Maksym Pachesiuk
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Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 100: Space Qi
🕑 Added 2025-07-02 23:36:01 +0000 UTCI had to skip my session with the mutual support club just to get in to see Novak.
“You suspect demons are behind the drug trade in the School?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” I replied, sipping plain green tea. Judging by his choice of brew, Vaclav wasn’t taking me all that seriously.
“I understand that the term ‘demons’ implies they’re hellspawn capable of anything vile, but drug dealing? We know now they’re actually aliens. Yes, they’re cruel, but they’re also highly mercantile. What profit would they gain from dealing drugs?”
“It’s more a question of whether it gets in their way,” I said. “If you ask me, it’s the perfect way to weaken us.”
“Yes,” Vaclav nodded. “If they were saboteurs and we were in a conventional war, it would make sense. But you’re forgetting they’re just spies. More than that, we’ve figured out that they’re not all that interested in our strength. Quite the self-assured approach, but they seem to be spying on what’s worth looting. They’ve been stuck here for half a millennium! Half a millennium behind enemy lines, jumping through dozens of bodies. Their main task is to avoid detection. And drugs — that’s very noticeable.”
And he was right, to a point. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that the dealer was a demon. Everything inside me screamed it.
“Where did he hide the drugs?” I asked.
“Sorry…?” Novak didn’t follow.
“He showed up to the meeting without the goods.”
“Isn’t that logical?” Novak asked. “Back when I was young, some powder dealers used to do it that way. They’d take the money first, then tell you where the stash was hidden.”
“Logical,” I agreed. “Only when I spoke to Liang Shi, he was practically fuming about the fact that they haven’t been able to catch anyone for years. No way to trace the money, no trace of the product either...
“Seriously? How good a criminal can a second-period be to avoid getting caught by veterans from the Hall of Order?”
“It’s a stretch,” Novak admitted. “Especially since this one did get caught.”
“The first one. In how many years?”
Novak paused, thinking.
“Illegal stuff has always been cooked up around the School, but the Hall of Order used to shut it down quickly. What we’re seeing now has been going on for four or five years.”
“Like someone experienced took over?” I hinted. “And if we dig into those five years, maybe even seven, might we find another dealer who supposedly killed himself?”
That caught Novak’s interest.
“That can be checked,” he nodded. “Anything else?”
“Yes!” I said. “What if they’re hiding the product in storage rings?”
Novak’s interest deepened.
“I have to admit, it’s a pretty perfect hiding place. Most people don’t even know about them.”
“What if it’s not a ring at all?” I asked. “Technically, I think it’s possible. The suspected dealer had a good-luck charm — a coin.”
Novak nodded.
“I’ll look into it,” he murmured, lost in thought.
An awkward silence followed. I’d said everything I came to say, so all that was left was to finish my tea. I didn’t drag it out. But somehow, standing up and saying goodbye felt wrong. I’d never once left this place of my own accord. Vaclav had always told me when to go.
Well, first time for everything. Maybe I could still catch the end of the mutual support club session?
I stood up, but before I could open my mouth, Vaclav raised his hand and wagged his index finger. Then the same finger pointed back at the chair.
“Wait,” he said, and disappeared into the room where he kept the fancy stuff.
Nice! I wasn’t expecting a gift.
But instead of a box of tea or something similar, Vaclav came back with a device. It looked like a triangle with three metallic spheres at the corners and a monitor in the middle.
“Before we started using neural interfaces, before we offloaded all measurement tasks onto them, we used this,” he said.
Vaclav set the device on the table and pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life, and he tapped something on the touchscreen.
“It’s fairly simple to use. A master channels specialised qi into the device, and it searches for it in the recipient. We’re going to measure your Space Qi. Place your hands on the two far spheres,” he instructed.
I obeyed without protest.
Novak placed his hand on the remaining sphere.
I felt a foreign stream of qi enter my body through my right hand, while my own flowed out through the left. There wasn’t anything particularly special about his qi, but the ancient device clearly thought otherwise.
Novak gave a thoughtful grunt.
“You’re lucky,” he said, and removed the device. I never got to see what appeared on the monitor.
“Sir?” I asked.
“Have you taken any essence today?” he called from the other room.
“Three doses of Palm Essence,” I replied.
“When? How long ago?”
“About six hours,” I said.
“Excellent!” said Novak as he returned from the other room with a contactless injector already loaded with an ampoule. Another was in his hand. “Your Space Qi rating is fourteen. We’ll give you some essence and teach you how to use a ring.”
Wow. Now that was a stroke of luck.
“You’re giving me a storage ring?”
“I’m giving you a training ring, with a usable volume of about one litre. It’ll have to be returned once you’ve learned to use it,” Novak said, and without further ceremony, injected the first dose of essence into my neck. Then he swapped out the ampoule. He set the empty one on the table and raised the injector again.
“Wait! If my rating is fourteen,” I said, “why two ampoules?”
“It’s not the highest-grade product,” Novak admitted. “Hasn’t gone through large-scale testing. Still, trust me, it works.”
The second ampoule was injected into my neck.
“This must be a valuable product,” I remarked.
Though in truth, I was wondering if I might be the testing subject he mentioned. But Novak offered a different explanation.
“It is,” he said. “And I wouldn’t waste it on you if your innate potential weren’t so high. Now...” He set the injector on the table and pulled a ring from his pocket, slipping it demonstratively onto his little finger. “Your task is to learn how to replicate this trick.” Novak reached for the empty ampoule on the table, touched it with his index finger, and it vanished.
He turned his palm upward, and a second later, the ampoule reappeared.
Then it vanished again. Novak removed the ring and handed it to me.
“Practise,” he said. “First, try to feel the Space Qi stored in the ring. Then try to retrieve the ampoule. It’ll get easier once you understand the Qi itself.”
Novak held out the ring to me.
It was a plain, polished band of metal. Nothing fancy, no demonic script, no glowing patterns, nothing that drew attention. It didn’t even radiate Qi.
“The decoy gave off more of a signal,” I noted.
“That’s the point,” Novak replied. “But if you think you can use a decoy to train, you’re mistaken. That Qi was far too corrupted. It’d give you a false understanding.”
I nodded and slipped the ring onto my little finger. Clearly, my fingers were thinner than Vaclav’s. I had to switch it to the ring finger.
Despite what he’d said about my natural potential, I couldn’t sense anything special in the ring. Space Qi, like Wood Qi, refused to yield to my understanding.
Speaking of Wood Qi — I didn’t make it to the club session. I should have, but by the time I got home, the others had already scattered.
The reason? A massive fight in the block, techniques involved. Kowalski, who was standing in for Dubois this time, couldn’t handle it and had to call for backup. He got roughed up pretty badly himself. Badly enough that he spent the night in the infirmary.
In the morning, he didn’t return alone — Dubois had been discharged.
Our meeting was a bit awkward. We ran into each other halfway down the corridor on our way to the canteen and both froze.
I didn’t want there to be tension between us. Not just because Dubois could beat the crap out of me, but also because he was actually decent. Relatively decent. And there weren’t many like that in this School.
I reached out my hand first.
“Good to see you,” I said.
Dubois shook it hesitantly. He clearly hadn’t sorted out his feelings yet.
“Can’t say the same,” he admitted with a sarcastic smile. “My guts twitch whenever I see you.”
“That was your stiletto,” I reminded him. Maybe unnecessarily.
Dubois grimaced like I’d stepped on his favourite foot.
“Next time I’ll try not to stab myself.”
“Hey,” I joked. “Spare a thought for me! How am I supposed to win like that?”
“Wasn’t once enough for you?” he shot back.
I gave a theatrical sigh.
“I need three.”
“You’ve got quite the appetite!”
The tension between us seemed to ease, though Dubois couldn’t resist promising firmly that next time, he wouldn’t give me a single chance.
I didn’t argue. I figured he hadn’t meant to let me win last time either. What mattered most was that he wasn’t making a drama out of losing. That alone earned him more respect from me.
Whatever Dubois said, I wasn’t planning to give him a chance either. Ordering a formation for the armour was the first step. I’d even started thinking about ordering a second set. Dubois wasn’t the only cadet who used different gear for different situations. And I was teetering on the edge of full “to hell with it” mode. Just a little more and I’d start burning money. I had to keep reminding myself it was only the third month of training. Nine more to go, and I had no idea what kind of expenses awaited.
At least wait for the auction. Maybe there’d be something useful: good gloves, or breakthrough materials.
Besides, Dubois wasn’t the only dangerous opponent in the tournament. There were others. Especially the palm cultivators.
Against Dubois, my perception of Point Qi had helped a lot. Just after lunch, I’d finished working on root growth, gained a final +3 to Palm, and all that remained was to master sensing each type of qi.
At the moment, my roots looked like this:
Spiritual Roots:
• Fire: 7
• Water: 16
• Lightning: 4
• Air: 15
• Earth: 16
• Wood: 15
Martial Roots:
• Blade: 5
• Mace: 15
• Point: 16
• Fist: 50
• Palm: 15
• Finger: 11
Celestial Roots:
• Gravity: 3
• Vacuum: 1
Somewhere in there, invisible to the interface, lurked my Spacel Root, sitting at around 15 or 16.
I couldn’t quite grasp why it had to be hidden. Publicity breeds competition, and competition leads to quality improvements.
Novak had said the essence hadn’t gone through mass testing. But if they simply made the information public, the corporations profiting from this would run hundreds of tests, plant dozens of gardens...
Which reminded me: how do they even make that essence?
If it’s the same principle, then somewhere there must be a Space Garden, where cultivators use space techniques to infuse plants with the right kind of qi.
How is that even kept secret? And more importantly why? Don’t storage rings help humanity fight demons? At the very least, they’d massively streamline logistics.
Although to be fair, it’s not like logistics here were particularly bad.
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Joyeus
Tftc unfortunately I have to cut back on my Patreon subscriptions for a time.
