Ball of Nothing Chapter 247 - Progression Falls (3)

It was about three in the afternoon before Zero finally had lunch. He finally understood why haste made waste and felt ashamed for not listening to the words of the wise.

Hua Tuo was preparing the herbs needed for the first level of breakthrough. According to the physician, Zero will be cultivating with Hua Tuo. The Sage God ran through the basics of cultivating the eight extraordinary meridian points. While the explanation sounded fairly similar to what Zero experienced with Tanya and the elemental spirits, it had one difference. Zero was unable to feel it with his body. He had to force his soul out of his body in order to receive the qi in those meridian points.

"The eight meridian points that you will be cultivating will not be in your vessel. It's an extension of your aura and part of your spirit. Then again, I have no idea if this is possible because you are a unique entity. Still, we will attempt it together. Remember to always circulate the qi in a yin and yang cycle with the timing of the tide in mind. We change it every six hours, following the pull of the moon."

Zero didn't quite understand it but Hua Tuo ruffled his hair and told him to focus on eating lunch first. Not one to refuse food, Zero dug in.

The Sage God shook his head. Zero was still too naive and easily distracted. He vaguely wondered if the boy would ever grow out of this although he thought that it was part of Zero's personality to worship food by now.

Normally, traditional cultivators would train the individual meridian point trying to force it to open with the help of herbs as a catalyst. However, Hua Tuo doubted that it would work for Zero's case. His body simply absorbed everything and stored it away as energy for future use and conversion. Hence, the Sage God designed a method of dual cultivation with on acting as the catalyst and the other feeding on the processed energy to force a breakthrough. 

The Sage God looked at the herbs in the bath and added more chopped rhubarb for detoxification purpose. After purifying the qi, Hua Tuo needed to clean his system of the pollution even though he doubted that Zero needed to do the same.

"I'm done!" Zero called out from the cave entrance. He did the dishes in record time and hopped into the spring for a short swim to freshen up. Post lunch sleepiness was a thing he developed lately and he didn't have his hawthorn tea that Hua Tuo normally brewed after a meal.

Hua Tuo didn't say much as he tested the water. Progression Falls was considered the gentlest of all three waterfalls. The medicinal bags that the Sage God threw into the bathtub were beginning to infuse themselves gently with the running water. Hua Tuo was glad that he didn't build the bathtub directly under the waterfall even if that was the best method to receive qi infused water. Beginners wouldn't be able to cope with the pace and he didn't think that having too much of it will help them progress faster. The physician was rather pleased with himself for actually managing to build a tub with a drainage system.

Zero climbed up the smooth stone stairs and held onto the vine railing, not wanting to slip and fall. The water cascaded down the cold stone and Zero thought that the water felt slightly colder than the air. It was nowhere near as cold as the spring so the teen took comfort in that. Hua Tuo warned him that as they trained, the temperature will rise accordingly. A failure to control the energy internally could lead to injuries for both of them.

"Ready?" the Sage God asked.

Zero nodded and became serious. He didn't exactly understand the concepts that Hua Tuo explained earlier on but Hua Tuo reassured him that he will understand it once they began. As Zero was more of a hands-on learner, he readily agreed to the first trial.

"We will be exchanging roles with six minute-cycles instead of six-hour cycles for the first hour. Please watch how I purify the gathered qi from the water and do the same. The herbs are here to aid in supporting your standard meridian channels during the purification stage. Once the qi has been purified in the first stage, I will circulate the qi to you. Your job is to gather as much yin qi as you can and hold it there while I guide the yang qi to the eight extraordinary meridians for you. Do not fight it or both of us will suffer heavy injuries. At any point in time that it gets too overwhelming to accept, circulate it back to me. It's fine if the cycle is cut short for the first few meditation sessions."

Zero nodded. normally, this method of training wasn't used due to the high risk of broken focus from either party. For ordinary solo cultivation, if the concentration is broken, the cycle breaks automatically and the session stops itself. However, in the dual cultivation method, any break in flow or imbalance can cause internal injuries to one or both parties. Meridian channels will rupture and sometimes if major points were damaged beyond repair, the cultivator becomes paralysed for life.

Hua Tuo also explained the dangers of dual cultivation between people of the same gender. Female bodies naturally harness yin energy while male bodies typically harness yang energy. There were special cases but Hua Tuo didn't go into the details. While it was more effective for female and male partners to train together due to the natural traits and the increased efficiency of progressing through the cultivation stages, not many people did it because of the invasive feeling both parties would feel during the training. More often than not, only couples did it because it was way too intimate for ordinary friends or students and teachers to practice it.

Zero didn't really know what it meant nor minded it. Hua Tuo told him that they would share feelings, memories and for a short time, become the same person with the intertwining of souls despite Zero's lack of one.

Zero sat down in the tub and gasped as the water came right up to his shoulder while Hua Tuo sat with the water comfortably at his chest level.

"Is it too high for you? You can get a rock or something to sit on so that you don't drown while we train."

Zero nodded and left to search for a suitable seat. Hua Tuo wondered why Zero wasn't more concerned about sharing memories and feelings with Hua Tuo. The Sage God wasn't extremely comfortable with his student sharing his past with him but if Zero was going to surpass him as a doctor one day, he ought to know the kind of world Hua Tuo was once a part of in order to do better on the new Earth and beyond. apart from selected few, not many people knew about the old Earth. Hua Tuo was one of the people who roamed it in the golden ages when humans were first showing signs of developing intelligence capable of taking down Gods. Merlin lived through a time that paved the way for humans to understand the existence of Gods and Steve lived through a time when humans started rejecting the existence of Gods and created their own.

"Found it!" Zero chirped and tossed the rock from the cliffside down into the tub.

Hua Tuo shielded his eyes and turned away when the rock landed perfectly in the middle of the tub with a huge splash before another big splash followed. The Sage God wanted to ban all diving activities or cannonballs from cliff sides in the fragile tub as it creaked ominously from the double attack.

Zero rubbed his throbbing bottom. The tub was too shallow for a dive and he was certain he heard a crack although he wasn't sure if that was his bottom of the tub. He didn't really want to check and gave his teacher a cautious glance. It didn't surprise him that Hua Tuo was glaring at him. Zero quickly apologised and settled down into position to show that he was ready for their test run.

The teenager was still worried. He wasn't human and this cultivation method was suitable for those who were more human-like in soul construct. Zero didn't possess a soul and the vessel wasn't made from flesh and blood. It was constructed from magic with materials from the Great Gods. Logically, he wouldn't be able to develop what he didn't possess. The eight extraordinary meridian channels were tied to a human's soul and spirit. Zero was the void. He didn't know how that would be possible at all. Still, if Hua Tuo said that they will find a way together, he would place his trust in his teacher.

They sat with legs crossed under the water. The medicinal bags were doing their jobs well and Zero took a whiff of the aromatic water. He linked hands with Hua Tuo who was waiting for him to settle down comfortably on his rock.

Hua Tuo closed his eyes and waited for Zero to enter the meditative state. Once he felt the water heating up and swirling around them, the Sage God decided to enter his meditative state to match Zero. His student was doing well and had absolute control over the qi circulating in his vessel. Hua Tuo envied how effortlessly Zero took to cultivation and magic. During his time as a human, cultivation did not exist and he had to explore it. Only after the invention of qi gong, pugilists started building on his initial foundation to the powerful art that they now knew it for.

Hua Tuo pulled on the qi in the Progression Falls and collected them in his dantian. There were several methods of dual cultivation and today, he was going to try something called mirroring where one party plays the dominant cultivator to direct where the energy would go and the passive partner focuses on maintaining the energy balance.

From what he could tell, they were doing great by collecting the qi energy separately in the inner dimension. Hua Tuo waited until Zero got a little further with his reserves before attempting to connect their bridges. The water was unbearably hot for him with all the yang energy. At the same time, Zero's body was wracked with shivers from the iciness of the amassed yin energy.

Zero wasn't prepared for Hua Tuo to start probing him with scalding hot strands o0f yang energy but he quickly reacted accordingly and accepted it without trying to fend off the painful energy coming into his body from the right hand. Hua Tuo transferred the yang energy steadily from the tip of his fingers on the right and Zero did the same and transferred his yin energy through the fingertips on his left to his teacher in the same speed and amounts that Hua Tuo was giving him.

Hua Tuo was impressed. His disciple had very good control even if he was still shaky with the purification part. Zero didn't know how to remove the impurities from the qi too well and there were still traces of chaos energy in the yin qi harvested.

The Sage God receiving the impure yin energy and used the medicinal water to nourish his heart before pumping it through the organ, separating the chaos energy and the yin energy. The remainder chaos energy was then pushed into his bloodstream and sweated out back into the water, turning it muddy.

Zero continued to harvest yin qi from the Progressions Falls and he was getting better at differentiating the different types of water coming from it. Some of the water sources felt familiar and Zero guessed that Progression Falls was a river connected together by a few sources. The Spring of Vitality's recuperation properties was present and so was the coldness of death from the Styx River. There some weirder energies that Zero didn't know about so he left them alone and focussed on acc.u.mulating the yin qi from the Styx water.

Hua Tuo was sweating bullets by now. He'd gathered enough qi to make even the cripple walk again but for Zero, it didn't seem like it was enough. The teenager had no reaction to Hua Tuo's incessant probing. In fact, despite their linked minds and energy, the Sage God was still unable to find where he and Zero connected. If anything, the physician felt as if Zero was swallowing him whole. It was just an empty space that everything disappeared in.

Hua Tuo shuddered at the immense pressure as the qi he pumped into Zero's inner space started to take form. He couldn't quite see it but the doctor knew it wasn't the eight extraordinary meridians that he was helping Zero cultivate. In fact, it was something else lying dormant within the void possibly left behind by the Great One.

Whatever that thing was, Hua Tuo felt a terrifying sense of hunger coming from it. Suddenly, the energy from the Progression Falls wasn't enough. In order to feed this unknown potential in Zero, they might need to suck Trigression Falls dry and even so, the Sage God wasn't sure if that would be enough.

Zero was surprised when the circulated energy was suddenly cut off. Why was Hua Tuo stopping? They'd only been doing this for about forty minutes. Did he make a mistake somewhere?

He felt Hua Tuo's apprehension and doubt as well as a little fear but Zero didn't understand why. He was beginning to feel something stir inside of him when his teacher stopped.

"We're ending here for today," Hua Tuo sounded tired as he said that and Zero nodded, not questioning why even though he was very curious.

Hua Tuo was thankful for Zero's silence as he cleaned up the tub a little and removed the medicine bags. The Sage God returned to the cave and pulled out his communicator to ask the cultivation expert about it. Who knows, Trigression Falls might not be the best place to develop Zero's potential after all.

Chapter end