Shen went by the Library to pick up her books then returned home. That night Shen carved the outside of another bracelet before eating Last Meal, then returned to her room. Unlike last night, this bracelet would be able to help her improve her chi purity. It was based on one of the techniques in her Five Elements book. Each element within her would be fed by the one before it, improving its strength and purity. The lower her supply was, the more it would naturally increase in quantity, and as it neared the quantity of the one feeding it it would start to increase in quality. While doing this with only two elements would result in only the one which was being fed improving, the fact that she would build a copy of this circuit for each element meant that all five of them would tend to improve over time. This would be accomplished using the small amount of chi the bracelet was gathering to control its counterpart inside of her. The beauty of this design was that it was practically impossible for it to cause her to overflow with chi. As her body neared the limit she had reached through meditation it would tend more and more towards improving the quality of the chi, and once she had reached her limit 99.9% of the energy would go towards improving the quality of next element in the sequence, with the last 0.1% doing no more than making her a tiny bit sore.
She finished soon after Mae returned to the room from the bathhouse and realized that she hadn’t taken a bath in the last few days. She quickly grabbed a change of clothes, her toiletries, and her two bracelets, then went to the bathhouse. Once there she cleaned herself off and slid into the water, making sure to wear one bracelet on each wrist. There were few other girls there, as it was getting late, so she wouldn’t be distracted as she closed her eyes and started feeding the energy into improving her chi pathways. She hadn’t looked over the body cultivation book yet, but from what she had overheard others talking about from the book, it referred to them as meridians. Whatever you called them, though, now that she had relics to fix the quantity and quality of her chi, they were one of the few things keeping her from advancing to Foundation.
While she could technically advance at any time, as her dantian was full of chi, she knew that there were certain things that were easier to do at different steps. As gathering chi was the main skill of the Chi Gathering stage, it was the best time to learn that skill, as once she reached Foundation she would have more important things to do. To some that sounded like she was slowing down her progress just so that she wouldn’t get distracted later, but in actuality she was trying to establish the best Foundation she could before entering the Foundation stage. Essentially, once she built the shell which would end this stage and start the next, what she did here would be finalized and all of her future progress would be based on it. She wanted to make sure that there were no flaws at this level to cause her problems in the future.
An hour and a few percent faster chi gathering later she decided to go home and got out of the water. After drying herself off she got dressed and headed home. Her new bracelet seemed to be using chi slightly faster than the old one could feed it into her, but she didn’t want to take the risk of running out of chi and removed both of them before climbing into bed. While the second bracelet couldn’t overfill her with chi, it could cause her reserves to fall, possibly even depleting the Gathering level of her dantian altogether. One weakness of the design was that, as the chi got above the purity of the chi it was gathering, it used exponentially more chi to further purify the chi. This would either cause the chi to be depleted as it tried to make higher quality chi or would make the chi quality stagnate at a few percent higher purity than the feeding chi if one could feed it chi fast enough, as the chi that was being fed in was diluting the purer chi within. As this last state was preferable, perhaps in a future design she would address this by only feeding chi into her normally if the level of the chi grew too low, limiting the purification to when her reserves were full. This would also allow to to wear it continuously, as the worst thing that would happen was it wasting the chi it gathered.
The next morning she put on both bracelets and went to work. She informed Master Chen about her plans to try and work with both businesses and he agreed to change her schedule. She would now work for five days and be off for five days. For now, however, she would be starting the five days on, so he ordered her to get back to work on the swords. As she finished on an Earth blade yesterday she started on a metal today, completing all eight blades an hour before it was time to close and doing a ninth, finishing just as the store was closing and having to stay late to clean up her station.
This continued for the next four days, always starting on the next one in the series whenever she got to work the next day, and by the last day she was able to complete ten swords per day. At night, however, she worked on a different project. As each of her friends didn’t yet have a good way of defending themselves as far as she knew she spent four of the five days on making them four defensive amulets. Each one was slightly better than the last, but she would sell the weakest one in order to buy more amulets, shuffle the three remaining, and hand them out at random to avoid playing favorites. While she had wanted to imbue her own Dragon Scales ability onto the amulet, as it produced a higher quality barrier, she wasn’t sure how to do that yet. She knew that bloodline traits could be given to relics, but the only way she knew of to do so currently was to use part of the body of the creature whose bloodline you wanted to use, similar to how using a Fire Core would let you use that beast’s ability to harmlessly store fire chi. She, however, wasn’t willing to put her own flesh into making a relic for her friends and wasn’t sure that adding her blood to the item would do more than slightly improve the chi consumption rate.
On the night of the last day she meditated. She had carried the Solid Base book to work with her for the last few days and read it while eating. From it she had learned several new ways to improve herself at her current level, and a better technique for improving her ability to gather chi. There were also tricks for growing more meridians in the Cleansing stage, but, as she was beyond that point, she would have to lower her cultivation in order to improve herself at that level. That wasn’t viable at this point as she wouldn’t have much time to do so before she needed to advance back to Gathering so that she could do her job. She would have to wait until she was an Inner disciple, when she no longer had a mandated work schedule and could talk with Master Chen and Ponma about taking ten or so days off to do it properly.
After spending over six hours in meditation and greatly improving her ability to gather, expel, and manipulate chi she stood up and grabbed the things for her bath. It was getting late, but she would need to bathe tonight if she wanted to get an early start tomorrow.
She got up early in the morning and went for a run. Normally she would have left the city and run to Fisher or maybe even the dragon village, but this time she stayed in the city. After making several laps around the outside of the city wall, Restricting her chi the entire time so that she would get more out of the exercise, she paused to catch her breath then headed to the cafeteria. Her friends arrived slightly afterwards and they gathered at their usual table. Once the pleasantries were out of the way she pulled the three amulets out of her bag and handed one to each of them. “I made these for you guys.” she told them and they all looked surprised, with Mae looking like she was about to cry. “They should be able to block a moderately powerful Gathering stage attack, but I’m not sure exactly how powerful. Just feed it any type of chi. The type only really makes it slightly more effective against the element that one defeats. Water chi more easily blocking fire attacks, etcetera.”
Mae climbed over the table and gave her a hug. “Thank you,” she said, crying. The boys also thanked her, though they didn’t try to hug her or cry.
“If you guys need any specific relics, I can make them for you. I can’t do them for free, of course, but I’ll sell them to you for the cost of raw materials just so I can get the experience.” The three of them agreed and Danka immediately requested that she turn his standard issue armor into a relic. “I don’t know how good I’ll be at engraving leather, but I can do the metal bits, as I’ve been making plenty of flying swords.” she patted the one on her waste. “That said, I’m not sure what I should add. I could probably add a larger, and therefore more powerful, version of the protection amulet to it. I might even be able to have it draw in chi from the environment to power itself. Give me a few days to look into it.” Guards were allowed to modify their armor, but if they did anything to it which violated the uniform code they would have to pay to replace the offending pieces. Thankfully, a modification like that shouldn’t violate any rules.
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After the meal was done she agreed to meet Ponma at the warehouse and set off for the jewelry store where she had bought the amulet. Upon arriving there she showed the woman the amulet and offered to sell it to her. By this point the woman had gotten good enough at relic creation and engraving to start making her own protection relics, but Shen’s amulet was still better quality than hers if only slightly. She agreed to buy it from Shen in exchange for three more amulets of the same style and one of a slightly different style, as she could sell it for slightly more than four times what the non-relic version would sell for. Shen had looked through the amulets and found one that was a simple blue and white disk with a small hole in the middle. That hole was the perfect size for the Fire Core she had bought off of Danka, so she would be using it to make herself an amulet that would store excess fire chi for her later use.
After making the trade she made her way to the warehouse. Ponma was there with two other boys from Fisher loading jars onto three hand carts. Apparently he had hired some help. “Hey Shen.” one of the two boys said as she approached. It took her a little while to realize that it was Po, who had been part of their business from the beginning.
“Hey, Po. I wasn’t expecting to see you until I got to Fisher. How has everything been?”
“Pretty good. With the sect picking up the demand for other goods, several fishers have taken to gathering things from the woods instead of fishing, as it earns more, so don’t be surprised if fish starts to run out in town.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. So, did Ko get hired by Ponma too?”
“Oh, him? He’s one of the worst ones to do missions instead of fishing. He actually reached Foundation a few weeks ago, just before the Caravan, and once those two books showed up he immediately bought a copy and has been practicing them every day he wasn’t out hunting spirit beasts with his friends. In fact, he’s out hunting a spirit beast right now. Some sort of Stone Bear that was spotted about ten li west of here. Apparently someone wanted its hide to make armor, and the alchemist wants its gall bladder and liver for some kind of pill, so he brought a cart with him so that he could haul the whole thing back.” The livers of certain strong creatures, like bears, could be turned into pills which would increase the rate your body naturally removed toxins from itself. Normally this wasn’t an issue for cultivators, as their bodies naturally tried to remain completely toxin free, but if one was forced to eat poor food or became poisoned, they would come in handy. The fact that this was a spirit beast would just make the pill even stronger from the chi within and could make the effect last longer or even become permanent. The Gall bladder on the other hand increased your ability to process the energy in food, thereby giving you more energy from the same food. While neither were worth sending people to hunt the bear on its own, when the incredibly tough hide and delicious meat were added into the mix, it was worth it.
“Nice. Well I hope he does well on his hunt.” After introducing herself to the other boy, Ling, she started loading jugs as well and shoved a few more in her storage bag at the end, even carrying one on her back. “Well, I guess that’s all we can carry for now.” she said, and the boys agreed. She drew her sword, dropped it on the ground, and climbed onto it. “I’ll fly just above the trees and follow you there.” she said. The boys looked slightly envious of her sword, but nodded and started pulling their carts.
While Shen did manage to spot a few creatures from the air, none of them looked hostile and only one was an actual spirit beast. She considered capturing one of the animals and turning it into a false spirit beast, but realized that she had too much planned already to make time for such a project.
When they arrived she landed beside the barn they had been using to store the jars and sat all of the vinegar she brought in its assigned place. Ponma had hung signs and built shelves so that everyone knew where to put things and had a place to put them. There were many children outside, pulling off flowers and throwing them in jars, but from what Shen could see they only had a few jars of vinegar left. This delivery should fix that.
She helped the boys unload the carts, which appeared to be half filled with empty jars and half with jars of vinegar, and put all of the jars in their proper place. She then started emptying out the full jars from the barn, making sure that all of them were properly labeled with the size of the blossom inside.
Once she was finished she noticed that the number of buds were getting low. They had many more than this to deal with the last time she was here, but with fewer fishermen working on the lake less of the plant was being harvested. She informed Ponma that she was going to go get more and grabbed a net.
She flew over the surface of the water and, when she found a patch of flowers, dropped the net into the water. After letting it sink a bit so that it could gather more plants, she lifted up on it and tried to fly away. She couldn’t lift it, though. The number of plants that had gotten tangled in the net were too many, so every time she lifted the net her sword sunk a little bit lower.
This was a major issue. If she had brought another weapon she could cut the plants free, but unfortunately the only weapon she had was the one she was currently standing on. She could try and feed the sword more chi, but as it was a Wood flying sword it didn’t specialized in power. Furthermore, she wasn’t very good with Wood chi, so it was inefficient to use the sword. She was only keeping up with the current demand for chi due to wearing both of her bracelets.
What if she used Fire chi, though? It was her best element, so she should be able to do more with it, including controlling it well enough to attack the vines without needing her hands. Once the thought solidified in her mind, though, she realized that wouldn’t work. The net was wet, but not as wet as the plants, as they also had water inside of their vines and not just on their outsides. Any fire that was hot enough to burn through them would be more than enough to burn through the net, destroying it. She kept trying to come up with an answer. Metal? Not good enough, and she didn’t have any on her to float a piece of metal. Earth? Same problem. If she was closer to the shore she might have been able to find a sharp rock that she could use, but she was at least two tenths of a li into the lake. She was even worse with Water and all of her Wood chi was being used to stay in the air.
After ten minutes of thinking she remembered one trick that she had learned years ago but hadn’t practiced with recently. Lightning. As it was made from Fire chi, she should have decent control of it, at least until it was converted. Furthermore, if it was targeted properly it could make the roots explode without damaging the nets, like how natural lightning could explode a tree while not touching the ones near it.
She closed her eyes and started concentrating. She gathered a thin stream of fire chi and touched it to the worst of the vines, then used the Fire to Lightning technique to turn the Fire chi into Lightning chi. There was a loud crack as the root she targeted exploded, letting at least ten percent of the plants fall back into the water. She targeted the next point and repeated her actions, and more roots exploded and fell back into the water. After four or five lightning bolts she managed to lighten the weight enough that she could actually fly on the sword again, though the speed of her travel was slower than she would normally walk.
She eventually made it back to the shore and, after dragging the net onto the shore, landed and laid down. While she had managed to make it back, she was almost out of Wood chi, which was making her feel like she was far more tired than she normally would be.
While the children of the village had already cleaned the blossoms off of the ones that were already there, when they saw her arrive with more they came out and started cleaning the nets, pulling the blossoms off of the plants that they removed and throwing them into jars as they did so. By the time Shen had recovered enough to move around properly the net was almost clean.
One of the adults from the village came over. “Tried to haul back too many, huh?” Shen nodded. “All fishermen do that at some point. Though the fact that you were on a sword at the time and not in a boat must have made it harder. How did you handle it?” She told him about her trick with the lightning and he nodded. “I never actually learned to use lightning, but it does seem like it could work.” He walked down the dock and hopped into a boat. “Come on, I’ll show you how to haul them in properly.”
Shen joined him and soon they were hauling back a net full about once an hour. While it couldn’t keep up with the children on the shore, it did let them do more and therefore earn more. As the sun started to set Shen and the Villager brought in the last net and got out of the boat. Shen’s legs were a bit shaky, as she had never spent that much time in a boat before, or even rode in one, as her home village didn’t have a lake, but soon she was waling properly again.
She called Ponma over and they talked with the man. With all of the fishermen and women leaving to do other things the number of people hauling Water Blossoms out of the water had greatly dropped. If they wanted to continue harvesting them to sell to the sect they would have to pay people to bring the plants in. While it was an extra expense, Ponma recognized it as a necessary one, so he agreed to do it. He asked the man to bring more people if he could tomorrow morning, and they would offer them a job.
