Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 17: Second One (Patreon)

By the end of Bao's second week in seclusion, I could already run the Monkey in parallel with the rest of my combat scheme. My body had adapted to the force of the leaps, and I'd stopped consciously controlling their strength. Now I simply jumped, without thinking how, only where to now and where next.

That should have been satisfying, but I'd hit a ceiling.

I wouldn't say my study of the techniques had stalled, or that I'd brought them to perfection, but I'd reached the level where I badly needed outside pressure — the unpredictability of a living opponent who doesn't strike on schedule and doesn't wait for me to assemble the perfect combination.

I needed someone who'd chase me around an arena the way Kate used to.

The thought alone brought on a mix of nostalgia and mild physical discomfort somewhere in the buttocks. Especially the left one, which still seemed to remember every charge from her finger-bolt. Mentor Kate was a sadist. That wasn't an insult — it was simply a fact. She was a firm believer in training and absorbing information through pain.

In my first year, she'd chased me through various halls, forcing me to sense danger through my backside and learn to dodge before my brain even had time to register it. It looked like pure abuse, but damn it, it worked. More effectively than any other method I'd tried since. My body had learned to react before a thought could even form, and that was exactly what I was missing most right now.

Formally, we were both on the fourth stage now.

In practice, Kate had already had time to settle into the stage. Her breakthrough had happened a full month before my return, and some time had passed since then that she'd certainly not wasted. The gap between us had shrunk, but it hadn't gone away.

Kate would have made a perfect candidate, if not for her sadism…

I didn't fancy taking another round of painful, humiliating bolts to the backside.

On the other hand, that reluctance would force me to work harder.

I opened the interface and typed out a message, weighing every word as though the condition of my backside, and whether I'd end up dragging it to the infirmary, depended on the exact phrasing.

This would definitely amuse Zola.

"Kate, I need a light spar, nothing too sadistic. Want to test my new skills under pressure."

The reply came faster than expected.

"Format? Armour on armour? If you damage my suit again, I'll grind you into the sand and paint the walls with what's left."

"That was ages ago and it was your own fault. We could play tag without armour. I'll use blunt plastic discs, but you'll still need a defensive formation."

An unprotected body, even a fourth-stage one, I could cut with blunt discs just fine.

In Yellow Pine, in the Blade Garden, they even used paper ones. Qi made them sharper than steel.

"Not needed. I understand how danger changes perception too. But go easy on me."

"Depends on your behaviour," I typed back.

We met under the dome, on a large training ground that reminded me sharply of that tiny patch of terrain where she used to chase me over the boulders: sand and rock. We discussed details and each other's capabilities. Agreed not to go all out, so as not to kill each other. I surprised her with how many discs I could hold in the air at once — not exactly a trivial number. She told me what she was capable of now. Essentially, she'd become a walking machine gun, able to fire off bursts of lightning-charged projections faster than I could shoot my classic Chain Punches.

Six years ago, she'd looked at me as a charge she needed to hammer details into. Now, almost as an equal worth testing.

We stepped apart and Kate picked a pebble up off the ground, tossed it, and dropped into a stance.

I activated my mental techniques.

The stone hit a boulder, cracking sharply.

We burst into motion.

I flung out the first pair of discs and monkeyed higher. A volley of lightning bolts streaked past on the right, while Kate herself ‘teleported’ left.

The first discs picked up speed, the second pair flew after them, and the space around me began to crackle.

Kate didn't bother trading in small change. Instead of single bolts, an entire storm front bloomed in the air — a dozen violet discharges at once, striking not at me personally, but ringing the air around me.

This was something big and slow. Not an ultimate, but something like my Scythe.

"What the hell?" I snarled, tearing myself free of that mess with the Monkey.

I gathered every last lightning bolt onto myself, like a moving lightning rod. They tore my suit to shreds, my arms and face, making my hair stand on end and my muscles seize with cramp.

I lost my footing for half a second and went flying face-first towards the rocks.

I grabbed at the air with my hands and caught a burst of electric bolts across my arse, back and shoulders. A couple hit my arms and scattered the support discs the instant they formed. I hit the rocks. Good thing I landed feet-first, not face-first.

"Stop!" I roared, rolling to the other side of a boulder to shield myself from machine-gun Kate. "What the hell? We were supposed to go easy?! You nearly killed me!"

Kate shifted instantly to another boulder that gave her a perfect view of me.

I hadn't managed to get up yet, so I raised my hands.

"I yield!"

Kate made two mocking gestures, as if firing at me with her fingers.

"That wouldn't have killed you," she said, and pointed upward. "Watch." She repeated the technique — a few brisk hand movements, above which a violet storm bloomed. "It's not an attacking technique, it's a trap set at minimum power."

"And you, of course, forgot to mention you'd learned something new!"

"Honestly? Yes, I forgot. I learned it years ago, and I didn't think you'd fall for it. What did it was the lack of armour, plus your sudden realisation of your own mistake."

"That I always leap straight into the air?" I tried to guess.

"With this technique, I'd have got you on the ground too. No, you weren't planning to fight at full tilt until you'd got all your discs airborne," she said. "Lots of discs at once is wonderful once they're already circling. But it takes time to get them up there.

"Think back to your own tournaments. Sometimes everything was decided in the first few seconds, and you acted as if you had all the time in the world."

I nodded and said, "Humiliation aside, this spar's already proving its worth. One request. Stop aiming for my arse!"

"It's a big target," Kate joked.

"You'll pay for that!" I promised.

But I couldn't make good on the promise. Kate chased me around exactly like in my first year, as if I'd lost every skill, every instinct, every understanding of combat I'd ever had. Her trap was even more infuriating than my discs, but for the second half of the spar she didn't activate it at all and still won anyway.

An hour of getting thrashed later, she called it off herself, declaring I'd had enough.

My efforts weren't leading anywhere. I'd fallen into the trap of my own emotions and kept stepping on the same rake, over and over.

Kate said I needed to clear my head, analyse the fight, and try again later.

I agreed with her and treated us both to coffee and cake at Marco's.

Marco, incidentally, was also a woman now, though she hadn't changed her name or her job, since part of the popular establishment now belonged to her, entirely officially, and she was no longer just a figurehead.

It was right there in the cafe that the news of Bao's breakthrough caught up with me.

Rene messaged me, suggesting I check the forum and dropping a link to the thread:

Second prото-aura incident in the Hall of Meditation.

So, Bao had repeated my feat — full proto-aura synergy after a breakthrough.

I wondered what he'd mixed, and in what proportions. I'd bet on something heavy paired with something that grows.

You'd think the Hall of Meditation had learned its lesson this time and reinforced the shielding, but no such luck. Bao had scorched it to hell and back.

Fortunately, not entirely. Only two people injured, and lightly at that. This time the forum knew straight away what they'd spent; things hadn't escalated to crystals. Forum-goers were debating compensation, but Bao had already declared he wasn't paying anyone anything. He'd honestly warned the hall's staff that he'd try to repeat my feat. No one had stopped him, quite the opposite, they'd encouraged him to try.

Because of that, the forum immediately recalled two things. First — that Bao was my friend. Second — that Bao's family had a downright dreadful reputation for being moral degenerates and rich but stingy arseholes.

The flow of information didn't stop there. The internet's amateur detectives quickly dug up the fact that Bao's father was at odds with his master, dredged up Bao Feng's disaster back in his first year, when he'd wrecked what little cultivation he'd managed to gain from his very first trip into the Flow Chambers, and the fact that his father had more or less disowned him afterwards.

Bao was the black sheep of a black-hearted family, and part of the forum insisted this technically made him white. Minus times minus equals plus.

The other part wasn't so sure, but the comments under the thread were updating so fast they'd turned into an informational mush, from which barely anything could be made out.

I closed the forum, apologised to Kate, and called Bao.

"Congratulations, hero," I said.

"You're our hero," he said. "I just modestly followed in your footsteps."

"Have you seen the forum? My breakthrough caused a lot less of a stir. At least they didn't pick my bones apart quite so eagerly."

Though, back then, nobody in the general public knew what a proto-aura even was, or understood what kind of incident had occurred. And Novak had taken steps to stop the extra information from spreading.

Perhaps that was exactly why the topic, suppressed back then, was exploding so hard now.

"I'm no stranger to this. In my first year I was already Bao Feng, the disgrace of the family honour!" he declaimed grandly. "I'll survive."

"Well, I don't know, there are people out there supporting you. Quite a few, I'd say."

"Seriously?" Bao sounded surprised. "I refused to pay compensation. How did that work in my favour?"

"The Hall of Meditation's getting blamed for the poor shielding more than you are," I said.

"Serves them right!" Bao agreed at once. "The hall's staff have been driving me up the wall. I can barely stand on my feet, and they're still trying to run tests on me."

"Call the Master, have him cool their enthusiasm."

"Already did. Judging by his aura, his actual aura, if they don't let me go soon, he's going to organise a few heart attacks in there."

"By the way… with this little stunt of yours, didn’t you happen to restore the family honour?"

"Hadn't thought about it," he said. "Technically, no one in the family's ever pulled off anything like this," a note of mischief crept into his voice. "My relatives will probably come crawling with questions, curious how I managed it…"

"Sending them packing?"

"We'll see…" Bao said vengefully. "First, let's see how sincerely they congratulate me. Might even hand out a few pointers."