Chapter 110: Until They Weren’t

Travel among higher realm cultivators was a mystery to Paike. Despite learning a lot and growing up around several of them, Paike hadn't been able to get a straight answer. Some used their own qi; others had artifacts that flew for them. It seemed to be just a matter of their preferences.

Elder Song flew on a cloud. Father was able to vanish and reappear pretty much at will. It did take time when he moved very long distances, and he could bring at least one person with him. Mother had a few different artifacts that would transport her. Her most recent favorite was a worn-out rug that flew. It wasn't the fastest, but she liked how many of her younger kids she could safely bring with her.

At least that is what she said; Paike was pretty sure she just thought it looked elegant.

Still, he had never seen his father do this. The seven younger cultivators hovered through the air as mountain peaks whipped by below them.

The wind was such that none of them could talk. They had tried a little at the start, shouting to each other, but made no progress.

Paike had watched the four cultists while he was either fighting them or preparing to fight them. He felt he had a decent sense of their personalities from observing them for a while, even though he had yet to get their names.

The core disciple, though, had no intuition about. She was a slight bit shorter than he was and felt like she was well into the fourth realm. After the initial shock of Father's abrupt selection wore off, her demeanor faded into an implacable placidity.

Paike had to assume that she had been told she was one of those to be selected, so she had some idea of what was going on. If she didn't, Paike would be beyond impressed with her disposition and courage.

As it became clear that while they were moving at incredible speeds, they were not going to reach their destination anytime soon, Paike closed his eyes to cultivate.

The empire was very large. And even at the edges of it, with this grand sect in the more mountainous region, there were still many peaks between here and the boundaries of the empire.

Paike started by doing a quick scan of all his spirit and cultivation. Things had been holding up fairly well. His physical cultivation pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and he didn't feel any sharp edges or kinks in its workings.

His dantian was as healed as it could be, as far as he could tell, and the qi was circulating nicely. The qi channels were unblocked, and his meridians were unclogged. There was only a tiny bit of maintenance that he had to do over his whole cultivation base, even after testing it with a good portion of a day of constant use while sparring.

Pleased, he considered his priorities. He had actually accomplished many of the ones on his previous lists. The only thing he could say was that what was still on there was advancing his research with Guan Li and Elder Song, and that wasn't even really true, as they had already done that and had just started new topics.

He was looking forward to investigating the meridian templates that Father had left them. But that wasn't something he could do here.

The nature of qi was something he could look into, but he was sort of waiting on Elder Song a bit to answer a few of the questions. At least he could learn more from what she found out. That might trigger some more ideas rather than him blindly looking around.

He supposed that he could pick up some more tasks now that his plate was surprisingly empty.

The obvious next step was Late Topaz. It felt crazy considering that already, but he still needed to get there eventually. The only other option was physical cultivation.

Learning new arts would wait until he could add more of the meridian varietals in and work on qi working. Practicing his qi-working tricks in front of a bunch of strangers wouldn't be smart either. As he used it in a fight, it would just look like part of a technique. And if they didn't pick it up from watching higher realm cultivators or from studying lots of techniques, they wouldn't get it from fighting him. Now, if he sat there and tied his qi into knots and twists, practicing the forms over and over, they might realize something was different, and he wasn't about to share this outside the family.

So, physical cultivation and spiritual cultivation. Truly back to basics.

He began twisting the qi in his dantian. The same simple pattern he had used to reach Middle Topaz did not have any effect. That had been too much to hope for. So naturally, he started trying different variations of knots he knew.

Sailing wasn't something he had ever had an interest in. And in their mountain home, their family didn't have much reason or ability to teach it. He had learned basic knots for basic survival, but that was only a handful.

So he started to chain them together. He was just idly fiddling with his qi for a bit, but making no progress. While there was no change in his qi, he began to notice a shift in his mind. It was starting to fully calm down after all the excitement, and he just let it wander. The qi felt comforting in his spiritual fingers, and he just kept fidgeting with it.

His mind went back to the fights, and he considered how he had performed. Overall, he couldn't be too disappointed, but he felt that he could have done much more. Working with Taka had taken only the tiniest adjustments to get back to where they were when they were on better terms. Paike would have thought that the years apart would have pushed them to change much more than they had.

Instead, it was like no time had passed at all. They fit like they were made to work together.

If this had been even a month ago, it wouldn't have been a problem for Paike. But now he wasn't satisfied with being one part of a whole. It wasn't pride or some desire to prove to the world that he was worthy. No, it was that it just wasn't his path.

He was going to grow forever, never stopping, never fading. Not for no reason, but not for his family, not for power or prestige. It was his intrinsic motivation. The desire to be all he could. To be his own person.

That wasn't to say that he would leave everything behind. He loved his family and wasn't about to just leave them, even considering the debt of gratitude he owed them in isolation from any emotions; he would honor that.

However, becoming his own person. Truly thinking through his own system of morals and honor, chasing his best self didn't involve being just a part of a whole with someone he didn't trust the same way anymore. His twin had been his other half, but that was gone. Their chemistry on the sparring grounds, and if it ever came to it, Paike was certain they would have the same compatibility on an actual battlefield, was just that.

They could work together, but he couldn't see them as the same person as he used to.

It was as Liming had said, Taka would get the credit. Paike never cared. Taka's gain was his gain and vice versa. They were the same.

Until they weren't.

Now they were different people, and anything else was just an echo of things that were no more.

Paike kept telling himself that, but each time it made his heart clench. Despite thinking this way for longer than he had been aware of it, he still felt so alone. But that was just how it would be. He didn't have someone he could trust without reservations. To share everything that life had. They were kids, but it was still just...

The last time he felt his heart tighten felt different. Paike returned his attention to his qi.

There was a complicated pattern woven between his many spiritual hands. And at the very center of the qi, there was a spot of qi that felt a little different.

Paike closely examined the weave. It was complicated, but not so much that he couldn't duplicate it with a little effort.

All the thoughts that he was working through, that were dragging his mental energy down, fled. Here it was. The answer.

It took several tries, but he was able to duplicate the pattern again. And again there was the change.

Over and over he formed the weave. Each time he got a little better, a little more precise, a little faster. Until it was all a blur, each piece of qi was wound, pulled, unwound, and then wound again.

He totally lost himself in work. The fever of cultivation took over so totally that even the roar of the wind faded to nothing.

It might have been hours or days; he didn't know, but eventually he was done. Every bit of qi had undergone that change. And as each bit of the qi had changed, he could feel his spirit grow with the energy radiating off the change.

It was so faint he didn't feel it at first, but he could logically deduce it had to be there, and once he knew what to look for, he found it. Only it was as baffling as any of his revelations. He was thinking that qi needed energy to combine, and then that energy was released when it was split. That logically followed. Something had been triggering the change in his spirit. However, it didn't seem that simple.

His first guess was that the energy was less than what he was putting in. If it was added to the extra energy when the particles were split, it would balance the equation. However, he would have to test that, and he didn't know how that would even be possible. He couldn't advance to the same stage again. Also, this was a stage change, not a breakthrough to a different realm.

He would need to talk to Elder Song again.

Paike opened his eyes, frowning because he didn't have any paper to write notes on. There was too much to understand, and he didn't want to miss a single thought while he was feeling inspired.

His expression might have been misunderstood by those around him. The other cultivators looked at him with expressions that seemed to oscillate among respect, fear, and horror. They all knew when he had awoken and whether he was a new member of the outer sect. His being Middle Topaz had been beyond notable, maybe even extraordinary, but it was believable.

Paike looked forward and saw Father looking back and giving him a big 'thumbs up' and smile. He looked back at the other disciples and hoped this didn't develop into a problem.