The last swords of sunlight sink below the horizon, a final rally against the encroaching night. The great moon beams from on high as her younger sister, the sickle surrounded by her chaff, smiles from the distance. Carved into a permanent crescent, the shy sickle-sister only shows her face when her older sister shines her brightest.

  From the narrow entrance to his drey, Ren watches, flat on his belly and with fingers folded beneath his chin, as the sickle-sister spins, twirls, and sways through her familiar dance. Twisting around the great moon's glow, the sickle-sister casts a spell as Ren's eyelids begin drooping. Sluggish thoughts dig up half-forgotten memories from some dust-ridden corner of his mind; a story of his youth, one told around a fire when his family was once again whole.

  Once, long ago, three siblings lived in a peaceful meadow. Their house was small and drafty, their fields were poor and sickly. They didn't have much, but they were happy all the same.

  The largest of the siblings, the brother, was as strong as an ox and worked the fields, always with a big smile on his shining face. The fields, poor as they were, required constant work to eek out even the meager living of the siblings. Thus, the brother never stopped his work, not for relaxing, not for meals, and certainly not for sleep. But he never complained of his fatigue, for he was happy.

  The beautiful older sister knew the secrets of plants and how to mix them into pills and medicines. With a wry grin and a clever nod, she ground herbs around the clock, never sparing a moment for slumber as she kept working her magic over the plants and roots of the land. The older sister was tired, yes, but she was happy all the same.

  The younger sister had dreams and aspirations. She wanted to dance, to sing, to entertain the crowds she knew to exist. She was small, yes, but she had vim and vigor. She would see her dreams manifested no matter the price she must pay.

  Alas, the younger sister was cursed with a fell plague. Her body tore itself apart from the inside out, her bones attacking flesh even while defending from her blood. It was only thanks to the constant efforts of her siblings that she still lived.

  One day... One day...

  Ren frowns, the memory slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. What happens next? How does the story end? And... And who told it to him?

  It couldn't have been Fang, for he had no time for such 'wasteful frivolities'. Could it have been Bing? Maybe, but Bing never understood metaphor nor the art of story-telling so the odds are slim at best. It certainly wasn't one of Mom's tales, for her stories were all of distant lands filled with oddities—like metal contraptions motivated by tiny explosions and boxes with moving pictures.

  But that only leaves...

  Father.

  Ren stares at nothing in particular, his eyes drifting off into space. A bank of dark clouds drifts across the sky as thunder cracks in the distance. The sudden noise rattles Ren, shaking him from his thoughts with a jolt strong enough to nearly send him tumbling to the forest floor.

  Picking himself up—and backing away from the entry point while he's at it—Ren clears his mind with a swish of the head as he eyes the makeshift sleep spot on the floor. Eyes stinging, dry and surely red, Ren shakes his head again as he pushes off sleep. He made a promise to Chen, to the Disciples of the Guiding Light, and he will not abandon them so easily. To keep that promise, to see it done, Ren needs to get stronger. And to get stronger, he needs to cultivate.

  Folding his legs beneath him, Ren's eyes praise the heavens as he allows them to close. Hands cupped together before his navel, Ren focuses on the gentle in and out of his breathing as sleep-drunk thoughts list the steps of cultivation.

  Cultivating by oneself is inadvisable at best, outright cataclysmic at worst. But it isn't like Ren has much of a choice in the matter, all the Elders of the Sect are either dead or oath-breakers—a shudder ripples through his body at the thought of being the disciple of such a horrid existence.

  Besides, Ren isn't converting qi into shen or anything complicated like that. Really, what he's doing could only barely be called cultivating at all! All he is going to do is widen his meridians by a tiny bit, easy-peasy! Simple and quick, no trouble at all.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  His hand picks that moment to offer a rebuttal, a harsher-than-usual spike of pain ripping up his arm and into his shoulder. Ren flinches, teeth clenching, muscles spasming, as he rides out the wave of pain.

  ...Right, yeah. If one isn't careful when widening their meridians—which allows more qi to flow, which, in turn makes everything else that much easier—they could cause their meridians to burst and their qi to explode from their body.

  Normally, the flow of qi through one's meridians is a bit under half of the maximum capacity. This is because mortals cannot control their own qi, so if they consume something that has a large amount—relative to their meridian network—of qi in it, they would die unless they had the needed space to cycle it.

  As Ren is a cultivator—Heavens, he could listen to those words forever!—he has no such issues controlling his qi, so he can cycle at his maximum capacity with no fear at all! Not only that, but he can cycle very slightly beyond his limits, which is how one widens their meridians. The wider the meridians, the more qi one can use in their techniques, their spells, and everything else a cultivator uses qi for. In short, more qi is more good.

  Now, then, time to get star... to ge... geh started...

  Ren wakes with a start, fire-filled horrors fading with the waking mind. Chest jumping up and down to the tune of his heart's drum solo, Ren swallows a dry throat as he collapses against the moss-covered drey floor.

  A frown digs ditches on the sides of his face as his legs tingle and twitch. The foreman of the mouth cracks his whip, demanding the peons to dig deeper as Ren lays eyes on his lower half. Specifically, at the fact that his legs are still folded in the lotus.

  ...Did he fall asleep while cultivating?

  Twisting his gaze inwards, Ren breathes a sigh of relief as a quick examination of his meridians reveals nothing out of the ordinary—besides the gaping wound on his hand, of course. He'll have to make a sacrifice to the spirit of providence once he's able, because it was only thanks to luck that he fell asleep before he began cultivating.

  Groaning to himself, Ren rubs at his eyes, ignores Mom's warnings against such actions, and bats a hand against his mouth as he yawns. Arms stretching overhead, he works his jaw as he turns his attention to the outside world.

  Something is wrong.

  Tension tightens muscles as adrenaline spikes, finally calm heart rate kicking back up to a fierce rhythm. Fingers twitch, eyes dilate, and qi cycles ever faster as Ren sucks down breath after breath. Primal instincts buried by generations of civilized life unsheathe their blades as Ren rises into a low crouch, a hand pressing against the mossy floor as his meridians reach their limits.

  The forest is quiet.

  The forest is never quiet. Birds always chirp, trees always sway, and insects always buzz. Life moves on even with death on the horizon.

  But the forest is quiet.

  Adrenaline stripping the haze of sleep from his mind, Ren's third eye snaps open almost eagerly. The world expands around him, the qi of all things filling his sight. The wood qi of the trees and plants and all manner of living things, the earth qi of the ground and the stones and all that burrows beneath the grassy surface, the fire qi of the-

  Ren crashes through the wall of his drey just as the flaming ball of fire qi impacts the roof. Hitting the ground in a roll, Ren looks up just as his shelter explodes in a spray of wood and ash.

  Flaming splinters rain down around him as, from the billowing smoke, two eyes spark with malice. A vulpine grin stretches beneath those piercing embers, a single flaming tail swishing back and forth as the shelter collapses in a raging inferno.

  There, clinging upside down to the bark of the tree, is a fox monster. Though it is not the fox, the beast of the nine tails, Ren recognizes this fox all the same. Its mane of flames alone are enough for that.

  Third eye fully opened, the extent of the fox's might reveals itself. Its meridians pulse with fiery qi, the potency easily eclipsing Ren's own by more than double. Like the sun's light driving away the stars of the night, the background qi seems to fade away before the fox's might.

  Ren scowls as the fox's grin spreads wider than mortal limits. Its maw hinges open, another blast of fire gathering on its tongue.

  Running isn't an option. If it tracked him from the sect, it'll track him wherever he goes next. It's stronger than him and has a deeper bag of tricks, too, if that fire blast is anything to go by—but that's not exactly much of an accomplishment, now is it?

  Ren's hand twists into a fist as his bandages burn away. His meridians scream in agony as a cloud of super-heated qi once more scorches blood-stained knuckles to the bone.

  If running isn't an option and fighting is suicide, then what does Ren have to lose?

  He will keep his promise, no matter the cost, or he will die trying.

  Besides, what better chance will there be to learn to use qi? Really, the fox is doing him a favor.