Druidic Cultivation | Thirteen

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The trip back to Crouching Grass Village was far less stressful than the trip to the city had been. Not only had most of the disciples who’d attended the martial tourney left with their sects, causing there to be far less bodies in the caravan, but all of the tension from the children who were nervous about their martial spirits were no longer worrying. However, whenever there was sunshine there must also be rain elsewhere. The few children who had gained ‘failure spirits’ during their awakening were feeling a bit gloomy.

It had to be said, although they were gloomy, they seemed far less upset than one would assume they’d be. Feng Jiao theorized that they’d already had low ambition long before they found about their failure to materialize a martial spirit and many of them were secretly feeling relieved. Although they were eligible to return in six months for a second attempt at the awakening, several of them likely would choose not to. It was a common occurrence, the failed awakenings refusing to retest, and often blamed on not wanting to shame their family anymore.

Of the thirty-six children who hadn’t awakened their martial spirit, twenty-eight of them were females and none of them were from the Feng Family. Feng Jiao had heard that women often had a more difficult time awakening their martial spirit the first time. Most people blamed it on women being more frail, ignoring the fact that the most powerful cultivators of almost any generation were often women, or weak of will. More likely, the boy thought at least, it was because the girls attempted it at a younger age. A child’s conviction was often pure, but not often was it concrete, flitting from one thing to the next.

Feng Jiao didn’t think too much on the subject as it wasn’t really worth his time. He’d awakened his martial spirit, and reunited with his old friend, and now needed to increase his strength. When Elder Nufang had told him to meet her at a restaurant in six months, during the winter awakening ceremony, she’d tactfully hinted at him that he wasn’t required to attend the martial tourney. Often times, when talent was recruited a young age they wouldn’t have time to train up their cultivation before departing to their sect. 

The martial tourney that followed the awakening ceremony was used to verify the results of a sect’s investment and allow them to gauge the child’s future in cultivation before bringing them in. Often times children who’d been accepted to elite sects with only medium talent would be disowned there, having not returned with enough strength, causing them to request to join a new sect on the spot. Just as often, the top sect would recruit a talent to replace that from one of the medium sized sects’ investments. 

More importantly for Feng Jiao, the martial tourney was a chance for him to prove to himself and his peers his strength, many of the boys remaining unconvinced of his strength due to his beauty. This had been the case his entire childhood and he didn’t see it changing anytime soon, so he needed to compete. Not only was he determined to compete, he was determined to win the martial tourney and gain the prize, cultivation resources and a weapon from the city lord’s armory. Likely the sect would reward Feng Jiao with these things anyways, but food was always sweeter when one hunted and cooked it themselves, so he’d earn his own as well.

During the week travel back to his home, Feng Jiao did not make any sudden breakthroughs in his cultivation as none of the other children did. He spent this time talking to the girls, like how Aideen had taught him, at night and cultivating during the day. He had to admit that Aideen’s communication tips had made him significantly more popular with the girls he spoke to, often causing them to turn red with joy talking to him. Her tips with cultivation were even more helpful, teaching him the process of absorbing Qi through his skin.

While walking alongside the carriages, Feng Jiao opened the pores that aligned with the acupoints laid over his meridians and absorbed Qi from the surrounding air like most other cultivators, strengthening his meridians in preparation with properly opening them. A faint image of a firebird could be seen upon the boy’s shoulder, by those with strong enough spiritual sense, while he did this, beak open and assisting in the gathering of Qi.

This is what entailed the first nine stages of the Mortal Awakening tier, strengthening and opening meridians before connecting them to one’s dantian.  The meridians acted as pathways for the Qi to travel to his dantian, where it collected as energy to form his foundation of martial arts, and the acupoints acted as the entry point. Once connected completely, they would become infinitely more powerful and efficient, also allowing Qi to flow both ways. One would be able to absorb Qi through the pathway faster and return Qi to strengthen the limb or organ.

Most cultivators would supplement the process with in several ways to speed up their cultivation. A few examples were formations to gather the energy of heaven and earth, causing it to be thicker in the air and easier to absorb, pills that increased efficiency by opening the acupoints wider or increasing one’s pull on the energy temporarily, or forbidden medicines that temporarily strengthened the dantian directly. 

All of these methods had their drawbacks. The formations for Qi gathering were expensive and extraordinarily difficult to form, leading to formation masters being a very profitable career. The Feng Family did not own any large scale formations that served such a purpose as they were too expensive, often only located within noble families or sects who could afford such an investment, but had a few small, low quality formation plates. It was a similar concept on a much smaller scale, the formation masters would carve a brazier with a Qi gathering formation to create an artifact capable of gathering Qi for use. They were also much less efficient than proper formations, requiring more resources for less return.

The cultivation pills contained trace amounts of pill toxins, the binding agent that allowed them to function the way that they did, which led to a slightly unstable foundation over time ultimately as well as the diminishing returns for the pills. Every time one took a pill that would greatly increase their cultivation speed or base, the next time they took a similar pill it would half in quality. This stopped the wealthy families from purchasing countless pills and resources to permanently increase their cultivation speed, the pill toxins eventually outweighing the benefits. This wasn’t really seen until one got to the higher cultivations as the lower one’s cultivation was, the lower the quality of pill needed was. The lower pills were less affected by the diminishing returns but were not damaging to one’s foundation.

Forbidden medicines, however, were a whole new story. They weren't actually illegal, like the name would imply, but were a very taboo substance. They required countless rare and expensive resources to form, as well as requiring very strong spiritual control and countless years of training, and were a type of pill one could only find but not look for. They were capable of strengthening one’s cultivation instantly, although temporarily, and would only be used in life or death situations due to the backlash. The backlash, depending on the medicine used, could be anything from severe internal injuries to permanent loss of cultivation.

Feng Jiao, unlike most of humans on this world, if not all, had a risk-free way to increase the speed of his cultivation, however. He didn’t know if it was because of his intrinsic knowledge he’d gained while a tree, the memories he apparently had from the life before that, or because of the bodily changes he’d made to himself while in his mother's womb, but once his Qi sense had awakened he was able to commune with nature once more.

In his family’s garden he’d overpowered many weeds, both common and spiritual, and drained their Qi into himself to strengthen his Qi Pool, the collection of Qi around his brain that he used to cast spells like would have in his last life. Both he and Aideen theorized that, using this ability, he should be able to absorb the Qi from plants through his Acupoints and into his meridians, explosively increasing his cultivation speed. 

This ability would be infinitely useful at the beginning of his cultivation path, but would likely fall off in usefulness later. The amount of Qi to jump from realm to realm in later cultivations wasn’t just multiplicative, it was exponential. Eventually, common plants and medicines that he could find in nature wouldn’t be able to provide enough Qi to even form a drop in the bucket. He would likely have to venture to dangerous areas to find rare medicines and plants if he wanted to continue gaining use from the ability, or have to find another way to utilize it.

Either way, as they trekked back to the Crouching Grass village, Feng Jiao would spend his days pulling Qi from the air into his pores as well as a slight amount from the grasses that surrounded the road. It was difficult to get too much gain this way as he feared pulling too much from the grass would cause it to wilt and gather attention from the others traveling with him, and he couldn’t pull from the trees as they were too willful. 

After getting home, Feng Jiao planned on talking his father into allowing him to spend a while in the forests surrounding the village in order to cultivate. It wasn’t unusual for children to venture a bit farther from home to cultivate as the Qi was always a bit thicker in the wilder areas of the world, but he was also much younger than those children. Feng Jiao intended to make big strides in his cultivation as fast as possible.

By the time they finally reached the Crouching Grass village, Feng Jiao was on the cusp of his first breakthrough and had cemented a few of his friendships. He could feel that his locus meridian, the Qi pathway that traveled from the tip of his toes to his hips along either leg, was overflowing and ready to break through the thin barrier that blocked them and connect to his dantian. It had to be said that his cultivation speed was a bit monstrous, most other children with a grade eight talent would take up to a month for their first breakthrough, as far as Feng Jiao knew. 

Of course, this children would be using formations within sects as well as pills and medicines to supplement their training. None of those compared to Feng Jiao’s ability to drain nature, or his Aideen who he knew in his heart was far more powerful than a grade eight spirit could ever be. That wasn’t even mentioning his years of experience forging and strengthening his mana channels in his last life, a very similar process. So long as he could keep up this speed, Feng Jiao did not believe he would have any issues winning the next martial tourney.