They drove around Bianjing Town without incident. Part of Jian had hoped that they might run into a family member by coincidence, but fate didn't grant him such an opportunity. He did make the time to stop at a courier's office on the south end of town and send another letter to his father. He had already posted a letter from Linshi Town to let him know what had happened, but there was no harm in making sure he got the message. The courier who only had to traverse the streets of Bianjing Town was much less likely to be killed by a demonic beast.

As they continued on towards the capital the roads grew wider and traffic heavier. From time to time Jian would see massive merchant caravans, part of the river of wealth that moved through the Empire like blood through the human body.

He and Shan stayed at the traveler's inns that were spaced a day's journey apart throughout the Empire. Their lodgings were simple and the food nothing special, but it was cheap. Cultivation was not a pursuit that grew cheaper as one progressed, to say the least. Jian had to keep a close eye on his pursestrings.

For the most part, they avoided socializing. Jian let Shan do all the talking when it came time to arrange their lodging. He could affect an older man's voice, but he wasn't sure how well it would hold up to scrutiny. Better to let the young man run all of the errands on behalf of his aged grandfather.

During the trip, Jian had days on end to do little but sit in the wagon and think. Dusty didn't need much direction to stay on the road. He made use of the time to throw himself back into cultivation.

He had a few missteps at first. He had grown accustomed to dealing with gaseous spiritual energy. Directing it from point to point required a great deal of energy. It also required accepting a certain level of imprecision. Liquid spiritual energy was much more biddable, but Jian still spent the first day or so splashing it all over the place by being too forceful.

The purpose of the Body Tempering realm was to refine the human body. Reinforcing the structure of the body was useful, both in day to day life and in combat, but ultimately it was a side effect. The true purpose was to prepare himself so that he could develop and maintain a spiritual core. Only by developing such a core was a cultivator able to perform the sort of legendary feats that were the first things most mortals thought of when they spoke of cultivation.

Jian was only now walking his very first steps along that road. He was also facing a dead end, as he wouldn't be able to form a core until he improved his artificial heart. That was no reason not to cultivate, though. Pushing himself until he hit the limit of his body's current capabilities would give him a better idea of what the next iteration of his heart would need to do, and would only bring benefits.

If he was lucky, tempering his body would help to offset some of the problems caused by the limits on his artificial heart. He doubted he would ever have stamina comparable to others at the same cultivation level, but he thought that by the time he finished tempering his bones he might well be able to get through a fight without passing out.

He wanted to be as far along as possible so that the creation of his next replacement heart would, hopefully, lead smoothly to the next level of cultivation. Only once he began walking the even longer road of core formation would he have even a ghost of a chance of catching up with Meirong.

For now, though, he focused on tempering his skin. The heart of the process was to suffuse his skin with spiritual energy. By circulating the spiritual energy as it completely saturated the chosen portion of his skin, he could begin to purify that small area. It was a tedious process. However, Jian did not let his mind wander. By focusing on precisely how his spiritual energy interacted with his physical body, he was preparing himself for the next stage of body refining. As he progressed through the Body Refining stage, he would have to use his spiritual energy more and more precisely in order to avoid crippling cultivation deviations.

Of course, wanting to keep his focus and actually being able to focus were two different things. Jian had honed his ability to absorb dry information during his apprenticeship under Elder Zhen. Nobody who grew bored easily could ever hope to achieve anything in the field of crafting with formations. Still, there was a difference between the gradual accumulation of knowledge and expertise through hours of hard work and the tedium of doing nothing but watching as a pool of energy cycled in place.

When it got to be too much and Jian needed to refresh his mind, he would hand the reins over to Shan and move to the back of the wagon. There, he would pull out his sketchbook and work on his ideas for future crafting projects. The most important such project was his new heart, of course, but that wasn't something that he could plan in detail at his current level. He needed to get his hands on a piece of living jade and get a feel for what it was like to work with such an advanced material before he could even begin to make concrete plans.

What he could do, though, was dream up his next generation of money making gadgets. Their food and lodging wasn't free. He'd be spending even more money to acquire the materials for his new heart. He could try to draw from the Guo family treasury, but he still wasn't eager to explain to his parents exactly what he would be using the money to do. He had no doubt that they would be proud of what he had accomplished so far, but he doubted that they would let him continue to bet his own life on his crafting ability.

In fairness, there was merit to the idea that he ought to wait and simply commission a new heart from a true master craftsman. Something in Jian rebelled at the idea, though. He'd gotten this far on his own abilities. He wanted to see how much farther he could go. Relying on somebody else's abilities felt like cheating, somehow.

If he wanted to get money on his own, then he would have to build things that people would want to buy. In Linshi Town, he had built up a business centered around two regular sellers: fire starters and hot plates. Both made life easier for a team roughing it out in the wilderness, which made them easy to sell to the hunters who made up most of the population of Linshi Town. If he wanted to make money in the more civilized area of the Empire, he would have to change his approach.

The first idea that he had was to return to the jewelry that he had made for his cousins. Delicate filigree butterflies, cleverly powered by small spiritual stones to flutter their wings on occasion or change color. The girls of the Guo family had loved them. He wasn't sure if the more sophisticated ladies of the capital would find his work quite so mesmerizing.

He filled page after page with doodles of potential refinements on the idea. His options in this area were limited, but the basic techniques of subtle motions and changing color could be used in a broad array of decorative jewelry. He would have to tour the shops of the capital and see what was selling before he committed to bring any of his designs from the page to reality. It would be a shame to waste time and precious materials making something that turned out to be hopelessly out of style.

The other idea that he had for an item was built off of Tingfeng's neckerchief. His first and only commission from the man who then tried to kill him had been to repair the formations on his clothing accessory. They were clever work, dropping the temperature of the cloth and providing some comfort for the wearer on a hot day, even when worn under layers of armor.

He saw a few possibilities. He could try working the formation into clothing, as the designer of Tingfeng's piece had done. The more ambitious route would be to cool down a larger area. Forcibly cooling down an entire room was probably beyond him. However, cooling down strips of cloth and then using a mechanical fan to drive air past them seemed like it should be possible. He'd have to try it out to see how much air he could move, but he thought it might provide relief from the heat for more than one person.

As they ventured south, his sketchbook filled up with more and more ideas. He could also feel himself getting closer and closer to a breakthrough with his tempering of his skin. Every time he suffused an area with spiritual energy he could feel it wearing away at the impurities within his skin. Finally, one evening just a few days out from the capital, it happened.

The spiritual energy washing over the skin over his wrist suddenly flowed outside of his control. It poured into his skin, surrounding his whole body in a short-lived shroud. Then all of the impurities that had been worn down and worked loose were expelled from his skin all at once.

Jian felt a moment of pure happiness. Then the smell hit him.

"Gah!" Shan choked from across the room. "I'll go get some water."

Jian nodded, unwilling to move and dislodge the filth coating his body. A moment later Shan returned with a washbasin and a pail of water.

"The landlord will be sending up more water," he said, shaking his head. "Breaking through in three weeks when most take a year... you didn't earn that title of the genius of our generation for nothing."

Jian carefully peeled off his clothing. Despite his best efforts, his favorite set of sleepwear would probably need to be burned. He took the washcloth and started wiping himself down.

"Small children take a year to break through," Jian said. "I'm already so far behind that just catching up by this much is hardly worth mentioning."

He was happy to take another step along the path of cultivation. Any progress at all was more than he had managed for years. But it was important not to overestimate the distance covered by what was, in the end, only a single step.