Anzan exhaled shakily and opened his eyes. His head was pulsing and his skull felt near splitting, but he’d finally got what he was after. He couldn’t let it slip. He set his jaw and rose to his feet, habitually checking his nose for blood. There was none this time. That was good.

He stood tall amid the swaying shadows of a darkened glade, motionless and staring ahead at nothing. His eyes bulged as he tried to see beyond sight and forcefully recall the image of a feeling. He grasped desperately at the slippery threads of his Art. Then, all at once, he launched into a series of movements, arms whirling and feet stamping. He looked like he could’ve been in combat, performing an awkward dance, an elaborate insult, or any combination of all three. Even Anzan himself wasn’t quite sure which.

“No, not yet,” he muttered under his breath.

He was slipping, losing hold of it. The feeling was growing fainter and fainter. Panic and despair welled up in Anzan’s chest. He didn’t know if he could take another flat-out failure, but he closed his eyes and continued to focus on that far-off feeling, and eventually, his emotions settled and Anzan locked into a rhythm. He was starting to get the hang of it! Yes, his movements were smoothing out, growing more deliberate. This must be what harmony with Heaven and Earth felt like. Any moment Earthly Qi would come flooding in, Anzan would become powerful, he would make his Treasure and then—

“Ahah! Please! No more—stop!” Ling cried, breaking into a fit of raucous laughter.

Anzan’s mind went blank and he froze mid-motion. The strange specter was wavering around in the air, holding her sides and gasping for breath as spectral tears ran down her face.

“I-I-I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly between gasps. “B-but you were so serious! I couldn’t! Oh—hehehehe…” She rolled in the air, wheezing and hissing with laughter.

Anzan’s arms dropped and his whole body sagged. He’d completely lost the feeling now, or whatever it was he thought he had. “Was it really that bad?” he mumbled.

“No!” Ling’s face locked up with effort. “Yes!” she cried as the tension blew right back out of her, and she fell into a giggling fit.

Anzan sat down glumly and tried to ignore the obnoxious specter. So, he failed again. He should be used to it—he’d had nothing but failures in the days since his first attempts—but frustration gnawed at him. It wasn’t that he had big expectations; past experience made it hard to, regardless of the miraculous changes that had happened to him. What bothered him was the uncertainty. He was still struggling to acclimate to the human body, and he often found himself falling into old habits like walking on all fours or wanting to lick himself, much to Ling’s dismay. But after being a human for several days, Anzan felt like he’d at least mastered the basics, but he had no way of knowing if there was something he was missing.

To make matters worse, cultivation was far more confusing than he could’ve imagined. The Art Ling had given him was less a set of instructions and more a collection of feelings. Somehow he was supposed to take those feelings and apply them in reality, but the process was too abstract for Anzan to make any sense of it. He had a tenuous understanding of Qi and the ‘Way’ at best but no knowledge of what to do with it. And Ling was no help at all because everything, to her, was obvious. Asking her questions was like asking why ‘up’ was up and ‘down’ was down. It just was.

“You know,” Anzan said, trying not to sound bitter, “you’re taking this a lot more lightly than I thought you would. What happened to the strict front from before?” His voice took on a nasally tone. “‘The shaping will determine everything; you can’t afford to slack!’”

“Ah…” Ling’s voice warbled as she calmed down, and finally, she seemed to take notice of Anzan’s sour mood. “Oh, now look!” she said, drifting into his face. “I really am sorry! And this is serious! It’s just—” She took a deep breath and crossed her arms. “I realized I can’t expect too much from a mortal.” Anzan’s expression contorted, and Ling faltered. “B-but besides that! We don’t even have everything we need. What’s the use in fretting?”

Anzan gave a noncommittal grunt. “I guess that makes sense.” Ling buzzed around anxiously. “Mhmm, well, we may as well set out? There’s no use just sitting here, and look!” She pointed past the tree line.

Anzan turned his gloomy gaze upward—the first rays of pre-dawn light were only just warming the treetops.

“The best time for your training’s already passed. We can try again in the evening! I’m sure it will go better,” Ling proclaimed, though she did not sound confident.

Anzan shuffled over to a heavily knotted pine tree and slung a solitary rice sack over his shoulder more strongly than was necessary. Pilgrim squeed and wriggled out from inside, scrabbling up Anzan’s shoulder, yawning.

“You’re right,” Anzan said, trying to dredge up enough confidence for the both of them. “Let’s go.”

***

The forest was a robust, if empty, place. That was Anzan’s impression of it after four and a half days. His hike had been mostly flat and easy since they left the vicinity of the temple. However, the difficulty had started to spike as the trees grew thicker and more gnarly, and their canopies grew denser and darker. He found himself tripping more and more over increasingly complex tangles of roots, halfway obscured by the forest’s heavy carpet of pine needles. Anzan tried to look at it like a test, one that scaled up in difficulty as his mastery over the human foot grew, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t add to his already mounting frustrations.

The glade had been their first look at pure sunlight in several days, and Anzan was sorry to leave it, but it also gave them their first good look at their surroundings in a while, and now a sense of progress drove him onward. A slash of daggerlike mountains cut across the horizon in the distance. Ling suggested that that meant they were in some kind of valley. They adjusted course, and soon, she said, they would find water. Then all they had to do was follow it because water meant people, and people meant civilization, and civilization meant they could finally begin their search in earnest.

Anzan hissed, catching himself just shy of a nasty fall. He looked down at an unreasonable swirl of roots with something resembling menace. He should’ve learned to watch his feet by now, but thoughts of his inadequacy and the problem of his Art dragged him down like a ball and chain. For some reason, it felt right to blame nature for this.

“Hey cheer up,” Ling said. This was the latest in a whole series of her attempts to make amends. The strange specter seemed to be feeling guilty, and aside from her stilted apologies and attempts at levity, their journey that day had been mostly silent and awkward. Pilgrim was the only one who acted normal, content to snack and sniff and scuttle.

Anzan sighed. “It’s all right Ling,” he said. “I’m not mad at you. I probably did look pretty silly before.” He smirked in chagrin and sighed again. “What’s got me all messed up is: I want to try hard—I want to take cultivation seriously—but I just don’t know how. And it’s hard not to think about it.”

“Is that all?” Ling blurted out before flinching at her overeager response. “Ehem—I mean, you know, I meant what I said earlier.”

Anzan looked at her quizzically.

“You can’t expect much from mortals—and I mean any mortal,” she said, raising a hand to show Anzan she wasn’t finished. “Most of them go their whole lives without getting even the slightest hint at cultivation, and those who do still often languish for decades or even centuries with little to no progress. You can’t expect results so quickly.”

“That’s comforting—in a way,” Anzan said, “but you’re not making me like our chances very much.”

“Well you are a little different from them,” Ling said, “because you have me. And really, whatever problems you’re having are at least partly my fault since I’m your teacher.” She furrowed her brow and mumbled to herself. “I never paid much attention to mortals before; it never occurred to me how much they struggle with everything.” She puffed up. “But we don’t even have everything we need yet, and by the time we do, I’ll have figured everything out. So stop worrying!”

Anzan paused a moment, then said, “And how exactly are we supposed to find a-a base material, was it?”

“Yes that’s it.” Ling frowned in contemplation. “Well, most reputable sects would produce elixirs to furnish one for their normal disciples. Otherwise, base materials are usually refined and passed down from master to disciple. We’re in the middle of nowhere, though, so we’re unlikely to find a major sect anywhere near here, and I can’t do anything to help you directly…” She bit her lower lip and trailed off. “The best we’re likely to do is if we can find a place of natural harmony between Heaven and Earth and have you refine a wisp of Heavenly Qi yourself.”

“Heavenly Qi? If you haven’t noticed, I’m having problems enough with Earthly Qi. Not that I really understand either,” Anzan grumbled.

“Understanding will come with time,” Ling replied, drifting toward Anzan. “As for Heavenly Qi, well, you don’t even need to understand it.” Seeing his confusion, she continued, “Earthly Qi is all around us and full of impurities from the natural world. So, while it can be used to refine the equally impure mortal body, introducing those impurities into the soul during the forging of your Spiritual Treasure would be disastrous. Death would be the best case.”

Anzan shivered.

“But there is no such problem with Heavenly Qi. Unfortunately, in the natural world, Heavenly Qi is extremely rare, existing only in certain places with a special unity between the elements. Finding such a location is a matter of luck, and absorbing the Qi will require a little inspiration, but nothing so far as understanding.”

“Well, that’s probably for the best,” Anzan said. “Though it sounds like we may be searching for a long time.”

“Yes, but we knew our journey was likely to be a long one from the outset, right?” That was true—perhaps something about his transformation and the pearl had got Anzan’s hopes up. “We have more than enough time to figure things out, so the best we can do for now is to keep moving. Come on!”

Anzan was standing still, he realized. He reached behind himself, absentmindedly fingering his pack, and started walking again. In addition to a wide variety of snacks for Pilgrim, Ling had had him pick several potential supplementary materials from their leavings at the Great Monad Temple. Now, Anzan was particularly glad to have them because, from Ling’s description, it sounded like they could be searching for a while. That might not be such a bad thing, though, considering his struggles with his Art. Anzan shook off his self-doubt and refocused on the journey ahead. It was like Ling said; they had more than enough time to figure things out. There was no reason to overburden himself with worries.

“There is one other thing,” Anzan said, his voice full of renewed vigor. “Ever since I started practicing, I’ve noticed a strange pain just below my chest.”

“Huh,” Ling whipped around, her face full of confusion.

“Right here,” he said, rubbing his stomach. Just then, it growled.

Ling’s face contorted, and she launched into a series of disconcerted ramblings. Apparently, Anzan was hungry—something to do with eating, he’d heard. He knew humans did that but never considered that that applied to him. It hadn’t before. But from the way Ling reacted, he could guess that his situation wasn’t good. She went on and on, and Anzan started to get the feeling that eating might be a very bad thing.