Book 3: Chapter 32: Dilemma
Sen kept up his kicking at the door until he eventually grew so bored with it that he was feeling tired. By then, it was late into the night, so he ignored the tray of food and settled onto the pallet. It wasn’t comfortable, but his body had been remade so often now that he doubted it would bother him to sleep outside in the middle of a torrential downpour. He slept for two hours, which was apparently all that he required, and then he resumed his assault on the door. Since he couldn’t use his qi to assess the door, he just had to hope that this nearly relentless assault would produce a result. Ideally, the door would eventually give way. That would give him a chance to find Lifen and Lo Meifeng. He didn’t seem especially likely, but maybe the three of them could figure out a way to escape. Less ideally, his captor would grow so weary of the noise that it would provoke a response. Sen accepted that the response might well be violent, but that could create opportunities in its own right. Plus, Sen would take some small measure of petty joy out of frustrating his captors.
From time to time, he would switch off legs just to even out the exercise he was getting. After a time, though, the kicking became like a meditation for him. At first, his thoughts raced from topic to topic, from implausible plan to even more implausible plan, and from memory to memory. He wondered how disappointed Master Feng would be once he learned that Sen let himself get caught and imprisoned. That entire line of thought was so disheartening and disquieting that he had to forcibly shove it away, lest it steal his motivation. Yet, as the hours wore on, the thoughts became fewer and fewer, the ridiculous plans faded away to nothing, and all that was left was a smooth, unperturbed emptiness in his heart, mind, and soul. Left to his own devices, Sen might well have continued on like that for days or weeks, but he wasn’t left to his own devices. When midday came, Sen found himself forcibly driven back from the door by something he could physically feel, but that refused to yield any secrets to his qi or his spiritual sense. It felt like a wall was slowly driving him across the room.
When Sen had been pushed all the way back to the pallet, Lan Zi Rui entered the room carrying another tray. As if to mock Sen’s efforts, the door swung shut behind the old man with a soft click. He offered Sen a smile that went unreturned. Then, his eyes fell on the tray from the previous day. He frowned at the untouched food and water. The old man sat down and placed the new tray next to the previous day’s tray.
“I know our food is simple, but it is filling.”
Sen didn’t dignify the statement with a response.
“Will you not speak with me?”
“Return what you stole from me. Release me and my friends from this imprisonment. Then, perhaps, we will have something to discuss.”
“We have stolen nothing from you. We merely safeguard it.”
Sen rolled his eyes at that doublespeak.
“Why do you rail against fate-,” started the old man, only for Sen to raise a hand.
“Do not speak to me about fate. It’s the easiest excuse in the world for justifying doing whatever you want to do.”
“You don’t believe in fate?”
Sen felt the overwhelming urge to answer, but he pushed that down hard. The old man waited, apparently expecting Sen to answer. Then, he shook his head.
“This hostility is unnecessary.”
Sen didn’t need to say anything that time. The fury he felt at being captured and held radiated off of him like a physical presence. The old man was quiet for a time before he gestured at the tray.
“Will you not eat something?”
“Resist. Escape.”
“What?”
“Those are the obligations of a prisoner. Resist and escape. That makes anything you want, by definition, something I oppose.”
“You don’t know what I want,” said Lan Zi Rui.
“Wrong. I don’t care what you want.”
“Even if what I want is to your benefit?”
“Let me guess. All I need to do to reap these benefits is comply, right?”
“You make it sound so-,” Lan Zi Rui hesitated.
“Accurate. Factual. Truthful.”
“Dirty,” said Lan Zi Rui. “Compliance isn’t always evil. After all, students comply with their masters.”
Without even meaning for it to happen, Sen’s killing intent filled the room. He found himself screaming at the old man, who didn’t seem harmed but definitely looked alarmed.
“You are not my master! You will never be my master! I will starve to death in this cell before I do anything you want!”
Sen tried to hurl himself at the old man, but once more found himself blocked by the invisible wall. Sen battered at that wall with his fists, with his feet, with lightning, with fire, and with wind blades. At first, the old man seemed like he planned to patiently wait out the storm. When it became clear that Sen had no intention of stopping, Lan Zi Rui sighed and rose to his feet.
“I will come back tomorrow and try again.”
“Don’t bother,” growled Sen.
After that, Sen was more determined than ever to break down the door, or at least to try until his body gave out. He started cultivating, less because he thought it would do anything and more out of habit. He was surprised to find that he had ready access to environmental qi. He wouldn’t have left a prisoner that option. So, Sen kicked the door, over and over, and he cultivated, sinking deeper and deeper into the cultivation trance. When he found himself being pushed back from the door, he simply retreated to the pallet, sank into a kneeling position, and let himself drop deeper into the trance. The old man came and went. He talked at Sen, who was so deep into his cultivation that he didn’t hear any of it. When Lan Zi Rui eventually grew bored and left, Sen returned to the door. With nothing but time to burn, he experimented with all of the ideas he’d had about a new cultivation method. He tried things that might have sounded insane to him at other times.
At first, he simply experimented with new routes that his qi could take through his channels. After that, he experimented with separating out specific kinds of qi and sending them on different paths through his channels at the same time. Then, he tried braiding those separate strands of individual qi and sending the braided qi through his channels along different paths. That had startling results. He found that sending it along certain routes through his channels seemed to supplement his body the way that food might otherwise do. It wasn’t exactly the same. He didn’t stop wanting food, but as the weeks passed, he found that he no longer craved food or water. It seemed that man could live by qi alone if his cultivation was advanced enough. When he sent that braided qi along a different path, it actually merged into more of that strange qi. He stopped that almost as soon as he figured out what was happening. The strange qi he produced almost on accident immediately joined the existing ribbon that orbited the outer edges of his dantian. That ribbon of strange, fused qi was in a kind of balance with his ribbon of heavenly qi, and he was very nervous about doing anything that might upset that balance.
When he ran out of things to do with environmental qi, he turned his attention to the slowly growing pool of liquid qi in his dantian. He tried mixing it with environmental qi and sending the mixture along different paths through his channels. That met with mixed results. Some were encouraging, and some were painful. Eventually, he tried it with just the liquid qi. He’d always been cautious about using that liquid qi before, so cautious that it had become an ingrained habit. Yet, now, with his core already formed and seemingly stabilized, he was more willing to try things with that liquid qi. Especially with the double helix of strange qi and heavenly qi doing all the heavy lifting of making more liquid qi. Again, he found interesting results. Cycling liquid qi could empower his body, although still not enough to break through the door. He even burned up a few drops of liquid qi to add further strength to his kicks, but that plain wooden door remained immune to harm.
When he ran out of ideas to try with liquid qi, he went back to basics. He’d tried running a couple of kinds of qi in parallel through his channels, but he wasn’t just cultivating two types of qi. He was cultivating all five major types of qi and a few others to boot. If he was going to advance again any time in the next hundred years, he needed something that addressed all of those types of qi. Sen had thought a lot about the cultivation techniques he’d read for people like him at the core formation stage. He didn’t have access to the manuals themselves anymore, but he had a good memory. He feared he knew what was required of him, and that those demands were simply beyond his capabilities. It was then, after months of ceaseless kicking, that Sen returned to his dusty pallet and stretched out. There wasn’t going to be room for anything else if he was right. Sen let himself drop completely into the cultivation trance. The outside world didn’t simply cease to have meaning for him. It ceased to exist as a thought or an idea in his head.
He knew that what he was trying to do was risky. Cultivators had gotten lost forever in trances that weren’t even as deep as the one he’d been living in full-time for months. Then again, it wasn’t as though he really had anything to lose. He was almost absolutely certain that he would never leave that cell. In those circumstances, a dive into the purest depths of a cultivation trance, something he would never have even contemplated in the outside world, became simply one more thing. If he got lost and never woke up, he wouldn’t lose anything. If he succeeded, he would emerge with a cultivation technique that should carry him through a complete stage of advancement. He hovered inside his own being, a whisper from fully committing to the course of action. If he did get lost, he wouldn’t be able to help Lo Meifeng or Lifen. Of course, he couldn’t help them now. Nor did he see a way that he’d ever be able to help as he was. His existing cultivation method was too slow. If he had to do any kind of sustained qi techniques, he doubted he’d be able to last more than half a day. Then, he’d need weeks to recover. A better cultivation technique might not empower him to a level where he could fight his way out of the damned cell, but it was a step in that direction. Shaking off the last of his doubts, Sen committed fully to the trance.
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