The two goats bleated in unison after bucking off of me, beginning to circle me like sharks in water. Their footfalls were delicate as they stepped across the vine. I spun the spear in my hands.

“You little shit…” My eyes flicked over to Kim, who was still in lotus, though her face was screwed in concentration.

In that half a second long lapse in concentration, the first goat slammed into me, biting at my legs. I felt its teeth near my flesh as its teeth dug into my pants. The goat whipped its head, tearing a chunk of denim free before kicking off me and running away. The goats were somehow dead quiet as they moved across the vines.

They were pack hunters, animals relying on each other as a distraction to wear their opponent down, deadly silent and probably calling for others with those little bleating noises.

I lashed out with the spear, spinning blindly and thrusting behind me. To both mine and a goat’s surprise, my spear found purchase in flesh, crunching through bone and into brain matter with ease. I spun the spear, now heavy with the goats weight, throwing it into the other goat, which was now charging me. It crumpled to the ground for an instant before rising to its feet, bleating offendedly. It leaned down, tearing off a leaf and chewing while staring at me.

Then it dashed away.

“It’ll be back.” Kim said. “This place is infested with them.” Irritation seeped into her voice, and she shifted in place, rocking.

“Goats and vines.” I said, leaning on the spear and thinking. I needed to speed up Kim’s cultivation. She could sense and process Qi inside of her, but not externally, and she would need to bring Qi in from the air in order to attune it to a law. If I was going to pass a cultivation law to her, I needed her to to be able to attune Qi on her own.

I definitely wasn’t going to baby a cultivator by doing it for them.

But with two weeks to practice, Kim should have at least shown a nascent ability to sense Qi. By now she should be able to sense it at least inconsistently, and be on her way toward learning to absorb it. Something wasn’t working.

“What?” Kim asked, having somehow sensed I was staring at her. I let the look of concentration on my face fall away.

“You said you could sense me.” I began, following a hunch I had been reflecting on for a few days. Kim previously had mentioned her ability to sense other awakened, saying it was something all awakened had. She could also instantly sense the Qi I released in her meridians.

I grimaced at the bleating noise to my side. This was going to be a long day if this kept up.

“Yes, like a calm lake…” She trailed off, then her face dawend in realization. “That is my sensing, isn’t it? Its an exact match for the Qi…”

I listened to her trail off from behind me as I circled another goat. This time I was watching it, and it charged at my side. I pinned it through the middle instead of through the head.

“What about monsters?” I said, having to speak up over the noises of the distressed goat.

“Uh… bosses, yes, but its more vague. Fuzzy. Most of the time. If this is Qi sensing as you describe it— it makes no sense I can’t sense the Qi in the air.”

“It sounds like you have a prototypical spirit sense.” I replied.

“Are you going to kill that goat?” Kim asked, raising her voice over the distressed noises it made.

“Try to sense it.”

Kim looked between me and the goat, whispering something under her breath and rolling her eyes before closing them again. She squinted, her face stuck in concentration. Then they snapped open.

“Fuck yeah! Goat sense!” Then she deflated a little bit. “Two weeks of work and I can sense goats now. Oh, I could probably sense Kobolds, too.”

It was interesting that she was able to sense the goat— I still needed to reach another realm higher before my prototypical spirit sense began, and my journey through the easy realms ended. I pressed my foot to the goat, crushing its head and pulling it off the spear at the same time, shivering as the Qi flooded into my body. Her ability to sense things likely meant that the awakened developed powers in a different order. It was likely she could sense Qi, just that she was tuned for high densities of it. The paltry amount in the air didn’t even register on her radar. She would have to slowly tune her way down. It also meant that throwing a health potion or two would definitely help.

I looked up from the goat corpse and towards Kim, who was staring at me with a befuddled expression.

“You can’t tell me no one has tried to expand their senses to small monsters before, right?” I asked. “Or maybe anyone that talented advances quickly…”

“Hey! I am talented. Also, you feel vaguely… goaty, right now.”

“Is that not normal? After someone kills a boss?”

“Even when someone kills a boss, the feeling is gone in a flash.”

That was… interesting. What happened to an Awakened’s Qi? I had to assume that the experience they talked about was the same Qi that I received from killing the enhance spirit beasts and monsters of the portals. It looked like there would be many difficulties on the road ahead towards training any Awakened. I could only cross my fingers that Kim’s rank would advance with cultivation and progression. If not… I could find another person to train.

“I see. The feeling your sensing is the Qi inside of the goat. It seems like you have a spirit sense, the ability to sense Qi around you. But you’re over attuned. You’re only sensing large concentrations of Qi. We should break a healing potion.”

“No healing potion!” Kim said, her face paling. “I am not planning on getting into anymore debt. No thank you.”

I nodded at that. “Then we do it the hard way. Close your eyes and work on sensing the goats again.”

With near perfect timing, there was another bleat of noise as a goat appeared next to me.

Actually, more than a dozen goats were cresting the hill around me, and I paced back away from Kim. Why they ignored her and focused me, I would never know. Maybe I looked like more of a threat. No, actually, I definitely looked like more of a threat, I just wasn’t sure if the goats could recognize that.

I dodged, ready this time for the charge of goats, stepping through them in a not-so-deadly dance. This was too many goats. Maybe five would do. I thrusted out, the spear crunching into bone, pulled back. The spear stuck in the goats head.

I adapted, lifting the spear up and slamming it back down into another, stepping out of the path of a black goat with a twirl. Two slammed into each other, just as I free’d my spear, and with two quick thrusts I ended more. Qi swirled in my body, wild and free.

I thinned the herd to five, dodging between them. They bleated and charged me, stopping only to chew on the leaves of the great vines that suffocated this world.

“Can you sense them?” I asked calmly. The goats had given up for a moment, five of them stomping around me and the corpses I had left littered on the ground.

“Its harder when they’re moving.” Kim said.

I smiled. All she needed was the ability to change her tuning and sense down, and she would be sensing Qi in the air by tonight.

“Alright. We’re going to play a game. Keep your eyes closed and tell me left or right.”

“Left or right?” Kim asked.

I stared down one of the goats that charged me with a bleat, thrusting the spear under it, between its legs, and sweeping left. The goat tumbled through the air.

Kim squeaked in surprise, opening her eyes when it rolled into the ground past her.

“No cheating! Close your eyes!” I said, launching another charging goat.

Kim could successful call the side the goat was on by the fifth throw. After that, it was as simple as reducing the Qi each of them possessed and then waiting for her to sense them again. It took less than an hour and a couple limbless goats.

Strangely enough, no more goats approached, though at one point some strange bird swept by and pulled away a goat body. Even now, it munched on it lazily in the distance. Wind swept over the vine smothered world, but besides that, it was strangely calm. The world felt abnormally empty, though I supposed that the vine probably suffocated out a lot of local competitors in terms of endemic life.

“Its like pollin. Everywhere.” Kim said, eyes closed. “I’m surprised no one has noticed this, yet. This is all it takes to get power? As much as a member of the pantheon?”

“This is just the first step of a long and arduous journey. Each one will bring pain and toil, and what you see in the air around you is barely enough to build a foundation. The path to the top— to the Pantheon— is a struggle, where you must have the eternal energy of a river, the power and dedication to carve your own path through the mountain, the willpower to journey to the top, and all the luck in the world.” I replied.

“You would think someone would have noticed it, right?”

“Others definitely have.” I nodded. “But without a cultivation law, its meaningless.”

“And that’s next, right? I just learn a cultivation law.” Kim nodded.

I laughed. If only it was that simple.

“What?”

“Its uh… yes. You’re right. That’s what’s next, but it is not so easy to accomplish.” I said, sitting in the grass opposite her. “First you will have to work to absorb the Qi from the air and tame the Qi you receive from monsters, taming it until you can pull it within your body and meridians. Once you’ve saturated your entire body, you can form your Dantian.”

“Dantian… thats like a magical energy core.” Kim nodded in understanding. Or at least, she nodded in what I’m sure she thought of as understanding. An exact conceptualization of the Dantian wouldn’t matter much for now.

“Yes. Magical energy core. You have to pull in as much as you can handle, until the Qi burns. The more you can saturate your body initially, the stronger your foundation will be.”

“Good.” Kim said, with renewed excitement. “So what now? We hunt?” She stood, stretching.

“No. First you have to learn to control Qi.” She groaned, sitting back down. “Sensing it isn’t enough. Now you have to draw it in from the air around you.”

Kim focused, sitting with her eyes closed. She looked noticeably less frustrated now, her features instead showing a calm concentration. Her black hair was tied back in case she would need to fight, kept away from her face.

“Got it!” She yelled.

“That easy?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes! A single spec of it. And it doesn’t even hurt— oh?” Her face scrunched up. “It moved along my body… those must be meridians… and its gone.”

“Gone?” I asked.

“Yeah. Hold on.” She closed her eyes. “Okay, another…” her face fixed in concentration. “Gone again. Disappeared right above my heart. That’s so… weird. I can see it and sense it and then its just like… like it falls into a hole? Every line it travels along passes into it.”

“Every meridian is passing through it… that’s impossible. What does the— can you try to sense the place it disappears?”

Kim replied after a few minutes with her eyes still closed. “Yeah. Its like a single point… but its like it has depth. It feels… this is weird, but it feels purple. Does that make any sense? Does any of this make sense?”

“A single point with depth… thats exactly what a Dantian feels like. Do Awakaned have Dantians? No, it has to be some other similar power that Awakened possess…” I trailed off. It had to be similar, but not the same since they didn’t cultivate. I really wished I had broken all the way through into the Third Realm— I currently sat at the half step, my core attuned by not ignited, which would awaken my prototypical spirit sense. Regardless, I wouldn’t be able to solve this mystery until a higher realm. It would wait for another time. “Try grabbing the Qi and holding it in your— in your stomach.”

Kim nodded.

“Okay. Alright. Just hold it in. Easy.”