13 Digging for the Truth

Jack followed the pack and found his way back to the house he woke up in that morning. He picked up the still laying door and, with some difficulty, slid it into the right spot in the doorway. He used the last few rays of sunlight to check out his new home.

Opposite of the doorway on a few stone blocks stood a short cot. It had a Xiezhi goat woolen blanket thrown over some wooden planks, a tied up sack filled with dried grass for a pillow, and another dirty blanket for covering up.

On the right of the doorway stood a rickety old table for one person with an accompanying stool. Nothing else remained in the small house, only the dirt floor, and the barely two-meter high ceiling.

Jack turned away from his new home and walked to the house he saw Kuang Bindun enter.

He stopped outside its closed doors and knocked. After half a minute he knocked louder.

"What!" from the inside yelled the muffled voice of Kuang Bindun.

"Can I ask you some questions?" shouted Jack.

He heard a few grumbling noises from inside the house before the door slid open and Kuang Bindun stood glowering over Jack.

Kuang Bindun looked at Jack's calm eyes for a second, sighed, turned around, and walked back to sit on his cot. "You just keep talking and talking. This is the last time I'll answer any of your questions before your week's over." Kuang Bindun looked up at Jack from his cot and said "And don't ask me about it." before Jack had the chance to open his mouth.

Jack looked around the house, then at the broad slumped shoulders of Kuang Bindun, and considered his questions for a second.

He pointed at a small pile of food on the table and asked "How do we get food?"

Kuang Bindun gave a hollow laugh and said "You don't." After a few seconds, he added "At least not yet. We get our rations every ten days. We got the last ration delivery two days ago."

Jack furrowed his brows as he thought for a second and then asked "Can I get some rope around here?"

Kuang Bindun raised his brows in surprise as he said "Not gonna complain about it?" Jack just shrugged and kept staring at him so he sighed and said "You can trade for some in the town."

'But you don't have anything to trade with.' Jack finished in his head what Kuang Bindun left unsaid.

Jack thought about it and decided to ask his last question "How can someone leave this place?"

This time Kuang Bindun laughed straight in his face "Hah! Go right ahead, you only have to cross miles upon miles of wild beast filled mountains and forests. And even if you manage to survive that, the Sect will send someone to take your head back as an example."

Jack gave it some serious thought but decided against it. 'At least for now.' he thought.

He nodded his head, thanked Kuang Bindun for his help, and left the house.

Jack walked around the place and didn't find too much. Only a well for water and a garbage pit.

He returned back home after his excursion and lay on his cot.

In the middle of the night, he heard a noise so he crept to his door and slid it open just enough to see outside.

A few human silhouettes stumbled their way through the darkness. 'The guys that Du Angliang called out earlier.' realized Jack as he saw the tired faces in the moonlight.

At their back, he saw Du Angliang walking as peacefully as before. His direction carried him straight towards Jack's house.

Jack quickly jumped away from the door and scurried back to his cot.

After half a minute, the door slid open and Jack heard Du Angliang's voice say "Get up."

Jack pretended that he just woke up and took a few seconds to drag his body out of the cot.

He stood in front of Du Angliang and with a slight bow and clasped hands greeted "Senior Brother Du."

Du Angliang nodded his head and said "Take this." as he took out an old tattered scroll from his left sleeve.

Jack took it and carefully unfurled it after a nod from Du Angliang. He could barely see anything on it, but just a few seconds later a bright glow filled up the entire tiny house. Jack looked up from the scroll and saw Du Angliang holding a glowing orb the size of a baby's fist.

'So this bastard can do it too. Figures.' Jack thought grimly as he looked at the glowing orb in slight wonder.

Du Angliang placed the orb on the table and said in his cold voice "You have until this light goes out to learn the cultivation method that the scroll explains. If you do not, you will die."

Jack swallowed and looked at the scroll again as he thought 'Cultivation?'

The scroll showed a low-quality depiction of the human body with some lines drawn through it and their annotations. On the side of the sketch stood a weird description of the so-called cultivation, and under it stood some weird words that he was supposed to repeat to himself while cultivating.

Jack only looked up when he heard movement coming from in front of him. Du Angliang already had one foot out of the door.

Jack extended a hand towards him and yelled out "Wait! What am I supposed to do with this? I can't read some of the wo…"

He saw a shimmer in the air, and then his back slammed into the wall above his cot on which he crashed down.

Before he could figure out what just happened he heard Du Angliang's voice say "I warned you not to talk to your betters without being addressed first." After which, Du Angliang walked out of the house without looking back.

"Son of a b*tch!" Jack groaned softly as he dragged himself off of the cot. He wobbled to the stool and sat down while he spread the scroll on the table.

'Repeat the something while drawing in spirit something through the Tai Yin meridian?' Jack read as he checked the sketch next to the text for the Tai Yin meridian. 'How am I supposed to draw something that I can't even see in?' thought Jack as he continued reading down the list of instructions.

It mainly described how to pull the spirit thing through some things called meridians to a place that he couldn't understand to store it, and then how to expel it back out through some other meridians. Jack figured that he had to repeat the weird words written under the description while doing all of this, but he had no idea how to do it.

He sat on his cot with his back against the wall and tried to read the weird words while he breathed in deeply. He couldn't figure out how to see or feel the spirit thing, but he guessed that the air around him should have some of it since everyone else behaved like it did.

After a few hours of this, he gave up and went to bed. Even though he didn't like sleeping, he decided that he would need all the energy he could muster in the next few days. So he stuffed the glowing orb into his pillowcase and fell asleep.

In the morning, Jack followed everyone else down the mountain to the Tranquil Lake Town. This time Du Angliang led them down the path with his empty cart while everyone else followed on foot.

When he left them in the courtyard, Jack went to Kuang Bindun and pulled out the old scroll that Du Angliang gave him last night from his uniform as he asked "Hey, can you help me with this?"

Kuang Bindun glanced at Jack and then back to the corpse he was dragging as he said "I told you not to ask me…" before he could finish he snapped his head back and dropped the corpse's legs.

He grabbed Jack by the collar and dragged him to a corner of the courtyard as he hissed "Why did you bring that here? If the snake sees it he'll strip the meat from your bones with his whip! Not everyone here hates him."

Jack hurriedly hid the scroll in his uniform as he said "Sorry, I didn't know. I just thought you could shine some light on this thing for me."

Kuang Bindun furrowed his brows at Jack in confusion "Didn't Du Angliang explain it to you?"

Jack shook his head as he complained "No, he just said that I had to learn it until that glowing stone in my house went out or I'm dead."

Kuang Bindun furrowed his brows even more as he asked "What did you do to him that he would want you dead?"

Jack spread his arms wide in exasperation as he said in a whiny child's voice "I don't know."

Kuang Bindun looked at him for a few seconds before sighing and saying "Fine, I'll come to your house later today. For now, do your job and don't let anyone else see that scroll."

Jack nodded and thanked Kuang Bindun as they both returned to their work.

The rest of the day went by without any accidents. After digging the graves for the new dead people, Du Angliang called out a few other names and took them with him while the rest of them returned home.

Kuang Bindun followed Jack to his house and took in a sharp breath when Jack fished the glowing orb out of his pillowcase.

"You must have done something to him." Kuang Bindun said as he pointed at the orb.

Jack looked at the orb, then back at Kuang Bindun in confusion as he asked "Why?"

"That thing will last for 3-4 days at most. He must have imbued it with less spirit energy." Kuang Bindun said as he shook his head and sat on the cot. He pointed at the small stool and instructed "You sit on that, I'm too big for it."

Jack felt like someone walked over his grave as he sat down on the stool. He shook his head a little, pulled the scroll out of his uniform, and said with a slight smile "Then I guess I'll have to figure this thing out before that."

Kuang Bindun shook his head with a serious expression as he said "Most people that manage to learn it take 5-6 days, a few rare ones do it in 7. Only true geniuses can do it in less than 4 days."

Jack laughed out loud as he said "I'm no genius, but I am stubborn. That should count for something."

Kuang Bindun sighed and said "Fine. Let's do this." as he took the scroll and spread it on his knees.

For the next couple of hours, he explained everything that Jack had a problem with and left immediately after because he didn't want to get caught by Du Angliang when he returned.

'So I need to draw the spirit energy from the air and guide it through these meridian things to a place called the dantian which should be around here somewhere.' Jack thought as he touched his stomach, right under his navel.

After a minute of touching himself, he thought 'Nope. Can't feel a thing.' and sighed.

He sat in the awkward position Kuang Bindun taught him, with his legs crossed in front of him, closed his eyes, breathed in deep, and tried to relax while reciting the strange words from the cultivation chant in his head.

Long after Du Angliang and the rest returned, Jack still sat there without any success. His brows furrowed in frustration as he opened his eyes and extricated himself from the cramped position he placed himself in.

'I can't see it.' he thought as he paced in his small house. He couldn't imagine these meridians which the scroll said ran all through his body. Nothing like that existed in his previous world, and he saw the insides of more than a few people so he knew for sure.

He suddenly stopped in his track and looked down at his left arm 'Can I…' he thought for a second and then said "F*ck it!", hid the glowing orb under the cot, and sneaked out of the house.

With the help of the moonlight, he went to the garbage pile and ruffled through it until he found a broken piece of clay pottery. He smiled and returned back to his house.

Jack took the orb and placed it on the scroll that he spread across the table. He laid his left arm next to the scroll, while he held the broken pottery in his right, and looked at the scroll.

He placed the sharp edge of the broken pottery over his forearm and slid it from his palm to just under his elbow, slowly. He had to be careful not to hit any major blood vessels.

He kept his breathing even as he did a few passes over the wound to make it deeper.

When he finished he carefully grabbed one side of the skin and lifted it. The pain almost made him faint.

He blinked the sweat out of his eyes as he looked under the skin.

There, all around the pumping blood vessels, meat, and bones, a few thin white lines snaked through everything.

Jack released his skin with a sigh of relief as he thought 'Well, at least they're not making things up.'

He felt fatigue try to close his eyes shut but he fought it and quickly pinched his wound as closed as he could.

Once again he sneaked out of his house to the well to get some water to wash out his wound and his old dirty pants.

After doing what he could, he wrapped the pants around his left forearm and went back to his cot to sleep.

Before sleep took him he thought 'I hope this spirit energy is as magical as Kuang Bindun said, or else even if I manage to cultivate the stuff the infection will kill me.'