Chapter 8

“You mentioned that the Ng family used formations. I've heard about formations in some of the novels that I have read. Do we have any of those in the ring space?” Switch asked.

“No, those have also been lost to time. I know they were these jade plates with a design inscribed on them and there were different ones for different elements. I think carved grooves of the design were filled with something. There are no books in the library that give me any more information than that, but...” I looked at them both with a smile, “I have been having some ideas for creating my own.”

“Can you do that? Create your own formations?” Switch asked.

“I don't know how to do a plate, but I think we can produce a jade-like substance easily enough and I know the shape of the natural core spiral that draws energy in, so I think I have enough clues to experiment with. It won't be element-specific, but if we are creating elemental energy nearby it should be able to concentrate it. If it wasn't for a computer and a fabricator it would be really difficult. As it is when I am not working on my health that is what I will be working on. The small meridian pathways might be really important for you, Switch. Wood energy is like life energy. You might be able to heal someone by channelling energy into their secondary meridians.”

“How can you separate out the different types of energy?” she asked.

“I don't think you do which is the reason why I said 'might' be able to heal. There is outside energy which in the books is called prana and inside energy which is called chi. When we cultivate we are pulling prana into our bodies, but our body will only accept prana that is similar to our chi. If the prana stays within us it turns into chi. I've noticed that a period after cultivating a certain amount of energy leaves our bodies. This is the part of the prana energy that is not aligned with our bodies.”

I grinned at them both. “Some of our mythical characters and creatures seem to be real entities on different realms. Yes May, there are elves and even dwarves in the higher realms. Humans are not considered very good cultivators because we are either male or female, yin or yang. Half of all energy we take in is lost due to fundamental human nature. If an elf was cultivating with us they would progress twice as fast.

“Going back to Switch and her healing abilities, at our stage we can only manipulate our chi energy and we know Switch's energy will have a wood component. If she was a one element affinity then almost certainly she would be able to heal. According to the books sometimes multi affinity people have no healing ability, but some are even more powerful than single affinity healers. It is going to be a case of try and see.”

Switch had to leave us for a few weeks to do a job. She couldn't tell us any details and I knew better than to inquire. May was curious but accepted Switch's word that she would tell all after we had ascended. Before she left we went on a purchasing spree. It was all delivered to a warehouse that Switch was renting and all I had to do was transfer it to the ring. We had bought four life-like android bodies for Ice to inhabit. She used those bodies to prepare the space in the ring and install all the equipment. The most expensive piece was an apartment power cell. It would cater to all our power needs and would last millennia but would eventually need us to find a Uranium source to refuel.

Besides equipment, a fair amount of resources for our fabricators was also stored in the ring space. The equipment was too large to be located at home and some of the things we wanted to fabricate like weapons and body armour were illegal, so it was best kept secret and you couldn't get more secret than the ring space.

While Switch was away, I spent the time going through another detox programme while hammering away at my secondary meridians. I started with my male sex organ meridian and when that cleared I went to my eyes and then third eye. I would have to build my level of energy up before I could do any more. I had to speed up the energy and then divert it to hit the secondary meridian opening forcing the energy to hit the blockage. It was a painful process. Every time the energy stopped abruptly, some of the energy would go outside of the normal channels and I would feel dagger-like pain in my nethers. I would then have to wait until I had recovered and try again. For me, this was a battle for my survival. After four days of hammering away, I finally managed to get it to flow all the way through.

My overall energy dropped as my energy had to circulate a larger route. I still had enough to do a bit more and I wanted to know if all my secondary meridians would be as painful and difficult. I chose my eyes next because it was a small loop. I first started just pushing the energy in the right place. There was some resistance but no outright blockages so it went a lot smoother and didn't require pain tolerance, just persistence and care. Slowly increasing the speed of the energy circulating through the secondary meridian until I felt resistance and holding that speed as the toxins were slowly worn away.

I needed to do my lungs, liver and spine but all of those secondary meridians were quite large and I didn't have the energy for it. To help with my research into formations and anything else I could think of, I thought having my third eye open might help and it was another small loop. Like my eyes, there was no real blockage, just small hindrances that I was able to clear eventually.

The fasting part of the detoxification programme wasn't as hard as previously and I put that down to my body also using the energy I was pulling in. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to survive on that energy alone yet. The black stuff that appeared on my skin came in fits and starts corresponding to my success in clearing the meridians.

The next question was what advantages had my body gained by opening those secondary meridians? I could almost feel my down below healing and within a day noticed my sexual appetite increase. For a long time, I thought I had a very low sex drive but that was no longer the case. I didn't want to get into a new relationship or divert any of my energy away from healing and heading towards ascension so I used online services to relieve my tension.

Before, I was able to use my cultivating time to also think about experiments and what else I could do to increase my knowledge and our technological advantages. Now, I struggled to think of anything but lustful and sexual thoughts. I decided the next secondary meridian I would open would be my brain as I needed to increase my focussing ability, then my lungs, followed by my spine and liver.

The improvement to my eyes were obvious and Ice was able to evaluate a significant improvement both to my clarity, focus and low-light vision. Considering the issues I was having with my sexual desire I would not be recommending Switch or May to be opening up that can of worms, but the improvement to my eyes was wonderful and a little bit addictive. I was eager to open up my other secondary meridians in the hope it would give me similar improvements.

My third eye allowed me to see energy. It wasn't very easy to see myself, but I could look at May and see the energy flow. I could even see the secondary meridians with the minor flow that they naturally received and could tell that May needed to open her kidney secondary meridians. When I told her that she mentioned that she had experienced a kidney infection and fairly frequently had bladder infections. She would have to wait until she had built up enough energy or Switch had enough to try her healing ability.

My ability to see energy was also really helpful with experiments for creating a formations block. Mine would be three-dimensional so calling it a plate would be inaccurate. I could buy jade but it would be impossible to get the energy flow material below the surface, so it was only useful as a comparison. I wanted to be able to print my formation block with a fabricator.

To start with I took a piece of real jade and carved a line in it. Then I started filling that line with different things, pushing energy into one end with my finger and looking at the energy flow. I wanted to see energy flowing through it at a similar pace to what happens naturally in my body. Any type of purely conductive material was too fast so that didn't work. In the end, using myth as my inspiration, I found crushed salt crystals with just the right amount of water to connect the crystals worked best. Too much water and it transferred the energy too quickly, too little and it was painfully slow. That didn't matter though as the medium would be sealed.

Jade is expensive and couldn't be printed with a fabricator so I needed a replacement. Looking at the properties of jade there was only one element that stood out as unique and that was its ability to conduct far-infrared heat. But it could have been used purely because it is hard enough to be stable but soft enough to be carved. From my eyes, I couldn't see any energy leakage into the jade. I produced various substitutes that matched jade for its heat conduction or energy insulation properties. Some were at the same hardness as jade and some were stronger. I was then able to produce my first formation blocks following the pattern of the energy flow within my body.

What I found was that if I put energy into it in the same direction that followed my body, energy was pulled in, but as soon as I stopped the energy gathering stopped. Through a few trials, I came up with version one. I needed a diode to ensure energy only flowed in one direction, an ability for the energy gathering formation to collect some of the energy it was generating and feed it back into the start. I still needed to start it off, but then it was self-sustaining.

The material didn't seem to matter too much. I think you could use any insulating type base, but the jade equivalent version gave off a tiny bit of far infrared. Far infrared has been associated with healing and when I scaled it up to a block big enough for each of us to sit on that might give some health benefits, especially for Switch who has alignment with fire.

The next step was to tweak it for maximum efficiency. That involved Ice producing a multitude of slightly different spirals with different thickness channels until we could work out what changes were beneficial and then further trials until we couldn't make it any better.

The next question was could we direct the flow directly into our bodies? The end of my spiral of energy was a little beneath my belly button and there was a weak channel, similar to an unopened secondary meridian channel, going from the surface of the belly button to the same point. The only person I was willing to experiment with was myself.

I created a new version where some of the energy generated went back into the start of the spiral and some followed a line to my belly button. I started very small, of course, so it would only be a little bit of energy. The small versions were fine. A little uncomfortable but not too bad, but I could see with my third eye that some of the energy left my body pretty quickly, putting some pressure on my weak channel. I came up with a hypothesis. My body would only accept energy that it was aligned with, which in my case was wind, water and lightning. My energy gathering formation was not so picky and would inevitably pull in whatever energy was in the surrounding space.

The only way we could directly pull in energy from the formation was if the only energy the formation pulled in matched our affinities. So I needed to isolate the space and use technology to generate the right energy. I started imagining these insulated rooms but then realised there would be energy in the air and probably an element of humidity. Maybe I could act as a filter. If we used recirculating air I could pull the energy out of the water and air. It was getting quite complicated and I wasn't sure how safe it would be. Even a little bit of the wrong energy could be painful and potentially harmful.

I was discussing it with May who solved it all with one simple idea. “Why don't you use the ring space?” The ring space has no natural energy. The only energy in the ring space is what we either create there or bring with us. There was theoretically unlimited space in the ring space but the mind struggles when faced with infinity so I had Ice fabricate some walls and create corridors and rooms well separated from each other with lighting and power points. Wind and water energy would be quite hard to create but both May and I could use lightning and Switch could use fire, both of which were easy to produce with technology.

Again I started with a small energy gathering formation, electrified the room, wore a Faraday suit and touched the output to my belly button. It worked better if I could penetrate the skin layer with a needle. No discomfort. It worked amazingly well, the only issue when I slowly increased the size of the formation, was the size of the weak channel from the belly button to my core meridian. I still lost half the energy which was incompatible with my male status and that only happened when I stopped channelling. It felt like I needed to have breaks to digest my energy meal. I brought May into the ring space and we did a similar experiment to work out her limits.

Since no time passed in the outside world while we were in ring space, the speed of our cultivating and timing it so we all ascended together had just become so much easier. I set up the other room for Switch. It did present a little bit of a challenge since we didn't want any electrical energy to be near the room so we used old fashioned wood torches to light the way and wood fires around the circumference of the room. I made a series of different sized energy gathering formations so she could work herself up to find the one that fit the best. The fabricator could produce a wood equivalent burning source but since Switch could utilize wood and earth energy we stockpiled natural firewood for her to use.

Chapter 9

Switch returned to us excited to talk about the martial art technique that I had given her. Her job, apparently, involved a lot of waiting and boredom so she had spent her time working on the Water Method, which was the best guess translation.

“Alright, guys, I know why this technique has been left behind. The Water Method looks like a purely defensive technique specifically designed for women and men are all 'the best defence is a good offence'. Rubbish, this is an amazing technique that we are all gonna learn,” she said looking at us sternly.

“I hate fighting,” I admitted, “but I would hate even more feeling defenceless and not being able to do anything to protect you two. I'm up for it.”

“Ascending could be really dangerous, the more prepared we are the better. Tell us more,” May added.

“Great! It is all about feeling and channelling forces. If someone hits you, normally you will be hurt and forced back especially if they are larger and stronger than you are. What if you channel the energy? In the early stages that means into the earth beneath your feet, at the intermediate stage, it would partly go into the earth and partly be used as stored energy for you to strike back and at the complete stage, the energy would be entirely reflected. The more force they use, the more they will hurt themselves. As I said, awesome. That includes weapons, by the way. Instead of using swords you use these two-pronged stiletto type weapons that can catch strikes and either reflect them or absorb their power to launch attacks with the other hand.”

So began our instruction in the Water Method. As soon as they were able to and with my new cultivating techniques that I developed in ring space that wasn't long, I had both of them open the third eye secondary meridian as it helped to literally see when the energy was diverted. It took three of us, two to spar and the third to watch the energy flow and point out where we were going wrong.

May turned thirteen. We bought her presents and tried to cheer her up but the whole event saddened her as it reminded her that neither of her birth parents were around.

Switch pushed us both not just in our practice with the Water Method but also shooting various guns and rifles, even sniper rifles. We used my targeting software and became proficient. Once we were more experienced with the Water Method we started entering competitions to get us more used to fighting against different opponents. We were careful to not reflect too much force as it would have likely hurt our attackers. All of us wore body armour that contains a thin layer of liquid that becomes rock solid under force to distribute the force but was ineffective against energy attacks. I redesigned our body armour to add the equivalent of an energy version of the Faraday suit, but I couldn't do that to people we didn't know.

We often lost because we accepted blows deliberately to absorb and redirect the energy that was effective but counted against us according to the rules. We started only being able to redirect energy that we touched with our hands, but the same principle applied to any part of our body. Switch drilled us well until it was automatically sent into the earth no matter where we were hit. All of us managed to get to the stage where we could reflect the energy back if it was taken on our hands, even if we were holding something to take the blow. You redirected the energy into a small loop, but none of us could reflect it back when it hit other parts of our body. Fighting with others was responsible for breaking through comprehension barriers. We were just stuck on this last element of the technique. The ultimate version of the technique would mean even a sword would be unable to penetrate the skin before the energy that was being used was reflected back.

May still had to do her school work. We worked out how to download her lessons and she was able to do them while in the ring space absorbing energy. There were social interaction camps that she had to attend from time to time, but she didn't want to make friendships that would be lost as soon as she ascended and that fortunately included boys.

I had such great benefits from opening my secondary meridians that both May and Switch decided to do the same. When May did the brain one her school work became easier and her intelligence score went up along with her memory.

My next series of experiments related to healing. After I had opened all the secondary meridians where I knew I had cancer, I arranged a new scan. While I was waiting for that to be approved I started thinking of other ways I could heal myself. I also wanted to find a way to heal Switch. Her core meridian had an area of damage that stopped the natural flow of energy. I was pretty sure it was scar tissue because right where the flow stopped, there was an external scar. It looked like a bullet wound scar. Having an operation to remove the scar tissue was hard to justify but our preparations involved having a full medical table with Ice in control. The only issue was that any operation could cause scarring internally so we hadn't jumped to that point yet.

Switch had reached the point where she could push energy into what she was touching and with her third eye open was able to see the pathways. She had tested her healing ability by cutting herself and found that it works but is accompanied by heat which makes it a painful heal, but at least there was no scarring. Still, she tried putting her energy into the internal scarred area, but it didn't work. Her next plan was to have Ice do a keyhole surgery to remove the internal scarring while she was awake so she could immediately heal herself.

That sounded drastic and painful so I was trying to come up with an alternative. I wanted to create a room in the ring space that only held wood energy, use my energy gathering formation and direct that energy to heal the internal area after Ice had removed the scarred bit. I had to bring in plants that had been grown hydroponically, no soil and therefore no earth type energy involved. I had Ice set up an area with edible plants using artificial light. She would then transfer the plants to the wood room. A long cable from the energy gathering formation would transfer the wood energy to a probe in the adjacent medical room so that Ice could use it. I cut myself and had Ice use the wood energy probe to heal my skin. It wasn't instant, but after ten minutes there was no evidence of a cut.

Switch went under the knife five minutes after I announced my success. There were no complications and soon after that Switch was able to fully circulate her energy without issue.

I went in for my scan a week later and to the shock of the doctors was declared cancer-free.

We celebrated long into that night. There were tears, hugs and laughter. There was nothing to hold us back now.

It took us a year from then, shortly after May had reached fourteen when we had all absorbed enough energy to ascend. We made our final preparations, said our goodbye's, even if no one understood, and started cultivating wondering who would ascend first.