What do you mean I'm a cultivator?-Chapter 7

For the next several months, Jiang's life settled into a demanding but purposeful rhythm, not much different than the usual one.

The outer sect's tasks seemed to grow more strenuous as spring gave way to summer, just like the summer before.

More herbs to harvest, more errands to run for inner disciples, more menial labor that left his young body aching.

Yet he persisted, not just because he had to, but because each completed task brought him closer to his goal. Every bundle of herbs delivered, meant giving way to cultivation and reading time.

What? payment for the work? you must be joking. The honor in being part of the sect is more than enough. yeah. mhm. Cheng would have really agree.

It was during the hottest days of summer when Jiang found himself scrubbing the stone steps of the main hall, sweat dripping from his brow as the sun beat down mercilessly. His hands were raw, his back ached, but his mind was elsewhere—cycling through the circulation patterns he had been practicing each night.

"Clean faster, Junior." one of the inner sect disciples that walked down the stairs, likely out of the sect for a mission, barked as he passed, barely sparing Jiang Cheng a glance. "Those steps won't clean themselves."

"Dirty like you lot, they are. Hmph!" He spoke, His arrogance clear, as he looked down at him, and the rest of the Outer disciples cleaning the steps alongside Cheng.

Jiang quickened his pace, carefully masking the flash of anger that surged through him. He had noticed that feeling more and more lately. He was getting irritated with his slow process. Frustration with the limitations of his position.

Not like he dared to complain. Elder Feng asside, he had seen first hand what had happened when one complained. He pittied the fool that tried to hit a senior disciple passing by. Not even of the inner sect, yet the difference of those close to Qi condensation, and those in it was clear, as the junior was beaten within a inch of his life for daring to not comply with the sect's mandatory, daily tasks.

Hell, he had even earned a nice slap himself from a senor, when he caught him mumbling to himself, complaining about the work, earning him a slap on the face, that made his ears ring, as well as a nice lecture from the senior.

That night, exhausted but determined, Jiang sat in lotus position on the worn mat in his cabin, his back protesting from bending all day to clean the stone steps.

The night air was still warm, carrying the scent of summer blossoms through his open, broken window, something he was personally responsible, as he had quite literarily slammed it too hard, in the days that he wasn't yet in full control of his newfound cultivation.

He closed his eyes and began the now-familiar process of gathering Qi.

The energy came more easily now, responding to his call. It flowed into his dantian smoothly, mote by mote, joining the pool he had been building for months. Yet when he attempted the compression techniques described in the manual, he encountered the same frustrating resistance.

"Condense, damn it." he muttered, focusing his will on the cycling energy in him, as he spun it around, in his dantian. The manual had described it as Using Your mind to refine the world, but for Jiang, it felt more like trying to squeeze sand into a solid form. Glass even.

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The harder he pushed, the more the particles seemed to slip away.

After an hour of futile effort, he sighed and opened his eyes.

The dim glow of the oil lamp cast long shadows across his small cabin. His gaze fell on the cup of water beside him, and something stirred in his fragmented memories.

Surface tension. Molecules pulling together.

The thought came randomly. Another one of his weirder ones. Along with it a vague image of water beading on some kind of leaf. What were molecules? The word felt right somehow, though he couldn't explain why. It felt right.

After a day's work, He settled at a reading table and began to absorb the text, before noticing another outer disciple enter, one older than himself. Perhaps, if not for his better perception, that would have been the time it would have taken to advance to Qi condensation.

He turned back to the book he was reading, a different one, that focused on more techniques to condense one's Qi. There were lots fo books here. From martial techniques, to ones with the usage of Qi. But those felt unimportant right now. What use was martial techniques, when he was spending most of his time chopping wood and carrying water, among other menial work?

The important books, were ones to further his cultivation. As he read, he landed on a section that indeed, furthered the speculation of his random thought, the night before.

"Water seeks its own level, yet when confined, it presses outward with equal force in all directions." he read. "When surface meets air, water forms a skin, pulling inward."

That night, Jiang tried a different approach. Rather than pushing inward on his Qi, he visualized it as water, with an outer surface that naturally pulled itself together. He relaxed his mental effort and instead focused on the boundary of his Qi pool, imagining it contracting naturally, like water droplets merging.

To his surprise, he felt a subtle shift. The Qi didn't compress dramatically, but it seemed to become slightly more coherent, as if recognizing its own boundaries.

"Progress," he whispered to himself, a small smile playing on his lips.

Over the following weeks, Jiang refined this approach. Each night, after completing his sect duties, he would return to his cabin, sometimes so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, as compared to wintertime, the workload was nearly double. Yet he never skipped his cultivation session, gradually extending them from one hour to two, then three, stubbornly refusing to slow down, or reduce his meditation time. If not for the refreshing feeling of the motes of Qi entering his body, he'd most certainly collapsed by now.

His progress remained frustratingly slow. The Qi in his dantian had definitely become more refined. Clearer and more responsive.

But it was not the qualitive change the book talked about. The dramatic compression he sought still eluded him. He continued to read whatever texts he could find in his limited free time, searching for clues.

One evening, after a particularly grueling day hauling water for the herb gardens, Jiang was sitting outside his cabin, watching the sun set behind the mountains. His muscles ached, and he knew he should rest before his nightly cultivation, but his mind was too active.

A small leaf from a nearby tree drifted down, landing on his knee. He remembered the exercise from the manual—maintaining focus on a leaf stuck to the body while performing other tasks. On impulse, he channeled a tiny amount of Qi to his fingertip and pressed it to the leaf.

The leaf stuck, as expected, As he had learned the precursor to the water walking technique, a rather unimpressive one compared to more sophisticated ones in the foundation establishment realm, but one that he knew would have mere mortals serve him, the weakling, Qi condensation cultivator as a god.

And as he thought more and more, he had a epiphany. This thought was his own. Not a random one. This was a intentional thought.

Instead of trying to just push The Qi, what about using the dantian?

Instead of trying to compress the water in the bowl, why not use the fucking bowl in the first place?

And so, he tried just that. He felt his dantian, and tried to force it to contract. Visualizing it just like a muscle. And to his surprise, it worked like a charm. Sure, he did fail compressing his Qi, but it felt much easier this way.

Along with it, he tried to think more ways, but he lacked the knowledge. sure, he had understood surface tension, but Qi wasn't' water was it?

All the times he had felt the Qi around him, it was like A gas. These motes of Qi floating around like...Gas particles. yeah, that felt like the correct word.

so perhaps, the only thing left, was to find a way, to put pressure on the gas in his dantian. Maybe somehow heat up his dantian? or maybe. maybe. He was out of ideas. But. There was one place that had something he could read. And hopefully, it would help.