The Dying Boy

In the unkempt back garden, the boy swung a sword. The uneven protrusions of grass that spotted the dry soil did nothing to hinder the sweeping motions of his feet.

His large frame was built but compact, and from the contractions of his muscular arms and the matching tensing of his shoulders, you could tell that he found the sword quite heavy.

One might expect that his movements be rigid and forced, where he would struggle to raise the slab of metal only to be forced to let it fall according to gravity. However, his swings were smooth, and trajectory controlled.

Rather than raising his sword to simply swing it down, it felt more like he was guiding the weight around the air, redistributing the balance along his limbs, using the downward force to dance the sword back up or diagonally.

Bits of dust that floated up from the ground as he twirled his feet created transparent clouds that hung around his dancing body. The clouds he created clung to his sweaty body and wet clothes making him look dirty, but he didn't seem to mind or notice.

His large rose-coloured eyes that would usually curve gently when he smiles were instead squinting in concentration.

Through the slits of his short black hair, he was staring down at his imagined opponent as he tried to sense and feel every aspect of this imaginary duel.

His body was lean, a testament to his diligence and love of training.

However, he was still weaker than his peers. His low cultivation base did not allow him to sufficiently infuse his body with qi to properly wield his sword.

Instead, he found ways to urge the sword along the path he directed.

He couldn't exert a sudden burst of strength to slash his sword so he simply let it drop, then using the acceleration from the sword itself, he would guide the direction of the falling sword by cleverly spinning his body or swinging his legs, momentarily borrowing the role of the conductor from gravity.

His genius intuition was creating a new type of swordsmanship that suited his weak body.

He knew that he lacked the prerequisite strength to pressure his imagined enemy to move in certain ways, he knew that he could not be the one to initiate.

Instead, the boy thought of how to deflect the incoming strikes to create an opening.

How he could use the impact of the clashing swords to hasten his movements whilst entangling and slowing the sword of his enemy.

How to interrupt his enemy's rhythm and for the short duration of impact, play his own tune in this tango of clashing metal.

The boy tried to understand every detail of this conflict and subconsciously processed all these questions to the best of his abilities. He swung his sword against his envisaged opponent as he struggled to gain the upper hand.

The sword and the boy moved in harmony, like a dance. They danced as the momentum of the sword and the guiding hands of the boy took turns to direct this duet. The boy wanted to be the one in charge, lead the initiative, force the sword and his opponent to struggle against his own tune. To be the director.

But the boy lacked the strength to do so. So, the boy compromised. He compromised with the weight of the sword. He compromised with the will of his opponent.

He had no choice to do so if he wanted to be part of this entanglement.

And so, the sword and the boy danced to match the oncoming attacks of their imaginary opponent, the aggressor's strikes acting as the music to which the boy and sword would react to, to dance to.

They danced a dance of beautiful compromise.

The fluidity of his movements spoke volumes about his swordsmanship.

He understood better than anyone how to use his body and sword, how to use balance and weight to his advantage.

The boy and the sword continued their dance to the cheering of the whistling wind and the spectating crowd of dust and leaves.

As the sun rose higher into the sky and more time passed, the beautiful movements of the boy eventually slowed, and the sluggish dance lacked the eloquence and flair that it showcased at the start of their battle.

Sweat dripped from his angular nose and the wet cloth of his training robes clung to his heaving chest as he struggled to breathe. Eventually, the boy failed to match the tempo of this dance.

As he let his sword drop from above his head towards his left foot, he was too slow. The sword cut into his retreating limb which had failed to lead the boy's spinning body, and blood splurted out.

"Ah," the boy mumbled, "I guess I should stop here for the day."

Popping a healing pill into his mouth, he looked up into the sky to note the position of the sun.

Realizing how much time had passed, he had a sombre expression.

"Just short of 5 hours." the boy calculated. "It keeps getting shorter…" he mumbled.

5 hours might seem like a long time for a duel, but not in this case.

He faced no real resistance when he swung his sword since he was only sparring against an imaginary partner. All he had to do was maintain the momentum of his sword and spin his body to guide said momentum. Not to mention his incredible efficiency with which he acted to preserve his energy.

In this case, where there was extremely limited use of qi, an average cultivator of 20 years of age would be able to fight almost endlessly. It was as if he were a mortal rather than a cultivator. And this wasn't far from the truth.

The boy, Adil Ashford, was ill. Adil had always been ill for as long as he'd known.

None of the doctors that his father had brought were able to tell him what the cause was.

Adil sat down on the wooden floor of the terrace that overlooked his cheap back garden. The old tiles creaked as they accepted his weight and Adil leaned his back into a pillar, getting more comfortable.

He sat for a short while with his eyes closed. His muscular body gave off a mature appeal that would win the hearts of many women, but his kind, almost childish face made him look cute rather than handsome. In this picturesque scene, Adil waited for his daily visitor.

"Meow~"

"Cinder, you're here," Adil replied while opening his eyes.

"Meow~" the black cat cuddled up against Adil's thighs.

Adil chuckled as he rubbed the top of the purring cat's head.

His hands roamed around Cinder's fluffy head and played with her ears. Adil scratched the underside of her jaw and Cinder simply indulged herself in his loving caress.

"You've gotten fat Cinder," Adil teased the chubby cat.

"What are we going to do with you? Little cutie, I've been playing along to your games for far too long."

"Meow," Cinder seemed to meow in protest.

"You can't just keep coming here forever."

"Meow…" It seems that Cinder had been planning to do exactly that.

"Cinder, you know I can't feed you forever," Adil sighed. "I'm dying," he said while looking into the orange eyes of the cat.

Cute, round eyes that resembled the shade of tangerines. Eyes that blinked innocently, completely oblivious to whatever Adil had said.

"Well, technically, I've always been dying"

"Meow?"

"There's something wrong with my body."

"It rejects qi… "

"Once it expels all the qi from my body, it will start to expel my life force. Once that dries out, that'll be it for me."

Adil was a cultivator not by choice but by necessity.

———————

When he was younger, Adil's body passively absorbed heaven and earth energy at a rate much faster than all his peers.

The hallmark of a genius.

Everyone around him had congratulated him and his father for having a body with meridians that aligned well with heaven and earth energy.

His younger years were bright and filled with the praise and adoration of others. He was respected and loved by everyone.

"He's just like his father," They would say. Adil's father was a genius just like him, perhaps it was because he was his father's son that he had such a gifted physique.

However, like a deal with the Devil, there was a catch. When Adil was around 6 years old, his body suddenly started expelling qi from his dantian.

Since Adil was only 6, he hadn't built up his cultivation sufficiently at this point in time. Once his dantian emptied, his life force began to be expelled instead.

In a panic, he ran to his father with tears running down his face. The pure terror of knowing that your life was slowly seeping out of your body was too much for him to handle at such a young age. He screamed and shouted, trying to explain between his sobs that he was dying.

"Dad! Dad! My qi *sniff* my, my *sniff* it's leaving!"

His father, maintaining his cool, looked at his son in silence. He didn't interrupt him, nor did he panic, he simply listened to his son's whimpering and stared at the snot and tears that covered his face.

Perhaps it was expected of someone who had experienced many life and death encounters, his father managed to keep perfectly calm.

"Cultivate this," His Dad responded while handing over the qi gathering manual that members of the Divine sword sect used. "I'll go consult the doctors," He spoke curtly as if to save time.

His father quickly left but returned shortly. He looked down on his son who was frantically reading the manual.

It seemed like his tears were making it difficult to read as he kept wiping them on his sleeves.

"Stay here."

Then his father left to bring back the doctors.

——————

Under the life and death stress, he quickly learnt the qi gathering manual that his father had left for him and upon comprehending it, he cultivated to save his life.

However, the cycle continued.

The qi he gathered during the day would then leave at night.

When he was younger, he focused only on cultivation due to his fear of death. But, as if to spite him, the rate at which qi left his body seemed to speed up.

He reached the peak of the Bone Cleansing realm when he was 12 years old. This was extremely fast for his age, especially so when taking into account that qi was constantly leaving his body.

His cultivation speed was fast enough for him to compete with and beat fellow cultivators his age.

"But by then the rate at which my body expelled qi had grown too fast," Adil explained to the hungry Cinder.

"If I were to cultivate day and night, and do nothing else, maybe I could have broken through to the Flesh Cleansing realm." Adil turned to look at Cinder. "But then what?"

Cinder tilted her head in response.

The young boy had come to a realization:

No matter what he did, no matter how desperately he cultivated, he would die. And he would die young.

"My body seems to reject qi the more I grow older, there was nothing I could do."

Technically, he could break through to the Flesh Cleansing realm, but sooner or later his body would lose its qi and he would die.

Even now, his cultivation was still at the peak of the Bone Cleansing realm, but the amount of qi that was usually stored in his dantian was pitiful when compared to his cultivation base.

His normal state was equivalent to that of a very fatigued peak-stage Bone Cleansing cultivator who had just finished battling using his qi. In other words, weak.

"So, no matter how much I struggled, I would eventually die as the rate of qi expulsion overtakes my ability to gather it."

"Meow~" Cinder responded to this news by endearingly rubbing her head into his hands that had not left her fur since the start of their conversation.

"Cinder…"

"Meow~~~"

He looked at the black cat. His only conversation partner he felt didn't judge him behind his back or interact with him out of pity.

"You just want food, don't you?"