42 Stories (1/2)

”Father, does Crow fight with his chains?”

”Yeah. Ah! I see what you're saying! That's not a bad idea, I'll go visit him tomorrow.”

”Oh, you don't have to–”

”No, no,” he interrupted, ”it's no trouble at all. I'd like to catch up with him anyway.” Father stood up and smoothed out his robes, ”It's getting late now. Let's catch some sleep and we'll talk in the morning.”

We headed to bed, but sleep was the last thing on my mind. I had only been awake for a few hours and was still buzzing with energy.

I took a brief celebratory moment to update my identity card, before taking out the Complete Guide to the Meditative Arts from my storage ring.

Next term, the fights would be relentless. If I couldn't recover my qi after each one, I had no hope of lasting. Meditation was the way forward, I just had to get through this scam of a book.

Reading it was grating and tedious, reminding me of the world I thought I had left behind. Half an hour later, and two chapters in, I had learnt nothing.

It was only in the third chapter that I found something. I almost missed it; it was so hidden within blatant hyperbole, irrelevant information, and sickening narcissism.

To begin with, it outlined the three essential forces of life: jing, qi, and shen. I was used to qi, but the other two forces were new to me.

It described jing as 'essence', given to us at birth and supplemented by nutrition. Certain herbs, such as ginseng, could replenish jing and stop it from leaking.

Shen, on the other hand, was the mind, or 'spirit.' The ascetic sects strove to become conscious of their shen, believing it would help them live a fulfilled life.

In life, there was a constant flow of energy between these three states. In order to maximise qi, one had to know how to convert it from jing. This was done through the Embryonic Breathing Technique.

Sitting cross-legged, hands resting in my lap, I began.

The first stage of the technique was called Reverse Abdominal Breathing. It counter-intuitively instructed me to contract my abdomen and perineum when breathing in and expand them when breathing out.

Settling into this rhythm was uncomfortable. If I lost concentration for a second, I would fall back into my natural breathing cycle. In this state, I couldn't even meditate, but I kept calm and persevered.

After about an hour, I could passively fall into the cycle. Now, it instructed me to bring my focus to the lower dantian. I already had some practice with this, so it was easy to do.

I found that when I exhaled for longer than I inhaled, warmth built, but when I did the reverse, there was a cool sensation. Attracted by the warmth, I adopted the longer exhalation method.,

Submerged within endless breathing cycles, I lost track of time. Eventually, I realised I hadn't been monitoring my qi.

In my neglect, my qi had become backed up and started overflowing through my pores. Bringing myself out of meditation, I took a look at the qi surrounding my body.

Tiny tendrils flickered from every surface of my body, like a thick fur coat. It was still dark outside, so I could only have been meditating for a few hours. This meditation method was powerful.

I swiftly siphoned off the overflowing qi and used it to fill my soul. There was still plenty to spare, so I decided to practice the Qi Manifestation Technique for the rest of the night.

For Crow to help me tomorrow, I needed to be able to form a whip. It took a few hours of trial and error, but by the time morning came, I was ready.

Father left quickly after breakfast to see Crow, leaving me alone with mother. I took the opportunity to chat with her in the garden about last night.

”Mother, can we talk about yesterday?”

She put down her shears and arced her back to stretch, ”Baby, why don't we just talk about that later.”

”I just wanna chat for a bit without father.”