The young man still sat in meditation, contemplating cultivation. He had waffled back and forth on actually doing what he had thought. On one hand, he could pick an entirely different creature, something he might know more about, something with less pathos, or whatever it was the stupid bird had behind him. He could pick a spider, or a tree, make his own treant, or some kind of spider-kaiju thing.

  All right, perhaps spider was not a good idea. He really did not have much to go on there besides maybe one or two D&D tropes from when he was a kid, and he did not think a drider would be a good focus for this Spirit Forge path.

  But then he thought, well, why not use the bird? The raven, or crow, or whatever the hell it was. Corvid. He was just going to start calling it the Corvid. Ravens and crows were both Corvids anyway, right? Whatever. The thing was, once he sat down and actually thought about it, he realized he kind of knew a lot about this bird.

  In general, it was a trickster. A troublemaker for sure. And there were plenty of myths, ranging from Native American tales to Norse myths to even a few Asian legends he had come across, where ravens or crows were always in the role of trickster, messenger, harbinger, or odd cosmic helper.

  And so far, the asshole bird seemed to fit that mold very well.

  Still, would it be safer to pick something else? Like a dog or a tiger? There was a lot of leeway with this cultivation technique, maybe too much. But that was the point, he realized. From what he understood, and from what the three women had told him, cultivation was not only about what existed, but also about what was perceived and believed. Even the Corvid had said something along those lines.

  It would be proper, in a way. It was the Corvid’s fault that he was here, on one hand. But if the stupid bird had not intervened, he would still be that broken husk of a man.

  Sighing, he contemplated a few different animals. The black dog from that old Eurasian legend came to mind, though he could not remember exactly which region it came from. Still, that one was more horror than anything, and he definitely did not want something like that in his life. He had enough weirdness already.

  Opening his eyes slightly, still maintaining that thin thread of meditation, he looked at the water, the trees, the quiet sway of branches moving with the breeze. The women had said the forest was kind of an entity, alive in its own way. Not just individual trees, but a whole. The Great Green was some sort of living something.

  That opened things up to a lot of interpretation.

  He assumed that the vaguer the starting concept or creature, the longer it would take, the harder it would be, but maybe the more rewarding. Still, he was not going to pick the Great Green itself, or any type of plant, because what did plants even think about?

  "What did plants even think about?"

  So after circling back again and again, through dozens of animals, spirits, myths, and mental pictures, he eventually came back around to the Corvid.

  He had almost chosen a butterfly, really, because nobody suspects the butterfly. But no. The Corvid.

  So he sat there and contemplated exactly what his Corvid, his interpretation of the Corvid, would be. In and of itself, the Corvid was semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic. Cheap cartoon logic from an old movie, maybe, but the point still stood. It was powerful. The fact that it could trick the three beings who had started this whole mess, survive the Tribulation, protect him during that same Tribulation, and still be strong enough afterwards to continue doing whatever its goals were… that spoke to power far beyond what he could comprehend.

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  So, step one: the Corvid was powerful.

  Possibly something up there with the Heavens themselves. A higher being for sure. How high, he did not know, but it was definitely up there. Maybe it was a concept, or the embodiment of a Law, or something like that. He was not sure, but he did not have to be. He just had to know that the Corvid could do certain things, and that these things were real enough to be part of his cultivation.

  It enacted changes.

  It hid things.

  It hid itself.

  It could protect when needed.

  It could sacrifice.

  It could guide, sort of.

  It was a total douchebag when it guided, but that did not erase the fact that it could.

  And for some stupid reason he could not explain, he actually liked the damn thing.

  His mind wandered to the various myths he remembered. The Raven who stole the sun. The Raven who carried knowledge. Odin’s ravens, who saw the world. The mysterious crows of old European villages. Tricksters who pushed people toward transformation, for better or for worse. Every little scrap of folklore he could remember, he folded into this mental image of his Corvid.

  He sank deeper into meditation, focusing on the creature. Focusing on the Corvid. Focusing on his Corvid.

  Then he started practicing the breathing techniques that the Spirit Forge path required for taking in Qi. So he did:

  Breathe in: this is my bird.

  Breathe out: this is what it is.

  Breathe in: feel the energy suffuse the body.

  Breathe out: let go of anything bad, anything unneeded.

  Breathe in: this is my creation, this is my concept.

  Breathe out: these are the things that hold me back.

  On and on he did this.

  At first, it was slow. Inefficient. He had no background in this. His breaths were uneven, his concentration wavered, and his thoughts drifted. But bit by bit, breath by breath, he found a rhythm.

  The forest around him seemed quieter. Or perhaps he was simply more aware of the quiet.

  The air felt thicker, as though charged with something he had never perceived before. It shimmered at the edges of his senses, like heat ripples on asphalt back in his old world, except cooler and lighter.

  Eventually, he felt something enter him for the first time. Thin strands of Qi, faint, gentle, tentative. They drifted through him, brushing along his meridians. He expected resistance, or pain, or at least some kind of blockage, but his pathways were pristine. They had been scoured clean by the Tribulation, opened all at once like channels carved through stone by a sudden flood.

  What should have taken months of painful stop-and-start attempts began working almost immediately.

  Day bled into night, night into day, without him noticing.

  The pond rippled gently beside him. The wind shifted. Insects hummed. The trees creaked with the subtle movements of the world. But none of it touched him.

  He breathed.

  He envisioned.

  He built the shape of the Corvid inside himself.

  And the Qi flowed.

  Three days passed, though he did not realize it. He remained still, unaware of his body stiffening, of time slipping by. Even his hunger and thirst dulled, smothered by the slow, steady forging of his inner world.

  The Qi drew itself inward, weaving through him, binding and settling into the cracked, dry-looking anvil that sat inside his dantian.

  At the end of the third day, something changed.

  Inside his inner world, he felt a faint pressure. A vibration like a heartbeat. Then, for the first time, he heard an anvil ring.

  One clear, sharp note.

  The cracked anvil in his Dantian shuddered and brightened, as though struck by a hammer forged of light. And on its face, an image appeared:

  A Corvid.

  Not perfect.

  Not detailed.

  More a silhouette, or a symbol.

  But it was his.

  And it was enough.