Cultivation Fever

He turned his head and looked down at me.

"I would love for you to learn my cultivation techniques," he looked back up and sighed, "but your mother"s right about this one. I can"t let you learn how to fight until you"re older."

My heart sank a bit. How long did I have to wait?

He squatted down next to me, took my hands and looked me in the eyes.

"It"s just not right for a kid in your position to start that perilous journey. You have complete safety here, and parents that love you. I hope you know that."

"Make no mistake, when you turn eight years old, I will let you make a decision. I don"t want our desires for your future to affect you."

"When that day comes, you can choose Military School, any Research Inst.i.tution, enter a Sect… h.e.l.l, you can even become an apprentice farmer, blacksmith or merchant."

He gripped my hands tight.

"You"re a smart kid and you"re naturally gifted. The world"s your oyster Oscar. But it"s a scary place. Enjoy this peace while you can."

"What daddy want?" I asked innocently.

His smile was gentle, his eyes full of love.

"For you to be happy."

We walked back into the house in silence. I saw mother standing at the door to the library, a pleasant smile on her face. She turned away and walked out of the study.

Eight years. That meant I had just shy of seven years left at home. Now that I had a date in my head, time flew by.

Father often spent his days off taking me to Tony and Lucia"s house. I played with Davide, and he talked with Tony.

I forged a close bond with Davide as I watched him grow. He started affectionately calling me "big bro." It was fitting in more ways than one.

I realised that Tony wasn"t short, Dad was just a giant. Even mother was taller than the average man. And I was growing up to be quite beefy.

By the age of two, I had caught up to Emilio"s height. Emilio was a year and a half my senior, and Davide"s real older brother. He took after his mother and had a wicked streak.

He often tormented us when we were younger, but after the day I could look him dead in the eyes, he stopped. He was quite bitter about our friendship. He didn"t seem to have one himself.

When I could finally keep up with Mother"s speedy walking, she started bringing me with her to town. She was loved by the townspeople and attracted attention with her mere presence.

It was difficult to miss this tall, beautiful woman with long, flowing auburn hair. My face was taking after hers, although I unmistakably had father"s strong nose.

Father"s hair was short and gold, with streaks of white. My hair seemed to be a combination of my parents"; light brown with fair blonde tufts at the front.

With my body growing so fast, I was able to help mother with ch.o.r.es. Although "help" was a loose term. Whatever I cleaned, she cleaned again after me.

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 n.o.ble family, or select government inst.i.tutions 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 s.p.a.ce?

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 pa.s.sed, 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?