The DAO of Magic

by Andries Louws

  I need to stop thinking of myself as this enormously powerful being, but honestly, I don’t want to. A normal mortals’ habits are hard to break; imagine how hard getting rid of a hundreds-year-old habit is. But more importantly, I don’t want to. I want freedom, the ability to do as I wish. I also want other people to do as they wish. Of course, if those people want to hurt me I will use my ability to kick their asses to impose my will, but that’s not the point. Limiting myself in order to avoid detection and attention is something I do by default, I prefer staying low key over lording my power over others like some spoiled young master. The main reason is that becoming famous is a bother and will limit my freedom.

  I hereby decide that I will not leave the wellspring of qi until I have regained enough power to do whatever the fuck I want. The lure of not having to worry about poison or a dagger in my back is a big contributing factor to my double core experiment. Mind cultivation is awesome; the only downside is a lacking physical defence on all levels. A shiver runs down my spine at the possibilities of perfect mental control and a powerful body combined.

  Alright, that’s enough blabbering about my feelings. My cores have settled down perfectly after that round of self-reflection. I would call it a reaffirmation of my Dao if that didn’t sound so pretentious.

  My cores start churning again, but this time they are purring like engines instead of threatening to fall apart. I look at my hand, make a fist and do some flexing.

  My heartcore has already started pumping body-reinforcing qi through my bloodstream. Instead of gathering the qi in a single place - like braincore and gutcore cultivators do - the heartcore releases the majority of its qi throughout the bloodstream. Here it slowly settles into the bone, sinew, organ, muscle, and skin cells, reinforcing whatever those cells do. Body cultivators make their entire body their core by spreading every strand of qi throughout their bodies. Training helps you control this strength, but no cultivator gets significantly stronger by lifting weights. At least, improving my body never gave me significant physical gains. I only ever powered up significantly after gaining more qi.

  I now feel every cell in my body getting a little better every second. It’s a tingling feeling, like a really pleasant version of pins and needles. I stand up and walk around a bit. The tower is around two hundred metres wide at this height, giving me a third of a football field to move around in. The jagged diagonal shard of rock, the back of the chair shape, cuts this volume effectively in half, but it is enough room to do some jumping jacks and jog in small circles.

  Shoes crunching on the loose-lying white shards laying everywhere, I start running past the edge. A quick look down nets me an amazing view. I see clouds blocking parts of the grasslands below my feet. At the very edge of the Tower, I can look straight down and see glimpses of the city. I am higher than some of the clouds and the wind is whipping my clothes about. Thanks to the qi now running through me it feels rather comfortable, while I know that it must be freezing up here.

  I look around, scanning anything interesting and saving it to my ever updating mental map. I see more cities on the horizon, all to the north. I give my cartography process access to my eyes, causing my vision to swim as the process scans everything in sight as quickly as possible. Efficiency over usability is a motto of mine, and I stand by it despite the dizziness.

  I start stretching as my map fills in with details. I am starting to understand why body cultivators never sit still, always moving at least a bit, always running instead of flying. Using the structural qi as it settles into my cells feel slightly orgasmic, just stretching a bit feels unbelievably good. I stop myself from moaning as I start running. I need to tone this down a bit. I can’t be soiling my pants when fighting.

  I move my hand around while I sense its movements. The problem is that I move my hand, not my muscles. My previous physical exploits, aka fights, were all greatly limited by the power of my body. My mind could calculate everything perfectly, the slow reaction times of my nervous system and muscles hindering me. If my body now keeps up with my mind I will need to have a greater level of control.

  I imagine myself hanging just over my own shoulders, remotely controlling each separate muscle via some holographic interface. My mental perspective shifts as I mentally take a step back from my own physical body.

  That worked great! I start running again, increasing my pace. It feels very nice now, but the positive feedback isn’t quite so overwhelming anymore. Sometimes you only need a slightly different perspective on things.

  I pull a massive rock from my spatial ring, the grey thing weighing at least a few hundred kilos. I struggle a bit, more with positioning and handling than because of lacking strength. I feel like I could juggle these boulders if I had longer arms. This is seriously exciting, a whole new path of growing stronger stretching out before me.

  I try to move my body to the limit for the next half hour. I stop when I sense no improvement twenty minutes later. My coordination issues are fixed, exercise really doesn’t do shit for gaining strength, huh. I do start seeing similarities between both cultivation methods now.

  My initial gaseous core was made up of something, a force I couldn’t really get a grasp on. All the qi it contains needs to be held under pressure. The core structure itself absorbs a part of the qi I absorb, strengthening itself so it can withstand higher pressures. This locked up energy is then utilised when a breakthrough happens. When crossing over to the solid core stage, that energy is used to rapidly transform large amounts of qi to my own fingerprints, allowing me to take in a large amount of power originally not my own. This newly gained power is then utilised in the creation of a new intangible containment field at the end of the advancement process.

  My body works the same now, only on a bigger scale. My cell walls and blood vessels absorb a percentage of qi in a similar manner, using it only to strengthen themselves. The leftover qi can then be compressed more because the container can withstand higher pressures. This higher pressure allows for more qi to structurally reinforce the walls, which then allows more compression.

  I wonder what the body equivalent is for the solid core stage. I can’t wait to find out!

  I immediately sit down and start breathing in all the qi I can handle. Instead of the slow trickle I get from creating it by combining mana, this is a flooding wave. It has my fingerprints already, so it willingly surges into my body, running through my heart and into my brain. The small time it has spent in the outside world has started the process of reverting it to neutral qi, but it only needs a single cycle through my own flesh and blood in order to make it fully mine again.

  I sink into meditation as the first drops of liquid qi start forming. The inner part of my braincore starts condensing mist at speed. My heartcore is infusing the majority of the qi it receives into my blood, and thus my body. A small portion remains in my heart and also starts condensing. Looking closer at my heart, I see that it has started forming microscopic drops of qi inside my blood cells. A portion is absorbed into my flesh and bones, while the rest returns to my heartcore and settles in the core.

  I breathe in so much qi that the loose sphere of power surrounding me starts shrinking. The tower is still giving off a steady stream and for the first time, I hope that it will last for a while. With no need to make fancy stuff like mana vortexes, I focus all my concentration on both cores, watching them fill up with liquid.

  I just breathe in, lost in a meditative haze as my cores fill up with liquid power. The fact that both are full alerts me to that fact that I will need to take steps to reach the next stage. I think I will have to crystallise both at the same time. Grabbing hold of both balls of liquid qi, I start squeezing. As if they were waiting for me, they both start collapsing immediately. Two small specks form, sucking up the liquid qi. They start draining the qi from my cells and I let them. I look closer and see them both absorbing all the qi in my body, even the structural qi stat has only recently embedded itself into my physical body.

 
Body cultivators are empty and stripped of qi after breakthroughs, and this is good to know. I will make sure to be careful when advancing in the future. I inhale more power-laden air while sinking into a light trance.

  ⁂

  The sun tells me an hour has passed. I zoned out again while forming my solid core, no qi starvation keeping me awake this time. Two magnificent solid spheres are located in my body. One in my brain and one in my heart. The downside that comes with a completely formed solid core is that there is little place left for storing usable qi. I can soak liquid qi into my braincore, I know from experience, but this process takes time and only supplies a trickle when I need the power. I will have to test how this works now that I’ve got a heartcore.

  Traditional teaching would have me starting to form my foundation now, or some such bull shit. I’m supposed to start making a representation of myself, carving up my core to elevate it into a more metaphorical position. I say screw that, I want to build a better carving material first.

  Gripping both cores, I use my willpower and start squeezing again. Instead of stepping into the next realm, I want to raise the qi density of my core. I pretend my core is coal and that my body is a diamond making machine and pressure vessel.

  ‘HEAT, PRESSURE, LOTS OF HEAT AND LOTS OF PRESSURE, HNNGHGHGHGG!!’

  Too excited to shout something funny, I press down harder until I feel two somethings snap. The solid structures collapse inwards, creating a smaller, darker core. I keep sitting there, breathing in the steady stream of qi and go through the entire process once again. I gather liquid qi and start adding to the smaller, denser crystals now floating in both core locations.

  I take a deep breath and moan at the pleasant feeling. My muscles are having sex again. Cultivating my mind feels addicting as hell, but doing the same with body and mind is an otherworldly feeling. I grin as I see the sun going down, painting the snow-capped mountains orange and pink. I make a mental note to not get addicted to this feeling. I need an anchor to keep me grounded.

  I feel like I forgot something though, maybe I should check on how my disciples are doing?

  Chapter twenty-five

  Lure

  Tess is confused. No, not confused, she reflects. She is weirded out so much that it can’t be called weird anymore. First, this guy shoves some weird energy in everyone’s body, gives a basic explanation that bordered on the insane and left. Then he tosses them out of the warm and weird space with the tree and they need to climb rocks. They talked a bit, but no explanations were forthcoming.

  She just went to sleep afterwards, hoping that the world would make more sense in the morning. No such luck, as she was woken up by a voice shouting at everyone to get off their asses at an ungodly volume. She stumbled from her hut, nearly ripping the crude door from its hinges with her unexpected strength. She then blinked a bit, because this super weird human-shaped white cloud was the source of all the shouting. Then the white smoke cloud taught them these so-called numbers. Zero to nine, ten afterwards. She can’t remember what comes after that at the moment.

  She had desperately looked around at the other victims but found no sympathy there. They all ignored her and each other. The smoke cloud turned more corporeal as the day went on, slowly resembling the weird guy. Adding and subtracting were shoved down her throat and left her even more confused. Now he is just telling stories. Ah, the robe around the slowly solidifying figure of white mist is new! Looking at the slowly forming face, Tess decides to focus on what he is saying.

  “And then there was that entire organisation that focused on water ripples. The Holy Water Inference sect or something, can’t really remember their name that well. They started when ages ago some retard looked at droplets of water falling into a bowl. He liked the forming ripples so much that he stared at this phenomenon for the rest of his life. He made the basic technique of the clan, the Rippling Water Mysteries.

  “It’s all based on how ripples interact with each other in a closed environment. Looking at these ripples should give you insight into the mysteries of water and how to apply them in combat. Their entire sect was filled with dudes staring at flat volumes of water. I would have been hilarious if they didn’t take this stuff so seriously.

  “I used that sect as a case study. Eventually, I could even recognise the shape of the bowl those guys used based on their fighting styles. Rectangular bowl practitioners developed their attacks in the direction of areas of effect. They concentrated their efforts on the art of spreading a single sharp ripple over a larger area. Round bowl practitioners were better at focusing all the energies of a single ripple into a single explosive point. There were even wars fought over what type of bowl was better. I couldn’t stop laughing for a week when I read those history books!

  “It’s all so sad because they never bothered to figure out what causes these ripples. Instead, they put this simple trick on a pedestal and lived their lives around it. Here, watch.”

  The monologuing spectre waves its hand around, leaving visible ripples in the air that shoot forwards. A tree tens of metres away explodes into a single point, causing a hail of shrapnel to rain on everyone present. Another wave with its hand splits the tree next to the previous victim in two. From top to bottom. A golden swirl of qi starts gathering all the fragments and chunks of wood while pulling them under the soil.

  “If you understand the underlying principles, a simple visualisation tool like a leaking bucket and a bowl becomes worse than useless. This is what I’m trying to teach you guys while giving tools to help you advance in the meantime. If they instead had looked at the physics of flowing water or studied any type of wave they came across, they wouldn’t have ended up as a lower tier sect.”

  The weirdness is still there. Nothing the weird guy does is normal. She has to think about everything he says instead of shoving it into simple-to-understand categories. His motivation is even less understandable. Just picking some kids from the streets and randomly teaching them? Not even trying to curry favour with the ruling class? She scratches her head while focusing on the white figure again. She can see the beginning of eyes on the blank face now.

  “So instead of focusing on something specific, try to take a step back and look at the bigger picture when developing your own stuff. Don’t just look at a single flame, look at what causes this flame. Then you will find out that fire is oxidation, and every living being uses that concept to burn and digest their food, move their muscles, and more!

  “Control over something that happens everywhere around you is way more useful than focusing on a single, specific instance of that concept.

  “You can ask questions by the way, but you fellows don’t know enough to know what you don’t know.”

  A troubled expression flashes over the white figure’s visage while he is scratching his head.

  “Alright, enough fun stuff. I have business to take care of, so I will give you homework.”

  Movement and a flash of light cause Tess to look down. A bench is now in front of her, laying on it a stick, a small knife and a white rectangle. Touching the white sheet, her eyes pop open.

  “Is this p-p-paper?”

  Visibly trembling, Tess manages to squeeze out these words.

  “Yeah, don’t worry, I can make loads more. Now here…”

  A large black rectangle flashes into existence behind the white figure.

  “…is all the stuff I taught you this morning. Next to it, I will write down exercises.”

  White letters fade into existence. The numbers and math symbols she recognises, the rows of them combining to make up a dense block of random lines on the right side of the blackboard.

  Is he controlling light or just creating something that creates light? Maybe he just changes the surface, making it look like white symbols? The board was filled instantly, not allowing her to get a glimpse of the writing process, but she thinks that she can understand some parts of how he wrote that down.

  Looking over at the sums, she recognises what
to do, but is at a loss of how to accomplish it. Numbers and symbols spin through her head, not making any sense.

  “I’ll put some food down in front of you, you can get off the chairs when you finish all the sums correctly.”

  Then the weird man, no, the devil, pulls out a massive covered dish, opens it and wafts a good cloud of heavenly aroma in their faces. Tess tries to stand up to go eat anyway, but white bands keep her stuck in the chair. Looking around she sees the other struggle. Bord especially is using all his strength in attempting to stand up, white bands cutting deep into his generous figure.

  Maybe he can’t help being that size too? Normally only the rich can get so fat. Tess pushes thoughts about her pitiful aunt away. Her aunt ate the same as the other family members, but only she got so big. That is all gone now, so she refocuses her attention on the white sums artfully drawn on the blackboard.

  Five minutes later she looks away, the swimming numbers not even once making sense to her.

  ⁂

  I look at the forest down below with longing. The clearing is just a pinprick from this distance, but I know what is down there. Nice and cool walking paths covered by shadows. Much better than sitting on top of a tower in the cold wind and blinding sun.

  I ended up spending the entire night on this blasted Tower, I spent the rest of yesterday breaking through and cultivating while teaching my disciples throughout the night. Basic math first, I’ve got to ease them into the more abstract concepts. It will be pretty cool to talk about advanced algebra or calculus again.

  I planned on making a clone of myself anyway, I just brought that plan forwards a bit. I will be stuck here until I figure out what is going on with the dungeon under my butt. Using the mass of qi to teach relieved my boredom and allowed me to do some training.