The booklet crumbled into dust as soon as I finished reading it, or more like finished experiencing its contents, as I didn't do much reading. Still, it explained why mom said it could only be used once. What a waste of good paper.

"Did it work? Do you know how to cultivate?" Mom asked, hope filling her voice.

I looked up towards her, and saw her eyes shining with some unshed tears, a big smile on her lips. Yep, I wouldn't get to live a peaceful life if I were to ever tell her about my actual cultivation. She would probably sent me to one of those 'sects' the guy talked about. To nourish my talent or some madness like that. I shuddered inwardly, please no, even the small glimpses I got when he mentioned his sect made me know I didn't want to go there.

Just a bunch of muscle heads bashing each other all day.

I didn't want to disappoint her too much though, she looked really hopeful, and just a little bit desperate, so an outright denial was out. What a shame.

So I answered.

"Yes."

And assumed the strange meditative pose described in the booklet. It was a strange pose for sure, but allowed me to maximise the air I took in with each breath, and thus cultivate faster, which was useful for now, considering I got all my qi from the air in my lungs.

I started up my cultivation method, storing all new qi in my heart. Something I noticed when reading the manual and making fun of his method - my own didn't make all that much sense itself. Sure my bone marrow produced most of my blood, but the qi would still get spread through my body by blood. And the heart moved all blood. Sure, back then I was a little confused, and scared of dying via heart attack, but in the three and a half years of my life qi had never harmed me. Not even once.

My thoughts back then made sense, though even now. When I thought of qi as just another source of energy to fuel my body and not what it was. Qi was no simple fuel, and I didn't actually use any of it up. I didn't know how it strengthened my body, but knew it somehow did, and it could do and was so much more. It was magical really. Keeping most of my qi in my bones was a waste, it'd be better to spread it through my body.

So it was safe to just store all new qi in my heart chambers, and wait for my blood to spread it through my body. I could only do that now though, now that I knew it to be safe. To be honest I would still make the same decision as I did back then, at least if I had the same knowledge.

Well, I should have changed my method faster, and not be scared by potential consequences! Live and learn. Live and learn.

Qi increased the strength of my muscles though, and increased strength needed stronger bones, so I decided I wouldn't remove any qi from my bones, instead only moving new qi into my heart, to let it spread through my body just as needed.

Later I would have to move some qi in my bones manually, to keep the level of qi in them higher, or equal to that of my muscles at least. No need to break my bones when moving after all!

That really was my biggest problems with the only other cultivation method I knew of. It did nothing for any organ other than skin. It didn't increase the survivability of its users, making many die of internal injuries without any attack breaking their skin. Using qi like this seemed just plain stupid to me, and like a path I would and should do my best to stay from. I could do without any inflicting life threatening injuries on myself by existing, thank you very much.

To be fair, all of his body got some qi still, as even tightly controlled qi diffused in areas of lower concentration, even if slower when forced along a certain path. The cultivation manual never mentioned moving qi once cultivated too, which also explained the warning about breaking through into the second realm. If you never moved your qi after it was cultivated, it would settle and merge into your body, and removing all that sounded painful.

Hell, it was painful after just a week of settling in my body. Not to talk about months, or even years!

I didn't know how effective qi was when merged with the body like this. Not all that effective if I thought about it logically, qi was energy, and liked to move, not stay still. It was a magical energy though, so who knew? And qi did feel different once it entered my body and control. I'd just have to test it.

Probably in my pinky finger, like all tests I did. I had two of them, didn't really use even one, and could life without one. Though I would prefer to keep all my fingers, so I vowed to be careful.

Why didn't the cultivator use his bloodstream to transport his qi though? Blood was a body's built in system to move resources just where they were needed, and should thus be perfect for cultivation!

Probably another stupid cultural or traditional reason, so safe to ignore. I knew I would keep doing things my way, I saw no downside in doing so, only upsides really.

Three weeks had passed since I read the cultivation manual, and ever since then I spend most of my days cultivating, encouraged by my very enthusiastic mother.

Without my intervention most of my qi had drained out of my bones by now, leaving only slightly more qi inside than directly around them. I decided to keep it at that, and wait for my experiments in my pinky finger to finish.

Taking stock of my cultivation yielded the expected results, a big part, about fifteen percent, of all qi in my body was located in my brain. My other organs held significantly less qi than my brain, but far more than anything else in my body. If one were to ignore the brain my kidneys surprisingly full of qi, about eight percent, giving the theory of a dantian some credit, or a reason for it at least. More than I thought at first at the very least - the concentration of qi in my kidneys was actually higher than that of my brain, as they were far smaller than the brain.

Muscles, tendons and stuff like that held the least qi, though the more I had strained a particular limb the more qi these muscles held. I tried to keep my exercise about even, so no big imbalance came to be. Unsurprisingly skin had the smallest concentration of qi, even though the total qi inside of it was quite impressive, about half as much as my brain.

Finished with my introspection I returned to cultivating. If all my qi were to be evenly spread through my body then its concentration would surpass that of the outside by now. Hell by now everything but my skin held a higher concentration of qi than my surroundings.

I felt I would get the required qi for my skin to reach equilibrium today, though it would still take a little while for my blood to spread all that qi all the way through my body.

I woke with a start. Something was happening. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. It was completely dark. I looked around carefully, but saw no moving shapes. I strained my ears, but heard no rustling clothes or creaking leather. So probably no thief. Hopefully.

Anything else?

My cultivation! Was it time?

I closed my eyes, and focused on the qi in my body. Only for them to shoot open a few seconds later. There was so much qi. So so much! More than I could ever hope to cultivate at the very least. My qi sense had immediately expanded a few centimeters beyond my body, and the movement of all qi around me made me a little dizzy.

I needed a few minutes to center myself again, and I turned my senses inwards, to see if the invading qi affected my cultivation base.

It did. Thankfully my qi didn't actually move out of my body, but sometimes a wisp of qi would cling to some of the foreign qi moving through my body, before settling down somewhere else inside me.

I didn't like it.

My qi should roughly stay where my body transported it to, not move somewhere else! Somewhere I didn't want it to be!

Could I do something about it though? I just saw qi could affect other qi, so it should be easy to use some of my own qi to shield my body. Yet my qi didn't stop any outside qi from moving through my body, so I'd have to change something. What though?

How should I do it? What made my qi different from ambient qi? I cleansed it of memories. So perhaps I'd need to add something, some kind of unique identifier make it mine in truth.

What to use though?

It would be easiest to continue on with the theme I had going on so far? My void was essentially a vacuum. Something space related then. Light? No, that sounded boring. Cold? But space wasn't really cold, it just lacked stuff to be warmed. Space or time? Nah, that didn't feel right, or like me.

So what remained? Heat and gravity. Gravity?

Yeah, gravity sounded perfect.

How should I implement gravity in my qi though? There were many ways I could go. I didn't need to use the scientific explanation, not that I could, gravity was still one big mystery back home after all.

I could do a simple downward acceleration, with the center of gravity being the qi’s initial location. Not enough gravity, and I very much doubted it would work, qi couldn't hold all that much information, and such a very specific identifier seemed useless to me. Furthermore doing it like that would only starve the problem, not solve it.

Perhaps reversed gravity? I shuddered in disgust immediately.

What? Where did that come from?

I'd have to think about it later.

What could I use that wasn't downward acceleration though? That's all what gravity was really.

Wait. Orbits. Gravity was responsible for objects orbiting the sun or planets. Or the center of the galaxy.

Yeah, orbits would do. If my qi could affect other qi anyways.

I expanded my consciousness, embracing my entire cultivation base, before trying to force it to change. I felt a resistance, but no block. Strange.

Perhaps it was because I wanted to change the qi itself, not just have it react to something. Well, the resistance didn't seem unsurpassable, but it would be hard. Not something I could or wanted to do in the middle of the night.

I checked again, but my cultivation wasn't in any real danger. I could always reverse any changes the ambient qi made if they got out of hand while I slept. I closed my eyes, ready to sleep through the rest of the night.

After a hearty breakfast I felt ready to change my qi when I noticed I had two pinky fingers. Changing all of my qi would be a huge step, so a small experiment was in order first.

I really needed some lab rats, experimenting upon myself would ultimately only lead to injury. And I wanted to avoid injuring myself if at all possible.

I focused on some of the qi located in my pinky finger when I had a great idea. Qi in the air was unbound, always moving, but my body seemed to bind it.

Perhaps all living matter had this property? Or solid matter in general?

I stood up, got myself a small crumb of bread from the floor, and returned to my bed. I made use of my newly expanded qi sense, and impressed a small amount of qi to move into the breadcrumb.

It worked!

The qi moved, and while I lost some when it left the protection of my body, the rest arrived in the bread, and stayed there.

Perfect.

Now to change it. I concentrated, calling the image of a gravity well in my mind. The gravity didn't actually work to capture qi though, any qi coming near it would come at an imaginary ''angle' and simply fall 'past' the crumb of bread. Like slingshotting something of a heavy planet or a star.

I pushed this image on the qi, right through the resistance. I didn't know why, but I felt I could not circumvent this, and would only regret it if I tried. So I didn't.

It took quite some time, and my whole body felt stiff, and I was drenched in sweat once I finished. Most of my qi felt dull and unresponsive, that added on top of the headache splitting my head in two made me feel wonderful.

But I had succeeded!

I took a look at the breadcrumb still in my hand, and noticed it looked just like before. A quick check with my qi sense told me of my success though, as no qi entered the bread, only moving just past it.

Good. Very good.

I would have to change my approach a little though, cultivating like this did seem significantly slower, and like quite the bother. I would have to recover for a few days before though, that took all I had out of me. I contemplated on eating the crumb, but didn't know what it would to with my qi, so I just drew the qi back out in the air and let it move on naturally.

Ouch. Looked like I wouldn't be controlling any qi until this headache was gone, because moving that little qi made my head throb in pain.

A whole week! It took me a whole week of feeling miserable to recover from the strain of changing a little qi. And I’d have to feel the same again, for another week!

Luckily I managed to hide my misery from mom, mainly because she had lots of work to do this week, with a wealth of new customers coming for different clothing each day.

I felt more than ready though. With a week of time to ponder on what I wanted my qi to do I had reached a conclusion. I would just have my qi take in other qi, and force it into a stable orbit around my body, just in range of my qi sense, and thus ready for me to cultivate. This would help speed up my cultivation, as my qi would do work for me even when I didn't actively cultivate.

I opened myself to my own qi again, feeling all qi held in my body. All my qi together was already me-shaped, with areas of more qi sharper than others. I impressed the modified image upon it. Of the qi becoming a powerful qi gravity well, causing qi moving in its range to orbit around it, or slingshot past me if that wasn't possible..

Once done I only felt marginally better than last time, and my qi sense told me nothing new.

Now I only had to wait and see. If my experience from last week was anything to go by the qi in my body would need a day to recover. Qi seemed to be able exhaust itself, and would enter an inert state after doing so, so I could probably use it to enhance my body beyond my current limits by doing that.

I just had to find out how to do that.

For now my qi would react to nothing though, not other qi, not me, it'd just sit there. I'd have to wait a day to see if I was successful.

Now it was time to bug my mother to amuse me though, as I spend most of my days cultivating, and starved off any boredom I felt that way. Now that I wasn't able to do that mom would have to entertain me! It was her duty as a mother!

I grinned evilly, she didn't know just how annoying kids could be, yet. She would learn though, oh yes. She would definitely learn.