18 Addiction (2/2)

I was better suited to doing DIY with father. I relished the chance, because I had an excuse to use my qi to power the hand-cranked tools.

My soul was expanding at a constant rate, and with each light meditation session, my body generated more qi of its own.

I wondered if these two methods of qi generation would conflict with each other, so I asked father about it.

He said that cultivators tended to practice one method. However, this was mainly for two reasons.

There was a nation-wide restriction on cultivating without a license. Your innate qi was measured at birth, and if it increased too much without a valid license, you could be imprisoned.

Qi generating techniques were therefore quite rare. You had to be a member of a sect, a noble family, or select government institutions to get your hands on one.

This had caused quite the fiasco when I started cultivating out of the blue. Adrian had to pull some strings to get me a license: the jade card in father's drawer.

Father didn't know why I was able to cultivate with no guidance. He said that Crow was looking for an expert that might be able to help.

Knowing this, a shadow of concern hung over my head for years. What if this expert could tell that I was a rebirth cultivator? What if my family found out that I wasn't really their son?

My worry clouded my cultivation. In the long, lonely nights, my inner demons were at their strongest. It was hard to let go of my body in light meditation when my mind was racing.

At age four, my soul expansion slowed down to a halt. The volume of qi I could store was about fifty times what I had started with.

Even if I didn't paint any layers, my soul didn't grow. I took this to mean that I had reached peak Middle Warrior grade. I had to advance my qi comprehension and breakthrough.

I spent my days wondering what I could do to progress. Finally, I asked father for advice. He said that he was a body cultivator, so he didn't know if his knowledge would apply.

Still, he recommended that I focus on controlling my qi. When he was at my stage, he had to learn how to control the qi that flowed outside of his body.

I made the connection almost instantly. Father learned to control the qi outside his body, but I had to control the qi deep inside my body. The qi in my soul.

I knew how to control the qi flowing through my body. Learning that had allowed me to breakthrough before. But I had never tried to control the huge body of qi in my soul.

Surely it couldn't be that difficult? That night I brought myself to my soul. Seeing this huge volume of qi made me wonder how it fit inside my body. Was it in a separate space?

The qi in my soul was like a thought. Thoughts originate in the brain, and we become so used to thinking that they're a part of us. But if you try to feel where they are, they're intangible.

How do you touch something intangible? Well, you anchor it to something real. We imagine that our thoughts are our own voice, making it easier to control.

I gave a voice to my qi. I imagined each droplet as its own person. I started small. Just a single droplet. I talked to it, persuading it to come to me.

It took some time, but I felt that droplet swim towards me. My concentration was broken by the rush of euphoria. It was here! I had broken through!

I lay back in my cot, savouring every moment. It was addicting, this incredible rush that came with breakthrough.

After the pleasure passed, I felt a clarity to my thoughts. I had struggled with addiction in my past life, and I knew that it would be difficult to stop myself rushing breakthroughs.

Cultivation was amazing, but it had a sinister side. I had already caused my family heartbreak by cultivating, but that didn't stop me. Was cultivation yet another harmful addiction?