There are these days, where your mind just can’t help but think over all the little mistakes you’ve made. All the regrets, and self hate, the ugly emotions that you keep hidden in some corner in your mind boil over and splash forth, and suddenly you realise just how much of a mess you are. How much you could’ve done better, how many mistakes you have made. Imagine if that day was a conversation with your other self or soul, and you’d understand what I was going through. “What… has it been like? Being in there all this time. Could you… see and hear everything?” I asked and Yuan turned to look at me. “I should be the one asking that. I have been like this for a few months. You have been there for all my life. Twenty years. You’d know better than anyone else,” Yuan said, and I paused. “Right. I still find that so hard to swallow. I guess- it’s like. I wasn’t really there? Like, I never knew I was there. I just have all these memories, and these emotions. I know these things and remem

The world was a swirl of colours as awareness returned to Yuan. Sensations assaulted him all at once, sight smell, sound. It was all so minor, yet he relished each moment, relished experiencing it all for himself.And with it came greed. He wanted to remain like this.The Gu boiled within his core, crawling across his pathways. It agreed with Yuan’s thoughts. He was the one who this body belonged to. It should be his.A voice interrupted Yuan’s thoughts.“Great Master?” Flee squeaked. Rising above the spirit grass she stood on her back legs, her pink nose twitching adorably as she looked at him.Yuan stared silently, as new emotions filled his chest. Concern, care, comfort. It wasn’t he who felt as such, but his other half that slept within his spirit. The one who he owed his life to.Yuan felt his mind clear, as he drew upon the Qi in his other core. It cleared the miasma, removing its clutches, and returned clarity to his thoughts. He had limited time, and a purpose to fulfil. He wo

The Old Man walked with fire burning in his eyes and above his palm. Instead of the kind smile I’d come to expect of the Old Man, now burned a strange sense of intensity. It was almost as if he’d suddenly become young again.“Have you mastered the flame since we last talked, Disciple?” Old Man asked.I nodded, circulating Qi above my palm as I ignited it, forming a ball of fire. I looked up at Old Man and scratched my cheeks in embarrassment.“Is this a known technique? I thought… well. I thought I’d come up with something new,” I said out loud.The Old Man smiled, as the flame leapt from his hand and towards the cauldron igniting the spirit stones underneath it. “Not a rare assumption for a young disciple to make. And it is not a well known ability outside those that walk the Path of Alchemy. Cultivators tend to attune themselves to a singular path within the world, forgetting that all is connected around us.”I saw a little blob of water flow around the Old Man again, as a realisati

I took a breath, stilling my hand as I gently pressed the brush against the paper. Carefully I guided it across the sheet of paper, letting my Qi flow through it and into the ink as I wrote down the character for ‘Wind’. The paper rustled, floating upwards before it snapped towards the wall sticking onto it. I turned to look at the other seven papers similarly stuck all around at equal intervals around my room, forming an enclosed encirclement.Qi flowed through the papers as I felt the formation set itself within the chamber and sighed in mild exhaustion, putting aside the brush. I had picked up an obfuscation ward from the library to try and hide the Qi and more importantly Gu that I’d be experimenting with in my chamber.It had been surprisingly easy to set it up, or so I’d thought until I actually began working on the formations. Piles of crumpled sheets lay behind me as for some reason, even the slightest mistake in my brush-stroke resulted in a formation that refused to work. I

Tall grass rushed past Flee’s form as she ran through the field, following the faint scent of the lightning Qi.Lunar and thunder Qi swirled in her core as she ran through the fields of the outer sect, heading beyond its boundaries and further up the peak. A place even her Great Master wasn’t allowed to enter.A pill remained clutched within her mouth, as the boundaries of the outer sect peaks began to shimmer and appear in the distance. A wall surrounded the higher peak of the inner sect, the Qi within the air rising with each step she walked closer.Purple lightning crackled around her as she paused, to sniff the scents carried across the air currents, and the little trails of Qi that brushed past. When she had been nothing but a common rat, she’d mindlessly followed a similar trail to find a gap within the wards to cross through.The task to breach the inner sect ward was much more formidable, but she too wasn’t the common rat that she used to be either.The Qi shimmered an invisib