Just bringing it up since from what I remember it was the one the author seemed to be leaning toward back when what Xianxia Zagreus should go to was being discussed.
I've said this before but he listed tales of demons and gods and battle through the heavens. You know the setting thats actually finished and fleshed out. Though god don't know when they might do a cultivation setting but theres still percy jackson and before that mushoku tensei.
I've said this before but he listed tales of demons and gods and battle through the heavens. You know the setting thats actually finished and fleshed out. Though god don't know when they might do a cultivation setting but theres still percy jackson and before that mushoku tensei.
And I care why? I only commented to explain why I brought up and asked Bruno about Tales of demon and gods in response to something he mentioned in the spoiler section. Your the one who seems to feel like I asked to have your opinion on the matter which I didn't nor do I want it since it has nothing to do with what I've commented on.
And I care why? I only commented to explain why I brought up and asked Bruno about Tales of demon and gods in response to something he mentioned in the spoiler section. Your the one who seems to feel like I asked to have your opinion on the matter which I didn't nor do I want it since it has nothing to do with what I've commented on.
jjk is almost finished and aside all the major players have already been shown and most of their powersets when he started on it. Tales of demons and gods has been on essential hiatus for several years now and was decently away from finishing and most of the upper realms unexplored.
Okay, okay, you two don't need to flare up like that. I have decided it will be Battle THROUGH THE HEAVENS! And it will come earlier than I predicted, actualy. Muchoku tensen is next and BTtH will come after that. Percy Jackson is quite a special jump so I am constantly reforming the plans around it.
Okay, okay, you two don't need to flare up like that. I have decided it will be Battle THROUGH THE HEAVENS! And it will come earlier than I predicted, actualy. Muchoku tensen is next and BTtH will come after that. Percy Jackson is quite a special jump so I am constantly reforming the plans around it.
percy jackson as the last in the heroic realms makes perfect sense as its explicitly a series about heroes and greek gods.
I wonder how zagreus is going to interpret perfect affects and absolute defenses in the exalted cross afterwards. By thew ay I looked up that mystic garden series and isnt it a bit weak as online its telling me it doesnt get past destroying city blocks in power. How would that affect someone in the tyrant realms?
Commander Shepard was having a pretty eventful year, and contrary to what her astronomer says, it has little to do with the despondence of her Gemini sign (god, she misses when those things were just superstition). She might be a Shepherding soul but this doesn't mean that she is a push over and everyone that had ever thought otherwise came to regret it! Not that she will find that in Absalom station, the aliens' prevalent opinion of humanity was built on the back of the Indigo Throne. They actually expect her to be… herself (renegade for life!) which is even more offensive! (but maybe not wrong?)
As far as the civilized species of the galaxy are concerned humanity belong in the same bin as krogan, feral dogs that Raging Heaven deigned to keep away from polite company until he beat the wolf out of them. And okay, maybe humanity ruined its first impression with the First Contact war fiasco. Maybe all the Independence Day style movies had some unintended consequences which led them to misinterpret the aliens' interest on Earth. Both parts were on the wrong but only one had the strength to back it up.
To put it bluntly, the Council expected more of humanity. They expected cultivators. But to humanity those were merely legends from a dark age of superstition and ignorance. But after experiencing a humiliating summary defeat humanity learned those things not only were true but it had been taken from them. In retrospect it was obvious, a punishment from the Father similar to the one inflicted on the krogans millennia ago. Why not? He is the "cause of life always to all things", coupled with his ability to manipulate memory and the past can become whatever he wants it to be. If there is anything to learn from the Whirlwind War was that people consider truth and history is only a fabrication fashioned by others.
Indeed, humanity took the news that the only value it had was as a religious and archeological site rather badly, that their gods were real even worse, and that they abandoned them worse still. Absalom was a human artifact, built by human hands, that housed gods bearing the shape of mankind. And while the aliens lived in prosperity under its humanity, they had been condemned to crawl in the mud. While in the privacy of her mind Shepard agreed that Absalom Station would probably end up the same way as Olympia did if the Lords of the Zodiac had been humans, she understands the bitterness of her kind.
The reality that gods that they didn't even believe in had cleared their hands off them and moved on to greener pastures somehow stung. It was like discovering that you were adopted as an adult, but aggravated by the fact your birth parents were billionaire celebrities. Zeus and Hera lived to their reputation but still were more than the caricature modernity paint of them. They saved the galaxy after all but tall tales don't compare to video records of their time living in the Citadel as celebrities. The… humanity of it all that they displayed.
The capriciousness and allure of Zeus who captivated the masses like a rock star at night and taught the urchin orphans of the citadel how to make a living by pickpocketing or learning a craft during the day. The hubris and charisma of Hera who made a pretense of a magnanimous matron while girl bossing, gate keeping, and gas lighting others by ruling the internet. Two more or less alright people with superpowers that sometimes acted like assholes.
Even Shepard sometimes wondered what they did that was so wrong to justify them being left behind. She never thought she would ever get the answer though. While the Zodiacs witness everything the souls under their care experience, they like to compete among themselves, to keep secrets, and raise drama. This more than anything else ensures privacy still exists in such an overly connected world (and suddenly the peacock as a symbol makes sense, hundreds of eyes fit to a control freak). The death of Olympus is taken as a truism since it came from the mouth of the devil himself but not what killed them.
But the Zodiac Kyrios that walked by their side have their suspicions. Despite living in an age of myth people rarely understand the implication of something like the Tartarus Network existing. Suddenly the pathological phobias of a controversial author exorcized in writing can take a prophetic attribute.
Carcosa had been a real place in the galaxy once upon a time… until the Father threw it at the nearest star and the Mother erased all records of its existence from the extranet. That happened before the Zodiac calendar, more than a thousand years before H. P. Lovecraft wrote "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1886). Suddenly Atlantis sinking into the ocean during a fight between pantheons is not so sound half as crazy as it should.
That was a piece of intel given to Shepard by the Kyrios of the nebula of Pisces, Javik the Spectre of Vengeance, after she got involved in a conspiracy by ratting out Saren Arterius as a traitor. Apparently, an ancient race of giant mind controlling cutter fish that created the Reapers and ruled the galaxy a billion years ago secretly reemerges and they want their old crown back. And humans look like the perfect pawns for that.
She had a lot of misadventures across the galaxy as the second human spectre in a crescendo of stakes and now she is found herself in a race across the forbidden section of Absalom station against Cerberus, a human supremacist organization secretly sponsored by the Leviathans with stolen samples of starlight marrow, the most precious element of the galaxy, plasma of the Father. When a living being consumes it, they basically become a discount demi-god which is why the Council tightly regulates it.
Their goal is the Moon Cell and the Father's throne residing at the core of Absalom station. It is said that in order to ensure victory against the Reapers the Father used the Absalom station to scatter his vital breath across the galaxy creating the Lifestream, the lifeline of the galaxy which allows most planets to become inhabitable. The hanar and other religious oriented species say the Lifestream is the Father himself and that his own will is scattered across it which is the reason for his silence, after all what was the last time you spoke with an amoeba living inside your gut?
Shepard thinks it is a load of hogwash but even the uptight turians pay respect to it as if it was true. Shepard thinks it is a nice way to say that Zeus is finally dead. And why not? If a god can die why not all of them? Even if cultivation stented the lifespan it only goes so far. There are a lot of old monsters capable of burning countries and sinking cities which only prove that cultivation has limits. This was without a doubt the most valuable corpse of the galaxy but it is not Cerberus' target.
The fools got brainwashed into thinking that if they sit on the Absalom Crucible, they can control the lifestream. More likely they got groomed into a device capable of disrupting it, killing trillions and destabilizing the Absalom galactic government enough for the leviathans to carve kingdoms of their own.
Normally trying to do something like this under the nose of the lords and ladies of the galaxy would be suicide but the Elusive Man proved himself to be every bit the audacious madman the races of the galaxy expect humans to be. Cultivators are still people prone to the same weaknesses, through deception, intrigue, preparation, and luck he managed to trip them up for long enough for him to enact his plans.
Now it is up to Shepard to stop Cerberus before some permanent damage were to happen otherwise Javik will blow up the Earth. Because apparently it is easier than searching for the leviathans hidden in our seas searching for things mortals should not get involved with. No pressure.
And because nothing can ever be simple the safest place in the galaxy has top class security that ward off teleportation, forcing her to enter a magical labyrinth full of divine beasts ordered to kill anything regardless of being friend or foe. The only way to access this place is by the combined effort of the twelve Kyrios but the place can't be truly closed off without obstructing the Lifestream. This leaves a crack Ceberus is exploiting using the starlight marrow as a compass.
Somehow she and her team managed to make it through the skin of her teeth thanks to the orientation of Garrus' "grandad". The throne chamber was gigantic and gave privileged sight of the true dimension of the Moon Cell, the Heavenly Eye that watched and witnessed all the occurrences in the Lifestream.
The throne itself was a pyramid as big as the ones back in Egypt but with an Aztek twist as the place was painted in blood forming a pool at the foot of it and at its cap there was… The first thing a cultivator learned to sense through the nascent pneumatic sense was to differentiate people's constellations and by the time they finished foundation establishment they are expected to identify the precise nature of a soul at a glance. There were a lot of reasons for that and many people had problems and reservations about it still far more reliable than memorizing whatever quirk a species has. That is why what she was seeing was so choking, the Father's soul felt nothing like any Zodiac soul. It transcended them yet it was also familiar, nostalgic. As if she had known him her entire life.
It was almost fitting that he looked exactly as he looked when he first burst his way in the galactic stage by cursing the krogans, except now he looked even more the part now that he grew a giant beard in the last thousand years.
And then Cerberus resident ninja decided to use our moment of revelry to ambush us. The former N7 had become a real nightmare through the starlight marrow, the kind of power no longer up for purchase after the end of the Reaper war. It was as if the thing worked better on humans. Fortunately, Shepard also received a drop as part of her Spectre package so while her comrades lagged behind, she parried Kai Leng's slash with her own wraith bone blade. The zero-edge of the two blades were so fine that they blurred as the two moved through the steps of a deadly dance. It is a testament to their efficiency that a technology first granted by the Mother to the Turian Hierarchy so long ago is still in use. Only molecular rift blades were sharper and those were prohibitively expensive made only by custom order.
"Garrus, Rex, it is a distraction, go!" Shepard ordered and sure enough, the Illusive Man was using some camouflage to hide. Enlightened souls' favorite manifestation of intention is the Golden Thread series, to be used as optical fiber and pseudo-nerve filament for intelligence gathering purposes. Sure enough hundreds of threads around the throne led to a giant yarn ball bearing a giant eye running divination algorism to breach the final layer of defense of the Absalom Crucible.
Rex launches a red bolt of lightning and fire at the loom, a display of excellence common among krogans, a mark the Thunder Bringer left in the species. A fearsome power due to its high conductivity through all pneuma constructs, even Aegis struggled with it and Rex was a master like few had ever been.
The Elusive Man lives up to his name though and redirects the lightning at great personal cost to protect the device, revealing there is a hard-light wall still barring the way to the throne. It is never this easy, that is why she also sent Garrus.
He might see himself as a bad turian but that is what makes him exceed in those chaotic skirmishes of small gangs, he can never bring himself to let the bad guys walk away and this time is no different. The Illusive Man was so focused defending the loom that he left himself open, getting shot with a super charged rail gun.
They had done it, they thought. But then threw a hidden dagger at a seemingly random point and collapsed in a cascade of shards. The Elusive Man used himself as bait.
Liara who stayed behind to help Shepard attempted to trap Kai Leng in a mass effect field weighted by the power of her virtue but the shadowed soul was slippery Like an eel. Her other companions did the same in a supernatural display of coordination guided by the pull of her virtue but Kai Leng sprinted through their attacks like a soldier landing in Normandy, accepting the risk of death and injury for the cause.
"Shepard!"
"No!"
"Stop him!"
But there was no stopping it. Shepard watched events unfold with an ever-rising dread as she realized that they would fail. The Cerberus agent crossed the last step to the galactic throne. Just to be summarily swallowed into the jaw of a real Cerberus who leaped from the king's shadow like a shark in a Jaws movie. Kai Leng wasn't dead yet and he made this fact known loudly as the infernal hound chewed him alive, prompting the other two heads to chomp down on his head and legs and then pull, renting him to pieces like a disabused dog toy.
Cerberus, the hound of the Hades (underworld). It certainly lives up to its reputation. The mythical beast was an entity that existed apart from the molten clay-based constructs. It was older, sure, but there was more than that. During her time as a Spectre he had to content with all forms of virtuous beast, to Sea World harboring megalodons to thresher maws in death worlds meant to replicate Tuchanka but none of these came close to Cerberus. It was like the hound had become a beast above virtue, there was no room for it to grow further.
Did overexposure to the Lifestream cause this or did the hound feast on the starlight marrow pool for the last millennium caused this? Or was Cerberus always like this from the beginning? A relic from the fallen Olympus?
All those questions were suddenly pushed to the side when a pair of eyes peeked at her from under Cerberus's legs. Electric amethyst spots dotted with a ring of white light pinned her in place. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, or think, nor feel, there was a pull to it like the gravitational riptide of a blackhole, as if everything was encompassed by that gaze. It was just a peek but even the smallest action from a being larger than life is bound to disrupt those who have to share said life with him.
The only thing she knew was that the galaxy would change forever after this.
-//-
Dreams are endowed with prophetic attributes. While high minded fools think of them as random whims conjured by one's imagination, wiser minds have the discernment to hold any judgment, to simply hear and listen as one does a child's frantic plea of attention. It only makes sense for a priori components of our being to be unconscious, we don't the beating of our own heart after all, life would have perished before long if such was the case.
That is why those dormant elements communicate with us through dreams. Indeed, religion, myths, fairy tales, fantasies and dreams are indispensable to understand those chthonic aspects of the soul. Dreams are spontaneous and unprejudiced expressions of the unconscious and as such might be the most objective criteria to judge the true nature of things. As a rule, they can't be manipulated as they are in a way the voice of nature in us. Indeed, nothing about them is superfluous.
Indeed, the consciousness is a ship in the great sea of the unconscious. Cultivation then is a naval journey, a cultivator follows virtue the same way a captain follows the stars, intentionally rigging his sails to catch only the favorable winds, man his oars with the finest men, and chart the stars at night to track his path. Even the transpersonal cultural elements manifested in them are just means to amplify and contextualize the core message. A communal magnifying glass that amplifies and facilitates what is being said through learned behavior and memetic inheritance.
All of this context did not prepare me for the weirdest and greatest dream of my life. My heavenly muse sent me the motherload of all messages this time around. It was an Odyssey, the vital sea of my soul appeared to go on and one endlessly through all directions. The shape of the ship was partially determined by the activity of the sea and like all seas there are resources to be had and dangers to be dared just waiting for those courageous enough to do the plunging and tangle with them. Potential for good and evil that make a man greater and more terrible that are hidden in unseen depths.
I embraced it all with open arms, bringing these hidden contents into the light and taming these monsters, enriching monuments of my Ego like a hero king. Much to the happiness of the queen of these domains. What was that they said again? Happy wife, happy life? Alas, she became far more vocal as of lately, pointing down below toward the recalcitrant and meek little stars dragged in the riptide of our cosmic dance.
Look how the crawl around upon the ground like little ants
Yes, but how the fascinate confusing fate with what is merely chance
Inst it a laugh?
Isn't it a shame?
Thinking there is someone in heaven to blame?
Yes, but even while blaming fate for the lives that they lead
They hope for the lives that they need
Living every day
'til the day they die
Never getting answers
Yet still asking why
Going through the motions as if there will be a reward
While we stay eternally bored!
They are only mortal
They are only mortal
They don't see
They don't see
Who they are is who they'll always be
Who they are is who they'll always be
Only mortal after all
Only mortal after all
So they push and they shove
With this thing they call love
'Til they fall!
'Til they fall!
Inst it a farce?
Inst it a waste?
Struggling to face what can never be faced
Yes, but maybe death can release something more than we share
I really don't know and don't care
They are only mortal
They are only mortal
Standing still
Standing still
Doomed to live pushing boulders uphill
Doomed to live pushing boulders uphill
Only mortal after all
Only mortal after all
So they give and they take
Hope someone will help break their fall
They will pray, curse, live, die
Never knowing their truth is another man's lie
Eat, sleep, love, hate
Like a leaf blowing in the wind
Watch them all vacillate!
They are only mortal
They are only mortal
They can't see
They can't see
All the years they could give you and me!
Only human after all
Only human after all
So they give and we take
'Til their silly hearts break!
Looking down from above
I'm intrigued by their love
So let's call!
(So let's call!)
-//-
Waking up was a disorienting experience. Like lights were on but nobody was home kind of disoriented. Even the chamber that I spent the last ten years in seclusion for closed doors cultivation now looks alien to me. Especially because it looked nothing like I remember and it was filled with noisy people. Some of whom were humans? Oh… no, daughter of a whore! It wasn't just a dream!
I stood up for the first time in what apparently had been over one and a half millennia. I really should have paid more mind to comfort when I designed that thing. I flexed sore muscles, each knuckle of my spine poops with the sound of thunder. I am really lucky that I stopped needing bathroom breaks after I integrated Deskari's quintessence… though I think it is mine quintessence now after countless cycles of spiritual purification.
Now, time to address the elephant in the room. All witnesses of my return are currently in shock like a deer in red light. Looking at each one of these people I realized that I knew their history intimately, having been alongside them all along while my conscience was dispersed through the Lifestream. I realized that I liked all of them. Their stories were all riveting, the kind of tale worth hearing about… even the weeaboo Kai Leng which my Cerberus just killed. Let me just fix that.
I bring a single drop of blood from ninja and use my Star Rage to tether his recently departed soul, growing a new body to him. Then summarily throwing him at his boss' feet while the man flailed around in disorientation like a newborn infant. As soon as he looked at his resurrected underling, I pointed a finger at his head and released a beam of light. Not to blow him up but to use the bean itself as a fiber-optic cable straight to his brain, undoing the leviathan brainwashing.
Then I started to clap, just to be a troll. "Bravo, bravo. That little display of yours was a show worth watching. It is unfortunate it will have a deux ex Machina ending but it's not something I can avoid since it involves me so I am willing to compensate for your trouble."
"State your wish and if it is within this king's means it will be done."
"Wait! What about Cerberus? They caused all this in the first place." Shepard protested.
"Sorry girl, but it is a pretty clear-cut case of non compos mentis, there isn't a serious court in the galaxy that would condemn someone under brainwashing which happens to include all his crimes since he founded his little terrorist organization." I say "what can you do?" gesture of shrugging my shoulders.
"That! That- …" Shepard was stumped, she was a girl of action after all and my witness are the worlds coming from the Father himself as I am the galactic patriarch. Dare saying my words is not something people would take kindly, the hanar alone would ensure that she would suffocate in a pile of bodies from their drell assassins if it was the last thing they do.
"Can you get my father to stop thinking of me as a failure?" Garrus says out of nowhere as a joke to break the heavy atmosphere.
"I am afraid that request is beyond even my own power." I reply without missing a bet as the two of us point fingers at each other in our little inside joke.
"I want the Thunder Bringer curse lifted!" Wrex growled in demand, as if daring me to go back to my world.
He really was an unusual one, a krogan with political aspiration. Absalom was governed by a two-houses system with the twelve zodiac Kyrios comprising the House of Lords and the House of Commons being composed of all governing bodies of the galaxy. The only reason this system is viable and accepted is because the weight of each vote is proportional to Reila using her Consensus to represent the influence each party has on the galactic stage.
The Krogans as one of the elder races from the Reaper War has disproportionate representation in it but due to my curse, they end up with thousands of councilmen who fight often with each other and get nowhere.
"I can do so to you and any other krogan also interested but at this point it is part of your species cultural identity. Not something most would willingly abdicate. Besides, it served its purpose. You don't know how close the krogan came to being genetically castrated to control your numbers."
"That… I guess it is the best I can get."
"And what about you Commander Shepard?" I ask the heroine of this little tale.
"Hum, can you get rid of the leviathans hidden on Earth? Javik wants to press the hard reset on the human race. Blow the sun to then reintroduce humans elsewhere. Which would be a bit of a problem. You know?"
"Sure, kiddo."
The Lifestream touches all lives of the Galaxy at this point, a coordinated effort from the Absalom government to build an infrastructure in order to optimize the Lifestream in the biggest geomantic project of the galaxy. Now-a-days it reaches most of the systems of the Galaxy. Earth is no exception, the space race never winded down there since Yuri Gagarin returned to Earth as a cultivator after becoming the first man to reach space. Indeed, the main reason the Americans reached the Moon first is because the Soviet Union became embroiled in a civil war led by Yuri but that is a story for another time.
I don't even need Nature Bounty anymore to seize Earth in hand and find what didn't belong. Using the Lifestream as a medium I open a silver gate leading us all to Earth. Alas my company had no personal means to fly under their own power so our current position hundreds of meters above the Atlantic Ocean caused them great distress so I made a point to anchor them to me to make up for this personal deficiency of theirs.
They started to pepper me with impertinent questions but I intended to answer them through my actions. I tapped into the Lifestream, it had all the power that I would ever need and more importantly, it recognized its master. My own personal power was almost irrelevant in the face of it.
Taking a page out of Majin Buu, I raise a single hand and use the Lifestream as both power source and homing device and use Divergence. From my hand erupted a coruscant pillar of light creating a rainbow arch around me as countless beans traveled through the globe until they reached all the leviathan victims, giving them the same brain surgery that I performed in the Illusive Man.
The peanut gallery was stunned into silence which kind of spurred me into going overboard again just to see how far I can push their suspension of disbelief. This time I used Convergence, becoming the focus of a black hole to raise the submarine cave the leviathans use as a base above sea level while using my logos to bend the laws of nature just so to minimize the damage to a limited range.
Honestly, part of me feels a bit ambivalent about this move as I can only visualize such a thing thanks to Kenjaku's suicide attempt. Fortunately there was an acceptable target in range for me to vent my frustrations on.
"Let's go with a classic, shall we?" I serrated my fist as tongues of electricity danced around it. The power coursing through me lights my hair and beard white with its coruscant energy while paradoxically casting the world into darkness.
The world was consumed by a flash of light and the sound of thunder and when the normal colors reasserted themselves there was a mile's wide and deep hole which the crashing sea frantically hushed to fill back, becoming momentarily the biggest waterfall on the planet.
"Problem solved, now who wants to go back to Absalom and party for my triumphant return?"
The Illusive Man, Jack Harper, turned to Shepard. "You know, maybe waking him up was a mistake. Am I the only one who feels this way?"
"Can I get my clothes back? Or at least a pair of pants?" Kai Leng begged while cupping his privates.
-//-
[AUTHOR'S ROOM]
Here we see why people liked to evade the gods' attention. Zagreus really is more trouble than he is worth it. For those curious about where the familiars stand now, they still don't compare to Libertas. The phoenix of the Caucasus has been feasting on Prometheus for epochs, while Zagreus can brush and dip his fingers into the Golden Age Prometheus was born submerged in it. They still are endowed with a similar attribute of an incarnated Ideal Form as is Zagreus as well, something that isn't related to 'standing'. The best way for me to explain it would be the Paragon Creature template from D&D epic handbook.
There are those in that braket of power but thanks to how wide spread cooperative cultivation is due to Reila it balances out. Kyrants like the elders of Raging Heaven are not so impressive in the grand scheme of things. The government structure of Absalom reflects that.
He became divine the moment the entered the heroic realm. What define divinity is something more abstract than power. Zagreus was capable of doing those things because the Milky Way is his turf but until he reach the tyrant realm he will be more restrained in scale... as restrained as someone in his position can be.
For me It makes sense, the world used to be pretty normal before he arrived so the amount of presure needed to grow doesnt exist. They probably still remained in the levels of the first war with maybe one or two levels higher because the number of possible heroic feats is low, and a few of them as tyrants. Also the flame was meant to humans, dnd species are biologically compatible but mass effect aliens arent.
And even if tyrants exist, Zagreus will remain the strongest of the setting because his new body and soul allows him to use divine levels of pneuma, although not produce them. By using the lifestream as a battery he can beat the crap of even a god.
Of course thats only while in mass effect, I await the Next jump with all my heart.
Haha it really is amusing how the confusion about Zagreus and his origin keeps growing into it's own mystery!
And haha I doubt the beard is long for this world Zagreus's pretty boyness demands it. Also have to say I wonder what Reila has been up to during all this time.
That craziness is not only common but natural. Overly Sarcastic even released a video about Astraea where she talk about how neatness is a sight of forgery because human behavior and belief lead gods to have broad portifolios. Just look at Poseidon: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvxo0vZPkcQ
It is ironic that while in canon Humanity chafed at being underestimated and patronized while here they are looked on in both apprehension and disappointment.
The galaxy truly did expect more of humanity given the previous race that the gods saw to curse so were the Krogan who very much did threaten the entire galaxy.
Battle Through the Heavens - Penglai & The Root of Cultivation
So, I just realized that in ME we haven't seen much one on one fighting. That won't do. Mushoku Tensei is not going to have much in the way of fighting either, so I am shuffling things a bit and starting Battle Through the Heavens earlier. With a twist. Hope you like it. This chapter feels a bit like a lore dump but sprinkling things around would just confuse you guys. This is the last one for a long time, I promise!
-//-
In the end there is no rest for the wicked. Most people would be concerned to have lost so much time but to begin with I was traveling not only through space but also time. The Labyrinth is more than synonymous with maze. It is an Archetype that invokes confusion, wandering, isolation, and opaqueness. Mystery. From within the Labyrinth the view is extremely restricted and confusing while from above one discovers a supreme artistry and order. A paradox that incorporates chaos and order and in doing so mimic the journey of life and its trial.
It is a liminal space of trial not subjected to the same rules as the ordinary world. Even entities that steward time can't really complain about it. The back rooms are just a modern manifestation to something cavemen had depicted in stone carvings. That is why just because one thousand years have passed to me doesn't mean the same is true to my acquaintances and interests.
This doesn't mean they can't keep tabs on me though, sometimes standing is its own assurance of success. Especially when you are the god of self-perfection. Irori gifted me with a pair of jade prayer bead bracelets stringed together with the red beard of an imperial dragon. This was a graduation present that served as proof that the Master of Masters considered a pupil worthy of such title. He didn't even complain when I wore them as ankle bracelets.
Since the god of self-perfection has a dim view on 'clutches' so the thing normally serves only for show, at best they give a lot of face in certain circles. But it also serves as a means for Irori to keep tabs on people of interest. They call from a god is not something sane people tend to ignore but fortunately for my master I actually like him enough to indulge him.
I didn't even have to derelict my duties in Absalom station either to attend his call. As reward for my fourth labor I became an unkindness-that-walks yet some of my shortcomings prevented me from making full use of this ability. In a sense it was the same problem of the geth, each raven is individually weak and the more of them that died the more of my influence was permanently lost with it. Besides that, if I created multiple copies of myself I would have to reintegrate constantly or risk losing control due to dissociative personality.
But my recent breakthrough changed things. I have become a "tree with roots" so to speak, my body became an avatar of my soul. This ensures performance isn't lost by splitting myself between vessels, I can tether my soul to the material world and reconstitute my body from a single drop of blood. This also allows the avatars to perfectly share memories instantaneously.
Since this is a heroic ability, I am limited by my current number of labors which is eight at the moment. So I can in fact go see him while maintaining one avatar of myself in Absalom. Convenient… but too good a time to be a coincidence. Is that master of mine up to some mischief?
Activating the token, I scatter like foam. A pretty dramatic and exclusive way of travel, I approve.
When I come back to my senses, I find myself standing over a grand sea with a sly painted on the colors of the sunset, an artful gradient mélange of orange, yellow, Puce, thulian pink, and hints of violet. Both sea and sky convex toward a single golden-bright spot, so far away that even my prodigious sight can only make out an unfocused picture no matter how hard I focus, almost as if what I am seeing is a mirage.
I had no doubts what I was seeing. My virtuous heart won't be swaged or led astray. It knew what I was seeing. An ever-distant utopia separated not by miles but by Kronos, by the inexorable march of time, by the wheel turning. That was what the sons and daughters under raging heaven know as Arcadia. The sacred domain of Pan, a virgin wilderness home to the god of the forest and his court of dryads, nymphs and other spirits of nature.
"So Irori was right, you can spot it under your own power alone after all." An unknown voice behind me speaks. It startled me in a way that should not be possible, despite my senses the speaker remains as elusive as the vista before me.
I suddenly found myself torn. What if turning around would cause me to lose sight of this vista forevermore? It was rude, especially because I had been invited, but I simply would have to put hope on my fortitude.
"Hoh, impressive! Most impressive indeed. I find that the more powerful one has the more cowardly they often become. I had my reservations about you boy but your achievements alone speak for themselves, testing you further would just be an offense to your dao heart. My name is Wu Fou, I am a xian, and… I brought you here because I need your help."
"Why would an immortal need for anyone's help? You certainly look like someone that can take care of yourself." I tried to process what was happening, and ask the right question. My master isn't the kind to help those who can't help themselves, he would never associate with a bum.
"You would think that wouldn't you? But reality isn't so simple, well… if you can truly see Penglai then you must understand it takes more than power to make it a reality. Penglai is a wonder the world no longer offers not because it wants not but because it can't. I need you to go get me this mysterious component so that I might finally make this vision a reality."
"Why can't you simply take it yourself then?"
"Because I lack the power. I am simply too weak to see this through myself."
"Wait, seriously? How? You said it yourself, you are immortal. You have all the time in the world to accrue power."
"You philosophers really like questions, don't you? In the same spirit let me answer a question with another question. Have you ever encountered 'genies'? The birds and the fishes, the mountain and the tree, after having spent a long time in the world, there is a chance – albeit smaller than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle – that they can awaken to their place in the world, manifest a conscience, and become enlightened with its spirits. Have you even encountered one such as this?"
"Well, more or less. If robots count. Why?"
"Have you never thought that it was unfair? It practically requires the stars themselves to align for most creatures to acquire sentience while humans don't require to cultivate at all. simply living for long enough will deliver to them what others have to fight tooth and nail for."
"…" That had been an angle I wasn't expecting. Greeks drew a clear line between virtuous beasts who achieved a crude grasp to virtue yet are still the slaves of their hunger, cultivating through consumption, and monsters who transgress against the rules of nature. Cultivation can only make someone more than what he already is.
Cultivation of virtue, that is. Imposing order into a chaotic existence. It is the light of civilization itself stolen from the Father by the Thief of Flame. That is why cultivators build marble cities in their souls. Cultivation of virtue exists for the same reason humans build cities to live in, to live in comfort besides his kind. But what if that wasn't his case?
"Quite sharp, indeed. Humans used to be just like the genies, only a limited number of high-level cultivators got enlightened and left their barbaric lifestyle behind… at the cost of solitude… 'enlightenment' was thought for millions of years to be something exclusive to the cultivators…" Throughout his explanation the Wu Fo could not hide the melancholy and pain the topic brought him. As if-
"Until you appeared… you found it. You found this!" I say, pointing at the ever-distant utopia just over the horizon.
"Indeed, after I encountered this saint mountain, Penglai, I suddenly acquired the knowledge of the ways of garden cultivation by observing it."
"Food for the soul, the same way our bodies are constructed by what we eat, humans are bound by the information they witness until they die. It is literally a matter of structure." I say, finally putting the pieces together. The greater mysteries of the Mediterranean are used as such to 'inspire virtue' among members of mystery faiths
"Using what I saw I created [garden cultivation], returned to my savage kin and built the first saint garden in the wilderness of the ancient past. All in order to protect my fellow humans… which resulted in them evolving into a race that can get naturally enlightened. Leading them to replicate my feat and build their own garden. At the end even the genies joined, becoming humanoid and evolving their souls and becoming enlightened. They joined hands for the sake of the future and became 'people'. All the Spirits of the world is- was… a term used to describe every species that had been enlightened." Wu Fo described things with the kind of brittle tenderness one manifests when visiting a grave.
"…"
"I implore the hero. For I am powerless. The purpose of building saint gardens wasn't to let the garden master gain a tremendous amount of power. It was to create a platform for everyone to survive. The garden master alone cannot maintain such a platform, especially after the garden reaches the actualized level. A mystic garden is the work of lots of lives who toil incessantly in its upkeep. It simply can't express the strength to measure up against lone cultivators beyond the boundaries of said platform."
"Lone cultivators?"
"Sword cultivation, body cultivation, qi cultivation. These cultivators absorb the energy of heaven and earth into their own bodies and cultivate all on their own. In doing so they steal something that belongs to every spirit in this world for their own self-interest!"
"Are you telling me they make the world… poorer?"
"Precisely. You surely must have noticed the effect you had wherever you went. Tell me Zagreus, why did you become a hero?"
Isn't it kind of funny? This was the first time anyone has ever asked where I stood. It is said time heals all injuries but the millennium I spent entombed in Absalom didn't hadn't make the memories of Termina any less harrow. If anything it only got worse the higher I climbed, as if a larger spirit only gave me more space for outrage. "To stand against the tyranny of higher power."
"Precisely, while selfish cretins pursue power to torment those who stand below them, you instead use your pain as motivation to help others! Even as the world tries to break your back with labors you stand tall and struggle on behalf of those that suffered before you, and those that will suffer after. Where others plunder all the riches of the earth in the vain pursuit of immortality instead set your own life ablaze and in doing so you push back the dark and inspire men to follow the virtuous path, nourishing the starving earth with the ashes of your heart blood. Breaker of chains, slayer of monsters, champion to all spirits of the world!" What was once no better than a ghost now weighs on my spirit like an unspeakable weight, Wu Fou focus was like a choral of countless voices living between heaven and earth.
A tyrant's focus, the credibility to speak FOR others. Through reputation, renown. From renown, credibility. In credibility, ethos. The final piece of the puzzle reveals itself. It seems that my master decided to naught for once and repay Asmodeus for his meddling in the same coin. In hindsight it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Especially from someone bearing the epithet of Master of Masters.
When a man takes upon himself the mantle of mentor to another, he is to blame for a portion of everything that follows. For better and for worse. It is just that I had habituated myself to flounder alone in the dark for every scrap of insight on my own for so long that I accepted this as normal. Somethings can't be inherited they can only be taken. A rather grim outlook, and something that inadvertently gives malicious agents like Asmodeus a footing.
It seems my own brand of stubbornness ended up teaching Irori something. I know with authority that it is the problem students that end up becoming the fondest to teachers. Blind self-reliance would become rather dangerous once I started dealing with Ethos. That is the lesson he endeavors for me to learn here. He must have gone out of his way to set this meeting and waited for just the right moment to invite me.
"Wu Fou, what happened?"
"…" is it possible for a disembodied voice to express shame and pain just with its silence? "My hubris cost me everything, a debt the spirits of the world are still paying for to this day. The peak of garden cultivation is the Inner Peace level which manifests the Saint Spirit Era. To be precise, there is no difference in power between levels once a garden enters the actualized realm, all there is just accumulation for a long time. History goes on, as spirits live, die, and are reborn once more. If the garden master can handle the turning of the wheel in a constructive way then in time the garden will reach the most perfect form of the greater garden creation realm. That is the Saint Actualized Era…"
"The said garden spirit era," Wu Tou speaks with such reverence and nostalgia that our spirits converge and I am inundated with his lived experience. "As the colorful clouds come out from the horizon, the saint beasts make their way through the aurora. The spirit mountains stand tall and cultivators and beasts alike walk within them. Lectures and speeches about cultivation and techniques never end, so that everything that exists can feel the gift from nature itself. Even mortals, living in a world like this, were able to live a brighter life with dignity from their cradle to their graves."
"But it wasn't enough, was it?" I say, my eyes never straying from the ever-distant utopia. Even the six heavens of the Great Beyond that I found in Golarion can be said to be "what remained" from before the War in Heaven and Asmodeus fratricide. The six biggest fragmentisms of was once a single realm.
"Saint Spirit Era wasn't the end," Wu Fou agreed. "The ultimate goal of garden cultivation is [Penlai], it is where the blessed immortals live, where true everlasting prosperity can be achieved… such conceit was my undoing. After uncountable epochs of preparation all the living spirits joined their wishes and swore to their dao hearts to the cause of breaking through to the Penglai realm." The xian spoke with pride, or hubris just moments before the fall. "And then, it crashed. I… acknowledged this as a possibility but I never expected for it to be so severe. The destruction of my body was the least of its tragedies, my mystic garden and the world in it broke in thousand fragments. Countless broken worlds made of chaotic spirit energy that breed monsters beyond the natural order. "
"But worst by far was the effect it had on the dao heart of the cultivators that survived the crash. My effort didn't entirely fail, it brought into reality [Origin qi], but instead of continuing my work and picking up the pieces of our broken world they instead fought among themselves to seize the Origin qi for themselves, ensuing a fierce battle for supremacy that lasts to this day. That is the origin of lone cultivators and now-a-days only a few fortuitous and closed off worlds remain any knowledge and practice of garden cultivation. Even then the Origin qi that I brought into the world has been thoroughly exhausted into extinction… safe for one place, that is."
Well, that rather simplifies things, "Wu Fou, I won't offend you by feinting to misunderstand what you want from me. But how am I to do so? I am not even a garden cultivator."
"The confused have the Heart but not the Dao. The ruthless have the Dao but not the Heart. Dao is the rule of the way and the Heart is the human emotion. With both the rules and emotions in place, we have the way of the heart. This is the more important thing. If a person attempts to cultivate a mystic garden through the selfish mindset of a lone cultivator they will end up with a [Extreme garden] instead. But this also means that as long as a saint garden's purpose exists as a platform to support the spirits that depend on it then it will remain a saint garden no matter the form it may take."
Irori certainly lives up to his epithet, because he really pulled a fast one on me. I am completely check mated here. "Unity in all things is best, unity in virtue being the best of all." I recite the gadfly in exasperation. Said that, I hadn't been defeated yet. "Wu Fou, what is the First Virtue?"
I don't know if it was the Logic Slate translating context or if it was the xian's own wisdom or even if it was a constant of all cultivators but when Wu Fou next spoke, he manifested all the performative excellence of a virtuous heart. "Justice."
"And what is justice?" I asked further, because some things had to be said aloud.
When he next spoke he was less a disembodied ghost and more a king of glory worthy of Penglai. "When Heaven created life it has imposed the survivor of the strongest as a cosmic cruelty, the strong prosper by exploiting and devouring the weak. That is the Will of Heaven… but now that we are enlightened there is no reason for us to be the rabid dogs we used to be! We have our families, our loved ones, and we refuse to keep on killing, refuse to be enslaved by the way of the Heaven! Heaven wants us to devour those that are weaker but we are going to make sure everyone in this society gets to live! Heaven wants one victor at the cost of thousands, but we are going to make sure everyone turns out the winner! We will gather the wisdom of all and establish a glorious civilization!"
"Heaven created the wastelands and forced the lives to kill each other, but we are going to build farmlands, make buildings and create a world where everyone can be happy! Garden cultivators have always been capable of changing the world! We will control Heaven! And Let it work for our purposes!"
"THAT IS THE UNIFICATION OF HEAVEN AND THE SELF!"
"Heaven has given us the Heart to compete. Well, we're going to use this Heart to compete with Heaven itself! Our lives, our fates! Will only be decided by us! Who is the Heaven to tell us what to do!!
"The audacity," I lamented with a faint voice. Because really, what else was there to say? Wu Fou transgressed against the most fundamental and absolute rule that governs both gods and men alike. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must (…), that was something that I wrote in the pillar of loading bearing principle of my soul. But because of my own captain's virtue I added –for now… – as a promise forged under scorching moonlight. That one day, surely.
The path of a Greek cultivator was a solitary one. Something that I accepted because I knew it was the only one that remained for me to walk. I even came to revel in it, the lonely rising star cutting my way through heaven as a meteor. After all I will forever be a foreigner wherever I go, whether I accept this now or never at all makes no difference. But even then… When Wu Fou used the word 'we' it was as if he had seized the entirety of the world in hand, including me. This was the conceit to look at the face of god and judge his features would suit him better. The kind of king of mad glory stories are written about.
I would need to carve my own heart out to stop it from being swaged. My only regret is having been born too late to meet more than his shadow. I was thoroughly beaten. "Very well, you won. I will be your successor and carry the torch of your will."
"Excellent! I had a good feeling you would accept it ever since I heard about you." the xian says excitedly as the sight of the holy mountain before me gets swallowed into a giant scroll as tall as me. The only words written on it were – Penglai Style. "This is my lifework. This inheritance artifact is the compiled record of everything that I was capable of witnessing, something that I prepared before I died. Now everything that remains of me is recorded here as an instrument spirit. You are a clever lad I am sure you will be capable of making good use of it. I implore the hero, take it into your inner garden and become the torch bearer of my will!"
Really, he had me just by the fact that he deigned to ask in the first place. The ability to say please, thank you, and I am sorry, becomes rarer the higher I seem to climb. Wu Fou more than merited this vote of trust.
-//-
In the end integrating garden cultivation to cultivation of virtue was relatively easy, especially for me who was at my roots a farmer cultivator. During my time as a grave keeper I trained my virtuous technique by keeping vines, vegetables, fruits, and bees. What garden cultivators call inner garden, philosophers call monument to ego, and sorcerers call innate domain. When a cultivator goes through Foundation Establishment and sets a course for himself at the expense of all others the third factor takes on a fixed shape that expresses his desires, emotions, and past. Inner gardens are endowed with a core theme the same way sorcerers possess an innate technique and philosopher a foundational virtuous technique. These are just different names to the essential expression of one's soul.
At its core they are all the same. The biggest twist in garden magic is the use of 'nature magic'. While a philosopher uses his invigorating vital breath to absorb and then release the ambient pneuma, a xian refines his spirit energy by cycling it through their garden until it achieves a high affinity with nature. This allows them to use their internal energy as a "lever", and tap into natural energy directly once it is outside their bodies. Something that I have been doing to some extent or other since my time with the avatar gang, that is the essence of energy bending. My open domain expansion is just an extension of that, and my 7th labor closing the World Wound merely officialized things. The Lifestream was just a natural conclusion of what I learned; in hindsight it wasn't a surprise that Wu Fou decided to recruit me.
My and Yuki's research even got another chance to shine. The most natural shape of innate domain among humans is like a Christmas snow globe. A plain surface contained in a celestial sphere filled with items of symbolic significance. Garden cultivation master stroke was the idea of integrating a natural design in order to synchronize the cultivator with 'nature itself'. Their monument to Ego is a bonsai that mimics the internalized cycle of nature as they understand it using Penglai as a foundational frame of reference.
Indeed, while the ideal set up is the natural idea of true peaks and waters, the inner garden is still a reflection of its master heart. A sand pool can count as water of a dead mountain and massive trees can count as peaks as well. Inner gardens can grow into four cardinal directions: body, which similarly to Greek cultivators synchronize the virtue of the body with the virtue of the soul, making the body a microcosm of nature; calculating, which consciously instrumentalize the normally hidden prophetic qualities of the unconscious; culturing, the farming, growth, and harvest of 'bounties of nature' from the inner garden like medicine, poisons, forging ingredients, and food; forging, the manufacturing of products from culturing and other sources by using a 'furnace', twisting them to one's design.
Indeed, aside from these quirks the affinity between philosophers and xians is scarily high. From the fact that they study and internalize the rules of nature to their outlook on performative excellence, they just express it differently. Using the Penglai Style as inspiration to virtue I smoothly integrated the two. Fusing the Sophic realm with the Virtual realm was a trivial task thanks to the dominion I have over my own soul by using Star Rage. It was like I was just officializing something that was already true. The Parthenon of my soul remains the foundation of my monument to Ego, my garden, its Peaks, valleys and ponds illustrate the cosmos I had embraced with open arms.
This was the crystalized form of cultivation that I have been pursuing for so long. It's almost poetic that a god of foreigners is the one to perform a fusion of Greek, Indian, and Chinese style cultivations. I will call it [Silk Road Style].
It is also a testament to the Heroic Realm that it remains untouched through it all. There was simply no beating the classics, passions really are everlasting. A testament to the perfection of my upgrades.
Alas, the time for musings have passed. Now it was time for action. I was traveling through outer space at the speed of light. My destination was the planet called World of Combat, a primitive place ruled by Dou Qi (combat energy). Where only the strong have the right to rule and all pursuit cultivation to manifest their selfish desires. From practitioner, master, great master, duke, prince, king, guru, venerate, half-saint, saint, and emperor. All of those are realms just to determine precisely who has the biggest stick.
This is the mindset of wasteland cultivators that after the old era. Pathetic and hopeless. Even if I try to explain to them about the forming of a community based on trust, and civilized collective competition, they would not understand it. A mortal would have better hopes to find a needle in a haystack than I would get finding one cultivator capable of valuing human dignity and passions.
Well, they are about to be really disappointed then. I hit the Dou Qi continent like a meteor announcing to heaven and earth that I didn't come in peace. The Origin Qi would be surrendered to me, its rightful inheritor and the lone cultivators would be made to cower to the dark corners of the world like the savages they are.
-//-
GARDEN CULTIVATION
1. MORTAL REALM –fundamentally the same as the civic realm. Normally a cultivator at this level can break stone tablets with a single blow and perform simple tricks that don't excel displays of virtues of a citizen.
· Low/mid/high spirit – equivalent to a citizen nine ranks
· Unsealed/Inverted spirit – the cultivator awakens his pneumatic sense.
2. VIRTUAL REALM – at inverted spirit level starts to construct an inner garden, usually supervised by a senior.
· Inner Garden – the "foundation establishment" level, the cultivator constructs an inner garden from the elements found in the heart (spirit). The main advantage is that once "foundations are set" they can augment their performance with the spiritual energy of the environment by using their spiritual energy as a 'lever'. Because people's hearts are extremely chaotic as they are frequently affected by the outside world there is the danger of manifesting an "extreme garden", ego, deviation. Owners of extreme gardens struggle to keep them in check and often manifest mutations as a prelude to their total loss of control which will transform them into monsters without rationality. Those are called Raging Gardens.
· Grand Master – meaning 'master over nature and one self', manifesting true understanding of the nature cycle by imitating the dynamic change of the seasons and adding the circle where lives are created and perish until the 'bonsai' becomes a 'personal world'. The cycle of life comes with the cycle of "spirits", storing spirit energy from nature in the inner garden and subjecting it to countless cycles to 'mark' it. This creates a [saint qi] that not only belongs completely to the xian but is also highly 'infectious'. In The case of saint gardens, the circulation of spiritual energy of the world is improved, but raging gardens become vectors to mutations (imagine chaos gods induced mutations). The trump card of this realm is the [Garden Reflected Heart]. Normally a xian has access to only a fraction of the saint qi of his inner garden like a human sized faucet, but by 'contaminating' their surroundings with their saint qi they project the inner garden onto the real world by combining with the ambient spirit energy it is possible to create an area that is 'close to themselves'.
· Artform – this is the cap of personal to a garden cultivator. At this level a xian becomes a 'tree with roots', becoming truly worthy of the title of immortal capable of breaking open the prison of the body (think of it like Mahito's indestructibly and shapeshifting). Especially skilled xians can recompose themselves from a single drop of blood but even if the body is completely destroyed, they still have a chance to come back as long as their garden still exists, but in the same token, all hope is lost if the garden is destroyed (shattered ego). Due to the synchronization between body, soul, and mind, all attacks are endowed with a 'mental' attribute which also means xians of this level are the most threatening to each other as their attack can do "true damage" as a matter of course. Their trump card is [Blank Artform Canvas] – the xian adjusts his body to the shape most suitable for his garden magic and upgrading them from a 'faucet' to a 'fire rose' (same as domain envelopment).
3. ACTUALIZED REALM
· Greater Garden Creation – called as such because greater creation is something you possess, 'that is not within you'. The garden master reverses the tablet and bends nature into a shape close to his inner garden, slowly creating a bond between himself and this physical garden. When a xian at this level is on his own he remains at the Artform level but when inside the physical garden he is the avatar of the 'platform' and all 'spirits' that live in it.
· Hidden City – (very little is directly stated about this level but a lot is shown) At this level the garden master can anchor the greater garden and store it inside his inner garden. Mainly it solves the issue of mobility cultivators of the actualized realm have.
· Inner Peace – see Saint Spirit Era above.
OBS1: As you can see, what garden cultivators lack in "dakka" they more than make up for with "haxs". Contamination, immortality, shapeshift, and overwhelming field advantage on demand certainly stand out but there is more. Artifacts like the Penglai Scroll allow xians to use the 'innate techniques' of other gardens, though there is the risk of contamination if you take too much stuff from other gardens. Garden Cultivators are like the spell casters of the xian xia gender, if you read Records of the Mystic Gardens you will see the main character beating the crap out of them with pure dakka!
OBS2: If you read Records of the Mystic Gardens you will also notice that I uncomplicated the setting by a lot. It is a really confusing series and characters tend to get lost in small details. This is probably the most concise breakdown of the power system this series will ever get. I still cut off things for the sake of simplicity.
OBS3: Silk Road Style basically fuses the Sophic realm to the Virtual Realm and the Tyrant Realm to the Actualized realm. Because of the Divinity Drive Zagreus and tyrants from this style will leap straight into Inner Peace level due to omniscient instincts. The main contribution of jujutsu sorcery is how it straightens the refinement of a foundational technique. If you have ever seen the curse energy power system chart you know what I am talking about, that thing is clean!
OBS4: There are some quirks to the Silk Road Style, due to the refinement of the body a cultivator's body is as strong as the soul so they aren't as physically weak but in exchange the body is far less pliable so the shapeshift at Artform level is lost, at best they can fashion clothes that behave as hide and pseudo limbs. Speaking of Artform level, just imagine it as reverse curse technique or Mahito's indestructibility trick, adversaries can always resort to destroying the body. They are capped at 110 men put together, level of strength but their bag allows them to go further, especially with the divine guidance of the Zodiac, muscling in the muses' turf.
It is very poetic, also makes a lot of sense for Zagreus to be a garden cultivator. He has usually left a place better than it was before, or at least he tries to. Also good recommendation, will look into records of the mystic garden, never heard of it before.
At this point Zagreus has reformed and blended his cultivation style with at least four different styles and seems to have only gained from it huh not to mention made a greater path for those who come after him.
Actually Gojo seems to be on his way to doing something similar isn't he?
Also Zagreus will be able to shapeshift once he enters the Tyrant realm correct? I remember that being mentioned it will be fun to see what he gets up to once he has access to that.
At this point Zagreus has reformed and blended his cultivation style with at least four different styles and seems to have only gained from it huh not to mention made a greater path for those who come after him.
Actually Gojo seems to be on his way to doing something similar isn't he?
Also Zagreus will be able to shapeshift once he enters the Tyrant realm correct? I remember that being mentioned it will be fun to see what he gets up to once he has access to that.
OBS4: There are some quirks to the Silk Road Style, due to the refinement of the body a cultivator's body is as strong as the soul so they aren't as physically weak but in exchange the body is far less pliable so the shapeshift at Artform level is lost, at best they can fashion clothes that behave as hide and pseudo limbs. Speaking of Artform level, just imagine it as reverse curse technique or Mahito's indestructibility trick, adversaries can always resort to destroying the body. They are capped at 110 men put together, level of strength but their bag allows them to go further, especially with the divine guidance of the Zodiac, muscling in the muses' turf.
