Chapter 11: The True Spirit?

The next day everyone gathered in the courtyard. Jessy looked rather ragged today. Apparently she’d been dragged into the lab at some point for her hypno-memory implant and experienced some things she’d have been better off not ever having witnessed.

According to Skay, she very willingly jumped at the chance to join the Brotherhood. The face she made when he said that showed a great deal of grievance however, so James decided to take it with grain of salt.

The now ever present Harvy was lifelessly standing in a very ghoulish manner nearby with flies crawling over his yellowed eyeballs. He didn’t even seem to notice though and nobody wanted to approach him to let him know because he smelled dead, so he was left like that.

Once Hao arrived, Skay dumped out all the books he’d borrowed yesterday and then he and James launched into a discussion with Hao about cultivation realms.

Through their discussions James and Skay only grew more enthusiastic, whispering and muttering with each other every now and then like two old house wives gossiping about that bitch who’s been ‘hitting on their man’ while sitting right in front of said bitch drinking coffee.

Jessy the poor girl only grew more confused as the discussion progressed. She didn’t understand all these weird terms like spirit power condensation or true spirt formation.

She gleaned a few clues in the beginnings but soon felt so lost her head started hurting. Eventually Hao had to leave and the duo returned to the lab. Jessy, feeling incredibly left out, chased the boys to their lab. When she arrived they were crowded around a computer screen pointing at something and laughing in the exact same way. Madly.

The lighting of the lab was very dim until James slammed a hand down on a button and the lab began to be bathed in blue flashing lights and ‘zzt zzt’ sounds from a spot hidden behind a curtain. From where she stood, she could only see a strange shadow being bathed on the other side of the curtain. From where James and Skay stood they could see whatever was happening on the other side and whatever it was it only made their sickening smiles grow wider.

Slightly curious but mostly apprehensive, Jessy approached the pair while they discussed and finally got a glimpse past the curtain. There, in a metal wire mesh ball, was a very wet little blue ferret writhing around with a green wire attached to him leading to the ground. The ball was suspended by a green rope made of vines and the little round metal cage it was trapped in was surrounded by a multitude of metal rods all shooting massive arcs of lightning onto the cage from every direction.

‘Torture! My god! There torturing that poor little animal to death!’ Jessy, with that single thought, ran forward and smashed the big red button James had just pushed, cutting off the lightning.

“James you disgusting piece of shit. I knew that dried up old fuck was mad but I never thought you’d be so fucking disgusting as to electrocute such an adorable little creature. Have you no shame?!”

While yelling at James she started moving forward and pulling the rods away from the cage to get in and free the little ferret.

James wicked smile fell when Jessy pushed past him towards the cage. “Jess you bitch, what the hell is shame? Can I eat it? Can I sell it? If I can sell it, I probably sold it a long time ago! Who needs something useless like shame? Also Jess, I wouldn’t...” before James finished Jess had already reached the little blue ferret but the moment she parted the wire mesh cage and touched it Little Blue let out a loud screech and Jessy was shot back across the room like a rocket, smashing into the wall of the lab.

Seeing Jessy slumped on the floor shaking and trying to get her feet under herself James put a very innocent and confused expression on his face. “Should I have started with don’t touch the ferret and discussed shame afterwards?” He very shamelessly asked Dr. Skay.

Skay of course, being as mad as he is, chose to play along as well. “Shame? Can I eat that?”

Once the little ferret had been rudely pulled out of euphoria by Jessy it started screeching and shaking the cage, until finally the ghoul had reset the rods. James then smashed the big red button again and laughed madly with Skay as the flashing of the lightning painted their faces especially malevolent.

Jessy only now truly felt like she’d stepped into a whole new world as she climbed to her feet watching the ferret role and jump around inside the cage and James and Skay laughing in their madness. “What the fuck is actually going on in here?”

James and Skay ignored her and once their laughing died down James leaned back, sitting on the bench and looked to Skay with his arms crossed. “I doubt Little Blue will ever gain the element of True Lightning because he’s already entered the True Spirit stage and it’s too late to try and teach him the wind element. He’s fairly close now though just when he uses all the spirit energy he’s accumulated in his body in one go. Hmm ... We can perhaps try it on one of the other forest hoppers? For now though, let’s just leave him in his cage to soak up all the electricity. With any luck he can push half way through to the Spirit Palace in at least a month. If we design a better method of creating electricity than these old reverse engineered pressure pumps we may be able to speed that up.”

As he spoke Skay was rummaging around in a wooden box filled with an assortment of strange and wonderful gadgets he spent the whole night building. Finally he pulled out James’ Gau Compass and passed it back to him. “I finished having a look at your compass last night. Spent almost half my time on the stone actually and still barely understand it. What I do know though is it’s a superconductor. Basically zero energy loss in energy transfer, like excited electrons aren’t even given a chance to jump into an atoms orbit and just get pulled forward. It’s almost as if this material isn’t so much conducting electricity, as it’s allowing it to bridge a space between both ends. Bloody thing doesn’t even heat up or create electro-magnetic waves but can release energy pulled through it at any position on its surface. Makes it very dangerous.

“The danger is outweighed by the pros though. If we were to make a cable out of this it could essentially carry an infinite level of current and voltage to any location instantaneously. This material is truly mind blowing and if I really wanted to understand it I’d need another 20 years working by myself. More aggravating is how exactly it fucking find places. If I had to guess it tracks a location by some kind of magnetic frequency that your mind subconsciously records when it memorises a place. That’s why the stronger your memory when you envision a place the more accurate the compass is. The reason tracking items or people only works with lightning elements is because it needs to charge its little black-iron box up to create a strong enough electro-magnetic field that it can sense the changes in position. Or something. That’s only my best guess. That would mean the more lightning affinity spirit energy you pump into it when placing a vision the more accurate it will be. Long distance tracking with it would almost be impossible though. It would probably work if I hooked you up to nuclear reactor and we made it an even bigger box and had a bigger spirit stone.”

Finished with his explanation on the properties of the Lightning Seeking Spirit Stone he turned to the Ghoul. “Harvy, get ready, I want to examine every possible reaction your body makes when you condense a True Spirit and break your Spirit Barrier.”

“Yes, Master.” Harvy nodded and moved to the operating table. Stripping off his clothes he laid on the table in only a loin cloth and Skay started attaching a bunch of electrodes all over his body then placed a mesh cap on his head. Jessy seeing this wandered over to James who was in deep thought and gave him a push.

“What exactly are they testing over there James?” Jessy asked. She too was curious about the stage in cultivation in which a breakthrough is supposed to be achieved as eventually she hoped to reach that stage.

“Brain waves mostly. Also physiological reactions during breakthrough. We’re trying to understand exactly what happens when your conscious mind condenses spirit energy then attacks and defeats you subconscious mind. If our theory’s correct, either you lose and remain sealed at the spirit barrier until you can break it or you break it and gain true conscious awareness of your spirit realm.” James then pointed over to a monitor with 4 wavy lines and one blank line similar to a heart monitor. Then continued to explain.

“From what the old madman’s explained to me the first few initial stages of cultivation can be described as taking full, conscious control of your own mind. When you’re running around or trying to control spirit energy inside your body that is considered the duty of your conscious mind and reflected in the Beta brain waves which is this top line, the most active line when you’re awake. At this level you essentially can only slightly control spirit energy inside your own body and can’t materialise it or manipulate it outside of your body. This line is also the weakest in magnitude but highest in frequency.”

He then pointed at the second line on the monitor. “This is your Alpha wave, it has a lower frequency than your beta waves but has a higher magnitude. We believe it reflects your Spirit Realm or rather the gateway between your conscious mind and subconscious mind. It also spikes when Harvy used his spirit energy so I’m of the opinion this level is a part of your subconscious that assists your conscious mind in controlling spirit energy. This is also where spirit energy is accumulated and the reason its storage area seems so limited is because your subconscious mind has created a barrier to prevent the spirit energy from effecting it and messing up your head. Or so we believe. So far we still don’t know what spirit energy is but we can tell it’s not any form of matter or energy we’ve observed on Earth. Skay’s convinced it’s ‘dark-matter’ and I’m slightly inclined to believe him. How exactly it came to be that a person’s mind can gather and control this dark matter is beyond me, so for now were still calling it spirit energy.

“In addition to protecting the subconscious, we believe the barrier creates an opportunity for the conscious mind to gain control of all the spirit energy it’s collecting in the Spirit Realm. If you manage to crack the barrier and still haven’t gained sufficient control it can affect your subconscious mind much like poor old Harvy over there.”

When he said this far he looked at the ghoul on the operating table saying “yes master” and singing the praises of the Dark Lord. He then quietly sighed, shaking his head and looked back to Jessy. “Normally such a situation is incredibly rare because your subconscious builds its barrier to be greater than the relative strength of your spirit energy and thus limits its growth until you can consciously keep it under control. We’re not sure if everyone’s spirit realm is the same size but we suspect its size is a reflection of the combined strength of your conscious and subconscious mind. Some people may step into the True Spirit Realm vastly more powerful than others, but again, only a theory for now till we have some more subjects.”

He then pointed at the third wavy line. “This line represents Theta waves and is considered to be your subconscious mind. This guy’s job is things like breathing and keeping the heart beating but also other things like your own superstitions, fears, joys, prejudices and assumptions. Your subconscious mind keeps a track of all these mundane things for you and influences your conscious mind with them in your day to day life. Although we doubt we can just delete our prejudices or alter our own character once we break through to the subconscious in later realms we suspect we gain an incredibly fine degree of control over other things.

“The journey of realms between the barrier and the level in which our subconscious mind and conscious minds assimilate each other is the most important however and considered the foundation of one’s power much later into their cultivation, unfortunately Hao couldn’t tell us much past the 3rd realm which is the Spirit Palace.

“Now back to our realm, once you break through the barrier there will be nothing holding back the progress of gathering as much fuckin’ spirit energy as you want because your Spirit realm is infinite. The catch being that you have to be able to control it and not let it influence your subconscious mind. If that happens it’s referred to as cultivation deviation but we don’t know shit all about that yet apart from Harvy’s ... Ahhm, condition.”

Jessy’s face scrunched up cutely and her eyes spun around in her head as she tried to wrap her brain around all this stupid sounding science stuff. Finally she couldn’t help asking about the True Spirit. “James, you’ve told me the spirit barrier is a shield your subconscious mind makes to protect itself. What about the this true spirit thing? When Hao described it he said you had to condense your spirit energy into a true spirit. What in the fuck does that even mean? He says it like it’s something we should all just know!”

James had a smile split his face and then started patting Jessy’s head like a dog. “There, there Jess. I know not all of us finished high school.” He then spun around and walked back to the computer to sit on a chair before Jessy even had the chance to try and scratch his face off.

“I’m sure by now you’ve entered your spirit realm a few times, played with your energy and noticed, when your there you’re just a ghostly, ethereal body with no other sensations than what feeling your spirit energy gives you. No doubt even in that cute little head of yours you’ve discovered that it’s a great deal easier to control energy in your spirit realm than out here trying to control it in your body. I believe that it’s because the conscious mind simply isn’t strong enough to properly control the spirit power straight away and requires practice much like anything else in regards to your body, think of it like muscle memory if you want.

“I also believe the true spirit is a reflection of your subconscious and once you merge with it in the spirit realm it will assist you subconsciously with your control. The old madman’s of the opinion that it’s not to do with practice and subconscious control but is because the subconscious mind is purposely limiting your conscious minds ability to control spirit energy outside your spirit realm and once you merge with your true spirit it releases that control.

“The reason I mention that is because regardless of which theory is correct, your control of spirit energy, even in your spirit realm, is based off both your knowledge, experience and understanding of how the element operates, which is gained from either learning about it second hand like going to school or memorising their meditation mantras or learning about it first hand through experience. It seems learning about it through first-hand experience greatly increases your level of control in comparison to second hand.

“Amusingly, control over ‘your’ element can be trained by gaining more knowledge on how it affects the human body. Or it could simply be trained by constantly creating twisted sexual fantasies in your head and having an excessive amount of depraved animalistic sex. The more you feed your lust the stronger your control will grow and the faster your spirit power will grow in meditation.”

At the mention of her spirit nature, and worse still, the way to train her control of it, Jessy could hardly contain her shame as her face blushed bright red and she averted her gaze towards the floor looking quite upset. Seeing this, James frowned then got up from his chair, took two steps forward and slapped Jessy across the face.