I identified a few small changes in myself once the ritual was completed. The most obvious was a sense of bloating, that feeling you get when you eat too much at Thanksgiving and want to unbutton your trousers and let everything settle.

There was a sense of another astral form merged with my own, something more reliant on the soul that seemed to not quite fit within the confines of my skin. I turned my perception inward, examining in minute detail the changes forming a partnership had made.

The first thing I focused on was the quality of Qi that filled my Dantian. It had always been a swirling mass of white and blue affinity aligned Qi, that energy highlighted with tinges of lightning. Now there was the smallest amount of red. A red that revolved into Blood Qi as I focused more fully on it.

Blood was mostly comprised of water, so finding I could control it wasn’t unreasonable, but what made this change significant was the concentration of life within the Blood Qi. It contained the seed of life, and the potential stored within that seed yearned to be freed.

There are old stories on Earth about the Fae, a race of people that used blood in rituals to make crops grow. Fae, a people that cast blood tithes across fields of crops so that the forces of nature would respond favorably to that sacrifice.

I knew, intellectually, that blood could be and had been used as a fertilizer, but the life brimming inside this small trace of Blood Qi was exponentially more powerful than any fertilizer ever used. And to equate that energy with fertilizer was almost sacrilegious.

A single drop of this new energy would be enough to sustain a field of coral the size of a football field. It would enhance and speed up the growth of that coral while ignoring the strains and mutations such advanced and quick growth would normally experience.

The mutations would form, but the Blood Qi would allow an individual to identify them quickly to remove or propagate any interesting permutations of the base stock discovered. To experiment with unique traits that might advance Alchemy or serve to work as the catalyst in the flux for arrays and runes was a powerful upgrade to my abilities.

“Cien? Jai?” Alpha said when she noticed something that let her know we were no longer lost in our contemplation of [Dao].

“I am fine, Alpha,” Cien responded, “the partnership formed, and I have been given a glimpse into the [Dao of Movement]. I will need time to cultivate, but I have gained enough insight to advance my understanding of my [Dao of Growth].

Once Cien had mentioned her [Dao], the images and insights I’d gained from her understanding of Growth began to coalesce within my own [Dao]. Growth was intrinsic to motion. Each life-cycle stage was a transition, a movement and growth from one phase to the next. It was only logical for the [Dao of Movement] to harmonize well with the [Dao of Growth].

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Even death was, at the core of the matter, a process that harmonized with the [Dao of Movement] and the [Dao of Growth]. The movement from life to death. The body returned to the ground to begin the cycle of life again. Life into death. Death into Life. A cycle of movement, a cycle of growth, a transition from one state to the next, over and over again.

This epiphany was sudden, the reaction within my inner sea not as profound as what had happened when I first glimpsed the nature of the [Dao of Movement], but it was just as immediate. A [Pillar of Dao] began to form, small and ethereal; the seed from my understanding of the [Dao of Growth] was substantive enough to germinate the founding of this new [Dao Pillar]. Each [Dao] grew close enough that I could meditate between both [Pillars], and that pavilion of calm was perfectly placed to increase my understanding of how growth and movement were interconnected with the [One Dao].

Those who were watching must have realized that I was experiencing new enlightenment, and they made sure not to interrupt me or let others intrude as they waited for me to process any insight I might gain as my understanding of the nature of [Dao] and the universe expanded.

“How often can we do that?” I asked Cien, realizing that she had shared my epiphany, our joined cultivation allowing her access to my insight into the Heavens and [Dao]. This breakthrough, in tandem with a companion, could become addictive. I did not want to get to the point that I spent all my time in closed-door cultivation, at least not until I had reached the Immortal Venerable Realm, but I was honest enough with myself to know that I would make every effort to join in dual cultivation as possible.

“Monthly is ideal,” Clement responded for Cien, “but you can go years without dual cultivating and still see significant progress.”

“I wonder if partnering with a Hindel will affect that?”

“It should make it easier,” Cien answered. “Hindel can use the mind gestalt to form a connection for dual cultivation when distance or more pressing issues make meeting difficult.

“Now that you are part of the gestalt, we should be able to meet monthly within that mindscape without issue.”

“If that works,” Clement mused, “you need to document your progress. I’d like to see empirical evidence for the efficiency of using such a method. If the Elves can somehow replicate this mind gestalt, knowing that there are real benefits to cultivation would work to induce even the most skeptical person into joining.”

“If you can replicate the mind gestalt, you may find that adding your young to the Gestalt collective will guarantee that everyone awakens as a cultivator,” Alpha added thoughtfully.

“You should be able to. We can create private collectives, a mindset that we can limit to immediate friends and family. I will send you a working model of this type of collective, Jai. See if you can add people once you replicate my rune model.

“I think you will find the gestalt mind plays a major role in cultivation. Every Hindel is able to cultivate. Why can’t the Elves?

“There must be some limiting factor that keeps the Elven people from replicating our efficiency. Perhaps, by strengthening the mental fortress of an individual as they age, using the mindscape for that purpose, makes a real difference.”

Her theory was something to think about. And something I would test as soon as possible. My younger brother and sister were getting added to the personal gestalt once I could form one. Now that I had a working model to emulate, I would prioritize the construction of that private collective over everything else.

I would have to test to see how many people could be added, along with the other changes my elevation to Nascent Soul Realm meant. But even if there were limitations on the number of people that each private collective could hold, by having other cultivators form their own collective and creating a network between gestalts, it might be possible to link my entire nation.