Before An Fei’s glistening pupils, the fragile twig carved an elegant dance through the darkening skies. It bobbed, pivoted on its tip, and rotated with a drunken swing, but refused above all else to settle onto the earth where it had once remained for the majority of its lifespan. Xu Lingxin waved her sleeves as she returned to her seat, and the wooden branch maintained its eerie melody.
“Is this a martial arts technique?”
The young girl reached with her right arm, her fingers outstretched towards the dampened skies. With a small leap, her index finger brushed against a moderately-sized knob ingrown into the branch – and with a thin keel of despair, the twig clattered onto the ground and gasped for breath.
“Not a martial arts technique. There is no spiritual essence involved from either of us three; just utilizing the environment’s natural elements.”
Xu Lingxin’s swift reply was easily deciphered by the ears, but was devious to the mind.
An Fei furrowed her brows, and strode to the crackling fire with bewildered steps. She sat besides the quietly brooding He Xin, and poked the ground directly below the crackling embers with her newly acquired branch.
“Only the environment’s natural elements? Then was it a trick involving atmospheric pressure?” the young girl mused while rubbing at her forehead.
“But there wasn’t any winds when the branch was thrown, nor is the atmospheric pressure different…”
“Little Sister Ling… Martial Aunt, you’re overthinking the matter quite a bit, ah.”
Xu Meilian’s lips twitched, and her speech faltered and hitched at the words ‘Little Sister’. The woman gnawed at her lips, and settled for the address Xu Lingxin had determined for An Fei, though her flushed cheeks expressed her destabilizing mood.
“There are no tricks involved with the act of tossing a branch into the air,” Xu Meilian chuckled, and grasped the twig from An Fei’s hand.
“Close your eyes, open the ears, and observe the surroundings. Listen to the world’s whispers and murmurs, and eventually – heng! – there will be a breath of spiritual qi. The only… trick, if it is to be called a trick, is tossing the branch towards a nearby plume.”
As she spoke, the woman tossed the twig in an overhead throw, disregarding all proper throwing posture and strength. The wooden branch flailed aimlessly through the skies as it hurtled towards the unforgiving and unrepentant ground, when it abruptly suspended its motion. Its motions not unlike that of a puppet attached to metallic strings, the twig gasped and jerked through the air as it ascended into the darkened skies, exceeding the height that Xu Lingxin had achieved with her previous throw.
“Atmospheric spiritual qi is present only in small pockets that travel through the vast skies, and is not always contained within our surroundings,” the celestial maiden jerked her fingers, and forced the wooden twig to spring into her hand.
“When spiritual qi is not present, the world will certainly follow the laws that you mentioned earlier. Water flows downstream, objects fall from greater heights, and heat flows to colder objects. However…”
An Fei followed Xu Lingxin’s gesturing hand with her gaze, and stared at the flickering tongues of fire. With a light shake of her head, He Xin reached to retrieve the flaming embers with a pair of tongs, removing the base of the fire. Its source had been removed, yet the young girl soon noticed that the fire had yet to diminish its raging fluster of sparks, and the surroundings seemed colder than just moments before.
“…heat is being removed? Forced endothermic process?”
An Fei jerked in place as the numerous lectures and notes flickered in the depths of her mind. She closed her eyes and fought hard to cling at the dissipating remnants of memory, and managed to wrench together a scattered series of concepts and definitions. The young girl gave herself a breath to muster her thoughts, and ultimately flinched.
To force an endothermic process in a closed system, especially given an environment the size of the open and vast skies, required an astronomical amount of external energy. There was surely bound to be additional explanations and limitations to what her eyes relayed to her brain that the mind couldn’t recall, prompting An Fei to sit in place, utterly dumbfounded.
She seemed to have some sort of epiphany as her mind tunneled deep into a memory that seemed foreign and far distant in the past, yet unflinchingly recent. Her lips moved of their own accord, and repeated the murmurs of a certain maidservant she had in the past –
“Cultivators can achieve feats of miracles through their will and the world’s assistance. They can walk through the skies, float on water, and run through fire…” the young girl whispered, and glanced towards the smiling countenance.
“Is this also… are those caused by these… plumes of spiritual qi?”
“Correct; although, cultivators who have attained the Core Formation Realm had certainly achieve them on their own efforts. The remainder of us cultivators, however, must rely on the world’s blessings to seize the power of miracles and wield them in our grasp.”
Xu Lingxin adjusted her posture onto both knees, and extended both hands towards the source-less fire. Before An Fei’s baffled gaze, the celestial maiden reached into the flickering mass of light and sparks and compressed her hands into a tight grip. Her countenance gave neither expression of pain nor did the flames release the piercing screech of burning protein; instead, as Xu Lingxin retrieved her hands, the ball of flames followed, separated into small nests of sparks clenched in both fists.
“Little Sister, observe closely!”
Xu Lingxin released an invigorated shout, and loosened her fists. Before the flames could escape into the vast skies and declare their freedom, the celestial maiden brought her palms together into a powerful slap.
The sparks were extinguished and light seeped from the gaps between the fingers. With an earsplitting screech, the golden light struck a torn path across the vast skies, lighting up the massive canvas with streaks of lingering radiance. The streaks of light weaved and carved an unusual path through the dark backdrop, forging their escape in a glorious trail.
Their movements seemed to resemble the engravings on a circuit board, and once An Fei’s sea of perception had managed to pool together the captured fragments of memory into a comprehensive scene, she recoiled from the shock. The young girl phased through a series of creased brows and frowns, mutterings of denial, and confused sighs before the three smiling women.
“That… was a diagram of a computer’s motherboard? Why would the lights travel in a path not unlike that of a circuit board…”
She didn’t know much about computing technology, for she was never interested in deconstructing a computer, nor did An Rongchen, her blasted, damnable father of the previous world, allow her to possess a computer of her own. The only images An Fei could relate to were the thinned memories of a lecturer gesturing to several diagrams presented on the projected display, and the droning speeches…
“Little Sister, you’ve seen the pattern the lights followed, no?”
Xu Lingxin beamed when she received the young girl’s befuddled nod of confirmation. The celestial maiden gestured for He Xin to rekindle the embers, and relaxed her body and gazed towards the skies with a lingering sigh.
“Each movement of spiritual qi leaves behind a trace of its path; once the plume had travelled through the entire world, it will follow the trail once more in an infinite cycle,” she chuckled.
“A cultivator is one who can sense the presence of any of these… threads in their vicinity, and is able to harmonize with them to receive spiritual qi. This spiritual qi is received and converted into spiritual essence in the dantian, and as for the usage of spiritual essence – I believe you should know the rest, no?”
“Harmonize with the threads to receive spiritual qi? Siphoning?”
An Fei blinked, and frowned at the nagging sensation digging at the base of her chest with the damnable persistence of a naughty thorn. The young girl poked at the flickering flames with a newly found branch, and glanced at the gloomy silhouette of He Xin busy cleaning the bowls and cauldron.
“To cultivate is then to… dig for the scraps left behind by the skies?”
“To refer to the act of cultivating as digging for scraps… that description is rather harsh, Little Sister. These begging cultivators can gain the power to move the earth at their will and defy the world’s natural laws with ease, and the strongest of them all can desecrate a sizeable portion of the Shattered Star Continent if angered,” Xu Lingxin grimaced, her cheeks flushed.
“It requires talent to sense the presence of the threads of spiritual qi in the skies, and even more so to harmonize with them to absorb spiritual qi. Little Sister, you’re better off eating berries and recovering in the Mourning Forest than attempting to cultivate.”
The young girl’s bottom lip curled into an aggressive pout, and Xu Lingxin erupted in boisterous laughter. As night fell, the conversing silhouettes of four women kept the dullard skies company as the spring moon struggled to ascend to its predecessor’s heights.
