, Yin is in the sightless night. Though he was keen to think about the energy of the pillars, their rigid completeness, and violent pull, yet stubborn magnetic rejection of each other. He could still feel their power on his fingertips. He was far from truly touching and understanding such a concept, he barely understood the cold stone he found his face on after touching it.

  But, he was lost, nowhere, with nothing he knew around him, Hao sought first to heal himself. It gave him reason to put more meat on the fire, too. Blood welled in his stomach. He could feel it ball up and coagulate, then it fell apart before coagulating again. Alongside it was the Qi that was in the meat he had just eaten. He thought it would have been silvery-red by the way it made him feel. He held that which coagulated still while pushing the silvery-red Qi through a secondary set of vessels, more closely related to his body than the other channels through which spiritual Qi flowed.

  He felt exhilaration and energy in his body. Much of his pain faded as they were slowly coming back. A bit of feeling returned to his fingers. Then he stopped as the Silvery-Red Qi depleted.

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  The coagulated blood shot to his throat so fast he didn’t notice till his stomach pinched down, reaching for his spine. Blood, dark red with a wood lacquer shine, splashed onto his fire. It didn’t smell like impurities did, but steaming away, burning till black, it had a sour sweetness that told him he would have to make a new pit later.

  “Oh, come on…” he just had to deal with it for now; the scent was trapped with him in the mountain. All that was left for it was a hope that nothing sought out the smell. He couldn’t fight off a sixth Reclamation equivalent beast right now. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to knock away a rabbit, at most run away, even then he was not sure for how long.

  Another fire, eat, spit blood, this time to the side, less shiny, a matte red.

  Eat, meditate, no blood that time. But he was running out of water. Hao didn’t want to be thirsty, never again. He was thirsty all his life until he came to land, where there were streams of water, puddles, all fresh, drinkable water. He didn’t have to filter any of it through mud. Or pray for rain when his mother was exhausted and his father bedridden. He shook his head, those thoughts were of the past, they should be no more, they had more money, they could dream of, handfuls of silver.

  It was easy to get rid of the worries. He slipped into meditation, he never wanted to fail to enter the state again. He challenged and promised himself that with the thought of his spear at his heart.

  The next time he ate, he found there was no water to drink, and little to no pain in his body. Not everything was healed, but nothing was soft as to break the moment it was poked. The meat he ate gave him that silvery red Qi. It flooded the muscle and skin. He didn’t have a breakthrough, but it felt like something similar; his body grew in strength. Not in World Energy.

  And that same, but a little later, he felt a blast of wind that carried a foul smell. The smell he ignored at first.

  The wind could have meant a few things. Most importantly, a way out of the cave. There was light reflecting down, but he didn’t trust it. It could have been anything, a reflection of a reflection. Or a Spirit Stone, or any other source of light, locked in the mountain with him. But wind, wind was a sign of a way out, or he would bet on it more than the dull light that stretched across the stone ceiling.

  It made him curious about the time, too. Either the storm had come, or it was night, or morning of the next day, or that day’s night, or any day at this point. The only sky he knew was stone, and an unshifting light.

  The wind came again, this time blowing lower. Hao heard it sing, perhaps the hole it was blowing through was being played like a flute. The thought made him chuckle while he stood. His laugh stopped, and he sealed his mouth. The inside of his nose and mouth was coated with that foul scent, like rotten fish, half its bones exposed, washed up on the mud flats.

  His fires were out; there was more than he could bother counting, but he took back the ash and charcoal that piled twice as high as he thought it would. They could be added to the field of dirt in the Spirit-Holding bag. He was still waiting for the day he could see inside with more than his mind.

  As he passed the threshold of sorts. A little area of the cave where he sat with his back to a wall, he stumbled. A boom of voices exploded in the air, licking his ears. For a moment, he felt his knees go, like he was sinking into mud, but he didn’t fall; his back straightened as he listened to the voice.

  “Good intentions pave the way to hell!” A familiar voice, but he had never heard it full of rage; it was packed with love before.

  The voice seemed to seep out from the stone. Then there was another; they were faint and fading as he stood, but as he moved, they got louder. Hao knew both voices. The voices from the peach pass, the two went back and forth, the Immortal and the Tree Spirit spun a tale in words spoken back and forth.

  Hao didn’t want to hear it again. The feeling of tendrils under his skin works its way towards his Semi-formed Vital core, towards his soul, NO! His own words boomed in his head. His legs dropped to the ground, and he meditated, Yin freezing, he imagined mountains of ice crumbling. Yang burning, he imagined the sun in a jar. The five elements, one after another. He tried every trick he knew.

  The voices were gone, or so he thought they were. Then he heard a third voice, one like a stone skipping across water, popping and cracking. “It’s Perfect! This One.” That feeling of bugs crawling on his neck was more vivid than ever before. Something was looking at him, pointing at him. Then it was silent, just him in the cave.