SFS - Chapter 23 (Patreon)

AN: 2/2

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The pill she ended up letting me take was only made on her fifth attempt. A floral taste spread across my tongue, and then I gulped it down. Even now, I could feel warmth spreading through every part of my body. It condensed on my injuries, which were just about everywhere. According to the healer, I’d be all better in a day or two now instead of two weeks.

”Ugh, I’m so bored Heizen!” I rolled around on the altar under the gaze of my subordinate. The crow had returned at some point, and waited around here for Graft and I to come back.

”Caw?” The black bird tilted his head to the side for a moment, and then hopped off the altar. His wings flapped, and sent him straight up to the rafters of the building. When he came back down, he held a familiar manuscript in his hands.

“Kek.” A bitter laugh escaped me, and I abruptly rolled to a stop. My ears drooped tragically on either side of my head, and I stared up at the crow. “Really?”

Heizen just nodded his feathery head and dropped it off next to me. “Caw! No technique, no recovery.”

”Why you—“ eavesdropping little feather duster. I took a breath and shook my head. It was probably for the best he listened while Crane was going over all of that stuff. 

“Caw!” Heizen nudged the manuscript to me. It glowed softly with Qi under Eye of the Recorder. It was definitely important, but it was just so confusing to read. Not only was it designed for humans, but it was full of nonsensical sayings and phrases. Like, what’s ‘let pain be the plough’ even supposed to mean?

I stared at the book for a moment, and then my vision returned to normal. There was something I’d been curious about since I woke up. “How’d you track me back then?”

”Mine is mine.” Heizen opened up the manuscript for the Red Tithe Technique and carefully flicked through the pages with his beak. He stopped on a page near the back, and pointed out a spot with his talon. What’s mine will always be mine.

My attention piqued. I snatched the manuscript from him and pulled it away to take a closer look. What’s mine will always be mine… the whole world is naturally mine as Heaven’s Chosen, so—

“Bad Fluffy!” Heizen bonked my head with his beak. Tears gathered in my eyes as he accidentally scratched at one of my scabbed up wounds, and I shot back with a betrayed expression across my snout.

“Why—?” I brushed at my eyes with my tail and backed up another step—only to lose my footing and flop off the back of the altar. I slammed into the ground with a soft groan. Maybe… maybe I’m not Heaven’s Chosen after all.

“Snow?” Heizen appeared over the top of the altar and looked down at me. Only once he saw that I was fine did he relax slightly. “Kakakakak.”

”Evil bird.” I pushed myself to my paws and felt my limbs pull weirdly. I took a breath, and Wraithwalked into the altar to climb up it. No way I could jump that height in my state.

Heizen was still watching off the side of the altar when I popped up behind him. A vindictive sneer plastered onto my face, and I silently snuck forward to the crow. How dare he push me off? Doesn’t he get that I’m injured? Injured! My delicate body can’t keep taking a beating like this!

Right, I was just giving him a little scare. The dumb bird deserved it for daring to tarnish my noble fur by throwing me on the ground. Just behind the bird, I dropped Wraithwalk. “Rah!”

”Caw!” Heizen flicked back toward me in surprise and instinctively lashed out with his wing. Qi condensed along the edge, and what should’ve been a light hit instead snapped my head back toward the side. 

“Argh!” I collapsed backward, and wrapped a paw around my throbbing neck. My tail curled protectively over my head to protect me from any more abuse.

”Fluffy fox! Caw!” Heizen flinched and jumped over to me. His eyes opened wide like he hadn’t just been the one to attack me. “Hurt? Graft Graft?”

”… no,” I muttered and covered my eyes with my tail so I wouldn’t have to look at him. More than anything physical, my pride throbbed in agony. I’m supposed to be the noble, graceful Spirit Fox. Why is it that even my lowly servant is stronger than me?!

I curled into a small ball for a moment, and then summoned out the Record. My gentle thorn-tome, who’d never hurt me aside from that one absolutely torturous time, flowed out. The silver glowed faintly in the dim light, and bobbed softly in the air before me. 

I couldn’t just sit here and feel sorry for myself, yip. I may be no good at reading manuscripts, but I still had my own path forward! Thorny! Bind the wolf’s Spirit Body Art! KekhahahaKEKEE! We’ll see who dares bully me when I can squash them like a bug!

[Bind Record—]

[Error: Full Slots]

My evil laughter abruptly died in the back of my mind, and my entire body collapsed like I’d taken a physical blow. My dreams—they were gone. Shattered. Spread to the wind so they’d never recover. Even my reliable thorn tome had betrayed me in the end.

I shook my head and glanced at my status page. Maybe I could get more slots by leveling up? Leveling up meant acquiring Records, though, and I couldn’t very well do that just lying around here. I’d need to go out into the village and risk myself more…

It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. My head dropped onto my pillow-like tail. In hindsight, having the Spirit Body Art wouldn’t matter much. Just like I’d been told, having techniques didn’t matter if I didn't have the Qi to use them.

Instead of skipping past everything like I’d planned I rolled over onto my back and flipped the Record to the Red Tithe Technique instead. The manuscript might be long and confusing, but I needed to start somewhere. Grace came with patience… and I hated to admit patience wasn’t something I was good at. 

I carefully flicked to the first page of the Red Tithe Technique. Before warriors, before scholars, before emperors, before empires, there’s the simple farmer. Without the farmer, all else will collapse.

From front to back, I read through the manuscript again and again. There were three distinct chapters, though the last one cut off abruptly. I didn’t really know what I was hoping for. Sudden enlightenment? Instead, I just had a bunch of useless phrases and parables floating through my head.

Cultivating Qi, of course, was the main goal. I just didn’t get anywhere with actually doing that. I could feel it surging alongside my blood through the silver veins the Record had stabbed through my body with—Meridians, apparently. Nothing aside from actually sensing it made sense though.

I glanced at Heizen, who was totally engaged with the real manuscript. He flipped through the pages, nodding his head like a wise old scholar. I watched him for a minute before turning back to my own copy. Something just wasn’t clicking, but maybe a few more rereads would fix that, yip?

— — —

It’d been a couple days since I sat down and read the Red Tithe Technique. My progress had been… quite frankly terrible. I could move around freely now, and Graft had even pulled off my bandages. I was freed from anything holding my body back for the first time since I fell off the cliff face.

And yet I didn’t feel very good. I closed the manuscript and staggered to my paws. Am I just not good at this kind of thing? Cultivating Qi—it doesn’t make sense. Heizen is seemingly getting better and better at it everyday, but the only progress I’ve made is being able to recite the thing from front to back.

“I’m going out.” I called softly to Heizen. Sitting around here in this stuffy temple was starting to get to me. Besides, the defaced monk statue leering down on me constantly was a little uncomfortable.

The crow’s head lifted from his perch up in the rafters, and he nodded once. Before I could go far, he ripped out one of his feathers and jumped down to pass it to me. “Caw!”

I stared at the feather for a moment, and then shook my head. My tail curled gently around the plush feather, and I wrapped a loose bandage around my back to tie it down to me. “Are you happy?”

”Ca-ca-caw!” His head flopped up and down, and then he flapped his wings and moved back up to his spot in the rafters to meditate. Or sleep? It was kind of hard to tell.

Without waiting any longer, I moved toward the hole in the wall I escaped out of the first time and slipped down into the tunnel. It opened up onto the ledge dropping into the sheer abyss of fog just below the mountain. Lightning crackled dramatically over the sea of fog, and I huddled back against the exit onto the ledge.

Was it stupid? Probably. The first chapter of the Red Tithe Technique mentioned farmers on repeat, though. If I couldn’t figure it out, then why not go watch actual farmers work? Sure, they were blighted monstrosities, but they still tended to their fields.

The journey around the ledge was much easier this time around then I thought it’d be. I wasn’t injured anymore, which was nice. My steps were also much more confident though. My agility had spiked since I first woke up, and it was definitely noticeable.

The walk led me back up to the eerie snowfields, and then out onto a ledge looking down over the northern fringes of Dragon Vein Village. Just as I expected, blighted worked the fields like broken puppets. Plows… let pain be the plow? What did that even mean?

I groaned and settled down to watch the farmers work. Most of them just kept going over the same spots on repeat, digging deeper and deeper—

I paused and watched the blighted farmers. Their plows weren’t shovels, obviously. They weren’t great at digging trenches. And yet, with countless repetitions, the plow marks had grown and grown into deeper trenches scattered across the field.

Is that it? I turned my gaze inward, toward the flow of Qi through me. The whole pain and plow thing still didn’t make sense, but repeatedly digging to make a deeper trench definitely did. 

My eyes closed, and I sat down in a snowbank to focus on the warmth spread through my body. It had a certain cycle to it—one that started somewhere near my heart and flooded out to the rest of my body. The cycle lopped again and again, though it was much slower than the blood flowing through my body.

”Repition guides mastery. Let pain be the plow,” I quietly muttered the phrases aloud. Something seemed to click mentally, and I carefully grabbed a hold of the flowing Qi. When I used Wraithwalk, the Record formed the pattern automatically and took care of the Qi flows. The last time I used it against the wolf, though, I had to force every last scrap of Qi into the pattern to get it to work.

Using that same mindset, I worked the Qi in my body into a slightly faster repetition. The source of energy flowed through my body a little bit faster. Heat flushed through me and filled my head. The next pass drove the heat a little higher, and an itchy sensation filled my meridians. 

I sat on the ledge and repeated the process again and again. Each pass of Qi through me made me feel slightly more uncomfortable. Just like a farmer plowing her fields, though, I kept at it regardless of how it felt.

By time I realized it, the sun had dipped below the mountain, and darkness scattered across the land. I shifted and stretched out. My entire body felt sore, and yet the flow of Qi felt a little smoother than every other time I’d felt it. It almost felt like… there was more of it in me? Just a bit, though. Almost like my meridians had widened a fraction.

Or maybe I’m just getting delusional from sitting up here in the snow for so long. My lips pulled into a bitter smile, and I stood up. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right, but I certainly felt a little better… I should go ask Crane to see if he could help me.

I headed back down around the hidden ledge to the Forlorn Temple. Regardless, it was getting late. I wasn’t sure if the hunters moved along the northern fringes of the village, but it wasn’t something I wanted to test out.

When I got back to the main hall of the Forlorn Temple, I found Crane and Heizen sitting around in a silent standoff. The two just watched each other, the latter of which had an irritated scowl pulled across his beak. He perked up once I stepped in, though. “Caw?”

”Yip.” I moved back to the altar I’d been sleeping on and looked at the human invader. I sat down with my tail curled around my legs.

”Snow.” He nodded and adjusted his robes. “You mind helping me track someone down?”

”Um… sure.” I eyed the man and stood up. It looked like my rest period was over. My next great adventure awaited me.