It has been 3 weeks since the launch of SAGA OF THE SWORDBREAKER: INVINCIBLE UNDER HEAVEN. I’ve noticed that in previous campaigns, Weeks 2 and 3 are usually the slowest. Still, the campaign is only 46% funded. There is still a long way to go.
INVINCIBLE UNDER HEAVEN is a cyberpunk cultivation saga written in the grand traditions of both genres—and goes beyond. Like the best cyberpunk works, it is filled with high tech and high adventure, intrigue and politicking, powerful megacorporations and freedom-loving adventurers. Cultivation is the heart of the series: cultivation of martial skill, cultivation of magical power, and most importantly, cultivation of the spirit.
The series blends the best of both worlds, and goes beyond. The timeless wisdom of the ancient sages is infused into the work. Protagonist Li Ming and deuteragonist Ghazan embody the best of their respective cultures and civilisations.
Where other authors treat cultivation as a means to pump out soulless product, this series seeks to bring out the full potential of the genre.
Don’t believe me? Previous posts showed Chapter 1 of Book 4. Here is Chapter 2. We see how a civilian sees the cutthroat world of the rivers and lakes… and how both his and Li Ming’s perspectives are coloured by their culture.
Enjoy!
—
Consciousness returned with the celerity of a thunderbolt.
Colors flooded into his eyes, chasing away the darkness with muted blues and relaxing greens. Soft, cool gel enveloped his body. Waves of tingling fire washed across his skin, ebbing and flowing like the tides, bringing pleasure and warmth into every crevice. Electric currents surged through his meridian lines, all of them, all at once, lighting him up from the inside out. Circuits of life energy joined his fingers to his lungs, his scapula, his ears, his philtrum, his heart. Lines of bright fire pulsed through his toes, up his legs, feeding into his organs, his eyes, face. Lightning erupted in his perineum, blasted up his spine, and roared into his brain. His bones, his nerves, all of him, shivered and oscillated, vibrating to a cosmic frequency.
Li Ming breathed.
His belly rose and fell. His eyes remained wide open. The rest of him lay as still as a sleeper, as still as a corpse. He welcomed the qi, allowed it into him, letting it cleanse his wounds and purge his poisons, freeing it to transform his muscles and rejuvenate his marrow.
He breathed.
The qi field abruptly cut out. His body was still aflame with life, but the waves of healing qi that flowed over him dispersed. The lights grew brighter, sharper, revealing a smooth, curved surface in front of his eyes. The gel grew warmer, matching his body heat. The excess qi within him slowly leaked away, returning to the universe.
He breathed.
In the breath he allowed it to happen. A small part of his conscious mind, soft but insistent, demanded answers and explanations. His deep mind muted it, shushed it, smothered it, falling back on a lifetime of qigong practice. Gratitude swelled within his heart, a profound thankfulness for this miracle, a sense of appreciation for this healing and restoration. Anchored in these emotions, he bade the excess qi farewell, and allowed it to depart.
Servos hummed softly. White light peeked through long cracks, defining a lid. His conscious mind butted in, now telling him that he was lying in a gel-filled pod, and the pod was slowly opening. The lid swung fully open, now revealing a white-painted ceiling, stark white lights, and a man in a white coat peering kindly down at him through a set of thick smartglasses.
“Welcome back,” the man said.
Li Ming blinked. Synapses sparked in his brain, and suddenly he remembered how to speak.
“Where am I?” Li Ming asked.
“Guangci Hospital in Bao An. I’m Doctor Song. You’re safe now. How are you feeling?”
Alive. Li Ming was fully, completely, truly alive. As though he’d been injected with a concentrated bolus of raw vitality, replenishing reserves he’d never known he’d drained, restoring function he hadn’t known he’d lost, rejoining connections he hadn’t known he’d broken.
“Energized,” Li Ming said.
Dr. Song smiled. His huge glasses made him look vaguely like an owl.
“Wonderful.”
There was a long grab bar on either side of the opening. Under Dr. Song’s direction, Li Ming carefully seized the bars and pulled himself back up. The gel flowed sluggishly around him, yet refused to cling to him. Li Ming stepped out of the pod and looked around.
Sunlight flooded the room through a bank of wall-length windows, looking out into a park. Leather couches and chairs ringed the smooth, coffin-like pod. More chairs surrounded a nearby coffee table. A massive television screen faced the table. Vases of fresh flowers graced nooks and crannies. Paintings of waterfalls and flower fields hung on the walls. By the exit door, wooden panels concealed a generously-sized cabinet.
Looking down, Li Ming saw that he was wearing a form-fitting black one-piece suit, exposing only his face and hands and bare feet. Its attached hood covered his short hair and held it in place. Fine wires ran down the surface of the fabric, forming an intricate mesh. It reminded him of a wetsuit crossed with a circuit board.
“What day is it?” Li Ming asked.
“The twenty-second day of the third month. You’ve been out for three days,” Dr. Song replied.
“Gai si… How bad was it?”
Song frowned.
“You suffered a tremendous blow to your rib cage. It shattered ribs four through eight on both sides of your chest, drove multiple fragments into your lungs, and damaged the intercostal vessels. A small chip nicked your pericardium too, but thankfully it didn’t penetrate the heart itself. In addition to massive internal hemorrhaging, you developed hemothorax and went into hypovolemic shock. The blood accumulated between your chest wall and your lungs, placing pressure on your lungs and threatening to collapse it. You lost about thirty-five percent of your blood volume. You also broke the third knuckle of your right hand, and experienced significant bruising all over your body.
“You were fortunate that your father applied immediate first aid magic to stop the bleeding, then arranged for an air ambulance to fly you here. Just ten more minutes and you would have been too far gone.”
“You saved my life. Thank you.”
Dr. Song’s frown deepened. He planted his fists on his hips.
“You could have died, young man. Do you know how many martial cultivators are killed or crippled in pointless duels every year? At least a hundred. You could have been one of them.”
Fire surged through Li Ming’s heart.
“It wasn’t a ‘pointless duel’,” Li Ming insisted.
“Really. What was it about?”
“The challenger wanted to prove the supremacy of his style.”
Dr. Song shook his head.
“A pointless battle. Can’t you have walked away?”
“He also wanted to build his reputation by killing me.”
“Ah, so one man is murdered and the other becomes a murderer. Even more pointless.”
When phrased that way, it surely sounded stupid. Li Ming almost, almost, fired a rebuttal. Then he remembered that some things should be left to the jianghu.
“The jianghu is a realm of blood and suffering, young man. Get out of it while you still can,” Dr. Song said.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Li Ming replied.
Dr. Song grumbled under his breath and sighed.
“Martial cultivators. Always eager to prove yourself—and die for it.”
Once again, Li Ming was tempted to snap at Dr. Song. Once again, Li Ming held himself back. Dr. Song was clearly a civilian. Though he witnessed the turmoil of the rivers and lakes, he was not an inhabitant of that world. There were some things he could never understand.
“Anyway, we performed emergency surgery on you,” Dr. Song said, his professional mien returning. “We removed the bone fragments, drained the trapped blood, delivered medicines to encourage clotting, closed the wounds, and applied absorbable fixation plates to hold your ribs in place.
“Once you were stabilized, we sent you for rejuvenation therapy. You spent the last day and a half in the pod while it repaired you from the inside out. Looking at the readouts…”
Song’s hands and fingers danced through a complex series of gestures in front of his glasses.
“…your vital signs are nominal,” Dr. Song finished.
“How can you tell?” Li Ming asked.
“Your suit is equipped with electronic sensors. They let me measure temperature, respiration, heart rate. Do you feel any discomfort? Any weakness, pain, stiffness, anything?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s a relief.”
The last of the excess qi drained away. Cold air brushed against him, stealing warmth and energy. Goosebumps ran down his exposed skin.
“Do I have to keep wearing this suit? Or do I have other clothes?” Li Ming asked.
Dr. Song pointed at the cabinets.
“We’ve got gowns for you in the cabinet. But you must keep the suit on. You can only remove it when you go to the toilet or take a shower. You need to monitor you for adverse reactions.”
“What kind of reactions?”
Dr. Song raised an eyebrow. “Is this your first time undergoing rejuvenation therapy?”
“Yes.”
Li Ming knew the theory behind it. The patient would be suspended in a pool of qi-transparent gel within a medical pod, then immersed in a superconcentrated field of healing qi.
It was the most advanced biomedical treatment in the history of human civilization. Conceived by the Celestial Empire and perfected in the era of the Five States and Ten Corporations, it could achieve miracles beyond the reach of other medical treatments. A single rejuvenation treatment could replace a complex regimen of expensive drugs, resolve chronic illnesses in a day, save weeks, months, years, even decades of painful healing and physical rehabilitation.
Li Ming’s knowledge of rejuvenation therapy was limited to books and conversations. Now, having experienced it for himself, he understood why it was so prized.
And so pricey.
“The treatment clears out deep energy blockages and realigns your meridians,” Dr. Song said. “Most of the time, patients experience a powerful rush of energy, followed by improved quality of health. Occasionally, however, there may be more severe effects. Patients may experience a healing crisis.”
Li Ming had read about those. When qi slows and stagnates, it becomes a blockage, preventing the smooth flow of vital energy through the body. There were many causes for qi stagnation: poor diet, unhealthy lifestyle, lack of exercise, emotional trauma. Clearing a blockage was like lancing a boil. All the stored toxins would burst out in an instant. The revitalized body would—usually—clear out the toxins eventually, but until then, the patient may experience strange diseases.
Instant onset of the flu, with a sudden fever, sneezing, and coughing up phlegm. Unusual fatigue or muscle weakness. Spontaneous pains springing up in other parts of the body, old injuries demanding special attention. At the higher end, Li Ming had heard of fast and irregular heartbeats, full-body pains, even symptoms mimicking cardiac arrest. Once Li Ming had read of a man who, after undergoing rejuvenation therapy and clearing blockages at the base of his spine, suddenly developed a flesh-eating disease in that same area caused by a species of exotic bacteria that lived in water—even though the pod and gel were completely sterilized before use, the treatment was in a landlocked city, and he was the only person in the city to experience that disease.
Healing crises might manifest immediately, or soon after treatment. There was no way to predict how severe they would be, if they indeed presented at all. The only guideline was that the thicker the blockage, the more powerful the aftershocks once it was cleared. Especially if located in or around an energy center.
“Once we’re certain there are no secondary diseases, you’ll be free to go,” Dr. Song said. “In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the amenities. If you need to leave the room, please let a nurse know.”
“Understood,” Li Ming said.
“And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
You’ve taken your first step down the road to immortality.”
The human body was constantly absorbing, generating and expending energy. In most people, the output far exceeded the input. This caused the body to deplete its essential energies over time. A multitude of cultivation methods were designed to reduce the output, increase the input and conserve a person’s essence, achieving energy equilibrium, and with it, immortality.
Rejuvenation therapy injected a huge amount of energy into the body, as much as the body could hold, creating a massive energy surplus. The body would draw upon this surplus to carry out vital functions. So long as this surplus remained, the body would not age.
Immortality through rejuvenation therapy was a race against the clock—and dwindling funds. Most people could only ever afford therapy once or twice in their lifetimes, enough to repair damage at the genetic level, recover from severe injuries or illnesses, and enjoy a graceful senescence. To stop the biological clock, a person needed to undergo treatment at least once every half-year. But to become a true immortal, to turn back the clock and regain the flower of youth, he needed monthly treatments. That was a regimen only a vanishing few could afford.
Politicians, the ultra-wealthy, celebrities, and martial cultivators.
“Do you plan to continue down this path?” Dr. Song asked.
“I… haven’t thought about it,” Li Ming admitted.
Dr. Song recoiled.
“You haven’t? Why not? I thought everyone in the jianghu aims for immortality. That’s why they become cultivators.”
Li Ming shrugged.
“It just never crossed his mind.”
Li Ming was a dirt bun from a farming town. What was immortality to him? The pinnacle of human technology, a pillar of urban society, a goal many cultivators aspired to. He’d known a few immortals himself. But he focused his time and energies on other things. Immortality simply wasn’t something he gave much thought to. After all, immortality was hugely expensive…
…Or it was, until one day he woke up to find he had more money than he knew what to do with.
“If you can afford regular treatments, you should think about it,” Dr. Song said. “Immortality could change your life, and the lives of your entire family.”
“I will,” Li Ming promised.
“However,” Dr. Song stressed, “it is only biological immortality. It does not grant you invincibility. You can still die from accidents and diseases like any other human. Or from violence.”
Li Ming nodded slowly. He’d seen that truth first-hand, far more intimately than most mortals could guess.
“I’m not going to tell you to leave the jianghu. But if you continue to accept pointless fights, one day you may discover the limits of immortality. And then, who’s going to look after your family?” Dr. Song asked.
“I understand.” Li Ming bowed his head and saluted the doctor. “Thank you for your wisdom.”
Chuckling, Dr. Song waved his hand. The fierce persona was gone again, and in its place was the kindly healer.
“I’m not of the jianghu. Please don’t salute me that way. Just one thing for me.”
“Yes?”
“Try your best not to let me see you again. Unless you’re planning to become an immortal.”
—
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