Mage's Cultivation Journey 36

After Elder Kai had left, I expected him to return with an immediate request for help. To my surprise, that did not arrive. Instead, I had received a delivery of material. It was mostly books and scrolls, though there was more than one painting.

The content was even more varied. Some of the books were on elemental theory, both in general philosophical terms and in more practical applications to understand martial arts. The others were about cultivators. There were some handwritten accounts of people who had encountered cultivators, while others had a more technical breakdown of cultivators. There were even some battle reports.

Separating the truth from the false proved to be difficult. Most of the books were penned by either professional scribes or martial artists who dedicated themselves to calligraphy, the smooth perfection of their handwriting revealing the truth.

Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to put the same rigor into properly analyzing and vetting the information they had committed to paper. It wasn’t just the contradiction between materials. More than half weren’t even internally consistent, making most of the information I had to extract a suspect.

Though, some information when it came to cultivators had been pretty consistent. For one, they seemed to disdain living together with mortals, preferring to either live in immortal cities or their sects; meaning it was very rare to encounter one.

Second, apparently, unlike martial arts, they were very selective in allowing who to join, with strict restrictions on talent. Most texts claimed that if one didn’t have the talent, which was rare enough to be counted as one in a million, it was impossible to become a cultivator.

That, I wasn’t willing to believe; mostly because back when I had been living in the streets, I had heard very similar gossip. The truth of it was that while factors like stability of mind and soul, or mana sensitivity played a big role, ultimately, anyone could learn to be a mage. It was just not worth training the most.

Until I found conclusive evidence otherwise, I would assume it was the classic gossip. And, if not … Well, I could think about that later.

Once I had extracted anything I could about the cultivators from the texts -- very little — I turned my attention to the more pressing issue. The transformation of internal energy, and how it relates to elements was a far more difficult issue to delve into.

Unlike accounts about cultivators, which I could only read once and reach a conclusion, the texts about the transformation required far more time to decipher. They were no less incoherent than the cultivator accounts, most declaring their inane observations as absolute truth in a way that contradicted their next point, meaning I had to not only spend a lot of effort to stitch together a semi-decent theory.

The part about analyzing the texts didn’t take long, merely hours. The difficult part had been to validate these theories while relying on observing Yu Xing.

Which was why, I was tempted to go for a walk through the inner courtyard, and observe people, but I was afraid that it would damage my aloof persona too much, and I was not in a position to damage the valuable persona.

I found myself lingering by the pond. The koi still glided without concern, unaware of politics or complicated theories.

Maybe the local method of inspiration would work, I decided as I sat there, stirring some patterns on the dust with my stick.

Internal energy, I surmised as I tried to focus on the existence itself, and how it could change its nature so easily. It wasn’t anything close to mana. That much, I had already learned. But, the more I used it, the more I started to get convinced that it wasn’t physical either. It was just mostly physical. It had a place in the body, but it also had a luminal counterpart. Not something like soul … more like a shadow.

I suspected that was what allowed it to transform to something close to elemental existence. But, even if that was the case, there were many methods for it to be the case. I had multiple theories to explain it, each as likely.

The first one was an existence beyond our understanding, which came from one of the more niche magical theories. It is believed that behind the material existence, there was a layer of perfection that actually shaped the world. Those perfect, idealized existences cast a shadow on the material plane, giving things shape.

Perhaps such a thing truly existed here, at least large enough to underpin the whole plane. That might be why some of the mundane activities, like merely writing characters that carried my ‘heretical’ understanding of elements, received a subtle but real threat.

If that was the case, it would mean the martial artists, with their breathing, connected their internal energy with the concept, gaining a hint of transformation. That way, their energy changed and transformed … but also turned into something that couldn’t stay in their body without destroying themselves.

The second working theory was the exact opposite. The elemental transformation had nothing to do with nature. It was some kind of self-hypnosis inherent in the style and the movement in a way I wasn’t able to identify. Martial artists imposed their subconscious understanding of the elemental concept on their internal energy. It only happened in the lungs because it required air as a physical fuel.

Admittedly, it was a less convincing theory. If that had been the case, I expected to find some martial arts that didn’t directly use the lungs but relied on a different part of the body. But, it might be just as well the efficiency drop making those styles unsustainable, therefore abandoned.

It was tough to draw a conclusion based on my very limited access.

Of course, there was another possibility, one that led to two other theories.

There was a type of energy in the air. One that I couldn’t sense, either due to an inherent difference like the texts about cultivators implied, or simply because I lacked the appropriate method.

If there was one thing that I objectively knew about cultivators, it was that they relied on a primal existence that was similar to mana, one that could be converted from primordial existence, which was clearly not internal energy.

That was how everything started, with that so-called Human Immortal dragging me to the filter room.

Of course, whether that energy was actually available, and if so, whether it interacted with internal energy, was another question. Worse, even if that was the case, it still didn’t answer the question fully. That cultivator energy might be the thing that gave direction to the internal energy.

Or, it might just be the fuel.

I sighed. The probabilities were endless. The only thing I was sure of was that the transformation wasn’t a fully biological process. If that had been the case, the kid’s breakthrough would have had a notable impact on the nature of transformed energy, rather than just affecting the amount.

“Difficult,” I muttered as I continued to draw some patterns as the sun started to go down, marking the end of yet another day. I didn’t move, but I changed my mind. Exploring the transformation was an exciting path, but I had a more critical issue to solve.

My limited internal energy capabilities. I was already keeping enough internal energy inside my body that, if uncontrolled, it would have spread into my body with some deadly consequences. Splitting my attention to maintain a conscious hold over that energy was easy. I could probably double it without wading into deadly territory, but anything more … no, that would be problematic.

I could replenish that by taking a pill, but processing it would take a minute, even if I was willing to let all the impurities infuse my body, several minutes if I wanted to maintain its purity. Either was too long for a fight.

“Maybe, if I can create an external container,” I muttered, my mind wandering to some of the magical setups. I had used cleansing patterns of demonology. Maybe I could take the next step and draw a proper, external containment unit, one that could temporarily hold the internal energy I transferred.

I frowned as I thought about it. The idea was solid, but it had one big problem. Without mana, I had to reinvent the whole discipline from scratch, which wasn’t helped by my level of expertise when it came to demonology.

At best, I had a passing familiarity.

Compared to that, access to local materials wasn’t that big of a problem, but it was not a trivial one either. While my guest expert status gave me a lot of leeway in certain matters, in others, I was strongly limited. I couldn’t just claim to be an expert on one of the local disciplines, or they might have a related request; and rejection would cause some problems.

Maybe I could frame it in a way that I was looking for a new hobby —

My thoughts had been interrupted by a loud explosion. One that was coming from the outer gate of the compound.

It looked like things were heating up.