Chapter 14: Is this Torture or Cultivation? (2)

I want to become immortal. I want to see the view at the top of the mountain, to go where no other has gone. I want to reach eternity.

That single thought reverberated across his mind as he kept cultivating. Sixty cycles. Seventy. Eighty… A hundred.Without realizing it, Xun began cycling his hundred and first cycle. And then hundred and second. Although pain still wracked his body, his face was serene, peaceful even. It was like nothing was bothering him.If another cultivator had seen Xun in that moment, they would have known exactly what was happening. Xun was in a moment of enlightenment, one of the rare times where a cultivator lost themselves in their cultivation. At the end of the process, they'd understand something new about themselves, something that would drive their progress in a way mere practice and dedication couldn't.Usually, these moments of enlightenment came after a fight or during meditation. Xun lacked the luxury of a restful time to experience his. He kept cycling zhen, and the strains from the Inner Breathing Method were beginning to show. Small dots of red appeared throughout his skin like unhealthy goose bumps, then blood started flowing out of all of his pores.Finally, when Xun hit the two hundredth cycle, he opened his eyes and took a deep breath.Wow that felt really nice. It's been a while since I was in a state of enlightenment.But that scripture really, really hurts.Xun didn't have time for a third thought. His world went sideways. An instant later, it turned black.—When Xun woke up, the sun had already set. He was lying on the ground, his new robe drenched in a mixture of blood and sweat. All his muscles were screaming like they had been abused. In a way, they weren't wrong.Xun folded his legs under him and tried to stand. His first attempt failed pathetically. He landed face-first on the floor again. The second attempt was better, especially since he learned from his mistake and grabbed onto his bed for balance. His legs felt like noodles, his arms like stalks of grass.It smells horrible in here. With the moon's dim light, Xun looked at his hand and found it a dark red. Blood had sunk into every crease of his skin and dried there. What in the nine skies happened?I need something… The rice field.Beyond just scriptures and spirit channels, there was a third way that cultivators could increase their cultivation, resources.It was said that with enough resources, a toddler could become a Consecration Realm cultivator. Though that story was likely apocryphal, there was some nugget of truth. Spirit rice was one of the most basic spirit plants and each pound of rice had around eight units of zhen.The only problem was that a cultivator couldn't just mash their face in rice to keep gaining zhen. When consumed, a spirit plant's zhen would diffuse through the cultivator's body. Over time, a cultivator's zhen cycles would pick up the energy and deposit it in the cultivator's aperture. Even though the spirit rice's zhen was incredibly calm, too much of any type of zhen would damage the cultivator's body.That's why most spirit plants were used as ingredients for pill refinement. By extracting the essence of each plant, pills could supplement a cultivator's cultivation directly or even help them break through to the next rank, stage, or realm.The picture changed when one's body was injured or broken to the extent Xun's was. For his purposes, zhen diffusing throughout his body was just fine.Opening his door, he stumbled out into the open. He had enough awareness to know that he should try and avoid the other laborers. Luckily, his hut was remote enough that no one noticed him dipping into the lower terraces of the farm.Surrounded by rice stalks, Xun snapped one of them with his hand and brought it to his mouth. He used his teeth to thresh the stalk and swallowed the grains raw.As each grain of rice slipped into his stomach, they turned into miniscule amounts of zhen and sped through his spirit channels, choosing random locations in his body as their new homes. And since almost every part in his body was broken to some degree, wherever the zhen settled, the nearby muscle fibers began to greedily take in the energy and heal themselves.In seconds, the zhen from the raw rice was gone.Xun brought a second stalk to his mouth and swallowed. Before he took the third stalk, a small voice in his mind cautioned him towards reason. Taking too much from a single location would expose him. If he was going to steal from the spirit farm, the least he could do was be smart about it.With strength the rice had provided, Xun stood up and slipped off his shoes. He made his way to the drainage ditches dug alongside each terrace. From there, he began to pick ten to twelve grains of rice off each stalk, spacing out his theft to minimize the chances of it being discovered.Because the harvest wasn't ready yet, the rice was green and small. But there was still a slight bit of zhen in them, less than the fully mature spirit rice but greater than the ambient zhen that Xun would take in from breathing.The mud and water in the ditches squelched with each step that Xun took, but he had no intention of moving to the elevated footpaths. Snout-nosed rice borers appeared more frequently next to drainage ditches. It was natural for the stalks closer to the ditches to have lower yields, and nobody would question it enough to search for his footprints.Xun shoved the rice in his mouth as he slowly made his way through the terrace.As he worked, he noticed more insects were sticking to the rice stalks than normal. The yields of the rice would be severely impacted, but that suited Xun's needs just fine. It might be a problem for someone else, later. For now, it helped cover his tracks.Once he ate enough unripe rice that his body felt bursting with zhen, he made his way back to his hut. He could have taken more, but having green rice in his hut during the day was asking for trouble. If he needed more rice later, he could steal it then.He was set on food, at least for the moment. Now, what he needed the most was an alibi.