Chapter 360 - 15: A Frightened System

Chapter 360: Chapter 15: A Frightened System

The rice was still warm. Barely, but warm enough. Ash ate it with the kind of focus he had only ever shown during exams.

It was gone in about four minutes. He set the bowl down, looked at it for a moment, and then looked at the second tray Rylan had so thoughtfully saved for him. That disappeared in another three. Somewhere in the middle of the second tray, he realized his body was no longer hungry in the ordinary way. It was hungry the way a construction site is hungry. Every cell in him was rebuilding itself, and every bite he swallowed seemed to vanish into some deep, busy place and be put to work at once.

As he chewed, he could actually sense it happening. His stomach was rapidly breaking the food down and sending the majority of the refined energy straight upward toward his brain. Only the leftovers were distributed to the rest of his body. The process was smooth, efficient, and slightly alarming.

I guess having a super OP brain wasn’t without its downsides, he thought dryly.

"Are you eating for two?" Rylan asked. He had stopped eating himself just to watch. "Is the beauty martial soul hungry?"

"It’s a lot of work being this handsome," Ash ignored his teasing question said with his mouth full.

Rylan laughed so hard he had to put his cup down.

Ash went back to the counter for a third round. The dumpling stall at the end of the line was run by a heavyset man everyone called Uncle Bao, who had been serving breakfast to the western block for as long as the academy had existed. Ash had been a regular there for four years. Uncle Bao had never once looked up from the steamer while serving him. This morning he looked up, stared, and then stared some more.

"Boy," he said slowly. "Do I know you?"

"It’s Ash, Uncle Bao."

"Ash." Uncle Bao blinked. "The skinny one, with the hair."

"I wasn’t that skinny and I still have the hair."

"I guess you do." Uncle Bao shook his head in wonder, then loaded a plate with eight dumplings instead of the usual five and slid it across the counter. "Awakening really does strange things to people.

Anyways eat. No charge."

"Uncle Bao, I can pay—"

"I said eat, you really need to put on more weight." Uncle Bao replied, and went back to his steamer with the satisfied air of a man who had done something noble.

Ash carried the plate back to the table. At the next table over, two girls pretended not to look at him with great skill and no success at all. One of them elbowed the other. The other elbowed back. Rylan watched the whole exchange with the quiet joy of a man at a theater.

"You know," Rylan said, "a week ago, nobody noticed you when you walked into a room."

"I liked that week. I don’t like being the center of attention"

"I’m sure you do." Rylan stretched his arms over his head. "So what are you doing today? The instructors said this week is a ’settling week.’ We’re supposed to spend it ’getting acquainted with our martial souls.’ That’s the polite way of saying nobody is going to teach us anything and we should go away and feel good about ourselves."

"That sounds like the best week of my life," Ash said.

"It would be, if the Genesis Apex Assessment wasn’t a month away." Rylan’s face turned a little more serious. He tapped his fingers on the table. "Top ten percent get Quintessence Fluid. I’m a B-Rank, so I should have a decent shot, but I’ll need to actually work for it. I’ve heard the senior classes are going to be ruthless. You, on the other hand, if you want that Quintessence Fluid, have to get from E-Rank to the top ten percent in one month. No pressure."

"I really want it. I’ll figure something out."

"I know you will. And I’m still going to carry you. I said I would."

Ash smiled. It was the fourth or fifth time Rylan had made that promise since yesterday, and every time it sounded a little more sincere. He did not have the heart to tell him that the carrying might end up going the other way.

Rylan pulled a thin tablet out of his bag and propped it against the napkin dispenser, scrolling with one hand while he stole a dumpling from Ash’s plate with the other. The cafeteria had slowly returned to its usual noise. Trays clinked. Chairs scraped. A boy at the far end of the hall was loudly explaining his martial soul to anyone who would listen. Sunlight from the high windows lay across the long tables in warm squares.

"Oh, the academy bulletin updated," Rylan said, chewing. "Something happened in the western block this morning. Look at this."

He turned the tablet around.

WESTERN BLOCK’S COSMIC ENERGY DEVOURED BY UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT

Shortly after dawn, the Energy Array Department recorded a sudden and severe drop in cosmic energy density across the western dormitory block. Students reported a massive energy vortex above the building and an overwhelming pressure that left several unable to cultivate. No injuries have been reported. The Department rerouted the main supply to the affected section, and normal operations have resumed. The Academic Council has confirmed that the student responsible is a first-year in the low-talent section. The student’s name is being withheld until the cultivation is complete.

Ash read the whole thing while chewing, in the calm, steady manner of someone learning about an event that had nothing to do with him.

"Huh," he said.

"Huh?" Rylan frowned at him. "Isn’t this your dorm? The western block? You live on the third floor of the east corridor. I helped you carry your boxes."

"I do."

"And you didn’t think to tell me that something groundbreaking happened in your own building?"

"I was asleep," Ash said.

"Nobody can sleep through a vortex." Rylan jabbed at the screen. "It says here half the building dropped to one knee. Look at the comments, some guys said they couldn’t feel his own qi for ten minutes. They said it was like standing in front of a god or diety."

"Maybe I’m a deep sleeper."

"Nobody is that deep a sleeper."

Rylan trailed off. He was still looking at the tablet, but the look in his eyes had changed. It was the slow, creeping look of a man who had put several pieces of a puzzle on the table and just noticed that they fit together.

He lifted his eyes from the screen. He looked at Ash’s face. Then at the headline. Then back at Ash’s face again. Then he put the tablet down very carefully, as if it might explode.

"Your dorm," Rylan said quietly. "A cosmic phenomenon in the east corridor of the third floor. A student from the low-talent section. And you, this morning, with a face that was not yours yesterday." He swallowed. "This person couldn’t possibly be you, right?" "It wasn’t a Beauty Martial Soul was it?"

Ash picked up his cup of soy milk, took a long, slow sip, and set it down again. He smiled. It was an easy, mysterious smile—the kind he had seen a hundred times on the calm masters in his shows—and he had always wanted to try one.

"Who knows?" he said. "Eat your rice, Rylan."

He did not say yes. He did not say no.

It did not matter. Rylan stared at him for a long time, his mouth slowly coming open, and Ash could see the whole realization arriving in his friend’s face one piece at a time, like the sun coming up over a hill. Disbelief. Then understanding. Then something warm and bright that spread across his whole face until he was grinning like a lunatic.

"You," Rylan said. "You absolute idiot." He reached across the table and grabbed Ash by the shoulder, shaking him, his voice cracking in the middle of the word. "You absolute idiot. You definetile didnt awaken a E-Rank. Why didnt you apply for a re-ranking?

They put you up there and they said E-Rank in front of the entire school, and you were sitting there thinking, ’Hold my soy milk.’"

"Rylan, keep your voice down—"

"I’m keeping my voice down!" Rylan was not keeping his voice down. He took a breath and lowered it with visible effort, but his eyes had gone shiny. He wiped them quickly with the back of his wrist.

"Sorry. It’s just— Yesterday I didn’t know what to say to you. I kept telling you I’d carry you, like some idiot, because I couldn’t think of anything else, and you were—" He laughed again, wetly. "Never mind. I’m just happy. You deserved this. You really did."

Ash felt something tighten in his chest. He had not planned on this. He had planned on being mysterious.

"You were the only person who said anything to me yesterday," he said. "Everyone else just gave me that look. You told me you’d carry me. It mattered."

"Stop it, you’ll make me cry in front of the girls."

"They’re already watching."

"Then I’ll cry with dignity." Rylan sniffed once and sat up straight, becoming very serious. "Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll look at every single person who asks and say, ’That’s just a coincidence.’"

"You’ll look suspicious."

"I’m a great liar."

"You are not."

"I’m a great liar when it matters," Rylan said, and stole another dumpling.

Ash let him have it.

He could not stay for long. The bowl of rice was empty, the dumplings were gone, and every nerve in his body had started to hum with a low, steady, impatient pull toward his dorm room.

"I should get going," Ash said, standing.

"Already?" Rylan looked up in alarm. "You’ve been here twenty minutes."

"I need to get back to something."

"Cultivating?" Rylan narrowed his eyes. "You? The guy who told me last year that cultivation was ’just exercise with extra steps’?"

"I’ve revised my position."

Rylan laughed and waved him off. "Fine, go. I have a soul integration session with Instructor Hale at ten anyway. We’ll meet for dinner? Same spot?"

"Same spot," Ash said. "I’ll save you a seat this time."

"You’d better." ℯ

The path back to the western block was quieter than it had been on the way in. Most students were either still eating or had already drifted off to their sessions. The morning sun had warmed the stones of the walkway until they were pleasant under his shoes. Ash walked slower than he had run, hands in his pockets, and found himself thinking about why he was leaving a perfectly good breakfast in such a hurry.

He had never understood the heroes in his novels who lost whole days to cultivation. In every book there was a scene where the protagonist’s friends knocked on his door and he did not answer, and the author would write something about being "lost in the Dao." Ash had always thought that was a very convenient way for an author to skip a Chapter.

Now he understood.

Basically, cultivators were drunk on pleasure.