Chapter 18 - A Path That Belongs To Her

It took several breaths of time before Ao Wen had gotten enough control of herself to be able to respond to Feng Xi. When she did, a wisp of black smoke escaped her mouth, causing another fit of coughing. "I felt like something was missing. Since I have both 'Earth' and 'Fire', I thought I should be using both kinds of energy but clearly that didn't work."

"Of course it didn't work," Feng Xi said, fetching some fetch cool water from the stream and bringing it to Ao Wen. "Didn't you say that the saber art you practice is derived from the Obsidian Night Scorpion? It should be compatible with earth energy and darkness energy, but it's not an acceptable method for using fire energy. The flow to use fire energy should be very different. If you try to follow the same method with the wrong kind of energy…" Feng Xi gestured at Ao Wen's scorched robes and the charred wooden saber. "You're actually really lucky that it wasn't worse."

Ao Wen sat there, sipping cool water and savoring the feeling of relief it brought while she thought about where things had gone wrong. Running things through her mind, she still felt that using the pure earth energy was incomplete. There had to be a reason why it felt so uncomfortable beyond that she was pulling too much energy. There was still something she hadn't reached out to.

"Doesn't your father use Wood energy along with his Wind energy?" Ao Wen asked. Feng Xi came from a cultivation family with far more awakened cultivators in living memory than Ao Wen's own family. Until recently, her father had been one of the leading hunters in Turning Leaf town, frequently hunting the spirit beasts that posed the greatest threats to the town's safety.

"That's different," Feng Xi said, returning to the stream with a handkerchief to help Ao Wen clean up a bit. "Father's a mid stage Soldier using our family's Tempest Heron Archery method, that's his body cultivation. He also practices a form of Mysticism, the Relentless Predator Mystic Path as a soul cultivator. Even though he's only an early stage Drifting Mystic, it lets him use Wood energy to track things through nature. If he tried to use his wood energy with the Tempest Heron Archery method, he'd likely suffer the same result you did, or some version of that at least." Gently, Feng Xi began applying the cool cloth to the places where Ao Wen seemed to have felt the most intense heat, wiping off the few traces of soot she found from where Ao Wen's clothes had burned. "Be careful. I know you have all this Immortal Empress power but you still have to take the beginning steps one at a time. Cultivators burning themselves out is far too common."

"You're right," Ao Wen said. She'd let her early success get to her head and she'd rushed into entirely new territory. Still, if she didn't resolve this issue, she was worried that she'd only end up hurting herself as she practiced the Obsidian Night Scorpion art. "Let me try something that should work better," she said, pushing herself back to her feet and picking up Pathfinder.

Looking around the clearing, Ao Wen found a small, half dead handkerchief tree and marked a few lines on it's bark with a small knife. It wasn't as sturdy as one of Teacher Xie's stone pillars to practice with, but she was only using a wooden saber anyway. It would be good enough to serve as a target.

Sending her mind into her inner world for the first time since she'd woken up, she knelt at the word 'Dragon' that Wei Lien had carved onto the floor. "Help me," she whispered. "I don't want to borrow your power, I just want your help to find my own." For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, a wisp of azure energy shaped like a long serpentine dragon lifted from the word on the floor. The wisp circled around her several times before flowing into her right hand, following the heart meridian towards her heart and circling around a small solid bone like sphere in the center of her chest before exiting her chest and flowing out of her left side, using the same path it had taken to enter on the right. Once it left her body, the wisp faded away. "Thank you," she said. "I know we haven't met, and I rejected becoming your blood sister, but in this life, I will call you 'Brother' anyway, okay?" The drops of blood essence seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat for a moment before becoming still.

Returning her perception to the real world, Ao Wen began to move her energy along the familiar pathways according to the Obsidian Night Scorpion art. This time, however, when the circulation began to extend to her arms, she pulled the energy into the path the wisp of azure energy had taken, passing it through the small 'bone' at the center of her chest. Suddenly, the character of her energy changed. Her heart beat faster, the way it had when she was pushing open the gates of her soul palace. The feeling of tiny bits of sand abrading her meridians was replaced by the feeling of smooth scales as her energy became richer, flowing without obstruction and inflicting no pain. Her entire body felt like a great slumbering beast was awakening within her, desperate to announce its presence to the world.

Feng Xi took several steps back as the bronze earthen energy swirling around Ao Wen took on the shape of a coiling dragon. Still, she could see the signs of struggle on Ao Wen's face. Sitting behind her zither, she watched the flow of energy carefully, wanting to help but afraid of doing more harm than good.

With each passing circulation, Ao Wen felt the energy moving within her growing stronger and fiercer, but it threatened to escape her control, wanting to rampage like the fire energy had done but unable to do so. Her meridians strained to contain the growing surge of energy, flexing like strained muscles under the pressure building within her.

"It can't get out," Feng Xi realized. "Wen!" she called. "You need to unleash your energy or you're going to suffer another backlash!"

"I'm trying," Ao Wen said through gritted teeth. "It wants to pull me along with it!"

"I have an idea," Feng Xi said. She wasn't sure if it would work or not, but Artists like her had long lent their skills to aiding in breakthroughs and awakenings. She hadn't lied to the Honored Elder when she said she couldn't play the Song of Awakening, but a breakthrough didn't need a song that could reach dozens of different kinds of cultivators. She needed one song that could help the one person currently facing their own breakthrough. "It might not work. It might make things worse," she warned.

"I trust you," Ao Wen said, placing her full faith in Feng Xi. "I know you won't hurt me."

Feng Xi didn't have the same confidence in herself and her idea that Ao Wen had but hearing Ao Wen's words, Feng Xi pressed forwards anyway. Gently at first, Feng Xi began filling the air with a melody. The first few moments were soft, teasing, playful. Her music called out to the dragon, almost flirting with it. The opening chords of Blossoms in Snow were coy, fleeting, fading into silence like a young maiden fading into a flurry of snow before coming back, being glimpsed again.

Feng Xi knew she was playing with fire. Blossoms in Snow was a song about being captivated by an emerging beauty. With how Ao Wen felt about her, she felt that the playful coy melody would attract Ao Wen's dragon energy. She didn't want to direct that energy in a romantic direction though. Once she felt she had the dragon's attention, she shifted her playing, letting her energy guide the tempo of the energy in the clearing. The strident notes of Yue Feng's March filled the air with a strong, unshakable martial tempo. The song told the story of the Unshakable Yue Army's rise. It had been said that it was easier to shake the mountains than to shake the Yue Army. The references to mountains and the weight of the strident march felt like a good match to Ao Wen's Earth Dragon.

Pale white energy began to dance around Ao Wen's bronze dragon energy, calling it forward to trample any opposition beneath it. Finally, Ao Wen could feel the path for her energy needed to take. She stepped forward heavily, cracking the ground beneath her feet as she unleashed a roar that shook leaves off the nearby trees. Pathfinder struck out at the handkerchief tree, quickly transitioning from the first to the second strike of a Rending Pincer. Her energy took the form of dragon's claws catching the tree trunk between them, rending the tree in half in a shower of wood splinters. The rebound of the earthly energy splintered Pathfinder all along its length before the wooden saber crumbled into pieces little larger than sawdust.

The last lingering notes of Yue Feng's March hung in the air with motes of sparkling white and bronze energy. Slowly, the energy descended, gathering around both Ao Wen and Feng Xi. Some of the energy flowed into Ao Wen, strengthening her strained meridians and nourishing her body. For Feng Xi, the experience was far more intense.

White energy with flecks of bronze swirled around Feng Xi as her energy resonated with the spiritual energy of the world. Her heart fluttered, beating in sync with Ao Wen's, opening a door in her heart to seeing more clearly into the heart of others. The experience of using her energy to guide Ao Wen's was profound, allowing her to take a significant step forward along the path of an Artist, transitioning from an Aesthete to a true Understudy of the arts and becoming one of only a handful of cultivators to reach the second stage of any cultivation path in Turning Leaf town. Nestled deep within that, traces of Ao Wen's draconic aura seeped into Feng Xi's bones carrying with it a portion of Ao Wen's hope to protect Feng Xi in the same way that Long Yao had given his dragon blood esence to protect Ao Wen in this life.