Mage's Cultivation Journey 10

I split my attention between Yu Xing and the cave entrance while I let my body recover from the exertion. There had been no progress when midnight had come and passed, so I decided to call it a night. “That’s enough for the night. Let’s stop here,” I said. 

“Shall I take the first shift, my —” he started, the last part I killed with another gesture. 

“No need. I can use meditation to rest while staying aware of my surroundings. I will wake you up if there’s an emergency,” I said. He nodded, taking my words at face value. But, I could see his hesitation. “You have a question. Ask it,” I ordered. 

He still hesitated for a second before he followed my request. “It seems like a useful ability,” he said. “Is it possible … for me to learn it.” 

I could see why he found it useful. He made a living out of exploring the mountains, but his range was limited to what he could handle in a day. To explore further, he needed collaborators to take turns keeping watch. 

Collaborators that wouldn’t cut his throat the moment they discovered a valuable medicinal plant. 

Moreover, unlike the mages who spent most of their days in their towers, and traveled rarely, the martial artists were more geared toward moving around. Having the ability to maintain awareness while resting their bodies would have utility in many different situations. “It should be,” I answered. “But, it requires a strong meditation ability, so it won’t be quick. It might take months of dedicated practice.” 

He nodded stoically, showing that he wasn’t afraid of hard work. That part was not a surprise. Nothing I had seen from him suggested anything other than an extremely hard worker. While I had yet to hear the full story of his life, the fact that he was able to stand against a grown man while he was still a kid, all the while dealing with an extremely disadvantageous birth spoke wonders. 

It was clear that, even with his injury, he didn’t stop working as hard as he could. That was a grit I could respect. 

“What should we do tomorrow?” he asked. “Should we travel faster toward the nearest town, or stay in the mountains?” 

“Let’s take a more leisurely pace, and stay in the outskirts,” I responded. “Going to the nearest town is not a good idea. If they decide to search, it would be one of the first places they look. Is there another town we can go to? Ideally, a large enough for us to disappear into the crowd, with a lot of movement?” 

“We can try Dongxi Town,” he suggested. “It will take a week even with a brisk pace, but it’s near the mountains, constantly visited by trade caravans because of the western passage, allowing movement.” 

“That sounds good. And, we can move slower. We don’t have to cover the distance in a week. That way, we can collect some medicinal plants to sell once we arrive at our destination.” 

He nodded, approving the plan, and pulled to his corner. Meditation allowed me to stay conscious while he slept, my mind churning with everything I had learned about the martial arts, trying to understand. In a way, it was similar to what I had done with the local language, trying to break down everything I observed into a coherent picture. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t particularly simple. For the language, I had many points of example from listening to the others. Comparatively, what I had truly seen from the martial arts was limited. Just a punch I watched from a distance, Yu Xing’s chaotic energies, and Wang Bi’s punch that I interrupted halfway. 

Hardly a justification to start experimenting and risking the kid’s life. 

That didn’t mean trying to solve and understand it was a waste of time. It wouldn’t be as effective as I hoped, but it wasn’t like I had nothing better to do. 

I certainly couldn’t go around alone. The stories of restless savage beasts I eavesdropped from the villagers were enough to dissuade me. I didn’t want to die. 

When dawn arrived, I started another fire, cooking another batch of porridge before I called. The sun was already up. “Xing, breakfast is ready,” I shouted. 

He stirred awake, looking dozed. After the day he had, it was not a shocking sight. “My —,” he started, but this time, he managed to correct himself without my warning. Progress. “I could have cooked the breakfast,” he said. 

“No, you’ll be carrying all the extra weight. I need to pull my weight,” I countered. I would have loved to help carry the stuff as well, but even walking half a day had been exhausting enough. 

He nodded. We had breakfast mostly in silence, only interrupted by the occasional questions I asked. It was inevitable. He wasn’t exactly shy, but he didn’t take the initiative to talk, limiting himself to answering my questions, and I wasn’t exactly awash with options for casual chatters. Not with the immensity of the secret I was trying to keep. 

We cleaned the dishes in a nearby stream, refilled the water skins, and started the next leg of our trek. I would have asked him about martial arts, but I felt that I was already at the limit of what I could learn from him. Not because he was deliberately hiding secrets, but because his understanding of theoretical aspects was extremely limited, with most of the training limited to memorizing mantras and punching, leaving the rest to the technique. 

Whether it was the optimal way to learn martial arts, or Yu Xing suffered from substandard education was not something I could answer at the moment. 

So, I decided to focus on another topic. “Tell me about the local medicinal plants. The names, general features, and their uses. Everything.” I was eager. Even if my alchemy knowledge wasn’t applicable without mana to assist, those plants could be useful. Not all need to be processed to be useful, and a way to tend open wounds would be useful. 

So could poisoning a troublesome enemy. Not particularly honorable, maybe, but I needed every advantage I could find. Sometimes, an innocuous leave ingested by a troublesome enemy could make all the difference.

He nodded, changing the direction slightly until we arrived behind a large stone, pointing at a thick layer of bright green moss with a white top. “This is Cloud Moss,” he said. “It grows in shaded areas, especially near the stream. Most villagers use it to deal with scrapes and bruises. It prevents infections,” he explained. 

“Since we’re not gathering it, it shouldn’t be too expensive.” 

“No. A cartload barely goes for a tael, and it needs to be fresh. It loses potency in a day or two. Worthwhile if you’re near a town, but otherwise useless.”

I nodded and touched the moss, slowly enough to leave him some time to warn me in case of a problem. It had a soft, comfortable texture, but I wasn’t interested in its physical properties. I tried to sense its energy but felt nothing. I still took some, as it could be useful for my hurting feet. 

We continued to walk, until he took another detour, this time climbing over a rocky outcropping. I waited for him below. When he returned, he was carefully carrying a long, bright red plant in hand, about a foot tall. “This is "Fire Tongue Grass. The apothecaries use it to make medicine for open wounds. It stems from bleeding well. It gets half a tael per bundle.” 

“And how many of them in a bundle?” I questioned, even as I took it off his hands. 

“Twenty,” he replied. 

We started walking again, but this time, I was paying less attention to my surroundings, and more attention to the plant in my hand. Because, I could feel a hint of energy from it. It wasn’t a particularly strong feel. Without an absolute trust in my senses, I might have dismissed the feeling as a vague sensation. I did not, instead examine it carefully. 

The most I could feel was a rough similarity with internal energy, but the connection was distant, like how water and molten iron were both liquids. A similarity in form, yet it meant next to nothing in any practical context. 

That didn’t prevent a smile from growing on my face. Even without any practical benefit, just confirming that the plants had some kind of energy in them, which could be roughly in the same category as the internal energy of the martial artists was a win by itself. 

Every little tidbit of knowledge helped me to better understand the plane I found myself in. And, learning to distinguish different types of energies would certainly be useful.  

“Spectacular,” I said. “Let’s continue.” 

With that, we continued our trip, learning more and more about the world itself in the process.