Chapter 167 - Physical Cultivation II: Deep in Hot Water

  There was one door at the end of the hall. Old wood that was frayed and broken, with a thin layer of dust covering the top where it warped slightly out of its frame. Age had made it dark. Every inch of it was an ugly splinter waiting to find soft flesh.

  “Odd, someone’s been here,” Que muttered, shrugging his shoulders as he looked at the slender handprint on the round brass knob.

  “Senior. Is this cultivation method worth it?” Hao asked, the look of pity the Seniors had given him stuck in his head. If it was something so terrible, he had no reason to do it. Physical Cultivation would never be his primary focus, but his spiritual path was at a bottleneck without an abundance of resources. He needed an edge in battle. The worry that his strength would fall behind was an itch behind his ear.

  “Junior Brother,” Que sighed, “If you can endure some pain, you don’t have to worry. You will get stronger. But… Don’t get lost in your passion, as my First Brother Guan.”

  He pushed the door open, pressing it with his shoulder, the splinters holding the side of his robe like sharp fingers.

  “I am half his age and managed to catch up to Senior Brother’s Realm while he practiced Physical Cultivation. Still, I can’t beat him. But if I cultivate one realm higher, I doubt that he could beat me…” Que shook his head with uncertainty. “I don’t know, it’s hard to tell, every path is different. Some people practice the path of water for a lifetime; one may find the ocean, while another only a muddy puddle.”

  The Senior looked back as steam crept towards his shoulders. Fear flashed in his eyes, and his nose wrinkled when he glanced at the fruit cradled in Hao’s arms.

  “Those at least are worthwhile,” Que said, stepping aside to let Hao enter the room in front of him. “Their effect is immediate and permanent… but I would rather get licked by a beast fire. Junior Brother…”

  Hao looked down at the fruit as he walked in, the steam condensing as sweat droplets on his brow.

  “Thank you for the warning, Senior… I will try.”

  Que slid by Hao and pulled the door with him, “I’m sure Senior Brother Guan gave you some advice. I will give some more. Don’t drop those in the water. Not unless you want maximum efficiency.”

  The door slammed at Hao’s back, and the words lingered in the room like a challenge as wet footsteps got further away in the hall.

  Hao crouched and set the fruit and strange tool down before he looked at the bathhouse around him. It was different from the bathhouse in the servant quarters he knew. There was no dust or mud, no dark, shady corners or pools of gray filth.

  The room was well-lit. Crystals of yellow and white hung from the ceiling and walls in scones and chains of painted blue stone. The paint was chipping like the hall outside. Steam hid most of it, rising and falling with the room's temperature, and getting thicker the closer Hao got to the pool that sat between the far wall and a stacked stone boundary. It flowed in from outside and vanished down in a whirl. A grate at the bottom made of silver metal that looked freshly cleaned went into the peak’s stone foundation.

  “A bit extravagant for a room to scrape dirt off the body, no?” Hao asked himself, pulling back from the steaming water.

  He felt a bit lost. Luckily, there were a few large wooden basins tucked in the corners. Less fortunate, most of them were as aged and beat up as the door. There was one that looked new. Soft white tender wood that was bound tightly with several silver bands.

  Silver can’t rust, but it can buy food and medicine. Hao thought to himself as he lifted it out, rinsed and filled it. A tedious but quick process. He plucked an arm's length of black hair from the bottom and tossed it, preparing the fruit and tool.

  “Okay…” Hao muttered, moving quicker as time ran from him. Robes and silks off, he sank into the hot water, steam licking his chin. All the advice he got held close to his chest, but all the advice sounded like warnings, and made each moment feel slow.

  Hao held one fruit and looked down at the tool. A flat kitchen ladle with two spiked sides and a trigger on the handle. He pressed the tool down on the fruit. It was ugly and dry as if it had long been desiccated. Yet, once its flesh broke, a syrupy red juice swelled from the wound and dripped into the water.

  It was initially underwhelming, all those warnings for…

  As it ran down his hand, it looked like blood pooling at the edge of the scar on his left forearm. Yet it reminded him of fire. He had forgotten what burns felt like, abandoning that fear with his growing ability to touch burning logs and boiling water.

  Hao got a chill as the tool was set, and he pressed the trigger. The two spike sides tore up the fruit from the inside, creating a bloody iron-spiked sponge.

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  Rub it on your skin. He remembered Senior Guan’s instructions, but the longer it stayed, the more it burned, the more it throbbed and traveled from the spots it touched to where it didn’t. “Not in the water… don’t drop it in the water,” he remembered Que’s words, but his thoughts no longer stayed in his head.

  Pain was a primal, and this was close to torturous before he began, yet it was hardly as debilitating as the repeated suffocation of burning herbs in the censor Hao forced upon himself.

  There was no reason to hesitate. Not anymore, they wouldn’t leave him alone for this if it was going to get him killed. They still had to drag him to the Second Peak. He would only feel close to death.

  Hao pressed the syrupy red spikes against his chest and placed his tongue on the roof of his mouth. There was a good chance that he would bite it off if he didn’t.

  The first stroke left marks, even scratches, but didn’t break skin enough to draw blood. It didn’t need to. Thin red trails grew and went bone deep, igniting his blood, tickling between muscles. Soon it was hard for him to move. His nose ran down into the water, and his jaw hung slack from exhaustion before he reached his legs.

  When he reached that point, his head felt like a nest of raging bees. He wanted to leap out of the basin and, at the same time, not move, give up. Time was a concept lost on him. It might’ve been a minute, seconds, yet it seemed like hours. The water around him was a transparent red, as if he stood in a pool of hot red wax.

  “Hot…” Hao muttered. He swapped fruits, leaving the used one still dripping on the edge of the basin.

  The spikes touched his inner thigh. It was his thigh that had to move; it was hard enough to hold the paddle. His arms were red and swollen. Every vein he scrubbed was massive and bulging as if they were ready to burst.

  Soon, he had only his face left. And he wished he had run slower; the whip was kinder, as the whip was not in his hand. Third fruit. Onto the spikes. The used one was placed on the edge. Lifted, placed, and moved around.

  Cheeks.

  Brow.

  Scalp.

  “Neck…”

  His face burned more than the rest, but didn’t get ridged like his legs and arms.

  Yet as he stood there, there was one more thing to try. His jaw clicked, and his teeth chattered. The tree in the mural came to mind as he pulled the fruit of the tool, and set it next to the other three.

  “How much worse could it get?” He asked himself. Saliva splattered from his mouth into the water. The pain of some mottled, candle-red, ugly fruit wouldn’t be his end, Mo Bangcai, the First Elder, Daoist Silver Steps, and if he got the chance, Pao Toayi, they would kill him.

  Hao lifted the three fruits together. Under the water, he sank to his neck and squeezed them together until they popped and filled the basin like a porridge. He still underestimated them. His jaw went slack, and his jolts made waves. Some snuck up in nostrils, and coated his tongue, and flowed up to his ears, and lapped at his eyes. From slack swollen lips, he howled. And he knew they could all hear him, outside, on the peak, anyone under the stone where the drain led.

  He reached up with his fingers and gripped his scalp beneath his long hair. It was blurry, a black seaweed on his palm and golden strands on his thumb. “Under!,” he growled, but he couldn’t understand his own words. His body understood the command well enough, and he pulled his head down into the shining, waxy water and screamed. The only relief that came was the bubbles his agony made that caught for moments in his eyes.

  Hot needles of pain, kicking, kicking, a splinter in his heel. His heart beat a war drum in his ear, until it was still, and he was still, until the water lost its luster. It no longer looked like wax but rust and blood.

  Enough, then he thought, enough.

  Hao reached up and grabbed the edge. He needed four limbs and his top row of teeth to climb his way out. He flipped and rolled. His back hit the stone floor, ice cold, yet accursedly hot at the same time.

  A flop and a crawl were all he could muster. He wanted to wipe the red of his skin, using his dirty robes in an attempt to scrape it away, but his flesh was dyed a bleeding red. And slowly, it was vanishing, going in, and going cold, with the fire that flowed in his veins.

  Hao used the wall as support to sit up, as his muscles tremored. He forced a limp meditation. A slow breath in and out until he opened his eyes, and there was no pain, just a stiffness and warmth.

  It took him time to stretch and dress. But he managed on his own and went for the door, which he was tempted to break instead of open.

  When he touched the door with its ten thousand raised splinters, two men burst in as if they were waiting.

  Guan and Que, the two Seniors.

  The Elder of the two was far more eager. He looked around the bathing room for just a moment, then down in the basin, he touched the water. No reaction, then a nod.

  “Impressive. Mhm, Junior Brother is impressive.” He looked at Hao, up and down.

  “Senior Brother, you shouldn’t have given him more than one fruit.” Senior Brother Que demanded. “Another few minutes—”

  “—Yes, another few minutes, I would have thought you drowned,” Gaun interrupted as he lifted a handful of the rusty water that made Que back all the way to the door.

  “Calm down, he got almost all of it,” He told his Junior Brother before looking at Hao, “Besides, look at him, he looks lively, three Boiling Blood Fruit.” He shook his head as he put an arm around Hao’s shoulder and walked him back to the main hall.

  Que ran ahead of them, as if to escape.

  Hao looked up at the Senior, as he hobbled, slowly getting back the function of his limbs. It was true he felt lively. But it was the kind of lively that made him want to run for his life.

  “Come up here and sit, Junior Brother. We should get your mind focused and something for you to eat. A boiling blood fruit changed the composition of the body a bit. You need some oily meat to recover before we move on.” Guan laughed, helping Hao to a handwoven pillow. “Relax and cultivate, absorb what you just took in, the energy on the peak is better than the World Energy below.”