The Broken Knife

Under Lianhua’s gentle hands, Kaz found his eyes drooping closed, and his attention wandering ever further from the topic at hand. By the time he was as clean as he could get, and Lianhua draped the thick, warm ‘towel’ around his shoulders, he gave in and simply curled up on the ground by the little pool. He didn’t even notice when Li crawled under the towel with him, and Lianhua lifted his head to lay it in her lap, lightly stroking his fur.

He had no idea how much time had gone by when he woke, but as he blinked blearily at the circle of huts, he realized that no one was sitting outside them anymore. The fire was out, and the only light was emitted by bioluminescent moss that grew on the walls and ceiling of the cavern. It was plenty for him, but when he stirred, so did the soft, warm thing beneath his head.

Lianhua groaned softly, looking around in the dimness, then traced a rune on her hand. It flared into life, and Kaz flinched away instinctively before realizing that it didn’t bother him as much as it had. The female grimaced at his movement, closing her fingers around her light and pulling her power back. It dimmed, not flickering, but simply fading to a more tolerable level.

“Sorry,” she murmured, reaching behind her and retrieving the darklenses. “I took them off because they kept snagging on your stitches when you moved.”

Kaz accepted the lenses, but didn’t instantly put them on again. Instead, he looked around at the quiet cavern. “Why didn’t you leave me? I would have been fine. Kobolds usually sleep on the ground.”

Lianhua shrugged, then sighed, looking slightly guilty. “I sleep with my puppy every night when I’m home, and when I travel, I usually share a bed with Yingtao. I had to leave them both behind, and I’m… lonely. I’m sorry.”

He rubbed his eyes, yawning. “It’s all right. I’m just surprised Gaoda allowed it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, he didn’t. I’m amazed our argument didn’t wake you. Still, he may technically be the leader of our expedition, but I’m getting very tired of him trying to control everything I do.”

As Kaz stretched, the towel fell from around his shoulders, partially exposing the dragon sleeping next to him. She hissed softly and rolled over, burrowing her nose under the edge of the cloth, all without waking.

He and Lianhua shared an amused glance, and then the human female sobered, glancing around. “I also need to talk to you about something. Privately.”

Kaz tilted his head. He had many things to ask her, but he wasn’t sure what she could possibly need from him.

“I have things I need to ask you, too,” he admitted.

She smiled. “Then let’s exchange questions. I suspect that some of yours may answer some of mine.”

The sound of water dripping into the pool filled the space between them, and then Lianhua shook her head, laughing softly. “You first,” she said.

Questions swirled in Kaz’s head, but the pain in his paw and head pushed a particular one to the forefront. “You said that opening my middle dantian was the first step in tempering my body. What’s the second step?”

Lianhua blinked. “That’s not what I expected you to ask. But yes, in order to refine your body, you have to saturate it with ki, and the middle dantian is the anchor for that.”

Reaching into her pouch, she pulled out her stick of chalk and drew a rough sketch of a human body on the stone between them. Then, she drew three stars inside the body; one in the head, one in the chest, and one in the abdomen. She tapped the bottom one, her tone shifting into her ‘scholar voice’.

“The lower dantian is where we collect and process our power. All true cultivators have one, and, as I said before, the amount of ki we can store in it determines our strength. The upper dantian is where we control what Raff would call spells. By thinking, or imagining something, we can make it happen, and the more precise our imagery and control, the better. Those with a closed or weak upper dantian and a powerful lower dantian can often brute force their way through obstacles, but find their cultivation stalls out sooner than others.”

She shifted, circling the top star several times, so the head of the figure was obscured by the expanding circles. “On the other hand, someone with a very small lower dantian and a complex upper dantian can become quite powerful through compression and wise use of their limited resources.”

Now, she lifted her hand to press it against her chest. A small puff of chalk lifted from her fingers as her fuulong silk rejected the white powder. “The middle dantian, on the other hand, is optional. A cultivator cannot reach immortality without it, but there are those who are either unable or uninterested in opening this dantian.”

Her voice was deliberately neutral as she said this, and Kaz wondered what lay behind it, but he was quickly distracted as she drew lines leading from the middle dantian into the rest of the chalk figure. “Without a middle dantian, our ki cycles along the Conception Vessel going up along the spine, and the Governing Vessel going down the front of our bodies. Once we acquire a middle dantian, a sort of secondary pool forms in the center of our bodies, in between the two vessels. It’s fed by the cycle, and feeds the cycle, and as it develops, it links and balances the ki that travels to our muscles, bones, and organs.”

Kaz frowned, staring at the messy white figure. “But how do we develop it?”

Lianhua grimaced. “If I understood that, I would be further along in my body cultivation. The best advice I can give you is to listen to your own body. My grandm- My master told me I’m stuck because I think too much. The body is beyond the control of our intellect, so techniques that develop our upper and lower dantians can actually slow the growth of the middle.”

She put the chalk down and took something that glinted sharply from her pouch. When she held it up, Kaz could tell that it was the finest metal needle he had ever seen, with an eye so small he could barely make it out. Turning it, Lianhua stabbed it into her palm, wincing as it barely penetrated the skin, allowing a single red drop to collect in her palm.

“I was able to temper my skin,” she said, “because I can see it. My eyes, ears, and lungs, too. I can see and feel how the things I do affect my senses, and what happens when I hold my breath, or a sharp object pierces my skin. I can tell when I’m stronger, and I understand how to develop my muscles, so I’ve managed to temper many of those as well.”

Lianhua tucked the needle back in her bag, then blotted the crimson droplet with the corner of the towel. “I have a much more difficult time with my bones and organs. I’m not going to stop my heart to check whether I’ve managed to pour enough ki into it, and I won’t break my bones, either. A body cultivator, however, must flood each and every organ and bone with so much ki that-”

She broke off, fingers flicking as she tried to find the right words, before saying, “Eventually, the entire body must be replaced with ki. Or ki must fill every single part of it so completely that it might as well be ki. Ki cannot be damaged, so a Rhodium-class body cultivator is essentially invulnerable. In order to ascend, a person must move beyond even that, however, and learn to meld the ki that forms them back into that of the universe. At that point, all ki is one ki, and they become eternal - a divine being. This is the goal of most cultivators.”

“But not you,” Kaz said.

She smiled, just a little. “No. Not me. Perhaps that’s really why I struggle with body refinement.”

“So, these are vessels?” Kaz asked, tracing his finger along the chalk oval traveling between the upper to lower dantians. “What happens if they start to leak?”

Lianhua grew serious again. “A ki healer might repair them, but the only one I know of works directly for the Emperor. You’re on the right track to do it yourself, though. A properly tempered body becomes all one ki. The cycle still exists, but the ki within and without the vessels is the same, so the leak is the cycle and the cycle is the leak. Of course, most people with leaking vessels die fairly quickly, so I’m only repeating what I’ve read in scholarly texts, and at least half of that is theory.”

Kaz wished he could look at his own cycle, but even thinking about it made the constant pressure behind his eyes grow. Once his head was better, perhaps he could ‘listen to his body’ and refine it, at least enough that he and Li didn’t have to constantly support his channels. It had to help that he now knew what the end goal of refining was, though he still had one more question before he was done with the subject for now.

“You said you make things happen just by imagining them,” he said, “But I’ve seen you draw…” He traced the general shape of a rune in the air, looking at her expectantly.

Her cheeks turned pink. “That is my image. Everyone has their own, and mine is words.” She touched a finger to her forehead. “I have a library here, and when I need something, I take out a book, and find the rune and draw it. The rune looks real to me, though of course no one else can see it.”

Except me, Kaz thought, but he just nodded.

“My servant, Yingtao, has a garden as her image. Each plant she grows there has its own meaning, and the more she learns, the more of that meaning she can imbue into them. For some people, their ‘image’ is actually sound, and for others, it’s color. A simple image is faster, but lacks depth, while a complex image, like mine and Yingtao’s, can take a while to activate, but we can do almost anything with them, given enough time.”

“Color?” Kaz asked, excited. “Can some people see ki, then?”

Lianhua shook her head, looking amused. “Just their own. Only I can see the runes I use, and only Yingtao can see her garden. They say Color-weavers can see their own ki, but no one can see all ki. If there was someone who could do that, their power would be even more coveted than my own. I’ve been kidnapped half a dozen times, and several dozen more attempts have been made. That’s why I went to live with my grandfather until I could learn to protect myself. Even now, one of the servants is pretending to be me so no one will know I’m outside the sphere of Grandfather’s protection.”

Kaz swallowed hard, looking down. He’d had a feeling that his peculiar vision was unusual, even among the humans, but this was not good news. He would have to be even more cautious about revealing his own abilities, at least beyond those that a kobold might reasonably have. It was strange enough for a male to have power, but he thought these humans wouldn’t understand just how strange, so the nebulous plan that was just beginning to form in the back of his mind might be feasible. If they found out just how different he was, though, his situation could go from bad to worse.

He stroked a finger down Li’s spine, taking comfort in the soft scales beneath his fingertip. Small, sharp bumps were beginning to rise along her neck, and he wondered if someday she would have spikes there like her parents.

“One more question,” he said, “and then I’ll answer yours.”

Lianhua nodded, and Kaz very, very carefully said, “You said all ki is one ki, but it seems like… your ki is different from Gaoda’s, which is different from Chi Yincang’s and Raff’s. Is that because you have different images?” He knew it wasn’t, at least not entirely, but for someone who couldn’t see the colors of ki it would be a natural assumption.

The human shook her head. “In the end, all ki is one ki, at least that’s what Grandfather says. But for us, at the beginning of our cultivation, we each have a natural ability to use certain forms of ki. In the Sheng Empire, we have tools which can test what kind of ki a person will find easiest to use. These tools are rare and expensive, so they’re mostly owned by wealthy clans or sects, but they can make the process of training a student much simpler. Eventually, of course, the goal is to unlock all five types of ki, or elements, but I’ve never met anyone with more than four, and the vast majority of people have only one.”

She pointed to herself. “I was actually born with three, which is another reason my family wants to marry me off. Not only might my children inherit my ability to sense auras, or ki, but if I marry someone with the types I’m missing, our children might be born with four or even all five elements.”

Kaz swallowed hard, his throat dry. “What types do you have?”

Lianhua smiled. “I’m a triple Life cultivator. I have wood, water, and earth, which are the things needed for growth. Chi Yincang is Duality; he has metal and water. Gaoda Xiang has double Life; wood and earth. Yingtao only has wood. People with some or all of the same elements can share ki, as you saw when we made the shield, which is part of why Grandfather selected Gaoda and Chi Yincang to go with me. We’re stronger together than any of us would be alone.”

She leaned forward. “Which brings me to the first of my questions. Kaz, why did it seem like I was taking ki from you when I was trying to cultivate on the way here?”