Rise of a Matriarch, part 4 (Patreon)

When she awoke the next morning, she was lying back on her side of the bed. She looked suspiciously over at Lau Meng, but he lay as unmoving as ever.

“A bath first, and a lesson,” he said. “Then breakfast, and we will be ready to face the day.”

Chian stopped worrying about last night and started worrying about his words.

“Why is the lesson paired with the bath?” she asked.

“You’ll see. I’ll need to call the servants to take me there— are you ready?”

“For a bath? I suppose so…” Chian was used to taking baths in the morning, but they tended to be a cold tub with a rough scrubbing cloth. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be ready for, but she got up and made sure her miraculous robe was still in one piece. Then she yelped as Lau Meng’s clothes disappeared, leaving him only with a loincloth and a bandage wrapped around his torso.

At the same time, a wicker chair on wheels appeared in the middle of the room, and two male servants entered, bowing to the master and mistress.

“What? How?” Chian spluttered.

“Ah… my spatial ring,” Lau Meng explained. “It allows me to dress— and undress— myself without moving. Normally, it would only be a convenient saving of time, but now it saves my servants a good deal of trouble.”

The servants bowed again, and then lifted up their master. The ease at which they did so suggested that they were cultivators themselves, but they showed none of the customary arrogance as they gently placed him in the chair.

“We shall lead the way to the baths,” Lau Meng said. One servant took hold of the handles on the back of the chair, while the other went ahead and made sure that the doors were held open.

“Are we bathing together, then?” Chian asked cautiously.

“Only to be expected for a newly-married couple, is it not?”

“I’m not sure,” Chian admitted. She remembered having baths with her family, but she had been living in the women’s dormitory of the servant quarters for some time.

“I’m not exactly an authority on the matter, myself,” Lau Meng acknowledged, “But I can hardly give you a lesson if we stay in separate baths.”

“And the lesson has to be in the bath?” Chian asked with a resigned sigh.

“Exactly.” With that, the final doors were opened, and they went out into the early light of summer.

The bath Lau Meng had brought them to was an outdoor one, a hot spring bubbling and swirling. The pool, and the garden that surrounded it, was walled off from the rest of the world, first by artfully placed trees and rocks, and then by high walls. It was open to the sky, but the sun had not yet risen high enough to shine down on them.

The two servants picked up Lau Meng and placed him into the pool without another word being said. Chian waited until they were gone before she warily approached the pool. The bubbles and froth on the surface made it impossible for her to make out Lau Meng’s form underneath the water. Not that she was looking.

“I shouldn’t get this robe wet,” she said.

“It is customary to bathe naked,” Lau Meng agreed. “Would it help if I wore a blindfold?”

His eyes had remained closed all this time, but it was a reminder that her hesitation was nothing but foolishness. Lau Meng was only using his spiritual senses to perceive the world, but the spiritual senses of a practitioner of his level could see through clothes as easily as they could see through walls. Chian’s body, no, her very soul, had been naked before him since the start.

Still, she hesitated.

“I shouldn’t leave it on the floor,” she tried. The robe was probably worth more than its weight— more than her weight — in gold.

“Behind you,” Lau Meng simply said. She turned and saw one of her maids, head bowed, her arms out to take the robe. There was no escape.

Disrobing in front of her husband… there was no way to make it not feel salacious. The fact that he didn’t say anything, or react at all physically, helped, but Chian felt enormously embarrassed as she slipped the robe off and handed it to her maid. Instinctively, she started to cover her breasts with her hands, but… there was no point, was there? Better to seem confident.

Pushing down on extraneous thoughts, she strode as confidently as she could to the edge of the pool and down the steps leading in. Her poise lasted until the point that her calves were submerged, when let out a little hiss of pleasure at the sensation of what the water was doing to her muscles.

By the time she sat down, she had lost all her thoughts of embarrassment and only cared at the bliss she was feeling from the caress of the hot water.

“A wonderful feeling, is it not?” her husband said, reminding her of his presence. She looked over at him and blushed. It was just the heat from the water, she told herself, and nothing to do with his presence. He was submerged up to his chest, but that meant that his upper body muscles were clearly visible. The rest of him was hidden, but it was very close to her.

“Do you even feel the heat?” she asked, to distract herself.

His trapezius muscle tightened, just a little, as if to suggest a shrug. “It feels pleasant,” he said. “My muscles don’t need the water’s help to relax, but its Qi is invigorating.”

“I see,” she said. Something else was bothering her, so she asked, “Are hot springs always so… turbulent?”

“This isn’t a natural hot spring,” he told her. “The Mountain of Vigilant Echos is not volcanic. There is a formation underneath that heats and churns the water.”

“Heating I understand, but wouldn’t it be more relaxing if the water was more still?” Chian asked.

“It was one of the early attempts at my treatment,” he answered. “Circulating the water to make sure that toxins don’t gather. It didn’t work out for me, but I kept it because it should prove useful to you.”

“Your treatment…” Chian said slowly. Her mind flashed back to the sight of him getting in the pool. “Should you not be more careful with your dressing?”

“It is warded against far worse things than water,” he assured her. “Now, if you please, take my hand.”

Chian hesitated for a moment before realising that, of course he wasn’t going to hold it out to her. She’d have to… Swallowing, she slid close to him, and reached out to where his hand should be. Drawing it towards her, she lifted it out of the water.

“Place my palm against your palm,” he told her, “And lean back against the wall.”

She did as he said and felt… a touch. Not against any particular part of her, but every part of her at once.

“That’s your Qi,” he told her. “Can you feel it move?”

“My Qi?” she asked, “But I’m not a cultivator.”

“Last night’s feast left you full to the brim with Qi,” he explained. “Over time, your body will absorb it, perhaps causing you to spontaneously cultivate. But it’s better to learn to do it properly instead learning through trial and error.”

At his words, the touch moved. Somehow, Chian could sense that was what was happening, even though she continued to feel the touch with her entire body. It wasn’t moving to a different place, it was moving inside of her. Circulating.

“Can you feel it?” Lau Meng asked. “It starts in the lungs, and then gets drawn down to the stomach. Then up to the heart, and then?”

“It goes… everywhere…” Chian said. “Down to my legs and arms, up to my head and then back to the lungs…”

“Yes. This is how a cultivator of the Foundation Realm circulates their Qi” Lau Meng said. “First, you learn the cycle between lungs and stomach and achieve the Initiate’s Realm. Then you reach the Sovereign Realm when you can include the heart in the cycle. It is only when you’re able to cycle to all your extremities that you’re ready to attempt ascension to the Foundation Realm.”

“How do I move… I mean cycle my Qi?” Chian tried to influence the motion of the Qi within her, but she might as well have tried to move a mountain with her thoughts.

“Eh, leave that question to your tutor. For now, just concentrate on where the Qi is supposed to flow. They’ll show you diagrams, but that doesn’t compare to actual experience.”

“You’re not going to teach me?” Chian did as instructed and focused on the streams of Qi within her. There was a complicated twisting as the flows ran through her flesh. Random, or was there some kind of pattern..

“I’m a terrible teacher,” Lau Meng confessed. “All of my students gave up, or ran away, or tried to kill me. I’m just going to focus on what I can do that your teacher can’t.”

“He won’t be able to do this?”

“It’s a thousand times more difficult to move another person’s Qi, than it is your own,” Lau Meng boasted. “There are others in the Sect that could do this, but they won’t be wasted on training an Initiate. Nor will they be able to do the next bit.”

“The next bit?” Chian asked. Part of her trembled at the reminder that Lau Meng was a thousand times stronger than what she hoped to be, but she pushed it down.

“Have you memorised the paths?”

“I think so? At least the first one, to the stomach and back.”

“Good. Now have you noticed that there is something building in your stomach?”

There was a warm sensation coming from her belly. She told him so.

“That is your Qi accumulating in what will become your Dantian,” he explained. “Each cycle of Qi, it grows a little more. That’s one use for the excessive amount of Qi that’s flowing through you. Another one is this.”

Without warning, the flow of Qi in her changed. While the main cycle continued, tiny capillaries branched out from every point, burrowing deep into her flesh. Chian gasped as the Qi stopped moving through her, and started moving into her. The sensation wasn’t painful, but it was more intense than anything she had ever felt before.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Chian whimpered, and looked around.

“You dropped my hand,” Lau Meng said.

“You… what?” Chian stuttered. Tiny beads of back sweat were being washed away by the water. “What was that?” she finally managed to say.

“The first pillar of cultivation,” Lau Meng said. “Perfecting the Body.”

“This… stuff?” she asked. She touched her face to find that more of the black stuff remained on it.

“Dross,” Lau Meng replied. “Parts of you that aren’t perfect. Purified Qi has replaced it and forced it out of your body.”

“It was so… much,” she tried to explain. “Not pain, but something.”

“It’s not normally done this way,” he told her. “Normally, part of your entry to each realm past Initiate involves purging a massive amount of dross. You go into seclusion and come out with the stuff caked on. I thought though, that since you’ve got an expert at Qi manipulation on the side, that we can do a little bit at a time, and let the dross wash away with the water. Much more pleasant.”

“It won’t ruin the spring?”

“This was originally set up for the toxic stuff that comes out of my wound. Dross is merely unpleasant to be around. It actually makes good fertiliser.”

“You want to do that again, then.” The thought didn’t thrill her. “Wait— is body perfection what gives Fairy maidens their beauty?”

“Of course,” Lau Meng said, like it was obvious. Chian supposed that it was.

“Alright then,” she said. Maybe it was vanity, but she was going to have to meet a number of these women, she knew. She’d take any advantage of looks that she could get.

“Very well. Now our problem was that you broke contact with my hand, due to the sensation, I suppose. Why don’t you drape yourself over me?”

“What?”

“Skin contact is important for this,” Lau Meng said seriously, “And if you wrap your arms around my neck, you’re much less likely to fall in the water when you become… overcome.”

“Right. Skin contact. Safety.” She paused. “Couldn’t we do it not in the water?”

“Well… I want to make this part of our morning routine. While we do have the resources for you to ruin an outfit, or just some bedding every morning, I don’t really like to waste good cloth like that. This is much more efficient.”

“That’s—” ridiculous, she wanted to say, but the word stuck in her mouth as she realised that she resented such conspicuous waste as well. If a Lady that she had served had thrown out a dress each day, or made her scrub the tiles of such disgusting filth every morning… she would have done it of course, but she would have resented it.

Against that, what was a little embarrassment?

He’s my husband, she told herself. There’s nothing wrong with doing… this.

Flushing furiously, she straddled Lau Meng, pressing her body against his, and bringing her arms up around his neck. He didn’t move, of course, and Chian was relieved that his member didn’t react at all.

“Are you ready?” her husband asked.

I’m doing this for beauty, she told herself. “Yes,” she said aloud.

She felt him take control of her Qi again, and then she gasped as he plunged it deep within her like before. Every muscle in her body wanted to contract at the sensation. Her back arched and she thought that she let out a moan, before everything went white.