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2.13 - Lessons on Foundation
🕑 Added 2024-01-18 23:00:04 +0000 UTCOver the next week, He Yu, Li Heng, and Yan Shirong would head to the nearby forest edge and chop trees each morning. It took them the better part of their time to chop through the tough bark of the Stonewrought Pines, even with the instruction they’d gained from Old Guo on that first day.
He Yu felt that he perhaps had the easiest time of it, oddly enough. Cycling wind qi in an improvised body enforcement technique was similar enough to his demonstration of what his father had shown him, and it only got easier the more he did it.
The biggest hurdle he had was his own conception of wind qi. How would the wind lend strength to something as solid as one’s body? He could almost picture Fang Yingjie scowling at him from underneath his conical peasant’s hat in response to the question.
A simple check with the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment confirmed what he’d suspected—the wind was perfectly capable of lending him strength. Storms could topple trees and weather mountains with their gusting winds, so why couldn’t he chop a tree with the aid of the same?
Of course, he also had the benefit of his guandao technique, too. The Five Crescent Winds wasn’t an art that particularly cared what sort of weapon he used, despite being developed for the guandao. Adapting it to an ax was trivial, although He Yu quickly learned that the Sweeping Wind was the only technique that was useful for this particular task.
Yan Shirong complained about the training, which He Yu wasn’t particularly surprised about. He did, however, participate—despite having a rough go of it, especially on that first day. None of his techniques had prepared him to use his shadow aspected qi in a manner that would assist this particular task. He’d never had the benefit of needing to use a generic body enforcement like He Yu had.
Although he’d availed himself well in the fights they’d had so far, Yan Shirong’s arts weren’t meant for direct combat. As such his family arts didn’t have a body enforcement technique as part of their repertoire. While he’d learned the White Mountain Body Art—only because it was free, he’d admitted—he seldom cultivated it. He thus had little experience with its principal body enforcement, the Eternal Mountain Root.
Also, none of his offensive techniques charged his daggers with qi in the way the Five Crescent Winds did. He admitted that he’d only a single attack technique as part of his arts, the Myriad Black Thorns. It was the close-range spray of shadow darts he’d used during their fight with the Third Realm awakened serpent. That technique was basically just a directed blast of qi shaped into the form of the darts themselves.
When He Yu asked him about the times he’d thrown daggers at King Hao, Yan Shirong admitted that it was simply as it had appeared. He’d used another technique, one that he called the Umbral Puppetmaster—the technique that created the shadowy tendrils he used to bind the serpent—to quite literally throw a number of daggers that he kept in his storage treasure. That was enough to give He Yu an idea, however, and before long he’d helped Yan Shirong work out a method of using his Umbral Puppetmaster to support each swing of his ax.
Much to He Yu’s surprise, it was Li Heng who had the most trouble with Old Guo’s training.
“This isn’t how my arts are meant to work,” Li Heng said, grimacing at the ax in his hand. He’d been trying—and failing—to figure out a way to adapt the Winter Moon Reflection to channel its silvery lunar qi into his ax without receiving a strike first. “It goes against the nature of the art.”
“Don’t you have a body technique that goes along with your sword art?” He Yu asked. From the research he’d done into arts trying to uncover information about the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace, he’d learned that most combat arts contained their own body enforcement technique. The Five Crescent Winds was unique in that respect, leaving a noticeable gap in He Yu’s repertoire. Fortunately, he’d the White Mountain Body Art to fill that gap for the time being.
Li Heng shook his head. “Not that I can use, at least. The Lunar Mirror Sword Art does contain a body enforcement technique, but I need to be Third Realm before I can begin to cultivate it. The strain would be too much otherwise.”
It made a certain sense. Li Heng’s fighting style relied on absorbing and redirecting his opponent’s attack, using their own strength against them. From what He Yu had seen during their sparring sessions and when Li Heng fought others, the Winter Moon Reflection had been more than enough to defend him against assault from anyone at his own level. It hadn’t been until Li Heng had fought opponents of the Third Realm that his principle technique had begun to fail him.
“Well,” He Yu said, absently tapping the haft of his ax as he thought, “Old Guo had said this training was meant to prepare us for higher realms by helping to align our qi more closely with our nature. What if you used a basic enforcement like the one I used, but cycled your own lunar qi? At the very least it should begin preparing you to cultivate your enforcement technique once you break through.”
The big muscle in Li Heng’s jaw clenched at the suggestion, but he said nothing for the moment. After the silence had stretched between them for a time that He Yu thought far too long, the noble turned away. “I shouldn’t have to resort to such a basic technique to cut down a simple tree.”
“Well it isn’t a simple tree,” He Yu said. “Old Guo said as much.” Immediately he realized that had been the wrong thing to say. The Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment opened his inner eyes, and he saw the wound on Li Heng’s pride.
The son of the esteemed General Li, Marquis of the Western Passage was the inheritor of a young, but well-respected art. He had the reputation of his family to uphold. Even Old Guo had spoken of Li Heng’s grandfather—the art’s creator—in respectful terms, saying he’d not want to cross blades with him again.
More importantly, perhaps, was the weight bearing down on Li Heng’s shoulders. Despite his relative youth, he bore a tremendous responsibility, given his family’s precarious political position. The Li were a young family, and they held a coveted assignment in the Dragon Empire. Enemies circled them, waiting for any sign of weakness to pounce upon.
Other, deeper thoughts hid below Li Heng’s immediate concerns, but He Yu couldn’t grasp the shape of them. They were linked to his pride, that much was certain, but the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment gave no insight into their nature—only their existence.
“I know that,” Li Heng snapped, drawing He Yu’s attention back from the truths revealed by his technique. “One should think that he’d devise training more appropriate to our Way, is all.”
He Yu frowned. He didn’t think that was the issue at all. To him, Old Guo’s training seemed the exact opposite. He knew full well that he lacked a body enforcement that was compatible with his other arts. Based on what he’d learned in those first days at the sect from Elder Wen’s lectures, it wouldn’t become too pressing an issue until he reached Body Refining, but the sooner he could lay the groundwork for his future cultivation, all the better.
Old Guo had done nothing to dispel that idea, explicitly telling them to lay the foundation that the Second Realm was named for. All things considered, He Yu would take the advice of a Sixth Realm cultivator over that of a petulant noble any day.
Despite his protests, Li Heng did eventually relent. Suffusing his limbs with his lunar aspected qi seemed to help, and he even managed to channel some to his ax without having to first receive an attack. To be certain, he complained the whole way and gruffly rejected all of He Yu’s offers for help, but he did manage to make some progress on his tree.
As the week wore on, questions surrounding the merits of Old Guo’s training faded to nothing. He Yu could feel the wind qi etching itself onto his spirit, carving through his meridians and deepening his connection to that aspect. During his nightly cultivation of the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, he could mark all the ways his spirit was beginning to take on the presence of wind.
The swirling mass of qi in his dantian reminded him more and more of a rotating column of air, gathering the first wispy clouds of the coming rain far above. It hadn’t been exactly what He Yu would have expected his spiritual presence to develop into—he hadn’t had any expectations on that front, really—but he liked it. The late afternoon thunderstorms that frequently dropped torrents of rain on Shulin were the reason he’d always loved summer.
Elder Cai had said his spirit was aligned with wind and water, after all. What was a rainstorm other than those aspects made manifest? He’d wondered how exactly his presence would manifest itself. He’d never thought it would be anything like Zhang Lifen’s, with its sense of crushing depth hidden beneath a tranquil surface, despite their shared affinity for water. What he’d gotten instead was more aligned with his Way, and he didn’t need the insights of the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment to see that.
Both of his companions saw benefit from the training as well. Yan Shirong was easily the greatest beneficiary. Despite having been at the middle Foundation stage for some time, he’d yet to develop much of a presence. That rapidly changed over the first few days as he carved his own shadowy qi into his spirit.
When he used his techniques now, he gave the impression of smoke drifting in the dark corners of a dimly lit room. It was, He Yu thought, an entirely suitable way for his spiritual presence to develop. Old Guo had called him a spy, and Yan Shirong was proud of his family’s service to the emperor as such.
Li Heng continued to grumble, but he saw benefit, too. It was less pronounced than either He Yu or Yan Shirong’s, but it was there. The sense of moonlight became sharper, somehow. It was subtle, but He Yu didn’t think too much on that. Li Heng already had a fairly well-developed spiritual presence for a Second Realm cultivator, and if what Old Guo had told them was anything to go by, further refining it now would only benefit him.
As much as He Yu was glad that his housemate had come around to Old Guo’s training, he still couldn’t shake the way Li Heng had been acting over the course of the week. He’d been growing more brusque than He Yu was used to, and the noble had also given over to sulking when Old Guo wasn’t around.
He Yu tried not to think too much about it. They had training to do, and whatever pressures were weighing on Li Heng, they could be dealt with after the three of them had fulfilled their mission to deliver the sect’s justice to King Hao.
