Book One, Chapter 19 - Damn, That Mad Science Do Be Cooking

And we're back! Pretty early too, relatively. Turns out sleeping before 3am pays positive dividends! I love having a brain that has to re-learn new information constantly, lol, but it's good information to have.

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In accordance with the signatories of this act, the Empire proclaims the righteous and unrighteous, and blesses the wise with understanding of what must be proscribed and forever removed from the grasp of the unlearned and unwise.

Modification of blessed mortals, unbound from the decreed overseers of the Empire’s Divisions

The unbinding of Soul from Flesh without the authorization of the Division of Research

The construction of weapons of Life, which suffer and enact that suffering in turn

The unLawful alteration of another without their consent

The transformation of community into symbiosis, through…

-Excerpt of the Nevian Accords, standardizing the responses for esoteric endeavors, the legality of biological and mechanical augmentation on non-combatants, and agreed-upon definition of several previously unclassified “unLawful acts”.

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“What is all this?” Li Shu asks, her tone already incredibly weary at the sight.

“It’s the project. You know, the one that I asked you about, that you were helping me theorize for?” Raika says, aiming for nonchalance and landing a bit off her mark. “Do you… I mean, why were you in here?”

“I-” Li Shu immediately blushes like a tomato, the way she does only when she’s having to juggle something complicated and also adorably mortified. “I was here to give you a present! I was going to leave it under your pillow!”

“Why?”

“Wuh- because it’s been almost a year since you got hurt! I didn’t want to do anything on the day of because I thought that might bring bad memories, but I figured a week early would be enough to form some good ones!”

“That… is maybe the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” Raika says sincerely. “And definitely one of the cutest things anyone’s ever done for me.” 

Li Shu blushes again, the fading cherry red coming back with a violence, and Raika takes the opening, cane clacking on the ground as she crosses the space between them. Bowing rather than kneeling or sitting in front of Li Shu, she puts their faces at nearly equal height and does her best impression of a hug without using her arms. It’s really just putting her head on Li Shu’s shoulder, but… it’s the sweetest thing anyone has done for her, and the sheer tension of thinking the healer was spying on her or doing something nefarious being broken by the sweetness is such a relief.

She pulls back and knocks her forehead to Li Shu’s, who hasn’t moved. “Sorry,” Raika whispers. “I… didn’t want to say something dumb.”

“Ugh!” Li Shu exclaims, face bright and eyes a little wet, her gaze not totally distracted from the diagram. “Do you always just do the first thing that pops into your head? A simple thank you-”

“-Wouldn’t be enough,” Raika interrupts. She pulls back, not wanting to annoy or make the situation actually awkward. “Sorry. I’m- that was silly, but I wanted to give you a hug, and I can’t really sit fast and with the cane, I- sorry. It’s… it’s really sweet, Li Shu. I hadn’t really associated the date like that, I don’t think, but… well, it has a weight and I just wanted to be sincere.”

This time it’s Li Shu’s turn to give Raika a smile as the taller woman ends up with slightly darker cheeks. But, like all good things, the moment passes as she turns to look at the diagram again. 

“Well,” Li Shu says, “I’m not going to give it to you if you’re going to do… whatever this is! What is this?”

“Remember when I asked you about how biological malformations manifest in entities without spiritual organs? I was sort of cross-comparing that with some ideas I had about the ways that things without spiritual organs interact with Qi, and how Qi interacts with stuff in general, and, well…”

She hobbles around the far wall of her room, which has been completely overtaken by a series of notes, small scrolls pinned to the wood, and a complex, hand-drawn diagram of a human body, overlain with versions of her own damage. There’s not much space left on the wall, and it’s started to spread across to the perpendicular ones beside it, but there’s room enough for them both to sit and still see it all. “I’ve been drawing it the last month or so. Took me a while to figure out what all the stuff I was copying down means, or I would have started it sooner.”

“Ok, but what is it meant to do,” Li Shu asks, staring at the mishmash of symbols, organic designs and technical jargon with scribbled definitions around them. 

“Well,” Raika replies, “I was thinking about powerful stuff without ‘proper’ organs. Like… swords, or natural treasures. Artifacts don’t have meridians, but they have spell circuits that I really can’t follow, and that’s a whole other field, but stuff like Qi stones or rare metals become valuable just by absorbing Qi over time. They gain higher levels of their own properties, or the properties of the space they’re in. So… in theory, if I can bring a bunch of Qi into my body, let it saturate without digesting, it might enhance what I still have, like my blood, heart, organs- all that. I’m trying to design it in a way where it drags in Qi, then holds it there, rather than letting it drift around or leak out.”

Li Shu just looks at her. Raika lets the silence sit for a minute, twiddling her thumb, poking at a little bundle of herbs and flowers on her desk with her cane.

“Ok. So. Bare minimum that’ll kill you,” Li Shu finally says. “Unless you’re carving whole arrays under your skin, unless you design an outlet, it’ll just keep building until you explode. On top of that, any increase in Qi absorption without specific, almost cellular guidance would just throw your body out of balance, and then that would kill you.”

“Ah,” Raika replies, “but do you know that?”

“Yes!” the woman who’s spent her life learning the intricate and complex art of medicine exclaims. “Absolutely! Even normal levels of Qi, over time, can put you into a state of Qi deviation! Your condition is impossibly delicate- even the slightest amount of Qi put into one muscle over another, even if your theory does work, which I don’t know if it does, I can’t think of any living organism that’s survived Qi-poisoning to gain a benefit from it, could still have that muscle detach. Or start rotting!”

“Well,” Raika replies, “I think that’s stupid.”

She’s pretty sure the fact that even a glancing blow from an angry Li Shu would kill her is the only reason why the cultivator hasn’t smacked her upside the head. From the look in her eyes, she thinks the healer might be genuinely considering it, too.

Then, proving yet again why she’s the best, most genius healer, cultivator, and all around awesome young lady in the world, Li Shu stops and takes a breath. She centers herself, and then, looking only at the diagram, she breathes out. Then, when she’s back in balance and not just blindly reacting anymore, she simply asks; “Why?”

Raika takes a breath. Ok. 

“All the time that I’ve been hitting myself with the tuning fork? Dink? I’ve been focusing on the vibrations, and meditating with that, and I think it’s pretty fucking clear that we’ve both noticed that I’m getting stronger. More than should be expected. And I don’t think I’m cultivating, really, because I’m not storing energy or touching it directly, but… I think if a rock, with more Qi, becomes more rock, then in theory, a person, with more Qi, becomes more person. And a rock is only one thing, mostly, where a person is so many things, but if I can replicate that, then it can be something. Not apotheosis or anything, not the same as before, but more than… more than this.

“So! Then, the issue becomes what kind of Qi. Because rocks with more rocks means special rock, and sword-metal with, say, a dark cave makes for shadow-metal, but I don’t have access to those kinds of resources or a few decades to figure out how much to fit in each part of me and where. But! If a corpse can generate Death Qi, or a rock can generate stone Qi, then a person can generate person Qi. And maybe the spiritual organs are a way to eat outside Qi and digest it, or a way to be more efficient in production, but the sheer fact that there’s any energy in my body at all means that even without them, I’m generating some power.”

Li Shu sits in silence. Her face is doing that thing, where she is completely focused on a single thought, and her nose is scrunching slightly but her eyes are ice cold. She just nods, once.

“So!” Raika continues, “rather than try to emulate cultivation or cover myself in super expensive treasures and just sit for a few hundred years, I figure that if I can get one good burst of Qi, and then lock it in myself, it’ll start to change. I won’t be able to digest it, but I also won’t be able to properly absorb it, because unlike medicines or poisons it won’t be designed to be absorbed yet, and there’ll be no organs to pick up the slack. So… eventually it’ll just sort of become me-flavored Qi, and then that’ll just naturally sink into me where it ‘belongs’. And then… repeat the process, maybe. Or find a way to circulate it and generate more. I know it’s a lot slower than absorption, but you can meditate more Qi into existence with the right cultivation, so that should mean that more Qi makes more Qi. Somehow. Sort of. So long as I don’t die right away.”

Li Shu does not speak for a long time. Like, minutes, plural. She simply sits in that exact same meditative kneeling position she’s been in since Raika sat down, nose just a teeny bit scrunched and eyes flicking slightly left and right, like she’s reading something in her head.

“None of what you’ve mentioned gets into how you’d survive the initial infusion, or the prolonged exposure to what’s in your system.” She eventually says. “Even if you somehow get this… quasi-array to work, and make sure that Qi goes into all of you simultaneously at the exact same quantities (which has its own issues) or into the ‘right’ organs in the ‘right’ dosage (which would be complete guesswork), you’d still need to endure the Qi poisoning affecting your system until it… ‘changed flavors’.”

“That’s what these are for,” Raika says, pulling closer to her desk and hitting its underside to move the board she’s put in place as a disguise. From out of it fall a dense selection of grasses, flowers, and small bags of different powders, none in particularly good condition. “I’ve been going through the medical waste and expired herbs. Not in great condition, but that actually helps, because if I won’t have to dilute them, just balance them against each other. And me. I’ve got Inner Heat Bulbs to keep my blood warm and moving, Blackened Seedlings for my hearbeat so it keeps going when it shouldn’t, and as many Deepened Breath pills as I could find, so my lungs keep taking in air while my mouth is open, I hope.”

“And the Blackened Seedlings won’t burst all your blood vessels and explode your heart because…”

“Because it’ll be still,” Raika replies. “I need to have no heartbeat for this to work, maybe be just on the edge of real death. Diluted, even a mortal in the lower realms can take it and live if their body is tough enough. It’s not a proper elixir, but the seeds force the heart to convulse- except without it already moving, it’ll be weaker, more like a real heartbeat. Kinda.”

“It won’t work,” Li Shu says, shaking her head. “It makes the heart beat harder, yes, but if there’s no heartbeat there it doesn’t do anything. At best it’ll cause completely random spasms for a bit before they dissolve.”

“But what if I take it before the heartbeat is gone? There’s no chance it’ll keep the muscles moving, even without my brain awake?”

She pauses. Opens her mouth, pauses again. “Mmmmmh… maybe,” she allows. “I don’t think anyone’s tested for using them as a way to prevent heart failure right before death, since usually that just means you’d bleed out or spread a poison faster, and you can stop a heart attack with much simpler combinations.”

“Excellent time to find out then!” Raika smiles. 

“No!” Li Shu yells. “Terrible time to find out! With a healthy life on the line?”

Raika pauses at that.

They’re past the first hurdle. Li Shu is focusing on the herbs, now, not saying that the whole idea is ridiculous, which means it has at least some merit. Just think of it like a friendly spar; not out to hurt, but when there’s an opening, make sure to go in hard, and always aim for a big finisher if you see the shot.

“I’m going to do this whether you like it or not, honored Li Shu,” she says, keeping her voice quiet and making sure that the healer can see her eyes. Her vision has gotten a bit better, enough that she can see the younger woman lean back a bit. Move quick; opening is closing, defenses coming up, slip through before she has a chance to hit back or steal the momentum.

“I don’t mean I don’t value what you think,” Raika continues. “I’d be far more confident of this with your help, and I was planning to show you soon to get your opinion on it. But I think that has genuine merit, and if I cannot do it with your help, short of imprisoning me, I will leave this sect, memorize my diagrams, scavenge the ingredients and do it anyway.”

“I refuse to be stagnant,” Raika snarls, keeping the eye contact by force of will and presence, not daring to give Li Shu weakness to look away with. “I refuse to be weak. I was a cultivator, someone pursuing a transcendent self, and that was stolen from me in a fit of pique by some random bastard with more power than he deserved, and then I was thrown away like filth. I’ve defied the will of the Heavens since I’ve known how; just because my path is more dangerous or uncertain now does not mean I am going to give it up. I don’t give up, Li Shu. I lose, I die, or I win. There is no surrender.”

The silence sits in the room, heavy. Raika does not break eye contact with Li Shu; she simply sits and waits, letting some of the steel back into her eyes from where she has kept it hidden and guarded. She wants her to understand, needs someone to understand. The last time an impossible law of nature told her to stop, she bit his eyeball; a dozen more and a gamble are nothing to her, nothing in the face of allowing herself to choose to remain as she is.

Li Shu breaks eye contact first.

She turns back to the diagram and sighs. Looks at the herbs and seeds, sighs again.

“You’ll want water breathing pills to add,” she says. “They allow for passive air absorption, rather than just increasing how much air you get per breath. And we’ll need to set a fire, to keep you as warm as we can. And I think you should use the Aldermain Curse of Blocked Breath on this section,” (she points at a spot along the outer rim of the diagram)- “it’s well known for blocking absorption of Qi through the skin, if we layer it more than once on the diagram, especially for you, it might be enough to block Qi from even getting in the circle, and definitely block it from casual absorption.”

Raika lets out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She wipes away the wetness on her face, breathing deeply, slowly.

“Ok,” she whispers. Then, more forcefully; “Ok. I was also thinking we should get some proper needles, to be able to inject deeper and hold acupoints. And if we can find any trance or meditation aids maybe it can help keep me semi-conscious?”

“Maybe, but without meridians I don’t know,” Li Shu replies. “Have you considered using Dink to enter the trance, and then use Spirit Enlightenment Roots? We can only get lower quality, but for you, it might induce an astral experience, but… no, we should-”

They talk for hours. Li Shu doesn’t let them stop until she, in her words, thinks it has a chance not to explode Raika’s veins. Raika, personally, thinks that’s a good start.