The Qi Condensation Realm

The first threshold of cultivation. Drawing the spirit qi of heaven and earth into the body, running it around the meridians in a cycle, condensing it in the dantian a little at a time — this is Qi Condensation.

The realm divides into nine layers, and only a full nine counts as great completion. What separates one layer from the next is the purity of the qi and its steadiness. The same breath, nurtured muddy and nurtured loose, will not hold a single layer no matter how much of it a man piles up.

For rogue cultivators in the market town, Qi Condensation is already everything most of them will touch in a lifetime. The Lesser Heavenly Cycle Breathing Art that nine in ten of them train is only written down as far as the third layer. Above the third layer a man needs another copy and another master, and that is mostly something only sect disciples can afford to talk about.

The road through the first three layers has a schedule to it. Half a shichen sitting morning and evening; the diligent hold the second layer steady in three to five months and reach the doorway of the third in about a year. After the third layer nobody can put a schedule on it. There are men who have held the third for nearly two years, whose qi comes up to the top of the third layer and runs into a wall with no door in it, push as they will. The market town calls this the root-bone reaching its end, and tells a man to accept it.

Layers are not taken on a man’s word; they have to be verified. The sects take people on with a bluestone half a man’s height, its face cut from the bottom upward with ring-veins, one ring inside the next. A hand goes on it and sends qi through, and the rings light as far up as the layer goes. Only a whole ring counts. Light half a ring, or leave the ring flickering bright and dim, and the steward will write you down a layer lower — qi floating between two layers and unable to settle is, to their eyes, the look of a qi deviation coming. Arguing gets a man nothing. However many rings light on the stone, that is how many there are.

The qi of Qi Condensation is alive. Some days thick, some days thin, and the man nurturing it has to wait on it daily. Nurture it badly once and the realm does not fall back, but the qi sinks a layer, and it takes ten days or half a month to come back up. A man who has been through one qi deviation has it harder — the qi sinks further by the day, and he squats at the foot of a wall with his eyes shut and his teeth set, waiting that breath out until it eases on its own, and sitting up all night when it does not.

One layer of difference is the whole sky in the market town. A man at the seventh layer of Qi Condensation collects the levy on West Street; he came up to the seventh in his early twenties, and everyone says his root-bone is good. A rogue cultivator at the third takes a slap across the face in public and can only lower his head and take it.