Moon Cultivation [Sci-fi Xianxia]

It turned out nothing like I had imagined.

The reactive shield enhanced the striking properties of the Monkey and the Iron Head, but it also had a drawback — a negative effect on the recoil of the technique. After executing it, I would freeze for half a second longer.

Layered shields, on the other hand, could potentially cut recoil by a quarter of a second — an eternity in battle.

Black Dragon's Blood was out, along with the Fire Ginseng Root, Black Pine Resin, and Valkast Ash.

The new shortlist: Living Glass, Sea Serpent Scale, Central Plate from the Carapace of a Giant Black Turtle, and Crystallised Black Lotus.

The last one was the cheapest, since it came from our own Black Lotus — the school's symbol. Crystallised Black Lotus didn't just layer a cultivator's shield, it fragmented it into thousands of interconnected segments. Each layer was micron-thin, stacked one atop another, so the shield looked unchanged to the eye. But after a breakthrough with this material, the shield didn't always collapse after being pierced. If the hole was small, it could 'heal' itself by regenerating the damaged segments.

Of course, I fell in love with the idea immediately. It cost only 1,800 points. Novak could easily get me one for units, but Kate had spoken about having back-up options, so I prepared them too. At the same time, I came to better understand how the materials worked.

The same Crystallised Black Lotus not only altered the shield, it also influenced the Point root. For cultivators of that qi, it layered their attack as well. I'd never looked into it before, but it turned out they too used a kind of force field, wrapping it around their weapon. The Lotus created several such fields, nested inside one another. On one hand, this reduced their penetrating power against a plain shield, but on the other, it improved their ability to pierce formations and segmented shields.

A dilemma…

It would be quite funny if Dubois, Cinar, and I all ended up choosing the same material.

Although Dubois had already made his choice. He broke through thirty-eighth. I didn't know what he had used for his breakthrough, but it was clearly something good. At the latest weekly tournament, he once again took second place, losing only to Gunter. This time he even gave him a real fight, though he still lost.

Coming back to the Black Lotus: if I broke through with it and one day stepped onto the Point path, I would already have that 'layered' attack. And Dubois, if he had used the Lotus, would have a segmented shield on the Fist path.

Changes brought by materials were permanent. That was why Novak demanded clear planning from me, and why backup options were essential.

The Sea Serpent Scale layered the shield and made its layers move in opposite directions. Living Glass made the shield more elastic and allowed it to seal punctured holes, while the Central Plate from the Carapace of a Giant Black Turtle made the shield thicker — literally one and a half centimetres thick.

The Scale also had a positive effect on the Water root and a negative one on Earth. Living Glass had synergy with Wood, which made me wary of it, while the turtle material boosted both Water and Earth, but slowed shield formation. And somehow I felt that wouldn't sit well with the Monkey. Besides, it was an actual chitinous plate — two fingers thick and a metre in diameter!

Compared to it, all the other materials looked tiny.

In essence, the choice was obvious — Crystallised Black Lotus.

Specifically Crystallised, because plain Black Lotus was a material for Palm and Wood; Black Lotus Root Extract was used by Mace cultivators, and its seeds by Wood cultivators. Only Air had been left out of the Lotus line. But for them, our Air Garden cultivated Storm Fruits.

By the time I went for my next tea session with Novak, I was already well-prepared.

We sat down at the table, and he poured the tea.

Even though this was about my future, and I had approached the conversation with full responsibility, Novak didn't consider it serious enough to waste Pure Thoughts on.

"First of all, I want to say that I don't have any plans yet for the materials I'll use for advancing to fifth stage, nor for techniques. I'm only ready for the next breakthrough, and I'm focused on how the materials will affect me."

"Surprise me," he said.

I laid out my choice and all the reasoning I had.

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I didn't manage to surprise Novak.

"Half of our students use Black Lotus for their first major breakthrough," he said.

"And is that a bad thing? Or is it so good that everyone uses it?"

"If it were bad, it wouldn't have become the school's symbol. It's a simple, but worthy choice. For you, it'll cost two hundred thousand."

"Money…" I muttered, turning my gaze to the window.

"You don't like it?" Novak asked with a smile.

"It's the most wonderful thing in the whole wide world!" I replied, saluting him with my cup. "But don't you think it's unfair?"

"Explain," Novak said, setting his cup on the table and lacing his fingers together.

"The way things are set up here, it's not the best who advance the fastest — it's the richest. I'm not complaining, of course. How could I, when it's my money pushing my progress forward?

"But aren't we supposed to be training to stand against demons?" I said, then mockingly parodied some propagandist from my tattered memory. "To give one's life for Mother Earth!"

Novak laughed. Not at my delivery, I was a lousy impressionist, but at the words themselves.

"Cadets of the Army and Fleet Academy are trained to give their lives for Mother Earth. Cadets of the Spirit Temple are trained to defend humanity and the principles of humaneness.

"The task of the Black Lotus is survival. Nothing more, nothing less."

"How do you mean?" I asked, puzzled. "If I just hide during a raid…"

"And how do you think most cultivators of the past survived?" he asked. "For the most part, they were cowards and runaways. But it was precisely they who restored Earth and rebuilt the Academies after the raids."

"That's kind of…"

My worldview cracked. Kate was as stunned by the revelation as I was.

"Yes, you won't hear that in history lessons," Novak said. "To be fair, those were low-ranked cultivators who got very lucky, since demons can sense qi. The more you have, the better they find you. So if you can develop an effective formation, or find some other way to conceal your qi, humanity will only benefit in the long term."

"So we're cockroaches?" I asked.

"Unfortunately not," said Novak. "We're rats. And cornered rats…"

Cornered rats lunge at the cat. It's an act of desperation, but it can help others, and it can play its part in the greater picture. On top of that, it would be a devastating blow to the reputation of someone like Daddy Bao if he tried to hide.

As Novak said, there was no guarantee he would succeed. And if he didn't, and by some miracle survived, there was no guarantee his insulted colleagues would let him live.

True, Novak didn't spell that part out. But my déjà vu whispered that traitors in wartime often suffered 'accidents.'

No, someone like Daddy Bao would defend his status and his little micro-empire to the very end. Because an emperor without an empire is no different from a beggar.

The people of this Earth had chosen an unusual path of survival. They certainly hadn't put all their eggs in one basket. They had faced more than one invasion to refine their system.

There was much in it that didn't sit right with me, but who was I to judge?

Still, there were some things I wasn't willing to accept.

"What a pity," I said. "I'd rather be a mighty cat than a cornered rat."

"Then be one!" Novak said. "You've got forty years of preparation ahead of you. Every chance of reaching fourth stage — maybe even daring for the fifth."

"There are only a few hundred of you across the whole Earth," I pointed out.

"You're hardly the one to talk about impossible," he hinted.

My turn to laugh.

The old bastard knew how to motivate!

"You'll have to help me a lot if that's ever to happen!" I said.

"I help all my students," he replied. "The only thing standing between you and that status is a single procedure."

An awfully important procedure, I'd say!

And a dangerous one.

The chance of injury was minuscule, around three per cent, but it was still there.

So far, only one cadet had been harmed. Li Meihua — she had broken through, but her core couldn't hold qi.

Some rumours claimed it could be cured, others insisted the damage was permanent. Either way, a breakthrough had to be approached with full responsibility.

"You said you had recommendations for this procedure," I reminded him.

"Yes," Novak confirmed. Without pausing his words, he stood and went to fetch a tablet. "In fact, they're not mine, but Bulsara's. I asked him to look over your chart and put together the optimal programme." He handed me the tablet. "Don't worry, Kate will be watching you closely, and Bulsara will be reading the data through the network.

"You haven't taken any stimulants today, have you? Tea?"

"Marigold, this morning," I said.

It suddenly struck me that the absence of Pure Thoughts on the table might have had another, weightier reason.

That's the kind of thing you warn a man about in advance!

"Marigold tea isn't serious," Novak waved it off. "But don't drink it tomorrow. In fact, drink nothing like that at all!" He passed me the tablet with the schedule.

"Tomorrow?" I asked.

That was rather soon.

"The chamber is booked for Kate. They don't know about the crystal, so we need to avoid attracting the demons' attention.

"It would be too good an opportunity for them to arrange an 'accident' for you, so the sooner the better. Besides, the schedule takes into account your current cultivation level and dispersion rate."

According to Bulsara's notes, tomorrow at two in the afternoon my cultivation level should stand at 2346/2467.

I would need to take a set of stimulants intramuscularly, sit under the flow for 28 minutes, then rest for five minutes. After that I was to stick to the crystal and suck it empty. Everything else depended on how fast I could drain it — and forecasts ranged from one to two hours.

Once the crystal was dealt with, I'd have to take the Pill of Nine Poisons. Two more minutes' rest, then drink the Elixir, after which I would immediately inject the breakthrough drug into a vein and latch onto the Crystallised Lotus, same as I'd done with the qi crystal.

From there, everything was supposed to happen on its own. The crucial thing was not to lose myself in the sensations and never stop sucking qi from the Lotus. If I failed to consume it completely, the transformation of my shield would also be incomplete, and predicting what a half-done result might look like was difficult. It could mean thicker segments, fewer layers, or perhaps only part of my shield becoming segmented.

Either way, it was not recommended to test it.

No pressure on me at all.