Book 2 Chapter 47

The following few days were some of the most fun Willow had in a long while.

Frankly he was surprised at how much better he’d felt with this small break from his training. He thought that he’d been destressing enough from playing with his spirit friends, though in hindsight he supposed that since he was always worried about balancing his time amongst everyone he hadn’t really been fully relaxed while playing with them lately.

He also wasn’t as sad as he initially feared when he inevitably had to leave his new friends behind. He merely did what his mentor said and promised to see them again the next time he travelled through there. Sure he felt a little bad having to leave them behind, but surely with the amount of wandering he’d be doing down the line he was bound to see them again eventually.

His new friends were used to children of merchants and the like coming and going throughout the year, so there didn’t seem to be any hard feelings on their end either. Though Willow still wished he could’ve used his spiritual sense to make sure they weren’t upset with him.

Honestly being back on the road and letting his senses free was more liberating than he expected. The feeling of his surroundings and the qi contained within felt like a familiar friend coming to greet him when he let loose the restrictions his spiritual senses were bound in.

It was also strangely a bit of a relief to throw himself back into his studies.

Willow enjoyed playing as much as the next child, but he realized that non-stop socializing in a group setting was far more tiring than he expected. So going back to just him, his mentor, and his many spirit friends felt refreshing.

Even if Change was being just a bit of a brat about not being allowed to play with the group.

“I’m just saying, it wouldn’t have hurt to let me out for just a little while.” The void-eyed spirit grumped to Willow one afternoon a few days after they’d left the town.

Willow chuckled to himself, more amused by his friend’s antics than anything. “Harmony would’ve scolded the both of us and you know it.” He sent to his friend.

“Indeed I would have.” She idly commented. “We saw a group of the people after us not too long ago, and you would risk our capture to play with children?”

Willow could sense the Yang spirit crossing his tiny arms inside of his void. “But that ball game looked like so much fun! It even had constantly changing rules which makes me a perfect participant!”

The boy tried to placate his spirit friend. “We could try to play it with the others?”

Change harrumphed. “No offense meant to the little ones, but they don’t have the right mentality to play a game like that. Plus my sister would probably abhor such a chaotic form of play.”

Harmony tinkled with laughter. “He is right. The idea of constantly shifting rules such as what I saw you and your new friends do would have me tearing my non-existent hair out.”

Willow supposed they were right. Calypso in particular would probably not really understand what was happening the entire time, and the majority of them wouldn’t have the best of time with it. Even if Phoebe would likely love to be the ball in such a scenario.

He would continue to try and think of a new game for his little group of spirits to play. It was important to him that he continue to try and do more with his friends whenever possible, but it was still proving difficult for him to balance what everyone liked.

He’d just keep trying his best and hope it was enough.

He brought out Andrea again and resumed the exercise his mentor had assigned for him to learn. The now not so little flower began to dance around him and take in as much sun as they could, causing Willow to crack a smile. He even took a moment to harmonize with their bond and briefly basked in the sunlight himself before fully concentrating on his task.

Before they had mostly worked on undirected and wild growth, with Miss Mu having him focus on creating many different ways to deliver his qi into the environment so that he could then have more plants to work with for the next step.

Which was directing the qi of living beings.

Currently he was told to only focus on plant life, but Willow could tell where the lessons would be going next since you don’t impose a restriction like that unless you planned to lift it later.

It kind of scared him if he was honest.

He already felt bad when he messed up directing the qi of plants. The results could be surprisingly unpleasant with strangely warped branches and malformed fruits and flowers.

He shook his head to clear it of such thoughts. Dwelling on his past failures made it more likely for future attempts to follow a similar pattern according to Miss Mu.

Willow focused on the seed in his palm that he’d been given for the exercise. What plant it was a seed from apparently didn’t matter too much, but this was from a fruit that was his most recent snack, so he at least had an idea of what it was supposed to turn into.

Though that was kind of counter to the point of the exercise. He was supposed to turn the seed into a vine and have it grab something. Not in a way that would actually restrain something just yet, but it was apparently important for him to get a feel for such things.

Andrea wasn’t much better than him at it just yet despite having a more instinctive understanding of how it should be done. They mostly seemed to know how to make more poppy flowers.

He supposed it was a side effect of his friend being so young.

He was getting distracted again.

Willow refocused on the seed and poured a trickle of his qi into it. He’d previously tried shoving a whole bunch in since he hadn’t really used his wood qi much after starting his next level of core exercises.

The results had been a tad explosive.

Thankfully no one had been harmed, but a lesson had been learned. Be far more stingy when using his more condensed qi.

He pooled the qi at one specific point near the seeds surface and that was where a tendril of green broke through.

Now the difficult part began. He had to fight against the pattern the seed wanted to grow into. Instead directing it to grow towards his other arm and gently coil around it.

To achieve this Willow had to carefully ration the amount of qi he fed it, while constantly overwriting what the seed naturally wanted to do. A process that grew just a bit easier as time passed, but initially feels insurmountable.

There was a reason his mentor kept emphasizing how much willpower was required to use wood qi properly.

To make matters worse, if he took too long then the supple vine started to harden and turn into more of a branchlike structure, which meant that he needed to be relatively fast while doing it.

Unfortunately this time proved to be similar to the last couple. Before the vine could reach his outstretched arm, he lost focus and the newborn plant twisted and calcified as it tried to forcefully turn itself into the tree it was meant to be, strange flowers blooming on it all the while.

Willow let out a sigh, but refused to be discouraged by yet another failure.

Besides, the flowers he’d accidentally made were fairly pretty.