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

“From here, originally, but I’ve been in the World of Rivers and Lakes for eight hundred years.  I just recently came back here.”

“You must be on a Water Path.  Your Core is immense, and you can still fully draw on it here.”

“Yes.” Ryu looked over his shoulder at it. It might want his Core, but Kappa became strangely loyal. “What’s your name?”

“Teppin,” it croaked. “What about you?”

“Ryu. Tell me, was it you who killed that man last night?”

“No.” It shook his head, the water in its bowl sloshing but never spilling. “That’s the Shirikodamanuki clan.”

The Kappa had clans? Perhaps that made sense, just like Cultivators had sects. “Do you know what they are doing here?”

“Looking for easy prey.”

Of course. Humans in the World of Rivers and Lakes had the martial skills to defend themselves against many of the creatures there, but except for the Peacekeepers and MoD shocktroopers, humans here would be defenseless against these yokai.  Even the former’s weapons might not harm certain creatures.  With a name like Shirikodamanuki, it was obvious they were trying to steal Cores.

“What about you?” Ryu asked.

Teppin fiddled with the rim of his bowl. “My clan sent me to monitor them, and to try to steal any Cores they acquired.”

Ryu harrumphed. So Teppin’s clan wasn’t going to do the dirty work themselves, but wanted human Cores all the same. They were just opportunists.

Within a few minutes, they’d nearly reached Ginkakuji, spreading the fog with them.

“How many of the Shirikodamanuki are there in this world, and where are they now?”

“Six.” Teppin pointed southwest. “They’re at the Kamo River, near Shijo.”

“Where did they enter into this world?”

It pointed north. “The Kamigamo Shrine.”

Up to now, the other yokai had entered through Buddhist temples; this was the first instance of a Shinto shrine being used.

“I’m going to introduce you to my friends,” Ryu said.

“Friends? Did they come with you from our world?”

“No, two belong here. Another is from out there.” Ryu gestured to the skies.

Teppin rubbed his bowl again. “What do you mean?”

“From a faraway star.”

“Ohhh.” Teppin’s big lips rounded.

“You owe me your life, right?”

Teppin bowed. “Of course.”

“We are going to fight the Shirikodamanuki clan. I need you to show them your fighting style.”

Chapter 21:

The Hacker

I nside the EtherCloud, the shocktroopers’ encrypted datalink to their hovering gunship appeared to Aya as a cable intertwined by chains and locks.

Static protection, without Sentinels.

Within her dilated perception in the EtherCloud, it gave her near-infinite time to break in. With her hacking algorithm macros appearing as lockpicks, she simultaneously tried a dozen codes in different spaces. Openings quickly appeared, with one large enough for her Avatar to slip through.

She’d done it.

She’d gotten into a Ministry of Defense EtherSpace partition for the first time. As far as she knew, only her friend Slash had accomplished this.

Appearing as a library with rows and rows of shelves, it was a treasure trove to mine, at least until the MoD realized there was an intruder.

“Ai, copy all files, priority on current visual, aural, olfactory datastreams from the shocktrooper armor sensors.”

As the nine-tailed fox dashed off, Aya snooped around. As a gunship, it only contained a limited amount of information; another virtual cable extending into the sky represented its link to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and the spiderweb sprouting from there depicted Earth’s defense network. The thicker cable from the satellite to Northern Europe led to the MoD’s central EtherSpace

How tempting it would be to look around there!

But no, the farther she ventured from the datalink she’d entered through, the harder it would be to get out. Not only that, the MoD’s AI defenses would be Level Eight or Nine, orders of magnitude above Aya’s ability to run from, hide from, commandeer, or decompile.

The Level One Filers on the hovercraft’s server, appearing as wizened librarians in vests with several pockets, would be easy.  She went to the closest one, which would ignore her until she addressed it, and slipped a note into one of its pockets—a command to create copies of the files onboard and assemble them in a packet they’d pass on to Ai when she zipped by.

With a nod, it set about the task she’d assigned, and she continued to the other Filers.  At the fourth, she paused as the robe-garbed Avatar of a real human stuttered into the library from a hallway. Using another macro, she copied its Shell.

When Aya put it on, she would appear to anyone monitoring the EtherSpace as a very fast human. Thus disguised, she went from the library into the hall from which the Avatar had emerged.

Side passages led to rooms that represented other aspects of the craft’s functions. Curious, she continued along a straight path until it arrived at a chamber filled with gears, maps, and other devices.

The control system. Weapons, flight and navigation controls, everything in one place. All relatively unprotected by Level One Sentinels appearing as unarmored foot soldiers, so that humans could operate the vehicle. Indeed, it was mostly Avatars fiddling with the controls, though several laborers—Level One Operators—and craftsmen—Level One Repairers—roved around taking care of mundane tasks.

Now she was getting greedy. From here, she could sever the craft’s link to the MoD, and then set the gunship down in an uninhabited area outside of the city. There was no telling what kind of hardware she could acquire that would help her hack into the MoD’s EtherSpaces in the future. She just had to get to it before the salvage teams.

The uplink to the satellite appeared as four small lines from different parts of the ship, fused to create a thicker tether. She’d have