Sword and Snow

Emery

Everyday life had truly fallen into an easy rhythm. It took a little while after Kord, Enrik, Karn, and Briar joined us, but the whole family once again had fallen into a reliable schedule for the most part, and things were going well.

With the single exception of the kids' Cultivator training.

It had been years since Cierra had asked to start learning how to defend herself, and Stena had ended up joining her lessons not long after she had started them. Avuri and I had agreed to keep Stena's training light for a while because she was still young, which had left a fair gap between the two sisters.

Cierra was nearing the peak of the Core Formation stage, and would be ready to Awaken her Core and enter the Human Realm soon. Stena had only recently entered the Core Formation stage, having completed her Core a little before we had heard news of the kidnappings around Resin.

Now it was finally time for the newer kids to join the class. They had adjusted to their new home life enough that they were able to meditate without their thoughts and fears taking over, and, perhaps more importantly, wanted to take part in the daily lessons that we did before lunch.

All of that was fine, honestly. The issue was that we were struggling to decide what sorts of boundaries to set with their Cultivation. The Basin was rich with natural Qi, and its location between the four Peaks even meant that the elemental Qi was usually well balanced, especially toward the middle of the Basin where the training pavilion was located.

Altogether, it made it very easy to Cultivate, even for children. Perhaps even especially for children, as their body naturally wanted to draw in well balanced Qi for forming their Core. Cierra had managed to essentially reach the peak of Core Formation in two years, which was fast. It wasn't a once-in-ten-thousand-year-genius fast or some such nonsense, but it was still quick.

Quick enough that it made me hesitate on allowing the other kids to follow in her footsteps. Cultivators that grew too quickly often had cracks in their Foundation. It was a well-known fact of Cultivator life that if one rushed down the path, they would be ill-equipped to continue into the future. But how fast was too fast was a question with no answer.

Worse still, I felt particularly unqualified to tackle the problem. Having been forced through the early stages of Cultivation by demonic experimentation far too young, then guided as a child by a powerful dragon who had taught me how to channel my cursed power into more natural growth was hardly experience to base another child's growth and direction on. And the last thing I wanted to do was push any of my kids too hard or too quickly and hurt them in the process.

Avuri, meanwhile, had gone through her own personal bit of hell as a child of a rich family that bent their children to their will. In addition, growing up in Bouquet, where Qi was less abundant, leaving the area somewhat middling in power, left it's own complications. Children growing up there usually didn't need to worry about future Cultivation because they rarely advanced past the Earth Realm.

For the moment, things were still manageable - at least until Cierra truly hit the peak of Core Formation. But the two of us were woefully underqualified to make sound judgements on how to raise our children when it came to Cultivation, and now that we were about to be bumping heads against the first of those walls, it was showing.

"Would Vale know what to do?" Avuri asked me silently as we watched the six kids meditate and Cultivate.

"Honestly? I'm not sure. Dragons probably have their own idea of 'normal', and Vale's probably not even familiar with those normals."

"But he raised you and your siblings well, didn't he?"

"Ri, we were quite literally demonic monsters as children. I'm not sure that's an experience we should judge by."

"So…what do we do, then? We already agreed that going by my family's standards is just as bad, so…"

I sighed, my body slumping over my pulled up knees as I sat on the ground watching our kids. "I don't know."

Both of us had our eyes locked on the kids. Each of them had been doing incredibly well, even the four newer additions to the family. Their eyes were comfortably closed, and I could feel their bodies drawing in the ambient Qi around them. It was slow and steady, maintaining a smooth pull from the air around them. How Karn and Briar had managed to understand the process at around four years old was beyond me, but they had picked it up almost as quickly as their older siblings.

I secretly suspected that the two of them were just predisposed to being quiet and observant, which let them meditate easily.

"Could we ask the Elders, you think?" Avuri asked.

"It's a possibility, I think. They're still dragons, though, so I don't know how much they know about human Cultivation."

"More than Vale?"

"More than Vale." I agreed, mulling over the possibilities. The simple truth was that neither of us knew any good, normal, and reliable human Cultivators that we trusted. "The other option is that we go with the theories we've read, and trust ourselves to see any issues before they arise."

"Do you think that's wise?"

I just shrugged. "We don't have a lot of options. But we're both talented enough to spot obvious flaws in a Foundation, surely."

"I can agree with that."

"And I'm sure plenty of parents out there help their kids Cultivate without outside guidance."

"Sure," Avuri allowed, "But I'm also sure that those parents aren't in charge of a mini-sect of their own."

"If I have my way, these kids won't ever be near any of the fighting." I sent.

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"We both know that won't work."

"I can dream."

"Besides, this whole thing started with Cierra wanting to defend herself. We should take that desire seriously."

"I plan to. None of our kids will be defenseless ever again."

"It sounds like you have a plan."

"I know the basic timeline that I've read about. It's supposedly the standard for most major sects; Qi Gathering at six, Core Formation at nine, Human Realm at thirteen, Earth Realm at twenty."

"We're not following that, are we?"

"No." I sent, tinged with amusement. "Despite our worries about it, we should still recognize our good fortunes with where we live."

"So, move the timeline up a bit." Avuri said. "Say, Human Realm at ten, Earth Realm at sixteen?"

I stared at the youngest two kids, already in the Qi Gathering stage at four, then pointed at them. "I think those two little monsters are outliers. Being able to concentrate the way they do at four isn't normal, so I'm not planning to include them in the general timeline for our family."

"Seems reasonable, sure."

"I think if we end up with more children -"

"When we end up with more children. Be honest." Avuri sent, interrupting me entirely.

I turned to her with a soft smile. "When we end up with more children, I wouldn't start them on Qi Gathering until five, maybe six. If we aim for a relaxed pace to avoid stressing their Foundations, then reaching Core Formation around nine seems reasonable."

"That feels about right. Then Human Realm at…eleven?"

I shook my head. "No, I think Human Realm still at ten, like you said."

"You literally just mentioned taking a relaxed pace, but you want to jump through an entire stage in a year?"

"Ri, you know as well as I do that the move between Core Formation and Human Realm is like a half step."

"Sure, but if we're purposefully taking it slow with them, shouldn't we still extend it?"

"I do want to keep general growth slow, but I think that one stage is where we can gain a little extra ground. The Basin is so flush with balanced Qi that gathering the amount needed to Awaken your core is incredibly easy. Cierra did it in under a year, too. And because the transition between Core Formation and Human Realm doesn't require any actual consolidation of power, only accumulation of it, there's no reason to take it slowly."

Avuri seemed to be considering what I was saying, which was good. If I was making any bad leaps in logic, I wanted her to catch it. But I was still pretty sure my logic was solid.

The Qi Gathering stage was very important to a Cultivator's long-term growth. While the two stages before reaching the Human Realm were referred to as the Foundation stage, it was really only Qi Gathering that was truly worthy of that name, as I understood it.

The Qi Gathering stage was entirely focused on the young Cultivator gathering ambient Qi into their body and condensing that Qi into a core. Done properly, the core was formed slowly through consolidating all of the Qi into a tightly packed ball of power. Once that core was so densely packed that it reached a minimal critical mass to sustain itself, it solidified into the Cultivator's Core, bringing them into the Core Formation stage.

If someone sped through the Qi Formation stage, not taking care to consolidate their Qi properly, their Core would end up weak and brittle, or even cracked. Which was why I wanted our children to take their time in that stage, and consolidate everything slowly and properly.

The Core Formation stage, in contrast, was more focused on gathering enough Qi to Awaken the Core. It was more akin to gathering enough firewood and fuel to start a fire, as opposed to Qi Gathering's building the firepit itself. While the Cultivator would spend a long time building up the Qi within their Core to breakthrough to the Human Realm, the vast majority of the gathered Qi would be used as fuel to jumpstart the 'burning' of Qi within the core.

The process essentially consumed a huge amount of the gathered Qi to start the process. But because it was consumed, there was no real need to consolidate the Qi beforehand - it was all about amount, not quality. Once you had enough to burn, that was it. The breakthrough process itself was hard, but the stage as a whole was not.

So I was fairly positive that the abundance of Qi in the Basin could make that stage very short. And then, once they were in the Human Realm, we could slow down again.

"If we speed through the Core Formation stage safely, I think the rest of your timeline works. Human Realm at ten, then aim for Earth Realm around fifteen. Of course, all of this is flexible, but I think we should think of these more as minimums, and not goals."

I watched as Avuri seemed to consider that as well, before she nodded. "So, no pushing anyone for speed. Instead, we make it a rule that we don't Awaken anyone before their tenth birthday."

"I think I'm with you, for that step in particular. I don't mind if anyone is slow to progress. Hell, I don't even mind if we end up with kids who have no interest in Cultivation at all. But I do think we need to set some boundaries to be sure that they all remain safe and take the time to build themselves properly."

Avuri nodded. "No objections."

I responded with a nod of my own, then looked back at the kids as they quietly meditated. "That does mean we hold Cierra at the peak of Core Formation for another six months."

I could feel the tinge of stress that my statement induced in my wife. "She's going to be such a handful."

"I know. But if we're going to set a hard rule, we should follow it. And even as it was, we probably allowed her to advance to Core Formation too quickly."

Avuri sighed in agreement. "I don't think she has any issues with her Foundation, but we could still take the next six months to work with her and make sure she's rock solid."

"I think that's a good idea. "

"What about Stena?"

I eyed our second daughter carefully. "I'm worried about her."

"I know."

"I think we should work with her too. Firm up her Core before we let her get too much further."

"Yeah."

Stena had started training with Cierra around the same time, but she had also clearly rushed to keep up with her older sister. Her Core wasn't damaged, necessarily, but it wasn't nearly as sturdy and solid as it should have been. But it was also something that I struggled to blame on anyone but myself and Avuri. We should have thought all of this through before we let her enter the Core Formation stage as a six year old.

With a solid plan, though, we could focus on preparing her for the future, and reinforce her Foundation before letting her move on.

It was just bound to be a lot of work, for all of us.