Having given the Heaven and Earth Wheel Art another quick read just to make sure that he'd not missed anything, Wu Hao shuffled in position for the final time, slowed his breathing, and tried to center himself.

  Oddly enough, the cramped surroundings helped, but the flickering lights of the lantern only made concentrating harder. After a few breaths of watching them play across the cave walls, he decided he'd had enough and simply extinguished the lantern, leaving himself in a soothing darkness.

  Here he was again, he realized: back in a dark cave, attempting to cultivate. In the darkness he allowed himself to smile, and then set his mind firmly to the task.

  The Heaven and Earth Wheel Art was composed of two main parts, as it had stated in its introduction: one part was called an "image", the other part was called an "interaction". The author warned that these weren't universal terms, or even universal concepts, though.

  The image was simply imagining something in the mind. In the case of the Art, this was an enormous water wheel, with its top reaching the clouds, and the bottom sitting deep in the ground. The exact size didn't matter, the author claimed: it was more important to believe that this wheel might actually exist, and that to make that belief rock solid.

  The point of the wheel was to imagine that it sat in a river, spinning slowly but steadily, never stopping and never slowing, no matter what happened. As the wheel spun, it moved water and moved, but its fundamental position was not moved. It cycled, remaining in place despite its rotations.

  And like a waterwheel was the engine that set a mill into motion, the spinning of the imaginary wheel was to gather qi. The river in which it was placed would be the qi of the world, and its spinning would deliver power through his body. Slowly, at first, it would begin to later form a core the size of a mustard seed, which would keep growing and growing by compacting more and more qi onto its surface, until Wu Hao had once more reached the level of a third-grade martial artist when his core had grown to a sufficient size.

  That part - the ways in which the image had the concept of movement built in - was called the interaction, and that was what actually made pulling in qi possible. The author had an entire digression on why this worked, but Wu Hao had skipped that part.

  He could always read it later, anyway.

  But if he was to compare this to the Limitless Pulse Art, this felt a lot more abstract. The instructions there had been a lot more internal. "Focus on the pulse, feel it throb, and immerse yourself in the rhythmical pounding. It pushes the blood out from your heart and, as it returns, it brings with it fresh natural qi that starts transforming you from the heart out."

  Then again, he supposed that similar principles applied. The pulse was the image, the process of it bringing blood was the interaction.

  He exhaled again, calming himself, and started to imagine a wheel, starting with the simplest possible model. It was thick, wooden, standing on top of ground somewhere. He imagined clouds near the top first, floating softly just above; imagined its gigantic tread, resting on the solid stone of a mountain below.

  Then he imagined a river, translucent the way all qi was to his sight, flowing past, without origin or without a riverbed, just qi. It rushed through the mountain that he'd imagined, more ancient than time itself, and pushed the wheel into motion.

  With a groaning creak that lived only inside Wu Hao's head, it began to move. Small splashes resounded as the wheel's spokes grabbed parts of the river's qi and carried it upwards, for no other purpose than having been built to do so on Wu Hao's whim. There was a loud rumbling as the wheel creaked.

  But the creak wasn't real. It simply seemed to Wu Hao that it should creak, the way he vaguely thought all wheels should creak.

  Still, it was in motion. He encountered no resistance except that which he imagined himself, and he forced it to remain in place even as it ground down upon the mountain. Wood couldn't survive the collision with the stone, though, so he had to imagine a steel shell that covered the edges of the wheel so that it wouldn't splinter, though even a splinter would be the size of a mountain.

  But it turned, and it scooped along parts of the qi river, carrying them all the way along until it splashed back into itself, drifting back to its eventual destination past the horizon.

  In this world there was no time except that suggested by the turning of the wheel, and he lost himself in the task of forcing it to go.

  He pushed it on, on, on, forgetting himself and his entire concentration bent on simply maintaining the image. There were temptations to add birds and the like, to let go of the edges of his imagination and let the mountain or the clouds fade, but he couldn't allow that.

  On and on it went. At some point, he felt his concentration fray at the edges, anywhere between the fifth and the ninth revolutions, and he eagerly let the thing collapse as his mind returned to the problems of his body.

  His arm ached, as did his ass, though for different reasons. The medicinal paste still stunk. The cave was dark, though his eyes were growing slightly more used to the darkness.

  And beneath his heart and above his belly, a single seed lay, composed entirely of natural qi. It was small, roughly the size of maybe an ink blot, but it was there, and it was his.

  Disbelieving, he prodded at it, poked at it, tried to move it with his mind. It responded, though sluggishly, and he had the odd feeling that if he really wanted to, he could tear in half for a boost of power, should he need it.

  If he did nothing with it, it would disippate eventually.

  He'd done it. He wasn't a third-grade martial artist yet, but now it was only a matter of time.

  Grinning to himself, he consulted the book again, before he realized the lamp was still out. His hands quested around for something to light it with, and after a bit of scrabbling in the dark and muttering to himself, ignited it again.

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  It still took some squinting to read, but with some guesswork he managed somehow.

  "It is a measure of talent to succeed, even on the third or fourth try," the author stated. "It always takes the most effort to set something into motion; this is the most difficult part of cultivating. Personally, as for the ones I have taught, I have seen this art take anywhere from five to fifty days of solid cultivation before the initial seed manifests. More than that, however, and I should recommend you seek another art to practice instead, as your fate with this art may be limited at best unless you consume a significant amount of resources."

  Wu Hao couldn't help but think of Old Qin and winced.

  The book didn't mention what these resources were, but Wu Hao could make an educated guess: things like the three-seed peaches, which carried an innate qi of their own, which could then be used to kickstart further growth and provide additional qi to shore up the seed until it formed up into a proper core.

  Although, then again... He stared down at the mat, felt faint flickers of qi run through it, and wondered what he was actually seeing. It obviously wasn't alive, so what was it, then?

  He ran a finger along its surface, and though there was the minute pull of qi attracted to his touch, the rest of it continued humming along quietly along its set path.

  How did that work, exactly? He'd seen qi in living things, but so far he'd understood the attraction of qi as being something you actively had to perform. That was why he had to imagine the wheel in the first place.

  Deciding that he might as well find out, he flipped the mat around, trying to see if that made anything clearer to him. He spotted several threads worked into the material, threads that glowed both in his real sight as the not-quite-visible sense that he interpreted as seeing.

  There was a faint smell of musk and sweat to the mat itself, but he figured that was just a normal scent, not something qi-related.

  He'd seen those same threads earlier, but he remembered them glowing much more than before he'd started cultivating. The gentle breeze of qi seeping through the cave walls had definitely slowed, too.

  It was simple to conclude that the thing giving him qi had been spent, at least for now.

  With that same finger as earlier, he poked one of the threads. It was fairly hard - almost steel-like, to his guess, and it glinted oddly in the lamplight. He could make no sense of the patterns, but he imagined it probably had to be an array of some kind, woven into the mat using... gold?

  That seemed wasteful, but what else could it be? It wasn't like he knew anything of metals.

  Wu Hao wondered if he could simply steal the mat, but it was too bulky by half and it'd poke out the top of his robes if he did try. It was a shame, because this mat had been vastly useful to him, and it might be useful again. He eyed his saber for a bit, wondering if he could simply try cutting parts of it off until it fit.

  They'd probably know, though, and he imagined that getting caught would cause Lady Jin to smash him into paste. That'd be a waste of effort.

  With the qi dissipating, his attention had frayed, he decided it was clear that he wasn't going to get back in that same meditative mood again. He ached to move, to stand up and do something now that he had his qi back, even if there was nothing much that he could do with it yet, so he worked his way up to his feet again.

  Giving the cave another look, he left the lantern burning and then stepped back to where he knew the entrance to be, feeling his way past the smoothened cave walls with his left hand.

  It'd been an overcast day before he entered, but even still he had to guard his eyes against the sudden flood of light, so bright in comparison that it almost stung.

  The rest were still there, which was good, he supposed. It would be embarassing to be late again out of ignorance, and it might be taken as deliberate instead when it wasn't. Shan Kong was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Yi Wei.

  "You're out," Jin Qilong said, rising to his feet from where he'd been leaning against a stone wall nearby. He trotted over, Wu Hao meeting him halfway. "Had any success?"

  Wu Hao shrugged.

  "Don't worry," Jin Qilong said, trying to sound comforting. "It takes a few attempts, usually. I didn't manage it until my ninth attempt, and that was with several experts funnelling qi into me to help me get used to the feeling, and a Heaven-tier cultivation manual."

  Should he tell him? Jin Qilong had been nothing but supportive thus far, but part of Wu Hao distrusted him all the more because of it. Despite everything, Wu Hao knew well enough that it was possible to kill with a smiling face, or while looking utterly pathetic. Open hostility he could deal with easily - had dealt with easily, in the past, and he would again.

  His only experience with sympathy had been Du Linglong, and Ke Jiaming's words that she treated him more like a pet hadn't been wrong. That had been pity, and pity hurt deeply.

  So no. He wouldn't tell Jin Qilong, not until he was absolutely certain that the other boy wasn't planning anything, and if he was that it wasn't aimed at Wu Hao.

  "How long was I inside?" he asked instead.

  "About an hour," Jin Qilong said. "That's pretty quick, mind you. Shan Kong usually comes out after maybe two hours, Yi Wei an hour and a half."

  "I see," Wu Hao said.

  It didn't necessarily mean anything, the time they spent inside. If the others had techniques that made them cultivate more slowly in return for stronger foundations or more abundant qi, that would make sense.

  But still, he felt... good. For the first time since he'd awoken in this compound, he had his own qi again, and soon he'd get more.

  He couldn't wait.