30. Math

  Shisuke frowned as he listened to the discussion of his advisors. They were evenly divided on whether he had taken the correct course of action in negotiating with the alliance, or whether he was a fool.

  He didn’t care. They were advisors and minor dignitaries, they were not the head of state of Nonpo. He was. If he wanted to cut out the middlemen and negotiate a treaty, then that was his prerogative. But some of them were making good points on things that he had forgotten to say, do, or ask in his initial proceedings, so when the meeting broke up he assigned those men and women who had pointed out those errors or omissions to the delegation that would be sent to Mer’cah soon.

  When the meeting was over, he did something he had not done in a while.

  He flew to the mountain array where the Qi was the densest in Nonpo, and he sat in the imperial villa that his great-grandfather had constructed, and he cultivated. This was where he had achieved the silver, and later gold rank. For nearly a century that had been enough to distinguish him as the unquestioned leader of his nation.

  Now, however, he needed more. Heritage was not enough, he needed power. And in this new world, the Golden Path was only a stepping stone to true power.

  He contemplated many things as he drew from the array, which drew from the earth. How the world was changing, and he felt like he was struggling to keep up. How to maintain the traditions of Nonpo in the wake of these changes, to keep his history from being swept aside in the waters of time. How to protect his people from monsters like Lady Omaia, who had the power to crush him like an ant.

  And monsters like Little Bug, whose unexpected tribulation had been felt all the way from halfway across the globe.

  Neither of those monsters were likely to pose a threat to him, they viewed themselves as being at a higher stage of politics, he realized eventually. Why govern the people when the land itself is yours? The petty politics and squabbles of those who dwell upon it are not for the likes of them.

  The emperor would not get involved in a dispute between two farmers over who owned a field. That is the way that Little Bug would perceive the challenges of Shisuke’s true rivals. The upstarts who had achieved gold over the last few years were beginning to establish followers within Nonpo. While they hadn’t done anything overtly aggressive so far, they had questioned whether he truly had the right to rule in this new world, going so far as to suggest measures like an election.

  Especially as more and more commoners rose to silver rank, traditionally a rank reserved for clan families and sect members of renown. As these upstarts had begun demanding the same privileges that were traditionally granted to those with families and heritages, social tensions had begun to rise, and there was a call for reform.

  “Hello,” a voice said suddenly.

  Shisuke looked up, and a young boy was smiling at him from a few feet away. The boy was familiar to him, but at the moment he couldn’t place where he’d seen him before.

  “Are you trying to push into the next realm? Or are you doing something else with all of this Qi?” the boy asked. “I noticed that there’s a lot of turmoil in your soul, and I was thinking maybe you were trying to form a weapon. But now it looks like you’re advancing, but you don’t have the quietness of your soul that you should have for that. So I’m confused.”

  Sensing that this boy was more than a boy, Shisuke answered honestly.

  “I am trying to step onto the diamond path, spirit,” he said. “But I do not know where to begin.”

  “I’m an eidolon. You can call me Atla,” the boy said. “What gave me away that I wasn’t a regular boy?”

  “A regular boy would have a nosebleed from the Qi density in this room. And they would have had to get through seven locked doors and keyed wards,” Shisuke answered honestly. “And then of course there is the fact that you speak of things that you should not understand.”

  “Ah, okay. I figured,” the boy said, shrugging and leaning back, floating on the air as though it were a sofa. “So are you trying to advance?”

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  “Yes, spirit, I am,” Shisuke said, seeing no reason to deny it.

  “Okay. If you swear that’s all that’s doing, I’ll move some dragon veins around and give you more Qi to draw from,” the boy announced.

  “In order to lead my people I require more power,” Shisuke said, explaining his justification. “Standing at gold was fine when that was the pinnacle that was achievable in this world, and so I have ruled for a century on those laurels. But now I must—”

  “Yeah, okay, I’m working on it, hold on. The dragon veins are being stubborn, they haven’t moved in a long while and they’re sluggish,” the boy said. He had a look of concentration on his face, then he nodded. “Okay. You should have more power to draw from now. Everyone in Nonpo should feel better too, I think. I’m going to go now.”

  The boy vanished in a puff of mist, leaving Shisuke alone to contemplate the visitation in silence.

  He placed the boy now. It was the Worldfather’s son, he realized.

  He laughed, and with his laughter he quieted much of the turbulence in his soul. Sitting down to cultivate, he found that the Qi came to him much easier than before, and he cycled it calmly as he pushed against the invisible barrier between gold and diamond rank.

  Six days later, he achieved something that he had long though would be impossible to achieve without ascending. He stepped onto the diamond path.

  ~~~~~~

  Toorah gasped as the blow to his abdomen knocked the wind out of him, and the opponents followup strikes to his head sent him reeling to the ground, where he struggled to get up.

  “Hold,” the judge said, Toorah collapsed. The judge stepped forward and knelt next to the young cultivator on the silver path. “How are you holding up, son? Can you continue?”

  “I’ll be fine, just give me a second.”

  The judge nodded, and he stepped back. “We take a two minute break and then continue.”

  Toorah stood, walked over to his corner, and took a drink that one of the mortals watching the show offered him. His opponent did the same. However, while two minutes in a fight seemed like forever, the break passed all too quickly and he turned back to face his opponent in the ring.

  While he had won the regional qualification tournament, the city of Lima had been most disappointed in his skills in the area of martial arts. And so they had arranged a dozen duels such as this. His opponent was the Lima gold ranked representative, Lusiah, a beautiful woman with her blond hair tied back in a braid. She was dressed in a tight-fitting martial artist’s outfit that left her abdomen bare.

  Her dress had proven a distraction to Toorah at first, as he wasn’t accustomed to seen so much skin on a beautiful young lady, but the woman was in fact sixty years old and treated him like a grandson when she wasn’t beating the daylights out of him.

  “And begin,” the judge said, and the combatants faced off again.

  Lusiah was holding herself back. Not only was she restraining herself from using techniques, but she was only using the amount of strength that a particularly strong silver path cultivator might possess when facing him.

  But Toorah was overly reliant on his techniques, and once she had mastered the art of avoiding them, she easily closed the distance and beat him once more.

  He spat on the ground as the judge once more called a halt to the match and instructed them to reset. Toorah knew that this was just the beginning, as the training match would go on for hours.

  He had an audience watching his humiliation, though a small one. His friend the comptroller was there, as were several other members of the government who were invested in his performance. Both because he was one of them, as their most trusted translator, and also because he would represent their city, and nobody wanted him to give a weak performance at the central tournament.

  Which is why he picked himself up off the ground after each beating, why he spat out the blood from a cut lip and cycled Qi to heal his bruises during the breaks.

  His techniques were his strongest aspect. His martial arts were his weakest. So he would learn martial arts, and he would be unstoppable.

  It was basic math.

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