I didn’t sleep at all that night. I tried, but I wasn’t remotely tired, and laying down just made me fitful and uncomfortable. I finally decided to try the breathing exercises the old man had given me, instead. I closed my eyes and pictured the gunk-filled series of rivers running through my body, but something about the image didn’t quite feel right anymore. I didn’t know what was wrong, but when I tried to imagine the oily liquid flowing to my lungs and out of my nose with each breath, the image just felt subtly off, and that feeling of wrongness kept jarring me out of my practice. I finally gave up with a sigh and rose to my feet.

I figured that too much had happened, and my mind was just struggling to process everything. I thought that a walk around the farm might clear my head, and the moment I stepped outside, I’d sensed the silvery moonlight bathing me from above. I stopped and looked up; the moon was full overhead and enormous, bigger than I’d ever seen the moon on Earth. Its craters and shadows looked different, as well, although I couldn’t quite place how. I stared at the giant orb for what might have been minutes, simply basking in the light that flowed from it. It felt different from the energy I’d gotten from the sun, cooler and less comforting. The light had a soft feeling to it and a sense of the darkness surrounding me.

“It looks like you can absorb qi from the moon, too,” Sara spoke from beside me, startling me from my reverie and reminding me that I was outside, in the dark, in a world that was apparently full of things that wanted to kill humans – or whatever I was now. I scanned the area about me hastily, but nothing seemed out of place, and I didn’t get the feeling of being watched that I’d apparently kept when coming to this world.

“Probably the stars, as well,” I muttered, looking at the bejeweled night sky. The world around me was utterly black, revealing what had to be millions of stars set into the fabric of the darkness above. I could faintly sense their energy, as well, dwarfed by the light streaming from the moon but still a presence caressing my skin. I sighed.

“This is all really weird, Sara,” I thought silently. “I grew up in a world where magic was just illusions and sleight of hand. People who believe in magic past childhood are considered crazy or even dangerous. I’m programmed to look for logical explanations for all this – and I can’t think of any.”

“That’s because you’re thinking of all this as magic, John, rather than just energy,” she smiled at me. “It sounds like your Earth is a high-tech world, right?”

“That’s what the old lady told me, yes.”

“Then you should be used to the idea of energy and work.”

“I learned about it in high school,” I shrugged. “I don’t remember much. Energy flows from a high concentration to a low concentration, and you can use that flow to do work. I think. I don’t remember exactly how.”

“That’s more or less correct. Just think of that energy you feel from above in the same way. It’s flowing from a source of high concentration – the moon – to one of low concentration, you. You collect it and concentrate it inside you, then you can let it flow from the high concentration in your body to the low concentration outside you, which lets you do work with it.”

I frowned as I considered her words. “When you put it like that, it makes me sound like a giant battery,” I realized. “A rechargeable one, at that. I can take energy in from above, store it, and use it for power later.”

“I don’t know what a ‘battery’ is, but the concept seems sound,” she smiled at me.

I suspected that the analogy wasn’t perfect, but it made sense to me at an intuitive level, so I decided it was close enough.

As it turned out, I wasn’t that far off.

I was still awake when Jing came to fetch me and hadn’t gotten so much as a wink of sleep. Oddly enough, I wasn’t tired, though. I expected to be sandy-eyed, surly, and maybe have the start of a headache after a night without sleep, but I felt perfectly fine. Even more surprisingly, I had a much easier time walking across the swaying latticework over the paddy; I still had to stop and hold my balance when the wind blew hard, but my steps otherwise felt sure and secure. I assumed that was from my improved physical stats, but I had no real way to know, and I had to wait a day or so before Sara could tell me.

Doorworld: Kuan Yang

Magic Rating: 35-40

Tech Rating: 20-25

Bio Rating: 50-55

Estimated time for full analysis: 1:02:21

The old man was waiting for me when I arrived at the hilltop. The body of the tiger-monkey – I wasn’t about to start calling it that absurdly long name Jing gave it – was gone from the slope beyond without a trace. I didn’t know if that was because the old man or Jing had disposed of it, or because it had been taken by something else, but it didn’t really matter. The ground was still dark beneath where it had fallen, stained by its blood, and the ground around it was torn up from our battle, but the hilltop looked as prosaic and calm as ever.

“Sit with me, Xu Xing,” the old man said, and I obediently took a seat before him, my legs crossed but again not in the lotus position. He glanced at my feet, and his lips pursed, but he didn’t say anything, so I assumed I was fine.

“Today, we will teach you to purify your qi,” he spoke. “This is a step that most students must wait months or even years to take, and it must be done before you can seek your dantian.”

“Why is that, teacher?” I asked curiously.

He stared at me, then sighed. “I forget how little you know of the Heavenly Path,” he said. “Very well, I shall explain.

“When we are born into this world, as babes, we are pure and perfect,” he told me. “Our bodies are natural gatherers of qi, drawing it in from the world instinctively from the moment of our first breath. However, perfection is a state that the mortal world abhors, so we do not remain so for long.

“As we draw in qi, all unknowing, we also take the world’s corruption into ourselves. This corruption fills our meridians and blocks them, stopping us from drawing in further qi or using the heavenly powers of cultivation. Once, this was thought a curse, but now it is understood to be a blessing.

“You see, Xu Xing, there is a space at the center of every being called the dantian. It is the place where our spirits reside, where our true selves seek shelter from the mortal realm. Your meridians link to that place, drawing earthly qi into it and carrying qi from it back into the world. However, the raw qi that we take from the world is too coarse and impure to coexist with our spirit. Should raw qi find its way into your dantian, corruption will build up there, poisoning your spirit and ruining your chance of walking the Heavenly Path.

“That is why students typically spend years learning to clear corruption from their bodies,” he said. “Once you have done so, you will begin to absorb raw qi once more, and this qi will be impure and tainted. If you do not learn to purify it, it will either block your meridians once more or flow into the core of your being and afflict you with the mortal curse.”

“The mortal curse?” I repeated.

The old man shook his head. “I will not speak of it. Suffice it to say that it is a dreadful thing, and any true practitioner would rather die than suffer it.”

He straightened. “You will have a small advantage in what you must do, as you are absorbing celestial qi rather than earthly qi. It is a purer form of energy, and it will require far less time to process before you can allow it to fill your dantian. Now close your eyes.”

I slid my eyelids shut, again feeling a flash of nerves as I did. I hated not being able to see what was happening around me, and the attack yesterday didn’t help matters much. I supposed that the old man could deal with anything that attacked us, but that meant I was relying on him for my safety. I hated being dependent on anyone, especially someone I barely knew.

I expected him to start talking, but instead, he laid his hands on the sides of my head. Instantly, an image flashed into my mind, an odd, spiraling shape with lots of twists and curls to it. It almost reminded me of a seashell from Earth, one that wound into a central point, but when this shape reached the center, it swept slowly back out toward the edge. My eyes had trouble following its curves and odd bends, but it looked like it moved in and out repeatedly, connecting to itself so that the curve never really started or ended.

“This is a cultivation spiral,” he told me. “It is one of the most advanced ones I know, but purifying celestial qi with a lesser structure would be a great waste. You may note its incredible complexity, the layers of depth to it, and how it winds around upon itself in an eternal loop.”

He took his hands away, and the image vanished. “Ultimately, this will be the way you purify your qi, Xu Xing. You will draw celestial qi into this spiral, where it will be compressed and purified. When it is fully cultivated, you will deposit it in your dantian.” He chuckled. “However, that will be some time from now. As you saw, the spiral is terribly complex, and you certainly will not be able to recall more than the rough outline of it. That is normal; you will start with a coarse structure and refine it until it serves your purposes.”

“I remember it, John,” Sara’s voice spoke in my thoughts softly, and instantly, the spiral reappeared in my head. “In fact, I think that I can improve on this. It’s based on mathematical concepts, but it’s not quite complete. Give me a few hours, and I’ll have something even better than what he showed you.”

I went to thank her, but the old man was still talking. “For now, I must show you which meridians you have opened and teach you to access them. Then, you will build a rough spiral and begin the process of adding qi into it. This is the true heart of cultivation: taking the energy of the world, refining it into something more, and filling your spirit with that pure power. By doing so, you will drive the mortal impurities from your body, strengthening it and making it once again a perfect vessel for your spirit, until eventually, you transcend this mortal realm and move to a higher plane.”

I spent the first part of the morning in meditation. I realized quickly that the lines Sara had shown me were my extraordinary meridians. The lesser meridians connected to those and extended into my hands, feet, the center of my head, my heart, and my groin. Five more channels extended along a line down the center of my body, the spiritual meridians that reached from my extraordinary meridians and connected to the surface of my skin in my forehead, throat, solar plexus, navel, and in between my thighs. Finding them wasn’t easy; it required turning my thoughts inward, cutting myself off from my senses and focusing inside my own body. I was supposed locate the meridians by feel, reaching around blindly for them until I sensed the power flowing through them. Apparently, this step required weeks of focus and meditation – at least, it normally did.

Fortunately, I had Sara, and she’d learned enough about this world to guide me in locating the meridians. She displayed an image of me in a sitting position, and as I sought a meridian, she lit it up in the illusory body. Once I had a good idea of its location, I could feel it inside me, like a warm current flowing through my flesh. It was both unnerving and sort of comforting at the same time.

I didn’t tell the old man that I’d found all of my meridians, of course. He told me it was a process that would take weeks; if I did it in hours, he’d wonder how it was possible, and I didn’t have answers for him. At least, I didn’t have any answers I wanted to give him. Instead, I told him I’d found my first two meridians only, the ones linking my hands, and he seemed plenty impressed with this.

“Show me,” he said bluntly.

“How, teacher?” I asked.

“Close your eyes and imagine the morning sun beating down on top of your head. Feel the warmth of it on your skin.”

I didn’t have to close my eyes for that. I could feel the sun on my back from the moment it crested the horizon. Its warmth filled me up, seeming to burn away more of the corruption that I knew still filed me. Still, I didn’t want to get smacked, so I closed my eyes obediently.

“Now, imagine that warmth running down from the top of your head, flowing across your face and through your neck,” he instructed. “Feel it coursing down your shoulder, wrapping under your shoulder blade, and flowing into the meridian in your right arm.”

“He’s talking about using these two pathways, John,” Sara explained, lighting up one of the extraordinary meridians and the lesser meridian in my right arm. A moment later, the image shifted, a third line lighting up to link the two meridians deeper in my body. “I think it’ll work better, though, if you connect the energy this way, instead. You shouldn’t lose as much of it like that.”

I followed her directions, and I felt the sun’s warmth flowing slowly down my neck, into the center of my chest, and out into my arm. It pooled in my hand, making the skin there hot and uncomfortable. “Okay, I’ve got it, teacher.”

“So you say,” he replied. “Now, open your eyes and strike my palm.” I looked and saw his hand held up before me, fingers together and palm toward me. “When you do, direct the power out of your hand and into my palm.” I hesitated, and he chuckled. “Do you fear for my safety? That is kind of you, Xu Xing. I assure you, though, I will be in no danger.”

Remembering how I’d punched through the tiger-monkey yesterday, I wasn’t sure about that. Still, I also recalled how easily he’d knocked me down that first morning. I doubted I could hurt him, but even if I could, I kind of felt like the old ass deserved it. I clenched my fist and lashed out, pushing the energy in my hand into his open palm. I knew how to punch. I knew to clench my fingers at the last second to increase my speed, how to strike through an object instead of into it, and how to put the entire weight of my body into the blow. I used all of those tactics, lashing out with a strike that probably would have killed a person back on Earth.

I screamed as my fist slammed into the unyielding wall of the man’s palm. The old guy’s skin was harder than iron, and the bones of my knuckles popped and cracked as they fractured against it. My wrist snapped, and the impact carried up into my shoulder. Something tore there, sending a lance of pain screaming into my arm and neck, and I fell backward, clutching my shattered arm with my whole one.

“It seems that you have indeed located that meridian,” the old man said calmly, seemingly unruffled by my agony. “However, it seems I underestimated the amount of qi you can channel into a strike.” He shook his head. “You should not do that again until you have learned to use more qi to strengthen your bones and muscles while striking.”

“You told me to!” I snapped, gritting my teeth against the pain in my arm. It was starting to ebb, now, as shock set in, but my shoulder still screamed, and my bones throbbed in time with my heartbeat.

“That is true,” he agreed. “And were I to leave you like this, it would hamper your training, so…” His hand lashed out, so fast that I could barely track it, and latched onto my shattered wrist. I cried out as he squeezed the broken bones there, but a moment later, I felt energy pouring from his hand into my arm. The pain eased and faded as power spread down into my fingers and up into my shoulder.

When he released me, I held up the no-longer-injured hand and stared at it, flexing and straightening my fingers in disbelief. “You healed me,” I breathed.

“You are not healed, Xu Xing,” he shook his head. He reached into a pouch at his side like the one Jing wore and pulled out a small, pinkish pill. “I used a bit of my spirit to bind together what was broken. It will fade, but it will hold long enough for this to heal you fully.” He held out the pill, and I took it a bit hesitantly. It seemed odd that a single pill could heal so much damage; of course, a different pill had allowed me to recover fully from torn muscles, so I supposed a healing pill wasn’t much of a stretch. I swallowed it hastily, grimacing at the bitter taste of it.

“Pills should be bitter,” he laughed at my expression. “If they tasted sweet, people would come to rely on them rather then trusting to their cultivation.”

“Is there something wrong with using these pills?” I asked, a bit alarmed.

“Sparingly? No, not at all.” He sighed. “However, there are those who use such pills as a shortcut, Xu Xing. They seek rare beasts and herbs, and they craft powerful pills that force open their meridians or purify their qi.”

“That doesn’t seem like a bad thing, teacher,” I said cautiously.

“The Heavenly Path does not have shortcuts,” he said sadly. “Those who try to take them pay a price. Cultivation must be built on a strong foundation, one that is crafted through hard work and sacrifice. Those without such a foundation become imbalanced. They attain great power, but they do so at the cost of their spirit.” He shuddered. “A heavenly body with a weak spirit, Xu Xing, is something to be pitied, and it must eventually collapse upon itself, destroying it and all around it in the process.”

I stayed quiet and thought about his words. Strangely enough, I got what he was saying. I’d seen it in my profession back on Earth. People thought that the willingness to kill made them a good assassin. They focused on killing, becoming better shots or learning about exotic poisons. They took shortcuts because all they cared about was the kill, and those shortcuts came back to haunt them. I’d built up a range of identities over years, took classes in acting and speech. I studied with makeup artists and costume designers. I worked with expert marksman learning not just how to shoot but where to shoot from, when to take the shot, and when not to try. They just bought better guns or more powerful bombs.

Those people didn’t live long, for the most part. They made mistakes, didn’t take their time, and either walked into a trap or led pursuers to them. They started to enjoy the killing for its own sake, got greedy for it, and stopped worrying about incidental casualties. That’s always a mistake; people will look for you if you shoot a mafia don, but they’ll never stop looking if you also kill his wife and family. Sometimes, people just got greedy, taking money and delivering sloppy results; that usually led to an assassin becoming a mark themselves.

“I understand,” I finally said. “No shortcuts.” I just hoped that Sara’s help didn’t count as a shortcut – or that I wasn’t in this world long enough for it to matter.

“Good.” He rose. “Now, for today’s task…”

Hours later, I silently cursed the old man as I jogged up the stony, uneven side of a hill, one that had to be a good mile from the farm. The staff laid across my shoulders bowed beneath the weight of two leather sacks filled with rocks, creaking and popping with every jolting stride I took. I panted for breath and sweat streamed from my skin, drenching my shirt and plastering my hair to my forehead, but my muscles weren’t really tired. In fact, I felt suffused with energy, as if I could keep going all day. I knew that wasn’t the case, though. I’d been watching the qi pool number in my status all day, and it had crept slowly but steadily downward since the old man had assigned me this task. Already, it was down to about half its maximum, and I still had a large chunk of the day left to go.

“Goddamn old man,” I muttered as I jogged up the hill and down the other side. “I swear, if I could kick his ass, I would. ‘You must learn to carry with your spirit, not your body.’ What the hell does that even mean?”

“I think he’s talking about using qi to do the work instead of muscle,” Sara explained.

“Yes, Sara, I get that,” I sighed aloud. She knew I did; she had to. She was in my head.

“So, why aren’t you doing that?”

I stopped, startled, and her image appeared before me. “What do you mean?” I asked her. “Of course, I’m doing that. That’s why my qi pool is dropping.”

“I don’t think you are, John. I think that you’re doing this intuitively, and that means letting qi flow into your dantian, then pushing it out into your shoulders, back, and legs.”

“Okay, what’s the difference?”

“I think you’re supposed to do what the old man told you to earlier. Remember how he had you channel qi directly into your punch? That’s what you should be doing. You’re losing a lot of qi doing it this way, and you’re probably getting more of that corruption in you.”

I sighed. “How do you know all this?” I demanded.

“That’s my job, John. I’m here to help you navigate and understand this world. The longer we’re in it, the more of its secrets I’m unlocking, and the more I comprehend how its energies work. I know enough now to tell you that you’re doing this the hard way.”

“Fine. What’s the easy way?”

“Try this.” An image of me appeared in my vision with a staff across my shoulders. This image had several lines lit up along it; one ran from the top of my head down to my waist, where it connected with the one that wrapped around my waist. Three more lines sprouted from that, one heading up into my chest, where it diverged into the meridians that went down each arm, and the other two plunging into my legs. “I think this will channel qi directly where you’re using it. You should need far less of it, this way, and you might not feel so tired.”

“That’s ridiculously complicated,” I protested, staring at the image. “I can’t possibly hold all those lines at once!”

“Probably not at first, but that’s what practice is for, right? Besides, if it was easy, everyone would do it.”

“I think everyone on this world does do it,” I grumbled, then sighed again. “Fine. How do we start?”

“I suggest holding the central and abdominal lines, first. You can add others as you go.”

At first, following Sara’s suggestions made carrying the stones much, much harder. As I focused on holding those central lines, my qi pool started to plummet, and I could only go for thirty minutes before I was exhausted and had to stop to recharge. After an hour or so, though, I could keep qi cycling from my head through those two meridians without much effort, and once that happened, my aching back muscles started to relax.

“Your muscles are pulling qi directly from the meridians,” she explained to me. “At least, that’s what it looks like. If you can keep your meridians full, then your muscles will draw from them, not your qi pool, and the excess will get stored.”

Once I was confident holding the first two meridians, I added the one leading up to my chest, which helped my shoulders. Maintaining three was exponentially harder than holding two, though, and I realized that three was probably my limit at that moment. Still, with those three lines, carrying the stones was much easier, and my qi pool had almost refilled by the time I returned to the farm at sunset and put down my burden. My legs were sore and aching, as were my arms, but my back and shoulders felt fine. My stomach, though, was grumbling mightily.

The old man examined me and nodded with approval. “You are learning,” he told me. “I can sense, though, that you are allowing unfiltered qi into your dantian.”

“That’s a problem, isn’t it, teacher?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not at this level, although it may become one eventually. After you have eaten, practice guiding qi into the coarse spiral we worked on this morning. If you do so while indoors, you should draw the qi from your dantian, not from the heavens, which will keep it from corrupting your spirit.”

I ate my meal of soup and bread gratefully, realizing that I hadn’t had a bite all day. I hadn’t really been hungry earlier, either. I wondered if that had something to do with my open meridians, or if I had just been too distracted to notice.

That night, I sat in the outbuilding, my eyes closed, holding the odd, twisted image that Sara was showing me in my head. At her suggestion, I was building it in the center of my body, behind my solar plexus, and I’d attached links from it to all four of my opened extraordinary meridians.

“Careful,” she warned. “You’re losing it right here.” Part of her displayed image flashed, and I quickly focused on that part of my structure, reshaping it back into place. “Good. I think you’ve got it well enough to start.”

“Okay, what do I do?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure your dantian is located right below the spiral. Imagine that it’s that battery thing you were talking about, and picture it sending power into your spiral. It might help to envision the spiral lighting up as its filled.”

I did as she suggested, and I felt a stream of warmth rise from the center of my abdomen up into the spiral. The spiral slowly lit up as power flowed into it, filling it and following the recurved paths I’d built. They weren’t as complex or intricate as the one Sara had showed me, but it was as fancy as I could make it. More to the point, it created a sort of recycling flow, spinning the power around faster and faster, cycling it repeatedly through the spiral without losing a drop of it.

After a few minutes, I sensed what felt like a dark mist drifting from the spiral into my meridians. “Is this the corruption the old man was talking about?”

“He has a name, you know. It’s Wading-in-Morning-Water.”

“Fine, but I’m not saying all that. I’ll call him Wim. So, is this that?”

“I’m fairly certain, yes. You’ll probably want to get that out of you before it starts to reclog your meridians. Here, this is the fastest way.” A line appeared connecting my abdominal meridian to my lungs. “Pull it from there to your lungs and breathe it out, and it should draw from every other meridian, too.”

I continued my meditation until my qi pool ran dry, at which point it was well into the night – and I still wasn’t tired. I wasn’t even a little sleepy. I sighed and stood up; if I couldn’t sleep, I could at least refill my qi pool outside.

After I walked around the farm a dozen times or so, my qi pool was totally full, but I still wasn’t the tiniest bit sleepy. I spent the next couple of hours practicing my Retzev drills and groundwork, and when I finished, another blinking dot was waiting in the edge of my vision.

“When did that start appearing?” I asked Sara silently.

“When I realized that the full screen would be dangerous if it obscured your vision at the wrong time. This way, you know that something’s waiting for you to read, but it won’t distract you at a crucial moment.”

“Good call.” I pulled up the screen and read the contents through without really knowing what they meant.

Skill: Qi Absorption has gained a level

Qi Absorption (neophyte 2)

Benefits: Absorb Qi 10% faster, +1% per rank;

Absorb qi at double the normal speed beneath

a heavenly body of some kind.

Skill: Qi Cycling has Gained a level

Qi Cycling (neophyte 2)

Benefits: Heal 10% faster, +1% per rank; All training

speeds are improved by 100%, +10% per rank

Skill: Unarmed Combat has gained a level

Unarmed Combat (Initiate 1)

Benefits: Combat Speed +6%; Defense +6%

Skill: Weapon Focus (Unarmed) has gained a level

Weapon Focus (Unarmed, Neophyte 3)

Benefits: Damage +3%

“I don’t understand how this works, Sara,” I’d admitted. “What are skill ranks? What does an increased damage percentage mean?”

“Skills are just what they imply. They’re unique skills that you happen to know. Your rank is a measure of how good you are at them, more or less. Neophyte is the lowest rank; Initiate is the one above it.”

“Okay, but how can you give a number like ‘6% more combat speed’? Are you saying that I’m 6% faster than a regular person, and that because I’ve that, you’ve assigned me that rank?”

“It’s more complicated than that, I’m afraid. You see, as I adapt to this world, I’m able to siphon its energies and use them to empower you beyond what you’d normally be capable of. While you were practicing, I was learning how to improve you, to make you faster in combat. Thanks to that, I can assist you a bit, now, making you move faster, block more effectively, and hit harder. Your skill rank is a measure of how good you are at a specific skill; the bonuses are how good I am at helping you out.

“Fortunately, those numbers are closely related. The better you are at something, the easier it is for me to understand how you’re doing it, and the more help I can be to you.”

I’d thought about it for a while and decided that it didn’t really matter exactly how it all worked. What was important was that I was faster and harder to hit in combat, and I could hit with more force. It also seemed that the more I practiced and used those skills, the faster those numbers would rise, and the stronger I’d become.

And from what I’d seen so far of this world, I definitely needed to be stronger.