Depthless Hunger

Chapter 193: Cultivating Differences

"Again." Zae Zin Nim raised the rock on a bit of her qi.

"I can't." Gundle rubbed his forehead with stained fingers. "My head hurts."

"Consider it weakness leaving your body. Focus again. Draw your qi just beneath your stomach, take a deep breath, and try again."

For all his whining, Gundle settled back into his task sooner than most children would. Unlike some geniuses Zae Zin Nim had known, he had no ego about his achievements and didn't seem aware that his cultivation was more advanced than many young men twice his age. Unlike her, he also had no sense of pressure or crushing obligation to perform. Even when she reprimanded him, he didn't fear her or think anything except that she was trying to help.

Most likely that was due to his mother, who sat at the edge of the courtyard monitoring them. She was always there, as if afraid her boy would be stolen. Then again, she was quiet and she didn't bother anyone, so Zae Zin Nim didn't mind. Because they were so easy to work with, Zae Zin Nim had moved from her old chambers to a bedroom in the main house.

"Take this!" Gundle let out a weak little cry and thrust his hand forward.

Acid shot out and struck the rock she had been hovering. Not a bad shot, if far weaker than the acid spitting ability Kai had gained from a monster. And yet, just when Zae Zin Nim thought she had seen the extent of the ability, the acid collected in a sphere. She realized that the boy was holding it in a bubble, acid clinging to the stone and making it crumble away.

Eventually nothing remained and the acid splattered to the ground. "It worked!" Gundle hopped several times, more like a child than someone who had just developed a lethal ability. "But I have to think real, real hard or it goes away."

"You're using qi to hold the acid in a shape, aren't you?" Zae Zin Nim extended a little of her own and used it to pick up and coat another stone. "The idea is good, but what you want to do is change the fundamental nature of the acid."

"How do I do that?"

"You're already drawing it up, making it move, powering it with your qi. This is just another step. You want to make it sticky, like it wants to grasp hold of what it hits."

"I'll try." Gundle screwed up his face and concentrated, as if she hadn't just given him a task of monumental proportions.

Most likely he would be able to manage it eventually, with her help. They wouldn't develop any masterful technique polished to within a half step of perfection, but they could develop something potent enough to use in war. There was more potential there than she had thought when Kai first proposed the idea.

While the boy worked, Zae Zin Nim examined his soul.

Name: Gundle of N District Pits

Total Power: 009

Acid Cultivation: 253 (6)

Physique Level: G-0 (2)

Soul Level: 1 (1)

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He had a remarkable Power rating for a boy, especially given his limitations, but she suspected that acid cultivation would suffer from diminishing returns, just like its crystal equivalent. And despite his enthusiasm, there was no question of him participating in any kind of violence. That would be like... well, like throwing a child into acid.

"Excuse me." The boy's mother spoke up quietly. "May I speak with you?"

Zae Zin Nim moved to her, ready for the complaints about her son learning dangerous arts. Sometimes Zae Zin Nim couldn't tolerate just being female, so motherly concerns might as well be on the moon. And yet, when she drew closer, she saw that the woman was holding a sphere of acid hovering between her hands.

"Is this right?" she asked.

"What exactly are you trying to do?" Zae Zin Nim peered down at the sphere of acid and was surprised that it seemed more potent than the rest.

"I only thought... I'm sorry if I made a mistake..."

"I didn't say that, I asked a question."

The woman swallowed, then coughed violently and lost control. She narrowly avoided the falling acid sphere, which rapidly hissed into the stone of the courtyard. Once she finished coughing, looking like a pathetic wreck, she managed to answer the question.

"When we're refining crystals, it's possible to go too far," she said. "There's a point where the ore is completely refined, but if you go beyond that the surfaces weaken, and they don't absorb qi as well. When that happens, they punish us for it, so everyone learns to stop. I thought..."

"You're doing it intentionally." Zae Zin Nim sought about for crystal equipment to test on and found nothing except her bracelet. She would have to ask the old woman for testing materials later.

"Could it work?" the woman asked. "In theory, could we make the acid strong enough to damage crystals?"

Staring back at her, Zae Zin Nim realized that she had been too negative again. This mother had been listening to the lessons and must have been following along, because she had mastered the basics. Not only that, she was developing the ideas further - maybe not with her son's brilliance, but with an adult's mind and soul.

"What did you say your name was?" Zae Zin Nim asked.

"It's Yurwa, my lady."

Name: Yurwa of N District Pits

Total Power: 026

Acid Cultivation: 242 (21)

Physique Level: G-1 (4)

Soul Level: 1 (1)

>

When Zae Zin Nim examined the woman's soul, she found more power than she had expected. Her cultivation wasn't as advanced as her son's, but it also wasn't limited by the boy's immature soul. In an adult, acid cultivation was more potent than she had expected. Even that was unfair: Yurwa was dedicating herself to the work with remarkable focus given her weak constitution.

Both of them would die in an instant against a real cultivator or any of their opponents. But for the first time, Zae Zin Nim felt as though that was unfair. They deserved to live on and see what they could make of this strange cultivation of theirs.

"The idea can work," she said carefully, "but if you want to create an anti-crystal technique, you need to take a different approach. Remember that your opponents will be reinforced by qi..."

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..

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A man in tattered silk robes stared at the horizon, wondering why it had changed colors. After so long in the endless blue, the green looked wrong, like an affront to the natural laws. He stared at it listlessly, his tongue flicking over dried lips.

How long had he been drifting at sea like this? The days and nights all blurred into one another. After his supplies had run out, he'd struggled to survive on the fish he could catch with qi techniques, but the oceanic qi was difficult to grasp. If not for the occasional rainstorm, he would no doubt have died of dehydration long ago.

Things had become truly desperate when the crystals powering the engine of the boat cracked, then finally broke. Worthless barbarian technology. As he'd drifted, occasionally using qi techniques to push him back toward home, he'd prayed to the ancestors to be found by an ally, then as he grew miserable, to be found by anyone at all.

And now, just to mock him, there was that green line...

The cultivator suddenly sat upright, his mind beginning to work again. Cloudspire! Glorious Cloudspire! In that moment he would have been immensely grateful for any land at all, but the sight of the shores of home made him weep.

He lay on his boat as he drifted closer, just soaking up the qi in the air. Before his journey to Deadwaste, he would have considered this no energy at all, but now his soul yearned for it. This was like a feast, sending him into spiritual reveries he'd never imagined.

When he hit the shore, the cultivator staggered for a while, drunk on the excess. But eventually he remembered his purpose, found his footing, and began heading inland.

It was a long journey to the Brightwind sect, but he would find the patriarch and receive his reward.

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