Chapter 92: The Wind on My Fingertips – revisit?

Liming was handling the mounting pressures as well as Paike could expect. It had been less than a week, but things were happening in the sect. Twice more, he or Guan Li had been accosted while trying to go about their business.

The second time, Paike had been a lot less merciful. None of the attackers had less than two broken bones, and he had made sure to do it publicly and with enough spectacle that his reputation had been thoroughly spread.

In the girls' half of the sect, Liming's position was starting to become more difficult. Most of their year was putting up an uninterested front, backing her. But as she failed to move into Topaz, they became more nervous. The clashes there were different from what Paike had expected.

Only two of the faction's leaders were able to enter the girls' housing; however, neither of them seemed inclined for direct confrontation. So for the time being, Liming was able to work together with a few of the more powerful girls and fend off singular Early Topaz cultivators.

It was working for now, but until she could do so by herself, the situation was untenable in the long term.

After each session of cultivation, they talked. She would ask about how his breakthrough had felt. He recounted every detail he could remember several times in different ways. She said that it was helping and she could feel herself getting close.

"It is like the wind on my fingertips." She said on the fourth day. "I can feel it, but when I close my hand I find it empty."

Her experience was very different from Paike's, but advancement could be a very personal event. Because of this, there wasn't much more he could do to help. There wasn't even anyone else she could ask. The only one that was a possibility was Taka, and Paike hesitated to even bring him up, wary of distracting her.

Soon, though, it would be time for his third lesson, and Paike had promised to talk to her about it anyway.

His own cultivation suffered from the worry more than his sisters' or anyone else's; such was his desire to see her succeed.

Progress on his trance was slow, if nonexistent. He honestly wasn't sure how to progress without assistance. He kept meditating and trying to feel for the end of the trance. Still, while he started to feel it, he didn't dare push himself over the edge without supervision. There were too many things that could go wrong. If there wasn't any more progress after their next lesson, he would start to worry. As of now, though, he still had almost half the time given to him left.

His battle trance wasn't the only thing he worked on during this time.

Between sessions of him expanding his dantian, he and Guan Li had resumed their research while they had time. It was slower going now. As they were fully flushing out the ideas they had confirmed worked and were pushing the boundaries. Neither was as excited about this part, but they both agreed that it was necessary. Because of this, their book of finalized notes nearly doubled as details and fine-tunements were added.

They also had a list of various cross-interactions they wanted to explore further. But as Guan Li was getting ready to learn his next art, they also slowly started to theorize about how meridians were carved and how they affected the qi. Not just the attunement or location, but the patterns of twists and turns.

Guan Li had finally been convinced not to try and design his own this time around. He already had five. From their tentative classifications, they didn't overlap with Paike's in type or function. That didn't include the attunement of the meridian or the part of the body it connected to. Their hope was that neither of those variables directly affected how the qi formed into techniques based on their research. They hoped the location had more to do with the domain the qi was able to affect and the attenuation of the flavor.

If that wasn't the case, they would have a lot more trouble doing the research with just them. Paike thought it was about a fifty-fifty chance. From what they had laid out after looking at all the arts they had access to, plus taking a look at a few others from the library, they categorized them into nine archetypal patterns.

They hoped the Guan Li could get an art with two particular kinds of meridian formations included. Then they would have access to all nine archetypal meridian formation styles among them. This would greatly increase the effectiveness of the research on how meridians worked with the soul and governed the qi interactions after passing through them.

The issue was that they had pretty much no leads on what they did. Clearly it was important somehow, but once they had at least one version of all of them, they could experiment much more.

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Just considering the vast number of combinations of the nine types, the many destinations, and the adjustments Paike dispaired. If the nine types had no overlap in effect, even if he ignored attunements and made everything unattuned, there was no way that he could have one of every type to each part of his body. Even if he didn't have as much trouble carving them with his internal qi circulation, it wouldn't be possible for an exceptional cultivator with 70 meridians. Mostly only just got ot 40 or 50.

He was hoping that there was enough overlap. How his father cultivated gave him reason to believe that his goal was achievable. Still, it would take even longer than he first thought.

By the day before his next lesson with Taka, Elder Song still hadn't contacted him. That wasn't too surprising, as cultivators at her age moved on their own timetables. Still, he did expect it would be sooner rather than later before she called on him again. He had a decent amount of ideas to run past her. And he was curious to see the results of the tests she came up with.

He had also received a few responses from the letters he had sent. The general response was mixed, from pleased surprise at his success to Mother's triumphant fawning. She had always believed in him more than anyone.

For the first time he was able to tell Liming the news from home, rather than the other way around.

"Both of our stipends are increasing again." He told her as they walked out to the qi nexus, ready to start another session. This time their friends weren't joining them.

"I'm already not using all they gave me from last time. This is getting to be too much." Liming complained.

"I know some of the cultivation aids are not exactly cheap. Haven't you been burning through your funds this week?"

Liming didn't look at him.

"You haven't been using them, have you?"

"Not yet." She said, "Give me one more day; I think I can do it myself."

Paike relented. He understood not wanting to need them. Especially this early. They didn't actually make it harder to break through later on, despite the stigma. However, many took it as a sign that if they were needed, it would make it harder to get higher, as your natural talent was low.

This was ridiculous for Liming to think right now. Her problem wasn't that she needed them to advance at all but rather to do so quickly. Even talent cultivators would take months to advance, even out of Ruby. Of the hundreds in the outer sect, only a handful or two made it out in the year.

She was just trying to do it faster. But her pride wouldn't let her give up.

"Okay, take what time you can." He said, not letting his nervousness for her come through. "On a separate topic, I'm having my next lesson with Taka tomorrow."

"So?" Liming said, sounding a little hostile.

"Well, so far he has held up his end of the bargain, and he seems different from what I remember as little kids." Paike started to explain; he was working up to asking her about going with him tomorrow.

"He wanted you to ask if I would come, didn't he?" She guessed before he could get there.

"How did you know?"

"It's exactly what he would do." Liming scoffed. "You don't remember how many times he would act nice and pretend he hadn't just stabbed you in the back until you forgot and then betrayed you again? It was literally your entire childhood! I only remember parts of it, but I heard the stories."

"Stories?" Paike didn't remember anyone talking badly about his brother.

"Yes, of all his successes and conquests?" Liming said. "I don't think anyone else realized how it was always the two of you getting to the finish line together in all those. Working as a team only for him to take all the credit in the end. You were always forgotten in the stories."

"I never cared about the credit for when we did well," Paike said.

"Well, he only cared about the credit. You are far too trusting, brother. It took until he awakened and thought he had no more use for you until you finally realized how much he had used you. But maybe you don't even see it now?" Liming was getting worked up. "Now that your star is on the rise, he is just getting ready to use you again."

"I--"

"I swear if you are about to defend him... Or say that you would help him if you could, I'm going to slap you." Liming stopped walking and poked his chest. "You need to stand up for yourself. You are better than you realize, wake up!"

"I was going to say I think you should see if you can use him this time," Paike said softly as he gently moved her hand from his chest. "I get where you are coming from better than you know. However, while I don't want to give up on our brother just yet, I'm not going to be naively taken advantage of again. I don't mind sacrificing for the family, but I think it's only fair I get something too.

"However, I can't think of a better way for him to show that he had really changed than to start making up for everything. When I feel we are even, I will still not trust him the way I used to, the way I want to, but then we can start building trust again."

Liming was left speechless, so Paike continued. "I think you should go. You don't even have to listen to his apology or anything if you don't want to. However, I think he is the only one here besides myself who will give you a detailed explanation of his breakthrough to Topaz. Even if it will hurt him because if you succeed you will have beaten his time by more than a month."

Paike finished, hoping that he hadn't even made her angrier. He was pretty sure Liming wanted him to hate his twin forever, but Paike wasn't going to do that.

Liming's mouth twitched into a smile. "Finally getting something from him would be nice, I think."

She actually agreed to come. Paike didn't think she would, but she had. Maybe the good old days when children would never come again, but it gave him a little hope that things could move forward.

"I'm still not listening to anything he has to say, though."

Small steps, he supposed.