DC 78

Last week was hell at work. Genuinely 8 hours straight of work, every day, without even taking my lunch break. All in order to make sure that the sudden increased work load wouldn't stretch into this week and prevent me from being home. Luckily for me, I work like a dog and was able to get my free time back so that I telework this week and can spend more time writing and editing again. 

This chapter, we start on names. I also went a little more in-depth to explain what Feng Jiao's been up to, and we get ever closer to the influx of new recruits that will kick off his time in the sect with a bang.

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It had been two weeks since he’d arrived at the sect, only a week since he’d helped his friends reclaim the field that they’d yet to rename, and already Feng Jiao was finally feeling progress in his cultivation. After spending five months traveling through the end of winter and all of spring, he was finally able to do something that wasn’t just absorbing and refining fire essence.

He’d finally finished digesting all of the wood based cultivation techniques that he’d stolen copies of with his spiritual sense. By far, the Ramsons’ Spread had been the biggest windfall and the largest meal to digest. Though he initially thought that most of the information contained within the technique was miscellaneous, he realized there was more to it than that.

After finding the hallowed technique that he’d had a breakthrough with the previous week, he’d known there was likely more information embedded in the various passages of information. Imagine his surprise when, the more he digested the hidden information, the more he realized he might be uniquely capable of doing such. The language that was embedded wasn’t even a language so much as it was a way of thought. It was the exact same ‘language’ that the trees used to communicate with each other in his previous life.

He was no longer capable of hearing the thought patterns, nearest as he could tell, and until that moment he hadn’t even been sure that the plants in this world communicated the same way. If there weren’t so much information that he was convinced that the technique was actually a higher grade than it had been given, he never would have even noticed that the thoughts were encoded that way as reading them just felt like reading a normal language for him.

Still, after accepting that the technique that he’d ranked as the ‘16th’ best technique of all the plant-related wood techniques that the sect provided for mid-tier could actually be the most powerful wood technique that the sect even had, he had used it as the foundation for the technique he was writing for himself. He pulled heavily from other techniques, such as the lotus technique’s moonlit cultivation pattern as opposed to the sunlight passages of most other techniques, as well as all the knowledge he had of his past life.

The hardest part was relating the knowledge that had miraculously appeared within his soul moments before his death as a tree. He’d spoken to Aideen about it a while back and realized that they both had a similar experience, a reward for ‘passing’ their tribulation, he supposed. She had, in that moment, realized the secret to cultivating a human form and he had been given knowledge for a humanoid form, a large tree with legs, arms, and a head. It wasn’t human as the channels did not align with a human’s dantian and meridians, but that was what all of the other techniques were for anyways.

Unfortunately for him and Aideen both, the few scant seconds they had with the knowledge before they died were vastly overshadowed by the unknown amount of time they’d been tortured. Guarding new and unknown knowledge was difficult when trying to keep unknown entities from peeling away at your soul, or so Feng Jiao thought.

Still, he’d worked his way through all sixteen of the techniques, comparing similar knowledge to what felt right within his soul. At the end of it all, he ended up with a whole that was greater than the sum of its individual parts. Thanks to the Ramsons’ Spread providing him such a verbose and powerful backbone, along with his actually having lived as a plant that had, in this world’s words, actually attained the ability to demonize, he had a technique that he felt was as powerful as, if not more powerful than, the flame technique that Aideen had been in the process of teaching him.

He’d even successfully purified his first string of essence the night before, surrounded by the copse of wild garlic plants, ramsons if you will, that grew more vibrant with each night’s passing. It was as he pulled the strain of wood essence through the final rotation of his meridian that he felt a sense of fulfillment, like water after days of dehydration or a muscle stretching just the right way after running a marathon.

It had taken him a long time to complete the first proper cycle, an hour or two most likely, but that was because it was a new and untested process. He knew it would get faster with time and, after feeling the glow of power from that bit of wood essence that now settled itself at the bottom of his wood dantian, he knew it was successful.

He’d need to convert the rest of the essence to match it while at the same time increasing the density until it finally condensed into Qi, a process that he was enlightened to through the hidden hallowed technique within the Ramson’s Spread technique. If he understood it correctly, it was a technique that a demonized garlic plant had created in order to not only help expedite the growth of its progeny, but also to teach them as practice to condense their own Qi out of essence. It was honestly a cheat and he lamented all the wood-based cultivators of the sect that had passed the technique over in the same way that he almost had.

The technique even felt like it would work for the fire dantian, though every time he almost condensed the Qi droplet for the first time he would stop. There was something missing there and, although he could condense the Qi if he needed to, he knew that it would be a mistake to follow through without getting in contact with Aideen once more. The summer solstice, and his eleventh birthday at that, was only two weeks away so he knew it wouldn’t take too long to confirm.

As the night continued to speed by, Feng Jiao managed to complete the circulation of plant essence several times. Just as with his fire technique, each cycle gave diminishing returns with each repetition after the Apex of the moons’ journey across the night sky. The basis for that particular part of the technique was actually centered around Aideen’s technique almost entirely, simply substituting the moonlight for sunlight. This created a period of time every day and every night where he could get optimal returns for his effort as opposed to a slightly larger return with every cycle regardless of the time. So long as he made sure to cultivate in those two three hour periods, one for fire and one for wood, he would benefit almost just as much as other cultivators but would also have free time to pursue his own passions.

After cultivating throughout the night to make sure his technique worked the way he wanted, he decided he would take the walk for breakfast that day. The boys had managed to buy some rations so that they wouldn’t have to take the large trek every single day, but Feng Jiao didn’t like the food as much. Until their first crop finished growing and they had fresh ingredients to cook with, he thought it was still worth walking to the Mess Hall from time to time. It was even easier when he went himself as he could sneak into the Outer Sect Mess Hall with his robe rather than head even farther to the Nominal Disciple Mess Hall as he had to do when he brought his friends.

Speaking of which, after only a week of growth the plants were almost ready for harvest. The speed at which they grew in their field was almost surreal and most didn’t understand why it worked that way. Feng Jiao, however, had a few theories of his own. He couldn’t help but notice that the growth speed decreased the farther one got from the garlic patch in the center. Something about the plants encouraged growth in the same way the strange sweat-like substance he put off when using the hallowed technique did.

‘Names’, he made note to himself. Saying hallowed technique this or wood technique that was getting tiring to him, even if he only said them mentally. Eventually, he figured he would transcribe the techniques down to teach to other like-minded cultivators, perhaps years down the line or perhaps sooner. Either way, the things he was doing needed names even if only to refer to them easier for himself.

Like that, Feng Jiao spent a good amount of time thinking up names. Aideen’s technique for fire Qi cultivating would have to be named by her, he decided, but his own wood technique would have to be his own. Thinking back on the naming conventions of the other techniques, he knew that he should mention the creature or plant it was based on. The problem, obviously, was that the tree that he was did not exist in this world. Likely, it didn’t even exist in the same way in his last world either. The sapience lent to him as a seedling had led him to develop in a way that most trees didn’t, in either world.

The base was definitely an Ash tree, that much he knew from the shape of his seeds, but he was larger than any other specimen, including those he’d seen in this world. Added to that the peculiar coloring of his bark and leaves and he knew he wasn’t just naming a cultivation technique, but an entire species of tree that was birthed and died with him. Unfortunately, all the good and domineering names were taken by rather mundane trees in this world.

Flame Ash for his flaming leaves, taken by a regular species of Ash Tree with autumn colors year round. Blood Ash, for the vein like textures of red that ran through his bark, already pegged for a specific type of tree that grew in graveyards and battlefields alike. At least that one had some alchemical uses, he noted to himself. Hells, even Mountain Ash for the fact that he not only grew atop a mountain but was practically the size of a mountain himself was already allocated to a more hardy breed of Ash trees. The obvious cheat was to name it in his old language, but then he’d have to answer questions about that too.

“Aideen, if you can still hear me I want you to start brainstorming names. This is way too difficult.” He mumbled aloud during his walk. At the very least, he was able to think of a suitable name for the hallowed technique. Unlike breeds of animals and trees, martial techniques and hallowed techniques frequently shared names so he didn’t have to worry about plagiarism.

“Ramson’s Dew.”

Without an author’s name in the technique, Feng Jiao decided he would call the plant demon Ramson, as it had obviously evolved from some variation of bear garlic. Obviously the correct name was ramsons for the plant, but Ramson felt more like a name and it would sound exactly the same when said aloud.

Finally he arrived at the Mess Hall and, once again, he wasn’t the first in line regardless of when he arrived. A small line of disciples had queued up before him, likely all nightly cultivators like himself or, also like himself, there early in an attempt to get some meat in their diet.

“Is that..” Though he was not in the habit of talking to himself, Feng Jiao’s eyes went wide when he recognized someone in the front of the line.