Limitless Cultivation System: From Trash to Immortal

The hawk’s eye held on the cliff for a count of three before the bird angled its head into the wind and let the thermal lift it away.

Lin Xuan stayed where he was for the full thirty seconds after the silhouette dropped behind the next ridge. He counted thirty more. Pathfinder’s pressure rings, which had bloomed faintly red while the bird had been over his head, faded out one at a time.

[ Clear. ]

He moved down the cliff the way he had come up, slow on the holds Pathfinder still marked, faster on the stretches the bird had no business inspecting twice. By the time he reached the scree, the sky behind the ridge had shifted from indigo to a paler grey that he could not yet call dawn.

He found a wedge of overhang half a stone’s throw from the base of the cliff, sheltered from the wind on three sides, and dropped onto the dirt with the weight of someone who had earned a sit. Plain Steel went across his lap. He pulled the small wrapped bundle of rations from inside his robe and unwrapped it.

Jerky. Rice cake. A boiled egg. The strip of dried plum Lian always tucked in without telling him.

He ate.

[ The hawk did not see you, in case the math wasn’t clear. ]

’I noticed.’

He chewed the jerky and watched the ridge to the north where the hawk had landed. He could not see the nest from here, but he could see the spot on the air the hawk had vanished into, and that was enough to start mapping the next part of the operation.

The hawk came out twice while he ate. Once to circle a thermal east of the ridge, drifting wide before turning back. Once more in a tighter loop closer to the nest itself, the way a watchman makes a final sweep before turning in. The second loop ended with the hawk dropping behind the rim and not reappearing.

’Tucked in for the morning.’

[ The window from now until midday is yours. ]

He wrapped the rest of the rations and stood. His Qi had stopped pulsing in his fingertips. The body, having stolen eight minutes when it had been offered five, agreed to walk again.

’Where exactly?’

[ Two crests north. High ledge. Most of it is not climbing. It’s approach. This part isn’t about strength, Xuan. ]

He grunted, set Plain Steel back on his shoulder, and started north.

The next half hour Pathfinder ran a layer he had not seen yet.

When the yellow markers came up, they sat under a translucent overlay of concentric rings centered on him, expanding outward in soft pulses every time he set down a foot or shifted his Qi. Each ring carried a colour: green if it was below the threshold a creature like the hawk could detect, yellow if it was creeping into range, red if it was loud enough to put him on a menu.

The first ten paces ran red.

He stopped. He breathed.

[ You are loud. Stage Seven runs hot. Pull it down. ]

He pulled it down. A slow inhalation, the Qi drawn out of his hands and shoulders, packed back into the Dantian, capped tight. The rings paled.

[ Better. Now the feet. Heel before toe. Roll the weight. Don’t drop it. ]

He rolled the weight.

The rings stopped pulsing red. Yellow at the second ring. Green at the third. He moved another six paces and watched them stay yellow.

’This is going to take a while.’

[ It would have taken a Foundation Establishment Stage Three half a day to do what you’re doing in twenty minutes. Don’t complain. ]

’I’m not complaining. I’m marvelling.’

[ Move. ]

He moved.

By the time he reached the lip of the ledge below the nest, his Qi was a small, dense weight against the inside of his spine and his breathing had slowed to a count he hadn’t used since the breakthrough night. Pathfinder’s rings barely showed. Even the wind off the crag was louder than him.

He pulled himself onto the lip without making the rock complain.

The nest was bigger than he had expected. A wide, ragged platform of branches and pale bones lashed together with woven sinew, lined inside with feathers, scraps of fur, fragments of small prey the hawk had not yet finished with. The bird lay in the centre with its head tucked beneath one wing. Its breast rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm.

Pathfinder picked out one feather among dozens scattered across the nest floor. Not the bright tail feather. A smaller one near the rim, half buried under three others, with a hair-thin line of gold running the length of the shaft.

The Crimson Feather Quill. The one a hunt had left behind. It rested half a body-length from the hawk’s head.

[ Hands first. Slow. The rings just turned yellow because you held your breath. Breathe. ]

He breathed.

He extended his right arm over the lip of the ledge and stretched along the floor of the nest. His fingers crossed the rim. His sleeve did not. He moved another two inches.

Pathfinder gave him the angle. Index and middle finger to slide under the quill, thumb to pinch the base, lift without dragging.

He reached.

His fingertips kissed the shaft.

The hawk inhaled.

Nothing dramatic. A longer breath than the last one. But the rush of air through its lungs moved the loose feathers around its head, and the quill under his fingertips rolled half a hand-width into the nest, sliding out from under his pinch and lodging between two larger feathers deeper in.

The hawk’s left eye opened a slit.

Lin Xuan froze. Every part of him that had been about to move stopped moving. The hand half-reached into the nest. The breath caught against the back of his teeth. Pathfinder’s rings dropped to flat green in the half second it took him to fold his Qi tighter.

The hawk’s slit-eye swept the lip of the nest, tracked the sky, tracked the wind, and found nothing in any of it. The eye closed.

He waited a count of twenty by Mira’s steady tick and withdrew his hand the way he had extended it, with no quill in his palm. He slid back along the ledge and crouched behind the crag.

He let himself breathe.

’Falling Stars.’

[ No. ]

’Seven cuts. Ten seconds. I have the angle. I have the steps. I can plant four points around the nest and three above and end this in two breaths.’

[ Xuan. No. ]

’It is right there.’

[ Three reasons. ]

[ One. A hawk under attack throws its leading-edge feathers in the first stoop. Those are blades. Stage Seven or not, they will open your femoral artery before you land your second step. ]

[ Two. Falling Stars costs you thirty-five percent of your Dantian. You don’t have that capacity to give before the Tusker, which is sixty kilos of armoured boar you have to put down inside one minute or the plate goes inert. You spend it here, you fail the third component. ]

[ Three. The quill carries the resonance of a calm bird. Kill the hawk and the resonance breaks. The shaft goes hollow inside an hour. You’ll have a pretty feather and an empty trip. ]

A small pause.

[ The rage is fair. The rage is also a luxury this morning. Put it down. Wait the cycle. We are going to do this properly. ]

He set his forehead against the cold rock and let the breath out in three slow pulls.

’I hate that you are correct.’

[ I know. Watch the head. When it sinks completely under the wing and the breast slows by a third, that’s the deep cycle. I’ll mark it. ]

He watched.

The hawk’s head shifted twice. The first shift made his pulse jump. The second was the one Mira had described. The head sank under the wing, the breast rhythm dropped to a slow swell, and a small blue marker lit in his vision.

[ Now. ]

He moved, slower than the first time. Every joint logged against the rock. Pathfinder redrew the route from a different angle, along a slim ridge that came in from above the nest, used the shadow of the rim as cover, and approached the quill from the opposite flank.

His Qi did not pulse the rings once.

He reached the new approach. Hand over the rim. The hawk’s head three hand-widths from his fingers, and the bird did not stir. The quill, now half buried between two larger feathers, was still within reach if he was willing to be patient about it.

He was willing.

Index finger under the shaft. The quill resisted for the fraction of a second before sliding free. Thumb to the base. Lift, not pull.

The feather came out.

He drew it back across the lip without rotating his wrist, without disturbing the feathers around it, without moving anything else inside the nest. He retreated the way he had come, one body-length at a time, ridge to ledge to crag to overhang. Three crags out from the nest, well below the line of sight, he let himself look at the quill in his palm.

The hair-thin gold line ran the length of the shaft. When he held it up against the dawn light, the line shimmered. Resonance, as Mira had said. The Qi of a small dawn hunt the bird had taken yesterday, vibrating inside the hollow.

He wrapped the quill in a strip of dark cloth and slid it into his inner sleeve beside the phial of Marrow.

A panel bloomed.

[ Crimson Feather Quill obtained. ]

[ Plain Steel Reforge Components: 2 / 3 ]

[ Bestiary partial entry: Cinder Hawk — observed, undisturbed. +10 OP ]

’Two down.’

[ One to go. ]