“Now would be a good time for some unconscious help to show up,” Kai thought.
His lungs stopped working. His heart stopped beating. He waited for something, but after long seconds his eyesight began fading. Seriously? You show up when I’m threatened but when I’m dying, nothing. What kind of sense does that make?
He focused his attention on his body, feeling for his energy. With a push, he sent his energy out through his palms streaming toward Master Rhi Tat. You think I’m helpless, that you can do whatever you want? Anger burned within him as golden, prismatic streams pulsed with energy, stretching out like vengeance toward the master.
Rhi Tat quickly moved back, a single step taking him across the room. The energy bands honed in on his new position and sought him out, but a few paces away from Kai they slowed down and cycled back in a loop, diving through his body back into his meridians. The concentrated streams further charred his flesh, burned away his hair, and lit his bedding on fire. As soon as Kai realized what was happening he cut off the energy flow, but the damage was done. His body smoldered and smoked. His bedding sputtered in flames.
Kai shifted his attention back to his soul space, appearing on his dais. With a few deep breaths, he expelled all his anger, calming himself again. Without anger or fear, Kai stood and stepped down from the dais.
An overwhelming sense of regret washed over him when he realized death was certain, that he had no tools to stop it. This feeling too was useless. Kai inhaled deeply and exhaled all his regret away.
“Relay,” Kai called out.
“That did not go as I expected,” the Eternal appeared beside him in a flash. He turned towards the screen. The visuals from his room in the Celestial Templed appeared. The two watched as Kai’s bedding burned itself out leaving only a completely charred and smoking body.
“Your meridians are still undamaged but the data is losing integrity. Based on these readings I can now answer your former question. When your body dies we will likely lose contact with that world, but otherwise, be unaffected.”
“Finally some good news.” Kai beamed. “Bodily death is not the end.”
“It is both good news and bad news. Good that death is not the ultimate end and bad that we will lose our connection to a concrete reality. This is a mental domain. Not being anchored to a physical plane could mean an eternity of isolation.”
“Eternal isolation,” Kai muttered, “that’s a bit grim. I have you. I won’t be alone.”
“Thank you, Sir, it feels good to be appreciated but I would like to avoid eternal isolation if possible. I have developed a theory based on recent data. I believe your soul is split into two parts. One part is here and is represented by the three shapes inscribed on the foundation of this construction. One part is your body itself, encoded into your energy network. That appears to be the part we are losing contact with.”
Kai watched the screen begin to flicker before stabilizing.
Kai shifted his attention back to Relay, “How does that help us? Once my body dies there my soul will dissipate, that’s what happens. Without life, nothing is anchoring that half of the soul.”
“Remember when you were looking at the three pillars of your soul earlier, you said that it didn’t feel right just shoving the soul fragments in there. If the fragments we have don’t work for this half of your soul maybe they will work for your other half?”
“Work for my other half? You mean fuse them into my meridians or cores…” Kai’s eyes opened wide, his thoughts speeding up. Seven fragments. Seven cores. Voids in the center of each core. “You may be right.”
Kai teleported to the laboratory. Before he fully appeared his hand was already reached through the glass. The glass shattered, parts exploding outward. He deftly snatched the purple gemstone fragment and pulled it away from the rest, before teleporting back.
“I have it, but,” Kai stopped in thought, “how do I…” He furiously thought. I can hold it in my hand and move it between here and there. There’s probably nothing unique about my hand, any way I can hold it here, I should be able to hold it there.
“Thank you Relay. You are brilliant. I’m going to try,” Kai looked down into his palm, “I want you to know you have been a wonderful friend.” He turned and walked slowly out of the central hub, across the hall, heading outside.
As he walked he concentrated on his body. He’d never tried to cultivate in his soul space, but now he imagined his meridians here, his cores, sent his energy cycling through his body here. Once he completed a full cycle he imagined his flesh fading away leaving only his meridians, his cores. An aura from pure energy formed an outline of his form, a translucent golden skin that protected his meridians and core.
His body transformed into a network of golden prismatic meridians and nodes, surrounded by a field of energy that perfectly replicated the shape of his flesh. Three cores, two in his head and one in his chest glowed like stars in the night sky. Kai stepped over the railing and floated out into the starry night sky. His glowing body moved slowly into the space adjacent to his pagoda.
He looked down into his hand and saw the purple soul fragment there. It was roughly half the size of his largest core. With a thought, his body grew, until the fragment could comfortably fit in his core.
“Here goes nothing,” Kai’s voice echoed. With no vocal cords, his intention caused vibrations around his whole body, creating a resonating vibration. With trepidation, he pushed the fragment passed his outer golden skin, passed some crossing meridians, into his chest, into the core. Feeling some resistance, he pressed harder. The fragment penetrated the core, but the energy from the core ground against the fragment. He tried pushing deeper, but the core just ground against the fragment like mismatched gears grinding. The vibrations and sounds scared him so he pulled it back out.
Relay hovered next to him. “Maybe certain fragments can only fit in certain cores?”
“I only have two more, let’s hope it’s one of them,” Kai replied, his voice echoing and reverberating with the thrum of energy.
Undeterred he tried again this time his newest core. He pressed the fragment down into the crown of his head and passed the core wall, deeper. Unlike before this time, the fragment was pulled from his hand like a magnet to metal and slipped into the center of his crown core.
A pulse of purple energy pushed out like a wave and then pulled back into the golden core until the color of the core changed from golden to deep purple. Kai cycled more energy there but the core was solidly purple now.
“That worked. Now I just need to shift back and bring this fragment with me.” Kai said, excitement in his voice. “Just like when bringing souls here, it should work the same way.” He breathed out slowly. “I can do this.”
With a thought, he blinked out of existence.
----------------------------------------
Kai came too without opening his eyes. He cycled his A’nah core, tracing the dual geometries for spiritual energy and visual light. The way he saw the room was strange, like assembling a panoramic image from many small glimpses. It felt foreign but at least he could see what was going on. He checked his crown core and found it was now purple; the transfer had succeeded.
The doctor’s lips moved, but there was no sound. He stood over the burnt body. He was speaking and shaking his head but Kai couldn’t hear him.
“Relay?” Kai thought. “I can see fine, but I can’t hear anything.”
“Good to see you are still with me,” the fox strutted around the bed. “I can run some analysis on their expressions and simulate their voices but you are correct, there’s no sound geometry in the God’s Eye Art I have some thoughts on that, but let me try to interpolate.” Kai heard some clicks, a long signal tone, then voices.
“I’ll notify the Soul Hall, they will send someone for the body. No doubt they will want to do their investigation, but it’s obvious what went wrong.” The doctor shook his head again. “Opened three cores at seven years old, a true monster. Such a shame.”
Mei crumpled to the floor in silent tears.
“Thank you for hurrying here Doctor Fei, you did everything you could.” Master Rhi Tat looked at the mewling Mei, “Come along Mei.” The master spared one more cold stare at Kai before leaving with the initiate.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Kai watched them go then focused his awareness on Relay. “Wait. How am I able to think without my brain chemistry and neuro-electrical connections working properly?”
“Many belief systems exist about the connection of the brain to the mind, but I think you proved one. At least in this world, the brain is a sympathetic organic system, working in correlation with the higher-level thought processes that reside in your soul. The brain is not the cause of these thought processes.”
Kai thought about that but interrupted his thought. He returned to his soul space, appearing in his normal form again, seated on his dais.
“So is the connection stabilized now, or is there still some degradation?” Kai looked over to the screen displaying visual data. The stream of data seemed steady with no dropped frames.
“I’m pleased to report we have arrested the degradation and restored full data integrity. Whatever that soul fragment did is keeping us connected, for now.” Relay replied, this time he didn’t hover in his sphere form. The white fox sat near him; Kai noted that the fox was solid, not spectral.
“Big sister Tast said the emperor cricket excelled at one thing, its soul was able to remain cohesive. Normally once life leaves the body the soul begins to lose cohesion and immediately begins to fade away.”
“So minimally we bought ourselves some time. How much is uncertain.” Relay looked at Kai’s burned corpse on the screen before summing up the situation. His tail flicked in agitation.
Kai considered the situation. When the cricket died the soul separated from the body. That didn’t seem to be the case for his body’s soul, which was still firmly seated inside his body. Body soul? Spirit Soul? This is getting complex.
Kai considered what differences there were between him and cricket. He was a cultivator with opened cores. He was a soulforger with a split soul, one half in a soul space, one half in the body. Any of those might account for the difference.
“So?” the fox asked impatiently.
“Can you play back what the doctor said before we started interpolating the sound? He said something and shook his head.”
“I wish we had gone to the library yesterday,” the fox grumbled, hopping down from the dais and moving toward the control panel. “Let’s see, scanning the data stream, interpolating. Here it is.”
The image on the screen changed to the scene where the doctor entered the room. Mei made it into the room, breathing hard from her exertions.
“Deviation,” the doctor took a sharp breath. He moved to the body and placed his hand on his forehead. A moment later he withdrew his hand.
“I detect no life processes, just residual spiritual energy. That will continue to gradually dissipate,” he shook his head.
“I’ll notify the Soul Hall, they will send someone for the body. No doubt they will want to do their investigation, but it’s obvious what went wrong.” The doctor shook his head again. “Opened three cores at seven years old, a true monster. Such a shame.”
“That’s enough,” Kai stopped the playback and considered his options. “I am beginning to agree with you, that library could have been instrumental. We don’t know what their burial practices are. If they cremated bodies then we may have a problem.” he blew out a long sigh.
The fox's tail swished, and his black eyes fixed on Kai, his black lips drawn to a thin line. Kai couldn’t remember ever seeing Relay display emotion.
“Are you seriously going to ignore the fact that you were just murdered? You could have lived for another three hours, but that man stabbed you with a poison needle, and you died in moments.” The fox started pacing back and forth, “He even called for a doctor to help you. He admitted your wounds were treatable!” his voice grew louder. “And then he just murdered you! What kind of place is the Celestial Temple, where they put that kind of person in charge of all the initiates?”
Kai opened his mouth to respond but closed it. I purged anger, fear, and regret so my casual murder didn’t even bother me. He thought about it, struggling with the choice to feel those emotions again, but after a long moment decided he didn’t understand emotions enough to casually disregard them. He took a moment then pulled a deep breath of air in, and with it, fear, anger, and regret. When the emotions flooded him he found himself immediately agitated.
“I thought something was off about him the first time I met him,” Kai vented, his pulse quickening at the thought of how close he came. “But it’s not just him, it’s this whole cultivation world. There’s a cruel logic that pervades every choice they make. When there are more cultivators than resources required to support their advancement then violence and systems of violence are inevitable.” It was just math. Numbers could be cold-blooded killers sometimes.
“So cripple you, or just throw you out, but murder? How could that make sense?” the fox relaxed, his previous agitation from before fading.
“There’s more at play; politics between halls, hatred of soulforgers, or maybe he’s just a psychopath. Add him to our list of people to deal with later. Much later, because I don’t think we’re out of trouble yet,” Kai stepped down and started pacing.
“I didn’t have three cores when I met with Elder Tai, I only had one. There’s no way she will have missed that. Now, I have three. Someone is bound to be curious about how I cultivated enough energy to form three cores. If they even suspect I have a link with some hidden energy source they will refine my body trying to discover the secret.”
“We have to rebuild your body. I know we can, but it will take a lot of work, mostly cultivation with the God’s Eye Art, assuming that the manual is accurate.” the fox started pacing too, alongside Kai. “But if they refine your body. Wait,” the fox stopped and looked up at him. “What does it mean to refine your body?”
“They will dissect every part until they isolate the energy-rich parts, then extract that energy into a spiritual treasure to use for cultivation. Or try to anyway.” Kai theorized, “I doubt that my soul could survive that.”
The fox swallowed and started pacing again. “We can’t let them do that. Transfer your energy back here, leaving only the smallest amount to keep your sight working. Empty your cores as much as possible. Maybe the reduced energy will confirm your death and prevent further inquiry.” Relay hopped up on the control panel, and looked up at the screen that showed his room. His white fluffy tail wagged once, then settled down. “That’s why you were talking about burial processes… because as long as they just bury you then we might have a shot. That will give us the time we need to cultivate. Then when we manage to restore your body you can escape from the grave.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Kai stopped pacing. “Okay, I’m going to reverse the flow and start siphoning the energy back here. Let me know if we have any signal degradation.”
Returning to the dais Kai settled down in the Blooming Lotus position and got to work.
----------------------------------------
The table barely fit through the doorway, the wooden edges scraping against the white wall, marring the surface, as the disciple pushing it tried working it this way and that through the doorjamb. After a few attempts, they breached the room.
“This is the second initiate this week,” a short blue-robed disciple squeaked, his voice sounding feminine. “I heard there were even more the week before. I don’t remember that many dying so fast when we were initiates.”
“That’s why they keep the initiates apart, have them meet in small groups, and change the groups you meet with every few weeks. It’s all designed to minimize the impact of death on promising cultivators.” a girl in an orange robe, explained. Her hair was tied back in silver chains, and her voice was uncharacteristically masculine.
“Relay,” Kai thought, “Is something wrong? Are the voices switched?”
“Apologies,” The fox grinned, “there. All fixed.”
“Heaven above, what’s that smell?” a new blue-robe boy entered, “why is it whenever I get paired with you two we always get assigned the most disgusting cases.”
“Just get him on the table and cover him up. We are to deliver him to…” the girl flipped over a card with print on it, “to the grand chamber of the Soul Hall.” She swallowed and looked down at the card again.
“That can’t be right,” the short boy questioned. “You mean the mortuary right?”
“That’s not what it says,” her lips drew into a thin line that quavered, “he was a soulforger. They want his body in the grand chamber.”
The two boys moved all the furniture away from Kai’s bed before rolling the table alongside it.
“Just great. Always the most dangerous jobs with you two.” the boy grumbled. The two blue robe cultivators stretched out a white silk sheet over Kai, cutting off his visual feed. There was just enough light coming through the silk to tell they had flipped him over and wrapped him up in the cloth, before shifting him to the table.
He could see the light change positions, rock back and forth, then get dimmer, then brighter.
Grand Hall? What does that mean?