Chapter 7: The Basic Principles Of Cultivation
I couldn't sleep, so I cultivated.
That sentence would've meant something very different in any of the three hundred novels I'd read. In those stories, "I cultivated" meant sitting in a cave absorbing the concentrated essence of heaven and earth while spiritual energy poured through perfectly mapped meridians in volumes that could level mountains.
What I actually did was sit behind the house in the dirt, close my eyes, soften my attention, and spend forty minutes trying to hold onto the boundary between internal and external qi for more than ten consecutive breaths.
My current record was fourteen.
The process was the same each time. Relax the mind and let the warmth build behind the sternum until it radiated outward on its own. Find the membrane and then breathe.
On breath eleven, the membrane stabilized. I could feel it clearly now, a threshold that separated what was mine from what belonged to the world. Internal qi was warm, slow, and rhythmic. External qi was cooler, denser, and it moved in currents that shifted with the wind and the river.
On breath fourteen, my concentration flickered.
I opened my eyes and stared at the stars for a while.
Alright. What do I actually know?