Heaven's Laws - Lifestone - Chapter 33

Finally, Chao had reached his peak. His Huifen had started circulating his mother’s old medically inspired, qi-gathering technique before he had. They’d both made a practice of it because it cleansed a person as much as purifying pills if done consistently. He also knew Huifen just liked the way it made her feel.

He committed himself to circulating it for a quarter of an hour. It was time to get started. Huifen was already deep into the card jade Divine Envoy Po had gifted her. Grinning to himself, he turned to his own cultivation. But where should he start?

There were so many areas of study he could focus on. Many of which he had need of. His laws could not be neglected. There were countless new ones for him to examine. Sharpness that Sage Li had reveled to him was just the beginning. Concepts existed in both animate and inanimate states. Sharpness could become slash, pierce, and cleave. And who knew how many nuance concepts existed in just the movement of a blade?

Before he moved on, there was one question he needed an answer to. He summoned an awakened fire dragon of the nascent realm. It didn’t cost him much qi, but he’d done it so often that he noticed every distinct difference between now and when he was in the common space of the lower realm. Even his fire dragon cost more qi. The amount was miniscule, however.

He then tore space again. This time he did so vertically. It was about a meter in height. The increase in qi was greater than with his fire dragon, but not to the extent he expected. Why?

A space bend appeared next to the tear. He’d only made a joint. It was about two meters high and thirty centimeters (one foot) wide with a rounded surface. This was the simplest type of space bend, but it had just cost him at least three times the amount of qi. Maybe closer to five times. Was it because of the amount of air he had to displace to create it?

He took it further and created a fist size tunnel in space. Even though there were two separate tears until space expanded and joined between them, their surface area was smaller than the space bend, so it cost him less qi. At least, that was the theory. Then he made an interesting discovery. After his tunnel had swallowed the qi rich air of that floor, it was much harder to reverse. Forcing it cost more than its normal creation. If that wasn’t a good indicator that air displacement was the issue, then he didn’t know what was.

He wasn’t finished. He reverse created another tunnel of equal size and cut off his qi to see how long it would take for it to dissipate on its own. Observing it closely, minutes went by. No wonder it had cost him so much qi to force the tunnel closed. The density of the air was holding it open. Five minutes later, it finally disappeared.

From where he was sat, he organized his thoughts. If it was the air’s density that held it open, then…

He reverse created a space tear, then created space that was the same shape and size. They were both as long as a painter’s quill and thinner than a strand of hair. The space tear was reverse created, meaning that the space that the sliver of space before him had been removed. It was the lack of space, not just space displaced with only a vacuum remaining. This was no vacuum, for it was void of all space.

Then there was the created space of which his space bends consisted of. It was space borrowed or created and then overlapped onto common space. It was solid and slippery. Even though space couldn’t have any substance in itself, created space was also the hardest of all substances. It’s lack was the sharpest.

Both his tear and created strand of space began to dissipate at a faster rate than normal to the lower realm. It was as he suspected. This was both good and bad. Large space law techniques would drain his qi quickly, but they were still technically possible. A defensive space barrier for instance would use a large percentage of his qi. It wasn’t as bad as his father had warned, but it did mean his current fighting style of surrounding himself in space while picking his attacks in his own time would be impossible.

However, using space in air this dense with qi also had its advantages. If it was harder to deconstruct once it contained air from the divine realm, that opened him up to many new possibilities—and much more dangerous ones.

Even if what his father had said about his use of space in the divine realm was exaggerated, for all practical purposes it was true. With that said, he wouldn’t be as defenseless as he’d been led to believe.

Stretching out his perceptions, his will flew toward his target, tearing space horizontally many meters away. The desperate training his father had put him through when surrounded with overlords had not been for nothing. Even if he was left with the same problem he’d originally had, a weak defense, his offensive capabilities were still potent.

He spied Huifen out of the corner of his eye. She was absorbed in her card jade. As much as he wanted to return to those peaceful days where he studied the laws and cultivated his mother’s garden, there was something he wanted much more. To provide for and protect his wife. There was one thing he knew his father hadn’t exaggerated about. There were men out there that would want to harm her and take her for themselves. He had work to do.

Taking out his new pipa, Chao strapped it over his shoulder, holding it in the nontraditional way. He wouldn’t say he preferred the method, but it allowed him to stay mobile while playing. In their weeks traveling, he’d become competent enough playing it on its side that he rarely missed a note now.

Even if his space laws had the potential to make him near invincible in this realm and the divine, his father had said there would come a time at the highest realms where even the most common physiques could resist them. Out of all of his laws and techniques, it was his sound laws that were the most unique. They weren’t limited to themselves, but could carry his will and with it every law he had access to.

He began by playing a familiar song. It had been one of the first he’d played when she’d awakened in his cabin. It was a lighthearted, joyous melody. He filled it with emotion and intent—for them to focus their minds, see the wonders of the things they were studying, and to understand them. After he’d played through the song several times, he stopped, pulled out a bucket’s worth of card jades, even more scrolls, and a few stone tablets.

Chao had already scanned through them and categorized them between theory, practical instruction, and songbooks. They were also broken up by instrument. Before he moved on to trying the zither, flute, or drums, he wanted to further his knowledge with the pipa first—or should he call it a lute?

He picked up a jade on basic music theory and started to read. He’d spend some time each day on theory, then instruction, and only then turn his attention to a new song. Today would be his first time trying to learn one in written from. He knew the basics of reading it already. Remembering all the rules wouldn’t take long. The terms and their meanings wouldn’t be as easy to recall. His mother’s education in the matter was limited. She’d always emphasized the human connection to the music over music itself.

An hour later, he was plucking at the strings of his pipa as he tried to make the notes, he was playing to what was written in the jade. This song was a simple one, but it arranged things differently than he’d ever seen. There was so much to learn. Too much. It threatened to overwhelm him, but he reminded himself that no one even knew the true limit to even one of the elemental laws. Just because his mind had been opened up to better understand how much he truly didn’t know, didn’t mean he was further behind today than yesterday.

After he’d gotten through the song and had glimpsed its majesty, he put everything away and began to surround himself with the many blades he’d found in the sage’s spatial rings. Suffice it to say, they weren’t limited to the one they used. He had dozens not including his own and those Huifen carried in her rings.

She moved from her steady state of meditation for the first time since they began and piled the many swords and daggers she had before him.

“Keep your weapon close at hand,” he insisted.

She nodded and went right back to her mediation as soon as she was finished unloading.

He marveled at her, then set his mind to arranging the weapons in a circle around him. He remembered back to the cultivation chamber of the Li family. He couldn’t exactly set up his own chamber without making it a permanent structure, but he thought he’d gleaned enough from what he saw to try something.

The bladed weapons weren’t laid out in any specific order. The chaos of different materials was exactly the point. If they were too focused, he would have difficulty focusing on the sharpness concepts. If they were all yin leaning weapons, for instance, the yin concepts would be as pronounced as sharpness. Perhaps, more so… An element was a concept of a higher level. It was likely that too much of a focus of a higher concept would drown out a lower one. It was just another thing he’d have to test.

Using his qi, he lifted the blades surrounding him all at once until they floated with their blades facing him at an angle and pointing straight to the sky. His control of them, especially in the qi density of this floor, would be awkward at best. He didn’t need to do anything more than just hold them there.

He popped a pill into his mouth and shallowed. His own qi had already taken a hit. Then he studied the blade surrounding him. It wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it was in the Li family cultivation chamber, but he could feel it. The sharpness concept was there.

***

Huifen wasn’t just spending her time trying to figure out Indominable Plumage, the first technique in the third pillar of the Ice Phoenix Cultivation Tome. This divine realm card jade held a series of exercises that would allow her to practice aspects of the technique without wasting her qi.

Much like Ice Phoenix’s Breath, Indominable Plumage used a large number of meridians and flooded them with qi. Instead of every meridian, it focused on those on the front side of her body. Her ice gown would be necessary after casting it. The biggest danger was that there would be more pressure inside her meridians, since it required her to use almost the identical technique as she did with Ice Phoenix’s Breath while blocking off those on her back. It also required a far higher level of control since she’d have to focus all the qi that she released to a limited space in front of her. In many ways, it was an advanced use of Ice Phoenix’s Breath.

She’d spend much of her time on the first exercise. It required her to shut off the meridians in her back and open those in the front. It wasn’t difficult if time wasn’t an issue. It was being able to do it instantly as a massive burst of qi from one’s inner world threatened to destroy whatever got in its way, including Huifen herself.

She had to admit that Ice Phoenix’s Breath was far easier and much more natural. When releasing such a large amount of qi, the meridians in her body naturally reacted by opening. To forcibly keep some closed went against the bodies desire to protect itself. Mastering these exercises would be of great benefit, even if they were tedious. She was a cultivator of the Ice Phoenix Sect. If she couldn’t handle tedious then she would’ve left long ago.

The practical implications of Indominable Plumage weren’t lost on her. If she could use it to create a wall of defensive ice, why couldn’t she use it to create a movement technique, or an offensive attack? Such techniques were simple at a conceptual level, but the danger was extreme. Not just to herself either. If she could direct all of the qi of Ice Phoenix’s Breath in one direction…

She did something as she practiced the exercise over and over that she never would have just a few years before. While she practiced, she let her imagination wander as she thought of the many possibilities.