The few weeks following the event have been different and lonely, for a lack of a better word. I now live in Aunt Meng’s room, who basically is split in half – one for all her alchemy, and the other for all her clothes. Not the worst outcome by itself, but Aunt Meng, mother and father are hardly around most of the time.

“Young master Yun.” Ascetic Yang says, knocking on the blackboard. The sound itself isn’t loud but she releases waves of qi that disrupt my train of thought, her favorite tactic after all her other methods failed to worked. “You’re drifting off again.”

“Sorry,” I say, sighing. Her lessons are great – just long. Without my parents or Aunt Meng to restrict her, any free time I have, she absorbs. Even worse, her qi disruption tactic actually drags me out of deep meditation, so I cannot even use sleep as an excuse. “What was the question again?”

“What do five realms, ten ranks mean in cultivation?” Ascetic Yang asks, tapping the blackboard. A pyramid of five layers and color is drawn on the board. Red for the base, then orange, yellow, green and blue.

“Five realms denotes the five stages of growth. Not only in strength, but in longevity, regeneration, domain, spirit and qi. Ten ranks signifies that although all five realms need to be achieved to become a Divinity, there is flexibility to the path there. Some pursue strength, others regeneration and longevity. Still others are talented with domains, spirit or qi. Cultivation needs a broad mind to realize that although Heaven leaves a path for us to cultivate, only the destination is the same.” I say, trying to regurgitate every portion of the theory that has been drilled into the past couple of weeks. Some of this I already knew, but did not know the Shanhua words for. Others were not included within the Spirit Like Water scrolls, but I do feel were mentioned within Overthrowing the Heavens one way or another.

“That’s adequate.” Ascetic Yang asks, flipping the blackboard over to reveal an empty board. “Now what are the two requirements for the first realm and why are they important?”

“While most things can be learned later, two things must happen in the first stage: being able to sense and absorb qi. There’s also an informal requirement of being able to do so with both the body and the spirit, but this is only preparation for the later realms rather than strictly necessary.” I say, trying to hold onto my train of thought as the blackboard slowly reveals each point I make as well.

“Congratulations. You have earned the right to begin cultivation, the soul part anyway.” Ascetic Yang says, dropping five stones, one for each realm, onto the table. Each are about the size of her palms and all of their surfaces are filled to the brim with runes.

As I reach out to touch them, Ascetic Yang grabs my arm. “Before I give these to you, promise me, that you will never take the yellow, green and blue stones outside of your room.”

“Because they are worth a lot of money?” I ask. Sure a blue spirit stone is worth a hundred and twenty-five red spirit stones but that’s not exactly a world-ending amount of wealth.

“These are priceless.” Ascetic Yang says, pointing at the three spirit stones. “The yellow improves your regeneration when you absorb its qi, the green can help you develop your domain ad the blue one can help you strengthen your spirit.” Then she points to the red and orange stone. “The red one helps alleviate physical exhaustion, and the orange one for spiritual exhaustion.”

These would be very helpful in cultivation indeed. “Alright, I promise.” Taking a cloth bag for the spirit stones Ascetic Yang hands me.

With a wave of her hand, she drops a stack of scrolls onto the table. “All cultivation is at the beginning is repeating a few simple steps until something clicks. Choose one you, but don’t stress over it – you can always switch it out later, if you want.”

I hesitate in even picking up the scrolls since I already have my hands full with Spirit Like Water, but choosing one would give me quite a good excuse in hiding it. So I open the first scroll, looking for something about sensory manipulation, qi or mundane.

I sincerely doubt my Shanhua is anywhere adequate to read these scrolls, because they can be dense and esoteric, but here goes nothing. The first scroll is completely blank. “What?” I utter.

Moments later, a voice appears within my mind: Wind Accompanying the Ear, the Sound of the World. Much like how I comprehended Spirit Like Water without any language barrier, this scroll seems to be able to do the same. In essence, the cultivation and martial technique does little more than Awareness, but only focuses on sound and wind. There is only one wind of the world that exists from the beginning of time, understand its sounds and it will tell you everything.

“By the way, can I even cultivate?” I ask as I reach the next scroll. “Aren’t I supposed to wait until I’m twelve or something to begin?”

Ascetic Yang scoffs. “If you cannot reach the second realm by the time you are five, let alone twelve, you will be disinherited.”

“But there are young and weak nobles training down the mountain, in the sect?” I ask. I mean there’s always the typical main character who angers some young noble, gets into some drawn out war over what amounts to be a couple of pennies. Overthrowing the Heavens was no exception.

“Young, weak and noble? Yes. Twelve? No.” Ascetic Yang says, tilting her face into her hand. “It seems like I glossed over some important points for the sake of brevity.” She erases the blackboard and begins drawing a chart:

Noble

Commoner

Birth

8 month baby

1 month

13 month baby

2 month

3 year old toddler

3 month

5 year old toddler

4 month

7 year old child

1 year

10 year old child

“There’s diminishing returns to accelerating growth past the first five months, so few people do it, as puberty has taken over.” Ascetic Yang says. “You are an odd case. At almost five months old, you are only equivalent to a three year old commoner toddler. But with a few more months of medicinal baths, you should catch up.”

Oof, I knew I was lagging behind the curve a bit, but less than a seventh feels a bit stark. And raises a lot of questions, so I ask, “how the body even handle the strain, physical and spiritual?”

“That’s why noble parents, especially the mother, generally have a child only after reaching the sixth rank and achieving Xiantian status. It ensures faster development, endurance, regeneration and longevity.” Ascetic Yang says, pausing for a moment. “It’s also why noble female children are valued higher than male ones.”

Left unsaid and implied there, of course, was that mother was of commoner birth. Do they believe that it’s mother’s fault that my growth is stunted? Other mothers have implied it and servants do whisper about things.

My curiosity turns into irritation as I breeze through the next scrolls – there’s a couple of interesting picks, such as a soul splitting technique, divination, emotional manipulation and more. I chance upon one called Mind’s Eye, which is a visualization technique that helps me find flaws and imperfections within my forms and physical actions, just like how Qi Awareness helps me visualize the flaws within my control of qi.

“Finally done choosing a scroll?” Ascetic Yang says. “Just in time too.” She looks out the window, to the setting sun. “Now that you are beginning to cultivate, daybreak and nightfall doublehours are cultivation hours.”

“Why?” I ask, as she throws me onto her shoulder.

“The Divine World is closest to the Mortal World then, increasing the amount of qi entering our world during those times and bringing a bit of aid towards spiritual cultivation, something you desperately need.” Ascetic Yang says. Contrary to my expectation, she brings me to the basement, not my room. “Now, close your eyes, hold onto the blue spirit stone and try your best to sense qi.”

I do exactly that. As it turns out, now that I’m in the second soul cultivation rank, sensing qi is pretty easy, especially with a skill called Qi Awareness. Who would have thought. Holding the blue spirit stone enhances my spiritual cultivation tremendously, so much so that I’m wary I might shatter another one of my talismans like before. However, my spirit has strengthened and my worries are unfounded.

Even though my spirit now requires liquid qi, thanks to the amount of qi I am gathering, the conversion process completes smoothly so I can jump straight to weaving spiritual threads. My spirit is the size of a bowling ball but I feel like each time I look at it with Qi Awareness, I discover a new weakness within the spiritual threshold. It hurts because I now have to divert time and time again to patching them up.

This particular cultivation doublehour session feels really good and I actually manage to weave five spiritual threads into my threshold. Four of them even succeeded without being rejected. My elation is pretty hard to hide apparently, since Ascetic Yang opens her eyes in suspicion, which are normally rather hard to see amidst the wrinkles.

“Did you succeed?” she asks. “I felt a lot of qi move around your vicinity.”

“Yeah.” I say, trying to remember how it felt before. “I felt a little nudge on my spirit.”

“Nudge? Spirit? How did you feel your spirit already?” Ascetic Yang asks. “Did you feel anything in your dantian?”

“Like the qi dantian, under my navel?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“No.” I say, giving it a quick check. Nope, that dantian is sealed liked a snow globe. Impenetrable.

Ascetic Yang gives an exaggerated sigh. “Alright, if you can truly sense qi, you can probably open it now. It’s the easiest one to open.” She says, grabbing the red spirit stone from the cloth bag. “Take multiple deep breaths and try feeling for a lake of qi, there should be a small one in your qi dantian.”

“Now what?” I ask, feeling a spherical lump near my navel.

“Try pushing into it or taking a bit of qi from it.”

I cannot sense any qi within the spherical lump so I push some liquid qi into it. Its walls collapse on the gentlest touch and for the second time today, I fear that another talisman will break. I’m down four talismans already and I have yet to begin the actual difficult part of cultivation.

Contrary to what Ascetic Yang says, the sphere is empty and my qi quickly fills it. Before I am able to even able to celebrate this achievement, qi from both dantians channel towards my spiritual dantian just behind my heart and breaks it open. A heavy force smashes into me and I lose conscious.