Deep drink and...

Breathe. 

If you want to dive in so badly, then just read the bloody pins. 

It's not like she had anything else better to do with her life.

She huffed a little, drank down another shot of water, and nestled back into bed to read back through the logs as best she could.

The resources channel has a lot of things - first off, there's a lengthy explanation of the cultivation realms that they were mentioning and the associated special abilities and status, alongside a typical age range - apparently most of the members of the chat according to their roles were on the 'young genius' side rather then seniors themselves, journeymen only somewhat independent and established. There's a warning that overly detailed descriptions and understanding of some of the higher levels can be hazardous if you don't have a sufficiently good 'cultivation base', but it still tells of cultivators who can walk upon the sky, create illusory realms with their thoughts, wore power-enhancing crowns of light and even resurrect the dead with the right preparations, techniques and materials. 

The links ranged from several esoteric analyses that she can't make heads or tails of, a fairly disturbingly detailed procedure for getting a fake ID, apparently for 'seniors who have been away from the mortal world for too long', but one of them really jumps out at her - a basic 'fist methodology' that was apparently designed to work for just about anyone called the "Twenty Four Flowing Fists".

And there's something weird about the image in the pin that draws her in further.

She stared at the images, transfixed.

It looked like just the beginning, but there was... some sort of moire to it that made it seem almost like the figure was moving - not flowing like she had tired not through the motion of a video or an ordinary optical illusion but in her mind somehow and... 

By instinct, she clicked through to the pin and the rest of the images, and got washed away. 

When her focused returned, there was a firm hand on each of her shoulders, and a verdant glade around her, with a sweet-dew-laden breeze running through the fall air. She blinked a little, and moved to turn her head.

"Breathe."

Her hands gently guided her head to her centre, then slid down to her shoulders to adjust them slightly, just as the soft and smooth sound of her breathing in and out guided Moonsilver to sink a little more. 

The woman strides over in front of her, each step perfectly aligned with her not-quite-quieting breathing, before she starts flowing through a motion, a smooth and slow dance through the whole of her body, every motion burning into her memory, her eyes glinting with a silent invitation to follow along with her motions.

A small relaxed smile formed on her face despite herself and...

Come on. 

Of course she was going to follow along. 

The movements were oddly natural, not just because the motions that were designed to intermingle with each other and work alongside each other, but because it was like she already knew exaclty what she was to do and this was just the finishing stroke, the completion of something deep inside her, the natural thing to come up simply breathing and feeling that building hum inside her. 

The energy slowly coalesced inside her as she finished out the final kata, hands drifting back down to her side. 

A hand reaches out to her chest the moment the energy settles and - 

"Dive in." 

And an elaborate system of energy inside of her becomes visible, with an obvious a void inside her heart waiting to be filled with the thread of energy she's formed, as her breathing still guides her foreard.

Her breath half-hitched at the vision as she centered herself once more and...

She followed the breath, the gentle guide of this vision and these motions and clasped the thread of energy with her will and...

There.

It locked in, and vital energy gently flowed back out through her body as the scene started to fade. 

She blinked hard, and glanced over at the system clock on her laptops display, trying to shake off the daze with focusing on the concreteness of the time and moments and... 

What was that. 

She laughed a little hoarsely, overwhelmed with the feeling and the shock of tiredness flooding through her system from... whatever the hell that was. 

She'd...

Drink first, brainstorm later.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

She chugged down the rest of her glass swiftly, the cool liquid tingling pleasantly as it slid down her throat.

Ahhh...

She'd heard of stories with all sorts of situations for accelerating cultivation - from specialized formations, to places where the energies of heaven and earth naturally gathered, to countless alchemical, acupuncture and soul-based methods to increase cultivation, and even jade slips and trial realms that made only a moment pass in the outside world, but this was just...

A bunch of screenshots in discord, for goodness sake, and she doubted that even if there was some elaborate 'technomantic' method to embed soul seeds or whatever this system called them in images that it wouldn't just be in a resources page that anyone in a large-ish group could access, and most novels had manuscripts needing some sort of elaborate inking process that just...

She sighed.

She had no idea what that was, beyond this abiding bone deep certainty that the method would work, and that as far as her computer's clock was concerned, she'd just spent around 10 minutes reading the page not... 

However long it was inside the... 'simulation'.

So the only thing left to decide was...

...Would she do it? 

She'd just encountered undeniable proof of the supernatural, but nothing about that meant that this technique was real or did exactly what it said it did, and there was no reason to believe that if it could do something like that it couldn't compromise her judgement in some way. Of course, nothing about the technique seemed inherently like the sort of thing that would do that, but it wasn't like genre knowledge is some absolute defense against being ticked. File away as something to consider, move on. 

Whatever it was, it was (seemingly) posted on a community discord - not some private message she somehow got access to, but a place that was intended for sharing basic resources amongst practioners. Cultivation novels were full of dangerous techniques to ones body and mind, but there was a reason why such things were basically synonymous with 'secret techniques'. Those things were generally edges, clan techniques, the sort of thing that one works hard to keep secret, not the sort of thing that you leave lying around for years on a server filled with people from different traditions. And similarly... She really hoped that there was something to prevent random discord staff from stumbling into this w/ admin permissions if things were as dangerous as said - but still, there was no real reason for this to be a trap, there's no obvious effect on her mind and there's no reason why that off all things would be where the trap was if they were going to put one there for the case of something like this happening - no one actually reads the rules is apparently one of the biggest mantras of community building for a reason, and...

She sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"It was real." 

Diving into the root of that thought gave her the same sort of jumble she'd expect from her own nature, a twisting staircase of thorns whispering of the value of meta-knowledge, of the seductive power of the chance to be important, resounding steps echoing with gleeful words telling of how this would already be past the defenses, that any such game would be already defeated with access into the heart of the community, 'til the winding path ran back into the placid milky cloud-lake of the heart of her thoughts that told her that she knew it was real in the same drilled way that she knew the laws of mathematics, the same instinctive comprehension to rederive the comnclusion, the knowledge of the way that her heart guided her breath guided her arms guided her energy guided her mind guided her energy to create something profound, that every prediction she had was something that she could test, that it was alterable and adjustable for use in any sitatuon where she could do those sort of motions, and that there was nothing more that she could possibly ask for beyond a vision, a test, and the indications that this was a simple encounter of chance. 

It was real. 

And what would she gain not pursuing it? A touch of embarrasement? A waste of a few hours? Those paled in comparison with the chance for immortality and...

Yes, she didn't understand enough to tell whether or not it was a... "Cauldron technique" - one of those evil-techniques designed to turn the body and soul of a cultivator into resources for another, and yes you would want to share that widely, but...

She laughed, a little. 

"They seemed nice." 

...And they did. More reasons popped into her mind to complete the 'argument' - that for example, that such techniques were far rarer then normal ones, that usually that sort of thing relied on manipulation of the dantian in a way that was totally unrelated to the technique, and of course the countless mechanical arguments about why that wasn't the case emerging from those instincts inside of her but...

Ultimately... 

That was really all she could go on. 

She breathed in deeply, taking care to not follow the method she had somehow gotten downloaded into her head, and let herself reflect wordlessly for a moment. 

...She should sleep, first. 

Clear her head, even if she doesn't have a strong reason to believe that it's actually better, because the odds that it makes a difference to her judgement are much much better then the odds that it will actually make a difference to a non-urgent decision to end up sleeping.

There's a lot of annoyingly large numbers to understand in the payoffs and in the denominators but...

Yes sleep. 

She dragged herself off to bed, brushing her teeth - would this really make a difference if she gets to enjoy the benefits o body tempering - a shower - really just for today's sleep, but still same question - plugged in her laptop, pulled up her covers and...

She wasn't gong to sleep that easily. 

She sighed. 

She let out a long yawn, letting the heat sink back in, and breathed deeply to slowly force herself to drift off to a nearly dreamless sleep. 

The morning came (and mostly went) and then her eyes popped open, and...

It was real. 

...She smiled, a little, and...

Yes. 

She'd try it - and then reach out, more then likely if it worked, because even her instincts from the download were... not nesscarily incomplete, persay. It seemed too high quality for that, but the instincts and knowledge trailed off into nothingness in a way that was hard to express and harder to work with.  There just wasn't the same contextual experience of learning in the 'extras', or the theory of composition so much as there was the theory of working - if it was a mundane martial art, she'd describe it as the knowledge of a master not some sports scientist or kinesiologist or designer who would know how to edit it or have the complete understanding of why it works that way but just the understanding of an athlete of intuition and descriptions and not-quite-experience to modify the action to be just right for what exactly she was doing and map it onto herself, which meant...

She didn't exactly have a full suite of 'if things go wrong' reactions, just some pitfalls 'to be wary off' that came in with the process, and doing heavy exercise without a spotter was... unwise. 

As for how to do it...

There was a park with some nice woods that should work well enough, even if some visual effect shows up, considering the tree cover and lack of popularity so...

Breakfast, grab phone, and off she goes. 

Walking to a park to intentionally do something that she was constantly thinking about not at all using was a curious experience, she found. 

The whole point of it was to get something controlled - ideally she could even do a quick test of whatever visual result she ended up getting - her instincts more or less gave a shrug and that the relevant calculations required sensory techniques to get the information that it needed to work, and that it would vary from session to session in a complicated way until some versions of complete mastery - and what that ended up showing on records and seeing how the start up happened would be valuable too, because the meditation method was something that could probably be pulled off in a lot wider contexts then just this. 

It was also a way to get time to think about what it meant if it worked - and... mostly just not think about it? 

She had something either way, but the outcome of this working was better, and that's the whole reason she was doing this. 

So, she stretched out her shoulders as she walked, hummed a little to herself, as she went through the streets to the little 'forest', and into a spot with a little tree stump to set up her phone on, which she promptly did, setting it to record. 

Alright. 

It's time.

She takes the time to... 'build' her stance, trying not to think about how silly that idea would have seemed to her a while ago at first glance, and takes a deep breath. 

This isn't something to rush, the only reason why it was so swift in the initial training was because of her guide and the better circumstances, and she has the time to ease herself into it slowly. 

In...

And Out. 

There's elemental details to how it works, but it's balanced between the five elements and yin and yang to make something stable and smooth inside, so just... 

In and out, out and in...

Commencing. 

Inhale, knees bent modestly, palms down up to shoulders, drifting in arms as they fall back to my side, Exhale. 

It's more then just this - ways to fortify, grasp, strike, force forward, even just gently relax out your shoulders and let your tension drain away - but this was still complete in itself, and that's not worth worrying about as the warmth gently slid into her muscles, recentering. 

The Wild Horse Parts Its Mane.

Inhale, shift weight to right foot together with left, hands circling around her chest following the intent in her eyes, energy soaking in a little deeper, step left, right hand down, in, left out and flow forward, exhale. Shift foot outward, Sink down, left palm forward, right to hip, inhale and set back again to do the whole series of motions in reverse with her other foot - 

Breathe as one with the world, and follow the steps - 

She shifted to the motions of the White Crane Spreads Its Wings to the Earth Brushing Step to the fifth to the sixth onwards and through the full series of motions as a soft ache settled in. 

It wasn't quite like what she would expect of a cultivation technique - the strain was almost more mental then physical, every physical strain equally matched by a reinforcing healing fortifying vigor drawn up through her body, but there was still... something in her body that made it feel like it was too full of energy, like she had skipped the first stage of exhaustion and just experienced the lingering burn left over after the tiredness and sharp pain multiplied a few fold and...

She stumbled a little as she faintly noticed a slowly then swiftly disspating aura of energy around her. 

One more step still left. 

She sat down on the leaf-laden ground, sitting in a fairly comfortable spot against a relatively thick tree in a rough approximation of the lotus pose. 

Dive in, she said - and so she did - the physical experience trading out for a more spiritual one, attuning to the currents of the wrold, breathing in the evergy of heaven and earth as she worked to condense the energy as she was taught - a thick thread of energy forming near her center. 

Breathe, don't force it, follow the dao in all things - 

and she did, the thread going to her heart, and somewhere there it linked in, and... 

Success.

There as the theoretical possibilty of doing more - forcing more threads in, refinements of energy besides that catalyzed with the physical practice - but she could feel something nastier then simple sweat caked on her skin and a bit of bile in her throat, and she was frankly just... exhausted.

She laughed strainedly, and let tears start to fall. 

I really should have brought a bottle of water here, really. Alas.

She grabbed her phone, stopping the recording, and took a moment to inspect herself with the selfie camera. 

Her face was covered with these thin streaks of black sludge, her hair matted with the same... 'impurities', alongside the grime coating the rest of her skin. 

The smell wasn't exactly ideal either - the sort of offensive scent that reminded her of excrement that she bet was going to soil her clothes pretty badly, too. 

Goddess, she needed a bloody shower. 

But more importantly...

It had worked.

Knowing it academically via some absurd magic intuitions was one thing but...

She was a cultivator now.

An actual cultivator on the path to immortality, refining her body to something stronger and better, practicing her spirituality for... hundred days foundation building, she thought? 

She shook her head. 

She didn't know anything about this, not really, but...

She laughed brightly, and grinned. 

She was doing it. 

So let's see what happened as I did it. 

The recording on her phone was.. not ideal - the cover of the trees made the lighting pretty poor, and the motions weren't especially well captured with the changes in the conditions and the angle wasn't great but...

She could see herself walking up as normal and... when she started breathing something about the lighting changed? It was hard to parse under all of the layers of computational photography that cameras on phones had these days, but even beyond the changes from the branches moving around in the canopy, the light sort of... gathered, around her, and as she did her breathing it faded into a the blue of her eyes, a subtle aura that emitted around her and added little currents as she went through each action - every aura something that looked like it would be something that could be unleashed if used in the right combative form, as best she could tell, though the aura rippled in and out of her skin as the impurities just sort of... oozed out of her skin as she went, starting with something that made her look just a little dirty to streaks of gunk, tending to increase a bit more as each motion completed through the exhales. 

She chastitised herself a little at forgetting about this - especially since water would help with normal exercise, so she just...

Groaned a little, pocketed her phone and walked back to her house, kicking out her legs to get the overstretched feeling out and rubbed out the worst of the impurities - hopefully she could just get away with being sweaty and grimey in the normal sense if anyone saw her. 

She trudged back home, breathing using the patterns as best she can - she doubted that she'd get much results out of it, but there were minor benefits in theory even for the mundane version so...

Her shoulders slumped down a little as she finally wrenched open her door, and took a moment to rally her energy to bound up and into her shower, turning the water all the way to hot just because she could and it might help, too - shucking off her probably permanently ruined clothes before reaching her hand in to touch the streams of water. 

Oooh that's interesting.

Her skin was... just a little bit more sensitive, but it didn't quite hurt as much as it ought? It felt light and smooth and soft and even supple as she ran her fingertips across each other, blinking as she noticed that the callouses were gone. 

....She grinned a little, and just stepped into the stream of water. 

Ahhhhhhhhh...~

Gosh it was nice - especially since it gave her an excellent showcase of so many of the little things that had changed - the way that she could half-hear every drop of water against her skin alongside how much she could feel it, the more noticeable taste of dew of her tongue and an odd opposite feeling of being both loosely comfortable in her skin and yet have it tight and hanging just right on her now-enhanced curves, and... is that the start of proper abs? 

To think...

And wandering lower...

Her hand gently traces across her sex, feeling the little jolts of pleasure and the eager responsiveness that makes her feel like a teenager again. Even beyond that though... 

It's all there in a way that she never would have expected - each little bit of her folds were sensitive, not just in the way that made them perk up to light brushes of fingertips but with that fullness of sensation it was so hard to get without angling everything just right and going hard enough that it was hard to discern from the mass of sensation that came with, and it wasn't painful or uncomfortable, it was just... 

nice.

As she gently washed it out, there was just... a few little differences here and there, from the smoother skin to the crevices finally being clear of all the little ickiness they normally accumulated, to an added supple quality to the point where she was fairly sure she didn't have hair follicles down there at all. 

Gosh she was excited to get to take this on a ride - once she figured out if she needed a special artifact dildo to it safely, at least. 

She let herself chuckle bemusedly. 

That'd be a whole different dimension of awkward to ask around about. 

She ruffled her hair, throwing on some shampoo to clean it off and enjoyed the way her hair positively glistened in the light, like the silver she named herself after in truth.

This will be a good life after all...

She went through the process of conditioning - she wasn't even sure it would help, but no reason to be neglectufl if it didn't, and besueds - relaxing with hte water pouring down her skin was hardly the worst use of her time she could get up to - so...

She smiled a little lazily, turned off the faucet, and stepped out of the shower to towel herself off. 

Alright. Throw on a now-pleasantly-tight t-shirt, some nice yoga pants, and then...

Let's see how this all goes.

Hey. 

Sorry for not talking when I first showed up here - there's a lot to unpack here so... 

I guess I'll just start from the beginning? 

I think I got accidentally invited here, and when I was reading through the resources pins and I had some sort of vision from the slides in the resources about the 24 flowing fists and it worked  - I got some sort of impurity sludge coming out of my body and I feel way better now after completing a strand but I have no idea about basically anything apart from the methods inside there - and if one of your resources can drag me away like that...

Could you please help me, seniors? 

Oo someone figured out how to cultivate that??