Moon Cultivation [Sci-fi Xianxia]

I sat in the chamber, unable to make sense of what I felt. The body was mine, and at the same time not. Every breath echoed in my chest not just as air, but as a wave of energy that now resonated in my bones, my muscles, even my brain. As though I'd been permanently plugged into a power grid, and all that excess energy wasn't harming me, it was simply searching for an outlet.

My first small breakthrough had had rather unpleasant side effects — every sound too loud, every light stabbing at my eyes, and not to mention the cursed diarrhoea!

I'd had to readapt to every movement, and the changes then had been far less dramatic. But now…

My energy centre, which I jokingly called my reactor, felt like a mere spark compared to what the new one was generating!

A pure, raw sensation of power!

And yet, the sounds didn't cut my ears, the light didn't stab my eyes. They simply carried more depth and more shades.

"Well, how do you feel?" Kate asked. "Aside from 'a whole new world' and the other standard nonsense. No pain? Fatigue, discomfort?

Since the medics aren't already breaking down the door, I'd say we're on the safe side."

I deliberately turned inward, and my body responded as though I'd scanned it.

There was minor damage — the injection sites still ached a little, and a trace of heartburn lingered. The finger cuts were closed, though they pulsed faintly under the drying blood.

"Nothing serious," I answered.

Kate gave a little snort.

"Get up."

I stood, and she began ordering me about like a drill instructor: "Arms up. Bend forward. Back. Right, left."

I obeyed. Nothing complicated, but even in those simple movements I felt something inside me straining to burst out. Kate's commands weren't enough. I wanted exertion. I wanted speed!

Without thinking, I dropped into a stance and shot out my fist, beginning a series of Chain Punches.

"Stop!" Kate snapped, grabbing my arm. "Not here!"

I realised it myself: one more movement and I wouldn't be able to hold it back. The qi was straining to burst out, even though I hadn't meant to use a technique — it was just a habitual, forceful move.

Qi was already creeping from the reactor through the channels. Not the thin threads I'd spent so long refining, but thick, poorly controlled eruptions, as if I were back at René's very first lessons.

Only then my problem had been dragging the qi all the way to my fist, while now it surged on its own.

I scattered it through my arms and expelled it in an uncontrolled burst, the way I'd done with Rene, just to purge the leftovers.

"Probably not the best idea," I said to Kate.

"Looks like you're the energetic type," she clicked her tongue. "After a breakthrough, people like you feel a surge of power. I'm the sleepy sort myself. After both of mine I slept for a whole day.

"Come on, let's grab a coffee, then find a hall for a proper warm-up. Otherwise you'll scratch up all the walls in here, and the bill will land on me."

I nodded, but before leaving, I ran my palm through the air. The chamber was still heavy with a thick cloud of qi — leftovers that had burst out of me during the breakthrough. It wasn't in a hurry to disperse, seeping slowly into the walls.

"It'd kill me to let such treasure go to waste," I said. "It's vanishing anyway. Help yourself."

"Really? Thanks!"

Robinson had never thanked me! He hadn't even bothered asking.

Kate stepped back and began moving her hands in smooth patterns, like Chinese calisthenics, or a dance underwater. Inhale — palms up. Exhale — a light push to the side. With each motion, qi drifted towards her palms as if into a vacuum nozzle.

I tried copying her. My reactor was firing on full blast, but it was still zero out of who knows how many. I'd have to wait until I was out of the chamber to see.

Qi clung to my hands less eagerly, and it was harder than sucking from a crystal, but after a couple of movements I felt something being pulled in…

"Remember that cadet who coughed up blood!" Kate ordered sharply. "And give your body a rest!"

I stopped.

"Could that happen?" I asked.

Stolen story; please report.

"All sorts of things can. You got through your breakthrough safely, so don't get greedy," she said, a little more gently. "Let your body restructure and adapt."

I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender.

"All right, all right. Coffee it is."

Kate snorted again, but this time warmly.

"Let me just finish here first," she said.

While Kate vacuumed up the qi with her hands, an awkward question bubbled up in me.

"Listen, what about cleansing?" I asked. "When's that going to hit me? Maybe I should head to the loo first, then the coffee and the gym?"

"Don't worry," Kate reassured me, adding footwork to her movements and speeding up. At that pace it didn't look so graceful anymore, more like madness. "The harshest cleansing always comes at the first bottleneck. With a major breakthrough, the side effects are different. If everything's done right, they don't show up. Looks like you've dodged them."

Kate finished after a few more minutes, and we stepped out.

The medic at the door didn't look too happy as he scanned me. I'd swear he'd been hoping to get a share of free qi, but Kate had sucked it all dry.

He informed us that everything was fine in the most disgruntled tone possible. Maybe it wasn't just Robinson. Maybe all white coats were that cheeky.

Kate sent me to change while she went to the barista, making sure to ask what I wanted.

A few minutes later, I was already sitting at a table, sipping a latte, fingering the metal 'one' on my collar. Yes, I was still a first-year, but now I was second stage.

My cultivation level was 1/6274. Apparently I had pulled in a single unit of qi before Kate slapped my hands away.

My maximum was almost three hundred higher than Baturyn's 5976. Still within the normal range though. Some had broken through with 6400, even 6500.

What bothered me more, even insulted me, was that her life span had progressed to 18/142, while mine was stuck at 18/99.

Better, of course, than the sixty years I'd been given when the interface was installed, but damn it! Ninety-nine was the lowest figure among everyone I'd checked. Only Dubois was higher, at 18/145. Gunter was more modest, with 18/117.

By now almost two hundred first-years had broken through, so flipping through them all wasn't easy. I focused on those I knew — my colleagues. Only Omar was still holding off on his breakthrough, waiting for the annual auction, which, incidentally, started today and would last the whole week.

After the auction, breakthroughs would come in waves. Omar wasn't the only one delaying. But for some reason he was sure he'd have enough points to pass the selection.

I wasn't willing to risk it like that, and I had other reasons to hurry.

What else could I measure myself against?

Energy, of course. Not for nothing had I taken the Qi Purification Elixir.

Energy: 503/401

Well, the first number in the pair didn't interest me. I already knew what an energy boost beyond the limit felt like. Evening Sun had that effect. But Evening Sun relaxed the body too much, and the boost only came the following day, after a night of rest. This time I got an instant surge, my muscles trembling with power.

What mattered was the second number. And that was a very good number. Higher only for Gunter — 419. Everyone else's energy level hovered around the three-hundreds. If that was the norm, then my increase wasn't ten per cent, but closer to twenty!

I'd lucked out there.

The interface had nothing more to show me, so I cast an impatient glance at Kate, who was slowly savouring a strawberry cheesecake.

"Impatient, are we?" she asked.

"I can't test the shield in here," I pointed out reasonably.

"You won't understand much the first time anyway," she said, but still picked up the pace and finished her cheesecake quicker.

After that we headed to a training hall similar to the one where I'd sparred with Cinar — a rough concrete box with sand instead of flooring.

"Monkey up!" Kate ordered.

I leapt past her, and instead of a clean movement ended up in an uncontrolled roll, collecting sand down my back, under my clothes, in my hair, my eyes, and my mouth.

At one point my arm twisted at such an angle it should have popped from the shoulder joint, but it simply refused to dislocate and braked my tumble instead.

Kate laughed.

I got to my feet, spitting first, then blinking out the grit and shaking my hair. The sand that had got under the jumpsuit would have to wait for the shower.

My shoulder ligaments ached, but nowhere near as much as they should have.

I rotated my arm, trying to gauge how accurate my sensations were. It would be a nasty surprise if I'd broken something and simply couldn't feel it.

"Shall we continue?" Kate asked.

I explained my doubts, and she reminded me that my body had changed. It had literally grown tougher. So we carried on.

I did a few minimal Monkey jumps side to side, fired off a series of Chain Punches, and burned through about fifty units of energy. I was still overflowing, but the consumption didn't please me. At that rate, I'd last at most three rounds in a tournament. After that I'd have to drop out.

Qi was gushing from me in an uncontrolled stream. To rein it back in, I'd need serious effort, but that could wait. Right now I had to test the very thing this was all for — the shield.

Maybe it was only my imagination, but it seemed a little darker. As though silver had tarnished ever so slightly. The glow of Fist Qi dimmed a fraction, making the world behind the forcefield look sharper.

Or maybe it was just my new eyes again. Still, those eyes didn't see any segments. To them it was the same thin, seamless film of force.

Kate's electric bolts the shield handled well. They smashed against it in sprays of violet sparks, and I didn't feel they weakened its durability much, though there was a faint shift in the energies.

That must have been the shield's self-repair at work.

"This won't do," I said. "I need to see a breach. And I know you can pierce it with your projection. I want to see how it handles an Point strike."

"And give away my secret to every Point cultivator out there?"

"Surely Novak has some combat artefacts that imitate Edge attacks?"

"Adam does… but it's a costly thing, and wasting it on you would be stupid. Hold on, she's gonna be here soon."

She – same swordswoman who'd let me taste Blade Qi joined us.

I activated the shield, and without hesitation she thrust her sword into it.

The sensation was much like when Cinar had done it, though strangely, it felt even more like when Okoro had shattered my shield with his mace during that flip. As if the shield was cracking and falling apart, but this time the feeling was localised.

The sword tip pierced through, entering a few centimetres.

Kate's acquaintance clearly had no intention of stabbing me.

The shield only crumbled around the tip, leaving a hole the size of a cup. Around it, the shield glowed opaque silver — those were the overlapping fractures of the surviving segments. The further the cracks spread from the hole, the fewer they became, forming an almost geometric pattern, as though they followed the shapes and angles of elongated hexagonal plates.

The girl withdrew her sword, and the cracks began pulling together. The hole in the shield narrowed, closed, and vanished without a trace.

"Again," I said. "I want to know exactly how long it takes."