I set up the barrier again, then spent the night building seeds within my body, careful to do the best job I could. The fact that I could keep the qi at just below the threshold for PLQ, therefore maximizing my absorption rates, meant that I was able to finish all nine body systems and three additional mind systems before sunrise, even working in two hours of the Mental Rest technique so that I would be well rested.
Around an hour after sunrise I got up, stowed the flags, and deactivated the barrier. I was immediately greeted by the sounds of dozens of people going about their day mixed with the sounds of at least a dozen different animals. Now that I thought about it, though, the people here were a lot like farmers, and farmers normally worked from sun rise to sun set. At least, that was what I had heard.
I stepped outside and noticed Ben sitting on my porch, rapidly reading a book copy of the Beast Tamer’s technique. “Randy sent me to get you for breakfast.” he said in the local language. “I knocked, but you didn’t seem to hear me.”
“I had a barrier up to block sound. I didn’t want to be disturbed.” I pointed to the book. “I’m impressed you can do layered reading that fast. What rating is the book?” Maybe it was just a Petty copy and only had the first layer, the normal text.
“Layered reading?” he said. “I don’t know what that is. This is average grade, but it doesn’t seem any different to the petty one to me other than the slightly better materials it is made of.”
I nodded, surprised that he hadn’t learned about the layers yet. I explained the first two methods of adding layers to him as we walked to the mess hall, cross eyed and heat sight, and he tried them, immediately noticing two additional levels. “I loaned Mike a technique jade for Layered Text, so if you know the Jade Memory Transfer technique you might want to read it. Though you might need to read through both it and the Jade Memory Transfer jades multiple times to learn everything, as they feed into each other. It lists at least ten different ways to add layers to written text, and has a chapter on how to imbue complex concepts into jade slips. If I had to guess, though, those two technique will get quite popular soon, so you might want to borrow them as quickly as possible.”
“I’d love to,” said Ben, “But I’m overseeing the construction of the outer wall, so I won’t get an opportunity to study them until after sunset. I have to set out as soon as breakfast is finished, and I have the new guy to train as well. Sure, he’s a carpenter, but there’s only so much fine quality you can put on a palisade wall, even when we need a fancy butterfly or dovetail joint to hold an attached building in place and stabilize it without nails.” I suspected that Ben used to watch carpentry shows back on Earth, as most people didn’t know what those types of wood joints were.
“You might be able to reserve them.” I said, and he nodded and shrugged.
“Maybe.” We then reached the mess hall and went inside. It was busy, and it seemed that everyone in the room shared the same food. There was a table reserved for Elders, where Mike, Randy, and several other people sat, but they seemed to eat the same food as the disciples. An admirable show of comradery.
Ben and I went to the serving line and soon we both arrived with plates loaded with bacon, scrambled eggs, and rice porridge. Everything here seemed to be giving off qi. The bacon was likely from one of the boars I saw last night, probably a weakblood, the eggs were from various medium or large spirit birds, and the rice was from High River’s overproduced spirit rice stores.
The two of us sat down at the Elders table. It was only then that I realized that, as Ben was already level three, he was technically an elder of the sect. I hadn’t noticed it because I had only heard him take orders from Mike and Randy, and be referred to as Randy’s disciple. I supposed that made Randy a higher rated elder, though he was controlling his qi at the moment, so I couldn’t tell his actual level. My guess was late or peak level three. Maybe initial level four at most, as Mike was far stronger than him when they were on Earth, and was only now crossing from Late level four to Peak level four.
Ben brought up the Layered reading and asked if anyone else knew about it. Mike spoke up. “Actually, I got so mentally exhausted once while reading that my eyesight got blurry and I saw another, similar meaning in a few words. I wasn’t sure if it was something others could do, but it did help me to understand the text better once I started doing it on purpose.”
“I accidentally left my heat vision on during a moonless night.” said Randy. “Saw something similar. Nice to know it wasn’t just me.”
“Magic mushrooms.” said an older man at the table. “I’m a biologist, and I was studying the local spirit plants. I found several types of spirit mushrooms that I wanted to test as possible ingredients in food or alchemy, but when I ate one I thought was safe I developed synesthesia. I heard the smell of the page and opened the musical book, only to see new meaning coming off the page. I thought I was just high, though.”
I explained to them about the Layered Text technique and how it was trying to mimic the complex concepts of a memory in jade, as well as about the link between the Jade memory transfer technique and the Layered Text technique. I then encouraged them to teach everyone to the maximum level of both to maximize what they could get out of their techniques. Some of them loved the idea, and decided to start making lower grade copies of both techniques as soon as they had learned them, essentially having Low and Average quality versions for mass distribution, then High level versions which could be read once they had mastered the others.
Once breakfast was over I got up and thanked them, then asked Mike if there was somewhere I could go to practice making talismans and talisman paper. One of the men at the table, Dr. Shmidt, had also started learning to craft talismans, providing both the ones to keep the animals in their pen and the ones needed for the contract technique Mike used in town, so he said that I could follow him. He had never made his own paper or ink, instead having whoever went to town purchase the paper and ink for him, and wanted to study the process.
After taking our dishes to the kitchen I followed him back to his workshop near the mine, about fifty meters from my cabin. After bringing out boards and stands to hold the paper, he spoke up. “So, how do we make paper?”
I shrugged and pulled the sheets I had left from my bag. “I don’t really know how to make this type of paper. I know that it involves pulp from spirit wood and infusing the energy of certain botanical preparations, but I didn’t study the method very much due to the inefficiency of the resulting talismans. They tend to have no more than one third of the full effect, as the paper lacks the energy needed to trigger the effect. What I want to make is actually better described as talisman leather, and if made perfectly can fully power the spell just from stored qi.” I motioned towards one of my bags and the body of a level one vrooshkin came out. Because it had been in storage, the decay had been greatly slowed, so its condition was as if it were only an hour old. “I need to use the skin, blood, and core of this creature to create the leather. I will crush the core, mix it with the blood of this demon, then paint it onto the hide, before infusing the power of the blood and core into the leather, then repeating the last two steps until it is saturated or I ran out of the mixture.”
Dr. Shmidt looked surprised and a little disgusted at that. “In that case, I think we should go visit the tannery. Butchering a demon there is fine, and it is where we already hang up the skins we use to make clothing.” He stored all of his supplies in his bag and then removed something from the beast bag he was wearing. It was a tiny black dog with pitch black eyes. The dog looked at him, its tail wagging, then disappeared, reappearing on his shoulder. He reached up and petted it. “Shadow Shifter dog.” he said. “I has the ability to jump around like that, as well as control shadows. Bought it off of a traveling trader for five hundred stones. As a pureblood of a rare breed it was worth it. Once he grows up he’ll be able to fly, and some legends even say that they can open portals at level five, the same way level five cultivators can.”
I nodded. It sounded like he got ripped off to me, but if it could reach level five one day even five hundred thousand wouldn’t be too much. As we walked towards the tannery and he started feeding the puppy strips of bacon from his pocket, likely taken from the mess hall at breakfast, I spoke up. “Actually, I left my copy of the high grade Talismonger book with Mike. If we could both reread it before we start the process, I think it could help us understand the process better.”
“Really?” Shmidt asked, surprised. “I’ve been using the talisman schematics from the Beast Tamers manual, and discovered how to use certain spirit inks and blood from experimentation, then bought those inks from the talisman merchant. I was only doing the job because no one else was doing it, not because I was interested in the process. Even now my interest is in saving money, not in the actual craft. But if you have a copy of the book and don’t mind me reading it, I’ll accept the offer gladly.”
“Oh, I gave him many occupational texts for the disciples to read while I’m here. As long as they don’t damage them, it costs me nothing to help out Randy’s friends. As far as I know reading a Jade doesn’t damage it, so I might as well loan it to your sect when I’m not using it.” He nodded in understanding. “I actually kind of like the idea of creating talismans. I’ve always found the idea that you could store a spell for later use, possibly by someone that doesn’t know it, fascinating. I’ve just never really looked into it. I got caught up in studying other things, so I never really had time to study this subject.”
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He nodded. “I never thought of it that way. Now that I have, though, it does make it more interesting. They are like small, cheaper devices or artifacts, something that those without a lot of money can use. They can also work as a way to build up your resources for future use, something that is usually only done by stockpiling spirit stones or pills.”
We reached Mike’s office and he knocked on the door. When Mike’s secretary answered the door Shmidt asked him about the books and was informed that he sent them to the sect library. Shmidt said goodbye, then lead me a minute away to another building with the words ‘techniques’ above the door. We went inside and I saw three shelves filled with books. The first only contained copies of the Beast Tamer’s guide, with the most expensive Average copies on the top shelf, the less expensive Lesser copies on the two shelves beneath that, and the other four shelves full of Petty copies. The next shelf contained copies of the Cook and Manual Laborer guides, similarly sorted by quality, as well as a few dozen other technique and cultivation books, including the ones I wrote that Randy brought here to sell. The last shelf wasn’t entirely full, but it included a wide variety of other books, such as historical and educational texts, including guides to different types of animals, plants, and types of rock.
Shimdt asked the disciple in charge of the library, a peak level two, about the books. He brought out the slip in question quickly. “Excuse me.” I said before Shmidt could use it. “Do you still have the slips for the Jade memory Transfer technique and the Layered Reading technique?”
The disciple shook his head. “Unfortunately not. Dr. Lee took them about...” He pulled out a cell phone and checked the screen. “Twenty minutes ago so that he could make copies of them using some of the jade slips we bought for record keeping. I probably won’t have any copies until this afternoon, and the high grade ones probably won’t be in stock until a few days from now, once he has enough practice with the memory transfer technique to make near perfect copies. If you want, though, I can contact you once we get an appropriate quality one in stock.” He pulled out a fine tipped permanent marker and a spiral bound notepad. “Can I have your name, your address, and what quality you are looking for?”
“Uh, Li Kev.” I answered instinctively, “but I’ll just come back in a few days.”
He wrote my name down using English characters, then seemed to realize something. “Right, I heard of you. You’re Randy’s friend, and the one who loaned us all of those jades. I thought Randy was only into a specific type of women, but I’m not judging.”
I sighed. “Drinking and gambling buddies. Not that kind of friend. I’m only interested in women too.”
“Well, you’ll be out of luck here. Only two of us original founders were women, and only three of the eighty recruits so far are. Or, I guess four with that family signing up, but she’s already got a man, and the daughter is still a child. Most sects are around thirty percent female, with female cultivators tending more towards safer jobs in cities, but we got the short end of the stick there.”
I smiled. “Well, I didn’t come here for that. I was just in High River, so I could just find a woman there if I wanted one. I have a dao companion, though. so I wasn’t even searching for one there.”
“Union Sect Outer Disciple, I’m guessing? We have a copy of their manual here, so I read it.” He pointed to the bottom of the middle shelf. “Some kind of nonsense about souls splitting into male and female before reincarnation, then needing to find each other after birth. Not the weirdest religious doctrine I’ve read, but I can see why most of the people here reject it.”
I couldn’t reveal at this time that I was from Earth just like him, a place where monogamy was far more common, being part of over 30% of romantic relationships, but I didn’t want to make it sound like she was part of a religion I knew nothing about either. I had no choice but to make something up. “She was probably influenced by them, but I’m not sure exactly what her feelings are on that matter. We never really talked about marriage. I just know that before I left on my trip she told me that she didn’t want me to find another woman, even temporarily, and promised not to find another man. I agreed to her request.”
He nodded. “Honestly, I know lots of people with similar relationship rules, just not on this…” Shmidt cleared his throat and the man realized that he almost said he was from another world. “Region.” he finished, not bothering to correct his poor grammar out of fear of making it even more suspicious. I knew from last night’s conversation that the sect was founded so that they could hide from the three sects and their assassins, so he couldn’t tell anyone where he was actually from. Ideally he wouldn’t pull out a cell phone or anything else from Earth, nor write in English or another Earth language, but that could be explained as his buying the goods from Earth before the siege and writing in a language of a different region, lies that it was unlikely anyone could disprove. “Right,” he said after an awkward pause. “I’ll contact Randy or Dr. Shmidt when we get the originals or high grade copies in stock, and send the two of you both of the jades.”
I thanked him and then thought of something. “Do you happen to have any blank jade slips, then? I’m not sure what level it is, but I can put my knowledge of both techniques onto slips for you if you want. It’s not as easy to use as just reading a book, but my memory fragments might help someone else more easily understand the technique.”
He nodded and pulled out two disks about five centimeters across and five millimeters thick. “This is the style we use for record keeping.” he said, handing me two of them. These were actually from Earth, likely brought as a trade good, which meant that they were poorer quality than the ones the local books were on. I could tell as much from the amount of qi contained in it, as local jade had been exposed for thousands of years and therefore absorbed enough to qualify as a middle level one material at worst, and a middle level two material if it came from certain ancient veins instead of the local newer veins that were no more than two thousand years old. The Earth material had only been exposed for twenty five or thirty years, so it was barely initial level one, and could better be described as half-step level one, an unofficial term which meant that a person had tried to grow meridians but at least partially failed, like Maria when she was in the coma from failing her breakthrough.
“The quality of this jade is too low for a detailed memory.” I said. The more qi the material contained, the more detail one could store, and therefore the more realistic the memory. I would be editing the memories so that they didn’t contain information about me being from Earth, and the low quality could help disguise that, but if it was too low quality it would be difficult to use. This was one factor that contributed to the poor quality of the jades computers could produce. “If you don’t mind, I will try to improve its quality.”
He nodded, and I used a bit of qi to put a tiny hole in my skin. I rubbed the blood on both sides of the jade coin before it stopped bleeding, then made my hand symbol and focused on the coin absorbing the essence within the blood. This was a version of the imbuing technique for creating talismans, based roughly on what the man had done when improving my sword and the seal plate. At first nothing seemed to happen, but after around a minute the resistance within the material started to disappear and the qi started flowing into it, strengthening it and slightly changing its atomic structure. The same thing happened within the flesh of a cultivator, but was less obvious due to how slow the process was.
While blood wasn’t the best material for this process, I didn’t have any qi enriched fluids or liquid chi to use. I eventually managed to turn two of the coins into proper initial level two materials. I wiped the dried blood off of them and touched the first one to my head. I sent a stream of qi into the jade, focusing on refining it with my memories, similar to how one refined the body with one’s guiding vision of perfection. Slowly the memories of my experiences using the memory transfer technique were infused in it, while hiding any connections to Earth. My practice with the computer produced jades even showed them as coming from a strange crystalline device, a fabrication which was needed, as this region of the world didn’t have the memory transfer electronic devices outside of the military base. Eventually I added my current use of the technique to transfuse these memories into this Jade, and the memory started to fade as it managed to catch up with current events. I ended the connection, then reconnected once more to add the disconnection, then handed it to Shmidt.
As he connected to the Jade and started reading it, viewing the memory like a dream, I started on the Layered Reading technique. This one was much easier to do as it required far less editing. I had learned the technique and first practiced it at the Eastern Gate sect with the Human Slag technique. I didn’t need to filter the book itself, only the identity of the woman that taught me and the sect. I then added in the various jades and books I had read with it, focusing on the method instead of the contents of the book. I knew that some of the book would leak through, but didn’t care if they would get individual sentences of the text. The one exception was when I got to Chasing Tribulation. I only added in the specific words and their various levels, trying to duplicate the concepts as accurately as I could with my crude technique, then carefully removed all context. I wasn’t sure how to treat the book at this time, so I would keep it from the general disciples for now.
When I finished, Shmidt was finished with the first slip as well, so I handed him the second. The librarian was busy viewing the first, so I got another jade from the stack and started infusing qi into it. I was still busy doing that when Shmidt finished the second slip. “That was...a strange experience. I feel like I had a vision from god, but know that it was just a dream, an illusion you created to share knowledge. It will likely take me several hours of meditation to fully assimilate it.”
“I likely made a few mistakes in the transfer.” I said while maintaining my focus on the jade slip I was infusing. “It didn’t cause any nausea or headaches, did it?”
“Just a feeling like I’m coming down from a good high.” said the librarian in a voice like an intoxicated person, having finally finished the first jade.
“That is likely because you aren’t used to lucid dreaming like me.” said Shmidt, rubbing his eyes. “My experience allowed me to realize it was a dream and not something I was actually going through, so I could see things objectively. You, on the other hand, were likely dragged along with the memory as it unfolded.” He laid the second jade on the counter. “Please be more careful with this one. I am an entire level above you and even I found using it to be mentally taxing.” The Librarian nodded and put it in an envelope labeled ‘Layered Reading memories, Li Kev’.
