Qi Like Tar

Paike saw his brother’s posture break slightly, slumping in exaggerated relief. Watching what was clearly a calculated reaction to an emotion that he may or may not actually be feeling, Paike just wanted to leave. Despite his misgivings, he had said he would hear him out.

His brother spoke up. "Well, I don't think we need to talk right in the middle of the street like barbarians. There's a nice tea house in that village that I have frequented since I was in the outer sect. Perhaps we can talk there?"

Paike gave him some side eye, not exactly enthused about spending more time in his twin’s presence than he had to. His reaction did not seem to faze Taka at all as he started walking back toward the village. Paike looked up toward the outer sect one more time, wishing that he could just leave. It was tempting, but after a few seconds, he sighed and turned to follow.

The tea house was just as nice as his brother had said. They were served promptly by a young woman who was likely only a few years older than them, who clearly recognized Taka. She was neither scared nor overly familiar, which was a good sign, Paike supposed. Either one would have reflected poorly on his brother. But he didn’t think that any Kong was that kind of monster. The family aggressively weeded the rotten fruit out.

After they were served, they sat there sipping tea. Kneeling on the cushions, Paike studied his brother, waiting for his new instructor to speak.

Technically, he had only paid for a single hour session. Still, as a family member, he would likely be imposing more on his brother's time if he found it useful. However, that had yet to be proven, and now the waste of time was starting to get a little bit obvious. Paike set his teacup down and cleared his throat, giving his brother a pointed look.

Taka sighed as well, taking a long pull of tea before setting his cup down as well. "I'm going to be honest. I know a bit more than a little about combat trances," Taka said. "I was being needlessly humble earlier. I'm probably the foremost expert on it, at least amongst disciples. But I hadn’t expected anyone to take me up on tutoring for a while yet.

“And I know that you must have only awoken recently, since I have not heard about it from any correspondence yet, which means that I likely will not hear about it ‘til next month's letter from home. But what baffles me, beyond everything else," he said, gesturing at Paike's dantian, "is that you are interested in combat trances already.

“Beyond that I saw one of your techniques, which was interesting. I couldn't categorize it, but to help I kind of need to know what I'm working with here."

Paike nodded slowly. Everything his brother said was reasonable on its face, and he could find no objections. So he sighed and gave a very abbreviated explanation. He mentioned that he had had a lucky encounter with an ancient spirit and taken some of its power. The aspect had been influencing him with his breakthroughs, and especially his physical cultivation. When he fought a couple of times, once in a duel, once when ambushed and was pushed, he fell into a trance. In which, his physical augmentation became much more pronounced and his level of control lowered, the viciousness getting out of hand.

Taka nodded, listening, asking a couple of insightful questions here and there, but otherwise let Paike tell his tale. He slowly worked on his teacup all the way through, occasionally injecting a little bit of qi to keep it at the perfect temperature. When Paike finished speaking after a few minutes, there was a long silence.

"Well, can you help me?" Paike asked, a hint of irritation in his voice. Even after years of being gone his brother still rubbed him the wrong way. He was still far form convinced that he was genuine in his supposed maturity.

His brother nodded. "Interesting. So this is not a technique you have intentionally approached, rather a combination of an outside influence and an excessive mastery of meditation, specifically meditation through combat katas."

Paike gestured in a so-so manner. "I wouldn't say excessive or combat katas. I've been doing a lot of meditation and training, but a lot of my training has been sparring rather than just katas."

Taka nodded. "Interesting. Have you noticed when you are training, does your mind ever go elsewhere, or do you just fall back on instinct?"

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Paike shook his head. "No. I'm usually fairly present when I'm fighting."

"What about when you're teaching the younglings back home?"

Paike shrugged. "I guess in that time some, yeah. I would get a little bit bored, and my mind might wander while I was demonstrating a series of combinations."

"Hmm. Well, when I started developing combat trances, it was not for similar reasons, but rather because the mindset allowed me to work on my qi techniques even while in melee."

Paike nodded, not understanding why that would be useful unless one practiced particularly complicated arts. Especially of the more esoteric variety, which he had to admit would suit his brother perfectly well. So he supposed he saw the benefit.

"But," Taka said, rising and raising a finger, "while we might come at this from different directions, I believe I can still help you. There are many ways you can approach gaining control of this combat trance, but it depends on what your ultimate goal is."

He waited for Paike to fill in the answer.

Paike shrugged. "Whatever it will take for me not to get kicked out."

"I believe there are many possible solutions for that," his brother answered. "First, and probably the most difficult but most useful, is that you can slip into a state where your emotions feel distant, and your thoughts do as well. Your body acts independently, only guided by your instinct with the overall direction provided by your conscious mind. This is one of the ultimate forms of combat trances. Not always ideal if one is a particularly strategic in martial combatant, but for those who want to be working on instinct while not letting their mind get in the way, it is incredibly useful.

"Another solution is simply for you to be able to control when the combat trance happens. This would involve being able to activate it at will and suppress its activation. This is likely not something you want to do long term, but it probably would be enough for your situation. Likely that would prevent you from being ejected. However, if you ever did activate it in a situation where it was not appropriate, maybe while it was putting another disciple in danger, this might cause them to reverse the ruling. This is likely the easiest path.

"There are a few dozen options somewhere in between these two, such as partial control or removing the ability entirely and only maintaining physical changes that you can adopt at will."

Paike considered, but asked a question before answering. "Do you have physical changes when you enter your combat trance?"

His brother shook his head. "No. Mine is wholly mental. The physical changes thing is actually not very common with combat trances. Still, if it comes about through some aspect of one's qi, it is not unexpected, nor even detrimental."

Paike nodded. "Okay. So how do I go about achieving these?"

"Well," Taka said, and began to delve into an extremely thorough explanation of several different meditative practices, cycling techniques, physical exercises, and various alchemy solutions that might help put Paike in a proper state of mind.

Paike considered each carefully before he nodded, indicating to his brother to move on to the next option. This took nearly half an hour on its own, and Paike had already begun to slot these into his routine. His normal meditation and cycling would have to be put on the back burner for now, though these techniques might help him progress if different ways as well, though likely not as fast as his extreme qi gathering techniques.

Another thing he had to be concerned about was whether he could even perform half of the suggested exercises with the nature of his qi. He did not want to go into that with his brother right now, though, so he did not mention it, simply categorizing things to work no or not.

Lastly, his brother said, "You're going to need to fight against opponents while in a combat trance to practice. There's really no better teacher than live combat. However, it sounds like you will not be allowed to use this against your fellow disciples, especially if you are of a higher stage than they are."

Paike nodded in confirmation.

"I would recommend you mostly find beasts willing to fight you in the curated wilds. However, before my time is up, I would like to test out your abilities, brother."

Paike had noticed the tension building in the air as they had spoken for the last several minutes. His brother had clearly been amping himself up for conflict, the feeling of his qi permeated the air. Paike felt no reason to object, even though he knew he would stand no real chance against his brother. Not while being a full stage or more lower.

However, he had progressed impressively and maybe wanted to show off a bit, especially if he was allowed to enter his combat trance.

If he actually hurt his brother, there would be no one to blame but Taka. As an Emerald realm cultivator, he should never be truly threatened by a Topaz, especially a new one like Paike, so there was no need to worry.

Paike resisted the urge to fling himself over their low table at the mere mention of being able to fight his brother. However, destruction of the property would likely get him severely fined, and there were mortals nearby who may or may not survive their clash. So he restrained himself and stood immediately.

"So eager to hurt me, brother?" Taka teased with a dramatic sigh as he left payment on the table and stood up. "Fine, I suppose I can understand."

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