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

[occipitallobe]

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[Sirrocco]

Wait...

Have the Jingshen actually successfully pulled off any schemes against Old Gold that he didn't turn back around on them... ever?

I suppose the bit where they manage to get Purity to give them loot from a war that they weren't even in was at least something, but even that didn't go but so well for them. They had the lands, but their heavily restricted pop growth practices (made worse by the strain of internal dissension) meant that they couldn't really use them.

 

[Catpetter1981]

Upon learning the Spear hit whatever it was aimed at, he had thought to test it. The ill-fated attempt to strike at the sun through the spatial protections that surrounded it had burnt his arm quite badly, and done no damage to the sun besides. The Spear could also strike at more peculiar things, such as minds, or the connection between soul and body. The main problem is that it wasn't very good at doing those things - he could attack someone's mind with the Stone Spear all day and they'd perhaps get a headache. However, it was spectacular at helping him locate the things he needed to strike at.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if the Spear could strike at even more abstract concepts than "minds" or "the connection between soul and body".

Could Manual use the Spear to attack "the weaknesses in his cultivation foundation", so that those weaknesses are removed and Manuel retroactively reached 13 Heavenstages at Qi Condensation and became a Single-Pillar King, with the benefits spilling over into his current Nascent Soul form?

Could Manuel use the Spear to attack Heaven's Curse, so that the centennial attack from the 5th Sea no longer happen?

Could Manuel use the Spear to attack the Heavens themselves?

 

[AlphaDelta]

Could Manual use the Spear to attack "the weaknesses in his cultivation foundation", so that those weaknesses are removed and Manuel retroactively reached 13 Heavenstages at Qi Condensation and became a Single-Pillar King, with the benefits spilling over into his current Nascent Soul form?

Click to shrink...

Attacking weaknesses in cultivation base means attacking someone's cultivation base. A medical staff, this spear is not.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I'm pretty sure that Heaven's Curse and Heaven itself operate at a higher level of cultivation than whatever went into the Spear. The Spear's most remarkable trait is that its ability to hit what it's stabbed at is conceptual, is a fundamental law of reality itself, and not one of the negotiable ones Nascent Souls are used to bending.

That suggests that the Spear is in some sense an artifact of the kind of secret knowledge that goes into Law Creation (that name may be very meaningful). But even if true, Heaven itself operates on or above that level. Heaven also creates laws, sometimes mutable laws but laws, and can enforce them either by practical measures such as "when you drop a rock, falling is what happens" or by quasi-sapient and intentional administration of punishments for breaking the rules.

Therefore, Heaven may be able to respond to any attempt to attack it with the Spear by acting on the same fundamental level to block the attack:

"It is a law that this spear always hits what it's aimed at, but it's a law now that the thing you just aimed it at will regenerate the damage, then blindfire a Spirit Severing grade blast of tribulation lightning at you for trying to stab it, Mister Clever Fucko!"

I mean, Jin Muyi had the Spear, and was frankly better attuned to using it than Manuel is, and Manuel defeated Jin even though he was 'only' one Great Realm above Jin in power. Heaven has a much greater margin of superior power over Manuel than Manuel did over Jin, and Manuel cannot use the spear as effectively as Jin did, so it stands to reason that Heaven would be able to defeat Spear-armed Manuel fairly handily.

...

Also, we note that if I understand how the Spear works, it's not actually very good at hurting things with a conceptual attack. Manuel was only able to pull this off because of one or both of the following:

1) He was targeting a spiritual connection that's very frail, at least unless you are Nascent Soul or higher in which case it's fortified and no longer such a weakness. Also,

2) I may have misunderstood, but I think the Spear was doing this in part by telling HIM where to attack, giving him localized targeting information that he could then follow up on by delivering precisely metered strikes of his own. If he personally were not strong enough to carry out the attacks, the Spear itself might not be able to do so.

In this case, the Spear's attack does not necessarily enable him to attack something like Heaven's Curse, because Heaven's Curse may NOT be frail and is assuredly not susceptible to attacks launched by someone of Manuel's level of cultivation.

 

[TehChron]

That suggests that the Spear is in some sense an artifact of the kind of secret knowledge that goes into Law Creation (

Click to shrink...

It's not

Its explicitly a Soup Chef creation, and he circumvented that scaling entirely

 

[Simon_Jester]

It's not

Its explicitly a Soup Chef creation, and he circumvented that scaling entirely

Click to shrink...

Ahh, I'm sorry. I got confused.

On the other hand, in that case we run into a different problem. Soup Chef was strong enough to kill a world turtle and all that, but I'm pretty sure that if a weapon he made were useful as a weapon for poking Heaven hard enough to hurt it, then we run into a problem.

Soup Chef wasn't an idiot. Soup Chef knows that Blood Path cultivation pisses Heaven off. Soup Chef left the dying Third Sea after killing the turtle. Presumably, wherever Soup Chef went, a confrontation with Heaven or some component of Heaven was likely.

Again, Soup Chef wasn't an idiot. Why would Soup Chef have left behind a weapon capable of inflicting meaningful injuries on Heaven? He might need it where he was going.

...

Possible Explanations:

1) The Spear was capable of harming Heaven, but was inferior, possibly a prototype or a failed creation, compared to the weapons Soup Chef really took with him.
2) Soup Chef had an apprentice so important that he thought it was worthwhile to arm that apprentice with anti-Heaven weaponry, but not important enough to take with him or to be of any help in his plans for after leaving the Third Sea.
3) Soup Chef's plans didn't involve confrontation with Heaven at all.

...

(1) is possible, but consider that the cosmos we live in sure doesn't look like Soup Chef succeeded in defeating Heaven on any grander scale than his successful consumption of the Third Sea turtle's energies. But Manuel is at least one Great Realm below Soup Chef and probably more. If Soup Chef did not inflict relevant and useful harm on Heaven, with whatever superior weapons he took with him, then what chance does Manuel have of inflicting relevant harm on Heaven with an inferior castoff?

(2) seems unlikely. Soup Chef could not possibly have conceived his schemes and plans and pursued Blood Path cultivation even unto ensuring the long-term destruction of the world unless he were, on some level, super fucking self-centered. Like, he may have had a "greater good" plan, but whatever that plan was, it was centered on priorities, not people. You don't go around slaughtering billions or destroying the world if you're the sort of person who's in the habit of doing other people a favor that you don't expect to help with your own goals. So if Soup Chef crafted the weapon with the intent that it be used by others, he would have taken those others with them if he thought them capable of helping him. Since raising up Blood Path followers as strong as Manuel would be trivial for Soup Chef, it stands to reason that Soup Chef didn't expect having along a Nascent Soul wielding the Spear to be useful wherever he was going. In which case it seems unlikely that Manuel, wielding the Spear, would be able to achieve results like "seriously harm Heaven."

(3) seems very unlikely to me given everything else we know, but cannot be disproven.

 

[Sirrocco]

(3) seems very unlikely to me given everything else we know, but cannot be disproven.

Click to shrink...

I'll note that we have Altar Lord, who has much greater direct insight into Soup Chef's overall Grand Plan than we do.

He certainly seems to think that opposition to heaven, at least, was what Soup Chef was trying to pull. He also deliberately left behind the Blood Path to try to facilitate that (though that may have been more of a bit of work on the side).

 

[Shard]

I'll note that we have Altar Lord, who has much greater direct insight into Soup Chef's overall Grand Plan than we do.

He certainly seems to think that opposition to heaven, at least, was what Soup Chef was trying to pull. He also deliberately left behind the Blood Path to try to facilitate that (though that may have been more of a bit of work on the side).

Click to shrink...

The Blood Path seems to be a degenerated version of a path that let you just eat anything. Now you can only eat people.

 

[Simon_Jester]

The Blood Path seems to be a degenerated version of a path that let you just eat anything. Now you can only eat people.

Click to shrink...

I think that's because of a Heavenly curse placed on the Blood Path, not because of degeneration of Blood Path itself. Heaven (at least in the Third Sea) couldn't undo whatever made Blood Path possible, but it could block off other avenues of cultivation to anyone who did indulge in Blood Path.

Which sounds like Heaven's Sysadmin trying to crudely shut down or at least greatly deprecate the chances of anyone actually duplicating Soup Chef's feat by becoming a Blood Path cultivator powerful enough to kill another World Turtle.

I'll note that we have Altar Lord, who has much greater direct insight into Soup Chef's overall Grand Plan than we do.

He certainly seems to think that opposition to heaven, at least, was what Soup Chef was trying to pull.

Click to shrink...

Yes, which is why I figure Soup Chef would have taken all the good anti-Heaven weaponry with him, including any minions he could have trained up to a level capable of wielding "lesser" pieces of anti-Heaven weaponry he didn't see fit to wield himself.

Anything he left behind would probably have been too weak for him or anyone to directly fight Heaven with. Because when he left, he presumably did everything in his power to ensure that he was loaded for Divine Transcendental Bear or whatever. He wouldn't have left behind things he could have used.

He also deliberately left behind the Blood Path to try to facilitate that (though that may have been more of a bit of work on the side).

Click to shrink...

Yes, but I don't think he would have intentionally weakened his own chances against Heaven by leaving behind assets so useful that they would help noticeably in a direct conflict with Heaven itself.

He might have left behind prototypes that a future student could refine into anti-Heaven weaponry. He might have left behind training techniques that could, in a thousand years of world-shaking slaughter, eventually enable someone to raise themselves up to a level of Heaven-challenging strength or to craft Heaven-threatening weapons.

But he wouldn't have left behind anything that there, then, in that moment, as it was right then and there could be used to fight Heaven.

...

Because when you get right down to it, he'd already damaged the Third Sea beyond repair just to get his shot at this, and he wouldn't have jeopardized his shot for the sake of someone else getting a shot in the indefinite future.

Altar Lord is barely capable of such a gambit himself, after all- and Altar Lord expects to lose and fail anyway, so he has much less to lose than Soup Chef presumably did.

 

[ObsidianNoir]

Qinglong Shu 3 - Mingling With Mortals

As a Cultivator, she was always taught that she was superior to those without the ability to use Qi. Better. That lesson was especially beaten in when she was trained in the Golden Devil Clan. After all, the first thing they did was teach them that everything they learned before Cultivation was useless. Any martial art, any skills, did not apply, as they were created with mortal logic, not for cultivation. In a way, Shu understood. It made sense. Some skills just didn't carry over. And they were different. Living longer, more power, different priorities. By all means the logic was sound and there was no real need to object to the seperation.

That didn't mean that Shu liked it or even accepted it. Matter of fact, she hated that logic. That Cultivators and mortals lived in different realms. Different ways. Why? Who decided that? They shared the same air. Shared the same living space. Sure they could easily break a mortal. Sure, mortals were nothing to them. But so what? What was wrong with holding back? With going down to their level, to interact with them in a way that wasn't just master and servant? So maybe out of spite or an arrogant sense of duty, whatever flaw made her do this, Shu patiently looked at one of the villagers of her old clan. The elderly man scratched his beard, sweating nervously before he gestured behind him, showcasing the prepared wood, some still logs, some already turned into proper materials.

"Uh, let me get this straight, young master... " He coughed slightly before raising an eyebrow. "You... want to learn how to build a house?"

"Yup, yup. Handy to know for the future." Shu frowned a bit after nodding. She pointed at herself. "Also no longer young master, remember?"

He smiled at her gently before shaking his head.

"You will always be our heiress."

She bit her lip. They were nice words. But it only felt heavy on her shoulders. Only reinforcing who she was, what her role in this world were. Mentally promising to herself to double down on training for the time spent here, she rolled her shoulders, ready for the lesson. He then walked to the wood and brushed his palm over the surface. He turned back to her, giving her one last questioning look. She sighed before nodding, a bit irritated. Yes, yes, time better used for Cultivation, but this was her life and a couple hours wouldn't hurt. Resigning himself to her will, he crossed his arms behind his back.

"First of all, planning is everything. One can't just start building things without measuring everything and planning everything out. A house is not a tent. It is meant to last, to be your home. Not something put up out of need, but out of desire. It needs to be sturdy and needs a good foundation."

Well, obviously. Just going at it would lead to a very shaky house, at best. One would fix one problem but then create two new ones if they didn't have the whole picture in mind. She hummed. Huh, she could apply that to life too. Chalking that up for later use. The old man paused before scratching the back of his head sheepishly.

"I suppose you wouldn't be interested in the... maths. So let us just focus on the wood itself."
She winced at that. Her reputation of... having difficulties with theory seems to be rather known with her people. Only natural. She was always the more practical person. She always needed good images in her head to work better. Pure mathematics for example were just agonizing to her. Well, adding it to the list she needed to read up. She giggled, trying to cheer herself up as she waved her hand.

He then proceeded to explain how the wood had to be treated. How to properly dry it out first of all and then how to handle it with the saw. Shu let out a sound of awe as she held the tool in her head, feeling a bit giddy. She swung it around playfully, as if it were a sword. She wasn't one to use weapons in combat but she could always appreciate the beauty of it. The old man hummed, scratching his beard before pointing at her.

"You could just cut it with your bare hands now that I think about it... "

"That would ruin the point though." Not to mention she wasn't that good yet. Most mortals lacked a sense of scale of the levels a Cultivator had. She waved the saw in demonstration, pouting a bit. "Now lemme use the piece of steel with sharp sharp teeth."

Shrugging nonchalantly, he demonstrated the movements.

"Well, the cut needs to be even anyway, so it's better that way." After cutting into the wood a bit, he took a step back. Shu didn't miss a beat and placed the blade against the material. "Now before you start, you have to keep your-"

A loud crack sounded. They both blinked before Shu raised her hand, looking at the saw that was a lot smaller now. Then they both looked back at the wood, seeing the other half of the saw stuck in it now.

"...Cultivation in... mind... " He finished lamely.

"Whoops." Shu giggled nervously. She wretched the broken piece out with ease but seemed a bit helpless as she held both halves in her hands. "Err, I swear I'll pay for it."

"Not to worry, I have spares."

That didn't make her feel better at all. Damn it, she forgot that she didn't need to put all her strength into this like him. She was like ten times stronger. Stupid, stupid. Of course it would break. Nevertheless, she felt it would be insulting to insist on replacing it. Instead she grabbed the next one but not before sending a glance at the broken pieces. Maybe learning how to forge tools like these could come next. At least knowing how to repair items like these, since she doubted this was going to be the last time. Weapon forging was a thing with the Golden Devil Clan, but they usually didn't care for mundane tools like these. Things to research and learn for later. For now, she had wood to saw. Properly this time. She exhaled slowly.

Slow and steady... control yourself, Shu. Repeating that in her mind over and over, she slowly made her way through the wood. To her senses, it felt awfully slow. Almost torturingly so. She wanted to hurry up. Simply cut through it. Move on already. But instead of losing her patience, she struggled. She focused. She refused to give in to her impulses and instead took the hard way, the proper way. After what felt like an eternity, she stepped back, letting out a breath. It was a bit rough. Not as smooth as she wanted to. At some point her muscles began to shake from the exertion of holding back, as if they struggled against thick ropes. But... she did it. Sawed right through it.

"Not bad for a beginner."

She preened at his words. It may be just a little thing... but it felt nice. Learning something new, mundane as it was. Heck, she wasn't aware Cultivators even used saws at all. What was the need to have a specific system when one could just push right through it? Sometimes the ideas mortals came up with were wondrous and she hated that they were dismissed like that. As she followed the old man, to how to make a foundation with the tools at hand, she let out a satisfied breath.

Maybe these skills were meaningless to a cultivator... but she was more than that. One couldn't reach the end by just looking up. Sometimes one had to look down and that was exactly what she was doing. She was who she was.

She was Qinglong Shu. And she wanted to stay connected to the world around her. To always learn from it, to be taught by it, and strive to be better, until reaching the final destination that was the Center.

 

[GardenerBriareus]

(2) seems unlikely. Soup Chef could not possibly have conceived his schemes and plans and pursued Blood Path cultivation even unto ensuring the long-term destruction of the world unless he were, on some level, super fucking self-centered. Like, he may have had a "greater good" plan, but whatever that plan was, it was centered on priorities, not people. You don't go around slaughtering billions or destroying the world if you're the sort of person who's in the habit of doing other people a favor that you don't expect to help with your own goals.

Click to shrink...

I mean, "everyone dies" is still fairer than an eternal grinding wheel of oppression, atrocity, and misrule sanctified and enforced by the Celestial Machine.

Under Heaven, that Fifth Sea psycho who was going to rape Manuel Konstantinos to death just for the novelty of doing so to a Nascent Soul cultivator? Righteous. A-okay.

Given that he was a respected member of society (and that said society conducts the Hundred-Year Trials), how many more people like him do you think there are throughout the Seas?

Just by daring to say "No" to that world, Soup Chef and everyone he associated with was marked for death by the universe itself. He threw away the power and comfort he could have had by levering his one-in-a-billion genius toward being a Righteous cultivator. Whatever flaws the man had, I don't think selfishness was one of them, at least not in any conventional sense.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I mean, "everyone dies" is still fairer than an eternal grinding wheel of oppression, atrocity, and misrule sanctified and enforced by the Celestial Machine.

Under Heaven, that Fifth Sea psycho who was going to rape Manuel Konstantinos to death just for the novelty of doing so to a Nascent Soul cultivator? Righteous. A-okay.

Given that he was a respected member of society (and that said society conducts the Hundred-Year Trials), how many more people like him do you think there are throughout the Seas?

Just by daring to say "No" to that world, Soup Chef and everyone he associated with was marked for death by the universe itself. He threw away the power and comfort he could have had by levering his one-in-a-billion genius toward being a Righteous cultivator. Whatever flaws the man had, I don't think selfishness was one of them, at least not in any conventional sense.

Click to shrink...

I'll stand by what I said, with some modification for clarity.

If your grand idea is "destroying the world and bringing about the end of everything on it is better than allowing it to continue to be ruled by an eternal grinding wheel of oppression..."

You may be idealistic. You may be willing to sacrifice personal comfort and safety to achieve your goals. You may even be right.

But ultimately, you are the sort of person who cares a lot more about a principle than they do about actual people. Especially when your chosen method of doing something about the problem you intend to solve involves killing and eating an exponentially rising number of people to surmount each successive step on the ladder to ascension.

...

Which means it is psychologically very unlikely that you would knowingly compromise or weaken your own chances of succeeding personally at fulfilling your goals, purely to create the hypothetical chance that some probably-lesser equipped with probably-less-effective tools than you yourself possess might somehow succeed where you have failed.

Which is why I consider it unlikely that Soup Chef would have knowingly left behind any weapon capable of meaningfully opposing Heaven, or any person he could rely on to help him fight Heaven even when equipped with the best weapons he himself could craft.

Soup Chef might have left behind the knowledge of how to create such weapons. Or a path to rise to the kind of power he himself enjoyed, insofar as that was even possible with the turtle dead.

But I do not believe he would have left behind actual weapons that he could have handed to a follower and said "here, come with me and help me by poking Heaven repeatedly with this to weaken it" and had it work.

 

[Alectai]

I'll stand by what I said, with some modification for clarity.

If your grand idea is "destroying the world and bringing about the end of everything on it is better than allowing it to continue to be ruled by an eternal grinding wheel of oppression..."

You may be idealistic. You may be willing to sacrifice personal comfort and safety to achieve your goals. You may even be right.

But ultimately, you are the sort of person who cares a lot more about a principle than they do about actual people. Especially when your chosen method of doing something about the problem you intend to solve involves killing and eating an exponentially rising number of people to surmount each successive step on the ladder to ascension.

...

Which means it is psychologically very unlikely that you would knowingly compromise or weaken your own chances of succeeding personally at fulfilling your goals, purely to create the hypothetical chance that some probably-lesser equipped with probably-less-effective tools than you yourself possess might somehow succeed where you have failed.

Which is why I consider it unlikely that Soup Chef would have knowingly left behind any weapon capable of meaningfully opposing Heaven, or any person he could rely on to help him fight Heaven even when equipped with the best weapons he himself could craft.

Soup Chef might have left behind the knowledge of how to create such weapons. Or a path to rise to the kind of power he himself enjoyed, insofar as that was even possible with the turtle dead.

But I do not believe he would have left behind actual weapons that he could have handed to a follower and said "here, come with me and help me by poking Heaven repeatedly with this to weaken it" and had it work.

Click to shrink...

He did leave behind 'Instructions on how to get to where he is'. It's called the Single Pillar Method, which when taken to the Great Circle allows you to bypass the normal requirements to enter the cultivation path he was on and shift to a parallel cultivation track at Core Formation equivalent. (Want to know where the Sword Immortals that are so iconic in the genre are? The SCA killed them because they were actually hypothetically a threat, Soup Chef just reinvented the paradigm they operated on from first principles because he was just that brilliant, and then went on to inscribe a way for anyone to walk into it into the rules of the setting, or at least distributed instructions so far and wide that everyone has them)

(Of course you can also take Single Pillar to its terrifying extreme instead, but it's kind of hard to be heroic and still take that route)

 

[Simon_Jester]

He did leave behind 'Instructions on how to get to where he is'.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is that:

1) Leaving behind a method to reach his level IS in character, as evidenced by the fact that he did it, and this in turn does imply that he had some actual goal beyond maximizing his personal power and that Altar Lord isn't just indulging in wishful thinking that there's a point to all this Blood Path horrorshow.

However... While the aforesaid leaving behind of techniques or manuals is in character for Soup Chef...

2) Leaving behind weapons, tools, or allies that could have helped Soup Chef to accomplish the specific task he was setting out to accomplish when he left the Third Sea is probably not in character for him. Notably, by all appearances Soup Chef failed some time after leaving the Third Sea, or at least wound up stalemated in such a way that he hasn't reshaped the entire cosmos to his liking. As such, it's safe to say that either:

2a) Soup Chef grossly underestimated how hard it would be to achieve whatever his goals were, in which case he probably didn't even make many weapons capable of meaningfully harming Heaven and it's unlikely that the Spear is one of them, OR

2b) Soup Chef knew this was going to be a harrowing and heavy task, even as powerful as he was, in which case he'd have taken every weapon, tool, and ally available who could plausibly be of any use to him in the upcoming struggle against Heaven. In which case if the Spear were much good at directly striking Heaven, Soup Chef would have taken it with him.

...

The point here isn't to trash Soup Chef. it's to recognize that this was clearly a man willing to sacrifice anything to achieve a specific, delimited objective. An objective that involved obtaining vast personal power and using it to alter the underlying fabric of reality. An objective that put him on a collision course with the very powers of the cosmos, which would surely destroy him if they got the chance.

As such, it just seems very unlikely to me that Soup Chef, by all appearances a very knowledgeable figure as well as a powerful one, would have not maximized the firepower and resources he could bring with him on his fateful journey away from the Third Sea and on to whatever his final destination was. He must have known roughly what kind of power he'd be dealing with, that any amount of help he could possibly muster might very well not be enough, and that he was going to need to come loaded for bear.

We can reasonably infer from this that Soup Chef didn't consider the Spear that Manuel now holds to be a weapon powerful enough to qualify as part of his "loaded for bear" lineup.

Which suggests that, specifically, no it is unlikely that Manuel can reasonably harm Heaven or significantly disrupt Heaven's curses by attacking them with the Spear on a conceptual level.

 

[Nordlending]

Demetrius Ceres - Digging a Hole
200 words



Demetrius was an arrogant man.

Why wouldn't he be? He had saved the Hong Xuan from themselves and prevented Pyre City from turning into Pyre City. Sure, 18 993 mortals had died in extreme agony, but that wasn't his fault. The blame fell on Hong Xuan, whose contributions to the effort equaled their number of Nascent Souls.

If only he hadn't been forced to sacrifice 18 993 people to achieve it.

____

Demetrius was an arrogant man.

That's why he had no issue digging a hole in the ground close to the Underworld Palace. Demetrius assumed he was bait, so he kept digging. The Jingshen thought it was a trap, so they elected to ignore him. Sheng Yu had no idea why a Centurion was digging a hole in the middle of a field, nor did he have time to care.

The only one who knew the truth was legionnaire Julia Septimus. She had accidentally given Demetrius the wrong coordinates, and when he had asked if this was the right place, she had doubled down. Julia was a prideful woman and had decided to court death by digging a hole was preferable to admitting making a mistake.

This went on for months...




Authors note:
Omake Bonus: LST

 

[Alratan]

As such, it just seems very unlikely to me that Soup Chef, by all appearances a very knowledgeable figure as well as a powerful one, would have not maximized the firepower and resources he could bring with him on his fateful journey away from the Third Sea and on to whatever his final destination was. He must have known roughly what kind of power he'd be dealing with, that any amount of help he could possibly muster might very well not be enough, and that he was going to need to come loaded for bear.

We can reasonably infer from this that Soup Chef didn't consider the Spear that Manuel now holds to be a weapon powerful enough to qualify as part of his "loaded for bear" lineup.

Click to shrink...

Perhaps it was redundant. Having two stone spears is no better than having one, so if he'd made two he might as well leave one behind for anyone who follows his path in the future in case he failed. Or there was something he did that would transfer the equipment he took with him to prepared hidden backup sites for future inheritors to recover in the event of his defeat.

Inheritances and legacies are a big deal in xianxia.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Perhaps it was redundant. Having two stone spears is no better than having one, so if he'd made two he might as well leave one behind for anyone who follows his path in the future in case he failed.

Click to shrink...

It's hard to see how, because the Spear's thing is striking things; striking something twice generally works better than striking it once, seeing as how you want it dead.

Or there was something he did that would transfer the equipment he took with him to prepared hidden backup sites for future inheritors to recover in the event of his defeat.

Inheritances and legacies are a big deal in xianxia.

Click to shrink...

Not strictly out of the question.

I still think it's unrealistic to expect Manuel to be able to meaningfully hurt Heaven or Heaven's Curse by stabbing it with the Spear.

 

[Alectai]

The weird thing is that Laws are apparently very time consuming to comprehend, and expensive to employ.

But whatever else Soup Chef was involved in, one of the Laws he mastered was "I hit what I aim at without exception"

I almost feel like he had a Dao of Cooking taken to absurd heights like some people take stuff like Swords. So he's capable of extending that to some insane troll logic directions. (One of the few things we do know about him, for instance, is that he's a Keikaku-type protagonist, not a hot blooded one). His planning? "Preparation" is a key aspect of cooking! His precision? "I need to be able to remove the undesired ingredients while preserving the bits I want to keep". It even explains why he got so incredibly mad at someone calling him a King... Because he's not, he's a Chef, his role is to prepare the finest of meals, not to rule over anyone.

Most importantly, he left people alive, therefore whatever his Dao is, it can't solely be about consumption because he would be in violation of that by leaving enough leftovers behind to sustain civilization (And since he was on the "Dao" track of Cultivation apparently, as opposed to the "Qi" track most people are on, that's actually a very important distinction to make!). Because the other part of being a Chef is that someone has to enjoy the meal he's prepared for you.

You're not a very good chef, after all, if the only one who can enjoy your food is yourself.

 

[Sirrocco]

You're not a very good chef, after all, if the only one who can enjoy your food is yourself.

Click to shrink...

So let's follow that one out. Suppose that "leaving behind enough people to enjoy the soup" was a fundamental part of The Thing He Was Doing. What is the nature of the soup he was making for them, then? I'm sort of getting some "I shall cook and serve the heavens" vibes here - seeking to break the will of the heavens so that it could be more readily savored.

And if that is what's going on, then even if he didn't destroy it, he might have inflicted serious wounds upon it, as something of a backup plan, with the idea that others could come along later and finish the recipe.

 

[occipitallobe]

Sun Diaxiang hung in the air in front of the three women, waiting patiently.

He was upside down, making the most ridiculous face.

Xinyue almost snapped at him, but she'd learned better. He was patient, yes, but stepping out of line was usually punished. He didn't bother with pain - Nascent Souls were beyond that, but minor humiliations or removing useful resources from them was certainly something he'd do.

She felt with her spirit sense for Gengxin. The other woman hated her, she knew. But for all she hated Xinyue, Gengxin loathed Master Sun, and had for a few years constantly tried to kill him with various poisons, attempting assassination upon assassination on his Blood Clone after he'd proven that he wouldn't punish her for such attempt - and considered them a sort of teaching opportunity.

He took it in stride, absorbing poisons into his clones as they died one by one, but with each attempt he grew more resilient, more able to simply shake off the poison with ease.

The only time he had gotten angry was when Gengxin had tried an attempt he had considered sloppy. He'd torn off her skin and had implanted some sort of leeches into her flesh, each one growing full with her blood until she'd been nothing more than organs and bone, a miserable wretched corpse hanging from a spike as leeches dropped off her one by one.

She'd sat there for three weeks before he let her down.

He had called Hu Ai to him as well as Xinyue, and had calmly informed them that if they ever tried something so foolish he wouldn't be half as merciful, owing to their 'greater common sense'.

Xinyue on the other hand had no such protections against poison, and Gengxin's rage had turned on her even more. Her requests to work together had fallen on deaf ears, and she largely spent her time with Hu Ai, who despite being a gullible young idiot, was at least good company. Besides, she wasn't about to anger the second strongest cultivator in the region by offending his disciple, so things were fairly calm.

Gengxin on the other hand had forced her to gain even more weight, her Ten-Weight Ten-Times Rebirth Body growing to nearly its actual name in size. She had become truly corpulent, fat finding its way onto the oddest places on her body, from her fingers to her forehead. She was slower than before, but her swarm was no less potent, and the Qi stored within that fat was enough for her to regenerate to full health time and time again.

Master Sun wiggled his eyebrows, and with a particularly strong wiggle one crawled off his face and into his nose like a great hairy caterpillar, squirming out from his eyesocket to take its rightful place above it once more.

"No? I always found that one amusing, a shame you don't like it."

He rotated again, sitting upright in the air. He demanded his 'students' - and wasn't that a peculiar thought still - sit below him as a sign of respect, and Xinyue had been unsure what his being upside down had meant. Still, Master Sun was mercurial in mood but rarely in action, his furious rants and friendly talks delivered alongside both punishment and gifts in equal measure.

He spoke.

"We've been waiting for some time, you know. The Righteous Path has nearly won in the north, and the Demonic Altar itself is under siege. Your master still hasn't called you back, though, Hu Ai. We haven't acted either. Do you wonder why that is?"

This was typically how he asked a question, waiting for one of the three to answer.

Xinyue spoke.

"Master Sun, I believe it is an attempt to lure out the strength of the Strength Purity Sect. Weakening them to ensure they cannot unify the Righteous Path by cajoling and coercion is more important than winning any particular battle at the moment."

He smiled at her, and his lips wobbled and wavered, making the shape of a small happy face within his face.

"On Solved and Insoluble Mysteries speaks on this point at length. There are decision points, and points at which everybody knows their next best move, and have no superior one, or access to one that can counter the enemy move. For the Strength Purity Sect, they wish to consolidate the Righteous Path. The Righteous Path very much wishes not to be consolidated, and so resists. The Noble Devil Alliance seeks to preserve its Nascent power to strike back at an opportune moment, and we aim not to stir the Righteous hornets overmuch lest they swarm on us as one."

He smiled more widely at Xinyue.

"Simple enough, but there is another truth. The Righteous Path drove far into the north, an offense fueled by the endless supply of Jingshen Spirit Stones. Now their armies are essentially stranded without those stones, and will be picked off one by one if their supply lines are cut. The damage to the core Righteous strength would be immense, enough to let the Noble Devil Alliance feast and drive south once more."

He grinned now.

"Old Gold, that wonderful enemy of mine I've told you about, invaded the Jingshen. I just received word he sent a major shipment of stones to the Righteous Path, their invasion prevented from stalling completely. For the moment, the balance of the war lies in the hands of the Golden Devil Clan. If we drive north, the Righteous Path will band together and save all those armies regardless of our actions - and if Strength Purity seek to overexert their will, the Spirit Stones from their erstwhile allies might dry up. A pivotal point, where the best option for them is continue and win, seizing the most important forts and cities, the best mines and herb gardens. Retreating would be possible, but more costly, and so we are all set on our course."

Xinyue breathed out.

"All except Konstantinos."

"Yes. A clever plan, and despite everything I gifted that imbecile Junjie, I doubt he can outwit Konstantinos. Outfight? Perhaps. He has two Nascent Souls against two - Manuel and the bandit girl - but I cannot see him winning this war regardless. Still, not even Konstantinos can simply beat his opposite into submission and take his lands, and so this war will take a very long time indeed. Decades, if not centuries. Inch by grinding inch the Golden Devils will have to take Jingshen land, and if they reach the Underworld Spirit Palace in the next fifty years I'll be much surprised. The Spirit Stones will dry up, and as they do, the Noble Devil Alliance will see a great resurgence. As they do…"

His finger lashed out, tapping Xinyue on the nose. She started in shock - she hadn't even seen him move!

"We will strike as well."

Xinyue looked up at him eagerly. She knew she was only a tool to the man, but he had planned everything to this extent? Marvelous. Besides, being a tool was one thing, but a tool brought into Mid Nascent Soul was another entirely.

 

[nothingtoseehere]

Muwahahahaha

 

[occipitallobe]

The above was me thinking 'I really need to show third party thought processes more, and Old Cannibal is a big long-term enemy.'. Showing his plans when he gets them right and outmaneuvers people is fun, but showing that same process failing I think makes him more plausible and interesting as a planner and plotter.

You can be smart, and capable, and well-reasoned, and a treeman can gift a magic spear to your worst enemy and some crazy Qi Condensation girl can blow herself up and suddenly your predictions just don't work out at all.

 

[ObsidianNoir]

Ah yes random factor

The bane of all plans.

Then again who would've expected a super killer tree spear would just happen to land in the hands of the one guy who is the definition of control

 

[Katana1515]

I really want to see his reaction when he gets the news that we reached the capital in 20-30 years (fingers crossed), have 3 Nascent Souls and Old Gold has decisively won every Nascent tier engagement of the war so far.

I do also wonder what impact that will have on his plans. Surely in that situation waiting for the RP advance to stall out for lack of stones won't make sense anymore?

 

[TheCount]

There is also the possibility of gaining a 4th NS in Casia - I'm hoping/praying for her success - and that would put us on the upper ranks, nascent power wise.

As for OC, he is a delight to read.
I can't wait for his reaction and can only hope it will be before his students when he learns of the results.