Market Hearsay | Half a Page Left by a Qi-Deviated Rogue Cultivator: "It's Not Your Aptitude"

(This entry is a transcription of a sheet circulating in the market. Its origin is unknown and its authenticity cannot be judged.)

On the second-hand book stalls of Qingqi Market a sheet like this turns up now and then. The writing is very small and very dense, both sides filled; the lower half has been torn away and the tear is ragged. The man who copied it says the original came from the hand of a rogue cultivator who, after his qi deviation, stayed lucid for a while.

The words on the sheet run roughly like this—

I practised that breathing art for 8 years. Stuck at Qi Condensation. Could not get through. I thought my aptitude was poor.

I tried. I tried everything.

The first 3 years I sat longer. Half a shichen morning and evening was not enough, so I went up to 3 shichen, up to where my knees would not fold. The qi still stopped at the same place.

Then I changed pills. Qi Condensation Powder, 2 a day, and I took it up to 4, took it until the second month when I was bringing up sour water at night. A man at a West Street stall told me my foundation was thin, that I had to nourish it first. He sold me a dose of foundation pills and took 8 spirit stones for it. I hauled herbs for 2 months to put that together. I swallowed them. Nothing happened. Nothing happened.

Then I changed copies. I bought 6 of the sort that go for a couple of coppers a sheet, and I gritted my teeth and bought one fair copy from the South Market bookshop for 50 coppers. Clean characters, stiff paper. I laid all 7 out on the floor and went through them line by line. Went through them for 3 days.

Guess what.

Identical. All 7, missing in the same place.

Only later did I understand. It is not that I am poor. It is that this art was short a stretch from the beginning. The front teaches you how to start it, the back teaches you how to close it, and the one section in the middle that matters is gone.

You practise it as written, the qi runs halfway and has no road left, so it can only turn back. Turn back and you tear a meridian; fail to turn back and you deviate.

My right hand shakes now when I write. That patch below the left rib has something knocking inside it day and night. I have 2 Spirit-Reviving Pills left, hidden in my shoe, and I do not dare take them both at once.

This morning I saw my mother standing in the doorway. My mother has been dead 12 years.

The men in the market who sell you this art will not tell you any of it. They may not know it themselves.

The one who sold me those foundation pills knew. When he took my 8 spirit stones, he did not look at me.

At the end of the sheet the man seems to have wanted to write more, and stopped. Only half a line is left:

The ten thousand methods were flawed to begin with. It is only that someone did the flawing for you—

Nothing after that. They say the man went mad the next day, and a few days after that he was gone.

Whether the sheet is genuine, nobody can say. But rogue cultivators who stall until their meridians tear have never been in short supply here. If you too have been practising and practising, and keep feeling the qi lose its road at one particular place — this sheet may be worth your reading.