Seth sat in his quarters with his eyes closed, checking his decaying spirit furnace's progress, and frowned. Five days earlier, he had ripped enough energy from Mal and the rest of the tumors to render them inactive. Ever since then, his cultivation's progress had slowed to a crawl. It made sense when he thought about it. They weren't cultivating, so they were just absorbing environmental qi.

  Pain erupted behind his eye as Mal squeezed his optic nerve. He felt the eye twitch around in the darkness beneath his eyelid. With a sigh, he opened his eyes.

  [Mean]

  Seth didn't respond, opting to check on his cultivation. Mal had started actively cultivating, but nowhere near as much as they had prior to their conflict. He could feel the other tumors' consciousness flickering in and out.

  [I hate you.]

  Seth smiled and chuckled, remembering how his kids often said that to him when he had to punish them. Is that what I should be doing? Punishing? Teaching? He took a deep breath.

  "No, you don't. This is hate." With the line, Seth sent his rage at the tumors for stealing everything he loved. He didn't bother with any images, just the burning heat that demanded he make them suffer. Mal's presence shrunk back as if slapped, but Seth didn't let up.

  [You hate me?]

  Cold water poured on the burning heat in his chest as he pondered the question. Did I hate the thing? I hated the mindlessly thieving tumor, but this... He clenched his fists and slammed them on the ground in front of him while grinding his teeth.

  "No," he answered, the confession surprising him. He had hated what it had done to his life, but this thing had even less choice than he did. Impotent rage seethed within him, but he couldn't bring himself to hate the inquisitive voice inside his head.

  "However," he continued, not giving Mal a chance to respond. "We're going to need to set some ground rules before you get us killed." The image he sent along with that thought was of his body being blended up and refined into a pill, Mal and the other tumors joining him in his fate. He felt something trembling deep within him and realized it was Mal.

  [I want outside.]

  "I can't."

  [Outside!] Pain exploding inside his head accompanied the primal scream. Seth could no longer see out of the eye Mal was controlling, and hoped the blindness wasn't permanent.

  "I can't. I won't survive the process, and neither will you." His words didn't seem to help at first as Mal screamed inside his head. After some time passed, he felt the pain fade and he could see outlines of shapes in his injured eye. He let a breath out he didn't realize he had been holding. Not wanting to anger the petulant tumor, he remained quiet.

  [Someday?]

  Seth considered his answer. Would he even be able to progress to a realm where he could survive the procedure? If he could, would separating Mal from him cripple his cultivation? He pondered the questions echoing in his head before answering.

  "Someday," he said, deciding on his answer.

  He felt no further complaints from Mal and sighed in relief. Then, an idea floated into his head along with that sigh. He saw himself sighing and floating around on that sigh as if it were propelling him around at random. The more he thought about it, the more fun it sounded. With a grin, he left his room and activated leaf on the wind. As usual, he got a good couple of steps before air resistance brought him to a halt.

  After deactivating the technique, he leaped up while empowering his legs with qi, and the ground sped away. He reached the apex of his jump about thirty feet up and activated the technique. The first attempt failed to activate, and he immediately tried again. He fell a bit, but then the technique caught him, and he found himself floating down to the ground. A breeze blew by and carried him over a building. He relaxed and let it happen, trying to get used to the feeling of floating on the wind.

  A voice in the back of his mind whispered about wasting time, but he crushed it and enjoyed the floating.

  Mal grabbed control of his eye and looked around. He felt Mal's rumblings of contentment roll through him as he floated. The area of the sect he was in was mostly empty, though he had to force a few strange gazes out of his mind.

  A breeze touched him, and he adjusted his position on a whim. It sent him floating toward a group of people. Another twist, and the breeze caught his robes just right to take him away from the group. I wonder how long I can keep moving without letting the skill go. Seth started laughing at the stupid idea. Then resolved to keep the skill up for the rest of the day.

  Days blurred into weeks of whimsical experimentation. His life in the sect had become a peaceful blur of going with the flow. Most days, he trained with Therus. He lost most of their bouts because of his experimentation. Therus had expressed concern a couple of times, which led Seth to show that he could still fight when necessary.

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  His greatest gains were with leaf on the wind. He had spent several days where he had only moved while it was active and had learned a great deal about how to move effectively with it. While it would never be as efficient as normal movement, the sheer unpredictability of the movements proved to be annoying, if Therus' cursing was any indication.

  The other benefit Seth got from this time was a mental break he didn't know he needed. Now that he had it, however, he found learning new formations came more easily. That, combined with his newfound experimentation, allowed him to grasp more advanced techniques quickly.

  His experimentation also extended into the formation pieces he had inscribed on his soul. The shield he could make was useful, but a lot of space was being taken by pieces that he had no idea how to use. After some research, he began the process of replacing those with pieces that he could use.

  For that process, he had two goals. First, to get a directional shield he could deploy more quickly and cost less. Second was to experiment with healing energy in formations. He wasn't sure if he could accomplish either goal, but the effort, combined with everything else he was improving, made him excited for the future.

  The dimming evening light cast long shadows on the abandoned courtyard Seth was training in. Formation pieces materialized one after another in the air, snapping together before him. This time, it will work. He forced the pieces together, ignoring their initial resistance. The shielding didn't want to be constrained. It wanted to protect everything.

  A mental twist at the right moment, and a circular shield flared to life in front of Seth. The shield was five feet in diameter and shimmered translucent green in the air. He poked it with his finger; it was stable. So far so good. His heart raced as he anchored the shield in place and moved across the practice yard. He summoned a lance of ice and sent it screaming at the shield. It slammed into the shield, draining his qi but holding. Yes, definitely less effort than maintaining a full shield. A little inefficient given the size, but... He let the thought drop, smiling.

  Seth caught a flash out of the corner of his eye, and a full shield sprang to life around him, muscle memory taking over. A wave of flame slapped the shield, too weak for him to notice much of a drain. He turned to face his attackers.

  Before him was a group of fourteen initiates. He activated his qi sight, and had to do a double take at the group's lack of qi. Granted, they were still stronger than he was when he left for the trial, but not by much. How had I survived being that weak here? He pushed down a wave of annoyance and schooled his face into a calm expression.

  "Leave," he said.

  "You think we're scared o you? There's a lot of us and one of you," said a large, bald man with teal skin. Seth swallowed when he noticed the man's biceps were larger than his head.

  "What you think doesn't matter. If you take another step toward me, things will go very badly for you."

  One man on the side chuckled and stepped forward. Seth didn't waste any time in forming a large, blunt rod of ice and shooting it at the man's kneecap. It blurred forward and slammed into his knee with a loud crunch. The man let out a cry of pain as he crumpled to the ground.

  Seth leaped up in the air and activated leaf on the wind as the rest of them charged him. A man next to the leader activated a technique, and another wave of fire flew at him. He laughed and let the wave approach, letting the forward heated wall of air push him aside unharmed. In response, he fired another rod of ice and shattered the man's arm.

  The others looked around for stones to throw at him. It seemed none of them had any ranged techniques to deal with him, letting him rain down blows on them with impunity. After five of them succumbed to their injuries, eight fled, leaving the bald leader to face Seth alone.

  As the fight was all but over, Seth cast eighteen needle incapacitation. The man didn't see any threat from the needles, and just tried to block them. They pierced right through his defenses, into his accupoints, and stunned him.

  The man's eyes went wide as Seth floated down in front of him. When the stun faded, he fell to his behind and tried to scoot away from Seth, staring up at him as if he were some monster.

  "W-what did you do to me?"

  "I j... I cursed you," Seth said, putting a calm smile on his face.

  "What do you want from me?"

  "Who sent you?"

  "Sent me? Nobody sends my gang except me."

  Gang? Here?

  "So what you're saying is that you just... decided to attack? Why?"

  "You look hurt. Figured you could take my place."

  Seth's brain spun for a second as he processed the man's words. He had wanted Seth to take his place as one of the ones who would be refined.

  "And I take it your friends have done this to others?"

  "Of course! Survival of the fittest and all. You get it, right?" The man asked, holding up his hands in surrender.

  "Of course I do," Seth said, feeling a disgusting heat rise in his gut. He channeled that heat into a lance of ice that he sent at the man's leg. The man screamed, and the sickly heat spread.

  "I thought—"

  "Survival of the fittest, right? Oh, but it looks like you're about to bleed out. That won't do. Let me heal you real quick."

  "Mal. Can you show me how you heal people?"

  [You want me heal?]

  "No, for this guy, it's the right kind of healing," he growled to Mal. Seth was standing over the whimpering man, and he kneeled down to touch him with healing.

  As his healing energy poured into the man, Mal twisted it. Instead of resisting, Seth examined the healing flow, eyes narrowed as if trying to focus on minute details too small to see. He saw a kind of qi he hadn't noticed earlier mixed in the healing that de-aspected other qi around it. Then, Mal healed the part of the wound that had been de-aspected. The process made the wound glow with a dull gray light. Did Mal use decay qi here? Fascinating.

  Seth ignored the building nausea and tuned out the man's screams as he focused on the process. When he got all he could out of observation, he asked Mal for control so he could feel the process for himself. Mal gave up after some light prodding from Seth, and he could feel the process; play with it if he wanted to. Rancid liquid flowed out of his mouth and onto the ground, the heat from his stomach spreading to his chest, throat, and head. He heard distant laughing, but ignored it.

  He tasted vomit and looked down at the man's leg. The wound had been "healed," though the flesh in the hole didn't match the rest of the man's body. On top of that, the man was crying in pain. Finally, he recognized the laughing voice. His laughing voice. A fresh wave of nausea assaulted Seth.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?