Demon of Dawn and Dusk

“I think you’re ready to enter the meditation chamber, Darian,” Astra said, though she looked unhappy about this.

On the other hand, I felt ecstatic. This meant that I was finally ready to start cultivating with the divine fire qi. It was just after breakfast, and the two of us were still sitting at the breakfast table. It had been about a week since Astra agreed to let me stay in her old immortal cave and continue to train so I could become a divine demon.

Over the past week, my days fell into a pattern. I would wake up before dawn, head up to the peak of the mountain to meditate using the Song of Dawn and Dusk technique, before heading back down to perform my morning exercises and eat breakfast.

When I finished with that, Astra and I would head down to the meditation chamber and use the divine fire qi to help temper my mind. After several hours of that, which always left me exhausted, I would spend the rest of the day resting while studying the manuals Astra gave me. When dusk approached, I headed up to the peak so I could meditate using the Song of Dawn and Dusk once more. Afterwards, I would head back down to the immortal cave and go to bed for the night.

Thanks to Astra’s vigilance, I didn’t end up suffering another bout of qi poisoning, though I found her caution excessive at times. After that first training session, she treated me as if I were made from glass and would shatter under the slightest pressure. Granted, to a cultivator at her level of power, a mortal was as fragile as glass. However, I think she took it too far sometimes. The training sessions were far too short for my liking. I always wanted to keep going, to truly push my limits, but Astra refused to budge. I found her concern for my well being both touching and suffocating.

Unfortunately, the door to the meditation chamber was sealed and Astra was the only one who could unseal it. This meant that I couldn’t sneak into the meditation chamber and train on my own when Astra wasn’t around, to my immense frustration.

While Astra spent most of the day at the immortal cave, and even slept over one night, she otherwise spent her time tending to her duties within the Dawn and Dusk Sect. Unlike the other core disciples, who spent almost all of their time cultivating, Astra had picked up several duties in order to make up for her lack of contribution, which she really needed if she wanted to become an elder of the Dawn and Dusk Sect. That part of her story hadn’t been fabricated.

Despite my impatience, my mental refinement using the Song of Dawn and Dusk progressed at a steady rate. I didn’t progress as fast as I wanted to, but it was better than making no progress at all. My mind grew stronger with each passing day, making it easier for me to withstand the pain from the divine fire qi. The pain itself never lessened, but my ability to endure it improved by a significant margin.

The training and mental refinement also strengthened my spirit sense. At first I just saw Astra’s aura as a hazy, black outline. However, within a few days, I saw it with clarity. To me, Astra’s aura looked like an inky and smoky black substance that looked like it was simultaneously both liquid and light. It swirled around her, as if it were a living being in its own right.

Astra explained to me that this was the result of the demonic qi refining technique that she practiced. It was the same for other cultivators in that their auras reflected the kind of cultivation techniques they practiced, unless they took steps to conceal their auras. A perceptive cultivator could use this to their advantage when dealing with others, since a cultivator’s alignments and their qi refining technique affected what kinds of mystic arts they could use. Learning how to accurately read auras would give me an immense advantage.

Over the course of the week, as my spirit sense grew stronger, I also began to see other kinds of qi, starting with the divine fire qi. As Astra predicted, this was due to my body’s sensitivity and weakness towards it. Like with Astra’s aura, the divine fire qi appeared indistinct to me at first; I saw it as a golden haze tinged with red. However, by the end of the week, I saw the divine fire qi as motes of golden light with undertones of deep red. I found it beautiful, even as it burned me.

As for other kinds of qi, they still remained hazy to my eyes though I could see their colors at least. Not that there was an abundance of differing kinds of qi in Astra’s old immortal cave. There was yellow Earth qi, which suffused the mountain we lived in, as well as the black demonic qi within the purplish-black mist that gave the Black Mist Mountains their name. If I wanted to see other kinds of qi, I would have to go somewhere else.

“Yes!” I said in response to Astra’s words, pumping my fists in the air. “Finally!”

Astra rolled her eyes.

“Calm down, Darian,” she said. “You’re not going to be in there for long. Given how sensitive your body is to the divine fire qi, I estimate that an hour a day is your limit.”

My mood plummeted and I gave her a sullen look.

“An hour a day?” I asked. “That’s not nearly long enough! At that rate, it’ll take me weeks to form my dantian. Maybe even months.”

“Too bad,” Astra said, giving me a flat look.

According to the manuals Astra gave me, and the lessons she taught me herself, forming one’s dantian required diligent effort over a long period of time. One took in ambient qi from the environment into their body and refined it, making it their own. By doing this for long enough, one formed and ignited their dantian, breaking through to the Qi Condensation realm. Only then would one become a cultivator in full; well, a qi refiner. For physical refiners, the process was different.

The time required to form and ignite one’s dantian depended on a number of factors. The most important one was a person’s aptitude. Those with good aptitudes cultivated much faster than those with poor aptitudes. The quantity and quality of the ambient qi within the environment, as well as the cultivation technique one used, also played a big part.

As someone with mutated pure spirit roots, my aptitude was better than most but lesser than those with heavenly spirit roots. The Soul of Divine Fire was a top tier technique, and the meditation chamber contained an abundance of high quality qi. All in all, if I spent several hours cultivating each day, I estimated that it would only take me a week or two to form my dantian.

However, if I could only spend an hour each day within the meditation chamber, it would take me much longer than one or two weeks to form my dantian. It might even take me months. Considering one of my goals was to participate in the Dawn and Dusk Sect’s entrance exam next year, I found this unacceptable.

“Can’t we extend it to two hours?” I asked.

Astra crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me.

“No, Darian,” she said.

“What about an hour and a half?”

“I said no.”

When it became clear that she wouldn’t budge on this, I turned away from Astra with a scowl. She let out a sigh.

“I understand your impatience and frustration, Darian,” she said. “However, this is for your own good. The amount of divine fire qi you dealt with until now was but a fraction of the amount within the meditation chamber itself. Not only that, but instead of merely enduring the divine fire qi, you’re going to cultivate with it. Anything longer than an hour would be too dangerous.”

My scowl deepened. While I understood where she was coming from, that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

“At this rate, I won’t be able to participate in the entrance exam next year,” I said.

Astra let out another sigh.

“I had hoped you had given up on that,” she said. “It seems that my hopes were in vain. Why are you still fixated on that?”

I took a moment before responding.

“To prove to myself that I’m not the worthless piece of trash that my kin treated me as,” I said, facing her once again. “And to help keep you out of trouble with Big Sis Sidra.”

Astra flashed me a brief smile.

“As much as I appreciate your concern, I don’t need you to protect me from Big Sis Sidra. I can look after myself.” She paused. “As for your first reason, your worth is not determined by how fast you cultivate. You have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all your kin back on Mt. Wind Dance. Those people don’t deserve it. Your safety is more important.”

“How will I get anywhere if I always take the safe route?” I countered. “Isn’t taking risks necessary when walking along the path to immortality?”

“It is,” Astra agreed. “However, that doesn’t mean you have to be stupid about it. That’s a good way to get yourself killed, unless you have heaven-defying amounts of luck.” She leaned in close. “Darian, you’re a demonkin attempting to cultivate with divine qi. That in itself is a huge risk.” She shrugged. “If an hour a day is not enough, you can always cultivate with a different technique. You’ll form your dantian much faster that way.”

“But then I won’t become a divine demon.”

“In that case, you need to ask yourself this. Which is more important to you? Becoming a divine demon, or becoming a cultivator as soon as possible? You can’t have both.”

I didn’t answer right away, since I knew where she was going with this and it annoyed me that I didn’t have a counterargument.

“Becoming a divine demon,” I said with some hesitation.

Astra gave me another smile.

“As the one who put the idea in your head in the first place, I want to help you achieve this goal,” she said. “However, if you want to become a divine demon, you need to do it the right way. Trying to rush ahead will only lengthen the amount of time you’ll need, not shorten it.”

I sighed and slumped my shoulders as all the fight went out of me.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll do it your way.”

Astra snorted.

“You mean your way,” she said. “You chose this path, remember that. I’m just making sure you don’t get yourself killed before you even take the first step.”

I scowled at her, but didn’t respond.

“Now, if you’re done arguing with me, let’s head to the meditation chamber.” She stood up from the breakfast table. “The sooner we begin, the sooner you can attempt to become a divine demon.”

Once more, Astra and I stood before the door leading to the meditation chamber. After the training I endured over the past week, it was a familiar sight. Without hesitation, Astra walked over to the door and opened it, flooding the spherical antechamber with divine fire qi. As before, it burned me all over. While it didn’t actually damage me, not yet at least, it was still quite painful. However, I was used to the pain by this point.

After taking a few deep breaths, I walked towards the meditation chamber. As I drew closer to the entrance, the heat grew more intense and the pain grew more severe. It was like walking into the heart of a fire. Each step was more difficult than the last. I struggled to continue forward, even after all the training and practice I endured over the past week. Despite the heat and the pain, I never stopped moving. When I reached the threshold to the meditation chamber, I gritted my teeth and went inside.

Astra hadn’t exaggerated when she said that the amount of divine fire qi within the meditation chamber was several times more than the amount that I had dealt with up to this point. It felt like walking into an inferno. It took everything I had not to immediately run outside. The mere act of breathing was an ordeal, as I drew in more of the divine fire qi with each breath. My lungs burned, as if scorched from the inside out. While I knew that they weren’t actually on fire, that didn’t make the experience any less painful.

Ignoring the pain as best I could, I turned to the meditation chamber itself. It was similar to the antechamber in both size and shape, with little in the way of decoration. A column of fire emerged from a hole in the center of the room; the Earth Fire. It was deep red in color and swirled with Fire qi. Unlike divine fire qi, regular Fire qi wasn’t golden but a deep red similar to that of the Earth Fire.

While the flame itself was relatively small, about the size of a regular torch, it emitted an astonishing amount of heat. Even if Astra hadn’t modified the Earth Fire with an array so that it produced divine fire qi, the heat would’ve been painful to bear. Perhaps not as much, but still unpleasant.

An intricate array was carved into the floor, taking up a good half of the available space. It was so complicated that even a cursory glance left me feeling dizzy. Situated within the array were five crystals, each one shining with a golden light. They formed a pentagon around the Earth Fire. I assumed that those were the divine elemental stones Astra told me about during our first trip down here. With my spirit sense, I watched as the array absorbed the Fire qi produced by the Earth Fire, refining and transforming it, before releasing it as divine fire qi.

After I finished studying the meditation chamber, I walked forward until I stood halfway between the entrance and the edge of the array. That was my limit. I couldn’t step closer. The heat beyond that point was too much for me, even after practicing the Song of Dawn and Dusk technique for the past week.

Astra remained by the door to the meditation chamber, watching me with worried eyes. A barrier made from her demonic qi surrounded her entire body, protecting her from the divine fire qi. Without saying a word, she pulled out a cushion from her storage ring and tossed it to me. I nodded to her in thanks, before placing the cushion on the ground and sitting down.

I closed my eyes and began to cultivate following the method described in the manual for the Soul of Divine Fire technique. First, I cleared my mind. This was easier said than done, since each breath I took threatened to break my concentration and shatter my composure. Even with the Song of Dawn and Dusk technique, I found it difficult to maintain my focus. Despite this, I succeeded.

After I cleared my mind, I fell into a meditative trance. Everything else fell away from my awareness, except for myself and the divine fire qi. It surrounded me on all sides and even filled my lungs, burning me both inside and out. The pain I felt became little more than a background detail, insignificant and easily ignored.

I started performing the breathing exercises described in the manual for Soul of Divine Fire, taking in more and more of the divine fire qi with each breath. As I breathed it in, I channeled the divine fire qi and circulated it through my meridians. They were similar to veins, but were spiritual in nature and instead of blood they channeled qi.

The moment the divine fire qi entered my meridians, that was when I felt true pain. The pain I felt before this was a mere prelude. It felt as if a purifying fire filled my entire being, eating away at my very soul. The pain, no longer insignificant and easily ignored, was almost enough to break my concentration. Almost, but not quite.

With an effort of will, I continued to circulate the divine fire qi through my meridians, refining it to make it mine. This was not an easy task. My body wanted to reject this foreign qi. As a demonkin, the divine fire qi might as well have been poison to me. Keeping my own instincts in check while also circulating the divine fire qi exhausted me. A part of me wanted to give up now and choose a different path, but I ignored that part and stayed the course.

Soon I started to collect the divine fire qi within my dantian region. At first it was just a minuscule mote of golden light. However, as I continued to circulate the divine fire qi through my meridians and refine it, the mote grew larger and larger. This went on for an indeterminable amount of time. Circulating, refining, collecting. It was a cycle that I repeated over and over again, all while awash with pain.

When I first felt Astra’s presence brush up against my mind, signaling the end of the hour, I was tempted to ignore it. I wanted to keep going, to keep cultivating. I could handle it. However, I stopped when I noticed that my body was starting to show the early signs of qi poisoning. If I kept going, not only would I damage my body but I might also damage my meridians. At best, this would slow down my progress. At worst, this would cripple my cultivation, leaving me unable to tread the path towards immortality.

Unwilling to take that chance, I stopped taking in more divine fire qi and finished circulating what remained within my meridians. By this point, the mote inside my dantian region had reached the size of my thumbnail. Pitifully small, after everything I endured so far, yet the sight of it still filled me with joy. After all, small as it was, that mote of qi proved that I was well on my way towards becoming a cultivator.

When I opened my eyes again, I glanced back at Astra and smiled at her. However, she continued to wear a worried expression on her face. I stood up to exit the meditation chamber, or tried to at least. A wave of exhaustion washed over me, and I almost stumbled over. Astra caught me and hefted me up. She carried me out of the meditation chamber, closing the door behind her.

Astra carried me all the way back to the immortal cave’s living area. I would have felt embarrassed by this, but I felt too weak to protest. While my current condition wasn’t as bad as actual qi poisoning, it was still unpleasant.

When we reached the living area, Astra laid me on the bed and examined my body using her spirit sense, which was far superior to mine. After all, I was still just a mortal while she was a Golden Core cultivator.

During the course of her examination, Astra’s expression grew darker.

“It was a good thing you stopped when you did, Darian,” she said, sounding displeased. “You almost suffered from another bout of qi poisoning. It would have been worse this time around, since you circulated the divine fire qi throughout your meridians.”

“Thankfully, I have my big sis to keep an eye out for me,” I said, giving her a weak smile.

Astra snorted, before she used her demonic qi to purge the remnants of the divine fire qi from my body, except for the mote I had gathered in my dantian. The demonic qi felt soothing and eased my pain, unlike the divine fire qi. For some reason, that made me chuckle. The divine filled me with pain while the demonic soothed me. For regular mortals, the opposite would’ve been true. Well, I was demonkin. Like attracted like, after all.

When she finished purging the divine fire qi from my body, Astra retracted her demonic qi.

“I’m almost tempted to scatter that little mote of qi inside you and purge it from your body,” she said. “It looks like it's causing you a lot of pain.”

It was. The mote of divine fire qi that I had formed inside my dantian region continued to burn inside me, even after Astra had purged the rest from my body. It felt like someone had shoved a hot coal inside my navel. I hadn’t noticed it before, back when I was still inside the meditation chamber, since my entire body felt like I was burning up.

“Don’t do that,” I said, forcing myself to speak in a jovial tone. “Otherwise, all my hard work up to this point would go to waste.”

Astra frowned, but didn’t respond.

“This won’t give me qi poisoning, will it?” I asked in a slight panic.

I had been so focused on becoming a divine demon, that I hadn’t considered that possibility.

“No,” Astra said, shaking her head. “Any divine fire qi that you refine using the Soul of Divine Fire technique won’t poison you, though it will still cause you an immense amount of pain until you break through to the Qi Condensation realm and become a divine demon; assuming you succeed that is.”

I relaxed at her words and closed my eyes.

“Things are only going to become more difficult from here on out,” Astra said in a solemn tone. “Do you still want to continue? It isn’t too late to step away now.”

I opened my eyes and looked up at her.

“I know you think that I’m being overly cautious, especially since this was my idea in the first place,” Astra continued. “However, that isn’t the case. In truth, I acted recklessly before, when I first proposed this idea.” She shook her head. “While I knew the chances of success were low, I didn’t think you would be as sensitive to divine qi as others of our kind. I truly thought you would have been fine. That was my mistake.”

“Hey,” I said, speaking in a soft voice. “I already forgave you. No need for that.”

Astra flashed me a small smile.

“You forgave me,” she said. “However, I haven’t forgiven myself.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that. Astra would forgive herself in her own time. Nothing I said or did would change that.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t be as sensitive to divine qi?” I asked, changing the topic. “Even though I’m demonkin?”

“Of the four of us,” Astra said. “You take after Mother the most. I thought that would make it easier for you to cultivate divine qi.”

I frowned at her words.

“Is our…mother a divine demon?” I asked.

Astra nodded.

“Like you, she was born with mutated pure spirit roots with Fire and demonic affinities,” she said. “Since you were the same, I thought you had a good chance of succeeding.” She let out a bitter chuckle. “I also thought that you wouldn’t be as affected by divine qi, even though I had no basis for that assumption.”

My frown deepened. For some reason, it disturbed me to find out how little I resembled my father. The only thing I inherited from him were my sky blue eyes. I took after my mother in everything else. To me, she was little better than a complete stranger. At least I had some sort of relationship with my father, even though it only consisted of me speaking to myself while sitting in front of his immortal cave.

“What is she like?” I asked. “Our mother, that is. You told me a bit about her, but what is she like as a mother?”

Astra tilted her head, before reaching over to stroke my hair.

“While Mother is a rough and raucous person, I never found her lacking as a mother,” she said, wearing a fond smile. “She raised us with love and care, though she does have strange ideas about child rearing.”

I felt a sharp ache, deep within my heart, at her words. What if…? I shook my head. No. Speculating on what could have been was an exercise in futility. It was better to focus on the present.

“I see,” I said instead.

Silence fell over us for several seconds, threatening to turn awkward, but Astra tapped my forehead before that happened.

“You still haven’t answered me,” she said. “Do you want to stop here or keep going? There is no shame in choosing the former. Most who attempt to become divine demons step away at this point. If you continue forward, not only are your chances of success low, but you risk serious injury or death. I can protect you from the worst of it, but not all of it.”

I considered it for several long moments. When I first decided to become a divine demon, I hadn’t realized what I was getting myself into. I had been naive, even after enduring the pain from repeated exposure to the divine fire qi. Now that I experienced a taste of what I would have to endure going forward, it was different. As Astra said, things would only grow more difficult from here. The burning hot pain in my dantian region would be my constant companion until I either succeeded, or failed.

“I want to keep going,” I said with a nod. “I’ve come this far, and I don’t want to stop now. I want to give it my all, even if I end up failing.”

Astra snorted.

“I thought as much, though I needed to ask just in case,” she said. “You really are a stubborn one.”

I shrugged.

“My stubbornness helped me get to this point,” I said. “I don’t see why I should stop now.” I frowned. “You were right, however. An hour a day is my limit. I can’t go any longer than that.”

I sighed in frustration. This is going to take a while. I grimaced at the thought of enduring weeks, maybe even months, of pain.

“What was that?” Astra said, cupping her hand around her ear. “I didn’t quite hear you. It almost sounded like you admitted that I was right.” She covered her mouth while wearing a faux surprised expression. “But that can’t be. After all, I’m just a Golden Core cultivator. What would I know?”

I scowled at her before turning away and pretending to fall asleep. Astra broke out into laughter. However, it wasn’t long before my eyelids grew heavy and my exhaustion caught up with me. Even the pain from the divine fire qi in my dantian region wasn’t enough to keep me awake.