“Thank goodness for small favors,” he whispered to himself as Bronze-ranked reflexes had him flipping the priceless Gold tomes end over end into the space beside the temple as if they were school texts being thrown like frisbees before trembling hands grabbed a fortune in mortal and cultivation treasures, hastily scooping up handfuls and tossing them into a quickly grabbed storage pack, along with a number of Silver tomes he hadn’t been expecting. And much to his fierce satisfaction, he had managed to gather up nearly the entirety of the spilled wealth in just a handful of seconds.
Before spying the seductive glimmer of not one but three spirit pearls twinkling merrily, just behind the ruin of a building only a few extra feet away...
Before feeling that terrible killing pressure once more.
Quickness check made!
Then it was racing the handful of feet back to his barrier and forcing it back up with a foot in the blood channel and a fierce surge of will and trembling laughter as he gazed upon his now-stuffed storage pack and the pair of Golden tomes that had skidded to a stop just beside the obsidian temple entrance, giving an unabashed howl of victory.
He had finally done it!
He couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear as trembling hands grasped the weighty Golden tomes before him.
It felt so glorious, yet so strange, holding those tomes. They were an odd combination of pristine shiny gold, yet were as soft and plush as finest leather. And when he carefully cracked open the manual in his hand, beholding just a glimpse of the dizzying, wondrous secrets within, his senses gloried in the smell of leather chairs and finely preserved tomes in the grandest of college libraries with shafts of warm light and the delightful aroma of cherry blossoms wafting in from a nearby window. The perfect blend of scents, flavors, and nostalgic collegiate memories he had never lived.
Or had he?
He might never know.
But what he did know was that the pair of Golden tomes in his trembling hands were treasures beyond compare.
And even as he felt the growing presence of the terrible creature rapidly approaching, Alex all but certain that furious gods were slamming cards down left and right upon the board of fate in a desperate attempt to tear even these bitterly fought-for prizes from him, he already knew what he had to do. He quickly gathered every trace of supplies or evidence of his presence into the belt’s own mystic storage space, including the pair of Gold-ranked tomes, pleased and gratified to see it actually exceeded the lower grade backpack.
And save for the blood groove channels which he could do little about, there was no longer any trace of him at all.
And when the titanic roar echoed through the grand cavern once more, Alex knew he was desperately running out of time.
Yet still, he hesitated before entering the obsidian temple yet again.
Before he dared try manipulating the inverted levers that would allow him entrance, he placed his brow against the strangely warm stone. “I seek entrance only for shelter from the storm. I plan on going no further than a dozen paces into the sanctuary below, the exit always within my line of sight. I will be grateful for any fruit that drop to the ground, but promise not to touch the silverbells blossoming above, and under no circumstances will I proceed down the path and dare glimpse upon that which my eyes must never see again.”
Alex took a deep breath, not sure if he was being absurd, or if he would be struck dead for his temerity either way. “With that oath given, I seek entrance. May I proceed?”
And for all that a mad part of him just wanted to race back the way he had come for the shimmering moonlit magical rope stairs by the underground pool he had been thrown into, he knew better than to run like a fleeing rodent into the maw of the hawk awaiting his folly.
Much to his surprise, he was neither killed nor maimed for his temerity, but allowed entrance once more, the entrance opening as smoothly for him as if he had just come home.
“Wait!” roared an inhuman voice with the frustrated fury of the gods above.
But Alex did no such thing, and the portal that could only be opened by a precise manipulation of Dark Qi and no other force on this planet, Alex sensed, closed behind him. Yet still, he did not hesitate to race down those endless flight of stairs for what felt like hours before finally emerging, panting and sobbing with relief, into the sanctuary below once more.
He fell to his knees in gratitude before quickly placing several items of camping gear around his imagined twelve pace perimeter so he would never risk forgetting himself and stepping beyond the bounds of his oath.
Then, with a final grateful prayer of thanks to the very few powers that actually cared about his fate, he slowly took out his coveted prizes once more, wide-eyed with wonder and an almost comical disbelief that he would actually be permitted a chance to study actual tomes of Bronze, let alone Silver and Gold, finding the handful of blank leather tomes and magical writing quills perpetually full of ink to be some of Xiao’s greatest treasures of all.
With that and a final bow to the glorious woodland sanctuary all around him, Alex quickly got to work, magical quill and blank leather tome at the ready, eager to see what secrets he could uncover, and how close his sporadic revelations into the nature of Qi and the ideal formation of cords had come to the actual truth.
25
“Three for Bronze, five for Silver, eight for Gold? Then that means...” Alex’s gut clenched, suddenly forced to wonder if his earlier flashes of transcendent insight had, in fact, been flawed.
He gazed down at his notes, made over weeks of diligent study, gazing at the key principles he had unlocked from those priceless tomes, and how effortlessly, how perfectly they flowed with his own overarching theory regarding the framework upon which a cultivator’s power rested upon.
He gazed almost fondly at the handful of Bronze tomes he had gone over, at first overwhelmed by the depth and complexity of the information contained therein, before he changed his focus to one of just studying the underlying themes at the heart of each and every Bronze tome he had gathered.
But the true test had been when he had tried to apply those key principles to the tomes of Silver, and then Gold.
At first he was overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of knowledge before him, feeling the same awful sort of dread he used to feel right before finals in subjects he hadn’t mastered, beyond stressed by all the odd lessons and seemingly contradictory bits of cultivating advice in the Bronze tomes favored by the body cultivator Wu, the healer Bolin, and by that master of projected Qi so mirroring the deadly powers of an Earth sorcerer in countless games, the local headmaster of Morning Dew Temple, Xiao Shen himself.
But it was only after suffering through that anxious handful of days, desperately trying to understand what he was missing, the common themes that tied so many principles altogether, that it all finally clicked.
He wasn’t interested in their various tips in manipulating his cultivation base, once forged, into various avenues of power, or learning the myriad techniques inscribed within, like Black Swan or Adderstrike, and it wasn’t just because he sensed these cruder techniques were nowhere near as sleek and deadly as his own favored Qi disciplines had become. He was sure he’d find even deadlier, more efficient techniques in the tomes of Silver and Gold, but learning them might come at a steep cost.
He already knew that Silver Swan kung fu had shifted his Lower Dantian in a way that was slightly out of true, and he was incredibly lucky it would have no adverse effects on his advancement. Quite the opposite, in fact. But he had dared to master that art at his peril. Alex was all too aware that should he dare to share intimacy before he broke through to Silver, a feat that fewer than one in 100,000 would ever achieve, he might actually shatter his core.
He shivered at the thought, and knew the cost better than anyone of losing himself too deeply in techniques before he had forged a perfect foundation.
Above all else, he wanted to avoid being led astray by certain authors who were so eager to specialize in wha
t they knew that they actively bent their understanding of forging ideal meridian channels in order to facilitate those special abilities or attacks above all others. Even if it ended up hindering their ability to use other attacks, or even to advance altogether, though of course the authors might not even realize how their prejudices were damning them in the long run.
What Alex was interested in was a pristinely strong, almost transcendent foundation, without any leaning or specialized affinity for any particular element or Qi power at all. And this was both a blessing and a definite burden.
A blessing, because it meant he could skim over so much of the texts, most of them giving similar foundational advice regarding how to advance in rank and forge strong meridians before diverging off into the author’s favored techniques and recommended avenues of meditation to even further enhance them.
And Alex’s task was made all the more burdensome as he needed to find the secret of balancing not just five elements, but eight, plus Dark Qi, and if he was right, even more than that.
If the transcendent insights he had gained by WiFu’s side on the cusp of dream were correct... he shook his head.
One step at a time.
The first hurdle to overcome was that of forming the ideal pattern in which one would forge a particular arrangement of channels between one’s meridian gates. Of course, each tome had differing interpretations of what constituted an ideal pattern, and the most detailed of all of them were the intricate patterns listed in the Gold tomes.
Alex could only imagine that deducing the perfect pattern for a given practitioner was something a diligent master and student spent considerable time on, if a student was lucky enough to have such a resource, or years of private study, trying to determine the best fit, if they were not so fortunate. Every student was no doubt driven to find the ideal pattern that played to their strengths, yet wouldn’t cripple their long-term potential.
And here alone, Alex had a pristine solution all ready to go. The transcendent pattern listed in his Eternal Fox Unified Cultivation manual resonated so perfectly with the strengths of his soul, after having literally risked his soul in its forging.
For anyone else, that pattern was pristine enough to lead them straight to Gold, if they had the potential, assuming they got everything else right. For Alex alone, the pattern he had forged might just be the key to walking a divine path, allowing him to surpass even Jade.
Thus, half the struggle was already solved for him, which was why he had been able to accomplish in weeks what another student might spend months or years pursuing, just planning those first crucial steps. But there was another side to his dilemma if he was truly to forge the strongest foundation he possibly could, to truly make use of the Dual Path Cultivation Technique that some part of his soul had fought so hard, so long, to be able to pursue.
It all came down to forging cords of intertwined elements.
For a single-element Bronze cultivation manual, forging proper meridian channels comprised of twining fibers of elemental power that were coiled tightly together to form a single thread. This was repeated so as to form three threads now twisting about to form a single strand, then replicated to forge three strands now twining together in a twisting cord of Qi.
And that was all for a single Bronze cord.
With the Silver tomes, it was different. Here, each cord was comprised of at least five strands made up of at least five threads, each thread comprised of as many fibers as the cultivator had elemental affinities. And here, Alex saw what he had been hoping most to see, even in the Silver tomes with one element.
Space was being made in the twisting of each bundle of fibers into a thread. It weaved and twisted even with itself as if there were a total of five fibers, even if there was only one element in all. It was as if there were four ghostly placeholders. And somehow, the thread held its resonance, as if the missing elements were somehow all there.
And unlike the Bronze tomes, almost all the Silver tomes made it clear that the twist of the fibers was the inverse of that of the thread, which was twisted in opposite direction to that of the strands, and the strands themselves were counter-twisted again when finally forging the massive cord of Qi, anchoring any two meridian points together.
Alex couldn’t help smiling. His father, once an avid sailor, had taught him long ago how important strong rope was for handling sails or anchoring one’s boat, and by having each aspect of the rope’s construction twisting in opposing directions, one increased the tensile strength considerably as well as assuring a stable, unified whole that wouldn’t unravel into a giant mess.
And though there was that bare minimum, three strands for Bronze tomes and five for Silver tomes, most of the tomes bent that rule with more, not less, numbers of strands, threads, or even space between fibers, real or imagined, as if they were comprised of even more than five elements.
Alex certainly appreciated the advantages of making one’s cordage, or meridian channels, as strong as possible. But the perils of making even one wrong step at the beginning of one’s cultivation journey were painfully clear.
Alex wondered how many cultivators with the potential for Bronze could have advanced to Silver or even Gold in a single lifetime, if they only had access the proper cultivation techniques.
At the very least, he had no doubt that a student gently ushered upon the Noble’s Path of any cultivation school would find far more care given to ascertaining his strengths and ideal future meridian configuration than a peasant who had just happened to earn his right to attend a given school based on nothing more than his own potential.
Still, Alex knew from his own limited uses of Soul Sight that some practitioners had far smaller meridian gateways than others, allowing at most a tiny trickle of Qi potential.
Perhaps most cultivators were directed to the thinnest twined cords to be found within Bronze tomes simply because that was all their meridian channels could ever hope to support, and Silver tomes were coveted not so much for their meridian pattern configurations and complex twining cords, but for the numerous specialized techniques Alex had no real time to study, focusing on what most pertained to him, the secrets to forging the strongest cords he possibly could.
He took a moment to contemplate his own singular accomplishment, forging a meridian channel unlike any other. A brilliant strand of flashing silver and darkness, comprised of Dark and Light Qi in equal measure, it was an absolute contrast to orderly cords, and already as broad as the widest river and as wild as a living storm, as if exemplifying the ideals of chaos itself.
It had been the product of transcendent insight and more than a touch of madness as his enemy’s poison pushed him to the brink of death. And he already knew he needed an orderly configuration to balance that chaos, because any other path forward would require reforging himself in a constant crucible of pain and fire, kissing death once more as he danced across the face of oblivion.
Either that, or it would take a thousand years of peaceful cultivation.
The choice was his.
And here was where Alex felt an anxious knot in the pit of his stomach.
He knew that one misstep in forging his next meridian channel could dwarf his potential forever after. And knowing that this might be the last life he ever lived... he shook his head, refusing to dwell on pointless anxieties, instead focusing on the dilemma before him.
Just as Silver needed three sets of five in terms of strands, threads, and fibers, Gold needed eight of each. And Alex already knew that the next step, the step within his own tome, which had made such transcendent sense, required twelve elemental fibers, or space for the ghostly equivalents, incorporating whatever elements one did have. Twelve strands, each comprised of twelve strings, each comprised of twelve elements, were then twined together, producing the strongest of all meridian channels, a suitable foundation for achieving the highest rungs of power.
And there lay the crux of Alex’s dilemma. He was no fool. He already understood the progression from three
to five to eight to twelve. He could intuitively appreciate the incredible significance of forging channels that would each have, in total, 1,728 elemental fibers, whether real or ghostly placeholders. Even the numbers themselves held significance: eight Light Qi elements, a Dual Path, seven meridian channels, twelve elements altogether. All of it rang true to his intuitive sense of the flow of spiritual energy radiating through existence as a whole.
But the path he was following was one that would allow him to transcend to Jade. A feat that only the world’s greatest cultivators could hope to achieve. A realm solely the province of emperors and perhaps the deadliest of warrior kings, or wujen more akin to elemental forces than anything else.
Yet the path of Jade, no matter how fierce, terrible, and awe inspiring, was not the path of Immortal Transcendence.
Not quite.
He was still missing something.
He could all but taste it.
And the anxious fear that if he made just one wrong move with the ascension that awaited him like a maddening itch, the incredible burden of experience earned, to say nothing of the remnant of an eternal Golden core he had earned by Panheu’s side, it almost drove him mad to distraction, now that he wasn’t forced to fight for his life every hour of every day.
Like a caterpillar deep in his cocoon, he knew it would soon be time to emerge, to break free of all restraint and embrace his potential.
And how he feared emerging as a broken-winged moth and not the pristine monarch he hoped to become.
Wracked by uncertainty, going over his notes one final time, Alex ignored his growing itch and surrendered to exhaustion at last, falling asleep atop his own pile of notes.
“Wake up, disciple. It’s almost time for your test.”
Alex snapped awake, finding himself at an old-fashioned school desk, warm shafts of sunlight coming in from the windows behind, as well as the sounds of children at play.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior's Oath: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 4 Page 44
