It was the last day before we got to the capital. We had been in the desert for a few days trekking through and up the mountain pass which led the way to the capital city from this side of the empire. The next morning we’d finish going down the mountain and we should reach the city by nightfall.

  The sun had started to set on the horizon beyond the city, which we could make out from our vantage point. Also, with our advanced eyesight. The sky was orange and pink, and it was growing cool at the high altitude.

  I was sitting on a rock that overlooked the valley we had just spent the past few days traveling through, and Niku was sitting beside me. We were both on our bottoms sitting criss-cross applesauce. Though I think she was actually in the lotus position. She tried to get me to fix my legs, but it was too uncomfortable for me. Betsy was behind us and eating a bit of grass that was growing in a little flat area.

  “Alright then, let’s do this so you can stop whining about it and you can have your element before we meet the emperor. It’ll be beyond weird if you meet him and his advisors without an element being as powerful as you are. His principal advisor is even more powerful than Silas,” Niku told me.

  I frowned and looked over at her. “I haven’t been whining.”

  Betsy snorted behind us, and I glared back at her before I looked back at Niku.

  “Isn’t the head advisor Silas’s father?”

  Niku nodded. “Estranged, yes. Rumor is they haven’t even talked since Silas joined the Jade Mountain Sect. I’m not sure about the whole story though, why Silas wouldn’t join the sect his father was the head of but…” she trailed off and shrugged.

  “Anyway,” Niku put on her serious voice. “Do you know how to use your spiritual sense?”

  I nodded. “Hisai taught me.”

  “Good. Close your eyes and focus on that.”

  And I did. She walked me through it and went a little further in the teachings that Hisai left out. In my spiritual sight, I saw the different sparkles of aura in the world, and she explained the different colors and what they were. I always thought wind aura should be something like to see through? Here it was a sort of light mint green that did have little silvery flecks in it. Also, it didn’t really glow or sparkle like the other bits of aura did in the world. It shimmered more than sparkled, and the edges of the flecks seemed sort of hazy.

  She walked me through and had me focus on the wind aura. It was plentiful in the world right now because, like she wanted, it was a windier day than it had been. Being on top of the mountain might have helped, but it was nice. I breathed in deeply and brought in as much of the wind aura as I could and cycled it through my channels.

  “You’re going to take as much of it as you can into your body and your channels and bring it to your gut. You want to hold it there and squeeze it. If you squeeze it hard enough, it’ll kind of explode and form your core.”

  I cracked open an eye and looked over at her. “Explode?!”

  Her hand reached out and slapped my arm. “Focus.”

  She must have really meant it because she slapped me kind of hard. I hesitated a moment, and she opened her eyes to glare at me. “What?”

  “Is this going to hurt?”

  Niku frowned. “Yes, but you’ll be fine. Normally, kids who aren’t even teenagers yet do this. You, as powerful as you are.”

  The alchemist paused and lifted her eyebrows as she tilted her head back and forth. “You either won’t notice the pain, or because you are so powerful, exploding will be an understatement.”

  I breathed in deep and widened my eyes and then watched her shrug.

  “We won’t know until we do it,” she said.

  Since we were so focused on everything else, we didn’t realize the two men had walked up behind us. “She’s not telling you the real danger.”

  God dammit. I closed my eyes and lowered my head before I asked. “Real danger?”

  Silas grinned. “Yeah. While you’re passed out from the explosion inside of your body, the aura, the mana in your case can run rampant and explode out. You could not wake up.”

  I gulped. “Maybe we should wait.”

  Then I heard an Irishman laugh.

  “No, you want to do this. Hisai wants you to do this. We have our chance. Besides now we have the Anvil Saint himself and another powerful cultivator to help in case something goes wrong.” Niku pushed.

  Silas groaned at the title.

  “Aye. She is right. If it goes wrong, me and Silas here will be able to help, or tell your alchemist girlfriend here what she can give you to help ye. It’s windy, and there are a lot of auras about tonight. She’s right about Silas’s old man too. If he sees ye with yer power and figures out you don’t have an element…”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I ignored the part about where he called Niku my girlfriend, and she didn’t really seem to object either. She just sat there and watched the exchange. She was still relatively small compared to these two, so she didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Besides, if you crack your core, I have something for that,” she said confidently. I tried not to hear the added. “Probably,” she said a moment later.

  William paused for a moment before he continued. “Well, there’ll be questions you don’t want him knowing the answers to.”

  I turned now and looked at him. Even Silas was giving the man a curious side-eye. “Do you know those answers?”

  William grinned and nodded his head. “Aye, I think I do. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me and my sect.”

  “Your sect knows about me?!”

  William shrugged. “Sect might be a bit of a strong word for us. A loosely organized bunch of rabble-rousers is more like. It doesn’t really matter, point is you’re good, and the girl is right. Close your eyes and do as she said. She’s leadin’ ya true.”

  Betsy bellowed an agreement and then did a motion with her head where she was telling me to get on with it. I grunted and nodded and turned and closed my eyes once more. I was really going to have to get a map that showed more of the world than just the empire so I could see if there was an Irish island or something.

  “Good, now, like I said before, pull in all the wind aura you can and cycle it through your body to your belly. Then squeeze as hard as you can,” she instructed.

  I breathed in deep and steeled my resolve and did as she told me. It was easy to pull the aura into my body; it was hard making sure only the wind came in. In cultivation or xianxia stories I’ve listened they were able to convert other auras into their aura so they could cultivate. Did it work like that here? After I made my core, maybe?

  Along with the green shimmering bits of aura, there was a plethora of others. The sandstone brown of earth, or soft blue raindrop-looking aura of water. There were even some powder-blue sparkles that said winter was in the air. Further away above the city, with the populace of the city, there were bits of lavender with pink sparkles of illusion.

  There were some interesting bits of aura that I learned about later. It was an aura humans weren’t allowed or couldn’t cultivate. There were fiery golden bits that seemed to radiate and explode outwards. That was apparently the sun. This sun aura seemed like the Heavenly qi you read about in Xianxia. With the night fast approaching and the moon looming, there was also a lunar aura, which looked pale silver in the middle with violet and blue around the outside. I learned that cultivators who followed the usual path, couldn’t and never saw these.

  “Alright lad, squeeze like she said. The more you take-”

  William didn’t finish his warning, though. I did as he said and pressed all the green shimmery aura I had inside of my body and condensed it. I squeezed it, and it seemed like my body exploded. It felt like I was in one of those cartoons where Roadrunner got Wiley to eat a bomb and it exploded in his gut. The channels that were given to me when I came here were the back draft of the explosion, and everything inside of me hurt.

  With Niku sitting here, I tried to hold it in. I tried to just grunt and hold the pain inside. I ended up screaming, and my body tensed as if I had a cramp all over. Eventually I fell over and spasmed.

  “Aye shit, I think we killed ‘em.”

  That was the last thing I heard.

  I don’t know how long I was out, but my eyes shot open. “I’m alright. I didn’t pass out!” The dirt I was lying on seemed to blow away from me violently as I woke, and when I breathed in, it seemed like I could have exhaled a tornado.

  There was a heavy electric snort, and Betsy shook her head.

  I looked around and moved around jerkily and realized I very much did indeed pass out. Looking back, I was lucky I didn’t fall off the cliff, but I guess with everyone there watching me, they wouldn’t have let that happen. I was lying in the dirt, and everyone, including Betsy, was standing over me. Betsy was giving me the same sort of worried look she gave me when I first woke up after my truck accident.

  William laughed a little and held a hand down to help me to my feet. “Aye lad, sure, ya didn’t pass out. Ya just needed a little nap. Welcome to being a proper cultivator now.”

  Niku looked over me, and I felt the cold spiritual scans run through my body. Betsy wouldn’t need to scan me since we had our link. She’d be able to tell instantly how it went.

  “More powerful than I thought,” was all Silas said.

  Niku, the weakest of the lot, wasn’t really able to scan me.

  “Aye, might have given’ you a run for your money as the first to become a celestial,” William said and nudged his…friend? No, they didn’t really seem like friends.

  Silas snorted and shook his head. With the activities done, he turned and walked away once more, pulling the slightly floating hammer behind him. “Yeah.”

  Niku was at my side with one hand on my stomach, on my newly formed core, and the other on my back, holding me close to her with her smaller petite form. “Are you alright?”

  I nodded.

  “Aye, of course he’s alright. He’s a cultivator, and this is part of the process. Tell him to have a bit of a laydown and relax. He’ll be right as rain in the morning,” William said and clapped me on the shoulder. He gave each of us a confident nod and then walked off after Silas.

  “Come on, let’s lay down,” Niku said, and I grinned over at her as she led me back off towards my wagon. While we didn’t stick to the ‘she had to get a room in an inn every night’ rule, we hadn’t slept together since the night in the inn. That was until that night. We climbed into my bunk wagon and lay close to each other. My arms around her, and closed my eyes.

  I could feel the new power flowing through my body. It felt like… well… it felt like I was a god. It was all still new, and it seemed like the wind itself was rushing through my body. It was hard to lay there and be still, but then I looked at Niku’s face and smiled. She had her eyes closed and was nuzzled into me and instantly the winds calmed, and I felt like I could lay there until the planet was destroyed and we were nothing but dust on the wind.

  Elsewhere, two cultivators sat by a fire.

  “Silas,” William asked with a little worry in his voice.

  The bald man looked up from the fire and at the apparent spy.

  “What would you say that man’s advancement level is now that he has a proper core?”

  Silas closed his eyes and sighed. “I don’t know, but wait till Zhao Tseng sees him.”

  William laughed a bit, but it was short, and he didn’t quite feel it. “He’s not in the Nas-”

  “No,” Silas said simply and stopped William before the man could say the whole rank. “He hasn’t reached the Heavenly realm. I don’t think anyway.”

  Patreon

  Which is usually 15ish chapters ahead.

  Discord and start a conversation.