Calculating Cultivation

I woke up suddenly. My eyes quickly opened and my lungs gasping for air. Everything was incredibly clear in a way that was hard to describe. The currents of energy were subtly moving about me in a way I had never noticed through the walls and floors. Even the air, which was almost devoid of energy, I could pick up faint traces. I could feel these currents on a much deeper level and not just visually.

I was in my room back in the TripleX faction. “So, you are awake,” I glanced over at the Head Servant who was sitting on a chair nearby. I saw points in his body where energy was circulating. Those had to be his body modifications. I was still trying to gather my bearings as he stood up. I was in the same clothing and equipment I had been in when I had broken through.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked, my mouth felt dry.

“A few days. Now, get cleaned up and changed. Our Master wishes to speak to you,” the Head Servant said and remained standing there looking at me. I got up and quickly went to the bathroom. Thankfully he didn’t follow me. I took a shower and changed into a fresh martial robe. I made sure to put on my spatial rings and observation blockers.

I looked at them, and that was when it hit me in full. I had alive and had broken through. I had done it. My cultivation was a mess, but it felt much stronger, better. I closed my eyes and focused before I left the bathroom. I could feel my soul in fine detail. I could also feel the organ pulse in my gut.

“Hurry up,” the Head Servant called out. I would need more time to understand all the changes. I left the bathroom and followed the Head Servant back to Qiang You’s garden.

I entered and he was sitting on his platform. I could see him much more clearly than before. Instead of a blinding beacon of energy, there were patterns and layers. The intricacies of his cultivation were immense, and I didn’t understand any of what I was seeing. I also noted ripples of energy moving around the garden in tune with the energy inside his body. He gestured at me to approach, and I did. “Junior Yuan Zhou greets Vice Leader Qiang You,” I said with a deep bow.

“Sit, we have some things to discuss,” he said, and I quickly sat. “Any pain or immediate issues?”

“Nothing, but I still need to assess my cultivation,” I replied, and he nodded at that.

“A new path you have stepped on. The effort Leader Han and I exerted for you was considerable and cost us a great deal,” he said. That wasn’t a lie, but he wasn’t listing out the benefits he may have gotten. But once again I could not object. “There were also complications.” I paid very close attention to what he was about to say.

“Most of your cultivation base was either wasted or used to step onto a new system of cultivation. That is something you will have to work out on your own, but there are two things that resulted from this. The first being that a Temporal Hunter managed to get pieces of your cultivation and we were not able to kill it.” That did not sound good. Anything involving time was not simple.

“What this means in practical terms, is that if you enter the Astral Plane again it will hunt for you. If you are ever in a place in the Firmament that is unprotected, it will come to devour you. Ask your questions,” Qiang You said.

“Isn’t my soul linked to the Astral Plane?” I asked and he nodded.

“Indeed. The standard paths of cultivation provide protection. I cannot say anything about the path you have stepped on. While in the Forever City you are fine, but outside of it you will be at risk. Since the monster consumed pieces of your cultivation, it will be able to find you again. You will not be able to kill such a monster before you break through to immortality, and even then it would be difficult. Which brings up the second thing we must discuss. You are being sent on a couple of errands from me to work at repaying your debt,” Qiang You said. I wanted to discuss this monster that was after me a bit more, but he just plowed forward, uncaring about how concerned I was.

“How much do you know of reality?” Qiang You asked.

“The Firmament exists in the middle with the Astral Plane and then Chaos below,” I said.

“And above?” he asked.

“Very little Vice Leader,” I replied.

“That is understandable. I shall enlighten you before your departure. Reality exists as a cake.” It took me a moment to process that last line. “I sense your disbelief. And while it is far more complex in practice, for your simple mind it is the best metaphor.” I listened closely as he continued.

“There are three major layers and two minor layers. With positioning dependent upon the usage of energy and causality. At the top layer, the Material, you have almost no energy, and near complete causality. At the bottom layer, Chaos, you have endless energy, and almost no causality.” I figured as much about the energy, but the causality portion was something I hadn’t really known.

“While there is correlation between the two aspects, they should be considered separate. The Firmament exists in the middle. Where both are equally in flux. Some even claim that it was a minor layer like the others, until many beings came to inhabit it over time as their preferred environment, including us cultivators. Risking causality, is worth than death. That is why the Astral Plane is as far as anyone sane goes. But what about the other way, what do you think?” he asked. I wasn’t sure why he was asking but I considered the question.

“A lack of energy. Cultivators would struggle, but our souls are linked to the Astral Plane. I am not sure what would even work if a cultivator left the Firmament,” I finally said, and Qiang You nodded.

“Pain and stagnation. Energy is the singular resource that all desire. The higher up you go in terms of power and ability, the more refined one desires it to be. Cultivation links to the Astral Plane in a way that is safe, while keeping the physical body safe at the same time. There have been attempts to live on the Astral Plane, but they end in failure as monsters surge upwards from the depths of Chaos,” Qiang You explained.

“Cultivators can close off that connection. You can do the same. But that energy is the fuel for one’s progression. Instead you will have to find another way while running errands for me. As you go up, devices and equipment are more common. While our arrays and formations struggle. That is why the layer above us is called the Mechanical Divide. Ask your question.”

“And this monster won’t be able to get me there?” I asked.

“Monsters from Chaos rarely go beyond the Astral Plane. You could cut off your connection and live in the Firmament without much worry. But if you did that, it is no different than if you went to the Mechanical Divide. Everything wants energy. It is the ultimate power and source of power. Nothing is more valuable. That is why Chaos is at the bottom. Desperate people, civilizations, and other existences, seek to exploit such a resource, while bringing their own doom. That is why cultivation society is superior. We live at the boarder, extracting the most benefits with the greatest risk,” Qiang You said with some pride.

“I sense your skepticism. But our society, despite its flaws, allows for civilization in a place where none should exist. While it is stagnant, corrupt, and ruled by powerful old people who take most of the benefits, it still allows one a chance to climb up the ladder of power.” For a moment there I wasn’t sure if he was talking about himself or me, but then realized that was foolish. Qiang You stood above me in terms of power and standing and clearly enjoyed putting me in my place.

“I understand Vice Leader Qiang You. What errands would you have of me?” I asked with a bowed head. He flicked his hand, and I caught a folded piece of paper he threw at me.

“You may refer to that list. The value of each item is listed,” he said and I opened up the folded piece of paper. There were hundreds of things written in tiny print in three columns with value next to each item. At the end of it the items only listed value was favor. It was clearly scaled in terms of power. My eyes went to the last item on the list, the only one that listed two favors as payment.

Type 5 Energetic Calculator Core – 2 Favors

“Your efforts in business convinced me you aren’t hopeless, so I will let you figure out the rest yourself. You have access to the faction’s information. While it isn’t much, make of it what you will. Your departure is scheduled five cycles from now. Until that time, you may rest here and focus on stabilizing your cultivation,” Qiang You said.

I bowed my head deeply. “Junior thanks Vice Leader Qiang You for his guidance and generosity,” I said.

“I have invested quite a bit into you already. If that debt can be repaid, we shall see.” That was a dismissal. I got up and returned to my room. Thoughts were swirling in my head as I processed everything I had just been told.

I carefully set the list to the side and collapsed on my bed once I arrived in my room. “I did it,” I muttered with a smile. After all the headaches, hardships, and giving up my freedom, I had managed to get past the first bottleneck in cultivation.

There was still one major one left, but that was a problem for far in the future. It would be hard, there was no doubt about that. But I didn’t mind. I would find a way. I closed my eyes and a couple of tears escaped as my success truly hit me.

I fell asleep, mentally and emotionally exhausted. When I woke up again, I felt far more relaxed than I had in ages. I rang for a servant to bring me a meal, while I lounged in the sitting room. A far cry from the dark stairwells of countless towers I had lived in for a long time.

As I slowly ate, I focused on my body and soul. My breakthrough had managed to succeed quite well. The extra time I had been given to manage each step by Leader Han had made it possible. It made me wonder how strong both he and Qiang You were. There were no clear power rankings unfortunately. And higher ranked cultivators rarely fought, and even if they did that information wasn’t recorded down any place, I could access it.

The first thing that was clear was that I could feel energy thrumming through every part of my body and soul. In fact the two were so closely overlapped, there was some difficulty telling where one ended and the other began. The nexus of this issue was the cultivation organ. It had grown in my body and soul. I could feel energy being pulled in through the boundary of my soul, and then through the cultivation organ.

It was a slow process, but I could feel the entire process. I would need to create filters to process the energy. It wasn’t that hard to mentally cut off the connection and not draw in energy. The world seemed dimmer and I lost strength. Each breath was harder to take than the last. There was a brief period of panic, before I began drawing in energy once more.

That was why Qiang You didn’t run these errands himself. He would be incredibly weak, depending more on his physical body. It was only the constant influx of energy that kept my strength up. I would need to look into the long-term consequences of not drawing in energy.

The cylinders I had tried to fashion to build filters on top of, as well as the boundary to my soul were quite sturdy. Still the biggest accomplishment was how solid I felt. Before, I could only feel my soul by moving energy through it. Carving it out was painful and time consuming, but the sense came more from the energy and cultivation structures in my body.

Even as I gained the ability to sense force, it was like sensing the inside of my body through a foggy glass screen compared to now. This was a massive difference just in terms of my ability to detect everything about myself. I cut off the flow of energy once more and everything dimmed. Like dimming a lightbulb, there was less visualization and power within me.

My external senses were much finer as well. It wasn’t just my sight, but I could sense forces acting on everything around me. That nature of my cultivation carried through. A Dao or path was something that the cultivation system of the Forever City was based around. A cultivator would tie themselves to such a concept and use that realization to link their existence to it. I wasn’t completely sure about all the later details, but the cultivation path that was used was very focused on becoming one with a path.

I had broken that paradigm. While I would be able to strengthen my base, filter energy, and become stronger over time, the second breakthrough was no longer simple. I had stepped off of the standard path. If I had stayed on it somehow and made it that far with the cultivation I had, then it would have been easy.

All my accumulation wasn’t spent on making the second breakthrough easy but stepping into the unknown with a stable cultivation structure. It was a massive achievement, but I was in uncharted waters now. The cultivation structures to filter energy, the cultivation organ, and the link between my body and soul all needed to be improved in massive ways.

There was no step by step guide I could follow. It was intimidating, but also freeing in a way. The risk was immense, but I could feel how sturdy my soul was and how it overlapped my body. Compared to before, it was the difference between a thin sheet of rice paper and a block of steel. It really wasn’t a comparison.

I had a servant bring me several metal rods for strength testing purposes. Their durability quickly increased with each rod I tried to bend. My strength was far greater. I focused and my perception of my surroundings slowed down as well. If I had to place my strength and combat ability, not counting techniques, I would place myself at the sixth stage of cultivation in relation to the old system, for a body cultivator. It was an immense difference in personal power.

Still no match for immortals, and my techniques needed to be improved and refined with my newfound senses and control. But that would come with practice.

My attention instead turned to the task I had been given by Qiang You. While I hated how much I was in debt to him, I also acknowledged that I wouldn’t have made it this far without his support and help. My first master Yi Rong had taken me in out of pity. I had nothing to offer. My second master, Jiang Fengge had taken me in out of hope for a better future for his sect. A long term gamble.

Qiang You, was my master in another sense. He owned me with the amount of debt I had accumulated against his generosity. I noticed a trend. The higher up one went, there was less kindness and more focus on transactional relationships. But that was the nature of being immortal, you wouldn’t be kind to those beneath you. It was impossible. Any person would wear themselves out emotionally.

I rubbed my eyes as I thought about all the people I had left behind. The journey to immortality was a lonely one filled with hardships. I allowed myself this moment of weakness, since I had managed to make it this far. “I did it,” I muttered quietly to myself. It felt like a major accomplishment, and it was, but there was also a sense of loneliness.

It was easy to imagine other cultivators that had started on this path and couldn’t stop once they were on it. That was all they knew. It felt like all I knew. The singular focus on cultivation to get stronger.

I got up and picked up the list I had been given. I began to read through some of the items that caught my eye. “Dragon scale, a billion credits. Just got to kill a super beast. No problem there,” I muttered and rolled my eyes. That was never going to happen. “Knowledge fruit, ten million to a billion credits, based on the knowledge within. Let’s go find a garden. Weapon that breaks causality, one favor. Maybe one will just appear?” I looked around and no super weapon suddenly appeared near me.

The Firmament may be infinite along with the other planes of existence, but that didn’t mean these things grew on trees. Well the knowledge fruit might, but that was besides the point. Each of the items I could guess at were insanely valuable. I would need to do research on all of them. Create a binder of information on these items as well as looking up the Mechanical Divide.

What goods would be valuable and that I could bring over? Would my equipment work? And what methods did I have for maintaining my cultivation while traveling? Qiang You hadn’t explained all of this for a reason. I was expected to work it out on my own. Like a boss giving instructions and expecting their subordinate to fill in the gaps.

As for success or failure, it was how much I managed to gather while also improving my cultivation. I was being let go. That probably meant that Qiang You had managed to gather enough value from my breakthrough he was willing to give me a longer leash. Or that the danger around me was too much. Beter to be a rat that was alive, than a tiger that was dead. As long as I was alive, there was hope for the future.

Regardless, I didn’t plan on complaining. I was done with the Forever City and cultivation society. It was as toxic as the air. That wasn’t even a question in my mind. While Qiang You might appreciate its virtues, I did not. While the core of the Forever City might be slightly nicer, you can only have so much opulence, before it just didn’t matter.

With my expanded senses, I could understand why you would want a large environment, so you could relax one’s senses over a larger area to not be constantly stressed. But Qiang You seemed to have reached that limit, taking up three entire levels of his tower with his garden.

Looking at the information the sect had on the Mechanical Layer, there wasn’t much. Just like with other layers of the Firmament, there was a tremendous amount of variation. Just like with cake types, now that metaphor was never going to leave my head after Qiang You shared it.

The biggest issue was that the effects of arrays and formations would be far more limited unless the item was of high enough quality and imbued with enough energy. All my spatial items and almost all of my equipment were not rated for the Mechanical Layer. They would malfunction or just not work if I brought them with me.

The only thing that would still function properly was my sword from my first master, One Swing To Sperate Heaven And Earth. It had served me well over my life and I was glad I would be able to find a use. The energy was imbued into the metal itself, which was what made the blade resistant to the changes in the environment.

Everything else I had used arrays, formations, or the ambient energy in some way. While my blade would be lesser, it would still function. I was at the proper strength to wield it effectively now and use techniques with it.

As for trade goods, it all depended on where I would be going, which would require a lot more research. Qiang You seemed content to just toss me off into the wilderness and see what would happen, hoping I would come back alive.

The biggest issue was that there was a lot of degradation in the Mechanical Layer. The Material was what I would refer to as my old reality. Matter made sense, there were very little shenanigans. Things were stable. As for the Firmament, there were pockets of more solid existence, outposts on the frontier before the Astral Plane that I had been staying in.

Material was being degraded slowly by ambient energy, moving upwards through the layers. It was a mess. Bones had been right, that the full Firmament was a place that was incredibly dangerous. The Mechanical Layer was far more chaotic. Which was why it was considered a lesser layer like the Astral Plane. There were very few long-term settlements. Everyone wanted energy, but the more they used, the more they depended on the stuff.

Like a drug, they kept getting closer and closer to the bottom layer of Chaos and instant death, or a worse fate. I would need to make arrangements for my survival in terms of environment and traveling to wherever I needed to go.

Like the Astral Plane, there was too much that was in flux on the Mechanical Layer. It made me wonder how things moved between layers. While Qiang You had described them like a cake, they clearly existed in a way that was far more complex than that.

The fact that things were in flux made a lot of information useless by being out of date. It was painful to admit that the Forever City held such a prominent position, since it had been around for so long and acted as a rest point for cultivators that were traveling beyond its borders. Many other groups didn’t have anything near as expensive or long lasting as the Forever City.

That combined with looking up the items Qiang You wanted, might have driven me to despair, but instead I relished the challenge. The Forever City would be behind me and while I would need to repay Qiang You, it was not urgent. If I ever wanted to return to the Forever City for whatever reason, then I would need to show results, but that would be a problem I could sort out once I reached immortality.

It felt wrong putting things off like that, but it was clear that Qiang You wanted to toss me away. He had gotten whatever value he could from me, and anything else would be extra. If I did succeed, then he could leverage the debt and the favors I owed him. If I died in some forgotten corner, he would shed no tears.

That feeling was liberating. To know that I was going to be a free agent. While I would still have the backing of the TripleX faction technically, that meant next to nothing outside the Forever City. Super organizations did not respect other super organizations. The differences between them was too great. Now if I was part of the Heavenly Alliance, then I might get some respect from another cultivator super organization.

The main thing was the ability to keep myself alive. Thankfully the TripleX faction had training levels I could practice on. I didn’t want to work on my combat abilities, but I needed to get used to the improvements in my body, mind, and soul. Also I could refine my Force techniques even more and work on the sword techniques I had inherited from the Cloudy Moon Sect.