Anger, pride, ambition, fascination and incremental progress all drive me on against this sheer cliff of solid qi. On a spiritual high dangerously close to shattering a talisman, I fall into a familiar cycle: gather qi, compress, compare, repeat. Almost like within that spiritual lake before, only this time the qi is inert, easier to analyze. I no longer need to direct the qi to maximize my chances, but analyze the qi to proceed forward.

My increased spiritual strength makes this process easier. Qi gathers much faster than before, especially since my soul’s size increased considerably. Three opened dantians also improves my qi control in almost every aspect, so failure is that much more grating.

My anger soon wanes – Ascetic Yang long forgotten, no longer a battle against her qi but against this still, arrogant enemy that has intruded into my body. My pride falls to the wayside, unable to withstand countless failures. But my efforts continue.

Soon, the qi I create no longer splash against the foreign qi, but creates a dent so small I can barely notice even with Qi Awareness. However, it is the most damage I have done so far. Success is dangling right in front of me, all I need to do is stretch out my hand and grab it. Gather qi. Compress. Compare. Repeat.

҉҉҉

Just when I am about to put all the puzzle pieces together, the foreign qi washes away from my meridians, like absorbed by some type of vortex as I chase after it. I am so close. I refuse to give up now. I give chase.

A hand falls onto my shoulder, grabs me tight enough to draw blood. The world turns white, shatters, and I find myself on my bed. Ascetic Yang stands behind me, yet still lording over me, staring me down.

“Stop now.” She says.

I feel the qi within my body freeze up from her words and the spiritual high begins to wear off as exhaustion sets in. Anger comes back with reinforcements. She was the one who started this who situation to begin with. And, when I am so close to figuring it out, she tells me to stop? I close my eyes. My qi may have cowered, but a cultivator needed to have other tricks up their sleeves to survival. If not, I could always make one.

“Don’t be arrogant.” She says, throwing me face-down onto the bed.

If she could not snap me like a toothpick, I would have some choice words to say.

“Look around. You have already absorbed and used more than three times your qi capacity.” She says.

Sure enough, I am surrounded with many orange spirit stones, not just the five spirit stones I originally brought with me. “Where did all of these even come from? That’s a lot of money to waste.”

Ascetic Yang shrugs. “All complete spirit stones gradually recharge. Only fragments can’t, or if it is completely exhausted to the point of shattering.”

I blink a few times. Did that mean Xin Feng wasted what amounted to millions or billions of red spirit stones while cultivating, just because he could not wait a few days? Perhaps some bad habits remaining from his early days – the incomplete spirit stones were given out freely during distribution day – that he never quite grew out of.

She hands me a bowl of noodles, with a minced pork and green onion topping, all over a lovely chili oil sauce. The exhaustion and hunger sets in and I give up on starting another argument. Her words might have merit, I admit. But after many long hours spent trying to resolve a problem she created and fixed within moments, I am left a bit too unsatisfied to listen to her.

The sun shines through the few windows and my exhaustion takes a turn for the worst. “Did I really just meditate through the night?” I ask.

“A day and a half. You went straight through the commencement speech and more.” Ascetic Yang says. “But your efforts did not go unnoticed.” She points to Tie Lijie and Fang Wangyong who have planted themselves on my couch and have entered meditation in a locus position. Their guardians are near them as well, reading. Personally, I feel my lying-on-my-back meditation is far superior, but I suppose the kids are too young to know of its merits.

“Chen Yingyue also came over after the commencement speech, but she had to leave before nightfall.” Ascetic Yang says. She hands me a pill and a clear soup. “Swallow the pill whole, then drink the soup. It may not be a perfect substitute for sleep, but it will do enough. Your first class begins soon after the daybreak doublehour, but before that, it’s back to meditation. You’re running on empty.”

After a few Spirit Like Water recitations, I check on the condition of my soul. Enough time has passed that its humanoid shape no longer distracts me from what it is: full of flaws. There is enough patchwork here and there to see that my earlier work did pay off a bit, but it seems most my increase in spiritual strength came directly from size. I want to begin forming spiritual threads immediately, but a lack of qi prevents me from doing so.

҉҉҉

“Freedom. Daylight. Fresh air.” Fang Wangyong says, falling to his knees, kissing the ground outside our dorms.

Tie Lijie skips speaking entirely, screaming instead as he bolts around in random directions.

“Class starts in ten.” I point out.

My words fall on deaf ears, as the two decide to start a rolling competition across the ground. Poor Tie Lijie does not realize how outmatched he is – Fang Wangyong at least some fat to buffer his body and to roll, while Tie Lijie rolls like a square head bolt. Meanwhile I walk circles around them as I draw upon qi from new orange spirit stones.

The two are so lucky that the dome lacks stairs, because I would have very much enjoyed if they tried rolling up them. But it does not take long for them to give up. Our class is at the tippy top of the dome and the ramp spirals by every single room along the way.

A fragile old man furiously taps his foot in front of the classroom we are supposed to be at. His eyes are bloodshot, made even more daunting by the complete armor, including helmet, that he is wearing. It would be funny if I could not feel the qi seething from his entire body. He should not be the strongest person I seen since my reincarnation, but he has been the person most willing to show his strength. It’s suffocating.

“Ying Yun, Fang Wangyong, Tie Lijie.” The man says, nodding his head in deep understanding. “How nice of you to finally join class.” He brings out a pocket watch and exclaims, “three minutes late! The audacity.” He shakes his head, then turns to us. “As punishment, run down the ramp and back three times. In fifteen. If you fail, you will do it again.”

“We aren’t even that late.” Fang Wanyong cries.

“Four times. Twelve minutes.” The man says.

“That’s not fair.” Tie Lijie pouts.

“Five times. Nine minutes.” The man says, tapping his pocket watch. “Quickly, a minute already passed.”

I grab the two’s sleeves as I make my way down the ramp. I manage to keep on their heels on the way down the ramp, but on the way up, the difference in stature and physical cultivation becomes apparent. By the time I reach halfway back up, I already see the two bolting down. By the time I reach the top once more, they have caught up to me.

And that was my lap one. Even pouring qi into my body to relax my muscles does not work.

After my lap two, they are already done. They plop down onto the ground and begin heaving. Only they are not too serious, because they give me a giant grin when I tell them I have two more laps. I need some type of movement technique. Given that I already have a water technique, and my physical technique will be fire, I bet it will be earth or wind.

By the time I finish the fifth lap and walk into class, my body hates me. There are nine other students in my class, four boys and five girls. If I had to guess, it is simply the top five from each sex, rather than top ten. Otherwise I would be the only boy in the class.

“Ying Yun, you have finally made it to the class.” The teacher says, spinning his failed excuse for a mustache. Yeah, I downgraded it after that punishment. What is mister teacher going to do?

“Finally.” I agree.

“We are about to start talking about opening the meridians. As the highest ranking boy in the class, why don’t you explain the topic?” He asks, smiling.

“Sense the foreign qi, then pulse your qi through it until it becomes brittle and breaks against your qi. Remove the bits leftover then continue with the next part.” I recite.

“What is that garbage?” He frowns, then turns to the glass where he has drawn a sexless human body and the basic meridian circuits within. “The meridian holds no foreign qi, only yours. Before you could even think, you could manipulate qi. To form your body. To strengthen your soul. To grow. The qi within your meridians is a vestige of that point. See it. Study it. Attune your qi like it and you will find that the qi will merge into your own and open easily.” He turns back to me and frowns once more. “Not only did you take twenty minutes more than allotted, but you even gave a terrible answer. Back to running you go.”

I shrug as I close the door behind me. I don’t feel terribly bad about missing class, if his explanation was any indication. I doubt a Divinity would fail to understand what meridians are and what I know from Overthrowing The Heavens checks out with my current knowledge. Unless he assuming that babies create themselves in the womb, with the underlying assumption that our instinctual self is better at qi manipulation than our current selves. Makes no sense but that is a main school of thought in this world.

As I walk down the ramp, I begin converting whatever little qi I have gathered the past couple of hours into strings. Not to repair my soul with, though I would like to do that, but to begin repairing my meridians. The basic concept behind repairing the meridians is the same, only my body does not reject my qi like my soul does.

The strings are easy enough to form. Weaving them into my meridians meets no resistance, but unlike my soul, my meridians seems multiple weaves over a period of time to repair. My soul only needs once, but it has much higher criteria for what it considers acceptable qi weaving.

About an hour later, when I return to class after the fifth lap, I am thrown a scroll – the wordless kind – and have to learn about qi theory. It’s about instinctual qi usage, which I find difficulty accepting, so I shut close my eyes, pretending to contemplate its words as I weave my meridians more.