PtM Book 16 - Chapter 27: The Shortest Straw

1/3 this week.

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The instigator in the wine house was punished, and so were the other cultivators that had attacked Cha Ming without clarifying things. On the surface, their charge was breaking the peace between cultivators and mortals and offending a cultivator of the senior generation, but reading between the lines, Elder Choking Tide was simply rebuking them for not cluing in on obvious things like one’s domain randomly breaking apart, or not being able to determine your opponent’s cultivation and attacking anyway.

Cha Ming left the city with an updated map, a few thousands high grade transcendent crystals in way of apology, and a much better idea of the local situation. He became familiar with the local overlords, the Raging Tide Sect, which was one of seven Tier 3 sects under the Tier 2 Xuan Dao Sect.

There were countless mortal kingdoms on the Chasewind Plane, and the Soaring Eagle Kingdom was one of twelve in the Raging Tide Sect’s sphere of influence.

Cha Ming confirmed that the maximum cultivation realm the plane would tolerate was the middle of law stitching. The Sect Tiers were based on this top cultivation level. A tier 1 sect was required to have a sect master that had reached the middle of law stitching, while a tier 2 sect needed an early law stiching sect master, and so on.

Each sect was also required to have a certain ratio of cultivators. For example, a tier 1 sect needed at least three early law stitching realm elders and 30 initial law-stitching realm protectors to support them. There was also a minimum sect population a sect was required to have, though it didn’t come up often because most of the sects greatly exceeded the threshold.

The sect tiers did not exist in a vacuum. Each sect would need to seek the approval of one of the Three Great Sects, the Four God Clans, or the Five Desolates to confirm their qualifications.

These twelve powerful entities were located in the northern hemisphere, an area prohibited to those from the Heartforge Realm. The fiend activity there was much greater than in the southern hemisphere, and as a result, only thirty-two Tier 1 sects existed in the bottom quarter of the planet to protect the people from fiend incursions.

From a threat analysis perspective, this meant that only Tier 1 and Tier 2 sects were a threat to Cha Ming and the other invited. Tier 3 sects only had a single initial law-stitching cultivator guarding them. According to the Elder Choking Tide, there were only 28 Tier 2 sects in the Azure Wind Territory, which meant that there were perhaps 50 cultivators Cha Ming should be wary of. Officially at least.

I don’t get it, Cha Ming sent to Huxian as he was leaving the city. Why send us someplace where there isn’t a lot of external danger? Even the fiends here aren’t very strong.

For now, they aren’t, Huxian said. Who says they won’t get stronger?

I also got some statistics for human martial artists and cultivators from Elder Choking Tide, Cha Ming said. Less than one in ten thousand people ever become cultivators, which is pretty low, in my opinion. But of those then thousand, twenty-percent have the potential to train as martial artists – what they call core formation cultivators or marrow refining cultivators. Its just that they don’t bother. There’s no increase in lifespan, and the local transcendent cultivators look down on them.

Your point? Huxian said.

My point is that there’s a lot of untapped potential,Cha Ming said.

We’re staying for 48 years, Huxian reminded. It was a good point, but a part of Cha Ming felt uneasy about this. I know what you’re saying, Huxian eventually said. There’s a similar thing going on with the demons. They’re all half-finished products that can train with the right resources and knowhow. It’s not so bad here in the demon lands, but that’s probably because of inherited memories.

I know it’s a long project, but I feel like giving it a shot, Cha Ming sent. Assuming I can figure out a better way to take care of al these fiends.

The fiends were a two-part problem to Cha Ming. A part of him, currently the dominant part, was greatly peeved at the near-constant need to eliminate them. It was a lot of busywork, eliminating fiends as they popped up, and he would consider ignoring a lot of them, but couldn’t because doing so would result in huge points deductions. The smaller part of him was also curling up into a ball at the sheer number of deaths that were accruing. He needed to figure out a better way to deal with this, because otherwise, a lot of people would die.

The main problem was travel time between spawn points. By the time he arrived, the fiends would have already dealt a great deal of damage. You said you managed to set up a small teleportation network, Cha Ming said. I thought that was supposed to be impossible.

It is, but I’m awesome! Huxian said. Sensing Cha Ming’s displeasure, however, he corrected himself. It’s obviously not impossible, Cha Ming. The reason they can’t do it is because their control over space isn’t good enough. Spatial affinity is a very rare gift, and even I had trouble forming and joining up the void tunnels using my demon-Dao domain.

Any chance you can set one up between our protectorates?Cha Ming asked.

The distance is too far for now, Huxian said. Give me time, and I’ll see what I can do though.

I peeked into void space, Cha Ming said. It was much deadlier than on the Inkwell Plane.

Yeah… don’t do that. Don’t even think about travelling through the void, Huxian said. I’m risking my life every time I do it. You’d just be throwing it away.

Then another mission came. Another fiend had spawned about eighteen hours away. The numb part of him calculated that most of the points he would gain from the otherwise generous mission would probably be gone by the time he arrived. The feeling part of him dwelled on the thousands that would probably die by the time he arrived.

There had to be a better way to deal with all this. There had to be a way to prevent all these deaths – and solve this stupid points problem. Spending so much time on the road was also cutting into his training time, and if he didn’t come up with a solution, he would fall further and further behind.

***

Two months after the opening of the second phase, Cha Ming turned up at Huxian’s residence. The fox was seated before a large illusory sphere covered in tags.

There were other details on the map, both topographical and otherwise. There were green spots that aligned with where the sects in his protectorate were located, as well as red spots big and small that it didn’t take him long to identify. “Are the spots spatial anomalies?”

“Yep,” the fox replied.

“Doesn’t it seem like–”

“Yep,” Huxian said again.

“Well isn’t that –“

“Yep,” Huxian said a third time. “Looks like you were right. We drew the short straw. Our territories each have fifty percent more spatial cracks than the average. They’re also scattered instead of clustered. So while in theory this means more fiends for us to kill, it also means they get to run around more and cause a lot of damage.”

“And this map is accurate?” Cha Ming asked.

“It is,” Huxian confirmed. “And I paid a lot for this information, thank you for asking.”

They weren’t the only ones with this problem. Petros, for example, also had a high density of spatial cracks, and all of them were scattered just the same. Conversely, Cao Wenluan’s territory had a clustered grouping of spatial cracks, meaning that he could simply remain in the general are and fight water came out.

More rifts meant more points, but more rifts meant more fiends. In theory, the situation was balanced. In practice, however…

Cha Ming massaged his forehead. “I should have known. This bad luck keeps piling up, Huxian. Are you sure we’re not cursed?”

“I’m sure,” Huxian said. His ears twitched, however, telling Cha Ming that there was something he was hiding.

“Spill it out,” Cha Ming said.

The fox wasn’t keen on talking, but with enough coaxing, he eventually relented. “I went digging through my ancestral memories a while back. And while I’m not completely sure, because contradictions exist, I think we might be in the middle of something called a karmic shift.”

“And what exactly isa karmic shift?” Cha Ming asked.

“A karmic shift is a restoration of balance,” Huxian said. “At least in theory. It’s a poorly understood phenomenon, and quite controversial. It all boils down to luck and karma and the fact that most things in the inverse are balanced. Creation and destruction are that way. Good and evil are opposites. Wind and lightning are opposing forces. Where there are Buddhists, there are evil spirits.”

Cha Ming nodded. “That does seem to be the general trend. So you’re saying karma is balanced as well.”

“Over the short term, no,” Huxian said. “But over the long term, yes. Or so goes the theory. It was a popular stream of research back a few hundred thousand immortal years ago. But in recent years there was a data anomaly, so a vocal group of scholars called it a hoax and a big lie.”

Cha Ming groaned. “Just spill it out already. What is a karmic shift and how is it relevant?”

“Well…” Huxian said. “Do you know the saying, good thing happen to good people?”

“Of course,” Cha Ming said. “It’s a statistically proven fact.”

“In recent times,” Huxian said. “But apparently, in the olden days, there were random cycles where bad things happened to good people and vice versa. The average over the long term was pretty balanced.”

“How does that even make sense?” Cha Ming asked. “Everyone knows that devils are stronger than angels, and angels get good luck and comprehension as compensation. Right?” Huxian’s expression seemed to indicate otherwise. “You’re saying that’s not correct either?”

“Okay, you know what, let’s just look at some data from a long time ago,” Huxian said. We waved his hand, and a series of large screens appeared inside his residence. The place now looked like a science fiction war room.”

On the screen were graphs. Lots and lots of graphs. “Huxian, this is crafting data,” Cha Ming said. “I get all these metrics. There’s normalized concoction success rate, pill difficulty, etc. But what’s this?”

“Standardized Merit Units,” Huxian explained. “It’s a measurable quantity. Sometimes Standardized Sin Units are used as well. Anyway, as you can see, if you plot normalized concoction success rate with time for varying levels of standardized merit, you’ll see a small bump whenever a karmic shift occurs. Those with stronger positive merit experience a larger failure rate for a while, and those with stronger negative merit experience better success rates for a while. This alternates every few thousand years.”

“But it all evens out in the end,” Cha Ming said.

“Which is a common argument against the theory,” Huxian said. “But observe!”

More and more graphs flashed across the screens. There was data for many different crafting professions, including talisman artistry, alchemy, geomancy, and spiritual blacksmithing. “The spirit doctors refused to participate for ethical reasons, so all we have is case studies,” Huxian said. “Spirit dietitians, on the other hand, didn’t have that hang-up. But their data is garbage and biased. I blame the food lobby.

“Now this… is gambling data.”

“Gambling data,” Cha Ming repeated. “You’re using gambling data to pitch a dubious karmic theory?”

“Hey, don’t diss the gamblers,” Huxian said. “They’re the ones who picked up on it in the first place, and many people got rich real quick. Then a few people tried applying it to stock markets, which was a failure because there’s no luck involved, just fundamentals, purchasing power, and how people feel on any given day.

“Anyway, gambling data! Arena battles! You’ll see here that angelic cultivators end up experiencing long losing streaks, while devilish cultivators experience surprise winning streaks.”

“But everything evens out in the end,” Cha Ming said.

“True,” Huxian said. “It’s a legitimate point. So that’s why this next bit of evidence is important.”

The crafting data appeared again alongside the gambling data, but this time it wasn’t success or failure rates that were being shown. Instead, it was craftsman rankings. In the case of arena battles, it was the arena rankings.

“Strange,” Cha Ming said.

“Yep,” Huxian confirmed. “There’s a bump in the short term, but when things stabilize, those with stronger merit end up increasing their ranking – or decreasing it depending on what karmic cycle we’re on. So to use the current timeline as an example, angelic cultivators would start losing an awful lot in arena battles, but then their ranking would start increasing and they’d stabilize at a higher rank.”

Cha Ming frowned. “Should we go place bets then?”

“Unfortunately, all the big gambling places have clued in on what’s happening and have already adjusted the odds,” Huxian said.

“Thereby giving weight to the karmic shift theory,” Cha Ming muttered. “And this crafting data… in the short term, angelic alchemists would experience a lot of failures. Their rankings would drop. Then a few years down the road, they’d make a resurgence and become better alchemists.”

“The proponents of Karmic Shift Theory call it the Karmic Tempering Effect,” Huxian said. “If your luck is terrible for a week, it’s one thing, but if it’s bad for years…”

“You get better,” Cha Ming said. “Or you die or flunk out. Those who keep at it will get stronger for it. They’ll learn to compensate for their random failures, so in the end it will even out. It’s like the balance between angels and devils. Angels are lucky, and devils are stronger. But if that was to suddenly change…”

“Anyway, the theory’s not very popular these days,” Huxian said. “It rang a bell because a few of my ancestors were good at karma back in the day. They said that when that happened, it would be like the karmic web started spinning in reverse, which is what you say you’ve been seeing.”

So you’re saying I should expect more of this bad luck then?” Cha Ming asked.

“Maybe,” Huxian said. “Like I said, there’s been some research on the subject, but recent papers are calling it into question.”

“And who’s funding that research?” Cha Ming asked.

Huxian coughed uncomfortably. “I believe it’s the Seven Heavens.”

“Of course it is,” Cha Ming said. “In other words, it would be prudent to assume that my crafting rate is going to suffer until I just learn to deal with it, and I’m going to keep being unlucky for the foreseeable future.”

Karmic shifts either existed or didn’t, and they weren’t going to solve the mystery today. Since Huxian had been kind enough to procure this map, he didn’t hesitate to note down the details on it and mark the location of their mutual friends. He pointed to the south pole where all their protectorates intersected and magnified it. Like the north pole, it was covered in spatial storms. “Do any fiends come out form in there?”

“All the time,” Huxian said. “But the southernmost Tier 2 sects mop them up all the time, and the Tier 1 sects give them a big helping hand. Teleportation gets much harder the further south you go, and space becomes impossible to tunnel through.”

“Which means that if you want to make teleportation happen between both our territories…” he pointed to two territories located on opposite sides the planet, “You’ll need to hop over several other protectorates.”

“I can’t set up a portal directly either, since I need anchors on the material plane,” Huxian said. “What I can do, however, is build intermediate teleportation locations in friendly territory. Petro’s for example, which is only a few territories away from mine. I would then leapfrog to Xing Tianlong and Wei Longshen’s adjacent territories.

“Jadefall and Wu are unfortunately in the opposite direction, and so is Baleful Vision’s. White Mirage, however, is willing to let me build a portal in her territory on the condition that I link her up with Baleful Vision.”

“So you basically need to make a ring around the entire planet to make this happen,” Cha Ming said. “Drat. And here I wanted you to build me a small teleportation network so I could save time.”

“Sorry, can’t be done,” Huxian said. “We can’t exactly go through each other’s portals either. At least not that I know of. And flying around the entire planet isn’t a good idea either.”

Cha Ming sighed. “I’ll have to think of a stopgap measure then. How long will that planetary network take you?”

“A year,” Huxian said. “Assuming I have time.”

“Will you?” Cha Ming asked.

“I should,” Huxian said. “I’ve got a bit of a relationship going on with a few stronger demons in my territory. I convinced them to help me hunt down fiends when I can’t for a few benefits.”

“How did you manage that?” Cha Ming asked.

“Bloodline suppression is a thing, you know,” Huxian said. “But maybe I’m just more of a people person than you are. Have you tried asking for help?”

Surprisingly, Cha Ming realized that he’d completely overlooked this fact. Or rather, a part of him had purposefully sidelined it for his own spiritual welfare.