Chapter 29: Chapter 29 Qi Cultivation Techniques

“Are you ready?” Marina asked in her usual tone, but Raul swore he felt a hint of malevolent glee underneath. She was standing in the middle of the yard with a sword clasped between her two hands.

“Are you sure about this?” Raul gulped worriedly as he stood across from her while holding a sword of his own with one hand.

Three days passed since he began learning the Four Seasonal Winds Technique, and Marina decided he was proficient enough to hold a spar.

Raul was quite nervous about this, but not for his own sake. Over the past few days, he’d gotten a firm grasp on how important meridians were to qi manipulation and, in extension, a cultivator’s power.

Though much of the experience using the Pairing Hearts Technique was fuzzy to him, the broken state of Marina’s meridians remained vividly in his memories. He couldn’t see her being able to use much violent force in that state, and he worried this spar might go over her limits and hurt her.

If Marina could hear his thoughts, she might not have been able to resist laughing.

“I’m sure. So long as you display a level similar to what you have in training you shouldn’t die, at least.” She assured him.

Raul’s mouth twitched at that, and a small sigh escaped his lips. “Alright, let’s do this then.” He raised his sword unenthusiastically.  

The moment he gave the ok, Marina practically instantly appeared before him. Her sword swung down at him with zero hesitation or flaw.

“Whoa!” His heart jumped to his throat as a yellow wind barely finished surrounding him before the sword struck. The wind squeezed down on him and he shot backwards using the speed of the Summer Wind Style. A frown crossed his face as the movement felt too restrictive to him.

The Four Seasonal Winds is a very balanced technique. The flexible defense of the Spring Wind, the fierce speed of Summer Winds, the deep techniques of the Autumn Wind, and the chilling offense of Winter Wind.

Though it didn’t have a strong point, its four styles offered it a lot of versatility and room to personalize for ones fighting style.

“Rigid.” Marina commented from right beside him before stabbing at his throat. She’d appeared right before him again while he was in mid movement still.

He was more than just a little surprised this time. Both of them were at the same level of cultivation. She may be faster than him, but he didn’t believe she could be THAT much faster than him.

His fingers twitched as he almost instinctively unleashed the swift slash of the Summer Style, but an image of her hurt shot through his mind and stilled his hand. He instead tightened his grip and used one of the defensive moves of the Spring Style instead.

A gentle blue breeze spread across his sword as it clashed with hers. Again, the movement felt unreasonably heavy and restrictive to him.

Her sword was like iron strings twined together, it easily pierced straight through his feeble winds. Red hot pain laced through Raul’s shoulder as Marina’s sword entered it.

“Sloppy. You should know that you don’t have the skill to change styles on the spot like that.” She said coldly before kicking him in the stomach and sending him flying away.

Raul coughed loudly as he rolled on the floor, pain radiating from his stomach and shoulder. He clutched at the wound in shock. ‘She actually stabbed me!’

“Who said you have time to rest on the floor like that?” Chills immediately overwhelmed Raul as that voice fell upon him. His body instinctively dashed forward right as the sword strike fell where he previously was.        

He rolled into a crouching position and pushed himself up. He felt genuine fear as he watched Marina remove the sword from where his head was.

“Every second you spend on the ground has the potential to be your last. Always assume a ready position at every possible moment.”

His body followed her words as his sword swung up defensively as his eyes locked on to her. All thoughts of taking it easy or concern for her meridians were forgotten.

“Good, it seems you’ve got the right mindset now.” She nodded at him instead of disappearing this time. “Don’t drop your guard, and always go all out. Never play in combat, or else you won’t even know how you died.” She raised her sword and came at him again.

 

An hour later had Raul laid out on the floor while bleeding from multiple wounds and struggling to suck in gulps of air.

“Awful. Your choice of technique was usually good, but your execution with the forms were too rigid and stiff.” Marina stood above him with a genuine frown on her face.

His performance was honestly worse than she expected, an unappreciated first from him. After the first minute, he didn’t make any super sloppy mistakes, and he showed high combat IQ in his selection of moves and responses, but he could barely pull any power out of the forms. It might just be the gap between training and actual combat, but Marina had her doubts.

‘I’m probably just thinking too much.’ She shook her head. If you were to judge him by a regular first timer then his performance was good, she’d probably just set her standard too high.

“Groan, I’ll work on it.” Raul grumbled through pants. None of his wounds were deep, and many of them stopped bleeding already, but that was its own source of shame as it meant she had that much leeway while dealing with him.

“Why is your qi so much stronger than mine?” He looked up and asked the question that’d been bugging him for the past hour.

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Every time their qi clashed hers would rip right through his. Though this could just be a difference in skill, he felt like there was a deeper reason for it. It felt like her qi had a qualitive difference when compared to his.

“I’ve refined my qi using the Qi Cultivation Technique Strings of Creation. It’s naturally more powerful than your unrefined qi.”

‘How is that not cheating?’ Raul’s lips twitched in irritation. “When can I learn a Qi Cultivation Technique?”

Qi Cultivation Techniques were different than the Vault Family Sealing techniques or The Four Seasonal Winds Sword technique. While those where methods of utilizing qi, Qi Cultivation Techniques fundamentally changed qi.

Those changes could be positive or negative depending on a person’s compatibility with the technique, that’s why it was important to know your attribute before learning one. They were one of the most important foundations of a cultivator’s strength.

“You? I don’t plan for you to learn a Qi Cultivation Technique until we reach the Spirit Ascension Realm.” Marina said bluntly, turning Raul dumb in shock.

“Wait! Why? If it’s a matter of not having one, I’m sure my Family has some wind ones.” Raul questioned in a panic. Just for certainties sake, he had taken the attribute test and the result were indeed wind.

“No need. I can definitely give you a better one than the Vault Family can.” She said arrogantly. “There’s a technique that the Academy has that allows one to perfectly materialize their meridians without a Qi Refining Technique. There’re many benefits to it and I plan for you to use it to break through, but most techniques of that type require the user to have not used a Qi Cultivation Technique before.”

Raul took a moment to digest this. The Qi Refining Realm was far from his goal, staying a bit weaker during it to give himself more options later sounded like the smarter play.

“Sigh, you’ve really thought of everything huh.” He lamented. Just because he was willing to do it didn’t mean he wasn’t annoyed. Most cultivators he met would have a significant advantage due to this, and he didn’t like the idea of being bottom of the barrel.

“We should still check with Tai to see if the Vault family has one of those breakthrough techniques though, no point in making it harder on ourselves if we don’t have to.” He couldn’t help saying as a last-ditch effort to avoid his fate of enlisting.

“Sure.” Marina humored him. She didn’t believe for a second the Vault family had such a rare technique, even her Norn family only had five such techniques in their entire library.

Upon thinking that, she couldn’t help lamenting that she never read them. Despite what Raul thought, she truly hadn’t had it all planned out.

She’d told Raul the truth when they’d discussed their future plans, but she still hadn’t told hm everything. Though it was impossible to do it in two months, Marina had full confidence in materializing all their meridians perfectly by the end of the school year, even without a breakthrough technique.

The issue was that using Qi Cultivation Techniques inevitably dyes one’s meridians and would limit their choices of Techniques in the future. Some would restrict certain attributes, some would restrict fighting styles, and some would restrict certain utilizations.

This was the case with most Qi Cultivation Technique. Even her Strings of Creation wouldn’t allow her to practice a Qi Cultivation Technique that wasn’t string related in the future.

Ordinarily this isn’t a problem, at least for those who come from a cultivation background. Talent is heavily tested and techniques are carefully picked.

Even for those without a background this usually isn’t a big problem, as most of the popular Refining Realm Qi Cultivation Techniques have little future restrictions. Strings of Creation was fairly niche and had one of the strictest restrictions.

She’d originally planned to give him a strong wind type Qi Cultivation Technique to use while she made a personalized Qi Cultivation Technique for him by studying his Dao Weapon. But now she felt that such a method was too wasteful.

The more time she spent observing Raul, the more she couldn’t help feeling that any sort of loss was a waste. His talent gave her the feeling she was only scratching the surface of what he could do.

Once she made his Dao Weapon, she’d be able to glean the best path for him through it. At that time it wouldn’t be a problem to craft a technique that would use his full potential. Since she had the confidence she could make it, it’d be wasteful not to. At least, that was how she reasoned it to herself.

In truth, her real reason for choosing this path that she wouldn’t admit even to herself was simply intuition.

Her intuition screamed at her that giving Raul a Qi Cultivation Technique now would be wrong. It was the same illogical intuition that made her unconsciously follow as two cultivators abducted a random mortal from the streets.

But Marina would never consent to the idea that a vague feeling influenced her actions.   

“How long are you planning to stay on the ground?” She tilted her head in wonder. With his pain tolerance he should’ve bounced back from a beating of this level already.

“Oh… Don’t mind me, just spending some quality time with the ground.” He mumbled while enjoying the view above him.

The light droplets of sweat dropping from her gorgeous face, her chest heaving from her slightly panted breath, and the look of deep contemplation that would occasionally come across her face just drew him in…

Marina simply shrugged, already used to his strangeness. “You can get acquainted with the ground on your own time, I need to patch you up for our next session.”

“Wait, we’re going again?” Raul voice carried a hint of dread.

“Of course. We’ll have at least two more bouts before lunch. Be warned, I will be going harder every session and I expect you to keep up.” She signaled for him to get up in a way that brook no argument. She sounded strict, but he swore he detected that hint of malevolent glee again.