12. Epoch Tide

  We arrived at the destination the next day. It was a more traditional imperial outpost, without any peach-tree worlds or floating mountains, but with a giant habitation complex floating out in the neptunian orbit range. They weren’t exactly up to date with the current information of the empire, however, so my identity wasn’t at risk. Or so the Alliance assured my crew.

  The spiritual grain that we’d been shipping turned out to be a purchase from the local government to encourage the growth of three young cultivators who had ignited their Dantian recently. While they could have moved to a more Qi dense environment, they were only kids yet and were reluctant to leave their friends and family behind.

  Ahm Raht was just a tourist, and after his mistake with Aster he staunchly refused the offers by the station governor to mentor the children, saying that he was not worthy of the honor. This was a layover for him as he journeyed through the various worlds of the dimension, writing about his journey in his journal and sending the records back to Atla.

  The children were eager to board a soulship that had the spark, as their own home was spiritually dead, making my cargo hold more spiritually rich than any environment they’d ever encountered.

  They didn’t interact with aster or the crew very much, just paying a small fee to cultivate in the same Qi-dense room that Aster liked to use. I think they were very far behind her, because when they cultivated they finished their sessions covered with dark black sludge that they had to shower off of them before leaving me.

  We spent two weeks docked to that space station while Tess figured out our next big move. Then we loaded up a bunch of textiles in my cargo hold, sixty passengers, and enough food for everyone, and we took off for another world.

  Ahm Raht came with us again, paying triple the fees of all of the other passengers, but he remained locked in his room. There was a steady draw of Qi from his quarters, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t doing something. He was cultivating, carefully drawing about ten percent of my Qi generation to himself.

  The rest of the crew had considered asking him to disembark, but it was Aster’s intercession which prevented them from doing so.

  “It was just a training accident,” she said as she quietly ate her rice. “They happen. It’s no big deal. He feels worse about it than I do. The truth is that I hope to challenge him again once my ribs heal. He was a good sparring partner for me. Although I will ask to make certain that Yoji doesn’t interfere in the future.”

  “I’m sorry again—” I began, but she waved my apology away.

  “It happened, and that’s all there is to it Yoji. But in the future, if you’re going to participate in a sparring match, tell both parties so that we know that you’ll be using your techniques. Speaking of which, have you been practicing whatever it was that you did to Master Ahm?”

  “I haven’t,” I admitted. “I haven’t tried that since I got you hurt.”

  “Well, we need to figure out a way for you to practice it,” she said. “I mean, we need to figure out if it’s actually harmful, or if it’s just slowing things down, or whatever.”

  “Yeah, let’s start with insects to figure out if it’s safe to use,” Lila suggested. “One of our passengers has some crickets for her pet frogs. I’ll acquire some of them and we can see if there’s any major changes to their biology before you move up to more complicated animals like gerbils and Lukas.”

  “Hey!” Lukas said, and the crew laughed.

  So that’s how Aster wound up with a small terrarium filled with crickets. I practiced the technique on them constantly, finding that it was a surprising drain on my Qi. Not enough that Aster noticed, but enough to draw Ahm Raht out of his room.

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  He knocked on Aster’s door, and she answered in her sleepwear. She blushed slightly when she realized that it was him and apologized for presenting herself in that state, but he waved her embarrassment aside.

  “How are your ribs?” he asked.

  “Better. I’m using it as an opportunity to teach my body how to mend itself better,” she admitted.

  “I apologize again for the accident,” he said.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to keep saying that,” she said. “What brings you here anyway?”

  “I sensed that Yoji is practicing his technique and wished to investigate. I don’t know much about SoulShip techniques, but perhaps my understanding can illuminate his path in some small way,” Ahm Raht explained.

  “Oh. Yeah, Yoji is practicing on the crickets,” she explained. They went over to the terrarium, and I decided to show off a bit.

  Just as one of the crickets jumped, I hit it with the technique and it suddenly slowed in mid air, moving at ten percent of its normal speed. It slowly floated for a while before landing.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” I asked, manifesting my hologram self in the room with them.

  “It is indeed,” Ahm Raht agreed. He reached into the terrarium and retrieved the cricket. I sensed some Qi fluctuations coming from him, and he nodded. “It is a formidable support ability. One that you should practice every day until you are exhausted. I volunteer to serve as a target for this technique, simply inform me before you try to use it against me. I also wish to see if I can develop a counter for it, so we will be learning together, you see.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Lukas was complaining that it would probably make his balls shrink up if I used it on him.”

  Ahm Raht chuckled. “That’s a common concern among imperials. But from my examination of the insects, there doesn’t seem to be any danger to the technique except for if it’s applied during battle, in which case the danger comes more from the other opponents fighting the target than the technique itself. I am so embarrassed that such a small technique caused my body to move the way it did that day.”

  “It really is okay,” Aster said.

  “No, it is not,” Ahm Raht said. He sighed. “but I suppose even the great Po Guah made mistakes, so if I am to be forgiven by the offended party then I must forgive myself as well. Tell me, how has your cultivation been proceeding? Let me see your Peach Blossom Dream.”

  So he spent the next hour or so critiquing her cycling method, while I, with his permission, spent the rest of the day randomly hitting him with my technique.

  Unfortunately my “Super amazing kung-pow time slowing which when I master it will cause you to wake up in another epoch technique,” or “Epoch Tide” if you don’t want to say the entire thing, really did drain a lot of my Qi, and it wasn’t nearly as effective against Ahm Raht as it was against crickets.

  But as I practiced it over the coming weeks, I found a few things. The first was that I could hold it for slightly longer each day before I ran dry. The second was that both my Qi capacity and my regeneration rate went up slowly but steadily. And the third was that it was more effective against regular humans than cultivators like Aster and Ahm Rahn.

  They noticed almost immediately when I used it on them, but they were slowed by almost fifty percent instead of only about ten percent. Ahm Rahn theorized that this was due to the normal Qi in their body fighting against the technique, even in someone who didn’t have very much of it. He didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop someone entirely, but encouraged me to keep practicing.

  I was careful not to hit anyone with the technique while they were doing something important, but there was some grumbling among the crew members when I randomly caught them by surprise.

  Still, I was a growing SoulShip using a shiny new ability, so it was a fairly minor phase of acting out as far as they were concerned. Once the crew confirmed that it didn’t impact their health, they even volunteered to serve as targets.

  Nobody ever expected that my ‘Epoch Tide’ ability would come in handy so soon after I developed it, but then the incident happened.

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