Cultivating Chai

10:

While Xiao Feng was struggling to follow what exactly the difference between adventitious and fibrous roots was, he was nevertheless finding the class quite engaging.

Albeit for an entirely different reason, one that none of the students in the class or Senior Alchemist Lan Huang was even vaguely aware of. On the table before him were two different stalks of uprooted spiritual plants.

One had adventitious roots and the other fibrous roots and Xiao Feng was somehow required to tell the difference between them, before listing out what the characteristics implied when it came to Alchemy.

He honestly was not too interested in that, considering he was missing an entire semester’s worth of knowledge. Not yet, at least.

Brewing Chai was a passion of his, one that he dreamed of making a career in his old world. He would make it a reality in this one.

But the new Xiao Feng, much like the old one, was not a fool.

He hadn’t chosen the Alchemy Division on a whim, after all.

For like any competent cultivator, Xiao Feng had a secret of his own.

It was no coincidence that he managed to slay one cultivator after the next on his own, uncaring of how much more powerful they were than him. There was no sudden epiphany that struck him in the midst of battle, no awakening that increased his strength by tenfold when he called for it.

No, the truth was, Xiao Feng knew what he was doing.

He always had. Over two decades ago, a little after Xiao Feng reached the third layer of the Qi Gathering realm, he came face to face with a brutal realization. For a cultivator left with a singular purpose, to take from the demons what had been taken from him, Xiao Feng was forced to accept a simple conclusion— he could not beat his heretical enemies with the cultivation art the Frontier Sect was offering him.

Of course, if he remained patient, worked his way up the ladder, from the outer sect to the inner sect and then to core disciple status, he would be awarded with the profound cultivation arts he sought.

And just how long would that have taken him?

Xiao Feng didn’t just want his revenge, he wanted the shortest pathway to it.

That meant looking where others were not willing to. The lowest of the low grade techniques available in the outer sect library, the incomplete, nameless techniques that lost a cultivator face by merely deigning to look through them.

Seven incomplete techniques caused him to suffer from Qi Backlash.

Two nameless techniques almost pushed him to cripple his cultivation base.

These were the techniques he had chosen after sifting through dozens upon dozens of techniques. And almost all of them had brought him harm.

Almost all.

For there was one incomplete, nameless technique that did… nothing, when he cycled his Qi to the tempo and pattern the technique prescribed.

Nothing at all.

Nothing was good.

The technique mentioned that there were six stages to the technique, but Xiao Feng had only found the first three written. The last three were either torn away, lost to time or intentionally desecrated by another.

But that didn’t matter to Xiao Feng.

He practiced the Wind Qi Art the Frontier Sect had bestowed upon him, but never forgot about the nameless, incomplete technique.

Six months later, he figured it out.

The Art that he would later name the ‘Essence Cultivation Art’ was an ocular technique.

The Essence Cultivation Art’s first stage required a trickle of Qi to maintain and true to its name, it let him see through to the essence of anyone or anything, as long as they had Qi flowing through their internal structure.

So when Xiao Feng fought, not even a Nascent Soul Elder could see anything out of the ordinary. His Qi Reserves, fighting technique, artifact usage— none of it exceeded what a cultivator of the Second Layer, Foundation Establishment stage out to have been capable of, when he fought in the battle for the Zheyan Pass.

Of course, it was not the Frontier Sect’s fault that they were unable to see through his true strength. The Essence Cultivation Art, while incredibly formidable, was far from invincible. Once cultivators of the Frontier Sect started using it en masse, they would turn the tide against the demons… for a little while. Then, the Demons would find a way to adapt, like they always did and once again, there would be a stalemate.

So, Xiao Feng was not to be blamed for the disappearance of a nameless, incomplete cultivation art that nobody knew of or cared for. He had incinerated it thoroughly after committing it’s contents to the deepest reaches of his memory, making sure that not a single soul but him would get to pry upon his secrets.

Pretty ironic, given how things turned out.

However, not even in his dying moments did Xiao Feng regret his decision. He had lived his life in the pursuit of revenge and to that end, he had done everything he possibly could. The Frontier Sect enjoyed forging weapons of war out of orphans like him and in return, Xiao Feng enjoyed taking from them an invaluable secret, to further his own goals.

Such was the way of cultivators in a society where cultivation was everything.

Merely recalling memories of Xiao Feng’s battle was enough to get his blood pumping when he had woken up with full access to his deceased predecessor's memories.

He saw.

Xiao Feng saw.

He did not see people, but masses of floating acupuncture gates, anchored by their dantian and interconnected by vein-like meridians.

He saw the meridians down which Qi flowed from the dantian, saw as the Qi was more and more compressed corresponding to the greater number of acupuncture gates it passed by. Xiao Feng’s opponents may be faster and stronger than him, but seeing where the attack was coming from turned out to be enough for him to bridge the gap.

‘Follow the flow of Qi and the attack would betray itself’ was the combat methodology Xiao Feng had devised and it had worked brilliantly until he was shot down by an attack that was so quick it superseded his reaction time.

The terrifying Essence Cultivation Art was the reason the new Xiao Feng had chosen to come to the Alchemy Division.

It was not as if his predecessor had been a fool. No, he had been smart and cunning when he needed to be, but his desire for vengeance had ultimately blinded him. If he had stopped to consider the way to truly defeat the Demonic Path, he would have found his way to the place where he could have made the greatest contribution.

Xiao Feng could see through the essence of things and Alchemy was the art of refining the essence of many things into a singular, greater essence.

Come on, He chided himself as his fifteenth attempt to use the Essence Cultivation Art on one of the uprooted spiritual plants. I have the muscle memory. My body knows how to cycle Qi instinctively. I remember how to do it. The real Xiao Feng accomplished it while facing down an army of demons, I’ll be damned if I can’t do it in a class full of teenagers.

“Essence Cultivation Art,” Xiao Feng mouthed without actually speaking, his gaze locked onto the spiritual plant that was placed to the right.

To his surprise, he saw with the eyes his predecessor had not long ago seen through.

Through the eyes that were capable of making history.