Enlightened Empire

Out in the green waters of the Verduic Sea, a diver broke through the surface and clung onto a readied flotation device made of cork. Deep, desperate breaths returned life-giving air into his lungs, and from there into his blood stream.

Although the man's actions looked desperate, this was all just part of his daily routine. Every day, the people on this island would dive down into the water, stay as long and deep as they could, and then reemerge as late as possible. Again and again they would repeat this life-threatening procedure, while others coldly marked off their performances from a distance.

Today, only one thing was different from the usual routine: On the distant shore, on the veranda of a newly built holiday home, two additional audience members were watching the proceedings while lazing on their recliners.

"Stop! How long was that?" Corco put down the spyglass he had used to watch the divers and turned to ask Sumaci, who was playing around with a fancy pocket watch.

Though Egidius had called it a 'pocket watch', Saniya's precision manufacturing still wasn't quite good enough to make any truly pocket-sized mechanisms. So far, the watch was barely small enough to be held in one hand, and would maybe fit into one of those massive, old-fashioned pockets inside the long sleeves of a robe. Still, this kind of size already represented an impressive achievement, especially since this model in particular even came with a stopwatch function, on Corco's urging.

"14 minutes, 30 seconds," Sumaci read off after she had pressed in the little stopwatch timer. "Although we already saw it yesterday, it's still a shocking result. Their performance matches the best pearl divers of the Verdant Isles."

"And after only a year of proper training, compared to generations of evolution and training from childhood. It's certainly not bad," Corco commented without much enthusiasm in his voice. As they continued to watch one diver after another rise from the ocean, the king reflected on their journey so far, which he considered a resounding disappointment. Maybe such a result had been inevitable. In his excitement, his expectations had simply been far too high.

Ever since they had left the Lonely Island of his Uncle Eclestius, they had spent their days traveling around the islands surrounding southern Medala, at least the ones controlled by the Kingdom of the South. After years of effort, most of these islands housed some kind of cultivation research by this point. Every time the research teams occupied an island, it was completely transformed, with all kinds of experimental setups on the inside of the island, and heightened security along its edges. The deep water cistern in the center of this island, designed for diving training, was a good example of this.

In fact, they had begun to run out of islands until Corco's cousin Mayu had started his pointless rebellion. Ever since Saniya's central government had taken control over Puscanacra, they had also gained full control over the island chain around the bay, which had solved their problem in regards to space. At the very least, it had delayed their issues.

After all, there was a near endless number of experiments to run, most of them in isolation, for reasons of secrecy and scientific rigor. On their journey so far, the King and Queen of the South had watched people cultivate to gain muscle mass, gain more flexible joints, improve their concentration and gain an improved memory, and train their senses to the point of night vision and high- and low-frequency hearing. In one experiment, the test subjects had even grown in height, though the process was apparently very uncomfortable for the participants.

On this island, a series of cultivation techniques and accompanying exercises had been designed to test the effects of cultivation on the respiratory and circulatory systems. Since diving had been considered the most useful method to stress both, they had even trained a group of exceptional divers in the process, sort of as a nice little bonus. As the project continued, the divers had been separated from the main group to start their own side project, an attempt to cultivate super-human diving and swimming capabilities for use in naval warfare and shore reconnaissance.

So far, the results had certainly been incredible. Not only were these people able to dive deep into the ocean, up to an astonishing 90 meters, they had also improved their eyes to be more resilient to salt water, which allowed them to keep them open underwater more easily. On top of that, two subjects had even formed thin films of skin between their fingers and toes, proving that the cultivation of webbed feet for fast swimming was an entirely attainable goal. Even the risk of diving sickness were tremendously reduced in the subjects. However, to achieve anything truly remarkable, there was still plenty of work left to be done.

"While it might not be bad, but it's not something we can't also do with normal training," Corco finally concluded after a prolonged silence between the two.

"That much is true. Why would we waste our energy cultivating these divers here, when we could recruit the ready-made article elsewhere?" Sumaci agreed. Her happy face showed how glad she was to see the talents of her people recognized. However, Corco was far less optimistic than his wife about the Verdant Folk.

"I know the pearl divers of the Verdant Isles have similar capabilities, but that's a tiny tribe spread across a handful of small islands," he argued. "Their numbers are, ultimately, limited. Not to mention, it took them who knows how many generations to select out the genetic traits to become good divers, and it still takes them decades of effort to train up to this kind of level. It's just not realistic to employ them on our ships on a large scale. For that, there's too few of them, and training more would be too time-consuming, and too costly. In comparison, these results were achieved in a short three years, and almost any healthy young man could be transformed into an expert diver with the right cultivation technique. No special talent required."

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"Sure, that might be true. However." In preparation for a major argument, Sumaci righted herself on her recliner and turned towards her husband. "You are forgetting that these cultivated divers over there come with a hidden cost as well."

When Corco saw the aggressive glint in her eyes, he knew that his wife had spotted a crucial weakness in his diver cultivation plan, one he himself had noticed a while back.

"You mean the limitation on the total number of cultivators?" he asked with a sigh. In contrast to his own low mood, Sumaci looked as happy as she looked smug.

"That's right," she gloated. "If the research results we've received are correct, then the amount of cultivators we can support on our territory is, ultimately, limited. For every diver we train through cultivation, there will be one less warrior, or elite spy available. Do you really want to waste those limited cultivation spots on something you could just replace with talented commoners?

"Well, at least they still have their webbed feet. That's something your pearl divers can't do. Maybe these cultivators could be used as part of some kind of special force, crossing rivers to support an advancing army," Corco tried to console himself, although he should have known better.

Still, he couldn't just let Sumaci win the argument like this. At the very least, he had to prove to himself that their efforts here weren't completely in vain. As he had watched their lack of progress in various fields over the past weeks, Corco had become more and more despondent. It had begun to have affect his attitude as well. Yet as expected, his ruthless wife didn't allow him to console himself with convenient lies. Instead, she once again forced him to confront reality straight on.

"Those webbed feet are a hindrance everywhere outside the water, and their effect can be easily replicated with the right equipment. You yourself showed me the designs for flippers, remember?" she pointed out.

Of course Corco knew all of that himself. Only, he had been desperate to find any positive of this research, which seemed so promising at first glance, yet proved completely useless in the end. Maybe this was what real research was like, research without guidance from his otherworldly knowledge. Most of their progress would be sluggish, and most of their experiments would yield either no, or only extremely limited results. Thus, in response to his wife's question, Corco could only sigh again and admit defeat. However, Sumaci still wasn't done twisting the knife.

"I just don't think this is a very fruitful direction of research," she added, before picking up a marked folder from atop the short table between them. "This report says that attempts to let the cultivators breathe water or grow gills have also failed so far."

"Yeah, it does," Corco had to admit again, though he was still stubbornly trying to argue. "But maybe growing gills isn't entirely impossible. Maybe it takes more time, or it's hard to do, and we haven't been lucky with the talent of the test subjects so far."

He couldn't just give up on this project like this, not when he could see actual, impressive results right in front of him. In fact, Corco felt trapped in an endless deja-vu. He would arrive at an island, get excited by the immediate results presented by the researchers, then read the detailed reports and end up disappointed by reality. No matter where they went, no matter what direction the research had taken, the story was always the same.

Again, Sumaci opened her mouth to argue some more. However, at the last moment, she hesitated. Maybe she had seen how frustrated their lack of progress had made her husband. Suddenly, all the glee from winning the argument drained from her face.

"It's also possible that your Uncle Eclestius doesn't know enough about gills to actually design a technique which grows them," she tried to console him instead, and squeezed Corco's shoulder. "Once he knows more — and has more experience with designing new techniques — there is still a chance that something like growing gills could be possible. Not only that. The current cultivation technique, could also simply get refined further, enough to make the divers useful. Or we could just break through the number limitations of cultivation after some more research."

As she came up with more and more hopeful wishes to cheer up her husband, Sumaci became more and more animated. In comparison, Corco couldn't find the positives in his wife's endless suggestions. To him, they only confirmed their biggest problems.

"There's still too much we don't know," he said. "So many question marks."

After one more sigh, Corco looked down at the reports on the table, before he glanced over his personal notes, which lay forgotten in his lap. Since the start of their journey, the king had aimed to organize his loose thoughts on cultivation based on what he saw on the islands. His goal had been to gain a more comprehensive picture of how cultivation functioned. However, his notes were filled with nothing but question marks in the end. For every issue he resolved, ten more questions popped up. Even most of the 'resolved' problems were little more than educated guesses, with copious amounts of 'tbd' sprinkled in.

After a long silence, in which a confused Corco stared at his useless notes and a worried Sumaci stared at her husband, the king finally spoke up again.

"At this rate, I wonder if we'll ever find any meaningful answers here. It seems like the deeper we dig, the less we know. This whole operation might just a giant waste of money."

"You're worrying too much again," Sumaci complained in a gentle tone. "I thought we wanted to enjoy the journey."

"You're right," Corco said, yet he still continued to sit and stare at his own writings, until the letters lost all meaning and returned to the chaotic collection of lines and circles they were.

"We should go back inside. There's not much left to see anyways," Sumaci added, and grabbed Corco's arm to pull her husband back up on his feet.

Only now did the king realize that the sky had started to turn red. In the distance, all the flotation devices of the experiment had disappeared, as had the test subjects and the researchers. Unsure how long he had been sitting there, Corco finally took a deep breath and silently scolded himself, eager to pull himself together. Maci was clearly worried about him. He couldn't just let himself go like this, and he couldn't let her worry all the time. Thus, he showed a smile he considered confident and got up on his own two feet.

"You're right," he said. "So long as we keep digging, we will always end up finding more and more answers to our questions. "We should worry about anything else tomorrow."

Thus, as Sumaci returned his fake smile, the king and queen ended their inspection for the day in a somber atmosphere, so different from how they had started their journey.