The surge of pride Lindon felt when he heard that had surprised even him. His Wei clan practiced a Path of dreams and light, and now it seemed that might be an impressive combination, even by Gold standards.
“You will re-Forge each of these aspects into discs,” Fisher Gesha continued. “Solid discs, don’t just move them into a circle, you hear me? I had a disciple once…troubled girl. Anyway, reshaping madra besides your own is the fundamental skill of a Soulsmith. If you can’t do that, you can’t do anything. Bring your discs to me, and if I approve them, then we’ll try Forging them into needles.”
By then, Lindon had grown used to setting extra challenges to push himself, so he decided to skip the discs and dive straight into Forging needles.
Over the next few days, he bent all of his time and effort to the task, eventually succeeding…with six of the seven aspects.
Even water madra could be forced into a solid shape if he focused himself, though it wouldn’t stay there, but life…he spent an entire extra day focused on Forging life madra, skipping his training, before he finally gave up and returned to Fisher Gesha in shame.
“It’s impossible,” she said, eyeing his seventh box. “Life madra on its own is a liquid, and that’s the end of it. Even life Remnants are giant blobs of ooze. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to say you couldn’t do it, hm? Thought it might get you to think about your limitations.”
She looked over the other six needles, which were supposed to have been simple discs. “Doesn’t seem to have worked, did it?”
On the night of their eighth day, he was cycling power into his core, using up the last of the Four Corners Rotation Pill before he snatched a few hours of sleep. He breathed evenly in the pattern Eithan had taught him, building up his power one step at a time and slowly pushing the bounds of his core.
After about an hour, he slowly opened his eyes.
…to see Eithan peeking in through a crack in his door.
The first few times Eithan popped up unexpectedly, Lindon’s reactions had been entertaining enough that the Underlord kept trying to catch him off guard.
But you could get used to anything if it happened often enough.
“What can I do to serve the Arelius family?” Lindon asked, rising from his bed. Eithan had done so much for him already, the least he could do in return was ignore the Underlord’s…quirks.
Eithan kicked the door open and grinned like a child playing a prank. “Cycle! Now!”
Lindon reasoned that Eithan had also earned a measure of trust, so he dropped to his knees, hands in his lap, and began to cycle. Just as Eithan had shown him in the Transcendent Ruins.
At first, every breath using this cycling technique had felt like trying to inhale water. But he’d grown so used to it over the following weeks that he rarely had to consciously think his way through the technique anymore.
Eithan tapped his fingers together as he waited for Lindon to settle into a cycling rhythm. When Lindon’s breathing evened out, Eithan’s grin broadened.
“Now,” he said, “close your eyes. I’m going to teach you a trick.”
I should trust him, Lindon reminded himself. I owe him.
Once he’d returned to the position he’d held before he was interrupted, Eithan’s voice cut in. “Madra is very responsive to your imagination. It’s part of you, just like your thoughts. So as you study more advanced techniques, you’ll find that holding a clear mental picture is just as important as moving your madra in certain patterns.”
That fit Lindon’s experience. As he advanced, his madra was easier to visualize, and he was better able to get the power to do what he wanted without forcing it into a pattern.
“I’m going to teach you a cycling technique. Once you’ve mastered it, this method will take you to Jade and beyond.”
Lindon leaned forward eagerly, eyes squeezed shut, suddenly afraid to miss a word.
“This is a technique for processing your madra, not for battle,” Eithan went on. “If you try to fight while cycling like this, you might as well tie your ankles together.”
Lindon wondered if he should be taking notes.
“In your mind, focus on your core. Ah, I mean one core. Pick one.”
The core that had reached Iron first was brighter and more solid than the other, so he focused on it, letting the bright blue-white ball fill his vision as the other one fell behind into irrelevance.
As he breathed, his madra cycled, spinning out from his core to run out to the rest of his body and then swirling back.
“Your core is made of stone. Picture it as a huge, stone wheel. It’s all you can see. It’s like a wall of heavy, solid stone.”
Lindon focused on that image, superimposing it over the blue-white sun.
“Now, as you exhale and cycle madra through your body, the stone grinds away at the edges of your core. It’s heavy, and it rolls slowly, pushing your core outward.”
That was harder to hold. Madra usually flew out from his core freely, but he had to slow it down, forcing his core to rotate and running power through it a scant inch at a time.
He felt like he was pushing that stone wheel up a hill with all his strength, all while trying to keep madra from slithering through his grip. If he lost concentration for one second, the strings of madra would escape and the wheel would fall back down, crushing him.
The effort of moving his madra in such an unnatural pattern caused his channels to strain, as his spirit groaned under the effort. Sweat dripped over his eyelids as he concentrated, and each exhalation was agonizingly slow.
“Now, when the madra comes back in, spiraling from your limbs to your core, the stone wheel shifts. It slowly rolls back the other way, grinding your core again.”
It was like letting the wheel roll downhill, only to haul it to a stop and pull it back up again. He poured all his madra into the effort, controlling his spirit with every ounce of his concentration.
There was an instant in the middle where he felt like he was manually stopping his own lungs. He gaped like a fish, his lungs frozen as though the stone wheel sat on his own chest, before he finally got it moving the other way.
Eithan waited for him to get himself under control before graciously reminding him that he still had to hold his previous cycling pattern. It took Lindon another half an hour to match the old timing, and by that time his soul felt like he’d pounded it flat. Only minutes of cycling, and he was more exhausted than he would have been after hours of practicing in the dummy course.
But Eithan wasn’t finished.
“Once you have a grip on that, you want your wheel to spin as slowly as possible without stopping. Breathing in the same pattern, I want to see how slowly you can move your madra, how heavily that wheel turns, how that huge stone wheel is almost stopped and your madra is just crawling along.
“Then you exhale, and it goes back the other way.”