I parted ways with Su Lin halfway up the hill, the sect was on. As he handed me my new cauldron, I realised that I could’ve simply stuffed all the herbs inside it, making carrying everything far easier. Feeling a bit stupid while simultaneously amused, surprised and confused from what had happened with Yan Yun, I made my way back to my room.

Labby had fallen asleep once more in my pouch, and I could sense her slowly but surely growing her cultivation base, as more and more lightning Qi began to gather in her tiny body. The art that Yan Yun had given was clearly helping.

I noted the absent silver pill where she was sleeping, but I’d already expected that she’d eat it. I couldn’t sense anything harmful in it, so I let the thought go. I couldn’t survive if I lived being hyper-paranoid about everything.

I walked into my room, somehow opening the doors with my feet while balancing the many items in my hand, as I jumped around, to make sure none of my porcelain petri dish substitutes fell. Not after I faced down actual thugs to keep them.

“Well, at least I’m back now,” I muttered, entering my room as the sweet and, oddly relaxing scent of the many spirit herbs planted in my room hit me.

Somehow, before I’d realized it, this place had become home to me.

A small pang of pain went through my heart, as I remembered my old home and friends, but the joy of crafting new and wonderful pills, as I tried to understand more and more about this world was enough to break through the gloomy emotions.

I sensed Labby stirring in my pouch, and I realised that I’d inadvertently been sharing my emotions through our bond. I was about to cut off the connection when affection poured through the link, mixed with awe and respect. It took me a moment to parse through the jumble of emotions before a smile blossomed on my face.

“You sweet little troublemaker, so cute even when you sleep huh?” I said out loud, laughing as I took off my pouch and carefully kneeled near my desk, letting Labby sleep on my desk. I’ll have to look into creating a more comfortable home for her to stay in, and possibly someplace I could construct filled with enough electric Qi.

“Maybe I can even try and get some electrostatic reactions going. I wonder if that’d help with the Electric Qi,” I muttered out loud, petting Labby’s head slightly before I stood up and began to go through the items in my hand.

I placed the spirit stones together, and the spirit herbs in another bunch as I put them in my herb drawers, which I’d reinforced with some simple hinges to prevent another Labby invasion.

I took out the heat-sensing stone, and had a quick look at it, wondering how I could make something a bit more precise from it. I pocketed the item for now, as I moved to the thing I was most excited about.

My second cauldron.

I’d been fairly excited about getting it, but the many events happening today had distracted me. The cauldron was made of some kind of metal, most probably iron but I couldn’t tell for sure. There were small lines carved throughout its body, with small circular indents at the bottom end to place spirit stones in. I highly suspected the design wasn’t just decoration, but actually some form of heat conduction method the cauldron was using.

A neat little lid would cover the whole thing shut, but since the caldron was connected with my Qi, I could sense the inside without having to look. It would be far easier to experiment with Qi pressure and its relation to the Qi saturation of the pills now, with this present. Alongside actual measurements of some values for the creation requirement of the basic pills that I could create.

I went up, quickly grabbing my notes, as I sifted through them. One of the issues I’d been trying to work on had been how to standardise Qi. And if that was even possible. One neat thing I’d found out had been how all spirit stones had a precise size and quantity of cut established by the empire for them. Meaning roughly each spirit stone worked as a rough measure of how much amount of Qi was present in it, making it usable as a standard of measurement for Qi until I could find something more accurate to replace it with.

The second part was how spirit stones were, quite literally, solidified Qi. I went through my notes to take in the observation of how one of the spirit stones, after being spent of its Qi, had been slightly lighter in weight.

The revelation meant that Qi had an intrinsic association with mass. But that didn’t match with my observations with how Qi worked when in my dantian, or even when simply expelled outwards.

Perhaps there was some inherent form transition of Qi to mass? A formula that worked both ways? A mid path to add on to the transition between energy and mass. Not a question that’d be answered today I suppose.

I flipped through a couple more pages, before I remembered something I’d planned to do, but had forgotten a while back. A test that I had in mind, with regards to my cultivation and my spirit herbs.

I looked at my notes with regards to my tests and scratched my head.

“Time to cultivate for once I guess.”

***

A deep breath in. A deep breath out.

The Serene Mist arts flowed through me, as Lu Jie’s memories guided me through the cultivation method. Qi bubbled forth in my dantian, swirling and pushing against the boundaries, trying to push through and break past the limit’s they’d been confined to for months now.

No change.

I continued, repeating the process, as Lu Jie had done for months on end until he’d given up all hopes. I felt a sour taste in my mouth as my concentration began to falter. I pushed through anyway, continuing through the process as Qi circulated around me.

I tried to reach out to the Qi of the spirit herbs around me. Qi pulsed through my being as I cultivated, yet the lid on my dantian was closed shut.

The sensation was like pushing on a wall with a single finger. My cultivation refused to expand, the essence of the world refusing to move as I asked it to.

I sighed, opening my eyes. It’d be dumb to try and do what Lu Jie had done for months with no success to be found. Even with the high amount of Qi present around me due to the spirit herbs, my knowledge of cultivation itself was minimal, and I was still stuck at the peak of the third realm.

I got up from the spot I’d chosen to cultivate in, as I walked to my shelf of notes. I picked the one where I’d tried to simplify and make notes from a book that tried to talk about cultivation but spent far too long in nonsensical philosophy instead.

Walking back, I seated myself, as I began to go through the pages from the start. From what I’d read, and knew from Lu Jie’s memories of cultivation, the path to immortality seemed to be fairly well defined.

Twelve realms, three dantians, and five circles. I wasn’t sure what the significance of these numbers was, and I was hesitant to dismiss them as random coincidences. This was a cultivation world after all.

I flipped through the pages, reading what each realm had to offer. The first circle of Qi was fairly simple. The first realm was the foundation realm. The formation of the first circle which was the entirety of your dantian. You gathered the heavenly Chi from the world, converting it into Qi, as your first circle was formed.

After that was Qi gathering, which simply expanded on the dantian and reinforced it, and finally was Qi shaping. The third realm, and the realm at the peak of which I was stuck.

I flipped the pages once more, opening the notes on the second circle, and the fourth realm of cultivation. Core formation was a tricky realm, as to break through, cultivators had to form a second circle around the dantian and condense it into their dantian.

A process that was likely to cripple you if it went wrong. It made sense that this exact point was where most cultivators got stuck and failed to breakthrough. And why actual cultivators were all in the fourth realm or above.

The first three realms were like having a single step in the cultivation path. You have Qi, you have a dantain, and you can explore abilities, gain spirits, use spiritual weapons, like a tutorial before the real game began.

The fourth realm, Core formation, changed things. Your path begins to reflect itself in the world around you. The mark of your cultivation, starting to impose itself on the world in the form of a budding domain as it projects the fundamental truths of the cultivator’s path. Similar to the static presence around Yan Yun, or, for a stronger example, the moonlit forest I saw when the sect Elder’s spirit came out.

From what I’d read, the Qi would change qualitatively at the fourth realm, being far more potent. I wanted to see if Qi density was actually a thing and if Qi was being compressed inside the dantian. It added to the mystery of what exactly Qi was in the physical sense.

Beyond the fourth realm was Core shaping, Golden Core, and so on and so forth. The thing that caught my eye, was the very peak of cultivation, a realm attained by a handful of people ever. And the name that it was called.

The Twelfth realm and fifth circle of cultivation. Core Shattering.

I hummed to myself silently, thinking over ideas. Wondering how that may be related to a crippled cultivation, and perhaps there were some similarities to be found there. It may just be impossible tangents that I was grasping at.

I kept going through the notes, the many many writings on possible pill formulas and effects, for explanations of Qi. For possible applications and things, I could make. A filter? A portable burner? With a cultivator’s body, disease was much less of a concern, but perhaps some kind of Internal healing device, a Qi injector? It might help with Su Lin’s brother’s crippled dantian. Maybe I could even try to make a generator.

Ideas upon ideas filled my head, old and new ones merging when suddenly I stopped on a certain page. A page, where I’d not written much, but had simply drawn circles, two circles overlaid in one, chasing one into the other eternally.

For some reason, I’d changed my cultivation to follow this pattern, something about the dual motion, as if weighted on both sides in a perpetual sequence of circles had just felt right to me. The reaction with the essence had told me that I was on to something as well.

Yet, despite having looked at it, I’d failed to come up with any possible reason. Why was this split cultivation method better? What was different? What was different from Lu Jie’s methods? I’d had no breakthroughs in my cultivation. It would’ve been extremely obvious had I suddenly broken through. Yet something had certainly changed.

I’d chosen to leave the topic be, occupied with experimenting with alchemy instead, but, I found the question growing. An eternal cycle in the Qi’s circulation, perhaps there were some hints hidden. Like the question of why circles? Why was the dantian a sphere and not any other shape?

It somewhat made sense if we went with the lowest state of energy being a sphere for the dantian, yet, from what I knew, Qi circulation followed a path of circular rotation as well.

I sat pondering over the thoughts for a moment before an idea struck me. Taking a spirit stone, I seated myself along with the spirit herbs. Closing my eyes, I let go of Lu Jie’s memories, diving into my own mind.

I circulated my Qi, first in a singular circle. The Qi from the spirit stone slowly but surely began to shift to my cultivation, drifting into my dantian at a slow trickle. I let the Qi flow in, as I continued to cultivate before I split the circulation of my Qi in two. Two parts, one chasing the other in an infinite circle. Two loops forming an infinity.

The Qi from the spirit stone froze, stopping its flow.

Yet, I could sense something else shift around me. The essence of the spirit plants moved, their Qi pulsing as one. I could sense the spirit herbs around me, their essence trying to move towards me, as the Qi of the world slowly but surely began to trickle towards me. I nudged the Qi from the spirit stone, moving it outwards as I guided the essence of the spirit herbs.

Two cycles, one into the other. A duality of perpetual motion. Harmony within the flow of Qi itself. I tried. I failed. I tried, and I failed again.

The essence spread around, floating through the spirit herbs, within my reach, yet untenable. It was like moving many limbs at once, and I faltered, breaking the flow of Qi many many times. I went back to try again.

Essence floated in a void, and I drifted the Qi around me within the spirit herbs. This time, something changed. A link, a cycle. The herbs began to swivel, their essence being channelled, as Qi began to move within them. A cycle, at the centre of which I sat as the spirit herbs began to cycle their Qi in sync with me. I was their anchor, the root of a wide tree made of Qi.

Time passed in a blur, as I drifted through the endless void. A singular anchor, to a hundred motes of Qi. The core of a web of life.

The Qi flared within my dantian. Essence swirling in a torrent as the spirit herbs all sucked the Qi within themselves, as tiny threads of Qi extended into me. Something changed within my dantian, something that I couldn’t yet understand. A blurry shape began to form within.

I felt sweat drip down my back, as I felt my mouth turn dry. I opened my eyes, finding my room completely dark, as moonlight lit up the corners dimly.

I felt exhausted. A sensation I’d almost forgotten in the weeks I’d been here, as a cultivator.

A gentle gust of wind passed by, as I sensed Labby stirring, and rushing towards me. I sensed her curiosity and concern, but I simply rubbed her head quietly, letting her be for the moment as I took a look around me.

A lush green sight full of plants extended all around me, the spirit herbs now taller than they’d been before. Patches of spirit grass peeked through the gaps of the wooden floor as they covered this corner of the room.

Qi flared, from the now tall spirit herbs that’d grown around me, drifting in the gentle wind and I smiled, pleased to see what I’d created.

My very own spirit herb garden.