The Laws of Cultivation: Qi = MC^2

We moved swiftly across the pathways, slowly but surely getting further and further from civilization of all kinds. Wintery winds swept through barren lands as the world around us began to turn even more barren, soon hills and cliffs rising in the distance, covering the horizon and darkening an already cloudy sunless landscape under their shade.

We spent most of our time meditating, and I spent my own time inspecting the inner world I’d manifested. It was a nebulous thing and I’d need to spend some time properly existing inside of it to see what it truly was but for now I simply focused on the sensation of it existing and being a part of me, an existence within my own self.

Before I knew it, our time was up as we arrived at the edge of the Cradle, the carriage coming to a stop at the foot of a peak with no visible traversable road to travel upon any longer.

We stepped outside, and I quickly gave the driver a thankful nod. He turned around and began his return to the seventh peak to help the Lord and his entourage make their way to where the demon army was.

Whether we got to go with them or not would depend on how quickly we could get through this place.

As I stepped out I finally got to take a proper look at the Cradle of Dragons. It was a barren and rather unassuming place, for one with such a grand name. Cliffs dotted the landscape, reaching out into and through the cloud skies that rumbled and crackled with lightning and storm in the distance with a threatening roar every so often.

The one thing that gave away the specialness of this place was the Qi. It was slight but you could feel the difference. It was more attuned to the heavens, attuned to storms and skies and lightning. To dragons. It’d need someone perceptive to be able to tell, but the signs were there if you looked.

“Welp, guess we’re here,” I said, looking out at the mountains.

Labby shivered next to me. “This place is cold. Labby doesn’t like it.”

I glanced down at Labby, who was still wearing her usual garments. Which were for warmer weather as, before all of this, Azure city had been rather warm.

Before all this… it had barely been a week since everything that had happened. Yet to me, it already felt like months had passed. So much chaos, so much had changed all at once.

I put it out of my mind.

“You can return to my spirit if you’re cold,” I told Labby but she shook her head. “It’s not that cold!” she lied, and then sneezed as a colder than usual gust of wind passed by her.

“I believe you, but we need you to preserve your strength. When we’re further in, then I’ll call you out, alright?” I said.

Labby glanced at me, and then gave a reluctant nod and I pulled her into my spirit.

I glanced at Ash, who with his bare cut and rugged sleeves obviously snorted at the idea. The wolf seemingly did not know the concept of cold.

“Let us not waste any time,” Liuxiang said.

I nodded, as we began to make our way into the Cradle.

***

“There’s something wrong with this place,” Yan Yun said, holding her hands in a hug around her body as well. Leiyu had returned to her spirit, and even Liuxiang and Zhang were starting to look a little uncomfortable.

Only Ash and I remained unaffected, but I could tell that the chill permeating the winds here was unnatural. My encounter with the winter spirit before had given me a sense for natural weather and when something was… a little bit beyond natural.

“There’s a strong aura on this place, on this entire land itself,” I said, looking up at the swirling clouds in the skies as we continued our trek up the snowy mountain. After I’d merged with my twin… my body had become a lot sturdier as a result of that transformation and so I shrug off the cold, but I knew the others wouldn’t be able to.

“Pull your Chi to yourself and try to ward yourself off from the wind with it. It should help a little,” I said, and then glanced at Liuxiang. “And Qi,” I added.

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Zhang, Yan Yun and Liuxiang all followed my instructions, pulling their Chi and Qi respectively around themselves, almost like a blanket covering them. It took a little moment for it to form, but they visibly improved upon doing so.

“What? It’s not cold anymore,” Yan Yun proclaimed, looking down at her hands and putting them on her cheek to test if she was just imagining it or not.

“Interesting. So the cold was not in the air but in the Qi carried by the wind,” Liuxiang said, humming curiously.

“The wind is not going to be our only problem, I suspect,” I said, looking forward. I saw dark clouds steadily heading in this direction and my expression darkened.

“Let’s continue,” I said, as we marched forward through the snow.

The peaks continued to rise around us, the temperature steadily falling as we climbed the heights. I was obviously a lot stronger than the others, but Yan and Zhang were on the verge of breaking through to the third circle, and Liuxiang was already in the third circle.

I was the only one who was in the fourth, though I, obviously, had skipped a lot of steps to get there. Ash was the only other one who was in the third circle after his transformation as he’d become a Chi spirit beast, so our entire group was fairly powerful.

Which meant we should’ve been able to move quite rapidly through the snowy mountains, able to scale it rapidly and run up its inclines. Heck, if I was being entirely honest, I was half confident in my ability to just leap over this peak with a few well placed jumps.

But instead, we were trudging through knee deep snow, like we were mere mortals at the mercy of nature. I was starting to understand why everyone had said this journey was going to be difficult.

With each step we took, the amount of Qi in the air kept going up. The snow, the earth, the air, the wind, all of it was saturated with Qi, and it was all working together to slow us down, to make our limbs heavy and drain our energy on our climb.

As we’d made our way, icy cold rain droplets had begun falling down which had soon become a downpour. I had no idea how water could even remain unfrozen in such a cold climate but it was worse that it was.

All of us were soon soaked in water that was filled with Qi, which cloyed to us, weighing us down. Worse, it kept sucking on our energy and slowing us down.

I’d figured out a way around it, and was drawing on my Chi, which felt night endless nowadays, and was simply evaporating all the water by over saturating it. I’d soon begun doing the same for everyone else, but the process took some focus which meant we still couldn’t go as fast as we wanted to.

“Can you see if we’re still heading in the right direction?” I asked Liuxiang.

Zhi Zhu appeared on Liuxiang’s shoulder and she turned to me and shook her head. I glanced at Yan Yun, we’d need to have Leiyu scout the area to see if we’d strayed off the path.

“I’m not sure Leiyu will be able to fly in this kind of rain and wind. It’s like the wrath of the heavens is falling down upon us,” Yan Yun said.

Almost as if on cue, lightning crackled in the distance, turning the world blinding white for a moment.

And then it hit me. The wrath of the heavens.

I looked up at the skies and the swirling clouds up above. It had been some time since I’d truly had to deal with the Heavens so I’d forgotten to look for it… but I could feel it quite strongly now that I knew to look for it. The presence of the Heavens, it had fallen off over the entire empire, crumbling and weakening… but here? Here it was roaring with power, with rage.

I gathered my Chi, and took to the skies, rising upwards into the skies. The winds grew colder, the rain blasted me harder and a few strikes of lightning curved in my direction, warning me.

I huffed.

“You’re still putting up this pretense?” I asked the skies, as they continued to rumble.

“I know we’ve had our differences. It’s not like we’re allies, per say. But both you and I know that your best bet is for me to succeed. Or would you rather that Yang Shen gets his hands on the Azure Dragon and doom us all?”

The clouds rumbled in displeasure at that.

“Exactly. I know you have rules, and you can’t bend or break them completely. But you can skirt them, at least a little. I know you have before,” I shouted to the skies.

For a moment there was silence, and then I felt the winds quietening down ever so slightly, the rain slowing down just a little, as a path through the storm began to appear.

I smiled and then returned to the ground.

“What did you do?” Yan Yun asked, eyes wide.

“Just negotiated a deal. As the saying goes, the enemy of your enemy may not be your friend, but they can at least be a temporary ally.”

“No one says that,” Yan Yun chided but I ignored her, as we continued on the path visible in front of us now.

Walking through the dense storm, we moved, finding the winds starting to die down as we began to approach a curve through peaks. The winds began to die down, and the rain began to slowly fade away.

And then, we saw it. In the distance, in the middle of the swirling storm, a vibrant valley with sunlight shining down through the storm clouds filled with trees and blooming flowers like paradise nestled between the mountains.

And in that valley, flying through the skies, swimming through the rivers and swirling around the peaks were the magnificent creatures that the empire itself revered and was founded on.

Dragons.

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