V5 Chater 40 – Body Cultivation

V5 Chater 40 – Body Cultivation

Breakfast had sounded like a good idea to Sen, and a great way to procrastinate for a little while. Hed 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 wasnt going to happen. The rest of his was thinking about how much he didnt know about what that pill was going to do to him. Hed started 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 hed taken had strongly favored one of his affinities. That wasnt true for this pill. It had attributes in common with some of his affinities, but it wasnt predominantly any one thing. It didnt help that he only had a vague grasp of 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 eating it. He wasnt 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 wouldnt be true after this pill. If everything shed said was true, he should be healthy again. If anything, he should be noticeably stronger than hed been in a long time.

Youre 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.

Its that bad? she asked.

Yeah, he said. Its that bad.

Im sorry.

Sen shook his head. Its 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.

Okay, now youre 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 didnt 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 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 leave him either unconscious or insane. As it was, his waking mind tried to pull away from 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 be the end.

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 wouldnt. He simply needed to endure. Much as he had 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. With 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 his mental image of himself with the peeling back of each layer inside of him.

It didnt 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 wasnt 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 hadnt moved for a while. There hadnt been any new pain. Thank the gods, he thought as he pulled in ragged breaths. That lasted forever. He didnt relax, though. Hed 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 infuse 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 hadnt 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 wasnt just infusing him, but it was searing away all of those parts 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 he couldnt 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 hed 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, despite 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 the 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 didnt kill 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 didnt 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 the 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 hadnt gone far enough away from the galehouse.