Last Days

During most of her remaining month and a half, Zhi Xing remained true to herself. She spent majority of every morning helping around the village since she had more energy and strength to spare. While the afternoon and evening were spent fine tuning her cultivation technique and increasing her Spirit Power.

In the middle of a shabbily decorated room with hand crafted stuffed animals, drawings and used parchment with diagrams and cultivation conjecture littering the walls and shelves was a girl performing a myriad of yoga exercises. These various positions she was executing were the coping mechanisms used while in her only year of college in her past life, apparently it was the only thing stopping her from getting physical with her lecturers during and after classes before she eventually dropped out.

With her eyes closed she was currently preforming a low lunge stretching her hamstrings and quadriceps before slowly standing and straightening her posture. Moving on immediately she began executing a standing split. With her left leg pointing above as straight as it could possibly be with her toes curled towards the ceiling and her abdomen uncomfortably folded down towards her other leg, she clutched behind her right calf with the crook of her arm and kept her forehead aligned with her ankle for a minute or two. She wasn't this flexible in her past life and owed her body's current progress to her training. Readjusting her posture she sat down in a lotus position on a hand sewn frilly cushion with floral patterns and relaxed. Wisely using the time to determine if any of the positions she attempted had any affect on speeding up the development of her Chakras or Spirit Power. She frowned soon after completing her first full circulation of the day, not finding any subtle diffrences within the quality of either.

Exhaling deeply she opened her eyes to take in her surroundings, while pondering over the increase to her energy's circulation speed during the exercises. Next to her was a huge glimmering green and bark brown beetle laying down on the blanket Grandpa Jack found her unconscious in once upon a time. Roughly 2½ feet long and a width of 22 inches, if she had been standing right next to it, the spirit would nearly reach her waist, which wasn't that tall considering she was six but it's still testament to it's insane growth over this relatively small course of time. Simply starting at the size of a fly all that time ago, if questioned about such explosive increase in biomass Xing would quickly feign ignorance.

When Tang San had dropped off the cured Boar meat weeks before; her martial spirit had torn into the cloth packaging and began consuming the freshly seasoned and dried meat before Xing or Tang San could even react. With that first taste of treated flesh it had pestered Tang San and Xing to cook everything it found whether it be wild insects or any small animal that unluckily wondered near their homes. Perhaps due to it's most recent weight gain the bug or Shí as Xing had come to affectionately refer to her since the incident with the leaves. Had slowed down it's stomach's vendetta against the world, with it's new weight which sat at quite a few pounds, it could no longer generate enough strength to fly, while it's crawling speed had also dramatically decreased. It was reminiscent of living row of bowling balls, wobbling to get around.

Yet besides eating their entire half of the Boar in the span of a few hours, Shí had continued crippling it's own ability to hunt long after that night had passed, which irritated Xing slightly to no conceivable end. At a certain point she just stopped trying to train her, deciding it would realistically be best if she trained without relying entirely on her martial spirit for everything. Between their conversations on martial spirits, Tang San had been engrossed and over sharing when talking about his Blue Silver Grass. The useless weed, possessing no identifiable attributes besides it's anomalous Innate Full Spirit Power and Vitality meant neither he nor Xing had any idea in what direction it would develop as his cultivation grew, the two were both completely new to the materialized concepts and attributes of a person's body and soul yet they would constantly badger each other with questions that the other simply couldn't answer.

But after each conversation on cultivation and martial spirits in general that they had, Xing came to realize that her Insect was an anomaly in and of itself with it's absurd ceiling for personal growth. While it's only attribute besides the obvious appetite and poison 'was' it's speed, it had unfortunately already crippled such an asset on its own.

Xing could sense her every movement inside their connection's boundry, but outside of this tenuous connection was another story. Xing could only rely on luck to track her down after a certain distance was put between them while on the emotional side, whether Shí was upset, happy, sad or hungry all of them became too muddled for Xing to distinguish without putting all of her mental focus on strengthing that particular feeling.

Yet leaving her martial spirit out all the time while she improved her own cultivation was a habit that they were both very comfortable with. Shí would be out and about, wondering towards the boundary of their connection and beyond when it's poison or help wasn't needed in search of food to satiate itself. As a byproduct of this behavior, Xing would rarely lack spirit power and could therefore cultivate for longer periods of time. The added mental pressure of exchanging energy between the two of them even counted as a type of training in Xing's personal regimen.

Having not seen the downside early enough from it's random spikes in growth she had let her do whatever she wished while focusing solely on her own progress barely noticing the tree's around the area shrinking in size every day and the lack of insects signling potential mates or animals communicating with one another at night.

Even though the glutton was now useless she had the foresight to gather some of Shí's poison within wooden vials at different spirit power outputs and diluted them with water. Besides small talk and a shared fascination towards Spirits the two children also had negotiations, she earned Tang San's aid for the price of some of her poison stash in return for small needles and knives she witnessesed him forging while practicing different metallurgy techniques.

Deeming them sub par Tang San sold them to her at a hefty exchange rate knowing that she could simply produce more after sacrificing some spirit power. The girl might need bladed tools to make use of her poison on her own but in Tang San's hands the poison itself was the most versatile weapon he could ask for, having already cleaned its paralystic effects from their game multiple times he knew hundreds of different herb combinations that could increase it's overall efficacy or even change the type of effect the poison had on the enemy's nervous system from simple paralysis to outright epilepsy or perhaps the never ending sensation of burning throughout the body, only be relieved when spirit power was guided properly through the body for weeks or months at a time to properly expel.

Having received her purchase she coated the solution on their blades and pointed tips and carried them all in a small leather satchel with color coded compartments denoting duration that she had made herself. With Shí currently out of commission she had to ensure there was a way to protect herself.

Today was her first venture outside of the village in nearly a week, she had improved upon the leaf concentration exercise considerably and was ready to spend the rest of the day working on her tree and water walking. Armed with weapons she recalled Shí into her body and set out.

She walked along the dirt path extending out of the village from behind their homes towards the old trading route where her family had met their end. Since the incident, Grandpa Jack had assured her repeatedly over the years that there weren't any dangerous beasts left wondering the area after extensive searches by the villagers. How he was so sure they were safe she had no idea but what was left in these flourishing outskirts were regular wild life and plants that were usually only hunted and collected by the villagers when times were rough and trade with the nearby city was stalled between all the surrounding settlements.

Splitting off from the main path after traveling for nearly 15 minutes she darted through the underbrush, passing by small trees with nibbles through their trunks. A path Shí had carved out under her command during their retreats to help navigate when the weather was bad.

Reaching a clearing, she stopped and began unpacking her equipment under a large oak tree, removing some spare clothing, rocks of various shapes such as discs or dumbbells and finally her lunch and poisoned weapons. She's only had the knives and needles for a little under a week so but she hadn't put much effort into training with them and although they looked cool Tang San had warned her that they would quickly wear down and break apart after hitting anything harder than the raw ore with which they were forged from. With her tight schedule not really allowing her time to run around and throw them at poor trees, she packed them back in their satchel and hung it on a branch for ease of access.

Her telluric equipment was a byproduct of Shí's ability to consume simple plants, other insects and the thick meat and bones from animals hundreds of times her original size such as; Boars, Rabbits, Fish or Birds etc. Shí could also digest sedimentary rocks and other minerals.

Having no idea how she digested such diverse materials and converted it all into energy and nutrients. Xing used her like an electric saw in a workshop to design and sculpt a few rudimentary rock weights with Shí's mandibles, weights that she could simply lift or strap to herself or put into the extra pockets she made in her clothing during her Chakra training. The added weight and strain helped strengthen her body, while shifting the amount of weight occasionally forced her mind and Spirit Power to adapt in order to keep her from falling off the trees or into the pond.

She was still having issues with molding her spirit power into specific shapes but the exercises were definitely getting easier. Just from her warm up she had manged to reach a height of 11 ft by casually walking up the tree she had all her gear situated under, a testament to her spirit power control's growth. Having already marked that height with a knife she spent the better part of 2 hours increasing her maximum height on the tree to 20 ft before her concentration on the magnetism between her spirit power, feet and the tree broke. Long before she made contact with the ground, she shifted her spirit power to the palms of her hands allowing them to attract momentarily to the tree, yet with that pause in her momentum she shifted the force originally forcing her downwards towards her back and hips before rotating them to preform a simple flip and landing next to her equipment perfectly.

Summoning her martial spirit while she took a break she sat and gazed out at the pond wistfully thinking about her future. She had resolved a lot of the harm her cultivation technique was incurring on her body, but some of the damage was already permanent. Unless she located a Spirit Master specializing in healing she would continue feeling the faint pain she currently felt during cultivation and it would progress with her growth to the point that later in the Ranks, simply trying to stabilize or increase her cultivation would feel like wondering through a lake of lava, pain equivalent to dying over and over an nerve endings are fried. Prehaps it was an exaggeration of the mind but the notion of this happening gave her chills and although it would take a long time for the intensity of the pain to reach such a crecendo, the bit of pain she currently did feel during training, had already created a sort of mental block on what she originally believed she could achieve.

It was entirely her fault but Xing had no idea why she acted so rashly, perhaps it was because she felt inferior to Tang San and Su Yuntao's innate talent, perhaps she just didn't want to disappoint Grandpa Jack and everyone else in the village rooting for and supporting her. Perhaps she didn't care about anyone at all except herself and not being able to properly control her spirit power in the beginning was too much for her over inflated ego to bear. But now that she had grasped more concepts and experiences she was seeing how it had bitten her in the ass. The stray thought to simply chalk it up to her screwed up soul and memories metastasizing into borderline personality disorder or something worse was there, but she wasn't a qualified therapist.

Suspicion of it having something to do with her Chakra's existed as well but until she could remember more about their functions she could only focus her efforts towards creating and opening them and finding out herself.

Regarding her cultivation, during one of her discussions with Tang San, he had mentioned offhandedly that she was likely facing issues when refining and controlling her spirit power because she wasn't guiding it along the correct meridians. When she pressed him about the term and where he came to learn such insight into cultivation he became flustered and began saying it was just general information passed down through his family from an old sect that didn't exist on the continent anymore.

She thought it suspicious at the time but didn't press the matter besides asking him to teach her as much as he could through word of mouth but didn't force him. He was already helping her out a ton with the information and smithing services and by simply interacting with her. Having avoided him and many other children after the first incident of physical bullying when she originally started getting involved with the community she didn't want to bother him too much.

Back then she was still trying to process the grief her mind felt from her families passing while trying to reconcil and understand the bits and pieces of a life, an entirely different identity in such disorder that she still can't fully grasp things even to this day. Being pushed around and demeaned just wasn't what her psyche needed in order to heal.

From there her social skills had devolved considerably as she didn't wish to interact with people who would make fun of her shamble of a life. Before long when her mind was properly stable she wrote off the idea of even forming friendships since they were children and wouldn't be able understand her. It was the condescension of an adult leaking through and making judgment calls based on preconceived notions but it was enough to leave her an outcast until the time of the Awakening Ceremony.

*Click~Click*

Nudging it's head against her lap, Zhi Xing was embarrassed to find her Martial Spirit trying to cheer her up. It began rubbing its segmented abdomen together to produce a sort of chirping sound as she pet it. Looking into its beady eyes that reflected her face, she smiled slightly while stroking it's rock hard carapace, the two sat in relative silence aside from occasional chirping and the crunching of exotic leaves Xing had collected as a treat on her way here.

Humming while circulating her energy between the two, they watched as the wind generated waves across the pond. The branches hovering above swayed back and forth as leaves and flower petals fluttered down, the variety in color painted the waters with life while it's crystalline surface reflected the bright blue sky and passing clouds swimming aimlessly above. With her hair swaying to the side, Xing focused her concentration inwards.

She was currently at Rank 7, perhaps after another month or two in the Academy she and Tang San would be on the same level. Yet her common sense told her that within that month, he could very well find a way to surpass the Rank 10 boundry. Leaving her in the dust. Thinking about such a boundary Xing pondered over the Spirit Hall Representative's words and assumed the Spirit Ring mentioned by Su Yuntao refered to the circlets that surround Spirit Masters of higher ranks, such as her father. But how to go about acquiring one or even their use were things beyond her grasp.

Having already considered Tang San's point about her misguided energy, she had scoured her entire body for the meridians he referred to but couldn't find anything. After a few days of searching with her Mental Energy she gave up, concluding that either she managed to destroy them early on or this body, even before she remembered her past life, had absolutely zero talent or barely any ability to retain Spirit Power. It was a wild assumption, but it was still a possibility Xing wouldn't rule out. The brutal cultivation she undertook may have doomed her to a future of torturous pain, but perhaps she accidentally gained the opportunity to achieve strength that those with little or even without Spirit Power could only ever dream of. Compared to the chaotic and sickly feeling her Spirit Power originally circulated in, the pathways she had carved into her bones flesh and organs in the present felt far more natural and were far more efficient.

How she awakened a Martial Spirit and produced then retained her original Half-Rank Spirit Power she doesn't know. But hopefully with her time at the academy she can fill in these gaps of knowledge, there was only so much her insecure past self could help with regarding exercise, meditation and knowledge of the body. Knowledge that didn't extend into the mystifying and supernatural attributes of the Spirit Energy that pervades every corner of this world.

Taking in deep breathes she began circulating her Spirit Power along the path she created and between her martial spirit without making her energy spin or condence. She had broken through only a day ago so she was still spending time stabilizing her Spirit Power's current new 'natural' rotation inbetween each of her proper sessions. She had learned the hard way that if she didn't do this regularly between each Rank it was quite possible for her cultivation to slip and slightly regress on its own when she slept after a breakthrough or just wasn't as diligent as she should be towards her own growth.

Her Spirit Power was now infused and flowed through her skin, a few major arteries and most importantly her lungs and muscles during normal circulation. this allowed her to move the energy in her reserves through her nerves, bones and blood vessels to reinforce certain limbs and output more strength than her small body would natrually be capable of producing.

When she noticed that her Spirit Power continued to circulate without her constant concentration keeping it aligned she stopped and resumed her control training, this time on the water. Setting aside her robes she simply wore some loose shorts and a white shirt that she had brought along, knowing she would likely end up soaking wet before returning to the village . Wishing to preserve the dryness and cleanliness of her original outfit she folded and set them aside then began tying her long brown hair into a bun.

Walking along the smooth yet ever ebbing bed of water, beads of sweat raced down her face as she walked further and further towards the center of the pond while releasing just enough spirit power from the soles of her feet to keep her dry and balanced by relying on the repulsive force generated. The tricky part with this exercise was that the amount of spirit energy that needs to be emitted changed constantly. Forcing her to adjust her control every few seconds. It was probably the hardest but most rewarding exercise out of all three, by remaining calm and focusing solely on this single task her acute mental focus or energy and spirit power would cooperate seamlessly with one another. Bringing about far more benefits in the form of her unconscious Spirit Power Control being reinforced with exceptional experience that would hopefully in the future culminate into this same current feat she's struggling with becoming completely passive.

Xing continued cycling through her exercises and techniques until the afternoon sun began to set. With water and sweat dripping down from her hair and forehead, decending towards her soaked clothing she postitioned herself to land a straight forward punch on one of the sturdier trees in the area. Squaring her legs she threw out most of the rotation she built up in her waist into the punch, infusing roughly 90% of her Spirit Power into her hand, wrist and arm. When her knuckle made contact with the aged oak, a large indentation was immediately gouged into it's sturdy trunk as wood shrapnel was immediately pulverized into tiny indiscernable scraps. Her breathing remained steady even with the small bruise on her fist, while the after shock was dampened by the reinforcement up to her shoulder not influencing her body's other functions. Her sharpened concentration ensured that even without such dampening, her lungs would continue executing the same cycle of respiration. This was an added benefit of bathing her lungs in Spirit Power every cycle, allowing finer control over them and an increase to the amount of Spirit Energy she regenerates when normally using her breathing methods.

Looking to the top of the tree, Xing squinted. Focusing half her remaining Spirit Power into her legs and feet before darting up the tree far more quickly than she originally believed possible in just under a day of training. Pulling herself up on a branch near the crown of the tree she simply sat down, just to take in her surroundings. The bountiful verdant green of nature spread out as far as her eyes could see, with the sun blaring in the sky and the littered ponds and lakes doting the vast expanse of a world people could only dream of frolicking within in her first life.

She could see Holy Spirit Village situated not too far away along with the other surrounding settlements Grandpa Jack or other villagers would sometimes visit. Knowing the general direction of the nearby Nouding City she looked on aimlessly for a few minutes hoping to see such a city reminiscent of the countless metropolis littering her old world. She could make out the towering walls but not the cityscape they protected. Giving up she relaxed, simply satisfied to be living in such rich new world for a few minutes. Tilting her head back her eyes wondered between the strange new constellations in the sky and much brighter stars before eventually falling backwards, as soon as her body stopped being in contact with the branch previously supporting her she consciously directed the remaining 5% of her Spirit Power between her feet and hands trying to distribute the minimum needed with alot of mental effort on her part, swiftly repeling down the tree to her things. She flipped and swerved, avoiding thick branches and sharp sticks, sometimes clutching on to the tree at an inconceivable angle or remaining upside down on a particular branch for a few seconds before continuing her decent.

Reaching the ground she began changing her clothes and retrieving her things and recalled Shí who was sleeping in an adjacent tree, the two then returned to the village in order to spend time with their family. Before the first semester begins and goodbyes have to be said.