Excitement and nervousness shot through Raul as he sat. This was it, all the plans and agreements in the world would mean nothing if this didn’t work.
He breathed in and out while she sat behind him. She put her hands on his back and closed her eyes. After a minute she frowned. “Take off your shirt.”
He nervously obeyed. “So how exactly does this technique work?” He couldn’t help asking as her hands touched his back again.
She continued to frown while touching around his back. “Long story short, the Divine Pairing Hearts technique will allow us to pass essence qi to each other through our essence hearts. That way I can absorb the primordial qi and pass it straight to your essence heart.” She explained while her frown deepened, and she removed her hands.
She started undoing the buttons on the back of her dress. The familiar popping sounds behind him might have made Raul excited in a different way if he wasn’t so bloody anxious.
“Are there any problems?” He asked in a small voice.
“Not yet.” She continued to work on lowering the top of her wedding dress. “It’s just more difficult to use as a mortal than I thought it’d be. Mortals can’t project their qi, making it hard to form the connection. I think increased skin contact should work though.” She finally got the dress down and wrapped her arms around Raul and pressed herself to his back.
Raul shivered as two pleasant sensations on his back finally pierced the veil of anxiety around him. His face became red as his heart began beating even faster. He glanced back and saw half of Marina’s perfectly calm and focused beautiful face. He couldn’t believe someone could be so unfazed in this position.
“… Found it.” As she said that Raul felt as if an itch he didn’t know he had was suddenly scratched. A tingle spread from his core through his body and then into hers as he became intuitively aware of her as if she was a part of him. His tensed muscles relaxed, and a light moan escaped his lips as the comfort of being whole spread through his entire being.
“…” She only shivered a little, but he could tell through his newfound awareness of her that she was struggling to keep her own moan down. “I’m going to refine some essence qi and send it over now, don’t let it escape. Do it the same as when you try to absorb primordial qi and keep it in your body until it merges.”
Raul shook off his distracted thoughts and nodded. Marina closed her eyes to feel the primordial qi, Raul did the same to prepare for the receival. Within seconds a layer of reality was torn, and the colorful glow of primordial qi was revealed.
Marina trembled in shock and almost dropped the technique when she felt the primordial qi through his perception. Raul could feel her trembling, but he couldn’t feel the reason why. He sensed as she started pulling the primordial qi into her body and could track it along due to their connection.
It was the first time he saw how primordial qi interacted with other people. He could feel slight pain as the qi tried to escape her body, but it was leaps and bounds less than when he did it. He didn’t know if that was because the connection only let him sense a little bit of her pain, or if his own interaction with primordial qi was truly that different.
Soon he felt a reaction he’d never experienced. The primordial qi was slowly being absorbed by her essence heart and transforming into essence qi. As she processed it, he could feel a sharp pain coming from her. She couldn’t resist and coughed hard several times and Raul could feel something wet hitting his shoulder as the metallic smell of blood hit his nose. His focus wavered and he tried to get up, but her arms held him tight.
‘Focus!’ He told himself and gritted his teeth. He had no idea if this was natural or if something was wrong, but he did know that he’d be wasting her efforts if he didn’t properly receive the essence qi. He suddenly felt a disconnect from her essence qi. One moment, it was being refined in her body, then the next it was gone. A warm feeling began to spread from his chest as he felt his essence heart tremble for the first time. Completely refined essence qi began to flow out of it and attempt to leave his body.
Raul cracked down on them hard, but it was much more difficult than he expected. It was completely different from primordial qi. Primordial qi was hard and bullish. It rampaged through the body painfully, but so long as you had the will you could keep it caged. Essence qi, however, was soft and adaptable. It didn’t hurt, but every time he tried to hold it, it would slip through his control.
He did his best to contain it, but wisps of energy kept escaping his body. ‘This isn’t working!’ He cursed. At this rate he’d lose at least forty percent of it. He needed a different approach. A different way of viewing things.
He began to see the strands of qi as gusts of wind. You couldn’t stop the wind from blowing, but you could direct it. He stopped trying to trap them and instead let his focus flow with them. He nudged them slightly at every opportunity, tried to get them to create a flow in his body. He didn’t stress over the ones that were already on the edge and doomed to go outside, instead focusing on completing the flow as stably as possible.
The number of escaping strands slowly decreased, and all the new qi coming through got sucked into the flow. It wasn’t perfect, some of the qi still escaped, but it was less than fifteen percent now. Soon the qi stopped coming in and Raul only had to focus on keeping the flow going. As the essence qi circulated it gradually lessened as strands sunk into his body. Raul shivered uncontrollably as the qi refined his bones, muscles and blood.
Marina observed the whole ordeal through her perception of him with an increasingly bright gleam in her eyes. She handled her own cultivation while observing Raul’s until the essence qi in both of them ran out. She let go of him and backed off, causing both of them to gasp at the sudden feeling of loss as the technique was cut off.
Yet even that unpleasant experience couldn’t compare to the euphoria that Raul was feeling. A huge grin spread across his face as he gripped his fists. He was finally a cultivator! Well, technically he wasn’t one yet, but he was on the road to becoming one. His entire body felt powerful and full of energy, like a great beast roused from a long slumber.
It all came crashing down as he heard the violent coughing behind him. “Are you ok?” He turned guiltily, ashamed that he was so wrapped up in his own success that he forgot to check on her.
“No problem.” She sounded the same as usual, but her face was pale, and the hand she was holding up to her mouth was leaking blood. Raul was so scared that he barely even noticed she was still topless.
“Hold on, I’ll go get help!”
“I’m fine.” She grabbed his pants to keep him from running off. “It’s just a backlash from cultivating so soon after my cultivation was abandoned. I have some pills for it.” She pointed at the briefcase that was the only thing she’d moved in with. Raul opened it quickly and found twelve shrinking bags, five rings, and an old talisman inside. “The one with the stripped string.” She clarified. Raul picked it up and was surprised by how heavy it was.
She took a pill out and swallowed it before closing her eyes to absorb it. Raul sat next to her in solidarity and averted his eyes. “Thank you, it should be fine now.” She opened her eyes after a while.
“Are you sure you don’t want a Physician or alchemist?”
“Unnecessary. I know the problem and I have medicine, calling anyone else would be pointless.”
“Ok.” He relented. “Still, don’t refine anymore essence qi until you’re fully recovered, I won’t accept it.” He said seriously. He was impatient to improve, but he wasn’t willing to sacrifice her health over it. He would not become someone who would sacrifice everything for his own benefit, that was the one thing he swore on before coming to this meeting.
“Of course.” She nodded as if it were obvious. “This was just to get you into the smelting period, I won’t need to refine qi for another three months, and my injures will heal by then.
“Ah, I suppose that’s true.” Raul sighed in relief. “So what do I do for the smelting period?” His curiosity returned with the drop of his worries.
“Your body is still adjusting, training now would be pointless. What you need now is sleep.” Her hand reached up and touched his neck with force. it was easy since he was still averting his eyes from her. He didn’t even have time to tense before he started slumping forward. His last thoughts before falling unconscious were ‘This crazy woman!’
