Chapter 9: CH10: Aura Application

Dotty gave a happy musical grunt as he brushed out her coat. Before the spirit energy, she had been getting stiffer every day leading up to the first snow. He had been worried it would be her last winter before she improved. After drinking spirit water every morning for the last few days, she had improved faster than ever. Having her around to pamper eased some of the anxiety of teaching six men enough about cultivation to leave them alone.

 

While the hollow had managed to bypass his defenses with possessed and mutated worms, that wasn’t an issue. Silas added more posts improving upon the frequency. Anyone possessed wouldn’t last long behind his fence. With his current 83%, the seals he made were much stronger, and the pseudo spirit hog blood improved his seals more.

 

His faithful nag nipped at his shirt when he paused his work. Silas pushed her away and continued his brushing. In the stalls, he tried to put away his worries. But he needed to go to town, or soon enough, there would be a mob of hungry puritans marching over the horizon.

 

It was fortunate that there was enough grass for the cows and horses to graze, even if it was mostly frozen. Silas had been worried; some types of grass, when frozen, produced cyanide in large enough quantities to kill a cow. But, so far, none of his small herd had dropped dead.

 

He brushed her tail and picked out burs; she probably ran through them just so he had to spend extra time picking them out.

 

Silas hadn’t expected his animals to cultivate and become spirit animals. He had assumed the animals from cultivation worlds had an adaptation that allowed them to cultivate. Seeing as this was the bleach universe, he suspected some animals might have that same adaptation. But before starting his farm, he found it unlikely that spirit beasts were possible.

 

After seeing their growing intelligence, Silas hesitated to slaughter any hogs in case an animal farm incident occurred. However, Silas would revisit it when he reached the first stage.

 

Dotty stomped her foot when he stopped and looked back at him. Silas dragged the last bur from her tail, and she spun around to face him with more grace than he expected of a horse. To his observations, it meant she was closing in on the hump between mortal and the first stage. For animals, their veins naturally absorbed spirit energy, unlike humans, but the trade-off was resource requirements.

 

Humans only needed a source of spirit energy to cultivate their veins. Then to reach the first stage, they needed to cultivate their hearts in 9 heartbeats. There were techniques to slow the heartbeat, but Silas didn’t know them. Ascending to the first stage shouldn’t take many heartbeats if necessary resources are present. But, unfortunately, they weren’t in the mortal world.

 

The flesh of spirit beasts was an option for cultivation but not a good one. It would be better to increase his sources of spirit energy to draw upon. The worms helped, and their boost would increase as they multiplied in the worm farm. Every spirit beast on his property increased the overall spiritual energy in the fenced-in land. He could comfortably reach the first stage with spirit water in a decade.

 

Dotty rubbed her long face against his cheek, and Silas let the warm fur ease some of his tension. He wasn’t supposed to let anxiety plague him while he was in the horse barn.

 

Benjamin and Jack entered the barn both nearly bumped their heads on the door frame. “Hark thee, boss, we have something to show thou,” Jack said.

 

“Methinks this will put thou in a good mood. Even in this poor weather.” Benjamin said with a shiny white smile.

 

Benjamin had taken to cultivation a little better than the others and was looking better for it. While cultivating veins couldn’t regrow teeth, it could make them healthier. In Silas’s current state, he hardly needed to brush but chose to for the clean feeling. He sometimes brushed Dotty’s teeth when they had time.

 

Silas went to shut Dotty into her stall, then thought better of it. The nag followed them out like she owned the place, and Silas was being immature for locking her up in the first place. So long as Dotty returned to her stall at night instead of trying to follow him to bed, it was ok. Then again, he was a bit sturdier than the first time she collapsed on top of him like a dog.

 

The difference between 50% and 80% was greater than the percentages implied.                       

 

He followed Benjamin to the piss shack and found a pile of dirt taller than the shack itself and a lead pipe going down the hill leading into the building. Connected to the new reservoir of spirit water with a pump made from wood and metal.

While that wasn’t a complete game changer, it did help with some of the spirit water production. The distillery still ran hot in the shack turning cow urine into spirit water. He could also sense the six and felt each was in the low single-digit percentages.

 

By their current rate, they may be in the first stage in half a decade.

 

They had vastly more spirit energy to use than he did in the beginning, but his poor teaching hadn’t helped them much. It's why he wanted to hire a schoolmaster to teach them letters. Silas felt he could word the instructions better in writing than by saying them.

 

“Tis a sight. It came to me in a dream, and once spoken, the others caught on quickly.” Jack said.

 

Silas pulled on the lever to the pump a few times and felt the spirit water flow out of the reservoir below. He held his canteen under it and filled it quickly. Excess water fell in a wide cone back into the reservoir.

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The underground water reservoir meant another change to his farm. He could use the spirit water during planting season and grow spirit dense crops. In addition, it would lock more spirit energy into the growing ecosystem of his farm.

 

“Thou have done well. With this, our options have increased far beyond what they were before. I believe I can leave thee with my farm. Water the cows and horses with spirit water, empty the piss salt, and keep the distillery fires hot.” Silas said as Dotty bumped up against him.

 

He patted his affectionate friend’s flank and pulled out his pipe. The tobacco he used didn’t have any spirit energy, but that would change after he dealt with the hollow. The plowing season would come soon enough, and he had the area around the lake to fence in and fields to plant. The next year's harvest season would make him fabulously wealthy if they could survive.

 

“I will see it done, and do we have permission to finish the farmhouse,” Cletus asked.

 

Silas puffed on his pipe before getting serious. “Methinks no one should travel alone or unarmed, and everyone should practice with a musket until they can reload it in less than a minute. As for finishing the farmhouse, if thou have time, expand it; we are no longer a mere farm. We are no longer mere farmers but cultivators of the spirit and body, so our land is no longer a farm. By definition, we have become a sect of followers of the path of improvement. Instead of a farmhouse, we need a dorm for future cultivators. But collecting lumber is dangerous, and the hollow can control animals, so yes, finish the farmhouse but be careful.” Silas said, letting them know they wouldn’t be alone for long and that he valued their safety.

 

“Sir, thou couldn’t plan to invite freedmen here. Methinks we need time to grow, and prying eyes would be disastrous.” Cletus said.

 

Cletus still clung to his cross like a line to a drowning man. Silas wasn’t fooled; the man wasn’t his, but with time that could change. So he hesitated to kill a man until he had to.

 

“See to the farmhouse, I mean only to get a stallion for Dotty and more muskets. They are desperate for food and most likely already slaughtered most everything.” Silas said and puffed more on his pipe.

 

The ice hadn’t lasted long on spirit energy-soaked ground. The cows left plenty of dung on the ground, and already green shoots sprouted everywhere, poking through the ice and ignoring winter's breath. He saw a deer munching near the lake and picked up a rock.

 

“Let me show thee something.” He released his aura, and the lot of them winced. “Be not afraid. Thy leader merely wishes to show thee how to use aura.” A rock hovered above his palm, controlled by spiritual pressure alone, or aura as he preferred to call it.

 

It was the same application of spiritual pressure that his plus-soul servant used to harvest crops.

 

Silas held his hand up while the rock followed his palm. He didn’t have a sword whose name he could call upon or a tool to summon a bow that could unleash thousands of arrows a second. The rock hovered in front of his hand for a heartbeat before shooting off.

 

While he made it look easy, it was anything but. He had practiced lifting objects, pulling them toward himself with aura, and pushing them away. With every percentage and hour of practice, his fine control increased until he could fire objects a little beyond the speed of sound if they were small. It would have been impossible if he were in the 60 or 70 percentiles.

 

The rock flew, and he heard it whistle before it vanished, and the deer ran. It managed a few feet before collapsing. The doe’s legs kicked a few times before going still.

 

Silas gripped his chest as he sweated bullets from the act. Doing something like that before the first stage had been a mistake. His veins pulled hard on the ambient spiritual energy in the air, but it wasn’t enough. He drank greedily from his canteen, uncaring when some spilled down his chin. Silas put his canteen down half empty and pumped more out.

 

It was also a test of loyalty for his burgeoning group.

 

He gripped his knees and struggled to catch his breath until Jack grabbed him under his arm, and Dotty pushed her nose under his arm. Somehow, he made it back to his feet. While Jack and the others were forced on him, Silas felt he could work with them. So many of them could have betrayed him and probably did until he got the worms out of them.

 

Many of them couldn’t have gotten infected with the worms in the fence. He discovered that soon enough after making the isolated worm bed. Together they tried to run away from the only safe place and returned full of worms.

 

Silas could only baptize them in the cultivation culture and watch for a betrayal. Running away honestly wasn’t that bad; he would rather work with people who wanted to be on his farm. But, after the worms, they seemed to have a change of heart. Time was on his side, and he wasn’t terribly frightened of a mob of starved puritans.

 

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