Molting the Mortal Coil

“Cultivation is the process by which we build the mind, body, and spirit. With special techniques we gather the energy of the heavens and earth, using it to transform ourselves into higher beings!”

A few weeks had passed, and all of Sage’s wounds had healed. He was in a different world with an eastern culture and currently Uncle Zhang was giving him a lecture. Lang Sheng, formerly Sage, had accepted his situation. If he wasn’t truly in this new body, then it didn’t really matter as the dream didn’t seem to end. It was better to enjoy it while it lasted!

It’s just like a video game right? I’m the main character who just woke up from amnesia, no problem! Cultivation seems to be the level up system.

“You’re excited now, right? Don’t you want to be like those legendary existences, soaring through the skies on their flying swords. Splitting mountains in half with a single stroke. Plucking clouds from the skies with a wave of their hands. It’s a long and difficult road, you must work hard and cultivate diligently if you want to be important.”

Sage’s face suddenly lit up with happiness. It seems that cultivation wasn’t just a leveling system, it could turn you into a Superhero! After a bit more questioning, he learned about the path to becoming a powerful cultivator. First came ‘Ki Building’, breathing in qi from the world and filling the body with it. ‘Ki Condensation’ is the second, when the qi gets so dense it changes from a gaseous state into a liquid. After that, came ‘Sea Forming’. A cultivator had to gather enough liquid qi to form a sea inside their dantian. Uncle Zhang explained that the Dantian was a place inside the body near the lower stomach. After that came ‘Foundation Building’, and further still was ‘Core Building’. The cultivator had to build a foundation in their qi ocean and then condense the qi of the ocean into a golden core.

Uncle Zhang stopped there, telling him there were certainly more stages but he wasn’t high enough ranked to even know the names of the stages. He was just a low level character in the clan after all. This prompted Sage to ask about the clan and he learned that the Lang Clan was actually just a branch family. They served to spread the power and influence of the powerful Chong Clan. With his excuse of having no memory he then learned that the word ‘Chong’ was a bit difficult to understand. It was a class of animals and creatures that encompassed all the creepy crawly vermin. Insects, Arachnids, Worms, and small Reptiles and Amphibians.

“Enough talking. Time for you to start training. After that incident with the mines, I had to trade in every last favor I had to keep you from getting punished and to let you start cultivating. You have to work hard, Sheng’er, don't let your Uncle Zhang down.”

He would go so far for me? Poor Sheng had an Uncle who really cared for him.

Before he could think too far about it, Uncle Zheng handed him a strange cylindrical object. He unrolled it to find a dozen strips of wood, each a finger wide and nearly a foot long. He was told it was called a bamboo slip. Each of the strips had characters written on them in vertical rows, meaning they could just add more of them to make the slip longer. Instead of having more pages and getting thicker like a book it was like a scroll that could be added to infinitely. Laying out the bamboo slip in front of him, Sage read the title on the first strip, “Mantis Heart Manual”.

It was a cultivation technique! The core technique of their Lang clan, according to Uncle Zhang. Sage had no idea how powerful it was, but he was told that commoners had no way to get their hands on such a good technique. Even the soldiers in the military were given a lower grade cultivation technique than the Mantis Heart Manual. He quickly read the slip and was amazed at how strange it was. He just had to breathe in a very specific way while sitting and holding his hands in a specific pose. That was all it took to draw in and start storing energy in his body. Then if he were to meditate while doing this technique he should start to sense the energy that was being drawn into his body. It could train his perception and according to the manual, if he was sensitive enough, he could even be able to start feeling the qi and what it was doing inside him.

What a strange and crazy thing. Breathing and posing, could that really work? Only one way to find out!

Uncle Zhang was sitting patiently beside him, letting him figure it out on his own and ready to help if anything went wrong. There was little danger involved, but Zhang was worried that Sheng’s recent injury might affect him. Sage just thought it was normal and started to follow the manual’s instructions. Breathing in, and then out again. A dozen breaths later he stopped, feeling like nothing was happening. He checked the manual again and made sure his pose was right, checking his fingers and trying to mimic the pictures exactly. Trying again he still felt nothing at all. Was it impossible for him to do because he was from another world? Having nothing else better to do, and with Uncle Zhang sitting behind him, Sage continued soldiering on. Breathing in that special cadence and holding his hands and fingers in that strange way. He’d never really tried to meditate before, but from a couple anime he’d seen he knew he had to just clear his mind and think of nothing at all.

How could such a silly thing like breathing weird and making gang-signs with my hands do anything special?

A few hours later.

Sage had slipped into a trance. He’d started to meditate for the first time in his life. It was strangely refreshing, like his mind was floating on a cloud. He had the feeling that he could detach his mind from his body and send it off into the distance. Fearful of such a thing actually happening, Sage fell out of his meditative trance and took a look around him. Uncle Zhang left and in his place was a tray of food. He was sitting in the courtyard that he and his Uncle Zhang shared, all alone now as the darkness of night had arrived. Besides the stars, there was only a small lantern hanging from a nearby post. Sage rose from his seated position and stretched out his body, worried he’d be cramped up and sore from sitting in the same pose for hours. To his surprise he found that his body wasn’t in the least sore or tired. He even felt extremely comfortable, like he’d just took a hot bath and had a massage.

Heading into the house, Uncle Zhang stopped him to make sure everything had gone well. Encouraging him to keep working hard. Sage asked about the seeming lack of progress and was answered with a nod.

“You have to keep training until your perception increases. Just keep meditating and following the manual till you can sense the qi in your body. Be diligent, depending on your talent it might take weeks before you even notice a single thing.”

Sage went to sleep and after breakfast the next day he started trying to train with the manual again. With the reassurance that it took time, Sage kept on trying. If he was to be honest, there wasn’t really anything else he could be doing. He’d already learned how to read so he couldn’t go study with the younger children and his room was basically bare. He certainly didn’t want to run around and play tag with a bunch of kids. It was actually nice to have an excuse to keep from having to pretend he was an eight year old.

At least meditation seems to pass the time quickly. Let’s see how it goes today.

Nearly a week passed before Sage realized that he felt something inside his body. When he was meditating he usually felt disembodied, the connection with his body only a shadow of what it normally was. This time though, he noticed something moving into his mouth whenever he breathed inwards with that special cadence. Like a faint ribbon fluttering around his lips, only the faintest wisps of it getting drawn into his lungs and dispersing into his body. It felt like this had been going on for quite some time and it was only now that he differentiated what was going on while still in his hazy meditative trance.

The main difficulty was just training to meditate. He had to clear his mind and think of nothing yet also somehow focus inward and use senses he didn’t know he had. More questioning had told him that he wasn’t even on Earth anymore so it wasn’t entirely impossible for the rules of this world to be different than his own. He might even be in another dimension or an alternate reality.