My arms were burning with the qi pouring out of them. Half-formed projections were still bursting from my fists, and I didn’t feel like I could stop them. I mean — I could stop moving, but not the qi, and according to René, that could end with me losing fingers.
"How do I stop the qi?" I called over to René.
"Quite simple," the instructor replied — and slapped me.
Hard.
My head snapped to the side, my cheek went numb, and I had to take a few steps just to keep from falling.
"Hey!" I shouted, clutching at my cheek. There was no qi in my hand. The flow had cut off instantly. "Hah! It worked."
"Tried and tested method," René laughed. "A quick shock resets the system. If you were an experienced fighter, I wouldn’t have used it. But honestly? No experienced fighter gets into this mess. Only rookies and cripples."
The flow really had stopped — like it had never been there. My fists were just fists again, but my muscles still felt like I’d just hammered through a heavy kettlebell session.
"Throw two punches," René said, stepping back. "Pull enough energy for just two."
I focused, reached out to that generator inside my solar plexus, channelled the qi into my arms and threw two punches — left, then right.
Projections launched cleanly, and I quickly dimmed the generator...
The roaring energy didn’t like that. It recoiled, annoyed, curling up into a tight ball. Honestly, it hurt more than the slap — like a hot, gnawing burn deep inside.
René gave a nod. "Now do four."
I repeated the motion — and again, that same burning. I even pressed a hand to my plexus, trying to ease the ache.
"Burning?" René asked.
"A bit, yeah," I admitted.
"Good," he said. "No more. That’s enough. Get out of the hall. Go rest — and don’t argue. Your progress today’s already impressive enough." And as if he could sense I was about to push back, he folded his arms and frowned. "You don’t want that burning to become permanent. Trust me — it can happen. Burn out your channels, and forget the second period. Might as well pack your things."
"Can I still cultivate tonight?" I asked. "In the Flow Chamber?"
"Not my field," René shrugged. "Better see a doctor."
And as it happened — I had one.
I messaged Doc, asked where he was, found him in the medical wing, got scanned, received a pill, reassurance that cultivation was fine, and a "congrats" on my first real use of qi.
After that, I didn’t go to the Garden — I headed for the greenhouse and walked around until lunch.
As usual, Nur had lunch with me and the boys — and even joined in the food swap. I shared my latest success with them and earned another round of gritted-teeth congratulations. No, they weren’t jealous pricks — it’s just that my progress kept reminding them how far behind they were. And I know what that’s like — watching the back of someone running ahead of you and not being able to catch up. It’s hard.
And they didn’t even know that, from our little group of assistant curators, only Kowalski hadn’t broken through the first bottleneck yet. But anyone keeping an eye on the rankings would’ve said the gap was widening…
Actually, let me rephrase that.
The numerical gap between those who had broken through and those who hadn’t was technically shrinking — because the qi dispersion at mid-tier was way higher. Before the bottleneck, I’d lose around a third of what I cultivated. Now — it was two-thirds. Still, those who cleared the first bottleneck early would likely be the ones to hit the second bottleneck — and move on to Foundation — first.
Just as I stepped out of the cafeteria after lunch, a chime rang in my head and a notification popped up.
Incoming call: A. I. Veyron
Accept / Decline
Now he I wasn’t expecting.
I accepted.
"There’s a buyer for your technique," he said straight away — no greeting. "Contact from Yellow Pine. He’s offering thirteen thousand."
It took me a second to even remember what he was talking about. Then it hit me — the orange Earth technique chip. I’d given it to Adam a few days ago. Not that I’d asked him to find a buyer — I just wanted to know if it wasn’t pirated.
"Thirteen?" I echoed, a little unsure. "Is that a good price?" Orange techniques weren’t sold for units at our school. Didn’t seem likely Yellow Pine had different rules.
"It’s solid," Adam assured me. "At auction, you’d maybe get ten — but by the time that goes through, anyone with the funds to buy it will already have picked up other techniques. So I’ll take a thousand as a commission."
I shrugged — not that he could see it. Adam didn’t give off the greasy resell-snake vibes like Omar did.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Deal," I said.
He hung up, and within seconds, the money landed in my account.
New funds have been deposited into your account:
05.06.3225 13:39 +12,000.00
The mention of the orange chip immediately triggered another memory — the memory card Lina had given back to me.
Well then… Time to find out what’s really on it.
Actually — no. First, I had to get rid of Nur.
We were spending less time together lately, but she still used her post-lunch breaks to hang out with me.
Thankfully, she no longer stayed for the entire block shift — instead, she left early to train in the Garden of the Fist.
As soon as she was gone, I popped the memory card into my tablet and opened the music folder. The playlist had a weird name — [vortex.d04] — and was packed with dozens of tracks, most of them variations of electronic or techno.
I played the first one.
Boom-boom-boom-tick. Repeat. Again. And again. My whole body started to tense with the rhythm of this techno-terror. I lasted thirty seconds and skipped to the next. Same messy mix of bass and vibration. Did Jake actually listen to this stuff? The kid had no taste.
I closed the player and opened the video clips folder…
Porn.
Lesbian.
With a splash of BDSM.
I take it back — the kid had some taste.
I closed the "clips" before things started to hurt and opened the photo folder instead.
The pictures were well organised — sorted by year. The most recent ones were from this year. There was Jake — a teenager, about how I saw myself in the mirror — and two other boys.
One was tall and skinny, with a cocky grin and perpetually messy hair. The other was broader, more serious, and somehow looked grumpy even in a lakeside photo where everyone else was smiling.
There were pictures of us at the park, in a dark room in front of a screen, at school desks... A few snaps from a birthday — I was holding a cake, face smeared with cream, everyone laughing.
Not bad, really. Orphans lived well on this Earth. I think their social system had ours beat by a long shot.
I clicked into the previous year’s folder. In those, I looked a bit younger — noticeably more jug-eared — but the same two boys were still around.
I didn’t look through everything, but I glanced at a few photos from each folder.
Three years ago, the "serious one" wasn’t in the pictures yet.
The serious face, though — that was all Jake.
There were no folders from six or seven years ago. And the first image from eight years back showed Jake being hugged by a woman with long dark hair and kind eyes. She looked like him — like me, now. Standing behind her was a man whose features I could also trace in the mirror.
Parents?
I noticed the rings on their fingers. The same matching rings that were now lying in my locker. I looked at my fake — the one I wore to lure demons. Nur wore an identical copy. There was some irony in that.
I looked back at the photo, staring at it like that might change something — like I was supposed to feel something. And I did feel a kind of sadness — but mostly, it was just… emptiness. A vacuum inside.
In the child’s eyes — bright spark, curiosity. In mine, now — only the question: Who are you?
It was a strange moment. I was looking into someone else’s past and didn’t know what I was supposed to feel.
I didn’t remember my own childhood. No help from that cursed déjà vu, either. These people weren’t my parents. They were Jake’s.
But Jake had been killed by the demon that now sat in Nur’s head.
I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know what they were like. And I would not remember them.
An alarm broke me out of my thoughts.
I tossed the tablet aside, reached for my mace — then froze.
I was a fist cultivator now. And I had a technique.
I pulled on my gauntlets and stepped into the hallway. The red dot on the minimap wasn’t far. The disturbance was in one of the rooms. As an assistant supervisor, I had the authority to enter in case of emergency — unlike regular cadets — so my sudden appearance caught the guys inside off guard.
A tall, broad-shouldered Asian cadet was gripping a smaller, wiry dark-skinned one by the collar. The latter had his hands fisted in the taller one’s jumpsuit. Both turned to stare at me in surprise.
"You don’t have the right to barge in here!" the tall one barked.
"I do, if you’re fighting," I corrected him calmly.
"We’re not fighting," the smaller one protested.
"Right," I said with a dry snort. "You’re just into aggressive foreplay and were about to start kissing."
The two of them glanced at each other, let go at the same time, and immediately straightened their jumpsuits in perfect sync.
The alert on my minimap vanished.
"Great!" I said. "Whatever your issue is, I hope you settle it peacefully — coin flip, contest, whatever. Just don’t make me come back."
The smaller one dipped his head in acknowledgement.
"So… where’s your mace?" he asked.
Seemed they knew me here. Maybe they’d seen what I did to Tarik. Or how Bao had taken a hit.
"I’m a fist cultivator," I said. "I only carried the mace because I didn’t have any techniques yet."
"You’ve got a technique now?" the Asian cadet asked with genuine interest.
"Not exactly mastered," I admitted. "Only managed my first projection this morning."
"Then there’s our answer!" the tall one declared, jabbing a finger at his roommate.
"Deal!" the dark-skinned cadet agreed, holding out his hand.
The two cadets shook on it — then turned to me in perfect sync.
"What did you pick?!"
I actually took a step back at the force of their enthusiasm.
"Chain Punch."
"Is that a fast technique or a strong one?" the darker cadet asked.
"Fast," I said, still not sure what this was about.
"Ha!" The tall one raised a victorious fist.
"No, no, no!" the dark-skinned one objected. "Your first technique should be a strong one!"
"Oh, just give up already!" The Asian cadet clapped him on the back — hard enough to nearly knock him over.
"No! Let him show us! Show us the technique!"
"I’m here to keep the peace, not break it," I protested.
"You’re stopping a fight, aren’t you? Come on — show us!"
"There wasn’t a fight, remember?" I pointed out.
"Show us the technique — and there won’t be one."
"You’re such a stubborn bastard," the Asian cadet groaned. "You lost, man. Just admit it."
They really were about to start choking each other again.
And honestly? I did want to recreate that flashy move Dubois pulled off. Still, I managed to shake my head.
"Here!" the dark-skinned cadet grabbed a pillow and held it out at arm’s length. "It’s a light technique, right? Worst case — it tears the pillow."
I stared at the idiot… then reached for my solar plexus just like I had in the training hall.
Well — he asked for it.
"Two hits," I warned, dropping into stance.
"You’re taking your sweet time—"
The projections snapped off one after the other — too fast for the cadets to notice how rough and incomplete they really were.
The first one knocked the pillow out of his right hand. The second shot through the gap and detonated on impact with his shoulder. The cadet jerked, stumbled as he took a step back — and flew into the table behind him, hitting his head on the edge.
"Fuck!" he yelped, clutching his skull. "That’s not light!"
"Yeah, I guess that table plate’s pretty solid," I said, feeling just a little guilty for showing off too hard. At least he was clutching his head, not his shoulder. "If you want, I can call someone I know — you hold the pillow, and she’ll show you what a strong technique looks like. Spoiler alert? It’ll hit harder than the table."
The cadet shot me a glare.
"No thanks — that was plenty." He looked at his friend. "Fine. I give in. First technique should be a fast one."
"You two were ready to rip each other’s throats out over that?"
Idiots.