A journey in the wood

While walking in the wood, I began to hear some bird and the noises from the flaura and fona.

'Finally, I thought I was gonna die from stress. It's so much more scary a world entirely silent than one filled with noises.'

I didn't drop my guard. Now that I confirmed the existance of birds, animals, beasts and others creatures, I knew I had to be extra alert.

I tried to move without making too much noises in cases I alerted some creatures I didn't want to.

While walking I thought it would be good to know where were the differents tendrils of qi. To prevent sneak attack and see the change in qi near me. The problem was that my range of perception while semi-meditating was only 1 meter radius. So I had to think about what I could do to change that.

'Yes, I nearly forgot that the first level of Qi sensing was meant to push ourselves so we could sense the qi INSIDE and outside our body. I focalised all my attention on the outside and forgot the inside.'

I stopped myself and took a semi-meditating posture on the floor covered in silver branches. And I spread my senses inside myself. After 1h hour I sensed my differents organs : my lungs, my heart, my stomach, etc... Each of my organs were completely displayed for me to see. I could sense the red of my blood, could hear the thumping of my heart. I could see my lungs contract and retract after each inhalation and exhalation. It was quite the scene. But that was all there is to it, I couldn't sense my natural qi yet.

The natural qi was a term I had chosen to describe the qi we naturely had stored inside ourselves after our departation in the new world.

I persisted and staid in this position for 4 hours when a bird who looked like a red and silver peregrine falcon uttered a cry. I looked up and saw it coming straight at me. I took my spear but I saw the Falcon grow and grow. It was just then that I realised It was really big. Nearly 1 meter of wings span. I dived on my right and escaped by a hair'ss breath its sharp claws.

That's when my vision began to focus and the time seemed to come to a crawl. I already knew that some professional sportman had experienced this strange phenomen and I was really surprised for a split second to do it myself. After all, I'm nowhere near the level of skill, precision and focus of a professional sportman. I rapidly gathered myself and glared at the Falcon.

It's feathers were a mix of clear silver and Blood red. It gaves a feeling of brutality but also one of honesty. It's eyes were a dark yellow and reeked with savagery.

'Wait...It's feathers aren't just blood red, It'blood covering it's silver feathers.'

I was confused for a split second and focused more.

One of its wing was disheveled, it had more blood on it than any other part of it's body, There was a big wound. It's tongue was hung there outside it's beak and white smoke escaped from its nostril. It's proud and savage yellow eyes were unfocused and seemed tired.

I could understand easily what should have happened. It had a big fight and was escaping. It should have sensed me or my wolf fleshes and in a moment of madness or tiredness think I'm an easy prey.

That's when I put my spear away. I was destined to live with a lot of fighting, but I didn't want to kill every creatures or every persons I saw. I wasn't this cruel. Also the idea I had of my future cultivation restrained me from doing something like that. I planned to colaborate with every kinds of being in this planet so I couldn't kill if I didn't need to.

I took away a piece of wolf fleshs and trew it on the floor near the Silver Falcon. It looked at me and its eyes regain some focus. For like one long second it didn't move and just looked at me.

" I don't really know if you understand me but know that I don't want you any harm. I think I can understand your situation and don't plan to take advantage of it."

I looked in it's eyes and It did the same. After another second, it laid down and carefully smelled the flesh. I sat in front of it and tried to be in a semi-meditative state. You could think I'm careless but what you forgot is the term "semi". When you're in a meditation state, you're completely concentrated and your rate of improvement goes up as much as you put focus on it. The semi state I'm in, help me focus on two different task. As if I was cleaning my room while listening to music.

My rate of improvement can't exceed a certain cap but I'm more focused than normal. At the same time I get to pay attention to my surrounding in case something happen.

The Silver Falcon looked at me weirdly but didn't do anything.

After 3 hours of introspection I was able to see for the first time natural qi. It was an amalagam of greys going from black to white and with the differents nuances inbetween. I was surprised because it had taken me way much more time it should have taken, given the fact I already had "training" while sensing the surrounding qi, I was quite surprised.

'It should be Death and Life qi. The more we advance in our cultivation, the more white will be present. It's impossible for now to completely clear the Death qi to only have Life qi, but I think that if I become the True Child of God, I can erase this Death qi and then transcend time, space and matter.'

'The difference in time I needed to sense Death and Life qi reflected their complexity. We are all aware of the fact that death and life qi are more complex than fire or water qi. '

I opened my eyes and looked at Falcon in front of me.

"Do you undrrstand me ? If yes, could you nod for me ?" I said to the Falcon who was licking the wound on its right wing.

It looked, with a proud bearing, strait at me and nodded.

" Do you know this forest ? It's my first time here." I said.

It nodded again.

" Could you help me find the way towards the center ?"

It looked at me in strange way and slowly nodded.

'Nice, I have now a guide and can increase my pace to find a HQ in the forest. I think with my imagination and my knowledge of eastern novel, I can cover a large panel of activities which can increase my survivability by a large margin. I also need to be somewhat cautious of this Falcon. I think that beasts and animals are more straightforward than humans, if it was not happy with me it would pounce at me but I need stay alert. In this new world I know almost nothing.'

We spend the night together around the fire and this time I slept. Well, it was light sleep since I didn't want to be caught off guard, so I woke up several times during the night. But I found myself quite refreshed the next morning.

After the night, the Falcon and me seemed to have reached an understanding of each other. He didn't looked at me as weirdly as yesterday so I was pretty happy. I walked while he was flying above me and it descended to give me some information. It was quite complicated to communicate but we did it just fine.

After the meal we put yesterday I didn't have wolf fleshs anymore. This Falcon eated a lot more than I thought. Therefore I used the time spend walking to find some bays and roots. The more we were approaching the center of the forest the more they became silver. I had also the opportunity to kill some animals thanks to cooperation I had with the Falcon.

Just like that another day passed and I was still meditating in our campfire while the Falcon was resting.

I was quite impatient because I had an idea on how to increase the range of my perception of qi. I had first to divide my Death and Life qi and try to put them in my right and left eye. But this wasn't in the near future. I didn't know how to transmute qi from wood qi to fire qi but it was the basic of cultivation, I'm sure. Before attempting to manipulate Death and Life qi, I had to be able to manipulate the four elementals qi and transmute them. I also had to be ultra carefull because I wasn't only playing with Death and Life qi, but I was playing with Death and Life qi present from the beginning in me. I had the thought that it was related to my lifespan and I didn't want to mess with it.

While meditating I tried to take the wood qi around me, separate it from the silver qi and manipulate it to form fire in my hand without any combustible. I rapidly found it exhausting and tiring but I was happy to see little dots of fires just above my fingers. I continued watching the whole process and saw with my perception that the tendrils of wood qi were kind of rubbing against each other with a new filament I had never seen before. It was transparent and seemed sharp and fast.

I remembered my lesson about combustion in science and remembered that oxygen or a different gas was necessary to the process. I easily deducted that the transparent filament of qi was wind qi. A new elemental qi was engraved in my memories.

I was surprised that I had never seen it while meditating but rapidly found the answer. I was way too focused on trying to perceive colors but didn't pay attention to the transparent filaments. They were there but difficults to see.

After this discover I tried to rearrange my "spell" and make it more efficient, I was too exhausted after one combustion. Several hours after, I could do it easily and was super happy.

"Shit I'm like a real magician now. Harry Potter you're nothing, just wait for me, hehe." I grinned and talked to myself.

The Falcon looked at me with a weird look again and my grin disapeared.

'Why does he look at me like this, can't he see I'm happy ?' I complained in my head.

I gathered myself and thought about the blue qi I had seen several days ago and focused myself to sense it. When I saw the filaments of blue qi, I channeled it in direction of the fires on my fingers.

Steam began to emanate from the fire. I was pretty surprised. I smelled the steam and realised it was vapors. It led me to an easy conclusion. Water, the blue filaments were water qi.

I was quite content. In less than one week I had sensed three of the four elementals qis ; water, fire and wind, sensed the Death and Life qi, found the colateral qi of wood qi and dicovered how to transform the three elementals qis.

I just had to understand what was this silver qi, find new qis to understand them and begin my true path as a cultivator.

I then began a true search for qis. During the week that followed, the Falcon that I had named Osis, and me journeyed in the forest. We encountered a lot of beasts and worked well together to kill them.

I dicovered new type of qis. I found the blood qi after killing a blood snake and others kind of qi. Completing dark red, It gaves a sensation of profoundness and infinite possibilities. I could already heal my wounds thanks to it. By manipulating Life qi and Blood qi and mixing them together I received three different kind of qi. One was off-white. I had no idea what it was. One was golden. It was what I used to heal myself. I found that it was probably a sub qi used as an healing for now but I didn't think it was that easy. I think its more like a qi which can help me recover but isn't yet The healing qi. I had to make more research to be sure.

Apart from the blood, off-white and golden qi, I found a qi which was truly incredible. It was completely dark red, more so than the blood qi and it gaves a sliver of silver qi. I was shocked when I saw this. The silver qi was a qi I had found since my arrival on this new planet I once called home. But I had no idea what it could possibly be and it was a thorn in my foot. I was always curious and always wanted answers, that's one of the reason why I spend a lot of time reading.

Therefore one day while walking I tried to put silver qi in my surrounding. I tried on my finger but rapidly found that it was agitating my Life and Death qi, so I stopped. I tried on what was near me and discovered while puting it on a flower that the flower was beginning to wither. It was easy to understand what it was just by it's aura, color and what was its concequencies. It was Time qi. One of the most complex qi ever. I was completely flabbergasted when I understood it and didn't know how I could find it and sense it so easily. Every body knows that the most difficults qi to find, cultivate an master were Time, Space and Fate qi. The Death and Life qi weren't far from their complexity too.

After the discovery, I began to ponder. I now had knowledge of ten differents qis.

I had already began to classify them. There was Elemental Qis for : wind, water, fire, earth. Metal, wood, ice , ligthning, and others weren't for me part of the Elementals Qis, I called them Colaterals Qis. There was Humans Qis representing the Life, Death, Blood, probably the dark ancient red qi, the off-white qi and the Golden qi.

After that came the Time which I put in the Transcendental Qi. It is for qi extremely complex which gives you lot of power and control over your surrounding, exceeding what other qi could gives, just like the Space, Void, Fate and Time qi.