At a gesture from Yu Yong, a gray-robed attendant appeared from just beyond the edge of the all and swiftly walked through the room placing a small book on the lap desk of each recruit. When Liao opened this slender collection of pages he discovered the answer to a puzzle that had gnawed at him for much of his life. Sect law mandated that every child, even trapper's sons in mountain villages more likely to use paper to wrap a prize than look at it, learn to read. Aside from the priest hardly anyone in his hometown ever wrote anything longer than a list or acquired more than a bill of sale. All the local signs utilized pictures, not text. Many elders, reading nothing for their entire adult lives, lost the skill in time, and had to rely upon grandchildren when the time came to compose final testaments.

  But anyone might become a cultivator when tested at fourteen, and while the breathing technique described within the booklet included diagrams and imagery, it relied primarily on a considerable amount of dense text. Following it was hard, an unanticipated challenge full of strange words and odd comparisons, but he could puzzle out at least the basics of the passages.

  “The foundation of cultivation lies in breathing,” Elder Yu Yong paced back and forth in front of the group after distribution finished. “Qi, the energy released by all life, all action in the world, surrounds everything. It is in water, and rocks, and plants, and flesh.” His hand snapped back and forth rapidly, pointing at examples in the garden, before finally driving straight upwards. “But it is also in the air. Every breath you take draws in more air than all the water you will drink in a whole day. Therefore, air is the medium that serves as by far the greatest source of qi for all of you.”

  He put his hand down and raised a copy of the same book they all held. “This breathing technique is the Celestial Infusion Method. Orday developed it herself. It stands as the foundation of all her accomplishments, and when you learn it will serve you just the same. Other techniques exist,” he tapped his knuckles loudly against the slate, jolting everyone on their cushions. “As I'm sure you suspected, but you do not need any of them. The Celestial Infusion Method is superior to every other breathing technique the sect has ever encountered. It is used by all of the Twelve Sisters and every other cultivator who has ever passed through this hall. It will be the primary means through which you grow and expand your cultivation. You will use it to grow your dantians, expanding your qi reserves and invoking the transformations that culminate in the total reconstruction of your being as you change from the weak forms you hold now into a living immortal expression of your personal dao.”

  Yu Yong paused here, briefly, just long enough to drop his booming voice to a softer tone that, while still loud, seemed to represent this man's version of an intimate whisper. “Last night every one of you met Grand Elder Itinay. Recall her now, a cultivator in the celestial ascendancy realm, an immortal. That is where the Celestial Infusion Method can take you, and even beyond.” Instinctively, the elder passed his hand through the star-shaped path over his chest, invoking Orday, the Celestial Mother.

  Remembering the terrifying blue-shaded grand elder took no effort at all. Liao did not even need to close his eyes to summon that memory perfectly. It was engraved upon his mind, lucent glory and icy wrath in absolute balance. In bringing out that visage he gained the chance to recall details buried by his fear in the initial moment. He was a trapper, and even in his fourteen years had witnessed the end of small lives hundreds of times. His eyes knew the difference between the traits, the motion, of the living and the dead.

  It dawned upon him then that Itinay was neither. The elder could speak without inhaling, see without focusing, and move without exertion. The structure that formed her, some incomprehensible melding and reshaping of flesh, light, and qi, it existed beyond mere flesh and blood.

  An immortal body.

  What that a thing he desired? To live forever?

  Yes.

  The answer bubbled up from the depths of Liao's mind unexpectedly but with great speed. Death came all too easily in the mountains. Falls, chills, diseases, and above all cold could end a life all too early. He had both suffered losses, two sisters, many other children from neighboring families, and taken lives in the form of many animals. Line, trap, or bow, from tiny frogs the size of a fingernail to deer and wolves heavier than he was, he had reaped such existences. The ease with which an ordinary life might end, the power of even a small blade or short spike to pierce through all will to survive, it haunted him on dark nights. If qi could banish that uncertainty, and at least in Itinay's case it had, then he would walk this path willingly.

  A far better reason to pursue cultivation than simply to avoid repairing the walls.

  “The text before you describes the Celestial Infusion Method using Orday's own words,” Yu Yong continued after letting everyone indulge in their imagination for a spell. “Which are vastly superior to my own.” Such deference would have sounded strange coming from such a chiseled personage as the elder, had it referred to anyone else. As it stood, no one in the audience doubted this in the least. Orday, the fifth great sage, she who ascended to become a goddess, none could match her.

  “But I will offer you a general outline to point you down the right road. You must breathe in and, in so doing, find the qi the falls from the stars to illuminate all things under heaven. Isolate and grasp it, take purposeful breaths using your will, binding yourself not to air but to the celestial tides. Then draw the qi into your dantian. Over time, as your mastery of the method and connection to the infinite dao increases you will be able to draw ever increasing quantities through each inhalation. A grand elder can pull qi from an expanse of sky stretching horizon to horizon in a single breath, and more. For now, make no effort to move or manipulate this qi. Drawing it into your dantian is enough. You must fill it in order to begin binding the first meridian. That act will be your first true step as cultivators. Once you do that, forming the most basic of qi circuits within your being, you will be free of this class and this room.”

  Through this lengthy speech Yu Yong paced back and forth. He stopped when it concluded, an unmistakable sign. “Now, begin,” he ordered. “I will offer assistance where it is needed. Be patient, a solid but slow start is the superior approach to uncertain speed. We will work at this until the midday bell.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Eighteen sets of hands reached for the slender volume. That initial move offered up the only commonality of approach across the group. Some read slowly, some swiftly, some took notes as the servants appeared with brush and paper for any who wished it. Others pushed aside the book after a brief glance and began to mimic the postures and breathing motions displayed in the intricate diagrams. Yu Yong watched them all. The elder did not sit down, had not even provided a place for it, but neither did he move about. Standing in place for many hours, an act that would pain the knees of any large man, appeared completely effortless to the cultivator.

  No one spoke up. A silent consensus formed among the group, each youth sought to avoid asking the very first question. None dared display such seeming weakness.

  Placement is important. Study the terrain first, place your trap with care, avoid scrambling to move it later. Qing Liao had learned this lesson at his father's side, and he held it in the forefront of his mind now. The classroom was not familiar to him, unknown terrain, and he held back cautiously, trying to find guidance in Orday's words.

  Thankfully, Yu Yong had assessed the efficacy of those writings accurately. Orday, though ascended two and a half millennia in the past, demonstrated her searing, piercing insights through the writing left behind. Using language simultaneously simple and profound, the goddess described in flowing but partitioned prose the infinite Dao that infused all things under Heaven. She demarcated the streams of qi that flowed from the sun and stars – themselves one and the same, divided only by distance – the earth and other worlds lodged in the heavens, and how this flowed along the living boundaries between to fill water, air, and other spaces with endless combinations of essence.

  The core insight of the Celestial Infusion Method was simple: the quantity of qi that came from the stars was so vastly in excess of all other sources as to make its exclusive cultivation an approach of unmatched efficiency. Additionally, with the goal of all cultivators being to reach and ultimately tear a path into the Heavens, foundational alignment with the qi flowing from those cosmic strands of the dao drastically shortened the path upward both within and without. The celestial path stood above all others.

  Look to the stars. Feel their majesty, their overwhelming power. Grasp it, mirror it, make it your own. Do this, and let the universe flow through you, one breath at a time. Fundamentally it was simple. Any child who'd ever lost themselves in wonder marveling at the stars or stared upward at the sun could grasp the principle. The stars were ever there and waiting, even during the brightest day.

  In practice, aligning the body and soul to reach uniformity with the celestial dao, vast, cosmic, unmeasurable, was a challenge that stretched out to the very edge of human perceptual capacity and beyond.

  Liao read through the little book three times before attempting to meditate. Only then did he consider his understanding of posture, breathing, and mental formulations, all drawn from Orday's instructions, sufficient to make a first attempt. He was the second to last to put the book down, with only the thin girl who'd answered first choosing to bury her nose in the text for longer.

  Seated on the cushion, legs crossed beneath his body, hands resting atop his ankles, he closed his eyes, controlled his breathing, and imagined the stars swirling overhead. Many long nights in the mountains served him well in that final visualization. He had stood on the peaks and seen it, the slow dance of lights from distance constellations. Clean, pure light dropping through ice-clear air. He remembered, could see it again. Slow radiance, an unending cascade stretched across an expanse of time and space only immortals dared to count, waltzed across the back of his eyelids.

  Darkness, night, open skies, these were illusions, limitations imposed by the weakness of the flesh, the confines of the skull. The stars, like the dao itself, were ever-present. Endlessly constant even as they were ever-changing, the torrent of celestial qi, an unending tide of nigh-limitless power, they dispatched across the universe traveled everywhere and touched everything, always.

  This spark, a single thread of insight, slammed through Liao. It drove the breath from his lungs and set every nerve aflame. He fell from his cushion, toppled boneless to the floor, lying there sprawled as a dead fish. His vision swam and his eyes twitched erratically. The time of day, the progress of shadows, he lost track of all. How long he lay there he could not have said. Only the low crash of a distant gong, the sound of the tenth bell, rumbling through the paving below, brought him back from the crushing endlessness of the universe.

  It took several long minutes before he felt enough of himself steadied to push his body up and back onto the cushion.

  As he regained his seat, every part of his body suddenly sore, he discovered Elder Yu Yong was standing behind the cushion. The dark eyes of the elder were bright. “You felt something, Qing Liao?” The question was kindly, respectful, and reassuring, but it still demanded a complete and honest answer, nothing held back.

  “I saw the celestial sea, the wheel of stars, the dance of stellar qi,” the words burst out in a rush, his lips unable to properly form, to enunciate, the trust he'd been able to glimpse, ever-so-briefly.

  “A little flash of enlightenment,” the elder smiled, broad and open. “That is good; a strong first step. Go again, strive to recapture that feeling, only focus on the qi alone. It will be there, in your lungs. Sensing that, finding it consistently, that is the nest step.”

  “Thank you, elder,” Liao breathed. His mind still whirled from the impact of that moment of immense clarity beneath the stars.

  Yu Yong simply nodded and moved on. It swiftly became clear that other students had found themselves looking out toward similar vistas as the morning was periodically interrupted by gasps, shouts, and falls. He had been neither the first nor the last. It was a refrain that he would find repeated many times in the days to come.

  After using the initial meditative steps of the Celestial Infusion Method to center himself, Liao tried again.

  There were no more grand panoramas in the hour remaining before lunch, but he could faintly feel the essence surrounding him now, the strange energy the rained down from the sun, filled the air, and moved through him as it slipped in and out of his lungs. He could not grasp it; the first few stumbling attempts left him sprawled out on the floor, desperately gasping for air. Even failure served to slowly refine awareness, however.

  By the time the twelfth bell rang to signal midday he was confident that, given sufficient time and repetition, he'd be able to sense qi with every breath, and even, as the technique manual explained, without meditating. Eventually, Orday's words promised, qi sense would simply be a permanent part of the means by which he interacted with the surrounding environment.

  It was like learning to hear and understand the sounds of the forest, to differentiate bird, squirrel, and insect calls. To know the signs revealed by the rustle of a falling leaf or a snapped branch, only deeper, fuller. Not the erratic, intermittent pulsation of sound, but the continual, pervasive link of deep touch. It was invigorating. Contact with the dao, with stars, the very sensation of it beckoned him upward, drew him along the path.

  The demands of this went unseen until the bell rang and Liao discovered that despite having spent his whole morning lying still upon a cushion he was unbelievably ravenous.