One more push and it shattered like toothpicks, causing me to swear as I fell over from the mental whiplash of it shattering. I lay on the floor, groaning, mostly in annoyance at my failure. After recovering, I slowly filled my dantian and tried again using square shaped spaces only to experience the whiplash of the lattice shattering again and ended up back on the ground.

  ”Okay, squares and diamonds are not going to work, I need something stronger.” I said to myself as I sat up and began to refill my dantian once more.

  Once my dantian was full, I started mentally running through what I knew about shapes and how they interacted with forces. I could remember one of my friends from the engineering department telling me about how great the hexagon shape was. However, if I was remembering the conversation correctly, then it had been a discussion on even distribution of forces and had ended in it being an inferior shape to others that excelled in other areas. The obvious go to shape was the circle that quickly got changed to cylinders when it was applied to engineering, and that shape excelled at even stress distribution. Donna had said something about testing it in class, and found the shape to be particularly strong under compressive forces like those exerted by gravity on tunnels or domes.

  This thought made me pause and consider the shape and purpose of a dome, as I slowly turned my attention to my dantian and thought about two domes covering it. That would certainly create a circle around the dantian just like a core. I went to reach for my Qi to begin working on a cylinder shape but paused at the last moment and began to think about the lattice I needed to create. Making the holes circular alone wouldn’t be enough, the stress and force would fall on the rope binding the sticks together. I would also need to make the stick cylinder shaped to give it the best chance. Short of welding them together, I couldn’t think of a way to bind them so they would still be able to handle the force exerted on it.

  I froze a second later as I considered the welding idea and slowly started to wonder why I would need to do that when I could bind them together at an atomic level like the entire thing was made out of one piece that happened to have holes in it.

  I reached for my dantian again and slowly started pulling Qi from it. This time I decided to start with a ball and wove the Qi around the dantian to form a circle, making sure not to exert any pressure or force on it while I gently smoothed it out and made sure an equal amount of Qi surrounded it. Once I had completed that, I slowly started removing Qi like I was poking tiny holes into it. I went slowly and made sure the Qi remained equally distributed. When I was finally finished, I watched the design for a few moments, enjoying that it was holding and felt stronger than it had before I started. I was about to put pressure on it and try to compress it when I had a thought.

  ”What if I shape this lattice to be cylindrical?” I mumbled.

  I slowly moved my mind over the lattice, gently shaping it into hollow tubes. I then thickened the entire structure to insure it wasn’t too thin. When I was done I slowly went over it, noting that it kind of reminded me of the frame of a dome that happened to be a complete circle.

  “Moment of truth” I muttered. However, just before I started adding pressure, I considered the technique's wording and quickly started adding more Qi to my Dantian to fill it again.

  I slowly added pressure to the lattice, gently pushing on it. I was a little surprised when I found the lattice held and showed no sign of compressing or that I was applying any force to it. I felt my mental grip slip slightly, instead of pushing I had accidentally twisted, and the lattice moved an inch. I almost lept for joy, only just remembering what I was doing and smiled, feeling happy I had refilled my dantian because I had been using a lot of my Qi trying to push this lattice into shrinking.

  I gritted my teeth and leapt back in, focusing on twisting it, trying to force it down quickly. Hopefully, before my Qi ran out, I kept glancing at my dantian as I pushed, trying desperately to draw more Qi in while forcing the lattice down. I nearly lost control of the entire thing when the lattice dropped suddenly into a tiny ball inches from my dantian and solidified. The next moment, my dantian was empty, and I felt like a horse had kicked me in the head.

  It took me a few moments to realise the lattice was holding on its own and I no longer needed to support it. I quickly checked my technique, finding that once the lattice held on its own without my influence, I was officially a golden core realm cultivator and needed to start working on the next stage. The problem was, I felt so exhausted that I could barely mount the effort required to start filling my dantian again. Instead, I just laid back enjoying what felt like a comfy floor and fell asleep.

  *******

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  Itshu Biyu was pacing in the engineering department as the one and only engineer she managed to convince to stay went over the ship's engines, needing to make sure they were all in working order before they dared to make the dimensional jump.

  ”Captain, I have finished my diagnostics, the third engine is shot, which is surprising when you consider how new this ship is and that it was gifted from an elder to his personal disciple but there it is, shot and in need of replacing the second engine is also damaged, just enough to not be immediately noticeable but if you tried to use it while the third engine is shot in a dimensional jump it would not be able to handle the load and would fry the system, killing all the power, leaving the ship lost in the void.

  ”Are you telling me someone sabotaged this ship and intends for us to be lost to the void?” Itshu Biyu asked as she glared at the engineer.

  He shrunk from her glare but nodded his head, confirming her question. She turned away from him swearing as she tried not to throw a tantrum, this was her first command, and she had only just made deacon of the void walking sect she didn’t need this shit so soon after her promotion. She paused as she considered that Kenna may not have been the target, and it was in fact her because some shit decided they deserved the deacon position, and she had stolen it from them.

  ”Can you fix it before the jump?” She asked, not wanting to be the reason they had to delay their jump to the next dimension.

  ”Uh, I can certainly fix the second engine before the jump, but the third is a complete rebuild, I am not sure the fabricator can print all the parts in time.” He said slowly as he looked over the third engine.

  ”Use both fabricators, whoever booked the second one can wait, this is more important. Get it done, we need this jump to go smoothly, or we may risk offending an elder when his disciple doesn’t show, and I have no doubt a star hawk elder can definitely find us in the void so we would not be able to hide from him.” She watched the engineer's face go slightly pale and quickly started powering down the second engine before getting to work on tearing the third engine apart.

  She turned and left the engine room as her thoughts turned to Kenna and her cultivation. She had prepared the next technique needed by the girl that seemed to fly through her cultivation stages like they were mildly inconvenient steps in her path. The technique had been difficult to get and cost a lot, but it would be the best technique for a time and space cultivator. She glanced at her ring, looking inside it at the Time and Space Nascent technique. It was meant to cover the next two stages, the soul tempering realm, which came after the golden core, and the nascent realm which was halfway to the immortal ascending realm that Kenna needed to reach. Itshu Biyu didn’t understand why, but it was the realm her cousin had set for the young Federation girl, before she was allowed to stray from the void walking sect.

  She stopped outside Kenna's quarters and sighed, knowing the real reason she was captain of this ship was because she was meant to be the leash that kept Kenna from running back to the Federation before she was powerful enough to kill that demonic cultivator they called the emperor.

  ”Whatever, I’ll just drop this technique off and move onto the next task of preparing the ship to get out of this dimension so that it is harder for her to find her way home.”

  *******

  I woke suddenly feeling like I had just heard a loud bang and glanced around me before wincing from the headache I seemed to have. I slowly rolled over and pushed myself off the ground onto my hands and knees. I considered crawling to the bed and going back to sleep, but I found myself pushing myself up to my feet and stumbling over to the wall. My eyes landed on the food fabricator and suddenly knew I could really go for a coffee.

  Once I had my coffee and drank half of it, I started to feel more like myself and stumbled over to my bed with every intention of falling into it after I had left my coffee on the bedside table, but that entire plan went straight out the window when I saw the scroll sitting on my pillow.

  ”What are you?” I asked curiously, forgetting about everything else now curious about what the new scroll that was most likely about cultivation had to teach me. I placed my coffee down on the bedside table and picked up the scroll. Turning it over, I read the label ‘Time and Space Nascent Technique’. I quickly broke the seal as the golden core technique had only covered one realm and I had been needing the next one, I had just been too tired a moment ago to care about it.

  The moment the seal broke the information flooded into my mind causing me to let out a scream of pain as I dropped the scroll. I had not expected it to inject the information so suddenly, let alone to do it on its own.

  ”this shit needs to find a gentler way of doing this” I moaned as I held my head and slowly lowered myself into the bed. It instantly felt ten times better than the floor had, and I didn’t even realise I had fallen asleep by the time I woke up to an alert playing in the room.

  ”ALERT! ALERT! Pilots' presence is required immediately on the bridge for the dimensional jump!”

  The message played over and over, getting louder and louder, until I yelled at it to shut up. It didn’t, and I was forced to my feet and out of the room. I managed to pull myself together before I reached the bridge and calmly walked onto it and over to my seat.

  ”bout time you showed up, everyone is waiting on you to perform the jump.” Someone sneered at me as I passed them.

  I glanced at the man who looked like a generic ass sitting at a console, and I quickly dismissed them from my mind as I dropped into my seat. I quickly reached up and pulled my helmet down onto my head so I could deep dive into the ship. I instantly noticed two things, the first was the navigational path to a point in space that seemed to twist in on itself before vanishing, the second was a waiting communication from the Lazarus’s pilot that was flashing red and marked emergency communication.

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