A cultivation novel where three individuals rise through the worlds being born anew in each new world with a surprise consequence for one of them.
Three Mortals Rise To The Heavens ©2020 Savannah Maun
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Any adaptation of the whole or part of the material for broadcast by radio, TV, or for stage plays or film, is the right of the author unless negotiated through legal contract. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited. This work is fictitious, and any similarities to any persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental.
Certain licence is taken in respect of medical procedures, terms and conditions, and the author does not claim to be the fount of all knowledge. The author accepts the right of the individual to hold his/her (or whatever) own political, religious and social views, and there is no intention to deliberately offend anyone. This is only a story, and it contains a few swear words and mentions genitalia. If this is likely to offend, then please don’t read it.
Chapter 1
Mort's Point of View (POV)
I woke up that day with a sense that something was different. Being the optimist that I am I made the presumption that it would be a good thing. Considering that I had prostate cancer twelve years ago and it had come back with a vengeance two years ago, most people would probably be surprised that I could maintain my optimism. Despite my terminal illness, I found facing my reality with anything other than optimism, depressing.
It all began with a knock on my door. The knock itself was surprising. We were in our third worldwide epidemic in the last ten years, this time involving a deliberately mutated cat flu and as an at-risk person, I was under isolation rules. This meant when I answered the door I was expecting a package of some kind, not my neighbour's daughter, May.
May had stepped back the government-mandated two-metre distance and was looking down at her feet in a very sad posture.
“Hi, May,” I said, using a light tone of voice, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.
She looked up at me with puffy red eyes with such a look of sorrow that I felt a strong urge to leap the distance and gather her in my arms. I resisted my natural response and tried to convey warmth in my gaze.
“My dad...,” May said, or at least tried to before falling silent. I waited patiently. “My dad has died,” she managed to get out and more tears leaked out as her crying began again. Her head dropped.
I couldn't take it anymore and gathered her up in my arms, holding her tight. Initially, she resisted and tried to push me away, but I knew that was because she was trying to protect me, so I didn't let her and held on until she gave up and sobbed into my arms.
When she calmed down I let her go and she looked at me like I was an idiot. “He died of cat flu. You can't touch me or you might get it,” May said.
“Too late,” I said with a smile. “I was given a year to live two years ago, don't worry about me. Come on in and tell me about it.”
It turned out that May and her father came down with it at the same time. After two days of fever, May had recovered but found her father dead in his bedroom and didn't know what to do so she knocked on my door.
She was only twelve years old so it wasn't too surprising that she was feeling overwhelmed. I was actually renting the granny flat that was attached to her house and she had been a fairly frequent visitor, bringing me baked goods and playing chess with me. At least, until I had to isolate myself, then we started playing chess in virtual space. Her mother had either died or gone missing when she was young and she had never mentioned any relatives. She was a sweet girl and with no children of my own, I had ended up thinking of her and treating her as a niece. She called me, 'Uncle'.
After a little bit of food and drink, she started yawning. I put her to bed in my only bedroom and started making inquiries.
Civilisation hadn't quite broken down, but it was struggling. Hospitals were full and only essential services were running. A body bag would be delivered and it would be my responsibility to get the body situated and moved to the front garden for collection. The body would be cremated fairly quickly and the ash stored for a later funeral. Social services agreed to put me as the temporary legal guardian of May.
Cat flu had an abnormally long incubation period which made it difficult to control and required long isolation periods. On the plus side, I had time to make arrangements for May in case I died. Since this was the third epidemic in the last ten years there were protocols in place which meant the number of deaths were expected to be low and life would go on. Technology had reached a stage where isolation wasn't that big a deal. Virtually everybody had an internal quantum computer with virtual reality integration and most jobs did not require physical social interaction. Jobs involving travel and holidays would be badly affected but after the first epidemic, most people in those jobs also had income protection.
Sorting everything out took most of a week. I didn't let May back into her own house until I had received the body bag, filled it, placed it correctly and knew that it had definitely been removed. Still, May didn't want to sleep in her house and despite bringing a single bed across, every night she crept into my bed and only fell asleep in my arms.
Her father had an insurance policy and May would eventually end up a wealthy girl. In the meantime, I had to work out who else could take over when I passed away. It was only when I was introducing May to my good friend Switch and explained my thoughts that my mortality really hit her and we had another round of crying.
Switch was an interesting character. She appeared gentle and kind. If you were her friend that was the way she acted, but she had the ability to be completely ruthless with her enemies. Her turnaround from one to the other was so fast it was like someone flicked a switch, hence her nickname. She was a loyal friend and had stuck by me through thick and thin.
May went quiet for a couple of days after the meeting, thinking things through and making up her mind before she approached me with a surprising proposition.
Chapter 2
“Uncle, I know you have been ill for a while and you have been told that you do not have long to live. To be honest, I knew you were ill and already considered you my uncle, so I begged my father to help you. My family has a secret that has the potential to heal almost any illness. Whether or not it can help you is down to luck, but my father forbid me from talking to you about it. He said to me that it is a family secret that must never be revealed to outsiders. Well, he is gone and you have proved that even if we are not related by blood, we are related by spirit. You and Switch are prepared to be my family, I have to treat you the same way,” May said before handing me a diary.
“That is my mother's journal. She started one when she was eight, about halfway through that volume, mum turned fourteen, which is when the secret is usually revealed. I found out early because I read mum's journal. I know where the instruction manual, the ring and the pills are, so if you want to give it a try, let me know. I spoke to my father about it and his comment was that mum was very talented so I shouldn't expect the same results as she got. Dad wasn't able to cultivate at all. It will be a matter of luck as to whether this will help or not. I know you are not going to believe me, but mum didn't die or run away, she ascended. I saw it with my own eyes when I was eight. She could feel it happening so called us together, put the pills, manual and ring in front of me and challenged me to join her when I could.”
“She ascended?” I asked.
“You'll understand more when you read the journal. She turned into a white light and disappeared right in front of my eyes. Her clothes dropped to the ground,” May answered.
I had a lot of questions, but, rather than quiz May, I took the book to my reading chair. These days most journals and diaries are electronic and kept within our internal computers with pictures and video recorded. It was unusual to have an actual real physical book in my hands. While I started reading it, May went off and came back with five more volumes that she put on a table nearby.
I skipped through until I found her mother's birthday and then started reading seriously. I took a picture record of each page and labelled it under the Ng family. May's mother, Liu, didn't describe everything, mainly she talked about her emotions, but you could read between the lines with the information you were given. Initially, it was a bit frustrating as more questions were raised than answers, but I changed my attitude and decided that I would read through it all and then re-read it before I tried to formulate my questions.
The Ng family believed that there were nine worlds all linked by the Gods. The bottom world was called The Abyss or Hell and had the least amount of density and energy. Each world had more and more energy and it was the duty of all Ng members to ascend to the fourth world, which was called the Terra realm, where the majority of their clan existed. Previously it was possible for people and other creatures to travel between the worlds, but about twenty thousand years ago, for some unknown reason, such travel was stopped. Now the only possibility was to ascend through a method called cultivation.
Cultivation was a method of bringing the energy of the world inside the body. This would result in the body getting rid of all the toxins that the body accumulates through using food as an energy source and begin a gradual transformation towards a body run purely on the world's energy. The body gradually becomes more immune to disease, stronger, more resilient and denser. There is a limit to how much energy the body can tolerate and when it reaches that limit, the body will naturally ascend to the next world, reborn into a body that can tolerate more. Theoretically, the body can ascend through all the levels and become a purely energy being in the ninth world, called Heaven realm.
The realm that I was living in was the Mortal Realm, or world two. All I had to do was begin cultivating and my body would be resistant to disease and naturally heal. Excitedly I asked May to get the instruction manual so that I could begin cultivating. There was actually a hidden safe that May led me to that she helped me open. Inside there was a booklet that looked like a copy of a copy, a couple of glass bottles and a gold ring. I took the bottles and the instruction manual, leaving behind the ring since I hadn't got to the point where the ring was explained.
The incubation period for the cat flu was between two to three months, so if I could make enough progress between now and then there was a possibility that I could survive and eventually even cure my cancer. I'm not sure my hair would ever grow back and I wouldn't stop taking my medication, but this was a real ray of hope. I had tried all sorts of experimental therapies both medical and alternative, and the fact that I was still alive long past when the doctors thought possible, showed something had helped. My money was on the gene therapy since that was supposed to stop the spread and since then, although scans showed that the metastasis spots had grown, there were no new areas.
Liu did talk about trying not to hope too much since there was the chance that she would not be able to cultivate or that her talent would be too slow to do much more than slow her ageing. From what I understood the Mortal realm was very low in energy so being born with the ability to cultivate was not high and Liu was the first in multiple generations to be able to do so. Without the pills, the chances of being able to cultivate were almost zero. Because the Mortal realm had so little energy, humans got almost all their needs from food which meant lots of toxins built up in the body. Toxins reduced the body's ability to move the energy around and to cultivate one needed to move the energy around and be able to both feel it and use our minds to control it. The first step was to remove the toxins and I could start this step while reading the rest of the journals.
Chapter 3
I had to do four days of fasting while taking these herbal pills; one, three times a day. The only thing I was allowed was water. I have been through quite a few therapies in my attempts to save my life and had some idea of what I was in for when I started. I tried to distract myself by reading through the rest of Liu's journals and warned May that I would probably become irritable. I would try and warn her when I was in a foul mood and then she needed to keep her distance.
She laughed at me and said since her period had started over a year ago she would offer me the same courtesy and we both crossed our fingers hoping that our bad moods wouldn't happen at the same time. Most of the fast was very similar to what I had experienced before but there was one key difference and that difference gave me hope. By the third day, my body started producing a vile-smelling black residue on my skin. I think I had a shower every two hours. To sleep those two nights I wore clothes that I would be quite happy throwing away. By the end of the fourth day, my body was still producing the black residue and in Liu's diary she had stopped producing any toxins by the fourth day so I continued another two days by which time my body stopped excreting the vile substance.
Thinking about it, I was thirty-three-years old and Liu was only fourteen when she did her fast so it made sense that I had more toxins to remove. I was glad that I had read the rest of Liu's journals while on my fast because she had noted certain factors that had speeded up her cultivation.
Energy is all around us and in everything, but it seems to become flavoured by its experience and that vibration made a big difference to our ability to absorb it. People seemed to have natural affinities for different elements and were better able to absorb energy from specific elements. In Liu's case, she had a particular affinity for lightning energy and had specifically designed the granny flat, which was her cultivation space, to enhance the amount of electrical energy that was available. The underfloor heating in the granny flat was essentially just an electrical system that flooded the area with electrical energy. Liu suggested that technology could overcome the natural deficiencies of the world to make it faster to cultivate than even a much more energy-rich world.
The Ng clan was a clan that based its success on Alchemy. The pills that I used were high-level pills. Fortunately, most alchemy formulations are based on the chemical composition of the constituents, not on the energy available for the plants. The other set of pills were designed to pull in energy naturally and therefore speed up cultivation. They didn't contain any energy, just created an energy suction.
The manual described a set of postures and breathing that was designed to speed up the movement of the energy which in theory would also create suction for the energy around the cultivator. In my mind, I called it the energy gathering kata or EG kata.
Liu described her experience of cultivation and in her case, there was too little energy in her meridians to move much until the pills had helped increase the volume. She attributed her success to her alignment with lightning and the amount of electrical energy available in the modern world.
Based on what she had reported I knew that following the manual with the positions and the breathing was essential, but wouldn't do much initially. Still, I figured I needed to practise anyway, so I would go through the movement and breathing routine and try and pull in energy with the pills.
From reading the journal I knew the ring was a spacial treasure. If I was able to circulate energy and was able to control it with my mind, I would be able to divert a little into the ring which would allow me to enter the dimensional space. As soon as I stopped giving it energy I would return to normal space. No matter how long I stayed in the dimensional space, no time would pass in the real world, but time would only exist in the dimensional space when I was there. However, the dimensional space was a dead space and the only energy that existed there was what you brought in with you. It wasn't a place for cultivating but it was set up for alchemy. According to Liu, there was also a library although the language was unknown. A few sections had been translated which included the formulation for the two pills. It was the duty of any family member who managed to use the ring to create a stock of pills for the next generations.
I didn't want to ruin May's chances of being able to cultivate so I divided the energy gathering pills into half, saying to myself that the most I could use would be half of them. Still, I wanted to stack the deck in my favour so I ordered a few things online. Electrical or lightning was covered by the floor, but what could I do to increase the other elements? Heat might be covered by the underfloor heating but in case it needed a naked flame I bought four gas fires with a gas bottle. To increase wind and water I bought four fans with a misting function. I couldn't find a solution for earth, but I did buy twenty small trees in pots, including bamboo, oak and fruit trees including apple trees as they were prominent in mythology. I hoped the soil in the pots might help the earth element. My living area was going to be very crowded, but I would experiment and probably remove whatever didn't work. I was hoping to use my internal computer intelligence named Ice to help me work out what was working.
May had decided that Switch would be included in revealing her family secrets since she had already agreed to look after May if I was to pass away. I think that won Switch over. Obviously, she couldn't have access to the physical books until our isolation was over which was four months if I had no symptoms or three months after I had recovered from symptoms. She didn't want to wait that long, but I was able to send her a digital version of everything that I had read. She wasn't going to be able to start until I was able to make some pills for her and we came out of isolation.
Chapter 4
Switch decided a long time ago that my nickname would be Prof since, apparently, I think too much. Part of me wanted to dive straight in, take the pill and activate all means of increasing the appropriate energy in the air, but my logical mind felt uncomfortable with that approach. I once heard a proverb which said if you have four hours to cut down a tree, spend three hours sharpening the axe.
I bought a special camera that covered a wide range of scanning frequencies, hoping that it would be able to monitor changes if I was able to absorb the energy. Obviously using underfloor heating, gas heaters, or even fans with water mist, all of these would impact my body temperature, so before I took any pills I started practising the energy circulating kata, recording my temperature including each variable. I did multiple readings to create a control but would be relying on Ice to let me know if she detected any changes.
Two days later I began my first experiments, taking my first pill. What I found out was the wind helped but only for a while, so I took a guess and opened all the windows and doors and that resolved the issue. There seems to be a certain amount of energy in a certain amount of air, so once it is gone, unless the air is renewed it is gone. I didn't react to any of the plants, but I did wonder that if I did, would I need to continually renew the soil or give the plants a chance to recover?
The water significantly increased the effect and although the gas flame did nothing, the underfloor heating also helped. At a guess, it would mean I was aligned with lightning, water and wind.
Each pill lasted for about four hours and I used one pill a day. Similar to Liu I didn't notice anything for the first week, but at the end of the week, Ice noticed that even after the pill ran out of its effectiveness window, my body was still gaining a little energy when I was performing the energy gathering kata (EG kata).
Halfway into the next week, I started feeling a sensation of energy moving around my body when I was doing the EG kata that would slowly disappear when I stopped. Following the advice from Liu, when I felt it strongly, I stopped doing the kata and tried to meditate, using my mind to continue the energy movement. It wasn't until the fourth week when I was able to keep the flow with meditation.
I stopped taking the pills then and meditated most of the day. May was very understanding and even tried to help by cooking meals and cleaning around the house so I didn't have to do anything else. By the sixth week, I didn't have to start the energy flow with the EG kata and was able to make the energy go faster. According to Ice, when I stopped taking the pills the amount of energy that I was pulling in reduced significantly, but I made up for it by spending more time. When I speeded up the movement, I created a stronger suction.
As part of my research when starting my journey I had investigated the acupuncture meridian pathways, but when I felt the energy rushing through my body, the acknowledged pathways were only the surface pathways. There appeared to be a deeper pathway in the core of my body that created a spiral leading towards my belly button that then went up into my lower belly before joining the surface pathways again creating a secondary loop.
The other thing that Ice noticed was that after my sessions, my body would slowly leak energy. It was like I could direct the energy without any problems but holding onto and making it mine was harder and outside of my control. Regardless, I was making great progress and as I was approaching the time when I could start to have symptoms, I started to believe that I could survive this disease.
Cat flue was not universally fatal, in fact, less than five percent of people who caught the virus died, but the majority of those were people who already had health problems. May's father had some lung issues from his childhood that may have been the reason why he had succumbed. All I could do was continue trying to improve my health and hope.
While I was using the EG kata we created a virtual space so both Switch and May could practise at the same time. I used the information I was getting from Ice to make small adjustments to increase its effectiveness. Switch was naturally quite a competitive person and was itching to start but without the pills to both remove toxins and increase the body's ability to pull in energy, it was unlikely that she would make much progress. Not that she was going to let that stop her. I have a suspicion that she spent more time than me trying to draw in energy. She took my ideas about increasing the available energy and even turned some of them up a notch.
My job, at least until I retired for health reasons, was an internal computer software designer so my Ice character was top of the line and enhanced by my own efforts. Ice did have plenty of spare capacity, so I was able to task her with helping. Ice took Switch through the same protocol that I used but was unable to detect any sign of energy flow. It was not really a surprise, but still disappointing.
I liked her idea of a Faraday cage suit charged with electricity but didn't think it would go well with a fan blasting misty air in my direction. Higher temperature flames may help someone who had an affinity for fire, but since I didn't, we would have to wait for when both Switch and May were cultivating to test her theory. May was told that she needed to wait until she reached physical maturity before she started cultivating. Still learning the steps of the EG kata would help her in the future. She did warn me that once I started successfully cultivating my body would naturally keep doing it, even if it was at a lower level. Her mum had trained hard until she fell pregnant and then stopped completely. Despite this, her body continued to gather energy until one stormy night when she went past her body's limits and ascended.
There may be descriptive names for various levels, but in reality, Liu had just been able to tell how full she was. In her journal, she described it as a glass of water. After she had been gathering energy for a few months she managed to get a sense of how much her body could take. At that point, her glass was maybe a little bit less than a quarter full. When she became pregnant she was over three-quarters full. It took eight years, almost nine years for that last quarter to fill naturally. That was still probably very fast but in the modern world, electricity is all around us. I had no real fear of ascending before May and explained all this to her so that she wouldn't be worried about me abandoning her.
May really wanted to be able to ascend and find her mother. Switch and I discussed it and decided to join her. I didn't know how old May would be at that point but didn't like the idea of her going on her own. Both Switch and I were in our thirties and neither of us had anything to hold us in this realm. Switch had no family that she would mention. I'm pretty sure there were some members who were still alive, but Switch had no interest in men or having babies and had been ostracised a long time ago. The original treatments for my prostate cancer had left me infertile. My wife had stuck with me, telling me it didn't matter, but two and a half years ago she found out she was pregnant. Obviously the child wasn't mine and she had been unfaithful. I went through a divorce as quickly as possible and fairly shortly afterwards found out that my cancer had returned. Personally I felt the two events were linked.
I quite liked the idea of ascension for a different reason. During the divorce, my wife made a deal with me. She wouldn't ask for any alimony if my will had her as the sole beneficiary. Initially, I thought I would just spend it before I died, but in reality, I didn't like wasting money. If I ascended, I would try my best to bring all my money with me leaving her with nothing and that thought brought me a certain amount of glee.
My parents had passed away so it was only my sister who was still around. I loved my sister, but she had hurt me badly. With my cancer treatments, all my hair had fallen off. My sister was a top model and when I refused to wear a wig and create a more beautiful image overlay she had point-blank told me that I couldn't be seen with her. I was proud of her though and showed May my digital scrapbook of my sister. May told me that my eyes were more beautiful. My eyes were my favourite feature and quite unusual. I had light greeny-blue eyes that almost looked unnatural and very striking.
Chapter 5
When the cat flue finally hit me I was expecting it to hit like a ton of bricks, but initially, it started deceptively gently. I felt off and knew that I was 'sick', felt the need to cough occasionally, but otherwise felt fine. May permanently carried a worried frown. The next week was a living hell and if it wasn't for May, I don't think I would have survived.
During the day I appeared to be fine, but when I went to bed, after a short period I would wake up feeling the need to cough, my throat would be dry and after one cough and one dry swallow, my throat seemed to shrink and I would struggle to breathe. Only by repressing my coughing would my throat recover, albeit slowly. There were times where I didn't think I would manage to get a breathe in. May was there stroking my back and encouraging me. I tried sleeping in a chair so that I was more upright, but it didn't seem to matter. Having a glass of water by my bed helped, only if I could take a sip before I coughed. In the end, May timed how long it would be before my symptoms would start, which was twenty-three minutes of sleep, and woke me up before, got me to take a sip or two of water and spend half an hour doing the EG kata.
After five days we were both exhausted but there were signs of improvement. The first two nights I had three or four of these attacks. By the third night I only had one attack and the fifth night I managed without any. After seven days it was over and I felt myself recover. Even so, I kept a glass of water by my bed for months and if I woke up, I would take a sip first, before anything else. The experience of struggling to breathe stayed with me for a while. It was very scary.
The downside to having gone through it was that I wouldn't be able to see Switch for another three months, but, on the plus side, I had survived and I was now immune. My new goal was to cure my cancer and to help with that I wanted to activate the ring. I wanted to be able to produce the pills and even send some off to Switch.
I could feel several lines of energy that led to the fingers so I didn't think it would be that hard to divert the energy into a ring. I was wrong. I went back to Liu's journal. She didn't manage it until she had been cultivating for six months. I just had to be patient and continue my hard work.
Initially, I found cultivating quite boring. Doing the EG kata or sitting in a chair and meditating requires focus but not intelligence. If you lost your focus the energy would slow down. Ice was able to keep me on track by monitoring my energy and nudging me when I was distracted. The fact that what I was doing could save my life was a powerful motivator. Ice and I had managed to fine-tune the cameras to be able to observe the energy within me and create a three-dimensional picture of the energy flows. After I had been doing it for a while some of the process became automatic and I was able to start thinking of other things while still keeping the energy moving.
In my mind, I started to come up with ideas to prepare for ascension. I was hoping that the library in the ring would help me by giving me an idea of what to expect, but the information would be twenty thousand years out of date and if I thought about our world, a lot had happened in twenty thousand years. The world could be a low technology world or a high technology world. More technologically advanced than this one or less. It could even be very primitive.
We would arrive naked, with nothing, but when I quizzed May, she reported that her mother's clothes had remained but her internal computer had not. I hoped this meant I could place the ring inside myself and carry all sorts of things in the dimensional space. At the very least, a set of clothes would be nice. Hopefully, it would also mean I didn't lose Ice with my ascension.
We needed to be able to keep ourselves safe and provide for our future. Our currency was almost all digital, so we needed to convert that into something that would be valuable on any world. We also needed to be able to take advantage of our strengths. If a world was more technologically advanced then we would be in trouble, but at the same time as technology increases, society at least pretends to help out its people. If the world was less technologically advanced then we needed to be able to take advantage of that. But we wouldn't be able to just order something online, so we would need to be self-sufficient.
I discussed this with Switch and May so we all could develop a list. It was almost funny how different our lists were. I was pretty sure that Switch was either an assassin or a spy of some kind. I met her when I was developing software for snipers and needed the help of an expert marksman, or in this case markswoman. I needed to break down all the factors that came into play when she was making a shot and then develop a targeting software to mimic her expertise. We really hit it off and became close friends.
Her list included knives, guns, sniper rifles, body armour with camouflage and either a lot of ammunition or an elemental separator combined with a fabricator so that we could manufacture our own bullets. In order for those things to run we needed a power supply and one that would either run for a long time or one where we would be able to supply it with fuel easily. She also suggested medical software with an emergency medical table, and a robotic body for Ice to inhabit to assist with any procedures. The most expensive item she suggested was a pharmaceutical fabricator which combined different chemical reagents to create different drugs not that an elemental separator was much cheaper.
May wanted us to make sure we took a download of all the available entertainment, had access to a modern toilet and hot showers, maybe a hot tub. Lots of fabricator patterns for different clothes and a food synthesiser. She also thought it would be a good idea to have a bed in the dimensional space. A food synthesiser could also provide the reagents the pharmaceutical fabricator needed.
I hoped this dimensional space turned out to be quite large, it sounded like we were going to need it. I hoped to be able to cultivate inside this treasure by having a power source and creating various energies. If I powered up a Faraday suit, I presumed I would be able to draw in electrical energy. Wind and water would need to be renewed, so was probably not practical. I also wanted to be able to manufacture our technology which meant fabricators, elemental separators and all the patterns for the different technologies. It would make sense to stock up on alchemical ingredients. I was hoping the library would enable me to learn alchemy. Alchemy might be the best way to earn money in a more primitive world. I also wondered if we could send the detoxification pill and the energy gathering pill off for analysis, whether either the food synthesiser or the pharmaceutical fabricator could reproduce something equivalent. So on my wish list was a chemical compound analyser.
I also thought we should make use of our internal computers to give us advantages. We could use Ice to highlight plants that either had value or we needed to be wary of. Likewise, when we knew of what dangers we were facing our internal computers could use our visual field, possibly supplemented by additional cameras to warn us of danger. Hopefully, the targeting software that I had already developed could help May and me to be better, more accurate shooters.
There was also a good chance that the language that was spoken would be one we didn't recognise. I researched and found software that could be used to learn unknown languages and translate written words. It was a combination of using a large enough data set to make logical deductions followed by sleep hypnotic learning.
Whatever money we didn't spend on stocking up the dimensional space we would convert to gold and silver, hoping they could be used as currency in the new world. I wasn't sure we would have anything left over, our wish list was some of the most expensive equipment in the world.
I discussed our lists and my thoughts on it. I had already liquidated most of my assets, thinking that I was going to die. Theoretically, I was still on an expected to die soon list, but with my progress, I felt strongly that my cultivating would cure my cancer, so I put that idea out of my mind and concentrated on the future I imagined. All of us ascending to find May's mother.
I was quite willing to spend my wealth but I couldn't afford everything so it was a matter of prioritising. Or, at least that was what I was thinking but Switch interrupted me, telling me that she loved the idea of the chemical compound analyser combined with the pharmaceutical fabricator as a method for reproducing the pills. She had plenty of money and was ordering both immediately, hoping we can supply her with pills that will allow her to start cultivating. For the moment we could buy the reagents cheaply, the only reason we would buy the food synthesiser was because on a different world, buying the reagents may not be possible. That could wait for later.
Within a week we were able to synthesize pill equivalents. I didn't check out the detox pill because I hadn't noticed any obvious effect until the third day, but I did take one of the newly created energy gathering pills and confirmed it worked before we sent a batch off to Switch.
Chapter 6
I had been cultivating for almost five months with another two weeks to go before my isolation came to an end when I finally was able to move a bit of energy into the ring. My first effort was a bit of a non-starter. I was just feeling a bit of elation for managing to put energy into the ring when I was plunged into a darkness so strong there was no hint of light. In my startlement, I stopped pushing energy into the ring and returned abruptly to where I was.
After a few moments of adrenaline-filled thought I realised that the dimensional space probably didn't come with a light. I grabbed a torch and a few candles. The candles would give some omnidirectional light and made a note to order some camp lights. It turned out there were already camp lights ready to go. I recognised them and clapped my hands to switch them on. Since no time passes when the ring is not in use the batteries should be well charged. I guess switching them off when leaving was a safety feature Liu designed. I would have to think about keeping the ring safe with our travels. If someone took it off us it would be a disaster.
Quite a large room met my gaze. The floor and ceiling were black nothingness but there were walls made from bookcases although only one bookcase contained any books and even that one was not completely filled. There was also a workbench with a complicated arrangement of glass bottles and tubes with candles underneath various parts of it. On the workbench, there was a book of recipes written in a foreign language with a translation to another incomprehensible language followed by one that I understood. That was it.
I did wonder if the room was a specific dimension or were the bookcases there to make it easier on the human mind. I examined them carefully and found a small gap between two of them. I stopped channelling energy into the ring so that I returned to the normal world and found a long ruler then I returned to the ring space and prodded the ruler through the gap not finding any resistance. I didn't know if the space stretched into infinity, but it was obviously bigger than the space that had been used so far. That was good news, we could probably store whatever we wanted, we would just have to a little remodelling.
First things first, I needed to get as much information out of the small library as I could. The recipe book with a translation of the instructions may well help my language programme, so I scanned that book first. Over the course of the next week, I scanned every book in that library. I didn't want to take any of the books out of the library so I would scan books in the ring space whenever I had time available.
Underneath the workbench, there were herbs that were used to make the pills, but since we had already worked out an easy way to reproduce the pills, I didn't worry about that.
My language programme started creating a translation, but it needed help to improve. I started a book that was supposed to be a history book and pointed out the translations that didn't make sense along with possible corrections. By the end of the next week, I couldn't pick out any more obvious errors.
Whilst I was doing this, Switch was supposed to be cultivating, but that wasn't going so well. I probably should have noticed from our chats and looking back I remember thinking that she was sounding a bit off, but I was too focussed on everything else so it came as a bit of shock when she admitted that she wasn't able to cultivate.
Since our isolation was finally over, Switch came over and went through her experience. The detox worked great. Like me, she had to do it for more than four days. Still, she waited until her body stopped producing that vile-smelling black stuff and started experimenting with the various elements like I did. Ice linked in with her internal computer and worked out that she was aligned with earth, wood and fire. She did some experiments with different temperature flames and found the hotter fires produced the most fire energy. Plants and earth needed to be changed, which presented a challenge. The earth slowly declined in output, the plants quite quickly lost their wood energy. If the plants remained in a depleted earth soil they did poorly, but if they were re-potted in new soil they recovered quickly.
With the energy gathering pills, Switch was able to pull energy in. Like me some of the energy dissipated after a while but there was definitely a net gain. The difficulty came in trying to circulate the energy. She could feel the energy flow on the surface, but whenever she tried to get it to go into her core she met great resistance and the speed slowed to a stop.
“You are not getting out of it that easily,” I told her.
Switch sighed. “I'll support you in every way I can, but it just doesn't work. I'll continue to try. You just have to face facts, I won't be able to join you on this journey.”
“Rubbish! Nothing you have said suggests you can't ascend,” I stated.
“Are you not listening to me? I CAN'T DO IT!” Switch said angrily.
I moved close to her and gently stroked her face. “You are struggling to create a natural draw, but you are not struggling to draw in the energy with the pills.”
“But...”
“Ascension happens when the body has reached the maximum amount of energy that it can contain, or at least that is what I understand. If you get born anew at the next world, whatever the issue is will probably be resolved. Move into May's house, let's do this together. Once you have gathered enough energy, the next step for me was to get a feel for how much energy was in my body and how much it could contain. That only happened a week ago. We are not going to run out of the pills, each one lasts about four hours. Take three of them a day and you will probably get there faster than I did.”
“I read in some fantasy novels that taking pills causes you to build up toxins that will sabotage your progress,” Switch said half-heartedly.
I laughed. “Maybe you could take the detoxification pills occasionally?”
Switch joined in my laughter.
“I'm going to read all the books in the library and see if there are any other solutions. I also want to know why May has to wait for her fourteenth birthday before she starts. If I test clear of cancer...”
“When!” Both May and Switch corrected.
“When I test clear, I will stop cultivating until May can catch up. The idea is for us all to ascend at as close to the same time as possible and that is going to take a bit of finessing. The earlier she can start the better. Her mother was not that dedicated and still managed to get to three-quarters full in three years.”
Chapter 7
The next month was dedicated to research, reading through the library that had been left behind twenty thousand years ago. It was amazing that the ring still existed and that the Ng family was able to exist that long. From what I read it had declined significantly from what it was originally.
What family could boast such a lineage? Apparently, its success and ability to survive could mainly be put to one man, Ng Yu. In those times the surname was placed before the first name. He lived for almost forty thousand years, dying about eight hundred years ago. He was immensely powerful but trapped in this realm because the only way to leave was to ascend and he was already beyond that, having descended to this realm a long time ago.
As I read through the books, I made notes of the facts that interested me and discussed them with May and Switch of an evening when we all relaxed.
“May, I have found out why it is a tradition to wait for your fourteenth birthday before you start cultivating. The human body forms a particular shape with energy meridians that when activated cause a natural draw to the local surrounding energy. Until you reach physical maturity it is less likely that you will have achieved the right shape for this to happen,” I explained to May and Switch.
“Does that mean I can start cultivating sooner? Switch doesn't use the natural draw and she is still making progress,” May asked excitedly.
I smiled at her. “From what I can tell there is no reason why not. The natural draw may still work for you, it will just become more powerful in the next few years and it may slow down the time it will take to get there as you will age slower.”
We managed to persuade her to wait until she was able to have a week off school as the detoxification programme is quite gruelling. School was a virtual reality space, but there was a real teacher who monitored the students and set tasks. We negotiated with her so May worked extra hard for two weeks before having a week off.
It took May four days to complete the detoxification programme and start properly cultivating. We were all quite dedicated although for different reasons. I wanted to cure my cancer. May wanted to be able to find her mother and Switch wanted to be stronger, quicker and fitter. On that note, Switch had moved into May's house and we renovated a room with gym equipment. The increased energy going into our bodies was having a pronounced effect on our strength, endurance and toughness. Switch had created a few tests to challenge us and monitor our awesomeness.
We put May through our elemental tests and found only electrical alignment or lightning. This made things easy with cultivating. From my reading, I found having a single element was the most common and having multiple elements usually related to natural phenomenon. People with earth, wood and fire were called island gods. Earth and fire created magma and then life sprouted creating islands. Wind, water and lightning related to storms. This meant the best place for Switch to cultivate was a newly formed or forming island and for me, whenever a storm took place. Of course, we were trying to reproduce ideal conditions with technology.
“I have finally found out why a clan from the fourth world descended to the second world. It always puzzled me since it is so much harder to cultivate here,” I said with satisfaction.
“Well, what was it? My guess is they were hiding from their enemies. In all the stories that I have read those who are stronger oppress those who are weaker, sometimes the only option is to run away,” Switch commented.
“I have to be honest, that was my thought as well, but it is something entirely different. It relates to the differences between the worlds. I have talked before about the nine worlds where each world has more energy than the last. They say the universe is always fair although I think it may just be evolution. So what is the advantage to worlds with less energy? Theoretically, we have stronger souls. Strong souls just means that we comprehend things quicker. People in worlds with less energy don't live as long, so it may just be a consequence of a shortened life expectancy. The point is you can strengthen the body with cultivating, but it is almost impossible to strengthen the soul. The Ng family worked out that people who ascended tended to become more powerful than those who were born in that realm. Funnily enough that thinking was against the normal culture which looked down on those who ascended,” I explained.
“What do you mean shortened life expectancy?” May asked.
“The more energy the body takes in, the longer the body tends to last. According to the books, just by cultivating, we are already increasing our life expectancy but even people who don't or can't cultivate, how long they live will depend on which realm they are born in. We have a life expectancy of between fifty to sixty years whereas the Earth realm humans live up to a hundred and the Terra humans live to two hundred. Terra humans who have cultivated have lived tens of thousands of years.”
“Wow! Another reason to be a cultivator,” May responded.
“More importantly I think it makes it more likely that the world we ascend to will be less technologically advanced. The humans on our world should find it easier to understand advanced concepts and build on them. Sometimes the whole world can be advanced by a single extraordinary person so there is no guarantee on that, just theory.”
“All that sounds great but what I want to know is have you found any martial arts techniques?” Switch asked.
“I think there were quite a few there originally. Unfortunately, I think many have been taken out of the library and not returned, now lost. There is certainly mention of multiple techniques that we don't have. I have only found one martial art instruction book. I will forward you the translated copy and you can go through it and let us know,” I responded. “There is one other thing that may impact our combat effectiveness but there are pros and cons.”
“Tell me more,” Swich demanded with a smile.
“When we have talked about energy flow and moving it around our body we have been talking about primary meridians. According to what I have read there are also secondary meridians that create loops off the main meridians. These meridians already pass a little bit of energy down them, but if you push more energy into them and speed them up, they expand and increase the health and function of the tissues around them. On the plus side, if you can activate these meridians you are sending energy to areas of the body which will naturally enhance them like giving you super sight, super hearing or a superior nose. On the downside, you create more space that you have to fill before you can ascend.”
“What can you enhance?” Switch asked.
“The majority of muscles are all well covered by the primary meridians so I don't think they will make you any stronger. However, there is a spinal meridian that might increase the speed of your reflexes, a visual meridian that might enhance your vision. The same with the ears, brain and even your third eye. Multiple internal organ meridians that will improve their function. I will send you the details on that.”
“How do you open the secondary meridians?” May asked.
“You have to get to the stage where you can push energy outside the normal meridian pathways like opening the ring space and then it is a case of pushing energy into a place where a secondary meridian is expected to be. Because some energy already goes down it, you know when you have hit the right spot. A bit of trial and error, maybe some more detoxification to clear the pathway if it is a bit blocked.” I looked at them both sombrely. “There is a male or female reproductive organ meridian. I have experimented activating mine in the hopes of fixing my original cancer. The meridian was full of toxins so I am still trying to clear it. Likewise, I intend to, at the minimum, open my lung, liver and spinal column meridians. My thought though is that my cancer may have occurred because of the blocked meridian pathway which means to be truly healthy I should activate as many of these secondary meridians that I can. It may delay us ascending though.”
“As you have proved, without health, wealth means nothing, my vote is to open them all. What do the books say? Do they offer an opinion?” Switch asked.
“Yes, but it was based on a different situation. Their advice was to ascend without opening the secondary meridians. The original idea for the Ng family that had descended was to have children here in the Mortal realm and then take them up to the Earth realm and then to the Terra realm as quickly as possible using alchemy pills and energy gathering formations. In the mortal realm, we have four primary surface meridians and one deep meridian. So five rivers that need to be filled with energy to ascend. If you open all the secondary meridians it may increase the equivalent number of rivers to ten or even twenty. They also didn't have technology on their side so adding the secondary meridians would have added decades to ascension. In our case, with frequent use of the pills and creating ideal cultivating scenarios, I suspect adding all the secondary meridians will add a maximum of five years to our schedule.” I looked at May since she was the only one in a rush to ascend.
“Your health is more important, uncle. You are ahead of us anyway. It will be months before we can get to a similar stage. I think it will also increase our chances of survival. If one of us gets ahead of the others they can open another secondary meridian to slow down their progress so that we all go together. Ascending is scary enough. Arriving naked in a strange world that we have no information about. Or information that is twenty thousand years out of date,” May remarked and then gave me a hug.
Chapter 8
“You mentioned that the Ng family used formations. I've heard about formations in some of the novels that I have read. Do we have any of those in the ring space?” Switch asked.
“No, those have also been lost to time. I know they were these jade plates with a design inscribed on them and there were different ones for different elements. I think carved grooves of the design were filled with something. There are no books in the library that give me any more information than that, but...” I looked at them both with a smile, “I have been having some ideas for creating my own.”
“Can you do that? Create your own formations?” Switch asked.
“I don't know how to do a plate, but I think we can produce a jade-like substance easily enough and I know the shape of the natural core spiral that draws energy in, so I think I have enough clues to experiment with. It won't be element-specific, but if we are creating elemental energy nearby it should be able to concentrate it. If it wasn't for a computer and a fabricator it would be really difficult. As it is when I am not working on my health that is what I will be working on. The small meridian pathways might be really important for you, Switch. Wood energy is like life energy. You might be able to heal someone by channelling energy into their secondary meridians.”
“How can you separate out the different types of energy?” she asked.
“I don't think you do which is the reason why I said 'might' be able to heal. There is outside energy which in the books is called prana and inside energy which is called chi. When we cultivate we are pulling prana into our bodies, but our body will only accept prana that is similar to our chi. If the prana stays within us it turns into chi. I've noticed that a period after cultivating a certain amount of energy leaves our bodies. This is the part of the prana energy that is not aligned with our bodies.”
I grinned at them both. “Some of our mythical characters and creatures seem to be real entities on different realms. Yes May, there are elves and even dwarves in the higher realms. Humans are not considered very good cultivators because we are either male or female, yin or yang. Half of all energy we take in is lost due to fundamental human nature. If an elf was cultivating with us they would progress twice as fast.
“Going back to Switch and her healing abilities, at our stage we can only manipulate our chi energy and we know Switch's energy will have a wood component. If she was a one element affinity then almost certainly she would be able to heal. According to the books sometimes multi affinity people have no healing ability, but some are even more powerful than single affinity healers. It is going to be a case of try and see.”
Switch had to leave us for a few weeks to do a job. She couldn't tell us any details and I knew better than to inquire. May was curious but accepted Switch's word that she would tell all after we had ascended. Before she left we went on a purchasing spree. It was all delivered to a warehouse that Switch was renting and all I had to do was transfer it to the ring. We had bought four life-like android bodies for Ice to inhabit. She used those bodies to prepare the space in the ring and install all the equipment. The most expensive piece was an apartment power cell. It would cater to all our power needs and would last millennia but would eventually need us to find a Uranium source to refuel.
Besides equipment, a fair amount of resources for our fabricators was also stored in the ring space. The equipment was too large to be located at home and some of the things we wanted to fabricate like weapons and body armour were illegal, so it was best kept secret and you couldn't get more secret than the ring space.
While Switch was away, I spent the time going through another detox programme while hammering away at my secondary meridians. I started with my male sex organ meridian and when that cleared I went to my eyes and then third eye. I would have to build my level of energy up before I could do any more. I had to speed up the energy and then divert it to hit the secondary meridian opening forcing the energy to hit the blockage. It was a painful process. Every time the energy stopped abruptly, some of the energy would go outside of the normal channels and I would feel dagger-like pain in my nethers. I would then have to wait until I had recovered and try again. For me, this was a battle for my survival. After four days of hammering away, I finally managed to get it to flow all the way through.
My overall energy dropped as my energy had to circulate a larger route. I still had enough to do a bit more and I wanted to know if all my secondary meridians would be as painful and difficult. I chose my eyes next because it was a small loop. I first started just pushing the energy in the right place. There was some resistance but no outright blockages so it went a lot smoother and didn't require pain tolerance, just persistence and care. Slowly increasing the speed of the energy circulating through the secondary meridian until I felt resistance and holding that speed as the toxins were slowly worn away.
I needed to do my lungs, liver and spine but all of those secondary meridians were quite large and I didn't have the energy for it. To help with my research into formations and anything else I could think of, I thought having my third eye open might help and it was another small loop. Like my eyes, there was no real blockage, just small hindrances that I was able to clear eventually.
The fasting part of the detoxification programme wasn't as hard as previously and I put that down to my body also using the energy I was pulling in. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to survive on that energy alone yet. The black stuff that appeared on my skin came in fits and starts corresponding to my success in clearing the meridians.
The next question was what advantages had my body gained by opening those secondary meridians? I could almost feel my down below healing and within a day noticed my sexual appetite increase. For a long time, I thought I had a very low sex drive but that was no longer the case. I didn't want to get into a new relationship or divert any of my energy away from healing and heading towards ascension so I used online services to relieve my tension.
Before, I was able to use my cultivating time to also think about experiments and what else I could do to increase my knowledge and our technological advantages. Now, I struggled to think of anything but lustful and sexual thoughts. I decided the next secondary meridian I would open would be my brain as I needed to increase my focussing ability, then my lungs, followed by my spine and liver.
The improvement to my eyes were obvious and Ice was able to evaluate a significant improvement both to my clarity, focus and low-light vision. Considering the issues I was having with my sexual desire I would not be recommending Switch or May to be opening up that can of worms, but the improvement to my eyes was wonderful and a little bit addictive. I was eager to open up my other secondary meridians in the hope it would give me similar improvements.
My third eye allowed me to see energy. It wasn't very easy to see myself, but I could look at May and see the energy flow. I could even see the secondary meridians with the minor flow that they naturally received and could tell that May needed to open her kidney secondary meridians. When I told her that she mentioned that she had experienced a kidney infection and fairly frequently had bladder infections. She would have to wait until she had built up enough energy or Switch had enough to try her healing ability.
My ability to see energy was also really helpful with experiments for creating a formations block. Mine would be three-dimensional so calling it a plate would be inaccurate. I could buy jade but it would be impossible to get the energy flow material below the surface, so it was only useful as a comparison. I wanted to be able to print my formation block with a fabricator.
To start with I took a piece of real jade and carved a line in it. Then I started filling that line with different things, pushing energy into one end with my finger and looking at the energy flow. I wanted to see energy flowing through it at a similar pace to what happens naturally in my body. Any type of purely conductive material was too fast so that didn't work. In the end, using myth as my inspiration, I found crushed salt crystals with just the right amount of water to connect the crystals worked best. Too much water and it transferred the energy too quickly, too little and it was painfully slow. That didn't matter though as the medium would be sealed.
Jade is expensive and couldn't be printed with a fabricator so I needed a replacement. Looking at the properties of jade there was only one element that stood out as unique and that was its ability to conduct far-infrared heat. But it could have been used purely because it is hard enough to be stable but soft enough to be carved. From my eyes, I couldn't see any energy leakage into the jade. I produced various substitutes that matched jade for its heat conduction or energy insulation properties. Some were at the same hardness as jade and some were stronger. I was then able to produce my first formation blocks following the pattern of the energy flow within my body.
What I found was that if I put energy into it in the same direction that followed my body, energy was pulled in, but as soon as I stopped the energy gathering stopped. Through a few trials, I came up with version one. I needed a diode to ensure energy only flowed in one direction, an ability for the energy gathering formation to collect some of the energy it was generating and feed it back into the start. I still needed to start it off, but then it was self-sustaining.
The material didn't seem to matter too much. I think you could use any insulating type base, but the jade equivalent version gave off a tiny bit of far infrared. Far infrared has been associated with healing and when I scaled it up to a block big enough for each of us to sit on that might give some health benefits, especially for Switch who has alignment with fire.
The next step was to tweak it for maximum efficiency. That involved Ice producing a multitude of slightly different spirals with different thickness channels until we could work out what changes were beneficial and then further trials until we couldn't make it any better.
The next question was could we direct the flow directly into our bodies? The end of my spiral of energy was a little beneath my belly button and there was a weak channel, similar to an unopened secondary meridian channel, going from the surface of the belly button to the same point. The only person I was willing to experiment with was myself.
I created a new version where some of the energy generated went back into the start of the spiral and some followed a line to my belly button. I started very small, of course, so it would only be a little bit of energy. The small versions were fine. A little uncomfortable but not too bad, but I could see with my third eye that some of the energy left my body pretty quickly, putting some pressure on my weak channel. I came up with a hypothesis. My body would only accept energy that it was aligned with, which in my case was wind, water and lightning. My energy gathering formation was not so picky and would inevitably pull in whatever energy was in the surrounding space.
The only way we could directly pull in energy from the formation was if the only energy the formation pulled in matched our affinities. So I needed to isolate the space and use technology to generate the right energy. I started imagining these insulated rooms but then realised there would be energy in the air and probably an element of humidity. Maybe I could act as a filter. If we used recirculating air I could pull the energy out of the water and air. It was getting quite complicated and I wasn't sure how safe it would be. Even a little bit of the wrong energy could be painful and potentially harmful.
I was discussing it with May who solved it all with one simple idea. “Why don't you use the ring space?” The ring space has no natural energy. The only energy in the ring space is what we either create there or bring with us. There was theoretically unlimited space in the ring space but the mind struggles when faced with infinity so I had Ice fabricate some walls and create corridors and rooms well separated from each other with lighting and power points. Wind and water energy would be quite hard to create but both May and I could use lightning and Switch could use fire, both of which were easy to produce with technology.
Again I started with a small energy gathering formation, electrified the room, wore a Faraday suit and touched the output to my belly button. It worked better if I could penetrate the skin layer with a needle. No discomfort. It worked amazingly well, the only issue when I slowly increased the size of the formation, was the size of the weak channel from the belly button to my core meridian. I still lost half the energy which was incompatible with my male status and that only happened when I stopped channelling. It felt like I needed to have breaks to digest my energy meal. I brought May into the ring space and we did a similar experiment to work out her limits.
Since no time passed in the outside world while we were in ring space, the speed of our cultivating and timing it so we all ascended together had just become so much easier. I set up the other room for Switch. It did present a little bit of a challenge since we didn't want any electrical energy to be near the room so we used old fashioned wood torches to light the way and wood fires around the circumference of the room. I made a series of different sized energy gathering formations so she could work herself up to find the one that fit the best. The fabricator could produce a wood equivalent burning source but since Switch could utilize wood and earth energy we stockpiled natural firewood for her to use.
Chapter 9
Switch returned to us excited to talk about the martial art technique that I had given her. Her job, apparently, involved a lot of waiting and boredom so she had spent her time working on the Water Method, which was the best guess translation.
“Alright, guys, I know why this technique has been left behind. The Water Method looks like a purely defensive technique specifically designed for women and men are all 'the best defence is a good offence'. Rubbish, this is an amazing technique that we are all gonna learn,” she said looking at us sternly.
“I hate fighting,” I admitted, “but I would hate even more feeling defenceless and not being able to do anything to protect you two. I'm up for it.”
“Ascending could be really dangerous, the more prepared we are the better. Tell us more,” May added.
“Great! It is all about feeling and channelling forces. If someone hits you, normally you will be hurt and forced back especially if they are larger and stronger than you are. What if you channel the energy? In the early stages that means into the earth beneath your feet, at the intermediate stage, it would partly go into the earth and partly be used as stored energy for you to strike back and at the complete stage, the energy would be entirely reflected. The more force they use, the more they will hurt themselves. As I said, awesome. That includes weapons, by the way. Instead of using swords you use these two-pronged stiletto type weapons that can catch strikes and either reflect them or absorb their power to launch attacks with the other hand.”
So began our instruction in the Water Method. As soon as they were able to and with my new cultivating techniques that I developed in ring space that wasn't long, I had both of them open the third eye secondary meridian as it helped to literally see when the energy was diverted. It took three of us, two to spar and the third to watch the energy flow and point out where we were going wrong.
May turned thirteen. We bought her presents and tried to cheer her up but the whole event saddened her as it reminded her that neither of her birth parents were around.
Switch pushed us both not just in our practice with the Water Method but also shooting various guns and rifles, even sniper rifles. We used my targeting software and became proficient. Once we were more experienced with the Water Method we started entering competitions to get us more used to fighting against different opponents. We were careful to not reflect too much force as it would have likely hurt our attackers. All of us wore body armour that contains a thin layer of liquid that becomes rock solid under force to distribute the force but was ineffective against energy attacks. I redesigned our body armour to add the equivalent of an energy version of the Faraday suit, but I couldn't do that to people we didn't know.
We often lost because we accepted blows deliberately to absorb and redirect the energy that was effective but counted against us according to the rules. We started only being able to redirect energy that we touched with our hands, but the same principle applied to any part of our body. Switch drilled us well until it was automatically sent into the earth no matter where we were hit. All of us managed to get to the stage where we could reflect the energy back if it was taken on our hands, even if we were holding something to take the blow. You redirected the energy into a small loop, but none of us could reflect it back when it hit other parts of our body. Fighting with others was responsible for breaking through comprehension barriers. We were just stuck on this last element of the technique. The ultimate version of the technique would mean even a sword would be unable to penetrate the skin before the energy that was being used was reflected back.
May still had to do her school work. We worked out how to download her lessons and she was able to do them while in the ring space absorbing energy. There were social interaction camps that she had to attend from time to time, but she didn't want to make friendships that would be lost as soon as she ascended and that fortunately included boys.
I had such great benefits from opening my secondary meridians that both May and Switch decided to do the same. When May did the brain one her school work became easier and her intelligence score went up along with her memory.
My next series of experiments related to healing. After I had opened all the secondary meridians where I knew I had cancer, I arranged a new scan. While I was waiting for that to be approved I started thinking of other ways I could heal myself. I also wanted to find a way to heal Switch. Her core meridian had an area of damage that stopped the natural flow of energy. I was pretty sure it was scar tissue because right where the flow stopped, there was an external scar. It looked like a bullet wound scar. Having an operation to remove the scar tissue was hard to justify but our preparations involved having a full medical table with Ice in control. The only issue was that any operation could cause scarring internally so we hadn't jumped to that point yet.
Switch had reached the point where she could push energy into what she was touching and with her third eye open was able to see the pathways. She had tested her healing ability by cutting herself and found that it works but is accompanied by heat which makes it a painful heal, but at least there was no scarring. Still, she tried putting her energy into the internal scarred area, but it didn't work. Her next plan was to have Ice do a keyhole surgery to remove the internal scarring while she was awake so she could immediately heal herself.
That sounded drastic and painful so I was trying to come up with an alternative. I wanted to create a room in the ring space that only held wood energy, use my energy gathering formation and direct that energy to heal the internal area after Ice had removed the scarred bit. I had to bring in plants that had been grown hydroponically, no soil and therefore no earth type energy involved. I had Ice set up an area with edible plants using artificial light. She would then transfer the plants to the wood room. A long cable from the energy gathering formation would transfer the wood energy to a probe in the adjacent medical room so that Ice could use it. I cut myself and had Ice use the wood energy probe to heal my skin. It wasn't instant, but after ten minutes there was no evidence of a cut.
Switch went under the knife five minutes after I announced my success. There were no complications and soon after that Switch was able to fully circulate her energy without issue.
I went in for my scan a week later and to the shock of the doctors was declared cancer-free.
We celebrated long into that night. There were tears, hugs and laughter. There was nothing to hold us back now.
It took us a year from then, shortly after May had reached fourteen when we had all absorbed enough energy to ascend. We made our final preparations, said our goodbye's, even if no one understood, and started cultivating wondering who would ascend first.
Chapter 10
Ascension to the Earth Realm
The problem of doing something that you have never done before is that you cannot predict the outcome. We had tried to prepare for any scenario. We had brainstormed multiple times to imagine the world we would come to and had a plan of action for multiple different situations that we could find ourselves in. All our responses depended on the ring since we knew that we would lose all our external possessions in the ascension process.
Baring in mind that one common denominator, we needed to secure the ring to ensure that it came with us and that no one could steal it. I didn't consider the ring mine, but I had been the one mostly in charge of it and when Switch insisted on a chain of command, I found myself considered the leader of our little group. Control would shift to Switch if violence was involved. We took the fairly drastic step of surgically implanting the ring into the soft tissues of my left arm. We had used the anti-rejection serum and placed the ring near to a meridian. I had a week to practise using it before we tried to ascend.
We had sold off everything that we owned, spending the money on technology, resources and precious metals. We had stocked up on copper, tin and iron to cover different versions of primitive societies. Silver, Gold and Platinum for possible coinage. Precious metals are not that expensive after asteroid refining, but they were used as currency for a long period of our history. Drug formulations and fabricator patterns for a higher-tech world. We had even put all the furniture into the ring space.
We were sitting in the granny flat that we were renting off the new owners. The windows and doors were open, there were four braziers that would burn out in a few hours placed around Switch and the underfloor electric heating was on for both May and I, set on a timer. Other than that the flat was completely empty and when we left we were going to leave quite the puzzle.
We had tried our best to match each other in terms of fullness of our energy rivers. I had all of my secondary meridians opened. May and Switch were the same but had only recently opened their female sexual organ meridian (FSO). With the difficulties that I had with the consequences of that, I didn't want May in particular to open that meridian. With our third eye, we could see Switch's FSO system flowing much less than it was supposed to and the highest cause of death remained cancer and for women, it was cancer of the breast and ovaries that topped the list. The breast was covered with a frontal skin secondary meridian. The health benefit of opening the FSO secondary meridian outweighed the possible side effects in both Switch and May's minds. They both said they could cope with the increased libido.
It was difficult to time it so that we ascended precisely together as we all had different affinities. Generally, May was fastest because she only had a single element and that could be supplied easily. I worried about water leaks, I didn't want to leave a mess behind, so I was cultivating with wind that was naturally blowing in and the lightning. Switch was the slowest with only fire being generated around her. We tried to compensate for this by having Switch and I closer to being full, but it was a difficult thing to gage.
May still went first. I felt this rush of energy near me and when I opened my eyes I could see emitting a white light that got brighter and brighter before suddenly disappearing. All that was left behind was May's clothes.
I continued pulling in energy. I felt full, but it wasn't until I felt overfull that a hammer of energy hit me. I think I blanked out. The next thing I knew, I was blinking my eyes, feeling very different. I noticed that I was clearly outside, it was cold with a chill wind blowing. The darkness of night was slightly illuminated by a singular silver moon. My excellent night vision allowed me to see pretty clearly.
I was still sitting, but around me were these large rocks. Looking around I could see May sitting looking at me with a surprised look. I turned to look for Switch but she hadn't arrived yet. I could feel this strange stuff touching my face. I reached up and even before I could touch it I noticed my hand looked different. It was smaller than I remembered. As I looked at my hand in front of me I also could see in my peripheral vision that my chest stuck out more than I expected. I looked down and gasped. I had breasts!
“Uncle?” May asked.
“I think so,” I responded in a voice I didn't recognise. A girl's voice.
“What happened?” she asked.
I stood up. The fluttering feeling was my very long black hair blowing in the wind and touching my body. I looked down and confirmed that I was missing my male bits. There was hair there, but not enough to hide what should have been there. I couldn't help cupping myself there just to confirm.
“I, I er... don't know,” I said in shock and sat back down again, struggling to think.
Bright light lit up the night with a flash and suddenly Switch was there.
“Hi Switch,” I said with my weird high pitch voice.
“Who are you?” Switch asked, standing up and looking around.
“That is uncle,” May responded.
“She doesn't look like the prof,” Switch said suspiciously.
“I don't feel like me either,” I muttered.
Switch grilled me for a few minutes with a series of questions, including a few trick ones. When she was finally convinced, “what the hell happened?” she asked.
The questioning had allowed me to pull myself together and start to think.
“Best guess, it has something to do with the gene therapy I underwent for my prostate cancer. I was twenty-one at the time and I just did what the doctors told me to do. I'm guessing it messed with my Y-chromosome and when I was born anew it turned me into this.”
“Is the ring still there? Can you get me some clothes? I'm feeling the cold,” May said shivering.
I felt in my arm and could sense the ring but I had no energy in my meridians and with no energy, I couldn't feel them and without energy to put into the ring, I couldn't access it. Ice was still available for me to talk to and I started her investigating the world around me. But all our plans depended on the ring and that wasn't available so we were three shivering naked girls outside in a world we didn't know, surrounded by these huge rocks.
Chapter 11
Switch responded to the news with a series of words I had never heard her speak before. I am pretty sure she swore in multiple languages. May giggled and I found myself following. When I found myself doing so I stopped in shock. Maybe I had giggled when I was a child but I couldn't remember it. I laughed, chuckled, occasionally snorted, I didn't giggle.
Then I sighed, apparently, the new me was a giggler.
We spent the next ten minutes doing the energy gathering kata. The energy concentration was significantly higher than the Mortal Realm but we had nothing to increase the density of our affinity type energies and no pills or formations to help. After ten minutes it was obvious that it was going to take a long while before we would be able to push energy into the ring and activate it. Our bodies were different and not just in the fact that I had changed sex. There were now twelve superficial meridians and a further two that were central that linked in with the core meridian, plus with all our secondary meridians, we had a large lake to fill.
Besides we were all freezing so we needed a new plan.
I spent five minutes going over the information that Ice had gathered and added new lines of inquiry while both May and Switch were doing the same.
“So it is not all bad news,” I commented.
“I quite like the new look. You look just like your sister but with better eyes,” Switch answered with a smile.
“Ha, Ha, very funny,” I responded and then thought that two could play at this game. “Maybe now I can get you to go out on a date with me,” I said with a wink.
“Stop flirting, I am cold,” May complained.
I blushed in embarrassment. “Right, well the Earth Realm is not completely primitive. The country we are in now is called 'England' and we are standing on a heritage site called 'Stonehenge'. This country I would put on a technological level with our world about two hundred years ago. Custom wise going naked could get us in trouble with the law as well as being inappropriate for the weather conditions. The more technological parts of the world are just in the process of going digital and money is a combination of the two. Fortunately, their version of digital security is laughable which means we should be able to get money quite easily, but shops are closed at night and going into a shop naked without being able to speak their language would be a disaster.”
“We are going to need to steal some clothes, aren't we?” Switch asked.
“Maybe, but we can't get caught and wearing anything, even a towel would be enough to be considered lawful, weird but legal. However, there is something called a charity shop and in the small town nearby we should be able to find one. People donate clothes to these shops so that they can sell them for a small price and donate their profits to good causes. They usually do the donating at night so hopefully, we can find some clothes outside the shop. There will be cameras and if they are logged on to the internet, Ice can delete the images, but there is the possibility that some will be non-digital.”
Switch switched into combat mode, all expression leaving her face. Her ability to do this was the reason she got her nickname. “It is best if we jog to get there to keep warm, then you two will stay outside any observable media while I retrieve any appropriate items,” Switch said as she took over.
“There is also something called an ATM that Ice can guide you to. She can speak to the ATM and get it to give you some local currency. If you need to speak to someone Ice can translate easily enough but until we have had a sleep and used the sleep-learning function you will have to rely on phonetically reproducing what Ice shows you to respond.”
Switch nodded her head and we set off. Switch and May had their own internal computers but mine and in particular, my software, was far more advanced so Ice had copied herself onto their hardware. We could keep in touch within a five-kilometre radius and I had installed bioelectric batteries which could increase our range to twenty-five kilometres for short bursts.
We were all pretty fit with Switch making sure that we worked out regularly. Our bodies had obviously been recreated with different meridians and, at least in Switch and May's case, otherwise was a perfect replica. I could tell that Switch had lost her scar on her chest which probably meant all our scars had gone. I was completely hairless after my cancer treatments, so having any hair was a surprise to me. All of us had hair as far as the body could grow it, I guessed. My hair almost reached my knees, Switch's hair was curly so only reached her waist and May's hair just covered her butt.
Before my transformation, I was the tallest and now I was the smallest with the shortest stride. Switch had always been quite tall at just under six feet so I had been only an inch taller. May hadn't reached her full growth on the Mortal Realm and was now looking at about five feet eight inches. I was a little bit shorter than her. I would have guessed that Switch had reduced in age to about sixteen or seventeen years old, which probably meant I was similarly young again. Being young I could cope with, it was being a girl that was more worrying. Not only that but all the energy that we had accumulated was gone, so we were starting from scratch from that point of view, with none of the previous advantages and a bigger glass to fill.
I did have the formula for the pills and the instructions on how to make it, so if I could get the ingredients and the right equipment I could probably make the energy gathering pills.
I was trying my best to think about anything other than my gender change but it was so hard. Every step I took felt different and I couldn't help thinking that it was because I had no bits in the way and my hips were wider. Ice would be able to control my hormones so that I had no obvious signs of a monthly cycle, but all women I had spoken to, still talked about feeling emotionally off at that time. I could get pregnant, I could have a baby. No, I couldn't, that would involve a man and even the thought of that was a disgusting thought.
Would my mind change? Would I start to think of men as attractive? My sister was a model, considered one of the beauties of the world, if I looked like her men would hit on me all the time. This was a disaster. How was I supposed to live my life as a woman?
Chapter 12
We had been travelling across fields in the dark and now we were approaching civilisation with street lighting and roads. It was a little bit after four in the morning with no one about. The journey to that point had been across fields with the ground soft and slightly muddy. None of us were used to staying barefoot and our feet were feeling sore. There wasn't much we could do about it though.
Switch left us hiding between two houses, sheltered by the house on one side, fence on the other, between a gate behind us and a bin in front. May and I huddled together for warmth. Switch had about a kilometre to go and Ice was able to keep us informed of her progress.
I started search inquiries with Ice to help work out our next steps.
“I've found out what happened to my mother,” May said in a sad voice that made me fear the worst.
I had Ice show me the details visually while I responded verbally. “What happened?”
“She arrived during daylight with tourists looking on taking pictures. The flash of light was presumed to be lightning and the tourists and police were far enough away that they didn't actually see her ascending. Just a naked girl in an area no one is allowed to be. She was arrested but with her inability to speak the language she was presumed to be a refugee.” May took a deep breath before continuing. “They say she murdered a man. Mum was never violent, she would never do such a thing.”
“Switch has insisted that we both learn to fight. Not because either of us is violent, but because the world is often violent. If someone attacked you I would defend you. If that meant killing someone, I don't think I would hesitate. Your mum was convicted but she couldn't speak the language and no one could translate for her. Your mum is beautiful and sometimes that draws out the worst in some men. I very much doubt she has a different personality to what you remember.”
“You're right,” May responded. “Maybe it is just loyalty but all I can imagine are excuses for why she did it. I guess I can only find out after talking to her. I'm pretty sure that is going to have to wait. From the information I have gathered, I think she has ascended to the next realm. Not that they say that, just that she escaped but left her clothes behind and they have no clue how she did it.”
“How do you feel about that?” I asked.
“Disappointed, but not badly. I mean I really hoped to be able to see her soon, but with all the scenarios we went through, most of them suggested it would be really difficult to find out what happened to her. All I had to do was ask Ice to search through databases to look for her image. This was only a year ago so it took her five years to ascend. Hopefully, with all your innovations we will be able to follow her a little more closely and we know that she will be looking for the Ng clan in the Terra Realm,” May answered.
“We will find her, but you are right, we now have a new mission goal, ascend to the Terra Realm.”
“How are you coping will your new look?” May asked carefully.
“I don't feel any different,” then I snorted at my ridiculous wording. “I feel entirely different, but what I meant was I still feel like I am me, I guess. It is all these weird things that remind me that I have changed that are jarring.”
“Like what?” May asked curiously.
“Hair fluttering, touching me all over the place, especially when it brushes against my nipples, which I might add are way more sensitive than they were. Not feeling anything between my legs, looking up at you both because I have shrunk or my balance is all off with this extra weight on my chest and then it is more subtle things like giggling or my voice. I can't remember giggling before and I definitely don't sound like myself.”
May giggled. “What about boys?” she asked teasingly,
“How old are you?”
“Hey, I was fourteen, old enough to get married and I think my body is a bit older now, the same age as your body,” she responded. “What about boys?” she repeated.
“I think they are disgusting. Don't tell me you've become interested, we haven't seen any.”
“How can you call them disgusting? You used to be one, besides, the reason I didn't mention them before was because it's not something you want to discuss with your 'uncle'. I couldn't talk to Switch about them as she clearly is not interested,” May replied.
“It's because I used to be one that I know how disgusting they are. Believe me, they only have one thing on their mind and your personality is not where they are focussing.” I sighed sadly. “I'm not interested in them, but I am scared that I will become so.”
I felt May hug me a bit tighter. “If that happens I am here for you, if not then Switch will be. I do admire her. Our society is pretty brutal on those who don't conform on the creating babies front. I didn't really understand until she made me think about being forced to be with a woman. I hope this world and the next are less discriminating.”
“I think that will be your job, once we are more settled. We need to not stick out in this society so you need to work out what we need to do to fit in. Cultural taboos and normal practice. I am going to try and work out how to improve our cultivating speed and Switch will concentrate on defence.”
“Do you think you will be able to reverse the changes on the next ascension?” May asked.
“No, I don't think so. Gene therapy is very complicated and I don't even know exactly what they did. It was supposed to reduce the chances of my prostate cancer ever coming back, not that it worked.”
May giggled. “I'm pretty sure it's never going to come back now.”
The conversation went quiet so I tried to work out what we were going to do next.
Chapter 13
When Switch arrived at the charity shop she was able to go through a few bags that had been left outside. There wasn't a lot of stuff. She managed to wear a pair of men's trousers and shirt. She found a jumper that she hoped was long enough to cover my newly acquired female bits and a long coat that should cover May sufficiently. The only shoes available were one pair of men's loafers that were way too big, but she stuffed them with some children's clothes so that she could walk in them.
Ice was able to get the ATM to give Switch five hundred pounds by creating an account and pretending money had been shifted from another bank into that account and was now being withdrawn. The money was not being stolen, just digitally created from nothing. Rather than stopping the picture taken by the ATM, Ice changed the features on the face so that it looked like a man had been there. Digital transactions would be easy to cover up, change or make up, but physical interactions needed more background.
We needed new identities and Ice gave us two possibilities. Either we used a missing person database or created a refugee identity. The missing person identity would be more solid if someone checked it but would involve a risk of family members interfering. Some refugees came to this country with no documents at all, especially if they came from war-torn regions. We would have to learn another language, but that was easy enough with Ice and sleep-learning. We chose the refugee idea with Ice using other scanned documents as a template to be altered and inserted into the right databases with our pictures. We needed an address before we could become official and the best way to do that was to stay at a hotel that was also used by the government for refugees. Stay there long enough to sort out legal documents and bank accounts before moving on. Ice got all that started. To make it all work we now needed to be at 'The Sailor's Arms' in Portsmouth within two days.
By the time Switch had returned to us and we gratefully put on the clothes that she had found it was just after five am in the morning. We were all now covering our naughty bits, but not comfortable or normally dressed by any means. Ice was able to call a taxi and coach us in asking for a particular address. She was even able to tell us that the taxi was heading in the right direction. The taxi driver did try and talk to us and we just repeated 'no understand' until he gave up. I didn't like the way he looked at me, or more accurately, looked at my legs rather than my face when he arrived.
The destination that we had chosen was a twenty-four-hour supermarket that also sold clothes. There wasn't a great range, but enough to get us all looking human again. And very appreciative of shoes. It was a lot warmer inside so we took our time. I was guided by May in my clothes choices but wanted simple non-revealing clothes that weren't too feminine. Even putting on a pair of plain panties felt weird, reminding me of what wasn't there. We all ended up dressed similarly in colourful yoga pants, a tight top that gave support to my new assets, a hoodie that zipped up, these tiny socks and trainers. We bought two of everything, toiletries and food. We then took a taxi to the railway station and started heading towards Portsmouth. I don't know how we would have coped without Ice translating everything, pointing us in the right direction, telling us when to get off or move to a different part of the train.
It seemed quite complex for a simple journey and used up most of the rest of our money so we had to go to another ATM for a top-up before heading via taxi to The Sailor's Arms. We organised staying for two days using one room that had a double bed and a single. We didn't want to go straight to sleep since it was early afternoon although we all felt exhausted. Instead, we moved the furniture aside to create barely enough space and performed the EG kata. The Earth Realm hasn't figured out any effective electrical shielding so everywhere we had been was almost dripping in lightning energy. This was great for May and me, but not so much for Switch.
The other thing that had changed for me with my gender change was the usual loss of energy as the prana was assimilated into chi. Before, half of the energy that I had absorbed would dissipate and now I didn't seem to lose any energy. I think that meant I was a combination of yin and yang or male and female. That response left me a little confused unsure whether to be happy or sad about it. On the plus side, I could absorb twice as much energy in the same amount of time but it also meant I was in-between male and female, not quite one or the other. It did sort of fit with how I felt. I felt male even if my body was now completely female.
As soon as we could vaguely describe the day as evening, we all went to bed. Although the double bed was small, we all squeezed together hugging each other for emotional comfort. The sleep-learning would start with English then Arabic as refugees from Syria were the most common and a lot of them had very little documentation. We probably didn't look Syrian with our pale skin, but a lot of Syrians covered up so we thought we could get away with it as long as we could speak the right language.
We stayed for two days mostly keeping to ourselves, eating the food we had got from the supermarket, trying to gather as much energy as possible with the EG kata and practising our new languages. Switch had me sparring with her to get used to my new body and using the Water Method. Really we were just waiting for our identity papers to arrive so that we could create legitimate bank accounts. We had to choose new names and they needed to be Syrian so I became Amira, Switch became Jamal, May became Maja and we all took the surname of Antar. To make it easier to English ears we all had nicknames. I was Amy, Jamal became Jamie and Maja returned to May. Our new goal was to ascend to the Terra Realm, but we thought we would have some breaks to tour this new world and make some nice memories.
To make all this possible we needed money and the more of it that we had the better and easier it would be. Ice could just alter records and just give us money but that had the possibility of being discovered and felt dishonest. Once I had access to the ring, money would not be a problem, but explaining where the gold or other precious resources came from could be difficult. It took me months to get to the stage where I could push energy into the ring originally and that was with ideal conditions and taking energy gathering pills. Now we had more meridians to fill including all the secondary meridians that I had opened. I understood now why it was not recommended despite the benefits it gave to the body.
My original ideas for wealth generation included selling formulas for treating things like obesity. In the Mortal Realm, no one needed these any more since our internal computers could modify our metabolism to keep us in a healthy range, but there was a time when it was a serious problem and a drug company had eventually come up with a solution. That would generate huge sums of money but there were so many hoops to jump through before you could sell it would take years and that wasn't practical.
The fastest wealth-generating scheme seemed to be gambling of some kind. The biggest advantage to that was there was no tax to pay, of course, most people who gambled lost money and often quickly. Ice was my trump card. She investigated the possibilities and decided that you could earn money playing poker. Chance and luck definitely played a role, but Ice could calculate probabilities so the whole experience became a maths problem. She managed to use simple things like how long someone delayed before betting, how they responded previously, what they bet when they were bluffing or when they had a good hand and gathered all that information to work out what to do.
She didn't win every hand and she sometimes did all the right things but luck was against her. But... all she needed to earn money was to be more right than wrong and keep making the right decisions. She used my bank account and started by digitally approving a large overdraft so we had some money to play with.
Renting a house would be tricky with no evidence of earning, no references and no previous addresses apart from the Hotel. To buy something we would have to wait until Ice had made enough money. Location was easy enough to work out, we knew that May's mum, Liu, had ascended out of the women's prison near Guildford so we needed to base ourselves near there. In the meantime, we visited a camping store and bought a large tent, blow-up mattresses, sleeping bags, tracksuits, food and equipment. To help with our cultivating I bought a long extension lead and an electric heater. The idea was to loop the lead and since it was not shielded it should create a lot of lightning energy. Two gas stoves should help Switch with fire energy and being around nature should help her with both earth and wood energy.
Hiding away for a few weeks should give Ice time to gather some funds while we worked out the cultural norms and tried to fit into society. To carry everything we needed to buy four large rucksacks. Switch carried one on her front and another on her back. Public transport took us to Guildford and a taxi from there got us to the Horsley Camping and Caravanning Club.
Chapter 14
Our days were filled with cultivating and research. When the sun went down we made dinner, talked about our findings and relaxed. It was awkward trying to keep working at night although we could access our internal computer for entertainment. We had downloaded movies and TV programs from the internet that we were watching for a combination of fun and research.
“This world is obsessed with sex,” May remarked.
“I think what is easily available on the internet is not a representative sample. If you look on the Netflix site, none of those movies are offered,” Switch commented.
“I think it ties in with my analysis of the culture. From what I can work out, women are not considered equal. Less able physically and mentally, given jobs under the supervision of men, paid less and treated as less,” I noted.
“At least they have accepted intellectually that women are equal, even if they don't act that way. It is even worse in other parts of this realm,” Switch added.
“We do need to talk about what we need to do to fit in. Like clothing choices,” May suggested. “Even their different religions dictated that women had to wear different clothes to men.”
“I will follow your advice, but I do think they are linked,” I argued. “Because women have been powerless their only option to safety and security was through a man, so everything leads from that. Women competing with each other to attract a mate.”
“Women are doing ridiculous things in the name of beauty. The western world at least has accepted that women are not inferior, I don't see why we have to undergo torture to fit in,” Switch stated firmly.
“I told you, Switch, as soon as we have a house I will be able to order the right reagents and use the kitchen to create a permanent hair removing cream. Ice has the formula and the methodology. We don't have to wax to fit in.”
“I'm not sure I want my hair down there removed permanently and I am unsure about your permanent makeup idea,” she responded.
“If ascension can read my DNA and give me a new body, I'm pretty sure such things will disappear when we go up. Besides, do you seriously want to put makeup on every day? I'm not saying we can't learn the skills involved, but do you want to? I know I don't.”
“Ascension didn't remove our internal computers or that ring, what if it is permanent?” Switch argued.
“I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just telling you what I am going to do. If I am wrong, I will have to live with the consequences,” I replied.
“I'm with uncle, er... aunty,” May added. “Can we talk about hair cuts?”
Switch huffed. “Why not.”
“Girls can have short hair, but long hair for girls is hugely more common. Not as long as ours though, but I did have a thought. When we ascend it is going to be this long again and we don't know how easy it will be to see a hairdresser if they even have such a thing. They have developed all sorts of ways of managing long hair here. I have been practising on aunty and she has been helping me. Are you sure you are getting yours cut?” May asked.
“Yes. I will go to a proper hairdresser and they can choose something suitably feminine so I don't stand out, but I am not dealing with long hair any longer. Curly hair is much harder to deal with in a long style,” Switch answered. “I'm surprised Prof here is willing to keep it long.”
“May begged me as she needs someone to practise on and I quite like it when she plays with my hair,” I admitted. “It's soothing. I'm not sure about the piercings though. The earlobe seems harmless and the bellybutton might actually be helpful when we can get the space ring functional, but there is no way I am doing my lips, nose, tongue, nipple or clitoris.”
“I doubt they will be corrected with ascension. Each of us can decide what we are having done. I'm keeping my decisions private. Maybe if you take me out on a few dates I might let you check,” Switch said with a naughty smile.
“Just date already,” May said firmly.
We both looked at her in shock.
“You have been flirting with each other since uncle became aunty. You love each other as friends, Switch has always been attracted to girls and let me tell you, aunty, you make a good looking woman. You've always found Switch attractive. We are not on the Mortal Realm any more. These kinds of things are acceptable here.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I'm going for a walk,” May announced, grabbing a torch. “I'll stomp my feet before coming in.”
Another awkward silence.
We had watched the TV programme 'Friends' the other night so I tried to be funny. “How you doin'?” I said attempting to mimic Joey's accent.
Switch smiled at me. “I do find you attractive,” she admitted softly.
“I'm confused. I've always wanted to date you but in this new body, I feel shy and nervous. I'm curious about sex, but scared and embarrassed at the same time.”
Switch moved closer to me. “We'll take it slow,” she said to reassure me.
Her head lowered towards mine, I lifted up still keeping eye contact until our lips brushed and my eyes closed involuntarily while my mind concentrated on the beautiful sensation. I felt her arm gently going around me to hold me as our kiss deepened. It was a very different feeling. I was aroused and there was a little bit of sensation in my breasts and my pussy, but what surprised me was a more emotional closeness and joy in companionship. Switch was bigger than me and it would have been uncomfortable if I had been taking the dominant physical position, but I felt like I was being sheltered and cherished and for the first time, I really felt female. It felt too good to fight it, so I submitted willingly.
Chapter 15
We couldn't really date until we had a house sorted. We cuddled and kissed. Switch teased me by drawing circles on my belly when we were spooning at night, getting close to some naughty areas but never quite getting there. My confusion continued, unsure whether I wanted her to explore or not. May decided to move to the other mattress, sleeping alone, although sometimes joining us in the morning for a platonic cuddle.
Under a little pressure from me, Ice had gathered enough money for a deposit, although she hoped to have enough money to pay for the house entirely by the time we needed it, it gave us the opportunity to start looking. We quite quickly chose a house. It was near a power relay station with overhead power cables which meant it wasn't very popular, had been on the market for a long time and was going for a relatively cheap price. Probably harmful to people who didn't have an affinity for lightning. Switch thought she would be alright temporarily and we would start shielding the common rooms after we had access to the ring space. Being a cultivator probably meant that she would be immune to any detrimental effects. We did find it strange that the house had been built there in the first place. It wasn't that people didn't know that it was harmful, there had been numerous studies done already proving that.
Even with our offer accepted and being a cash buyer, it was still going to take three weeks for the legal elements to be completed. Enough time for Ice to gather funds and for me to work out what I needed to order in terms of both equipment and resources to be able to manufacture the energy gathering pill and the hair removing cream.
May had taken our sizes and was in charge of our wardrobe. She had done her research using magazines and was ordering lots of stuff from online shops. Switch was also ordering stuff but kept her stuff more secret. May was also insisting that, while keeping our end goal in sight, we spend time to enjoy ourselves. She talked about the socialisation that was mandatory at school and that we needed to follow the same principles. We needed the opportunity to meet others. There was no point in making close friendships bearing in mind that we would be leaving this realm and no one would be able to follow, but that didn't mean we couldn't be friendly.
We decided that once we were settled in the new house we would cultivate during the week and spend the weekends trying different things. There were a lot of things on offer in Guildford and London was not that far away.
I was getting used to this new body. I still felt more male than female. If I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't see anything and asked myself if I was male or female I would definitely say, male. In the light, it was very hard to argue with a female designation. I was all over the place in my thoughts about dating Switch. When she cuddled me and lightly touched my belly I knew she was thinking naughty thoughts and that scared and thrilled me in equal measure. In the end, excitement won. I was enjoying our kissing sessions, relaxing more into it as the anxiety faded and ready for the next step.
Switch, although insistent that she was going to have a short hairstyle, started joining May playing with my hair. We worked on different types of plaits and what could be done with a few bobby pins. I practised doing it on my own as well. It was ridiculously long and awkward to care for, but we all knew that when we ascended our hair would be this long again. We wouldn't immediately have access to a pair of scissors or a knife and if my prediction of each world having more elemental energy but less technology held true, we would be going to a relatively primitive world.
The other worry about a primitive world was that lightning energy would be significantly less concentrated. We could solve that once we could access the ring, but if we started on the Terra Realm the same way we started here, with no energy in our meridians, that could be a long way off. Switch would be unaffected, I would still have wind and water to draw from, but May would be limited to what was available from lightning strikes.
So while waiting for the house to go through, I was racking my brain, trying to think of a way to access the ring sooner and work out a way to do the same in the Terra Realm. The ring had to be activated with some kind of intelligence. I couldn't just attach a power source to the ring. The reason why I thought that is because I realised there were some inconsistencies. When I entered the ring space, what I was deliberately touching came in with me, but was I not also touching the floor? Air existed in the ring space but there was nothing to produce it. I could understand it not running out if there was no limit to the size involved, but if I was bringing the air with me, why did it not have any elemental energy? My overall conclusion was that my thoughts were influencing my use of the ring and the ring space itself. I didn't want to jinx it but my first ideas of creating a formation block and linking it to the ring wouldn't work because there was no energy in the ring space where I last left it to be gathered and there would be no intelligence guiding it.
I did think creating a formation block was feasible though and that could help with our cultivation. This world had primitive versions of fabricators called three-dimensional printers that could be used with salt crystals and water to make formation blocks.
My next idea was to inject elemental energy into the meridian that was close to the ring and then mentally direct it into the ring. There were numerous difficulties with that idea. My body would reject any energy that I was not in alignment with so I could only inject pure lightning, wind or water energy and separating them out was almost impossible. The only real possibility was lightning energy since we could deliberately produce it and when we did it would only be lightning energy.
I couldn't just use electrical energy as that creates damage, burns the tissues and achieves nothing. But what was the difference between electricity and lightning energy? I was pretty sure lightning energy could create lightning which was no different from electricity. Using electricity created an area rich in lightning energy.
Going back to my experiments with formations, I found using an electrical conductor pushed the electricity through too quickly and I needed to find a medium that would slow down the transfer of energy. I couldn't do any experiments until we moved into the new house and even then they were not my first priority. We needed to set ourselves up for the long haul which included creating a cultivating space and making the energy gathering pills. To better fit in I was also going to make the hair removal cream. I thought Switch was right, there was no way I was going to yank out all of my hairs. The youtube videos looked scary.
Chapter 16
May's POV
Aunty worried too much. I know her planning and experiments were really helpful, but we were missing out on enjoying the now. We had a whole new world to explore. I loved the new clothes and although I didn't like any of the work involved, I was thrilled with the process of making ourselves pretty. Aunty was going to have the permanent makeup option, I don't think Switch was going to bother, but I was experimenting with Ice's help with all the products available.
What amazed me was how different your face could look just by emphasising different features. Even Switch got excited then although she was more interested in disguises. Aunty didn't really need makeup to look beautiful, but a little bit of lipstick and eye shadow brought out the wow. I wasn't going to choose permanent makeup when I could change my look every day just by painting my face.
It was a little bit awkward with Aunty and Switch flirting so much and us all living in a tent, but I wanted them both to be happy so I tried to give them space. In the Mortal Realm, same-sex relationships were heavily discouraged. I have to admit that I was a little bit prejudiced but Aunty insisted that I approach Switch with an open mind and to my surprise, I found out she wasn't some weird sexual deviant like I had been taught.
Aunty explained that our culture was heavily influenced by our relatively rapid ageing, as compared to other realms, which meant our survival as a species depended on early heterosexual marriage followed shortly by children. Anything outside of that would not help society and would be frowned upon. People lived so much longer here in the Earth Realm that women often didn't start having children until they were in their thirties. Aunty also suggested that it would be even more common in the next realms although that might be mitigated by a more primitive male-dominated society.
Even though I know it is wrong, but being honest with myself I know I was a lot more accepting of Aunty's growing relationship with Switch because Aunty was originally Uncle. Despite his body physically changing he, or I guess she now, seemed to be the same person. It made sense that Uncle would find a woman attractive so I found it easy to see her, as Aunty, being interested in Switch. I didn't understand how it would physically work, but I wasn't interested in finding out either.
When we moved into the new house I chose the bedroom furthest away from the master. Switch nominally put some of her stuff into the third bedroom but slept every night in the master with Aunty. I'm guessing something happened to further their relationship as Aunty changed from looking nervous to happy. Switch always had a predator look about her, at least when she was looking at Aunty. After that happened I tried to not disturb them so much and if I felt the need for a cuddle I approached carefully, making sure I wasn't interrupting anything.
We spent a lot of time doing the EG kata and I could feel the difference cultivating near the power relay station. Still, it was going to take us quite some time to get to the stage where we could have enough energy in our systems to be able to mentally move it around. Those energy gathering pills made quite some difference.
Aunty attempted to make some of the pills using the herbs that she had ordered, glass measuring jugs and the ceramic stove. It turned into a mess so she ordered lots of complex glass apparatus and heating elements to replicate what we found on the bench in the ring space. In the meantime, she was experimenting with entering the ring space, which prompted another family meeting.
“Alright, I've got some good news and some not so good news,” Aunty told us.
“Lay it on, sister,” Switch replied.
Switch liked trying to use all these different expressions and especially liked to emphasise Aunty's new feminine form. Fortunately, Aunty didn't seem to mind and Ice was able to translate anything I didn't understand.
“I've managed to find a way to access the ring space, but I need your help and it can only be done is short bursts,” Aunty answered.
“That is wonderful, how did you manage that?” Switch responded.
I groaned but tried to keep it quiet. Switch should know by now that you didn't ask Aunty for explanations.
“Well, I filled these tubes with rock salt and a hint of water. Hooking them up with a car battery as the electrical generator and applying one to the meridian before the ring and one after the ring to create a circuit allows me to get a localised increased energy that I can divert into the ring,” Aunty explained.
“And when the battery runs out no more energy goes into the ring?” Switch asked.
“That would be true but, to be honest, that is not the limiting factor. The battery supplies electrical energy and the water energy is fine too, but there is earth energy in the rock salt which I am not compatible with so applying the energy hurts and does a bit of damage,” she responded.
“How much damage?” I asked nervously. There were lots of things I wanted that we had stored in the ring space, but I didn't want Aunty to hurt herself.
Aunty sighed. “That is hard to answer. I went into the ring space for a few seconds and the pain took about an hour to die down. I can't really move, but if you both came with me, it wouldn't take long to get the two things that we need; the pharmaceutical fabricator and the portable fabricator. I can assemble a suitable power transformer from local components and likewise, I can buy suitable reagents or resources.”
“Is it worth it?” I asked. “Yes, I want to see my mother again, but I haven't seen her for years, a few more won't matter. I don't want to put you through pain just to speed up the process.”
Aunty smiled at me in a very caring way. “Maybe I am being a little impatient. It's not just about speed, with the fabricator we can create armour and weapons. We will be a lot safer and for that, I am willing to sacrifice a bit of pain. With the pharmaceutical fabricator, you can get me some decent pain killers. I have to admit I didn't realise how much opening our secondary meridians would slow us down when I am not able to cheat with technology. I am even more worried about the next world. Lightning is a wonderful attribute to be attuned to when in a technological world, but if the world is more primitive the amount in the atmosphere is likely to be very weak compared to what we are used to. Without access to our ring space, cultivating could be very slow.”
“Only for me,” I remarked. “You still have wind and water affinities and Switch has three affinities that should be abundant in a primitive world. I have confidence that we would be alright if we ascended normally, but I expect you will develop a few tricks between now and then. You could consider opening our secondary meridians as a mistake, but you needed to do that to be healthy and if we hadn't then we wouldn't be able to ascend together.”
“Not only that,” Switch added, “with our secondary meridians opened we are more combat effective and if we ever learn techniques that utilize our chi energy, we would have a much larger pool to draw from. We will be able to punch much above our level.”