Calculating Cultivation

Once Yang Heng pulled the doors apart and we entered, there was grass and plants beyond the threshold of the ripped open doorway. He waved his hand and I could feel the metal floor beneath me shake slightly but that was it.

“What do you see?” he asked me.

“Grass, trees, but it is very dark,” I replied, and he frowned. “Is it an illusion?”

“I am not sure,” I could hear a touch of concern in Yang Heng’s voice. The only other time he had seemed off kilter when he forced me to take him along when we first met. He looked back behind us and waved his hand again. The floor shook once more. He was probably using a technique to sense his surroundings. “I can still sense the hovercraft, and I am using its position relative to ours to work out exactly where we are. But I have lost track of whatever is at the center of this place.”

“You think we are being moved about,” I replied.

“It is testing us and using the hovercraft to give me confidence in our position, while it slowly hid itself. We enter into that grassy area beyond this doorway we will likely be trapped until we are slowly worn down. It can’t beat us directly, so it looks to slowly sap our strength and turn our minds.”

“A wide area attack?” I suggested.

“I would be too weak afterwards and the damage would be limited. No, it wants us to think we are winning while always staying one step ahead.” I really hoped he had an answer, since I couldn’t get out of this situation myself. As we continued to stand around while Yang Heng thought about the situation, I heard a shout.

“Help!” I turned to see a young human child rushing out of the darkness. I didn’t hesitate, but brought up my gun and targeted the individual. Yang Heng turned to look at me as the child like figure disappeared after I fired. He reached out and lightly tapped me on the head once more.

The familiar grass and plants beyond the doorway turned red and curly. They were clearly not human plants. “Thanks. How was I fooled? The energy, there was force, there was a child?” I asked.

“A high level technique. That is why it is better to just kill things and sort through the wreckage instead of trying to trade,” he replied. “Well, the good news is that this thing’s combat ability is fairly weak. Bad news, it that I am going to have get serious.”

“So forward?” I asked, looking nervously at the alien plants beyond the doorway. I was surprised no more of the six legged dog creatures with beaks had shown up yet. But they hadn’t posed that much of a threat as we had made our way here.

“There is only one obvious path. Let us keep following it, for now.” We crossed the threshold, as I followed Yang Heng closely from behind. My mask keeping out the surrounding atmosphere as we made our way along a dirt path.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“A shrine most likely. Nature and plant life are quite rare in the Mechanical Layer. Often they are the remnants of civilizations that have been saved over the eons. While an interesting curiosity, they are best destroyed,” Yang Heng replied.

“Or it is a place of relaxation. A place for my people to recover,” a voice sounded out from all around us. Yang Heng came to a halt. It had a deep tone to it.

“Revealing yourself already. And listening to our conversation,” he replied out loud.

“If you were both allowed to leave, would you?” the voice asked.

“Yes. But that is likely a trap of some kind to fall into a deeper illusion. Disperse.” I felt a massive wave of pressure come from Yang Heng and it took effort to remain standing. The ground under his feet cracked and the nearby plants turned to dust.

“I apologize if my observations have alarmed you. That was not my intent. I get so few visitors, I wanted to learn more about you,” the voice said out loud.

“This is why one should only deal with other cultivators. You understand what you are dealing with. If you let us go, we will leave,” Yang Heng said out loud, while I kept looking around. I could see the doorway behind us, but there wasn’t that much ambient light to see far. The roof and walls of this chamber were hidden in darkness.

“The way back has been cleared. Once you return to your hovercraft, a passage has been created to the outside,” the voice replied.

“Wait. Would you be open for trade?” I asked.

“No. I have everything that I desire. I have observed enough of both of you, that I have no more interest in discussion.”

“Let’s go,” Yang Heng said. We made our way back to the hover craft. That was surprisingly anti-climatic. We were soon free. Yang Heng checked multiple times to make sure we had not fallen into an illusion after leaving.

“That was resolved remarkably well,” I replied. Yang Heng gave me a look and shook his head. “No?”

“The battle was far more complex than you could imagine. We battled into the future quite extensively.”

“What?” What Yang Heng said did not compute.

“Once we reached that doorway, I knew that we were falling deeper into a trap. To observe our movements our enemy possessed some form of divination. Either clairvoyance or future sight. Both are incredibly dangerous techniques but have weaknesses to them.” I paid close attention, since apparently, I had just missed quite a bit of what happened.

“Our trip was to confirm that our enemy was using some form of divination to divine our movements and prepare accordingly. The turns we made to reach that point when we paused, the environment afterwards, and the subtle fluctuations in energy confirmed what was truly happening,” he replied. I had been fighting for my life and he had done all of that!

“The mental effects were growing more pronounced. That meant we were on a strict time limit before we needed to leave. That was why I committed to breaking my soul and drawing as much energy into my battle to destroy everything around me after a certain period of time. I then started the steps to complete the process when our enemy spoke to us,” Yang Heng explained.

“And you were really going to kill both of us?” I asked.

“For such a threat to work, you must be willing to follow through with it, if conditions are not met. This is actually something we train for in the Heavenly Alliance. Follow through is incredibly important to counter future sight. While it makes certain strategies and mindsets inflexible, it also counters the ability to see the outcome of proceeding down a specific path.” I considered that answer.

“And it just let us go?”

“The powerful you become and the longer you have existed, the more you default to looking at things from a profit and loss perspective. Keeping us around would lead to no gains and a large loss. Anything being capable of such complex divination is also capable of knowing when to give in,” Yang Heng replied.

“But if it could see the future, then why even allow us to land in the first place?” I asked.

“At that point I hadn’t committed to a certain course of action. You must truly commit no matter what. Having that follow through is the most important thing. It isn’t just enough to think of doing an action, or even swearing to follow through. You must envision yourself committing the action you imagine, so that it echoes into the future.”

“But, why did it have to wait until you were committed? I guess I am not making myself clear,” I replied with a sigh.

“No, you are asking the same questions everyone else asks. The more energy you have, the more you can break the rules. But we are in the Mechanical Layer. The power of that thing’s divination is not going to be that strong. So, it could only see a single step ahead. It couldn’t react to my future reactions. That reminds of one battle I once witnessed in the Firmament between two cultivators who focused on future sight.” I listened closely.

“They played Three Dimensional Go, a common past time divination focused cultivators. There are people who are good at the game and people who look into the future to win. It gets crazy when two divination focused cultivators play. After only a handful of moves, one of them passed out, bleeding from their orifices. They were lucky their head didn’t explode.” That was not what I was expecting.

“Her opponent had just committed to doing a different move every second, while randomly cycling through them in a complex pattern. She couldn’t handle the constant flux of changed outcomes and collapsed.”

“Useful, but not all powerful,” I replied.

“It is a complex skill. But committing to a course of action is the best counter. Since most beings who focus on divination are weak in combat. The only exception is very short term combat predictions, or using probability to work out likely outcomes and responding to those. Nothing is all powerful,” Yang Heng explained.

“Thank you, for saving us. I am clearly out my depth,” I replied morosely. I hated being so weak and helpless.

“In the future it would be nice to meet some friendlier civilizations, but they don’t tend to last long. Eventually they succumb to infighting or external pressures. The Forever City is actually quite tolerant of all the external influences that pass through,” Yang Heng said.

“Why?” I asked.

“To extract knowledge and benefits over a long period of time. This is accomplished by only intervening when absolutely necessary, automating as much as possible, and creating factions to fight for scraps.” It was terrible, but for people who lived forever it made sense.

They wanted to slowly accumulate power slowly. They had reached the point where they couldn’t be easily threatened or avoid threats. Now the rulers of the Forever City were sitting around, getting stronger and stronger. It was a very clever strategy. They had created stability despite everything else that threatened that stability. Yang Heng’s points were hitting home, that the Forever City was a positive, since it had given me a chance to get this far, as much as I wanted to deny this.

“What was that thing though?” I asked.

“There are lots of possibilities. The most likely answer is something unique. That is why it is better to categorize what they do by how they use energy, not what they are. It was a trap, simple as that. More details aren’t needed unless we are going to fight.”

“That is fair. Sometimes it is better not knowing. I guess I have been too used to getting answers,” I replied.

“Curiosity is important for a child like yourself.” I was over a thousand years old, almost two thousand, but I was still a child. To a cultivator that amount of time was just a drop in the bucket of eternity. Yang Heng went back into his hibernation we continued traveling.

After the latest encounter, I was completely out of my depth. If I wanted stability to do business, then I needed to create my own civilization and power base. After thinking on this idea, I realized that was what the Forever City was. A place of stability where fighting wasn’t required all the time. While I had been near areas of fighting, I had been a scavenger.

There were just too many differences with only a single resource that was valued by any being with power. The Ek, while friendly traded in physical material, which had a low value. Energy was more versatile and easily used than any comparable technology. The exception being the combination of the two like the hover craft and other tools I had.

The Forever City did engage in diplomacy, but only in the Firmament, not in the Mechanical Layer. This place was considered a dead end for the most part, except when there was an interesting collection of materials or technology they could harvest.

It was frustrating that someone beat me to my idea. But it just showed that building a civilization was a good idea, since it had already been done and given me a chance. I needed to find another large civilization to trade with or work in. That might also give Yang Heng a chance back to the Firmament, and from there being able to return to the Forever City.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back with him. While I trusted him, I felt like it would make me too dependent upon the Heavenly Alliance. The only thing we could keep doing was to keeping traveling and hoping to run into something or someone that we could converse with.

Ninety seven days after leaving the trap, I picked up a much more diffuse energy signature and began heading towards it. Yang Heng also woke up with a frown on his face. He asked to look at the sensors, which was something he normally didn’t do.

“Problem?” I asked.

“That is a lot of diffuse energy. We need to be ready for anything,” he replied.

“Well, not like there is much I can do, except head towards it.” Several days passed by and the energy readings had grown larger. There was nothing I had gained from the seekers that informed me, what was coming up in front of us.

After moving around a large outcropping of gas, I saw a massive dark gray wall. “What is that?” I asked. The entire things was moving in a slightly different direction compared to us with gases and chunks of matter being pulled into the gray wall.

“Replicators,” Yang Heng said slowly.

“Replicators?” I asked.

“Don’t get close. We need to find a way around, since they are expanding in our direction,” he replied.

“They seem very slow,” I replied.

“These ones are, since they are consuming everything. Probably based on technology. For as many as there are, the energy is too diffuse. Probably nodes linking the machines togeather across a large distance, using energy,” he replied.

“Are they expanding in a sphere?” I asked. I couldn’t even begin to think how big such a sphere would be.

“Your eyes are deceiving you. I would say we should get closer so you could look, but that would be too dangerous. These replicators could have stealth units. Or they could surge. I would call it a wave. You can see how portions of them are thinner compared to other portions if you look at your sensors. In time, the wall will break apart due to other things out here. This area has a decently high concentration of matter, so they will surge forward.”

“And anything that can’t defend themselves?” I asked.

“If you are slow, you are dead. The Ek are a perfect example of this. It is also why a lot of different groups linger on the fringes of the territory claimed by the Forever City. It is safer, since these things will be destroyed if they don’t change their course.”

“Could that be an opportunity to get back to the Forever City?” I asked.

“If we could find it. Everything shifts. Tell me why the replicators would have trouble with that?”

“Communication. Eventually there would just be too much to handle,” I explained after thinking on the question for a moment.

“Exactly. Once so much territory is claimed, it becomes harder to process everything. Computational carrying capacity, or CCC, is term.”

“But couldn’t you design a super computer? Golems? Something?” I asked.

“Some civilizations do. But eventually they all collapse under the eventual CCC or energy limitations. If you spread out energy, you can handle all fronts at once. If you concentrate it all into a single being or a small group, you can only defend so much. Optimizing both of these, is the challenge of many civilizations that look to exist long term,” Yang Heng explained.

We departed from the area. Another dead end, or in this case a wall consuming everything in its path. “What about something like that trap we ran into? Would it survive?” I asked.

“Depends if it can weather the storm. Once you get a enough power, fights become a lot riskier.”

“Because of the sheer number of techniques and ways another being can drag you down if they think they are going to lose. Maybe a strategy that has spread out due divination?” I asked back.

“Possibly. The threats out there are many.”

“A shame, there isn’t a trade hub or something.”

“Oh there is,” Yang Heng replied with a grin.

“Because the layer is infinite, if can exist, it will exist,” I replied, knowing what he was getting at.

“Don’t despair. Eventually we will find something. It may take a while, but I have hope.”

“Well, I am planning to try and circle around these replicators. It might take a while, but anything that survived on the inside might be useful, or helpful,” I replied.

“Possibly. Or we could run into something that made those replicators. It is by far a very efficient harvesting strategy.” After that Yang Heng went back into hibernation.

Even if a civilization did develop or end up here, they had to be strong enough to survive. What a complete and utter nightmare. I had really been sent out here to die without creating a mess.

We continued to travel and just how the empty spaces were, I lost track of the replicators as they disappeared from the sensor. A couple weeks after that I ran into the sight of massive vortex of gas being pulled into a specific point.

Yang Heng didn’t wake up, so it clearly wasn’t important or dangerous. After looking at the phenomenon for a couple of minutes I moved on. While it was an amazing sight, I had become resistant to such things. When everything you saw was amazing, they lost their shock value over time. Yang Heng looked at such things, but didn’t seem to care. While it would be easy to get annoyed with him, he was incredibly patient with me and all the questions I had asked.

While I had thought his mentality questionable along with his character, he kept being proved right over and over. There was no need for him to deceive me either. He was the nicest senior I had ever met. One suspicion on why he kept me around was to steer the hover craft.

It didn’t need constant attention, but it did need attention so we didn’t run into swirling vortexes and other phenomena. Not everything had an energy signature that could be picked up on. It must have been nice, just sleep until something important comes up, chat a bit, and then go back to sleep until the next interesting thing happened.

If I didn’t know about cultivator culture and how work averse cultivators were, then I might have questioned the entire situation. But that was one constant, if cultivators could get what they wanted without exerting themselves, they were more than happy to wait around forever. And now I just realized where the name Forever City might have come from. Sure it was around for a long time, but it could also refer to waiting around for forever. Content to let things come to them.

Sure individual cultivators might go out and travel, but I would guess they were in the minority. It would be all too easy to die, get lost, while the city cultivators were content to inch forward. I was far to weak to wonder about the divide before and this wasn’t the kind of question I was going to bother my senior traveling companion with. But it was amusing to think about such things to help pass the time. Rural versus city cultivators.

I would be the lucky scholarship student who got into the best school. My application was my cultivation and according to Yang Heng I had passed. Using any other method controlling energy was impossible going forward. A big reason why getting past the first bottleneck was important. Before that point, it might have been possible to use another system. It would be difficult, costly, but not impossible. Now I was a cultivator. I had no complaints about that.

The next point of interest were a number of rocks that were almost see through, creating a haze effect. I made sure to avoid them by flying in another direction. It wasn’t like it made any difference in my mind.

Either I was headed towards something or away from it. Picking a direction was more like guesswork than anything else. That was why I had hoped to use the edge of the replicators as a guide, but I had completely lost them. Just having to take passages through the gas that put me out of range according to my sensors. How much was it things shifting around, was something I wasn’t sure of. Yang Heng didn’t have any numbers for encounter rates.

When he left the Heavenly Alliance previously, it was to clear out the surrounding area, and defeat some enemies, and that was how he ended up stranded, and eventually picked up by the Ek. He had knowledge, but the specific details about encounter rates, and long distance transversal were not things he had knowledge about.

He couldn’t build a superior hovercraft unfortunately. My knowledge of arrays and formations was better than his knowledge. While he could sense energy better and work things out quicker than me, his practical knowledge of such things was equal or less than my own. Which meant we had to keep traveling and hoping something showed up there was no other option.

We then ran across a dark red cylindrical pillar, that had to be a hundred times larger than the towers of the Forever City stretching across one of the tunnels. “Yang Heng, wake up, there is something,” I said out loud. This might be a natural thing, but it looked unnatural.

After a little while, he got out of his slumber and looked over my shoulder at the object in front of us. “I can’t see either end. And it looks like it might be something,” I replied.

“Most like a remnant of some technology, drifting here. It has no energy that I can sense, and nothing living.”

“Maybe get close and take a look?” I asked.

“I am slightly curious as well,” he answered which meant he had no objections. Traveling was incredibly boring. And while I didn’t linger at locations, if there was a chance to investigate something I wanted to take the opportunity, rather than continuing on. It wasn’t like leaving sooner would get us to someplace useful quicker.

Our only hope was to find something useful that we could use. The hovercraft came in close, and I could see the surface more clearly. It was pitted and worn slightly. There were also very feint seams all over the massive red cylinder.

“How far does it go?” I asked.

“Fairly far. Odd. But let us follow it to wherever it might end up. That way.” Yang Heng pointed to one side and I began following the cylinder until it reached a gas cloud. “Go in. I will be checking for any dangers nearby.”

I nodded and entered the gas cloud. I could see far enough through it that the red cylinder was still there. We passed into an open space, gas cloud, more open space, over and over. After two days of traveling, we still had not found the end or anything else of interest.

“Keep following it?” I asked at the end of the second day. Yang Heng was more hesitant this time.

“Such a structure is not a remnant. I was wrong, I am not sure what it is. That normally means it is a bad idea to mess with such a thing, since it probably belongs to another super-organization,” he replied.

“High risk, high reward,” I replied.

“Indeed. We are going too slowly. Bring us closer to the red cylinder. I will shield us and create a path forward. Go as fast as possible and don’t stop unless we come across something.” What Yang Heng wasn’t saying, but I could guess, was that it would alert anyone nearby to his presence. We would be a beacon other people or civilizations would look at.

There was no point doing this previously for several reasons, being detected easily by anyone looking for energy was one of them. The second being, Yang Heng liked to go into hibernation if there was nothing to do. The third being, was that it would exhaust his reserves of energy.

After the conversation with the trap, I had seen signs of exhaustion from him, and he had less energy. Spending energy to travel, would lower his combat ability, which was a huge risk. Regardless, we had found something interesting and were going to follow it to the end.

Destroying the object or touching it, was out of the question. The risk of offending a super-organization was too great. If we just followed it out of curiosity and then left, we probably wouldn’t be pursued. But if we damaged it then there would be a much stronger response. That was the attitude the Forever City took with their outposts. If something came along and looked at them, but then left, they wouldn’t attack since it was too much trouble. That calculus would change if someone attacked their outposts and was a threat.

While Yang Heng wasn’t one to back down, he wasn’t about to start fights that he couldn’t win. There was pride about being a cultivator, but he wasn’t suicidal.