Symbols (An original Story: Reincarnation; Cultivation; Exhasperation)

[bor902]

Just messing around with creating original fictions



Symbols determine the path one's cultivation takes. Symbolism, in general, is pretty important. Now, what does it say about me? That the name gifted upon me at birth is Serkel.
I hope that's a reference to my reincarnation, and not a cosmic being, implying I'm running around in them.



Though at this point, I wager it's both. Being reborn certainly didn't uncomplicate things after all. Though how a world composed of magical martial artists is so complex is beyond me.



Chapter 1

Editor: 5th dimension




Another piece of perfectly fine fabric made its way into his bag. Really, was a small grease fleck that hard to wash off? Serkel stopped the inner diatribe right there, before it really began. All in all, he should have gotten used to finding perfectly serviceable objects in the trash mountain that was Beggar's Town long ago. He was actively searching for them after all, but it still managed to upset him anew every time.



Serkel spotted something shiny in a heap of particularly disgusting garbage. He used his trusty companion, a stick with a hook (which he lovingly dubbed "hooky stick") to pull it out. It was the head of a spoon, with half of its grip seemingly melted off.



Probably a fire-based cultivator angry at the fact that his soup hadn't been prepared to his liking. It was still usable. Instead of putting it in the bag, he put it into a small pouch that Jean had sewn into his pants.



The pouch was a precaution. If someone tried to rob him, the valuables would be in the pouch, and he could hand over his bag instead.



The spoon jingled as it hit against a coin in the pouch. Should have thought of that. Serkel pulled the fabric he'd previously thrown in the bag out, and trying to not let others see him, used it to pack the two objects so that they wouldn't come into direct contact with each other. Wrapping them up completely also meant he could add another jingly item in the pouch without bothering all over again. It was getting kind of full, though.



He took out another piece of fabric, this one completely unblemished but for a hideous stitching design covering its surface, and used it to bind his slightly-too-long hair into a very short ponytail. Serkel pondered if he should just leave it at that for the day. He didn't pick through trash because he needed the money, but because he enjoyed the prospect of hidden treasure. He simply wasn't strong enough to go out and explore the ruins of some fallen civilization. Nor was his body old enough yet. Who'd heard of an eight-year-old treasure hunter?



Serkel startled as the choice was abruptly taken from him by the sirens starting to sound. The shrill sound lasted for about five minutes, the loudness of it enough to coax even the most deaf beggars out of their ragpicking.



Serkel ran over trash mounds and the cracked ground that served as a border for the mountain. He turned back just in time for the flying carrier ships that looked too much like demented grey whales for it to be a coincidence, to open up their bellies and spew forth an absolute deluge of garbage. The things were modified to hold much more than was physically possible.



It wouldn't be wrong to claim that the Empire produced a biblical proportion of waste. The scene itself, thousands of grey whales flying in the sky and opening their stomachs to spill their innards onto the ground, was something that could have come straight out of the bible. Though the moral of the possible story eluded him.



Not that Serkel was very religious. It had just been an interest of his a long time ago, and so he was more well-read in that area than most others. That not being particularly hard since most people were atheists, or rather, agnostics.



Serkel disrupted that thought process and started walking away faster. There were several small settlements surrounding the trash mountain. Their inhabitants only living here to sift through the waste of the kingdom. And since it had just been dropped, well, that's when they would all come crawling out like ants out of an anthill.

This of course wasn't in any sense a dream job, and as one could probably imagine the people who didn't have any other choice to survive but to become an ultra-rag picker weren't very happy with their lot. They were also quite desperate.



As if on cue, Serkel heard the first scream. He didn't turn around and continued walking. He'd turned around once. The sight of a man getting stabbed to death wasn't something that he would like to see again if he could avoid it.



Desperate people, well, they occasionally got violent.



Serkel had the potential to cultivate, enough of it to even be termed above average, he wasn't willing to risk his life for the sake of others before he even got the chance to begin his ascension. The time before he could safely start was quite close, and to be felled so close to the finishing line would just be a tragedy.



Well, the metaphor wasn't really fitting. The finishing line implied that something was done, but things were only starting. A more fitting one would be that Serkel had just managed to close his hand around a doorknob and was about to press forwards. The rest of the world outside his room was still open for exploration.



Speaking of rooms... He'd arrived at his house, which coincidentally had rooms inside of it. Even though calling it a house was a bit of a misnomer. It was definitely leaning more into the shack category. Emphasis on leaning. He opened the door and what greeted him was a flying drop-kick impacting directly into his face. Before he could fly back any great distance, he was grabbed by the lapel of his coat and spun around so the momentum of his flying body changed directions.



Serkel hit the mattress leaning on the wall adjacent to the entrance, blood dripping from his nose. He'd dropped his guard. Something that you really did not want to do when even entering a kilometre radius of Jean.



"Fuck yo-" A tooth falling out interrupted his cursing slightly. "-u." They were just milk teeth, but still.



Jean had, after his actions at the door, taken up position by the window and was peering through the shades. Once Jean noticed Serkel in a condition capable of talking again, he spun around quickly, basically teleported over to him, and hoisted him into the air. Sweaty strands of black fair framed his gaunt face.



"Were you followed?" Then, seemingly noticing the blood flowing from Serkel's face, he let him drop, only to start fretting. "What happened? You're bleeding! Are you alright?" Jean babbled at a rapid pace as he tried to press his hand to Serkel's forehead, only for every attempt to be slapped aside.


Jean tried to get through Serkel's defence a few times before he succeeded and promptly received a kick between the legs. Serkel had managed to propel himself upward with his arms, amplifying the force behind the kick. "You fukin wanker," Serkel said as Jean crumbled to the ground clutching Jean Jr.



"Sorry." Serkel sighed at the whimpering twenty-five-year old. He grabbed onto Jean's arms and dragged him to the bedroom, a room cordoned off from the rest of the living room by some rice paper. He laid Jean down and started stroking his hair as his brother stopped whimpering and entered full-blown crying mode.



It was one of the bad days, then. You never quite knew with Jean. Sometimes he acted normal, and other times he became slightly unhinged. Rarer still, he became completely unpredictable. Serkel laid him down and hummed him to sleep, covered him with a blanket, and started cleaning up the room.



He sighed. Some items just weren't where they were supposed to be, and his guardian wouldn't be able to find them when he fully recovered from his bout of mania. So he started putting things back where they belonged. They didn't have much so the task was easy. A drawer with all their clothes had to be picked off from the ground and set aright. The chest filled with the items he'd pilfered from the trash mountain had, as always, remained untouched. Some cooking utensils had to be sorted anew and some food thrown out due to prolonged contact with the ground.



He liked the shack, only two rooms. The living room with the aforementioned drawer, several knick knacks, weapons, and scrolls lying around. And the kitchen, a hole dug into the ground to act as a fire pit and a cooling box with some perishable ingredients. The pelts hanging there had been left completely untouched. Might have been Jean's subconscious trying to avoid messing the things that made them money.



When Serkel was done, he went outside, sat down and started meditating. He'd been practising the discipline for quite a while, so it was easy to slip into a state of not-thinking. He embraced it, let it wash over him for what felt like an eternity. But by the shadow of the sun clock he'd built, it had actually been closer to fifteen minutes.



He had come perilously close this time. He had breathed in the smell of the energy so deeply he was able to taste it. It tasted purple.



It wasn't safe to start cultivating yet. His body needed to be strengthened, the symbol engraved into his mind, branded onto his brain. He wondered how others did it, before chuckling. He knew how they did it, but Serkel wasn't interested in branding his body as well as his mind, no matter how close of an association it would bring.



"You're thinking again," Jean muttered from where he leaned on the door frame, previous episode probably completely forgotten. "You can do that while training," the older man continued.



"I think the quality of thought might be affected by the body working at the same time," Serkel said while rolling his eyes, making Jean snort.



"Think of it this way. Training is a numb action, which means thinking is possible during it. Therefore it's more time-cost-efficient to do the two together."



Serkel sighed. It made sense… as long as you looked at training the purely physical body, not the muscle memory or technique of whatever you were doing. That training was, of course, inferior to one which you gave your full concentration.



Another issue that Jean probably had in mind was that people needed to be able to focus on their symbol while doing any sort of activity. He would train while trying to meditate. It would settle Jean and give him a bit of an earlier start on the eventual focus & moving thing everyone needed to learn anyway. That didn't mean it would be fun, though.



Standing up he nodded at Jean, signalling he would do as said.



Serkel started running while trying to clear his thoughts and ran head first into a wall. He lay there for a bit, feeling the smooth-stomped cold earth pressing against his cheek. Or more like his cheek pressing against the smooth-stomped cold earth.



Since when had that wall been there?



A snort from Jean made him slowly stand up, glaring at the shoddily-constructed wooden wall he'd ran into.



Ah. The neighbours.

 

[bor902]

Chapter 28

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He turned in a direction clear of any obstacles, cleared his thoughts, and started running. Serkel felt more than saw Jean running slightly behind him.



Out of his neighbourhood he ran, past the store that sold godlike ramen, over the only bridge connecting the two parts of the city that would have otherwise been completely cut off from one another by the river, slightly swerving into the shopping district to catch a whiff of all the smells. And finally, out of the city, into the surrounding forests towards the clearing where the both of them often trained.



He was almost successfully meditating at this point, all while running, so why had he thought it was so hard again? Hey, this actually didn't take as much getting used to as everyone else said. Or so he thought. That was the point where he tripped over a log, his face once again making its acquaintance with the ground. Serkel stood up and spat out some grass. It tasted bad, but at least it softened the impact a bit.



He went into the part of the clearing that was still protected from the sun by the surrounding trees and entered a stance. Feet wide apart, knees bent, arms held aloft perpendicular from his own body. Then, slowly, he started up a punch that took approximately a full minute to fully extend.



Jean crouched beneath the arm, examining it. "Perfect." He nodded approvingly. "It's almost as if you've been doing it your whole life. Now just keep practising and try to get it to this level while maintaining a normal speed." That was all he had to say before he wandered off to the other side of the clearing to go through his own routine.



It had been like this since the beginning. Jean would demonstrate, Serkel would completely master the slow motion version in a few hours, and then Jean would just give up and tell him to try to get whatever they were working on to normal speed.



Serkel had seen a bit of disapproval in his brother's eyes at the start, once when they'd attempted a spar and he'd failed completely to even manage an attack. He'd been lashed out pretty harshly for it, verbally that was. But the disapproval had disappeared after Serkel showed the ability to not merely learn, but to master something to perfection. Which in the end was worth more, no matter how long it took.



There was a reason for his preferred method, of course. People generally thought about martial arts as something completely physical. While it was that, at its core, there was still a mental aspect to it. Through the routine of slowly doing any technique, the body and mind would prepare themselves ahead of time.



The slowness of the movement made you less likely to build in the shortcuts subconsciously put into the technique so the body could move onto other things faster instead of just standing there punching air. It also made it more likely for you to notice the small jerks and twitches in the movement. Errors, in other words.



Serkel had noted that when you slowed down, you noticed other things too. Everything appeared to be just a tad more loud, a tad less distracting, and you were more prone to notice other things pertaining to the technique as well: excessive force, tension, weakness, and muscular imbalances.



All things he'd tried to convince Jean with, only for the man to stay stubborn.



Tradition is the corpse of wisdom.



Maybe it had been necessary in the past to teach people moves, so they could then immediately go and use them on the battlefield. Times were different now. But humans were content with ignoring new solutions as long as the old, flawed ones were still working. However, change wasn't something that could be forced and Serkel was content with improving the impartation and learning of techniques one person at a time, starting with himself of course.



He idly blew a brown strand out of his eyes as his punching speed progressed to the point where it actually started affecting his hair. He would have to cut it soon. Serkel had enjoyed the luxury of long hair in his last life, but here, long hair was seen as more of a taunt. Look at me, I'm so strong, I can leave a handhold on myself and still beat your ass like I beat my meat, it said. Suffice to say, long hair was a symbol of power and/or wealth.



Serkel distracted himself with other such thoughts and short bouts of meditation as he worked, continuing to a point where it would have been unwise to do so. He sat down and went back to pure meditation while waiting for Jean to complete his training as well.



Soon he felt the winds gather into an obnoxiously strong storm, signalling that Jean was throwing out his strongest attack, as was his habit for ending training sessions.



"Vacuum."



Serkel opened his eyes just in time to see Jean expel all the air away from a small sphere above his hand, held stable by the fact it was still in proximity to its creator. The thing was then thrown up and exploded loudly in the sky with a pop. Air rushed into the space, ripping small branches from trees despite the distance between them.



The attack seemed stronger than usual today.



"Seems stronger than usual today!" Serkel screamed over at Jean, his ears still ringing and eyes watering from the winds.



"It does, doesn't it!" he heard back from the blur that was Jean.



The blast caused the death of several animals. Not feeling like eating poultry today, Serkel ignored all the birds that had fallen out of the sky and picked up three rabbits that had left this life convulsing with blood flowing out of their ears and eyes. Rad.



He didn't see any reason to dawdle on the slow way back, so Serkel started squeezing the little bastards, pushing the thing's insides to its lower half. He spun the thing by the ears a few times, and with a squeeze the organs of the rabbit popped right out of its butt.



They had made it back to the outskirts of the city by now, so he gained some odd looks from the people around him. Some laughs as well.



Ripping apart the last connection the organs had with the inside, he tossed the guts to a pack of sad-looking dogs, who immediately started wagging their tails and falling over the treat. After getting some appreciative barks, Serkel repeated the process with the other two rabbits he had.



Taking out a small knife he made a long incision along its stomach, just enough to get his thumbs in there and start tearing the pelt from the flesh. Careful to only pull the thing in the direction of the legs and the head, he managed to procure three perfect brown pelts that he then tossed to Jean, who at that point left to sell the things.


Usually they were worth more if dry and cleaned from the blood, but the leatherworker had said he would pay double this week for anything brought to him. The festival was approaching, and the quantity mattered more than the quality for anyone trying to make coin of the event.



He arrived home, the three skinned corpses hanging from his grip. He got out the chipped butcher's knife they owned and chopped off the feet and head.



He set these aside in a bowl to be distributed to the street dogs outside and got back to work. First he chopped off the hind legs, muscular things that you needed to add into the pot earlier than the rest if you wanted consistently tender meat in your soup. He did the same for the front legs and set them aside for now, to be added later.



He cut off the saddle meat along the rabbits' spines and gently pried the strip of sinew off of it, throwing the disgusting part into the bowl with the rest of the trash. Once he was done with all three rabbits, he put the six strips of perfect meat into the cooling box and threw in the rest of the spine and front legs into the already-boiling pot.



That was the point where Jean came back with the money he'd gotten from selling the pelts and the rest of the animals he'd killed. He was also carrying some vegetables. "No milk today?" Serkel asked him, chopping up the vegetables and throwing them into the pot.



"No, once every two days is enough."

"I need it Jean. You do as well," Serkel insisted to his stubborn caretaker.



"You're still a child. You might get laughed at for drinking milk, but if I, an adult would do it, I would never be able to show my face agai-" Jean spasmed, his next few words coming out as gibberish, right arm twitching. The man grimaced.



"Go lay down," Serkel said harshly, which Jean did somewhat reluctantly. "I'll explain to you again why milk and a balanced diet are important the next time you're lucid."



Jean didn't possess the necessary muscle mastery to reply back, but the roll of his eyes told Serkel all he needed to know about the man's opinion. Honestly. Telling a grown ass man to eat his veggies and drink his milk. Serkel would have been more exasperated if the scene hadn't been so common.



Serkel was able to convince Jean of almost all of his ideas. They'd been living much more prosperously because of them. But occasionally he would convince Jean of something, only for him to forget it again the next day.



The average intelligence of the people inhabiting this world seemed to be much lower than the society he'd previously enjoyed. Well, didn't only seem, it was lower. How else would you explain that they didn't have any particularly impressive philosophers, religions, or even technology? The year cycle was the same, but the world had only advanced to a level of the middle ages in over ten millennia of having a calendar. Almost exactly eleven thousand actually, since they'd started counting the years. Only twelve more years to hit the mark.



This didn't mean that everyone was stupid. No, intelligence once again showed itself as a bell curve. There were frighteningly smart people at work, it was just that these frighteningly smart people paled in comparison to what was considered a genius on Serkel's last world. Thankfully, intelligence was almost in direct correlation with the ability to cultivate, so in the future when Serkel joined the ranks of the would-be-demigods, he would once again move in a social sphere of semi-not-stupid people.



Not that he fraternised with idiots at the moment, either. It was overall very hard to build friendships with inferiors, therefore all the people he'd managed to enjoy the presence of over a longer period of time were quite smart.



It was also why he had only one friend.


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