Chapter 9 – Trouble and then more trouble, served with a side dish of trouble

“Good things will come, if you let the sum of squares of the lengths of the two short sides of the right triangle be equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse.” - Pythago Ran

Chao Li found a new research paper from that day, that predicted a 2 month period before she could start healing his teacher. This would be enough time for him to take his place on the throne back by the end of November and he would be ready if the Demon Moon came even in early January.

‘By all accounts this is the most feasible plan I have, I should give her a visit.’ Little did he know, Vera wouldn’t come back home for a long time. Here’s how that happened:

********

Vera went to morning Body training, this time she was paired against Markus Hong, her childhood friend who was alienating himself through his love for Lang. This started making their interactions more awkward.

‘Maybe now that Lang is not at school, he’s going to be more amiable.’ Markus definitely had her beat, not only in Body Realm techniques, but in the fact that he regularly trained his muscles, so they were bursting out of his skin. Vera had to stop herself from staring too hard.

Markus was a 28 while Vera was a 26 after achieving Future Sight, ‘That’s one toy I’ll have on him, but his direction was a lot more pragmatic.’ Markus had Steel bones, the technique Vera was working towards now, to ease her sword transit.

“How are you holding up Markus, now that Lang doesn’t come to school?” Vera asked, thinking it was an innocent enough question. Apparently, she was incorrect at that judgment.

Anger was welling up in Markus’s eyes, but he answered calmly enough “Honestly, it’s pretty depressing.”

The sparring practice started and Vera could feel that he wasn’t pulling any stops. Early stages of future sight actually weren’t very useful in combat against cultivators, because it’s predictive properties were greatly diminished for attacks that were planned less than 0.1 second before they were executed.

Men had an advantage, however slight, in both muscles and Qi, this usually meant they could win against women, even in situations where the woman was slightly ahead in terms of pure cultivation. This was also the reason, most early Kwoons didn’t allow women.

Vera wasn’t going to allow that to slow her learning down, using her hands, attempting Steel Bone, she would try to block his attacks. Of course, that could be counterproductive if he used a full form of Steel Bone, but he decided he didn’t want to start breaking Vera’s bones.

Body cultivation showed combat results much faster than Soul cultivation and especially in cases where Soul cultivation wasn’t usable Vera was on the back-swing against the Quicksilver Strike training boy. Quicksilver strike allowed its user to become liquid to overcome any barriers.

It of course had difficulties in the transitional period and that made the fight somewhat fair.

“I had a mirror-talk with Lang, she’s doing pretty well, training cultivation at her home. She believes that even if she ages up by the parasite, she’ll be able to obtain immortality.” It seemed to anger him once again and his strikes became more vicious.

“That just sounds like she’s suffering alone, and you ignore it.” Markus got a nasty hit in, on Vera’s stomach.

Vera had Qi enter that part and heal it momentarily, the twang of pain still there. Sparring was the best way to train one’s body, but Vera hated how her body would feel after being healed by Qi. The texture of her skin became more spongy.

“You say that, but did you give her a single mirror-talk, you big doofus?” Vera stood up and got in an attacking stance. Markus blocked both of her punches and slid backwards out of the range of her kick.

Markus looked saddened, then he started to vent that frustration on Vera, redoubling his offensive. “You don’t know anything do you.” He landed a punch on her shoulder, “You just glide through life without a worry in the world.” He kicked her in the knee, “You don’t know how it feels.” He got a grazing punch in on her ear. “When the person you love is ignoring you and you don’t know what to do.”

Anger welled up in him and his arm turned into a metallic liquid, before materializing in front of Vera’s face and slugging her backwards, flat down on the ground.

Vera woke up five seconds later, sending Qi to her skull, ‘That will make it hard to think for a while.’ she saw Markus above her mouthing “Sorry.” and extending a hand to her. Because it started dissipating, she noticed the ringing sound in her head.

It took an additional second to clear out, ‘So Markus has achieved Quicksilver Strike.’

“Congratulations.” She said as she took his hand and smiled.

‘This is what I hate about you.’ Markus mumbled under his breath as he started walking away, just loud enough for Vera to hear.

That sentence hurt more than all the physical pain he had inflicted on her in the short 20 minute sparring they had just had.

‘And he just up and left.’ Vera stood there in disbelief. ‘Just like that.’ She was incredulous.

After about a minute of looking at him leave, she walked to the instructor and said some sort of excuse before leaving.

Not having a sparring partner, she decided she would take a shower and go to the lab. ‘Maybe its for the best.’ She thought and frowned ‘No, it most definitely isn’t. Shirking my responsibilities as a friend isn’t okay. He’s clearly suffering.’

Vera went down to the lab where the medical teacher Professor Fong had come out to greet her. “Hello Vera, how are you doing?” Vera didn’t expect that, but it wasn’t too out of the ordinary.

“Good day Mister Fong.” Vera smiled pleasantly at the teacher “It could be going better sir, my sparring partner left close to the start of our practice.”

Fong tried looking sympathetic “A bad omen to be certain.” Rhe sympathy was filled with sarcasm. So much so, that even Vera picked up on it.

“Is there something wrong sir?” Vera was suspecting where this was going, but she still hoped something else had happened.

“You familiar with this?” He took out the container she placed there in the morning. “Or these?” He took out two blood samples with L.Blood written on them.

Vera was in shock, but she slowly nodded “Yes.” She was on the border of sobbing.

“You’re a good girl Vera, so we’ll do it this way, you can keep these samples, provided you haven’t infected yourself getting them.” Vera looked up “However” Fong made a short pause “However, you will be barred from the lab for a whole week. I know this is a punishment for you, so try not to gather illegal samples.” Vera thought she saw an opening.

“Sir, but this is important for the fight against the parasite.” Vera was complaining.

“Of course, but so are the rules.” Fong looked stern, like he wasn’t going to budge on this point.

“But, but” Vera was stammering in the face of Fong’s intensity.

“You can go to the principal and see if he allows you to stay at the school with this kind of activity.” He paused again “You know, I thought of you as a model researcher, but my faith had been broken. Don’t break it any further.”

“I understand.” Vera tried her best to be stoic about the whole ordeal, but as she started going the opposite way, she couldn't stop herself from sobbing, tears stinging her on the corners of her eyes.

“What can I do?” she moved towards the women’s toilet, locked herself in a stall and she started crying. ‘Isn’t it stupid to cry about this? It’s just a week.’ but the feeling of her world being torn down had finally caught up with her. “My best friend is sick” “My childhood friend hates my guts.” “I’ve broken rules and gotten on the wrong side of one of my favorite teachers.”

********

Vera didn’t know how long she’s been there but she felt a tug, she was being mirror-talked to.

She wiped away her tears, took out a mirror from her make-up bag and answered. Surprisingly, Jill appeared on the other side.

“Vera, you have to come back to the dorm.” Jill seemed out of her mind. “As soon as possible.”

“What’s going on?” ‘Jill doesn’t usually get this panicked, did she have a bad trip that nothing helped against?’

“THE Chao Li is here, he wants to talk to you about your research. I told him you’d be at school but he insisted that that would cause too much of an uproar for his taste.” Jill said.

“Wait, the God-Emperor’s stand-in?” Vera’s confusion had turned into shock.

“Well, he’s no longer the stand-in.” The look of confusion on Vera’s face somehow found a way to deepen, so Jill supplied an answer “but that can wait.” ‘Ah yes, that helped me a lot’ Vera thought. ‘How long have I been wallowing in self pity?’

“Okay, I’m on my way then.” Vera said as she ended the call and left the stall.

‘God-Emperor dammit, I hope this is not a prank, or I don’t know what I’ll do.’ Vera’s mind was ablaze with emotion, ‘why the hell is Overcome emotion not working its charm?’ Vera had heard about this, she was experiencing emotion intoxication, where Overcome emotion couldn't remove all the negative emotions fast enough, so suddenly feeling emotions caused one to feel them at an intensity that was inadequate for the problem.

“Well with that sorted, I just want today to end.” She said hopping on her sword.

On her way through the city skyline, she was ignoring her surroundings, her mind a soup of problems, when from her right, her Future Sight activated.

DANGER!

By sheer instinct, Vera steered left. A dark premonition along with a cold sweat swept over her.

“Watch where you go!” a man who was just behind her shouted at her as he barreled onward.

‘I just survived some sort of attack, and yet the man is only thinking about proper sword flying etiquette?’

‘What type of attack?’ She didn’t see anything, that could only mean an invisible sort of Soulcraft. Since those weren’t taught at her university or in any of the ‘new’ schools, it meant someone from the old school had just attempted at her life.

‘I have to change course.’ She thought as she changed her course while flying, the proper flying etiquette didn’t apply so she went behind the closest building, hopefully putting it between her and whoever just attacked her.

DANGER!

She jumped, again on instinct, staying close enough to her sword. This time she had a lot less time to react.

The attack wasn’t completely invisible this time, tiny rivulets of air showed a line through which it had passed.

The spirit signature blazed in her mind. This Soulcraft was powerful enough to remove her entire existence. Invisible Eradication magic, just the thought of it made her skin crawl, her hair stand on end and her muscles tremble.

Whoever was behind her was getting closer, and fast. They were invisible or assailing her from a Spirit Realm or there was a hundred other options.

EMERGENCY!

There was nothing she could feasibly do, this time an actual attack visible to the naked eye, well probably even to anyone who wasn’t blind and happened to look in the general vicinity as a giant well of Orange Light had been rapidly approaching and blotting out the entire sky.

Her time was running short, ‘Ahh, they underestimated me twice, but at least now they are not discrete.’

‘WHAT KIND OF THOUGHT PROCESS IS THAT!’ she mocked herself inwardly ‘If you die, at least the person wasn’t too discrete about it. Grow up!’

‘Going up is not a bad idea though’ Vera saw the orange beam enveloping her as she used ‘Soul Transference.’ right as her body was obliterated, her soul was already traveling through spirit realms. With the orange beam following at a rapidly decreasing distance.

‘Of course his Soulcraft wouldn’t attack only the body.’

A glint of Gold and the promise of protection snapped past her.

‘Well that’s do-or-die.’ Vera plummeted towards the promise.

Her ears were ringing as the orange started licking at the vestiges of her soul, she felt a weakening and then the orange hit the golden tint, while she sailed unobstructed past it.

She was safe. For now.

End of part 1.