Tui had been meditating daily for more than four decades. He had a lot of practice. At the academy, he learned to maintain his state while ice water was tipped over his head.His superlative skill was tested against a combination of factors. His emotional state had been roiling at the very prospect of revisiting his childhood. Actually activating the memory and reliving it had shaken him to his core.Seeing Uncle Ari and hearing his voice, the singing, and the drums had brought him back in time, restoring a part of Tui that he had blocked off and hoped never to see again. The uncivilized, savage part of his life.Then he established the incredible live connection with his uncle. When Uncle Ari looked at him and spoke, the shock rolled over Tui like a tsunami.His concentration was shattered. He fell out of meditation like a first-year student. The combination of factors had been way too much for his little meditation skills to bear. The connection was severed as if cut by a knife and the backlash struck him like a sledgehammer. A migraine bloomed through Tui's skull.Tui's qi was down to its last guttering spark. The short connection with his Uncle Ari had been very costly. He could never remember being so low on qi.The sun had fallen below the horizon, lighting the sky with pink, orange, and purple colors. Unfortunately, he was not in the frame of mind to appreciate the view. Tui stumbled back to his shelter, tired and aching. He choked down some breadfruit and collapsed.A storm hit again that night. Lightning cracked the sky and rain lashed the shelter. Tui slept right through. Even when rain trickled through the crude roof and dribbled onto his neck he continued his slumber. It wasn't until the sun was high in the sky that he woke up, feeling much better. He stretched out his arms and greeted the sky with a loud yawn, then trotted to the beach and had a swim.He recovered the essence trap crystal and sat across from it, bracing himself for what was to come. His goal was to resist the rush and recover qi in a controlled manner.Tui touched it with a single finger and reached for the essence. As before, the essence began entering his body as a trickle, then ramped suddenly to a torrent. As soon as he lost control, Tui pulled his finger away from the crystal, disconnecting and stopping the flood instantly.There was still waste with this approach, but it was a vast improvement.Tui took the energy he had captured and carefully fed it to the dim spark of qi in his dantian. The essence flared the qi to life. The spark grew and grew, split into two, then more sparks. Tui poured all the essence into his depleted dantian, then pulled again from the crystal. He disconnected again as he lost control. This time he had been able to draw a tiny bit more than before.Again, Tui fed his dantian, watching the sparks grow more and more numerous.This was so different from essence pills! The impurities in them dissipated slowly, making someone sick if they consumed too many too quickly. As a result, Tui had never managed to store up much qi.The essence trap captured pure essence. With no impurities, there was no limit to its consumption!Tui fed essence into his dantian twice more before exhausting the crystal. He had never held so much qi before.Hundreds of fat sparks were whirling around erratically, as sparks tend to do. They bounced around, pressing on the limits. His dantian felt painfully swollen and stretched.Shifting into the lotus pose and concentrating deeply, he changed focus.Tui brought a spark slowly through his fifth meridian and into his childhood memories, to the same memory he had kindled last night. His Uncle Ari. He explored the memory carefully, feeling over the entire surface. There had to be a remnant there. Something had happened that he had never heard of before. The connection to his uncle had been so strange, so unexpected.He searched over the whole memory twice and was about to give up when he found it. It was a tiny pinhole. It was a pathway that would lead him back to the connection with his uncle.Tui wasn't ready to see his uncle again. He didn't want to have to explain himself or the choices he'd made. He didn't want to discuss how he had cut himself off from his own people in exchange for a career in the Interior, for essence pills and qi, and a life away from home.Instead of exploring the new pathway, he carried the spark carefully to the third dantian at his heart. There he released the spark, empowering his body just like he had in the water after the airship crash.Warmth and strength flowed through his bloodstream.He got up and jogged up toward the caldera rim, out into the rocky clearing near the crest, searching for obsidian. After an hour, he'd found several good-sized chunks, which he brought down to his camp.The warm qi swimming through his blood felt good. His muscles felt loose and strong. He hadn't exercised like this in the last ten years. He felt young and happy.Back at the camp, after eating some breadfruit, Tui sat on a fallen tree. He spent some time recalling the process Uncle Ari followed when shaping the obsidian.He took a fist-sized piece of obsidian and smacked it experimentally with a hammer stone, a nicely shaped rock that he had picked up while looking for the obsidian. The obsidian split in half, revealing a smooth face on each side.He struck the obsidian a few more times, trying to split off the right sized piece with a cutting edge. Tui gained a pile of razor-sharp shards, but nothing good enough to keep. That was ok, he had more to work with. Before he cracked into the next piece, he reviewed how Uncle Ari had worked and adjusted his approach.He selected a spark with his spiritual sense, bringing it slowly to his sixth meridian, which governed coordination in his hands and forearms. He rarely used this meridian, so it took some time as he figured out the path. With the meridian activated, his hands and fingers had greater sensitivity and better control.Then he selected another obsidian piece. This time he observed it closely, turning it over and feeling its surface with careful fingers. He took his time selecting a spot to strike, trying to guess which way it would split. Finally, he struck it with the hammer stone, splitting the obsidian near the predicted location.Again he considered where to strike it, predicted where it would split, and struck decisively with the hammer stone. This time it split badly, leaving little fragments in his hands and a rock splinter sticking out of his finger.Tui spent the next two hours destroying four lumps of obsidian. He used the same approach each time. By the time he finished the last stone, he could predict how it would split with some degree of accuracy. He could also judge how hard to strike with his hammer stone to achieve the desired split.For the afternoon's efforts, he had a thin shard with a finger-length cutting edge that would function as a crude knife. He also created a triangular prism, with a short base and long sides. If he held it wrong it would cut him, but it was a functional hand axe.Tools were what separated men from beasts! With the tools he had made, Tui could stop merely surviving and start to thrive.The delve into his childhood had stirred up other memories. They contained something that Tui planned to implement straight away.With his shiny new hand axe, Tui dashed into the jungle looking for a long straight sapling. It did not take long to find a nice one. He trimmed it and cut it down with his awesome new hand axe.Then with his sweet new hand axe, Tui split one end of the stick into four equal-thickness prongs. He stripped some fibers from some palm fronds and used them to wrap the base of the prongs to prevent the split from traveling further into the stick. He also wove the fibers between the prongs to separate them.Tui began cutting a barb into the prong with his nice new "Ow!" The stupid piece of shit hand axe cut his hand because he'd gripped it wrong.Tui decided that his new fishing spear would work fine without barbs and headed to a rocky pool at the beach. In his bloody hands, he carried his new fishing spear and some breadfruit.He threw a few pieces of the breadfruit into the rocky pool and waited for something to come eat it.Sure enough, four handsome snappers came up to investigate the food. The fish were completely fearless. Ripping into the chunks of breadfruit, they gorged themselves on it just like he used to.With his new spear and qi steadied hands, Tui easily speared the fattest as they fed at the surface of the water. The other three darted back into the depths. He waited patiently for a few minutes and one came back. The snapper pecked the bait then darted away again. Growing more courageous, it returned for another bite, taking a larger chomp this time. Waiting for this moment, Tui speared the snapper just before it had a chance to get away.The sun was going down as Tui hacked the two snappers with his knife. He gutted and roughly filleted the two fish, then sliced the fillets into raw, finger-length strips. He was salivating.With reverence, Tui dropped the first piece of fish into his mouth. Sweet fishy flavor exploded through his palate. Joyfully, he ate the first non-breadfruit food in three days. Had it only been three days since the crash? It felt longer than that.The fishy fat and protein was glorious. This was thriving! Tui thrived his way through the last of his dinner. The sun had long set and the last of the color was fleeing the sky when Tui went to sleep.