Yi Cao’s aches and pains chased him as he followed Zihan onto the ship. Exhaustion amplified his discomfort and what little rice he’d had before throwing his bowl on the floor hadn’t been enough to replace the meal… or meals… he’d skipped since stepping onto the station, or the energy he’d spent in his long stress and adrenaline fueled journey.
A woman with steel prongs jutting from her forehead and a silver film over her eyes took their tickets at the gate and voices burbled at them from the walls as they crossed the tubular threshold into the ship itself. Shoulder wide corridors led down some narrow stairs to a long cargo hold lined with colorful seats. Zihan found two that were unoccupied and pulled Yi Cao into them, nodding to a red vested warrior in blue robes in an adjacent seat.
The padding on the seats was softer than anything Yi Cao had ever experienced in his life. Like sitting on clouds. Like floating on air. He tucked his bag and the metal case between his legs then leaned back and closed his eyes.
Passengers bumped by, murmuring in a half a dozen languages. Someone’s luggage clattered as they shifted a bulky pack on their back. The world faded.
On the verge of sleep he thought he saw Mu Chen appear above him to block out the light. Yi Cao woke up with a start.
A construct hung from the ceiling above him. Smooth cream plates surrounded a central glass eye pointed in Yi Cao’s direction while a pleasant feminine voice, nothing like Mu Chen’s, addressed him in a foreign language.
Zihan answered, in the same language, and struts hanging from the ceiling turned the machine to the young master. It chirped and turned to the warrior in the corner. A moment later it slid away on rails.
Zihan settled back in his chair and watched the other passengers filtering into the hold while Yi Cao’s heart slowed. He closed his eyes and hoped for the fading sensation once again.
“You don’t speak the language do you.” Zihan said.
Yi Cao didn’t open his eyes. “Which one?”
“Urdul.” Zihan replied. “Techish. Artificer.” He dug in his robes and Yi Cao cracked one eye to see him pull out his wallet. He touched a control turning the front panel into some kind of reactive display then dialed something up on it.
Yi Cao sighed and closed his eyes again.
“Here.”
Yi Cao opened his eyes as Zihan offered him a pill. He snatched it before the Young Master could retract the offer and then peered at it, holding it up to the light.
“This doesn’t look like a normal pill.” He said after a moment. The thing was opaque, perfectly spherical, nothing like the few pills he’d seen from the sect’s alchemists. The Mountain Recovery pill his cousin took was a pale brown jewel. This looked to be made of some kind of stiff glossy paper and half its size.
Zihan snorted. “It’s not a cultivation pill if that’s what you’re asking.” Yi Cao said.
Yi Cao looked at him. “Then what does it do?”
The construct appeared above them, once again blocking out the light. Two trays hung suspended beneath it in two sets of arms while a fifth wire appendage carried a bottle wrapped in brown paper. The bottle went to the warrior while the two trays were locked in place in front of Yi Cao and the Young Master.
“Please enjoy the trip.” The machine said to the warrior, burbling something in… techish… at Zihan before it moved to the next row of passengers.
The warrior’s bottle opened with a pop and he leaned back against the wall to watch his two co-passengers with lidded eyes while Yi Cao continued to hold the pill in front of him.
“It’s a construct. Technically.” The Young Master went on. Plates of meat steamed on the trays in front of each of them and Yi Cao’s stomach rumbled at the smell as Zihan cut into his. “They call them kikkitur pasoo.” Zihan took a bite and chewed as he thought, waving the steel prong that came with the meal in a circle. “They’re like, a technique manual that writes itself into your head, sort of.” He gestured to the pill in Yi Cao’s hand and swallowed. “That one teaches you the language. It will allow you to understand it anyways. At a basic level. And speak it. Poorly. Better than you can now though.”
“Pills that mess with your head aren’t usually a good idea.” The warrior’s voice purred from his corner as he regarded them over his drink.
Zihan glanced at the warrior as he stuffed another chunk of meat into his mouth. “Thanks.” He said. He turned back to Yi Cao and gestured with his prong for Yi Cao to take it. “It’s artifice, not Ki.” He said. “It’s going to teach you a language, not make you mad with foreign laws.”
Yi Cao looked at the pill with some uncertainty. “And you just had one of these sitting around?” He asked.
Zihan shook his head as he chewed. “Fu had it.” He said. “A few other ones too. Fancier ones about the way some of this stuff works.” He tapped his head. “Experimenting with it, I think. Useless stuff for alchemy though, mostly. The artificers don’t use Ki so none of their techniques would translate.”
Yi Cao looked at him.
Zihan grinned and shoveled another bite into his mouth. “What do you think I did with the rest of the pills?” He asked. He gestured again. “Now choke it down. You’re acting ungrateful. You’ll want that where we’re going. Don’t make me force it down your throat.”
Yi Cao grimaced, more at the implied threat than the prospect of taking a pill of dubious provenance, and tossed the pill into his mouth. A bite of meat carried it into his stomach and Yi Cao realized just how hungry he was after a day spent running for his life.
He froze at the thought and stared at the food in front of him.
“Only a fool supplements his cultivation with alien powers.”
The laconic drawl broke Yi Cao from his reverie and he glanced towards the warrior in the corner. A ceremonial dagger hung from the man’s belt while a sheathed Jian leaned against the seat in front of him. The man was probably in his early thirties, dark hair pulled into a chonmage, thin mustache framing his lips.
“What are you supposed to be, some kind of hidden master?” Zihan asked. He turned on the man. “Do we even look like cultivators?” He tugged at his half cloak as though in emphasis.
The warrior turned his eyes to the ceiling. “My mistake.” He took another sip from his bottle.
Zihan glared for a moment longer. “Yeah. Thanks again.” He turned back to his meal, and a moment later Yi Cao turned to his own as well.
The machine buzzed by overhead and voices shifted in the background, still as indecipherable as ever.
Zihan finished his meal and locked his tray upright against the back of the chair just as the ship rumbled and symbols flared to life in midair across the long passenger bay.
“Here we go.” The warrior murmured from his corner, then glanced at Yi Cao. “You may want to hold onto your meal.”
The rest of the passengers made it to their seats as something banged towards the front of the ship, then the rumbling rose in volume as the whole world shifted, something like the takeoffs Yi Cao experienced on the smaller sky-ships.
A voice spoke over the rumbling in techish, or what Yi Cao presumed to be the artificer’s language, and then the rumbling grew in pitch as a weight pushed Yi Cao into his seat.
Yi Cao clutched at the plate rattling in front of him while Zihan studied his fingernails in the seat beside him.
Yi Cao remembered his first ride in one of these machines. He remembered watching the sect disappearing into the distance, the valley, the wilderness, passing by beyond the windows before the inner sect members sent him scurrying on their errands. Yi Cao closed his eyes and clutched tight to the plate rattling in front of him. Kept his eyes closed as the shaking moved into his chest.
The rumbling stopped after only twenty minutes, but the feeling of motion remained. The voice came back on, but it still meant nothing.
“We’re away.” Zihan said quietly when the voice faded.
Yi Cao kept his eyes closed for several seconds longer. He opened his eyes as he regained control. Looked down at his meat. Sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
The rest of the meat tasted bitter on his tongue, like ashe.
Zihan clapped his hands together. “Well,” he said. He yanked the metal case from between Yi Cao’s legs and propped it on his lap, “let’s see what kind of treasure the sect got for us.”
Yi Cao sighed and pushed the tray out of his way. “I have a key.” He said. He reached for his bag but Zihan rubbed his hands together and shook his head. “No need.” The Young Master lifted the dented case onto its side, then with a flick from both hands, snapped the latches off at both ends.
Yi Cao pushed the bag he’d half retrieved back under his seat.
Zihan smirked and cracked the case just an inch. “I’m fairly certain I know what this is.” Ki rolled out of the crack as the case caught around the dented sides, and Zihan frowned as he ran a finger down it, raising a thin plume of smoke. “But…” he said as the case dropped open. He grinned. “I was right.”
Black folds of cloth filled the case. They shimmered in the overhead lights, but they weren’t the treasure. Cradled in their center sat an irregular blue sphere of metal no larger than the palm of Yi Cao’s hand. The sphere was pitted and scarred and odd bits hung from it like half formed bubbles or tiny beads. The air rippled around it with the force of its Ki, giving the whole thing an oddly distended look while the cloth seemed to eddy and flow like water around it. Ki rolled off of it in a tide, so heavy that it made even Yi Cao’s unremarkable channels twitch and shiver at the density of its power.
The warrior in the corner stared openly at the treasure while a few passengers in some of the other rows looked around, no doubt sensing the power nearby.
Zihan tucked the lid of the case underneath his seat then lifted the sphere out of its cradle of black cloth. An additional sphere extended from one side, hidden until Zihan lifted it out of its nest, like a second smaller bubble half formed and stuck to one side of the larger sphere of blue-white metal.
Zihan tossed it lightly in his hand. “What an ugly hunk of junk.”
Yi Cao stared at him.
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The warrior beside them cleared his throat. “I would be happy to take it off your hands.”
Zihan glared at the man. “Would you mind?” He asked.
The warrior looked at him and opened his mouth but flames danced in Zihan’s eyes and the man abruptly clamped his mouth shut. “Not at all.” He replied. He turned to face forward, lifting his bottle for a long pull while his eyes were dragged back to the stone in Zihan’s hand.
Yi Cao could feel the initial pulse of Ki fading as Zihan turned the sphere in his hands. “What is it?” He asked.
Zihan shot him a look. “A source.” He said. “Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Yi Cao replied, unable to pull his eyes from the stone. “But, what kind?”
Zihan shrugged. “You know the five classes of sources?” He asked.
Yi Cao shook his head and scowled. “I never saw a source until elder… Xia… took me into the lesser hall.”
“There are no sources in the lesser vault.” Zihan replied. “Were none before I emptied it either. Those were batteries. Storage gems and Ki matrices. You can make some potent weapons with them, mostly because they aren’t as likely to completely corrupt the weapon they’re attached to or corrode its scripts, but they’re also. Good enough to astonish a mortal, but nothing, compared to the power of a weapon tied to a source. Well…” he tossed the source into the air and caught it again. “A class three or better source, maybe two, if the craft is good.”
Yi Cao gazed at the source. The air rippled where it moved, not just in its vicinity, leaving a trail of mesmerizing eddies in its wake each time Zihan tossed it up and down. “What’s the difference?” He asked.
“Between classes?” Zihan asked. “Technically not much. Just, power on power on power.” He waved a hand. “Technically everything from our world is a source. Reality bleeds Ki, constantly. The dirt, the sky, the light, the leaves. Your clothes, even sewage. Anything born in our world.” He eyed Yi Cao. “Do you know about the dead worlds?”
Yi Cao thought back to the stories he’d heard at Zumu’s knees under dark pines on stormy nights, or the lessons they’d been given that touched on the dead worlds. “There’s no Ki.” He said. “Abominations. Living dead. Monsters.”
Zihan shrugged. “Sure, close enough. No Ki is the point. I only know what I’ve been told. Anyways. Sources.” He held up the sphere. “Class five is trash, mostly. Dirt, rocks, common, whatever. There’s Ki, but it’s not much, it’s aspected, but it’s not powerful. They’re mostly just dumb matter. You won’t fill a node with the Ki they generate and probably can’t even cut a channel with them. I wouldn’t know.” He shrugged and looked sheepish for a moment.
“Everything from our world exudes Ki, something you’ll find doesn’t happen beyond the veil. People not born in our world can’t cultivate, but there are immortals who left when the interdex lines showed up so there’s been demand for anything with a wiff of Ki past the technomancer’s station for centuries, interdicted stuff, of course. We don’t ship Ki.”
“Class four is a little better. Class three starts to have a noticeable effect on the surroundings, and class two is typically the source of the more potent cultivation grottos. Not that you can’t cultivate with lower quality sources, but the higher you go, the better the results.” He thumped his chest with a hand. “Clearer aspects.” he said, then winked. “A single class two source can form the foundation of a sect’s power. Even top sects don’t usually have more than a handful of them lying around in locked vaults and closed cultivation chambers. You may immortals with class twos, and on their ascension they usually consume the source entirely into their inner world along with a host of other treasures.” Zihan frowned.
“But Class one is where things get crazy. Class one grottos don’t just warp the world with their Ki, they elevate the power of everything around them. Toss a rock into a class one grotto and you’ll have a class two source in a couple of days, toss a cultivator in?” Zihan shook his head. “Immortal, but most likely completely taken over by the Ki. Immortals are about the only people who can handle a class one source without dying or turning into monsters. My father told me stories of class one sources that materialized in villages and turned the entire population into guardian spirits, even dogs, cats, anything caught in its aura. Made the whole place a death trap, and a cultivators paradise at the same time.”
“And this?” Yi Cao asked with a nod to the stone in Zihan’s hand.
“This?” Zihan looked at the stone. “Class two. Probably.” He shrugged, then grinned. “But that’s not what makes it the treasure of the century.”
Yi Cao felt a spike of alarm. He looked around. “Should we really…” He caught the warrior in the corner glancing at the treasure again and leaned towards Zihan. “Should we really be showing this then?” He hissed.
Zihan gave his cold hard grin. “Why not?” He asked, all the mirth gone from him.
Yi Cao quailed and sat back in his seat. He cast his eye over the seats that surrounded them but only the warrior next to them seemed to be paying any attention to the treasure in their midst.
Zihan tossed the source again, watching the ripples follow it through the air. “There are also three types of sources based on their aspects or combination of aspects.”
“Like the three types of aspects.” Yi Cao replied.
Zihan winked. “Precisely.” He rolled the source in his palm and ticked the types off on his fingers. “Element, Action, and State. You don’t get all three with each source, but typically the element describes the material it commands, action describes the way it commands it, and state describes a small handful of aspects that don’t fit neatly into the elemental aspects. Fire, Force, Life. Shadow, Heat, Stillness. Lightning, Deception, Truth.” He rolled his fingers as he played through the combinations then shrugged. “It’s a poor science. What’s the difference, afterall, between a Shadow Elemental aspect, A Shadow Action aspect, or a Dark State aspect for that matter?”
Zihan tossed the source again and grinned at Yi Cao who scowled without answering.
Zihan shrugged. “Could just be technique.” He said. “It’s the way it’s used, instead of something innate to the source. Who knows. Perspective? Point is though, most sources are a mess to pick apart. This for example.” He pulled out his wallet and after a minute of fiddling opened it to reveal a sapphire amulet floating between the transparent panes over the void within.
Yi Cao looked up from Mu Chen’s amulet with a frown. “They carried sources?” He asked.
“Not half bad ones either.” Zihan replied. “Class three, three and a half. I got some kind of wind ice spear that’s a solid class three. A few other baubles, and one of the ice cultivators had an artificer’s weapon, but nothing as good as the necklace that big guy was wearing.” Zihan plucked the amulet from the wallet and spun it around his hand on its chain. “Water, Shadow, Light, I think, Force or Crush maybe, maybe even Void. As sources go it’s about as dirty as they come. Too many aspects. If I had to guess the sect I killed rescuing you probably has a class one source in these aspects churning these sources out somewhere in their territory, probably an underground tide pool or river or something. They were all limited to pretty much the same techniques. If their source was purer they might have had more ways to utilize the Ki, but unleash something like this,” he flicked the amulet so that it twisted beneath his hand, “and it’s pretty much going to do the same handful of things every time.”
Yi Cao remembered the way the amulet glowed on Mu Chen’s chest and looked away. He realized he felt nothing from it as he had with the ball of blue metal and looked back at the sapphire set in gold.
“How come I don’t feel anything from it?” Yi Cao asked.
“Scripted.” Zihan said. “See?” Blue light pulsed around Zihan’s hand and gold scripts appeared on the facets of the amulet’s gem. “Fancy script too. A weapon, not a cultivation resource. I’d have to break it in order to cultivate with it, and that would probably reduce it to a class four, maybe even five. Sect didn’t want their signature power falling into someone else’s hands.”
Zihan pinched his fingers and the golden chain the amulet hung on parted with a stink of hot metal. “Most scholars who care divide sources based on their purity, identified by the smallest number of aspects reasonably attributable to them. The more there are, the more common they become, and the less valuable they are for cultivation. The fewer there are, the harder they are to find and the more valuable they are for cultivation.” Zihan pulled the chain from the amulet and closed the wallet back around the gem itself before he tucked it away. “They’d call that amulet a three five.” He said. “Class three, tier five. Then they’d quibble over the details endlessly.” The Young master lifted the class two source. “This is a two one. A class two source, with a single aspect.”
He spun it, making the air ripple as Ki flowed off the irregular conjoined bubbles of metal.
“That’s obscenely rare.” The Young Master said as he watched the air ripple. “Even I never cultivated with anything better than a two two, even if the second aspect was always negligible.”
He gazed at the stone for a moment. Lost to some memory while Yi Cao studied the sphere. Eventually Yi Cao pulled his eyes from the stone and poked at his food with a scowl.
“Do you know what it actually is?” Yi Cao asked.
Zihan shrugged. He nodded towards the case still sitting in his lap. “Tag says it’s a dimension pearl. Crap built up on the hull of an interdex liner that has to be scrubbed off every couple of transits. Pearls are rare. My mother had some jewelry made of them. Most aren’t a source though.” He rolled the sphere and touched an imperfect bead stuck to the shell. “Just, pretty baubles.”
“Then… that makes you rich.” Yi Cao said.
Zihan shrugged again. “Something like that. Normally this sort of treasure would get whisked to an immortal’s inner world to strengthen their influence over its laws, but there are no immortals on Elleppu station, one of the technomancer’s rules, which is why we had a chance at it in the first place. Any sect would do, anything, to get this.”
Yi Cao stared at the object and felt his lip curling in disgust. “What are you going to do with it?” He asked.
Zihan stared at it for a moment, then in a flare of Ki, he jammed his finger through the center of the primary sphere, drilling a hole straight through it.
Yi Cao jerked in surprise.
“By the-”
The warrior clapped a hand over his slack mouth.
Zihan glared at him and the warrior moved the hand over his eyes as he turned away and lifted the bottle once more to his lips.
Bits of the source flaked in Zihan’s lap as the young master levered his finger out of the hole and ran the gold chain from the sapphire pendant through it. He ran one finger over the surface, scorching lines into the sphere.
“My scripting isn’t what it should be,” Zihan said as he carved the smoking runes, “but, I can do a basic grotto rune.” He finished with a flourish and the runes flashed pale blue like the metal they were cut into. Yi Cao felt the Ki respond.
“There.” Zihan watched the ripples around the source slow and shrink as the Ki flowing from it dissipated. “If that didn’t destroy it…”
The changes slowed as the rippling effect reached the edge of the sphere and Zihan tossed it to make sure they still stuck around at the very edge of the source. He nodded, then lifted the source on its chain and dropped it over Yi Cao’s head.
Yi Cao blinked.
Zihan picked at the pieces on his lap and tucked them into an inside pocket.
“If the Young Master has no need for the chips,” the warrior next to them said, “This Su Xialu would be happy to pay you handsomely for them.” He made a little half bow from his seat.
Zihan glared at him. “Didn’t I tell you to mind your own business?” He asked.
The warrior’s bow deepened. “As you say.” He said and turned back to the wall and his drink.
Zihan brushed his hands off with a scowl.
Yi Cao touched the source tingling at his neck and looked down at it. “What is this?” He asked.
Zihan looked at his hands and picked at something caught on one palm. “You’re, what? Second ring?” He asked. “First? Still building your foundation?” Zihan pulled the lower half of the case off of his lap and tucked it underneath his seat with the top half then looked at Yi Cao.
“First.” Yi Cao said, still staring at the source. “Third step.”
“Damn.” Zihan scowled and tapped his thumb against his lips in thought. “That’s less than I thought.” He admitted after a moment. “Well, I guess it will just take longer.” He looked Yi Cao up and down with a hard look in his eyes, then nodded and examined his chair instead.
Yi Cao lifted the home made amulet and watched the air ripple subtly around his fingers, felt the Ki already moving through his channels.
Zihan tipped his chair back and put his arms behind his head. He closed his eyes. “Don’t cultivate now.” He said. “That pill you took needs time to get into your brain, and you need sleep for it to do that.” He popped one eye open to study Yi Cao. “Relax. We won’t have anything to do for a couple of hours anyways, and we’ve both had a long day.”
Yi Cao turned to Zihan but found himself eye to eye with the warrior sitting opposite him in the corner.
“Eat first.” The Young Master said, closing his eye. “You’ll wake up when we reach the gap”
Yi Cao looked down at what remained of his food and suddenly remembered the yawning pit in his stomach.
He ate, slowly, tasting nothing as he felt at the Ki moving in his body. When he was done he locked his tray in position and found the controls to lean back on upholstery that seemed specially built for causing sleep.
Elsewhere in the liner a child whined at his mother while two men argued in a language Yi Cao didn’t speak, both sounds combining with the low murmur of the other passengers and the soft rumbling vibration of the entire ship.
Before Yi Cao’s eyes closed, he lifted the source and watched the air ripple around his hand again.
A treasure to forge an immortal.
He touched a line of the script scorched into its surface and traced it with his finger.
The murmuring of the voices in the background shifted, in his tired mind, to the sussuration of tree branches in the wind while he faced an elder willing to do, anything, to obtain the treasure he now held.
He thought of his cousin, and tucked the amulet under his shirt before he put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes to search for sleep.
He never felt it steal over him.
He woke an hour later to the sensation of his guts getting flipped inside out. He gurgled a cry and jerked upright in his chair. His heart hammered in his chest and he found that one hand had gone automatically to the source dangling from his neck.
A bell chimed from the ceiling and a voice addressed them.
“Welcome to Massu. In just a few moments your screens will give you a view of Aarpaa station approaching from the bow. Local station time is currently third hour of forty three Hziran. We’ll be arriving in about thirty minutes. Please make yourselves comfortable as we begin the braking procedures.”
It took Yi Cao a moment to realize the language hadn’t been imperial.
Yi Cao couldn’t feel a scrap of Ki in the world, except, what came from his new source and from the boy in the chair beside him.
Zihan levered his chair upright with a grunt. He smirked at Yi Cao’s panicky look. “Welcome to your first dead world.”