Quantum Cultivation: A Xianxia / Cyberpunk Novel Read online

  Quantum Cultivation

  A Xianxia/Cyberpunk Novel

  Jace Kang

  Jace Kang

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended.

  Copyright © 2021 by Dragonstone Press, LLC

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work or portions thereof in any way whatsoever, as provided by law. For permission, questions, or contact information, see http://jckang.dragonstonepress.us.

  To Sarah Lin, Tao Wong, Dante King, and eden Hudson for your encouragement.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1:

  Chapter 2:

  Chapter 3:

  Chapter 4:

  Chapter 5:

  Chapter 6:

  Chapter 7:

  Chapter 8:

  Chapter 9:

  Chapter 10:

  Chapter 11:

  Chapter 12:

  Chapter 13:

  Chapter 14:

  Chapter 15:

  Chapter 16:

  Chapter 17:

  Chapter 18:

  Chapter 19:

  Chapter 20:

  Chapter 21:

  Chapter 22:

  Chapter 23:

  Chapter 24:

  Chapter 25:

  Chapter 26:

  Chapter 27:

  Chapter 28:

  Chapter 29:

  Chapter 30:

  Chapter 31:

  Chapter 32:

  Chapter 33:

  Chapter 34:

  Chapter 35:

  Chapter 36:

  Chapter 37:

  Chapter 38:

  Chapter 39:

  Chapter 40:

  Chapter 41:

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1:

  The Purebred

  W hile Ken’s peers were performing calculus in their head, he’d still been learning to add and subtract. Had he lived in the centuries before the Onslaught, teachers would’ve considered his three-year-old self a prodigy.

  Now seventeen, he held one of the best jobs a Purebred could attain: cleaning the floors at Japan Regional Peacekeeping Headquarters in Kyoto Central.

  With the corridor empty, he hefted his mop and twirled it in circles like he’d seen in one of those 2D movies the ancients used to watch during the Age of Greed: Once Upon a Time in China, when there'd been a country known as China. Back then, combat flowed like poetry, so unlike the stuttered fighting drills the Peacekeepers practiced.

  Spinning, he avoided an imaginary sword stab and swept the haft through his equally imaginary opponent. Like the legendary master in the movie, Wong Fei-Hong, Ken left no shadow with his techniques; not because he moved with blinding speed, but rather because of the ubiquitous, sterile light filling the smooth hall. On the upswing of his staff, he—

  The maglift doors at the end of the hall swished open.

  He snapped to attention, bringing the mop to his side, then dared a glance.

  Keiko Oyama, captain of the elite tactical unit of the Peacekeepers, stood there. Her braided brown hair framed an oval face with a high-bridged nose, large eyes, and full lips. Nobody in the world, save for some of the Purebreds, were unpleasant on the eyes, but Keiko was a beauty among beauties.

  She stepped out in perfect unison with two male Peacekeepers on either side. Like all XHumans, they stood about half a head shorter than Ken. Their uniforms clung to them, hers emphasizing the curves of her lithe form. Its grey sheen resembled the underside of a storm cloud, flashing like lightning as they strode toward him. Their clothes ended in toe boots, whose internal suppressors muted the sound of their steps.

  Swallowing hard, he bowed his head. “Captain.”

  “Ken.” She paused midstride, her aides freezing in synchrony.

  His pulse sped up a notch. She knew his name. Nickname, even. And now she was stopping. To talk to him! He kept his head lowered.

  “You missed a spot.” Her tone sounded encouraging, like the way he praised his cousin’s shibakita dog when it performed a trick, as she gestured with an open hand toward the smooth durastrium floor.

  “Thank you, captain.” Ken bowed lower.

  At least she noticed him. That was better than the others, who looked through Purebreds like they did the cleaning droid. No doubt it swept floors better than him, both because of its complicated sensors and algorithms, and also because the work bored him to tears. And to think, they reserved these jobs to help Purebreds find fulfillment in life.

  With a smile that sent his heart fluttering, she continued down the hall, underlings in tow. A door up ahead leading to monitoring station six swished open—

  Glass shattered in the room beyond. Someone within cursed. The men at Captain Keiko’s side dropped into defensive stances, their hands sweeping sidearms from holsters with fluid grace.

  “Ken!” Captain Keiko turned to him and beckoned before she and her men strode in.

  If his heart had fluttered before, now it raced. Whatever had happened, he was needed. She needed him. Ready to use his mop to vanquish the threat, he ran over and looked in.

  Several men and women in high-collared burgundy uniforms bustled about, while others sat watching three-dimensional images. Four officers gathered around one display, pointing.

  Ken craned over Captain Keiko’s shoulder to get a better view.

  The projected form of an adult Purebred male with long, glossy black hair was looking right at them, head leaning forward. Illuminated by the late-morning sun, his bushy black eyebrows scrunched together and shifted. Though his face placed him in his twenties, his eyes held the wisdom of an elder.

  “Pan back three meters,” a major ordered the projector’s AI.

  The man shrank, revealing him to be wearing curious black robes. They looked like they were right out of the old samurai dramas, save for the decorative silver border along the hems. Staff in hand, his eyes followed them. The shorter passersby in fashionably bright-colored clothes gave him a wide berth, and pretended not to stare.

  “Could the scanners be wrong?” the major asked.

  The lieutenant beside him shook her head. “The scanners do not detect an ID chip.”

  Ken patted his body. He and every other human—Purebred and XHuman alike—had a nanochip that stored everything about them, from their date of birth to the last shirt they’d bought.

  “That can’t be right,” the major said. “He must’ve found a way to deactivate or remove the chip.”

  That couldn’t be right, either. Ken’s forehead bunched up. The chip circulated in the blood, making it impossible to find without technology only the government had.

  The major turned to another station. “Specialist Hernandez, run facial recognition. Corporal Wilson, run spectral DNA analysis.”

  “Yes, sir,” a man and woman said in unison.

  The woman’s fingers waved through the air, and in front of her, two-dimensional faces flashed over each other. They looked so similar as the images slowed, like the stick figures Ken used to draw and flip through in the corner of his textbook for classic languages.

  “Well?” The major put his hands on his hips. “Is it like the girl who turned up at Honnoji Temple last week? Nothing in the database?”

  “Yes, but I’m searching deeper in the older archives.” Specialist Hernandez’s hand swiped through the display again, and a mix of both the alphabet and the old script danced through the air.

  Kanji, they’d once called it. Ken
shuddered. Studying the classics from actual paper books had been considered spirit-building, to imbue a sense of pride in the Asiatic cultures that once flourished here. Even though everyone used the planetary government’s sanctioned alphabet now.

  He turned back to the image of the stranger, who looked to be speaking to a young woman. Words flashed above her, identifying her as Yuki Papadapolous.

  “Have the closest team intercept,” the major said. “Computer, transfer sound to main speakers.”

  In the display, the woman waved a hand back and forth and shook her head as the man’s speech came out in a lilting mix of sounds.

  He was speaking the old language, just like the strange girl from last week who’d turned up out of nowhere, stolen a glowing blue sphere from an old well, and then vanished into a folding space aperture. Analysis of her skin particle DNA didn’t match anyone going as far back as DNA records went; an algorithmic analysis of mitochondrial DNA predicted her maternal line had died out three thousand years ago. Still, her genetics had proved one thing: unlike the vast majority of XHumans today, she’d been Purebred, like Ken.

  “It must be another like that girl,” a sergeant said.

  “Maybe.” The major snorted. “The Elestrae know something about it, but they won’t tell us. Computer, translate.”

  The stranger approached another man and bowed in the old way. Just like in the really old movies from the great empire known as Shaw Brothers, the words coming out of his mouth didn’t match the movement of his lips.

  “Excuse me, I am looking for Honnoji.”

  Ken’s heart raced. Nobody else but him would have remembered Honnoji if the strange girl hadn’t turned up last week. Since then, it had been all over the news. Investigative reporters had dug up old records showing that Honnoji Academy had once been an elementary school. It, in turn, had been built over the ruins of an old temple where the famous warlord Oda Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his retainers, one thousand, three hundred years before.

  “DNA analysis shows he is also Purebred,” the sergeant said.

  Just like the strange girl.

  And Ken.

  Specialist Tani gasped. “I found a record that matches his DNA…from 2015. Ishihara Ryusuke.”

  The buzz of Peacekeepers went silent. No doubt they’d done the math faster than Ken. The man was eight hundred years old. XHumans only lived to three hundred, and the theoretical maximum for Homo sapiens was four hundred. Chatter erupted again.

  “That’s not possible,” someone said. “Life expectancy back then was eighty years.”

  Just like Ken’s kind now. If the man wasn’t genetically modified, his appearance would suggest he was in his late twenties.

  “Cryostasis?” the major asked.

  A female lieutenant shook her head. “Cryotech wasn’t so advanced back then.”

  “The Pointy-Ears have supposedly dabbled in time travel,” Specialist Tani said.

  The lieutenant shook her head. “Time travel takes a vast amount of energy, and it’s just as reliable now as cryostasis was in his time. Look.”

  In the display, three Peacekeepers in light armor approached the man.

  “Excuse me, kind sirs.” Ishihara Ryusuke bowed. “I am looking for Honnoji.”

  The Peacekeepers exchanged looks.

  Of course, they didn’t have the benefit of translation AI, unless they’d thought to activate it in their ear dots. One held up an open hand. “Stand where you are, drop the staff, hands on your head.”

  The man cocked his head. “So sorry. My English not good.”

  In the monitoring station, murmurs erupted again. He was speaking in Universal Sol, with a heavy accent. The ancients had called it English.

  Snarling, the lead Peacekeeper shot a hand out. His motion blurred in Ken’s eye, the effect of centuries of genetic modification combined with the reflex enhancements imbued by his armor. His fingers closed around the staff.

  In an even faster movement, the stranger seized the Peacekeeper’s hand and twisted the staff. The Peacekeeper dropped to his knees with a yell. It happened so quickly, Ken would’ve missed it had he blinked.

  It shouldn’t have been possible for a Purebred to do that to a XHuman in reflex-enhanced Peacekeeper armor.

  But there it was. The end of the staff dug into the Peacekeeper’s wrist, which bent at a sharp angle.

  The other Peacekeepers drew their particle guns, but their target released the first, ducked low, and used the staff to sweep the second’s feet out from under him. Rising, he let go of the staff—which balanced on the street— seized the third’s gun, and twisted it out of his hands. A simultaneous whip of an open palm sent him flying back three meters.

  The man’s motions were so smooth, they could’ve been the master’s from that old movie. Ken gawked.

  In that, he was just like everyone else in the room.

  While the second Peacekeeper rolled onto his side and the first staggered to his feet, the stranger went over to the third’s prone form and seized his wrist. The monitoring room went utterly quiet. In the display, the onlookers covered their mouths in a collective gasp. Many turned their heads away.

  Ken winced at what was about to happen. The heroes of old weren’t supposed to really hurt anyone, let alone a helpless—

  The man withdrew a pouch from the fold of his cloak, removed something from it, and flicked his fingers in several places over the unconscious Peacekeeper’s body.

  “Pan in on Peacekeeper 23060,” the major said, breaking the silence.

  The Peacekeeper grew in size. Something straight and shiny protruded from his hands, shins, and forehead.

  Needles?

  With a light groan, the Peacekeeper stirred.

  Ken joined in the collective gasp, though only he, because of his love of old media, knew of this medicine, ancient even to the Age of Greed. The stranger was an acupuncturist.

  Just like Wong Fei-Hong from Once Upon a Time in China.

  “Captain Oyama,” the major barked. “Send a team to extract the fallen Peacekeeper, and apprehend the suspect.”

  “Yes, sir.” Captain Keiko saluted, turned on her heel, and gestured her men along.

  She paused and met Ken’s eyes. “Ken,” she said.

  Why would she stop? His heart raced again. Would she want him to go along with her team? It couldn’t be. It—

  She gestured to where some shattered glass lay in a puddle of water. “Please clean that up.”

  Chapter 2:

  The Cultivator

  I n the nearly eight hundred years since Ishihara Ryu had crossed into the World of Rivers and Lakes, the land of his birth had changed. The floating vehicles didn’t come as a surprise; they’d been conceptualized back then, and even appeared in some movies. Nor did the shiny metal skyscrapers in a city which had once taken pride in its ancient architecture.

  No, it was the people.

  Beyond the fact that someone was picking their nose in public, nobody looked Japanese.

  Well, the middle-aged woman sweeping the streets did; but besides her, everyone looked to be in their mid-twenties, with a ubiquitous beige skin tone, dark spikey hair, and eyes of varying shades of brown. That fact in itself wasn’t bothersome: it meant that in eight centuries, mankind had finally gotten past superficial distinctions of race, color, and nation.

  No, more disconcerting was their awful taste in clothes. His eyes ached at the garish colors, and the zigzag cuts didn’t seem to follow any logical pattern.

  The most perplexing fact was that beneath their outward façade of good health lay a fragility in their Three Treasures. Their Qi trickled, their Essence lacked foundation, and their Spirit wavered.

  A simple Splashing Hand shouldn’t have injured his third attacker so grievously, certainly not when his composite armor had absorbed most of the blow. Bystanders had just stood and gawked, nobody willing to intervene on behalf of these poor warriors. Had he not unblocked his victim’s meridians with acupuncture, the man mig
ht’ve died in a few years.

  At least the soldiers were determined.

  The first, whose wrist ligaments he’d sprained, had gained his feet, while the second shouted and charged.

  Trying not to yawn, he spun away from the man’s punch, and sent him tumbling head over heels with a Crashing Wave shoulder-butt. He held back though, so that the force only cracked the molded chest plate, and maybe a bone or three.

  Well, they’d both be all right, with nothing more than a few fractures and bruised egos.

  The first, however, apparently wanted more. These modern warriors were low-key cute, like the village children who were first learning to circulate their Qi.

  Though why they’d attacked him, he couldn’t fathom.

  Who assaulted visitors asking for directions? Maybe the sect elders were right: that beyond whatever technological advancements mankind might’ve made, these people’s culture and morals were as bankrupt as their Qi. It was all the more reason he couldn’t fail in his mission to seal off the portals between here and the World of Rivers and Lakes.

  The remaining warrior tucked his chin behind his fists and hopped back and forth on the balls of his feet. He looked very much like the boxers of Ryu’s youth, before the sport had been banned for, of all things, barbarism. He’d watched matches on television, and now marveled that there weren’t any screens anywhere in this city. Of all the things that had changed from his youth, the most surprising strangest was the lack of screens among the otherwise sparkling towers, dancing lights, and levitating cars.

  He let out a sigh and held out a hand. Words came out haltingly in a language he hadn’t used in what, seven hundred and sixty years? “I no want fight.”

  “Surrenda, hands on your head,” the warrior shouted, still dancing.

  Hands on head. That he could do, and maybe the warrior would spare himself further injury. Maybe they’d even guide him to Honnoji.

  Whatever the first word meant…well, English had never really interested him in junior high school. He kicked up his staff, caught the butt end on his toe, and balanced it. Of course, the six Cores embedded in its wood made the trick easier. He then put his hands on his head.