Untitled Space Xianxia - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: In Transit

I have a theory. You see, I think cultivators are so obsessed with their ceremonies and their honorable combat and their constant drama because none of them have jobs. You can only meditate so long before the boredom sets in, and with the mortals doing all the actual work, the cultivators have nothing better to do than argue over petty bullshit and hit each other with sticks.

My first trip with Lucy reinforced this theory.

Prior to this, the only interstellar travel I’d done had been the four-year trek out to roofie from my home system. Brady and I had hitched a ride on a long-haul freighter, which meant working through the journey. We probably spent as much time crawling around outside as actually aboard the ship. If RF-31 hadn’t offered us shorter hours, we’d have kept on for another two years to make it to the Riala system.

Lucy didn’t need any vac-welding—her qi barrier deflected any debris before it could get to the hull. She handled maintenance, cleaning, and food production entirely on her own, the latter of which I took some issue with.

It wasn’t that I thought I could do better—gods knew Lucy was a better chef than I’d ever be. It just drove me crazy to wander about aimlessly while someone else worked. All my life I’d had to pull my weight, and I’d be damned if I stopped now.

Problem was, Lucy had an annoying tendency to step in and take over the moment I tried to cook something for myself. Start to make an omelet? Lucy’s grinding the pepper before you’ve even cracked the second egg. Grab the ingredients for a sandwich? Lucy’s already spreading the mayo and toasting the bread. Hell, I couldn’t pour a bowl of cereal without a strand of qi adding the milk.

That’s how I discovered her weakness.

Day four into our three-week trip, I managed to finish two entire pancakes before Lucy swooped in to cook the rest. Turned out she’d been fixing a leak somewhere in the garden’s sprinkler system, which meant one thing and one thing only to my competitive nature.

Her perception could only be in one place at a time.

I tested my hypothesis on laundry day, waiting until she’d begun folding to sneak into the kitchen and make a sandwich. By the time her defeated presence made it back to the galley, I’d already taken my first bite.

From there it turned into a game. Once every other day or so, I’d dream up some way to distract her so I could cook behind her back, bonus points if I managed to do all the dishes before she noticed.

She responded with heightened vigilance at mealtimes, but that didn’t stop me. Whether or not I’d just eaten lunch, if Lucy went off to do some chore elsewhere on the ship, you’d better be sure I was cooking something. Usually the results of my efforts wound up in the fridge for later, but reheated pasta was a small price to pay for that little huff she made whenever she caught me doing things for myself.

To be clear, I wasn’t entirely unproductive. I spent long hours meditating in the core room, forcing myself to grow accustomed to the deafening qi. I couldn’t spend my whole life floating through deep space, and I wouldn’t make much of a cultivator if I got a migraine from being around qi. I knew whatever barren rock I ended up on would be a thousand times worse than Lucy’s core, so I had to get as comfortable around it as I could get.

I kept my senses constrained to the ship, refusing to touch the vast reservoir of calm qi outside. Once already I’d nearly lost myself to it, so Lucy and I agreed I should leave it alone until we got to The Dueling Stars. Presumably somebody there would know how to fetch a wandering spirit.

I did try taking in some of the reactor’s spill-off qi like normal cultivators did, but my body rejected it. With a bit of concerted willpower, I could pull some of the obnoxiously bright energy towards me, but it refused to enter my core.

On the bright side, even though I couldn’t cultivate any new qi, my previous foray into the infinite sea had left me absolutely brimming with the stuff. The act of condensing it took on a whole new level of difficulty without a ventilator doing my breathing for me, but I managed it after a few days.

It’s remarkable the things you can accomplish when you don’t have anything better to do.

From there I experimented. Cycling qi through different meridians had different effects on the body, effects I grew to realize differed from what I might’ve expected.

Cycling through my heart meridian, for example, slowed my heartrate, evening it out to solid, powerful thumps. Lucy told me most cultivators experienced the opposite, their pulses quickening as they cycled. Similarly, while it still improved my circulation, cycling through my blood meridian cooled me down rather than warming me up. I found it pleasant. I hated being too hot.

My kidney meridian—which also governed the liver, I discovered—had no immediately discernible effect. Most people can’t actually tell how well their kidneys or liver are doing unless the answer is ‘catastrophically poorly,’ so I just assumed my qi cooled them and made them run more effectively, if more slowly.

I practiced all sorts of different variations. I cycled one after the other. I cycled them all at once. I experimented with giving them each fresh qi, looping them so the qi out of one meridian went straight into the next, flickering them on and off like light switches, anything I could think of, really. Lucy didn’t bother trying to instruct me one way or the other, claiming circulation techniques weren’t relevant until I had all twelve meridians open. I practiced anyway.

The only trick I didn’t master was cycling qi without entering a meditative trance first. It was the one thing Lucy kept pushing me to work on, presumably because anything you can only do in a meditative trance isn’t actually that useful. I made a bit of progress towards keeping my cycling going after breaking meditation, but nothing inspiring. Hey, we can’t all be instant masters.

Imagine that, an instant master. Just add water.

Lucy outright forbade me from opening any more meridians, citing the inherent danger in doing so unsupervised. I told her I’d already opened three. She told me any more would raise suspicion in a new recruit. I told her she wasn’t my real mom.

One more wouldn’t hurt, right?

It hurt like hell.

I settled on my lung meridian, hoping it would help with my breathing and assuming it’s proximity to my heart and blood meant something. The qi channel itself was shaped liked, well, lungs, looping out to one side before swinging back to the other. Its entrance and exit both rested at the base of my throat.

I started by cycling my open meridians on the logic that my blood and kidneys would help purge the toxins I was about to force out. The slight spiritual numbness that came from circulating my particular qi had nothing to do with it, because I absolutely wasn’t afraid of repeating the painful opening process. Nope. No fear of pain here.

The first time I slammed a wave of qi into my clogged lung meridian my focus shattered like a wine glass hit by a cannon—not a cannon ball, a cannon. I fell backwards and gasped for air, but none came.

Panic mounted. My heart raced. The harder I pulled, the more my diaphragm refused to budge. This was it. This was the danger. I hadn’t listened, and now I was gonna suffocate because I’d thought I could fuck around with my lungs unsupervised.

Second by second, the air slowly came. It was a torturous process, my lungs expanding ever so slightly more with each failed breath. By the time the blue tone had faded from my face, I’d switched from asphyxiating to hyperventilating.

And it didn’t stop.

With just a trickle of qi running through my mostly-closed meridian, my breath ran away from me, energized and out of control. Trouble was, unlike my heart stopping when I opened its meridian, regulated, rhythmic breath was central to cultivation.

It came down to a race. Either I’d manage to recenter my focus while hyperventilating, or my lungs, diaphragm, meridian, or all three would give out, you know, exactly the perfect scenario for seeking inner peace.

Laying on my back with my knees in the air, I slammed my heel into the padded floor, establishing a tempo triple that of my normal breathing. If I was going to hyperventilate, at least I could hyperventilate in time. Triple proved too slow.

A fog swept through my brain. The room spun. My throat grew parched then enflamed as I sucked back more and more air. Still I tapped my foot, four, five, six times as fast as normal breath. I forced my eyelids shut.

My center reappeared in my mind’s eye in flickers, blurry and unstable as my focus wavered. I fixated on it, clinging desperately to my one and only hope. I grabbed the liquid qi with all the restraint of a starving man before a four-hour meal, snatching it up and throwing it against my lung meridian.

I coughed. Breath left me again, a momentary relief from my hyperventilation until, as before, it came back, and the cycle began again.

I don’t actually remember exactly how many pushes it took to finally clear out my lung meridian, but I’ll never forget the relief that washed over me as I finally inhaled at a pace of my own choosing. I’ll also never forget Lucy’s tone as I exited my stupor.

“Go wash up,” she’d simply said, disapproval clashing with concern in her voice. “I’ll take care of the mess here.”

I slunk away as she got to work cleaning the grime I’d expunged from the reactor room floor.

I took the longest shower of my life that day, first scrubbing the foul-smelling gunk that’d coated my skin, then simply standing there and letting the water wash over me. I thought about a lot of things, from how close I’d just come to death to what exactly had driven me to take such a risk. I refused to believe boredom and impatience had been enough, but the harder I looked, the less I liked what I found.

By the time I finally shut the water off and emerged from the shower, two conclusions had solidified themselves in my mind. The first was never to let my desire for progress cloud my better judgment.

The second was to always listen to Lucy, even if she wasn’t my real mom.

——

In the days following that particular adventure, Lucy made more of a concerted effort to keep me busy. My days started with an hour on the treadmill followed by another hour of weight training, rotating muscle groups as Lucy instructed. Apparently I was just copying the exercise routine one of her other passengers had used, but I supposed if it was good enough for them it was good enough for me.

After the gym, I’d eat breakfast and meditate through the morning, practicing cycling and all that other stuff I already told you about. Lucy would eventually pull me back to the lower deck for lunch, and then it was off to the sparring ring.

I’d never been a fighter. Sure, I worked with my hands so my body had some strength to it, but vac-welding was more of an endurance exercise than an agility one.

Lucy’s inexperience in the field didn’t help. She had an entire library of holos she’d recorded of her various passengers’ practice sessions, but even slowed to ten percent speed I could only hold my own against a handful of those. I tried emulating the forms as best I could, but mimicry could only go so far.

The best I could really say for my martial progress was that I grew comfortable holding a sword. It was better than nothing.

After what could only loosely be called combat training, I’d shower and retire to the lounge for a cup of tea. I’d spend the hours before dinner reading fiction on my holopad or pestering Lucy with questions about her past. She proved adept at avoiding straight answers, distracting me instead with tales great battles or legendary cultivators she’d met. The stories would persist through dinner, after which I’d recline in the theater to watch a holo or two before bed.

It was simultaneously the busiest and least busy I’d ever been. I spent all day every day doing something, but almost none of it could’ve been considered actual work. Exercising, cultivating, reading, even sparring all felt like practice at worst and leisure at best.

I had hours and hours of free time, yet all of it somehow ended up filled by one activity or another. I started to think all those bored cultivators with nothing better to do than duel each other or start drama were just lazy, but I supposed there were only so many books to read and holos to watch.

On the twenty-first day since our departure from roofie, my post-dinner routine went slightly differently. Rather than immediately whisking the dirty dishes away, Lucy simply left them on the counter and returned with a glass of port. I raised it to my nose. It smelled like raisins. I took a sip. It tasted like alcoholic raisins.

“Early tomorrow morning, we’ll land on Fyrion, an inhospitable dwarf planet which hosts the smallest and weakest outpost of the Dragon’s Right Eye sect. Once there, you’ll beseech the local elders for a chance to join their sect. Before that happens, there are a few things we need to work out.”

“Like what I’m going to tell them,” I said.

“Precisely. An unaffiliated initiate with four open meridians is going to raise questions, especially one with so little training and such peculiar qi. You should know the answers to those questions before you set foot on Fyrion.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with the truth?”

“Do you want to be a cultivator or a science experiment?” Lucy asked bluntly. “You should tell them as little as possible. Cultivators are famously secretive, an unfortunate byproduct of their competitive nature. Openly sharing information like that will get you exploited or killed. Avoid outright lying—anyone with an open sense meridian will sniff you out immediately—but don’t be afraid to stretch the truth.”

“Um… okay. So what can I tell them?”

“Lean on me,” Lucy said. “One of the perks of being around a few thousand years is your juniors assume you have some ineffable reason for everything you do. You were a vac-welder on a long-haul freighter until a soulship found you and gave you some basic training. That’s all they need to know.”

I sipped my port and nodded. “I like it. Short, sweet, and mysterious enough to explain anything weird I do while still maintaining plausible deniability. Anyone asks, I can just tell them that even I don’t know why you picked me.”

“Exactly. It explains your origin, your behavior, and your open meridians.”

“And what do I say when they ask why they can’t sense my qi?”

“The magic words.”

“The magic words?”

“Repeat after me,” Lucy said. “It’s a part of my Way.”

“It’s a part of my way.”

“Great. Now say it again with a bit more reverence to the word ‘Way.’”

“It’s a part of my Way?” I tried.

“Better. You still sound like a confused vac-welder.”

“That’d be because I am a confused vac-welder.”

Lucy sighed. “Every cultivator has a Way, the path they follow on their journey to grasp one of the threads that bind the universe. A cultivator’s Way encompasses all the techniques they learn, the way they fight, the truths they contemplate, everything. It’s an intensely personal thing, and pressing someone on the details of their Way is an insult at best and a challenge to a duel at worst.”

“So they’ll think I’m hiding my qi on purpose? Won’t they ask why?”

“That’s the beauty of it; asking any more questions would be disrespectful, and cultivators loathe disrespect. That’s why they’re the magic words. Whenever a cultivator asks a question you don’t want to answer, it’s a part of your Way. Got it?”

“It’s a part of my Way,” I repeated. “What else should I know?”

“Salute everyone higher ranked than you. When a higher-up is in the room, don't speak unless you’re spoken to. Err towards being overly polite.” Lucy sighed. “I don’t know all the protocols myself, and I really don’t know which are basic human behavior and which are unique to cultivators. Your background as a simple vac-welder will earn you some leeway, but don’t abuse it.”

She went on to coach me on the proper form and posture for a salute, the common greetings and different levels of respect each carried, and a hundred other little things I’d forget the moment I was in front of an actual human being. The longer the onslaught of instruction dragged, the less excited I grew for the inevitable sneers I’d get when I messed something up. A part of me didn’t believe it. Cultivators couldn’t have a stick that far up their collective ass, could they?

As the etiquette discussion wound down, Lucy moved on to sharing what little she knew of The Dueling Stars. It wasn’t much.

A binary pair of red dwarfs sat at the center, one for each of the two sects that governed the system. Unoriginally named Dragon’s Right Eye and Dragon’s Left Eye, the rival sects were identical in all but name, which was apparently enough of a difference to fuel a generation-spanning hatred for each other.

Each sect had three outposts scattered between the various barren planets, as well as a large station around their respective star. All the core members lived on the starbases, seeing as their proximity to the stars meant they had access to the most qi. I’d be starting as far from the red dwarfs as it got.

The majority of the mortal population lived on Ilirian, the system’s sole habitable world and the source of all its food. Lucy wasn’t sure which sect controlled it, but I sincerely doubted they shared.

That was it. That was all the background information I’d get on the people to which I was about to entrust my entire future. It was better than nothing.

As I finished my port and finally rose from the dining table to adjourn to my quarters, Lucy left me with one more lesson.

“The one thing you need to know,” she said, “more than how to salute, more than the magic words, more than anything, is that every cultivator thinks it’s gonna be them. Once you realize that, everything they do starts to make sense.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You think it, don’t you? You think you’ll be one of the incredibly few to reach the peak, to touch the threads, to attain immortality. That’s good. You need to think that. But you should know that every single cultivator thinks it’s not gonna be you, it’s gonna be them. Some are boastful about it—they’re annoying but generally harmless. It’s the ones that pretend to be humble you need to worry about. Those are the ones that want something.”

“So I should just trust no-one? That doesn’t seem like it’ll get me far.”

“Trust the ones that are open about it,” Lucy said. “Better yet, find the few idealists who think you can all make it, the ones who believe in rising tides. It’s a pit of vipers you’re about to enter, and you’ll need friends who can show you the way through it.” She exhaled. “I wish I could help you more, but you won’t understand until you experience it for yourself. Only the flame can temper the sword.”

“Tides, vipers, and flames.” I counted on my fingers. “Really pushing the metaphors, huh?”

Lucy let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” I laughed. “Thanks for the advice. I needed it. All of it, metaphors included.”

“Goodnight, Cal,” Lucy called an end to the evening. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight,” I bid her in turn as I left the galley and made my way to bed.

All jokes aside, I did deeply appreciate her words, even if they felt overblown. A den of vipers? Seriously? I knew cultivators were all over-the-top batshit insane; I knew they were competitive; I knew they obsessed over decorum and protocol and hierarchy, but they were still people.

How bad could they be?

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