Quantum Cultivation by Jace Kang (simple e reader TXT) 📕

knock people unconscious without causing permanent damage.  Wait.” Ken halted and spun around. “When they captured you, they hit you with six shots. Just now, there were far more, yet not a single one hit you.”

“A beam did graze me, actually.” Ryu brushed off a spot on his shoulder. “It low-key tickled.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone recovering so quickly after getting hit by one on the lowest setting. Even when you were hit by six beams, you woke up in an hour.”

Ryu shrugged. “Yes.”

“And this time,” Ken said, “you were able to avoid the shots. Why did you let them capture you before?”

Ryu put two palms over his Core. “Had I dodged those attacks, bystanders would’ve been struck.”

Ken’s eyes widened. “So you sacrificed yourself?”

“It’s the Code of Rivers and Lakes.”

“Rivers and Lakes?”

Ryu nodded. “The World of Rivers and Lakes is the world of martial Cultivators...and supernatural creatures.”

“Like the secret societies from Imperial China?” Excitement rising in his voice, Ken made a sharp turn into a new hall.

They looked just about the same, cold and sterile. Ryu touched the smooth wall. “Yes. Like those groups, we lay both outside the margin of society and also hidden within.”

“Where is it?”

“Here, but not here.”

Predictably, the boy looked confused. “How so?”

How to explain it? “Imagine this place on the planet. Layers of reality are stacked on one another.” Ryu set one hand on top of the other.

Ken looked no less bewildered.

“Same place, different realities. Where I’m from, there’s no gleaming city of concrete, glass, and lights, but a town of wood and dirt roads.”

“How do you get there?”

Ryu studied the young man. “There are portals.”

“I’d love to go to your world.”

Ryu snorted. The boy wouldn’t last long there.

“And what’s this about a Code?” Ken asked.

The kid sure had a lot of questions. Ryu chuckled. “To quote a great muse from the…what did you call it, the Age of Greed? ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

“I’ve never heard of this. Who said it? Confucius? Lao Zi?”

“Stan Lee.”

Ken’s head rose and fell in slow bobs. “I heard the men you fought weren’t seriously injured.”

“No, part of the Code is that we do only as much damage as we need to, especially against those who have not yet started practicing Cultivation.” Ryu stopped, then pointed at a pair of doors up ahead. “Is that a maglift?”

With a wide smile, Ken nodded. He lengthened his stride—only to fall back on his butt. He rubbed his nose. “Ow!”

“What happened?”

Clambering to his feet, Ken reached out. His hands stopped flat, and he moved them up and down, left to right. Anyone on the other side would think he was doing his best impression of an Age of Greed mime.

Ryu came up beside him and extended his own palm out.  It hit a flat surface, as if the air had become solid. “What is this?”

“Another force field.” Shuffling on his feet, Ken slapped the invisible wall. Panic rose in his voice. “What are we going to do? They’re herding us into a trap. What—”

“Wait. Stop fidgeting,” Ryu said. The boy’s Core gave him potential, but he’d never amount to anything if he didn’t stop and focus. “Take a deep breath.”

“What?”

“To quote another great sage, ‘Just do it.’”

“Which great sage was that?”

Which one was it? “Either the Bodhidharma, George Lucas, or Michael Jordan.” Ryu put one hand on Ken’s belly. Beneath, the network of energy channels had vast potential, but his Core would never solidify without Cultivation. “Grip the floor with your toes, bend your knees, and tilt your hips forward.”

“Why?”

“To anchor your Spirit. It will help you clear your mind.”

Head bobbing up and down, the boy did as he was told, following the pressure of Ryu’s hands to adjust his stance. He was actually a quick learner.

“All right,” he said. “It’s a dead end. We need to backtrack.”

“There’s another way,” came a sing-songy male voice behind them.

Nobody ever snuck up on Ryu without him sensing their Qi. He spun around and threw a punch.

His fist passed right through an impossibly handsome young man. His long black hair was tied up in a topknot. His skin tone was lighter than everyone else’s, and with his high cheekbones and large, angular eyes, he probably belonged to Ken’s Purebred class.

Except that he wore white robes similar in fashion to Ryu’s confiscated ones.

Another Cultivator? It would explain how he’d snuck up without Ryu sensing their Qi, and the white marked him as a practitioner of the Metal Path. Over the centuries, a handful of Cultivators had left the World of Rivers and Lakes for this world, never to return. This must be one of them, though his plain robes didn’t mark a rank.

Still, for Ryu’s hand to pass right through him… Projecting an image of oneself while cloaking one’s actual position was the province of the Fire Path’s Fourth Rank.  Very few people ever reached even the Third Rank of another discipline. Certainly not a Metal Cultivator, who risked Scorching his Core with the Fire Path. Which meant…

This man must have transcended the Elemental Paths! And maintained mastery in this world, no less. “A Transcendent,” he said, awe in his voice.

For a Transcendent to be here meant he must know of Ryu’s mission. Withdrawing his hand, Ryu set a fist into his other palm and bowed low. “My apologies for attacking you, Great Sage.”

Ken was just turning around, and Ryu reached out and nudged him into a bow.

“It’s okay,” the Transcendent said, eyes roving over him.

Okay? Transcendents supposedly used only formal wording. Then again, he must’ve been in the mundane world for a long time and picked up some of their more unrefined language. And if Ryu weren’t already almost naked, he’d swear