druidic cultivation | thirty

“Maybe if we cut around the infected parts and shish kabob smaller morsels, put some antidotal herbs as a rub… no, no, no. that won’t work either.” Jiao spotted the old man standing away from the crowd, staring down at the boar as he pulled on his beard. Although he was muttering to himself, Jiao was able to make out the man’s thought process and couldn’t help but think that he was a bit eccentric. 

“Senior Alchemist!” Feng Jiao called over to Zhurou in order to knock him out of his gloom and warn him of his approach. The old man looked up at Jiao approaching and beamed, seemingly forgetting about the boar as he remembered there was something else that demanded his attention. 

“Ah! Young Master Feng! I believe we still have business with each other.” The old man grabbed at his coin purse and beaconed Jiao over to his alchemist’s table. What followed was an exchange of various mamba organs as well as a short interrogation to determine the whereabouts of the corpse. After coin passed hands, Feng Jiao pulled out his oddities that he hadn’t yet identified. 

First were the fruits that he’d pulled off the mamba’s tree. The old man identified them as fetid fruits, a naturally occurring poisonous fruit. They were almost useless for humans outside of a few niche poisons, but could be consumed by poison attribute beasts in order to bolster their powerbase. The fruits were not actually decayed but appeared that way in order to prevent most animals from eating them for their strong Qi potency. 

Naturally, what Feng Jiao collected from this was that not everything that seemed insanely valuable in his nature sense would turn out that way. He vowed to himself that he’d be more cautious in the future, or at the very least would not put his life on the line for fool’s gold once again. Afterward he pulled out the water skin that contained the dribbles of liquid that seeped from the snake’s skull. 

When Jiao uncapped the water skin, a strong noxious fume escaped. The scent caused Jiao’s stomach to churn and reminded him of his near-death experience even as the hairs on his arm started to shrivel. This got a reaction from the man as he pushed the lid back onto Jiao’s water skin and looked around to make sure nobody else had noticed.

“That, little lord, would have won you the competition with no questions at all. What you’ve got there is a preconstitute beast-core or, in other words, congealed toxic Qi. It seems that the snake was in the last stages of forming its core when you slayed it, causing the viscous Qi to stop solidifying and leak out. Unlike when we pool Qi with our alchemical scales,” the old man beckoned to the tools on the table with his head, “preconstitute cores maintain their physical manifestation rather than dissipating back into the air. 

“This would make a good poison, or you can have an artificer work it into a weapon. Unlike working a full beastcore into a treasure, there won’t be any loss in quality because this core is already in liquid form. Usually a core would have to be smashed and then melted back into a similar form before it could be worked with.”

In the end, the man did not purchase the fetid fruits or the preconstitute core, saying that he did not specialize in poisons and was not a merchant. Feng Jiao thanked him for his time and departed a few silver richer than he had been while listening to the man’s attention turn back to the bear beneath him.

The feast passed late into the night with child rivals exchanging pointers and bets being placed on matches. Nobody challenged Feng Jiao again, which was just as well because he was not in the mood to spar. His new storage treasure contained many things, but his attention was focused on the three vassal rings he’d been given and the decisions he had to make. At one point, Lou approached Jiao at the behest of his father and apologized for his behavior. The apology was insincere but Jiao accepted it nonetheless, not seeing the point in continuing a useless childhood grudge. 

Jiao and his father departed the next morning for the Crouching Grass, along with his grandmother, uncles, and cousin. Strangely, Kiya was nowhere to be spotted, having vanished once more as he’d done often times in Jiao’s childhood. The caravan home progressed with no issues, taking almost a month to arrive back at their mountain. Four months had now passed since his awakening with only two remaining until he left his home for good. 

After arriving home, Feng Jiao did not run off into the forest again. Instead, Jiao decided to try and strengthen the few friendships he’d started and feel them out as retainer material. Every morning, Feng Jiao would seek out Duan Cao and Wang Jing, his two new friends, and spend the day with them exchanging pointers for cultivation. Although every martial spirit taught cultivation to their host differently, there were several places were advice could overlap or a martial spirit might have a better understanding than another. The two girls were floored by Jiao’s understanding of Qi collection but attributed it to him being an unmatched talent. It made sense, to them, for him to be more advanced when he had not one, but two peak eighth grade martial spirits tutoring him. 

Jiao taught the girls breathing exercises that he’d learned from Aideen during his one visit that she wasn’t a bird. The breathing exercises wouldn’t change the heavens and earth, but were able to help collect the energy in the air around them and coalesce it into meridians. Combined with meditation poses and smalls bits of enlightenment he’d gained, both Cao and Jing were able to make leaps and bounds in their cultivation speeds. It wasn’t as crazy as Feng Jiao’s ability to absorb Qi from vegetation, but his ability to commune with Aideen in human form had given him a very large advantage that he hadn’t really realized he had.

In addition to Duan Cao and Wang Jing, Jiao attempted to teach his little sisters the same things. Unfortunately, trying to convince a six and four year old girl to sit still and meditate was like trying to teach a phoenix to swim in the ocean. He found that more often than not, the girls learned nothing and he got a headache. His mother and father had practiced their own poses and meditation since they’d joined their own sect long ago but still benefited from the bits of enlightenment their son had gathered. 

In those two months remaining before he left, Jiao also practiced trying his druidic magic in this world. All of his attempts to merge his dantian with his mana pool continued to fail, his channels and meridians refusing to merge, but he continued to try for at least an hour each morning. If he could connect his two repositories of Qi, he’d have twice as much at his disposal. None of his knowledge from either life included how to merge two sets of channels or meridians, so he was on his own with that task.

Like before, he found that the Qi surrounding him was too chaotic to allow him to form spells. Even as the Qi left his mana pool and exited his channels, he could see the natural ether and Qi remnants in the air rapidly dissolve at his control of the Qi. Jiao found himself wishing that he’d paid more attention to ritual magics in the life he didn’t remember. Those, at least, had physical anchors that would stop the magic from dissolving, much like his séance with Aideen had used a brazier and fire. 

Of course, Jiao could always pick up a profession and attempt to adapt his magic to that. For example, there were alchemists who created pills and potions and Jiao felt that he could use his knowledge of potion brewing and herbology to advance in that craft very quickly. There were also formation masters who built large ritual circles to perform various functions, like barriers and ether collection. Hells, Jiao figured he could even succeed as an artificer if he truly wanted to, creating weapons and pedants didn’t seem too hard even if he lacked most in that department.

Alongside his hobbies and bonding with his two friends, Feng Jiao managed to make time to try and better his relationship with his cousins. Whereas most of the ones who’d tormented him had gone off to their various sects already, there were still several who were younger than him. His young cousins had heart nothing but negative things about Jiao and his sisters in the past but, after being given sweets and learning new games from Jiao, began to change their opinions of him and his.

In this way, Jiao was able to help better the life of his two sisters, both of whom were naturally social creatures unlike himself. They gained a better relationship with the family members their own age and, in turn, their retainers and friends. Every morning Jiao would wake and begin his meditation as he listened to the gaggle of children approaching to ask for Binglie and Chuju to come out and play.

Many kids remained jealous of Feng Jiao’s success and, by correlation, of Duan Cao and Wang Jing. Whenever the three beauties would walk past the other kids, vicious and disgusting rumors would start being whispered. Anything from Jiao having purchased his friends as bed warmers to them voluntarily hugging onto his legs to leech of his success. Such words bothered Duan Cao and Wang Jing, but Jiao told them not to pay any mind to the other children. It was only natural for him to offer his genuine friends as much assistance as he could, and he had no alternative plans for them. Odd looks crossed both of their faces when he said this, but they stopped letting the rumors bother them, at least visibly. 

Finally, the day where all of the children who’d begun sensing Qi would leave for Willow Mountain City arrived. The week before, Feng Jiao had gone to the parents of his two friends to beg a favor. In the end, both Duan Cao’s father and Wang Jing’s parents had agreed to allow them to travel with Feng Jiao and, if the gods were willing, leave for their sect early. They mourned their children leaving home so young but knew that the resources provided to them at the sect would outshine what they could provide at home, by far. 

After he’d successfully begged them to allow their daughters to leave early, he only had to convince the scout to allow them to tag along. He hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult, both girls seemed to be shining stars even if they were not as bright as Feng Jiao. Through the first four months after they’d awakened, both girls had managed to reach step one of mortal awakening and, with Feng Jiao’s help, they’d just managed to reach the second step not even two days past. The speed didn’t match up with Feng Jiao’s, but little would. Two high-grade grade-six talents reaching the second step in only six months was almost unheard of outside of large sects and ancient clans.

When the morning arrived for them to leave for Willow Mountain, Feng Jiao escorted both girls to the caravans. His Uncle Yaobei, the youngest of Xiaoke’s three sons, was leading the trip this time and smiled as he saw the three approach. Jiao helped both girls into the carriage before hopping up beside them and waiting for the rest of the children to arrive with their parents. Duan Cao’s father saw them off with a sour look on his face, standing beside Wang Jing’s mother who had nothing but a proud look upon her face. 

    The tree of them sat in their own corner of the girl’s carriage for returning children, kids who were to compete in the martial competition and leave for their sects. The three of them were by far the youngest ones there and many of the teenagers thought the three had hopped into the incorrect caravan. Jiao stared out of an opened window at the landscape while the two girls caught a morning nap.

    Snow fell from slowly from the sky, forming a thick blanket on the ground. The trees were barren and the grasses had died out from suffocation. Feng Jiao’s nature sense painted a bleak picture in his soul that synergized his sadness of leaving his home for a long time. The entire scene reminded me of scenes he’d lived through during his torture between lives. The snow was heavy on the earth like the ashes that had coated the grove of his nightmares. 

    Jiao was once again reminded that, while he was sad to leave home, he had a long road ahead of him if he wanted to obtain immortality. He would grow into the tallest tree in the forest and stand against the heavens and gods, never again subjecting himself to such a soul rending torment.