Chapter 20 – Chao … doesn’t find Vera?

“They don’t call it Half-step just because it is halfway to the next rank, a half-step rank brings a sense of incompleteness, nothing else in the universe can bring. Remembering a half-step advancement can be the main motivation someone has to get better.” -Samper Lye, teaching the Lye school of cultivation, while reminiscing of his own half steps

Chao got to the Golden Dragon’s spirit dimension.

Seeing the Spirit-Sakura tree and feeling a remnant of Vera on it, he noticed there were Koshi mushrooms, ‘Did Vera become a Koshi Mushroom in this dimension?’

“You’ve lost your respect from 107 years ago boy, do you think you can beat my trial this time?”

“With all due respect, I’m not here to take the trial today, I’m trying to get a cure for Teacher Qianfan.”

The dragon chuckled “And why are you looking for someone here then?”

“Cause I felt that girl, Vera here, and she was the closest to having an effective cure.” Chao replied.

“Couldn’t you just finish her research?” The dragon asked and chuckled again.

“I honestly think we don’t have enough time.” Chao said, thinking ‘They are going to attack Qian and they are going to succeed if he isn’t free of the parasite by the coming of the Demon Moon.’

‘It’s a January gambit, I’ve already invested good money into the continuation of the project in any capacity. But they don’t believe that it’s going to be completed until March. Which means the Demon Moon might come too soon for Qian Qianfan.’

“Well, you missed her.” The dragon spoke in a thundering voice as if basses were playing instead of violins.

Chao didn’t quite expect that “She was here?” He asked.

“Yes, she became a spirit, and she’s been Dimension Hopping to find a microscope.” The dragon sounded. “A very determined one, young Vera.”

Chao left wordlessly ‘I should get her one then.’

He went back to Earth to get a full set for biology, and returned all in the span of three minutes.

He placed them next to the Spirit-Sakura tree and said “Well, until next time then.”

“Are you really not going to try my test?” The Dragon chuckled, but the tone was much more serious than before.

“I guess…” Chao said “I will give it a try.”

********

Vera was experiencing a disconnection. Her senses, and the feelings she was feeling, were a stark contrast to what her brain had been conditioned to expect.

The Suzhouzan she had scryed was akin to a green and well-lit valley, but because of her difficulty in distinguishing details, her expectation was that the green was grass.

In reality, the green turned out to be stone, or something as rigid and lifeless as stone. Vera had trouble discerning textures as she is a spirit so she can’t actually feel it.

The place was composed of large cubic chunks, which were about 30 to 40 feet on each side, strewn around in mostly random arrangements, with smaller 10-15 feet chunks on top of them and then a last layer of 3-5 feet chunks that Vera was stepping on. The going was surprisingly straight with very little gaining or losing height.

The tranquil place is actually empty. With large swathes of stones and rock formations the place feels desolate. There is very little to suggest movement much less life in this place.

As Vera was thinking that “WHY DO YOU REMAIN?! THIS IS NOT YOUR PLACE! LEAVE AND NEVER RETURN!”

The creepy voice from earlier turned the tranquil slow surroundings into an eerie place. Vera’s emotions went haywire with a mix of fear and anticipation.

The dread multiplied until ‘bwip’ a small sound popped in Vera's mind and all the tension and fear just … dissipated.

Back to the calmness and tranquility, Vera suddenly felt exhausted from the ordeal, but she continued on her way.

The area slowly receded from green jagged rocks to a much darker green, and then brownish-green hexagonal minerals, stacking into the sky.

Vera willed her Spirit body to fly over the spires whenever they appear. The terrain slowly became more and more different. If the previous terrain with cubes roughly paving the way equally was a sort of equivalent of a meadow, this new place reminded her of a forest.

But the differences were clear, with the stones randomly jutting out to over 30 feet and sometimes switching to massive drops down. Each of the hexagonal stone spires was about 2 feet in diameter and they were at a very small acute angle.

This played with Vera’s brain, as it constantly had her thinking she was slightly lopsided.

All-in-all, the constant change in elevation, having to move around obstacles or just flat-out fly over them was a welcome change in pace for Vera. She almost felt like she was on a hike.

The amount of Soulforce in her surroundings, was definitely much higher and its quality much richer than she was used to on Earth or even on the Chuckling Dragon’s plane.

Vera got to a point where she couldn't see the previous green cubes by turning back anymore. Vera was realizing that the lopsidedness of the area was getting worse, but her brain automatically adjusted for those changes.

By closing her eyes for a couple minutes while floating, Vera managed to reset her brain, she made a rough estimate at the angle, it was about 30°. “That’s definitely more slanted.”, she said out loud, realizing that was the first time she spoke since coming to this plane. Her ‘talking to herself’ habit had massively diminished in the Chuckling Dragon’s Dimension, as there was no need for speaking at all.

She also noticed that her surroundings were turning much browner, as compared to the previous greenish brown color.

Vera was more capable of discerning certain things about the rocks. The taller hexagons were lighter and had a slightly greener hue, while the lower ones were definitely darker, that is, on average.

********

“I’VE TOLD YOU, TO GET OUT!!!” the creepy voice came again, just as terrible as ever.

Vera had stayed on her path for a long time. So long, in fact, that she had stopped paying much attention. She did the flying up and closing her eyes trick again and the spires were now just beyond the 45° angle.

Continuing onward, Vera had a realization. ‘If their angle is slowly changing, that doesn’t have to mean it only changes in one axis, it could be a spiral.’

It felt like something changed in her, her Spirit Realm had a small advancement. It didn’t feel unlike a Eureka moment of the new school, at least in terms of intensity. In terms of flavor, and Vera realized how weird calling a feeling of excitement a flavor was in her mind, in terms of flavor, Vera would place it closer to a feeling of being at peace with something.

This sort of reinforcement had to mean only one thing. ‘Ding, ding, ding’, she had to be correct. That of course meant that the hexagonal structure did indeed spiral in one way or the other. But it also had to mean that it held an additional importance in the Spirit Realm concept as a whole.

Being a Spirit, this information filled her with excitement.

“Yes doofus”, Vera sighed inwardly “Of course, a Dimension Hopper wouldn’t learn anything from traveling in a different Dimension would he!” She said so sarcastically that she found it comical.

‘As a Spirit, I really did take on a lot of their traditional problems, such as being snappy.’ Vera bemoaned inwardly.

Intrigued, by what might be in the middle, where the spires themselves were pointing, Vera decided to continue in that direction.

After a while she got much closer, with the angle being almost 60 degrees. Now the Hexagons were further from sticking upwards, they felt more like logs of wood strewn on the ground.

Vera flew up and saw quite clearly that in the area around her, the shape was a spiral, funneling forwards.

Anticipation and dread boiled over Vera, before she heard the voice “Leave. You still have a choice.”

This time, the voice went from being a booming and loud voice which terrified her, to a much more composed voice. Like someone was holding back their anger, bottling it up. It wasn’t nearly as loud either.

Vera took a much shorter time than before to get out of the trance and calm down. She continued on her way towards the center, mulling over the change in effect that she had experienced. Another thing she was thinking of, was the time she had spent. Not only had she lost her heartbeat, the time spent in the dragon’s dimension and the time spent in the Suzhouzan was impossible to tell. The seasons and days didn’t pass with indicators. Beyond the first 4 days she knew she slept through, she wasn’t sure of how much more time she had spent on either.

She also started thinking of Lang and Jill, she hadn’t even called Lang a single time, and calling Jill the single time also wasn’t much good. ‘She must be terrified. Also wasn’t Chao Li there?’ Vera was contemplating something different for the first time in a long while.

She realized, her memories of humans and her prior interactions had become foggy. She couldn't remember a large chunk of the people she had interacted with, details of moments she knew she had once treasured.

Another thing that tied Spirits together, their lack of human memories. By living as a Spirit, her human memories had inadvertently been overwritten to an extent by memories built in her Spirit Realm.

She remembered that Mind’s Gate was a Spirit Realm technique, which had been deprecated to the Soul Realm in the ‘new school’. A place for placing information for remembering, that had a suggested Soul Realm rank of 32, she had the realization that lesser spirits, ones which hadn’t developed this technique, didn’t have a bank of memories. This realization scared her profoundly.

Losing humanity was a concept she was aware she would have to contend with now that she was a Spirit. However, she didn’t expect that time to come quite so soon. “Was it even that soon?”

Ahead of her, Vera noticed a weird circle, which promptly took her out of her reverie.

Getting closer, Vera could see that the circle was comprised of all the hexagons ending at different points, with relatively large angles between them, creating rifts in the ground. She also noticed that the hexagons were now completely parallel with the ground.

At the end of all the brown hexagons, a platform that had to be at least a mile wide appeared just below the hexagon array, which was now basically completely flat, as opposed to the uneven footing the hexagonal spires afforded at the beginning.

Vera came to the precipice leading to the flat, mostly circular platform and flew to the bottom of it. She traveled towards the middle. Something about that place just made her feel enamored.

It radiated Soulforce in a way not unlike the Spirit Sakura tree in the Chuckling dragon’s Dimension. It was the perfect spot for cultivation.

Coming closer, she realized there were small hexagonal incisions in the platform, many of which held a discoloring to the brown hues. The closer she got to the middle, the more beige the hexagons took onto them, until she got close enough to the center to realize that the beige spots were prints of faces.

These were, what looked like human faces, trapped at the end of the hexagons.

Fear gripped her once more, but the tranquil atmosphere of the Suzhouzan cleared it away quickly.

At the center, a small half-sphere was missing from the hexagon, with many different faces mashed up together in it. Sitting down in this knoll, Vera entered her Soul Realm and started interacting with the fountain that appeared in her Soul vision.

“Despite all my warnings, I have been ignored again”, the once icy voice became sweet and tangy, reminding Vera of a grandmother, it felt like it was inviting her to remain there.

And Vera did, she allowed the Soulforce to pass through her, with the gentle tone leading to short monologue replies from Vera.

********

Vera had been stuck in there for a time, she was unsure how long. But something happened, the first thing to break the monotony of sitting in the middle of the hexagon.

Vera felt an incredible excitement. A euphoria that felt so… right. And yet, at the end left her unfulfilled.

A half-step to Familiar mastery, while not completely unheard of, caused Vera to feel astounded and took her once again out of her reverie. She noticed that something new had appeared in her Soul Realm, attached to her with a profound connection.

For a moment she struggled to jostle through her memory to identify this being. After a short while, she finally realized “Ah, Sweetheart”, as she opened her eyes.