Chương 83: Too Clever by Half

Breath came slow and heavy, tinted with the taste of iron as he stared down at the prey before him. The desire to rend and tear, to rip and bite. It overwhelmed him as he felt a mix of blood and drool spill down his chin. An odd feeling came from his fingers as they changed. Talons formed as his nails lengthened and-- A cracking noise made his ears ring as his head whipped around. Paike blinked. Looking down at his normal hands. Slowly he reached up and wiped his chin with the sleeve of his robe.

He felt his teeth and found them normal, though the lining behind them felt a little sharper.

"Good. Your back." Taka said as he sat back down. Paike rolled his head from side to side.

"Did you have to slap me that hard? My neck hurts."

"That was the third blow. The lighter ones didn't seem to get through," Taka said.

"But you managed not to attack. Being able to hold yourself back already is impressive progress." Paike didn't really think that he did much to hold himself back. He felt completely overwhelmed and more stunned. Locked in place by indecision rather than actually in control. Maybe that was progress; he did remember everything this time. Certainly the instincts of violence were still there. But from the little he knew about battle trances, that was the point, and he couldn't get rid of that.

"I can remember it, but I don't think I was really in control." He hedged.

"But if that was supposed to make me get into the trance, why did you let me do it here? I could have hurt someone!"

"Could you have, brother?" Taka asked with a raised eyebrow. Paike looked at his twin. He was a bit more muscular, having trained more as a mortal, but they were the same height. However, Taka was leagues stronger than him. More than a full realm, with just as good foundational training and more advanced training as well. He had far more arts. Could Paike have hurt Taka? No, he had as much chance as a snowflake in a forest fire. But he was pretty sure that he could have destroyed the teashop around them.

The fight might end as soon as it started, but Taka would have to use enough qi that collateral damage was unavoidable. With all his tricks, he was certainly going to be able to get more techniques off than when they had last sparred. And there were some real surprises in his arsenal as well. Not that he was going to test that. Paike just sat back down.

"So is that the plan for today?"

"Yes," Taka said.

"I'm going to help you get in the trance without battle. Activating without threat will help you maintain control longer each time you consciously enter it. Eventually you will have control over the physical changes as well. When you have fully integrated the trance, it will be active at all times, but you are realms away from your mind being able to handle that yet." They repeated this exercise for hours. Taka talked Paike into the trance and then helped him snap out of it.

Each time it got easier; each time Paike needed less encouragement to get out of it. The whole while, Paike kept a close eye on his brother. He kept waiting for something, but Taka seemed infinitely patient. Even when Paike still couldn't actually do anything while in the trance consciously. It was still far too early for his opinions on his brother, but it seemed that his suspicions had some legs. His brother had changed somewhat. Next time he would truly consider inviting Liming.

Paike returned to the house late in the evening. Again coming back to his new house, he was beyond worn out. The meditation had not been hard, but continually wrestling with the more beastial side of his nature left his brain in a fog. It seemed that even the physical transformation took a lot out of him. His body felt wrecked and his physical cultivation needed tending.

Guan Li was still not home, but he didn't think anything of it as he looked to bed, longing to get a full night's sleep for the second day in a row. However, before he could retire for the night, there were a couple of things he needed to take care of. He found a few sheets of paper and jotted down the ideas that had occurred to him throughout the day. He also did his best to write down everything he had learned from Elder Song.

Then he started going through all the implications of his qi being different in the way that she thought and how it tied back to his ideas and work with Guan Li. It was when he was on his second stack of paper that Guan Li stumbled into the house. Paike looked up to confirm it was him, then finished the thought he was writing down before his exhausted brain caught up to what he saw. Guan Li limped past him and went for the pitcher of water, kept chilled by an artifact.

"What happened to you?" Paike asked.

"Where were you?" Guan Li asked at the same time. Paike answered first as it was rather simple.

"I was meeting with an inner sect disciple to get lessons for my battle trance." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Ah," Guan Li said as he sipped some water and then took a healing pill.

"Well, you missed the announcement then." Paike pushed his papers to the side.

"Announcement?"

"The elders have decided that the new disciples have grown enough that they are removing the restrictions on the legacy outer sect disciples." Guan Li said with lips pressed tight in annoyance. The swelling on his face was rapidly dwindling as the healing pill took effect.

"That wasn't supposed to be for a while?" Paike was confused. That was supposed to happen later; it hadn't been a month yet, right? He was starting to lose track of the days now that the class was canceled and he wasn't sleeping every night. Guan Li shrugged.

"I don't know what to tell you. They said something about not wanting our development to stall."

"What does that mean?" Paike had an idea. The older cultivators were always talking about finding struggle to force one to grow, but this seemed strange even for them. A few more weeks would have made sense. Liming and a few others would have made it to Topaz, and they would have been on even footing. Besides, it wasn't like any of the new disciples were stalling. Even those at the peak, like he and Li Feng, were still moving at an incredible pace. Did the elders know something he didn't?

Was his momentum going to run out if he finally got his feet under him and caught up on the hundred things he still needed to do?

"Maybe Liming knows more? I think she might have understood it more, but I was too busy to ask her about some of the stuff I didn't get. The more advanced cultivators from previous years are coming down hard, trying to make sure that everyone knows their place." Guan Li said as he started to prepare some food.

"Do you want anything?" Paike shook his head and pushed some of the papers over to Guan Li.

"No, I already ate. But here are some other ideas I had; take a look and see what you think. Also, we are going to need to stock up on paper again."

"I'll take a look. Also, I'll set up a regular delivery tomorrow. A week ago I wouldn't have ever believed that I would need this much paper." Guan Li said.

"Well, if you wrote smaller, it wouldn't be so bad," Paike quipped with a small smile.

"Like you're any better with all your diagrams and drawings." Guan Li shot back.

"Besides, some of the characters are hard to get right if I make them too small." Paike had almost forgotten that Guan Li could barely read and write just a few weeks ago. So maybe he had an excuse.

"Fair enough." Paike conceded, and he slid his roommate a pouch of spirit stone.

"For my half."

"Do we have much more? I have my own thoughts to get down on paper as well." Guan Li asked as he picked up the pouch. Paike looked to the single crate they had left.

"Probably enough. Just try to keep the table clean." He got up and, unfortunately, walked past his bedroom and entered his cultivation chamber. He might have been lucky today and missed the start of the conflict, but he didn't think it would pass by him forever. If more powerful cultivators were looking to establish their place in the hierarchy, he wanted to be ready. He wasn't going to let himself, his sister, or his friend get pushed around.

Settling into the position in the center of the room, Paike dove into his physical cultivation. It didn't demand much qi from him, which was convenient as he was quite low and wanted to stretch his dantian as much as possible before refilling it. The last week of constant physical cultivation had done well to saturate it with qi anyway. And there were always things he could do. Besides the long list of things that Elder Ji had given him to work on, there were several things he noticed in his session with Taka.

His battle trance had initially come from his physical cultivation. It had made sense that it would grow with it. However, that wasn't really the case. The trance had actually originated from the aspect of the ancient spirit that he had stolen. When he integrated the tainted qi into his cultivation, the physical changes had started, including the battle trance. So just any improvements to his physical cultivation were not guaranteed to be compatible.

For example, the room he had given his qi channels to flex worked well with the qi channels and hadn't given him any problems so far. But when he was in his trance, he could feel that the gap was causing problems. The repeated activations had shifted many things out of enlightenment. Small perturbations that had rippled through his cultivation and created little inefficiencies that would compound if left unchecked. Paike took some time to consider the pattern and what he thought the causes were. There were several.

He also tried to connect it with some of the things he had figured out and what he had learned from his conversation with Elder Song. However, there wasn't that much overlap. He found himself falling back on what Elder Ji and Taka had taught him. After a little consideration, he realized that his solution to his qi channels bowing and flaking with his internal circulation method for his qi was too simple.

Taka talked about how to prepare oneself for the battle trance, and from that Paike was able to infer how it would affect one's cultivation. Then he took from the idea that Elder Ji had given him and Li Feng, as they were the only ones using Topaz qi. But then also found himself thinking back to the instructions Elder Ji had given Guan Li. In some ways, they were more advanced. He cobbled all that together and started to develop his own idea. After all the crazy things he had done this last week.

From creating his own techniques, to theory crafting general principles to improve and modify arts or helping a sixth realm or above with her research, everything he had done was so far beyond normal that this didn't register as insane to him right away. There were reasons that new cultivators followed established paths. They didn't know enough to invent. They were too fragile to survive if anything went wrong. The foundations laid and early realms were hard to fix and could prevent one from reaching higher.

However, his physical cultivation did not have a manual, not that it was too unique at this point. But still, changes and innovation were left to the geniuses or those in the higher realms. Those who ignored that usually ended up flaming out early. Or just dying in an easily avoided accident while failing to break through. None of the crosses Paike's mind as he developed a way for his physical cultivation to not only flow with the natural rhythms of his body. Not only flex with his qi channels.

No, it wasn't until he was starting to make the changes that would cause the physical cultivation to work as a pump, rhythmically squeezing the qi channels to further accelerate his qi through them, to avoid the friction in the channels from slowing it down further, that he thought he might have gone too far. It was the heart palpitations caused by his seizing aorta that alerted him. They seemed to be caused by the flexing of his aorta as it was contorted in a way that didn't align with his heartbeat.