Maksym Pachesiuk
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Moon Cultivation - Chapter 75: Trapped by Ink
🕑 Added 2025-05-22 23:36:01 +0000 UTCIn total, I gained +4 to my Fist Root.
The first one came almost instantly — before I even left the tech room. The second — about five minutes later. The third arrived after ten minutes of slow wandering between platforms, watching other cadets practise their techniques.
But the fourth... the fourth came when the timer was already flashing red, down to the last few seconds.
I was standing by a patch of everlastings, hypersensitivity formation active, trying to focus on the Fist Qi settled on the flowers like dew — just as Diego had told me to. I had no trouble sensing the Qi clearly. But the +1? No flash, no surge of insight. Nothing.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if my concentration had helped. It could’ve just been the delayed effect of the essence. But hey, +4 is +4. I wasn’t complaining.
I was about to leave when I hesitated by the violets. I hadn’t planned to work today, but something in me needed to fill the space. It wasn’t about the points — though they wouldn’t hurt. I just… needed the distraction.
My head was still a mess from yesterday — doubts, fears, anger all jammed together. I didn’t want to deal with any of it. Not today. And no, I wasn’t doing any mental recalibration either. Today’s goal was simple: survive a standard half-hour in the Flow Chamber — and not drown in lava.
I found Diego again. He looked surprised, said they already had more punished cadets than they knew what to do with, and reminded me I was close to qualifying for higher-paid work. But he didn’t say no — just assigned me two plots of chamomile and one of everlastings.
I asked for ten drones. With that many, I wouldn’t have time for dumb thoughts.
Unfortunately, more drones also meant faster workflow. The chamomiles were done in an instant. The violets turned out to be temperamental — one drone caught a Qi detonation square in the belly. Plastic shrapnel scattered across the plot, and I had to carefully gather the debris by hand while still managing the others. Two more drones started acting up, and I shut them down entirely.
Still, the work — intense, focused — did more for my head than any training session. I pushed aside the endless self-questioning and the itch to wonder whether Novak was worth trusting at all.
And that’s how I made it to dinner.
After that — Clear Thoughts and the Flow Chamber. Marlon walked me to the chamber himself, just in case anything went sideways.
With my nerves calmed by tea, the cultivation went smoothly. Not as smooth as last time — toward the end, the flow waves got rowdy and the heat spiked — but still, I made it through.
No way I could’ve handled a reassessment though.
Dragging my feet back from the Meditation Hall, I flicked through my stats and thought about what came next.
Cultivation Level: 1394 / 2477
Though about 160 of those would still disperse. My dispersion rate after the first bottleneck had been around 65%. Pretty lucky, honestly. Rumour among cadets was that it could reach 70% at this phase. And the max dispersion during Late Refining — after the second bottleneck — could hit 99%. Manuals said 97% was standard, and deviations shouldn’t be huge…
Still. It was terrifying. A high dispersion rate combined with an early second bottleneck could wipe out months of progress.
That said, bottlenecks were usually evenly spaced between the start and end of a stage. Which meant I could expect the next one be around 617.
At my current cultivation rate, I’d hit the second bottleneck in about a month. And reaching the next stage… at 250–255 units per session and a standard dispersion of 97%... that would be...
250 × 3% = 7.5
617 / 7.5 = 82.3
That meant the final stretch alone would take me 82 cultivation sessions. At a stable pace, that translated to 246 days.
Two hundred and forty-six days. That’s insane.
Kate and Diego — Diego 015, the one who works with Robinson — both told me early breakthroughs into Stage Two start happening around six months from initiation. Six months — that’s 182.5 days.
How the hell does that add up?
Crystals! Of course.
A single crystal gives you 75 units of qi — enough to shave off ten sessions. But only if you latch onto it just before breaking through. Otherwise, that qi gets hit with dispersion too.
I wondered just how much less it dissipated. Everyone always said that crystal absorption and technique-based cultivation had lower loss rates — but I’d never found solid numbers.
Could you absorb more than one crystal at once?
Overloading was dangerous — Bao proved that well enough. And let’s be honest, I wasn’t getting my hands on any crystals anytime soon.
But I needed to go in for reassessment.
If I could bump my Flow Chamber sessions from thirty minutes to a full hour, I’d effectively halve the number of sessions I needed.
I just hoped Bulsara would keep his word and that Nur would be alright by my next session. I’m not the kind of person who can just shut off emotion — not for people I care about. I could handle pain, sure — but handling pain inside the Flow Chamber was a different beast. It could cause internal damage.
So, I needed reassessment. And tea. The first box from Novak was nearly empty.
And again — trust him or not — if Novak didn’t supply me with more of that bloody tea, where was I going to get it?
My mood teetered again, threatening to plunge. Gods, I really was a master of spiralling into self-made misery.
Incoming call: F. Bulsara
Accept / Decline
My chest tightened.
Yeah — there it went. My mood crashed.
I didn’t want to answer. I just froze in the corridor, staring at the blinking alert in my interface for a good minute. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t convince myself this might actually be good news.
I only tapped the holographic button after reminding myself that stalling wouldn’t make the news any better — and Bulsara already didn’t like me.
“Listening,” I said, as neutrally as I could manage.
“You took your time answering,” the doctor said. “Something wrong? Any side effects after cultivation?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s just... you’ve never called me before.”
“That unusual?”
“It’s unsettling.”
“Well then,” the doctor murmured. “Your caution serves you well. I can confirm Rahman is alive — but her psychological state requires friendly support. Head down to the metro. Lina will meet you there.”
Something inside me snapped. Not broken — more like an explosion. All at once I felt everything. Then nothing. I didn’t know how to react, so I chose the one thing I could do: follow the order.
Lina was waiting for me. When I reached her, she handed me two small boxes.
“These are contact lenses,” she said. “And these are vacuum-sealed earbuds.”
“What?” I blinked.
“You don’t need to see where we’re going,” she replied calmly. “The lenses will limit your visual field.”
She opened one of the boxes, showing me two slightly raised lenses.
“Touch one with your finger — it’ll stick. Then pull your eyelid open with the other hand and transfer the lens. Go on,” she said, no room for debate.
I did as she instructed — lenses in my eyes, earbuds in my ears.
“Good,” Lina said, tapping something in her interface.
The world greyed out, then blackened. Everything disappeared — except the faint white outline of her silhouette and the nearest column. Along with the colour, the sound vanished too — save for her voice.
“Stay close,” she said, guiding me to the edge of the platform.
The lenses filtered everything beyond a three-metre radius, leaving only the floor beneath my feet and Lina ahead of me. I could still move more or less on my own — I even sat down on the train bench without help — but without Lina pointing the way, orientation would’ve been almost impossible.
Gods only know where we went, or for how long.
We took the train — that much I’m sure of. Then there was a lift — descending this time. From the metro station, we went down.
After that: corridors. Winding, sterile. Eventually, we entered a room.
Lina worked something into her interface — and the world returned me sound, colour, presence.
The room was typical for local architecture — cramped, windowless, undecorated, with that muted blue-white lighting that cast no shadows. The ceiling felt low — not in height, but in pressure, like the air itself was heavier. The floor was matte grey, textured underfoot. The walls were smooth, medical — embedded with panels of the kind Bulsara used.
At the far side of the room, opposite where Bulsara stood, was a single narrow bed. Dull metal frame. White sheets. Like someone had sawn the top bunk off mine.
And on that bed sat a girl.
Dark skin, milk-chocolate brown. Slim frame. Short, tightly curled hair. In her hands, a steaming cup. She wasn’t drinking, just holding it. Fingers still, like they were gripping something fragile, warmth, or balance.
Her posture was hunched. Her face empty. Her eyes — bloodshot, cracked with red like veins in shattered ceramic. Like she’d just stopped crying.
She looked at me.
It was almost the same look I saw in Nur before the demon took full control.
“Meet her,” Bulsara said, without so much as glancing in my direction. His gaze was fixed on a wall panel — one I couldn’t read. “Nur Amira Rakhman,” he said. “Your friend. Alive.”
I looked at the girl again. She gave me a forced smile.
“So… I take it the exorcism didn’t quite go as planned?”
Nur snorted — and her smile grew a little more genuine.
Bulsara grimaced and, for the first time since we entered, tore his gaze away from the wall display. His eyes were dark and heavy.
“The procedure went... unexpectedly,” he said slowly. “We managed to transfer the demon into another body. But—”
“Not just him!” Nur snapped.
“You can’t transfer her back?” I asked.
Another grimace from Bulsara.
“I wouldn’t risk it.”
“Well, I would!” Nur fired back. “I want my body back. I want my cultivation back!”
“You could lose more than just your cultivation!” Bulsara barked — though, notably, he didn’t throw out his usual threat about burying people in the wastelands.
That raised a different question: where did they even get the body for this ‘transfer?’ Or rather, bodies — plural.
“Wait,” I said, eyeing the doctor. “Is this the one you had supposedly buried in the wastelands?”
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t deny it either. So — they weren’t burying bodies. They were storing them. Somewhere underground.
I wondered how many they’d stockpiled.
“Nur,” I said gently. “You’re alive. And demon-free.” I tapped my forehead. “That’s a win.”
“Oh please,” she snapped. “You’re part of the reason I ended up like this in the first place! You have any idea what it’s like to be locked inside someone else’s body?”
“If anyone here’s to blame for what happened,” Bulsara cut in coldly, “it’s you, young lady. You shouldn’t have tattooed random crap onto yourself.”
Three confused stares hit him at once.
He sighed and clarified:
“The life-gathering formation on your left thigh. All formations have to be etched by certified Qi specialists — not by some tattoo artist trying to be clever.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re telling me the demon got trapped in her because of a bad tattoo?”
“I wouldn’t call it bad,” Bulsara said, almost smug. “In fact, thanks to that tattoo, we now have a fairly effective demon trap. Next time, killing the host won’t help them escape.”
Comments
STORRM
huh so her tattoo is what saved him at the start
Jonathan Griffith
Tyftc!
