Kai swam toward the light, but when the rushing water brought awareness to his lack of clothes, he swam back to the pod and fished through the compartments under the cultivation platform. There, tucked into a corner, he found scraps of purple silk. He looked over the shredded and burnt fabric.
Better than nothing.
He wrapped the material around his waist and tucked it tight before swimming towards the light. As soon as he started swimming, the silk came free and was left behind. He swam back and retrieved it, taking it in hand.
What’s going on with this water?
It felt thick and warm, then cool immediately afterward, almost fluctuating between ranges. He swam up the short tunnel into the lake above. The water felt comfortable on his skin, like a deep tissue massage.
Kai paused before surfacing. He explored the water; he ran his fingers through the syrupy warm fluid. The sensations on his new skin were exceptional. He looked at his hands, his arms. He’d lost most of his fat reserves but had reinforced every cell; the power he felt was euphoric.
Every cell felt densely packed with power and potential. He looked over his new skin and ran his fingers along his forearm, pinching and releasing his skin to feel its texture. His skin was smooth, pale, and unblemished. It reminded him of a porcelain doll he once saw in a museum. But tales of cultivators whose skin could withstand the sharpest swords seemed fantastical. His skin was firm but soft like it had always been.
Again he reflected on the fact he didn’t feel compelled to breathe. He didn’t even feel like he was holding his breath; he felt incredible. Kai turned his attention to the water’s surface and beyond.
There they are.
He saw four unfocused spiritual energy systems through the water and the lake’s edge. Holding the purple silk tight, he swam close to the surface before wrapping his makeshift loincloth around him. Once it was secured, he broke the water's surface, stepping out of the lake.
The thick syrupy water came up with him like a wave of slowly moving water. The water slowly broke into smaller and smaller groups until splitting into droplets that hung in the air. Kai watched in fascination as he walked through the hovering droplets, causing them to disperse in a slow mist from touching his skin.
He stepped up next to the group, the soft ground crumbled under his weight, but his attention was focused on the lake. Water continued slowly emerging from where he exited like slow plumes reaching the sky with lethargic tendrils. The tendrils lazily split into groups of droplets, then individual droplets, some evaporating into tiny puffs of mist.
It was beautiful to watch. Kai had never seen water so thick and slow and seemingly able to defy gravity.
“Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww,” Relay was droning on.
Nice.
Kai recognizes Relay’s avatar instantly. He had a pale-golden glean to his coat, like the dense metal from which they built the cultivation pod and mechanical microns. Kai waited for Relay to stop, but he didn’t.
Something is wrong.
After a brief reflection, as Relay continued to drone, it became clear to Kai that everyone else was moving slowly. With a glance at the motion of the blood in the cultivators, he could see how slowly each heartbeat was moving. He spared a moment to consider why they were all lying on the ground, but there was no apparent reason.
Kai returned to the lake’s edge and moved his hand through one of the rising tendrils. The water slowly parted around his hand, splitting into tiny puffs of mist. He watched as the small droplets continued to rise slowly.
Bending to the shore, he picked up a rock and, bringing it to waist height, dropped it. He watched in fascination as the rock hovered in place momentarily before slowly drifting downward. Kai counted the seconds it took for the stone to fall, but after a minute, it still hadn’t dropped a third of the way to the ground.
He turned back to look at the Lunar Temple cultivators. Kai recognized them, two as the girls he hid from in the hall, the other from the bath. They were all doubled over, passed out. One was gripping her head, one her chest. He cycled his spiritual energy vision and examined himself. His spiritual energy was contained inside his body as usual for him.
Kai looked down at Relay, and listened as he slowly transitioned from a droning wwww to a monotone hhhuuu sound. Opening an interface screen, Kai mentally dictated a message, sending it once complete. The ground splintered into fragments as he sprinted away, leaving them behind.
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“What was that?” Bao pushed herself up from the burnt ground. Her knees ached. She rubbed her temples with her fingers. To her left, Ai shook her head and turned over, spitting blood onto the ground. After shaking again, the leader crawled to Yunfie and took her pulse. Yunfie roused under her ministrations. Song sat up, twisting around one way before looking around the other.
“Did anyone see him?” Song signed emphatically.
“That was spiritual suppression,” Ai said, shaking her head, helping the wind cultivator to sit up before signing a message to the others, “Look normal, but we need to leave. Anyone that can do that to us can kill us at will.” She spared a look over at the golden ferrox, who seemed to be investigating some cracks in the ground.
“I didn’t see him,” Bao grumbled. The tall cultivator stood and helped Song to her feet. Song brushed the dust from her white robes before shaking her head.
“I am staying here,” she signed. Her long black hair fell over her eyes, so she pulled it into a tail and flipped it behind her.
Ai looked at the priestess-in-training and focused on her eyes, the only part of her face that gave a clue to her intent. She could only read determination there.
“We have to go, Song,” Ai signed more emphatically, “I can not keep any of you safe from a monster like that.” As the team leader, keeping her team safe was one of her highest priorities.
“No!” Song shook her hands, punctuating the refusal. She looked away from Ai’s stare to the golden spirit beast. “For the last three days, I’ve been listening to all of you go on and on about our lucky fortune, having come across all those rare ores.” She plopped back down on the ground and motioned for the others, pleading for Bao by tugging on her robe.
Bao’s brow furrowed as she sat down by her friend.
“I thought about leaving the Temple over some treasures we couldn’t hold onto,” her fingers moved in agitation. When Yunfie, covered in soot, sat across from her, Song nodded to her. She could tell the young cultivator was working hard to keep up with her fast gestures. Ai knelt beside her, completing the circle.
Taking a deep breath through her faceplate, Song calmed herself. When next she signed, her fingers were slower, more deliberate.
“Just listen,” she began. She looked up; the sun was high in the cloudless sky. “I’ve been thinking about what the high priestess said to me when last I saw her. It was the morning of the exhibition. She turned to me and said, ‘Song, do you know the difference between those that reach the top and those that fall along the way?’”
Ai sat back on her heels; the high priestess was enigmatic and mysterious but never frivolous.
“I told her that some gave up while others persisted.” Song tilted her head at the memory. She had been proud of that response; it seemed fitting to her. “She said, ‘Seeing opportunities where others see adversity and seizing them where others fail, that is the difference.’”
When Bao began to sign, Song motioned to let her finish.
“Then she said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since. She said, ‘All elders can do is expose our disciples to chances and hope they seize them.’ Don’t you see? She was talking about this right here, right now. She looked ahead and saw this, saw everything, and she sent us because she thought we could seize this chance.”
Song’s fingers relaxed, and she went still. Silence stretched out between the four of them.
Yunfie tried signing; her motions were stiff and slow. “I met him. He seemed like any boy that age. Forgive this one; I have eyes but can not see.”
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“Can we approach a fire and not be burned?” Ai signed. Of course, there was a chance here. Even just observing the golden ferrox and puzzling out some of his strange words provided her with many clues that she hoped would help her, but these were not forces they could control. The young master had survived a seven-fold heavenly tribulation, the first she’d ever heard of. They would have died if they had not moved far away, and he wouldn’t have even noticed.
“We don’t even know who he is,” Bao signed. “He sure didn’t come from the Celestial Temple, not originally. I doubt he is from any of the thousand isles” Bao was of the Kei clan. Her family was well known and had many connections in the thousand islands.
“He could have killed us but didn’t. Even his beast could probably kill us, it certainly doesn’t need to honor the deal it made with us, but it has.” Song signed. But Ai was right; it wasn’t about the boy’s intention. There was a saying: a candle can not cultivate the sun. It was a cautionary tale about reaching too far above your station.
“What do you suggest?” Ai asked, her fingers moving with the precision of an artist.
Song felt the pressure of the others gazing intently at her. She looked at the golden fox again; he was licking one of the massive oreclaws.
“We have five months to complete our mission. We spend the time between now and then learning everything we can. Safely if possible, but risks are part of advancement. And make no mistake; this is an opportunity purchased for us by the high priestess.”
A terrible high-pitched screeching assaulted them before shifting into a low-frequency rumbling. Interrupted, the four cultivators stood, quickly moving into combat positions facing the source of the sound.
The golden ferrox used one of his pale-yellow claws to slice through the big metal hook. Occasionally sparks flew as he continued cutting around the point, cleanly slicing a third of the oreclaw off.
“I thought I would help you process this,” the golden ferrox spoke, retracting his claw. “Also, the young master wanted me to apologize to you on his behalf for the rough treatment. He just had a breakthrough and needs time to improve his control. In the meantime, tell me what you know of spiritual suppression.”
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Naked, Kai brought his fist down on a burned-out stump, splintering it in a slow explosion of wood slivers and dust. Paradoxically, as he got faster, everything seemed slower. The wood continued to bloom slowly as he pulled his fist up to examine it. There were no scratches or marks.
He crouched and, leaning forward, jumped horizontally to a distant boulder. Previously he made the mistake of jumping vertically. Gravity was a constant, but his perception of time was not. When his jumps were more vertical than horizontal, he would feel stuck, slowly descending for minutes. He could keep his air time to a few seconds with short horizontal jumps, which felt fast.
He landed next to the boulder and sized it up. It was easily two tons of solid stone.
Now for the painful experiment.
Kai withdrew his spiritual energy from his fist. After he completed his second body refining, he noticed his power naturally permeating every part of his body, radiating out from his meridians into every muscle, tendon, and organ.
Pulling it back into the meridians of his hands took active concentration. When he was sure it was withdrawn, he punched down into the stone, not overly hard, as before with the stump. The rock splintered, slowly chipping into chunks around the impact site, but pain shot through his fist as well. Kai focused on his injuries.
His metacarpals and carpals were fractured. The soft tissue of his hand ruptured and was hemorrhaging. He watched in fascination as his bones knit themselves back together and his skin repaired. After a moment, his fist was whole again. When he released the tight control of his spiritual energy, it flooded back into his hand, saturating it again.
And now, the fun part.
Kai pushed his energy into his hand, supersaturating it until golden prismatic light started seeping through his skin. His flesh glowed brilliantly with golden light, his bones more intensely shown. His hand burned more fiercely where his bones were, his skin a warmer golden tone surrounding it.
With the same force as before, he punched down into the boulder again. It slowly fractured from the point of impact, splintering around in a concentric circle. Larger cracks burst out and away, fracturing the whole bolder into slowly settling chunks. Kai focused on his hand. It was unharmed in any way.
Again he released his control over his energy, allowing it to return to its natural state. The glow faded. Kai looked at the destroyed boulder. He hadn’t even punched it hard.
“There’s something strange going on here,” Kai spoke to himself. He turned and headed to a nearby boulder. He’d selected it earlier because of its broad flat top. Though his steps were light, each foot left cracks in the desert dirt.
When saturated with energy, my body behaves as though it is made of denser material. But my energy does not change the weight or density of my body. There must be some other principle at work.
Kai looked down at the flat-topped boulder. There, mechanical microns stitched together purple silk, reinforcing it with threads of pale-gold metal. He’d placed the ripped remains of his loincloth there earlier and set his microns to tailoring something that could withstand the forces he was now casually capable of displaying. During his trip to this part of the island, Kai lost his loincloth three times and accidentally ripped it in half, trying to tighten it again.
His microns had been busy removing the burnt sections and repairing the torn and fraying edges. The new cloth was still purple but shimmered with a metallic glint from the cross-weaved reinforced threads.
Almost done.
Kai assumed the Blooming Lotus position next to his project. He calmed his mind, taking a few unnecessary breaths to put himself in the proper frame of mind. He opened his eyes and looked around at the bleak desert. There was little here, dry and caked dirt, sandy-colored stones of different sizes, and some burned and blackened dead trees. Life was nowhere to be seen; there was motion, though. Dust and sand blew across the floor lethargically like a slow tide of sand rolling out.
Kai pushed energy into his brain, saturating it with a thick golden flow of prismatic fuel. The flying sand particles slowed to a standstill as he looked on. The increased processing speed he anticipated. He didn’t predict the strange overlay of colors that came to life as he looked at everything. Everywhere he looked, eddies of transparent color swirled. Swirls of blue and white frolicked in the air while muted and rich earth tones mixed stoically in the sand and stone.
He brought his hand up to examine it. His flesh and bones thrummed with energy of every color, a complete spectrum of dark and light colors swelling and receding in endless tides, combining into a brilliant golden glow. Unlike the muted colors of the world around him, these colors were saturated. He stared at himself, at the endless parade of new and different colors, for a long time before he released his control, allowing time to speed back up and the colors to fade.
Kai’s brow furrowed as he processed the information. All the data led to led to one uncomfortable conclusion. Animated energy was everywhere in this world. It was present in varying concentrations around every molecule, in the wind, the rock, the metal; it surrounded everything. Cultivators concentrated it in their meridians, their body, and their cores. To the degree a cultivator could concentrate it, they had more weight. No weight is the wrong term. They had a more significant physical presence; they were, somehow, more real. It was like increasing in density, but without the weight change, almost as if…
Molecular forces increase in strength proportional to the concentration of spiritual energy.
Kai shook his head. The very fabric of this universe was twisted around the phenomenal spiritual energy that seemed omnipresent here. His understanding of physics needed to be updated. He needed to relearn everything.
Kai exerted his will to drive his energy from his brain, pushing it back down into his two closest cores. As he did, he watched the flying sand accelerate until it no longer seemed slow but tumbled along the ground at an average speed.
So, to interact at regular speeds, I’ll have to desaturate my brain. That will take some precise control.
Two non-urgent notifications popped up. He checked the first. His microns had completed the task. Kai bent to pick up his garment.
Let’s call it a shendyt because wearing a skirt feels wrong.
A shendyt was a garment popularized by his distant ancestors before the age of modernity and before the rise of technology. He’d been fascinated by his ancestors as a child, their vast empire, and the significant constructions they created with their limited knowledge.
He pulled the knee-length garment around his waist, tucking it around a belt of pale gold. The strap fitted itself to his waist and held fast.
The second notification was from Relay.
Speaking with the Lunar Temple cultivators, I learned they collapsed under spiritual suppression. It’s a form of presence emitted by strong cultivators, tied to soul strength and intent. That’s all I was able to find out.
I’ll stay with them. They may be our best chance to leave this island. Find us when you’re ready.
Kai’s face lit up at the thought of a new subject.
Intent. I have something for that.