Dao of the Deal

The flickering sparks cast harsh shadows on Xinyi's face that shifted several times a second. The strobe light effect was strangely harmonious with her manic grin.

"It's suitable for the Storm Dragon scripture," she said, her voice carrying easily over the cacophony of sparks.

Muchen nodded, then approached the meditation space. He was dressed in a pair of shorts and a relatively close fitting shirt. While he had grown accustomed to the typical flowing cultivator's robes, his current setup didn't allow for any kind of loose fitting clothing. Perhaps in the future when his use of electricity had grown more sophisticated that would change.

He hopped over the array of spark emitters, then descended straight down into a cross-legged meditative pose. He closed his eyes, only partially blocking out the brightness of the sparks surrounding him, and took a moment to center himself.

It wasn't as bad as he'd expected. While the sparks were loud, the constant outpouring all blended together into white noise that was almost soothing once he had adjusted to the volume.

He made sure he was ready, then began chanting softly to himself. At the same time, he allowed a steady trickle of spiritual energy to enter his body.

At the foundation building stage, there were three components to a cultivation scripture. The chant, energy manipulation, and visualization. The chant seemed to Muchen to be a mnemonic more than anything else. He had memorized it long ago and was able to recite it smoothly.

The manipulation of spiritual energy was a bit trickier. Up until now, Muchen had largely focused on drawing in energy and letting it flow through his open meridians. Now, he drew that energy into a point behind his navel and focused on manipulating the energy within himself.

The Storm Dragon scripture called for the construction of a loop of energy at first. After all of his recent work putting the cultivation room together, It felt to Muchen like he was building another electric circuit. The only difference was that this circuit was inside of his body.

As for visualization, the instructions had told him to focus on the image of a lightning bolt that moment it struck the ground. Muchen had never seen such a thing in person, but he could picture it well enough. He did his best to keep it in mind while guiding his spiritual energy into forming a circuit.

He could feel the difference that the environment made. Usually spiritual energy acted like a sort of amorphous blob. Like water vapor in the air that he could move by fanning at it with his metaphorical hands, but nothing that showed any personality of its own.

This purely lightning aspected spiritual energy was different. It almost sparked as it came into his body. It felt like it wanted to race forward following the path of least resistance. Muchen had to focus and exert his will to keep it moving along his chosen course. He was able to form a loop of spiritual energy after working at it hard enough to leave his back drenched in sweat, but it refused to snap into place and stabilize the way the scripture claimed that it would.

Muchen kept hammering away at it, but it seemed that the harder he focused the farther he was from completing his task. Finally he realized that his anger and frustration was getting to be as much of an obstacle as anything else, and decided he needed a break. He opened his eyes and took a cleansing breath. Xinyi saw that he had finished and was kind enough to flip the switch to disengage the electricity.

Muchen rose to his feet and hopped out of the meditation circle. He shook out the tension in his arms and started pacing around the room. Meditation always involved holding still for long periods of time, but something about being surrounded by an electrical cage made that stillness feel more confining.

That wasn't the only frustration Muchen was trying to work out. With the success he'd been having in his cultivation up to this point, and the high quality of the Storm Dragon scripture—not to mention all the trouble he'd gone through to create a proper cultivating environment—he'd been expecting a more impressive result.

He kept silent long enough for the sharp edge of frustration to dull before voicing his complaint. "I couldn't build the first stable loop."

Xinyi cocked her head. "According to the scripture, it often takes several days."

Xinyi had been the one to decipher the scripture and relay its instructions to Muchen. She knew better than he did what to expect. Still, Muchen couldn't shake the feeling that he was doing something wrong.

"It didn't feel like I was traveling on a voyage, still short of my destination," he said. "I feel as though I journeyed in the wrong direction entirely."

He shook his head. "No, not entirely wrong. But still, wrong."

Xinyi tapped her chin in thought. Muchen, for his part, felt better for having gotten his concerns off his chest. Especially so since Xinyi didn't dismiss them out of hand.

"We'll have to wait for a thunderstorm," she said. "Find a nice vantage point to observe."

Muchen blinked. "Will that help?"

"Of course," Xinyi said. "Visualization is much easier if you've seen it for yourself."

Muchen could see the logic of it. Visualization was, after all, one third of the technique. It still seemed strange to him.

"It really makes that much difference?" he said. "Having a good mental image of a lightning bolt?"

"Visualization is vital," Xinyi said. "Your conscious direction of spiritual energy creates the framework of your foundation, but filling in all of the nooks and crannies is beyond anybody's ability to consciously control."

She held a finger up in a lecturing pose. For a moment, Muchen could almost see the lectern and blackboard.

"Visualizing an example of the energy you seek to master guides your subconscious," she said. "A water element scripture might call for you to picture a mighty waterfall or a placid lake. In this case, the Storm Dragon scripture requires you to picture the most powerful example of lightning energy, a massive lightning bolt."

Muchen nodded. Having an experienced teacher available to answer questions was a blessing. Although, his mind stuck on the last thing she said.

"The most powerful example?" he asked. "So it would work better if I pictured something more powerful than a lightning bolt?"

"Well, yes," Xinyi said, "but you can hardly visualize tribulation lightning without seeing it for yourself. Even if you had, using something like that as the basis for your cultivation is just begging to be struck down by the heavens."

"Not tribulation lightning," Muchen said, "but greater electrical power than a lightning bolt is possible through more mundane means."

He gestured at the spark gaps surrounding his meditation mat. Xinyi took a look around, then regarded Muchen with a raised eyebrow.

"While all of this machinery is quite clever," she said, "it falls far short of the raw power of a bolt of lightning."

"Of course it does," Muchen said. "It's something built quickly, using only the power of a small river. But it can be scaled up."

He walked over and threw the switch once more.

The electrical system sparked to life. The continuous sparks cast crazy shadows on the wall, the crackling noise drowning out all other sounds. Muchen moved back to the meditation mat and, upon Xinyi's nod of approval, hopped back into place.

Once more, he opened himself up and began taking in spiritual energy. Once more, he guided it to his navel. This time, though, instead of picturing a lightning bolt, he reached back to an image from his previous life.

Once, long ago, he'd taken a field trip along with the rest of his class to tour the Hoover Dam. He still felt a tinge of awe at the sheer size and scope of the thing, the fact that something so large had been built with human hands. He remembered seeing the massive generators that between them put out more electric power than a lightning bolt every second. More than dozens, hundreds of lightning bolts. Probably. He hadn't paid that much attention to the numbers.

He kept that image, of a massive electrical generator, on his mind as he continued circulating his spiritual energy. He could feel an immediate improvement. Compared to his previous efforts, he merely had to guide the energy where he wanted it rather than try to fight to get it to the right place.

Still, he couldn't help but feel that he could do better. He paused for a moment before beginning his chant from the beginning.

This time, he didn't focus on the image of an electrical discharge or an electrical generator. Instead, he pictured in his head a satellite photo of Earth at night. In particular, he focused on the grid of light stretching across the face of the globe, showing how an entire planet was wrapped with electrical wires and surrounded by electrical energy.

That was it. His spiritual energy practically leaped into place on its own. The first circuit formed, then another built on it. His spiritual energy circulated with vigor, seeming to multiply with every circuit. Muchen sank deeper into the meditative trance, doing his best to suppress the sheer joy he felt and focus on cultivating the scripture according to its design.

He could still feel the underlying connection to his dao. He knew deep down that it would never go away, the fundamental component of his cultivation. On top of that, though, he was building a foundation for the future to come. A structure that would allow him to deploy spiritual energy in pursuit of his goals, that would boost him and support him as he continued even further along the road of cultivation.

He only stopped meditating when he finished the meditative chant. For a moment he wanted to continue. He had memorized the second chant, after all. A glance at Xinyi was enough to sober him up. She looked almost worried, a rare enough occurrence for Muchen to drop what he was doing.

Besides, cultivation was a matter of making steady progress step by step, not trying to ascend to the heavens in a single bound.

Xinyi smiled in relief when she saw him finish his meditation. She flipped the switch to disengage the electrical generator. The sudden absence of electrical snaps and pops was deafening.

Muchen hopped out of the circle. This time, he didn't feel any aches or pains from holding his position for so long. Instead, he felt fresh, like he was ready to go out and run a marathon. He could feel his spiritual energy, too, crackling under his skin. It felt ready to move in a way that he'd never experienced before.

"That went much better," he said.

"No kidding," Xinyi said. "It's rare to go so deep on your first brush with a new scripture. Or even your second try."

Muchen puffed up with pride as she continued.

"Honestly, it's usually a sign of cultivation deviation," she said. "You didn't explode in the end, though, so it's probably fine."

Muchen cleared his throat. "Probably?"

She gave him a searching look. Muchen did his best not to fidget. After a moment, she gave a sharp nod.

"You've made good progress," she said.

"No explosions?" Muchen asked. He had felt like he was doing everything right, but he could imagine that a lot of people felt that way when they were doing cultivation wrong. If it were so easy to feel your way by instinct then the sky would be crowded with people riding their flying swords everywhere.

"No explosions," Xinyi said. "Whatever image you picked, it's a good one. Maybe good enough to warrant modifying the scripture."

There was a tempting thought. No matter how common it was for a sect to start with a stolen set of techniques, Muchen preferred the idea of his sect using a scripture that was truly unique. Unfortunately, sharing this particular secret technique was easier said than done. It wasn't like he could just print out a satellite image for other people to see. Or that they would understand it if he did.

"Can you use an image you haven't seen yourself?" Muchen asked.

"Maybe," Xinyi said, "if it's not convenient to show."

Muchen could hear the implicit question there, but elected to ignore it. He'd considered sharing the story of his previous life in a different world, but it always seemed to him that doing so would lead to more harm than good.

Maybe in the Qianzhan Continent he didn't have to worry about being kidnapped into a government laboratory for human experimentation... but he could easily imagine a sect trying some destructive experimentation if the prospect of interplanar travel was dangled in front of them. They certainly weren't going to be held back by something like medical ethics.

To offset those risks, there really wasn't much advantage to be had. A bunch of unverifiable stories about life on another planet might be enough to entertain somebody, but the only real practical value in it came in the form of the science he was able to replicate himself. And those projects were useful whether or not their whole backstory was known.

Of course, it did leave other people wondering just how he was able to come up with such things, but Muchen wasn't obliged to satisfy that kind of curiosity. It was hard to find somebody in the Qianzhan Continent who didn't have their own secrets.

He took another look at his own electrical equipment. While wild tales of another world might not be of much practical use, that didn't mean that improving the Storm Dragon scripture was impossible. Asking someone to imagine his own electrical generator, but scaled up to a massive size, might just work as a cultivation image. It wouldn't be as useful as Muchen's otherworldly knowledge, but the prospect of making any improvement at all to what was already a top tier scripture was a tantalizing prospect.

"Maybe I can do something," Muchen allowed.

They did have a disciple slated to arrive soon who was just beginning to build her foundation. It was the perfect time to try out a few experimental methods.