Chapter 4 - Cultivation

(Word Count: 2,540)

Lily awoke with a start, once again finding herself as a hummingbird. She was back inside of a flower, which had closed up again to protect her. She groggily got up onto her feet, shaking her limbs awake. Despite the long night of talking to Laura, whatever dream realm she had created, it was restful. 

The flower opened back up, revealing the valley before her. She took a deep breath, marveling at how good she felt and at how the valley had become so much more beautiful. Since awakening her magic, or Qi, which was the better term, everything felt more real.

Wait a sec, where was the technique Laura gave her? She looked around in a brief flash of fear. At the base of the flower was the green slip of jade that contained the Nature God's Garden technique. She sighed in relief.

The talk with Laura had been enlightening. Yes, she had already resolved herself to fight the frogs and creatures of the valley beforehand, but Laura had really driven it home exactly why it was necessary. A cultivator's world was ruthless, and if she kept to the same sensibilities she had before, then she would inevitably be killed off, pickled as an alchemist's ingredient, or enslaved as the familiar to some cultivator.

At those cheerful thoughts, she decided she had enough sitting around. She hopped off of the flower, landing on the jade slip. It was slightly bigger than she was, but the edge was thin enough to where she could grip it with her talons. Since awakening her dantian—the Chinese name for it had become the universal term because Laura was such a nerd before the end of the world—Lily was a lot stronger than a normal hummingbird, and she could carry it easily.

She pulled the slip further away from the edge, setting it right up against the back wall. Now that she felt more secure that she wouldn't lose it to a wild gust of wind, it was time to start practicing her new technique. ‘How did Laura say to do this again? Insert some of my energy to open it… right.’ She rested one foot up against it and thought back to the day before when she managed to unlock her energy.

She felt her inner energy, her Qi, flowing idly around inside her. It was thin, and there was hardly any there, but Lily couldn't help but be a little excited. This was her magic power! Tentatively, to not mess anything up somehow, she took some of the energy and channeled it to her foot and into the slip.

Immediately, it was like Lily was now reading a book inside her mind. The knowledge was there, and she just had to parse through it all. Though, it felt like she could only access the first chapter, so to speak, and the rest of the book was locked. What she could already access was already enough to bring her up to the end of the Mortal Realms, so she really didn't mind at all. The rest was likely the Immortal Realms and beyond, so she was nowhere near ready for all of that.

Going back to “page 1” of the info, she began to try and wrap her mind around it.

There were three parts to Nature God's Garden, for the three parts of one's being; the mind, body, and soul.

First of all, the main focus of the mind cultivation was the dantian, and improving her Qi veins and expanding her Qi reserves. To start with, there was the meditation technique. There was the passive collection of outer qi by breathing, then there was the active collection when she actually sat down and meditated. It acted as a drain, and the outer qi would be sucked in by a whirlpool.

These methods ensured that she had enough energy for the second part: Expanding her dantian, and refining her Qi to a higher quality and change some of it to Wood and Lightning Qi. These two reactive Qi types were then stored inside her dantian, carefully balanced and swirling around each other like the yin-yang symbol, with her natural Qi acting as a buffer between them.

There were listed ways on how to obtain pure Wood or Lightning Qi from the environment, like flying through lightning storms or going deep into a jungle. She wasn't quite ready for that, though.

Then, she had to actually use these energies to enhance her body. That was what body cultivation was all about: slowly but surely forging an immortal body out of yourself. Unfortunately for her, this body reforging required both the Wood and Lightning Qi simultaneously. She used the reaction of the two Qi's to fuel her enhancement even further. If she wasn't careful about it, she would blow herself up. Other lesser techniques would have you use only Wood Qi on some muscle groups and others with Lightning. It was a much safer option but less efficient.

It was like the red muscles, white muscles, and pink muscles. Red muscles had the strength, white muscles had the reaction time and “zippiness,” but pink muscles were both at once! Lily was sure she read something about that somewhere. Was it right? Who knows? Not her. Either way, it served as a good metaphor. The goal with this Nature God's Garden, while a lot more dangerous and time-consuming, was to craft a perfect Wood/Lightning-enhanced body that carries both properties, just as this pink muscle had properties of both the red and white muscles.

There were even some steps she could follow to take advantage of her beast nature after she kills something. Since she was a “beast,” hummingbird or not, when she killed something, she naturally drew in some of the recently deceased's energy. It was a unique energy, imaginatively named Beast Qi, that naturally soaked into her body to strengthen it, this was how non-sapient creatures “cultivated.” It was one of the key requirements in Nature God's Garden that made the whole “Wood/Lightning” body possible, as it acted like an emulsifier for the two energies. Then, when her body was ready to breakthrough to the next realm, she would let her Beast Qi accumulate to the breaking point and evolve naturally as a beast would. The combination should improve her body far more than anything else.

Then there was a crap ton of meridians throughout her body, and Nature's God Garden technique required her to spend a lot of time opening them in a specific order before she could move on to the next step. Some steps required certain meridians to be open, so her Qi veins could handle the amount of energy needed.

To top it all off, she needed a bunch of resources, which is where her pollinator status came in handy, to prepare her body for cultivation, to further improve the effects, and to heal and recover her body when she was done.

It was all very complicated and gave her a headache just thinking about it.

As Lily poured over every little detail she could, her Qi ran out, and the “book” in her mind closed and disappeared. It must have only been a few minutes, seeing as it was still early morning, but she felt like she had just spent hours studying for a college exam. She needed some brain fuel.

A quick round of pollination later, and she was full.

Settling back down on her home flower, she thought about what she had learned. It was all about cultivation, but there was nothing in there about how to actually fight! There was no movement technique, no “how to throw a lightning bolt,” nothing.

Lily huffed. She couldn't complain too much, she supposed. She was already in a much better position than yesterday. She wasn't going in blind anymore. She just didn't want to have to stab another eye with her beak again. But it looked like she was going to have to. Spells like throwing lightning needed denser Qi than she had, and she was just starting out.

‘Alright, enough procrastinating!’ She thought and shook her feathers to energize herself.

First step: Pollinate the “Hundred Petals of Heaven” flower. That was the official name of the beautiful cliff flowers she'd been drinking the nectar from all this time, so “Check!” This flower, when formed into a pill by regular cultivators—or when a pollinator drinks from the nectar—helps to purify and refine one's internal Qi. It's why she was able to awaken her dantian so quickly on her own.

Second step: She needed to have a full dantian, and she had just used up all of her energy studying from the jade slip. Her inner energy would naturally restore itself with time, but she could speed it up by spending some time meditating. As she was right now, her dantian was really small and her inner energy was gaseous, so she wouldn't have to meditate for very long.

Lily was already comfortable on her flower, so she simply closed her eyes and began the technique she had just learned. She pulled in the initial flow of the Outer Qi, swirled it to begin the vortex, and then sucked the energy from the dantian out to the rest of her body, creating a pressure that kickstarted the automatic siphoning from the outer qi. 

It was a small little whirlpool, but to her it almost felt like it was too much energy. Her job now was to cycle that energy and keep it from escaping her dantian so it didn't explode her Qi veins. At the same time, she needed to refine the energy into something that was worth using, converting the Outer Qi into Inner Qi. It was a surprisingly violent process that strained her mind. ‘Do birds sweat? Cause it feels like I'm sweating buckets.’ Lily thought.

Luckily, it didn't need to go on for very long. The dantian was filled to the brim within a minute, and she quickly disrupted the vortex. Lily gasped in relief, and flopped onto her back. If that was how her very first session of cultivation went, when she barely had any energy, she shuddered to think of what it would be like in the upper realms. It also explained why there was such a thing as “closed door cultivation,” when a cultivator went into seclusion to cultivate more intensely. They really needed to focus.

She groaned to herself. She needed a bath, but it was better to finish this first.

Second step, check!

Third step was to use the energy to open up her heart meridians. There were two main ones, which she'll be focusing on now. The left and right sides of the heart, out and in, representing positive and negative emotions. There were 7 minor ones as well, but she'll worry about down the line. As for the two main meridians, it was important to open both of them quickly in succession or she risked imbalance within her Qi veins.

The heart was one of the major thoroughfares in her Qi veins. About half of the time when she needed to push her Qi somewhere in her body, her Qi would have to pass through the heart. By opening these meridians first, it allowed for an easier time in opening the rest. It also helped to balance her emotions, improved her stamina, and recovery even without her reforging a single part of her body yet. It also helped connect the spiritual with the physical.

She needed both the heart and crown meridians open before she could attempt to find her inner spirit sea, so she could begin her soul cultivation. That comes later.

As instructed, she focused on the positive side first. If she did the negative side first, it would be easy to get depressed, unmotivated, and/or angry which was the last thing one needed when trying to cultivate. The positive side would still be dangerous, giddiness could make her careless when she was opening the negative side, so she still had to be careful.

She pulled out a good chunk of her energy and concentrated it into her heart.

Meridians were weird. They were small points along her Qi veins that acted like a small reservoir that the energy would get caught up in, with the dam only allowing a certain amount through at a time. They also functioned as exit points in her body where she could release Qi from. This was necessary to perform techniques. 

The idea behind “opening” the meridian was that she needed to flood the reservoir with energy to overwhelm and break the dam. She did that by concentrating as much of her energy as she could into the single point. Most of this energy would be used up in process, some would be vented out of her through the newly opened meridian. It sounded like an easy process, but as always, it was extremely delicate. If a cultivator didn't have good control over their Qi, it would explode open and all of that pressure they were putting on the meridian would explode out. Usually taking a chunk of flesh with it. When that meridian was in an important part of her, say the heart for example, it was lethal.

It was why it was better to open as many meridians as you can early on. The larger amounts of energy, and a higher quality energy, made the backlash of opening meridians much harsher. It eventually made opening them in the higher tiers extremely risky, needing high quality healing pills and elixirs so they survived the process.

Then, if one stopped too soon, they could be stuck with a half opened meridian. If they wanted to get it fully opened, then they would need to brute force it open, causing it to explode out. So, while caution was necessary, she couldn't be too cautious about it.

Little by little, Lily added more and more energy and pressure onto the meridian. When she felt it give a little, she stopped adding, keeping it to the same pressure. As soon as the meridian broke open, she pulled back so only a little bit of Qi escaped. It hissed out like a gas valve but was otherwise harmless.

Immediately, she felt extremely giddy. She did it! Lily couldn't help but want to chirp loudly and sing. She nearly jumped up to fly and dance around, when her control over her Qi nearly slipped. A bit of panic rose up, but it was muted and suppressed under all of the good emotions she was feeling. Still, she forced herself to stay sitting, but she still hummed to herself as she focused on the next point.

When the next meridian was open, her emotions returned to normal, and she collapsed back onto her back, wings stretched out. Looking up at the sky, Lily was shocked to see the sun so high up in the sky. She had spent the entire morning opening the two meridians! Now that she noticed, she was starving as well!

First things first though, refill her energy, then go back down to that stream to bathe again. She felt sweaty and grimy.