Untitled Space Xianxia - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: You Can Put Me in Class, But You Can’t Put Class in Me

There are only two things you need to know about meditation class. The first is that it almost entirely consisted of thirty ten-year-olds and one twenty-two-year-old trying to meditate while a pair of instructors wandered the room randomly hitting them with sticks. The second is that I was absolutely godawful at it.

I understood the necessity. A cultivator couldn’t afford to lose his focus for any reason, especially in the middle of a fight, but that didn’t change the fact that the normal human reaction to getting smacked with a cane is a sharp intake of breath.

I hissed and rubbed at the back of my head, the repeated smackings compounding into an ache that echoed back and forth across my skull. The rhythm of my breathing shattered, I glanced up at my most recent antagonist.

Senior Cadet Stevens glared down at me. I averted my eyes, opting to avoid drawing any more of the cadet’s ire. I watched as Senior Cadet Park rapped one of the children on the arm, her strikes upon them far gentler and less frequent than those upon me. I didn’t complain. I let out a breath and returned to my meditation.

Truthfully, their attention didn’t bother me. Whether they hit me harder to punish the upstart mortal, to put the newbie in his place, or simply because they thought the adult could take more of a beating didn’t really matter. Training was training, and I needed all that I could get.

That thought felt foreign to me at first. Beyond how deeply it contradicted the classically cultivator obsession with disrespect, it seemed like it contradicted me. I mean, hell, they’d been hitting me with a cane for two hours and I hadn’t made a single wisecrack. It was like someone had secretly replaced my brain with that of a mature adult.

Come to think of it, ever since I’d touched the void I hadn’t been big on holding grudges. Sure, I was traumatized and I was sad and I was detached, but even when I’d snapped at Lucy I hadn’t really been angry. I didn’t blame Xavier for challenging me. I didn’t blame Lucy for abandoning me. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even really blame the void psycho for what he’d done. It wasn’t his fault deep space had driven him homicidally insane.

Okay, I know that last bit makes me sound a bit insane, but something about comprehending infinity makes being angry at people feel like a waste of time.

And hey, if the instructors were hitting me more, that meant they were hitting the kids less. I’d happily take a couple of extra thwacks if it meant fewer ten-year-olds got hit. Seriously, I think part of why everyone on Fyrion was so fucked up might’ve had to do with getting repeatedly smacked as a kid. I had sympathy for the kiddos, even if a bit of tough training was nothing compared to what Brady’s and my—

Thwack.

“Fuck,” I swore and rubbed at my sore temple before realizing I’d just cursed in a room full of kids. I could practically hear Lucy chiding me. “Sorry,” I muttered and returned to my meditation.

I fought off the urge to cycle. They technically wanted us cycling, but I’d figured out by then their qi sharpened the pain of the blows. Mine numbed it. If I’d been willing to risk it, I could’ve drifted off into the infinite sea and not even literal torture would’ve broken my meditation. I couldn’t let that happen. Shortcuts wouldn’t prepare me for the pain of opening my next meridians, nor that of actual combat.

By the time their three hours were up, Park and Stevens had left a myriad of welts on my head and a crisscross of bruises down my back. Not once had I managed to maintain my meditation through their abuse, but by the end I did successfully suppress the sharp intake of breath. I counted that as progress.

A few of the young’uns followed the seniors out of the classroom, but most stayed behind with me. We had a half hour before cycling class, and whoever was in charge of such things had had the kindness to keep the introductory classes in the same room. I pressed off against the padded floor and stood up to stretch, casting my gaze across the class as I realized my mistake.

Each and every one of the remaining kids pulled a lunchbox from among their belongings.

“Note to self,” I muttered. “Pack a lunch.”

My holopad beeped to confirm it’d recorded the note. “Oh, shit, delete that,” I ordered it. I didn’t need the thing reminding me at some odd hour. I looked up from the holographic screen to find every child in the room looking up at me.

“Sorry, pretend you didn’t hear that.”

None of them looked away.

“Um, hi,” I tried. “I’m Cal.”

“Mister Cal?” one of the kids in the back asked. “What’s a fuck?”

I froze. “Uh… you should ask your parents that. Tell them you heard it from Senior Cadet Stevens.” Okay maybe I wasn’t as immune to grudges as I thought. Remember when I said my sense of humor had a tendency to get me in trouble?

Three of the kiddos snickered amongst themselves, but didn’t explain it to the others. Whether they knew the meaning of the word or just that it was bad escaped me, but I had no intention of pursuing the matter. That sounded like an entirely unfunny kind of trouble I really didn’t want.

Another kid spoke up, one of the younger boys near the front. “Where’s your lunch, Mister Cal?”

“It’s just Cal,” I told him, masterfully evading the question. I tapped the symbol on my sect uniform. “I’m the same rank as you.” Technically, as pre-cadets, none of the kids even had ranks, but I was at the same cultivation stage as they were and I considered those basically the same thing. I still didn’t know what all of the insignias actually meant, but I figured the holo circle on my uniform meant I hadn’t formed a core yet.

“Did your mom forget to pack you one?” the boy asked, laser-focused on my lack of lunch for some reason.

“Don’t be stupid!” the girl next to him elbowed him. “Grown-ups make their own lunches.”

I sat back down and smiled at the boy. “My mom is very far away.” That reminded me, I owed Lucy an update on everything that’d happened. Wait. Why had that reminded me of Lucy?

“Oh,” the kid said. He ruffled though his lunchbox and pulled out a peanut butter sandwich, half of which he grabbed and held out towards me. “You can have half of mine. My mom forgets my lunch sometimes too.”

“No, no, I can’t take this,” I said, fighting off my urge to give in to the overwhelming cuteness of it all. What kind of person would I be if I took some kid’s lunch? “That’s yours.”

Just as the boy started to pulled his proffered sandwich back, my body betrayed me in the most primal of ways.

My stomach growled.

The boy shot to his feet, plodded right up to me, deposited the half-sandwich on my knee, and returned to his seat. I looked down at it and up at him, tastefully ignoring the spot of peanut butter he’d smudged on my uniform, and picked up the food. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Vihaan.”

“Well, thank you, Vihaan. It’s very kind of you.” I gave the morsel a try.

The sandwich was painfully bland and it stuck to the roof of my mouth something awful, but my empty stomach and cuteness-overloaded heart didn’t care. I scarfed it down in three bites.

What followed could only be described as a donation drive as kid after kid walked up to offer some portion of their lunch. It wasn’t until half of them had stopped by that I realized I’d accumulated a surplus of carrots, celery, and nutri-shake, and an absolute dearth of sweets. Were these kids just pawning off the parts of their lunch they didn’t want to eat?

I devoured it all anyway, thanking each of them for their generous gift as I assembled a full lunch from a pile of kid-sized portions. By the end, I wasn’t entirely sure who had taken advantage of whom, but that uncertainty seemed par for the course on planet cultivator.

Ahead of schedule, a pale woman with dreadlocks stepped into the classroom, her uniform marking her as part of the sect. Cries of ‘Miss Chrissy!’ greeted her.

She looked right at me. “Caliban Rex?”

I jumped to attention, saluting my superior just a few moments too late. She let me slide.

“At ease. I’m Senior Cadet Chrystalia, but you can call me Chrissy. Elder Lopez says you’ll be joining my class?”

“Yep,” I said, already appreciating her laid-back attitude. “I’m very new to all this, so they’ve got me down here with the kiddos.” I grinned back at them. “I’m already making friends though.”

“That’s something, at least,” Chrissy replied. “Other than friends, I’m not sure what I can offer you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

“Right now we’re working on exercises for the bone, skin, and stomach meridians, none of which you’ve opened. Soon the class’ll shift gear to preparing to open our kidney meridians, which you already have opened.”

I blinked at her use of the first person plural to describe the class as if she were learning along with them. I wondered if that was a personal quirk of hers, or if Chrissy did it as a way to connect with the kids. “Okay, um… do any of the exercises apply to the other meridians?”

“The focus ones do, but your meditation training will help with that more than anything I can teach you. I’d give you some exercises for the meridians you do have, but I’m not authorized to teach those. We don’t open our blood or heart until cycling two, and lungs aren’t until cycling three.”

“Hmm,” I wondered aloud. “Any tips for opening those three you mentioned, then? Those are the easiest, right?”

“That’s why we start with them,” Chrissy confirmed, “but easier doesn’t mean easy.” She nodded towards the kids happily eating their lunches. “I have a few minutes before I have to start with them. Let me guide you through our pre-meridian exercises.”

As I learned over the following minutes, pre-meridian exercises entailed sensing your core, condensing your qi, and practicing moving it around a little bit—basically everything you could do without any open meridians. By the time I’d mastered and remastered the extremely basic exercises, Chrissy’s calm and rhythmic voice was already guiding the kiddos through some cycling technique.

I followed as best I could, simulating the starts and stops and twisting qi patterns with my differing set of meridians. I had no idea if it was any use, but I dutifully catalogued how each technique affected my body. Of course, none of it matched what Chrissy described, but I was cycling different qi through different meridians, so… duh.

I came away from the experience feeling calm and refreshed—if a bit bored. My relaxed posture clashed with the energized children, but I figured everyone looked calm compared to a bunch of kids who’d been cooped up inside for six hours. I lingered as they practically trampled over each other in their rush to combat class. “So how’d I do?”

Chrissy shrugged. “As well as you could do, given the circumstances. Usually once a child can sense their qi we go straight for the bone meridian, and you’re well past that. I’d start saving up now. If you’re efficient with your focus room time, you could advance to cycling two in a matter of months.”

“Bone meridian. Got it.” I nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for the tips.” I winked at her.

She chuckled. “Be careful with that. Most direct superiors won’t take too kindly to junior cadets flirting with them.”

“What? Flirting? Me? No. I couldn’t put you in that position. Imagine what would happen if you got caught sleeping with one of your students.”

Her chuckle graduated to a full on laugh. “That’s enough from you. Get to your next class.”

“Yes ma’am.” I saluted. At her nod I spun on my heal and left the room, following the distant sounds of screaming children.

She seemed nice. It was some relief to finally meet someone who didn’t insist on all the formalities, especially one who seemed to really care about the kids under her care.

Lucy’s words echoed in my mind. It’s the ones that pretend to be humble you need to worry about.

I groaned. Was it a ploy? Had she carefully calculated her casual manner to gets something from me? The fact I had to even ask didn’t bode well for my time on Fyrion.

It was with the nasty shadow of distrust lingering in the back of my mind that I arrived in what I can only describe as a dojo. A ring of benches lined the vast padded floor, across which the kids had already spread out and launched into a series of stretches. Racks of wooden weapons lined the walls, each lined with its own layer of padded cloth.

Three severe-looking men strode into the room at once, each clad in the same senior cadet uniforms as my prior instructors. Unlike my prior instructors, the kids all snapped to attention at their entrance. I followed suit.

“Cadet Rex, is it?” One of the instructors—a man with a long black braid, squinted at me. “You look awfully… humble for a man named king.”

“And you look awfully… actually, I don’t know what your name is. Let’s just say you look awful.”

The man snarled. “Do I need to—”

“Teach me a lesson? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

To my credit, I actually saw the punch coming this time. I still didn’t dodge it because holy fuck that man was fast, but I did see it coming. Baby steps.

Standing at the edge of the dojo, the block knocked me back and over the bench behind me. Its corner dug painfully into my already-bruised upper back, but it kept my head from slamming into the concrete floor behind it.

“You would do well to learn some respect, mortal,” the braided man sneered.

I kept quite, too distracted running qi through my racing heart to manage a scathing reply. The energy’s calming effects managed to stave off the worst of the fight-or-flight, but it didn’t stop him from launching into a lecture.

“In his incompetence,” the man paced as he addressed the children, “Cadet Rex has forced the sect’s elders to prioritize his training over your own. Because his greater size and strength render him an invalid opponent to all of you, whenever it comes time to spar, one of Instructors Charleston, Davis, and myself will have serve as his opponent rather than instructing the rest of you. His benefit is purely your loss. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Instructor Long!” the kids chimed in unison. A few of them flashed me angry glares.

Great. Day one and they’d already managed to turn the kids against me. And here I'd thought our lunch moment had meant something. Maybe Vihaan would still have my back. Nope, wait, he was scowling at me. Shit.

Then again, kids tended to like whomever was nice to them most recently. It couldn’t be that hard to win them back, right?

Lucky for me, while my meditation skills had sorely lacked and my cycling skills completely mismatched my classmates’, the limited combat training Lucy had given me proved remarkably effective, which was to say, my technique was only four months behind the group of ten-year-olds instead of eight.

While the rest of the class spent three straight hours practicing the same basic lunge ad nauseam, Instructor Davis wouldn’t even let me hold a sword. He and I spent the entire session working on my stance, an apparently deeply specific bit of technique with plenty of opportunities for correction via a well-placed kick.

My muscles, still sore from the morning workout, protested alongside my bruised back and battered skull as the gaunt senior cadet forced me to drop in and out of the low-seated combat stance over and over again. It was boring, arduous, repetitive work, rife with sharp comments about my every flaw, which was to say as a vac-welder I felt right at home.

The hardest part was refraining from informing Instructor Davis of which particular type of rotted fish his breath stank. Seriously, I think this man had some sort of medical condition, one of which me may have been aware given how often he spoke right into my face.

I’d yet to successfully drop into combat-readiness without warranting a half dozen corrections when Instructor Long called the end of class. Even exhausted from the afternoon’s training, each and every kid jumped to attention.

“Decent work today,” Instructor Charleston announced, fiddling with his holopad. “I’ve sent out today’s class rankings. Congratulations to Cadet Ria for taking second. Cadet Graham, do better next time.”

A list of just over two dozen names popped up onto my holopad, a list on which I sat comfortably at the bottom. Of course they were ranking the ten-year-olds. Fucking cultivators.

I gaped as I watched tears well in the eye of a blond-haired boy, presumably Cadet Graham. The list indicated he’d fallen just two spots.

Shaking my head, I slipped out of the dojo the moment the senior cadets dismissed us. I made a beeline for the nearest transport tube, waiting patiently on the platform until one of the public pods reached me. It thankfully arrived unoccupied. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to deal with any more cultivators at the moment.

I spent the ride pondering the events of the day, the variety of abuses and questionable teaching methods I’d experienced. I understood wanting to instill a sense of competition in the kids, but it was no fucking wonder the rest of the sect was so cutthroat. I’d started the day getting hit with a cane and ended it with a lecture about how my presence cost my classmates.

By the time the transport pod finally pulled up to the inconveniently distant housing section D, I’d concluded that cultivators needed to spend a little less time contemplating the universe and a little more time contemplating effective organizational structure. Animosity did not breed productivity, however competitive you made people.

I ignored the derisive and evaluative gazes of the sect-members in the lobby as I waved to Arthur and mounted the steps to the third floor. They’d get used to me eventually.

I stopped off in my room just long enough to exchange my uniform for a towel and a bar of soap before I left for the washroom. I could call Lucy later. I had two hours before dinner, which should’ve been just enough time for what I had in mind, and I don’t mean taking a shower.

After the way my first two days at the sect had gone, I really needed a win. I still had to talk to someone about ways to safely drink from the infinite sea, but that could be tomorrow me’s problem. For now, it wouldn’t be an issue.

I still had plenty of qi left to open my bone meridian.

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