Chapter 3 – Can you spell Shim?

“New school cultivators aren’t serious about cultivation; they are but civilians in a cultivators clothing.” Bien Li, an immortal-level cultivation headmaster of the Full Cultivation Academy

The next day she woke up to Jill’s alarm, but this time Jill turned it off before she got to the shower. Jill normally showered in the evening, but she liked to brush her teeth first thing in the morning, so she occupied the bathroom while Vera prepared clothes for that day. School uniforms were formal attire which made her skin itch if she took the sword the whole way to school, she therefore needed to take the train. Vera much prefered the lax standards for the garments under lab coats.

Jill came out the shower and sauntered towards Vera, “You look flushed today again, is it still the same thing?” Vera blushed even harder, remembering what she did last night.

“Yes.” She said trying to sound matter-of-factly “But also, I developed my Body Realm yesterday.” Vera tried to steer the conversation a different direction.

“That good? You should introduce me.” Jill knew exactly how to press Vera’s buttons.

“I achieved Future Sight, rank 1.” Vera said angrily, putting her hands to her hips “Don’t misunderstand.” She pouted, as she marched towards the shower, exciting a giggle out of Jill.

‘I’ll find out which guy you are with, just you wait.’ Jill exclaimed under her breath, a smile creeping up to her face.

Vera took a long shower, long enough for Jill to be gone from the house by the time she came out.

She prepared herself and went by train, she came 10 minutes early as she usually did on Wednesday, reading a book about Koshi mushrooms and their interaction with humans. She knew Jill used some as Indultatives – indulgence sedatives created by alchemy. Usually, they were meant to put a person into a calm state and remove certain negative influences from one’s mind, but she used them along with some heavy drugs, to make sure the trips she got were good ones.

Drug trips had a chance to trigger Eureka moments or breakthrough moments as they were called under the old system. According to Richard Fung, a Combined Realm proponent, using drugs, hallucinations and dimension hopping to bridge the two realms allowed one to ignore the differences between the realms and the difference in the powers they yielded.

Vera was open-minded to all three systems, each of which held a number of merits in her eyes, The old system put everyone into a couple ranks according to how far they progressed in cultivation; it had a distinct view on ranks in Soul Cultivation, Body Cultivation and Spirit Cultivation. The new system as it had been called for the past hundred and twenty years, had been adopted eighty years ago and it had a distinction between the Cultivations based on Realms – rather than seeking the hidden things of the world by oneself, a loose-end curriculum consisting of creating ‘ladders’ to climb up the realm. The ‘new’ system had a lot more graduality and resulted in a faster gaining of lifespan while diversifying the people. The new cultivation ended at level 70, roughly the equivalent of Nascent Soul and Nirvana of the previous method, it was all individual from there. The last system, currently called the experimental system, was spearheaded by Cushula over 2000 years ago, where one could achieve enlightenment of body and mind by listening to spirits and their voices while having drug trips. This system was discarded hundreds of years ago as it couldn’t achieve results for most of its users. With the drug industry booming, and many new drugs appearing, and the ‘new’ system awakening children from young ages to soul and body cultivation, this system seemed to be rising in popularity.

Jill was one of its proponents in the “Royal Cultivation University” which abided by the new system. Jill had a great track record though, with 29 Body and 35 Soul Rank. Her cultivation studies were mostly a result of trips leading to Eureka moments, she would try to train the same technique multiple times and used different drugs to see which one helped, jotting it all in a journal, her master’s thesis, was about this and about drug quality.

‘I should get some of her Koshi mushroom calmant.’ Vera thought to herself, realizing she was absentminded while reading and skipping over most of the words, while thinking of drugs. Her stop had sounded and the doors closed right in front of her.

‘Oh no’ she thought to herself, ‘the school uniform is going to get crumpled.’

She left the train on the next stop and flew a bit further than normally on her sword.

Entering the courtyard, Lang Bao was waiting for her “You’re late.” She said with an inquisitive look “At least later than usual, is everything all right in that scattered brain?” Lang smiled, but the smile quickly evaporated, Vera didn’t notice as she looked down.

Vera blushed a deep red before responding “Yes!” A little too excitedly, which had Lang raise an eyebrow to her “Yes, I mean. I was reading and I missed my stop, because I was thinking of asking Jill for some of her Koshi mushroom calming solutions.”

Lang didn’t like the sound of that “Don’t let her get to you, just because she’s had some success achieving better cultivation with her drugs, doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.” She shook her head “Thought you were more scientific than that.” Lang reprimanded her.

“Oh, it’s to calm me down, I’ve been so high-strung as of recent. By the way I achieved future sight yesterday.” She smiled and while Lang started saying “That’s Grea...” Vera continued “Yes, it is great, I feel like I have caught up to the difference between the two and I might start going back to Soul cultivation classes.”

“So you’ve taken my advice then~”, Vera cut her off again “Nope, I went to the research lab yesterday. Achieved it while the bacteria I wanted to follow tried running away” Vera blushed again, knowing that what she said hadn’t really been the truth.

“You really are too high strung” Lang said as they reached the classroom, thinking to herself ‘she definitely masked something from me, she’s a terrible liar.’

Micro-biology, Bio-chemistry, Anti-biotics, Bio-physics, ‘Fungi, Algae and Spores’, ‘Soul Diseases’ were the subjects they had each Wednesday, the order was determined by the order of usefulness for each other. As the current goal of the institute was to get rid of the Kung Parasite, everything was geared towards its understanding and ways in which diseased cultivators of higher ranks could get rid of it.

Normally, Vera would listen to everything attentively, but today she was not herself and was too giddy and energetic, the teachers noticed, the students noticed, basically everyone noticed, except Vera of course, she thought they were none-the-wiser.

As the day panged on, Vera found herself wanting, yearning to go back to the lab, but that would make it obvious to anyone, that she was not herself.

‘Or would it?’ she muttered under her breath, ‘isn’t it normal for me to want to go to my research?’ she pondered, as Lang had overheard her uncharacteristic muttering.

Lang was determined to follow Vera, not wanting her to get in trouble whatever happened. So of course, something happened almost instantly as she thought that.

Vera ran out the door, hitting John Wo head-on and falling over him. Vera picked herself off him, offered him her hand and as she brought him to his feet, they both went red with embarrassment, Vera said “Sorry.” in a small voice, while not looking at him and he averted his gaze from Lang who was right behind Vera. Markus Hong was staring daggers at John, but John didn’t notice, until Markus stopped, then he noticed a change had happened. Cold sweat from a premonition went down his back and he had a creeping feeling something bad was about to happen to him.

Vera didn’t allow her previous accident to put a dampen on her good mood, she hopped along happily to the female toilets and on the way there, she noticed a new message-board being placed in front of the staircase to the second floor. It was still blank, but something big was probably being planned, Vera though to herself ‘as long as it doesn’t eat into my research too much’ she winked to herself as she though that.

The rest of the day went without a hitch, except for Lang occasionally giving her questions “Did something good happen?” “What made you so high-strung?” “It has to be a boy.” Which all elicited a tirade of blushing in Vera, but she always deflected by saying “Research success.” or mentioning she had completed “Future sight”.

********

“So. Answers”, Jill was already in the dorm, when Vera came back, her smile turned upside down. “What has you all giddy like, and don’t give me that research bullshit.” She made a small pause to get her attention “Today, Lang Bao of all people, asked me if I knew.” She put down the knife she’d been cutting a radish with “And she fucking hates my guts!” Under her breath she said ‘classic new school cultivator from an established family.’ Vera heard that last part but wouldn’t say so, risking her friendship with Jill.

Vera didn’t know how to respond, so she murmured ‘fateful attraction’, Jill acted like she couldn’t hear, “Once more?” but really she was incredulous, ‘How did my sweet little child Vera Shim of all people get entangled with fateful attraction?’ There was no way she would get the person’s name out of Vera, seeing she was too embarrassed to repeat her little ‘fateful attraction’ episode.

Jill was going to find out, one way or another, but she now knew, what had had Vera up at night, although unlike a simple crush, this was something she couldn’t tell anyone. If Vera’s fateful attraction was a rare one-sided one, giving the guy she liked that ammo seemed to be a bad idea ‘Vera is already too nice to people, how much will he take advantage of her?’

“By the way, do you have Koshi mushroom calmant?” Vera asked Jill. Koshi mushrooms and the narcotics Jill and the alchemist association she joined made, were legal and not restricted in any way. However, this particular calmant was enough to make you into a vegetable for a couple hours if you didn’t exercise caution when ingesting it. Also, it stank.

“What about your Dharma relaxants?” Jill asked, both to see if she was still taking them and if they weren’t enough for the super jittery Vera.

“I’m still taking them of course” Vera answered earnestly.

“Are you finally thinking of getting a new type of Eureka’s?” Jill didn’t know what Vera would use them for except for calming down bad trips if she had her Dharman medicine.

“Nope, I’m just interested in the effect a Koshi mushroom will have on my Spirit Imprint, and possibly use it in my experiments. As you know the bacteria I’m working with has a propensity for that mushroom.” Vera answered in a completely normal tone.

“Ahh sure, if you give me the mushrooms from which you want it made, I’m not going to charge you any money.” Jill became inattentive again, ‘She had a big change from giddy to her old self.’

Vera went to sleep thinking of her research and looking forward to the next day.

********

Vera got so absorbed into her reading, that she missed her train. Flying on her sword, she noticed an advertisement for calming Koshi mushroom tea, ‘I have to bring some Koshi mushrooms to Jill, for the calmant for myself.’ Another advertisement that caught her eye was a fashion store selling beautiful dresses from some new textiles. ‘Zhing Lan Fashion, maybe I will pay them a visit.’

She arrived at the courtyard before Lang this time, Markus was already in front of the lockers and talking to someone, Vera waited for Lang at the entrance to the school, while many other students flew in-to the courtyard.

Lang was late, not late-late yet, but late nonetheless. Vera started becoming worried, as her classmates came in one by one, to attend more Body cultivation lessons. ‘Lang is always at least 15 minutes early, what happened? It’s 5 minutes before classes start.’

Vera took out her scrying sticks and wrote ‘Lang is okay’ in the sand, dropped the sticks, she got an affirmative answer. ‘Good’, she wrote ‘I can go to class without her, and nothing bad is going to happen to her’ and once again, dropped the sticks, getting a neutral answer. ‘That means I can’t change anything. I hope she’s alright.’ She smudged out the sand, to make it unreadable.

This time, during Body cultivation, they were doing laps around the building, body strengthening and breathing exercises.

She wanted it to end, but stuck with it, attempting to advance her Steel Bones, as she had been for many weeks during exercise lessons.

As it ended, she breathed a sigh of relief, quickly going to shower. There she saw Joanna, one of the twins, and asked her if she had seen Lang.

“I was going to ask you the same, I’m honestly a bit surprised she hadn’t come to class.”

“Her great-grandpa died, I guess today was the funeral.” said Helena Young, an alchemy genius. Helena was attempting to create an alchemy based cure, according to her family’s teachings. She was very short at 4ft8, short black hair ending with even darker tips, with a cherry blossom flower brooch in her hair.

“Where did you hear that?” Joanna asked, unhappy about being blindsided by Helena and her information pipeline. Helena was of another well-established family, so most of these things ran past her at some point.

“Was it the Kung?” Vera asked, looking down, she felt worse about being happy, when the parasite was taking lives left and right. But she was unable to stay sad for a long time.

“Yes, he was over 150 years old” Helena said, implying he was not Lang’s actual great-grandpa but rather an ancestor from even further beyond.

“And he isn’t the only one in the Bao family to be affected.” Helena said with what sounded like sadness, but Vera believed she heard the start of a smirk in her words. The families always fought each other for standing, but ever since the God-Emperor got sick, and many of the most powerful cultivators were dying, the question of succession inevitably came up.

Vera liked and appreciated the God-Emperor Qiang Qianfan, as he had become the most powerful over 600 years earlier through many a bloody battle. But he managed to unify all 8 of the great cultivation families and all 22 of the extended cultivation families, without belonging to any of them. ‘Well, there used to be 30 great families, but those of 8 his apprentices became the 8 great families.’

At first, many an insurrection happened under his rule, but eventually he managed to bring peace, through the fact that he was more powerful than everyone else combined. He then created multiple schools in which cultivation was taught not as the primary focus, but as a way to sharpen the mind and give people long and healthy lives.

Thus, over time the cultivation empire came to span the world. The power of the families waned, until they weren’t even taught in school as too important. They became more powerful though, through their advancements in science and products they were creating. Most of the financial world was owned by these families.

All of this was on the verge of changing though, as Qiang Qianfan’s state was deteriorating at a rapid rate, according to the newspapers.

“You don’t have to sound smug about it” Vera said, but as she had been stuck thinking in her head, the shower had emptied of everyone else.

With a hint of embarrassment, Vera finished up and rushed towards the research lab, not wanting to be the last, she came at the same time as Mike Zhou, the top of the class.

Mike was an inch shorter than her, with long hair fashioned into a ponytail. It had white endings symbolizing the Yang. His family had been Soul Healers for decades now, they wanted to become an important family, so they invested heavily into finding a cure for the parasite.

“I heard you made some progress with your research” He said, continuing in his brain ‘and you were so giddy that your scatterbrainedness came out a little too hard’. Vera reddened in her face and looked down. Now that was something he didn’t expect.

“Yes, the Koshi mushroom has a similar Spirit signature as the Kung parasite, so according to hypothesis, the Koi Koshi will sometimes eat the spiritual phase of the parasite, that is if you can trick them into thinking it’s the Koshi mushroom.”

“So, is that the breakthrough?” Mike actually thought this was the best progress anyone had made towards the cure, he would have to read up on the Koi Koshi, if for nothing else, so he could independently get research in. “Maybe skipping the Soul Realm training hasn’t dulled your senses like I thought it would.”

Not the least perturbed by his jab Vera replied “Finding a good way to trick them has been quite difficult, and inconsistent.” She didn’t want to give Mike high hopes, as she knew his older sister had become infected from the parasite in a lab unlike this.

“Good luck.” Mike said as they got past the last barrier, and he went towards his own experiment, ‘come to think of it, I don’t know what his experiments are.’ Vera thought to herself, quickly dismissing it, because she couldn't wait to see the progress.

She came to her bacteria and immediately checked her soulmate. An agglomeration of 6 somewhat identical cells was stuck to her eyebrow again, having made a small tunnel in it, along with two connected cells eating away at the Koshi mushroom piece she left for them.

Vera used future sight and something went pop in her brain, as a connection of sorts was formed once again with the bacteria in her Petri dish – they coalesced into a single 8 bacteria organism with a small amount of distance between them, through which red and yellow blobs were traveling between each other, it reminded her of a neural network connection.

“Wait, that is a neuron.” She knew for a fact that they were sending information in some way to each other. Red, yellow, yellow, yellow, red, the small blobs were traveling at a fast rate a normal human eye wouldn’t be able to see, but as the last message was sent they changed formation from an octagon, to a square with the center missing, they started to assemble something in the middle.

It was one letter “Shim”. Vera’s very own surname.