Qing Liao sat cross-legged on a cushion of his own manufacture, made from materials he'd acquired from the wild himself, and closed his eyes. He sank into the flow of qi surrounding him. Always present, it projected countless different forms and flavors. Several, as always, predominated. The slow, dream-like release of qi from the earth below. The erratic and complex qi aligned to living things that suffused the nearby air, water, and plants. The pure, untouched stellar qi that radiated down from high above.

  The last was omnipresent and incredibly strong. Even when the sun was blocked by clouds it pierced through. At night it came from the stars or reflected off the moon. Only solid barriers could block that mighty flux, and most imperfectly at best.

  He focused on that qi now, carefully filtering out all other influences. They were usable, in desperate moments, but required considerable manipulation and filtration by the will. An inefficiency that qi taken directly from the endless starlight did not demand, and given the abundance of such qi, one that was completely unnecessary.

  This was the greatest insight of the Celestial Mother, one that had changed the cultivation world. Every time Liao immersed himself in the currents he felt that revelation, its mighty power, strike him once again.

  The insight did not hold for long. Today was not given over to contemplating the subtleties of qi flow and essence patterns. It was for the utilization of that power and the generation of change. Not an alteration of the world without, but that of Liao's own existence.

  He had filled his dantian and circuits to near bursting. It was time to move past the limits of that state. To go further there was but one choice.

  He must step into the vitality annealing realm.

  He was twenty-five years old. He'd been a cultivator for ten years and nine months. A swift pace? ? attended his progress, though it was nothing like record breaking. Eighteen teenagers had become cultivators on the same day. Though he would be only the second of that group to take this step, that was not a marker of talent.

  Instead, it was one of luck.

  Nine of the eighteen were dead. All had perished on the same day, slain by the demons and their adherents.

  Liao pushed that memory, full of anger and grief, away. Honest though it was, today it represented an unnecessary distraction. Success, and nothing else, offered the best way to honor those lives and avenge those deaths. He knew it, knew what must be done.

  To gain the strength to take the fight to the enemy advancement was the only option. This act, this day, was merely one more step on the path. The road was a long one, but he dared not fail to walk it. Otherwise he'd be stuck as an alarm in a box forever.

  “You can trap a beast stronger than yourself, son,” his father had told him. “But not one that can smash out of the strongest cage you can carry.” Few pieces of advice from his old life had much purchase in the world of cultivators, but that one had proven remarkably prescient.

  The vitality annealing realm then, that was the next step. He delved deeper into his meditation. One by one he cast aside all thoughts not directed towards the stellar qi descending from on high.

  Fully immersed in the flow, Liao dropped below the surface. Within the shell of skin, of flesh and bone. Deep down he journeyed, pushed his awareness to the core of his self. It waited there, the swirling, ever-shifting pulsations of energy that formed his dantian. The reservoir of inner fire that bridged the gap between the mundane of the physical universe and the sublime truths of which it was merely an expression. The existence birthed from the primordial source that was the Dao.

  A place that was not a place at all, where life was qi and qi was life. That, and so much, much more. Countless things he did not understand, could not express.

  Not yet.

  “Once you feel your qi, you must focus. It's wondrous, but distraction will stop you in your tracks.” Sayaana had warned him. “You aren't seeking deep mysteries today. You're not ready. It will come, or not. Focus! Bind yourself to your purpose. If you chase the dao you'll never reach it. Today has one task, finish it!”

  A stout, steady teaching, laid out far more succinctly in the words of the northern remnant soul than in any of the manuals of cultivation in lodged in the sect library. Of course, like everything he'd done since becoming a cultivator, Liao discovered that simply following the instructions did not suffice. Sparks, flashes, and pulses of qi enveloped his dantian. Flows and waves raced through the circuitous, swarming, nimbus pathway of his meridians. The interplay of color, sound, and taste that they carried defied description. It overwhelmed his conscious thoughts in moments, awareness spiraling out of control as the mind pursued a thousand different internal phenomena at once.

  Control vanished. He crashed out of the trance, coughing wildly. Sweat coated his skin. Everything felt sore and itchy all at once. It took several unsteady, shallow breaths before he mastered himself sufficiently to sit back up and center his body. Balance restored itself slowly.

  Sayaana stood at the edge of the little leather-laced chamber. The greenish woman leaned against the side walls and stared off into the distance. Endlessly, she kept the silent vigil over his body that had been the first purpose Itinay pursued in binding them together.

  No words came across that link. Not even a shift of precisely controlled qi echoed through the gemstone. The once immortal remnant soul did not even turn to look toward him.

  What was there to say? All that could be spoken, all the advice she might have offered, it had already been given. The rest must be faced alone.

  Recognizing this, Liao adjusted his position on the cushion. He took a slow, lung-filling, breath. Once more he closed his eyes and sank back down into the qi within.

  Moments later he was thrown out once more, coughing fitfully. The wash of qi, the myriad fascinations it offered; these things were not easily overcome. It represented a massive storm to block aside. To succeed, the cultivator must be capable of finding inner stillness despite all distraction, even if they were placed inside a drum during active performance.

  It took ten tries before he could reliably hold his awareness at the edge of his meridians. Twelve more followed as he fought his way to gain control, to do more than simply hold his presence in place at that point. By the time he was ready to exert his will the sun had set.

  Liao paused there, taking the opportunity to fill his stomach. Despite not moving all day, he was utterly famished. Even as he was still chewing the last bites he dropped back down into the now-familiar trance. The stars were rising overhead. A good omen for progress; Orday above clear skies to watch over her followers. A sacred blessing to a process with neither beginning nor end.

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  The endless single step of entry into the vitality annealing realm. A simple process, truthfully, if somewhat counter intuitive. “The circuit of meridians is an illusion.” Itinay had explained without preamble. “Qi is flowing through you, both on the physical and spiritual plane. The pathways you imagine are a constraint used to process and control this. False though it is, your mind it not yet sufficiently developed to comprehend the truth.”

  This comment, more than a little patronizing and severely degrading, had initially set back progress significantly. Now, having immersed himself in the flow of qi over and over, he understood the power of it. Barefaced as all such utterances from the grand elder were, it carried power openly. Just enduring the flow, the pulse of primordial stellar energy flushed through his being, demanded everything he possessed. Natural barriers erected by his subconscious that normally staunched this rush of power had been stripped away through meditation and the incredible power of the Celestial Infusion Method. Orday's foundational technique drew in qi with such efficiency and purity that it threatened to entirely overwhelm his limited capacity to comprehend its vastness.

  He could only survive and sustain his cultivation by anchoring himself with the illusion, the construct was absolutely essential to understand who he was and how he touched upon the endless energy that burst free of the fires of unbroken dao that were the stars.

  Except that was not enough. To advance was to push beyond such limitations.

  “The heart meridian lies in the chest. This is the first point of expansion. Break the current out, narrow to wide, such that the flow passes not only through the heart, but every part of the chest cavity simultaneously.” A very simple set of instructions described an immeasurably difficult task.

  Sayaana had scoffed at any claim that this was hard. The Celestial Origin Sect, rich in materials and alchemists alike, stuffed initiates on the cusp of breakthrough full of pills. These concoctions minimized pain, increased focus, and reduced backlash. Liao might fail to advance, this day, but having swallowed nearly a dozen medicines used to reinforce his being, nothing untoward would afflict him beyond that. The trial was not as it was for those who advanced alone and unsupported in the wilds. The rigors of the day proceeded unnoticed by the specter of potential death.

  Welcome though such protections were, they also removed all excuse for hesitancy.

  Waiting no longer, Liao drew himself back into the focus of meditation. Awareness dropped into the flowing sea of his internal qi. The circuit rose up, and immense current within the fiery pool.

  The young cultivator had never seen the ocean. To his mind, a life spent entirely inside Mother's Gift, it was a thing mentioned only in books or rendered in artistic fancy.

  He could not imagine any body of water larger than Highcleft Lake, deep in the mountains at the very edge of the bounded warp of the hidden land. Powered by the meltwater streams of the peaks, it managed to contain weak currents of its own. Drawing on this memory, extrapolating, he imagined the influence of those currents upon the lake waters, above and below, in wide blooms swirling around their point of entry into the basin. This admixture of water could not be seen with human eyes, but those who hunted and trapped the lake knew its shifting formations well. Different fish, mussels, plants, and prawns adjusted their hideaways in response to those submerged clouds. Liao knew this. He had spoken to old fisherman as a boy, and in the sect library discovered a treatise from the old world that detailed the process.

  The final piece crystallizing the metaphor was his own work, ten years of trapping for the fur bearers of the waters. Beaver, otter, and water shrews gave experiential voice to such patterns, one that impacted both the conscious mind and the internalized dao.

  Each of the ten thousand things had a proper place, even if the boundary defining such was formed out of ever-shifting fluid.

  This insight gave him the confidence to grasp the circuit of his qi at the center of the heart meridian, to feel the twisting path entwined to his body, being, and core.

  Then he snapped it to the side, hard. The circuit fractured, bursting flow through countless holes, a shattered bamboo pole. No more a continuous tube, it was now a sieve.

  Qi spilled out from his heart to fill his chest. Every bone, muscle, and scrap of tissue was suddenly bathed in distant stellar fire.

  It burned. Furiously, terribly, mercilessly, it burned. Pain exploded across Liao's consciousness. Twining sources of agony took hold within and without.

  Simple and inevitable, a first source of suffering. Dumping a quantity of qi into tissues only rarely exposed to the briefest touch of it through momentary strengthening bursts caused immense feedback. His body protested this unexpected intrusion out of pure homeostatic reflex. Thankfully, the pills fought against this reaction, dampened down the response, turned immolation to embers. Though Liao felt as if his chest had been stuffed full of hot coals, it was not beyond his ability to withstand.

  That was very beneficial indeed, for a second source of misery originated from every instance of contact between the purified qi flowing through his meridians and fragments of qi lodged throughout his body aligned to one of the myriad other aspects of existence. Each clash knocked qi flow lose and tore through his spirit as they carved out dissonant pathways. Such improper channels threatened to render him shattered, discordant, and incapable of cultivation. Alchemical protections shielded his veins, naturally drew pure qi to each damaged location and repaired his spiritual channels and reservoirs even as they were pierced and torn. This effort would not shatter his meridians, a great boon, but to sustain was insufficient.

  Liao had to expand, he had to reorder himself, render into being a new space, one capable of accommodating all that now moved through him. The capacity of his chest must be shifted, increased, and formed into an environment suited to his qi and that alone.

  All other essences would need to be purged.

  One flake of qi at a time, he grasped and pulled. An exercise of will, nothing more, to tear those bits out. They were natural, detritus accumulated over all twenty-five years of his life through contact with various sources scattered throughout the world of Mother's Gift. Befitting his history, they could mostly be attributed to living daos. Forest, marsh, and river predominated. Elements of the soil and stone, similarly flavored but with an added iron tang, were likewise common.

  Removing them did not hurt. It was nothing but qi, essence and energy. It streamed out of his body to rejoin the surrounding natural flows without difficulty. Exercising directed will, by contrast, was exhausting. Awareness blurred around Liao. In time, even the stinging fury of pain faded. Only the rush of qi remained, and the slow straining. How long it took he had no idea. All external understanding, save of the stellar qi that radiated endlessly from above, vanished. This source provided all he needed to reshaped the tissues of his chest, realigning channels and pathways on a level invisible to the eye and merely felt through the resonance of his essence. Bones, muscles, glands, nerves, and more were all brought into alignment with the new flow flooding his system. Faulty linkages shifted, unnecessary impurities were swept aside, insufficient constructions were augmented.

  The body recycled much of this material. Unlike qi, the substance comprising the newly annealed regions did not change. Reorganization did not require removal in flesh. Nevertheless, some loss accompanied the transformation. Had the cultivator retained awareness of his bladder the urge to urinate would have overpowered all conscious thought.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, it continued. Cell by cell, tissue by tissue, muscle by muscle, until the chest stood completely matched with the new, advanced template drawn from a singular, perfect, qi source. Liao, lost in the flood, could only continue working from beginning to end. Struggling, he held on desperately, moving qi until he forgot why he was even doing so, the dregs of his consciousness working to the finish automatically, lost in the salvation of repetition. A trance of effort supplied by training and the work. The elders' constant invocation of 'again,' revealed its absolute value in that space that was not a space at all. Stretched his ability in this moment beyond mortal endurance through the flow of qi itself.

  Only one thought remained, that should he fail he would be stuck in the trap for another decade.

  That alone allowed him to endure.

  It took three and a half days. At the end, bleary eyed and barely conscious, he stumbled to the edge and purged the wastage from all three orifices before crumpling back down and collapsing into twenty full hours of dreamless sleep. During the night it rained, but this failed to wake him.

  Qing Liao would take his first steps in the vitality annealing realm soaked to the bone and deliriously hungry, but triumphant.