Chapter 8: Chapter 8 – Weave practice and finances

Now that Aki had the means to practice cultivation properly and a very good reason to act with the utmost haste, one might expect that he would feverishly dedicate all of his time to obsessively practicing weaves. However, one has to remember that Aki is not the typical type of person to end up in stories like these, so that was not how he acted.

Aki is a firm believer in a healthy work-life balance, not just because it is better for mental health, but also because he genuinely believes it to be the best method to achieve good results. People can only do so much work in a day before their efficiency begins dropping off sharply. Workers doing long overtime hours of mental work generally don’t actually get much more done than the workers who have clearly defined start and stop times for work. Yes, Aki was a firm believer in the importance of a proper work-life balance.

Did the same principles apply to cultivation? Aki did not know. But he was pretty sure that few cultivators had ever tried cultivating with a philosophy similar to his, so it was worth a try. The beliefs of cultivators in this world had spent generations upon generations coming to this point, where it was held as a universal truth that closed door cultivation was in any way a good idea. Aki had major doubts that shutting yourself away into a rocky hole to work at cultivation for years at a time would be an efficient or pleasant use of time.

Maybe he was completely wrong, and cultivators truly had no need to let their minds rest. Maybe working endlessly for long hours each day without rest was the truly superior method. However, Aki quite frankly did not want to live in a world like that. If he was going to make an honest attempt at becoming a cultivator, he would do it on his own terms.

Thus, in the days that followed his grim discovery, Aki did not spend every waking hour working with a manic intensity at his weaves. Instead, he woke up, checked his face for signs of aging, ate a hearty breakfast and then spent around four hours practicing Qi thread manipulation. He took plentiful breaks during this time of course, they helped clear his mind in preparation for further studies. After a satisfying lunch he spent a few hours relaxing by reading history texts from jade slips.

Jade slips felt to him like a comfortable compromise between a traditional book and an audio book. He found reading in this manner to be rather enjoyable, and understood now why there were so few physical writings in the sect. The slips were very convenient after all. He regretted that he could not find any slips containing stories made for the sake of entertainment, however he was luckily a man able to find enjoyment even in dry historical records, so he managed.

After his reading session, it would be time for his afternoon Qi thread manipulation practice. He typically spent another four hours practicing his weave creation skills, again with plentiful breaks of course. He would then enjoy his dinner and still have four more hours to spend at his leisure before it was time to retire to bed. He generally spent this time doing whatever came to his mind. Exercising and testing the limits of his new body, admiring the scenery while enjoying a cup of afternoon tea, or practicing his sagely expressions in front of a mirror. He slept a very comfortable 8 hours each night, as he found Qi manipulation to be rather tiring mentally.

Did Aki unlock hidden latent skills which let him grasp everything with ease? Not quite. It felt to him like he was a master craftsman who had never crafted a thing in his life. His body held all of the requisite skills to make it possible to efficiently learn, but he still had to practice forming weaves for quite a bit before he even begun to get the hang of them.

Aki suspected that if he practiced weaves that his body’s previous owner had used a lot, he might be able to learn them very quickly indeed. Regrettably, the inconsiderate fool had destroyed his core and all of his Qi strings, leaving Aki with only one Karmic Qi string to use. The techniques he had found on jade slips seemed much too complex for him at this point anyway. Besides, Aki had come to understand that the path of cultivation was supposed to be a personal journey, so he felt that copying what his body’s previous occupant had done would not work out well in the long term.

He spent the first few days of his practice learning to touch and move the threads of Qi floating around his courtyard. He managed to get the hang of it quick enough, and then moved to releasing karma Qi from his Qi string and manipulating that. Manipulating external Qi made him feel like he was a painter dipping a flimsy brush into a palette containing very runny paint, which he then attempted to paint precise mathematical patterns with. Manipulating his internal Qi on the other hand felt like painting directly with his fingers; It was simple but could easily get messy. He found that he could convert the karmic Qi he produced into other types with significant effort, however the Qi produced lost a vast majority of its potency. It seemed to be a lot more efficient to draw the Qi from the environment instead when he needed types other than karma.

After Aki had managed to get the basics of manipulating Qi threads down, he moved to forming weaves out of them. [Thread of Fate] turned out to be the easiest technique for him to practice. It was a lot easier to practice weaves using Qi from his own Qi string, rather than the external Qi from the environment. A steady, constant supply allowed him to gradually trace the necessary patterns, trying to tie them into the correct positions.

He managed to get a basic version of the weave working somewhat in only two days. He could find the “pulse” of his thread of fate, but his weave was too imprecise, letting him only sense a dull echo of what he was supposed to. However, he was confident that with steady practice he would achieve mastery of the technique.

It was after about a week of practice, while Aki was just finishing his morning Qi manipulation practice, that Passionate Seeker finally arrived bearing the reports Aki had been expecting.

“Master, I finally managed to gather all of the information that you wanted and compile them into the format you told me of. The information should be relatively recent.”

Finally. Aki smiled to himself. He had previously instructed Passionate Seeker to gather a sect census and a summary of sect finances. He felt like he could really use a bit of a break from his Qi practice, and this would finally make him feel like a proper sect leader.

 

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