"Alzeic! Alzeic, can you hear me?!"
With a groan, I opened my eyes. Bright sunlight from the blue sky above pierced into my brain like an icepick being jammed through my eye sockets.
"Ugh…"
My head was killing me, and it wasn't just from the light that was making me squint. I felt as though someone had put my brain in a blender.
Wait… what's a blender?
The pain increased and I let out a grunt, unable even to scream. Up above at the top of the cliff, I could see a child leaning over with concern written all over her face. Shaggy black hair, dark brown eyes, tanned skin, rough earth-toned clothes. It took me a moment to place her, but when I did I was shocked I hadn't recognized her immediately: my best friend, Seran, who was the same age as I was – ten years old.
Hold on… I'm a child? I'm an adult, right?
I grunted again, my hands going up to grip my head from the sides. The movement informed me that the rest of my body hurt, too, not just my head… though my head was obviously in much worse shape than the rest of me. Considering I was lying on the ground at the base of a twenty-foot cliff, it certainly wasn't a surprise that I was hurt. I must have fallen, but I didn't remember the fall at all.
Remembering. I twisted in agony. My mind was finally starting to sort things out. There was the car accident – what's a car? – and the fact that I'd been playing with Seran on my tenth birthday – how am I only ten years old? – and my family. My family… there was my author dad and my doctor mom, my older sister and my little brother. No, wait, my parents were small-time merchants who owned the local general store and I had an older brother and a little sister.
Dimly, I heard Seran yelling down at me in distress, but I was too caught up trying to figure out what was going on. More and more memories started surfacing, but they contradicted each other. I remembered school, then college, then working at the library. I remembered computers, cars, planes. At the same time, I remembered small town life without even electricity, playing with my best friend Seran as kids do, learning literacy and numeracy. I remembered learning how to assist at the shop, stories of spirit beasts and cultivators and swords and magic.
The memories… they're of two different lives. I'm Alzeic, and I'm ten years old today. Are those other memories from a past life? Stories do say souls are sometimes reincarnated, though aren't those usually powerful cultivators? My other life wasn't even in this world, and I wasn't a cultivator…
As I finally began to make sense of things and separate the memories of the two lives from one another, the pain in my head started to subside. At some point, Seran disappeared from the top of the cliff, and by the time I was finally getting to my feet, she had made her way around to the bottom.
"Alzeic!"
"I'm alive, Seran. I don't think my bones are broken, but I think I hit my head. It really hurts."
Seran took my hand. "Let's get you home."
"…Okay."
As we walked, I thought. I might be Alzeic, but with the memories of Tom, my mind had changed. I lived in a world with cultivators, long-lived people with supernatural power; how could I possibly be satisfied growing up to be a mere mortal working in a general store? I probably wouldn't even inherit the shop anyway since I had an older brother. I had to become a cultivator.
Not that it was as simple as that, of course. Cultivators were existences above normal folk; not just anyone could become one. My knowledge of cultivation was very limited, though I had a lot of fictional stories from my previous life to lean on. I just didn't know how accurate any of them were to the reality. I was sure that I had the potential, though, because I had been reincarnated. That made me some sort of main character, right?
It took us nearly an hour to reach town, and from there another thirty minutes to reach my parents' store. Mom and Dad happened to both be there – both brown-haired and brown-eyed, both in their early thirties. They noticed us immediately.
"I'm sorry!" Seran burst out. "It was my fault that we were running too close to the cliff!"
"Cliff?" Dad said uncomprehendingly.
"Alzeic? Did you fall off a cliff?" Mom said in concern.
"Yes. I hit my head…"
"I'll go get the doctor," Dad said quickly.
"Alzeic, let's get you lying down. My poor baby…"
Dad left and Mom took me to the bedroom I shared with my siblings in the back. Seran wanted to come with, but Mom told her to go home – not unkindly, but firmly. Mom tucked me into bed, inquiring about how I felt and generally fussing over me.
The doctor arrived some time later and began his examination.
"I believe he has a concussion, and he has a lot of bruising, but no bone breaks or life-threatening injuries. He'll need to rest and recover for a couple weeks. I'll check up on him every couple days. I can prescribe some pain medicine to make things easier on him."
"Thank you, Doctor," Dad said.
The soup that Mom fed me was okay, but it was nothing special compared to what Tom had eaten. The lack of much in the way of spices played a role in the mediocre taste. But my family, while not poor, was definitely not wealthy, so other than salt and pepper, we didn't have a lot of spices to use. Still, the soup had meat – chicken – in it, so it wasn't just a bunch of vegetables in water.
After eating, it was time for the medicine. Once I'd taken my first dose of the painkiller drink, I quickly drifted off.
-x-
I looked around. To my left, a small, clear pond, perhaps thirty feet across and six feet deep in the center, a seven-foot-tall sapling beside it; beyond that, a wall of fog. To my right, several empty tilled garden plots; beyond them, another wall of fog. Ahead, a field of grass leading up to thick woods. Behind, a three-walled house with a bed, an alchemy pill furnace, and a forge; behind that, a third wall of fog. And directly underneath, a stone dais with a complex circular formation carved into it.
"Where am I? I fell asleep, right?"
I frowned, thinking. To quote the Chinese transmigration stories… is this my "golden finger?" My special cheat ability for being a reincarnated soul? A space within my dreams… for training, maybe? I looked down at the formation on the dais. There were symbols at various points along the circumference. Fire, Water, Earth, Wind. Ice, Lightning, Wood, Metal. Lines between them: Wind and Fire meet Lightning, Fire and Earth meet Metal, Wind and Water meet Ice, and Water and Earth meet Wood. Is this some sort of qi-gathering array attuned to all the base and secondary elements?
I scratched my head, then sat down in the lotus position, since that was supposed to be the best meditation pose. It was very uncomfortable, so I switched to just sitting in a normal cross-legged position. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. Slowly in, hold, slowly out, pause, repeat. Some stories in my past life said that specific breathing patterns were necessary, but I had no idea if that was true or even how to test what breathing patterns might work, so I just picked something and used it until it became automatic. My mind cleared, becoming blank, and my consciousness simply floated along.
And then there was something. Red, heat, vivacity. Blue, coolness, flow. Yellow, firmness, solidity. Green, swiftness, unpredictability. White, cold, crystallinity. Purple, power, energy. Brown, life, growth. Gray, sharpness, protection. With every inward breath, the colors stirred, swirling clockwise. With every outward breath, the flow slowed to a stop. I turned my focus inward, away from the surrounding colors, and found that I could sense myself as a near-absence, a place where qi – for that was what I assumed the colors were – was far less abundant than around me. At my center, I felt an almost empty sphere with stagnant qi, and spreading out from it like a circulatory system were thin veins that went throughout my body – in xianxia terms, my dantian and meridians, though I didn't know for sure what they were called in this world.
If my guess was right, I needed to draw qi into my dantian to kickstart my cultivation. In stories, the first stage or realm of cultivation was often called something along the lines of "Qi Gathering," "Qi Condensation," or "Qi Refining." Without any guidance, I'd have to figure this out on my own.
I opened my eyes, breaking out of my meditative trance.
Trying to do this without any instruction seems dangerous. Usually, better cultivation methods give better results, and having no real method at all seems like a potentially lethal accident waiting to happen.
I sighed and stood up. There was no sun or moon in the violet sky overhead, just an endless expanse, so I had no idea how much time had passed. I had no clue whether time passed at the same rate here as it did in the real world anyway. I might as well explore a bit.
The pond was as empty as the garden plots, and the sapling had barely any branches, let alone flowers or fruits. I walked back into the building. Besides the bed, forge, and pill furnace, the place was empty. I knew basically nothing about how to work forges or fill furnaces, though I suspected these cultivation objects worked differently from normal cauldrons or forges. They didn't look that impressive; maybe as I advanced my cultivation they would upgrade?
With nothing else left to investigate, I headed across the field to the woods. As soon as I stepped past the first tree, I felt a shift in the air.
This place is dangerous. If this whole realm is for training, then perhaps the woods are for combat training. There might be beasts in here.
Despite the twinge of fear, I continued onward. This was some sort of mental or spiritual realm, not reality, so I probably wouldn't die for real if I got killed. Probably. It was worth the risk of death to see if there was something valuable here.
A squirrel as big as a medium-sized dog dropped out of a tree in front of me. We stopped and stared at each other.
"Hello?"
It struck like lightning, leaping and ripping out my throat with its teeth as it knocked me to the ground.
Pain. Terror.
I reached up to grapple with it, but my strength was as nothing to it, and it continued to tear through my neck. My consciousness faded into nothing more than pure fear, and everything went dark.
-x-
I woke up with a gasp, my limbs tangled in my bedsheets.
I'm alive! I'm alive…
My heart pounded in my chest, but as my mind caught up to the fact that I wasn't dying, my heartbeat began to slow to something more normal.
I turned toward the window. Based on the light, it was just around dawn. I had slept through the late afternoon, evening, and night. I still felt terrible from yesterday's injuries, and I realized belatedly that I hadn't felt the effects of those injuries when I'd been in the mind realm. I twisted, checking on my siblings; both were still asleep. Since they were, I decided to try meditating in the real world.
It didn't take me that long to reach the meditative trance, and I could sense myself; but the qi surrounding us was much thinner than in the gathering array in the spiritual realm, and it wasn't a perfect, even mix of elements either. I would probably be better off training in the mind realm than in the waking world.
Mom brought me breakfast after my siblings had left the room – more of the soup I'd eaten last night. A half-dose of the painkiller was enough to numb the pain somewhat without putting me to sleep, but I had little to do besides think. I already knew that no one in town had any expertise regarding cultivation, so there wasn't any point in asking. Besides, my parents would definitely not support my desire to become a cultivator. The world of cultivation was brutal, violent, and often deadly, and no sane parent would wish that on their children unless they themselves were already a part of it and could provide some measure of protection.
Seran came by around noon to talk a bit. She ended up staying for about an hour before Mom shooed her away to let me rest, plunging me back into boredom. It wasn't until after supper when I took another full dose of painkiller that I was able to drift back off to sleep.
-x-
Once more, I stood on the stone dais. Everything was as I had left it, except for one thing: between the dais and the building, there was a short stone obelisk. I approached it.
"Writing…? Let's see…"
On each of the four sides, words and numbers were engraved.
SIDE ONE
Visits: 1
Deaths: 1
Kills: 0
Visit Cooldown: 12 hours
Kill Rewards: None
SIDE TWO
Spirit Garden 1: Nothing
Spirit Garden 2: Nothing
Spirit Garden 3: Nothing
Spirit Orchard: Nothing
Spirit Pool: Cleansing Water
Spirit Pool Inhabitants: None
Advancement Tree: Sapling
SIDE THREE
Bed: Grade 1 – Return to Waking World
Pill Furnace: Grade 1 – Apprentice Level
Spirit Forge: Grade 1 – Apprentice Level
Spirit Mine: Nonexistent
SIDE FOUR
Cultivation Stage: Mortal (Qi Sensing)
Qi Center: Unignited
Meridians: Unopened
Body: Un-tempered
Mind: Gated
Progress Rewards: 8-Element Qi Refining Method
"Huh. It seems to be recording the state of things with this place and my cultivation." I placed a hand on it. "It says something about progress rewards being a 'qi refining method,' which should be a cultivation method for the first stage of cultivation. I wonder how I claim—"
Information slammed into my mind: breathing patterns, mental exercises for drawing in qi into my qi center (I guess that's what this world calls the dantian?), ways to take that drawn-in ambient qi and "refine" it into my own personal qi and empower it, the process for "igniting" my qi center so that I could start circulating my qi, and finally how to "structure" my qi center to nurture my "spiritual roots" with qi of every element.
It was everything I needed to start actually cultivating. I grinned.
This is exciting! I was worried that I'd be stuck without a way to progress due to lack of knowledge, but this… this is amazing!
I returned to the dais and sat down. It took me a bit longer to reach the meditative trance since I was using a new breathing method (and I was pretty excited), but eventually I was seeing myself and the surrounding qi again. Unlike before, the qi continuously swirled clockwise instead of stopping with every breath out. Following the mental instructions, I began peeling a strand of qi and spiraling it inward toward my qi center. It was more difficult than I expected it to be – and it wasn't even what I was supposed to do; I was supposed to do eight strands – one of each element – at the same time. When the multi-element strand hit my qi center, it shattered and scattered. A failure.
I opened my eyes. I wasn't sure how long I'd been cultivating, but "a long time" was almost certainly accurate. I stood and walked over to the bed. The moment I lay down and closed my eyes, I felt something shift; and when I opened them again I was back in the real world, dawn's first light coming through the window.
-x-
I told no one about my nightly visits to the spiritual realm, not even Seran – though I definitely wanted to tell her. I was sure she would let it slip to someone else if I did. Not intentionally, of course – she wasn't the type to betray someone's trust – but she was just ten years old and easily excitable. Even with my memories of my past life, it was hard for me to not blurt it out; a ten-year-old with no otherworldly memories of being an adult wouldn't be able to keep the secret no matter how hard she tried.
Honestly, I wanted for her to become a cultivator as well. She was a tomboy, and I thought she'd enjoy having supernatural powers, but most of all she was my friend, and I didn't want to leave her behind when I left town someday. I had no idea whether she had the talent necessary for cultivation, though, and even if she did she wouldn't have my special cheat. There was a very real possibility that she would never be able to be a cultivator. If I wanted to attempt to teach her, I needed to wait until I was more adept and knowledgeable myself, so there was no reason to worry about it yet anyway.
And so I focused on my own development. Each day, I rested. Each night, I worked at separating the qi into multiple strands, each of a different element. It took me a few nights before I was able to pull a pure strand, and then another few nights before I could pull multiple strands, but by the time my two weeks of rest were up, I was ready to pull eight distinct elemental qi strands and finally insert them into my qi center.
Fire, Lightning, Wind, Ice, Water, Wood, Earth, and Metal, all spiraling in toward my qi center. As they approached simultaneously, I nearly lost focus due to a surge of excitement. This was the moment of truth.
The strands didn't break when they pierced through the shell of my qi center. The qi strands remained distinct even as they began to fill my qi center. I continued cultivating until my qi center was completely full.
Then it was time to refine.
Wood roots in Earth, and is nourished by Water from melting Ice.
Metal is found in Earth, and attracts Lightning, causing Fire.
Fire burns Wood, and is fanned by Wind.
Eight strands winnow to a single drop, mist becoming liquid, concentrated and purged of all impurity.
A single drop of pure, multi-elemental rainbow qi rested in my qi center, with plenty of room to refill with more ambient qi. But I was mentally exhausted, so I called it quits for the visit. I checked the obelisk and found it changed.
SIDE THREE
Bed: Grade 1 – Return to Waking World
Pill Furnace: Grade 1 – Apprentice Level
Spirit Forge: Grade 1 – Apprentice Level
Spirit Mine: Grade 1 – Low-grade Spirit Stone Shards
SIDE FOUR
Cultivation Stage: Qi Refining (Early)
Qi Center: Unignited
Meridians: Unopened
Body: Un-tempered
Mind: Gated
Progress Rewards: 8-Element Qi Refining Method,
Spirit Mine (Grade 1 – Low-grade Spirit Stone Shards)
For reaching the early Qi Refining Stage, I had been awarded a spirit mine of grade 1, which apparently meant low-grade spirit stone shards. Looking past the house, I saw that there was now a hole in the ground between the house and the fog wall. I walked around the house to the hole; a ladder led down into the hole.
Curiosity piqued, I climbed down the ladder. Despite the lack of any light source, it wasn't dark below the surface. Rather than a mine, it was more like a natural cave. It wasn't very big, either, being a single chamber about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. Along the walls and on rock formations jutting out of the ground in the middle, there were countless adult-fingernail-sized flecks of the eight elemental colors. I approached the nearest cluster and put my hand on the black stone around it.
To my complete surprise, my fingers sank into the stone easily, and I was able to pry out the flecks with little difficulty. However, my mental fatigue increased with each time I pushed my fingers into the black stone, so I wasn't able to remain for long. Rather than go until I collapsed, I went until I was unsteady on my feet and then ascended the ladder with one hand, the other holding the shards I had collected. I returned to the house and assessed my haul.
"Four shards of each element. If I arrange them together in sets of eight…"
As soon as I did that, the shards fused together, giving me four stones that were approximately the size of an adult's finger segment from the last knuckle to the tip. They were dull and opaque, but they were rainbow-colored.
"So these are spirit stones! Low-grade, of course, but even so! Spirit stones are supposed to be useful for cultivation and are used as currency by cultivators. I wonder if I can take them out to the real world."
I yawned. "Time to use the bed to return."
-x-
When I opened my eyes, I immediately noticed that I was clutching something in my hand. Throwing off the bedsheets, I unclenched my hand. My eyes widened.
The spirit stones were there.
I gulped. This was confirmation that I could bring things out of the spiritual realm and into the real world. Could I do the reverse, storing things from the real world in the spiritual realm? If so… this cheat ability would be super powerful.
I hid the spirit stones under my pillow. I'd try returning them to the spiritual realm the next time I visited.
Today, though, I would receive a final checkup from the doctor and then I'd be free to go play outside again. I looked forward to it.