Chapter 15 – What everybody has been waiting for, a training arc in the cultivation novel

“Spirit Cultivation is a culmination of sugars, yeast and lots of distilling.” - Brachim Brachimovic, Vodka cultivator

Vera was looking at the Koshi mushroom, she knew housed her little ones. But even focusing all her eyesight prowess, she couldn’t see them.

Losing her rank 2 Future Sight, which had saved her life and done a lot in her life in the past few days was a real blow especially because the Chuckling Dragon couldn’t get her a microscope.

‘You can travel to other Spirit Dimensions if you want to get one.’ Like really, I’m not an old-school cultivator. Dimension Hopping had been declared too dangerous for the general public, which was another contributing factor for Soul Realm and Body Realm taking in most of the abilities the Spirit Realm cultivation, including Familiars and things around them.

“Not like I have a familiar of my own.” Vera exclaimed.

“Your Sweethearts” he chuckled as he said that word “would almost count as one.” After a short pause “Actually the bond between you would become a master-familiar one if you were more proficient in the Spirit Realm.”

He always knew how to get onto Vera’s nerves, she got angry again.

He chuckled “A spirit with no Spirit Realm, hahaha.” He laughed heartily, gongs sounding, but the zing that often followed, was nowhere to be heard. Or seen for that matter.

‘Yeah, yeah, stop poking.’ Vera grimaced at the dragon.

The dragon went back to helping the bacteria friend in its cultivation studies.

The first rank of the Spirit Realm is ‘Spirit Unlocking’ Vera mused, ‘What unlocks spirits?’

‘In all the stories, ghosts and spirits need to be exorcised or placated to get them out of the lock. So I should exorcise myself.’ Vera was filled with determination.

“Exorcising yourself is the worse of the two ideas.” The dragon quickly chimed in.

‘Outside of the Spirit Anchor and Sweetheart’ she wanted to think of the answer, but her mind kept going in circles ‘outside of the Spirit Anchor...’ She spent a good five minutes like that.

She threw herself at the ground “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

After she ended her fit, she sat up.

“Why is patience tied to the Body Realm? I’ve cultivated my Body Realm for such a long time and it doesn’t matter now.”

‘Wait aren’t most of the patience techniques in Body Realm originally from the Spirit Realm?’ Vera thought to herself ‘There are definitely many of the Body Techniques, such as Patient Student that don’t sit well with most other Body Techniques.’

“That doesn’t help much though! Why is this so frustrating?”

“Think, think, Spirits are representations of being on other Spirit Dimensions.” Vera felt like she had an epiphany, ‘That means the Spirit Representation, or Spirit Mask is how Spirits outside see us.’

“That’s wrong!” She exclaimed. “Spirits have bodies in their own Dimension. Therefore they have a body realm.”

She waited for a couple seconds, but she didn’t get any of the satisfaction she expected.

‘That’s disappointing, it might be incorrect though.’ Vera thought to herself.

“Not every important correct statement leads to an advancement through ranks.” The dragon said, chuckling again, but it felt like he was chuckling to himself.

‘Is my Dimension this one or Earth? If its not this one, I won’t have access to Qi, which means I’ll be stuck on the Qi building, for my Spirit Realm.’

“But I was able to advance my Soul Realm without building Qi.”

‘That means I have to build a different type of power source, for the Spirit Realm.’ She was thinking, close to an epiphany.

She felt a crackling in her skull, as her knowledge of Alchemical flame and Alchemical power crackled inside of her. ‘Alchemy isn’t associated with the Spirit Realm by mistake.’

She entered her Soul Realm, and a tiny spark of Alchemical flame, with the stereotypical blue color appeared. She smiled inwardly, as she sent a piece of Soulforce into the spark, it fizzled making the flame larger, ‘THUS CREATING ALCHEMICAL POWER.’

She had advanced through Spirit Realm Unlocking and Alchemy Handling.

“And that’s your answer.” The Chuckling dragon chuckled again.

********

There were 13 points from which one could release Soulforce or Qi; the two openings of the palms, the two openings of the knuckles, each of these two spawning slightly different styles of casting. There were only two on the legs, just above the thumb toe. The head had 4 – one in each eye, the forehead and one in the mouth. The last three were on the torso, one on the belly button, and two at the tops of breasts.

Lang found the last to be too crass, and society in general agreed with her.

They all had different pros and cons, for the arms and legs it was element efficiency and accuracy. In Lang’s case she focused on kick stances, as they were the most efficient for conducting Lightning.

This made her kicks in general better receptacles for all sorts of Soulcraft as she trained them hard.

As was often the case in newer age cultivation, not everything was perfectly mapped. Soulcraft had the largest number of contingencies; the Four Elements(Fire, Water, Earth, Air), the Three Deadly Forces (Fire, Ice, Lightning), the Four Cardinal Options(Fire, Ice, Lightning, Metal), Yin vs Yang, Chaos Balance, Good Evil, Life Death, Earth vs Cosmos, Eldritch vs Classical and many more.

The Bao family focused their efforts in the Three Deadly Forces and sometimes Four Cardinal Options, focusing on lightning every time.

The difference, while minor, was very important. The Three Deadly Forces focused on inflicting as much damage on your opponent. With Lightning beating Ice, Ice beating Fire and Fire beating Lightning.

In the Four Cardinal Options, the main use of the elements was the creation of techniques to be used in combination with Alchemy. Of course some of the techniques were used in combat, but usually with preparation, or even rituals. Lightning was the Cardinal Option of conducting. Which meant its usage in both alchemy and rituals was large.

The Soulcraft tournament would require problem-solving on the first day and a 1 on 1 battle on the third day. Winning the second match, the one on one was what really mattered. The winner of the problem-solving task would receive additional protection and 10 points at the start of the 1 on 1 duel, this however wasn’t a big deal. Lang believed a 1 on 1 duel might just be the worst, because of her focus on Lightning. If she got an opponent proficient in Fire, the most commonly chosen element, her likelihood of victory would go down drastically.

Soulforce battles were done on some range and while kicks weren’t the most accurate, Lightning snaked towards the target, unlike any of the other elements. This made power the most important statistic for Lightning attacks.

The key to success with Lightning methods was curling the lightning, this gave it a better angle at which to hit the nearest spot of the opponent. If of course, it went uncontested.

Knowing the three most basic styles of the Bao family, the high kick, back spin, the side-kick style and the bottom kick. She was training a special style called the knee twirl, which had a knee go forward and break the lightning in to two parts curling around each other.

Normally, these styles were very useful even in close quarters as they could be used alongside Body techniques to get past opponents’ guards or allow you to back off quickly.

All Body Realm techniques were banned during Soul Realm competition, meaning one would lose a large amount of points if they used a Body Realm technique. Usually, this meant losing one of the three rounds the one on one was delimated into.

Lang had a tight schedule.

She would train Soulcraft at home on days that they didn’t train Soulcraft at school. On the days they did, she would participate, hoping to learn something new. At home she had her Great-Uncle to supervise her accuracy and understanding, along with manuals written by her family.

********

After twelve days, she was completely sick of Soulcraft. Getting only one more rank up to 23, Lang needed a change of pace.

After asking nicely, her Great-Uncle called another one, and they sparred together, showcasing the techniques Lang had been learning about.

At first their fight was very instructional, however that changed as they slowly increased in pace and intensity, until one of the Great-Uncle’s hair, which was originally blue-tipped with the arc of Lightning embedded in it, went green.

Green Lightning snaked its way from his head towards the other Great-Uncle.

He swiftly changed his pose and instead of dodging lightning, he caught it flying. He looked dissaprovingly at the other uncle who looked down in shame.

They apologized together “Sorry, for our shameful behavior. Even though we were supposed to be instructing you.”

“Never mind that.” Lang said, excited as a puppy “That thing with the hair, can you teach me?”

“Green Lightning or using your hair to harness lightning in general?”

“Either, it would be good to add to my repertoire.” Lang was hungry for more knowledge.

“Green Lightning contains Qi.” The Great-uncle hesitated “It isn’t particularly more dangerous, its just many people aren’t protected against Qi Soulcraft. Even some of the wards inside our house compound have a barrier only against Soulcraft.” He stopped for a while “Of course the main Ward around the house does contain as complete a defense as the Bao research allowed.” To diffuse any doubts Lang might have had.

“Adding Qi to your Soulcraft is easiest through the eyes, while using your forehead to create the Soulcraft itself, because of efficiency.” He continued.

“The easiest way to learn that is to use a Body Realm technique involved with the eyes while using a Soulcraft technique, also from the eyes.”

“Hmm, I haven’t really done much Soulcraft from my eyes.” Lang thought out loud.

“Students used to try Evil Eye or Fair Eye as techniques for eye Soulcraft. The alternative is Earth element.” Lang wasn’t used to either, the Earth Element was a tall order for lightning users. Lang used lightning as her primary and water as a secondary, partially as a failsafe against fire and partially to empower her lightning.

“I’d try Fair Eye, as I have read up on it.” Fair Eye was a technique that, when used on two Soulcraft abilities with different amounts of Soulforce bound in them, would attempt to sap from the more Soulforce-rich to the weaker, at its most powerful it could overcompensate this trade to the point that the more powerful one was less powerful.

Lang spent six hours training Fair Eye before she was happy with her progress enough to end for the day. She was completely exhausted by the end of it.

The next day, she worked hard on using Fair Eye and ‘Unblinking Eyes’ a relatively Qi-cheap Body Realm technique.

By not using up too much of her Qi, she wouldn’t feel the same level of exhaustion at the end of the day.

It took her two days to get Qi mixed into her casting. She inadvertently tied Unblinking Eyes to Qi release from her eyes. As with many Body techniques however, it was possible to turn it into a static technique, which remained on her eyes. Not unlike ‘Clear Mind’ or ‘Overcome Desire’.

This took till the end of the day to achieve, however it was combined with increasing the efficacy of Fair Eyes, and her proficiency at adding Qi to them.

It would appear to everyone that she blinked but this didn’t affect how well she saw. The technique had more ranks, such as being able to see behind you and in every direction, along with a degree of dark vision and imperviousness to blinding or extreme changes in lighting, but ultimately Lang wasn’t that interested in its advancement.

On the fourth day of the new ideas she finally started training Lightning from the forehead. The intensity was much poorer than from the legs, however, the accuracy along with the output duration made it completely different for certain uses. Unless she found a way to add Qi to it, any opponent she was paired with would probably be able to just negate it with their shield.

Once she was happy enough with the forehead lightning she started adding Qi to it, this was pretty fast but at the same time the lightning itself suffered whenever she combined them.

At the beginning of the fifth day she had an epiphany and managed to do it the way she wanted to, advancing her Soulcraft to rank 24.

She then learned how to make her forehead lightning more powerful from her frosted tips

In the remaining 2 days she trained to incorporate Qi lightning from her forehead into her fighting style. By the end she only managed to incorporate it as an end to a stream of attacks, that would leave an opening after failing.

During this time she had done some theory-crafting and problem solving from previous years but for Lang’s taste, the day before the grand opening, it was too little. She still had a whole day before the competition with the other school started, but tomorrow she would compete against a number of her peers from the University to see who would represent the University itself.