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

[occipitallobe]

Good Seed and Omake Spreadsheet Rules:

Firstly, if you have questions about Good Seeds and the like please read here. If that doesn't answer your question please ping me in thread, or on Discord.

If you write a new Good Seed, or write an omake, please update the spreadsheet if you have access.

If you do not have access, please ping a collaborator (Swordomatic, Alectai, Quest, TehChron, Insane-Not-Crazy, Humbaba, ReaderOfFate, Kaboomatic, no., BungieONI) letting them know what you want and they will update the spreadsheet here. To gain access, you will need a gmail account of some kind. Throwaway emails are fine (I'm using one for the spreadsheet), but to gain access it's as simple as sending me either your email via PM, via DM in Discord, or just in Discord's #spreadsheet-requests channel.

This is mandatory. If a Good Seed does not record their omake by pinging collabs (or just requesting access and editing things themselves - this is the preferred option), I won't give out awards. If a new Good Seed is not recorded here, they won't advance. By doing this it makes the whole thing manageable for me - it's gotten pretty unwieldy!

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Omake Writer Instructions:

There are four fields you need to fill out.

Omake Link, which is just a link to your first omake for the turn. This makes it easier for me to read them as I do the update - without this it's tough to know off the bat which omake were written this turn, and to properly

Requested Bonus, which is your requested bonus for your omake. You can leave it up to me if you like. You can see more info in the Good Seed infopost here.

Cultivation Aims. For those following unorthodox paths - higher than 9th Heavenstage or later than 7th Dao Pillar paths. Please put in what you are aiming for before you break through. I have left it as 'default'. If you do not edit it, I'll go with that.

Turn Notes - Do you want to do something specific? Enter a Secret Realm? Help the Clan out in some way? If you have something specific you want to accomplish on this turn, put it in turn notes so I can adjust your Fate around it.

All other fields are for QM use to record character information to properly run the flow of the game.

 

[TehChron]

Aretaphila X13
Trials of Nature's Son Part 2​

E.K. 274

Xin Wei Long had a future, once.

A glorious Kingdom that he would lead to greatness, by the light of Heaven's Favor. The desert sands would turn verdant with the harmony of five elements, the Xuan would be chased back to their molten Fathers, the petty infighting of the Five Families would end and Sorcery would finally find its place.

With their support, Nascent Soul would not be a dream, and with it - Freedom from the demonic yoke.

But that promise could not be allowed. Could be enabled. Could not be countenanced. And in the defiance of his great destiny, at the dawn of his ascension to the throne of Xin…The man called the Grand Son of Nature had encountered a true sovereign.

A King of Silver.

And been brought low by her utterly. A single Foundation Establishment King - a heretical cultivation method wielded by the Demonic Powers - had brazenly entered the lands of Xin, entered the heart of his rightful domain…Made him kneel for the temerity of demanding the Invader show proper respect to the august personage of the ruler of those lands. A simple matter of giving face and she had profaned it! Humiliated him, crushed what ought to have been a glorious moment - a completion of the Five Pillar Dao Dynamo! But no.

No, instead it had been his great humiliation.

His fulmination, vanished. As if it had never been. His proud Five-Elements Cycling Sorcerous Vessel brutalized, nearly crippled. An act of overbearing tyranny that oppressed the innocent and downtrodden. Invaders. Devils. What name could be more apt to describe the alien of bronze body?

The Silver King had forced him to submit, and with it the Xin Kingdom. But that had not been enough for her. The monster had had the audacity to speak to the pretender King in the Earth Tower. Demanded the Son of Nature be exiled from his rightful place! Not even crippled. No. Without the foundations and legacies built within the Xin Kingdom by the first Xin King, Nature's Son would lack the resources to finish fueling his advancement to Core Formation in a timely manner. Even with Heaven's favor his progress would stall.

And this final humiliation - Xin Wei Long had understood - was to be his true "punishment" (for how can one be punished when they had done no wrong?).

With the weight of the Golden Devils behind her, the Silver King secured the pretender King's concession. A minor slice of territory the Xin could ill afford, and the permanent banishment of the Xin Kingdom's greatest talent. Recompense for the crippling of a single Hong Xuan Core Formation elder.

Xin Wei Long's greatest successes. Twisted into bitter defeats. Something told him that such a result resonated deeply with the Invader who had humiliated him so. The look of raw satisfaction on her face as his banishment had been announced etched into his memory forever. Indelible. Unforgettable.

And so Xin Wei Long traveled. Healing poultices and blood regenerating pills smuggled to him, ensuring that he would recover from the damage done within a year. But in that year, Xin Wei Long was forced to confront a terrible, terrible truth - the Desert belonged to the Golden Devils. Where the road existed, everything operated within their system. All things were paid for in stavraton. The only jobs available to feed his body and fuel his cultivation were the mere scraps too demeaning for the Invaders to do themselves.

In the Xin Kingdom he had been King.

In the land of the Devils, he was a beggar. Less than, for he had been marked by the peculiar system the Invaders used to track those such as he. Denied places on a caravan, save if he paid outlandish prices. Denied the food he craved, the comforts he had grown used to. Even the elements were forever held from his reach, nature's bounty locked behind works of artifice in the Waycastle's, save the scrap of oasis deep in the desert that even the Devils felt beneath them to claim.

His cultivation slowed to a crawl. Less than that, even. Where before he had been the carp climbing the waterfall, now he was as the worm crawling helplessly along the ground.

Yet in poverty, Nature's Son did not lose his connection. He merely needed to exert far more effort. Far more control. To eke out even the slightest possible energies he needed as a Qi Sorcerer. Forced to perform demeaning tasks, Xin Wei Long ceased to refer to himself for a time as he grew desperate for better jobs. Taking up the moniker of the man who had been sacrificed to ensure his birth.

Merely to get a few more jobs.

Merely to save up a few more spirit stones.

Merely to get by.

He adapted. Locked away his pride as Nature's Son deep within his heart.

And though he could not rely on others, still he walked. North and East. To the lands where rumors said he might yet find compatriots. Find those able to help him reach his true potential, and take revenge upon the Invaders.

In the land of the conquered Jingshen, whispers spoke of a fleet of airships who had remained proud and unbroken over the course of the Invaders conquest of their lands. As he traveled over the years, Nature's Son imagined. He planned. He schemed. His elaborate dreams sketched complex plots and contingencies, and as he walked and scraped and begged northward, the years passed.

As he arrived in the North, Xin Wei Long took the next step. The second stage of the Elemental Dao Dynamo required the establishment of more than the commonly held seven pillars. Heaven's Favor, its whispers his sole companion over the years. They told him. Told him true. The Pillars he needed to erect, and then he could realize the true and greatest potential of elementalism in the Third Sea.

Earth. Metal. Water. Wood. Fire. This was the initial dynamo. A five element cycle that fed upon itself as a virtuous cycle. The second stage enriched and magnified the process. Earth Below. Heaven Above. Then, what he would need to form when the time came to break through to Core Formation.

Yin and Yang.

As Nature's Son stepped into the lands where the natural Qi were drawn into the earth, he understood. The whispers of hidden strength - the way to the Turtle Child's stilled heart - lay in this realm. He merely needed the strength to enter its resting place and survive. And here, in a realm filled with his fellow victims, Xin Wei Long would find help at last.

He disguised himself once more, and established his Sixth Pillar - Earth Below. Two decades after he had been banished from his home, Xin Wei Long had finally broken through to the next stage of Foundation Establishment.

The Heavens provide nourishment. The Earth bears fruit. Here, in the Jingshen lands bordering the Qi Draining Desert, was that truth encapsulated most thoroughly. Nature's Son - for the first time - entered a Spirit Stone mine, for so eager for workers were the Golden Devils as they sought to digest their ill-gotten gains.

In his dantian, Xin Wei Long understood what was needed. Not merely for the representation of his Heaven Pillar to enrich his Dao Elemental Dynamo with raw heavenly energies - but the Earth would process those energies, refine them. Condense them into a purified power source to be fed into the true center of the array - with which the Five Elemental Pillars would engage in a perpetual virtuous cycle, bleedoff enriching and energizing the Heavens and Earth within him.

And so, the Earth Below Pillar was formed, becoming the next step towards his foundation as a true master of elementalism.

...​

E.K. 280

The lands of the Jingshen Bei had undergone a great deal of change since the Sorrow of the Desert, as it had taken to being called by the locals. As the strongest of the sub-families, their remit had been to man the defenses against invasion by the former Clan's neighbors and enemies - to the west, the Golden Devils. To the north, the Magic Oak Sect. To the east, Cloudy Jade City. Home and operating base of the Servant Elders. When the Golden Devils had declared unjust invasion of the Jingshen territories, many within the city had grown hopeful; where the main family suffered surely they themselves would rise!

And as stories of mighty agents of the bronze-skinned devils visiting, seeking collaborators for a perifidious betrayal spread…Such stories ultimately came to nothing. Centuries long schemes to advance the cause of Cloudy Jade City. Dreams of holding the mineral wealth of the True Jingshen in their hands. All prepared for the Golden Devils to take advantage of if only they would but ask.

Yet they had never asked.

As easy as overturning his hand, Manuel Konstantinos had suppressed both Jingshen Elders, and from there carved open the heartland of the Jingshen Bei himself, visiting upon them a true nightmare as only a dominant and mighty Nascent Soul could. The fight that the Region - and the leaders of Cloudy Jade City themselves - had expected their Patriarch to put up simply never materialized. Traps? Subverted. Defenses? Shattered. And in the end, the True Jingshen were suppressed, brought low by the Grand Elder of the Golden Devils.

While the Jingshen Clan's own victims and internal does were left with nothing but broken dreams and wasted ambitions.

Thus, when a traveling Foundation Establishment performer appeared within the Jingshen lands, he did not seek out his fortune at one of the more developed settlements with a deep and wealthy mine. Instead, the performer sought out the one place in the region where the Qi was not unceremoniously ripped into the earth.

From the north a breeze eked its way through the passage into the lands of the Magic Oak Sect. A great icy chill descended at all hours, suffused with strong Yin energies that were stripped by the nature of the desert, ever so slowly. And by the time that current of air fully descended, what sank into the desert was a temperate - if cool - qi that resisted the crystallization processes that defined the rest of the Jingshen lands.

Over centuries, this lack of acclimization had not changed. The desert could not digest the Yin energies from beyond the mountains. Nor could cool air alone transform dead sand into verdant earth.

Instead, it merely…Stilled. Made the harsh, but livable. And every now and again, those Yin-aspected winds would carry a stray storm southwards, which would feed a growing lake. An oasis, one fit only for mortals perhaps, but it was a breath of life in the desert. It was inevitable that life would spring up around the sole concentration of the natural elements in the north of the desert. It was similarly inevitable that it would go ignored by the Core Family once it had been discovered to be incapable of supporting the raising of Spirit Herbs, and that only heavily Yin-aspected pills could be forged there.

Cloudy Jade Lake, for which the city was named, was a great inland body of water. Fed purely from the descending northern winds, the great filmy sediment perpetually stirred up within made it near impossible to see through, yet it retained an eery, flawless beauty even then.

Thus did a humble performer named Lin Han begin plying his trade upon it's coasts. Demonstrating a peculiar ability to freely manipulate the winds and water that fed the city, creating beautiful statues of exotic and mysterious personas. Ice sculptures of jade beauties and stern faced heroes. And - secretly - figures of bronze-skinned villains beaten and driven away by bow-wielding Lords, the brilliantly bald maternal figure of a beautiful woman, and the wrinkled face of a wizened and lost Patriarch.

When asked, Lin Han spoke of how glad he was to be in Cloudy Jade City - even as a Foundation Establishment cultivator, the northern winds of Cloudy Jade Lake provided him with incredible and unique insights into his art, and it was without doubt the strongest nexus of elemental energies within the Northern Desert. He might perhaps venture South in the future, for the stories of the lands surrounding the Scorpion Trade Palace were intriguing enough, yes.

It even had the benefit of being true!

That is why, as countless bronze-skinned aliens walked past him, and investigated him for any impropriety. As so many curious onlookers sought to delve into his past and the secret of his skill with the elements. Each and every single attempt to look into the secret of Lin Han's past and pale skin as a Foundation Establishment cultivator was met with polite misdirections. It was a very long time in coming, as the elementalist seemed to settle down by the Lake. Years, by the reckoning, as Lin Han became a fixture of Cloudy Jade City. Though this was not much time for him, as he was expected to live for centuries. Nor was it any great inconvenience - for he was offered plenty of minor spirit stones, and the waters of the lake were potent enough for his own cultivation besides.

Thus, time passed. Until one day, a particular bronze-blooded approached him as day faded into twilight.

"Lin Han?" The young man asked, a scowl on his face.

"That's me," The older man replied, a polite smile on his face, "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid that I'm wrapping up for the day. Could you come back tomorrow?"

"I'll make it worth your while." A leather bag is tossed into Lin Han's waiting hands, untying them smoothly reveals the sparkling surface of a dozen mid-grade spirit stones, "Consider it a down payment for your inconvenience."

"And the rest to be paid at the end of this meeting?" The humble elementalist inquired.

"Three times as much." Came the answer.

Lin Han's face slackened, his lips spreading into a genial smile, "May I have the name of the Young Master?"

"This one's name is Bei Yaoshun." With a jerk of the head, the bronze-skinned devil turned away, "Follow me."

As the younger man's back is turned fully, a cold gleam enters into the elementalists eyes.

...​

As night fell upon Cloudy Jade City, a number of strange phenomena reveal themselves. Aberrations brought about by the weather patterns that had lead to the city's existence in the first place. While the opaque lake in the center was the most obvious one, there were numerous other smaller examples dotted through the area, all brought about by the exotic and higher than average concentration of Yin energies suffusing the land.

When the day turned to night, these Yin aspects would intensify in strength, combined with the cooler temperature as the moon came to dominate the sky. Where in the rest of the desert things merely became deeply cold, here, in Cloudy Jade City true frost sprung up. Embankments of ice and snow caught the unwary, but served as sources of water for well prepared mortals to harvest come the rising of the sun.

Over many hours of walking, the moon reached its zenith. Beams of pale light illuminating a great mound of snow, ordinarily hidden in the shadows between buildings.

Bei Yaoshun brushed it away, revealing an iron grate. One that he casually lifted up with a heave of Qi Condensation strength. With a gesture, Lin Han entered ahead of his would-be patron, who followed shortly afterwards - closing the passageway up with cunning hand movements that caused the snow to fall back upon it shortly afterwards.

"This location has been used for centuries to hold clandestine meetings," The bronze-skinned young man explained, "Even back during the days when we held the desert." He scowled, fingers gripping his exposed flesh, "Before the devils came."

The elementalist performer hummed concomitantly, "So I've heard."

The two walked, and in spite of himself Lin Han grew impressed with the craftsmanship of the tunnel - he had not been blind to the nature of the entryway. The snow was not merely a physical camouflage, due to the construction of the city and the nature of its weather patterns, it had formed a congestion of yin-heavy winds. The mass of qi congealing and being drawn to the earth, where the faint traces of anything beneath Core Formation were obliterated, with even a careful Elder able to obscure his tracks were they so able.

Yin aspected Qi continued to sink into their surroundings, growing ever more potent the deeper they moved. Unlike the lake which had formed above, this Yin aspected Qi simply stayed in place, forming a natural barrier as it remained static. Consumed by the desert, but unable to be digested and processed into spirit stones. It would take a mighty effort to sense those within the tunnels.

Maybe even that of a determined Nascent Soul.

A great metal door eventually resolved to Lin Han's vision. A cunningly crafted thing of blue steel, carved with intricate Arrays that sealed it shut and repelled the senses of those that sought to investigate it with an overpowering chill. Halting before it, Bei Yaoshun withdrew a vial of red liquid from a hidden pocket, pouring a droplet into a depression near the heat of the thing. The characters flared briefly with a cold light, and the icy gleam in Lin Han's eyes intensified unseen.

"After you," The bronze-skinned man gestured.

The elementalist obliged, and wandered into pure darkness.

As he entered, the door slid shut. And he was bereft of all light. Of all sight.

"Do you know," A smooth voice issued forth, "The meaning of the darkness to the Jingshen Bei?"

"I have heard stories," Lin Han replied hesitantly, "The Nightmare of the Bei is something spoken of often in these territories."

"You are mistaken, foreigner." The voice continued, "We of the Bei were of not of the desert. We did not indulge in the vast wealth of the main family. We did not tread the lands as did our other cousins. We were the guardians of the Jingshen Clan. It's spear and shield, against the enemies of our Grand Elder. The tunnels, the mines. They were our true homes. And our great spirit mine was the mightiest fortress of the desert, second only to the Underworld Spirit Place in strength and indefatibility."

"I…see."

"You do not," The voice replied, "So I shall make it clearer: For us, among the Jingshen families, the darkness. The shadows beneath the earth. That was a partner we were intimately familiar with. Known to us. Welcomed, and even embraced every step of the way. Those the Bei's Elder was a man who shot arrows through the skies, we still made our homes in the pitch blackness."

"The Nightmare of the Bei was not about the horrors inflicted upon us by that old monster. The true Nightmare was the betrayal we suffered. As the Bei's oldest companion turned against us, wielded against us like a weapon eager to serve another, wicked master."

Lin Han considered the feeling of the elements turning against him, and found himself commiserating with this voice. The cold glint in his eyes turned steely.

"I understand."

"Good."

And with that word, a torch lit up. Then a second, a third, and a fourth. The darkness banished by light, and the contrast filled a deeply suppressed part of Lin Han with deep satisfaction.

The elementalist stood within a great, circular vestibule. Lined with wealth beyond anything he had ever seen before. Cunningly worked jade, inlaid with High Grade spirit stones. Finely worked artifacts that gleamed with chilly energy. Intricately woven rugs and drapes lined the walls of the chamber, and Lin Han stood stunned at the symbology and mementos he was faced with.

Opposite him stood an older man. Formation Establishment, Seventh Pillar.

"A pleasure to meet you, traveler." Straight backed, hair peppered with grey. He stood with his back unbowed, and a great moustache that stretched across his weathered, craggy features. Only slightly taller than Lin Han's slightly stooped posture, the elementalist suspected that at his peak he would have seen the individual before him as a mere ant.

Yet, at this moment, Lin Han instead bowed his head in respect.

"This Lin Han greets the honorable Elder."

The man smirked at the flattery, "No, no. I am no Elder. Not yet anyway. Raise your head, young man." He extended a hand outward, "I am Commodore Jingshen Bei Wan, and I'd like to acquire your services."

Lin Han rose to his full height, but did not grasp the offered limb, "Commodore of what?"

The Commodore's smirk grew wider, "The Soaring Dune Flotilla, of course."

In spite of himself, the elemtnalist felt his eyes widen in shock! The Soaring Dune Flotilla was infamous among the lands as the greatest remaining force of Jingshen Loyalists in the North! The sole organized force of Jingshen Bei that had fought the massed power of the Golden Devils Legions and remained intact enough to continue fighting, they were a force consisting of hundreds of high speed skiffs that outraced anything the Invaders could put forth, even their famed Scorpion Cavalry Legions!

In the years since the fall of the Jingshen Clan, the Soaring Dune Flotilla had transitioned into becoming an extremely effective guerilla force. Even after the Jingshen diaspora, several mortal loyalists had remained and their newly risen talents had been forced to take the Bronze Blood of the Golden Devils, converted into the alien nature of their oppressors. But this had not been enough to make the new converts forget their roots! Those who had refused or been denied the opportunities to work in the major mines had instead taken advantage of the lack of manpower to be positioned in the numerous minor spirit stone mines that lined the Bei's former territories, often times feeding the rebellious flotilla the intelligence needed to stage daring raids for the wealth they needed to fund their activities, as well as sabotage the Golden Devils attempts to consolidate the North. Even if they were not known to possess Core Formation level strength, they had speed that not even a Core Formation Elder Devil could match, not with their heavy bronze bodies!

Lin Han had heard much praise from his clientele, excited whispers of the bravery of the Flotilla, and how several newly erected settlements by the immigrating Invaders had been wrecked by them coming down in force. Razing the invaders to the last man, woman, and child. The most uplifting tales told of the gleaming bronze skulls that decorated the prows of their ships, heralding their arrival to drive off the oppressors of the Jingshen clan!

With these thoughts in mind, the elementalist looked upon the chamber with a newfound appreciation.

"Are all these from the old Jingshen Bei mine?"

The Commodore frowned briefly, his hand returning to his side at last, "Yes, regrettably we were unable to preserve more. But these are the less important legacies and treasures we could recover before the Legions could finish looting our former home to the bedrock. Our most critical treasures are locked away elsewhere, and our family's greatest legacy has gone West, in the rightful hands of our Young Master."

The younger man nodded, "I had thought this City was in the hands of the Servant Elders. How did you secure this place?"

Jingshen Bei Wan snorted, "Who do you think provided this place to us in the first place? The networks beneath Cloudy Jade City were initially built in order to facilitate plotting against us! The perfidious Servant Elders only recalled their debts when the Golden Devils refused to facilitate their treason, and they were left with nothing to show for allowing the Jingshen Clan to fall." A sneer crossed his weathered face, "So now they jockey in new games of betrayal, seeking to play for advantage as the Golden Devils seed their families into our ancestral lands like the maggots they are, feasting on the corpse of our Jingshen Clan!"

"I know something of their oppression," Lin Han commiserated, "It is a cruel thing to be beneath the yoke of willing slaves."

The Commodore's eyes glinted, "Yes, you would know something of that, wouldn't you?"

Lin Han stilled, eyes staring unflinchingly into those of the older man.

In response he merely smiled indulgently, "It is no great secret, your true identity." He stepped back, arms spreading open dramatically, "A peerless talent in Qi Sorcery, banished from your home by the perfidious Golden Devils? Aye, we know of your circumstances, and even share a common foe."

"Xin Wei Long."

In an instant, the humble performers countenance changed. The affected stoop and slight slouch of a commomborn man fell away. The softness and geniality of an amiable street performer were replaced by the steely glint and countenance of a Heaven's Chosen. Where before there had been a mere elementalist.

Now stood the Grand Son of Nature.

"Speak."

"The Legatus of the 501st," Jingshen Bei Wan spat.

"The Silver King," Nature's Son sneered, "Yes. I know of her."

"As we surmised," The Commodore said seriously, "She was one of the Golden Devils present, and possibly directly responsible for the fall of the Underworld Spirit Palace and the death of our Grand Elder."

Xin Wei Long's eyes narrowed, "This is your offer."

The older man nodded, "Correct. You join us. Assist our Flotilla and help us build up strength, and we shall fund your advancement. Surely you've noticed that your previous trajectory has stalled without a larger organization to fund your cultivation."

Nature's Son sneers in response, "That's not enough!" The air in the room rattles with the force of his voice, the earth shaking with the fury of his heart.

Yet the peak Expert does not waver, he does not flinch, "Then what would be?"

A finger struck out at the Commodore's chest.

"I want another shot at Aretaphila Myia!" The finger jabbed once with a steely glint, then a second time with chilly blue light, then the motion is repeated three more times. A verdant green. A blazing red. A loamy brown.

"I! Want! My! Revenge!"

"And you shall have it," Jingshen Bei Wan smirked, his hand grasping that of Nature's Son.

"Welcome to the resistance."

A.N.: Part 2 of the Son of Nature Saga! Just one more piece to go! 4472 words

 

[Resonant]

Holy shit, you madlads did it. Four Million Words! Kudos to all you content creators who've passionately built this amazing setting one omake at a time, the sheer creative output never ceases to amaze. Here's to another incredible milestone.

I can't wait to see what lies in store in the next Shadow of Heaven juncture, right in time for the Trials! Exciting times ahead.

 

[Humbaba]

Wei Feng Sidestory - Parable

​

"I just feel I was born at the wrong time, y'know?"

Jin Tai paced furiously.

"You weren't." his wife, Guanting opined lazily from the bed.

"One more year. One more Heavens' damned year… if I'd just waited one more year!" He flailed his arms about furiously. "I could have been more than this. With qi falling from the sky I could have passed through the tenth heavenstage at least, I know I could." He stops, his arms falling to his sides and his shoulders drooping dejectedly. "If I'd just waited one more damn year."

"Ssh." His wife's arms enfold him from behind as she hugs him. "Are you really so unhappy? So unhappy that you'd wish never to have met me?"

"Of course not!" he cries, grasping her hands in his where they weave about his shoulders. "Of course not. I just look at them and see how easy it is. How much more qi there is in the air for them, how much more training there is for them." He sighs. "I could have done it." He whispers.

"Perhaps you could. Perhaps you could, but even then you would probably still be trapped in qi condensation, waiting to break through." Guanting lays her chin on his shoulder. "We would never have married. You'd be a strong qi condensation." She kissed the side of his head. "A frog in a well." She kissed him again. "Not my three pillared tiger." She turns his head gently and kisses him on the lips.

"I know. I do. It's just…" he sighs again and turns his head away. "I could have done it."

"Tai." Her voice is steely now. "Tai, you must put it behind you. You cannot continue like this."

"I know, I know, just."

"Tai. Sit down with me." She leads him to the bed. "Sit. Let me tell you a story:"

--------

Once, there was a young man who was born in a poor village.

The young man was very clever, but the village was very poor. Education was sparse at best. So the young man worked the fields, grew the crops, and every day, he talked to people. He asked them about their work, their lives, their wisdom. He sought out what few travellers passed by, and learned about the wider world.

And he made a difference. Long nights of talking and learning, comparing everything he had heard, long days of hard toil, experimenting. But he succeeded in improving things for his village. Slightly better yields, a little more tolerance for bad weather. Small enough things on a grand scale, but meaningful.

The young man grew older, he married and had children. Time passed, and along the way, that poor village became a little less poor. Dim and distant, a civil war erupted, trade routes shifted, and the village reaped the rewards of change.

Time passed, as it ever does. Trade brought travellers. Passengers hitching a ride toward the greater cities. Poor but bright-eyed students eager to become scholars, poor and dejected failures returning; and almost every one eager to supplement their meagre funds by offering a few lessons to help the peasants' children better themselves.

The clever man takes what he can, older now, he sits in on what lessons he can. Uses his meagre savings to take a few private lessons from the scholars he judges best.

Time passes. He ages, the village grows. He suggests they try and attract one of the itinerant scholars to stay. A teacher, who might educate their children to one day take the exams and be accepted into the heights of education.

Time passes, he ages. A respected elder of the village, he watches the villages first young people be accepted into the universities of the capital. He's proud of course, happy for them. For the village. But a thought nags at him.

In their shoes, I could have done better.

His life was, by almost any measure, a success. He made the best of his lot, and succeeded far more than many in his situation. Yet that voice in his head never quite goes away. It whispers to him day after day.

So simply it starts. The children are coming of age, and of those who dream of the capital and the exams there is only enough for one. The Elders vote and it comes down to two candidates. The first is the more talented scholar, with a greater mastery of the forms. But they are arrogant, and argumentative. The other is perhaps slightly less skilled, but attentive to their elders and eager to help. He chooses, and he chooses the latter. After all a student who is argumentative and cannot moderate their tongue around their Elders to their teachers is doomed to fall even if they somehow passed the scholarly examinations. Better to send the other. Their chances of passing after all are nearly equal, and the quieter student would have a far longer career if they succeeded.

If it quietens that nagging voice just a little, if a tiny warmth glows in his chest at that proud student's dismay, that's hardly anyone's business now, is it? After all, it was the right decision.

Quietly, it grows.

He ages and cements himself in the position of overseer of the town's education. He grows too old to perform the backbreaking labour of the fields, so while his sons toil, he begins to attend more of the children's lessons. He finds it disagreeable. Some of the children are too loud, too inattentive. Still, he is here now, and a few good hidings soon see to that problem!

Don't you know how lucky you are? How dare you not pay attention?!

And grows.

He returns from an argument with the young teacher. It isn't that the teachings are wrong, but the teacher is defiantly under-emphasising filial piety. Saying it is lesser examined than the other areas of the teachings. Pah. It is still one of the most important virtues. Shouldn't they be studying to improve themselves, not just for the examinations and petty mortal power?

The voice is barely there at all now. Just a quiet hot murmur in his heart.

And grows.

"Look we have to cut back on the guest lectures." He explains to the teacher the village had hired so long ago. "They're only itinerant scholars and hopefuls. We don't know how good they are. For all we know they might be filling their heads with nonsense. Money is tight too. Been a few dry years, crop yields have been down."

Young people don't need confusing with arguments and interpretations. One truth, one teacher. That'll be the best way. His chest constricts briefly as the voice in his heart pulses in agreement.

Until finally…

What do you mean outdated?! He shouts. Pale white faces above small wooden desks swing to look at him, blotchy faced and trembling with anger.

"I mean outdated sir." The visiting scholar says from the lectern, tilting his head back slightly so as to better look down his nose at the angry figure of the elder. "That interpretation was a mistranslation by scholar Gao. Scholar Chen's corrected translation was officially recognised and adoped by the imperial authorities almost five years ago."

The clever Elders face grew pinker, white and red patches standing out on his skin. His fists clench impotently.

"Listen, here! I won't be insulted by som-"

"Oh, I see…" The lecturing scholar interrupts scornfully. "Such a little village, of course you haven't updated your textbooks to the proper translations." He adopted a sad little smirk. "Such a shame…I suppose these fine 'little scholars' have already been ruined, but perhaps your next crop might still be salvaged."

The Elder cannot respond, his mouth opening and closing, panting in unspeakable, impotent rage.

The next week, the Elder is stripped of his duties. To have missed such an important thing as the translations for the examinations changing for five years? Impossible. Accusations are shouted by angry families. Was the Elder who had been called so clever simply incompetent, or was there an even darker meaning to all this? Publicly humiliated the man returns to his house and crawls into bed. That night he squirms around as nightmares take him.

The Demon that had nested in his heart eats it whole.

And he passes away before he wakes.

-------------

"Dear, it's a lovely little morality play for mortals but.."

"Quiet, you" she grins at him. Then it fades and her face becomes solemn again. "It isn't really about mortals. It's about cultivators too. It's about this." She pokes him hard in the chest. "It is the tale of a heart demon forming, and a heart demon is far more damaging for us than a simple mortal."

"Tai, look at me. We are powerful, blessed. We have come far further down the path than many would believe possible. If we were that clever man, neither of us would have settled at changing a mere village." She hugs him tight, smiling lovingly at him.

"It's easy to see the training and the qi falling from the sky for our juniors and have that voice inside us cry out: 'What could I have been if I had possessed those things?'. For we would not be cultivators if we could be fully content with the way the world is." She shifts back guiding his head down into her lap, so he is looking up at her.

"It is an ironic, bitter pill to have envied the glories past so badly, and to have sought so hard to build ack towards those heights. Only to now find envy for the future generations instead.

It is natural to think, what could I have been? Much like it is natural for a person looking over a high cliff to hear that voice say, 'what if you could fly, if only you tried?'." She looks down at him with love, but also with melancholy.

"But Tai, you must leave it behind. Don't let that whispering voice become a demon in your chest, gnawing away at your innards. Remember that there are compensations too in being the elder, in being the shapers of the world, not just it's inheritors."

Remember the joys of being my tiger, not a cat in silk stripes."

She leans down to kiss him, and he returns it eagerly.

---------------

AN:So this was born out of thinking about the catchup mechanics (which I fully support) and how they might feel in universe. Imagine ascending just that few moments before qi starts raining down from the Heavens. Knowing you could have gone further if you'd waited just that short time.

So here is roughly 1800 words of crap couples therapy on the subject.

 

[fictionfan]

Abel Angelus
Xiao Yingzi

Origami

​

Abel didn't go to that many parties. Or at least not that many parties of mostly strangers. He went to parties with the brotherhood and family reunions all the time. However right now Abel needed funding for his next project and had already kind of tapped all the people he already had a close relationship with. So the obvious solution was to find some strangers to impress. Hence Abel putting on an improto magic show.

Card tricks were actually fairly successful since none of the people here seemed to know them and assumed that he was using either mind reading, remote sight or future sight well hiding all qi use. In fact a lot of people seemed to assume that he was a higher level cultivator skilled at hiding his qi.

"Nice tricks." A pale skinned woman in legionnaire armor said between his demonstrations, leaning casually on a bronze spear. Her normally stern-faced disposition was hidden under a polite smile of interest and her aura was completely undetectable to the young inventor. "But can you do something that would actually be useful for the legion?"

Abel considers, but just about any answer he could give is just bragging "Can you please make the question a little bit less open ended? In theory absolutely anything can be used to help the legion."

The woman thinks on that for a moment. "Then let us take a hypothetical." She replied, tapping a finger on her spear as she thought. "You seem to specialize in techniques that either don't use qi or that use it in a manner incredibly hard to sense. So, I need to get a team past enemy borders and they have sensors guarding the way. How would you get us past them?"

"Well it seems like you have researched me fairly thoroughly" Who in the world is this Women Abel desperately thought. She is acting like she wants a commission, but if so why approach me here instead of getting an appointment at my workshop like everyone else? He puts on his businessman smile "It would depend on your budget, but the cheapest way I can think of would be gliders."

Abel quickly folds a piece of paper into a paper airplane and throws it. "Get some height in any of a number of ways then glide over the border at night or on a cloudy day well suppressing your qi as hard as you can."

"Fascinating." She muses, eying the paper airplane in his hand. "I am aware of the principle of course, but I hadn't considered using it in this manner. Would you be able to integrate some form of camouflage into that? How easy would such a device be to carry? And of course." She smiles lightly. "How hard would it be to make such a device? Could others build it with training or is your personal attention required for each piece?"

"Easy enough to make the gilder the color of the sky, but then you are somewhat pre-committing to making the attempt at a certain time of day. The device has to be very light in order to work, but by default would be very bucky. I can make it foldable, but that requires whoever is using it to train a little in how to use it. Also it is very easy to make." Abel's calculating caterpillar crawls onto his hand. "I could have Carl here weave up about a hundred before the day is over for the right price. If money is more important to you than time then I can train some mortals to make them over a few months."

The woman considers that for a moment. "Are you here looking for sponsors?"

Abel resists rolling his eyes. This woman has obviously been researching him "Yes, are you one of them?" He says fanning ignorance.

"I could be." She replied, nodding to herself. She turned to him and raised an eyebrow curiously. "What was your name, legionnaire?"

Really she is pretending not to know my name after she lets me know she knows my specialty? Ah well best to humor her "Abel Angelus"

"Abel Angelus?" She said, seeming to recall something. "Any relation to Zeno Angelus?"

"He's my brother" So this is one of Zeno's friends. Come on bro I don't need your pity I can find sponsors on my own.

"Good man. I worked with him in the last trials." She replied, before looking away in thought. After a moment, she nodded and turned to him decisively. "Let's do it this way." She told him. "Make the gliders you proposed with whatever features you think necessary within a… week? Discuss the details with my representative. You mentioned an even hundred, which would be perfect for a century - if the artifacts are good, I'll send one of them in for the needed training. If it all pans out, we can look at other commissions and perhaps even a fund for personal projects. What do you say?"

"Well I will have to discuss exactly what your needs are and price with your representative, but in principle the deal seems sound" Odd that she would give me a week when I already said I can do it in a day what is she expecting me to add?

"Excellent. I'll be in touch." With a nod, she turns and walks away - heading towards some other individual in the crowd.

As Abel was lost in thought about the encounter, he felt a tap on his shoulder. "Wow," He turned to see one of the other inventors standing behind him with an impressed expression. "I can't believe you got an order from her."

"Who?"

"Wait…" The man said, staring at him in surprise. "You don't know who she is?"

"No really, who is she?" I assume a friend of Zeno.

"That's Xiao Yingzi, the youngest of our Legates." He leans in to whisper. "They say that she leads a team with two other Core Formation and that she might even be the current strongest in the clan - after the Grand Elders of course." Shaking his head, the man turned away. "Talk about pearls going to swines. I wish I'd impressed her…"

Well that explains why she gave me an extra week. She wants me to impress her. Ugh. This is like being offered the chance to eat a cow in one sitting.

—-----------

Abel waited on top of mount (something) with a pack far bigger then he was on his back. This had turned out to be a bigger project than he had expected. At first he had figured that he would just make the hundred basic gilders, but after finding out that his client was a core level cultivator he realized that would basically be cutting his own throat. So Abel had spent the last week painstakingly designing and redesigning the gilders. All the designs and tradeoffs, but on the last day he had a flash of inspiration.

The Legate didn't seem to be one for grandstanding. Rather than make a show of it, she simply showed up to their meeting with an escort of a junior administrator who had been the one to contact Abel and worked with him to set up the specifics of the commision. As it was the last time he met her, her qi was completely hidden from his senses.

"Greetings, Abel."

Abel bows. "Greetings Legate Xiao"

"The Xiao is an appellation. My proper name is Yingzi." She gently corrects, before gesturing towards his demonstration. "I hadn't gotten a chance to examine your work, but my representative has told me good things about it." She says, inclining her head towards the man beside her. "I am looking forward to what you have prepared for me today."

Abel wordlessly reached into his pack and pulled out a huge folded piece of paper. He tapped it and the paper immediately unfolded into an even more huge single piece of paper casting a shadow over the whole group. Then Abel took a small metal disc out of pocket and touched it to the paper. There was a tiny flash of qi and the lines appeared across the paper which immediately started folding along those lines in quick succession. In a second where there had been a single large sheet of paper there was now a hang glider the exact color of the sky and complete with hand holds.

Abel holds up the metal disk. "In theory you don't need this. You can just fold the gliders by hand. But the folder." Abel twists up his face for a moment as he tries to think of a better name for it. "This hundred fold...origami art array has many different gilder designs in it's memory and works very quickly"

Abel touches the disk to the gilder which quickly unfolds then refolds until it is a small paper cube which he holds in his hand.

"Of course if you want to have no chance of detection you are going to need to learn to fold them by hand still. But qi use is only when the folder is being used. The gilders themselves don't use any for their operations."

"That makes sense." The Legate replied, studying the cube in his hand. "May I?"

Abel hands over the dense paper cube. A mortal would find it quite impossible to hold in one hand but the Legate plucks it off of him as if it were weightless. After studying it for a moment, she tosses it to the ground and with an undetectable exertion of qi, she causes it to unfold back into the glider. "What material did you use for the design? While you've fulfilled the commission quite satisfactorily, I have some concerns regarding discovery - how tough is it and did you think to add some fail-safes for that eventuality?"

"3 bark paper treated with pink and red slime." And hadn't that cut into his savings it is a good thing that this sale was working out "So the paper is stronger than steel and even if you folded and unfolded it continually for the next hundred years the paper should not hold any creases."

She simply nodded in response to that. "Can that only change it to a gilder or are other configurations possible?" She asked, glancing at the folder.

"I have a few dozen gilder designs all optimized for different things, stealth, maneuverability in the air, speed or hang time, but in theory it can make anything." Abel puts a bit of qi in his finger and touches another paper cube he takes out. He didn't need the folder either, but it was very impressives that Yingzi managed to duplicate the trick after seeing it only used once. Guess that is the difference between Condensation and Core. The cube refolds into a shield. "Not the best shield, but better than nothing". He jabs it again and the shield refolds into a sword with an arm bracer. "It might give someone a paper cut"

"It's not a bad secondary function however, especially if you can create other configurations for different purposes. " After a moment's thought, she mused aloud, "Perhaps a boat, if one has to cross the water? Or a tent of some sort? It would depend upon the material of course, but I can see a myriad number of uses for this." Looking at the young legionary, she smiled. "I've looked into your other work since our last meeting and you have quite the history of revolutionary design. It is fitting for one of the Angelus to have such vision."

Abel starts sweating a bit "Ah maybe not a boat, incidentally you might not want to try using these gilders in the rain."

That caused her to raise an eyebrow. "That is quite a flaw, though perhaps less so in the desert." She said, looking at the glider. "I'd like to see this tested more before I allow my centurions to utilize it, but I do think I can justify assigning these to my legionnaires." She turned to the administrator. "Assign him a centurion with the understanding and authority to assign him a budget." Turning back to Abel, she nodded. "Pitch however much you think you can need "

"Ah I already had my hands somewhat full with Gaius. Doesn't seem fair to double dip."

She smiled at that. "I suppose after praising you so, I should have considered that others might have come for you before me." She replied, shaking her head. "Take the necessary details anyway - should you find the time or have some idea you wish to pitch to me, then my doors will be open. Discuss both payment and reimbursement with my subordinate."

She nodded at the administrator before turning back to him. "Unless there is anything else?"

"No, I am glad that you are happy with the product and look forward to impressing you in the future." Core level attention was best had in small doses.

"Very well then," She said, nodding at the legionnaire. "I shall follow your growth with a keen eye." Without another word, she turned to leave. As she left, the administrator stayed behind and walked towards the young inventor to discuss their accounts.

Abel looks down at the giant red target he had painstakingly painted on the ground in the distance. She didn't even ask to see the gilders in action. Abel internally shugs before starting his haggle with the administrator. Even if the painted target hadn't been used he was definitely going to charge for it.

 

[adamashield]

You seem to specialize in techniques that either don't use qi

Click to shrink...

Ah, one of the main reasons the Brotherhood love this dude

gliders

Click to shrink...

I already like where this is going^^.

Also it is very easy to make

Click to shrink...

I can train some mortals to make them over a few months."

Click to shrink...

Ohhhh^^. Still the part of the skill make worry that some elder in the Brotherhood will act in a stupid way. But that is usually a given.

The funniest part, to me, is that the Brotherhood had discuss wood/trees with the Elder Scion of the Angelus (his wife to be more precise). So, at this point they should have some quality wood to use for this

And give the fact said Senior is known for Divinations/Dreamwalking. They would think he has done this on purpose.

"It's not a bad secondary function however, especially if you can create other configurations for different purposes.

Click to shrink...

It has a (more expensive) 'brother' that could be used as building quick material? and even (silly) things like 'a paper fortress'?

Yeah they really like Abel for stuff like this. The guy that make 0 to low qi inventions. Since they are the '0 to low qi' general craftmen

"Ah I already had my hands somewhat full with Gaius. Doesn't seem fair to double dip."

Click to shrink...

Always double/triple/and so on dip . You need money. Science will not always advance on it own. And Money can speed it anyway.

That was one of the reasons they work for free in the Angelus Gold mines for 10 years. And made sure to make to explore even the dirt of that place for $$$$$

Anyway. While I have positive bias here thanks to my Good Seed. I really like a flying option that is not the angry and expensive (and also proud) bird formation. Specially since the Bird only allow Devils to 'board'.

 

[ilbgar123]

Great job everybody!

Our rewards might be halved by the Great Era, but that's sort of like being upset over getting a Fortune Point instead of a full Fate Point.

 

[adamashield]

Great job everybody!

Our rewards might be halved by the Great Era, but that's sort of like being upset over getting a Fortune Point instead of a full Fate Point.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, the worth of the kk rewards Grows too. They are just more discrete since the shadow of heaven now need to worry about heaven noticing their actions.

Plus, the size of 'the game' in the quest also change. From hegemony of the desert. to trying to survive and conquer this sea. to (maybe) ????? if some shenanigans/rolls/muse happen.

 

[CuriousRaptor]

Doubts

Ajax sat and thought. He wasn't in his usual place, his work tent, wherein he could distract himself from thinking heavy thoughts. Instead, he was sitting in a meditative pose, in a garden lush with plants and rife with the subtle sounds of trickling water. All designed to help put the mind at ease, to allow them to ponder the mysteries of the Sea, The Imperator and The Dao more effectively. It made Ajax's nose itch. To see all this splendor and glory simply to help a Cultivator think, when it could be put to better use helping people, the water and arable soil here enough to feed a family, not comfortably but better than some of the lean years his family had endured. The Unfairness of it all still made the young shepherd in the back of his mind furious.

But then the man he is now quashes that feeling. even though he's eighty years old, only barely a man by cultivator standards, he's seen more than any mortal would have at his age, several times over. He now knows a truth. Life isn't fair. If it ever was, would be a mystery he doubts even the vaunted Imperator knows, but here, now in the dying Third sea? Life is always and ever subject to inequity. Look between the Golden Devils, who labor heavily at a loss to help mortals maintain life, while other peers ignore mortals, or worse farm them. Look at heaven's uncaring gaze, squishing those it considers ants all to prosecute an agenda that is genocide. Look at the disparate terrains of the Virtuous Flipper region, where life flourishes vibrantly with next to no effort in the Verdant plains, but all but withers at the husk if not for titanic effort in the desert.

This is something he knew well, as soon the Golden Devil clan, of which he was a Good Seed of would be subject to another unfairness. The Centennial Trails of the Iron Pillar. He had personally not experienced them, but he had mentors, superiors, and peers who had. Well peers in theory, for with his laughable status as Good Seed they were not regarded as equals but lessers, only waiting for him to surpass them, and curious why he had not done so already. No one saw that he was not a vaunted genius, the next generation of the clan who would raise it even higher than the Indomitable Thirteen had. He was not gifted with a bloodline purity that shown so brightly it gleamed, even now in the twelfth heaven stage his blood was spotty at best, only by blind luck has he risen so high so quickly in the stage where blood told the most. He lacked a legacy that would let him strike upwards into the next great realm, and the speed and flexibility to make the most of it. He was a brick, nearly inflexible and slow by comparison. He lacked a mastery of raw elemental might, and a legacy from of the greatest beasts the seas had ever produced. Hell, he had no affinity for elemental manipulation at all. He would never claim the thirteenth heavenstage. Old Gold's Saggy balls, it was all he could do to try and push through at the twelfth, devouring Core of a Great Circle Core Formation Spirit beast putting him far ahead of where he should have been able to reach, out of blind luck and desperation.

Like what allowed him to a cultivator in the first place. Blind luck of getting snapped out of being a cannibal by tripping over a long dead dog and smacking his head, and the desperate fight in a burning charnel house afterwards. Killing everyone he had ever known or watching them be devoured by friend, kin and clan. All because Gaius Antonius tripped over a legacy left by the biggest asshole the Nine Seas had ever seen. Someone who had left an indelible mark on all lives that came after, simply by pursuing his gluttonous hunger. What was the point in even trying, when someone who has power so far beyond yours can come down and ruin everything wrought in an instant? What was the point when the Heavens tried to grind you and yours into dust and then continue on until even fine powder was crushed into eternal nothingness? What could a man, one who was lucky and skilled, not a true genius or once in a millennia existence actually do?

It would be so easy to let his cultivation go, to let loose the iron hold on the qi he had accumulated and just stop. what can a man, even a gifted one do in face of monsters? it would be so easy...

The shocked face on Markos Yan's face as he turned one of the Blood Path cultivators who had hemmed him in into a fountain of gore and bone with a single overprepared punch.

The proud if pained smile of his mother, spending what little life she had left to give to reassure her son he did well.

Forgemaster Zhang chuffing in approval as his Ballista punched through the armored robes of a Foundation Building Cultivator.

A single bright blue eye and a smile of too sharp teeth as he unveiled a newly forged cultivation treasure made by mad insight and a desire to spite the heavens.

An orb of hateful crimson and disdainful sneer morphing into a look of shock and terror as his thumbs moved to destroy both.

All these and a thousand more flashed before the young man's eyes.

It cannot be all for nothing. All life is suffering, but all anyone can do is Endure it. Even if the earth roars and turns. Even if the seas scream and flow in raging torrents. Even if the sky splits open once more and fire, blood and lightning fall upon you. Even should all of heaven bar your path and suppress you and your goals. Bend, do not break. Slow, do not stop. Bleed, do not die. And should those that rain calamity and catastrophe upon you come into your reach? Ruin them.

1026 Words, something my muse told me to write.

 

[fictionfan]

I really like a flying option that is not the angry and expensive (and also proud) bird formation. Specially since the Bird only allow Devils to 'board'.

Click to shrink...

It's not flying. It's falling with style.

 

[no.]

Gaius Antonius & Amaranth Castellanos - Dear, Sweet Child​

"Dear, sweet Aletheia. Why did you have to be born this year?"

The bundle in his arms was, objectively, not heavy in the slightest. Seven pounds of baby, wrapped in two pounds of cloth. It felt unthinkably weighty, like Gaius might lose his grip at any moment.

"A bad year for us, but a good year for the family." Axia sighed from the bed beside him, bringing a hot cup of tea to her lips. "An heir secured less than a decade before a Trial is something a lot of people would kill for. It means she'll be one hundred and ten years old by the time she becomes a target in one."

For all the calculating coldness her words sought to convey, her tone was despondent. His wife's argument was aimed to persuade herself, not him. As always, Axia was more dutiful and fastidious than Gaius - he thanked his guardian stars that she was the wife, not him. He could never be cut out for motherhood.

It could be worse, The Seeker thought to himself, trying to pick out whose features got passed down(a fruitless task; babies were so doughy, especially in their first week of life, that they all looked equally strange to him). He could have conceived the poor thing right before going into seclusion; he'd feel guilty for the rest of his days if he missed the birth of his firstborn. Hell, at least it wasn't one year out from the Trial; he could at least explain to his daughter why she wouldn't be seeing him for a year, or maybe never again.

"Maybe I'll snatch some heirloom off a Trial Hunter, for her tenth birthday present." Gaius cooed, poking Aletheia in the cheek, which made her scrunch up her face and wriggle in response.

Axia snorted at the thought, lacking any of her usual stoicism. "You're not putting foreign battle treasures in the hands of our baby. We've got more appropriate toys."

"Who said anything about a treasure?" Gaius shot back, turning to his wife with a lopsided smirk. "I was thinking maybe a heart."

Axia huffed and rolled her eyes, still smiling. Honestly, how many years had it been since the two of them shared such a simple, blissful moment, with no complicated emotions at all? "Not that either, small children are always putting things in their mouths. She would chew on the heart and stray to the Blood Path before she even started cultivating."

Gaius sighed playfully as he handed the little bundle back to her mother, who took her gratefully. "As usual, you are gravity itself, dear. Without you I would drift away." Axia, Gaius knew, was in bed by choice; as far as he could tell, it was for some kind of novelty. She could have walked within an hour of giving birth if she wanted to, and run within a day or two. Remaining in bed with her daughter was a sort of sweet sentimentality that Axia wasn't normally known for.

That thought distantly terrified Gaius - in what uncharacteristic ways would parenthood make him act? Hopefully it would never come to that.

He suppressed such anxieties with an ease born of suppressing far worse things. "I'll let you two sleep. Send for me if you need anything." Gaius said as he left the room, turning in the doorway to catch one last glimpse of the perfectly beautiful, perfectly human scene before him.

——

As the little girl grew, it became swiftly apparent that she saw things with greater clarity than others of her age. Most things came swiftly to Aletheia, and tutors were brought in and out year after year. Without something to work on, she became terribly restless, and did foolish things out of sheer curiosity. She pried the shells off of living insects with forks to see what their insides looked like, slipped away from her nanny to explore the sewers, and climbed onto the roof of the manor so she could look as far into the distance as possible.

The bright-eyed child learned quickly that there was more she could get away with than most children, thanks to the influence inherent to her position in society. She also learned soon after than excessive use of this power would get her scolded, and so it had to be used strategically. In the short term, this meant two desserts; one in the dining room and another in the kitchen straight from the cook. In the future, this prudence would no doubt be used to more ambitious ends.

Too smart, Gaius sometimes thought. Growing up far too fast. Already, she seemed to have an inherent sense for people, an ability to read their intention with surprising accuracy. As she shot up in size with each passing year, these moments of eerie clarity seemed to become more common.

And so, there was no way to address such precociousness than with discipline. Axia started the girl early, earlier than even most children of noble houses. Aletheia's hands learned how to grip the handle of a sword, how to form a fist, how to take a proper fighting stance. She learned the odd, numbing pain of a sword's vibrations, when it strikes metal at a bad angle and bounces off. She learned the sting of sweat pouring into her eyes when training on a hot summer's day. Perhaps it was harsh, but it was the only way either of her parents really knew.

One day, in the middle of her exercises, Aletheia suddenly stopped moving and turned to look at her father. She wiped a lock of sweat-slick hair off of her face, walked up to Gaius and looked into his eyes with an innocent yet piercing gaze.

"Auntie Marlissa said you're a King. What is a King, papa?" Aletheia asked, eyes sparkling with curiosity. She was beginning to take shape now, looking less like the indistinct doughy appearance of a toddler and taking on the sharp-featured visage more Quintia girls shared. The chin, the ears, the cheekbones, all of it closely resembled her mother, but her nose and eyes came from Gaius, as did her lanky physique.

"A King? A King is a whole lotta things, Sweetheart." Gaius answered, squatting down to look his daughter in the eye. A King rules over other people. He decides how society works, and tells his soldiers to fight other Kings' soldiers."

"Why are the soldiers fighting each other? Do they hate each other?" Aletheia asked m, tilting her head.

"Sometimes they hate each other." Gaius shrugged. "But sometimes they don't. Most people are mostly the same as each other. They fight who their King tells them to fight, because that's how society works."

The little girl thought on that long and hard, and the gears turning in her head moved around the sort of child-logic that Gaius could no longer comprehend. "Then why don't they fight the Kings?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Fight the Kings? Why would they do that?"

"These soldiers are the same. They're only fighting because the Kings tell them to." She explained, looking not at her father but right through him, as if the object of her curiosity were standing behind Gaius. "But their Kings are making them fight each other, even though they're the same. Shouldn't they work together and fight the Kings ?"

Gaius chuckled, only to meet his daughter's eyes and find that she was completely serious. The laughter died in his throat, and he began searching for words that Aletheia could understand.

Gaius conjured two figures in his hand. The first was a common Legionnaire in plain, unadorned lamellar. The second was a King, dressed in fine robes and glittering jewelry. "Because Kings are stronger than soldiers. The people who rule, rule because they can defeat their subjects." As he spoke, the King grew larger and larger until it was the size of a real person, while the soldier remained a few inches tall. "Even a thousand soldiers fighting together couldn't defeat a King."

"But why?" She asked with a tilt of her head.

Gaius made a puzzled expression. "Because sweetie, if the King isn't strong enough, he loses to someone else who wants to be King instead."

"But if it will always be like that, then why do we fight?" Aletheia said after a moment of consideration. "If all Kings rule the same way, what are they making the soldiers fight over?"

"Ideals." Gaius said with a wistful smile.

"What are ideals?"

Gaius ruffled Aletheia's hair fondly, then spoke. "Ideals are the things you get out of bed for, even when you're sleepy and don't want to wake up yet. Ideals are the things that make you keep training after you get tired, even if no one else is making you do it. An ideal is something you believe in so much, you'll die for it."

"So a King is someone who makes other people die for the King's ideals, not their own?"

Gaius nodded proudly at his daughter, encouraging her to keep listening even though she was clearly getting confused. "That's what nations are made out of. Get enough people to believe in an ideal so much that they'll die for it, and you have an army of great soldiers. True heroes."

Aletheia looked down, tugging at the hem of her dress as she grappled with emotions she was too young to fully process. "That means… to be a good soldier, you have to have the same ideals as your King?"

Gaius patted her on the shoulder before answering, putting on his best 'inspiring commander' voice. "That's right, little one, and that's why Golden Devils are the greatest soldiers in the world. Because we believe in the Grand Elder, because we know our society can build a better world."

Aletheia's eyes seemed almost to sparkle now, so taken in was she by the performance. Gaius continued, relieved that he was getting through to her. "Our enemies don't understand, so they try to destroy us. But always remember, we make war against them for their own good. Even if they die, their children will live in a better world."

It seemed Aletheia wasn't sure what to think about that, because she had no further questions. Indeed, she seemed to be reflecting inward rather than looking to her father for any further guidance.

It wasn't right, Gaius thought, for children so young to be thinking so hard. It would be better for Aletheia to have been born into a world in which death did not have to be reckoned with at such a young age. He had chosen a path full of strife, and whatever a life as The Seeker brought him was his own business; Aletheia hadn't chosen anything at all yet. Shouldn't she have been playing with friends, not learning the basics of war?

His head ached.

There wasn't enough time, not nearly enough. The girl was only five years old now and already Gaius felt like he wasn't doing enough. The serious possibility of death had not stung so sharply ninety-five years ago, when his hands were not so overflowing with things to protect and people who needed him. Ideally, Aletheia would already have decided her own path forward by the time he marched out to meet the Trial, but such an idea was foolish on its face. A ten year old child would not be an independent, fully trained philosopher-warrior no matter how hard Gaius pushed her.

Propaganda, however, was one-size-fits-all. In the coming age of war, doubt and regret would lead to suffering and death. Aletheia could find her own way of life later in life, but a strong backbone of loyalty was required. More than anything, what Gaius needed to give his daughter in the time he had was strength. She would be strong; she had to be.

"Always remember, do not lose sight of your ideals, Aletheia." Gaius said, in the warmest tone he could muster. "No matter how crazy you get, you can't forget them. Can you promise Papa that?"

"I promise, Papa." Aletheia declared, nodding as solemnly as a five year old could, before scrunching up her face in confusion. "But what is crazy?"

Gaius jabbed a thumb into his own chest. "It's what we call people who don't think like humans are supposed to think. Everyone becomes crazy, if they cultivate for long enough."

That seemed to take the little girl aback for a moment, giving Gaius a momentary reprieve from her questioning. Aletheia scuffed her shoe against the sand, pushing the grains around aimlessly. "Does that mean I'll be crazy?"

Gaius' smile grew wider, but his eyes grew sadder. "You will, one day. You'l find your way to live, and you'll split open anyone who tells you to live your life another way, because you're my girl."

With this conversation concluded, Gaius sent his daughter off to continue her regimen. From running to jumping to lifting to throwing, this physical conditioning, aided by a course that had been built just for her, required a broad range of physical motions, so as to build all the reflexes and muscle memories of a great athlete and warrior from a very young age.

He walked away until the glare of the sun was banished by the refreshing shade of an overhanging roof. There he beheld a familiar large beast sitting nearly motionless in a pool of water about twice her size. Many of these little aquatic recesses had been built on the manor's property; not for swimming, but for cultivation.

Scylla could not exceed the cultivation level of her partner, but the multiple layers of blood enhancements with which she was burdened ate into her cultivation base enough that her full effort was needed to simply keep pace with Gaius. Her Dull Bronze Constitution was qi-resistant, but made cultivation less efficient. Furthermore, it had been modified to reinforce itself over time, thickening with each passing year and eating into her cultivation base to do so. And on top of all that, she used a cycling pattern which advanced more slowly than the standard Golden Devil pattern, but produced greater qi reserves.

All of those restrictions, and she still kept up with Gaius, aided by the equalizing factor of the Beast Bond. Watching the Rainbow Carp cultivate was a feast for the spiritual senses, a cascading torrent of energy obeying her every command. It was not the steady, disciplined qi flow of a human cultivator, but something more primal; the prodigious natural cultivation of a Sacred Beast blessed by Heaven.

Scylla was roused from her cycling trance as Gaius sat down right next to her pool, spilling some sand into the water and irritating her gills. She burst out in an explosion of motion, spraying her companion and letting out an almost equine huff. "How many times must I tell you, the meditation pool has to be pure!"

Humans were a type of ape, and some humans resembled a particular species of ape. Gaius, Scylla thought, looked a bit like a macaque; long-limbed, long nosed and golden haired. The resemblance only grew clearer when the man was wet, causing his long, faintly metallic hair to adhere to his skin and almost look like a coat of fur.

"You don't need it perfect, you're just spoiled." Gaius groused, wringing out his hair and glaring at Scylla. "Can't I say hello to a friend, you diabolical trout?"

Off in the distance, Scylla spied Aletheia doing her daily routine, given to her as soon as she was able to perform the motions. Now that all of her other exercises were done, she would hit a wooden dummy with 500 forward sword strokes, followed by 300 punches and 300 kicks; a moderate number, for she was only five years old. The sound of her little fists striking the post again and again produced a rhythm which her father seemed to find quite pleasing.

Scylla didn't buy it - she knew this man far too intimately for his deceptions to ever work on her. "What troubles you, Brother?" She asked, floating a few feet above her companion and turning upside down to look him in the eye.

"I'm scared of what I'm becoming." Gaius said, the stark shadows falling across his face and rendering him in abstract, semi-visible shapes. "Men like me shouldn't have children; there's not enough room in our hearts for that simple kind of love. "

Scylla wanted to roll her eyes at the sentiment: the parent-child bonds of pack animals didn't make sense to her. Over the course of her life she had laid many eggs - such was the nature of fish, who spewed out their offspring in great clutches to live and die of their own accord. How many of them had become viable infants? Of those infants, how many had grown to adulthood? Of that fraction, had any reached Foundation Building and gained great intelligence?

There was a wistful affection to those thoughts. The idea of being outlived and honored by one's own blood was touching in its own way. But mammals who gave birth to a single, large offspring at a time approached it quite differently. From her perspective, it was a maddening sort of love, one which overtook rational senses.

Perhaps it was only natural that a species which reproduced so slowly would feel such attachment to each and every genetic prospect. Fewer chances at success meant each one became a greater priority. Supposedly it became the same with dragons, once they grew mighty enough - Yellow Dragons, Scylla had heard, reproduced so slowly that every egg they laid was protected as if it were the lynchpin of an entire nation.

When Scylla saw how Gaius played with his tiny little daughter, she saw the same fathers she'd seen in all sorts of places. It was refreshingly mundane. "And yet, you have found the room. You are becoming a simple man."

"What actions will I take, if I'm all bound up in those sorts of thoughts?" Asked Gaius, turning once again to look at his daughter. "I can't stray, Scylla."

"What reason could she even give you to stray?" Scylla replied, unimpressed by all this brooding. "This is nothing but baseless paranoia."

"I dunno what the reason would be, and that's the scary part… still, I reckon there's enough room in my heart for all of us." He said after a moment, bursting up to his feet. "Each and every Devil, as a collective; That's a lot easier to hold than one person. Mayhaps I'll drag the nation upward with me."

Scylla couldn't help but guffaw at such a simple solution. "And where will you take it?"

"Out of this desert, though I'd bet it could do that even without my help." Of its own volition, Gaius' finger pointed upward, drifting forward and to the left until it settled in a direction which just felt right. "Out of this dead Sea, out of this decrepit world. Off to someplace more suited for stalwart folks like them."

A star in that direction held their future, he thought. It just seemed to fit.

"You say it so casually."

"I was gonna fight for them anyway. I'll just have to carry them a bit farther than I planned." Gaius said with a shrug. "I can make it a part of my path without much friction, and so I will. All there is to it."

—-

You could tell at a glance that those two were related.

It wasn't anything as simple as just features, though Aletheia had come to look like her father in many ways (not the ears and chin though, Axia's genes held those in a vice grip). It was the way in which they both walked, a deliberate carelessness, a deliberately maintained confidence which became something instinctual. It was in the eyes, a shade of blue just bright enough to not look entirely natural.

It was also in the way those eyes looked at things. When Aletheia looked at something that caught her interest, really looked at it hard, it was as if she were disassembling it. Things, people, it was all the same; the girl meant no offense, but she just couldn't help it.

"I don't understand, Papa." The girl said, turning that same scalpel-eyed look upon her father. "Why do we have to make the offering on top of a mountain?"

"Well, the Imperator lives far away, you see." Gaius replied, bearing perhaps the most gentle smile Amaranth had ever seen on his face. "If we get up as high as possible, it'll be easier for him to see us. Ain't that right, Amaranth?" Gaius called out over his shoulder.

From a distance, far enough that the man wasn't even a dot to Aletheia's eyes, a voice called out. "That's for sure, Gaius!" Peculiarly enough, it almost sounded like the sound ripped itself forwards as he spoke, rapidly increasing from a faint noise to a more audible volume.

An emerald flash soared in from the distance, slowly becoming more distinguishable, until a wildly laughing figure appeared over the surface. With a thump, a single boot touched the ground. Unsteady, the man seems like he's about to topple over, but he brings himself on his feet after a few swaying motions. "Alright, maybe that one was a bit too far." Despite the force of the landing, the ground is completely undisturbed, which seems to make him look a bit proud.

Whatever veneer of unflappability the young girl carried quickly faltered at the sudden shock. She yelped and backed away behind her father, who only chuckled. "You're late, man. I was getting worried." With that, he immediately pulled Amaranth into a tight hug. "How are you, buddy? 's been a while."

Amaranth returned the hug, and started talking. "Oh, you know how it is. A giant toad who you offended a hundred years ago ascends to Core Formation in the middle of an island in the void, and decides to try to poison you in the middle of a fight that it really should've thought it'd have won either way. Fantastic stuff, really!"

Amaranth really did smile when he said that. Something as exciting as that, well. Compared to the last few times he got injured from relatively inglorious bits of bad luck, he'd call that proper good luck. Heck, considering that he managed to get some advancement to make up for all of that in the process, it really was a net positive in the end. "Anyways, I just came back from getting my meridians purged of Water Qi, which honestly took longer than I expected. Man, that mess really takes longer than you'd expect. Has to do with the patina inside of your meridians, I hear? Honestly not sure." Amaranth shook his head a few times. There was still a bit lingering inside of his ears, to be quite honest, but it was marginal compared to how it was before.

Gaius gave Amaranth a baffled three-eyed squint. "I… I know I've asked you this before, but are you one hundred percent sure you didn't desecrate some fu…" He glanced back at Aletheia for a moment. "Flippin' toad god shrine when you were a kid?" Seeing Amaranth roll his eyes at the same line of inquiry he'd been getting for many decades, Gaius sighed and backed off the topic. "Well, whatever. I'm glad to see you're in good health after all that. And you uh…"

His eyes briefly flit to the box on Amaranth's back, before returning to his eyes. "Good, you've got the offering too."

Whirling around and pushing Aletheia out in front of him, Gaius gave off a positively glowing grin of pride. "But first thing's first! Sweetheart, you haven't met this man, but he's met you, when you were a baby. He's a war buddy of mine, and one of my closest friends."

Shaking the apprehension from herself like a dog would shake off water, Aletheia composed herself into a polite bow. "Hello, it's very nice to meet you, mister. My name is Aletheia, of House Quintia."

Amaranth chuckled a bit. "Aw, you don't need to be that polite with me. Man, has it been just eight years? You've grown so big so fast! Guess time really does move faster with age." Amaranth looked a bit wistful, but drew himself back into a semblance of composure in short order. "Anyways, hiya! I'm Amaranth Castellanos, though I'm sure you already knew that from your dad."

"This guy," Gaius began, clapping Amaranth on the shoulder. "Is here to help us with our business today. He's brought the offering to the Imperator, freshly prepared." His face fell for a moment, but he quickly affixed a more pleasant look into himself, one Amaranth could tell wasn't quite as genuine. "In a few months… well, you already know what's happening. It's a dangerous time for everyone, low and high. So we're getting this ceremony out of the way now, even if you're a bit too young for it."

Upon hearing the words 'too young', Aletheia tried her best to pout in a regal manner, however contradictory a notion that was. "Papa, I can do it, you worry too much. I'm nine, not six!"

Gaius snorted at that, giving Amaranth a long-suffering but deeply fond look. "Every day, it's like this."

Amaranth smiled sardonically. "Yeah." He stretched that word out a bit. "Kids be like that. It's been the better part of my third century, but I still remember way back in the day, how much the younger kids cared about tiny differences in their age. Hell, there was a time that I called myself seven years and five months old instead of seven years old, just because I wanted to seem older than the others. Man, that's nostalgic. Guess some things never change, huh?"

"Guess not." Gaius sighed. "But we'd best be off. Sundown's the best time to do the deed, and we're a little behind schedule already."

With that, the three of them began their upward trek. It was agonizingly slow for the two Kings, to move at the pace of a mortal child, but there was something refreshing in it too. Something dangerous. In those few hours, in which ascending a small mountain felt like something momentous, Gaius and Amaranth brushed up against their own humanity - risky behavior for a King.

To keep their minds off such things, as well as the possibility of their impending doom in a few months, they discussed all sorts of frivolities. "That was quite a leap back there." Gaius commented idly. "Most Elders couldn't jump like that, I'd imagine. New trick?"

"Oh, that leap?" Amaranth smirked. "Would you believe me if I said I used only the same amount of force as the last leap you watched me do?

"If I recall correctly, there's a law against that. Says you can't make energy out of nowhere. Are you breaking the law? Are you some kind of outlaw, Amaranth!?" Gaius clutched his chest and swooned theatrically.

Amaranth snickered and slapped Gaius on the back. "Hell yeah I am, but that's not the trick that I used." Amaranth theatrically whispered, as if he were saying some great secret, but not nearly quiet enough if he actually wanted only Gaius to hear. "You know that feeling of rushing wind you get if you move fast enough? Turns out if you just eat a certain little thing that makes you push against that wind in the first place, you take longer for it to slow down. I don't really fully get it myself, but it seems to work well enough." Amaranth wipeed a fake tear from his eye. "Though, you haven't even noticed the best part yet! Do you remember how the ground was fine when I landed?"

"Oh, I just figured you'd been dieting." Gaius chuckled. "Seriously though, that was odd. You didn't move like… like an object? Or…" he cupped his chin, trying to figure out some kind of analogy.

"It was like a soap bubble." Aletheia cut in suddenly. "It moves however it wants, even though it doesn't weigh anything."

Amaranth dramatically points a finger at Aletheia. "Ten points to you! Yeah, that's not a bad comparison at all. All I did was just eat a bit of that thing that pulls things down at certain parts of my fall, so I fell as lightly as, well, a bubble or a feather or something else as light as that. I don't really have the specialization to go any further, though, or to do it for any longer than it takes to cancel out a fall. Still, it's a nifty little thing to have in your back pocket."

"You know, if you told that to Abel - he's this special officer of mine - if you told him that, he'd shiii-" Gaius paused, glancing down at Aletheia. "He'd uh… be very frightened. I don't think you fully understand what you've accomplished."

"Eh, how big of a deal could it be?" Amaranth scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I mean, if I threw a rock at something and it didn't fall, I'd be pretty weirded out, but I'm sure it wouldn't be any worse than that." He nodded decisively. "Hell, you could do the exact same thing with a bit of Wind Qi. Would be cheaper too!"

Gaius seemed like he wanted to press the issue for a moment, but then shrugged his shoulders and relented. "Well, either way, it's strong; strong in a way that's not too common either. Lotta the time, it's the esoteric skills that save you when it's down to the wire. The ones they wouldn't expect."

As Gaius spoke, his gaze flashed over to the box for a split-second, then drifted down to the back of his daughter's head. The daughter in question didn't notice, too busy climbing a steeper incline on purpose. "You're gonna regret tiring yourself out now when we're on the way home, girl!" He called out.

"I'm not tired, this is easy!" Aletheia called back.

"Where does that kid energy go?" Gaius asked Amaranth. "I mean… I know I literally have more energy in my body than I used to, but that secret sauce that never seemed to run out in my youth, I hardly ever feel that these days, you know?"

"My personal opinion? Enthusiasm. Variety is the spice of life, after all, and when you're just starting out, everything seems new and fresh, so you throw yourself at it at full force." Amaranth tilted his head, contemplating the concept; thus far in his life he'd proven fairly resistant to the ennui that frequently gripped Cultivators in their third century and beyond.

Even so, he couldn't deny that he didn't spring out of bed with the same electric enthusiasm that he used to. "You know, there's a limit to how many times you can surprise yourself, and if you don't try to push against it, you're going to run into it soon and feel bored for the rest of your life. Just a thought, anyway. I mean, I make no claims to enlightenment. I'm honestly in that exact same position too, but I'm certain that's just because I haven't gone far enough yet."

"Maybe… maybe I ought to take a vacation after this big rumble." Gaius mused, seeing the mountaintop come into view. "A real vacation, I mean. Not a tournament, or a solo monster hunt, or a deathmatch against a super speed science geek with a face full of holes…" after that last one, Gaius trailed off into annoyed muttering for a moment. "There's more than one way to make progress as a person. A bit of softness… it ain't so bad, is it?"

Amaranth nodded sagely at the comment. "Killing and cultivating is fun and good and all, and I wouldn't give it up for the world, but that all being said, if I had to live life with only that, I'd go insane. You got to fill it up with spice, you get me? What's the point of fancy-ass abilities if you can't show them off and make people go 'ooh, that's neat?' What's the point of an eternal life if everything day in and day out is just the same?" Amaranth gestured broadly, towards the sky. "Life is constant, exquisite change and transformation, something that makes you glad that you're still here even as it makes you curse it at the same time.

What's the point of extending that life forever if you don't use it to enjoy this world in its entirety, even if you break it to pieces in the process?" Amaranth paused for a moment, blinking hard as if being awoken from a dream. "Ah, I said something odd there. Let's just ignore that."

Gaius also blinked - once, twice, three times(or was it 4.5? Was a three-eyed blink equal to 1.5 regular blinks?). Then turned back to Amaranth. "Uhh, right, makes sense."

He sighed, seeing that they were finally cresting the top of this small, nameless mountain. Aletheia immediately sat down, wiping the sweat from her brow and beaming at the sight of so much land stretching out before her. "That's amazing! I can't believe I can see so far!" She exclaimed, gazing out upon the landscape as if she were mentally devouring it all.

Gaius looked around for a moment, before zeroing in on a flat patch of ground. "Sure is, kid. But compared to a really tall mountain, this is nothing. Scylla will fly you up one, when you're older." As he spoke, he motioned to Amaranth to bring the box forward.

Amaranth plopped the unusually tall rectangular box onto a smooth patch of ground, with a much louder thud than its size implied. Amaranth slaps the side. "I've got the pumpernickel, Gaius, packaged just like how you ordered."

Gaius strolled over to the box and knelt down, placing his hand on it. "Amaranth, I really must apologize. I won't touch my head to the ground, but maybe I should. This is probably the third most troublesome thing I've ever dragged you into… maybe fourth."

Breathing smoothly and slowly, Gaius pushed his Will into the box, which began to emit a soft yellow light. "Stars of Gold." He commanded. In a bright flash, the box vanished entirely, becoming notes of golden light which then dispersed out into the air, leaving only its contents.

All was quiet for a moment, and then another moment. Finally, the little girl spoke up. "P-papa? That's… that's a…"

"It's a person, yes." Gaius replied, his gaze all at once becoming something not quite human.

Hands and feet bound by spirit-steel manacles, a ragged looking Golden Devil in the dirty, simple clothes of a prisoner writhed on the ground, eyes burning from the sudden switch from total darkness to evening light. He mumbled on and on into a cloth gag, though it was unclear if his speech would be any more intelligible without it. The look in his eyes was already that of a broken man.

Aletheia stumbled backward in a stupor of disbelief and terror, but Gaius pulled her back in with telekinesis and placed his hands upon the girl's shoulders. "I know you're scared, sweetie. I know you are, but please let us explain."

Amaranth's face, in contrast, didn't lose a bit of its cheer. "Well, I think it's simple enough, Aletheia. That man right there is a traitor to the Clan. Your job is to kill him."

"That's the important part, dear." Gaius continued, nodding solemnly. "Your father is a cautious man, even if he doesn't look that way. I can't go to the Trial unless I know you're ready to carry on without me."

"You said you would definitely live!" Aletheia yelled, still trembling but no longer trying to get away. The analytical, almost clinical look she often fell into was gone entirely now, making her better resemble an actual age. "Why do I have to…" she couldn't even say it, and in that critical moment, the young girl made the mistake of meeting the prisoner's eyes.

It was only for an instant, but Aletheia turned away immediately as if she had been struck. "I don't understand…"

"You must." Gaius said in a steely tone, or at least a semblance of one. His resolve faltered for a moment, and he fixed his daughter with a deeply sad smile. "There's no time. Oh child, if you'd only been born five years earlier this would be so much easier…"

Amaranth spoke then, though he had been watching carefully earlier. "These Trials are a cruel thing. Even though I've survived through them twice now myself, I can't really say that I'd come out unscathed with no doubts, even assuming that I hid instead of going into the densest parts, as is my nature, and as is your father's nature. And that's for when things are—" Amaranth caught himself and stopped.

An array of emotions were clearly visible in his eyes, as he seemed to not know what to say next. Then, he shook himself, and it seemed like that mist had cleared.

"Well, anyways, it's not like it's that big of a deal." Amaranth nodded sharply, took a deep breath, puffed himself like a bird showing off its plumage, and put on the best patriotic voice he could manage. "This man, right here, aided a defector to the Blood Path. Our Clan, our glorious Clan, does not ask for much among those who serve under the Bronze Aegis."

"No, not much at all. There's room for all sorts here." Said Gaius, smoothly continuing where Amaranth had left off. That moment of distraction had given him the chance to regain his composure, and now he was back on the script they had planned.

Well, perhaps 'script' was too specific. It was more like stage directions, in a play where the actors were given permission to improvise. There was a general idea of how this would go, but no way to truly be fully prepared.

"But what we do ask is loyalty. We're soldiers, girl. A besieged army." Gaius reached to his hip and unsheathed a sword - not his Dream Sword, a weapon that by now had become rather famous in its own right. No, it was a simple Gravebronze weapon, forged from the bones of some poor Foundation expert who died a hundred generations ago, only to have his tomb looted and his bones melted down to meet the endless demands of the Clan's industry. "They have taken so much from us. So much."

Aletheia swallowed with so much force, it's as if she were choking down gravel. The girl peered up to meet Gaius' eyes, which from Amaranth's position were now blocked by the brim of his hat. Whatever silent exchange happened in that moment, it was in a language only the two of them understood. "A-and… he's a traitor, you said?"

"Yeah, he is." Gaius replied, seizing his daughter's hand by the wrist and placing the sword into her palm. Aletheia's fingers twitched; wanting to hold the sword, but not yet finding the will. Her father closed those fingers with his own hand as he continued to speak. "People died because of what he did. The Golden Devil Clan gave this man everything he ever had, and asked only for loyalty and duty in return, but that wasn't enough for him. He wanted more, and he left us; throughout the ages, under the reign of every Archegetes in recorded history, the punishment for treason has remained the same."

Aletheia's lips made the motions of speech, though she could not find it in her to speak above the barest whisper.

"Death."

Gaius released Aletheia and slowly stood back to his full height. His daughter did not drop the sword, nor did she collapse, but she did not move either, caught between moments like a rabbit in a snare. "By the cross. By beasts. By beheading or hanging or burning." Gaius trailed off, stalling for perhaps just a few more seconds of time. For what reason, it was hard to tell. A few more seconds of innocence, maybe. "The form changes with the times; the cross is back in style these days, after being unfashionable for a while."

Almost conversationally, Amaranth leaned in closely and said, "At one point Pleuron had their own way of doing things: by tree. And no, not hanging, or stretching, or anything like that. Back when Muyi— he was before your time, but when he wasn't really mentally here yet, around a hundred eighty years ago or so, it was pretty popular to toss traitors right at those parasite vines near to Pleuron." The jocular tone faded from Amaranth's voice and he went silent for a moment.. "…man, I miss that guy. Anyway,, those deaths were some of the most intense ones. You'd think that with all of the bodies rotting around in that mess, that it'd finish off its earlier meals, but I guess that wasn't really what it was after. Now, once he was awake again, you couldn't say he wasted any tiny scrap, but back then, well. It was something."

Amaranth wasn't sure where he was going with this, exactly, and that was fine. As long as he kept talking, he was still hanging out with his old friend, not doing… whatever this was supposed to be. "And once he was awake again, you'd better bet he was mad. This might sound surprising, since he was a tree monster and all, but he was one hell of a neat freak back when he was a human, and that carried over as much as it reasonably could. I heard he was still finding bones on him decades after the fact."

"He was my Centurion for a while, did I ever tell you that?" Gaius unexpectedly cut in, turning to fix Amaranth with a bittersweet look and joint him on this digression back in time.

"In the Seventh Cannibal War, right?" Amaranth replied. "Yeah, he sent you on that rescue mission where you found that volcano spirit."

"Wasn't much of a rescue mission. Half of captives didn't make it out."

"And the other half wouldn't have made it without you. Do you still feel bad about that?"

"I dunno, it was my first war mission, ya know? Could have…" Gaius stopped speaking suddenly, looking Amaranth in the eye and holding that look until both men wearily accepted that they couldn't procrastinate any longer.

The whole time, Aletheia didn't respond to them, though now she was moving, at least. One step, then another, she advanced on the restrained prisoner. He squirmed, but no doubt the man had failed time and again to break his bonds, and so his attempts to break free were half-hearted at best. Aletheia held the sword up to her face, adjusting her grip, tilting it this way and that, testing the balance. She was stalling too.

"Your first century of life will be more violent than mine." Gaius said, voice starting to quaver again. "You were born into a Great Era. Fortune rains down on the world, and men take their true shape. We are beings of will; all of this meat? That's just how we move around and keep it in one place."

All of a sudden, Aletheia's own voice returned, and she peered at her father with that analytical look she'd had before, as if all of this weren't happening. "What happened, papa? Why are you scared of the Trial now, when you weren't before?"

"Everything gets more dangerous in times like these. The Year of Sorrows ain't any different." Gaius replied, crossing his arms. "I don't intend to leave this world, but if I'm forced to, I won't go without knowing you'll be alright."

"How!? How does… how does killing someone make me alright!?" Aletheia shot back, voice growing shrill and distressed. It set in, in that moment, how large the standard Legionnaire's sword looked in her hand.

"There's not enough love to go 'round, not enough justice. You'll never prosper if you don't grab ahold of every last scrap you can get and never let go!" Gaius shouted, pointing down at the prisoner. "Some say the weak don't deserve to live. I call those people evil. But in the hardest times, the weak can't live, and we're entering some very hard times, girl. Kill the bastard!"

Eyes wide, the little girl shook like a reed in a storm, as if her father's voice had conjured a gale. She raised the sword above her head, but seemed about as likely to topple over as she was to bring it down.

Amaranth's voice took on a strange fervor. "Let me tell you something, Aletheia. Even if your father doesn't die, in order to succeed in this world, you must have the resolve to live. And if you are to have the resolve to live, you must have the resolve to destroy, no matter what path you walk." He stretched out his hands as if to encompass everything. The air shimmered, warped reflections flashing across the translucent surface if one was to look in the corners of their sight. "Do it."

"Remember what I taught you; a soldier's duty is to kill for someone else's ideals. You're a soldier of the Golden Devil Clan." The Empty King's eyes gleamed with a mystical, alluring intensity as he issued his command. "Do your duty."

Aletheia's second hand found the sword's hilt, and though this model had not been made for two-handing, her hands were small enough to both fit, with the exception of one pinkie. It was a rookie mistake to stick out that particular finger; when it comes to gripping a sword, the pinkie is the most crucial finger of all. This would serve to only make the deed take longer, but neither of the two men dared interrupt this private moment of rebirth.

Gaius Antonius made himself watch as his daughter brought down the sword he had given her over and over into the neck of their prisoner. Being a fairly seasoned Cultivator, said prisoner did not die easily. The first few impacts cut shallowly and only made him redouble his efforts to escape.

Soon, the strokes became more sure, and the cuts deeper. Having already begun the process of ending a man's life, the desire to finish the grisly business as fast as possible motivated her to kill him properly. The young girl adjusted her grip and drove the edge of the blade into bronze flesh with fewer wasted motions, following the direction of the edge more closely.

She hacked deeper into the prisoner's neck, again and again. Until he stopped moving. Until he stopped breathing. Aletheia couldn't have known exactly at which point the man died, and didn't seem to be in a state to judge such things anyway. She brought the blade down again and again, flecks of blood splattering all over her hands and face and chest and knees, until she stopped hitting a man at all, and was only hammering away at the stone where his neck had once been.

After her blade rebounded off the stone several times, the vibrations grew too painful for Aletheia to hold on, and the sword fell from her grasp. She stood in place, looking down at what she had done, not seeming to fully comprehend it.

Looking at the result, Amaranth simply smiled. It was a small smile, tinged with tiredness and relief all at once, less vibrant but no less true than the one he wore at the start of the day. "Good."

Gaius spoke again, after an unclear amount of time had passed - no one there was quite sure how long. "That's what soldiers do, Aletheia. That's what the Great Era means."

He put a hand on his daughter's shoulder. The girl flinched for just a moment, before leaning into his grasp, shivering and weeping. Turning back to the mangled remains of what had been their cargo, Gaius enveloped it in a shroud of his own will, thick enough it almost seemed like it could be touched, and the prisoner too dissolved into innumerable scattered motes of light.

"Now, I know you will be ready."

Amaranth's gaze grew hazy, staring off into something in the distance. "She sure will, Gaius. She sure will.". He looked back to his friend, and felt something that he didn't know how to categorize. Pride, maybe? It was something close enough. "I'm not sure if I've said this to you before, but you've raised a good kid."

The climb back down the mountain was quiet and solemn. No one said any of the things they might have otherwise wished to, and all three resolved to not speak of this moment again.

——

no.: And that's that. I was workshopping this whole entry for quite a while, because I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to introduce Aletheia as a character. I needed to get it just right.

Gaius is not a good father - a man like him never really could be - but he does want the best for his daughter. The problem is that he's crazy, and also a product of a culture which valorizes a glorious death and service to the nation through labor and violence. The two things don't mix well, and the anxiety that he might be about to die is only making it worse.

I also wanted to check back up on his friendship with Amaranth - the two have hung out plenty offscreen, but it was nice to have them interacting in an actual story again.

 

[ReaderOfFate]

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

Damn, that was fun, no. Real good stuff.

To the reader: These Trials really leave one hell of an impression on the people of the Clan, don't you think? It's easy to forget at times, but a third of the Clan dies every time on average, so there's some genuine terror here, embedded into the cultural consciousness. It's really quite interesting to imagine how that'd make them behave.

As for Aletheia, well. This is just the start of her particular story, to say the least.

Joint wordcount: 8317 words.

 

[Quest]

[Origami]

Fun little interaction between Abel and Xiao Yingzi. She got to show off a little in the beginning, but having Abel still reject her patronage even after that was pretty funny. It feels nice to post something after a while.

 

[adamashield]

but having Abel still reject her patronage even after that was pretty funny. It feels nice to post something after a while.

Click to shrink...

yeah, the answer for patronage is aways YES^^. Unless the first patron is Old Gold, then ask him for permission first

But seriously (to me) supply and demand + wide portfolio/business > 'brand loyalty' unless said brand give some serious shit back. Like (really) bullshit favoritism.

 

[Nordlending]

Demetrius Ceres and his unreasonable boss

 

[Taut_Templar]

Constantine Nikeodemos 4 - The Struggle

Constantine, when he had first stepped down the path of a full-time cultivator for the Clan, had privately vowed to himself that one day he'd find some calm and quiet little niche for himself. Like becoming an array builder or something like that, a necessary job that'd see him be considered important enough to be kept alive but not so much as to attract undue attention.

Thus far, it hadn't been going very well.

The Nikeodemos scion gave a slight grimace as the sealed tomb gave no reaction to his signal. It'd been happening more and more often lately, as the easy picks had all been snatched up in the past years. It was only a matter of time before his use in trying to open them was judged exhausted and he had to find some other task to handle, something Constantine regarded with dread.

Constantine had entered his career under the impression that it was a dangerous and nerve-wracking exercise for the terminally foolish, and two secret realms, one Poison Crushing Siege, and more harrowing encounters than he could count, the man's opinion hadn't changed in the slightest. Yet escape seemed no more tangible than it was all those years ago at the beginning - indeed, in many ways the prospect was even more distant, for now Constantine was wrapped within the fetters of reputation and expectation. The only thing that climbed higher than his cultivation were the expectations of his family, and despite his quiet fervent denials, somehow people kept getting it into their heads that he was shooting for the Thirteenth to join the Single Pillar Kings.

Well, that wasn't totally true, was it? Constantine knew well why folks might draw that conclusion: what else could the "Mighty Scion of House Nikeodemos" be putting off his tribulation for?

As he marched out of the cave, ignoring the swirling mortals who'd excavated the entrance, Constantine scowled at the thought of the 'T-word.' He'd been putting in a great amount of effort into deliberately avoiding considering the looming obstacle that imposed so strongly upon his future. But there questions kept coming and his excuses were running dry; how much longer could he keep fooling folks?

How much longer could he convince folks he wasn't scared?

His Grandfather, that persnickety old bastard, had seemed to pick up on his descendant's difficulties, and offered some choice advice. Most people would probably give an arm and a leg for coaching from a Core Elder on how to overcome their tribulation, but to Constantine it was just more white noise. Even Grandpa just didn't get it.

Nothing - absolutely nothing! - about his present situation was something he had wanted or achieved. What was he supposed to base his pillars off of, the unwanted happenstance of having power thrust upon you? Keeping a brave face while pissing your wants and not correcting people about it afterwards? Even his Blood, Constantine's own flesh and bone, didn't feel like something of his, merely another undesired inheritance from his family. If only he had just refused to take that accursed concoction, or if he'd left the complex a month earlier! Then Constantine could've been sitting pretty as the administrator of some same fortress city, living the luxurious life of idle aristocracy. Instead, he was sweating over the Trials like every other uppity Qi-Condenser, trying to figure out how he could possibly justify running and hiding instead of dying against hopeless odds like every other brave Nikeodemos would be doing.

What a mess, Constantine groused as he marched away from the camp. There was no lucking your way through a tribulation! You either had the Will or the Artifacts to survive, and right now he didn't have either. How were you supposed to find ... purpose? Determination? Did you stumble across them in the desert, were they given to you as prizes for earning enough gold stars?

Like every other time Constantine had thought about it, answers would prove unforthcoming.

*****

Word Count: 673

 

[no.]

Gaius Antonius 86 - Motivation​

Gaius took a long drag of his pipe as her stared down the elderly woman across the table from him. She was dressed in fine, practical robes and had her white hair pinned up in a tight bun. She fidgeted slightly under the Empty King's gaze, waiting for him to finally speak.

"So, how's everything been, Nanny Wu?" Gaius drawled. "Has Aletheia been good? She doin' well at her studies?"

"Most certainly, my lord!" Wu said a little too quickly, glad that the silence had broken. "She takes to the subjects well, studies hard, and learns from her mistakes. The Young Lady maintains good manners and etiquette, and is especially skilled at arithmetic."

The crone beamed with pride as she spoke; it was rather heartwarming, all things considered. Children ought to be minded by people who truly love them, not people doing it out of duty. When her parents couldn't be around, his daughter ought to still have that emotional anchor.

"That's nice, good to hear it." Gaius replied with a nod. "But what about training, is Aletheia slacking off when I can't check in on her?"

Nanny Wu's face grew a bit paler at that, and she fussed with her sleeves as she began to speak. "My lord, the training… the Young Lady continues to train, yes. Most intensely, indeed."

"And why are you saying it like that?" Gaius said insistently, leaning forward and causing the old chair beneath him to creak. A stray lock of hair swung down in front of his face, and he slowly tucked it away without breaking eye contact. "Is there anything wrong?"

Nanny Wu's lip trembled as she considered her words carefully. When her voice did come out, it was creakier and less friendly than before; more carefully guarded. "The Young Lady performs the training regimen set out for her most dutifully, My Lord. I only wonder…" She paused and swallowed, seeming to shrink inward. "I only wonder if it is appropriate for a girl less than ten. Ever since she returned with you from that trip to the mountains, she has been requesting ever more rigorous training."

"Yeah, sure, that's all great." The King drawled, rolling his wrist in a circular motion to not-so-subtly communicate his desire that the nanny get in with it. "But is she actually doing the training? What about the punches? Is she doing her two thousand punches every day?"

The nanny chewed the inside of her lip nervously. "My lord… I really have been meaning to speak with you about that routine."

"So she hasn't been doing them?" Gaius' eyes narrowed slightly and the little old woman seemed to shrink even further in fear.

"No, no, she has done them, I've made sure of it!" Nanny Wu hastily cried out from between chattering teeth. "It's just… that level of body conditioning isn't healthy for such a young child. Are you sure you don't want to consider a more restrained regimen, my lord?" The way in which she raised her shoulders and lowered her head made her look very much like a snail retreating into its shell, which Gaius found quietly amusing.

"Healthy? It's not about healthy." Gaius replied. His hand shot up, the motion eerie not in its speed but its smoothness, its lack of hesitation. He cradled the nanny's face in his palm from underneath, long fingers brushing up against the old woman's cheekbones. They came to rest just below the deep crow's feet which looked almost like old wounds when one squinted.

Nanny Wu was trembling now, but Gaius continued nonetheless, his tone taking on a sleepy, drifting quality. "The greatest people ain't healthy, not in the sort of way children raised in a textbook way grow up to be healthy. It's about dedication, about teaching her the right way to live and die: like a hero."

But for all her timidity in the face of power, the nanny nonetheless had the pride of one nearing the end of her days, and so she spoke truthfully to the King. "S-s-so doing two thousand punches a day as a nine year old girl gives her heroic qualities, my lord? Her hands, they'll be gnarled things; good for pugilism, but without the delicacy to write her name."

Curiously, the Empty King looked deep into Nanny Wu's grey eyes, and found himself a little bit impressed by the her conviction. Conviction, convincing, coincidence. Conviction, -viction, victim, victory. Conviction, convent, convalesce, content, consent, contract, contact.

"My lord? My lord?" Nanny Wu called out to the unresponsive Gaius, who did not heed her words. "Are you having an episode? Do you need me to get anyone?"

"Contact…" Gaius whispered, fingertips gently caressed the nanny's cheek. "Contact. Eye contact is burning, eye consciousness is burning. Burning with what? Burning with desire. Burning with the fire of affliction…" He soon trailed off, not fully cognizant of his own words, and let his hand fall.

He realized in that moment that his grip had been growing steadily tighter. How strange. He didn't want to kill old Wu, did he? He was grateful for all the crone had done.

Gaius blinked three times, re-centering himself before he spoke again. "My hands turned out fine. I abused them just as much when I was a boy. I can write." He waggled his calloused fingers dextrously as a demonstration before turning away.

"I know how you feel, my lord." Nanny Wu rasped, her voice thick with emotion. There was no hostility or resentment, despite the way Gaius had just treated her. "You carry yourself the same way I've seen many old friends carry themselves in recent years. The same way, I suspect, I will soon."

Gaius said nothing, facing away but not leaving. He picked up his pipe and took another long drag, then overturned it to empty the spent ashes into a tray.

"You carry yourself in the manner of a dying man, My Lord. You wish to set everything just right before you go." The nanny continued, some of the formality leaving her voice. "I cannot claim to know what is going on, but I can see that much. A person who will not see the future for themself wishes to align the pieces in such a way that they can imagine it vividly. It is a comfort we all seek in the end, when it comes with warning."

——

Being a gatekeeper is, generally, one of the easiest jobs one can have. So easy in fact, that gatekeeping duty is usually rotated by groups of soldiers so that no one goes soft by being a permanent gatekeeper; after all, a guard that's gone soft can't guard anything.

Today, it was Maria's job to be the gatekeeper, standing watch over the one entrance to the Quintia Manor. In times of political tension or military conflict, a whole squad might be assigned to such a position, but for the time being it was just a formality, something for a fairly strong Legionnaire to do when they weren't in the mood for a more intense, high-paying mission.

The only problem about this job was the boredom, which meant Maria was actually rather happy to see someone approaching along the brick pathway to the manor. A tall, broad-shouldered person silhouetted from behind by the glare of the sun made their way to the gate, moving with the sort of brisk walk someone uses when they're very determined to be at their destination, but doesn't want to look unprofessional. When this visitor arrived, they came to sudden, jerky stop less than ten feet from the gate, as if the idea there was a barrier in their way hadn't occurred to them until just now.

"Um… I didn't know there was gonna be a big gate…" the figure muttered, and Maria was taken aback by the tone and pitch of the voice that emerged. This wasn't an adult, it was a teenage boy. A teenage boy already taller than most adult men; had he started cultivating already?

Not that it mattered. The Legionnaire cleared her throat, prompting the boy to jump in place and whirl around to look at her. "You can't just walk into a great house's manor, kid. What's your business?"

Collecting himself quickly, the visitor pressed his fist into his hand and bowed sharply to Maria before speaking. "My name is Apollo. Don't have a last name; that's kinda why I'm here actually." The boy chuckled nervously before continuing. "I… I'm here to speak with my father."

Apollo wore a sturdy, rough-spun traveling cloak over the unremarkable pants and tunic of a commoner as he reached up to pull back his hood, Maria spied large hands, thick wrists and rough-skinned fingers and palms, all signs that the boy's short lifetime had been one of difficult labor thus far. However, it was what she saw when the hood was gone that left more of an impression.

There was a powerful sense of brashness to the way this teenager moved, all coiled power with hardly any grace reigning it in. He was big, too, which only added more physicality to every motion. A short mop of golden curls fell messily all over the place, and every now and then he had to brush a few over his ear to clear his vision.

Those bright blue eyes stood out the most, though - big, expressive and sitting on either side of a perfectly straight nose which jutted out of his face like the point of a dagger. Though still hidden by the last few bits of baby fat on his face, a chiseled chin and jaw could be made out as well.

Frankly, the boy looked kind of like if Gaius Antonius had been inflated slightly. Made more solid and broad than the scarecrow of lean muscle that the Empty King was. Did that mean…

"Please." Apollo said gently, looking the gatekeeper in the eye in vulnerable fashion that made her wholly uncomfortable.

What was Maria meant to do here? She'd been given no instruction about how to handle such things, and either letting this visitor through or turning him away seemed equally likely to get her scolded. How could she best avoid the ire of the man betrothed to the Quintia heir(and this one of the most important members of the family she was currently working for)?

After another moment of silent contemplation, Maria fished a carved array-slip out of her pocket and pressed it to the wall beside the gate. I'm response, it opened almost too smoothly. The relative lack of noise made the structure feel a bit uncanny, and served as a subtle reminder of the wealth that lay within.

"This seems prudent, so go ahead. Don't cause any trouble." The gatekeeper quietly commanded Apollo, her voice shot through the uncertainty as she stood aside. The visitor gave her a short nod in thanks, and then his attention shifted right away to the manor, fully fixated on his goal. She'd seen the Empty King coming and going in the past, and that looked familiar indeed.

——

Apollo, or Apollo Nolastname, or Apollo Nothing, or Apollo The Unwanted, depending on how rude one wanted to be, sighed with relief. He'd known the Quintia family was right, but he figured the guards would be in front of the house itself, not before he even got there. He breathed deeply and steadily, trying to steady his pounding heart as he grew closer and closer to that towering estate. The time right after the Trial would be too chaotic to get ahold of this man, what with all of his responsibilities. No, his only chance was now, in the calm before the storm.

And so, a commoner without much to call his own stood before the Quintia Manor. A groundskeeper eyed him warily, seemed to consider saying something, then turned and walked away. Apollo studied the door intensely. Obviously he wasn't meant to just open it and walk in - it might be locked anyway. Perhaps it would be best to simply knock, but how loud was he to knock? Too softly, and no one would notice; too loudly, and it would be rude.

How did bigwigs act when they visited one another? Apollo wouldn't know the first thing about that, not being a bigwig himself. It wouldn't be appropriate for him to act that way anyhow. How was a commoner who wasn't a servant meant to enter the manor of a great house? He supposed that wasn't something that ever happened without special invitation, and he didn't have that.

Before Apollo could get any more lost in thought, he was interrupted by the very reason he had come. A tall man in a dark green cloak with a wide-brimmed hat rounded the corner and turned to see the visitor. As the man approached, the boy told himself not to panic - he already had some rough plans as to what to say, and now was the time to put those plans into action.

The figure stopped a few feet from Apollo, who saw his three eyes and concluded for sure that this was definitely Gaius Antonius. "Now ain't that strange, that a visitor arrives just as I decide to go out for a walk." Gaius mused with a smirk. "You're not stalking me, are ya boy?"

"N-no, no, not at all!" Apollo replied, holding his hands above his shoulders and shaking his head. "Well, uh, I did come here to see you, but not because I'm stalking you!"

Gaius said nothing, simply crossing his arms and raising one eyebrow. Wow, they really did look alike!

Apollo would like to believe that he was not babbling, but simply recalibrating his own mouth. "I wasn't sure how I'd get to see you, I kind of came here hoping for the best, and then you were right out here. I… I'm sorry, this is sounding creepy, but it's not creepy! I just-"

"That's enough, I get it!" Gaius cut in, raising his voice over Apollo's and clapping him on the shoulder. "So you came here to see me. Here I am. What comes next… what's your name?"

"Apollo, sir." The boy answered, frozen stiff as a board at the King's touch.

"Don't 'sir' me, you don't work for me." Gaius chided him playfully, pulling away and looking the boy up and down. "Why do you want me here?"

"Because there was something I suspected." Apollo began, forcing the words out before Gaius got fed up with him and left. "Something I was ninety percent sure of, but needed to see you in person to confirm. Can we please talk for a while? Not long, just half an hour, maybe one hour?"

The Seeker sighed and shook his head, pacing back and forth as he spoke. "Listen boy, you've got gumption, but if I entertained every request every person had for me, I'd have none left to do the things that matter. You're asking for an hour of my time when you ain't even awakened your own qi. Check this out."

In his right hand, golden light gathered up. In fact, Apollo could swear their surroundings grew darker for a moment, though perhaps that was his own focus on what Gaius was doing. From that light emerged a solid piece of dark metal. It was a blocky thing, little more than a handle connected to a rectangular contraption which stuck out perpendicularly from said handle. There was a lever on one hand and a hole on the other, and for the life of him, the boy had no clue what he was looking at.

"This," said Gaius, twirling the little doodad he had conjured up. "Is something I got from a subordinate of mine. Perhaps you've heard of Abel Angelus?" He paused for a moment, only to see Apollo's blank face and snort. "Ah well, I suppose that's only fair; Abel's shy, he don't like to hog the spotlight. The point is, that man's got one hell of a brain. I should know, I dove in there and pulled this out when I was helping him train."

With that said, Gaius pointed the contraption at Apollo, whose instincts lit up with danger for reasons he didn't understand. The hole on the front of that device had a spiral pattern, the boy realized. It felt as if those spirals carved into the metal were a vortex trying to suck him in.

"W-what's it do?" Apollo nervously asked. He wouldn't, couldn't back down in front of this man, not if he wanted to confront who he was and where he came from.

"This." Gaius replied, followed by a loud, sharp bang that reminded Apollo of a small firework being set off. The whizzing that passed a foot from his head was, however, not something he had any reference for, save perhaps the time he stood on the edge of a ravine and nearly fell in. His stomach twisted up in exactly the same way, becoming aware of the the threat only when it had already passed.

"Amazing stuff, right!?" Gaius laughed, pointing that awful little weapon to the sky and letting out several more bangs. "This thing doesn't use any qi at all, if you can believe it; just regular blasting powder and a whole bunch of complicated mechanical parts. It's called a pistol."

The Seeker let that 'pistol' fall from his hand, at which point it released a bright flash and dissolved into golden motes which scattered to the wind like fireflies. "It doesn't use qi, but mortals can't even see the little bolts it shoots. Hell, almost nobody in Qi Condensation can either. I use it to fuck around with my Centurions and train their reflexes."

A man who could think up a mundane weapon that Qi Condensation soldiers couldn't follow? We're those the kinds of freaks Gaius Antonius had on his payroll? The man was infamously eccentric, and known for attracting other eccentrics, but now the distance between Apollo and Gaius seemed to get wider by the second.

Apollo realized after a moment that he was probably supposed to be saying something right now, and fumbled for some words to throw out there. "And, uh, is the pistol a wise metaphor or a proverb, or-"

"Apollo." Gaius said quietly, causing further words to die in the boy's throat. "If you can't even catch that bullet, can't even see that bullet, why am I talking to you? You don't work at the Manor, you're not one of my men, I don't think I've ever met you before." There was something mad in those eyes. Like curiosity, but more intense, intense enough that it needed a new word. "You've got five minutes. What is this really about?"

Shit, were they really going to hash this out right here, outside? Not in some sitting room or an office or some other place where business is done?

"Well, you see…"

He was supposed to just tell Gaius now? Without any real prelude? What was his original plan again? Had there even been one.

"I thought it should be brought to your attention that…"

Fuck, why wouldn't the words come out? Apollo spoke his mind how he liked; told it like it was, always. That was his policy, and it made him as many enemies as it did friends. So why was he struggling so much to say the truth now of all times? Now, when it was the most important thing he had ever said?

"You know… don't you think we look very similar?" Apollo managed after an interminable length of time. There was no sound, save for a very light wind that made Gaius' cloak and hair flutter a bit.

"…I suppose we do." Gaius said with a shrug. "Why's that matter?"

"Like… really similar? Too much to be a coincidence?" Apollo relied insistently, raising his eyebrows.

Gaius' gaze grew harder, more guarded. "If it's not a coincidence, then what is it?"

Apollo's breathing quickened under that sword-like look, but the pressure served to draw out more of his courage, and he pressed harder. "You… you know, mom talks about you a lot. She's always been sure it was you, because you rented her out for two weeks. That whole time, she was with you and no one else. And with the way I look, well…"

The King sighed and slumped forward, eyes briefly hidden beneath the brim of his hat. "When I'm not on vacation or a mission, I cultivate for eighteen hours a day. I sleep for one. That leaves me with four hours to train and one to do everything else." When Gaius raised his head once more, only dismissive pride swelled on his face. "One hour. How much of that hour am I supposed to spend letting a mortal ramble at me like this?"

Apollo's fist clenched, frustration he hadn't known he was feeling surging within him. "You really have nothing to say to me? Nothing at all, not even 'I don't care, go away'?"

"And why would I have something to say, kid?" The Seeker replied, his haughty look fading to a disinterested one. "Is there a reason I should hold any opinion about you whatsoever?"

Apollo 's fists clenched harder until it felt like he was about to break all the bones in his own hands. His heart raced. Gaius knew. He was a smart man, mom had said, so he had to have put it together. He was playing ignorant, because he thought Apollo wasn't even worth rejecting.

As this epiphany sunk in, the boy realized that he couldn't remember the last time anyone had made him this mad. Even two years ago, when an older boy with merchant parents had saved up enough allowance to buy Apollo's mother for a night and mock him about it the next day, it hadn't hurt quite this much. Shattering that smug bastard's face had been enough to quell his fury then, but he didn't think a dozen punches would settle this at all.

If he'd been rebuffed before he could get close, not even allowed to speak with the King due to the difference in standing, that would be one thing. If he'd been rejected entirely, told to never show his face to The Quintia family again so as not to shame them, it would be another. But this willful ignorance, as if Apollo's own birth was nothing but a speck of dust to be brushed away, was impossible to accept. "We're family. I'm your family…"

Gaius tilted his head, running the numbers on some evaluation Apollo couldn't hope to understand. Whatever conclusion he reached, it did not change his demeanor. "Of course you're my family; all people with the Bronze are."

A newborn, simmering grudge burrowed into the young Devil's body and sank to the pit of his stomach like a stone. "A prostitute named Rhea. Works in Emporikipolis. Tall, with a round face. Green eyes, bushy eyebrows, a mole on the back of her neck. Does any of that ring a bell?"

A nostalgic look flashed in Gaius' eyes for a moment before fading, leaving it hard to tell if it had really been there. "Listen, Apollo, I'm a busy man." He sighed, though it seemed from his tone like he was holding back more.. "If you have something to say, just say it already."

Two eyes met three, all five glinting with equal intensity. "I'm your son."

There was no sound for a few moments. Now forced to confront the information he had been so unsubtly dodging, Gaius' posture shifted, growing straighter, his body language more restrained and businesslike. "And do you have any proof of that?"

Apollo didn't bother to hide his anger anymore, openly glaring at this man who could turn him to dust. "Look at me, asshole! We look the same! I've got the same rare eyes, your eyes!"

Gaius' face grew meaner and more aggressive in turn, though he didn't stoop to such an openly hateful expression. "Lots of people look like lots of other people. Unless you've got something more substantial than that, I can't take those sorts of allegations seriously."

Apollo wasn't sure when exactly he got within two feet of Gaius, but here he was, all of a sudden, shaking with anger. His father really wasn't that large, he noted; the hat and the cloak added a lot of volume, but the King himself had to be well under two hundred pounds. Apollo could pick Gaius up, maybe even carry him around or toss him several feet. This was just a man.

Gaius didn't flinch, though something did stir within him, buried too deep to be clearly identified. "Are you going to swing at me? Even if I let you hit me, you'll only break your hand."

"If you don't want me, I understand. I'll go." Apollo growled slowly. The very wind seemed to be utterly silent. Nothing could get in the way of the two of them. "Just acknowledge that you heard me, please. For just a second, please recognize that I exist."

The light in Gaius' eyes shut off for a moment, revealing only the black iron of authoritarian will. "You shouldn't speak like that to people who outrank you, civilian." He replied, barely above a whisper. "You seem like you have a lot of potential, and I've got a good eye for these things. You oughta run along and become someone important if you wanna negotiate."

"Fine." Apollo answered, whirling around and striding away without looking back. Distantly, he heard his father walking away as well, as if nothing had happened.

As he began the long, shameful trip back home, Apollo found it strange that every step seemed easier than the last. It was as if a strength, an energy he never knew he possessed, was taking hold of his body. He didn't dwell on it long, for he was too caught up in his own rage, which burned hot, black and bitter like unsweetened coffee. "I'll be the winner in the end. Gaius Antonius, you will acknowledge me - I'll make you do it if I have to!" He declared, glaring off into the distance with newfound purpose.

——

Gaius leaned against a wall, peering out a window at the retreating form of Apollo, and saw in the boy's back the strength of one with newfound purpose. "Go get yourself strength that no one can deny. You can do it kid, I know you can." He said wistfully.

That had hurt a lot, more than almost any battle injury Gaius had received. He wanted, more than anything, to go out there and wish his son - his son, imagine that - well, to give him all manner of instruction. But dying men had to make sacrifices, so as to secure the future in the time they had left. Gaius was not sick, but with the special Trial coming up, his survival could not be guaranteed no matter what he did.

"Papa, who was that boy you were talking to?" Asked a familiar voice from behind Gaius. He did the best he could to cast off the weariness weighing down his bones and turned to face the sound.

There was Aletheia, dirty and exhausted, blood dripping from a few of her knuckles but eyes as sharp as ever. Gaius reminded himself what all of this was for, and felt reassured in his decision.

A soft, sad smile broke across The Seeker's face. "It's nothing. Just a boy who needed some guidance. I gave him an important gift."

"What kind of gift?"

"Motivation, drive. It's not something that can be given to you; it's something you have to find inside yourself." Unconsciously, Gaius' hand curled into a fist, and he gently struck the wall beside the window a few times, barely hard enough to make a sound. "When you don't want to do it anymore, that's when you do it harder than before."

Gaius had been aware of his bastard son for a two years now, ever since an agent of his had tracked down the prostitude who had borne him. Gaius found such things tedious, but Albinus was more fastidious than he, keen to seek out problems before they arose.

He had at first wanted to take the boy in - not necessarily into the Quintia family, but into his own care as a protege. The problem was, as always, the timing. The Trial was bearing down on him like an executioner's blade, and he needed to build things that would last beyond his end.

"Who is he?" Gaius' daughter asked him with a furrowed brow. "Why did you give something to him? Do you know him?"

"Oh, I know him. Not well, but I know him." Gaius said, looking out at the now distant form of his son. "Oh, dear Aletheia. I think you and him are going to know each other quite well."

Given Apollo's age, the Dawn Fortress would make him wait until the Trial's end to cultivate, rather than throw him to the wolves as a First Heavenstage. That wasn't actually necessary this time around, but such information was highly classified. He'd begin in two years at the age of sixteen, and then Aletheia would begin four years after that at fifteen. A fairly close starting line, if not perfectly even.

Apollo wanted to be recognized, and Gaius saw in the boy the same curse of mad stubbornness that he bore. He would push himself harder, faster and farther to be worthy, and Axia certainly wouldn't acknowledge a bastard unless they were so exceptional that ignoring them would be a political fumble. Aletheia, meanwhile, was truly loyal to her father, and would fight with all her might to not lose her position as Gaius' heir to an upstart bastard.

Yes, if Gaius died, those two would push each other forward competing over his legacy. Motivation, once lost, was a hard thing to regain, and he would leave behind a bountiful supply for both of his children.

——

And there's another plotline I've been meaning to start for a while now. I've had this thought in my head about Gaius' bastard child trying to gain his recognition, only for Gaius to rebuff them again and again so that they'll be motivated to become even more successful. I decided to tie that in with Gaius' daughter Aletheia, who I invented on somewhat of a whim. The number of important things I intend to establish that I haven't even posted any actual content about grows larger and larger.

Gaius is The Seeker. To him, human free will and ambition are the most important things of all, beyond anything else. His ideal world is a universe of pure thought and will, where people are sparks of identity that shape reality around them through their desires. Where battles and wars take the form of dreams and concepts smashing into one another like colliding galaxies.

He is often selfish, but he'll stop at nothing to ensure that the ambitions of those around him flourish, and in the event of his death, he wants his children to be eternally motivated to gain more strength.

 

[Kaboomatic]

Delivered to the hands of Jin Shufeng, Chosen of the Noble Knowledge Sect, via spirit snake messenger.

Dear Jin Shufeng,

Guess what!

Well, I assume you've already guessed based on the fact that I'm sending you this letter but the exact mechanics of this are essentially irrelevant, especially since I can quite honestly and enthusiastically say I don't give a solitary fuck. Indeed, I'm actively hoping that the anticipation and dread you're most certainly building up as I continue this rambling is going to fuck with you.

But! Even knowing that I'm playing you like a Guzheng, you're not going to to skip to the good part, just in case I've somehow hidden some sort of secret or important message here, thinking that you'll skip this foreword in order to get to the good part. Seeing as I know that, however, I'm obviously not going to do something like that!

Or am I?

Well, either way, I've wasted enough of your time and energy, so I'll continue on to stating the obvious.

I'm not dead!

Meaning, that you, Jin Shufeng, Divination Prodigy and bearer of the Seven Star Auspicious Body or some other bullshit physique that I don't care to remember the name of, were wrong~

Doesn't that just burn? Doesn't that just tear at your very being, as the edifice you've built your entire life, personality, and philosophy on comes crumbling to the ground? It was already beginning to crack after you realized you couldn't foretell my future, but you rationalized that away, didn't you? Said that while your physique wasn't able to pierce through my fate line, your superlative mastery of traditional divination techniques was more than sufficient to do the trick. You probably patted yourself on the back for having had the foresight to plan for the situational eventuality in which your powers didn't work, never mind the fact that those techniques were for spying on Nascent Souls and (more recently) Single Pillar Kings.

But now?

Now that you don't even have that, how are you going to justify it this time? Are you going to proclaim that this is all an elaborate lie, created by a Golden Devil, one of your rivals within the sect, or a simple garden variety enemy, in order to mess with your head and make you think that your divination skills were unable to work? If so, how are you going to explain what I exposed earlier? After all, nobody but my snakes and myself were around for our little conversation in Qigai, and while you might believe that my snakes would do this to fuck with you (they totally would by the way), where's your proof? They do certainly have means, motive, and opportunity but…

Actually, there's no 'but' here, this could entirely be a method of psychological warfare concocted by my contracted beasts in order to make you doubt your own divination abilities. And even if it isn't, the mere thought that it might be should be enough to cause you to spiral into a serpent-hole of theories and counter theories as you wrap your own mind in knots.

Of course, then there are the easily verifiable sightings of me out and about doing heroic things and preparing for this Century's trials, so that's right out. I might be an illusion. Indeed there are a few schools of thought and very creepy minor sects that say that reality itself is an illusion, but one detailed enough that nobody knows it's fake.

There's a lovely crater where one of those sects used to be, after they tried to kill me via trapping me in an illusion. Seeing as I'm writing you this letter, they obviously failed.

At the same time though, I'm not an illusion. If I was, you'd be able to tell, seeing as you'd be able to scry the fake Ninth Prince. I suspect you've done enough trials to know that whatever makes me unscryable doesn't extend to illusions and facsimiles of me.

The second option is, of course, that you say that I'm a spirit, some sort of lingering will that's been persisting through sheer force of will and desire to gloat. Or perhaps, I've managed to fake my death in a way that technically satisfies prophecy. You'll say that I'm lawyering my way around my own demise. Maybe I'll have been a ghost for a while, long enough for my death to 'count', before returning to life? Will you say that there's been an enormous conspiracy to hide my existence, or that I've managed to conceal my continued life from everyone, including the Golden Devils, until I made my triumphant return mere years ago? Is that how you're going to rationalize your massive failure as both a diviner and a human being?

If so, you'd be right.

Yes, as much as I hate you and everything you stand for, as much as I publicly call you absolutely insane to anyone and everyone who'll listen, I do have to admit that you're a rather good diviner.

An excellent one in fact. So much so that after you gave me that warning, I immediately began to plan, plot, and generally scheme, with total faith that you were right. I did this so well and so magnificently that I figured out a way to survive certain death. The only thing that matches the size of my prodigious throbbing intellect is the size of my equally prodigious, equally throbbing ego.

I managed this level of awe-inducing chicanery through a very specific interaction between a variety of incredibly secret treasures and techniques that I'll never tell you about, but the gist of it is that I died but persisted as a ghost, then got re-incarnated into my fleshy (well, metal) body as a regular cultivator.

Now, you might be asking 'Well, Ninth Prince, since you're so incredibly amazing and I'm so honored to be receiving a letter from you, what do you need this lowly Jin Shufeng to do? Also you're incredibly attractive.'

If you are, first of all, thank you. Second, you're a fucking idiot. Obviously the only purpose of this letter is to gloat consistently and continuously, until I've decided that the annoyance of taking time out of my incredibly busy schedule to write this thing exceeds the desire to mentally and emotionally distress you. I would have stopped about 900 words ago if it wasn't for the various atrocities you commit on a daily basis.

And they're not even the cool atrocities! I understand that you can't assassinate everybody, but really! Torture, enslavement, and experimentation? So three millennia ago. Poison is much more in vogue, especially poison that targets the Blood Path. So many fashionable things that you can do with targeting blood-aspected meridians and Dantians.

I'm obviously manipulating you, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm right, and you know it.

Anyways, the gloating is done for now. I can't be bothered to write out any more of this, especially considering that I have to enact so many preparations for the Hundred-Year Trials. I won't tell you about any of them, of course, because you'll probably use the information to further your nefarious ends, but rest assured that these preparations exist and they're both necessary to save lives and incredibly annoying.

Also, seeing as this letter is being pre-written before I die, I'm not sure what those preparations are. I know they'll happen but I'm pretty much just writing this so that once I both die and revive myself through the power of my monumental cognition, I'll have a letter written out explicitly to gloat with, no extra input needed. I'm that smart, that I can write a letter out a hundred years in advance and still have it be accurate, topical, and filled with the trademark charm, wit, and joie de vivre that nets me invitations to all the best parties.

Of course, you wouldn't know anything about that considering that you're a fucking nerd who sits around messing with fate and reading people like they're novels, but that's what happens when you don't have any friends. It is, as the youth say, not a good look.

Anyways, I do think I'm done gloating at you from a century in the past. If you're dead by the time this letter reaches you, ignore the above. If not, you should be. I hope you die. Go fall in a hole and bury yourself to save the gravedigger the trouble.

We are enemies after all.

Best Regards,

Ninth Prince
Terror of Jharkhand
Master of Ten-Thousand Serpents
Legate of the Hydra
Champion of the Sand Mammoths
Butcher of the Tongue-Boiling Sect
Better Than You
And a Variety of Other Titles, Each More Glorious Than the Last

P.S.: I totally did hide a message in my introduction. It's a modified Zhufeng Cipher with a code phrase and Qi signature that I'm not going to tell you because I despise you.

P.P.S.: No I didn't! You've just been made to look like an utter buffoon! This is why you shouldn't be a demonic evil torturing bastard! I do things like this to you! Well, also countless moral reasons but I doubt you care about those.

P.P.P.S: Or did I? You'll have to find out.

--------

Delivered to Fang Tai, Heir to the Seven Divine Saber Palace, via spirit snake messenger.

I lived bitch. Die mad about it.

Ninth Prince
Better Than You

A/N: Posting this early so as to have an omake out, just in case. The rest will be posted in a lump just before Occi starts reading my fates, because that's how I roll.

 

[Wizard Batman]

Lexus Macer, Tax Man 2
From the Journal of Lexus Macer​

Notes on Arrows of Wealth

While Arrows of Wealth is a weak technique in its current state, I feel it holds within itself a great deal of potential. The question is how to best bring out its true potential.

Size:
I have been experimenting with increasing the size of the coins in order to increase the power of the technique but while this does work I have found that doing so exponentially increases the power and more importantly the cost of the technique. As Arrows of Wealth is my main method of attack I need to carefully consider the cost benefit ratio of increasing the size of the coins. In the future I intend to more carefully chart the exact cost benefit ratio of each size of coin, however for now I intend to collect a mixture of coins of different sizes for my usage.

Shape:
This has been one of the area's I have been most interested in. While the original technique calls for coins, why can't I simply use other objects, such as small arrowheads? In order to test this theory, I utilized a series of different objects including a arrowhead, a spearhead, a ball, a knife,a cube, and several others(Full list in appendix f) Simply put it was found that the technique is optimized specifically for coin shaped objects, while it may be possible to alter the technique to the point that other types of items maybe be used, all other item types significantly different from the shape of a coin significantly either increase the cost of the technique or decrease the effectiveness.(Full charted comparison of optimized shape options in appendix s) Simply put the coin is the optimal shape for the Technique.

Materials
While the last section could best be summed up as a complete failure, it does raise a new line of questioning. Simply, if Arrows of Wealth is built around coins, what happens if you use different types of coins. Unfortunately, I have been unable to test with coins of a great deal of materials. Oddly enough though, despite it seeming to work through electromagnetism, the nature of the resistivity of the mundane material used to make a coin seems to matter little. Simply put the differences in effectiveness are so minor as to be non-existent.


To Be Continued:

Please Give Tax Man a Life Saving Treasure.

 

[Sirrocco]

Kakos Alexikeravno 7​

Kakos was an old man, slowly grown tired of life.

His body would not tell you that. As a 10th heavenstage cultivator of barely 100 years, he looked young and healthy, with the preturnatural fitness and lively shine that every cultivator had.

His Clan would not tell you that. He was barely a junior at this point - not worth comparing with those who'd really put in the time.

His Family would not tell you that. Those branches that had survived the horrible rain of blood clung to the false solidity of their Patriarch as a lifeline. The idea that he was aged and despairing was too horrible to consider.

But... he was among the oldest of the Alexikeravno, now. None had managed to follow him into the upper ranks of Qi Condensation and survive. He'd tried, with a few who had looked promising, but only two in all his years had chosen to really try, and the lightning had taken both of them. Among his people, he was old. He had watched from a distance as children of the family had been born, grown up, married, settled down, and had kids of their own. He knew of no living Alexikeravno who was older, and Kakos knew them all.

Through all this, his bile had carried him. It was a young man's rage against the heavens that had wronged him, nurtured by stories of how its oh-so-pious dogs mistreated their followers and oppressed their neighbors, fed with righteous wrath by his efforts in the war against the Jingshen, and honed by the hatred heaven had for him, felt in every imbalanced bolt of tribulation lightning that he stole for his cultivation arts.

For years, that bile had sustained him through the weariness of his lonely crusade, honing his techniques, developing his arts, ever striving for the peak, ever striving to grow more, in the hopes of increasing his opposition from a mite to an ant to a mouse... and that was what had made his recent realization so horrible.

It dragged him awake in the middle of the night. He had been pondering the heavens, again thinking through the hazy but distinctly forbidden lore (forbidden on pain of lightning-related demise) that he had managed to seize from their vindictive grasp. It had come to him in a flash. Heaven... was not worthy of his hatred. There was nothing there. It was not alive. It could not learn. It could not be taught. Simply punishing it achieved nothing. It was like an array of dreadful complexity, assembled by a long-dead hand, with fell intent. It was horrible, but there was nothing alive left to hate. He still loved his clan, and he still loved his family, and the heavens clearly hated them both with a cold, dead, frozen hatred that could only be changed through dissolution. His purpose of opposing the heavens was still alive and well. His path was not broken... but the burning hatred at the center of his being guttered out, and died, and would not relight. There was nothing left to hate... and without that hatred, he really didn't have all that much left at all.

He spent weeks going through the motions of his life, broken and despairing. It was... he mourned. It is said that hatred and love are two sides to the same coin, and he mourned the loss of the most important relationship in his life. He trudged on. He had been through worse, and his tasks still needed doing... but it still hurt.

He finally snapped out of it when the hurt became a bit too literal, and he realized that he had nearly killed himself through overcultivation - wallowing in the hollow hatred that he could feel in every lethal bolt, dead but still real. This... wasn't healthy. It was time to change... something.

He put a stop to deliberately getting struck by especially lethal lightning for a time. It wasn't good for him. Until he was in a better place mentally, he'd stick to refining his arts... opening up his veins to pour out his blood so that he could learn how to better weaponize it. It had gone from a spray to striking bolts to injecting spikes. He'd neve figured out a good way to change his blood into anything else once he had it inside of an enemy, but a decade spent carefully unravelling the powers of that bow he'd taken as war loot had let him develop the ability to fire bolts that would seek blood that he knew... and his own blood, he knew very well indeed. Once he'd sunk in one bolt, dodging would no longer avail them, and once he'd filed them with enough blood...? Well, in those cases where his blood-bolts weren't enough to do the job for themselves, his enemies weren't wearing robes that had been painstakingly inscribed with high-end Covering of the Blood arrays, were they?

Even so, one could always refine. His battle art was workable enough as a weapon, but one could always draw forth more precision, more power, better range... and two weeks later he found himself waking up on the floor of his practice range with a small injury on his head that he had not been conscious for the receiving of. That was... perhaps closer than he might have intended, and when he swallowed a blood replenishment pill to help get him back on his feet, his marrow screamed from the overwork. Ah. Yes. Apparently, "blood loss" should be added to "lightning strikes" on the list of "cultivation things that Kakos really ought not overdo while still somewhat distraught". That... probably meant that his blood-painting art was also off the table for now. Unfortunate.

He decided to just... take a break. He went out onto the streets of... whichever city this was. Which city was this? He asked around if there were any good low-heavenstage cooking cultivators to try. He visited the restaurant that was thus recommended. It was delicious. He actually tried cultivating a spirit stone directly for the first time in decades. The experience of adding qi to his cultivation base without excruciating pain nearly brought tears to his eyes. It was wonderful.

It was also expensive. Yeah, sure, his standard qi cultivation technique hurt like the dickens, and was always three paces from killing him outright, but tallying up how much he'd spent on his little break, as compared to how much he'd gotten, it really didn't compare at all... and, just like the young man he'd been when he started refining his art of stealing death from the heavens to turn it into power, he simply could not afford to use the same techniques everyone else did. It wasn't in the budget. Unfortunately, with his current heart-demon, his standard cultivation techniques were almost certain to kill him eventually. He needed to get his head on straight.

/*****************/

1160 words. @ReaderOfFate? Would you do the honors? I'll be asking for a trib treasure for this one. Also, I have reconsidered, and I do not want to sacrifice Kakos just yet. The options available didn't feel quite right. I'll try to drag him back around to a narrative I'm interested in writing again instead. Worth noting that this is a significant timeskip, essentially jumping his story forward to shortly before the present.

 

[BungieONI]

Kakos Alexikeravno 7​

Kakos was an old man, slowly grown tired of life.

His body would not tell you that. As a 10th heavenstage cultivator of barely 100 years, he looked young and healthy, with the preturnatural fitness and lively shine that every cultivator had.

His Clan would not tell you that. He was barely a junior at this point - not worth comparing with those who'd really put in the years.

His Family would not tell you that. Those branches that had survived the horrible rain of blood clung to the false solidity of their Patriarch as a lifeline. The idea that he was aged and despairing was too horrible to consider.

But... he was among the oldest of the Alexikeravno, now. None had managed to follow him into the upper ranks of Qi Condensation and survive. He'd tried, with a few who had looked promising, but only two in all his years had chosen to really try, and the lightning had taken both of them. Among his people, he was old. He had watched from a distance as children of the family had been born, grown up, married, settled down, and had kids of their own. He knew of no living Alexikeravno who was older, and Kakos knew them all.

Through all this, his bile had carried him. It was a young man's rage against the heavens that had wronged him, nurtured by stories of how its oh-so-pious dogs mistreated their followers and oppressed their neighbors, fed with righteous wrath by his efforts in the war against the Jingshen, and honed by the hatred heaven had for him, felt in every imbalanced bolt of tribulation lightning that he stole for his cultivation arts.

For years, that bile had sustained him through the weariness of his lonely crusade, honing his techniques, developing his arts, ever striving for the peak, ever striving to grow more, in the hopes of increasing his opposition from a mite to an ant to a mouse... and that was what had made his recent realization so horrible.

It dragged him awake in the middle of the night. He had been pondering the heavens, again thinking through the hazy but distinctly forbidden lore (forbidden on pain of lightning-related demise) that he had managed to seize from their vindictive grasp. It had come to him in a flash. Heaven... was not worthy of his hatred. There was nothing there. It was not alive. It could not learn. It could not be taught. Simply punishing it achieved nothing. It was like an array of dreadful complexity, assembled by a long-dead hand, with fell intent. It was horrible, but there was nothing alive left to hate. He still loved his clan, and he still loved his family, and the heavens clearly hated them both with a cold, dead, frozen hatred that could only be changed through dissolution. His purpose of opposing the heavens was still alive and well. His path was not broken... but the burning hatred at the center of his being guttered out, and died, and would not relight. There was nothing left to hate... and without that hatred, he really didn't have all that much left at all.

He spent weeks going through the motions of his life, broken and despairing. It was... he mourned. It is said that hatred and love are two sides to the same coin, and he mourned the loss of the most important relationship in his life. He trudged on. He had been through worse, and his tasks still needed doing... but it still hurt.

He finally snapped out of it when the hurt became a bit too literal, and he realized that he had nearly killed himself through overcultivation - wallowing in the hollow hatred that he could feel in every lethal bolt, dead but still real. This... wasn't healthy. It was time to change... something.

He put a stop to deliberately getting struck by especially lethal lightning for a time. It wasn't good for him. Until he was in a better place mentally, he'd stick to refining his arts... opening up his veins to pour out his blood so that he could learn how to better weaponize it. It had gone from a spray to striking bolts to injecting spikes. He'd neve figured out a good way to change his blood into anything else once he had it inside of an enemy, but a decade spent carefully unravelling the powers of that bow he'd taken as war loot had let him develop the ability to fire bolts that would seek blood that he knew... and his own blood, he knew very well indeed. Once he'd sunk in one bolt, dodging would no longer avail them, and once he'd filed them with enough blood...? Well, in those cases where his blood-bolts weren't enough to do the job for themselves, his enemies weren't wearing robes that had been painstakingly inscribed with high-end Covering of the Blood arrays, were they?

Even so, one could always refine. His battle art was workable enough as a weapon, but one could always draw forth more precision, more power, better range... and two weeks later he found himself waking up on the floor of his practice range with a small injury on his head that he had not been conscious for the receiving of. That was... perhaps closer than he might have intended, and when he swallowed a blood replenishment pill to help get him back on his feet, his marrow screamed from the overwork. Ah. Yes. Apparently, "blood loss" should be added to "lightning strikes" on the list of "cultivation things that Kakos really ought not overdo while still somewhat distraught". That... probably meant that his blood-painting art was also off the table for now. Unfortunate.

He decided to just... take a break. He went out onto the streets of... whichever city this was. Which city was this? He asked around if there were any good low-heavenstage cooking cultivators to try. He visited the restaurant that was thus recommended. It was delicious. He actually tried cultivating a spirit stone directly for the first time in decades. The experience of adding qi to his cultivation base without excruciating pain nearly brought tears to his eyes. It was wonderful.

It was also expensive. Yeah, sure, his standard qi cultivation technique hurt like the dickens, and was always three paces from killing him outright, but tallying up how much he'd spent on his little break, as compared to how much he'd gotten, it really didn't compare at all... and, just like the young man he'd been when he started refining his art of stealing death from the heavens to turn it into power, he simply could not afford to use the same techniques everyone else did. It wasn't in the budget. Unfortunately, with his current heart-demon, his standard cultivation techniques were almost certain to kill him eventually. He needed to get his head on straight.

/*****************/

1160 words. @ReaderOfFate? Would you do the honors? I'll be asking for a trib treasure for this one. Also, I have reconsidered, and I do not want to sacrifice Kakos just yet. The options available were not appealing. I'll try to drag him back around to a narrative I'm interested in writing again instead. Worth noting that this is a significant timeskip, essentially jumping his story forward to shortly before the present.

Click to shrink...

Oooo I quite enjoyed that. Too be old and driven by bile, hatred and spite... giving me my own ideas hehehhee. Thankie for the omake!

 

[Quest]

Xiao Yingzi 53
[Turn 11]
[The Old Bat]​

Xiao Yingzi lay camouflaged on a sand dune that had piled up so high that it resembled a mountain. She was buried at its top with the sand covering her and with the setting sun behind her, she was hidden from even the sharpest of eyes. Her aura had been suppressed to below a mortal's strength and all of her bodily functions had been limited, with her relying less on physical processes and more on simple, efficient techniques that further reduced the modicum of qi that her body still emanated.

From her vantage point, she used her Soul Farseer to study the flow of lives inside the abandoned mine that was directly below her and what she sensed made her wary. While their numbers and level of strength corresponded to the casualties reported, they did not move like any blood path bandits she had seen before. They twisted and glided within the mine, in a manner more indicative of flight than any other form of motion.

She only sensed three Experts in Foundation Building with the rest all being Juniors of Qi Condensation, all of whom seemed to share this capability and did so without visible exertion of their qi. Flight of that level, at such a low cultivation… It was difficult to imagine such a thing among simple bandits. She would have to take this slowly or it could get dangerous, especially with so many peer enemies.

Elder Teleos, I need your assistance. Xiao Yingzi called, holding up the Banner Pole Spear and in response, she felt the consciousness of the ancient legate steer from within.

What do you require, Xiao Yingzi? She felt him rumble within her mind as he took stock of their situation and she wordlessly drew out a scroll from her storage ring and unraveled it to reveal the drawing of a two-headed eagle. Ah, I see.

She gave the elder her energy and he kneaded it with the power of the spear, giving it the characteristics of a legionnaire. Then she cut her thumb with the spear, mixing her blood with the blood of bronze and then she smeared it across the scroll. The scroll glowed as it absorbed her qi and took in her thoughts as well, storing them as if it were a jade slip. As the array within activated, an eagle with two heads large enough to perch on her hand emerged from it.

It did not do that, instead gripping the spear tightly as one head turned and sneered at her for her lack of bloodline. The other head turned and looked towards the distance, towards an administrator who was posted in the nearest city and who had prepared this variant of the Two-Headed Eagle Formation in the first place.

Though the innate pride of the eagle made it tricky for her to utilize, it had been worth creating a workaround as that same quality also ensured that it defended the information vigorously from those without the Blood, choosing death before surrender. She felt the Elder focus upon the creature and it obeyed his will immediately, taking off to seek out its creator. Finally, she felt the Elder's attention turn back towards her.

While I grasped the gist of the situation through the report, I believe I might have missed the original briefing. She felt him look through her senses to study the bandits below her and then he continued. Could you cover the details of the mission for me?

For the past few decades, the local roads and villages were being raided and people were being abducted. Xiao Yingzi replied, while mentally focusing on different parts of the mine below them as her senior directed her. My initial investigations suggested a Blood Cannibal Expert who had been unaccounted for during the war.

And the goal of the mission?

Dealing with the source of the attacks. I was led to this mine by triangulating their sightings and spotting the likely locations they might have used as a base. As they have focused upon Jingshen Trade Caravans during the last few years, I have been given latitude to take a light hand if I am given reason to believe that they can be turned into an asset.

A few years ago… The elder mused. They attacked the clan before that?

Yes, Elder Teleos.

Then following common blood path trends, the original expert must have been consumed and the one who took his place must have changed tactics. Do you know how they identify their targets?

I could not find any informants among the clan or even any hints from the Jingshen through our own networks. Xiao Yingzi replied, shaking her head. I suspect that they have some exotic method of gathering information.

The blood path, that exotic technique and now the flight? I can see why you are being so cautious. He was quiet after that, focusing on the mine below her and only speaking up to ask a few questions regarding what she had observed throughout the day. Xiao Yingzi waited patiently for him to assess the situation.

Finally, he spoke up. Three hundred qi condensing juniors and three experts - two at the First Pillar and one at the Great Circle. The stronger Expert remains in the center of the mine, while others do his bidding. Then he drew her attention to the other two capable of facing her. On the other hand, those two seem to have rather erratic movements and are still running around far too much to have any major authority over their nominal juniors.

Recently raised, do you think? Xiao Yingzi asked, thinking through the reports she had been given. If two Jingshen Experts were captured and consumed, it would explain why they suddenly started to make a fuss about these bandits. Do you think that I am capable of facing them?

Most likely. The elder replied. Though only at the Fourth Pillar, you have several advantages and as always, should something go wrong, the Note of Despair makes you invincible in Foundation Building. How do you plan on proceeding?

I shall wait until the sun sets.

| | | | | | | | | |​

It was only a few hours until the sun was down and the moon was rising up in the air. She should have gone down already, but the moment night had fallen, the bandits had exploded into action. While it was hard to tell what exactly they were doing, she could grasp a sense of tension and anticipation from their auras. At first she was concerned that she had been discovered, but she quickly realized that the bandits were preparing for a raid. As the juniors emerged from one of mine's chimneys, she got her first clear look at her targets.

As a young scout, her ability to distinguish light and dark had been extraordinary in comparison to her peers, though perhaps not enough for this moonless night. As a centurion, though she could easily make out their shapes and what she saw weren't the familiar shapes of men. Long leather wings unfurled as man-sized bats took to the air, circling the mine as others flew up to join their formation.

And it was a Formation.

Though it was unfamiliar to her, she was still a golden devil and could recognise the patterns of the technique building on sight. They let out spiritual cries that felt like some strange form of demonic tunes, and the cries blended together into a symphony. The amplified cries echoed throughout the desert in a manner similar to a bat's echolocation. Forewarned by their movements, she was ready.

In the moment before it hit her, she turned her focus away from the bats and sent all of her thoughts and emotions into that part of her she called her shadow. When the wave washed over her and tasted of her intent, it found a mind as empty as the sand and rocks around her. Then the wave faded and the bats remained unaware of her presence. she turned her attention to bats to see if she had been discovered. However, her countermeasures had seemingly been successful.

Still, she suppressed her energies further and prepared to empty her mind again if needed. Then she focused on observing them in turn. Without needing to peer through solid rock, she could feel the way qi flowed through their body much more clearly. What was astonishing was that they were even more beast-like internally than on the outside. A beast core had somehow been intertwined together with their meridians and it was an entangled mess.

It wasn't something she hadn't seen before - the clan's goat-men vassals had something similar, but where their make-up was unique to each, these creatures had incredibly similar internal structures. It felt almost deliberate… Xiao Yingzi frowned as one the experts finally clambered out of the mine. She had never heard of one of the goat-men breaking through, so why were there three foundation building experts among these bat-men?

As the bats settled into a flight pattern, she focused on the expert who had emerged. He didn't take to the sky immediately, instead clinging to the wall as he climbed out. Unlike the juniors who were almost chimeric in their amalgamation, he was entirely a man save for small leathery wings on his back that connected to his arms. His humanity was an important clue, but it was his demeanor that had caught her attention first.

Though his posture was different, she still recognized the way he had carefully clung to the mine's rocks - as if a simple push would send him hurtling into the air. It was something many cultivators experienced as they came to terms with new physical limits after breaking through and she realized that the elder's supposition had been correct. He hugged the walls for a moment, before finally leaping off. After flying around for a few moments, he finally seemed to adapt to his wings and then he joined his juniors, taking off for a new night of banditry.

Xiao Yingzi frowned as he left, wishing to examine him further but she turned away. At her level, a lingering gaze could easily give her away to a paranoid enemy. Instead, she reviewed the image of him she had grasped in a moment. Unlike his juniors, his meridians were human and while he had a modified physique, it was only on the level of a normal, if powerful bloodline.

However, she had also had a chance to observe the bats in qi condensation and having seen them all directly, she was certain those bats were genuinely his juniors and not just some strange spirit beasts. While the expert was human, the bats seemed to be at various degrees of humanity that rather than be truly random like the goat-men instead seemed to correlate with the levels of their cultivation.

If she had to speculate, she would say that they consumed the qi of humans through the blood path and in doing so, they became more human. It would make sense that the large jump from Qi Condensation to Foundation Building would have dissolved their beast cores and made them more human than bat. It was unlikely that such a thing could survive heaven's tribulation but that could be bypassed by the consumption of enemy experts.

It took her a moment to come to the obvious conclusion. Something like this certainly couldn't be natural. First the Blood Path, then the Flight, then the Formation and the Demonic Tunes - Nay, not merely that but Soul Investigation. No wonder they didn't need spies, they could take the information they needed directly out of enemy minds. They were an unholy amalgam not only of man and beast, but of the demonic ideal. What do you think, Elder Teleos?

Even he was quiet for a moment as he processed everything they represented, even if they were limited to only Foundation Building. When he spoke, his voice was tinged with sadness. I think it is a tragedy. What else would you call a creature that could only grow through the blood path? After a moment of silence, he spoke more firmly. This changes little for us. Do not be so blinded by their potential that you become incautious, Xiao Yingzi.

Taking a breath, Xiao Yingzi simply nodded and began to move. With an Expert and half the juniors out of the mine, this was the best time to enter.

| | | | | | | | | |​

The path up to the top of the chimney was fairly steep, and if she'd had to suppress her qi, she could see it taking her some time to chart a path. Instead, she let her aura loose, not showing her full power but also not hiding her energies as she bounded up the side of the mine.
She could sense the awareness of her spread in the form of surprise and alarm, but they held well and the aura of the peak expert awaiting within the mine barely flickered at her presence.

She kept part of her focus on it but as she reached the mouth of the chimney, she turned the rest of her attention to the guards below her. There were two Juniors looking in her direction with intense wariness and resignation but her primary concern was the First Pillar Expert who was waiting not in the mine's central chamber but assigned to guard the entrance. She was reacting to her presence with rising panic. Hoping to cut off any chances of accidents, Xiao Yingzi took the initiative in the discussion.

"This is Xiao Yingzi, Centurion of the Golden Devil Clan," She called down, keeping it as quick and simple. "I am here about reports of bandit raids. Please allow me to speak to your leader regarding that matter and your unauthorized presence within our lands."

Immediately, the expert reacted with a scream of intent. The sound could have perhaps damaged one unused to attacks on the soul, but it had little effect on one who had borne the Note of Despair. It was the fear that filled the scream that caused her to pause. It was not the killing intent of an experienced warrior but the instinctive assault of one unused to battle.

The expert didn't take advantage of her hesitation and as soon as Yingzi recovered, she dropped down with the Legion-Banner Pole extended outwards. The juniors sensed her movement but they were far too slow to react to her. The expert on the other hand was too focused on where she had been instead of the space in front of her.

Xiao Yingzi smoothly came to a stop at the entrance of a large defunct furnace. The lightest touch of qi muffled her landing and the impact was nothing to her tribulation-forged body.
Though panic filled the inside of the mines and they had begun to rally, the expert could only flinch at the centurion's sudden appearance.

Though it was dark, Yingzi heard the sound of their breaths. She could smell the scents of sweat and rising tension. Their very motions disturbed the air and revealed them to her, allowing her to know where they were even without needing to rely upon her sense of qi. By the time the expert had moved her face down to look at her, Xiao Yingzi was already behind her.

Sensing her distinctly human meridian network, she struck an acu-point behind her neck with the back of her hand and the expert immediately collapsed into the ground. The juniors who were guarding the room were frozen with shock, trying to understand what happened and then a moment later, an incredible rage rippled out from within them.

Before they could attack, she had leapt between them. A blow to the chin from the butt of her spear for one of them was enough to rattle its brain and cause it to stumble, giving her the opening to grab its partner by its throat. Though its meridian network was alien to her, the simple maneuver of choking it to unconsciousness seemed to work just as well.

There was a useless flutter of wings as it struggled against her hold, but it may as well be struggling against a mountain. She heard a gasp from beside her, as the bat she had hit had begun to recover. Enhanced strength and recovery? She had modulated her attack for the average ninth step junior and hadn't accounted for any advantages from their physique.

It turned towards the expert and the scent of desperation filled the air. The moment's confirmation was enough and the bat roared at her, burning its lifeforce in some technique that allowed it to strike above its level. Wildly spreading its wings open, it caused the air to shake as a scream of true killing intent struck at her.

She dispersed the attack with a flick of her spear and then placed the bat she was choking between herself and the attacking enemy. The angered creature hesitated and that was enough for Xiao Yingzi to step behind it, tossing the now unconscious bat she was holding to the side. She grasped its mouth and clamped it tight as she wrapped an arm around its throat.

With every avenue of attack locked, it was unable to do anything except struggle futilely. Slowly but surely, the technique it had used took its toll upon its body and as it fell into unconsciousness, she dropped the body and examined it. After making sure that it wouldn't die, she moved to check on the foundation building expert.

Despite the junior's anger, the bat hadn't been damaged at all. Perhaps the difference in physiology made it think that the expert was dead? Though the creatures were indeed knocked out, they would all awaken soon enough. She quickly secured them with ropes from her storage ring and then knelt to examine them, summoning a spark of lightning in her palm for illumination.

The expert before her looked completely like a human woman save for her eyes which upon opening were black down to the sclera and small wings that extended from her arms into her back. Her skin was light gray and leathery to the touch. It made her tougher than normal, though only equivalent to the lowest concentrations.

She was also startlingly beautiful compared to the bats she had ascended from.

The juniors were much more inhuman. The creature's head was strange, obviously a bat's with a snout and flapping ears but the snout was flattened onto a human-shaped skull. Like the expert, their eyes were dark and their skin tougher. They had dense musculature and almost certainly had other enhancements she could find with a longer examination. This was the strength of a beast, completely melded with that of a human cultivator.

Without a doubt, this was the result of intelligent design.

As she studied them, she could feel the other juniors grouping up and closing in, and she had to consider how to approach them. Though the third expert had yet to move, she could sense his gaze heavy upon her back. As she heard the sound of frenzied wing-beats behind her, she decided to use the advantage that the heavens had inadvertently given her.

Schooling her face into a confident smile, Xiao Yingzi grabbed the still-unconscious expert and held her with one hand while pressing the tip of the spear to her throat. The spark that had been hovering in her palm brightened and floated above her, filling the mine with light. The sudden brightness caused the wingbeats to falter and they fluttered wildly before they quickly organized once more into synchronized beats, smaller wingbeats melding into the loudest ones.

That is another formation. Xiao Yingzi noted, tasting the qi as it danced between them, rapidly building up to a level that might challenge her. They aren't holding back.

When their song reached her, it was filled with killing intent but it had been blunted by a desperate grasping that turned a weapon into more of a sensory technique. So they do worry about my hostage, then. Xiao Yingzi mused as she simply stood tall and let the attack pass her by. Perhaps against another centurion, it would have still worked but she was a spiritual cultivator in her own right and such attacks were as effective as a stiff breeze over her body.

The spiritual attack was then accompanied by a genuine ripple of air that was even less effective, though it helped her better understand their technique. At the very base of demonic tunes was a rhythm that moved the soul, allowing the tunist to coax it into action. More often than not, this was a song or a piece of music but for the bats it was their very language.

Fascinating. Elder Teleos whispered, his words rising into her mind. A language based upon demonic tunes. No wonder they could naturally develop formations with it. It would have 'merely' been as difficult as synchronized singing to them. I wonder what creature was hybridized with them, to produce such a specialized affinity?

As the air and the qi rushed past her, trying to push her back, she did not only hear the sound, but she felt it with her bones as the force vibrated through her. One powerful cry formed from nearly a hundred and fifty lesser ones - enhancing it enough that it was raised by the level of an entire great realm. The voice shook the entire mine shaft…

But that was all it did to her.

They faltered as they realized how ineffective they were, the formation rapidly breaking down as some tried to keep moving and others stopped to rethink the approach. Many were caught in that indecision as they were confronted with a sight they had likely not imagined and within moments, the formation collapsed. They lack the clan's discipline, she noted. But discipline can be taught. They have incredible potential.

Take care not to lose yourself in possibilities. The Elder warned her. Focus on the moment.

Yes, Elder.

Finally, the bats appeared. They flew around her, landing at a cautious distance. None of them dared come closer and she could feel their communications through her Soul Farseer - a cacophony of rising uncertainty, until finally it broke into a firm consensus. They retreated even further back and a single bat in the fifth heavenstage finally moved forward to meet her.

He seemed different from the others, old and grotesque in appearance but as his black eyes regarded her, she saw a sharp intellect reading her just as she had been reading him. Xiao Yingzi schooled her face into a pleasant expression and then hefted the expert she held over her shoulder like a bag of grain. Murmurs filled the air and killing intent rose once more at her disregard for their brethren, but she only smiled politely in return.

Then, she smacked her unconscious hostage with the back of her hand. The bats tensed at her actions, ready to lunge at her when the girl awoke with a startled scream. "Huh? Huh?" That was when she noticed where she was and with a squeak, she froze. As if by being quiet and pretending that she wasn't there, her enemy might overlook her presence.

Xiao Yingzi ignored her for the moment, instead glancing at the rest of the bats. "She's alive." She told the one who had stepped forward, which caused it to stiffen and then deliberately relax. "It is a well-known pressure point that any cultivator beyond acu-point awareness would be able to block, barring overwhelming opposition. As blood path bandits with divergent physiology, you simply lacked the training to know how to counter it."

Her explanation was a peace offering, though the bat in front of her still eyed her warily. Still, she could feel the relief emanating off of him and when he felt her gaze, the creature immediately tamped down upon his own emotions. Instead, it opened its mouth to speak and instead of words, it released a sound, layered with both intent and meaning.

Xiao Yingzi inclined her head as she listened to it. The basic message contained equal parts threat and placation. There were deeper notes within its voice as well, things that the creature likely didn't intend for her to know. The wariness she had expected but there was not much surprise directed at her. That confirmed that they expected the clan to show up at some point.

Besides that, there was also an almost aggressive undercurrent of… rage? Annoyance? Some level of suppressed resentment directed not at her, but at the expert in her hands and there was also a layer of deceit to it… Ah, this feels like exasperation. There is also worry buried underneath the feeling and the creature is stoking that exasperation to avoid thinking about the worry. I wouldn't be surprised if it is also concerned for the other expert.

They seem to have strong, almost familial bonds of loyalty to their leaders. Xiao Yingzi noted, Entirely different from most blood path powers. That is good, it means that the experts have worth as hostages. Though I don't think he wanted to reveal that to me. Do you think it is just a side-effect of their particular form of communication?

Perhaps… The Elder paused and considered that. No, I don't think most would have picked up on it, even among them. Your experience with the Note of Despair gives you an incredible advantage when it comes to comprehension.

Xiao Yingzi tilted her head at the bat as it - he - frowned or at least, gave her his equivalent of the expression. "The other one is fine too." She told him, shrugging. "I simply avoided them." The answer to a worry he hadn't voiced caused the creature to stiffen again and Xiao Yingzi simply smiled back at him. "This one stays with me though, at least until we are done."

The dismay from the girl she carried was obvious, but she didn't protest. The bat's frown deepened at that and then he looked at the expert before making an emanation that seemed akin to a sigh. It then turned towards the tunnel and screeched a message at the darkness, a general query of what to do. When an answer came, it became her turn to be wary. This time, the force behind it wasn't one she could so easily disregard.

The third Expert. She instantly surmised. Though the voice had no words or thoughts, it left her with the stark image of an old monster waving her over. The bat in front of her looked reluctant to heed the command, but rather than protest he simply stepped aside. Though the bat horde around her parted, it was at a begrudging pace - as if opening up their vaults to a thief. Still, they made a path for her that went to the heart of the mine.

Inclining her head in thanks, Xiao Yingzi moved her spear from the bat-woman's throat and began to walk. None of them dared to approach her, knowing full well that she did not need the spear to slay the girl. She walked in silence through the mine, carefully observing the remnants of clan engineering from when the mine was operational and later, cruder additions by the bats.

The heart of the mine was a large hallway, stone smoothed over with clan techniques after the last of the spirit stones of the mine had been dug out. At one side was a large stone slab, that though completely scrubbed clean, still stunk of blood. It was a makeshift operating table that had been cracked in the middle. Scratches littered the walls clearly showing notes, though she couldn't grasp their meaning.

Then her eyes were drawn to him.

On the opposite side of the entrance, sat a humanoid creature leaning against the wall. One leg stretched out on the ground, while the other was pulled in close, a hand resting on its knee. His aura felt impossibly refined. It was the sort of thing that she had seen only in those legionnaires who had reached the peak of their realm and rather than ascend, had spent their remaining time honing themselves and grasping for every advantage in order to survive the trials.

Even Elder Teleos stilled at his presence. Though she felt him looking through her eyes, he did speak or offer advice. Unlike the experts she had seen so far, this was a true opponent and any distraction might spell her doom when facing it. In principle, he was not a being different from the girl she had slung over her shoulder but if the girl had been painstakingly put together by an artisan, then he was the experimental creation of a mad scientist.

His body had strange proportions, some parts larger than they should be and his skin was a patchwork mess that was both leathery gray and fair. At other places, it even looked as if the skin had been flayed off. Where the girl's face had been young and beautiful, his was old and grotesque. His flesh stretched tight over his bones as if he had been starving for a long time and his haggard eyes stared out from his sunken face in a manner that would have been lecherous in another being, but in him revealed an entirely different sort of hunger.

"So you have come then, golden devil." The old bat said, his voice like cracked earth. It sounded as if he hadn't used it for so long that his throat had petrified and only now it was breaking open. His eyes flickered to the expert she was carrying and frowned, before looking back at her. "Would you release that child before we break bread as equals?"

"You presume to think that we are equals." Yingzi challenged, glancing at him imperiously. "Why shouldn't I simply take your head?"

The old bat's frown remained unchanged, but Xiao Yingzi felt his killing intent rise - not as a threat, but merely as a consequence of his consideration. Then suddenly, it fell away entirely. "If I attempted to kill you, I would not succeed unscathed. However, the same holds true for you."

Xiao Yingzi raised an eyebrow. "You seem fairly confident in your assessment."

"I can sense that broken Note in your heart." The old bat revealed casually, as if he wasn't speaking of her trump card. "Is that what gives you your confidence?"

Xiao Yingzi paused at that. "It is, yes." She answered, keeping the same tone as him. "Though there is also that other sword over your heads - that everything you know and love will be wiped out by my clan should anything happen to me."

The old bat remained unmoved by her threats, though she had expected that. "You would already be dead then, which helps none of us here. You must have my measure now centurion, so please cease these pointless diversions. Will you release the child or will you not?"

Xiao Yingzi glanced at the girl she carried, who squeaked at the attention and then she carefully placed her on the ground and stepped away. The girl fled from her as soon as she was on the ground, then hid behind the junior that had previously stepped forward before peeking out at her. Giving up a hostage was regrettable, but she could tell that the man wouldn't budge on this. After a nod of acceptance from the old bat, she stepped forward and sat down in front of him.

"I do hope you forgive me if I don't actually share a meal with you." Xiao Yingzi said, looking into his hungry eyes. "Your palate doesn't quite agree with me."

The old bat nods at that, grinning wryly. "Are you certain? It is quite a nutritious diet."

"Oh I agree." Xiao Yingzi answered, grinning back. "However, some diets require dedication and have rather harsh restrictions - nutritious perhaps, but you give up many things to follow it." After a moment's thought, she added. "Perhaps… as a last resort."

The creature's face grows somber at that. "Not everyone is given the choice, however." He replied, before glancing at her former hostage for a moment. Then he spoke more quietly. "Does your clan prosecute all those who walk the blood path?"

"One of our heroes walked a path adjacent to it." Xiao Yingzi replied with a shrug. "He has recently passed away, sacrificing his life to retrieve a treasure. Even the Archigetes himself honored his passing."

The old bat gave her a twisted frown. "That doesn't answer the question I was really asking."

"No, I suppose it doesn't." Xiao Yingzi agreed. Though it does tell me the quality of your information. "If you are asking for your own species, so long as you hunt our enemies and don't show yourself to our righteous allies, it wouldn't matter to us." She paused and glanced around at the bats surrounding them. "Though with such a number, that might become difficult."

The frown turned into a grimace. "That is fine." He replied, nodding in acceptance of her words. "None of us expect to survive for long."

Xiao Yingzi glanced at the beautiful girl still watching her, and then at the ugly old bat who was speaking to her. "How long do you expect to live?"

"My body will fail in a few decades." He answered, a bitter smile playing across his face as he spoke of their plight. He raised an unsightly limb and used to gesture to the bats surrounding them. "Their bodies will last maybe two more, less without my oversight. It is the children who will live the full lifespan you humans are blessed with."

"The children…"She repeated, looking around until her eyes landed upon the expert - that beautiful girl who still cowered behind a bat many times weaker than herself. "You called the bats your companions, but you called that expert a child. What did you mean by that?"

The old bat studied her for a moment. "To give a full accounting, I would need to speak of our creator and how we came to be. Would you be amenable to that?" He asked, and when she nodded, the old bat gave her a grotesque smile.

When he cleared his throat to speak, it sounded like the earth cracking and breaking. "Our creator was once a righteous cultivator of the Flowers and Arrows Sect. Unsatisfied by the limits of medicine, he was drawn into the forbidden art of surgery - a field that scraped the edges of the blood path."

Xiao Yingzi nodded in understanding. "And I suppose he joined the blood cannibals after he fled the plains? Or did he spend time with the Noble Knowledge Sect first?"

The bat grinned in answer. "He went to your people first - the golden devils - and then in time, he was drawn to the Battleblood Cannibal Sect after even you proved too limiting."

That caused Xiao Yingzi to raise an eyebrow. "Why did he make you?" She asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

"To transcend the limits of humanity." The old bat replied, laughing bitterly. The expression of mirth on his face was horrifying but the bitterness somehow made it more palatable. "It was that transformation portal of yours that inspired him and he decided to create his own proof of concept after he had examined it."

Xiao Yingzi observed the mixed feelings he displayed on his own twisted body and nodded with understanding. "I see." She said, studying him. "And tell me… how did he fail?"

Confirming her deduction with a twist of his lip, the creature answered. "A mortal can live for a hundred years, provided a cultivator keeps them fit and shielded from hardship. Our creator confirmed this - however, our own bodies began to fail in merely a decade."

"And that is why you consumed him?"

"Yes." The old bat answered, a strangely defiant expression on his face. As he turned to regard the other bats around them, that expression softened. Though as terrible as the rest of his faces, it was the first she had seen where it wasn't tempered by darker thoughts. "He was going to abandon us, when I knew he had the skill to save our kind."

"How did you manage it?" She asked curiously. "Killing him… I can see many ways that can play out but the sort of skill needed to twist and heal flesh cannot be so easily stolen."

Raising his bony hand, he summoned a drop of blood from his palm slowly formed into a sharp ruby scalpel. "This is the Blood Fusion Scalpel - I don't know where it came from but he found it long before he left the righteous path. The ease with which the blade could cut into flesh and alter it was part of what led him to stray and that same instinct guided me later."

"That tool taught you how to heal your people?" Xiao Yingzi asked, regarding the object warily.

The old bat simply chuckled. "No, not at all." He replied, grinning in his twisted manner. "It taught me how to take the knowledge from him. Our creator was a fool who left himself unguarded and in a moment of weakness, I slew him and consumed him as I was created to."

Xiao Yingzi eyed the old bat for a moment before glancing back at the scalpel that seemed to glow malevolently in the light. Taking knowledge… that was a feature of the old blood path and this was a tool with unknown origins. She wouldn't be surprised if existed from the time of Soup Chef… though the aura wasn't so strong that it'd be connected to him directly. Perhaps a disciple then, or a disciple's disciple?

"That wasn't enough, was it?" She asked, moving on from the tool. It wouldn't do to show my interest in it any more than I already have. "Your people are still dying."

The old bat smiled and shrugged, responding freely. "After taking the skills and tools of my creator, I was more than capable of improving them at least. Certainly, I could only improve their lifespans to fifty years but… I could give them the ability to give birth to a new generation of out people."

"Those are the experts." Xiao Yingzi said, saying out loud what she had long since guessed. "You improved upon your own ascension process and applied it to your children - giving them a chance at a normal lifespan and even eliminating your beastly origins. I doubt that they could be free of the blood path in their lifetime but… their children would be, wouldn't they?"

"You understand then." He replied, grinning hideously. "How about we make a deal, centurion?"

"What makes you think I would even be willing to deal with you?" She probed, studying him carefully.

The old bat simply chuckled at that, his voice scraping her ears. "If you weren't, then you wouldn't be sitting here and talking to me so casually. You wouldn't have walked in here, sparing my companions and putting yourself at risk." He fixed her with his gaze. "Tell me, am I wrong?"

Xiao Yingzi simply nodded to confirm it. "I assume you want me to spare you, then?" She asked, glancing at the crowd around her. "However, you must understand that your capabilities make you dangerous - even if we tolerate you, our allies will not. Don't you think that it would simply be better for my clan to put an end to the matter of your bloodline here and now?"

"Then kill us all, if it would help you." The bat replied, with no hesitation. Though she heard a squeak of surprise from the girl, none of the other bats seemed to share that emotion. Instead, they felt resolute. "We all know we are living on borrowed time. We want the children to survive." The old bat met her eyes with a strange intensity. "That is all I want from you and your clan - the chance for our children and our grand-children to grow under your aegis."

Xiao Yingzi studied him for a moment. "Very well then." She replied, nodding in agreement. "I agree that your people can be useful for my clan and that it would be easier on both sides to let you all pass on in the natural manner. However, I cannot say that my superiors will share that opinion - what can you offer me, for my personal guarantee?"

His mouth pulled back in a gleeful rictus. "You would demand more from me for your personal gain, but that is only proper. It is I who is asking for a favor. However, so long as what I offer you is worth your consideration, then you will personally ensure our children's success and safety."

Xiao Yingzi smiled at that. "What would have happened if you had slain one of your children?"

"I would have brought the mine down upon you in revenge for my daughter's life, leaving my son able to flee and hopefully survive." He answered, a grotesque smile on his face that nonetheless seemed the same as her own. "You would certainly be dead, however - that broken note you use would do nothing against the weight of a mountain."

She nodded in understanding. "You've mentioned that before." She pointed out. "I assume that your ability to sense my Note of Despair is related to your prowess of Soul Investigation?"

"Soul Investigation," The bat mused, considering how to reply. "You may know this skill as that, but to us it has no name. The act of listening and hearing in this manner is the same as the beating of our heart to us, innate and instinctive. I could no more ignore that melody in your heart than you could ignore the spear by an enemy's side."

Xiao Yingzi smiled and adjusted her grip on her spear, before gesturing to the other bats around them "And all of you can use this technique?"

"It is easy for us to learn as it is a skill we refined from our natural abilities, however the children cannot use it so easily. As they become human, they lose the natural affinities that let us learn the skill so easily - though they will still learn far faster than an ordinary human."

"I see." Xiao Yingzi said, consideringly. "What about me? Do you believe that I could learn your art?"

The old bat shrugged at that. "Teaching you to manipulate tunes, while that note remains in your head would be the slow, patient work of centuries. I would be long dead before we could even begin such an undertaking." Then he hesitated, or rather, he made a show of hesitating. "There may be another method however."
"Oh?" Xiao Yingzi asked, playing along with his charade.

"There is a method through which you could gain all of the knowledge I have in a matter of minutes and while it would only improve your sensory capabilities to begin with, it would allow you to finish your actual work in your own time."

Xiao Yingzi frowned at that. "If you say minutes… are you suggesting I use the blood fusion scalpel to take your knowledge of demonic tunes?"

He nodded in agreement.

"I could only do that once for a person, without risking the blood path." She mused, glancing at the scalpel that he still held in his hand. "If you were qi condensation, there would be some leeway but you are not. If I consume you, that will be it. I would be unable to gain any other skills in this manner without risking the blood path."

Showing no change in expression, he simply nodded once more. "That is true."

Xiao Yingzi sighed. "So this is what you are offering again - your life."

The bat smiled at that. "You must admit, this time my offer is far more compelling."

"Do you expect me to teach the children the art as well?" She asked, glancing at the girl who had stopped hiding but still maintained a careful distance.

"I would be grateful," He agreed, "This… more than the surgery I inherited from my creator, is something that I can call my own. This is what I would consider my true inheritance for them."

Xiao Yingzi inclined her head at him. "I will consider that."

He nodded at her, satisfied with her answer. "If you wish to study this…" He held out the Blood Fusion Scalpel, turning the gripping end towards her. "Please, take your time."

As she took it from him, Xiao Yingzi realized that the scalpel felt strangely normal. She had expected it to have some effect on her mind, but it felt she was holding any other scalpel - only this was the color of clotted blood. "May I have some time to consider this?"

There was a crack as the old bat shrugged. "Do what you must."

Inclining her head in thanks, she retrieved her Banner-Pole Spear and stood up. The crowd around her parted as she turned and left, while the old bat behind her did not ask for the Scalpel back - he simply lay back and waited patiently for her return.

| | | | | | | | | |​

What do you think, Elder Teleos? She asked, holding the glittering scalpel up to the moonlight. She was back on the sand dune that she had started in, though this time she didn't bother to hide her presence from the bandits below. I don't think I quite understand what this is.

It's a nascent level tool, if only barely. He answered, after he finished the examination of the scalpel. I expect the original user may have used it once - perhaps as a demonstration - and then passed it down to an apprentice of a lower realm. That was enough to make it a treasure over generations of use.

Will it allow me to perform the procedure the creature proposed?

It will guide you when you perform this particular procedure and with the right knowledge, you may be able to use it on other forms of surgery as well.

I see. She replied, before leaning back. And that he could sense the Note of Despair meant that at the very least, his knowledge can aid me in my comprehension of that. In the best case, I gain Soul Investigation - speaking of which, did detect him reading my mind during our exchange?

No. He probed you certainly, but I don't think he dared to dig too deep out of fear of provoking you. However, I do believe he did not lie when he claimed to have that ability.

So that means that the plan at least is viable.

I suppose it is. The Elder agreed. I suspect the procedure would give you more than just the knowledge - I wouldn't be surprised if you are influenced by his memories.

While sympathy for his descendants is an acceptable price for his offer, would you be able to do something about that? Xiao Yingzi nodded at the bronze spear that held the Elder's Will. The spear can already filter the experiences of its previous holders towards me.

It is possible, He answered, after considering it for a moment. What of the clan's reaction to performing this procedure?

The bats should be fine so long as I take responsibility, but I believe I will need to spend a few years under observation to ensure the clan isn't suspicious of me. I will need to arrange something for them to cover that time period.

So everything seems to be in order then. The Elder said. I suppose that means you have already decided upon your course of action.

I have, Elder. Xiao Yingzi replied, nodding. However, I would be grateful for your advice if you have any.

There was a moment of silence, as the Elder considered how to respond. It is a little risky. He admitted. Too risky for my tastes, however the costs seem to be worth the risks so I won't stop you.

Very well, Elder Teleos. Xiao Yingzi replied, getting up from the sand dune. Thank you for your guidance. After feeling his acknowledgement, she leapt out of the dune and into the mine below, letting those within feel her coming. She felt the air whip her hair back as she faced the mine growing closer and closer, angling herself to hit it exactly where she wanted to.

Then she pulled her arms back, kept her body straight and slipped into the chimney. Just as she was about to hit the ground, the tight chimney space gave way to the open caverns of the mine and she flipped around, landing upon her two feet, earth cracking underneath her. She suppressed her aura and glanced at the young girl who she had taken hostage and was now staring at her with her mouth agape.

"Shall we proceed to the elder?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Um… Yes, ma'am!" The young girl replied, before running towards the inner mine and Xiao Yingzi quickly followed her. This girl… She mused, considering the girl as she awkwardly moved in front of her. She could work with this one.

| | | | | | | | | |​

Xiao Yingzi was back in the same central cavern as she had been before.However, this time it was empty save the old bat, who was simply waiting for her in the same position impassively. As reached the entrance, he nodded at the girl next to her. "Leave us, Fu." He said, and the girl lingered for a moment glancing between him and the centurion before retreating.

"Fu…" Xiao Yingzi mused, as the girl left. "You've named her after the character for bat?"

"No, I named her after the character for happiness." He corrected her, looking unusually somber. "It is what I hope for her future, though I hope the similarities ensure that she never forgets where she comes from."

Xiao Yingzi didn't approach him directly, instead giving him a wide berth as she studied the carving upon the walls. "What of the boy?"

"Fenghuang." The bat replied, causing Yingzi to look up at him incredulously. He simply chuckled at her expression. "The brat was always ambitious and never backed down, so I gave him a name that was worthy of that nature."

"I suppose there is a reason that he leads your raids." Xiao Yingzi mused, spinning her spear in her hand. By the time they had finished their exchange, she had come to a stop directly across from him and as she turned to him, she gripped her spear overhead like a javelin. As she tossed the weapon towards him, she saw him close his eyes as the spear struck his heart.

There was only a grunt as the impact echoed through the cavern and then she was kneeling next to him, the Blood Fusion Scalpel held in her hands. It moved instinctively, sinking into his body as if he were butter to her knife. Then his eyes opened and he gripped her spear, blood spurting out of his mouth as he attempted to speak.

"Any last words?" Xiao Yingzi asked, leaning back warily.

He cleared his throat, sounding like parched earth cracking when given water and then spit blood away from her. "Let my death be enough to earn your trust, centurion." He forced out, struggling as his starved body failed to resist his wound. "Let what I offer be enough to earn my people their freedom." He looked into her eyes, pleading. "Please."

"I will not go back on my word." Xiao Yingzi told him simply.

The old bat stared at her and then smiled, seemingly satisfied. He leaned back and closed his eyes, stopping his struggle as his hand fell back to his side. The only sign that he was still alive was the qi in his body and gurgling breaths he took as he body finally began to give up. She could see his body twitch every so often, as if he would attack her but even near death, his hunger did not master him.

Finally, he passed and two words escaped his mouth.

"Thank you."

Xiao Yingzi continued her bloody work.

| | | | | | | | | |​

The blood path had many variations, but the simplest was simply consuming your target and cultivating with the qi they released as they were digested. Fundamentally, this was a simple transfer of power with the unique traits of the target being broken down completely. When transferring a bloodline intact, you needed intricate arrays or bloodlines designed to be easily transferred and if you weren't careful, the transfer could easily cause rejection.

None of that mattered with the Blood Fusion Scalpel. It sunk into the flesh and seemed to become part of the body, allowing her to manipulate it as if she were working with clay. Incisions left no marks and when she separated something from her patient's body, it seemed to lose some important connection to the original body - allowing her to consume it herself without any fear of complication.

Even as she worked, a part of her replenished what energies she lost from a spirit stone held in her hand. The Elder kept an eye on her progress, watching as her efficiency fell as she began to absorb more and more of the old bat's qi. This was the blood curse affecting her, reducing her ability to cultivate from any other source. The clan had studied this extensively and so long as she didn't cross a certain threshold, she knew that it would be reversible.

The procedure was a delicate one. She needed to preserve not the bat's bloodline, but his very memories. The first parts of him that she removed filled her with a blurred flow of life, serving as an assistant to the blood cannibal who had created him. Then came the moment he slew his creator, forced into action by a flippant comment about getting rid of his siblings. As she gained the memories of his own procedure, her movements became surer and the memories became sharp and crisp.

Where he had channeled his qi into his cultivation and ascended, she didn't intend to commit to the blood path. Instead, once she had absorbed the memories, she burned the qi within her body and removed not only the unique traits of the old bat but the very humanity of it. The efficiency was so low, that the power that filled her would barely have replenished her reserves if she hadn't been drawing from a spirit stone at the same time.

But then, that was the point.

All she had left were slivers of memory that she drew into her mind. As she saw further into the old bat's life, she saw the operations he performed upon his own comrades. There were failures at first, but soon he could extend their lifespans. This was when they limited themselves to Jingshen caravans, drawing from the knowledge of their creator to identify their targets. As time passed, she came to the true prize she had risked this for.

With time on their hands, the bats began to experiment with their physiology. They developed their form of demonic tunes and it was imitation games of all things that led them to developing their formations. As the old bat observed how their souls resonated in those formations, he turned his own considerable knowledge of memories to the task and learned to draw memories without cutting people open.

Soul Investigation.

Only a few of his siblings managed to learn that art, and none to his level but it was enough to ensure that they had perfect information. Never overdoing things, never threatening the Jingshen to such an extent that they could afford the loss of face that complaining to the clan would entail. Then the old bat discovered how to allow them to have children and everything changed for them.

The memories she had of them now showed them very different from the woman she met and the man she saw. They were bat-hybrids, the same as their elders and they were… She remembered Fu as an empathic child. Always picking up on her elder's sorrow and becoming sad in turn. Her name was a joke to make her smile, as much as it was a wish for her future. Feng was oblivious, always making mischief and wanting to join the raids. It was he who chose his name, falling in love with the only winged beast in a retelling of the four heavenly beasts.

She remembered the impatience necessary to let them grow.

She remembered those tense moments of planning.

She remembered deciding that they would not be subject to the same tortured form as their elders for a moment longer than they needed to. Even if it required slaying Jingshen Experts to allow them to ascend. Even if it required risking the golden devil clan attacking them. The old bat's decision to sacrifice himself had been made long before she arrived.

As the memories of his final moments played in her mind, she saw the tense negotiations from his point of view. She saw the worry as he waited for her to make a decision, as the thought of her simply leaving came to his mind. She saw his final goodbyes and then experienced dying at her own hands. As the last moments of his existence flowed into her mind, she stopped and realized that her hand had moved to her eye.

Elder Teleos, it seems you didn't completely remove his influence. She said, wiping the tear that had fallen from her eye and stepped back from the corpse of the Old Bat.

I did. He simply said, causing her to glance at the tear in her hand once more.

I.. see. She replied, before wiping it away.

Instead of dwelling on it, she turned to see the bat of the fifth heavenstage who had stepped forward when she first arrived with Fu standing behind her. Seventy-Nine, Her mind supplied, by the order of his creation. For a moment, she wondered if the old bat had a name but her memories showed no signs of one. He hadn't considered it important. She could try to remember the number he was created around… but it wasn't that important.

"What's wrong?" She asked, having realized what they were concerned after reading their body language. It wasn't merely grief at what she had caused, but something else. Her head immediately snapped to the outside of the mine. "Where is Feng? He should be back by now."

"He left to rob a safe caravan today, E-elder." The girl quickly informed her, though despite her seeming acceptance of the centurion, she remained a healthy distance from her. "I'm worried and w-wish for permission to seek him out."

Xiao Yingzi thought back to their target for the night - a Jingshen Caravan, lightly guarded with no VIPs and a fairly large number of mercenaries. The perfect balance to ensure that the Jingshen wouldn't care to look too strongly if they consumed them, but that was before they had slain two Experts. Looking back on it with a bigger picture and the experience of playing the hunter, she could see it for what it really was - a trap.

They had been gone for a terribly long time.

"Don't worry, Fu." Xiao Yingzi said, smiling at the girl who hesitantly returned it. "I'll handle this issue myself. Please work with the others to prepare for relocation, we'll be leaving soon and you'll be coming with me to my place."

When Fu glanced at the elder next to her, the bat simply agreed with her and the girl ran to do their bidding. As soon as she was gone, the bat's posture changed and he stared at her with hate in his eyes. The song he sang for her was filled with anger, grief and worry. While Fu had lost yet another parent, the elders had lost their messiah. It was a natural, if regrettable feeling.

"I promised I'd protect them." She replied, inclining her head in acceptance. "I will keep that promise so long as none of yours interferes with me and mine."

The bat nodded in agreement, before telling her where Feng had gone but Xiao Yingzi simply held up a hand. "I'll handle this. I might bring trouble though, so get ready to run." Seventy-Nine was smart, so she knew he'd act on her instructions. Not bothering to wait any longer, she moved towards the corpse and pulled out the spear.

"Be ready." She warned him one last time, watching him stare wide-eyed at her bloody spear and then she was running through the mine, her memories letting her chart the shortest path to the chimney. As she ran through, she saw the bats looking at her with different degrees of grief and loathing but more importantly, she realized that she was hearing a new sound from them

It was their heartbeat… but not. It was the sound of their pulse and every single movement that they made but she heard not with her ears, but she felt it with her soul. Focusing upon herself she could hear the same sounds, only forming a symphony that reminded her too much for a familiar Note. Demonic tunes, she had previously mused, used rhythm to move the soul.

But what rhythm was closer to the soul than that of the body?

Even without realizing it, the sounds of one's body echoed outwards. Anything that had a soul could be heard in this manner and it required incredible mastery of oneself to hide this. Xiao Yingzi had hidden it when the bats were searching for watchers outside the mine, but she had hidden parts of her being from even a whale who was beyond Nascent Soul. Few others could match her level of self-control.

As she adapted to her new senses, she began to pick up sounds of grief in her passing. They covered it up with anger and hate but even so, she could hear how their heart ached. Though they suppressed their auras, likely knowing she had inherited the old bat's abilities, she could still hear the trembling of their souls. It was the simplest thing to see the sounds of the heart…

But couldn't she push it even further still?

Reaching the top of the chimney, she waited for a moment to steady herself and make sure she knew where Feng might be. The instincts that she had inherited from Old Bat urged her to release her own song and use it to figure out where they would be. However, the only note she could make was one of despair and that would kill all those who heard it.

That part of the old bat's skill-set was beyond her, but… she felt like she could feel something around her, even though the bats were now hidden by the ground. She closed her eyes and focused. It took her a moment of thought before she finally realized what it was and why it felt so familiar. When she had comprehended the Note of Despair, it had told her the story of the death of the turtle-child.

If the turtle-child could be killed, then didn't it mean that it was alive? If the turtle-child was alive, then didn't it mean that it had a soul? That was what she thought she was feeling, resonating with the Note within her. But it wasn't the soul sounds of the third turtle-child, for it was dead. No, it was a final faltering sound - a death cry that was already fading.

But it was still there to be sensed.

No wonder, the righteous called this practice 'Demonic Tunes'. Wouldn't any being with even the modicum of mastery, have to face this wail of despair before they could grow? How many would-be tunists turned away, dao hearts shaken by the deathcry of the very earth below their feets? No wonder, they simply labeled the art demonic and turned away from it entirely. However, she had comprehended the Song first, and only then was she learning to sense it.

To Xiao Yingzi, it was the sun.

Too profound to contemplate, yet it filled the world with its light. A colorless model of the world opened in her mind, far sharper than what the old bat remembered. She could feel the presence of Elder Teleos in her spear, patiently awaiting the end of her revelations. The bat-folk were below her, moving close to the corpse of their elder now that she was gone and added their own sounds to the baleful symphony of heaven and earth.

Much farther away, the boy who had gone to raid stood bloody and defiant but slowly retreating from an enemy. The number of bats who had left with him had fallen and behind him an expert followed, his heart singing of the sword as he cut down these bats one by one. He was an enforcer of the Jingshen who wanted them to run home, so that he could flush out the source of these bandits once and for all.

Her eyes opened.

| | | | | | | | | |​

The Jingshen Swordsman was a man in the flowing robes that often seemed to be the trademark of righteous cultivators. A green-jade vest on his upper body released a field of energy around him that would blunt coming blows. His belt was filled with talismans, each allowing him to use a different elemental attack and a sapphire pendant hung from his neck, distorting space - a life saving treasure that whisk him away should his life be threatened.

As he sensed the attack upon him however, it was his sword that he used to deflect it. Stepping aside, he moved his blade to parry aside a bronze spear. A banner fluttered behind it, distracting him for a crucial moment and then he sensed a presence behind him. Xiao Yingzi stood there, knees bent and earth cracked from impact, having leapt after her thrown spear. Lightning gathered in her hands as she moved to strike him.

His vest glowed as her fist impacted his back and the lightning was deflected. That was enough time for the swordsman to turn around and swing his sword, shattering the ground where she had just been standing but she had already moved to his side. A blood-red scalpel flashed as it moved towards his throat and the swordsman leaned back on instinct, a thin red cut upon his neck.

Xiao Yingzi jumped back, making distance between him and her as she reached towards her spear. "A sword without any special abilities wielded by a Jingshen scion who is a genuine master swordsman." She mused out loud, drawing his attention towards her. "You must be Jingshen Kai. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"A pale centurion bearing a bronze bannered spear." The man replied, eying her warily. "I have heard of you as well, Xiao Yingzi of the Golden Devil Clan."

"Oh? I don't suppose my reputation is enough that you would be willing to retreat?" She asked, looking at him hopefully.

"You are defending blood path scum." He answered, pulling out the talismans from his belt. "They have slain people who are important to my clan. Allow me to pass and my superiors will not demand your head from your clan."

Xiao Yingzi grinned and held out a hand, letting a crushed sapphire fall to the ground. "I'm sure that the Jingshen Clan will send a strongly-worded complaint." She replied, letting lightning surge around her body as she prepared to attack. "That doesn't matter when you will be dead."

The man's eyes widened as he saw his life-saving treasure crumble to the ground. Realizing her intent, the man didn't even hesitate. He tossed the talismans to the air and then he swung his sword through them, sending a blade of flame in her direction. She could feel him turn to flee as she casually stepped under his attack. His speed was such that it wouldn't take him far and she had some work to finish before she took him out.

Turning around, she saw Feng standing across from her. He was bloodied and battered but he still looked at her in defiance. Glancing at the other bats, broken and battered yet still willing to get up and gather around their child, getting ready to defend him with their lives if necessary. She needed them cleared out, but she had to consider how best to do that. After a moment's thought, she held up her hand.

With inherited skill, she summoned qi in her hand and condensed it into a red energy as dark as a drop of blood. The Blood Fusion Scalpel was bound to her now and as it formed, it glowed with a malevolent intent. This was not something as common as sword qi or spear qi, but the Scalpel Qi of a surgeon who had cut into flesh too many times. The qi in the scalpel had become tainted with bloodlust as sharp as the killing intent of a murderous swordsman.

To the bat-folk who were born under its ministrations, it was as familiar as their own mother. She heard gasps and suspicions as they saw it in her hand, but she spoke before they could form their own conclusions. "I came from the mine." She said, holding up the tool in her hand. "Let this serve as proof of my statements. Retreat and I will hold off your pursuer."

She didn't wait to hear their reply. Instead she turned away, tracking Jingshen Kai. He had suppressed his power by now and moved to a different direction than he had initially run to throw her off. With her new senses, he may not have even bothered. She could track the rapidly fading qi he had released with his step techniques and from there it was a simple matter of tracking the closest humanoid energy source.

Perhaps in a crowd, he might have lost her but even suppressed to a level of a mortal, he stood out to her senses in the middle of the desert. Leaning forward, she held up her spear and bent her knees, placing one hand to the ground for balance. Then she leapt forward, leaving the ground shaking from the force of her jump. She didn't bother to hide her power or her direction, letting the swordsman feel her coming.

The bat-folk behind her gasped at her strength and luckily, they obeyed her and leapt into the air, hoping to make some distance from this battle between experts. This suited her just fine as she felt the swordsman respond to her challenge by unleashing his own aura. Even from here, she could feel him take a stance and gather qi into his sheathed sword. A single strike to kill her as she arrived - it was an impressive resolve for one of the Jingshen scum.

He struck her at the middle of her arc, releasing a wave of sharp sword qi. It was too strong to easily block and it was hard for her to maneuver well enough to dodge it. She tossed her spear into the air and kicked against it, allowing the attack to flow past her while her spear went careening in the opposite direction. In this moment of vulnerability she saw Jingshen Kai hidden in the slipstream of his own attack, preparing another one.

A day ago, this attack would have caught her by surprise. Now, she simply reached out and grasped his vest. Pulling him towards her, she stamped his sheath with her leg and pushed his sword back in. The man's face widened in shock but before he could react, she leaned forward to his ear and whispered a single word.

"Despair."

Her heart trembled from the word as it impacted her as well. Yet, she had borne its complete song while the man before her had not. Blood dripped from his ear and his eyes rolled to the back of his skull as the whispered Note broke him. Holding him close, she reached out with her hand and her spear slammed into her palm as she fell. Placing his body into her storage ring, she maneuvered towards the ground.

The bats who had gone raiding had reached the mine by now and were discovering what had happened in their absence. It would be best to be there to ensure that it goes smoothly, and then she will need to introduce them to the clan. Filling the necessary reports would take up the rest of her time and then making arrangements for the bats, as she voluntarily submitted herself for evaluation to ensure that she had not been corrupted.

She had a lot of work to do.

-------------------------
[Soul Echo] [4 Impact] [T14(3) + Soul Farseer(1)]: An spiritual echolocation technique using demonic tunes. Though unable to use spiritual tunes herself without unleashing the Note of Despair, Xiao Yingzi is able to use the ever-present song in the environment instead to sense everything occurring in her surroundings. At her current level in Turn 15, nothing below Nascent Soul is able to hide from her perception.

 

[TheCount]

Misadventures of David!
part 10 turn 15 (508 words)
Confusion​

I opened my eyes with start, inhaling sharp and deeply. Looking around while standing up, i saw the bare walls of the small tunnel around me. But how did i get here? And why was i just lying around in a tunnel without supplies, weapons or even armor? Even my stick wasn't to light my way.... but i brought it everywhere!
On high alert, muscles tensed like springs, i strained my ears, listening if anything was coming, while trying to feel if there are any air currents moving, but there was nothing, nothing for minutes of waiting. Not even a breeze or the scraping of insects.

I sighed in relief, and sat down to think. What was the last thing i clearly remember? it was.... blue. Blue lights falling from... mushrooms?

"Oh.... i can't believe it. Why did i thought that was a good idea?" I said as my face met with my palms.

Mushrooms. Of every size and colors. In one of the Caves of the Cursed Mushroom clan. Who are sentient mushroom people. Who we visited to deliver their ordered goods and pick up what they produced for sale. Then... a sandstorm blocked the cave. So, what do i do? Wander into a park/garden with overgrown fungi without anything to catch the spores before i breath them in....
Why would they just leave them in the open? Maybe they aren't as affected by the spores of other mushrooms?

With a Groan, i laid back, massaging my temples. If.. no, not if, because i definitely did breath in some of those spores, then i probably passed out... Did some of the bats took me? hm, no, i wouldn't have woke up then... or not is such a peaceful place anyways. But then, what happened? Did i got kidnapped? Hm... no, the Cursed Mushrooms wouldn't have a reason to do that and the Golden Devils do not like people going missing in mysteriously near their cities...

But then, where is this place and how did i got here while unconscious...

Wait, unconscious? I got knocked out by the spores... of the mushrooms. And we did needed to take up some medical ingredients... was some grown in the park? Was that a park to begin with? Was i under some effect from the mushrooms and wandered off somewhere?

"Might as well start walking somewhere." i said aloud and kicked myself up.

Luckily, my clothes were still on me.... even though i had none of the pouches, bags or armor i wore on them. Small mercies, i guess.
Considering that i don't know where i am, i started searching for any clue as to how i got here. First, on the ground, finding nothing. On the walls, still nothing. Even looked at the ceiling and the was nothing either. Not even a foot print or drag marks, nor any seams for doors or array characters. Nor did my own movements caused a footprint to appear.

"What the... just where did i end up?" I said, and started walking forward.

------
Omake Bonus: I would like an LST, Thank you.

 

[no.]

Gaius Antonius & The Builder - Immaculate Conception​

An ingenious plan. A historic opportunity. A monumental war.

In just a few more years, the Centennial Trial was set to begin, but this time things would be very different. The offensive would be diverted entirely, leaving the Golden Devils free to wage war, as was their favorite pastime, unhindered. In this, their most vulnerable moment, the enemies of this great civilization planned to launch all manner of assaults, in response to alliances of convenience made against them.

The barbarians would be driven back, and in the furious fighting, glory and riches aplenty would flow. Under such circumstances, competition inevitably emerged - after all, every Legion wished to elevate itself to a higher status, to gain more resources, more lucrative and prestigious missions, greater sway within the Clan at large. The Stargazers were no exception, and it could not be said that Gaius Antonius was one to waste an opportunity.

"With all due respect Sir, why not just commission puppets?" Asked Penelope, following behind Gaius as he briskly walked across the Legion's camp toward the testing ground he had prepared in secret.

Gaius sighed and tilted his head skyward, dilated pupils wincing as they caught a glimpse of the sun. "Because puppets are stupid, Penny. Without an operator, they're useless. I need a fighting force that operates on its own. Real, thinking soldiers that we can make on the spot."

"Such a thing would be a very steep investment, especially in such a short timeframe. Everything else will have to work on quite a lean budget." The Amazon said, not quite sighing. No, a sigh would be too brash and insubordinate for such a straight-laced officer, so she merely let her tone grow firmer, adding more weight to her skepticism. "Forgive me Sir, but I fail to see the point of something this drastic."

"The point, my deeply uncreative Junior, is that I need more fucking men!" The King shouted, spreading his arms wide. "I've got five thousand here, and they're damn good, but that'll only get me so far. And for a good long time, ten thousand is the most I'm allowed. That's not enough either."

"A lopsided ratio of footsoldiers to officers is a dangerous thing, Sir. Communication might break down." Penelope shot back, unabated by the sheer energy of her superior. The people the two passed looked away, long since familiar with the exchanges that happened with Gaius got a huge new idea. "I mean no offense, but you hired me on the condition that I would speak frankly to you and without fear. I worry you might be too ambitious."

"These battles we're about to have are our chance to take this whole thing to the next level. Game time shit!" Gaius tried to snap his fingers several times, only to fail thanks to an excess of sweat between them, producing a sort of dull whacking several times before giving up. "Let's say each and every one of our boys gets enough action to kill three of the bastards on average; those are damn good numbers, that's fifteen thousand kills. Lotta wealth to go around from that, lotta clout. We'll see a whole lot of soldiers going up a Heavenstage or two in a short time."

Penelope furrowed her brow in consternation at the manic energy of her superior. "Sir, are you on stimulants right now?" She asked plainly.

"Yes, but that's not the important part. Use some imagination, Penny!" Gaius pointed to his temples, as if perhaps a visual aid would get such an idea across better. "Imagine if we had another five thousand soldiers; ones that didn't need to cultivate, didn't fear for their lives, didn't need to be paid. Let's say each of them kills three." He continued, giving his subordinate a pointed look

'Penny' finally relented, stopping dead in her tracks and drawing her mouth into a thin, grim line across her face. "Then, in that hypothetical scenario…" The Amazon began to answer cautiously, hesitant to enable her boss like this. "If all went according to plan, then all the spoils from another fifteen thousand kills would go to the five thousand actual soldiers."

"You're damn right…" Gaius muttered, rubbing his hands together and chuckling to himself. "The enemy won't know what hit 'em. Now, let me show you what the eggheads have cooked up."

——

Henrietta Stolo was stressed out of her mind, but what else was new?

Working for an ambitious eccentric like Legate Antonius held one strong benefit: when she took advantage of his manic episodes, she got more funding. Unfortunately, the young Centurion had finally bit off more than she could chew. Henrietta ran her fingers through her short, messy hair and inspected the comatose body before her. Standing a few feet back, another Centurion by the name of Anacletus Lupus leaned over a desk with a scroll laid atop it, charcoal in hand and ready to take notes.

Before her, surrounded on all sides by a coffin-like, array-lined container, was… something. Not a human, really, and depending on one's definition, not an animal either. After all, animals were born, either from eggs or directly from a womb - they were not built.

Its skin was pale, as infusing the Bronze would only complicate their project at this point. It was entirely without hair too, so as to make monitoring and testing easier. It was fairly thin and nearly seven feet tall, built for speed and endurance more than strength; the muscles could be enhanced once they had a model that lived long enough to reach the battlefield.

The facial features were not quite humanlike, though. The nose was broad and somewhat flat, to make it resistant to breaking. The skull was thick and the forehead sloped, to deflect blows. The eyes were large for good vision, but set rather deep into the face, again for protection. The small chin, flat teeth and square jaw provided additional resistance to injury. All in all, the experiment's head looked somewhat like a helmet; this was a creature meant first and foremost for combat.

This carried over to the bones, which had been thickened compared to a human's in places where it was possible. This was primarily in the limbs, although the ribs and spine had a bit of extra mass as well; as much as could be managed without a major drop in flexibility. The organs, too, were mostly like a human's but modified for combat; thicker and more numerous veins for greater bloodflow, and a larger heart to pump all of that blood. A third lung, so compensate for the heart's greater demand. The stomach and intestines were shrunk down a bit to make room for all of that - this expendable creature wouldn't be eating normal food, but a compact, nutritious paste, and so the digestive system was not a major issue.

There were no genitals, and while the experiment's impact-resistant face could be said to look masculine, inasmuch as it looked like a human face at all, it had no sex in any real sense. Dealing with that had in fact been one of the pair's greatest challenges - hormonal and humorous problems were nearly as likely to destroy the subject's body as heart attacks, strokes and ruptured arteries were.

It was not beautiful, but Henrietta held a sort of mild affection for the beast she had built nonetheless.

Each new model spasmed horribly, could only manage to walk a few steps, and expired in a matter of hours. Though a powerful warrior in theory, these fleshy recreations of a popular kind of puppet design simply weren't equipped to properly hold a Will yet; almost nothing was. True, each new model lasted longer than the last and moved more easily, but none had been truly viable. The last one had lived for fourteen hours, and this one probably wouldn't go past sixteen.

When the door to her underground workshop flung open, the alchemist Centurion knew immediately who it was. No one was allowed in here aside from the few assistants who were also in on the project, unless they had the permission of Gaius Antonius, Legate of the Stargazers. It was an old bunker, re-used from the Thousand Forts built to withstand Cannibal attacks a century and a half prior. A bit cramped, but it did provide a lot of security.

No one else but Gaius would simply walk in without forewarning, and so, Henrietta snapped to attention automatically. Anacletus got into position a split second later, saluting beside her.

The King looked casual enough in his demeanor, but it was hard to not be nervous when her superior stood two heads taller than both her and her coworker. Without saying another word, Anacletus fell back, stroking his beard in a soothing motion and letting Henrietta handle the talking as usual.

"Uh, good evening, Sir! What can we do for you?" Henrietta stammered out, trying to feel out the mood.

"It's morning." Gaius chuckled, prompting her to look over his shoulder - sunlight was indeed shining through the bunker's entrance. "And I've come to show Penny here that this project has a chance."

The Empty King stepped forward, letting the Centurion in question enter through the small doorway, and leaned over the storage unit. "Yeesh, it gets uglier each time I see it. Can't we get something a bit prettier?" Gaius joked as he inspected the specimen.

Henrietta swallowed thickly and slowly gave her report, one heel bouncing on the floor as she spoke. "Sir, our most recent model survived for fourteen hours and six minutes before dying of a heart attack. We've improved the integrity of the circulatory system, so we believe we can make this new one last over sixteen, and with increased physical strength besides."

"Not even a whole day, and they've been getting how much funding for ten months?" Penelope asked, raising one eyebrow impressively high.

"You're supposed to get more resources soon now that we've cut some more corners, but…" Gaius winced, running his fingers over the rim of the storage unit. "This ain't making me too confident."

Henrietta winced; of course her Legate would expect some kind of miracle from the first year of production. He was the sort of person who was used to miracles. "I'm afraid this model has plenty of flaws, Sir. It will take us more time to smooth everything out. We're breaking new ground here, building Cultivator bodies in this sort of way…"

Indeed, it wasn't the sculpting of flesh that was novel, but the idea of mass-production. Were Henrietta allowed to be more extravagant with her creation, to use more rare materials and spend more money, she could certainly make something functional. Hell, Anacletus could build an artificial man in three days if given no other restrictions. But a body functional enough to house simple Wills, powerful enough to fight on the front lines, and above all else simple enough for Gaius to conjure en masse was a very tall order.

Gaius took a pull of his cigar, glowering down at the timid officer. "War's coming soon, and this doesn't cut it. By all means, keep revising your designs, but we need a prototype we can throw at the enemy in waves as soon as possible. You can improve it all you want after that."

"I-it's as you say, Sir, but an organic body is a lot more complicated than a puppet, even if it does interface with a Will more easily…" She tentatively replied, her voice growing a bit softer with each word until she was barely audible. Why? Why couldn't anyone understand how complicated this sort of work was? 'Build me mass-produced artificial men, I'll handle the Wills' was not remotely the simple command Gaius seemed to believe it was.

What didn't help either was that Gaius was vain and flashy at times. He didn't have the patience for the scientific details, nor did he care that the fundamentals were improving in leaps and bounds; he wanted something that could be used for a demonstration.

"Henrietta, Anacletus, I'll be frank with you." Penelope spoke up, folding her hands behind her back and looking down at the experiment with a critical eye and a sickened expression. "Can you actually have these… beasts ready for mass-production in time? From what the Legate tells me, your progress has been incremental at best for the past six months."

"We assure you, Sir, if the only things you need are combat power and the ability to be controlled by a Will, then there are a few shortcuts we can still make. These incremental improvements help us pave the way for bigger changes." Anacletus cut in suddenly, putting a reassuring hand on Henrietta's shoulder and stepping up to meet their superior's eyes. Gaius seemed bemused - The short, stout alchemist didn't speak more than he had to, so to see him take initiative in a conversation like this was unusual.

"There are more breakthroughs we're working on here, and when we can implement those, the organism will become far less complex, allowing us to hone in on the flaws. We don't need to store it long-term; they'll be going into battle over and over as soon as they're created. They don't need spiritual anatomy complex enough to cultivate either." He nodded to Henrietta reassuringly, bidding her to take over. The sudden shift in the energy of the conversation seemed to please their Legate, who conjured up an ashtray on a nearby table and tapped his cigar on the edge.

The physician stroked her chin, trying to look like she had it more together than she really did. "Indeed, that will help out a lot once we get it working. An artificial creature like this wouldn't be stable enough to ascend anyway. We could greatly simplify the meridian network; that would make them more resistant to injury with only a small drop in qi efficiency."

Penelope seemed a bit less disdainful, albeit still skeptical. Gaius, on the other hand, looked relieved. "Well, I'm sure you can get it all done. Big things are coming, and I won't be around to supervise you when it's go-time."

"Sir, yes Sir!" The two scientists said in unison, both giving a sharp salute. The sooner they were alone again, the sooner they could get back to catching up with their timetable.

—-

With time, of course, the project did improve. As the Clan prepared for another wave of war amidst the sea of conflict that made up their lives, rumors began to spread through the Stargazers' ranks about a diabolical scheme concocted by the Legate and his pet nerds. Artificial bodies, to house the Wills of the dead and bolster the ranks of the Legionnaires. This soon came to be known as the Revenant Project, and by the time said project neared its completion, many already believed it to be true.

Returning from the Quintia Manor and on his way to the battle that might very well be his last, Gaius stopped by Henrietta and Anacletus' latest laboratory. As usual, it was constructed in whichever of the Thousand Forts was closest to the Legion's current location; in this case just ten miles from the main camp. When he arrived, he found that he wasn't the only visitor - the other key participant had already arrived.

The newest iteration of the Revenant looked crude on the outside - cruder than the last one, in fact. 'Simplify, simplify, simplify' had been the mantra of the project, finally arriving at this, a genuinely stable specimen. Capable of surviving for up to six months on its own, and over twice as long with regular maintenance. That meant that in a properly supplied Legion, each generation of Revenants would live for one year. Good enough, for now.

Replicating the Blood of Bronze had remained an impossibility for now; too expensive and too complicated. It remained a pale thing, but now it had leather-like skin resembling the hide of a wild beast. The thick, armor-like head was mostly the same, though it now had a larger jaw and a small raised ridge on the top of the head which made it look a bit like a gorilla's skull. Apparently, this shape increased the creature's biting power, which in turn helped the rest of the body generate power. Gaius knew gritting one's teeth helped with landing hard, forceful strikes, but how did gritting harder make one hit harder? He supposed this was why he wasn't the one building the Revenants.

The body was still seven feet in height and more muscular than before. The two alchemist Centurions had decided in the end that they would in fact sacrifice some flexibility for brute strength and running speed, as a narrower range of motion meant the nervous system could be made ever so slightly less complex. This large size also allowed room to store a larger amount of qi, more than the standard Fifth Heavenstage Legionnaire would be capable of holding.

A variety of natural weapons such as claws, blades or venom had been debated, but in the end, this particular specimen had been constructed without any so as to meet the deadline. Its four-fingered hands could wield weapons just fine, and reducing the number of digits on the hands and feet had made the limbs easier to get right.

In short, what lay on that slab would be what you might get if you asked a young child to draw you a warrior. There was so much room to grow, but at least they had an effective starting point now.

Gaius turned to the other man, who stood across from the alchemist duo, looking down at the test subject thoughtfully. The Seeker tipped his hat and smiled. "It's been a while, Builder. I'm sorry to call you over on such short notice; we really got down to the wire making this Revenant viable - got it done with just a month to go. Told ya my nerds could do it."

It is very, very rare for any member of the Brotherhood to think of resting. The single day in a month or year they call 'vacation'. But after the preparations for the Trials, that secret mission by the will of Old Gold, the forced work by the will of their original legate to make 'the best doggos ever'. And the pain of knowing that Abel Angelus is dispirited. Usually that would break a Man.

Fortunately they are Devils. And like a Man can shake off the feelings of war by going in a new war. The Brotherhood can shake the tiredness of work with more work. Great work. Work that will save lives.

The Legate Gaius commands that there will be some great work that will protect the Clan. Was all the Brotherhood needed to go even further beyond.

So, with still dirt on their bodies from the digging they just did to clear a path, with the Builder still being hit by the effect of a curse that made him a 13th heavenstage by accepting said curse. They all beat their tiredness and move forward.

They rushed to where the Stargazers were located. After some days of double duty march, they finally meet once more the King Gaius.

"By your will, Legate. Will start now." the Second Builder said. Then the Brotherhood starts another day of work.

The members of the 13th brother crew moved urns, disk-wills. Working and preparing new corpses from 'mortal' members of the Brotherhood that failed to become cultivators and die from old age. The (second) greatest enemy of their family.

Those brothers under the 13th brother dedicated their whole lives for this kind of craft, to the point they use skulls of people they loved deeply as their helmets. That is, when said people die from one reason or another. So, one can say they are fanatics even compared to The Brotherhood 'usual' members.

Others members help in the ways they could. By giving resources and/or money from what they craft, and/or helping with their knowledge of (mortal) craftwork, or just by giving their Qi in big formations.

The Builder, as a 13th heavenstage, got the lion share of the work. His was the duty to finish the preparations to turn 'disk-wills' into these 'spheres-wills', the delicate transfer of the souls of dead brothers and ancient ghosts from the curse land. And the use of the 'Ghoststone'. To make the project to be far cheaper than it should. Far faster than it should. And far greater than the Builder could do.

To finish, the Builder built a 'Abel-class' computer to serve as a core for these spheres-wills when they were not in use. In the same way Abel made the way for 'the Brotherhood Heaven'. A place the wills/ghosts can share their information and become greater than the sum of their parts.

One can say they Built A Hell for their own. A place where the ghosts will train forever, a place they will fight forever. Fight even their own brothers. And share what lessons they learn until 'rank' and 'disparity' appears among them. In order to make the best soldiers possible.

This is a sacrifice the Brotherhood would gladly do to themselves. They will do everything to make a better future for the kids after all. That said some would say that 'Hell' looks, in action, like a Gu's jar probably means that The Brotherhood went too far.

—-

And that was that. Everything had come together perfectly, inventing a whole new sort of blasphemy which lay in front of them on that stone slab. Well, it wasn't like the Golden Devils could get cursed much worse than they already had been.

All the chemical compounds upon which a body was built had been constructed to perfection. All the valves and tubes, all the squirming, pulsing things, all the pressures and tensions which pulled the body every which way until it reached an equilibrium. All of it, arranged just so. The resulting contraption of flesh, brought into the world with all the things which would allow for life, did in fact live. But it only lived. With no soul, it could not form new ideas, new thoughts, and so thoughts would have to be inserted manually.

Housed in the chest, behind the lungs and in front of the spine, was a sphere of Gravebronze that would let this happen: a hollow vessel, connected to the brain by thin, flexible tubes which emerged from the back and plugged into ports in the skull. Into this sphere, a Will would be placed, alongside enough soul-stuff to stimulate a degree of independent thought. And as for the Will? The Ghoststone, such a fabulous little object, made the collection of weak Wills trivial, and had been brought into the possession of those strange brothers by the whims of fate. A perfect match, and a perfect template from which to base the Will-vessels of the Revenants.

Only one thing remained now: turning this vessel into a true soldier.

"W-we will now commence the testing of version 3.22 of the Ghoststone Revenant." Henrietta declared, wobbling on her feet and barely awake. A surprising amount of her skin and hair had gone green in just a few years, and the same could be said for Anacletus; the project had damn near killed them, but they seemed confident in the results.

"Let's hope this all paid off, shall we?" Gaius said, laughing nervously. "Trust me, I'm as nervous as you… well, almost."

He turned to the Builder and held out his hand. With his other, he pointed a finger at the Revenant's chest and cut it open with a thin beam of yellow light. "Everything should be ready to go. Give me a Will-Sphere, whichever one you wanna bring back first. If everything's working properly, they should be able to control the body and move around. And if that works…" Gaius loudly clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "Then we do the fun part."

The start seems too weak. Dispirit. And when someone is about to raise their dead one should deeply focus on WILL and HEART. The new warriors were too ready to just wait for instructions. And like the fourth brother says 'the first impression is the one that lasts the longest'. Together with 'always make a show'.

So, with the Ghoststone in his hands the Second Builder start to (horrible) murder a song to bring his fallen brothers and sisters (including the new ones) to the appropriated state of mind/spirit.

A song of the land of Pleuron. Made by a former legend. A song no member of the Brotherhood could accept in their hearts gives the main idea in its verses. And a music that fills his family hearts with the need to fight that fate.

So the Second Builder starts to sing. Loud and Badly.

"No! Regrets." Who among his family can say this without lying?

That alone made the Revenant shake. And made the ghosts looking and waiting for their time to become sphere-wills to literally raise from the ghoststone.

"No! I will not have any regrets" more and more those new warriors shake. Some almost moved away from the formation (of ghost legionaries). Eager to fix some regrets. Or fight for the clan once more.

Gaius gave a deranged grin and nodded enthusiastically at the display. "That's it! That's the kind of can-do attitude we all need more of! Nobody gets it, nobody understands that fire that'll burn you alive if you don't keep going until you can't move! That's what makes you a winner!" With a snap of his fingers, he conjured up a flask of whisky and took a big swig. "It's a fucking party! A resurrection party!"

Given the implicit permission to continue. But still not given no instruction for them to move (since only Gaius can do that). The Builder continues to (badly) sing. And hit a key part that always. ALWAYS. Make any elder angry.

"All the things that went wrong" some of the new warriors start to raise even more. And even some ancient ghosts left the ghostones. These ones come from the cursed homeland. And they were eager to enter the new formation.

"For at last I have learned to be strong" the Revenant's months start to open wide in anger (even without the sphere-will). In denial since they all know where the song is going. New muscles strain the new body.

"No! No regrets" some ghosts start shaking their heads in a negative way.

"No! I will have no regrets" there is just too much to do. They will always feel regret.

"For Grief doesn't last" it certainly does. For centuries.

"It is gone" "NO!" some of the new warriors yelled to heaven in negative. They are finally breaking rank? Good. These are the frontliners. They must be the Fury.

"I don't have any limits, I never did!" Gaius shouted, continuing to rant as the Brotherhood sang. "These earthly vessels, this meat and blood, it's all just shackles! It's built around us to make us think we were ever human! The truth is, each and every one of us is infinite! I can do anything if I work hard enough! The entire Golden Devil people, I'll raise them out of this world! I'll give them a better one, I'll give them a hundred!" He continued to take swig after swig from the flask, getting louder and louder and prompting the Brotherhood to get louder in turn.

Now perhaps would be the time to shift the song. After all they were murdering it already.

"We will never forget the past" and now to truly (Break) where the music should go. Still just this new beat already made the new soldiers to stomp the ground following the ritme of the song.

"And the memories we have" they start to hit the soil with any weapon they had or was close by together with the beat of their feets.

"I have just a SINGLE desire!" and that. Is the core part of the Brotherhood. So much so that many sing the same verse without any kind of preparation. And was not that horrible to the ears.

"That is Both Good and Bad" and now each brother starts singing their own version. It should be beyond ugly. But it clashes less than it should. For in their core they were of one spirit.

"I will even throw myself in the fire!" and with that the Builder looks to Legate Gaius if they should march outside or not. The new soldiers looked to be eager enough.

Gaius extended his shaking hand toward The Builder, meeting his eyes with his own delirious gaze. "Please… please, give me the sphere. There will never be a time more perfect than this…" He breathed fast and heavy, as if he were sprinting, or perhaps suffocating. "Give it to me… the power to create life…"

And with that The Second Builder bowed and gave the Legate the 'Seed' (sphere) that certainly will grow (with love and fury) into a mighty tree.

Gently, gently, ever so gently, Gaius commanded the sphere to float into the Revenant's chest, guiding it until it connected with the little hollow spot behind the lungs. With a wave of his hand, the incision he had made in its chest closed up. The artificial human spasmed slightly and seemed like it might rouse right away, but soon fell back asleep.

"Come on… come on, wake up…" Gaius commanded, voice quivering. By this point, the two scientists had gotten very, very far away, wary of what might happen if this final attempt failed. "Wake up, buddy, it's your birthday. Stand at attention for me, would you?"

It rockets to a ready position, artificial muscles shaking with unrestrict desire. Eyes searching for any possible cannibal, enemy. Or someone bullying the young.

Gaius stumbled backwards, laughing. "That's one hell of a response time! You can understand me, right? You know what I'm saying?" The Revenant nodded in response. Gaius stroked his chin in thought for a moment. "But do you actually understand? What's nine plus seven?"

He glanced back at the Brotherhood, many of whom had once been peasants in tiny villages. "Okay, bad question. What is…" Gaius pointed at his esteemed guest. "That man called?"

Getting more calm, the relevant say "this is one in life sacrificed its name. This one was one among the crew of 'the eleventh Brother'. In death pehars this one should regain the name of Marius". "Also this one dies at the age of 89, this one knows the glory of Devil's Math. it should be ninety seven" then it blinks "no! sixteen".

The Builder shook his head, perhaps the training was too hard. If a number as small as that made his fallen brother fail. And the Brotherhood use numbers to call each other. So, he certainly knew a 'sixteenth' for example.

Still the new soldier has the spirit, the (angry) heart, and clearly knows that even in anger he should obey Legate Gaius. So far, this test is going great.

"Okay." Said Gaius, suddenly calm again, at least on the surface. "Okay, alright, we get to do the fun part after all!" Making a big, sweeping gesture with both hands, Gaius called forth all of the Will-spheres in the Brotherhood's possession, several thousand in total, and arranged them into neat rows. "Everybody get back, way back, this is gonna be big! 'S gonna take everything I've got!"

As all present scrambled to create an appreciable distance between themselves and The Empty King, the air began to ripple with a powerful heat haze. Gaius dumped massive torrents of qi into the air around him, gathering the light of the noontime sun and making it as dim as twilight for over a mile all around. Little motes of golden light clustered around each and every one of the Will-Spheres, growing brighter and brighter as they were shaped by Gaius' will.

Memorizing the structure of an object is a bit easier than truly understanding everything about it; that was one benefit of Stars of Gold; as long as he understood all of the parts and what they were made of, Gaius could create something if he had enough qi to do it. Human beings were, ultimately, made of parts in the same way machines were, and the Revenant had been designed to be anatomically simpler than humans, which made memorizing every nook and cranny easier still to do.

"We've got a model that works, which means we've actually got five thousand!" Gaius declared, crossing his arms at the wrist over his waist. "With the nine sacred keys I open the nine secret doors and unite the nine holy crowns in the name of the true King!"

He wobbled on his feet, nearly passing out from the exertion. Even as a Single Pillar Artist with the Blood of Bronze, putting 99% of one's entire qi supply into one technique was a foolhardy and painful thing to do. "May the winds of North, East, South and West bless this birth with fortune and victory! STARS OF GOLD!"

Flinging his arms wide, Gaius unleashed the full extent of the raw potential he had been building in one wave of creative force. All at once, the blinding light around the five thousand Will-Spheres took solid form, creating five thousand Revenants, all standing in formation. The Seeker's own technique knocked him over, leaving him flat on his back, gasping for air and soaked with sweat. Blood oozed from his nose and the corner of his mouth as he strained to raise his head and look upon his handiwork.

It would be hard to describe this sound. Maybe the 'sound of silence', for what you can describe the sound of the void? Five thousand Revenants breathing at once using the 'Builder Breathing styles' with bodies far stronger than any of them had in life shook the earth, made a wind of their own. But there was no sound. Because they took almost all the air so no sound could be made. The rising members of the Brotherhood used the first 'spark' of life of their own bodies to do something each and every single member of their family carries in their heart as their 'motto'.

They Breath Qi and start the 'Oasis Formation' to give their Legate their (tiny) power, their (tiny) stamina and their (tiny) regeneration.

After all 'One For ALL. And All for One' is almost their religious belief.

Feeling a bit of energy returning to his exhausted body, Gaius painfully hauled himself back to his feet, pushing away the hair that had fallen over his eyes. "Good. Yes, yes that's very good." He drawled with a satisfied smile. The intense mania that overcame him before seemed almost like it had been drained out alongside his qi, leaving behind a clearer perspective. "Nerds!" he shouted, prompting the two Centurions to run to his side and salute.

"Gather the medical corps, as many as we can spare. Line these new recruits up and give them all a checkup." Gaius paused for a moment to breathe deeply, still gathering himself. "Get 'em all processed, get the Centurions up to speed, all of that. Penny will help."

"A-and you, Sir? What do you want to do now?" Henrietta asked nervously, looking out warily at the crowd of identical Revenants.

"Take a fuckin' nap, that's what. Damn, why'd I do 'em all at once…" Gaius muttered, pointing at one of the Revenants. "You. Bring me back to camp. Put me in bed, have somebody leave food and water for when I wake up." His command given, Gaius promptly let himself pass out, falling into the Revenant's arms.

Marius, the new (temporary) leader among the Revenant, nodded to that. Carrying the King in his arms like he was his own beloved son. After being sure the Legate was secure he looked for the rest of the new warriors.

"Secure the Commander, continues the Oasis Formation until commanded otherwise by him" then he point at some of his brothers "you and you check if the Commander's tent for traps" then he point to another "you will find a living member of the brotherhood to make sure they eat some part of the food to check for poison"

The scientists look to that with some concern since that was not entirely what the King said. The Builder just followed the 'horde' of Revenants. To see their reaction and write a report of what they would do on their own.

He continues to watch while they start commanding the 'eternal aspirants' trying to secure a better bed which was an impossible task given the aspirant that made that one was a master craftsman and that was already his 'Magnum Opus' , better food (almost impossible) and trying to find (good) water. Still, the 'horde' of new warriors were taking the safety of their new leader with the same zeal that any member of the Brotherhood would show for their kids.

So, he did not fear any kind of (significant) problems. Everyone here was family.

The Curse in the Builder veins pulsed.

We ALL are.

—-

no.: This was a concept I was ruminating on for a while, and now I've finally made it a real thing. We've reached a point in the story where a lot of characters have an incredibly broken ability, and when you combine those things you get some insane stuff. The Revenants were a concept that went through a lot of iterations in my mind, just as they went through dozens of iterations to create an acceptable prototype in-universe. Them ending up looking like Neanderthals wasn't something I intentionally thought up; that's just the face I ended up imagining when I thought "if you designed a human head to be as durable as possible without removing any senses, what what that look like? Still, the idea of this artificial, "primitive" human looking like a literal proto-human ancestor ended up being quite thematically poignant.

Gaius and The Brotherhood occasionally resonate in their madness, which causes them to rile one another up quite a bit. The sheer exhilaration of having his legion fielding this secret weapon in the coming battles is also getting him very excited. Well, that and the fact that he might be about to die, so leaving behind a legacy as big as possible, and being there to see that legacy being left, matters to him.

This omake, in addition to that one scene in my previous one where Gaius creates a modern pistol out of thin air, are also here to demonstrate to the reader the sheer power and potential of Stars of Gold as a technique. It's not a do-anything power as it has some fairly straightforward and rigid limitations, but it sure can do a whole lot, and Gaius doing big, flashy displays of wizardry is something I enjoy writing a lot.

 

[adamashield]

Adding here my link for the collab

Many thanks for the opportunity, it was really fun^^. Plus, the muse was yelling at me to find a chance to put that song for some time.

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

Gaius Antonius & The Builder - Immaculate Conception An ingenious plan. A historic opportunity. A monumental war. In just a few more years, the Centennial Trial was set to begin, but this time things would be very different. The offensive would be diverted entirely, leaving the Golden Devils...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Sending the ping here. one more omake for the omake throne

@Swordomatic, @Alectai, @Quest, @TehChron, @Insane-Not-Crazy, @Humbaba, @ReaderOfFate, @Kaboomatic, @no.)

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

Eirene of Nowhere Twenty First Omake - The Tale of a Cat on the Hunt

Let me tell you a story about a Cat. Now this is not a tale of a cat but the fable of a Cat, for there is quite a difference between the two. The Cat was a prince of its kind, terrible on the hunt and handsome in worship. But a prince is still lesser than a king and the Cat could not abide being in the shadow of others.

"Was it not cruelly cunning and inescapably quick, its victories on the prowl feted by the Good Folk who run wild in the hunt? Had it not matched the strength of the Hundred-Armed Forgers or weathered the kiss of the Thousand-Headed Serpent?" The Cat grumbled to itself, displeased with its many pleading toys whose cries no longer pleased, "Why then did others overlook its glory and praise the unworthy? Surely that crude quartet of apes carousing wildly could not match its glory from their little hill full of noxious flowers and insipid fruit? Or could that preening abomination of mismatched avian idiocy match the Cat's beauty?"

Sorely vexed and growing ever more irritable at those who denied it its due acknowledgement, the Cat roused itself and sought the counsel of the one it would consider slightly wise in such matters. To the Weaver it went, making a request of that which saw the course of all things. The Inevitable and the Inescapable did not frighten the Cat for what was fate but herald to its as yet unveiled glory.

"How do I take my rightful place among the stars and claim my proper place as a king?" The Cat asked the Spinner of Life's Thread.

"To be more than a prince, you must have a Name that exalts you as greater than a prince. By theft, by purchase, by gift or however you may, you must have a Name worthy of your desire. But only one ever can you take so you must search and choose wisely." The End of All answered.

The Cat returned to its den and brooded on this answer. A Name it must have but how to find and choose correctly? It tossed and turned in thought, invigorated by hope and paralyzed by fear. Madness infected and tortured the Cat for the path forward lay before it yet whence to go it could not decide. To court the stately courts of the Heavens or challenge the perilous gauntlet of the Hells? Perhaps it was better to chance the paradoxes of the Furthest Beyond or sift the red dust of the Middle Realm?

Greed warred with indecision and tote the Cat in half, in quarter and many more pieces as its multitude of lives provided. Ninety nine directions it chose to walk, a thousand and one journeys it set itself to travel. Always seeking and searching the Name above all Names that would be the prize worthy of it.

So there is a Cat, many Cats walking the winding ways of existence. It looks for a Name, supreme and majestic that a King of Cats could claim. Perhaps you've seen it in the corner of your eyes or perhaps it's sauntered right up to you, bold as can be. If you ever should meet it, remember these words and keep your Name to yourself. It has been a long search, always looking but never finding and the Cat has grown very good at taking what it never keeps.

Word count: 600 words. This popped in my head while trying to plot out Eirene's journey in Turtlebone.