There was a sudden moment of inexplicable dislocation- as though the world had shifted six inches left for no obvious reason. The air tasted different. Still cool, but without that mountain stream or deep well freshness. Tian looked around the cavern. The ugly turtle had vanished.

Tian took a step back into the cavern and nearly tripped. His limbs all felt jerky and uncoordinated. Everything seemed like an annoyance, and worse, like something precious had been stolen from him.

Oh. Oh that’s… yeah.

“Grandpa?”

Just… hang out for a minute. Actually, you might as well lay out your bedroll, I’m pretty sure it’s the null cavern through there. You can sleep in here now.

“Wait, I didn’t beat the guardian.”

Yeah, you did. The whole room was the obstacle for you to overcome. You know this. I know you know this because you said that not even one day ago. “The Guardian” was a naturally occurring manifestation of the place. The water qi that would pacify you, encourage you to sleep, and eventually drown you. Think about how you finally got out.

“I just… went with the flow. Went where the water would go.”

Yeah, but not passively. Bashing against the walls didn’t do it, and not moving wouldn’t do it. Just flowing around the obstacles. Trusting in your understanding of water more than your lying eyes.

“Effortless action. I suddenly wonder what arts Brother Fu practices.”

It might be related. Or it might be that he’s been thinking about this a long time and reading books written by people who have been thinking about it longer than he’s been alive.

“So why do I feel like I’ve just been robbed?”

No dao charm.

“Pardon?”

No dao charm. No… feeling of a higher principle of reality. The qi before was saturated with the Water element. Now it’s pretty pure. The same elemental density that would have killed you was also a major learning opportunity. The longer you could gut it out in the cavern, the longer you could study it. You picked up some things but reached the limit of your endurance. You left the room. The charm is gone. I assume it will reset when everyone swaps rooms, but for you, the opportunity is over.

Well. You can cultivate in this wonderfully qi rich environment, but it’s comparatively nothing.

“Do you think all the rooms are like that?”

To an extent. I can’t imagine it’s that simple, though.

Tian thought that was reasonable. Most things are more complicated than you would expect. For all the talk of returning to simplicity and emptying your mind of complicated thoughts, actually doing it was pretty damn complicated.

“How long do you think we have until they swap us around?”

Six days.

“Really?”

Five chambers, thirty days, you do the math. Assuming that everyone gets an equal amount of time in each room and why wouldn’t they?

Tian nodded and laid out his bedroll on a flat stretch of rock. Lost dao charm or not, his brain was cooked. There was just so much that was felt rather than understood. Like trying to put it in words would never really convey the meaning of what he experienced.

His hands suddenly stilled, his pillow suspended over the blankets. This is why so many cultivation and combat arts manuals sounded utterly cracked. They were trying to put into words something they mostly understood through feelings. They were playing that literary reference game that Brother Long was going on about. References to shared interests so that people would understand what you were getting at.

It was entirely possible that the writers were just bad at writing. But maybe they were just doing their best to explain something inhuman- how they were able to make a tiny twist of the universe do what they asked it to.

He put the pillow down, and put his head on it shortly afterward. Maybe he had figured it out. Maybe not. Either way, he was tired.

The next morning, he investigated the null chamber. He stepped boldly in, and launched himself right back out again like he had just stepped on an exploding talisman.

“KWVRACH!” Tian swore.

What’s that?

“I don’t know any good enough swears, so I made one up. That was awful!”

No qi whatsoever, in a pitch black room. Steady your breath and try again. Maybe even hold your breath. Might help.

Tian tried it. It wasn’t as bad the second time, but it was still intensely unpleasant. His light flickered and went out very quickly but he could feel the door behind him. It was practically the only thing he could feel.

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Elder Rui had said that this room was good for studying elemental principles, or words to that effect. He tried to feel for any sort of qi in the air- but of course there wasn’t any. The only place there would be any sort of qi at all would be inside of him, mostly in the form of his vital energy. Though, it’s not like his middle dantian wasn’t converting vital energy into qi. Just not very much of it.

Which did lead to the problem of him not having the faintest idea what use studying the elements were supposed to provide. Would understanding wood better make Snake Head Vine Body more lethal? Make the Advent of Spring more effective?

Tian thought about that for a half second, then slapped his forehead so hard his head hurt. Of course it would. Of course that’s how things worked. Maybe not directly, but Brother Fu said it again and again and again- he was able to do what he did because he was moving with the dao. The elements were a very high level part of that vast system. The better you understand them, the more deeply or completely you could grasp even a tiny part of them, the greater your future potential would be.

How could it not be huge, when you had mastered a tiny part of the laws of the universe? Hell, it probably even improved the possibility of a revelation. More things to compare other things to at a more sophisticated level. It would definitely improve the power of that revelation- your insight would be that much deeper. Truer. Closer to the dao.

Tian stood in the emptiness, trying not to think too hard about what he just thought. The consequences were too huge.

“We are now officially part of Elder Rui’s faction for life, aren’t we, Grandpa?”

Oh yeah. One thousand percent. At least as far as he and everyone else is concerned- never let someone convince you they are the boss of you forever. At the end of the day, the one responsible for your choices is you. But that’s not what that Rui kid is up to.

That magnificent bastard has been playing a long game and a very big one. He already has at least one Core Disciple to his credit, and I have no idea how many True Disciples. If you or Hong become a Direct Disciple, he’s going to have a free hand to remake the Outer Court in his image. More than he already is, I mean. And I have the suspicion that while he may never hold the sect master’s seat, there are Elders and then there are ELDERS.

“You don’t think he’s aiming for the top spot?”

His cultivation is meh, remember? At least that’s what people told you. I’m willing to bet he was, at best, a core disciple. No, he’s going for a power-behind-the-throne role. Better still, someone whose patronage network includes a future sect master.

It also explained why the void room was so important. Tian started slowly moving through Thunderous Palm. His vital energy depleted fast, but that was fine- he could feel the energy moving in him very clearly. All the brilliant threads of gaseous energy flowing through his meridians. He tried to incorporate what he felt from the strange turtle- that sense of water providing weight and intensity to each move.

It was rough. It was very rough. It was only when he was nearly fainting from energy depletion that he thought he caught the barest hint of it. But it was too late. He had to stagger back into the Water Cavern and recuperate. Advent of Spring roared into action, hauling in vast lungfuls of the pure qi and quickly refilling the depleted vital energy.

Don’t miss the chance! Focus on the feeling of the water qi moving with the wood. Visualize the tree. Feel the water qi adding meaning and mass to the structure and direction provided by the wood. You already figured it out once, now focus on it!

Tian once again visualized the willow tree, with its long roots drawing up the cold water, growing and spreading and reaching up for the sun. Because that was the other thing about willow, wasn’t it? It spread. So long as there was water, those willows could grow and grow. Someone had told him that you could plant willow whips in wet soil and they would grow into saplings. You could make a living wall with them, so long as you took great care to maintain it.

Water gives rise to Wood, fueling endless growth and renewal. It adds mass and meaning. It was the stuff of life itself. The winter gathering of energy before the explosion of spring. He breathed, and the energy circulated through him. Was it filling him more quickly? More densely? He couldn’t tell. He just breathed, and gave his body his full attention.

The second, the very second he was recovered, he launched himself back into the Null Cavern, this time using Snake Head Vine Body. “Six days. We only have six days! And how much time did I waste sleeping?! I was crazy to sleep. Crazy! That elder must have secretly kicked me in the head!”

Pace yourself. Tian could hear Grandpa chuckling. You should take advantage of every moment, but pace yourself. This is only the first cavern of five, and who knows what “finding the true center” means. Probably involves the null chamber though. Focused effort, but pace yourself.

Tian tried his best, he really did, but the sensation of an opportunity slowly slipping through his hands was enough to drive him crazy. What was worse was that he could practically hear Brother Fu tsk’ing in his ear, reminding him that he had just seen proof that forcing things wasn’t the way to progress.

“You are right, Brother Fu. But effortless action doesn’t mean no action, and sometimes the way of nature is to get off your ass and chase something!”

The biggest immediate gain was in understanding something of the why behind what he had been blindly doing since he first started cultivating. It’s good to visualize, but it’s a lot better to know how to put that visualization to use. Tian hadn’t the first clue how to transform his image of a willow tree drawing water in through its roots into usable strength. Fortunately, Myriad Blessings Child, the author of the art, was several steps ahead of him.

The circulation pathways had a deeper, hidden meaning to them. Tian was sure of it. The human body had only so many meridians, but it had hundreds of acupoints placed along those meridians. There had to be a reason for the energy to route through some and not others. His instinct was that it was tied to elemental energy, but this was miles and miles beyond anything anyone had ever taught him.

An art began in his mind as his will sent his intention to his vital energy. That energy was never stagnant, it flowed smoothly through the meridians all over his body, maintaining it. He then took a portion of that energy and pulled it away from its usual purpose, and directed it towards a particular course. A network of roads and waystations. And by concentrating the energy in that certain course caused changes to occur.

It let him control the specially made rope and dart of his rope dart like another hand. It let him make his body lighter, or his senses sharper, or shatter the inner organs of his enemies. Then, whatever energy remained closed the loop. The return part was every bit as much of the art as the gathering and activation of strength.

He could feel the acupoints delicately throb and warm as the dense vital energy flowed through them in the Null Cavern. It was almost impossible in the Water Cavern- the dense atmospheric qi flushed his whole body with energy. The tiny signals were lost in all the happy noise. It was only here, in the Six Turn Caverns, that he could investigate such a magical thing so early in his cultivation journey.

Tian was endlessly fascinated. If he had been at the Depot, he would have been given several missions to bed already. He didn’t care. He could feel the future waving at him, inviting him upwards. Reminding him that he had a place in the endless heavens. If he was strong enough to leap off the heavy earth, and fly.