Cultivation Without Heaven

The Path of Elementalism was a labyrinth of complexity. The dantian served as the wellspring of elemental energy, a central node from which power flowed. Yet, no two elements traveled the same path through the body.

Fire, Wan Juo's element, was said to be the most straightforward. Gather energy in the dantian, circulate it through the heart, and then push it into the opened meridians that spiraled out like tributaries. Simple in theory. But in practice? It was punishing. Fire was temperamental, eager to leap ahead, but quick to destroy if mishandled.

And worse, Wan Juo's dantian refused to move.

No matter how much he meditated or breathed in the energy-rich air of the academy grounds, his dantian remained locked. Still. Empty. Dormant.

He stood behind his dormitory, where no one bothered to look.

The official training fields were on the east side of the compound, surrounded by banners bearing sect crests and training puppets with painted cores. They were always filled with noise. Grunts, clashes, encouragements, and the constant spiritual hum of clashing elements. Too loud. Too exposed.

But here, at the back of the dorms… past the laundry lines and the crumbling storage shed… was a forgotten patch of earth. It wasn't even paved. Mud-caked in some areas. Dusty in others. Nothing but an old, leafless tree stood here, gnarled like an arthritic finger pointing at the heavens.

That tree was his companion.

It was the only place where the sky was unobstructed. No towers, no banners, no watchful eyes. Just raw wind and quiet. That mattered. Wan Juo didn't want to be seen. Not until he figured out what was wrong with him.

Not until he made something out of nothing.

He sat with his back against the old tree's trunk, arms resting on his knees. His breathing was calm, but his mind wasn't.

Why won't it move? he thought again, for the hundredth time.

He reached toward his dantian with his will, trying to feel for the familiar flicker of heat, the sign that fire energy was gathering. Nothing. Just silence. Like knocking on a door that no longer had a house behind it.

He opened his eyes.

The twig caught his attention.

It had fallen from the tree just beside him, no thicker than a writing brush, brittle and uneven. He picked it up without much thought, twirling it lightly in his fingers.

To anyone else, it would've looked like a stick.

To Wan Juo, it looked like a sword.

He believed, deeply, that anything could be a weapon if wielded with enough conviction. He had read about masters who killed with chopsticks. Warriors who fought off spirit beasts with cooking knives. Monks who used prayer beads like chains.

So why not a twig?

Anything can become a sword, he told himself. If my will is strong enough…

But what he didn't know was that fire didn't obey willpower alone.

Fire demanded harmony, structure, and balance.

And a twig was just a twig.

He exhaled slowly.

Then, the ritual began.

The first step was resonance.

To refine a sword with elemental energy, the cultivator had to become the sword, match it in thought, in breath, in spirit. The sword wasn't a tool. It was an extension. A mirror.

So he let his thoughts narrow. He imagined the line of the twig as the line of his body: long, inflexible, sharp. His muscles began to respond, tensing, aligning. His breath slowed, each inhale as measured as a strike, each exhale as controlled as a guard.

Then came the second step: observation.

This was where things became nearly unbearable. Wan Juo had trained his body, endured pain, hunger, and the shame of failure, but dual concentration was a battlefield of the mind. It wasn't just multitasking.

It was forcing two separate truths to exist at the same time. Part of his awareness had to completely fuse with the twig, matching its weight, its feel, its very grain, while the other part rose above it like a dispassionate judge.

The split strained him to his core. His vision wavered. A single lapse of attention meant the resonance shattered instantly. Cold sweat broke across his back, not from fear, but from the brutal mental pressure of holding two identities at once.

His breath trembled slightly, as if his lungs weren't sure which part of him they belonged to.

It was like trying to walk on a tightrope, blindfolded, while reading a book upside down. A mental paradox, like trying to fall asleep while calculating the depth of your own heartbeat.

His mind split. One part merged with the twig. The other hovered above it, examining its surface grain, its asymmetry, its damp edges.

The air around him warmed.

He drew elemental fire, not from his dantian, which remained as lifeless as stone, but directly from the world around him. A reckless method. A cheat, some might call it.

But he didn't care.

The moment fire entered his chest, his heart twitched.

It was like swallowing molten metal.

His breath caught, throat constricting as his body tried to reject the foreign, unrefined elemental surge. There was no buffer. No control.

Just raw fire, skipping the core and going straight into the engine.

Still, he did not stop.

The twig began to glow. Faint orange lines traced along its bark, forming patterns that almost resembled runes… but weren't. They were scars. Stress fractures of unstable energy.

He gripped it tighter.

The air around him shimmered with heat, blurring the edges of the tree behind him. His pupils shrank. His heart beat once, hard, sending a pulse of fire through his veins.

Then…

Crack.

The twig exploded.

Not a dramatic burst. More like a firecracker in a closed palm.

Sharp splinters tore across his hand, digging shallow trenches into his skin. One shard nicked his cheek. Smoke curled from his knuckles.

His body jerked back from the shock, but he didn't cry out.

He stared at his hand. Blood ran in thin lines between his fingers, bright against the blackened bark.

"...Too weak," he whispered.

Not himself. The twig.

But deep inside, a colder voice whispered a second truth: It wasn't just the twig.

Still breathing heavily, Wan Juo reached for another.

This time, he didn't impose his will on it. He didn't make it a sword.

He let it be what it was.

He closed his eyes.

He felt the fire around him, not as fuel to be consumed, but as presence. As warmth. As rhythm. And slowly, gently, he drew it in, not through force, but through resonance.

His heart tightened again, but didn't spasm. Not like before.

This time, the twig didn't glow. It pulsed. A soft, ember-like throb. Not enough to burn. But enough to hold.

He opened his eyes.

The tree loomed above him, branches swaying like ancient arms. The breeze whistled past, cool and uncaring.

Wan Juo sat in silence.

The path ahead was longer than he thought.

But for now… the twig didn't explode.

And that was enough.

Wan Juo leaned his head back against the tree and let out a slow breath.

The warmth in his chest had stabilized. The twig, still intact, pulsed faintly in his palm, alive, but tamed. For the first time in days, he felt something shift. Not victory or power, but possibility.

He exhaled again.

And then… the world tilted.

The ember in the twig flickered.

His vision narrowed into a pinpoint of red light… then expanded violently, pulsing like a burning sun behind his eyelids. His heart seized. Not a beat. A grip, as if an invisible fist had clenched around it. Fire surged, this time without form or invitation, and slammed into his meridians with brute force.

He tried to scream… but no air came.

Agony bloomed across his nerves. He felt heat in his bones. His ears rang. Blood began to trickle—first from one nostril, then his ears, then his eyes. Seven points of crimson seeped down his face, painting lines like a curse mark.

Then came the fall.

His body collapsed sideways, the twig rolling from his hands.

Silence.

Only the soft rustle of tree leaves. The faint warmth of fire dissipating into the dirt. A curled, still figure beneath the dead sky.

A few minutes later…

"Oi. What the hell kind of cultivation method involves leaking out of every hole in your face?"

Wan Juo's consciousness stirred.

He didn't open his eyes, not yet, but the voice was familiar. Loud. Irritating.

Elder Shen.

"Are you dead?" Shen prodded his side with a stick. Not gently. "Because I'm not carrying your body again. Last time my back nearly snapped, and I know you eat like a spirit boar in the canteen."

Wan Juo groaned.

"Ah! He lives." Shen crouched beside him, grinning as he nudged a bloody twig with the toe of his boot. "What did you do this time? Try to become the Flame God by channeling fire directly into your liver?"

Wan Juo cracked one eye open. The sky spun.

"I was… trying something," he mumbled.

"Oh, you tried something alright," Shen snorted. "You tried internal combustion, genius."

Wan Juo's lips twitched. "…Did it work?"

"Well," Shen said, looking around the scorched patch of ground and the blood on Wan Juo's collar, "if the goal was dying flamboyantly, then yes."

Wan Juo groaned again and turned his head away.

Shen sighed, finally kneeling beside him.

His voice softened, just slightly.

"But seriously… your heart? Are you insane? Drawing fire without a core filter, do you want to become a human candle?"

"I didn't have a choice," Wan Juo whispered.

"You had a choice," Shen said, shaking his head. "You just picked the stupid one."

Wan Juo didn't answer.

Shen stared at him for a long moment, then noticed something.

He reached down and picked up the second twig, the one that had not exploded.

He turned it over in his fingers, eyes narrowing.

"…This one's different," he muttered.

Wan Juo didn't move.

Shen frowned.

"No cracks. No burst marks. It's warm, but it's not burning."

He looked at Wan Juo again, and a strange thought crossed his face.

"…What the hell are you?"

Wan Juo didn't respond.

He was already unconscious again.