Elder Fu Jin once told Qing Liao that, in time, he would 'learn the basics of the entire Twelvefold Panoply.’ He suspected the way he was going about that diverged rather drastically from her intended meaning, but somehow the phrase remained pertinent all the same. In his increasingly desperate pursuit of an effective means to purify his body without the proper tools of an alchemist's lab, he'd had many false starts, only to finally reach something that might just be functional in the form of a hollow stone sphere that roughly mimicked a furnace. He watched that sphere, painfully carved and flaked into existence using countless acts of hammering, roll back and forth within the flames assembled inside the equally rough-hewn mud brick oven he'd produced to raise the temperature above campfire levels. The shifting motions of the wind, directed through paired arches, caused the sphere to keep moving. This prevented the materials inside from burning away. Instead, it induced congealing as liquid at the bottom.

  The losses induced by this makeshift process were immense, and Liao suspected that if he ever dared reveal this contraption to an alchemist he'd face a lifetime's worth of ridicule. Using the wind to move the sphere and mediate the heat was barely more effective than shuffling it back and forth with a stick, and only had the advantage that it allowed him to leave the oven periodically to get more wood. He'd lost several earlier batches to that difficulty before devising this solution.

  Such a pathetic apparatus would never produce proper pills. Instead, when he pulled off the clay cap, he found the bottom of the sphere filled with a tarry, pitch-like mixture of degenerated vegetable matter, animal fat, clay, stone powder, and ash. The stuff tasted impossibly foul, and it took every bit of suppression he could muster to choke it down, but after dozens of attempts he'd hit upon a concoction that did, at the very least, function.

  Months of experimentation, and many long nights vomiting up endless failures had produced something that, while distinctly inferior to pills in most respects, fully matched the purifying effect of that basic creation. He’d crafted a rather profound improvised purgative sourced entirely from readily available bamboo forest materials.

  Liao could only wish that it was selective in what it purged. The compound removed improper accumulations from his qi circuits and dantian, but it did the same thing for the rest of his body. The night sweats, hideous diarrhea, and constantly dripping nose that inflicted him for days after drinking the sludge were an aspect of personnel misery beyond any sickness he'd ever experienced as a child. He felt remarkably refreshed once his body finished pushing the compound through him, but it was not, on balance, worth it. He would have neglected this if not for the fact that otherwise his cultivation would inexorably degrade.

  Instead, he inflicted this agony on himself every month and resolved each time to be far nicer to the sect's alchemists in the future. He only wished Sayaana didn't smirk quite so blatantly every time she watched him gulp down the mess.

  Thankfully, the improvised furnace could do more than produce this one menacing purgative. Similar sludge, formulated using different herbs and powders, could be used to produce a simple healing poultice. The loss of efficacy was far greater in that case, however, an impact hardly any better than simply boiling the relevant herbs in soup. He rarely bothered as a consequence. More useful was the discovery that the byproducts of this primitive alchemy were useful outside of his own body. Following considerable experimentation, he'd discovered that he could produce supplies of curing, salting, and washing agents for use in the tanning process. Given the absence of easily gathered ordinary reagents in the confines of the bamboo forest, especially oaks, that was exceedingly valuable. Had he not conducted the alchemical experiments he would never have been able to construct his own personal primitive tannery.

  “Almost done,” Liao watched his stone furnace while he slurped down the last fruits of the autumn season. The equinox was a week away. Soon he would depart to visit his parents, something this wilderness adventure could not inhibit. Storing up portable food and producing an outfit that was presentable and not merely concealing had occupied him for nearly two full months. Yesterday he'd carefully cut his hair while leaning over a still portion of a nearby pond. A mirror was one of the conveniences of civilization he truly missed.

  A cultivator in the wild could make almost anything, so long as it did not require metal components. Liao had tanned fine deerskin leather into boots, trousers, gloves, and a simple vest. These were lined with soft fur, mostly rabbit, on the inside to avoid chaffing, but arranged in strip patterns to avoid overheating. He had also made simple bamboo weaves, from young shafts, into a basic textile to use as a liner in the style of matting. A proper robe remained illusive, so he'd settled on a coat of lamellar made from boiled leather and tied with sinew strands instead. Armor was acceptable wear for cultivators in almost all circumstances, so that would suffice for now.

  Liao suspected that, given sufficient time, he could have acquired a modest supply of simple metals. There were small mines scattered throughout the hills, and Sayaana knew the ways of stone and sand well enough to identify those carrying copper, iron, and tin. The problem was that, if he took the time to build all that was needed to break, smelt, and forge such substances he would no longer be in the wild. Curing and tanning were different, they could be accomplished using simply stretching frames and tightly woven bamboo baskets. He could even make simply bricks and cups by firing the clay in a pit oven dug by hand. To work metal though, that would require far more, more even than planting crops would have demanded.

  “In the wild, metal tools are irreplaceable,” Sayaana had counseled when he mentioned this. Examining the camp he'd made, she noted just how rapidly everything there could be replaced in it were all destroyed, by fire, landslide, or some other circumstance. He could even move elsewhere and, so long as he retained access to the right materials and the skills to use them, restart within days. This mattered, since anything that could not be carried must be destroyed, preferably by fire which obscured even qi residue, when shifting locations lest demonic cultivators discover clues to the presence of a living human.

  Frustrating though it might be, for a twenty-five year old to endure shaving with an edge of sharpened stone rather than a proper razor, the reasoning behind it was beyond all challenge. Nor, with cultivator strength and stamina, did Liao feel threatened by anything in the wilderness in the absence of steel to defend himself.

  He had, over several months, managed to craft a stout bow using bamboo, deer sinew, yew, and boar tusks. It was not an ideal piece, and especially lacked the flexibility provided by horn, a substance in short supply in a forest without any resident goats, but he'd found he could slay any animal he found with the strength it offered and a sharp knapped stone arrowhead. That had been put to the test by stalking the oldest and toughest boar he could find. That kill had been completed effectively, though the arrowhead shattered against the bones of the ribcage.

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  The knapped stone daggers tucked into his belt had similar limitations. Liao had run down and slaughtered a proud buck with them, but shattered both blades cutting free the antlers. Such weapons were clearly not suited for prolonged fights, or any clash against bronze or steel. Thankfully he had no need to put them up against such a challenge.

  He did wonder, often in his nightmares, how such stone implements might fare against demons. Eventually, curiosity overcame his reticence and he asked Sayaana directly.

  “For arrows, they will serve well,” the remnant soul answered. “Qi cloaks the arrowhead and it is the speed of the passage that empowers the impact. A stone arrowhead may shatter against demon bone, especially in ogres or giants, but that simply spread shards through the flesh. For blades, less well. Stone edges lodge in thick muscle, snap off against tendon, shatter against bone, or break when being pulled free.” She shook her head, braids writhing. “Holding them together in battle means holding a constant cloak of qi over the whole of the weapon. From the start of the blow to its end, even in the death throes after you've killed the demon. That's hard, and a waste. Sometimes, it is better to just make a great many such blades, and sacrifice them, one for each blow. If you have a large storage ring even carrying hundreds is no trouble.”

  “That would be nice,” Liao murmured as he poured out one bamboo canteen full of water after another to rapidly quench his furnace and cool the stone orb without allowing the potency of the mixture to escape. His sentiments echoed those of countless cultivators strung across the history of the Celestial Origin Sect. Not that carrying wood and stone about was hard, given qi-enhanced strength, but the awkward balancing required to pull together mixed loads and the tricky motion necessary to transport large loads through thick vegetation were a source of frustration many days. Without a means to compress down the volume, strength was often stymied. Even the immortals, capable of lifting nearly infinite amounts, could only squeeze so much through a doorway or beneath a ceiling.

  “Yes,” Sayaana agreed, smirking with amusement. The impulse faded a moment later, replaced by the somber expression that Liao learned only appeared when the remnant soul though heavily of the distant past. She turned away from her position beside him as he dripped hot black sludge into a bamboo container. Walking among the thick surrounding cloak of dense stalks, she rose upward among the foliage to stare at the night sky. “But bent spatial qi constructs cannot overlap. Spatial storage rings used to be common, once. A small one, that's easy to make. I even managed it myself, once, after the sect fell, enough space to fit a large melon. Out in the wastes, wandering, I learned to smell the qi they left behind and found hundreds. There are places where they lie in piles, left behind as cultivators fled into hidden lands now gone. The one I carried, before my body was destroyed, could fit a whole house. Convenient, so convenient that many cultivators refused the shelters of hidden lands and fought hopeless battles instead. Maybe, had the old world not valued riches so much, then things would have been different.”

  Liao stirred the black ooze in his organic containers, mixing in water and mashed bark. Slowly, it lightened, taking on the fluid consistency he needed. As he mixed, he looked at the piled canisters high up on the slope, put in that place where the wind would carry their scent far away and upward, unable to reach him at night. The possibilities danced in his mind, consideration as to how he might use this batch. The forest featured few large creatures, for the palatability of bamboo was limited. The shoots were edible, but neither deer nor boar had any more success than humans did in consuming the full grown stalks. The forest therefore featured relatively small numbers of those key sources of leather, and even less of the elusive bears who rumbled through the berry bushes of the rare open patches.

  Boar and deer had served his projects well, and the former were especially useful for they bred rapidly, allowing him a greater take than he might of other creatures. Bear, however, that would be a new challenge. He knew there was one nearby, it’s den was somewhere on the opposite side of the next hill, and he had considered making its hide his winter project. Such distractions prevented any interruptions as Sayaana continued to speak.

  “But then, maybe not,” the remnant continued. She made a slow loop around the edge of the little campsite. “The natural hidden lands are wondrous places, unlike any other part of the world. It would be a shame, to make them all into fortress pens like this. Then again, no one sees them now. I wonder….”

  “Did you visit many hidden lands during your travels?” Liao tried to keep this probe gentle. His head remained lowered, focused on the tanning mixture he was fashioning. Sayaana rarely spoke of her past, and if this moment offered a chance to learn more, he would do his best to prolong it. Bears could wait for another day.

  “Not that many,” the green-tinted woman shook her head. “Nine, that's if you count this one and my home. That probably doesn't count, so seven.” She held up a hand, extending long fingers to mark out the count. “Three of the others were like this place, created by some immortal playing with spatial qi. A lot smaller though, not even a tenth as big.” This drew a nod. It was generally believed that Mother's Gift was the largest hidden land ever created. The theorists of the Formation Pavilion even claimed it was as large as a hidden land could possibly be, though Liao was dubious of such grand statements. Still, it seem that the spatial qi creaked and strained at the edges, so perhaps they were right. After all, why should the nearly limitless power of an ascended sage be stopped by anything less than an absolute law of reality itself?

  “Four were natural,” fingers lowered and raised again. “But only two were truly wild. The other two had been tamed, settled, and made into little cultivator fortresses.” Sorrow filled her words, an emotion strong enough to bleed through the edges of her perfected form. The green image blurred in Liao's vision. “Gone now, of course, found and destroyed, all of them, even the wild ones.”

  “Why would the demons destroy empty wilderness?” Looking past the immense sadness, Liao focused his words on this base and mechanical question. Hopefully it might pull Sayaana back from the fugue that sometimes took her in such moments. “They cannot drain qi from it.” He'd been told demons could only drain qi from humans, and his experience during the horde attack – where they had completely ignored the sheep in the Killing Fields – supported this.

  “The demons did not, demonic cultivators did,” she hissed out the label like a curse. “They wanted to eliminate any place where their enemies might hide.” The remnant soul’s condemnation was simple but brutal. “Savages. They won't be content until they've destroyed everything.”

  A sobering declaration. Liao wondered why anyone would choose such a path, align themselves to wanton destruction. Wilderness offered no threat to any cultivator. These months in the wild had taught him that. He did not fear animals, weather, or even poisons. The sort of injuries that would take mortal life when suffered in the wild, sprained ankles, broken arms, rung skulls, and infected cuts; these things were mere minor delays to a cultivator.

  He thought he could live a very long time like this. With Sayaana's companionship, strange though it was, he did not even truly get lonely. Mastery of leatherwork and fur treatments was a slow process. This path, alone and reliant upon only that which the forest could supply, was not an end, but it was a passage. Everything slowly integrated in the quiet times. He felt this, and confirmed it through the progression of his cultivation. He was growing steadily, though each new layer would be measured in years, not months.

  The black mix having reached the proper viscosity, Liao poured it out into a large stone bowl. He added several sliced sections of cured pheasant skins to the resulting mixture, grinding them together beneath his hands to insure the compound fully marinated the flesh. He was experimenting with the possibility of lining gloves and hats made using the skins of the large and box-like birds. “It would be something,” he mused. “To find a new hidden land.”

  Sayaana brightened at this comment, as expected, but then admiration faded from the green face all too rapidly. “You've a long way to go, to dream of that. Keeping working.” Her imaged vanished then, an unspoken command to focus on the task at hand.

  Cultivation, meditation, the fruits of the forest and the hides of its creatures, these things remained unchanged. There were present before and they remained after any pause.