CHAPTER 35: A MUCH LARGER WORLD

The maps created questions.

History made them worse.

Joe expected to find ordinary records of kings, wars, tax changes, famines, border disputes and succession struggles, and the books provided all of them. What he did not find was a satisfying explanation for how the current world had become what it was.

The monarchy alone raised problems.

According to the records Joe could access, the same ruling dynasty had existed for approximately fifteen hundred years.

He checked the date against another history.

The second author disagreed about some of the earliest rulers and clearly disliked one branch of the royal family, but the general timeline remained the same.

More than a millennium.

Possibly fifteen centuries.

Joe found that extraordinary.

His previous world had seen dynasties survive for centuries, and institutions sometimes lasted much longer, but fifteen hundred years of recognizable continuity under one ruling house demanded an explanation. Histories recorded rebellions, civil conflicts, succession wars and regional families powerful enough to challenge royal authority.

Yet the dynasty remained.

Joe wrote one short line on his board.

Martial strength?

It was speculation, so he added a question mark.

If martial cultivation eventually produced individuals capable of changing battles personally, political stability might work very differently from anything Joe had known before. Replacing a dynasty might require more than capturing capital or defeating an army. Perhaps it required defeating practitioners whom ordinary military force could barely threaten.

Joe had no evidence yet.

The possibility remained useful.

What came before the monarchy was even less clear.

The books mentioned older kingdoms, ruined cities and forgotten peoples, but almost nothing explained the deeper origins of civilization. Joe found no convincing history of how martial exercises were first developed, no detailed account of humanity's earliest settlements and very little discussion of anything preceding the great states that eventually became part of the current kingdom.

Even the old history seemed to begin halfway through the story.

Joe disliked missing beginnings.

There was nothing he could do about it for now.

The natural-history records produced another mystery.

Animals sometimes changed.

Different writers used different names. Some called them spirit-touched beasts, others changed beasts, while a few used terms Joe mentally translated as mutations.

He preferred the last description because it assumed less about the cause.

The practical results were much clearer than the terminology.

Some animals became larger, faster, tougher or dramatically stronger than ordinary members of their species. A handful of accounts described sharper senses, strange physical adaptations or behavior that suggested greater intelligence.

The writers often connected these changes with places where natural spirituality seemed particularly active or with animals that had somehow developed a stronger relationship to it.

Joe treated those explanations cautiously.

The Starlight stone did not measure spirituality numerically. It only established whether the qualification necessary to use blood energy existed.

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The books, however, used terms like strong, rich and dense without clearly explaining what they were measuring.

The explanation might be wrong.

The phenomenon probably was not.

Too many unrelated records described similar creatures.

Whatever caused the changes, animals appeared to experience them more frequently than humans. That made some intuitive sense if spirituality existed throughout nature rather than belonging only to people.

Humans nevertheless controlled most settled territory.

Joe did not find that mysterious.

A dangerous animal possessed its body and whatever natural advantage it gained.

Humans possessed tools, weapons, walls, organizations, written knowledge and martial methods that could be intentionally taught to generation after generation of qualified practitioners.

Nature might produce one exceptionally dangerous beast.

Civilization could deliberately produce trained fighters repeatedly.

Knowledge accumulated.

That advantage was enormous.

The conclusion also made the empty spaces on the state map more unsettling.

Ten days to the nearest major city no longer meant ten days through harmless countryside.

One travel journal contained a stranger claim.

Most of the writer's account sounded believable enough. He described mountain passes, road conditions, distant settlements and several encounters with dangerous animals.

Then he claimed to have met an immortal.

Joe read the section twice.

The supposed immortal crossed a river without touching the water, spoke of kingdoms as though they were neighboring villages and disappeared after offering several pieces of advice.

Two of those supposedly profound lessons sounded suspiciously like ordinary proverbs.

Joe closed the book.

Then he opened it again.

Ren noticed.

"Bad book?"

"Parts of it."

"Then don't read those parts."

"The first half is useful."

"That doesn't make the second half true."

Joe wrote a short note anyway.

Immortals — probably story. Keep in mind.

Ren looked at his board.

"You believe that?"

"No."

"Then why write it?"

Joe thought about waking in another world with memories of a previous life.

"I've already had to revise my definition of impossible once."

Ren took a slow drink of tea. "That's how foolish stories catch intelligent people."

Joe considered that.

"Sometimes foolish stories also preserve one true detail."

"Which makes them more dangerous, not less."

Joe smiled.

He kept the note.

The martial books were immediately more useful.

The Skin Tempering method taught by Theodere was only one among many.

Joe had expected that.

What interested him was the difference between ordinary and superior methods.

Theodere's inheritance was practical, stable and relatively safe. It was suitable for village trainees who lacked unlimited medicine, specialized instructors or expensive supporting techniques.

It was not considered a superior Skin Tempering inheritance.

Better methods supposedly distributed blood energy through the skin more evenly, wasted less energy during each tempering cycle and reduced the weaker areas that remained when the stage was completed.

The Hall's method did not deliberately leave flaws.

The problem was control and anatomy.

Large regions of the torso were comparatively easy to temper. Thin, complicated or constantly moving areas were much harder. A practitioner who used an ordinary method and advanced too quickly could technically complete Skin Tempering while still leaving some parts significantly weaker than others.

Superior methods reduced those differences.

One text described an excellent Skin Tempering foundation as having "no obvious gate for blade or fist."

Joe doubted the phrase was literal. An eyelid could not sensibly possess the same structure as a palm.

But the principle was obvious.

Uniformity mattered.

Then Joe discovered that Skin Tempering Completion did not always mean moving immediately to Muscle Tempering.

Some practitioners repeated the entire stage.

After completing the first tempering, they deliberately went through the skin again, reinforcing tissue that had already adapted once. A second complete pass could increase density, reduce weak areas and improve how efficiently blood energy moved through the outer tissues.

A rare few supposedly repeated the stage more than twice.

Joe immediately understood the attraction.

He also understood why most people did not do it.

Every additional tempering cost time, medicine, food and blood energy. More importantly, every year spent perfecting the skin was a year not spent moving through Muscle and Bone toward Internal Organ Tempering.

The practical cutoff around the mid-thirties existed for a reason. Organs aged, injuries accumulated and the body gradually became less forgiving. A practitioner could build an exceptional Skin foundation and still fail completely if he arrived at the dangerous Internal Organ stage too late.

Joe thought of Alex.

Alex had already reached Late Skin Tempering at fifteen, which was extraordinary by Green Hollow standards.

Even so, Joe doubted Alex could afford to spend years tempering his skin two or three complete times. He still had Muscle, Bone and Internal Organ Tempering ahead of him.

For ordinary talented practitioners, moving forward mattered.

Joe's situation might be different.

Every Hard Work Pays Off meant genuine effort continued producing progress.

No Regression preserved correct gains.

Perfect Body supported unusually strong development and recovery.

Most importantly, Joe was fast.

If his current pace continued, a second complete Skin Tempering might cost him far less than it cost another practitioner.

Perhaps even a third.

Joe refused to decide before completing the first one.

Anything else would-be speculation built on top of more speculation.

Still, the possibility changed the way he viewed cultivation.

Advancement was not always about reaching the next stage as quickly as possible.

A stronger foundation could make every later stage easier.

Sometimes spending more time on one step meant beginning every step after it was farther ahead.