I am dead !?

It was a night like any other, as I was walking back to my apartment under the snowflakes relentlessly falling winter sky, when my phone received a notification. I took it out of my pocket, a smile split my lips because it was a message from this important person in my life. She would ask me to join her at her house later that evening. I jumped like Charlie Chaplin then continued on my way. Once I got home, I changed and went out again to go to her place. It was not our habit to meet on weekdays because her family were against her and I being together, so we only saw each other on weekends. That evening I took the trouble to look for a florist that would still be open and was glad to find one where I picked up a bouquet of roses and irises.

I was now standing on her doorstep, classically dressed in a sweater and jogging pants with sneakers on, with my index finger I rang the doorbell inside and she opened it for me. A few cuddles then we entered.

- Take it, it is for you. I said, handing her the bouquet of flowers.

She looked at it for a long time, smiled, but smiled in a strangely sad, empty-loving way.

- Thank you. She said taking it.

My significant other and I were therefore going to sit on an armchair. She looked embarrassed, as if she was hiding some information. Since she was not speaking, so I decided to make a gesture and put my hand on her cheek, the reaction was immediate. She removed my hand, then held it between the braces of hers as a pearl of water slid down her cheek to her chin. So she looked up at me and then in a broken voice she said:

- I'm sorry…

- Enough to ? I asked incomprehensively.

- For this ! declared a third voice.

Then a man in black came out of a room and shot me three times. My focus changed, so did my body. I saw my body on the ground, my executioner will go and take in his arms the one for whom I had just died. The tears that moistened her eyes dried quickly enough as the two offered their lips. I, who could no longer interact on the physical plane, watched the scene, helpless, angry, bruised. Then my soul that had just been detached from my body slowly disintegrated into a white light. I knew my hour had come, my disappearance had arrived.

The air, the warmth of a touch, when I opened my eyes a woman was smiling at me while hugging me. Her face with fine and delicate features gave me an impression of security, of familiarity. Her small black eyes and her long jet black hair bewitched me, gave an impression of unfaded maternal beauty. Then I heard a voice, again that of a woman, I turned my head to observe but my field of vision through a white garment was obstructed.

- What do you want to call him? asked the voice.

- Xian will be his first name. Wu Xian will be his full name. Said the woman carrying me smiling.

It was then that I understood the situation: I had just been reborn. Which means that the light that we see at the time of our death is ... no! I have to focus on the present moment instead, and when I think back to the fact that it was the fault of the person I loved that I died I find it ironic.

A month later, I had understood several things: the first is that this world is not at all modern, more of the medieval kind; the second is that in this world the most powerful beings are the immortals, people who have a knowledge of martial arts far superior to that of Earth, they are said to be able to travel between worlds; well the third thing i learned is that being a baby doesn't get more painful.

Those little hands, little feet, uncontrolled bodily functions - a prayer for my diaper which has just died in war - however my state of baby allowed me certain inappropriate gestures when my mother carried me with her in the streets of the market. Finally what interested me the most in this world was not fiddling with female beings but rather her books which on the shelves of the house lay, gathering dust. But with my little hands and my little feet, it was impossible for me to reach them. For some reason I hadn't lost my reading skills after I was reborn, but it wasn't even worth trying the writing I wasn't able to. At least that's what I thought.

One afternoon my mother decided to write to my father and in the middle of the letter she stopped to greet a passing visitor to the house. From the height of my two months, I tried to crawl, I forced my supports to be stable, with the sole aim of being able to reach the stack of papers. The ride had been a success, but holding the brush was a big problem due to my tiny hands. So I decided to change the tool and use my fingers because after all: "If a knight can't use his sword, he uses his dagger!" "; I thought. So I dipped my index and right middle finger into the ink pot but found myself unable to be able to use it to write, they were shaking so much. So I changed hands and strangely I felt more comfortable with and with my fingertips, being careful to put ink all over me and on the sheets I drew the character for the word "book". No sooner had I finished my work than my mother returned. A frozen expression of smile and surprise at the same time.

- But what are you doing, little Xian? she said, coming closer to me. All that ink all over the place, look how you got dirty. A new bath is called for.

So she carried me and as she lifted me off the ground, she saw the parchment on which I had written "book" so she smiled nonetheless still surprised and took me to take a bath. After cleaning me up, she grabbed one of the books from the shelf and handed it to me.

- Your father doesn't need it anymore since he worked at the Imperial Court anyway. But don't "read" it too quickly, you won't get one straight away. She said laughing with a hand in front of her mouth.

I chirped back at her, being really unable to phrase a sentence. "The Path of Cultivation" was the title of the book she gave me. Dusty from its state, I must have sneezed a dozen times when I opened it. It was written there:

"For one to become a cultivator, it is necessary to possess the will, to wish for it and to visualize it. The first step towards cultivation is the absorption of the energy around us, in order to store it in itself to create a dantian which will be the core of cultivation ... "

With the first few lines looking promising, I decided to go even further in reading this book to learn more about how to become a cultivator. It must have been around three in the afternoon, and between then and dinner I had plenty of time to read. Over the pages, this world was demystified a little more in my eyes, the power of the cultivators too. The book clearly stated that anyone, at any age, could access the art of the immortals, so from the height of my one month of birth, I decided to start my cultivation!

Difficult as it could be, I tried to sit in lotus flower with my legs crossed. Resting my hands with difficulty on my knees, palms facing up. Slowly, I closed my eyes and did as the book says:

"First clear your mind ... luckily I am a baby I have no real worries ... then breathe out for a long time in order to separate from the impurities of the current dantian ... inhale deeply to absorb the Qi coming from the outside ... repeat the 'operation until entering his Wu dantian. "

I repeated the operation over and over again, hoping to reach that space where I could then impose my personal cultivation style, but very soon I couldn't find anything. However, I felt that there was a slight difference in me with each new cycle of breathing, so I decided to stay in this state until dinner. My metabolism was not of that opinion, however, and very quickly nature forced its appeal to me: "Another valiant dead diaper on the battlefield." ". Then I screamed while forcing the flow of tears to attract the attention of my mother who was nearby. She ran up and changed me once more, what a pleasure to have someone doing things for themselves. I could see myself taking a liking to this new life, but unfortunately every living being is called to grow one day and reincarnated as I am I was no exception to this immutable rule which governed whatever worlds they were.

Time passed, the routine set in and the day-to-day became more and more mundane. The absence of a father figure in our home meant that there was always a man to court my mother and that had the gift of exasperating me, so to get rid of them I used a very ingenious little mechanism. For example I could happen to drop a golden flow on a man's legs completely "accidentally"; another had a diaper on his head that died in combat or was used to tine my teeth, which in this case grew prematurely. I had no recollection that it was such a painful phenomenon anyway. When I was six months old my dad came home to spend some time with us for a while, it had allowed my mom's courtiers to stop their parade at our home elsewhere grateful. My father was a man with supple facial features, with eyes that wore a look of sympathy; the people of the village said that he had earned his place at the imperial court thanks to his martial prowess. This statement about his muscular appearance was consistent. Every morning I would watch him perform a series of movements after watching him meditate for two or three hours. Having not yet established my dantian, I was not able to determine one's cultivation level, but I knew it very well : he was strong. The seasons in my village were beautiful, my favorite was definitely the fall due to the festival which was held in honor of the god of fire. For some reason that escaped me in our region fall was called the "fire season", I had come to think of it as the color of the leaves in that season.

It was my second fall, when once again I was meditating in the book room of the house. Since I was two months old, every day I was able to assimilate Qi for a period of the day in order to establish my cultivation core. This year, I was finally seeing the formation. During my exercise, a squall surrounded me and heat penetrated the pores of my skin to settle in the center of my body. Upon the release of the crossing shock wave the sheets of the book I was reading flew away and a heavy shock shook that room of the house. Distraught, my parents had run to see what had happened, I had not yet opened my eyes because I needed a certain concentration to balance the Qi I had just absorbed.

- What…

- Our son… is a cultivator…? How is it possible ?

I couldn't really distinguish the voices as they seemed to change due to my conscious semi-absence. When I touched the ground again and opened my eyes, my parents were placed in front of me, staring in amazement at my current situation. After a minute of static, a minute that had felt like an eternity, my parents and I stared at each other. A tear flowed down my mother's cheek, not a tear of sadness but a tear filled with joy, pride in her child that she came to take in a protective motherly embrace as if to remind me that she would always be there to protect me. As for her husband, he remained standing, a smile on his lips, then declared:

- Looks like there can still be exceptional beings on this earth.

This premature awakening phenomenon had gone around the village and already people were coming to visit me, they seemed to consider me some kind of divine figure. It would have been a lie to say that I wasn't proud of it. Since I had reached the first stage of Ju Qi I felt different from a normal person. As it happened, I was very much, especially since after I reached this realm, a light scarlet three-leaf lotus flower appeared on my forehead, right in the middle. Since I brokethrough two years ago, I had stopped meditating inside the house and was doing it in the yard near the man-made lake we had available. The water in this lake had been brought by my father from a special source and seemed to improve and facilitate cultivation - another reason I was practicing it. During my cultivation cycle, a strong pain manifested on my forehead, then a strong release of Qi resulted and a spirit came out. This spirit must have been a manifestation of my Dao, but strangely enough I had not yet reached the cultivation level where I could have one, so it seemed strange to me. The spirit was a female type, translucent pink in humanoid form, with long hair whose true color was difficult to determine; her clothes were two separate fabrics, which covered the upper part and the lower part of her body, revealing a slight part of her abdomen.

- Greetings young master! she said smiling.

- You… are you a fairy !?

- What ? No, not at all ! I am your spirit guide! she replied proudly.

- My guiding spirit? I didn't read it in the book though.

- That is normal, most immortals begin their cultivation at a rather ... mature age and no longer of connection with the spiritual world until their ascension.

- So you're a cheat code?

- Sorry ?

I forgot the language difference between Earth and this world and swept away with gamer terms I used to use.

- No nothing. Haha ~.

- Either way, you can consider yourself lucky to have a spirit that will accelerate your master cultivation! Especially at your age. She continued, circling around me.

- Speed ​​up my cultivation?

- Yes, this is the main role of a guiding spirit!

Our discussion was lingering on and I almost forgot my parents' presence at home, but my mother's voice calling me violently pulled me out of my discussion. I was panicking, trying to figure out how to hide that shiny, floating pink thing that was in front of me.

- Don't worry, it's not possible for humans to see me! she said, putting her head upside down.

- Ah ...

- Xian it's dinner time, come and eat. My mother said as she walked into the backyard before leaving.

- Yes mother, I'm coming right away. I replied.

Once she turned her back on me, I began to think about who was able to see my Guiding Spirit.

- Would a cultivator be able to see you?

- Yes it's possible. Finally, it also and above all depends on his level of cultivation!

- OK. For safety you will return to my spiritual space.

- At your master orders.

No sooner said than done, it rushed straight into my forehead and entered where the three-leafed lotus flower stood, disappearing in pink smoke.

The dinner that followed was one of the most classic, filled with fatherly stories and widespread laughter and then my mother went to drop me in the bedroom as I pretended to be sleeping. When I was finally alone, I would again settle into a meditation position.

- Spirit-guide are you there?

- What are you doing, master?

I was startled at first when I opened my eyes and she was standing in front of me.

- Are you able to read my mind?

- No. But I can communicate with you by thought if you want!

- Oh interesting. Come on, did you say you can improve my cultivation speed?

- Yes indeed !

- How do you do it?

- It is very simple ! first I return to your spiritual dimension, then I create a path to your dantian through your meridians and spiritual roots. Only after that we will be able to synchronize and you will obtain the Qi absorption speed of an immortal.

- Truly ?

- We can do it now if you want.

- No, I prefer to wait a few years, but if you can help me develop my spiritual roots I will not say no.

- I can also awaken your master meridians!

- Very well ! let's do this!

Then the guiding spirit returned to my forehead symbol as I entered my spiritual temple. Spiritual roots, elementary vessels crossing the meridians of the body and which allow the manipulation of martial arts related to the elements. The most seasoned in their openness are even able to merge, see derived the elements constituting their roots. The meridians are axes of concentration through which Qi circulates in the body, they allow better control of Qi according to their level of openness. Both are divided into twenty levels, ranging from the damaged level to the celestial origin level. Normally spiritual roots do not develop until one has reached the foundational level of the dantian in terms of the meridians, it is usually necessary to wait for the Yuan Ying in order to open them. The fact that I have a Guide Spirit was a real cheat code that allowed me to ignore the necessary level differences.

A spiritual temple or spiritual dimension is a space specific to the cultivator where his spirit flows in order to allow his body to channel the Qi present in the body and to refine it into a dantian if he has not yet passed his first tribulation. In case the cultivator has passed the stage of Jian Ji, then the temple serves him to accumulate outer Qi and condense it in his dantian and then cleanse it of impurities in order to access a higher cultivation state.