Chapter 5 – I just need your blood, I swear I’m not a vampire though

“Cultivation is supposed to be about cultivating one’s brain, one’s brawn and one’s talents. It’s clear you missed the first and the last.” Emperor-level Qiang Qianfan chastising Lye’s cultivator school about only cultivating for military purposes the day he started the great upheaval

Vera was excited, “This is Double cultivation!” She said to herself proudly, laughing at the terrible pun.1

The Soul Gathering stage was a bottle neck about 15-20% of all people couldn’t get past. All the systems Vera was accustomed to had meditation progress into the Soul Gathering stage, only after this stage could you progress in any direction, tho almost always Qi Gathering.

All around the world, those who had talent for it could advance even without the wider knowledge easily available to people of this era.

The better the understanding of cultivation and subsequently the three magical disciplines -Soulcraft, Alchemy and Runecraft, the more it lent itself to usage by humans. This is why pagan druids or wandering sorcerers appeared. They didn’t as much explore the Cultivation Realms, as much as they lucked into understanding some of the deep secrets.

Vera was noticeably proud of the speed at which her ‘Sweetheart’ bacteria had progressed, but she realized, she had no idea about the time. Looking around she saw that it was 4:33 already, which means she spent over 7 hours with just that specimen.

“Oh no.” She said out loud, but luckily no one was in her lab as most people didn’t care much about fungi. She did the required testing and wrote things down in her notebook as fast as she could, finishing 12 minutes after her 6pm deadline.

She cleaned up and left the lab. “Why so late? This does not seem to be regulation.” a half-cautionary half-joking tone came from her side, it was the head of Research, Professor Jacob Wang.

“Professor.” she made bow with her head, “I lost track of time, when I noticed at 5:40, I had a big mess, so I decided it was more important to clean it, than to leave on time.”

He picked up a bell and moved his eyebrow in an all-knowing fashion “I usually am not late so I forgot we could ask for permission to leave late.” Vera quickly added, slightly scared there would be dire consequences.

“All right, you are correct, it isn’t a big deal, you may go.” He said with a smile, dismissing her and looking the opposite way.

Vera waited till he was far away before she sighed a sigh of relief. That man gave her the creeps. There was no reason, except the way he enunciated. But Vera was always happy to see any of the other instructors.

Apparently, he had reached immortality of the body through some Alchemy and Runecraft processes, but hadn’t worked on his cultivation much from that point. This seemed as much pragmatic as it was creepy to Vera. This of course made him more powerful as a cultivator than a majority of their instructors.

She could even sympathize with his distaste for cultivation “It’s unscientific.” Was his answer to why wasn’t teaching it. Runecraft was the most scientific of the three magic directions afforded to one by cultivation, which is why it was the only one he practiced actively.

Vera used the sword to get back to her dorm, knowing she missed the train from school that left at 6:07. On her way she decided to indulge her taste for updating her wardrobe, stopping at Zhing Lan Fashion. The store had a novel design with red velvet curtains and in general a red demeanor.

Entering, a mild rose scent filled her nose, Vera was interested in the dresses on the right side, as they were the ones on the large billboard. She giddily picked one of them up, but as she read the price tag, she stopped still. ‘Products of alchemy, bane of a noble’s treasury.’ She let the old saying slip her lips, as she slowly put the dress back.

‘I should have known this would be another high-end boutique.’ Vera thought as she made way towards the exit. “Sorry for the bother.” She said as she left the store, with the bell tingling softly behind her.

Dejected from that unfortunate run in with the pricing of things in the capital, she flew on her sword back towards her dorm. “I should get myself a part time job, that pays at least a bit more than the students stipend.” She said under her breath ‘Or maybe I should just cure this bloody parasite, that’s bound to fill my pocket.’ She thought dreamily.

She went to the other store that caught her eye, buying some Koshi tea, ‘hmm, I wonder if Jill has got the stuff for me already.’

Filled with determination she came back home. Jill was nowhere to be seen, this was pretty much unexceptional. “Probably out on a party of sorts.” Vera said out loud again.

She noticed she had a bag of Koshi Tea on her nightstand, which she bought the other day. ‘Oh no, how did I forget?’ She remembered, it was because Lang had gotten sick that she forgot, ‘I have to work for her sake.’, It was time for Vera to plunge herself even deeper in the research than normally, with a reignited passion.

She decided she would devise a plan for getting as much data as possible. The only person sick with the parasite that she knew and could ask for help was Lang. And she could use this plan to get rid of some Koshi Tea as well.

“She has to cough up some of her blood, mucus and other samples for me to experiment on.” Vera said happily, thinking of her friend, ‘I hope she’s alright though.’ Which instantly soddened her mood with the murkiness of doubt.

After a while she started thinking of her Sweetheart bacteria, and how they achieved the Soul Gathering stage.

‘Soul Gathering, that brings back memories’, she thought laying down in her bed, as she started drifting into a sleep.

In her dream she went through her entire catalog of Cultivation training: The meditation and Soul Gathering stage took about two weeks for her to achieve, all-in-all pretty average for Cultivators taught in elementary schools. It consisted of four steps, Soulforce feeling, Soulforce seeing, Soulforce grasping and ended with Soulforce union – the step that allowed one to merge their own self with the Soulforce.

The next step, Qi building, had taken her about two months as her Soulforce gathering speed was rather slow. Qi was the force in everyone that they could control by moving the Soulforce they obtained in the Soul Gathering stage, the most important aspect of this stage was to turn Soulforce into Qi, this allowed one to use Qi techniques, also called Soul techniques for those that didn’t understand the difference between Qi and Soulforce.

From here, everyone in the ‘new’ system would learn some basic Qi and Soulforce techniques that allowed them to advance the ranks.

Learning a Qi-technique usually comprised of learning the wanted outcome, creating a Soul image of the technique from watching someone else use it through meditating in the Spirit Realm, and finally assembling energy in the same or similar pattern, that worked for the user themselves.

This was where her perseverance and stoicism showed up, as she would have very little difference in the pattern from attempt to attempt, this way, she slowly inched towards a complete pattern that worked for her. This was the concept of Graduality, moving slowly towards the finish line until everything ‘clicked’ together.

The opposite concept of Breakthroughs was based on addled and incomplete incantations that had less individual merit with a higher variance, but had a higher chance of clicking. The old system taught the basic of many techniques and mostly focused on pondering over things, increasing one’s Qi, Soulforce, and strengthening the body, until all of the knowledge packed together created a massive breakthrough, advancing the student to a higher rank.

The Breakthrough concept had been adapted into the Eureka concept in the ‘new’ system, as each Eureka only applied to a single technique.

Out of her 63 technique ranks she only got a Eureka 27 times, whereas most others at 63 technique rank would experience it 45 to 50 times, only slogging through things a couple of times.

Remembering her parents and the many techniques she tried so hard to learn, Vera woke up to Jill’s alarm clock.

********

It was Saturday – which meant she could work on whatever she wanted. Lang would have advised her to do Body Realm training, but she had a different plan, allowing Jill to brush her teeth she prepared what she needed.

Looking in the mirror, she set two runes “Talk” and “See”, on a piece of paper with a paintbrush, She focused her Qi into the runes and then into the mirror, while moving to Soul Realm, she used Spirit Resonance to invoke her own Spirit Signature, and then she invoked a complete Spirit Signature as she reminisced of Lang. She sent Qi in the form she envisioned towards the mirror, and then she waited.

1 minute and 23 seconds of concentration, before a blurry face of Lang Bao appeared in front of her, it opened its mouth and said “Very sloppy work Miss Shim.” In a choppy voice, but the voice went from stern to joking surprisingly quickly.

“Well I haven’t been using mirror-talk with anyone from my family and you know my Runecraft skills aren’t that impressive.” Vera said apologetically.

“I’m playing with you.” Lang smiled and it was visible even through the choppy image in the mirror, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I’m going to visit you.” Vera said, and Lang’s smile froze.

“We are under lock-down, no one comes in, no one comes out, servants bring us food and take care of our trash in protection suits.” Lang said dissaprovingly.

“I will also wear a protection suit. Also, I’m going to need samples of your early-stage parasite infection, I was stupid enough to get rid of whatever you left on my shoulder yesterday.” Vera said so, matter-of-factly.

“You know that’s prohibited material in the lab” Lang was furious “How do you even plan to get it in without tripping the alarm?” She stood up triumphantly again.

“Either, when no one else is there, or I’ll just add it into ‘The Box’, mark it as things for Miss Shim’s research and then happily open a bunch of illegal parasite samples. I can then feign ignorance.” Vera was mostly prepared for whatever needed to be done.

“It’s not only against the protocol, it’s dangerous.” Lang tried to chastise Vera but she felt as if Vera wasn’t just unloading a spur-of-the-moment thought on her, rather an elaborate plan.

“I’m so close to a soft cure already, a little bit of your bodily fluids might advance it leaps and bounds.” Vera said it completely stoically and professionally, totally not trying to stop herself from laughing when saying ‘bodily fluids’.

“You’re such a child.” Lang said as she smiled again “Okay, come then, in full protection gear, but only for the samples, how much of what do you need?”

“I mean, as much as you are willing to give, I believe blood is the most important, but urine, mucus, and phlegm would all be useful for different applications.”

“I can’t believe I’m going through with this.” Lang wasn’t used to breaking rules, especially not ones that could get her expelled.

“It might save your family though.” Vera said, knowing that Lang would probably survive the parasite, she’d be severely weakened and years of Qi and Soulforce coagulation in her body would be destroyed, but she would live.

“Yeah right.” Lang went back into her joking mood.

A short sword ride later, Vera landed in a forest not far from the Bao residence, where she put on a full-protection suit, knocked on the door when three monkeys hanging on the door came to life. Each of them was covering a part of their head with their hands, it was the ‘No evil allowed’ monkeys as Vera liked to call them.

The one holding its hands in front of its eyes spoke in a deep booming voice: “Reason?”

“Bring sustenance.” Vera answered as rehearsed with Lang. The wooden door slowly creaked open, where she saw rows of gates, along with statues, one of which she recognized as the God-Emperor, another which she recognized as the founder of the Lang Cultivation school.

After getting to the first gatehouse, she was stopped by a man with disease protection gear, but it was obvious that wasn’t the only gear he had. “State your association.” He said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

“Food for Lang Bao, Vera Shim.” she supplied.

“Ah yes, Miss Lang came personally to make sure someone so described was to be allowed to see her.” As he said this, Vera calmed down, but he opened his mouth again “However, the timing is a bit soon after that conversation. I think I’m going to escort you.”

“That won’t be a problem” Vera said, she continued as she added something that wasn’t the complete truth but wasn’t really a lie “I was also told to bring something to the school from her.” Hoping he wouldn’t care about the package she received from Lang.

He led her through the main road, as they passed many a building and Vera remembered that one time she was allowed to visit, where they went directly with Lang to the house where she lived.

As she was remembering more fond memories, the guard stopped and said, “We are here.” He pulled on a bell and after a while, Lang in a traditional dress came out with a small box.

“Is my package here?” She asked in a snobbish tone.

“Right here ma’am.” Vera took out a package of home-made Fish and Rice, along with the Koshi Tea.

“Thank you,” Lang said, still snobbishly “and have this delivered to the school.” She stuffed the package into Vera’s hands and without skipping a beat, she turned her back, said “Goodbye” and closed the door.

Vera stood in disbelief for a second before the guard said, “We should head back.” So she followed him towards the guardhouse, from where she said “Goodbye” and left the complex. She went back to her sword and school-wear and took off towards the university.

********

Vera still had the protective gear on, and as she entered the university grounds it was still early for most people, she went towards the lab where she looked in the storage room and found The Box, a trolley with a fridge box and a freezer box, for transporting Kung parasite samples, along with other required things into the lab area.

Luckily for her, it was unattended, so she slipped the crate with the name Vera Shim into the parasite fridge and started leaving, when she heard footsteps.

She moved towards a cupboard and jumped into it, closing it behind herself.

The door opened and someone entered, they started placing things into the Box and then they closed it and left.

Vera waited a couple minutes before leaving herself. She took off her protective clothing in the ladies’ bathroom and placed them in her backpack.

1 - This is the joke that I suggested as a writing prompt on tumblr, now I’m writing that prompt.