Mage's Cultivation Journey 18

“As promised, your charge is back here, master,” the martial artist said. I simply nodded, giving him minimal courtesy.

He didn’t say anything else, but didn’t move away either. “Speak,” I ordered.

“My employer extended an invitation for a tea ceremony.”

“When?” I asked.

“Whenever it’s convenient for you, master,” he replied.

“Not for a few days, then. I’ll make sure to visit before we decide to travel once more. Now, leave,” I said.

My rudeness didn’t blunt his mood, which wasn’t a surprise. People expected rudeness from the people they saw above them. Acting excessively kind would have been more suspicious.

I waited until he moved away. “How was it?” I asked, looking at the sacks they carried. The one the girl carried was mostly filled with books and scrolls. That much was obvious from the shape. Meanwhile, the other sack had many smells, but mostly food and plants.

“It was good, better than expected,” Yu Xing said. “We sold the twenty-year-old spring ginseng for three hundred taels, and it allowed us to purchase most of what I need.”

“Not a bad price,” I replied, like I expected that. I didn’t have any other choice. While the energy I could feel from the plants we weren’t able to identify had been strong, I hadn’t expected such a great gap. If I knew, I might have never attempted the current charade, but instead done my best to bribe the guards to enter the town. “What did you buy?”

“Many things,” he replied. “Various essence pills, some cured savage beast meat, several medicinal plants to strengthen meridians … and a set of silver acupuncture needles.” The pause at the last part was enough to betray his hopes.

I understood where he was coming from. Acupuncture was a fundamental part of medical treatment for martial artists, allowing the doctor to directly manipulate the target’s meridians. But, I needed to practice first.

“How about you, girl?” I asked.

“Just as you asked, sir. I bought writing supplies, books, and scrolls for Yu Xing to read, including some martial arts manuals. I don’t know how accurate they are, but —”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You two have done as good as I could expect. Go to sleep.”

They nodded before preparing their sleeping bags, and retreated for the night, curious how long it would take before someone would have the courage to attack us. Many eyes were on us, some actual refugees, while the others were merely disguised as refugees, staying further away, thinking that the distance was enough to hide their internal energy.

I opened the sack Su Mi brought with her, and started to go through the books and scrolls she brought with her. Luckily, three of the books could be treated as dictionaries. They were not exactly dictionaries, because the written language didn’t have a straightforward translation. They were more like short essays on the various meanings of the symbols.

Deciphering the written language was even more difficult than trying to decipher the spoken language. But, unlike the spoken language, I didn’t need to hide in a ditch near the well, wishing for the gossiping villagers to use new words in their gossip.

When the sun started to rise, I developed a limited understanding of the language, enough to get a glimpse of the basics from the martial manuals she picked. The long discussions I had with the kid on the way, giving me some context clues to decipher the Initiate Stage recommendations played a role as well.

I went through each manual several times, but I ignored the techniques and styles they had, focusing only on the first portion, where they described how they elevated themselves out of their ‘mortal’ state.

An arrogant statement for a bunch of meatheads that could punch harder.

Still, their delusional word choices didn’t deny the truth of the process. Martial arts might not carry the incredible potential of magic, but that didn’t mean it could be dismissed. It was still a complex, tricky process.

From what I could decipher, the general outline of the martial arts was simple enough. The first step was to develop an awareness of the internal energy, which seemed to be the critical objective of the Initiate Stage.

For that, the prospective martial artists required energy, likely coming from sources like essence pills and beast meat. However, multiple guides had warnings about the excess of these sources in the early stages being dangerous. The symbol for poison was shown many times.

But, most importantly, almost all guides had warnings about attempting the Muscle Reinforcement stage, with several vague conditions, like practicing their techniques for a long time to strengthen the meridians before attempting, giving another facet of passive improvement.

I didn’t know if it was true, or if they were just using that as a proxy condition to identify general awareness of energy.

But if it wasn’t just a proxy measure but actually reinforced the meridians responsible for channeling internal energy, the constant practice cycle of the new martial artists made more sense.

They weren’t just training. They were transforming their bodies, preparing for the further stages.

I rolled the scroll, and started thinking. My limited literacy was a challenge, but not a complete dealbreaker.

I managed to understand the first stage, which was to metabolize the various sources to generate internal energy, I understood sufficiently well; though only because every martial arts scroll described the same process in similar words, allowing me to compensate for any mistakes I might make.

Unfortunately, the same wasn’t true for transforming the internal energy. Every technique had its own mantras, making the comparison technique impossible to apply.

But all of it meant nothing until I verified it.

I took a drastic step, and took an essence pill.

It burned.

The risks, I was aware, but that didn’t hold my hand. I wouldn’t have done so in a more ideal world, but there was only so much safety I could chase when I was lost in a foreign plane.

For a moment, I was afraid that I actually killed myself. The energies of the essence pill spread far faster than I expected, threatening to burn me … but it only lasted for a breath before I could take control of them. The energies contained in it might be wild and unrestrained, but that was nothing compared to mana.

However, the difference between the internal energy of others, and my own, was shockingly different. It was colder, heavier, and surprisingly less malleable. Still, it was there, spreading to my body like a flood.

Yet, there was a reason I dared to do it. Yu Xing’s experience had shown that meditation, even with his limited control, could be used to control internal energy. I took a deep breath, using meditation to exert full control over my body, touching the energies that spread, and pulling them to the center of my body.

The essence pill slowly radiates more energy, which I captured and pulled back to my center. I stayed with my legs crossed, my attention turned inward. Yet, once the first shock passed, the process was surprisingly easy.

And, slow. I could feel the speed the essence pill was shrinking in my stomach. It would take about a day for it to finish.

Now that I got a gist of the process, I didn’t want to spend the whole day meditating. Instead, I reached for some of my newly generated internal energy and sank it into an essence pill. The move was surprisingly smooth.

The essence pill dissolved faster, the internal energy filling my body, not unlike flood water invading the plains. But, no matter how hard it lashed, I gathered it, forcing it to the center of my body, forced into a dense ball.

With the assistance of my technique, it went much faster. It still took me the better part of an hour to completely transform the essence pill into my own energy, but most of it was about my haste.

Naturally, that didn’t mean the martial artists were incompetent. The situation wasn’t too different from Yu Xing and me learning how to read and write the local knowledge. The advantage granted by my background was too much, making any comparison meaningless.

But, there was one difference. The internal energy that had been gathering in me was different from Yu Xing, or any other martial artist I had observed. If theirs were clear drinking water, mine was more like mud, both in terms of viscosity and purity.

Ultimately, it was only to be expected, considering I had skipped most of the necessary steps to purify the internal energy I converted, a slow and grueling process that needed to consume weeks, if not months.

That didn’t prevent a smile from spreading across my face. The low quality of the internal energy might have been a death knell for a martial artist, but for me, it was merely a small challenge. Managing internal energy was nothing compared to channeling mana, the smallest mistake enough to burn the user to cinders.

For the first time since I arrived in this world, I had a weapon, giving me something other than my bluffs to rely on.

I just needed to figure out how to use it.