...Oh. I suppose I should have figured. 

Look forward to seeing you. 

Grabbing a bunch of apples, plums, and pears to just bite into, letting the juice trickle down her cheek was oddly, almost primally reassuring.  Something about it made a little bit more energy just sort of trickle into her core, her stomach oddly empty as she devoured more and more of the food. 

She stimmed a little, too, letting herself pace with her light and smooth feet across the floor, the ease of motion still making it a little shocking. 

There were... a lot of instincts in her head now, and to some extent it was screaming that the best way to adapt to her bodies changes was to cultivate - and there was no reason to really doubt that but...

Of course, the problem with adapting using a body tempering technique was that was another way to get waves of changes, and that's fine - cultivating was good and she really wanted to get into it but there was only so much that it made sense to push...

So she walked, and paced, 'til the rythm of her breath slowly let her calm, not quite using the technique, because she didn't want to adjust her mind too much but...

Still. 

Trying out the 24 flowing fists again with a full stomach, a water bottle on hand and the benefits pass of body refinement was... odd, though that wasn't all there was to it. 

Resetting her expectations of what it was, from the faint-traces of memories of what was probably the 'original' basis of the flowing motions (from tai chi chuan, her memories helpfully supplied) and from proceeding from the name and instinctive pace for first practicing the art gave it a very different impression from doing it anew with a faster, harder pace, or at least one a lot less concerned with accomodating problems that no longer existed. 

The movements were still slow, essentially, something far slower then what she could accomplish even before all of this, they still followed the deep breaths that seemed just as much part of the form as the physical motions or coursing energy, there was no need to force her body to stretch or still nearly as much, or to force her lung capacity to increase to more naturally fit into the motions, she simply moved, every motion natural not just as a possibility or the next item on the list but because there's a completeness to it, a firmness rising and falling that made it feel so much more focused, everything there something that could deflect, parry or facilitate a blow that she knew would hit hard with the weight of her spirit behind it, though there was still a long time to go before she'd be manifesting the more... extreme versions of the abilities within. 

Despite the slivers of black shooting through her sweat, she felt cleaner then she'd been in a long time as she sat to meditate, her energy neaerly overflowing before being tamed with each breath guiding it back into control, focusing down into the aperture of her heart - and... 

Strand formed.

Focus, recall the process, internalize the knowledge, guide my breath with hands and feel the heart still going, the elements coming in and staying, taking hold of the rest of the energy still there even after the formation of the strand, full breaths in nose and mouth, stabilize it, gently glide the energy in place like the brush of a palm, hold it as the strain starts coming in harder, and... 

Third strand created. 

And exhale-cough-slump-drawn-in-just-a-little-draw-from-pulse-focus-qi-focus-blood-stay-safe. 

...Okay. 

Okay. 

Okay. 

She rested there for a while, feeling how thin she was stretched out as she chugged down a good deal of water with slightly trembling hands. 

So that's what cultivating to your limit felt like. 

She smiled a little despite herself, grinning a little unfocusedly. 

I can work with that. 

She took a moment to run her hands over her chest, feeling the racing of her fuller-heart, her...

blush

Substantially heftier breasts and yep those are abs, not quite the complete version she was expecting but something that she knew would be 'washboard' someday. 

Goodness this was nice.

That was...

She checks her phone. 

That was like an hour and half, just for the actual cultivation, and probably another ten-twenty percent of that thrown for... reeling. 

Probably worth checking in on the chat about this all, at least after a shower.

Hey - just got back from cultivating another 2 strands - that was a lot. Felt like my energy was so... thinned out and I'm pretty spent, and might have even avoided something nastier - any advice for mundane things that I can do to help with that? 

It really depends on how badly you overstrained and your realm - I find that mostly I just practice katas at a lower level as a cool-down exercise. 

...

I wonder why it isn't called a "warm-down" excercise instead, since that ought to be logically equivalent. 

Some use things like a Gentle Dao Pill - I make large batches of Constitution Calming Capsules for myself that equalize my energies and get it up to a more suitable level, but that's more of a custom solution then anything else. 

You are using a Taoist art, right?

@Steely Student

Yeah.

I expect there's a breathing method in there that should be somewhat specialized for that - traditionally, looking for an elemental balancing method and basic regeneration of your mental energy. There might also be something you can do with biocontrol or such that might help the absolute speed of your recovery, if not something that is especially practical for this sort of thing. 

Also, two strands on your second day together? 

That's rather impressive, @Moonsilver.

Oh it is? 

Yeah - normally there'd be a good stretch of time where you can only do one per day, or at least one at a time, though I'm sure this server hosts some exceptions to that rule - took me... 'til my thirty-fifth day, I think, 'til I was able to get 2, though it really does accelerate from there quite quickly - got through to beyond mortal at 212 after about four months - really got helped by Resplendent Solar Soldier's help and instinctively focusing on optimizing thread-size a little agressively when bottlenecked - the quality of it isn't quite as ideal as you'd normally expect for that few, but it is a real reflection of quality.

nod nod

I think I remember seeing that it was usually 300? That's quite a bit of an edge, I'd expect...

It is. It's always good to get to get those as soon as possible, though...

I'm curious if anyone else would like to volunteer the counts of threads they had, going through foundation building? 

157, IIRC. Poss. done > that if rec. hunt. 

It's always so absurd to see your talent laid out so starkly, Ruby. 

I took 171 strands to form my foundation, personally - didn't experience too much of a bottleneck, if only because Glacial Glave Grandmaster made the effort to help the process along in my case specifically, taking a bit less then a month for it all and not encountering much of an opening bottleneck. 

999

tilt head

draws back

Oh...? 

I'm sure there's some clever trick to why that was a good idea but I've frankly never heard of such a thing and I'm eager to learn.

So ok. 
The whole conception of 'filling' the heart apeture is weird, 'cause it's not exactly a normal physical thing, yeah? You just sorta put the strands in the heart and they go in and establish, but there's no like, notion of optimal thread packing efficiency, or the existing strands somehow 'getting in the way' of you putting in a new one. 
Can't do the whole bit on this properly to the juniors, but basically it's sorta-kinda a conceptual receptacle for the strands themselves that has a bunch of criteria for relative fullness relating to e.g. interferometry, and the 'quality' and 'volume' and yes quantity of the strands. Conventionally, you want to max out the parameters for quality and volume, since that's the traditional way to do it, plus it's inherently kinda faster and more something that builds agressively on itself and synergizes with a lot of conceptual frameworks as well etc etc. 
But like...
You don't have to do that. 
The technique I was using for my foundation kinda sucked at the whole 'volume' thing, and in a few other areas besides, so I just... went and tried that, and forged my own path from there. 
Went for 999 'cause that's the last num 'within an order of magnitude' of the sort of answers geniuses get and I want to use that as my snide reply :p
(Plus the diminishing returns kick in ~badly must past there and numerological reasons and yeah yeah.) 
After patches throughout the years and stuff, that bit of my foundation is prob. of about the same grade as yours, RSS, ignoring the bennies of my realm. 

Interesting!

Ah seniors are amazing as always - though that sounds like the sort of thing that would be about as annoying as it is helpful. 

@Mindful Master Maid

Ouch that a lil too real. 

Got a buncha interesting techniques out of it, just not...

Something I expect I would even want to teach an apprentice, beyond as a bitta knowledge on more esosteric possibities. 

Who knows, something like that could eventually create an interesting mutant lineage...

laughs

Yeah that can be horrifyingly fascinating...