I don’t sense any hostility from the angelic woman, but I do feel a strong sense of apprehension. I know I’ve already given up on not standing out, but after talking with Jinlan, I kind of regret my choice. It’s only been a few hours, and the attention is already getting annoying.
As she walks closer, I notice her eyes occasionally flitting down to the cat, which is sitting at my feet. All the other people from Earth are doing the same, though unlike her, they look a bit scared. Hopefully, that means she’s interested in it, and I can sell it off.
“Arm,” says the woman when she reaches me. Her voice is deep and smooth, but with a sharp edge that reminds me a bit of an army drill instructor.
“Sorry?” I ask.
“Give me your arm,” she says. “Either one. I’ll heal you.”
If she wanted to hurt me, I doubt she’d do it so obviously, and while I obviously don’t trust her yet, I see no reason to refuse. I let her take my good arm, and as soon as her skin touches mine, a flood of ki enters my body, rapidly repairing the damage, not only in my arm and ribs, but also the rest of my body, removing muscular fatigue and even fixing that spot in my lower back that kept bothering me when I sat around for too long.
In addition to the healing ki though, something else enters my body. It’s small, and nigh imperceptible, but it’s also distinctly not healing. It travels up my arm and into my body, settling behind my navel, right where my ki center will be. I can’t tell what it is, and while it doesn’t feel harmful at the moment, I don’t like having a foreign ki object in my body like that.
I look up to see her staring intently at me, as if waiting for a reaction. I don’t give her one, of course. Even a master of ki shouldn’t have been able to notice that. The only reason I did is because of how familiar I am with ki healing.
“Thank you,” I say, stretching out my now-healed arm.
“You’re welcome.” She turns her eyes to the cat. “I see you’ve gotten a void beast.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “You are quite lucky. Tamed void beasts are incredibly rare.”
“Would you be interested in buying it?”
“What?”
“Bella!” exclaims Vanessa. “You said I could train it!”
“I’m just feeling out potential buyers in case you fail.”
The angelic woman narrows her eyes. “You have no idea what you’re saying right now. You can’t just sell a void beast. Not when it’s already bonded to you. And even if it was possible, I wouldn’t take advantage of your ignorance. Tamed void beasts are very useful. You might not understand now, but in the future, you’ll feel foolish for even suggesting selling it.”
“...Maybe.”
I really don’t want to take care of a pet.
She stares for a few more seconds, then sighs. “When you begin lessons, you should seek out Nadia, another one of the Administrators. She will be able to help you understand better what you’re dealing with, and how to take care of it properly.”
“Lessons?” I ask.
“They will be explained after the second trial concludes. For now, just rest.”
Without waiting for my response, she turns around and walks away, returning to where Ganyu is. With her gone, I look for a place to sit down. There aren’t that many people out yet, so there’s plenty of room along the walls. I try to find a place as far away from everyone else as possible, but I should have known that would never work. As soon as I sit down, I look up to see Katherine approaching.
“Can I pet your cat?” she asks.
“I don’t care,” I say with a shrug.
“Yay!”
About a minute later, I realize that I shouldn’t have agreed to that request. I have opened a door I shouldn’t have, and now there are almost a dozen people crowding around me and cooing at the cat. It’s enjoying the attention quite a bit, laying down belly up, almost hidden underneath all the hands reaching in to pet it.
I try to slide out of the way so I can have a bit more peace so I can meditate and find out what the thing the angel woman put inside me is, but as soon as I move, the cat notices. It wriggles out of the mass of people and trots over to me, laying down a foot away, and the crowd follows. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Alright, that’s enough,” I announce. “I want to take a nap. All of you, go away.”
They glance between each other as if debating the merits of angering me to pet the cat, but all except Vanessa and Katherine ultimately back off. I’d prefer if they left too, but at least they got the hint, and they’re being quiet. I do one final scan to make sure that no one else is going to bother me, then I close my eyes and start meditating
Slowly–too slowly– I shut off my other senses, focusing only on my ki. It’s been so long that I’m a bit rusty, and it takes me a few minutes, but soon, my awareness shrinks to just my body. I concentrate on my heartbeat and my breathing. The way the lungs bring in oxygen, delivering it to the heart which pumps it throughout my body. I control my breathing and my heart rate slowly lowers until I have them synchronized: breathe in four beats, breathe out six.
Normally, this is the time when I would start absorbing ki, but that would only muddy the waters right now, so instead, I look closer at my non-existent core. The ki construct that the winged woman injected into me is sitting there, inert. It’s about the size of a grain of sand, and it seems to be perfectly spherical, and as far as I can tell, it’s just a dense collection of pure ki. My best guess about its purpose is it’s there as sort of a tracker of some kind. Even without doing anything else, having a piece of ki inside me will allow her to sense my location more easily.
Needless to say, I am not a fan of this. I can’t get rid of it right now without my own ki center, but I will later. In fact, I can probably turn this against her. Well, perhaps not against her, but I can at least turn it to my own benefit. That will have to come later though. Now that I’ve roughly determined what it is, I can move on to other things, like actually forming my ki center.
Ordinarily, it takes about a year for new practitioners to form a ki center. For prodigies, that time is cut down to as short as a month. For me, it would take about two weeks. Maybe even faster. However, here in the Tower, where the ki is denser than it ever was on Earth, I think I could do it in less than a week. Three days if I got to spend them all alone focusing on nothing but cultivation.
Unfortunately, I don’t have three days. I barely have more than three hours. That’s enough to get a solid start though. I can at least cleanse my meridians.
I take a moment to re-center my mind, and then focus on the ki in the air around me. I take in just a bit at first, letting it enter through my nostrils and flow through my body. With every breath, I increase my intake, letting it mix with the oxygen and spread throughout my body. I can’t help but smile as the familiar warmth flows through my veins. It’s been millenia since I felt it.
After a few minutes, I start to notice a minor problem. The first step in cultivation is to use ki to cleanse the meridians of their impurities, but I have far more impurities than I should. I thought I kept fairly healthy on Earth, but I guess letting myself indulge in junk food “as a treat” wasn’t really a good idea. Then again, how could I have known I would get to cultivate in this life?
The high amount of ki around helps a lot here though. Usually, it wouldn’t be the best strategy, since it risks damaging the meridians, but I have good enough control that I can just brute force it. Each time I breathe, I force more ki into the meridians, using the buildup of pressure to clear out the impurities. It’s not pretty, and it’s not the “correct” method, but it gets the job done much faster.
Even so, I spend the entire remainder of my time waiting for the second trial to finish simply cleansing my veins, and I still don’t fully finish. I still have probably another hour of cleansing to do before I’m ready to move on to the next stage. I stop the process when someone pokes my shoulder, and I look up to see who it is.
It’s Vanessa, and she’s holding her breath. There’s no one else within ten feet of me. Even the kitten seems to be avoiding me.
Whoops.
I completely forgot what cleansing the veins did externally. I was so focused on the flow of the ki, I didn’t even notice it happening. All those impurities had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was out my pores and into my clothes. Back on Earth, we always did this outdoors and while wearing cheap rags for this exact reason, and it’s been so long that it never crossed my mind.
Well, no point crying over spilled milk. And I’m already nose-blind to it, so really, it’s everyone else’s problem. On the bright side, people will be less likely to bother me now. Even better, the cat doesn’t want to touch me. It's sitting in Vanessa’s arms, eyeing me with a look of betrayal.
I guess Ganyu or the angel woman must have said something while I was meditating, because everyone else is starting to stand up and look toward them. I notice that there are more people than before, but not much. It seems that the vast majority of people who passed this trial did it quickly, and those who took longer didn’t fare too well. There were about 80 when Vanessa and I emerged, and there can’t be more than 120 now.
That’s actually a lot more than I thought there would be. This was a trial to test our ki sense, and a nearly two-thirds pass rate given that is actually quite astounding. In the past, if two thirds of applicants to a martial arts sect proved to be this ki-sensitive, it would be considered the miracle of the century.
“My name is Organa,” says the angel woman. “I’d like to start off by saying, Congratulations on passing the second trial. From now on, you are all Climbers,” she continues. “You have proven yourselves worthy of the opportunity. For the next four years, you will not be forced to enter any trials like the ones you just went through.”
The entire group breathes a collective sigh of relief.
“Do not relax!” Organa shouts, bringing them all back to attention. “If anything, you should begin working harder. You are on the first floor of the Tower, known better as the Floor of Fate. What happens here will shape the nature of your Climb. If you neglect yourself here, you will find yourself lacking as you move on.
“During your time on the Floor of Fate, you will be granted comfortable accommodations and all your biological needs will be met. You will not want for anything. However, these accommodations only last up to four years. Once your four years are up, you must either take an Ascension Test, or be banished to the Outlands, at which point you will become a Stray. Strays may be hunted by Climbers for sizable bounties.”
A few people shuffle nervously at that information.
“I will now tell you about the four types of Opportunities granted to all residents of the first Floor.”