Calculating Cultivation-Chapter 132: Change Is The Only Constant

The entire vessel shook as a massive wave of force and energy swept over us. That fact that everything shook and I could tell there was a wave of force coming through the defenses, meant whatever just happened was massive. The energy levels had spiked as well.

“Whatever that was, came from the Free Port or close to it,” Yang Zi said, while I felt a heightened sense of danger. Which wasn’t very helpful for the situation, since it was clear something had happened.

“Opportunity and risk. We should be okay if we approach carefully?” I asked out loud.

“If something did happen, the longer we wait, the safer it will be, but the less advantage we would have when looking for any valuable salvage,” Yang Zi replied.

“Would we be able to get that much? Even if there was a battle or attack, this vessel isn’t that huge and most of the storage space has been taken up,” Luo Lingtai replied.

“Well, we have to check out what happened eventually. We can approach slowly from a distance and put the filters to max to be safe,” Yang Zi replied.

I wanted to ask how big the explosion was, but that would be a stupid question. Distance was less of a hard fact and more of a suggestion. Combined with the energy involved in the wave that went by us, it was impossible to say. We had encountered waves like this in the past, but nothing so extreme.

They were probably caused by events in other places of the Firmament, too far away to matter. The last echoes of whatever civilization was dying. The Soaring Star Society’s Infinite Ring Complex probably let out a similar death wail when it was destroyed. With how distance could get wonky with spatial effects, measuring distance on a large scale just wasn’t practical. That was why everything was measured in relation to the location of other things.

“As long as we take precautions, we should be fine. I am isolating our systems and creating a delayed filter. It will reduce our responsiveness, but if anything really bad is happening we should be spared the worst of it,” Yang Zi said.

There were no more objections since he had the most experience and understanding of salvage situations and traveling the Firmament. I also couldn’t deny there was some curiosity about what had happened as well.

We stopped at the edge of the cleared space around the Free Port in the Firmament. The best estimate in terms of distance was a light hour, but again with any kind of measurement, which was highly inaccurate. Unless an area of the Firmament was stabilized in some way, distances and other measurements were more opinions than facts.

Images would also get distorted as the ambient energy and distance increased. That was why the Astral Plane was a kaleidoscope of colors. There were deeper theories behind this, but what mattered right now was that we couldn’t trust past observations based on the speed of light. What we were observing would be obscured and might not be correct. Most of the time, the gas of the Firmament covered this up, but with the gasses cleared from around where the Free Port was located it mattered.

With the massive energy spikes we were picking up, this confusion regarding base measurements and seeing what happened would only get worse. Distance was less of a hard number and more of a suggestion. Normally the Free Port would exist inside a large region that had been cleared of gases and other debris.

This was so other vessels could easily see each other and have clearly defined borders for the Free Port. The Free Port claimed a very small portion of the Firmament compared to super organizations, which was why it was mostly ignored. This was because the Administrator made energy through trade, sales, and various transactions rather than trying to use energy pumps. The cleared area was its territory, which was comparatively small to super organizations.

Even if the Free Port drifted through a super organization’s territory, they would most likely work out some kind of compensation depending on where the Free Port went. While it was basically two big spheres around a star, it could move and possibly teleport if necessary. The Administrator probably had some kind of equation of how much energy that would cost versus paying rent or a tax to whatever super organization was nearby.

There were also a lot of vested interests in the Free Port as well like the cartels. If a super organization tried to be this open for trade, it was just inviting sabotage and attacks from its neighbors. A super organization would struggle to run a Free Port due to the inherent distrust and conflicting interests.

The other free ports that did exist out in the Firmament had a history and reputation to back them up, with the Administrator’s Free Port being near the top of the list. On top of that was all the technology and energy the Administrator had to defend the place. I had no doubt the calculator was accumulating knowledge and had the manufacturing base to back it up. Even if it couldn’t do something itself, it could easily hire people with its quest system it used to give out jobs.

All of these reasons were why none of us took the idea of an actual attack on the Free Port too seriously. Nothing sane would do something like that. Unfortunately for the Administrator it wasn’t anything sane that had attacked. Even if some being did go crazy and attack, the damage would be repaired fairly quickly. There were also countless safeguards in place.

As we got closer the display was visually glitching, not the display, but reality itself. My brain couldn’t process what I was seeing. Entire sections of the display were blacked out, but there was still something there.

“Not good! Reversing course!” Yang Zi said while quickly activating the various systems to cut off all the displays and most of the sensors while getting us out of here.

“Yuan Zhou! YUAN ZHOU!” Someone was shouting at me, but it felt distant. There was a word on the tip of my tongue. I had always known it. I just needed to say it. What was that word? I had learned it the moment I was born and knew it until the moment I had died.

A helmet was slammed down over my head and the floating feeling vanished. “Yuan Zhou. Are you there?” Luo Lingtai asked me while leaning in towards my face and looking directly into my eyes.

“What? What is happening?” I asked in a daze. I reached up to take off the helmet so I could remember, but Luo Lingtai quickly grabbed my hands. I could resist her, but I hesitated. She had a helmet on as well. Why did she have a helmet on?

“Don’t take the helmet off. That is the only thing keeping us alive,” she said. I didn’t understand. “Focus on the present. You are here. On this vessel. Breathe. Don’t think about the past, focus on my voice.” She sounded worried and scared. There was nothing to be concerned about. I just needed to remember by taking off this helmet and everything would be fine.

“I am fine,” I said and knew this to be true. “I just need to remember something.” She frowned at this and stared at me intently.

“Swear on your soul you won’t take the helmet off until I give you permission,” she said. I hesitated to make such an oath. “I need to get us out of here, but I can’t let you take that helmet off. It is the only thing keeping you alive along with me. If you go, then we are doomed.”

“Where is Yang Zi?” I asked while looking around. He would let her know that I needed to take this helmet off to remember.

“In an emergency stasis box. Thankfully he knew what he needed to do to survive. As a member of the Xyon Front I have regularly been in separation chambers.” Nothing was making sense. I needed to take off this helmet to remember. “That helmet is blocking the worst of the mental interference. If you take it off you will die. Then I will die. Do not take it off.” She let go of my hands and stepped back. I could have broken her grip, but that didn’t seem right.

I began to raise up my hands, but then stopped. “I…” I wanted to grab the sides of my head, but grabbed the armrests of my chair instead while Luo Lingtai kept staring at me.

“Focus on the present. It should help,” Luo Lingtai said while still standing right in front of me.

“What…what is happening?” I asked as I felt like my brain was mush. What was happening?

“What happens when someone really screws up big time. Chaos. Most likely some kind of creature that attacks mentally.” That couldn’t be right. I just had to take off this helmet to understand. Luo Lingtai was tricking me. I wasn’t sure.

Taking a deep breath, I focused on the limited information on the display. The only thing it was confirming was that we were headed away from the Free Port. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“Away from here. Find a nice place to hole up for a little bit until Yang Zi can be taken out of his stasis box and you aren’t about to develop brain parasites,” she replied. Brain parasites were bad. I needed to keep the helmet on. But I also needed to remember. That was really important. “I also scrubbed the image files as well and isolated the system that passed on the visual image. Thankfully it was already set up to be isolated. Yang Zi knew what he was doing when he had this vessel built and took precautions.”

“I always knew something,” I muttered trying to recall what I had forgotten. If I just remembered, everything would be fine.

“Don’t think about it. The effects are probably propagating backwards and forwards through time. Don’t think about how that is possible, and you are still here. Trying to understand how chaos breaks causality is impossible and will only make your condition worse,” she replied.

“That…that shouldn’t be possible,” I muttered, feeling like I had a headache. Nothing was making sense.

“Well lucky for you, you didn’t spend that much time on the Free Port and went through a separation chamber recently,” Luo Lingtai said.

“How long do I need to wear this helmet?” I asked, since I needed to remember. I was forgetting and I didn’t want to completely forget.

“The longer the better. You are lucky I had a spare on hand and I didn’t need it,” she said with a heavy sigh. There was a long stretch of silence as she would check the displays while always keeping one eye on me. I kept my arms glued to the armrests.

It was strange. I knew I shouldn’t remove the helmet, but I wanted to at the same time. While I had never done drugs, this was probably like the feeling of knowing they were bad, but also wanting to experience the high again.

Minutes went by in silence as I slowly came to grips with what had just happened. Chaos had wiped out the Free Port and we had almost gotten caught up in it as well.

“Thank you,” I replied and took a deep breath.

“If you got a chaos brain parasite, then there was no way I would have survived in proximity,” she replied.

“That matters?” I asked out of curiosity. No one liked talking about chaos or recording any kind of written information.

“Temporal or physical proximity makes a difference for things like this. You talked about wanting to remember something?” she asked.

“Yes. There is a word or name I had to remember. Like I had always known, but had just forgotten,” I replied.

“That is both good and bad. Since it was propagating backwards and forwards through time and had a mental component, not good. Well not good for the Free Port, good for us as long as whatever Chaos creature this was doesn’t manifest in our past or our brains,” she replied.

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“But…is it just my memory changing or is the past changing? And what about the past of all the people on the Free Port or people I have met?” I asked out loud.

“You need to not care about the answer, since it doesn’t matter and could be either or both. Why do you think Free Ports are incredibly rare, especially long lived ones?” She didn’t give me time to answer before continuing and answering her own question. I could tell she was stressed out. “Because of nonsense like this.”

“But if people are impacted by Chaos in the past, how did I arrive here? Wouldn’t I be impacted by all of that?” I asked, more confused that before.

“Chaos ignores cause and effect. That is what makes it so powerful and impossible to understand. You are looking for half of the equation that doesn’t exist. While existence is reality, the upper portion is called causality for a reason while the rest is Chaos in one form or another. How are you feeling?” she asked me.

“I don’t feel like I need to take this helmet off anymore. What is it?” I asked.

“Not as good as a separation chamber. It has a couple of names, occlude, present helmet, or last resort. It only exists in the present on a linear time from the moment it was created. It isn’t perfect, but it will continue to exist from one moment to the next without changing. It is a good way to anchor someone against the effects of Chaos,” she explained.

“You had a spare?” I asked in surprise.

“Yes. And they are insanely expensive. You didn’t think I would come on this trip without precautions. This isn’t something you can purchase normally either.”

“So, what happened to Yang Zi?” I asked. “Why not put me in the stasis box and give him the helmet?”

“He needs a separation chamber. A helmet won’t cut it. He was at the Free Port far longer than you? So what do you think happened?”

“The Chaos creature had more of an impact on him,” I replied, and Luo Lingtai nodded at this.

“Exactly. This is why super organizations tend to stay isolated from each other and visitors. They don’t want someone else to drag them down, with isolation being the best policy,” she explained. It made sense. Like a disease that would propagate through contact and through time. It was better to avoid contact entirely.

“If I went, then you would be impacted as well,” I stated.

“It would have been a disaster. Who knows what would have happened. The best case was some kind of Chaos creature bursting out of your head,” Luo Lingtai said. I didn’t need that kind of vivid imagery.

“What about my past at the Free Port?” I asked. “My memories are a bit hazy at the moment.”

“A separation chamber would be best, but again, those kinds of things are insanely expensive. Also the number of powerful people you have met is probably also helping. Since if your past is changed, their past is changed. Chaos is powerful, but the Chaos creatures tend to be like a fire and burn themselves out quickly. Not enough energy.”

“A tradeoff, between range and power then,” I said quietly while thinking over the situation.

“Yes, but don’t get overconfident. Anyways there are opportunities now.

“What do you mean?” I asked, still feeling confused.

“Lots of dead super organizations now. Something like this, it is strong but will burn out quickly enough. This is why super organizations have closed borders for the most part. To reduce the risk of something like this instantly wiping them all out,” she replied.

“Backwards and forwards,” I muttered. “I feel better. I think. It wanted me to recall something I felt like I always knew.”

“Memetic as well. The moment you speak the name, then Chaos would exist in your mind backwards and forwards through time and extend its mental influence outwards from there, infecting more people. I have read about things like this in the past. I guess I will add another note to the Xyon Front’s records.”

“But, it felt like I always knew. I just had to remember,” I said with a lot of fear. It made absolutely no sense, but that was Chaos.

“That is why you never mess with Chaos. One mistake and it isn’t just you that gets wiped out, it is something that will wipe out your civilization as well. There is a theory that chaos creatures are just beings who delved too deeply into breaking their understanding causality. For all we know, that mental attack could be the dying scream of some powerful being echoing backwards and forwards across time,” she replied with a shrug.

“It just felt real,” I muttered. “Like I always knew this word. How can memories be impacted like that?” I figured through energy, but it just felt weird.

“It wasn’t your memories being impacted, it could also have been your history that was being changed. There was no mental attack. Or it was a mental attack, but by changing the past.”

“Which makes absolutely no sense,” I muttered.

“Now you are getting it,” she joked. I did get it, but it still made my headache worse just thinking about how such a thing could happen. “Why do you think super organizations are so isolationist? They all think that someone else is going to mess things up and then this will happen.”

“All those people?” I muttered. “What happened to them? What would Chaos even do?”

“Depends. Most Chaos effects are self-propagating. It might be a reproductive strategy. Could be the lingering effects of a weapon. Could be some super being passing gas for all we know. As for the beings impacted, their brains or bodies probably exploded. One Chaos latches on, in most cases energy rapidly builds up since reality itself is being altered and a connection to Chaos is made.”

“Too much energy, then boom,” I muttered.

“Also, why Chaos can’t survive that long outside of its layer unless there is a lot of energy. That is why high level cultivators are at a greater risk of an accident happening. Even with all the precautions one can take, Chaos gets everything eventually,” she replied with a heavy sigh.

“Everything?” I asked in surprise.

“It is a saying. The Firmament is infinite, so anything that can happen-“

“-will eventually happen,” I finished off the common saying.

“Exactly. At least you sound better.”

“I still feel off and that my memory is messed up,” I replied.

“Let’s give it some more time. Time and distance helps quite a bit. I am more concerned about Yang Zi,” she replied.

“Will he be, okay? If the past has changed?” I asked, while trying to think how all that would work.

“It was his stasis box, so he should probably make it. He also doesn’t have much energy, and he probably has an implant to block out altered memories. The stasis box will only prevent the worst, he really needs a separation chamber,” she replied.

“The more I think about how all this would work, the more frustrating it feels,” I muttered.

“You and everyone else,” Luo Lingtai replied. The conversation was helping me focus on the moment. Thinking back over my memories in the Free Port, everyone was repeating the same word, but I couldn’t make it out.

“How would physical things even change?” I asked.

“Don’t ask those questions. Well you can ask, but they don’t have any answer. Or at least an answer that makes sense. With Chaos you can get two plus two equals purple. Now you can only do math with colors. And yes, that is something the Xyon Front has recorded. Where a person’s math becomes color based. Not everything is flashy and death. But how would a being even function if they can only do math in colors?”

“What happened to that person?” I asked, not thinking about the question, more just wanting to talk about something to distract me from how close to death I had just come.

“They along with three other people they talked to in person were but in a separation chamber and incinerated just to be sure that one person’s madness didn’t spread,” Luo Lingtai replied. That wasn’t helping me mentally deal with the situation.

“Would the Administrator be okay?” I asked since Luo Lingtai seemed to have a lot of answers and it helped me focus on anything but my changing memories which was scaring me immensely.

“Possibly. What impacts a calculator might not impact a flesh and blood being and vice versa. But when a Calculator goes bad, it is very bad. Anyone attached to the calculator will be impacted. That is why dealing with certain currencies like the units the calculator issues is also risky. The higher the level of interaction between you and something that is infected, the higher chance of you being infected with Chaos. Once that happens, your entire history will be messed up and your life will probably end,” Luo Lingtai explained.

“People need cause and effect,” I replied quietly. I was finally understanding a bit of what was going on. Even if what I understood was incredibly scary.

“Yes. More than air, water, or an environment, we need cause and effect. The moment you lose that, well your brain won’t work properly anymore.”

“So, there is one timeline?” I asked while trying to focus as much as possible.

“That is an entirely different debate. There are claims that there are infinite branches. If they repeat somewhere else in the Firmament or exist in an entirely different reality has been the subject of high level debate for a long time.”

“Reality is a cake with layers, so that would be a fourth dimension,” I replied.

“Yep, so outside of that would be a fifth physical dimension in existence. No one has been able to prove or disprove such a thing. Since one would have to separate themselves from reality itself, which means going deep into Chaos. And no one has ever returned,” she replied.

“Nothing visits that layer? Ever?” I asked. The Infinite Ring Complex had gone all the way down, but that had ended in disaster.

“Sometimes super organizations connect an energy pump that low, but that is asking for trouble. Enough questions. You are making my head hurt.”

“My apologies. Yang Zi and a separation chamber. Can you get access to one?” I asked.

“I can, but it won’t be cheap. Those kinds of things are insanely expensive. We would have to use all the profits that we had collected,” she replied.

“Then let’s do that. Helping Yang Zi is the most important thing at the moment. Everything else can come second. I don’t want to try and salvage anything without his knowledge, and we could use some time in a separation chamber, so we can remove these helmets,” I replied.

Luo Lingtai nodded slowly at this. “That makes sense. Very well. Altering course to one of the intermediary bases of the Xyon Front. They have a separation chamber there that I know of. What bad luck.”

“Will anything dangerous stick around?” I asked.

“Unless there is a large source of energy, probably not. But everything could fall apart if the calculator running the place has problems. They tend to be a highly concentrated form of pure energy, which makes them vulnerable to Chaos, even more so if their math goes bad. Something mental like this, the copies it made of itself are probably deleted, but it could restore itself from a backup. Don’t underestimate a calculator,” Luo Lingtai said.

It was funny that multiple people had said similar things about machine intelligences and didn’t like them. They used a separate system. A calculator would never become a cultivator and how it took a percentage of energy from various beings made calculators a target of scorn. They were powerful, but powerful through others.

As far as culture went, it was completely different to the cultural views of cultivators. A calculator would work with others, but cultivators were on their own for the most part in terms of getting stronger. If I had gotten enough energy for my breakthrough from the Administrator, then it was corrupted by Chaos, then I might be impacted as well.

It was an inherent vulnerability in the entire process which was incredibly frustrating. It wasn’t something that could be easily fixed unless I gathered my own energy, but that had risks regarding Chaos targeting me, if the energy didn’t go through enough purification steps.

The situation was a quandary, but I was forgetting something. I shook my head and closed my eyes to focus my mind on the present. I wasn’t forgetting anything, that was just the residual effects of whatever Chaos brain parasite was out there trying to alter my past or memories.

I got up and Luo Lingtai looked at me but didn’t say anything. I went to check on Yang Zi. I found him in his personal storage room where he kept a lot of odds and ends. Off to one side there was a coffin like device that was lit up. Looking at the singular display it was active, and he was inside of it, in stasis.

After going back to the bridge, I checked the historical footage inside the vessel, but it had all been wiped. That made sense as a safety measure, but it was annoying. I wanted to confirm everything for my peace of mind. While I trusted Luo Lingtai to a certain extent, Yang Zi was there to balance things out.

That was the most valuable thing in the Firmament, trust. Trust that what people told you was the truth and there wasn’t any kind of plot. The events and what I could remember lined up with what Luo Lingtai told me. But there was always a small sliver of doubt.

The only thing now was to let Luo Lingtai take us to whatever base the Xyon Front had set up for situations like this. As a group spanning multiple super organizations and Free Ports, they had to have some way to account for Chaos. Having a completely separate base with a separation chamber made sense to some degree. It would be risky keeping something so valuable in some random location, but it helped the organization avoid putting everything into a single base and risking it all like super organizations did.

If the Heavenly Alliance went down, it would all go down with only a very few escaping. Even the Soaring Star Society didn’t have any of their members escape. Once the super organization went down, it dragged down everything nearby.

The Free Port, while not being a super organization, held to the same principle. Once it collapsed, everyone and everything nearby was dragged down as well. Isolation was the best choice, but I wouldn’t be able to advance my cultivation if I completely isolated myself.

My thoughts drifted to all the people and beings living in the Free Port. There was probably only a fraction of the people living there that had been living in the Infinite Ring Complex. After a certain point the deaths just became some kind of abstract number. It was easier than seeing people die in front of me.

It was still depressing how cheap and fragile life truly was. But that was the risk of not being powerful and accepting your situation. Once things took a bad turn, there was nothing you could do. If you didn’t have the ability to escape or resist, then you would end up dead like everyone else.

While these structures were man made, since there were no naturally occurring habitats inside the Firmament as far as I knew, the disasters felt like a hurricane or a volcano rather than the failure of people. I couldn’t even blame the Soaring Star Society for their failure, since the more I had learned about energy compression and purification, the more I learned they had been completely over the top in their safety measures and procedures.

As for the Free Port, it was impossible to say what happened. Some salvager or energy pirate could have been impacted and that impact echoed backwards in time to the rest of the Free Port. The risk of such a place was immense. But the Chaos creature that attacked could have been more powerful than usual, it was hard to say. At the very least, its unique vector of attack of time and mental attacks made it insanely difficult to combat.

There wasn’t exactly a record of these things to compare to. Luo Lingtai clearly had knowledge, but I wasn’t going to bother her anymore after she had already answered several of my questions. I knew what happened, but I wanted to know more, to get definitive answers, to learn the name I had forgotten.

I let out a small sigh after the last thought crossed through my head. That was not good. Whatever this Chaos creature was, it was still trying to affect me in some way.

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