Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

Yes, another spreadsheet!

To keep track of the Clan numbers and the like, I've created a new sheet. I'll remove this threadmark and put the link in the Clan info status post in a few days - just highlighting it here so people have a chance to see if they want.

It is by no means mandatory to keep track of Clan numbers to participate, though.

A grunt of exertion.

The weights stacked high on his back rattled, threatening to collapse onto him. Large blocks of bismuth and spiritual lead were piled to the height of a man. Six thousand, six hundred and fifty-five kilos.

It was getting more difficult to condition his body without running into logistical issues.

The two knuckles pressed to the floor as his only contact point with the stone had made two small dents in the rough-hewn rock. He lowered his nose to the ground again and again in a steady rhythm. He had stopped counting a while ago.

He felt like only now could he reasonably call himself immortal. Essence Gathering made one stronger, a more powerful fighter, but ultimately just a mortal but better. Chaff.

Yet it was easier. Conditioning while layering Qi into your body was unpleasant, but it was straightforward, and aside from a few hiccups, had come relatively easy to him.

A shiver ran through his body. The foundation of his current power was so much more tenuous.

Physical exercise centred him, but was no substitute for introspection.

He closed his eyes and haltingly felt around his Pillar, continuing his push-ups in a steady rhythm meanwhile. He could visualize it too, given the proper mindset and enough time.

As far as these things went, his…felt like a pillar. A mundane one. He heard fellow experts talk about their Pillars being gems, trees, some had poems, others even more abstract notions – the idea of spring's last snow, the concept of vision.

His was bronze. He knew it was bronze, like he knew he had ten fingers and hair.

But it was hastily cast – he supposed it was Ionic – but the capital and base were ill-formed. Like they had been for the better part of a century.

His nose touched the cold rock.

Victory.

This pillar had to do with victory – this he knew. On that understanding he had broken through to Foundation Establishment and forged this first cornerstone of his power.

In the deep desert, he had hunted down their would-be hunters. With the horn he had slain groups of stragglers, reaping a bloody toll with the wicked artefact's power. He and his squad of vanguards had been a squad of marrow-hungry wolves, each bronze-blooded killer a flawless extension of his will.

He had fed most of them into War's hungry maw, spending their lives to take others.

Then at Calergis he had led his troops to relieve the siege and buy a few valuable weeks of time. Then in Laskaris, thousands of Sons of Gold, alongside hundreds of risen invaders controlled by his horn, against near a thousand dark-skinned invaders in that final assault.

When he had broken their spine and scattered them at great cost, at that moment a part of his soul had become visible to him.

But his victories were no immortal Triumph, no Miracle. They were stained by the muck of the world.



Dark green eyes flash before him

"सहजं कर्म कौन्तेय सदोषमपि न त्यजेत् |सर्वारम्भा हि दोषेण धूमेनाग्निरिवावृता"



He didn't understand the words whispered in his head, but the meaning burrowed itself in his deepest self, like a noxious parasite.

Aris roars and the preposterously heavy weights fall off of him, breaking the stone and deforming under the weight of others.

He jumps up and kicks one the blocks the size of his head, the impact deforming the substance like water. It flies against the far wall of the small, underground training room.

"AAAAAAARGH!"

Aris picks up a thick, heavy disk and throws it into a stack of weights with his full immortal strength, sending an ear-deafening clang echoing through the small room.

"WHAT DO YOU WISH OF ME?!"

Aris screams with a voice that makes every loose object in the room vibrate and move on the floor.

He punches the nearest wall, making a deep fist-imprint in it and sending fissures through the rock.

One, two, three seconds pass.

Aris breathes in deeply. He slowly, deliberately pulls his fist from its rocky sheath.

No response from the voice.

Aris runs a hand through his coppery locks and reaches under his tunic for the slip of solid gold-coloured jade, containing his late uncle's art. Not to cultivate, he knew he wouldn't make more progress here and now, but because it provided a focus to drive out his foreign and treasonous thoughts.

Channelling a trickle of Qi into the slip, the lesson he had heard so many times before popped into his head again.

"Firstly, a Ruler's Body is the whole of the Law. It is inviolate and perfect."

He was about to lower himself into seiza, but his Essence Gathering attendant rounded the corner into this little nook of his with concern clear on his features.

"Honoured centurio, is ever-"

Aris fixed him with a look that radiated disdain.

"Leave, cur."

The young legionnaire bowed deeply, stammered apologies and hastily fled the room.

Blonde hair, dark skin, but not a lick of bronze. Bah.

Aris sat down with the slip clutched between his thumbs.

He had mastered the technique as well as he could for his level of cultivation. But the insight yet eluded him. He couldn't cultivate the next technique in the series before he understood this step.

His doubts snaked back into his thoughts. What if victory eluded him? What if every achievement of his was doomed to be ash-stained, imperfect, mortal?

Perhaps this was part of Heaven's curse on their blood. Those things which were not of this world, which fell under the purview of the heavens, would be forever beyond their reach. Doomed to suffer one cut for each two inflicted, one small sorrow for each great glory.

That would make his soul and Path a glorious, cosmic joke.

He idly wondered if individuals like the accursed World-Slayer, who destroyed the Turtle Child to consume it, are those who, maddened by the prospect of never achieving a pure thing, decide to take Heaven's purity by force.

Aris briefly entertained the thought of shattering his Pillar and meridians right here and then and starting anew as a mortal.

But there was his duty. Damned duty.

He had donned it more than a century ago as a resplendent set of lamellar armour, its proud wearer and affectionate possessor. Now it felt at times like a brace, constraining and directing him. Gently if one didn't strain against the bindings, tyrannically if one tested them.

His father had unwittingly been right in one thing, though. The lotus blooms in muck, not in thin air.

If such immortal Victory as he sought existed, it would not be found here.

He saw his reflection in a disk of polished bismuth.

Into the muck then, time and time again. Until he burned out, or found the enlightenment through victory that he sought.

The harness of duty purred and caressed – a fidgety little cog was bent again towards productive work.


To the Song Empire, then.

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@Kaboomatic @Humbaba
Offering #2 for this turn!

Offering #3 is, following the hype, Aris as rendered by Heroforge!