Chapter 1 – I can’t be … in love. Right?

“Cultivation is the act of preparing an all-you-can eat meal for a voracious multiplying horde and hoping you will find a use for that horde.” - Fleming Chin, bacterial cultivator.

Vera Shim was in a rush, she missed the 8:15 transit train, so she took out her sword and flew on it towards her school. Vera hated using her sword, it was tiring and always made her sweaty, messed up her makeup and worst of all, frazzled her long straight hair. The hair was black, except for the end, which had a bit of green, signifying her general affinity with Earth and its elements.

Vera knew she could sleep more if she just used her sword for transportation like all the other university kids, but she preferred to read medical journals on her transit, even if the train was slower than her sword.

Vera flew next to a couple billboards ‘Increase Soulforce output’, ‘Golden stamina’, ‘Soulforce colored clothing’ all blaring in neon colors, irking her on to buy them. She knew all the advertisements were mostly accurate because of advertisement trust laws, but she also knew that people who took Soulforce pills would inevitably fall behind on their own cultivation.

The only pills Vera took, were relaxants, as her brain would tend to wander everywhere, making it hard to concentrate, this was because a part of her brain was hay-wired by an anti-Dharman tick. In modern psychology this was a common problem plaguing those who achieved at least a full rotation of soul cultivation over their body, about 10 ranks, their brain was physically not capable of dealing with information at the rate the soul could supply them.

Her head started hurting and she stopped thinking about certain complex concepts for just long enough to realize she had flown all the way to the school, seeing many other people entering the premises riding on their swords. “I’ve got to train my physical body a bit more” she muttered under her breath, when soreness entered her legs from the strain of sword flying.

She dismounted the sword and with a swift motion sheathed it into the scabbard on her back. Dismounting next to her, on the field was Markus Hong, one of her microbiology classmates, Markus was just an inch taller than her, but he would tease her about this fact unceasingly. He had black hair with red streaks bundled in a pony tail and like most of the cultivators at the He Xao Royal Cultivation University was in peak physical form.

“Did you miss your train again?” Markus said, putting his knuckles on her head and rubbing them up and down. This made Vera blush a deep red color. She was weak to good looking guys and there were so many in her class.

“I was thinking about the project for professor Shengu and I absentmindedly forgot to check the time.” She said while putting his hand off her head. “And stop that, I’ve told you.”

“You know you like it” Markus said as he dashed away towards the building faster than she could give him his comeuppance. But alongside some first years, another of her friends, Lang Bao, one of the prettiest girls in the school, and probably the prettiest in her class, with spiky hair going to shoulders ending with blue thunder spikes, the mark of the Lye family, although she was part of the branch Bao family. This was also the reason she worked so hard on her studies and cultivation. She was somewhat forced into the Stem fields as the Demon Moon was predicted for next year, even though she wanted to be in the military not to bring shame to her family, they decided she was too young to be on the frontlines.

“You know, I can hit him so he stops doing that to you.” She said while smiling and sheathing her ornamental sword.

Vera smiled back, “He’d probably enjoy it, if you hit him.” They continued walking together to their first class on Monday which was sparring, a Body Realm based class. It was one of Vera’s worst classes, because she was tall but far behind on her body cultivation in comparison mostly to her Soul Realm cultivation. Masters students did 4 hours of Body on Mondays and Thursdays, 4 hours of Soul on Tuesdays and Fridays and filled up the rest of the time working on research for their theses. On Wednesday they would have 10 hours study schedules, with no research.

According to the newest ranking system, her Body Realm was at the 25th level, Muscle folding, as that was the last body technique she had learned. Unlike ranking systems of old, a group of important techniques were grouped together, and achieving each new one increased your rank by 1. It was pretty arbitrary, but it made a lot more sense, since some people were incapable of learning some techniques or had large trouble with them, despite this they could always advance.

She was working on achieving Future Sight as her main goal, along with Steel bone as her secondary. Steel bone would make her less fatigued from using her sword for transportation, while Future Sight was useful for many things, her main reason was to increase the efficiency of watching through the microscope many fold. She had been spending months on it, to get up to triple efficiency on the microscope, but she could only predict 0.14 seconds ahead using the technique, in situations where other cultivators with blocking abilities weren’t involved. This disqualified her from having it added to her roster of mastered abilities.

She hated how almost all of her Body Realm advancements were through Graduality training, where most people could get Eureka moments, unlocking a full rank of a skill at once. She had a lot of luck with Eureka moments for the Soul Realm though, which is why her Soul rank was 37, the stark difference was causing her to have her anti-Dharma headaches.

Lost in thought again, she realized she didn't hear anything Lang said to her, about her cat familiar, but she knew she was supposed to respond to her question “I’m so jealous of your cat familiar, I wish I could get a familiar soon. And hopefully its going to be just as cute.”

They got to the locker and because of the bustle, their conversation slowly came to a stop.

They dressed into their battling uniforms and took their stance on the field. Instructor Wu had already been there, doing mock-up kicks in the air, everyone would have a single sparring practice with him each semester, as fighting stronger opponents was one of the fastest ways to grow your abilities, Vera had had a match with him only 2 weeks ago and she thumbed her back remembering the pain. Luckily, this time she was set against someone who was quite in line with her own strength.

“Good luck to you Shim” John Wo was three inches shorter than Vera, he had orange hair with a ring of black and a ring of white flowing through it, similar to his spider familiar. Vera was scared of spiders including John’s familiar but John himself was very friendly.

They were both ranked at 25 in terms of Body Realm prowess, while Vera had a big advantage in terms of Soul Realm prowess at 37 to 33, however in the sparring class, pure Body Realm techniques were to be utilized.

“I’ll be in your care.” She said as they started butting heads, with Vera winning some and John winning some, at the end of the two hour class, they had sparred 17 times with Vera winning 6 John winning 8 and the match being broken up 3 times.

“I only lost because I’m focusing on Future Eye, which makes my offense weaker” Vera was a sore loser again, but she was smiling which told John that it was more of a jape than an accusation.

“Did you progress at all? Do you think you’ll get a Eureka for this at least?” Vera flared up beet red, this was a topic she hated. Everyone knew her progress. while fast, was almost never rewarded by Eureka moments, and she had been too easy to make fun of, so they always did.

“Come on” Lang took her and they hit the showers, saving her from continuing the embarrassing conversation.

“Man but you are tall” Lang was complimenting the 6 foot tall Vera and longingly looking at her supple breasts. Vera knew that when Lang was talking about her height she usually just sidestepped the conversation about breast size.

“Tall and cool.” The twins Joanna and Mila entered the shower, the only two females in the biology course that were more advanced in Body Realm than Soul Realm, and both by a pretty wide margin, they advanced at the same speed because of their Spirit Link. They both had long dark brown hair, Joanna had a yin symbol in her left ear while Mila had a yang symbol in her right ear, otherwise they were difficult to recognize. For some reason all of the girls liked Vera despite her not being outstanding in any way, other than being tall, at least that was how Vera viewed it.

“We had a Eureka today” Mila said happily, “finally achieved Sarira Skin, so now you don’t have any tricks we don’t Bao.” Joanna looked proudly at Lang while sticking out her chest, which was slightly larger than Lang’s.

“And when are you catching up to me in Soul Realm?” Lang knew that the two girls were among the weakest 4 when it came to the Soul Realm in their class, and it caused them quite some strife as the Soul Realm was prized higher in any of the research fields.

The japes lasted while the girls were dressing,but when Lang and Vera were ready, they left the locker room.

The two of them went towards the research lab, which was down stairs from the main entrance, split into many zones. The research lab was set up with some state-of-the-art medical technology two years prior, due to the recent outbreak of a weird parasite, which hit stronger cultivators the hardest. Reducing their life-span quite quickly. This was visible on Lifespan Monitor Technology – LMT.

The zone, where the parasite was being researched, which was the target of both of their master’s theses, was set up with two levels of security protocols.

“How much was your last LMT?” Lang was asking to see Vera’s progress on the monthly medical exam.

“It was at 78 years and 4 months and 3 weeks, meaning I went up by a full month.” Vera was happy with her progress, just going up 3 weeks in a month was her usual progress before, but now it became a whole month, this was known as the ‘First step to immortality’ – being able to increase your lifespan by a year in a single year, this of course required one to cultivate more Soulforce and have as much of it as possible be turned into life force, unlike the half-step to immortality or full immortality, this didn’t affect aging much.

“Mine went up to 91 years” she had been on a four week, five week alternating for quite some time – going up in predicted age. The reason this wasn’t considered true immortality was that the body would age and the body realm would deteriorate, slowly reducing how much Lifeforce one could cultivate. They continued talking about school and idle cultivation chatter all the way towards the lab.

Entering the lab, they went through all the safety procedures, card scan, writing down their LMT results, putting on lab equipment, and finally entering the disinfection barrier.

Each of them was working on a different project, Lang was part of the life-protection project – creating a vessel for filling Soulforce capsules with Lifeforce from their own reserves. By doing this, they could starve the parasite, as it was proven that it has difficulty in duplicating in bodies with a small difference in LMT and age. Spending life force before too much of the disease wracked their body was the only way to survive the disease as of yet, but for many that meant giving up thousands of years of stored up Lifeforce, and if they had had the disease for over a month, the rate at which it drained them was too large to be stopped realistically.

This is why the main purpose was to allow the God-Emperor to get healthy. It would be absolutely imperative, especially before the Demon Moon started next year, for the first time in 60 years.

Vera on the other hand was working to find a direct soft cure, research in this department was predicted to be much slower, so the temporary measure was important until then.

Vera then entered the secondary purification chamber, it could accurately tell if the person passing through it was infected or not, it would not allow anyone infected to leave, and anyone with the Kung parasites attached to their clothing or body would be told to have a thorough cleaning before leaving.

Vera passed through, with the indicator turning green, she looked into the one way glass, she knew someone was behind and asked: “Any news?” She was mostly asking because of the announcement from two days ago ‘Qian Qianfang has the parasite.’ This both depressed Vera slightly, but it also reignited her passion for researching the cure.

“Nope, you’re the second last after the Shan sisters, before everyone is at their station.” came the voice of the Medical professor Fong.

“They were almost finished with changing when I left” Vera said as she came to her table to watch the Petri dish she had prepared the day before.

As she put it under the microscope a strange feeling gripped her, a combination of excitement and happiness like she hadn’t felt before. The orange-coloured strain in her dish definitely had some merit to it, as it chewed up the entirety of the blue-coloured disease strain attached to the green Koshi mushroom, along with the mushroom itself. To open the box, a lock-down protocol needed to be pressed, which was supposed to happen whenever all the students were present, however she was the only student actively working in the mycology1 department so she often just went ahead it. Because she didn't hear the lock-down siren yet, she assumed she couldn’t open it, so she took out her research notebook, and her research diary and started writing about the experiment itself.

Finally, the double beep had sounded and she could open the sample, with the disease, to make sure every bacteria which attacked the Life force part of the Soulforce was destroyed or immobilized. Thanks to a slight increase in her Future Eye she could now see so much clearer under the microscope “Thank the God-Emperor I started working on that.”

********

Vera worked and wrote things down for a couple hours, jotting things down, preparing a new experiment and documenting what happened on the current one. Getting ready to leave, she realized she didn’t want to, a warm feeling was holding her down, she looked through the microscope looking for something, after about 4 minutes, she found a specific bacteria with a more reddish coloring, and her heart started beating incessantly.

She finally realized that what she felt wasn’t a Eureka moment for solving a problem, but a fateful connection to one of the single cell organisms in the Petri dish on her table.

“Oh whatever shall I do?” Vera said, blushing all the while she was playing with the idea of staying overnight in the lab playing in the back of her head.