Chapter 15: Breathing

After a good sleep the trio of Dark Brotherhood’s founders met in the lab to find a perfectly ghoulish Harvy tidying up with Little Blue running around everywhere madly. The moment he saw James he ran up his leg and bit his arm.

“Ahhh! You little shit!” Once he gave a response, Little Blue let go and started madly running around again. He’d clearly been terribly bored being ignored the last two days and wanted to play.

James let out a sigh and against his better judgement tried to catch Little Blue. Half an hour and two new lightning ball holes in the lab later, Little Blue had finally calmed down and just quietly climbed up to James shoulder and started snoozing.

The group sat down to discuss their futures in more depth and just as they were finishing their discussion Anvil and Song stopped by. Before now, it wasn’t particularly appropriate for Elders to visit on lowly disciples but now despite having hardly any cultivation they could be considered esteemed allies and guests. This meant the Elder duo could come and explore their lab a little as they discussed in more detail the Hall of Forging and Dark Brotherhood’s collaboration.

“How’s preparations to create a seal? Have you created a design yet?”

Song was the first to ask anything, mostly because Anvil, whom normally was so excited, was somewhat dazed. Skay’s lab had a variety of obscure test equipment assembled on the fly that looked hardly safe or operational despite their lights glowing showing readiness to melt, cut, mix or destroy some material, plant, cute harmless creature or person.

Skay could be considered particularly careful for a madman, as almost every corner of his lab contained a hot glowing pit with the words “Caution: test subject disposal” scrawled above them in something suspiciously red, very much resembling blood and written with a person’s bare hands.

James too questioned this when he first saw it but after Skay side-tracked, distracted from or completely ignored his questions on it James stopped asking. Occasionally he thought he heard Skay mumbling “just like soul experiment zero zero one” whenever something he’d created, attacked him or exploded and he had to sweep it into a pit, or fight it in, which wasn’t uncommon when he got into the Gau Clans herb garden and fed something he wasn’t sure about to a creature he also wasn’t sure about.

This greedy and malicious zeal for science resulted in the gradual disappearance of all the other forest hoppers apart from Little Blue, whom James had prohibited Skay from touching without him present.

James was the first to respond as he waved his hands in front of Anvil who appeared to have had a stroke and turned red like he was about to explode as he just watched the tesla coils on the wall jumping great arcs of electricity around the place. Normally Little Blue would play in there when everyone else was busy which no doubt would have resulted in Anvil’s heart actually seizing had he witnessed it.

“Ahh ... Oh, yes we’ve had some ideas, I think we’ve decided on this though.” As he said that he handed a piece of paper with a rectangle about the length of a hand. In the middle of the rectangle was a very poorly drawn english number 7 encircled by an equally appalling drawn Ouroboros made of lightning. When Song looked it over he had a strange expression. Finally he couldn’t contain himself and asked about the significance of the odd ruin and the snake.

“On our previous world this was the number 7. In the folk lore of a certain religion it described 7 major sins. They were pride, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, greed and wrath. There were also 7 major virtues which I can’t remember for the life of me. Can’t imagine why. Anyway, we intend for our guild to eventually contain 7 core members denoting these aspects. It’s my belief that in this world these sins reflect the true power and driving will of all cultivators. Err ... And the snake eating its own tail is an Ouroboros and is a sign of infinity. Meaning these 7 sins will always exist for as long as time runs forwards. It’s made of lightning because I’m the founder and that’s my most proficient element.”

Anvil finally woke up from his daze and was once again hit with a bombshell. “Wait! Lightning? You mean you have more than one element?”

James gave a nod as he and Jessy began to make some tea. Skay looked to be amusing himself over at a work bench with a whole bunch of random glowing herbs or strange plants.

The numerous glowing substances he’d poured into Harvy a few days ago appeared to have multiplied now and whenever the lights in the lab were off this workbench shined with a rainbow of colours.

“Tea?” Jessy asked the Elders. Song and Anvil both gave a nod. James sat down on a chair they’d flogged from the mansion somewhere. “So how does this seal creation work? You said you needed me to create a design and also need me present to forge it?”

Song and Anvil were still processing their shock at a double wind/lightning element. They both were now somewhat more accepting of letting the steppers go in their hearts. They could never contain James here, it would be a true waste of his talent. To assist someone so talented will only help their clan in the distant future.

Not to mention this lab. If this was what they’d set up in what... 6 days? Then what would they have created in 6 years or 600 years? They didn’t realise that a great deal of this equipment was the debris they hauled back from the Gateway site.

Actually, they could barely tell what half of it did but the magnitude of such a scene was still enough to slow there motions. As people who created magic artefacts and weapons they could tell this equipment wasn’t just here for show.

“Elders?” When he saw them both in deep thought, he grew a bit worried. ‘They aren’t planning on reneging on their words and forcing us into submission just because I revealed double elements are they?’

“Ahh. Oh yes, sorry. I’m just surprised. Double elements are rare. Even in our entire empire there may only be a small elite group of other double affinity cultivators. You truly were destined for greater things than our little Gau city. We just hope you remember our oaths and kindness should the time ever come that we must call on you.” Song let out a sigh when James called out.

“Oh and the seal. Hmmm ... Well let’s say that your soul is necessary for the creation of the seal. Essentially the material used to create it comes from a fairly rare beast known as the One Heart beast. By carving your seal from it’s horn and mixing its blood with your fresh blood, along with holding the seal, then you can bond your soul to it and by extension bonding your soul to whatever it represents.

“That’s why, guild masters, sect leaders or clan heads generally remain in that position for life. When you swear in guild members they will be swearing to the seal and not yourself. Even when you’re not nearby, if someone makes an oath to your guild in front of someone from your guild, you will know. This is actually one of the most complicated artefacts we can create and it requires hundreds of intricately carved array patterns. There’s actually quite a number of different seals and ways to make them, but we only can only produce this one.”

At the mention of something interesting he’d never heard of Skay perked up from whatever he was working on. At the same moment he poured a little too much of something labelled as ‘unknown 15’ onto a little vine that had been sitting in a pot. The moment he realised his lapse, it was already too late as the vine rapidly grew out from the pot and started whipping violently around.

Skay was struck back and Harvy and Jessy had already run to a wall with a rack of shovels and machetes labelled ‘lab accident fixer’. Harvy collected a weapon and ran towards the vine but Jessy had already leapt through the air like a barbarian women and slashed off a dirty great vine.

Harvy then joined in to start hacking away until the plant couldn’t keep growing at the rate they were dismembering its limbs. Once it only had a few feet left on a handful of vines, Jessy launched forward and gave the pot an excellent 3 point kick and it shot towards a furnace pit in the corner.

For the whole ordeal, Song and Anvil just stared dumb founded while James calmly poured their tea. Never in their few hundred years of life had they seen someone able to aggravate a Soft Vine to such an extent it tried to kill something.

The whole scene of Jessy and Harvy’s practised execution of said normally harmless spirit plant led the two Elders to question just what sorts of abnormal things they’d been creating in the little lab. If it was anything like this they may need to be slightly more apprehensive about letting them set up a lab in the inner city.

After this whole incident, Skay climbed back up off the ground, gave his lab coat a few pats and straightened himself up. Then pulled a chair over and poured himself some tea, like that whole thing was just an everyday occurrence here and nothing to be concerned about. Finally he asked. “What are these array patterns exactly?”

Anvil finally started and awoke, then with a wry smile at what he’d just witnessed he explained. “By now you should be aware that spirit energy is everywhere and in everything. Array patterns are a means to harness the spirit energy of the world into a confined area and is usually used as a means for advanced law manipulation. The monolith for example, is covered in obscure array patterns that no one can understand and all attempts to alter or study the monoliths have ended in failure. A long time ago a group wanted to try and build more to cover the eastern continent that is widely considered barbaric because it’s never had any monoliths and the majority of people living there are from sects or clans that don’t speak common.

“Haah ... But I have digressed. Essentially array patterns are a means to channel spirit energy for very particular uses. Because they’re ancient and not wide spread, meeting someone skilled with them is rare and it’s even more rare to meet one that would want to pass their knowledge on to anyone. The seal is only a lower level array magic and our clan only won it through auction in the Empire’s capital.”

Skay and James we’re both lost in thought until Skay looked at James and then James looked at Jessy. Jessy was confused for a moment when everyone started looking at her. When James gave a nod towards the Elder pair to suggest something, she cottoned on.

“Ahhh ... I see, well ... Um if these array patterns are so rare what would it take to trade for all your knowledge on them. Let’s throw a ballpark figure out and offer you...” Jessy looked around the lab for a second then she thought for a moment. “If we offer to sell you the means to create electricity ... Ahh, artificial lightning. We won’t sell a method but a device. If you can reverse engineer it then more power to you. What do you say?”

James and Skay were both satisfied with this. It was an eventuality that they would trade them something like this for resources later. The fact that it was sooner rather than later didn’t bother them. They had an entire world of more advanced technology they could create and sell to the Gau Clan. Actually they were quite pleased with Jessy, they were both thinking of selling the broken arc cannon for them to play with, even if they didn’t particularly want to. They never even considered starting lower than that, such was their terrible negotiating ability.

Anvil and Song both looked at each other having a sub-vocal chat. Song started off. “It’s a very tempting offer. We only have a few dozen lessor patterns we understand anyway. The clan ancestor was the only one who really knew what any of the other patterns did, or had the knowledge to use them.”

Anvil thought silently for a moment then replied. “I agree. We know they don’t intend to step into any of our business so it wouldn’t hurt to let them see our research knowledge. Like you said, even we can’t explain the older arrays we have. What if we have them share anything they discover from looking them over? That way we get a lightning device and can learn anything new they learn about them.”

Song turned to Jessy with his ever present slight smile and gave a nod. “We accept, however we have an extra condition. Anything new you learn from your research we’d like shared with us.”

Jessy quickly agreed with these terms. They then discussed other future co-operation between the guild and the clan. Once the tea was cold James agreed to go with them tomorrow to the Hall of Forging then once the seal was complete they would have a signing ceremony.

Once the Elders left, James turned to Skay. “Old Madman, how much longer do you need for the breathing techniques?”

Skay scratched his head then went to a computer and began typing. “It’s actually even more difficult than I thought. From discussions I’ve had with cultivators in this universe the breathing techniques aren’t even about a pattern of breathing, but a method of channelling the flow of refined spirit energy through the body in a set pattern then having it return to your spirit realm. They envision their spirit realm in their Dantian, just above the waste. When they discuss a breathing technique they’re not discussing your lungs breathing but the spirit realm in their Dantian breathing out spirit energy into your body and breathing it back in along with primal spirit energy.”

Skay started to madden as he slapped the bench. “They follow some fucking superstitious ancient Chinese mumbo jumbo bullshit about following fucking meridians and breaking through bloody acupuncture points, which just makes it all the more difficult to discern how exactly their stupid fucking breathing pattern and their piece of crap spirit energy path is effecting their control.”

Skay then started getting rather riled up and swearing about meridians and Chinese acupuncture. After a solid ten minutes of swearing he calmed down enough for James to understand him again, at which point he questioned. “So explain to me why this is making it so difficult. Can’t we just design a system that utilizes every ahhm ... Meridian path? and just create a generalised breathing technique?”

Skay took off his glasses to wipe them and then pressed a button on the computer allowing it to resume spewing out continuous random drivel across the screen. Once he’d finished he put his glasses back on and repositioned his Spider Eyes then sat down. After signalling Harvy to make some new tea he continued.

“My boy, it’s not so simple as that. Meridians as they call them, are an imagined system the ancient Chinese used to try and describe the flow of life energy or some such crap through a person’s body. It has no bases in real medical science therefore we have no way to speed up the computation as we did with our universal meditation technique by using information on meditation from our universe. Apparently just flooding your body with spirit energy and trying to recall it into your spirit realm has the least effectiveness and is almost pointless. We have no way to fucking measure it or discern what exactly it’s doing or how in the fuck it’s doing it when it runs around inside you!”

At this point Harvy poured fresh tea for Skay and James sat down to enjoy a cup as he began to consider this problem. Jessy who was also somewhat interested sat down to discover what she could about the one piece they were missing from their cultivation. As she began to think about the problem, she asked a question to herself aloud. “I wonder what other cultivators with rare elements do at this stage. Surely breathing techniques must have come from somewhere?”

Skay clicked his tongue. “Not just a pretty face after all. Your right, I was also curious and was told by Hao that normally at later stages in cultivation a person develops their own breathing technique and meditation techniques. In fact they often begin developing their own martial techniques well before then. He couldn’t say what other rare element users did in their early stages though, because he’s never met one.”

James frowned slightly. “How do they develop their own? If they can’t accurately measure its effect, do they just randomly pass their spirit energy through millions of different patterns until it feels like it’s doing what they want it to do?”

Skay nodded. “Most likely that’s exactly what they do. I wouldn’t be surprised if these savages just sit around for hundreds of years meditating in different ways, to try and develop meditation techniques.”