Calculating Cultivation-Chapter 134: Trapped In Darkness

I slammed a metal spike into the ground with one hand and walked forward. Luo Lingtai followed behind me doing the same thing. The dark clouds rushed about us, primarily when the gravity shifted. More and more, it kept pushing us away, which was why we were using metal spikes to advance forward to the edge of this space.

Luo Lingtai had said it wasn’t part, but it was unclear if this meant a couple days of walking or a year. With our current progress, it might be more than a year. The ground was becoming completely smooth, worn down by the wind and gravity, hurtling past us towards the center of this space. At least there was ground to stand on.

The moment I had that thought, I came across an expanse of nothingness. Luo Lingtai slammed her metal poles into the ground to move up next to me. “What now?” I shouted out so I could be heard over the roaring wind that was biting into my exposed face and clothing.

“Can you sense anything?” she shouted back.

“No! There is too much-“ A small piece of rock flew at me. I barely moved my head in time thanks to my danger sense as it shot past me. The wind and gravity making it fly faster. “There is nothing that way, we have to head towards the center. Too much energy, too much gravity.” I wasn’t horizontal due to digging my feet into the holes I had made with my metal poles.

“If we could escape into the Firmament, the Xyon Front would pick us up,” she said. What she really meant, was that she could get a lift and I would have to beg and hope for some luck. Unfortunately there was no way out of this space in the direction of the edge. Our lights barely made a dent in the passing gas and darkness.

I didn’t say anything more and turned around, heading back the way we had come. Thankfully we managed to reach the vessel, which was embedded into a slight depression in the ground. We retreated back inside to get out of the wind and to have walls around us in order to rest.

That trip to the edge and back had probably taken ten days, at least. I was mentally worn out. While I could have dug out a hole in the ground to sleep in, that would not have been my first choice. At least the edge of this place was close enough.

After resting and recovering, we set out once more towards the center. I was glad Luo Lingtai was with me, otherwise there would have been no way to keep track of which direction we needed to go. There was no Light Source here like the Great World to act as a compass.

Nothing but hard stone, swirling gas, and darkness. There were temperature shifts as well, but they were bearable unlike the changes in gravity. Those were cursed. I had to constantly keep focus on each step, make sure each metal pole had dug in deep enough, and make sure each metal pole was at a different angle.

That way if gravity shifted to straight up and down, I wouldn’t go flying away. Once we lost contact with the ground it would be a nightmare to safely recover. I thought about crawling, but it would be slower and the rock was too smooth to get a proper grip. It wasn’t as bad as ice which could form a layer of water when stepped on, but it was as smooth as rock could get with only some minor indentations, from past impacts.

After ten or so days of walking, I needed to take a break, both mentally and physically. My arms felt sore in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. The shifts in gravity were really throwing my reactions off. I put one of my metal rods into spatial storage and then began cutting out a hole with my hand. Each chunk I removed went flying away.

Luo Lingtai stayed behind me and made sure my singular metal pole didn’t go flying off while I dug. The rock wasn’t that tough, but it wasn’t completely soft either. I could make progress, but I had to rip the rock out one handful at a time. Once I dug deep enough, I was able to brace myself in the hole and keep digging.

It probably took about an hour to make a hole big enough for Luo Lingtai and myself to bunker down in while, getting out various pieces of equipment. The hole was shaped like a bottle, with a small opening at the top and a wider inside. This would help in making sure we didn’t fly out while we rested, if we could even rest.

We didn’t say anything while we ate nutritional goo and water in silence. The meal of cultivators was the mental joke I told myself. I knew Luo Lingtai would not appreciate it. While she had a decent personality, she wasn’t about to start laughing at a lame joke to lighten the mood. Before falling asleep I dug out hand holds and foot holds while Luo Lingtai did the same, to ensure we could brace ourselves from the shifts in gravity.

My sleep was horrible. It was like trying to sleep on a plane experiencing really bad turbulence. It wasn’t the constant motion, but the fear that would keep jolting me awake. If anything, it would make a really good torture method with how miserable it was.

After a constantly interrupted rest, there was hesitation before leaving our hole. “Think we can make something?” I asked.

“Not with this kind of spatial turbulence. The wind can be dealt with, but the changes in gravity would make most designs useless. You would need a spatial stabilizer and then it would be difficult to move. Unfortunately, no,” Luo Lingtai said with a touch of despair.

“Well, best keep walking,” I replied heavily, and we set out again. As we traveled the changes in gravity were less severe, but that wasn’t saying much. It wasn’t so much the severity but the frequency and having to be constantly on alert.

It was tempting to let myself fly away and hope for the best, but that was to give up any control or agency I had left. We were stranded in this place and I wasn’t about to make the situation worse. Even if we held onto each other, the risks of getting separated were too great. Even worse was there was no way to see that far ahead. If the ground disappeared and there was another void, I would be flying through the air constantly.

While I had devices that could make nutritional goo and water, I needed to be on a stable surface to use them. Using them while constantly being tossed about in the air wouldn’t work. I would slowly dehydrate and starve to death. It would take a long time with how much energy there was and my level of cultivation, but death would eventually come to me if I got sent flying. I estimated it would take a year at most.

We kept trekking across the rocks, leaving behind little divots where our metal poles had dug into the stone. At our sixth stop, I spoke up. Unless it was to keep me on track heading towards the center, Luo Lingtai remained quiet.

“So, guesses on what this place is. I am thinking a super weapon to take out a super organization. Someone fired it but wasn’t able to stop it,” I said.

“It is our tomb,” Luo Lingtai replied. Her mood was going down quite rapidly and there was nothing I could do. What was I supposed to say, ‘Look at the view of smooth rock, dark gas, and a hell scape.’

“Perhaps, but I feel my brain melting since nothing changes,” I replied.

“The energy, wind, and gravity mostly flow towards the center. It is a reverse hole into the Material, sucking everything out of the Firmament to birth new bubbles of reality, that will eventually descend,” she replied.

“Oh, good guess. I didn’t think of that,” I said.

“Otherwise, where else would all the energy collected go without attracting Chaos? Even the Mechanical Layer would drag up Chaos with this much energy going to a single source,” she replied.

“Well we could both be right,” I said. She let out a small scoff and didn’t say anything more. That was the thing I missed most about Earth, the variety in the landscapes. It was a distant memory, but one that I cherished.

“We could make claws. Claw our way forward rapidly,” Luo Lingtai suggested.

“They won’t get enough depth and different angles. Not enough leverage. We wouldn’t be able to travel as quickly,” I replied.

“Well, if we keep traveling like we are, you will die of old age and my implants will break down before we get anywhere,” Luo Lingtai said.

“We make a spatial stabilizer and carry it,” I suggested.

“It could work. There is more than enough energy floating about that the formation could work. But such a large plate will be a pain to carry. We will each have to take one side and run with it,” Luo Lingtai said.

“Well, after traveling togeather through this desolate hell for so long, I think we can sync up carrying a formation plate,” I replied.

“Let’s make this place bigger, so we have room to work,” Luo Lingtai said. We a new goal in mind, we made our hole in the ground wider and then pulled out a large metal panel from our vessel that we had brought along.

I kept the metal plate in place, firmly on the bottom of our hole, while Luo Lingtai carved the formation, very carefully. While there was a lot of energy in the air, having the formation built better would only be useful. Less chance of small errors building up and failing at a critical moment.

“What do you think?” Luo Lingtai asked me.

“Well, it should be working, it is hard to tell,” I replied.

“I kept the effects as small as possible,” she replied. We waited and while I felt some minor shifts in gravity, they were nothing compared to before. “The challenge is that we will have to keep the plate level with the ground. If it tilts we are in trouble,” she replied.

“Well let’s get some proper rest and we can set off once we wake up. Its going to be a pain to carry,” I muttered. Luo Lingtai didn’t respond as we both rested. There was no concern about betrayal from either of us. We were both stuck in this place and combining our efforts was the best way to escape. Neither of us had anything particularly valuable that we were carrying. It was a trust born of mutual self-interest sprinkled with the desire to live.

She was already awake when I woke up. We had our nutrition goo and some water. The air was definitely toxic and not breathable without a mask. At least it wasn’t a complete vacuum. While I should be able to handle such an environment for a short period of time, I would have had to wear more protective gear. A simple breathing mask was more than enough to handle the current environmental difficulties with my level of cultivation.

We dug our way out and then carefully brought up the formation plate. We didn’t use our spatial storage devices, since trying to store an active formation was a bad idea. It might work, or it might cause problems with our spatial storage. That was something neither of us wanted to risk. We both held one side. It wasn’t that heavy compared to our strength, but it was awkward to carry such a large object with another person. We set off again, building up speed as we got used to moving in sync.

Every so often Luo Lingtai would call a halt and check our direction to make sure we didn’t veer off course. Our speed tripled compared to before. There were some close calls. The trick was to not slow down or speed up rapidly without coordinating with the other person.

Time seemed to blur togeather. I only had a vague sense of how long this trip was taking. “Energy spike in that direction. Small, but it could be something,” Luo Lingtai shouted over the wind. I gave her a nod and adjusted course with her, the large metal formation plate carried between us.

We came across several vessels all smashed up against the side of a low cliff. They had all pancaked and smashed into the ground as well. There were at least five in this area that we could see through the dark gas and no light. The first thing we did was dig a hole to rest and plan our next move.

“I don’t sense any danger. Should we try and look for salvage?” I asked Luo Lingtai.

“We can try. But I would say looking for signs of survivors would be our first concern,” she replied.

“They might have melted, if they don’t possess internal energy, like Yang Zi,” I said.

“He only melted after he died, and his implants failed. But I don’t see anyone easily surviving those crashes. I have been checking the changes in gravity at each of our rest points. Things are getting less extreme in terms of shifting, but it is reorienting sideways again,” she explained.

“That is troublesome. We go from blank smooth rocks, to a cliff. I don’t know if it is a shame we didn’t crash this far in,” I muttered.

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“These vessels probably didn’t react at all like we did. They probably had more momentum. Once something big is moving out there, it won’t easily stop,” Luo Lingtai commented and I nodded at this. At least we had seen the edge of this place. I had no concerns about overlooking something important. If we had crashed this far in, then we would have reached the edge just about now and have to trek all the way back.

I got out the goo and water machine. Nutritional goo, my favorite, just like this place. At least we had energy to spare. If things weren’t so dire, this would be a great environment to cultivate in. The energy might not be as dense as I would want at my level, but it was at the point of usability.

After a rest, we got up and brought along the formation plate while we explored the various vessels, one by one. Luo Lingtai was able to quickly work out if they had anything valuable to salvage based on their design. There were a range of vessels.

“These are old, and someone took the energy cannisters,” she pointed out. We had found locations where someone or something had cut into the vessels. I felt a bit of danger and could sense something approaching.

“Danger, approaching, over there,” I pointed out and we quickly hid inside a small carved out portion of one of the crashed vessels. A heavily cloaked figure advanced across the landscape. They wore goggles and had large clawed metal feet that gripped the ground with each step. They were lit up with two bright shoulder lamps, illuminating the ground beneath them.

“Cultivators? Come out,” the figure called out. I looked at Luo Lingtai and she nodded. She pulled out a rod that gave me a very dangerous feeling while I pulled out my sword. I had prepared just in case I had to fight and there was a spool of metal wire tied around the hilt of my blade. I quickly tied a loose end around my wrist. We both advanced out of cover to the edge of our formation plate.

“I am Yuan Zhou of the Heavenly Alliance,” I declared.

“Luo Lingtai of the Xyon Front,” my companion declared as we both brought up our weapons.

“No need to get spicey. But if you want to turn into slabs of meat, you are welcome to. I will slice and dice you before cooking you up,” the figure declared, while shifting their stance and their shoulder lamps turned towards us. It was hard to tell anything about them with the wind and how we had to shout.

“We don’t wish to fight, but we will protect ourselves. Declare yourself,” I called out while lowering my blade.

“Ah, yes. You can call me Chicken,” the figure said. The words were being translated, but to have such a specific name was surprising. “Let’s sit and lay some eggs before they hatch.” The figure advanced and I kept my sword to my side but didn’t raise it.

Chicken stood at least twice my height and was thoroughly covered with grey and black cloth. He maneuvered into a sheltered alcove created by one of the crashed vessels without sparing us much of a look. I glanced and Luo Lingtai and shrugged before carefully following this Chicken. We made sure to bring our formation plate.

If we had to fight, being able to stay grounded was very important. “So, you two hens have flown in to the dark nest,” Chicken said right away.

“Yes. Any idea how to get out of this space and back to the Firmament?” I asked.

“That is clucking impossible. Stuff only comes in and doesn’t go out. Like an egg. It can only hatch. Now give me something valuable, each of you. Or I will peck our your eyes,” Chicken said. That went dark really fast. But I had a sense that not everything was right in Chicken’s head.

“What do you consider valuable?” I asked.

“Meat. Chicken needs meat,” Chicken said in the third person. Okay, this was getting very concerning very fast and the sense of danger was increasing. I had dealt with many people. I couldn’t easily recall anyone with mental issues who was such a danger. Demonic cultivators just started off dangerous, wanting to cook your cultivation and consume it. Powerful cultivators and individuals were proud. But they were all rational to some extent.

They might have different values, but Chicken wasn’t clearly more powerful than us. But the real risk was hidden abilities. It had confirmed we were cultivators first and foremost. Luo Lingtai and I both took a step back and brought up our weapons.

“You should just feed me. I am Chicken,” the being said. I was hoping it got its name from being a coward, but it appeared to identify with a small land bound bird instead. Two mechanical limbs unfolded from beneath the robe. Two arms, each carrying a very large blade. Chicken began settling into stance, one blade pointed forward while the other over its cloaked head.

BANG! The rod Luo Lingtai was holding, activated. A beam of white light instantly cut through the distance between her and Chicken. A glowing red shield formed in front of the large cloaked figure. The beam of light broke apart into smaller beams hitting the ground and vessels to the side as the main attack was broken.

That was not good. That was a hold out weapon from the Xyon Front. I had no doubt about its power and usefulness, for this Chicken to shield against such an attack automatically meant this was about to become a very tough fight. “You are clucked!”

“Ten seconds!” Luo Lingtai shouted as I surged forward to cover her. We had discussed how we would fight as a team during a rest break. She would act as ranged support while I would cover in melee. I hated fighting, but she had the most powerful ranged weapon. Unfortunately, it needed around 10 seconds to recharge.

“One Swing To Split Heaven And Earth!” I shouted out and focused. A blade of energy surged forward to intercept Chicken as he raced towards me. He deflected himself with one blade, leaping up at the last moment and extending his blade to impact my ranged energy strike. He used the force to push him to the side and then landed back on the ground.

Then 20 blades of various shapes exploded out of Chicken’s robe and went flying into the air, the wind and gravity spinning them about, Chicken ran forward towards me. I was slightly faster allowing me to block both blades it used and had similar strength to Chicken, but its unknown combat style made me concerned. This is why I hated fighting. Every single time was a massive risk due to the unknown.

My sense of danger spiked from above. I brought up my free hand and brought out a metal plate from my storage above me. Three blades drove into the plate before it went tumbling to the ground. “The formation!” Luo Lingtai shouted.

That was all the warning I had before gravity shifted upwards and my feet left the ground. Chicken kept its grip with its clawed metal feet. I threw my sword while giving it a spin. The wire unspooled from the hilt as my sword went flying. It cut into the side of one of the crashed vessels, anchoring me. I quickly began to reel myself in while Luo Lingtai retreated from Chicken.

I hadn’t used it in a long time, but I had kept it in my spatial storage as an important item. Against an opponent of this caliber it would only be a distraction, but I needed to buy Luo Lingtai more time. I pulled out my gun from my home continent and fired.

A red shield formed to block the projectile, creating a small explosion and a shower of sparks at the point of impact. Luo Lingtai used her rod once more. Chicken’s shield didn’t come up. She had noticed like me, that it was a half shield, not a full body shield. Attacking from two directions at once at range, would most likely overwhelm it.

I might not like fighting, but I wasn’t about to be an idiot. Gravity shifted again and I landed on the ground. I quickly raced over to my blade and freed it. Glancing at Chicken, it was standing back up, its dark and tattered robes were smoking and heavily scorched. One of its shoulder lamps was broken and its head coverings were blown away, revealing a metal head. A mechanical golem of some kind.

“AHHH!” Luo Lingtai shouted as a blade fell from the sky and cut the back of her shoulder. I dodged three more blades that came flying downwards.

“Time to pluck your feathers!” Chicken screamed and rushed forward. I kept near the wreck of a vessel while holding off Chicken. It seemed content to focus on me instead of chasing after Luo Lingtai. Gravity shifted again, this time I went with the change, adjusting my footing to the side of the vessel so now we were fighting at a right angle.

“One Swing To Separate Heaven And Earth!” I shouted again and focused at point blank range. My change in position allowed Luo Lingtai another clear shot. The automatic red shield blocked her attack, but my attack went through. It struck Chicken in the head and down its body. There was a surge of energy from Chicken as its dark robes split apart and then it collapsed on the ground, unmoving.

Gravity shifted again and I made sure I was anchored so I didn’t go flying away. Luo Lingtai and made our way to the fallen Chicken. I had cut halfway through it. “That was annoying,” she said while breathing heavily.

I cut off its head just to be sure it was fully dead and not playing coy, waiting to restart or some nonsense like that. I got to checking its body for anything useful and Luo Lingtai did the same. It was a large mechanical golem, but it had suffered a lot of previous damage based on the wear on tear its frame had.

“The power core is still intact and it has a miniaturized spatial stabilizer that can be adjusted. I think we just found our ride,” Luo Lingtai said with a sense of elation.

“Hahahahaha,” I began to laugh. I couldn’t help myself. Normally I wouldn’t have laughed, but it was too funny.

“What is it?” Luo Lingtai asked in confusion.

“It was called Chicken, a flightless bird, but now we are going to use it to fly,” I said while trying to reign in my mirth.

“Whatever you are using for translation is messed up. The shield will protect us from the gas and wind. Help me move this corpse to a secure location, before it goes flying away,” she said. It was a pain to drag it back to our initial resting place near the vessels with the formation plate stopping the changes in gravity, but if we didn’t have to walk across this landscape that would be the best.

I was not about to go on another decades long trip to reach the center of this place. We were going to take Chicken’s corpse and fly away. I needed something to smile about after crashing here and trudging across the barren landscape for around a year.

We carved out an underground chamber and sealed up the entrance with a metal plate so nothing could go flying away. Luo Lingtai took the time to properly tend to her wound. It wasn’t deep luckily and had already stopped bleeding.

Luo Lingtai explained what she was doing while she worked. This was to both teach me and to double check her work. Thankfully, it was about rearranging the systems and implanting new controls for those systems.

Once the core systems were built, then we needed to make the housing. We had the simple tools necessary to bend metal and bind it togeather. The housing was ugly, incredibly ugly. Lengthwise it was shaped like triangle with a flat top with two indentations we would sit on. The front was an elevated half sphere with a small clear viewport to help block the wind from our upper bodies and heads. The shield would only deflect high energy and physical objects, not the gas mix of this place. Our legs would partially exposed, but we couldn’t increase the weight too much.

It looked nothing like Chicken, since we had only used its core parts to make the flying brick. “So how fast will it go?” I asked.

“Fast. Very fast at max speed. You will have to fly and depend entirely on your danger sense. There won’t be time to see or react to anything,” Luo Lingtai said. That would be incredibly dangerous.

“I will have to test it slowly first so we don’t go splat,” I said. I would have to reach into two gaps in the housing with both my hands to adjust the orientation and speed. The controls were like connecting wires to an engine.

“It will go fast. Very fast. If the shield activates due to the speed, then you need to slow down, since it is treating the air like an attack. I will keep track of direction, since it will be too easy to start drifting,” Luo Lingtai said, and I nodded at this.

After a long rest, we got Chicken out. While I wanted to think of it as flying brick, the name Chicken was just stuck in my head. I very carefully sent us up into the air. The real risk was that a jolt would cause me to adjust the flight controls, sending us spiraling out of control. Luo Lingtai was pressed up against my back as we both leaned forward.

I adjusted Chicken, so it was angled upwards slightly in our local field of gravity. I then began flying through the dark gases. The two small lights we carried were barely enough to illuminate anything. Chicken’s one remaining working light had been installed at the bottom of our flying vehicle.

“Let’s try and land. Slowly,” Luo Lingtai shouted into my ear.

“Got it,” I shouted back over the roar of the wind around us. While we were protected from the worst of it, the noise was still quite loud. I carefully landed us on the smooth rock ground with Luo Lingtai letting me know when we got close.

We could take off, fly, and land safely. The three key parts of traveling quickly and safely. Thank everything, but mostly Chicken for an insane mechanical golem we could repurpose, that we didn’t have to walk anymore. It made sense that it would hang around the crashed vessels, in case more showed up. I didn’t know why a mechanical golem wanted meat, but some questions were better left unanswered.

There had been some consideration to try and find its home base, but we decided it was less important than getting to the center of this space. We had something that could fly, there wasn’t anything else that we needed that Chicken would have.

Flying started off really stressful with the red shield occasionally activating, but after a little bit, it turned incredibly boring. There was nothing to see, except dark gas. It was like driving a boat with your eyes shut. At first it is really scary, but once you don’t crash into anything, it becomes more instinct than anything else.

I could feel the subtle currents and spikes of danger as I flew. Luo Lingtai would occasionally say something so I would adjust my course to keep heading towards the center of this spatial enclosure. I still couldn’t help but wonder what this place was.

When I became a powerful immortal, I vowed to label my super structures and super weapons. So that way the poor people and beings stuck inside of them, would know what they actually were. Heck, I would keep everyone out. Put up a big barrier to keep everything and everyone out. I really hated getting pulled into spatial locations like this, since I had to find a way to escape.

I had benefited greatly from the Great World, but it was still frustrating to be trapped. I had entered the Firmament and was able to travel around, and now I had taken another step backwards. That was what my entire life felt like, constantly taking steps backwards with an occasional massive forward leap. I would rather be advancing at a steady pace and not going backwards at all.

At least I had someone capable with me on this trip, who hadn’t fallen into a coma or died. Luo Lingtai might not be the most sociable of women in her current situation, but she was competant. I would take competency over chattiness any time. I could tell she was frustrated at herself and the situation, but the fact she hadn’t taken it out on me showed her immense self-control. It would be too easy to lash out.

This was her big chance to advance as part of the Xyon Front, now the investment was mostly lost and she was stranded in this place. Still as long as we were alive, there was hope. I had noticed her mood picking up now that we no longer had to walk either. Some of the tension seemed to have left her.

She had probably been thinking how long it would take to walk to the center of this place like I had. We made a good team, covering each other’s weaknesses. My past teammates had been overpowered or underpowered for the most part. Only back when I was part of the Cloudy Moon Sect did I have equals I teamed up with.

“Adjust heading, five degrees left, slightly upwards,” You Lingtai said. I adjusted course. We covered in a day what it had taken in a year. I wanted to ask if she picked up on any points of interest, but it wasn’t worth the distraction. If she located something, she would say. Asking would just be annoying and distract me.

While I was flying with my eyes closed, I needed to focus on my danger sense and the slight shifts in turbulence and gravity. I adjusted our heading slightly to ride out a shift in gravity, instead of approaching it at a direct sheer.

I slowly moved us back onto course afterwards. The red shield flared into existence as a small piece of metal or rock impacted it. “My readings are changing quickly, reduce speed,” Luo Lingtai said. I reduced our speed to half our cruising speed.

I could feel gravity shifting and my danger sense was growing. I lowered our speed once more, then another three times until we were moving at a crawl.

This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦