With a tired look of suffering on her face she pulls another small blade of grass from her ring. She then takes shards of mana crystal and starts grinding them between her fingers, filling the small pressure cooker made from leaves she is sitting in with mana again.
“Cultivation is still based on aspects of plants, like Selis but with plants instead of water. Now leave me alone for a few days. I wanna make fire and metal mana grass before feeding it qi.” She waves her hand and the slit closes.
I stand up and smile at the two girls, who are ignoring me. I take another bag of mana crystals from my ring and place it on the floor. I hear distracted words of thanks as I quietly close the door on my way out.
⁂
“Just leave, go bother someone else!”
Vox looks horrified as his sister berates him. He looks around the clearing as if to leave but ends up sitting down a bit away and closing his eyes.
“Leave him. He has a heartcore after all.”
Ares looks at the other person nearby, Ket. He is sitting on his haunches, peering into a large chunk of sparkling, semi-transparent green stone that is lying in the grass. Ares also hunkers down, touches the stone and closes her eyes. Light start to flicker inside the stone, strands of grey light intertwining with streaks of white.
Vox looks at the still scene for a bit before standing up and walking away. He freezes as he sees me. “Couple of braincore nerds, am I right?”
Ket snorts and Ares sniffs at my comment. Vox grins widely and nods furiously. “Yeah, those two are extremely boring. They just sit there and stare at that rock.”
I shrug my shoulders at this. “Of course, something complicated is boring to the uncomprehending observer. Anyway, how did your cultivation progress for the last three weeks?”
Vox looks me directly in the eye for a couple of seconds and smiles a wry smile. “Honestly, I want to change to a braincore too but I’m afraid I’ll fall behind the rest. I reached liquid qi just yesterday. Other than that, a large focus on buffing and healing is hard to do when there is little need for it.”
I stop to ponder his words for a second. I will need to find or create some proper opponents for my students to fight sooner than later. The dungeons have been good training so far, but their experience in fighting intelligent humanoids is severely lacking. The last time I saw them do teamwork, it was quite a mess. Ket tried to bring some order to the chaos, but there was little actual cooperation going on.
“Do you remember my little talk about lifespan?”
“Uhm, sort of?”
“There is plenty of time to catch up later on, don’t worry about that kind of stuff. Check your access jade for the bit about foundation realm and lifespans.” I watch him pull out a small piece of jade with a tree engraved on it. I feel the connection to the main database form as Vox sends an information request through the small transmitter.
Turning to the duo of braincore nerds, I ask the same question again. “I’d love a status update on your cultivation progress over the last few weeks.”
“I steered my intent back to magnetic metals. The small bit of utility influencing non-magnetic metals gave wasn’t worth the magnetic efficiency loss. Braincore is two-thirds filled with liquid qi. I noticed a relation between intent specificity and cultivation speed. I have a few processes running tests, would like to discuss that later.”
“I tried changing my mindscape.” Ares looks around at the two boys nearby. She flushes a bit before putting a small piece of jade to her forehead. She hands it over and I check it with a strand of augur.
Basically, her mindscape was based on begging and pleading. She tried changing the way her mental processes worked with disastrous effects. It worked, but the efficiency was horrible. So now she is back to begging and bribing her own mind. I knew she was a weak-willed doormat coward, but having to grovel in front of your own mindscape is a new low…
“Maybe you should consider reforming your cultivation base again.” I stare at the pitiful girl with pity in my gaze. I then shake my head and move on, leaving the boys to stare at Ares with questions in their eyes.
I crouch low and jump, calling upon the ambient qi inside the ground and grass to prevent it from shattering under my feet. The wind splits at my command, causing me to speed upwards. Pretty soon I am looking out over the entire domain, Tree sticking out of the forest from in between two massive mountains. It grew quite a bit in these past three weeks, but that’s not what’s relevant right now.
I look upwards and see a massive, bright, pale object. It’s Bord.
Technically it’s Bord who is sitting on a massive artificial satellite I created, but that is not quite as funny to say.
I land on the large sphere, kicking up a large plume of dust. A few square blocks are scattered on the white surface, breaking up the monotonous bleakness. Looking upwards nets me a gorgeous view of Tree and the surrounding forests.
“Hi Teach! Can you throw me back?”
“Why? You got here on your own.”
“Angeta will beat me up again if I use that method again.”
“She won’t know; she’s in the ship’s hold.”
“She’ll smell it. Please just throw me.”
“Sure, just give me an update on how your cultivation has progressed the past few weeks.”
“Ah, no problem! I uhm…” Bord then takes a very thoughtful pose. A rogue wind ruffles his blonde hair, making a tranquil scene as he seems to ponder the mysteries of the universe. “I ate a lot.” He nods firmly to himself. “I ate a lot and did stuff with triangles. That’s it. Explosive triangles.”
This response was within the probabilities I predicted, but it still leaves me speechless for a few seconds. I decide to shrug my shoulders and grab him by the shoulder. I then throw the fatty up into the air.
“THANKS, TEEeeeeaaaaa….” His voice becomes inaudible as he speeds away. I see him land inside the lake near Tree. I have a soft spot for obese heartcore cultivators with a triangle obsession, so I made sure he didn’t land on something hard.
I then take a deep breath, inhaling the air totally devoid of qi that’s hanging around the small moon I am standing on. I have to say, creating a supercomputer inside a moon was a stroke of genius on my part. Well worth the effort of importing and filtering tonnes of seawater and seabed mud.
I sit down and make a connection to the moon’s core. I observe the data structures and permission shell, going over the stored data and its systems one last time. Now I only have to quickly reach the foundation realm before activating the entire thing. It’s gonna be great!
Chapter forty-four
Step
I frown a bit as I spot the last member of my qi-powered entourage. Lola is making herself way too comfortable. She’s smack dab in the middle of the artificial construct circling Tree. She is chilling on top of the massive hunk of jade that is the core of this construct.
Creating this entire thing took a lot of effort and time. Being the lazy braincore cultivator that I am, I didn’t do any of it by myself, of course. I designed the thing but left the actual building of it to my qi clone - the same qi clone that’s now floating in the middle of the moon’s core.
Jade comes in two main forms, nephrite and jadeite. Nephrite is also called ‘mutton fat’ jade, a creamy opaque off-white. Nephrite is a cultivator’s beginners jade, comparable to rough sheets and paper and crayons. Jadeite is the good stuff, made up from a complex combination of sodium, aluminium, silicon and oxygen.
All of these materials are available in large quantities in seawater and the seabed. My qi clone has been filtering truly humongous amounts of the stuff to create this semi-supercomputer-database. My Tree necklace is still floating under the ship, an automated process pulling in water and silt. This muddy water flows out under Tree in an underground cave, through a qi-powered automated processing line, dumping the filtered stuff back out into the sea before it can be contaminated by qi.
All of this is being processed and ope
rated by my qi clone. Some people might say that locking up large quantities of qi into a constructed copy of my physical body might be seen as odd or inefficient. Those people don’t realise what a life-saving treasure it is. I could be dead or dying and qi-starved. Merging with my qi clone would replenish my reserves and allow me to heal my body in full.
And now I’m using it as a glorified industrial process operator and database manager.
And Lola is using this complex construction as a bed. I feel her consciousness flickering through the stored info and analysed data. I wonder what she is learning or searching for?
Anyway, I came here for a reason. I get back to my purpose, eager to get it going. I gather all the recordings I just made, the full-HD, full detail holographic reports of cultivation progress from my students and Rhea. I summarise the info and copy it into the computer. I then register a few new processes in my qi clone’s brain, letting it pore over every detail of the info I just dumped.
People are never truly consciously honest to themselves, the very impossibility of a thinking machine fully analysing its own workings while it is in progress is muddling the waters with subjectivity. Each self-reflective thought causes changes that then need to be analysed by the changed thinking unit. It’s like trying to win a race with someone that is by definition a single step ahead.
Someone else can be objective, however. Asking someone to summarise what they have been doing is a great way to get a feel for what they think is important.
Long story short, a hyper-detailed analysis of the answers I just received will allow me to show them the best options for their growth. Each twitch and glance, down to the milliseconds they held eye contact, can tell me a lot. I might not show it, but I do take this teaching stuff seriously. I give the occasional lecture, but more can be achieved by a single sentence at the right time than days of monologuing to a half listening audience.
The first few action points start flowing into my to-do list. Give Ket a hint about non-grid simulation solutions in a few days. Selis and Angeta should do some research about mana mutation, DNA and the effect forming ice crystals have on both. I should do bondage play with Rh…
I cough a bit and file that titbit of analysed information away in a deep recess in my mind. Very useful indeed.
Lola should stop interfering with the data processing. I sense some irritation from my qi clone directed at the dumb animal. Ares needs more information about the electromagnetic spectrum, and I should tell Bord about the concept of polygonal rendering, forming the complex from the simple. My qi clone is using a part of the jade core to offload these processing tasks, causing lights to flash through the massive crystal that’s hidden underground.
Putting my hand to the stony surface of the moon, I twist and pull up. A plug of stone reveals a deep tunnel with lights flickering far down. I reach out with my hand and mind and pull Lola upwards.
She dangles from qi threads while glaring at me. “What were you doing, you shitty rabbit?”
She huffs at me and turns her head away. I frown at the petulant rodent. “I know that the qi around the core is easily absorbed, but stop interfering with the data and processes in that thing. They are important.”
She peers at me from the corner of her eye, looking away guiltily when she sees me looking at her accusatory. I ruffle her head a bit. “Come, you’ll want to see this.” I take her with me and jump back down to the main piece of land.
Soaring between the white satellite and the round disk of forest, I take stock of the developments that this dimension has gone through. Clouds are scattered in a wide circular band around the primary landmass. The ocean has grown, becoming deeper and getting a bottom of dense silt. My mind starts to hurt when I try to figure out the complex gravitational forces at play here, so I stop thinking about it. The way Tree seems to be employing complex forces in order to keep everything together is mind-boggling.
I’m sorry science, but I have to pick and choose my battles. I’m willing to do practical research on fundamental levels. Qi has little effect on the building blocks of the universe. When large amounts of qi start to influence large objects or ecosystems, that’s when pure science starts to become so infinitely complicated that belief begins to become more useful.
Tree has been gardening its heart out, making sure that the ecosystem does not get dominated by a single type of mutated plant or animal. Even now, I see golden threads of qi move slowly through the flowing hills, planting seeds and influencing the environment in all kinds of ways.
Bending the air into a telescope, I peer at the hot and cold mountain. I really should name all of this sometime soon. Those thoughts drift away as I see what Tree has been doing. Ideal growing spots for all kinds of rare herbs and plants have cropped up all over the place, thanks to the increase in temperature difference. I start salivating as I think about my patented ice and lava chilli.
If only I had some more Phoenix steak…
Shaking away my distractions, I land back in the clearing. Vox and Bord are sparring while Ares and Ket are still staring at the piece of jade. “How goes it?”
Ket looks up from a daze. He smiles widely. “Great! Ares and I have been processing the data Tess and Selis have been gathering. Even Angeta’s rage-filled experiments have helped us confirm and eliminate some hypotheses.”
Ares also looks up. “This is seriously awesome! We made more scientific progress in three weeks then there was in the past hundred years!” It’s always nice to see someone bloom when they do something they truly enjoy. Gone is the snivelling coward of a few weeks ago, drowned in a sea of nerdy-ness.
“Remember to take breaks though, focusing on one thing for days on end will cause you to lose perspective. In fact, let’s all go outside. You all don’t want to miss this, I think.”
I jump outside, laughing to myself as my students appear under the boat. I might have forgotten to tell them that the necklace was underwater again. Four bedraggled and dripping figures clamber over the railing, shooting daggers at me with their eyes.
Selis, Tess and Angeta also come up on deck. The blue haired girl waves a hand, gathering the water that was covering the bedraggled group. Angeta looks angry. Her latest experiment must have failed again. I drop Lola, who hops over to Rhea’s shoulder. I see the dragoness’ mouth twitch, but she stays silent.
Clever girl, the first sentence out of her mouth would have included the words ‘bum’, ‘doo-doo’, ‘love’ and ‘eating’.
“I told all of you I wanted to start a school, right?”
I see petulant nods here and there. “Rule number one of helping others is that you need to be in a position where you can help others. I didn’t feel like guiding a lot of people without the strength and ability to make those words true. So…”
There are eight people and a rabbit here. I look them in the eyes one by one. “I hereby request you all to be my dharma protectors.”
Ket is about to raise his hand, so I pre-emptively answer the question. “‘Dharma’ roughly translates to ‘the thing that makes life possible.’ It is what separates sapient life from raging lunatics or instinctual beasts. It is the right way, path and lifestyle. Please watch over me as I make mine a bit more real.”
I make a slight bow, clasping my hands in the traditional way of greeting. Everyone looks sufficiently uncomfortable now. I grin widely and start pulling an array of items from my ring. Colourful skulls, loose mana crystals, shards of energetic materials, orbs of concentrated qi and small wooden figurines of Tree. “Aight, I’m off. Try to get on my level, losers!”
I jump up and pull all the stuff behind me. I peer inside my ring’s secret compartment and pluck the beastcores from the pile one by one, adding them to the swirling mass of items following me. I command the wind to become like stone under my feet as I arrange all the junk into a pattern. The skulls start spinning in eccentric orbits, using me as their gravitational centre. The mana crystal wires connect in an ever-moving web. The sphere of qi I place to t
he Lagrange points of the complex orbital pattern. The wooden figures I intersperse and suspend at significant junctures. The beastcores are sprinkled here and there, facilitating flow patterns.
Then I make a rotating circle of mana crystal, similar to the one still hanging above Tree. In fact, I make it exactly similar. Tree was born from my qi, so the ghost of my fingerprints still covers every fibre of that being. I form a circle under my feet, a copy of the one gathering qi on top of the Tower Dungeon. I add another circle, this one a copy of the mana gathering array I made with my own blood. I force all three circles to be the same. I feel the qi seeping through the bonded circles as it starts to whirl around me, syphoning the Tower circle as if I were next to the dungeon.
I have been moving slowly upwards, gaining altitude. The complex mess of stuff now surrounding me has started to influence the mana in the air for a couple of kilometres around, regardless of my instructions. Adding my will to the entire mess causes the range of influence to skyrocket to tens of kilometres, then hundreds, then thousands.
Then I pull.
I open my mouth and set the machine in motion. Gathered qi starts to fight with the gathering mana, forcing it together. The freshly formed qi is then split, half going back into the process, the other half entering my mouth. I guide it towards both my cores, causing the little space inside my cores not occupied by solid qi to swirl with liquid power.
I gather the elements, forcing discrete energies into a neutral whole. I gather the power gathered by Tree. I gather the qi generated by the Tower Dungeon. I swallow it all.
The skulls are the focal points of the mana-gathering system. The mana crystals extend their range. Tree helps me turn the qi into mine. Tower gives me reserves to tap from. I take it all.
CRRIIIPPNNCCHH
I ignore the pain as both my cores collapse for the third time. Third crunch is achieved. I breathe out all the liquid qi in my body. I squeeze. The liquid starts to collapse into a solid, but I refuse to let it settle. I refuse to let it become stagnant crystal. The liquid turns into a slurry as I will it to compress.
The Dao of Magic: Book II Page 36