Live The Balance (Original cultivation)

2.5 - Mental Path

After his previous success with the body path, Zhi Gao decides that he will try to replicate it with the mental path. He's aware that he's lagging behind, and that it's of no benefit to him to be so advanced in the body path without a matching advancement in the mental, so he's eager to correct the imbalance.

That it will mean he can earn more from working in the sect gardens is only a minor consideration.

He spends the first day working so he can scrape together enough points for the pills he needs, and then he gets to the business of cultivation. It's less physically strenuous than the body path, for obvious reasons, but it still leaves Zhi Gao feeling drained. The pills leave him feeling strangely detached, while simultaneously experiencing every sensation as if it's three times as intense as it would normally be. His qi rushes through his meridians like a river in flood season, and he sucks in more qi with every carefully measured breath.

He reigns the qi in, slowly and steadily, pulling it down into the core of his cultivation just behind his diaphragm. He pushes and compresses, forcing more and more qi into the same space, layer after layer, like building a pearl by hand. Any slip of his will, any loss of focus, and the qi escapes again to rush back through his meridians, and he has to spend more time to herd it back into position. His efforts are rewarded, though, as he breaks through into the Third Step on the very first day. The change isn't as dramatic as the one he experienced when he first fully broke through into the Outer Human Realm, but he can still feel the qi in the air more clearly, and his body feels lighter than ever. His body has been refined into nothing more than sleek muscle, bone and skin, but with the full breakthrough into the Third Step everything seems to fit together better. His mind can now keep up with some of his body's speed, so he can finally make use of it.

He heads to the dining hall for a celebratory meal, and sees Ma Gang sat on his own at one of the tables. It's a rare sight; the other man is normally with Lady Zhu, unless he's cultivating. Zhi Gao considers for a moment, but he's curious enough to risk it. He walks over to Ma Gang and stands across the table from him.

"Do you mind if I eat with you, Ma Gang?" he says, as politely as possible.

The look he gets is hard to decipher, but it doesn't take long before Ma Gang nods. "As you wish, Zhi Gao. You seem to have advanced every time I see you."

Zhi Gao sits and shrugs. "I only do what I can. I'm sure you will stay ahead of me."

"Hah! It is expected of me to do so," Ma Gang says. "But expectations are not reality. You are only a step below me in full advancement, and you overreach me in the body path." He sniffs, scowls, and takes a careful bite from one of the heaped vegetables in the bowl in front of him. "If you do not outstrip me by the end of the week, I will be surprised."

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Zhi Gao says. "You could do better than me with the same effort, I have no doubts. Didn't you advance to Outer Human without outside assistance, the same week as Lady Zhu?"

"I could destroy you with the same effort," Ma Gang says, but there's no heat to it. It's simply a statement of fact as he sees it. "But my duties require a significant investment of time. We can't all be carefree peasants."

Zhi Gao doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just starts his meal.

"You think it's foolish, don't you?" Ma Gang says. "Devoting so much time to Lady Zhu that it damages my progress?"

He doesn't want to say anything of the sort, mostly because he's fairly sure Ma Gang would jump over the table and beat him if he did, but he's certainly entertaining the idea now.

"I don't," Zhi Gao says, instead. "I'm sure you've got good reasons for it."

"At least you know something," Ma Gang says. "We're not going to stay at the sect, so what's the point in gaining status with them? Our paths are determined already. I will likely never need to use my cultivation for anything other than paperwork."

It sounds like he's trying to justify his failures to himself, to Zhi Gao. Surely with a noble's resources, Ma Gang could have arranged for at least the same pills as Zhi Gao has used. That would probably have been enough to get him to the same level of advancement, with a little work.

"But don't you have to deal with raiders from further west?" Zhi Gao says. "With gems for eyes and fire for blood, or so I've heard."

"They don't bother to come so far east as my family's holdings," Ma Gang says, with a dismissive shake of his head. He sighs. "So here I am, talking to a peasant."

He looks down at his vegetables and starts to eat again, and the two of them fall into an uneasy silence for the rest of the meal.

It takes Zhi Gao another day and a half to break through to the Fourth Step, and another day and a half after that to hit the Fifth. Unlike the previous steps, the change he experiences is not a minor one. His entire body shakes as he's flooded with sensations, his improved body finally aligning almost fully with his mind. It feels almost like a failed breakthrough, except the barrage of information never slackens. He can still taste black and hear the texture of his robes, but after a few moments to adjust, it's no longer so overwhelming as to paralyse him. After a few minutes, his mind finally manages to sort everything into its proper place, and he only has to feel the flavour of grilled fish if he chooses to. The flows of qi through the world around him now stand out, almost as though they're threads and ropes of brightly-coloured cloth, winding through everything. He spends almost an hour just staring at his own body, and tracing the way the black and blue intertwines with his muscles and tendons and bones.

His sleep is brief, but he wakes feeling fully refreshed after only a couple of hours. He only needs to eat a fraction of what he did before, so long as he has qi to draw upon, and the sect is so rich with it that he could probably go without food entirely, if he chose to. He doesn't think it's a good idea, though, considering that he still sees inner disciples regularly visiting the dining hall, and even core disciples, on occasion. The woman from the library sometimes sits at the small black table reserved for the core disciples, and even if she doesn't eat much, she still eats. She also watches everyone in the dining hall, which leaves Zhi Gao feeling unsettled, but that's beside the point.

He takes the next day more slowly, and uses the extra time he has in his day to adjust to his newly-expanded senses and relax a little. He invites Shan Hong to spend time with him in the gardens, not to work, but just to spend time together. She looks even bigger than before, and the hint of metal that was in her horns and on her fingernails has resolved into what looks like actual bronze. They walk together through the temperate central space, a huge room that's mostly fields, with a small stream that cuts it in half, and a slight rise towards the southern side that is topped with a copse of old oaks. It's a pleasant temperature, the false sky shows a bright sun, and there's a faint breeze that blows across the room.

"It's funny," Shan Hong says, after a few minutes. "I never really had any friends before I came here, but now I have you, and Jia, and even Lady Zhu seems nice."

Zhi Gao tilts his head so he can look up at his friend. "I can't say I had the same issue," he says at last. "But it's good to have people who I can talk to around. My grandfather always said I got strange if I spent too much time talking to the spirits."

She nudges him with her elbow, so carefully he barely feels it, and he nudges her back, with more feeling. She returns it, and this time it actually makes him stumble a step. He grins.

"I'm not going to break," he says. "You don't need to be so scared around me. Around any of us, really, except Leng Jin."

"Your grandfather was wrong," she says, smiling. "You're strange even without talking to spirits."

"Hah! That's fair enough," he says. "I see you've advanced. Where are you on the body path, now? Seventh Step?"

"Eighth!" she says. "And I broke through to Second in the mental path. Not like you."

"Fifth in mental and Seventh in body," he says. "But I've only just started to bring my mental path up. Are you aiming to hit Ninth Step in the body path before devoting time to the mental?"

"Yeah," she says. "May as well get as far as I can in what I'm good at while I pull together sect points for the other side. I'm getting tutoring in other stuff, too, so I've got a better foundation."

"It's a good plan," he says. "It seems like I spend my sect points faster than I earn them. I can't even think what the extra costs are like for better rooms."

"If you've got money, you can exchange it for sect points," she says. "Lady Zhu said so, anyway. That's why she's got nice rooms. Not like I've got two coins to rub together, though."

Zhi Gao thinks to himself, puts together some information from Leng Jin and things he's observed while working.

"Huh. The sect gets a lot of money out of us, when you think about it," he says, scratching at his chin. "Most of the jobs would cost a pretty penny to hire people for, and I bet they're chraging more for the cultivation resources than they'd cost to produce."

Shan Hong shrugs. "It's all fine by me," she says. "I get to cultivate, and there's plenty of stuff to do. Not sure I'm gonna stick around after I've done my service, though."

"You've got plans already?"

"Maybe. You know you can transfer sects, if you want? It takes a while, but it's easier if you're lower ranked," she says. "And Lady Zhu's made some offers for work out west. It's not perfect, but I'm kind of interested. The Blazing Sun sect would take me."

"I'd talk any offers through with Jia," he says. "I'm pretty sure she knows more about this stuff than any of the rest of us other than the nobles. But if you think it's a good offer, it might be worth it. I'd miss you."

"You could come with," she says. "Pretty sure she'd like to pull all three of us over." She shrugs again. "Not like I've got anything solid, though. We might not even survive to go."

"Ugh, don't talk like that," he says. "You'll curse us. Have you decided on a role you want to aim for? Leng Jin and Liao He were talking about it the other day, and I've been a bit lost."

"It's difficult to know," she says. "I'd talk to Zhang Shui about it, if I were you. She's got good advice for military stuff. I haven't decided, either, but there's plenty to choose from."

They walk together for a few moments in silence, as both of them think.

"Well, at least we'll have plenty of time to work on it, once we're out at sea," he says at last. "Not that it'll make much difference. I haven't left the ship since we arrived."

"I went out to clear some fields," she says. "Paid well, and it was nice to see a real sky. Had to fight a couple of spirit beasts, though," she adds. "Some sort of fish-scaled wolf things."

"I still don't want to think about fighting, yet," he says. "I've been avoiding the idea as much as I can."

"Maybe you could go for something like blacksmithing, then," she says, perking up at the idea. "Fire, metal and earth is the best for that."

"I was mostly considering the water-wood-fire combination," he says. "But I'm not committed yet."

"We've got a few more months," she says. "Better to know before you do it than to rush in."

He nods his agreement, and they pass a few more hours in comfortable conversation.

The next day, the last day of the week, he dedicates purely to mental cultivation. He pushes through to the Sixth Step before the end of the day, and though he's a little disappointed that he doesn't manage to match his body path, he's fully aware that his progress has been nothing short of obscene. He's two Steps from the peak in the body path, and three in the mental path, though he's aware that it's likely to take as long to get through those last few steps as it did to manage the entire rest of his advancement. The week ends with him sat comfortably on the raised platform of his bed, legs crossed, as he contemplates the week to come.

What's the week plan?

You may choose 2 people to spend time with this week:

[ ] Lady Zhu.
[ ] Ma Gang.
[ ] Jia.
[ ] Zhang Shui.
[ ] Leng Jin.
[ ] Liao He.
[ ] Shan Hong.
[ ] Lady Xuan
[ ] Other (you will go wandering and try to find someone interesting. Now that you are an outer disciple, new options will be available).


Pick a job to spend 7 blocks a week on.
[ ] The Garden Job. Now that you're an outer disciple, the job pays better, but has commensurate difficulties. 5 sect points as base income, +1 sect point per hour per Step increase. At your current level (Sixth Step Outer Human), offers 29 sect points per time block, plus the Degrees of Success on your Spirit Ken roll.
[ ] Other. See the Jobs Board post in the Informational threadmarks.

You have four (4) 4-hour blocks a day (28 blocks a week) free to spend as you wish. Cultivating takes 1 block, jobs take 1 block, various training will take up blocks as noted in the description in the Sect Points post in the Informational threadmarks.

An example plan would be:
[ ] Jia.
[ ] Liao He.
[ ] 1 block a day on mental cultivation lessons.
[ ] 1 block a day on physical cultivation lessons.
[ ] Search for a spirit to bind. (Spirit Ken)
- [ ] What kind? (Type of spirit, associated element)
- [ ] What powers would you like it to have? (Rough outline)


You have six technique slots available in the mental path, and four in the body path. Discuss what you would like for them. You do not have to fill these slots immediately, and can choose to wait. Please feel free to ask me questions on this. Requires 5+ votes to lock in a technique.

[ ] Free technique.
- [ ] Physical or Mental
- [ ] Type: Attack, Defend, Support, Heal, Move.
- [ ] Element: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood.

[ ] Purchase Technique (50 sect points)
- [ ] Physical or Mental
- [ ] Type: Attack, Defend, Support, Heal, Move.
- [ ] Element: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood.
—[ ] Specifics. What do you want the technique to do?


Vote closes on Friday at 1800 BST.