Young Master Cultivator Advancing Beyond Ultimate Techniques Through Supremacy

“You dare?!” The voice boomed and the classroom door blew off the hinges.

Gary, the youngest of the platinum-ranked young masters, jumped to attention, leaving a greasy smear on the glass wall of the fish tank his face had been pressed against.

“I am so sorry Arch Demi-Grand Old Master Revae, I was just admiring your fish.”

“That will be the last thing you admire in your pitiful life, you insignificant worm!” Revae screamed loud enough to wake the heavens themselves, with vitriolic malice dripping from a rictus grin. The assembled young masters fell to their knees as one, while old man Revae lifted the young master by the throat and slammed his back against the wall. With his exceptional control over insect qi, the ivory-ranked old master moved with the speed of a hundred thousand dung beetles. The assembled young masters nervously held their hands over their heads to protect their carefully coiffed hairstyles from the inevitable rain of blood. They cowered with faces pressed against the floor in terrified supplication.

“PLEASE SPARE MY LIFE!” Gary struggled and cried out, choking and flailing ineffectually against the old man’s chitinous strength.

“You have smudged my fish tank for the last time,” he glowered. The old man brought up a clenched fist, held before Gary’s face. His tiniest finger slowly unfurled, extended out. Around them a hush fell, then a whisper of wind picked up. The huddled young masters on the floor whispered to each other, struggling under the pressure of the old master’s murderous intent. “Please master, no. Not the Thundering Mantis Finger of Eternal Snowfall! Please, think of my children! Think of my wives!”

Revae curled the extended pinkie in, snagged it under his thumb for leverage, then flicked the pinkie finger against Gary’s nose.

“Pl—” Gary’s head exploded into a fine pink mist.

Seven minutes later…

“—ease no!” Gary screamed into the… black nothingness. “Wait, where am I?” He was floating in the vast emptiness of space. No body, no physical presence, nothing to see, nothing to hear. An endless void. “Great. Now what do I do?”

Four thousand and eighty-six minutes later…

“Who’s a good black endless void? You are! You’re a good little endless black void! G’boy! G’BOY! …I am so bored.” Gary sighed.

Seventy-three days later…

“The pickles go in the jar!” Gary giggled.

Six months and four days later…

Gary genuflected.

Four years and thirty-nine days later…

Gary sighed and spun around in a slow circle.

Nineteen years later…

The infinitely unknowable black void continued voiding voidly.

Three hundred and seventeen years later…

Gary gesticulated. He defenestrated. He performed for the infinite void. Finally, he felt refreshed.

Two hundred and eight years later…

“And that’s why I kept feeding the fish all those little pieces of—” Gary screamed and recoiled from a bright flash of light and an accompanying loud pop directly in front of him.

“Whassa?” he muttered, ogling a mysterious floating orb of yellow light now hovering before him.

“Terribly sorry for the wait, sir!” A disembodied static voice chirped through the orb. “There was a bit of a tangle-up in the lab and it took us a little longer than anticipated to process you. We should have been here… uh….” Some papers were heard rustling. “Oh holy shit how many years? Harold, did you see the date on this file!? This guy’s been trapped in limbo for—I mean uh, hello sorry sir! Sorry for the wait, perfectly normal. Happens all the time.”

“What’s uh.. happening?” Gary perplexed.

“So you’re in limbo which is where souls go when they die before moving on, and you were here for a tiny little bit longer than you were supposed to be. Which is like I said totally normal and not at all the fault of myself or Harold. But so what I’m gonna do to fix this for you is let you pick your own special skill and then I’ll toss you back into the world you came from for another go around! How’s that sound, champ?”

“I mean, yeah I guess?”

“Cool! Awesome! So what skill would you like? I can give you pretty much whatev—”

“I want to be the greatest young master cultivator!” Gary said without hesitation.

“Are you sure? I could give you any number of powers of a go—”

“I’m sure. Young master cultivator.”

“Okay, champ.” The orb seemed to shimmer for a few moments, then waves of energy began to emanate out from within, gradually overcoming the area around Gary, then completely obscuring his view of the void. “Here. We. Go.

Five hundred forty-eight years, seven months, twenty-one hours and fifty-three minutes earlier…

“Imbeciles. Every last one of you. No. Once again, I teach. The young master ranks from lowest to highest are Platinum, Gold, Bronze, Silver, Iron, Mocha, and finally Paprika. Please have this memorized for the test tomorrow. Any questions? No? Good. Dismissed.” Revae watched as the young masters filed out of the classroom. He sighed and walked over to the impressively massive fish tank dominating the corner of the room. He tipped the container of food over the edge and watched the brightly coloured fish swarm to the surface, fighting each other over the green flakes. “Good girls,” Revae smiled. “Train hard. Defy the heavens for your food.”

A loud crash interrupted his reverie. Revae whipped his head around to glare at the young master on the other of the fish tank. “Insolent girl. You’re lucky that filth didn’t get on my shoes.”

“I’m terribly sorry old master,” she stammered, grasping for and then righting the bucket of water that had been knocked over. A thin trail of red-tinted water flowed slowly away from her, creeping towards the master. He arched an eyebrow at her and she practically flew across the floor with her rag, catching the stream before it could make it to his velvet footwear.

The girl wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and returned to washing the Gary-shaped blood stain off the classroom wall.

“I swear I’m the only one who knows how to do their cursed job around here,” Revae exclaimed as he stomped out of the room.

“Stupid prick,” the girl muttered, after quadruple checking that he was actually gone. One could never be too sure with the old masters, even these low-grade ivory-ranked old masters like Revae could sometimes have unexpected tricks. “When I’m an old master I won’t treat my students like this,” she said, scrubbing her gold-knit rag harder into the brick and mortar.

With a grunt and an oof the girl dropped her rag and stumbled back as a tear in the fabric of reality ripped open in front of her. The girl cried out, “I’m sorry Revae, I didn’t mean it!”

A moment later, Gary stepped from beyond the tear and the rippling rip in reality slithered closed with a wet squelching sound. He stumbled forward and the girl reached out to catch him.

“Gary?!” the girl said in shocked disbelief.

“Subixia?” he asked confused. “Is that you? I… I feel starved. It’s been so long. What’s happening? Where—”

Subixia grabbed his arms to steadied him, but the moment she touched him her form shimmered, wavered, then popped. Her body exploded into red powder, swirling around Gary like a fierce tornado, then coalesced into a funnel, diving straight into his soulheart. Gary felt his body filtrating the mist, the flecked remains of his old friend Subixia, and his Qi centre begin to fill with the results.

As the last of the Subixia-flavoured mist was absorbed into his body a tiny shimmering translucent bubble appeared in the air before him. The bubble grew rapidly, until it reached the size of a basketball, then popped. Where it had been, a cockroach was now hovering. A pair of dragonfly-like wings buzzed on its back, holding it aloft.

The cockroach seemed to grin at Gary and then spoke with a high-pitched voice, “Grats kid. You just ranked up your Young Master Cultivation skill from Young Master Platinum Stage Lilac to Young Master Platinum Stage Celadon.” The cockroach buzzed over to him and landed on his shoulder. It flicked his ear with an antenna. “Cultivate five more Young Masters and you’ll be at the Celadon stage in no time.”

Gary met the cockroach’s eyes with a horrified stare. “This is NOT what I asked for!”