Beginning Cultivation

Three days after the battle on Fangcun Mountain, Goten stood beneath the waterfall as water crashed down from a height of thirty meters.

This time, he didn't grit his teeth and try to endure it. He closed his eyes and relaxed, letting Origin Energy circulate through his body and guide the force of the water into the earth beneath his feet.

The water was no longer his enemy. It had become part of him.

One incense stick's time passed. He didn't move.

Two incense sticks—and he was still sitting. Only when the third incense stick had burned down did he open his eyes, stand, and walk out of the pool.

He could now sit beneath the waterfall for three incense sticks' time without being swept away. He'd done it almost three months faster than Patriarch Bodhi had predicted.

Patriarch Bodhi sat beneath the willow tree by the bank, with the jug of Spirit Mist Wine in front of him.

He poured a cup and pushed it toward Goten. "Starting today, you don't need to sit beneath the waterfall anymore."

Goten took the cup and drained it in one gulp.

Warmth spread through his body, mending the muscles that had been battered by the water all morning. "What am I learning next?"

Patriarch Bodhi didn't answer. He stood and walked to an Old Locust Tree—the one by the mountain gate.

He extended a finger and lightly traced it over the trunk. A deep groove appeared in the bark beneath his fingertip, but it hadn't been carved by an external force. The bark itself had split open.

Goten's eyes widened. He hadn't sensed any fluctuation of power. "What was that?"

"The most basic principle of Immortal Art: you don't change the world. You let the world change itself."

Goten frowned and thought it over, but didn't quite understand. "Give me an example. If you wanted to make a rock move, what would you do?"

"Push it."

"Pushing it uses your own strength. The way of Immortal Art is..." Patriarch Bodhi crouched and lightly tapped the ground with his finger. "You tell it: 'It's time to move.'"

A crack opened in the ground. It hadn't been split open; the earth itself had parted to make a path. Goten's mouth fell open.

"That's Immortal Art. You don't use your strength to make something happen. You negotiate with the world. Once it agrees, things happen naturally."

Goten was silent for a long while. Then he said something that made Patriarch Bodhi pause. "Isn't that just like a Saiyan's 'ki'? We don't push ki with our hands, either. We use our minds to make it move. We just fight a lot harder in our world."

Patriarch Bodhi's eyebrows twitched. "Go on."

"In the world I came from, we called it 'ki.' We sensed it, guided it, and released it—but we never negotiated with it. We ordered it around."

Goten grew more and more excited as he spoke. "What you described just now wasn't an order. It was a request. The methods are different, but the essence is the same!"

Patriarch Bodhi was silent for a long time. Then he smiled—a smile Goten had never seen on his face before, warm with the satisfaction of finding a kindred spirit. "You're better suited to learning this than your father."

Goten froze. "You really knew my dad?"

Patriarch Bodhi didn't answer directly.

He stood, brushed the dust from his robes, and turned toward the cave. "Tomorrow, I'll teach you your first technique. For today, think this through: what's the difference between an order and a request? If you can't figure it out, don't bother coming."

Goten sat beneath the willow tree, watching Patriarch Bodhi's back disappear into the cave.

He placed his hand on the groove in the tree trunk and closed his eyes to feel it. He tried to negotiate with the tree.

After a while, he opened his eyes. The trunk hadn't changed. He lowered his head and thought it over again, then tried a different approach. He placed his hand on the trunk—not to ask anything of it, but to listen.

The wind passed through the treetops, and the leaves rustled. He heard it—the tree's "breathing."

It wasn't power. It was a rhythm.

Every tree had its own rhythm, just as every battle had its own breath.

He opened his eyes. Along the edge of the groove in the trunk, a thin layer of new bark had begun to grow.

From that day on, Goten learned the first lesson of cultivation: it wasn't about controlling power. It was about listening.

When Zixia found Goten, he was sitting beneath the Old Locust Tree with one hand against its trunk and his eyes closed.

"You've been sitting here all day."

Goten opened his eyes. There was something in his gaze that Zixia had never seen before—not the excitement he showed in battle, but a sense of calm. "Sister Zixia, have you ever heard a tree speak?"

Zixia paused. "Trees don't speak."

"They do." Goten patted the trunk. "Just not with words. It's more like a feeling. Like how you know spring has arrived—not because you've seen the flowers bloom, but because you can feel it. It's the same with trees."

Zixia sat down beside him and watched him for a long moment. "You've changed."

"How?"

"When you first got here, you wanted to fight everything. Now you're willing to sit down and listen."

Goten lowered his eyes to his hands. "Because fighting can't solve every problem."

Zixia said nothing. She felt that the words didn't sound like something Goten had figured out on his own. It was as if someone had told him.

She was right. The night before, Patriarch Bodhi had told Goten, "Fighting can solve many problems, but not all of them. Only when you learn when not to fight will you be truly strong."

Zixia stood and patted Goten on the shoulder. "You're learning your first technique tomorrow. Don't keep Patriarch Bodhi waiting."

Goten nodded. Zixia walked a few steps, then stopped. Without turning around, she said, "Sun Wukong said the same things you just did."

Goten froze.

Sun Wukong—the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, who had caused the Havoc in Heaven five hundred years ago—had once sat beneath the same tree and said the same words: I heard the tree breathing.

Zixia didn't turn around, but she smiled. Her smile in the moonlight was faint and gentle, like the echo finally reaching someone who had waited five hundred years.