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Unintended Cultivator V5: Chater 40 – Body Cultivation
🕑 Added 2023-11-02 07:04:39 +0000 UTCBreakfast had sounded like a good idea to Sen, and a great way to procrastinate for a little while. He’d been waiting for the moment for so long that having it right at his fingertips felt unreal. Part of him was waiting for the moment when he discovered it wasn’t going to happen. The rest of his was thinking about how much he didn’t know about what that pill was going to do to him. He’d starting thinking over the list of ingredients and the bits and pieces of what he could recall about making the pill. The more he thought about it, the less confident he was that he understood what he was in for. Most of the body cultivation pills he’d taken had strongly favored one of his affinities. That wasn’t true for this pill. It had attributes in common with some of his affinities, but it wasn’t predominantly any one thing. It didn’t help that he only had a vague grasp on what the elixir that Elder Bo had instructed him to make had actually done.
The more he thought about it, the more nervous he became. The more nervous he got, the more unhappy his stomach got. He found himself mostly pushing food around instead of actually eating it. He wasn’t paying attention to either Falling Leaf or Fu Ruolan. They were talking about something, but it was just noise in the air to him. Assuming he managed to survive this advancement, he was going to insist that Fu Ruolan show him the manual. He needed to know what he doing to himself so he could prepare for what was going to come next. The kind of secrecy that the nascent soul cultivator had shown initially did make sense. He had been too eager, too desperate, for her to give him the manual. That wouldn’t be true after this pill. If everything she’d said was true, he should be healthy again. If anything, he should be noticeably stronger than he’d been in a long time.
“You’re not eating anything,” said Falling Leaf right into his ear.
Sen jerked away in surprise and then sucked in a pained breath as his back tried to spasm and fresh pain exploded from his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut and took several shuddering breaths. He focused inward, trying to reinforce the sphere of control that kept that pay somewhat at bay. It helped… a little. He forced his eyes open when he felt a little more in control. Falling Leaf was staring at him with wide eyes.
“It’s that bad?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s that bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sen shook his head. “It’s gotten worse since we sat down. I need to stop putting this off.”
Both women gave him somber looks as he stood up from the table. He considered making a joke about it, but then reconsidered. They should look somber. This might well be the last time either of them saw him alive. He looked to Fu Ruolan.
“I appreciate the training.”
“I’ll expect you to pick it back tomorrow. Well, maybe the next day. I’m crazy, not heartless.”
Sen made himself smile at her attempt at humor. If she wanted to deflect, he’d let her. He turned to Falling Leaf.
“I don’t think I ever thanked you for coming with me. So, thank you.”
“Foolish human boy, go take your pill before you run out of time.”
He inclined his head and retreated to his alchemy lab. The pill was still in the cauldron and still giving off that dull red glow. With his mind in better condition, he finally understood what Fu Ruolan meant about the pill being frighteningly powerful. He could feel the power trapped inside of it rolling out into the room in waves. If there hadn’t been thick stone walls in the way, he probably would have felt it out at the table. He quickly revised his original plan to simply take the pill right in the lab. He truly had no idea what it was going to do to him, which meant he wasn’t going to take it anywhere near other people. He put the pill into a storage ring and was shocked to feel how much resistance the ring put up. He usually only felt that when a ring was getting too full. He wondered if there was a similar limit how much qi a ring could contain. That was a sobering idea, if it was true. It was also a question for another day.
He got a couple of startled looks as he headed outside, but he just said something about being careful. Neither Fu Ruolan nor Falling Leaf looked happy about that, but they didn’t object. Sen trudged away through the snow. He was tempted to use his qinggong technique. It would make things faster. Even so, he resisted the urge. He suspected that taxing his cultivation in any way before he took that pill would be monumentally stupid. Besides, he thought, I’m not going that far. He only meant to go far enough to make sure that everyone was out of harm’s way if things went catastrophically wrong. Or even if things went right. There was no guarantee of a tribulation but the possibility existed. There was no reason to risk someone else getting caught up in that particular bit of unpleasantness.
Sen walked through the snow for perhaps half a mile before he decided that he’d gone far enough. Even if the pill did something absolutely ridiculous like make him explode, it shouldn’t reach all the way back to the galehouse from that far away. Sen’s mind tried to race off and chase the possible outcomes of him exploding, but he shook off those thoughts. He was stalling again. The sheer power of that pill had unnerved him, but there was nothing to be done about it. He could literally feel himself getting worse by the minute and was thankful he hadn’t tried to make a less potent version of the pill. He would have doomed himself for sure. Doing what he could to steady his nerves, Sen took the pill out of the storage ring. For just a moment, he could have sworn he heard the ring groan in relief.
“Okay, now you’re imagining things. Just take the stupid pill,” Sen admonished himself.
Before he could procrastinate any longer, he popped the pill in his mouth and forced himself to swallow. When the memory of prior body cultivation advancements sprang to mind, he hurriedly sat down. The melting snow quickly soaked through his robes. By the time that might have become a true frustration, though, Sen had bigger problems to confront.
The pill didn’t seep into his system the way others had. It erupted inside of him. Sen was dimly aware that he was screaming. He noted in the back of his mind that his screams were infused with qi. He heard the trees around him shatter under the force of that screaming and splinters and shards of the wood rained down on him. All of that, though, was background information. The only thing he really had room for was what the pill was doing to him. He felt like the pill was peeling him from the inside out, one infinitesimal layer at a time, opening his bones, muscles, and organs like the petals of some kind of grotesque flower. If not for all of those months learning to distance himself from every-increasing pain, the sheer incandescent agony of the pill working on him would left him either unconscious or insane. As it was, his waking mind tried to pull away form the pain, tried to hide from it, but Sen knew that was a short path to death. He had to stay with the process. Whatever his mind was telling him, he knew that some part of him was gently guiding the process. If he withdrew from the pain, he would withdraw that guiding hand as well. The process would go out of control and that would that.
He reminded himself that this pain, like most other pain, was a temporary condition. It might feel like it was going to last forever, but it wouldn’t. He simply needed to endure. Much as he done on waking, he fastened his mind on the symbol of the jian. It gave him a focal point, a place where he could feed that pain. Which each layer that was peeled back, the torture became more acute, invading every corner of his consciousness. It felt like it was spilling over into his very soul and making a home for itself there. He wrapped his hands around that mental construct of the jian and began to work his way through the forms he had mastered. There had been pain in that process as well. He had survived that. He could survive this. He began timing the motions of mental image of himself with the peeling back of each layer inside of him.
It didn’t hurt any less, but with something to do, he could channel that pain into his forms. Despite everything, he even had a notion about a new attack. It wasn’t the time experiment, even in his own mind, but he did tuck the idea away for later examination. If he was right, it might even impress Master Feng. It took Sen several seconds to realize that his mental projection of himself hadn’t moved for a while. There hadn’t been any new pain. Thank the gods, he thought as he pulled in ragged breathes. That lasted forever. He didn’t relax, though. He’d only reached the eye of the storm. There was more headed his way.
As that very notion crossed his mind, all of that intermixed qi started to infused the deepest exposed layers of his entire being. The screaming started again. At least, he thought it started again. Maybe it had never stopped. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. As agonizing as the metaphoric peeling process had been, this process of infusion was something on a whole other level. The qi wasn’t just infusing him, but it was searing away all of those part of him that had been damaged in his protracted wait to begin this advancement. He knew it was necessary. He knew it would benefit him. He knew it, but it couldn’t make himself believe it. There were limits to what someone could endure, and Sen was certain that he had reached his. He thrashed around inside his own mind looking for anything, anything at all, that could help him hang on to his sanity, to say nothing of his life. When he was sure that he’d be sucked down into an abyss of madness, he heard words echo out of his memory.
“Take the pill. You will survive.”
Falling Leaf had believed in him. She had believed he could survive the pill, in spite of everything that had gone wrong on the journey to get there, she believed. And because she believed, Sen believed. It was a tenuous thread to cling to, but he clung to it with every bit of his strength. Even when he was sure that his body was simply to rip itself apart… Even when he was sure that destruction of all that damaged bone and flesh would wrench his mind away from him, he wrapped his consciousness around those words. He let them give him what he needed most, belief, plain and simple belief. Yes, the Five-Fold Body Transformation killed most of the people who attempted it, but it didn’t them all. He had survived on the mountain. He had survived against demonic cultivators. He had survived imprisonment with the cult. He had even survived a conflict with a nascent soul cultivator. Maybe Falling Leaf was right to believe, he thought. If I could survive all of that, I can survive this.
Sen didn’t have the will to watch how his body was changing, even as he felt the changes happening. He only had room for the echo of those words, that precious lifeline, and they carried him through the other side of storm. When the raging torrent of misery inside of him finally abated, the absence of pain was so jarring that Sen was thrashing on the ground in confusion. He only slowly realized that he was done and that he had survived. He forced himself up onto his knees and looked around at the wasteland of destruction that radiated outward from where he sat. As exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him, all he could think was that he hadn’t gone far enough away from the galehouse.
Comments
Victor
Thanks, enjoyed the chapter. Edit Suggestions: He needed to know what he doing to himself --> what he was doing to himself trying to reinforce the sphere of control that kept that pay --> the pain the galehouse from that far away. --> this far away. out of control and that would that. --> and that would be that.
Xiver
Edit Suggestion: "Yes, the Five-Fold Body Transformation killed most of the people who attempted it, but it didn’t them all." it didn't them all -> it didn't kill them all
Valderan
I feel like a tribulation is waiting for him to stand up so that it can sucker punch him with a lightning bolt to the nuts. "This will help, cultivation love more power!"
Cogsys
Now the question, what will Sen be now? How will the cultivation change him?
Sanctum
Just realized how much I’d been waiting for AND dreading this chapter! Poor Sen. Lucky Sen. Thanks Falling Leaf. Thanks for the chapter Eric! The descriptions were quite vivid without being grotesque. Great balance! A really engaging chapter
Keven Leigh
Grammar and skipped words here and there but damb is it a good chapter. Glad that he finally advanced after so long. Even more reason his power has been earned and not just given, even with his crazy talent
John Anastacio
I think it's funny that Sen put the pill in his ring. Why didn't he just carry it in his hand? This might be the cultivator equivalent of carrying a mobile phone with you everywhere.
Ekko
Finally it happened! Sen is healed, Elder Bo has come closer to becoming Turtle Soup and in Sen's usual style, when he advances unwillingly/uncontrollibly stuff around him Breaks. Tftc
BigFun
Caution, tribulation possible with upgrade
