Untitled Space Xianxia - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Well, That Was Fast

I blinked. I looked back at the still-open door to my room behind me. I looked down at my sweaty, towel-clad self. I looked up at the cultivator who’d challenged me to a duel on my first day.

“How long have you been waiting here?”

“Two hours!” he proclaimed with both too much pride and too much volume.

My brow furrowed. “And you didn’t… I don’t know, knock?”

“I did. You didn’t answer.”

I rubbed at my temples. “Right. Sorry. I was cultivating.”

“All the way up here? No wonder your core is so weak! I can hardly sense it.”

“No, no, you can’t sense it at all. It’s not…” I trailed off as I realized the futility in trying to explain my peculiar qi. “Look, can this wait? I was just about to take a shower.”

Xavier squinted at me. “You’d rather shower before you fight? Wouldn’t you just have to shower again after?”

“Good point.” I sighed. “Alright. Let me just put some clothes on and we can get this over with.”

“Of course! I shall await your return!”

I slipped back into my room, wondering if all cultivators were this extra or if Xavier was a special case.  By the time I’d re-donned the clothes I’d arrived in, I concluded both could be true.

Xavier didn’t shut up a single time as he led me down the steps and across the lobby to a well-decorated hallway. He swore up and down that he was the most motivated person here, that the thin qi on Fyrion wouldn’t stop him from rising the ranks, and that his position at the absolute bottom of the sect rankings didn’t truly reflect his talent or his grit.

Over the course of the five minute walk, he used the phrase ‘future champion of the Dragon’s Right Eye’ a grand total of eight times—more than once per minute. I counted. I might’ve asked what it meant had I been able to get a word in edgewise, but my head still hurt and my cultivation session had left me far too exhausted to compete with his seemingly boundless love for his own voice.

Ego notwithstanding, there was a certain sincerity to the man I couldn’t help but appreciate. Xavier said what he thought and he wore his feelings on his sleeve, two traits I’d come to appreciate all the more since entering the world of cultivation. I remembered Lucy’s words about all cultivators thinking they were special. She’d said I could trust the ones who were open about it.

I don’t know how much more open anyone could possibly be.

His boastful rambling and my analysis of his character were almost enough to make me forget he’d already declared his intent to beat the shit out of me. Almost.

The hallway spat us out into a cavernous gymnasium. Every type of exercise equipment I could imagine and a few dozen I couldn’t lined the outer walls. An elliptical running track that must’ve been over a mile long separated the weights and treadmills and other machines I’d never learn the names of from the room’s dominant feature.

A dozen elevated sparring rings ran in two rows down the room’s center. Each came with their own rack of wooden practice weapons, padded floor, and no walls or railings. Around the ones currently in use, a pale blue dome surrounded the combatants, keeping them and any wayward projectiles from escaping the ring. I imagined with a bunch of cultivators throwing qi attacks at each other, such precautions were necessary.

Fascinating as I found the sheer scope of the gymnasium or complexity of the automated qi barriers, my favorite attribute was the ceiling. Instead of the normal bare metal or plaster facade, a single, gargantuan pane of glass kept the atmosphere in. I stopped in my tracks just to gape at it, the engineering in making such a thing a marvel in and of itself. The fact it made for the best view of space I’d ever seen didn’t hurt.

“This way, newcomer,” Xavier pulled me from my state of awe back into my gallows-walk to the nearest open arena. A mortal woman with her holopad out greeted us.

“Back again, Xavier?”

“Of course! Nothing shall stop me from proving my might!”

“Alrighty then. Registered duel between Xavier Honchel and…” She trailed off and looked me.

“Caliban Rex,” I introduced myself. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she muttered, not bothering to give me her name as she entered mine into her holopad. She looked to Xavier. “I assume you’re the challenger?”

He nodded.

She turned back to me. “That means you get choose the weapons.”

“Oh—um… no weapons, please.” If I was going to get my ass kicked, I preferred if guy doing the kicking didn’t have a fucking sword.

Xavier clapped me on the back. “A traditionalist! Man after my own heart! Why allow a few paltry pieces of wood to get between two cultivators in the throws of combat?”

I groaned.

“You two are good to go. Best of luck.” The woman didn’t wait for us to mount the steps of the arena before she walked away, screaming something about a cultivator misusing a piece of exercise equipment. It was only as I watched her go that I noticed the crowd gathering around us.

I wasn’t sure if registered duels were always spectacles, if they’d come to evaluate the newcomer, if they just wanted to see bottom-ranked Xavier flounder, or some combination of the three, but something like thirty cultivators in sect-member gray watched us with expecting eyes.

With a sigh, I climbed the steps to the arena.

The ring stretched forty feet across, plenty of space for us both to move about, but absolutely minuscule for the speeds I knew cultivators could travel. I supposed Fyrion had to have larger sparring arenas somewhere else. For us underlings in housing D, forty feet was plenty.

The padded floor had just enough give to it to add a slight spring to my step, but not enough that a fall wouldn’t hurt. It visibly bent under Xavier’s weight.

Whispers of ‘where’s his qi?’ and ‘how weak is he?’ spread through the crowd around us, questions I’d have to get used to hearing sooner or later. They didn’t matter. All these people were about to watch Xavier absolutely thrash me, so whether or not they could sense my qi, the answer to their second question was going to be ‘very weak.’

I sized up my opponent. He was bigger, more experienced, and probably a higher level cultivator than I. I almost certainly had more qi, but I hadn’t even managed to cycle while standing up, let alone while fighting. At least I knew I could take a punch. A lifetime spent saying things I maintain were absolutely hilarious had earned me that much.

A gong rang out.

I darted in, eager to at least land a hit. Xavier let me come.

I learned, in that moment, how he’d landed at the absolute bottom of the sect rankings as Xavier went on to block my punch with his face.

I got him in the jaw. His head jerked to the side from the force of the punch, but only by an inch. Immediately it spun back, his eyes focused on me. He smiled wide and let out a bright, boisterous laugh.

I blinked and the arena was gone. The gym was gone. Fyrion was gone.

I stood in a narrow metal hallway under the pale glow of the emergency lights.

Xavier’s eyes turned black. Sweat dripped down his brow. His upper lip twitched arrhythmically. His laughter echoed through roofie’s dark hallways.

I froze. My heart pounded against my chest. My breath came quick and shaky and shallow. My eyes shot wide open. “No,” muttered, the terror clear in my quivering voice. “No, no, not again.”

My throat tightened. My stomach dropped. I stared into his void-darkened eyes, refusing to look away, refusing to look down. I already knew what I’d find if I looked at the floor beneath his feet.

I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to cry for mercy, for rescue, for a quicker death. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I stood, petrified, as he came for me.

The punch knocked me flat on my back.

I curled into a ball, protecting my stomach and face from further assault. The cold metal of roofie’s flooring pressed against my exposed skin. Tears streaked down my cheeks as I trembled there, waiting for the void psycho to finish me off. “No. No. No. No,” I whispered the word to myself like a mantra, as if my desperate denial would stop the walls closing in on me.

A dozen voices murmured taunts and jeers in the distance, but they didn’t matter. They weren’t here.

Okay, I know this wasn’t the best look. I may have had an eentsy bit of ptsd, but come on. Cut me some slack. You saw what’d happened. Half the point of all this was to grow strong enough to fight back, to win. So what if I wasn’t there yet? Xavier was right about one thing: we all had to start somewhere.

He knelt over me. “Newcomer! Newcomer, are you alright? I didn’t punch you too hard, did I? Of course I did. My might has overwhelmed you! I’m so sorry, newcomer.”

“It wasn’t you, you idiot,” an unfamiliar female voice rose up from the fray. “He’s having a panic attack. My father still gets them after the void horde.”

That shut the onlookers up. It was like magic.

A gentle hand touched my shoulder. “Newbie, can you hear me?” the woman asked. “Newbie, it’s alright. You’re safe. You need to stop cycling. Cycling makes it worse.”

Cycling? But I wasn’t—wait. Cycling! That was a great idea. I pulled and the qi came readily. It rushed through me, spreading cool calm through my blood, slowing my heart, deepening my breathing.

My eyes flicked open and upward, past the worried faces of the two cultivators kneeling over me to the glass ceiling above and the stars beyond. The infinite dark sang comfort in my ear, serenaded me with the petty smallness of my fears and pains.

Reality eased back into place. The whites returned to Xavier’s eyes. The metal hall gave way to the padded floor of the arena.

I exhaled, qi still racing through me as I perceived the world around me. It was the first time I’d cycled without meditating, but the achievement felt hollow given the circumstances.

“I’m alright,” I panted. “I’m okay.”

I sat up, ignoring the silently-gaping crowd to get my first look at the girl who’d come to my defense. She had long, perfectly straight light brown hair and a pair of black-rimmed glasses. What kind of cultivator needed glasses? To top it off, even beyond the concern in her eyes, she had a look to her like she knew something you didn’t, a kind of quiet sense of superiority that at once left me feeling stupid and insulted.

Xavier offered me a hand. I took it, and he pulled me to my feet. “A valiant effort, newcomer! The first of many defeats on the road to endless victory!”

“Um, thanks,” I managed, unsure if I liked or hated that he was talking about the fight as if that was all that’d happened.

“Come on,” the girl said, a hand on my back, “let’s get away from the peep show.”

“They’re just here to revel in my triumph!”

“No, Xavier,” I muttered. “They really aren’t.”

The crowd parted for us as we climbed down from the sparing ring and through the gymnasium. My cycling slipped as we walked, and the weight of everything that’d happened struck me like a piece of space debris.

Was there a prize for worst possible first impression? Fuck, I hoped so. I had a strong candidacy.

As we left the gym behind and entered the wide hallway, I broke the uncomfortable silence. “Thanks for the help back there. I… that’s never happened before.”

“It’ll happen again,” the girl said. “Every time you cycle you put yourself at risk. Higher blood pressure, heart rate, body temp, none of it’s good for panic attacks. Your options are stop cultivating or find a way to work through whatever’s wrong.”

I opted not to mention that my qi had the opposite effects. “I’ll… work on that. Thanks.” I held out my hand. “I’m Cal, by the way.”

She shook it once, a prim, deliberate motion. “Charlotte. Charlotte Velereau.”

She said her last name as if I should’ve recognized it. After the way mention of her father had silenced the crowd, I put two and two together. “I take it your father’s someone important?”

“Important?” Xavier burst. “He’s a hero! He saved the entire sect!”

“There a void horde a few cycles ago.” Charlotte sighed. “I don’t like bringing him up, but sometimes it’s warranted. None of those idiots have seen real combat, so none of them know what it costs.” She looked up at me. “They’ll all think you’re weak because they don’t know what you’ve been through.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “And you do?”

“Gods no. For all I know, you just have a crippling fear of cultivators.”

I gulped at that, but she seemed not to notice. “The point,” she continued, “is that you’re not necessarily weak, you’re just facing greater challenges than they are. That’s good. Meditation and practice and epiphany are all well and good, but overcoming adversity is just as important if you want to progress. The road to immortality is paved with conflict.”

“Welp,” I exhaled, “it’s looking like I’ve got adversity in spades.”

“The good news is, now you’ve lost to this buffoon, nobody’ll challenge you any time soon. Nothing to gain and everything to lose fighting the bottom rank.”

“Thank gods for that,” I said, relief clear in my voice. “I’ve had enough dueling for a while.”

“Enough dueling for one day!” Xavier countered. “The real advantage of sitting at the bottom is having so much further to climb.”

“No, no, I think I’m good where I am, thanks.”

Charlotte snorted. “If that’s your mindset, you can go ahead and leave now. Ambition isn’t optional.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t ambitious. I said I’m happy with my rank.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she argued. “It might seem like a lot now, but the qi in D-block is very thin, especially all the way up on the third floor. Once you start trying to develop a core, you’re going to start living for those two hours per week you get in a focus room.”

“What’s a focus room?”

Charlotte looked side-eyed at Xavier. “Where did they find this guy?”

“Deep space,” I answered. “Assume I know nothing.”

“You opened your qi sense in deep space? That’s incredible. I can hardly sense core spill-off. No wonder D-block feels like enough qi to you.”

Now that was interesting. I’d found Lucy’s core spill-off overwhelming. If other cultivators thought it barely perceptible, what did that say about me?

Charlotte exhaled. “Anyway, the formations on the planet direct its qi towards the outpost. Formations in the outpost direct its qi to the seventy seven focus rooms. Each sect member gets two hours per week to cultivate in one of the focus rooms. You can earn more time, but only by being useful. In those two hours, you’ll get more qi than the rest of the week combined.”

“Huh.” I blinked. “Can I trade away my hours?”

“Only if you need a really big favor,” Charlotte explained. “Like I said, once you start building your core, you’ll need every scrap of qi you can scrounge up. The focus rooms are essential—use them for breakthroughs if you can. Outside of that, if you want more qi, you’ll need to earn a better housing placement. It takes top four thousand to make it to C-block, and to make top four thousand, you’ll have to duel.”

Xavier clapped me on the back yet again. He seemed to have a thing for that. “Imagine it! Endless opportunities to challenge yourself, endless progress to be made. It’s beautiful.”

“I think you and I have different definitions of the word ‘beautiful,’” I told him. My gaze slid back to Charlotte. “So how does the daughter of the sect’s savior wind up in housing D?”

She glared at me. “I don’t see you offering up your life story.”

“Fair point.”

Our conversation faded as we reached the lobby. Various bored cultivators eyed us as we made for the stairs, doubtlessly coming to all sorts of conclusions about me based on everything from my current company to the particular tempo of my stride or some other bullshit. I’d been here less than a day and I was already tired of it.

I stopped at the base of the steps. “I think I can make it from here, unless you were planning on showering with me.”

Charlotte’s nose turned up at the comment, but Xavier let out a laugh. At least somebody appreciated my comedic mediocrity.

“Thank you for the duel, my friend.” Xavier slapped me on the back. I wasn’t sure exactly how many time it was appropriate to slap someone on the back in a ten-minute period, but I was pretty damn certain Xavier had passed it. “Best of luck on your struggle to the top!”

With that he walked away, leaving Charlotte and I both squinting at his confident stride.

“He’s… a lot,” I said.

Charlotte nodded.

“Very self-assured for someone at the bottom of the rankings.”

“At least he has you below him, now,” Charlotte said.

I chuckled. “Glad I could be of use.” I smiled at her. “Thanks again for the assist. And for the info. It’s really a big help.”

She smirked. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to pay me back.”

I cursed to myself as she walked away. Of course she expected me to repay her. Fucking cultivators. Maybe I could give her one of my focus room hours. It wasn’t like I had any use for them.

I reflected on the day’s events as I made my way up the stairs and to the third-floor showers. I thought of Elder Lopez’s disdain and veiled threat, of Xavier’s challenge and the crowd’s judgmental eyes, of Charlotte’s help at an unnamed price.

The system was rigged.

It’d taken a fucking soulship just to get me in the door, and all the sect had offered was the worst room they had, three children’s classes, and a literal punch in the face. How was anyone without generational wealth or powerful friends ever supposed to succeed? How could one climb the ranks if everyone above them had access to more resources?

I had a long road ahead of me—meridians to open, techniques to master, combat to learn, and maybe a bit of unresolved trauma to work through, but at least I seemed to have taken strides towards making friends, egotistical and-or manipulative as they may’ve been.

Better yet, for all the hurdles in front of me, I had one inalienable advantage they couldn’t even comprehend.

They could set the rules. They could mark the cards. They could stack the deck. But in the end, none of that would matter.

I wasn’t even playing the same game.