23 Nia's Perspective #2

Nia woke up, she felt different. Before her, the world looked filtered with a hazy brown. She felt stronger and energetic. She wanted to run outside but her mother kept her down to eat breakfast before being dragged before Louis and Melissa in the same place yesterday.

"Follow the blue light." Louis said.

Nia could see the a giant blue light sphere within her palm. She could follow the blue sphere as it flowed through an opening in her body she did not know she had. Chasing right behind it was a brown, earth qi, warming her body as it did. It was similar to the warm feeling from the earth element qi she felt within the clay orb, but the water elemental qi was not here this time. She followed the sphere round and round in the body, trying to remember the best that she could, but she could only basic paths.

"Alright. Try to follow the path on your own." Louis said, standing up.

"I do not know." Nia said, surprised.

"It is fine. I sealed the meridians, so just use your qi and follow the path. Every two weeks, I will have to remake the seal until you memorize the path, so do your best learning it in the meantime."

"Move your qi? How I do that?"

"The same way you used the clay orb yesterday, move your energy instead your body."

Some hours after the basic practice of cultivating her qi that she could not quite understand, Melissa, her mother and Nia moved into a different room. The room had four pillows to seat upon, a coffee table and some lamps at the side of the room. There was an one foot by one foot by one inch box of solidified block of earth qi on the coffee table. Carved into the solidified block of earth qi were nine four inch in radius circles. Her mother and Melissa sat on one side of the coffee table while she sat on the other side.

"This game is called 'Journey to the West'. You have to push the ball from your side to the other side." Melissa said. She picked up the ball and rolled it across the board to her side. "You can only use your qi to move the ball." She put the ball into a hole. "If the ball falls into the hole, you need to make another one or bring out the ball with your qi. While you do this, I will try to stop you."

Nia got the gist of it and pushed the ball with her qi. It was deceptively simple. A little amount of qi pushed the ball to the other side with ease.

"That's basically the idea of it, but this time I will stop you." Melissa said.

Nia pushed the ball with her qi again, but it only reached halfway before it was pushed into a hole. Nia frowned as she tried to bring the ball out of the hole. It took her ten minutes before she got the hang of it. When she pushed the ball with her qi, Melissa used a breeze to push the ball into the next hole. Frustrated, she tried to bring the ball out of the hole again, taking a couple minutes to do it this time. When the ball came out, she used too much qi and it fell into the adjacent hole. When she pulled the ball out, Melissa pushed the ball to the hole four inches back.

The game only ended when Nia gave up, so the game only ended when Nia ran out of qi. For the first time, Nia realized the greatness of the pill that Louis made. Eating one gave her enough qi to try to win the game again and again and again. She never did win the game that day, but she never gave up, only stopping because she ran out of qi.

A month later, the block of solidified earth qi had thirty-three empty circles, each one inch in diameter and evenly distanced from each other, were in the dirt. Nia never won a single match in this last match, but she grew increasingly confident and comfortable with manipulating her qi. While she may never win against her mother or Melissa, she was confident to win against anyone her age besides Louis and Amber. Louis was not a kid in her eyes as much as a very small adult who could talk one-on-one with her mother. She had seen Amber play this game and accidentally burn the entire block, so from that day forward, she kept a few steps away from her at all times.

Today, however, she was not facing just her mother or Melissa but also Amber. It was still the "Journey to the West" game, but there was no timer nor unlimited tries this time. Instead, she not only had to reach the other side, which she had not managed to do, but also reach the other side before Amber reached the other side.

There were two solidified blocks on the coffee table. Nia sat across Melissa while her mother faced Amber. The board was the thirty-three hole table that Nia had just gotten accustomed to. She pushed the ball and the moment she detected any wind approaching the ball, she transformed parts of the nearby earthen block into small walls, trapping the ball in place. Then, she made an a tunnel for the ball to move through without the interference of wind. Melissa sent into pin holes into the earthen block and pushed wind into the block to stop the ball from moving forward. Nia hardened the earth qi before the ball and made another tunnel into the wall and continued forward, inch by inch. She eventually reached the end, then looked at the match between Amber and her mother.

The solidified block of earthen qi was not the same anymore. The entire top of the block was in a sea of flames, with a small ball of wind riding the waves of flames to draw closer to the goal. The entire bottom of the block was no longer a flat block, only a quarter of the inch of the edge remained at the goal and the rest of the block was molded into a mountain, pushing the flames up instead of allowing the flames pull any closer to the goal. At the same time, the block of earth on the other side began swallowing itself to put out the flames. Amber counterattacked by burning the new layer of earth. After all said and done, the small ball of wind made no progress. The fight went on for a hour before Amber eventually ran out of qi and conceded, frustrated.

Puffing her cheeks, Amber looked at Nia with a glare in her eye. She bowed, saying "I lost" before running off. Nia looked at where Amber disappeared, shocked then looked at the remaining block. Half of the block had disappeared and the rest was charred, leaving only the thinnest of layers at the bottom unaffected by the flames.

"Relax, if you have not reached that level yet, Nia," her mother said. "She has a special body that makes her really strong very early, but with enough hard work, you will be able to beat her."

"Really?" Nia said, looking at the board.

"Yes, but you have to cultivate with the orb now before you can start the next game."

"Alright." Nia said, eating a high grade Earth Qi Replenishing Pill.

In the afternoon, the four of them and Tera, Amber's mother, had played musical instruments. Amber was singing while she played the drums. Tera played the piano, Melissa the violin, her mother also played the drum to set the melody and she was singing, since Amber had taken her drums. While she did not want to play the drums, she did not want to be forced to sing either. Still, she and Amber sung while the five of them played many songs, one after another. Amber's singing had been one of the things she liked doing and she was a fairly good singer, given her age. Despite her yelling and loud voices outside singing, she had a gentle and soft voice as she sang. She said afterwards she had not been able to sing since her body was sick, but now that she recovered, she could sing once more, making her really happy.

Afterwards, Amber had to go to Louis to learn alchemy while Nia had to play the game again and cultivate for a few more days, until she had to learn arrays from Louis. She was both excited since she could compete with Amber. While she had won the "Journey to the West", she felt much more inferior because she felt cheated, given the easier mode and allowed to win rather than earning it after watching Amber's match. Putting her thoughts aside, she played "Journey to the West" with renewed vigor and attempted to win in even more challenging situations, hopefully one day she could put Amber's match to shame.