A Thousand Li

by Tao Wong

  Elder Ko nodded and pointed at the second manual. “This one is more promising. It was used by a Core cultivator of our Sect, with his own notes within.”

  “Core only?” Master Cheng paused, pulling a small wad of mints and other herbs from a small pouch. He slipped it into his mouth, chewing on the bundle to work them in properly. When Elder Ko raised an eyebrow, he muttered, “Elder Xiong’s orders.”

  “Ah.” Elder Ko nodded. “We will never know how far he could have progressed. He left the Sect for an extended experiential journey and fell to a demon beast.”

  Wu Ying nodded. Experiential journeys were a necessary part of cultivating life. Enlightenment could only be achieved by experience, and for many, the experience of repetition, of mundanity was insufficient. Though, Wu Ying’s lips twisted upward, it would be interesting to meet a god who had achieved deistic enlightenment from boredom.

  Or perhaps that would be entirely too dull.

  “These are not many choices at all,” Elder Cheng said. “What are our options if none of these are suitable? The Patriarch’s library?”

  Elder Ko paused in his incessant stroking of his beard, peering at Elder Cheng, who returned his gaze unperturbed. Eventually, Elder Ko answered. “No. If you were seeking a metal elemental body… or perhaps even earth…” He shook his head. “But wood, we lack entirely.”

  “Then?”

  “You will have to seek outside the Sect.” A smile crossed the Elder’s face a moment later. “Your best bet would be one we already are in negotiations with, in fact.”

  “Oh?” Wu Ying said.

  “Yes, your friend. He seeks a cultivation manual for his problems. And the Double Soul, Double Body Sect are the foremost Sect for such matters.”

  “Of course!” Master Cheng exclaimed. “I should have thought of that myself. Though going to them is less than ideal.”

  Wu Ying frowned, looking at his Master for clarification.

  “The Double Soul, Double Body Sect are a small but prestigious sect. They specialize in individuals with unique constitutions,” Master Cheng explained. “Their Founding Patriarch achieved great fame due to his body. To break through and clear his meridians, he had to open not just one or two dantians but all three. While he walked the middle kingdom, he was unrivaled in his strength. The creation of the Sect was to find other individuals with unique, difficult paths and offer them guidance.”

  “And in so doing, they have acquired the most extensive and eclectic library of uncommon cultivation techniques and exercises in the kingdom. Potentially all five neighboring kingdoms. I have visited it thrice myself,” Elder Ko said, a glimmer of happiness in his eyes. “They also often trade with other sects to build upon their library.”

  “While they are willing to allow others to browse their works and even acquire copies, the cost is often steep,” Master Cheng said bitterly.

  Elder Ko nodded in agreement.

  “And Tou He is looking to acquire his cultivation method from them?” Wu Ying asked.

  Elder Ko nodded and Wu Ying smiled. That was good. He was glad his friend had a way forward. As for himself… his fingers traced the books, itching to begin reading. Seeing his impatience, the Elders shared amused looks.

  “You may begin, Wu Ying. Use the time you should be practicing studying these works. Though I expect you to make up for it tonight,” Elder Cheng said.

  Wu Ying nodded, taking a seat and unrolling the bamboo scroll. Still, he paused as he glanced at the Elders who had begun to leave him.

  “Are you free for a cup of tea?” Master Cheng asked Elder Ko as the pair strolled away, black robes trimmed with green swishing.

  Wu Ying shook his head, dismissing the pair, and turned to reading. Best to get it over and done with. He would have to see which method seemed to work best for him with his current physiology. Supposedly, unlike soul cultivation methods, many body cultivation methods required you to physically test them to truly grasp their suitability. Still, there was much you could understand with a little reading.

  Or so he hoped.

  ***

  First to be read was the threaded bamboo scroll. Each bamboo slip was tied together with cord, tightly bound such that it was possible to write down the length of the bamboo pieces without obstruction. Such bamboo slips had generally been used in the past and had fallen out of favor due to their weight and overall bulkiness. However, minor enchantments and the use of demon beast cores had allowed the preservation of old works, and their general durability meant that certain die-hard groups still used the format. It was, Wu Ying had been led to believe, much more common in other states that had yet to acquire papermaking technology in abundance.

  Running his hand along the slips, Wu Ying scanned through the document and considered the technique. It was, as warned, only the summarized workings, with a few notations that a practitioner might take with him whilst on a quick trip. Wu Ying had much the same notations for his own cultivation manuals. They were often unique to the individual and their understanding of the manuals.

  And perhaps because it had been adjusted for its practitioner—and missing key information—Wu Ying found it difficult to grasp the essence of the Shadow Sword Sect’s technique. Working on a hunch, Wu Ying discarded it as an option, though he vowed to give it a single read-over after he had finished the other manuals.

  The next manual, A Tall Sapling Struck Twice, was the self-created work. It was, to his surprise, a work that Wu Ying found some level of comfort within. The way it described the flow of energy, the way it dictated the progress of strengthening muscles and bones and cleansing, it made sense to Wu Ying. One of the major aspects of the Tall Sapling was cultivation in certain environments—specifically, during the day and preferably, while raining. That was, supposedly, the best way to absorb and cleanse a wood elemental body.

  That was a little unusual, but the work made sense to Wu Ying based off his understanding of plants. Understanding in theory, but suitable and usable in practice were two different things. He would have to test it, but at least he was willing to do so, unlike the first work.

  The next manual—White Aspen on the Cliff –Wu Ying felt he might be able to make use of as well, if he did not mind its peculiarities. Unlike the Tall Sapling manual, he found the text more obscure, the requirements in terms of physical manipulation and strengthening less intuitive. For example, one exercise required Wu Ying to freeclimb nearby cliffs nude.

  Nude!

  Of course, there were also a series of chi flow exercises and various herbs he would have to consume, as well as a series of medicinal baths he would have to take, but the heart of the manual seemed to be the series of strange exercises, often on high ledges, to “absorb the flow of the universe.”

  In truth, body cultivation was strange. Unlike soul cultivation, which everyone learnt from the earliest stages, body cultivation was rare at the levels and intricacies that he was studying. Oh, simple body cultivation exercises like the ones he had picked from this very library were common. Those focused upon improving and toughening the existing body and were common, ancillary exercises.

  True body cultivation was different.

  Soul cultivation—normal cultivation—was, in the end, the refining and formation of an immortal soul. Once one broke through energy cultivation, you created the womb—the core—that you grew your immortal soul within. Ascending to Nascent Soul stage required the breaking of the core and the survival of the newly born soul—while under heavenly tribulation. That was where too many cultivators failed. But even then, a Nascent Soul was not a true immortal yet, though they were long lived. A Nascent Soul cultivator still had to raise the soul with the understanding of a dao to ascend as an immortal.

  Body cultivation, on the other hand, altered not the soul but the body, turning the body itself into a heavenly treasure. The end goal of body cultivation was to create an immortal body by replacing portions of one’s body such that the final form was as tough, as durable as Hebo’s[7] chario
t. Supposedly, at the end of body cultivation, a cultivator’s body was as wondrous and ever-changing as the Ruyi Jingu Bang[8]. The very essence of the Dao flowed through a body cultivator’s body, though there were arguments whether body cultivators actually needed to grasp the Dao to progress.

  Arguments. So many arguments.

  That was one of the primary reasons why body cultivation was not taught more widely. Unlike the well-worn path of soul cultivation, body cultivation was less successful in general and its paths to immortality less well mapped. Even if there were five main elements, within those main elements, sub-elements of numerous forms were present and could affect the development of a cultivator. Much like how Li Yao had aligned herself with the ice element, bodies too could bend toward certain elemental types.

  And though there might be arguments between orthodox and heretical sects on how to progress soul cultivation, both could list numerous success stories to point their way. Not so in the case of body cultivators.

  Of course, part of the reason for that was due to the second major issue. One that Wu Ying was noting now as he read through both potential cultivation manuals again.

  “Heart root of a thousand-year oak. The first bloom of a fresh-water Moon Lily. Metal-aligned Sage Grass. Spring Blossom of the Northern Highland Orchid.” Wu Ying frowned, stabbing a finger at the document. “Which one?”

  In fact, multiple times he noted that the ingredients for the tonics and baths one was to take, in progressive stages, were badly enumerated. There were six different kinds of northern highland orchids that Wu Ying knew of, never mind when they were properly aligned. Which was he to get? Did it matter? And while baths and tonics were much less precise on their actual ingredients, unlike apothecary, it was because they were also, in some ways, less effective. They took longer to affect a body and made more subtle but wide-ranging changes.

  Which seemed to be the theme here.

  Body cultivation was a slow process, changes in the body supposedly taken over decades. With each step, a cultivator replaced a portion of the body and aligned it with the element further. Then they would take time to further cleanse the body.

  Each stage saw a slow, subtle shift. The entire thing was best started as a child.

  Except Wu Ying had skipped many of the initial stages. As a wood-aligned elemental body, he had already completed the equivalent Body Cleansing stage of body cultivation. Now, his goal was to cleanse his body of further impurities, then begin the process of replacing individual parts with further wood-aligned elements.

  Simple enough really.

  “But first, dinner. Then to attempt one of these,” Wu Ying said to himself.

  He picked up the documents to find the nearest librarian, grateful his Master had offered to pay for the manuals for now. Poor as he was, and as ashamed as he was for accepting his Master’s largesse, Wu Ying still could not afford these manuals.

  Better to accept help now and concern himself with repayment afterward.

  ***

  Later that evening, Wu Ying was seated in his courtyard. A note to his Elder Sister had seen him excused for the night, allowing him to attempt to test out these cultivation methods. Thankfully, both cultivation texts had information in the front that allowed one to test one’s affinity for the cultivation method.

  Of course, with Wu Ying’s advanced elemental body, the test might not work as well. Or at all. Because, of course, he would have to make things complicated.

  Wu Ying exhaled roughly, pushing some of the hair that had fallen across his forehead out of the way. He briefly considered redoing his hair tie, pulling his hair back into a proper bun, but decided against it. If these cultivation methods worked, he would have to take another bath anyway.

  And really, he was just delaying.

  Picking up the first manual, the White Aspen, he read the instructions once more. He skipped past the initial section on testing for elemental alignment, since it was cruder than the method Elder Xiong had used. Also, more expensive, using a formation and five spirit cores of each element.

  Instead, he focused on the next step. The process of body cultivation.

  “The order is blood, stomach and digestive organs, other organs, skin, muscle, bone, and then, most difficult of all, the meridians and other nerves,” Wu Ying muttered. He shuddered, imagining the kind of damage you could do when altering one’s meridians or the nerves that drove one’s body. It made sense to leave it for last, when one had the most experience.

  Of course, both manuals had a different recommended order of replacement, along with the exact chi flows and herbs required to enact such replacements.

  For now, Wu Ying would ignore those details and undertake the task of testing himself.

  In this case, the testing was a simple matter. He would draw in wood chi from the world around him, working to strain it through his dantian and his meridians to make it his before then having it fully enter the blood and bones of his body. He would soak his body in that wood chi, watch how his body interacted with it, and from there begin the actual body cultivation process.

  Of course, first he had to adjust his Never Empty Wine Pot cultivation exercise. He had to reach into his aura, push against the boundary that kept all but unaspected chi from entering his dantian, and allow both wood and unaspected chi within. Eventually he would have to purge the wood chi or convert it, but for this cultivation period, he needed it.

  Even though his aura helped filter out other forms of elemental chi, it couldn’t filter all of it. So as he breathed and cultivated, he drew in small aspects of the other elements. Small, however, was insufficient for his needs.

  At first ten minutes, then another ten passed. Wu Ying gently tugged and adjusted the invisible, unconscious membrane of his aura. It was like playing with a bubble, one that could only be affected by your breath but with greater durability. Of course, that didn’t help when he was attempting to put holes within the bubble, but holes that only let in one form of… air.

  Metaphor failed him at times.

  Even though they were useful for envisioning cultivation practices, metaphors were no more the real thing than a grain of rice the rice plant.

  Eventually, having adjusted his aura to accommodate both forms of chi—and practiced enough to be able to adjust it backward—Wu Ying began the actual testing process. Wood chi entered his body with each breath, seeping into his skin and lungs and flowing through his meridians into his dantian, where it was slowly converted and stamped.

  That was when Wu Ying noticed the difference. Almost every other time when he cultivated, he would be fighting to convert the other elements, making them unaspected so that he could store and use the chi in his dantian and meridians. Now though, he sensed that not all the elemental chi entering his body was converted.

  The higher volume of wood chi that he allowed into his body, that he had blocked out earlier, allowed him to note the change. His body, his elemental wood body, drank in the wood chi. It did not wait, did not stop to allow him to make it his own.

  Forgetting his earlier plan, forgetting the cultivation manual’s strict series of training regimes, Wu Ying followed the flow of chi within his body. Sensed how it entered his skin, his muscles, his blood and bones. It seeped within without stop before exiting, just like water that flowed through a ditch would do so. But in moving through the ditch, it left behind its imprint. Soaked earth, minerals, and other grains of sand from farther upstream. The ditch was changed, as was his own body.

  For a time, Wu Ying marveled at the change, marveled at how it altered with each step.

  Then, a growing ache. It started in his left calf, then along his right shoulder. Another spot, just above his right brow. He sent his senses over to check and found the same thing in each spot—a murky darkness, a splotch of grey and black, a hard granite stone in the flow of his chi. It blocked, caught, and twisted at the wood chi that entered, growing in abundance. Forcing pain when the new obstruction increased in size.

 
; His lungs burned, his stomach churning. Wu Ying cut the process of cultivating only to find that his body continued to draw chi into himself.

  Mistake.

  He knew now his mistake. Inadvertently, he had been protecting himself whilst using the Never Empty Wine Pot cultivation method. He had blocked off the majority flow of wood chi, the chi his body hungered for. Now, starved, it drank in what his aura let in, the blockages growing stronger.

  Wood chi was the chi of change, of growth. His body had been missing it, protected by his cultivation method. Now, it was no longer hindered and processes that had been halted or starved by his various cleanses began anew.

  Pain, in various spots through his body, in his bones and lungs, in his shoulder and calf, grew. A boulder that pressed, a poker that burnt. His breathing grew erratic while Wu Ying forced himself to focus on his aura barrier. Tried to patch the holes he had created, to revert it to its former state.

  To block out the chi that was killing him.

  All the time, his body sucked in the wood chi and finding the blockages, added to them. Made them worse.

  Another shuddering rack ran through his body, Wu Ying’s body spasming. He turned his head to the side as he vomited blood mixed with toxins forced from his body. Toxins and elemental wood chi that had found no purchase within him.

  Yet through it all, he sensed the flow lessening, his hasty reinforcement growing firmer. Pushing aside the pain, the danger, Wu Ying focused. As oily stickiness grew on his skin, seeped out from pores, his body heaved, and another mouthful of blood was spat out.

  Consciousness fought to escape into the dark tides of the underworld river. Voices called, muted and foreign, asking him if he was okay, if he was to join them. Wu Ying fought them off, fought the hands that attempted to drag him down, fought to keep himself awake until he was done.

  Until he had his aura repaired.

  Only to find that the chi he had absorbed within himself was still rampaging. Spasms shook his body, his muscles twitching, fingers clenched into claws, grasping at immaterial enemies. Nerves fired, jerking his body to and fro, throwing his head side to side. Blood dribbled from his orifices, staining ground and clothing, leaving the air to reek of rotten wood and earthy herbs.