Qi Like Tar

They ran through the woods as a group. There was more than a little comfort in having their allies close by.

It would have been easy for Paike, but he had Xia Jun slung over his shoulder. Even Mi Lixian's music only helped so much. And running while she played didn't seem easy.

Paike's burden was rather negligible; as a Topaz cultivator, he could run with that much extra weight incidentally as long as he wasn't giving max effort.

No, the problem wasn't how heavy the boy was, but avoiding the trees. The forest was dense this low on the mountain, and they were weaving through the branches.

Xia Jun wasn't helping either. The alchemist and his sister had stabilized the boy, but he was still in some kind of shock. A higher realm cultivator might have been able to shake off such a grievous wound, but still, in Ruby, Xia Jun was delirious.

He kept thrashing about, muttering incomprehensible words in a mix of random mortal languages. This made balancing hard and avoiding clipping any of the dense trees with a flailing limb even harder.

They hoped they had gotten away from the two fresh corpses fast enough to avoid more pursuit, but they couldn't be sure, so no one suggested slowing down for quite some time.

Eventually, they had to stop for Liming to check on Xia Jun. Paike had noticed his struggles were getting weaker.

While she was bent over focusing, Guan Li cracked a smile. "So is everyone ready for the next one?"

Paike was glad their fight had been short enough and in a dense enough forest that they hadn't tried to deal with it.

"You got it?" Paike asked.

Wu Chen nodded without looking up. "The harvest was clean."

Paike let out a relieved sigh. It would have been bad enough that they only got one harvest despite having killed three of them. But if they had lost that as well and come back empty-handed. His pay from one would cover his next lesson, but not much more. He had a bit of extra from his place in the sect and from physical cultivation class. That wouldn't last long if he needed more lessons.

He would need a better way to gain points than missions like this.

"I think he is just sleeping," Liming said, breaking the silence. "There isn't anything I can do for him; we just need to get him back as fast as we can. I think he will be fine."

She sounded less certain than Paike would like. He had seen the wound. It hadn't hit any vital organs, but there was a lot of blood in the boy's robes. Paike supposed there were a lot of blood vessels around the neck and shoulder area. Even with near-instant treatment, it was a terrible wound.

"Let's not waste time then," Paike said as he picked up Xia Jun again. The bandages had been refreshed, but there wasn't much else they could do for him. Wu Chen claimed he couldn't take any more elixirs or pills without toxins starting to become a problem.

He would certainly survive, but may never cultivate again. That wasn't a risk any of them were willing to take; it was better to face death. Even Paike agreed despite having faced living as a mortal before he awakened.

There was something about qi and the growth that called to you once you tasted it. Giving it up was not the same as never having touched that power.

As they climbed the mountain, the trees thinned, and the running got easier. They made better time and were soon back in the sect compound.

There they split up. Paike and Liming went to the medical while the others went to settle the mission result.

Liming stayed to explain what had been done to the healers as they took Xia Jun away. This left Paike on his own. His job as a pack mule complete, he suddenly found himself with nothing to do.

It was getting late in the day, so he headed home. Perhaps he could get some cultivation done.

However, when he stepped through his front door, he found the Guan Li had beaten him there.

The boy was sitting in their living room, several crates stacked next to him as he leafed through one of the stacks of paper they had been working on this morning. With his other hand, he was writing something.

He grunted as Paike came in, but didn't look up from the paper.

"What's in the crates?" Paike asked.

"Fresh paper, so we don't run out again," Guan Li said as he kicked the lid off one of the crates, displaying stacks of blank paper. Paike counted; with everything Guan Li had acquired, they could write hundreds of books. It didn't feel like overkill.

"I started transcribing the stuff on the floor. I'm trying not to get sidetracked with new ideas before I compile what we already had."

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Paike took that as a polite way of saying, don't talk to me. He was pleased the Guan Li was learning how to navigate polite society.

"I'll start with on the writing on the tables then," Paike said as he grabbed a stack of paper and a brush. So much for getting any cultivation done.

It took several hours, and in the end they didn't just move everything to paper, but they condensed it all, making connections with fresh eyes that they had missed earlier. They were slightly better at staying on track until they had a few stacks.

When they finally got through everything they already had, they came up for air.

"Did you try any of this during the fights?" Paike asked Guan LI.

He got back a look asking if he was stupid, and Paike realized that everything Guan Li did was experimenting; even his awakening had happened because he was trying something new rather than following inherited wisdom.

"Right, well, here's what I did," Paike ran through what he had tried of their theories. Most of it had worked. His techniques had come out faster, hit harder, and he was able to alter them to a degree he had never thought possible. Before, he had just been controlling how much qi went into the patterns and maybe pushing his will into it to move them as a whole. That was what almost everyone did. At least until some mysterious point in higher realms. It was seeing the elders doing what they did that even gave him the idea to try things like this.

He still left out the spinning qi for now. There were a couple of reasons for it. First, it complicated things a lot. Second, he had actually been warned to be careful with it by an elder, so it was clearly something important rather than just the tricks they were coming up with. He wanted to look into it a bit more before telling anyone.

Guan Li had been even more adventurous than he had been. The bolt of shadow that he had driven through the ant's head was actually a heavily modified version of the shadow knife he had already cobbled together. He had sped up its formation, moved its creation point away from him, added motion, spin, size, and mass. Not just adding more qi to give it spiritual weight or its equivalent- that almost sent Paike on a tangent trying to figure out the theory- but actual mass.

Instead, his attention was captured as Guan Li showed how he had converted something into invisible mass rather than giving weight to the shadows. This sent them into a tangent about the pros and cons of directly conjuring physical forces versus creating it as a second-order effect. This kept them busy for the rest of the night, and neither got any sleep or cultivation done.

***

Their theory-crafting session eventually devolved back into the mad scramble of tests, scribbled drawings, and theories. The order they had managed to enforce at the beginning was lost, but at least they didn't run out of paper.

They were also a lot more efficient. Guan Li finally learned their standard terms and descriptions, though they moved away from those as they became more and more frustrated with their limits.

So a new language other than their own started to develop around what they were calling qi modifiers. The drawing became standard and the experiments slightly more controlled.

Late the next morning, they sat in front of a stack of papers that held most of their results. Anyone else trying to read it would be very confused, as they were missing a lot of the terminology used. But to the two of them it was perfect.

There was still so much more to do, test, and try, but they had nearly summarized the core of their ideas into one thing. When they finished the stack, it seemed as if the energy was sucked out of the room. Paike felt as if his brain had been rung out and he was more exhausted than he had ever been in his life.

Guan Li looked like death; the bags under his eyes were dark, and his lids kept closing.

But they had done it. A book for only them, but the foundation of what Paike thought would surely propel them to great heights. Also a foundation for so much more.

Paike used a needle of qi, entirely using their methods, to punch a hole in the corner of the stack of papers. With a length of twine, he bound them together. It baffled him; he had made a whole new technique just to punch a hole in paper. That was insane. Only Father did something like that. Well, Father and now Guan Li and himself.

Father's existence was a lot of what had given him the confidence that they weren't crazy and this actually worked. Much of this had to have been known to some, even if most didn't understand it.

That direction of his thoughts led him to something he should have already realized. He would have to see if he could get some of Father's time this year. It was a big ask, but he thought he could at least introduce Guan Li to him. That would be interesting, and if they shared what they had found, maybe he could get even more time. Surely it was worth something to the family.

But if Father already did something like this, why had it not been shared? It was thoughts like that which made Paike hesitate to even share this with Liming. It might be risky or dangerous. He had Guan Li come up with this and would have already exposed them to it. But others?

Maybe he wanted to keep it to himself, but Liming should know if it wasn't dangerous.

Paike grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and put brush to ink. The formal request flowed naturally, and he laid out enough to hint at what they found without giving it away to anyone who didn't already know that it was possible. Hopefully this would catch Father's attention.

He also felt bad about only contacting Father, so he wrote a few other letters to Mother and some of his favorite siblings and cousins. He gave a short description of what he and Liming had been up to. He knew that she was in more regular contact with the family, so he didn't go into much detail, but spent more time asking after them.

With a quick gesture, he swept all their note and stored them in one of the empty crates. He couldn't bring himself to destroy them, but also didn't want anyone to find them. Some of their negative results were rather dangerous if tried, and he wanted to be able to reference them later. But the book was what was important.

Guan Li had passed out in his chair while Paike was writing his letter, their book clutched in the boy's hand.

Paike left him there as he went and buried the crate of their notes behind the house. Heading back inside, he gathered up his letter, sealed it, and addressed it.

He would get them posted and then also go to bed. Maybe when he woke up they could pursue any one of a number of directions they had ignored in their initial research. Creating more varieties of effects was high on his list. Working with attunement and aspects was there as well. Both of those were just delving into art creation rather than the modifiers they had been working on. Perhaps there was a good middle ground.

As he walked to the door, he was creating a task list for them.

When he pulled it open, he found a short woman about to knock. He blinked; girls weren't allowed in the male section of the housing complex?

It was a mark of his tiredness that Paike didn't immediately recognize the elder robes the short woman wore.

"Are you Kong Paike?" She asked in a brusque tone.

Paike slowly nodded, his brain struggling to turn over.

"Good. Elder Ji claimed you would be interesting. Come with me."

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