An Immortal's Retirement: To Achieve Peace

Chin sat there, legs crossed and hands clasped in meditation. It had been a couple of days since our last session, and the rainy season had kicked in with intensity, and it was heavy.

Different sects and empires ran things differently but on super planets like Ah-Marin, you generally had two types of treatments towards mortals. One was the intervention and care for mortals. Nothing too kind, just regulating the weather patterns and eliminating small-time demonic cultivators in their area. The other attitude was indifference.

Surprisingly, most sects chose to take care of their mortal population, though their reasoning was quite selfish. Mortals were harmless as long as they were mortals. But there was always a chance that one mortal or a group of mortals would gain access to cultivation and become powerful in their own right. And if the mortals you mistreated got strong enough to rival you, well that would be a very bad day indeed.

So most sects provided, some out of fear, some out of nobility, and some out of duty. The Void Empire’s Kong Clan was the latter.

The sky was a dark gray, and even though one of Ah-Marin’s seven suns shined brightly right above us, barely any of the light got through. Rain was important to farming, but it was more than just the amount of water the land got, but was the pace of the rain as well.

A good rainy season would be like a gallon of water drunk throughout the whole day, well-paced and fulfilling. A bad rainy season would be like a gallon of water drunk in only three hours. You’d piss most of it out and you’d have no water left for the rest of the day.

The Kong Clan provided the later type of rainy season. Chin had been busy setting up receivers and floodproofing both the village and the merchant’s campground for the past couple of days but all of that was finished now and Chin could finally relax, that is if he wanted to.

But instead, the man had marched over to me to “get this cultivation thing over with,” so he could go home and finish up some other things. I imagined he was out of farm chores for the time being, which must have been a tragedy for him. He’d shrivel up and die without work.

“I still don’t feel anything,” Chin spoke.

“Keep trying,” I replied.

Chin was trying to cycle his qi throughout his body, which was the first step in cultivation. You first needed to map out your meridians before you could even think about cultivating. Right now Chin was trying to do just that, and the man was being diligent.

“Still nothing,” he repeated.

“Keep trying,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Because it’s important?”

“And why is it important?”

“Cultivation is all about growth. You’re trying to grow your innate qi, your soul, and your spirit, but you can’t do any of that until you develop internal senses. You’d be like a man trying to take care of crops you can’t see.”

Chin frowned but nodded. It was always the farming analogies that got to this bastard.

“You’re trying to feel out the ground and understand the layout of your body and only then can you-”

“Got it,” Chin interrupted.

“What?”

“I can feel them. They’re thin symmetrical lines that work themselves throughout my body right? Twelve in total. All of them meeting together at three separate points,” he said while touching all three of his dantians.

“Here, here, and here?”

“What the hell?” I mumbled.

“Right?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Right.”

My senses seeped into Chin and he was right. He had developed internal sight.

“You know what Chin, you might actually have a talent for this,” I mumbled.

Chin shrugged uncaringly.

“What now?” He asked.

“Well, now we figure out what cultivation method to use,” I answered.

“Does that matter?” He asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Cultivation in its early parts is a consumption game. You take qi in from the outside and refine it over and over and over again until it becomes your own qi. But how you do that can affect your pace, strength, power, body, soul, and even beliefs.”

Chin scowled grimly.

“I don’t want to change,” he growled.

“I figured. So I pulled out a decent technique that focuses solely on growth and qi accumulation.” I answered. “But it’ll only get you so far. Techniques like this generally need to be remade and adjusted according to the user’s own experience with them. Meaning you’ll have to learn how to change and adjust the method as you go.”

Chin’s scowl left only to be replaced with a stupified look.

“What?” He asked.

I sighed.

“Every person is like their own unique plant, and while you can water a plant and give it sunlight and nutrients to keep it alive, you’ll have to give it the proper type of soil and conditions if you want it to thrive. This cultivation method is basic. It’ll get you to the third rank, but you’ll need to edit it or switch cultivation methods to push beyond that. If you refuse to submit to the changes the cultivation method will leave on you then you have to make one that suites you from the ground up.”

Chin nodded understandingly.

“Interesting,” he mumbled.

“Is it really?” I asked.

Chin nodded.

“Well, pay attention then. cultivation methods vary for a variety of reasons, the biggest ones being, efficiency, environment, technique, and compatability. But underneath all that is inarguable the most important thing to your growth, which is talent.”

“Now there are three parts to raw talent,” I said while raising my fingers.

“Draw, qi reserves, and nature. Draw is the amount of qi you’re naturally able to move through your body. Think of it as the efficiency of labor out on the fields. An adult man can farm better and longer than a ten-year-old child, right? It’s the same with cultivation. The more qi you can move, the faster you can cultivate.”

Chin nodded.

“Think of qi reserves as the amount of land a farmer starts out with. With good crops and great sales, he might be able to buy more land in the future, but the initial amount matters. If you have naturally larger qi reserves, then you have more energy to work with. But on the downside, if you have large qi reserves and not a strong enough draw, then advancing will be a harder thing to do.”

“You can have too much land?” Chin asked.

“Too much land and not enough workers,” I replied. “You can work yourself to the bone and still have unfarmed land. The land won’t necessarily slow you down at that point, but it will be useless. A large qi reserve is only good if your draw can keep up with it. And at higher ranks, you need to completely fill your reserves to advance so a mismatched reserve and draw can even slow you down later on.”

“And nature is kind of a hard one to explain, but if we keep with the analogy here, it would be akin to the quality of the soil. Some earth is great for one kind of plant while some is great for another. It’s inherit to the soul of the cultivator and while it is important to growth, it’s more important to the cultivator's identity.”

Chin nodded, a bit more slowly this time.

“It’s complicated,” I replied.

Chin nodded again.

“All of these can be changed and altered over time but what you start with means as much to your cultivation speed as how hard you work.”

Chin nodded again.

“You remember those cultivators that came by a while ago?” I asked.

Chin scowled but nodded again.

“There were five distinct sects.”

“What does that mean?” Chin asked.

“It means they had five different types of talents. Techniques are often based on the talent of the founders. For example, the Raging River Sect has decent qi reserves and a water-law-aligned nature. But their draw is unable to keep up with their reserves, so it’s harder for their members to reach higher ranks. And their fighting techniques take advantage of their qi reserves, pushing immense water qi at their opponents.

Whereas the Flowering Sword Sect has a pretty decent draw, but has a lacking qi reserve. They’re fighting technique focuses on utilizing every bit of qi and not letting any of their attacks go to waste.

The monks follow the path of Buddha, hammering their nature into something strong and virtuous. The Hollow Echo has a bloodline that changes their nature from birth, making all of them more like bats instead of humans. The same for the Hidden Viper, they have a bloodline nature attuned to deception, poison, and seduction. And their techniques and cultivation methods revolve around them.”

Chin frowned in response.

“The farmer grows crops that would do well for that soil and climate. You’re not going to plant a cactus by the water and rice in the desert,” I said with a sigh.

“Ah,” Chin said with a nod.

This guy.

“So you’re gonna use a cultivation technique that does nothing to alter your nature and grows your draw and qi reserves. But eventually, you’ll need to pick something up, like a dao or a law of some sort.”

“Why?” Chin asked with a frown.

“You just need to Chin. Being Daoless is dangerous.”

“And fiddling with your own nature isn’t?”

“What exactly do you think a dao does, Chin?”

“Changes you.”

“Eh, sometimes. But the only reason a person’s dao changes them is because they chose to embrace that dao to begin with. Daos are hard to explain but technically everyone has them, even mortals. A Dao is sort of like a path you’ve chosen to walk on. It’s that vague feeling of purpose you get when you do something. For you, it’d probably be farming, and for most cultivators, it’d be something revolving around fighting. The dao of the blade, the spear, the fist. But it can be as solid or as esoteric as you’d want it to be. Justice, kindness, hatred, chaos, destruction, creation, anything you want can be a dao. A dao is your purpose, meaning, identity, beliefs, and desires all in one. It’s the cumulative expression of who you are and who you want to be.”

Chin gave me a deep frown.

“No farm analogies for that Chin.”

Chin’s frown deepened.