Cultivation Fever

A tidal wave of fire built as he moved. It washed over me, and I thought I would be incinerated. But I felt nothing. I just felt drained, and the qi stopped flowing into my eyes.

I shut them and feebly wiped away my tears. When I opened my eyes again, I couldn"t see any flames. Just father"s concerned face looking over me.

He stroked my head and looked me over but seemed to find nothing wrong. A frown of confusion crossed his brow.

"Stephanie!" he called out.

Mother came crashing in. He stepped back and spoke to her, as if explaining what had happened. She took a brief look, then picked me up and laughed.

She sounded amused when she replied to him, and he looked sheepish. She put me back to bed, and with one last quip she left the room. Father gave me a stern gaze and sat back behind his desk.

What where those raging flames? Was that father"s qi? It seemed to be the best explanation. He must have been incredibly strong for that to happen.

Was he stronger than Sirius? No, Sirius"s aura was condensed, but it seemed more potent. Perhaps father just couldn"t control his qi.

I didn"t know the answer for now, but I did know two new facts. Father was a cultivator of some strength, so I could be hopeful for my future. As well as this, my mother"s name was probably Stephanie.

Bringing my focus back to my body, I found that my qi wasn"t leaking as much. When I checked my soul, I could barely feel any qi. Seeing father"s aura had drained me.

I scolded myself internally. In my hurry to learn more, I had exhausted myself yet again. For now, I couldn"t make any progress with the Soul Becoming World Technique.

Light meditation seemed to boost my qi recovery, so I centred my mind and began to slowly explore my body. I went back and forth between my soul and my eyes, opening many parallel channels.

I meditated until the next morning. Even though I meditated longer than last time, I didn"t have a breakthrough. At least the drops of qi had increased in frequency, and I had recovered.

I didn"t seem to need sleep if I kept up this process. I felt wide awake and full of energy. Mother brought me to father"s study in the morning.

This must have been so that he could keep an eye on my cultivation. It was probably strange for a two-week-old infant to be achieving breakthrough.

He had a visitor this morning. I recognised the long moustache and goatee from across the room. It was the same man who had visited me two days ago.

Father opened a sliding door and brought through a chair. He placed it up against the near side of the desk and ushered the man to sit.

"… Adrian," father said. The man nodded and sat down.

"… Carlo," the man replied.

I seemed to be able to pick out their names from that exchange. My father"s name was Carlo, and the man was called Adrian. They seemed quite familiar chatting across the desk. Adrian made occasional looks in my direction.

At some point, Adrian exhaled a thin, wheezing laugh. He took a small box from his robes, placing it on the table. Father opened it and withdrew a thin card. I remembered seeing something similar last time Adrian visited.

They stood up, and father clasped Adrian"s hand with both of his. Father uttered something with a bow, and Adrian nodded. He took one last look at me, and with a shake of his head, he left the study.

Father walked over to me and pinched my nose. He showed me the card, and I could see characters on it. Finally face to face with the first words of my life, I reached out.

Father pa.s.sed it to me, and I tried to hold it up in front of my face. But my arms were too weak, and I dropped it. He laughed and sat me up, then reached for the card, and held it in front of me.

It seemed to be made of translucent jade with a thinly etched border. The characters weren"t printed on it; they looked more like golden crystallisations within. The card was simple but beautiful.

I moved my hand to touch it and was surprised when I did. A pulse of golden light ran from my finger in a circuit-like pattern. When the light reached the border it circled around, and then the whole card blinked.

This card must have been a magic item. It didn"t respond like that to father, and there must be a reason he showed it to me. Maybe it was something made specifically for me?

I tried to study the characters on it. They were different from anything I knew, and I couldn"t make any sense of them. To my surprise, father started reading, tracing his finger along the words.

I knew that this was helpful, and I made some happy playful noises to encourage him. It felt weird, egging him on like this. But it was working, he was sounding out the characters for me.

I tried my hardest to commit them to memory. This wasn"t the boring, useless vocab from my past life. These syllables were the key to learning about this new world.

After a few minutes, father lay me back down. He walked away and sat back at his desk. He was always writing, and I found the scratch of his feathered pen relaxing.

When he finished a page, he placed it in a drawer below his desk and then took out another sheet. Occasionally he made a note in one of the books piled up beside him.

I stopped watching father and thought back to myself. I had the day left to work with and was fully recovered. I knew that it was time to form my soul, so I submerged myself in deep meditation.