After the rock-strewn landscape he’d just left, the lively forest was like a fountain of plant Ki to draw from. Dario greedily drank in the green aura as he hopped and skipped through the jungle, marveling at how much easier it was to move the stuff around now compared to when he just started.

  Whatever the Ki of truth had done to his seams, it had worked wonders for his control. Even grasping tiny bits of aura had become easier; splicing the right aspects together to create that poisonous flower had gone a lot faster than his struggles down in their hiding place.

  He sent a strand of plant Ki into a random nearby bud, watching with bright-eyed fascination as it burst open into a beautiful flower, its pollen being carried out into the jungle on an errant breeze.

  I need to keep these abilities a secret from Luca and the others farmers back home, he thought, or they’ll never let me go.

  It took him a while to find the hidden tunnel where he’d stashed his artefacts and on the way there he passed by the shallow canyon where he’d ambushed Hokori and his two Amber guards.

  The signs of battle were obvious and covered a large area; discarded artefacts, trampled plants, scorch marks on the sides of the canyon, furrows in the ground. From the way those marks spread out, the battle had carried on through the passage and back in the direction of the forest. There were numerous bloodstains and a few half-eaten beast corpses around, but no dead humans.

  Dario bent down to take a closer look at a few pairs of footprints in the direction of the forest, muttering curses to himself. That was not looking good at all. But instead of following the tracks all the way back into the forest, he veiled himself and moved to his hideaway. No point risking a trap there. If they were still alive, well… that would be a problem for later.

  The illusory patch of moss which covered the tunnel entrance looked thicker and more realistic than before, but his eyes pierced through it all the same. Pushing through the tunnel on knees and elbows brought back the fresh memories of their time spent underground, so he wasted no time getting through.

  The fire lizard was awake, shifting in its alcove, but now he could simply feed a trickle of plant Ki into the nearby red buds it liked to eat. The Reijuu wasted no time filling up on the fresh food and promptly passed out again. As he snuck past, he could see how the illusion on the other side was again different. It looked like the tunnel actually ended there, and only when he ran a good amount of light Ki through his eyes did his sight pierce through into the cave beyond.

  He was fully prepared to find that the head of the ape he’d left there would be too decayed to work with; he’d have to go out and hunt two more before preparing the absorption ritual. But when he ducked into the cave, careful to avoid the hanging vine of the dangerous-looking flower above, he gasped.

  The Ignis Wisp had grown massively, from three short stalks to what looked like a network of at least ten intertwining branches. The smooth, green bark shone in the warm light that came from its many glowing orange leaves. Those leaves were much larger now, so that the Ignis Wisp took up nearly a third of the cave, reaching more than halfway up to the ceiling.

  But when he looked at the pile of artefacts, his expression turned to horror.

  “No! My stuff! What happened?”

  He grabbed one of his Ki batteries, which was completely dried of energy. The artefacts were the same, all of their Ki simply gone so that now they were just mundane objects. The head of the Aureate Simian was dried up and shriveled, all of its powerful light aura gone. When he inspected it more closely, he noticed a thin tendril attached to the skull which then disappeared into the ground.

  In the direction of the Wisp.

  “Wait, did you do this?” he asked the plant angrily, but it didn’t answer. He let out a sigh, shaking his head.

  “Ugh. I guess it’s my fault for leaving all this stuff sitting out in front of a thirsty boy like you.”

  He let out a defeated sigh and kicked at one of the drained artefacts, sending it clattering over the cave floor. “Better go hunt some more of those apes then.”

  But right before he stepped out, he noticed one of the leaves lighting up, so he walked over to the Wisp. “What’s up? Are you still thirsty? Don’t you think you’ve taken enough from me? Huh, buddy?” He paused. Hana had told him to take good care of the plant. Handing over a bit more Ki wouldn’t make any difference at this point.

  “Fine. I’ll make you the Dario Special. Behold, a delicious cocktail of plant and light Ki!”

  He wove a string of green and golden light Ki together into a helix shape, swirling it through the air before feeding it into the Wisp. As soon as it touched the mysterious plant, a strange feeling passed through him. He got the distinct impression that the plant was investigating him. Still, that didn’t stop it from greedily drinking in the mix of plant and light Ki.

  He cut it off when he was halfway drained. Any more would take too long to refill and he needed to go out and murder some more of the angry apes.

  But before he could turn around, the plant began to pulsate, light shimmering through its leaves. The light concentrated into four leaves which grew out and bunched together, curling up into a ball. The other leaves dimmed and the Wisp’s stalks seemed to thin slightly as Ki concentrated into the glowing bud.

  Dario took a step back, eyes widening. That was a crapload of Ki concentrated into a single bud. More than he had in his whole body. If this was an attack, he’d be pretty screwed.

  He was on his guard, ready to duck and flee, but after more pulsing and gathering of Ki, the bud slowly opened. Inside were two small, gleaming objects that, to his eyes, were positively blazing with Ki, bright lines of green and gold running through the small things. They were thin and curved, with a faintly oval shape. When he went to carefully poke one of them, he noticed that it was curved in a way to fit almost snugly around his fingertip, except they were slightly too big for that.

  The Wisp looked exhausted, leaves dimming and hanging low, its stalk a bit thinner than before.

  “Is this… a gift?” Dario whispered.

  But what could he do with those strange scales, given that they seemed to be made of pure Ki? Solidified Ki like this was rare and would eventually just break down and dissolve. On any higher floor where the Ki was less stable, it would probably transition back into smoke. In fact, the only other instance he knew of pure Ki in strange shapes, was what you could extract from a Reijuu corpse.

  “Hold on. Did you take all that Ki to make me a Koto?”

  Now that he thought of it that way, it was unmistakable. The lines of green and gold Ki, the distinct and strange shape. It was like JeeJee had told him, a harvested Koto would always fit to some body part. But these were a bit too big for his fingertips. Should he put them on his toes? No, there were only two of them.

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  Could it be his eyes? When he took a closer look, they did seem to have exactly the right size and shape for that.

  A smile grew on his face as his frustration gave way to excitement.

  “Ready made Kotos to match my Kaku, without even having to hunt and harvest?” His grin widened and his eyes lit up. “Talk about a shortcut!” He let out an excited laugh as he lovingly tapped the Wisp’s stalk. “Never doubted you for a second, buddy.”

  He dug up the scroll that had the formation for the Koto integration step, though it wasn’t as complicated as the one for harvesting. But then he paused, recalling JeeJee’s advice on digging out his seams first. The energy from the Koto would still expand them, but the more of it he did upfront, the better the results would be.

  So he sat down with a sigh, closing his eyes to focus on the inner feeling of the channels that his Ki ran through. Thanks to the work he’d put in already, the seams in his legs were already well developed. Where previously they tapered off below his navel, now there were vine-like channels running all the way down to his feet, with a few branches stretching out to run past the largest muscles in his legs.

  His head was still where his seams ran thickest by far, a web of thick bands that felt warm and bright as light Ki danced within it. Large channels ran through his shoulders and into his arms, all the way to his fingertips. But his torso was underdeveloped, and there were not enough branches going near his muscles.

  So he got to work using the least painful method, goading the plant Ki up into his chest and having it dig out and widen the channels there. He had to be careful to move the light Ki out of the way, using it only as a lure, because by its nature the plant Ki wanted to steal its energy to fuel its own growth. There were plenty of plants to draw aura from to fuel this exercise, so he set the green Ki to digging in both his arms and his chest at the same time.

  It was a deeply uncomfortable feeling, all the much worse because it felt like work, but now that he was set on doing more adventuring… Well, he wasn’t about to change his life philosophy, not at all, but at least in terms of cultivation he probably shouldn’t be slacking off. Weak cultivators never got to make it up to higher floors and see all the cool stuff.

  A few hours passed where he squirmed as the plant Ki dug like roots through his seams, until there were at least basic channels running past the major muscle groups. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.

  He took a few deep breaths as he gingerly picked up the two curved scales forged from Ki and held them in front in the palm of his hand. Looking around at the plants covering the cave, they felt more still than before, as if they were watching and waiting with bated breath.

  He drew the pattern out on the floor, then his eyes flicked again around the cave as he wrung his hands. He quickly went to check on the fire lizard, to make sure it wouldn’t come wandering in, but it was still sound asleep. The plants were still. Nothing was about to explode.

  Perhaps a little power nap to make sure he was in tiptop shape? But he was already terribly late. His mother would be waiting. He took another few deep breaths before he finally sat down in the formation. He took off his boots and stretched his legs out in front of him, wriggling his toes, then clapped his hands once before slapping both palms to his cheeks.

  “Alright. Let’s do this.”

  Before he could find another reason to delay, he began to cycle first his light Ki in a particular pattern. It bounced through his seams along a circular path, repeating a few loops before continuing on to his left eye. There, it sprang out and formed an undulating golden bridge to his right eye, where it once again entered into his seams and continued the pattern. Once the circuit was complete, he pushed more and more of his Ki into that same circular movement, until all of it was in constant motion.

  The golden band of light that ran out in front of his forehead shone brightly as it lightly swayed up and down, the energy rushing through his seams like a raging river.

  Now, because he had chosen to have two different types of Ki, he needed to keep this circuit going while making another one with his plant Ki. A bead of sweat ran down his temple and he could already feel the beginnings of a headache as he pushed the plant Ki to start moving as well.

  Unlike the Ki of light which wanted to always be in motion and so only had to be guided along the right path, plant Ki needed to be goaded, to be pushed into it. It took more focus to drive it out of his seams, luring it out of his left toe and back into his right one.

  The green bridge between his toes didn't bend or shake; it was more solid, its movement slower. This Ki slid through his veins like a slithering snake searching for prey, always hungry for more energy, but moving slowly toward it, never in a rush.

  The pressure in his skull increased as he kept both moving along circular paths through his seams. Then, he introduced the two scales. If they had been of light, he would have only had to put them on his eyes and work to absorb the energy. But he had two separate circuits running, that of light running through his chest at the lowest point, while the plant Ki was right below, passing by his navel.

  So one of the scales was placed onto his left toe, while the other was placed onto his eye.

  As soon as they came into contact with his Ki, he let out a gasp, as if he’d jumped into freezing water. The only, immediate thought in his head was Tenjin have mercy on me, this is too much. Far too much.

  As a younger boy, he’d once been greedily chewing on trogmeat, gathering the half-chewed meat in his cheeks like a hamster, only so that he could push more into his mouth before the other boys could get at it. Only then, he’d made the mistake of swallowing it all at once. Once the danger of choking had passed, the ball of meat had hurt every inch of his throat, pushing against the flesh as it passed down into his body.

  If that band of green Ki was a snake, it now seemed as if it had swallowed an entire ox. A cry rang through the cave as Dario resisted the urge to grab for his right toe. The band of green Ki running into it bulged, stretching the thin seams in his foot further than he’d ever thought they would go. When they were pulled taut almost to bursting, the bulge still pressed into the edges, finding the nearly invisible grooves that had never felt the touch of Ki before. Those sleeping channels now got a rude awakening as blobs of dark green energy forced their way in and through, creating new branches.

  When those blobs of Ki had stretched the channels in his foot as far as they would go, they rampaged on through his legs, always pushing on, uncaring of how far his seams had already expanded. The intensity of their energy changed the seams itself, coloring them a faint yet lively green.

  His headache bloomed as he wrangled those concentrated balls of verdant ki, and he had a moment to regret having put two scales at a time when the light Ki was also drawn in.

  It felt like his right eye would burst like a grape as now that circuit also drank in the excess energy. Even his thickest, strongest seams stretched until it felt like they would tear apart. It was so much faster than the plant Ki, that it felt like the process in the upper half of his body was sped up tenfold. Dario fought to reduce the inflow but that energy flared and beamed into his seams, as bright and unyielding as the pillar itself.

  As the blazing energy dug up all the unused trenches and expanded the network of seams, first through his shoulders, then in his chest, tiny cracks opened and bits of energy went flitting through his muscles, causing them to spasm.

  “Gahh!”

  His arms snapped tight against his body, fingers contorting as if he was playing some weirdly shaped invisible flute. He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the spasming muscles, letting that play out as he focused on the part he needed to influence. All his attention went to guiding the light Ki along the pattern, circling through and out again, allowing some of the excess energy to pass out as a blinding flare.

  Meanwhile, the green Ki in his legs grew wildly through his channels, branching out until each muscle was covered. But then, with his focus elsewhere, it crept up past his stomach and towards his chest, reaching for the light.

  It absorbed a bit of that bright energy and bloomed in his stomach, trying to push further up and drink in even more.

  “No, damn you!” Dario grunted through gritted teeth, pulling the green Ki back down to his legs and into the intended pattern. With his focus shifted, the light Ki once again bounced around uncontrollably, causing him to stiffen and twitch as his muscles convulsed, nearly biting his own tongue off.

  He was pulled back and forth, wrestling both types of Ki to fall back into the intended pattern, the energy screaming through his channels all the while. When the flow of energy finally reduced, he felt like he’d run through a fire and was run over by a cart. Every bit of his body was sore, the seams so tender that running Ki through them felt like touching a nerve.

  Then, he saw that the scale on his left toe was still there, bright and golden, but losing Ki quickly. The same was true for the one on his eye, except that one gleamed vivid green.

  “Tenjin take me.”

  It was a crushing feeling, to realize that he’d only used about half the energy, like building a house only to realize you forgot to put nails in the wood and had to do it all over again. He considered tossing the scales away for a moment, but then he looked at the drained Wisp and felt a flash of guilt.

  With shaking hands, he swapped out the two scales and braced himself to do it all over again.