“It looks like we will be going over land then,” Yin Xue said, stating what they all thought.
“Yes! I get to ride more,” Li Yao exclaimed. “I’ve really come to like Qiufeng. He’s big and strong and lets me ride him without complaint, all day long.”
“Qiufeng?” said Wu Ying.
“My horse.”
“Of course.” Wu Ying shook his head, hiding his mouth behind a raised teacup. “Then we are agreed. We go by land.”
***
Travel by land had one advantage, at least for Wu Ying. Even on the horse he rode, he could cultivate. His training on learning to cultivate while running allowed him to optimize his time. Cultivating in this way was not as efficient, especially for his cultivation exercises, but considering they were traveling for hours at a time, he could still progress.
In terms of his actual cultivation—his progress with the Yellow Emperor’s style—he was stymied by the same blocks. To break through, he needed to collect a large amount of chi and force the breakthrough—unless he managed to achieve a moment of enlightenment—and that was too dangerous to do out here. Better for him to wear away at the edges of the blocks, decreasing their effectiveness. If he did it right, his next attempt at a breakthrough would be easier.
But mostly, all that was a by-product of his other training. While they traveled, he focused on his aura cultivation exercises, working on suppressing his aura while at the same time making it semi-permeable. Working on the new cultivation technique to increase the speed of his cultivation, of his recharge rates.
At first, he failed. Continuously. It was one thing to learn to use it while sitting still, another thing to do so when he was walking—then it was a matter of control of his own movement. But it was another thing entirely to work on the cultivation exercise while trying—badly—to ride a horse, keep a lookout for potential dangers, and talk to one’s friend.
Again and again Wu Ying failed, his aura growing fully permissive without him realizing it. But eventually, Wu Ying managed to increase the amount of time between his failures. He increased the flow of chi in his dantian, the whirlpool of the cultivation technique, while hardening his aura at the same time. He managed to pick out unaspected chi, draw it into his body and in the areas where he failed; he stripped the aspected chi of its properties and made it his own.
In the process, he learned something new.
Unaspected chi was significantly faster to “own” than aspected chi. After discussion with Tou Hei and having his friend compare his own process of cultivation and his own intake of fire chi, Wu Ying realized one advantage of the Yellow Emperor’s cultivation method. Unaspected chi was not as prevalent as aspected chi, but it was easier and faster to subsume. Even though Wu Ying had less chi to draw upon, the little that he did could be controlled and made his own faster than the fire chi Tou Hei used. After all, unaspected chi was just that—without seal, without ownership. But fire chi—or any other aspected chi—was drawn from the elements of the world, given form, and so Tou Hei would need to forcibly remove it and add his own flame to it.
After their talk, Tou Hei grew contemplative, focusing within. He soon pointed out an even worse issue for one like him, who was aspected to flame and heat. Water chi was incredibly difficult and slow for Tou Hei to strip and utilize. It took Tou Hei almost thrice as long as any other chi and five times for his own aspect. When he revealed that, he had Wu Ying explain what he had been doing in the cultivation exercise, enough that Tou Hei could grasp the plan. And then the ex-monk grew silent, experimenting with his own aura.
It was days later, when Tou Hei’s aura shifted and grew hotter, that Wu Ying understood what his friend had done. Instead of hardening his aura and blocking out chi he did not use, Tou Hei actually projected a small amount of fire chi into his. In this way, he “burnt” and repelled water chi, leaving him with fire chi that was drawn to his aura and other, less inimical energy forms. It was a different type of utilization than Wu Ying’s technique, though Tou Hei had derived some aspects from it. It was also grossly inefficient in the beginning, but Tou Hei was focused on increasing its efficiency.
In the meantime, Wu Ying kept at his own cultivation exercises during the day, refining and making them more intuitive.
In the evenings, he and Tou Hei sparred, training their martial styles. Wu Ying tried to combine his cultivation exercises with the duels, intent on keeping his energy regeneration ongoing. It allowed him to last longer, to keep going even when he should be tired out. If Wu Ying could not beat his friend with skill or talent, then he would have to be stubborner and endure longer.
Chapter 12
“Hold it right there!”
The voice commanded the pair of cultivators to stop, leaving them standing in the middle of the road in surprise. Wu Ying carefully moved his hands away from his sword as he looked around. Now that the strangers had revealed themselves, Wu Ying could sense their auras. It seemed at least one of the strangers had the ability to suppress his friends’ and his own aura signature.
The strange cultivators exited the sides of the roads, exposing themselves from the foliage they had hidden in, wearing the yellow-and-brown robes of the Six Jade Gates sect. There were five members of the intercepting party. One who wielded a crossbow stood the farthest away at fifty yards down the path, at the top of the slight rise they had been traversing. The other four clustered around Wu Ying and Tou Hei, weapons already drawn. Two wielded daos, while the third carried a long trident and the last a simple spear. Wu Ying absently noted that the trident-wielder was a female who stood even taller than him. The men, on the other hand, looked very similar, their long hair tied up into buns, with the narrow features of the people of Wei.
On command, Wu Ying and Tou Hei carefully got off their horses, making sure to make no aggressive motions. They stepped away from their rides, standing with their arms by their sides as Wu Ying gauged their opponents’ strengths. The weakest of them—the spear-wielder—was in the high Body Cleansing stage like Wu Ying. The others were in early or middle Energy Storage. Not easy opponents, but not too dangerous either.
“My brothers, why have you stopped us?” Tou Hei said.
“We are looking for spies, and you two are very suspicious.” The leader of the group pointed his dao at Tou Hei. “What are you doing in our country?”
It had taken Wu Ying and his friends over a week and a half to make it this far. Luckily, the border guard post had been simple enough to pass through. The guards stationed there were lazy, barely even paying attention. They were more intent on harassing a local fisherman and his daughter than the pair of them.
Since then, for the last few days, the pair had been making their way deeper into the country. To Wu Ying’s surprise, he’d seen few signs of a war being fought in the state of Wei. Oh, the farmers looked a little leaner, a little hungrier. There were few more vagrants on the road. But nonetheless, there were few signs of rampant destruction. In the end, the language was the same—with minor regional accented variations. The writing was the same, thanks to the Yellow Emperor, and the people… well, people were people.
So Wu Ying was surprised that they had been located so quickly by the cultivators of the Six Jade Gates Sect. As Tou Hei related their backstory to the group, Wu Ying watched them all carefully. He was grateful he had learned to suppress his aura, letting only a little of it leak. He even ensured that he was using the heretical chi gathering method, so that he would seem somewhat different, feel different, as befitted an independent cultivator. As for Tou Hei, his Energy Storage level was less of a concern. Everyone knew the monks had their own paths of cultivation and immortality.