Chapter 26: The World of Cultivation
The passage through the mountain took Jintian the better part of an hour to traverse. Considering his speed, it was a considerably long distance, as even at a brisk walk he could cross nearly twenty miles in that time.
The tunnel that led through the mountain was dark, lit only occasionally by sconces fastened to the walls with some sort of glowing stone held within them. The air was cool and damp, and more than a little stale, while the passageway itself was just wide enough for him to spread his arms out without touching either wall.
As Jintian traveled further and further into the mountain's hold, the reality of what he was doing settled within his chest. Everything he had ever known, every person he had ever met, were now firmly behind him and separated by a literal mountain.
But he did not let doubt creep into his mind. To live, he needed to progress in his cultivation, something he could only do in the wider world. But to live peacefully, without the near constant rage that he buried in his heart, he needed to settle his blood debt.
Wu Mingjie.
The name was all it took for him to steel his resolve, and continue in his unceasing path forward through the mountain.
Finally, after the closing of an hour, he saw a faint ray of light slicing through the darkness ahead of him. He quickened his pace, and eventually came to a stop in front of another wooden gate, sealed by a wooden beam laid across it, while bright sunlight filtered in from a small window carved in its center.
He lifted the beam away, his wounded heart thumping in his chest as he pulled open the gate.
A breeze immediately rushed past him to fill the cave, fresh air sweet in his nose after the hour spent in the darkness of the tunnel. He stepped through the gate, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the suddenness of bright sunlight. And when they finally did, he felt his breath leave him.
He was at the base of the mountain, a small plateau elevating him from the vast, seemingly endless forest before him. He saw mountains far in the distance, easily larger than the one he had just traveled through by at least a factor of two.
The trees as well were larger than any he had seen before, each one nearly three times the size of any of the larger trees he lived with. But the most shocking thing of all…
Was the spiritual energy.
He was bathed in it, the ambient spiritual energy here thicker than even Kang Shanxi's cave had been with three incense sticks lit. For the first time, he realized what Kang Shanxi had meant when he said that the mortal world was starved.
It was all around him, and he almost felt it was as thick as the towering clouds he could see in the sky. He knew that even a day spent cultivating here would have been the equal of weeks in Kang Shanxi's immortal cave. And this was still the edge of the continent! His Master had told him that the closer he traveled to the center, the thicker and purer the energy would become.
Almost without thinking, he immediately sat down in his meditative pose, his eyes closing as he immersed himself in the feeling of soaking in such rich spiritual energy.
After a mere ten minutes, his Qi reserves were once again filled completely. This kind of thing would have taken him hours in Kang Shanxi's home. He then focused his breathing, pulling in more spiritual energy and gathering it into his Third Circle.
He spent nearly two hours focused completely on his cultivation. Finally, he took a deep breath, and rose from his meditation, eyes practically sparkling as they opened.
Shen Jintian clenched his fist as he felt his progress. He guessed he was nearly a third of the way through completion of his Third Circle. In only two hours, he had improved what would have taken him full days in the mortal realm.
"Three months. Maybe four, if I am slow." He muttered to himself. He slightly regretted that he would not be able to reach the Fourth Circle before the Sect recruitment, but still, it was heartening to be able to feel his progress, after such a long time spent on traveling while remaining stagnant in his cultivation.
Nodding to himself, he then pulled the image of Kang Shanxi's map to the forefront of his mind. His memory had grown sharper, with his cultivation. While he was not able to remember the entirety of his life as a baby, like his Master had once said he might, remembering a detailed map from a month or so ago posed no problems.
From what his teacher had said, he was roughly a third of the way through his journey to Shan'an. It would take another month of traveling to reach the cultivator city, even without the burden of needing to slow to pull the cart for Xingyue…
His mind lingered on her name for a moment longer than he would have liked it to, before he shook his head, clearing it of distraction.
"Sect recruitment should begin in two months." He murmured, walking over to the edge of the plateau and peering down its side. He was nearly three hundred feet from the forest's floor below him, the trees around the mountain towering to a height just fifty feet below the edge. "That gives me a month's leeway for any unforeseen events."
Nodding to himself, Jintian took a deep breath. The ground was dizzyingly far below him, but he forced himself to calm his heart. He looked around the plateau first, but just as he thought, there was no discernible path that led downward from this point. Just a sheer drop down below.
According to his teacher, even a Second Circle cultivator would be able to survive a fall from this height, albeit with serious injury. While he was in no hurry to put that to the test, it at least gave him a measure of confidence as he pushed up the sleeves of his robe, and began to climb down the plateau.
He took the climb one foothold at a time, each inch of progress coming only after double and triple checking the rock beneath him would hold. Occasionally, the rock beneath him would crumble, and his heart would leap into his throat as he gripped tightly to the hold he had.
But eventually, his luck ran out.
After making it nearly halfway down the cliff, Jintian placed his foot onto a rock beneath him. He tested it once, but when he leaned a bit more weight, it crumbled. His heart pounding, he tightened his hand on the hold he had… but that too gave way to his weight.
There was a moment of weightlessness. A split second between the rock falling, before his body followed suit, as his mind barely reacted to the fact that he was now plummeting to the ground.
A scream tore its way from his throat, as his hands clawed the air in front of him without purchase. He desperately tried to snag a grip on the wall, but he was now too far away.
In the next second, he was nearly halfway through his fall. His body acted on animal instinct, flipping over to face the ground and trying to get his legs underneath him.
Primal fear overtook him. His bolstered his body with Qi, the energy surging through his meridians as he gritted his teeth and crossed his arms in front of himse-
BOOM!
The impact drove the air from his lungs, splitting pain erupting through him as a small explosion of dirt flew upward from the crater of his landing, a cloud of birds taking flight from the sudden intrusion in their lives.
Jintian's mind was in a daze, as he struggled to force air back into his lungs. He crawled out from the indent he had made in the ground, gasping as his lungs squeezed painfully in his chest. After a few moments, however, he finally managed to draw breath, which he gulped greedily.
He collapsed onto his back, trembling on the ground as he stared up at the dense canopy above him. Bright sunlight filtered in through the leaves, shadows dancing along his face.
Finally, adrenaline filled laughter escaped him. He brought his hands in front of his face, his fingers shaking violently from the rush he had just experienced. He patted his body, laughing again in relief when he felt nothing broken.
His bones ached, and his head was already beginning to pound from a headache pressing against his skull.
But Jintian had lived.
He continued to laugh madly for a few moments, before sitting up, wincing as the motion caused stabbing agony to crack through his skull. His ears were ringing, the roar of the wind in them having been almost deafening during his fall.
"I can't believe I lived." He muttered. For the first time, he was truly made aware of the difference between a cultivator, and a mortal. Even as durable as he had been, the Jintian of a year ago would have died from that fall.
He was barely given another moment of rest, however, when he heard thumping in the earth to his right. His head snapped toward the noise, and he saw what looked to be a bright blue panther charging towards him.
Jintian had only the time to widen his eyes before it leapt upon him, yowling as it brought its fangs to bear. He hurriedly rolled to the side, the panther slicing through the air where he had been only a heartbeat before. He sprang to his feet as the panther skidded to a stop, pivoting on its paws before leaping onto a tree. It sprang from the tree in the next second, once again pouncing towards him as the bark of the trunk snapped inward from the force of its jump.
"Damn!" He cursed, diving to the side and rolling back to his feet, the panther once again missing him by only a fraction of a second. Gritting his teeth, he prepared himself as the panther once again leapt to the nearest tree, pouncing towards him with another crack of shattering bark.
This time Jintian did not retreat. He jabbed his finger forward, his Strike spell flaring to life inside of him. In the next breath, there was a pulse of Qi as the spell slammed directly into the panther, hitting it midair and sending it rocketing backward with a screech.
It slammed into the same tree it had pounced from with a sickening crunch, its spine folding backwards before it tumbled to the ground, unmoving.
Jintian's breath came in rough gasps, his heart pounding in his ears as he stared at the panther warily. When it remained still, he drew his sword from his bag of holding, approaching cautiously as his grip tightened on the hilt.
When he reached the panther, he poked it with his sword, ready to jump back at so much of a twitch from the creature. But the panther still did not move, and he finally dared to roll it over with his foot.
The panther's eyes were bulged out of its skull, its body contorted awkwardly around its shattered spine. He saw bulging of ribs poking through its skin, and he finally realized that he had slain the creature with a single node spell.
He let out a shaky breath, finally relaxing his guard. The adrenaline from his fall, and from the fight, flushed through his system, and he suddenly felt dizzy as the world spun around him. Jintian fell to his knees, shaking his head as the pounding of his blood in his skull finally relented to give him space to think.
After gathering himself for a few moments, he rose to his feet, scanning the area with his spiritual sense. Now that he could use it without worry of being unable to replenish his reserves, he resolved to have it active during most of the day, so that he would not be ambushed like he had been just now.
In his spiritual sense, he suddenly paused as he felt an energy he had become intimately familiar with, over the past few months.
A demonic beast core.
Still making sure to scan his surroundings, he then pressed the tip of the sword against the panther's chest, and split it open. Sticking his hand inside of it, the blood warm on his skin, he fished with his fingers until he felt a familiar sensation. He grasped it and pulled it free from the beast, his hand glistening with blood as he held a marble the size of the bud of his finger in his palm.
He had slain his first demonic beast.
Jintian had, officially, entered the world of cultivation.