Chapter 39: Merging Spirit Realms

As the core of the Guild sat in the office, James finally opened his eyes. Unceremoniously wiping away the tear on his cheek, James willed it, and his guild seal appeared floating in front of him. Much to the surprise of the others, not only did the guild seal appear on the round table, so too did the incorporeal, ethereal form of Jasmine appear.

She sat in a seizer position on the table and wore a flowing silk gown, making her only more enchanting than ever. That is, apart from the obvious signs of crying. James felt the sensation of being scanned and then suddenly realised that Jasmine was using a Scrying field.

Not only that, just by looking at her ghostly form, James felt the pressure and experienced that strange sensation of knowing. Jasmine was quite clearly a true spirit realm cultivator, and not only that, when he scryed her, he felt the energy of Skay’s greed spirit energy.

It seemed, not only did Skay sacrifice his soul to grant Jasmine life, he even imparted everything that he had achieved in cultivation. His soul and his spirit.

Finally, Jasmine stood up and stepped off the table. Without a word, she waved her hand through the air and a projection fell onto the wall from the roof. She then started talking. “James, it appears we have suffered a severe depletion in the cities spirit power grid. Papa ... Dr Skay wired in every reactor in the city to power that array formation, and apart from the super reactor under the tower, the rest are at readable levels of spirit energy saturation. That means they are most likely damaged.”

James sat back into his seat and let out a long sigh. “Jasmine, for a girl who was just granted life and lost her father in the same moment, you don’t need to do this.”

Jasmine turned to James with a serious expression and looked him straight in the eye. “Please, James. I need to distract myself. Feeling things is an unusual experience for me. Before, I thought I had fairly closely approached the level in which I had emotions. But I now realise, when I feel this grief ... that I understood nothing.”

James let out a long sigh and deflated a little in his chair. As the rest of the core members watched on completely stunned by this development, James firmed his expression and sat up. “Very well Jasmine. Get the cities power grid operational. Then I want you to come and see me. I’m planning ... a change of scenery.”

Jasmine gave a nod, and then her body faded and the seal disappeared once more into James’ Spirit Realm.

Exsue was then the first to figure out what just happened and in an envious fit slapped the table. “That cheating bitch! That conniving old fox! Why does she get to become a part of James! It’s not fair!”

Everyone else then very quickly connected the dots and a ruckus broke out in the office. James waved a hand to silence everyone then stood up. “Yes, Jasmine is a True Spirit realm now and has a soul. I can explain it no more than any of you can. According to her, Skay had clearly been planning this for a long time. He’s set up some device that allows her to remain connected to the network and maintain her original functionality as the guilds AI, but at the same time, she is now intrinsically different.

“She’s also just lost her father, so give her some time. For now, she will remain within my spirit realm until I feel she’s ready to put up with you miserable lot. She only knows a little bit about what’s going on, and I know less. We’re all in uncharted waters with this whole escapade of that madman’s, which means we’ll be figuring out her situation as it develops.

“For now, Kelly, the lab is yours. I don’t expect you to become a miracle worker like Skay, but apart from me, you’re probably the only person even half capable of understanding some of his work. Jessy, everyone is going to find out about this one way or another, we may as well let it come from us.

“If they believe our guild loses value from his death, let them close out their accounts. While you’re at it, get Gary up here to meet me ... in say... 3 hours.

“Goliath, meet with the Generals and increase security. We’re no doubt going to be getting a few people thinking they’ve got a leg up on us now, so we need to prevent them from stirring up the city for the time being.

“Fatty, Harvy, Exsue, you three are going on a mission. Take the Ghosts with you and get the ship ready. I’ll brief you in the war room tonight.”

Finished giving orders, James left the office in long purposeful strides. When he left, everyone just shared a strange look and then got to work.

-James’ Meditation Chamber-

In his meditation chamber, James sat cross-legged while his focus was on his spirit realm. When he arrived, he saw Gold James getting the shit kicked out him by a furious looking Jasmine. Spirit James didn’t even bother to ask what was going on and simply grabbed Jasmine arm as he flew past, dragging her to the other side of his spirit realm.

He then waved a hand and created an island in his sea, then with another wave, a table and chairs formed. James sat down across from Jasmine and stared at her for a moment. “Jasmine, how did Skay keep you connected to the system. If you’re now a spirit, and you’re linked to me through the guild seal, I can’t imagine how he did it.”

Jasmine suddenly materialised a cup from her own spirit world then looked expectantly at James. James could only give a chuckle, and with a wave of the hand he created tea from his liquid spirit energy. Jasmine tentatively took a sip and smiled warmly while looking at the cup.

“So this is what tea tastes like? It’s bitter and disgusting. But it makes me feel so warm inside.” After she had shared her thoughts, Jasmine looked up at James again and started to explain. “From what notes I can find left by Papa, the arrays he built served a great many purposes. First, they pulled in a great deal of spirit pressure.

“Unfortunately, no matter how much of your intent you pour into something, it will never become a truly sentient spirit without time. Spirit pressure may carry intent and will, but it also lacks things that a sentient spirit needs. So as to facilitate that eventuality, Papa ... he ... he had to sacrifice his own soul. With the energy provided by all of you, he could reshape his own soul into a fresh new spirit like a blank slate.

“Then using the technology we developed for the Implants, he forced every last part of my programming into the spirit using a combination of arrays created from both our worlds scientific aspects, and this world’s Daoist aspects.

“Unfortunately, no spirit can exist without a vessel. He has notes and tests in which he tried to create a body or use a body to try and fuse the soul and the vessel. Unfortunately, all of those attempts failed. Finally, he found a way. Something that would allow him to anchor my soul.

“To anchor a free spirit, he had to fuse me with another spirit that already inhabits a body. It had very specific conditions though. Firstly, it had to be a spirit that would willing accept me, it had to be a spirit strong enough to support the fusion, and lastly, I couldn’t be directly fused to it because that would create a subconscious power struggle.

“Instead, I could only be fused to a part of that spirit. For example, your guild seal is interictally linked to your spirit. It harbours a piece of your spirit that remains connected to you but is not entirely a part of you. This was the median Papa chose.

“He didn’t choose it because it was the only one, but because he thought you would be able to protect me until I was powerful enough to form a new body myself. The price of this type of magic is steep though. I’ll be like a parasite living off you, if I try to cultivate, I’ll steal primal energy that you’re drawing in.

“And ... and ... no matter what, you and I will have a little piece of each other in our spirits for the rest of our lifetimes. Even if I manage to cultivate to the point that I can form a new body, our lives will be as one. If you die, I die. If I die, you die.

While speaking, Jasmine’s tears started to flow. She sniffled and wiped her face then looked at James with a firm resolve. “I promise James. I’ll find a way to fix this!”

James just sat and calmly drank his tea. Finally, he placed the cup on the table and looked Jasmine in the eye with a blank face. “I don’t care about that Jasmine. I can feel it. That ‘link’. Even though your explanation has cleared up my theory on it. It’s not what I asked you. How are you still connected to the system?”

Jasmine wasn’t sure what to make of James’ ignorance of the situation. He was now going to be stuck with her forever. Every time he cultivated, he would have to cultivate for two people. Not just himself, but her too.

To top it off, if they ever found a way to reconstitute a body like Exsue had when leaving the monolith, he would have to constantly worry that she may be endangered. He would quite literally be putting his life in her hands.

James, seeing her confusion, smiled gently, then reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “Jasmine, I don’t care about that situation at the moment. Your father left you in my care and whether I like it or not we’re stuck together. There’s no reason to worry about something we can’t change.

“Also ... I already have one crazy bitch who has my life in her hands. The only difference is that this one is entirely in my head.”

Hearing James indirectly calling her a crazy bitch with a teasing smile plastered on his face, Jasmine almost couldn’t contain her indignation. She slapped James’ hand away and rose to her feet. With a wave of the hand, a billowing wave of spirit energy materialised out of nowhere. James’ scrying was now an endless habit, and he could sense that this spirit energy wasn’t his.

Or more accurately, it wasn’t entirely his. When the realisation hit him that a part of his spirit pressure had refined this energy and left his mark on it, he inspected his own. Now that he looked at it, he realised that the very nature of his spirit had changed. Although still a pure spirit, it was now slightly different, like it was the amalgamation of two spirits.

James now realised just how closely their souls were tied together. Then, with a grin plastered across his face, he waved his hand down in a chopping motion and Jasmines liquid spirit energy split into half and continued on past James.

Seeing her own spirit energy being controlled, Jasmine then began to Scry James’ spirit realm and discovered the same anomaly he did. Very quickly, a war of spirit energy engulfed James’ spirit realm. As it all mingled in together, their spirits began to undergo a strange type of transformation.

Normally, the True Spirit in a spirit realm was a blurry phantom of your true appearance. But the more they threw around each other’s spirit energy, the more their spirits began to gain more form and substance. Just the action of believing it was acceptable to use each other’s energy began to create a huge paradigm shift in the duo’s cultivation.

They didn’t notice it because they were too busy having fun throwing lightning bolts and each other and laughing as they hurtled meteors at poor old Gold James. When they realised that something strange was happening, it was already too late to prevent it.

They had, in their ignorance, suddenly created and irreversible deviation in standard cultivation practice. They only actually realised because of Gold James, who had been launching balls of fire at Spirit James flying around in the air, while Jasmine tried to pin him down with lightning, suddenly froze in motion.

James intuitively sensed a difference in his clone and then glanced upwards in the same direction. Spirit James’ mind boggled as he stared up overhead.

What was normally a perfectly white endless sky, now had a mirroring spirit realm similar to James’. Not only had it suddenly appeared in James’ spirit realm out of nowhere, but it was now rapidly moving towards them. Or rather ... his spirit realm and that spirit realm were rapidly moving towards each other.

As James stared up in horror at the quickly approaching entire realm of spirit energy about to collide with them, Gold James and Jasmine flew up next to him and stared up as well. James couldn’t help but mutter as he squinted his eyes trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.

“What the fuck is that? Is that another entire spirit realm? What the fuck is it doing here?”

While also gazing up, Jasmine suddenly closed her eyes, and then just a quickly opened them in shock. She then made a loud ‘gulp’ attracting the James’ attention. Seeing herself being stared at with suspicion, Jasmine couldn’t help but sheepishly look down at her feet while mumbling something.

“I ... think ... be ... min ... maybe...”

James quirked an eyebrow then coaxed her to speak a little more loudly. “What was that?”

Jasmine, seeing James staring at her, couldn’t help but gulp again. She then spoke a little louder.

“It might be mine.”

“You’re what?”

“My spirit realm. I think ... it’s my spirit realm.”

Gold James and Spirit James both stared up at the sky with a very quickly enlarging realm. It had dozens of spirit energies rolling about the place like a tempestuous ocean.

Goldy just pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “God damn it! It’s just one thing after another with you. First, you conjure me up like a puppet and lock me away to be your cultivating slave, then you bring home some stray made from an old man and computer parts, now spiritual Armageddon. I want a divorce!”

Spirit James could only smile wryly at Gold James’ poor humour. He understood that a shit storm was about to happen. Some type of spiritual calamity that would doubtlessly end in either death or cultivation deviation.

He let out a long sigh and watched on as first liquid energy rained from the sky. When it made contact, the liquid energy in James’ realm began to bubble violently and rapidly started frothing about. Quickly following that was meteors covered with fire, that collided with his own solid energy blowing each other apart.

Shortly after, a gaseous nebula fell like a descending mist and James’ wind energy began to kick up gales of wind and tornados started forming everywhere. Bright balls of light and strange shadows fell onto James’ realm and soon other strange elements.

Some had no visible tell tales of their arrival, magnetism for example. The only reason he knew it was there was because he could sense it. Both because it was energy refined by his spirit pressure and because of his scrying.

A huge sun descended over the realm and bathed everything in its flaming glory. James felt fire and light energy pouring off this thing. Lightning and plasma fell like rain and clouds filled the skies.

Along with all these energies was another spirit shaped like Jasmine. The moment it fell from the sky, it shot towards Jasmine, and the two of them merged into a single true spirit.

Gold James gave a dissatisfied grunt. “Time to get to work.”

When he finished his sentence, another strange abstract energy fell onto realm. It was similar in many ways to his pride energy, in that when it came, it pervaded all the other energy that came before it. Like a disease, it filled everything, dragged it in and controlled it like a sickening pervert controlling puppets on a string.

Spirit James and Jasmine were just standing in mid-air staring at everything in shock. The beauty of having refined this energy was that it couldn’t harm your own true spirit. James could swim in his plasma tornado, and apart from getting buffeted by the forces a little, he felt only a tingling sensation.

By the same token, when they were play fighting with spirit energy, it could never truly hurt them, even if they tried. The most they got was knocked around a little. In their spirit realm, they were invincible.

Gold James on the other hand, looked like he was getting ready for war. He undid his shining gold robe and let it blow away in the wind and dissolved back into spirit energy that filled all the other spirit energy. James’ mind boggled as he watched Gold James in only golden sweat pants, start doing warm-ups.

“Goldy. What the hell are you doing?”

Gold James just smiled at James. “You know how it is. There can only be one.”

James wasn’t sure what the hell he was talking about until he finally thought back to when he tried to unlock more abstract elements. Pride destroyed them all the moment they entered his spirit realm. Back then, pride never bothered to let those elements try and grow and weeded them out the moment they began generating.

Things were vastly different now. Jasmine had Skay’s Greed, which had matured quite a bit and was more than just a budding freshly unlocked energy.

James grabbed Jasmine’s hand and pulled her to the edge of his spirit realm. Jasmine, who was rather new to the cultivating game, wasn’t sure what exactly was happening. “James, what’s going on?”

James smiled wryly as he pulled her outside the general area the spirit energy congregated in. At about 2 hundred metres he stopped. Reconsidered, and then pulled Jasmine out to another kilometre away.

“It would seem ... we’ve deviated together. Now that our spirit realms are trying to combine, Goldy is going to have to clean house. He’s rather proud of how well he keeps all the spirit energy properly equalised and in line, now though, another boss, who greedily likes to collect every kind of spirit energy, has shown up to take control. Goldy probably isn’t going to let that shit slide I imagine.”

While Jasmine was busily trying to compute that, James turned back and watched the show. Slowly, all the spirit energy that just came from Jasmine’s realm began to swirl together and form into the shape of a huge golem.

Inside his spirit realm, distance was relative. In a moment he could take a step and cross a billion kilometres or a single metre. That also meant that his scrying field covered everything from the realm where he gathered energy and onwards out into infinitum. He watched on with his scrying as the greed energy sucked in all the energy it had managed to get its hands on, and slowly take the form of Jasmine.

The spirit energy golem of Jasmine was mashed together with different types of energy all violently colliding and mixing together. Standing where he had been before, Gold James stood with his arms crossed and stared up at the giant golem.

Meanwhile, he made no such drastic changes to the spirit energy under his control and simply let it revert to how it normally looked. “Greed! You great bloated piece of shit. I already banished you from this realm the last time you were summoned. You should cut your losses and accept that the girl’s mine now too.”

“ROARRR!”

Spirit James standing off in the distance cupped his chin in thought and started muttering. “How odd. I had some strange notion that Greed would be like my pride, and be a clone or something. It doesn’t appear to have any conscious thought at all, though.

“It’s like it’s just doing what all abstract spirit energy does and eliminating any threats to its ability to rule the spirit energy in the way it’s host desires. If I’m not wrong, this will be a short fight.”

Jasmine gave him a confused look. “What do you mean should be a short fight. It’s my greed isn’t it? Doesn’t that mean it’s capable of using my subconscious control over spirit energy? I hate to tell you this James, but by subconscious understanding and control of my spirit energy most likely dwarfs yours.”

James glanced at her with a smile on his face. “Does it now? Well, how about your understanding of greed? Before you became human, you weren’t truly capable of these sorts of abstract emotions. You said so yourself. How long have you known the feeling of greed, how many times have you experienced the sensation?

“Not only that but what about lightning? How many times have you witnessed lightning personally? Not through a camera, but been there yourself? What about fire, you can tell it’s hot, and what it’s capable of, but you’ve never been burned, or stood near a warm fire on a cold night. Your understanding is no doubt beyond even the Old Madman’s was, but I doubt your experience could fill half a cup.

“Also, this is a battle between a sentient spirit with its own willpower, and a spirit energy driven by some primal subconscious command. You may not have realised it just yet, but Goldy and I are technically the same person. Although his spirit pressure is separate from mine, it’s an exact copy. That means any spirit energy refined by ... I suppose our spirit pressure, won’t be able to harm him.”

Jasmine was rather discontent with this answer, mostly because she felt he was like calling her a child, which if you wanted to be technical, was far closer to the truth than she liked. She gave a humph, pouted, and then turned back to the show.

James floated cross-legged in mid-air and watched on as the greed golem swung a huge palm filled with plasma towards Gold James. Gold James then looked around, and with a single flick of the wrist, a massive burst of liquid energy sprayed up like a geyser.

From where they sat watching, both James and Jasmine felt a sudden oppressive spirit pressure coalesce onto the water column from Goldy. Moments later that water energy blew a hole through the giant’s palm, down its arm and straight out its back.

As all that water energy poured out from the back of the golem, it dragged with it any energy it touched. James could sense from his scrying that all the energy touched by Gold James’ geyser and spirit pressure was being refined again.

This time, when it reformed, it was pervaded with Gold James’ pride energy. For the first time, James actually closely watched this happen and saw his pride energy particles stick to the green particles like tar. In a matter of seconds, those greed energy particles were engulfed in pride particles and absorbed.

The pride particles then split in half like mitosis and started sticking to the energy particles that once had greed particles attached to them. James was stunned to see this happening. While this battle raged on, he focused onto a part of his spirit realm that was slowly refining primal energy.

He watched in amazement as primal energy just suddenly appeared in his spirit realm and was then suddenly attacked by a tiny amount of spirit pressure. Presumably, his subconscious’ doing. This spirit pressure very slowly enforced James’ will onto the primal energy particle, and they slowly began to take on characteristics of his elements.

When this was happening, James suddenly began to have strange thoughts regarding everything he knew about certain energies. All his experience and knowledge of them flashed through his mind as he consciously inspected the process. Even stranger was that it wasn’t only his memories of these things.

A huge load of information he didn’t think he knew flashed past his mind. It was very methodical and perfectly memorised, which was far different from the rather abstract feeling and emotions that were attached to his own memories.

He and Jasmine then both looked at each other in shock. Jasmine’s mind was trembling at what she’d just felt, and her voice was hoarse and gasping. “What the fuck was that! I just felt ... so many things, and then this sensation, like my memories weren’t my own.”

James scratched his chin and gave a bashful cough. “Ahem. Well, that may have been me. Probably best if I not dive too far into that in the future. It seems we’re sharing a great deal more than just my soul realm.”

Meanwhile, Gold James was slowly working the greed giant down into a tiny speck. Much to James’ dismay, many of the strange elements that came from Jasmine’s realm were being refined again by their spirit force.

By the end of the very unfair and one-sided battle, James’ spirit energy had doubled. Not only that, his spirit pressure was more powerful and controllable than ever. It had a strange quality to it now that didn’t make James uncomfortable, but it was strange nonetheless.

After the fallout of the battle, and despite Gold James’ expectations, a single new element remained. Magnetism. Goldy was the first to admit that if any of those elements should be kept then magnetism would be it. After electron flow, it was probably the thing James understood best.

Jasmine didn’t particularly care what elements she had. All this was still too new to her, and she was still trying to wrap her head around everything, especially now that feelings and sensations were getting in the way.

As things calmed down from the battle, James suddenly felt Jasmine scrying. Or more to the point, he saw it in his inner eye. It very much felt like he and Jasmine had somehow become entangled in the exact same scenario that he and Goldy were in.

They had individual spirit pressures that were a merging and copy of the two. The shared a single spirit realm and its spirit energy. They could all see each other’s scrying.

Probably the only thing that stopped James from worrying was that they all maintained their individuality. The other thing was, that after some testing, James and Jasmine didn’t seem to be sharing the same thoughts simultaneously like he did with Goldy.

At least ... not unless they chose to. Which was very much an awkward moment for the pair of them when they tested it. Mostly because Gold James, out of pure spite that he now had to share his spirit realm with some hussy, would purposely focus his mind on something inappropriate so as to distract James’ thoughts in that direction.

Apart from getting slapped, James also got to witness Jasmine blush for the first time. Which he openly admitted, only in his own mind, that he would probably never forget.

At last, with everything cooled down after that huge escapade, James returned to his original question, which had started this whole fiasco in the first place. Seated at a new table, with a fresh cup of tea, he asked Jasmine; “How can you connect to the network and control everything while you’re so disconnected from the system?”

Jasmine, in much the same way as before, tried to deflect the topic of conversation. “Like I said before, Skay prepared in advance and built a machine. Do you think, that our cultivation will be simultaneous now?”

James, seeing her awkward effort to deflect, only grew more suspicious. “Jasmine, we only have the one spirit realm now, and a shared willpower. I suspect we may be permanently stuck together. However, as troubling as that is, we can’t change it yet. More importantly, what aren’t you telling me?”

Under the intensifying stare of James, Jasmine began to fidget uncomfortably. Seeing her reluctance to say anything, James suddenly had a thought. He then returned his focus to the real world and discovered something he was afraid to ask questions about.

In his defence, he’d just had a moment of crisis and spent the last few weeks reaffirming his own pride. He hadn’t spent much time inspecting his body, and certainly never made an effort to scry his body. Under the intense scrutiny of his scrying, James discovered two strange things.

The first was a series of spirit pressure pulses. They were unerringly accurate and specifically targeted.

The second thing he discovered was a very out of place, wafer-thin 5mm by 5mm chip right in the middle of his brain. Under his scrutiny, he discovered that this little chip gave off an endless number of different kinds of energy all pulsing at a frequency beyond his ability to comprehend. Not only that, they were so tiny that they were just as hard to recognise as previously mentioned pressure pulses.

Jasmine, now having a shared scrying vision with James rushed to try and explain. “It’s harmless James. It’s just a little wireless chip created on a molecular level. It’s so minute and harmless you couldn’t even detect it since you woke up after Latsoe’s attack.”

James, who had now returned his focus to his spirit realm, was visibly shaking. “Fuck! That fucking Madman! He’s fucking turned me into some kinda wi-fi cyborg! Piece of shit crazy old goat fucker! He was fucking poking around in my brain?! Motherfucker!”

Jasmine could only cringe and watch James go off into a rant about irrational fears being entirely rational near Skay. Half an hour later, James finally sat down at the table again and his bloodshot spirit eye’s focused in on Jasmine like a hawk eyeing a mouse.

“How does it work?”

Jasmine, seeing she wasn’t about to get blamed for this debacle, could only sigh in frustration. “Well, it’s a quantum computer of sorts. Papa had the idea of trying to entangle two spirit particles. To say he was successful would be an understatement. Normally, when two ‘real’ particles are entangled, they respond in an observable manner to any change in their partner. Regardless of distance.

“He found that if he used enough spirit pressure on two spirit energy particles, then he could force them into an entangled state. He could then separate those two particles using his pressure and then place them in corresponding devices that I need to interact with. For example, he launched some up to the satellite, placed some in the endless forest quantum antennae and left some here in the base.