Grave to Cradle - Cradle Crossover Part 2
The fundamental truth of civilisation is that someone has to clean up the shit.
Erphon Kealana's family had been cleaning up the shit for generations. They had developed sacred arts around it. They'd developed an identity around it.
A less pleasant truth about civilisation is that people love to look down on those who do the dirty jobs.
Erphon had been spat on when he'd developed his family's plaguekeeper iron body. People had stopped spitting when he'd advanced to gold by taking in a disease spirit remnant, but he still saw how they looked at him.
Disgust mixed with fear.
The Kealana family had spent generations cleaning up the shit and recycling it into something useful. But why bother when the shit was everywhere? It was in the streets spitting and hissing and ignorant.
It had been around that time that Erphon's family might have started to describe him as going off the rails. Hanging out with the wrong crowd. Going to the wrong bars. Getting drunk and starting fights in said bars. Petty thievery.
It had simply grown from there. Theft led to using his techniques and family knowledge to hide said loot. That led to smuggling… and eventually he'd been asked to use his family's arts to go from hiding loot to hiding his first dead body. An old corrupt scumbag of a guard called Brassus, who finally threatened one of his targets one too many times.
It had been a real turning point for Erphon. Seeing Brassus' corpse melt away and return to the earth under his family's arts. Watching as new life, tiny invisible life took hold and turned the corruption into something beautiful. It had led him back to the truth. A truth so fundamental that he'd almost forgotten it with how obvious it was. People too could be recycled. It was done all the time. Society was based around it. Remnants were harvested to create weapons, constructs, or to allow for a Sacred Artist's advancement. Many noble families even considered it a great honour (and highly effective for their future advancement) to ascend to gold by taking in the remnant of a deceased Elder of their own family.
If the sacred arts were built on cycling, then their society, their equipment, their tools were based on recycling.
Erphon Kelana looked upon society and vowed to give back in a way none of his family would dare to. And he vowed to get paid well for doing it.
In the nine years since he'd reached gold he'd made good progress in his goals. His smuggling operations had expanded across the city. He was no longer part of petty thief rings but running them, and his black market, and more importantly, grey market contracts had built up to an impressively wide ranging level.
A wide range of crafters knew to come to him if they wanted materials, and they knew better than to ask too many questions about where those materials had come from. They might get answers.
The answer of course, was remnant-legging. A small number of inns spread across the city had his people in them, on the lookout for worthwhile targets that would not attract too much attention. Those inns also had 'friendly' bartenders with unusually strong drinks, and somewhat unpleasant basements with underground entrances.
The compost heap of life, recycling shit into fertiliser. Of course, these days Erphon didn't need to get personally involved in the compost heap - he had people for that now - but it was nice to keep a hand in every so often. See the beauty of the process. Not to mention that it kept the help sharp. Nothing like the boss showing up personally to remind you that you could be the boor sucker on the slab if you screwed up too bad.
Today, as he occasionally did, Erphon was indulging another habit. People watching. Moving through the great morasses of the city, seeing the ugliness of it helped Erphon think, freeing up his mind to wander about alongside his feet, occasionally returning to consider the expansion of his little garden. He'd been at it for about an hour before his attention had been captured by an amusing sight.
A bronze skinned and well muscled man with orange red hair and a number of circular ridged scars across his body, which were being shown off by the holes in the remains of a set of robes, making the most ludicrously poor attempt to move inconspicuously through the city that Erphon had personally ever seen.
There was no doubt he was a sacred artist, his ragged and torn outfit practically screamed it, but it seemed to offer no real clues as to the social status of its owner. It was clearly made of decent cloth, but was not obviously of superior or inferior quality. With such a difficult to discern social origin it could have made an excellent disguise… were it not for previously mentioned huge holes in it.
Then there was his presence. It was brilliant for sneaking, Erphon couldn't notice a whisper of power. Which was the problem, as what Erphon certainly
was noticing was all the people the man was bumping into thanks to the man's clearly amateurish attempt to veil himself. He'd gone much too far with it, cutting off any sense of his own presence or advancement at all. Useful for skulking around a house at midnight perhaps, but it was the middle of the day on a crowded street. It just made him stand out to anyone paying attention, and the constant collisions and near misses with those pedestrians who weren't paying attention was making it worse.
He'd also seen enough to peg his target as at least a low gold. Erphon had seen a glow in his mouth as he moved through the streets. Not nearly as obvious as many gold signs, especially during the day, but still something the man was clearly unable to completely suppress even for a short period while he was veiling himself. That…or the man had just forgotten about his own gold sign, Erphon reflected with amusement. Perhaps it was even the more likely possibility, given the amateur veiling and the relatively minor manifestation for a gold sign.
Amusing as the whole thing was, it was also an opportunity, and having been considering keeping his hand in, Erphon forced himself to consider the man as a potential target for his other job.
The clothes, as said, told him nothing. The amateur veil indicated a lack of familiarity with what blending in actually meant. Could be some noble trying to slum it with the peasants, but his face looked a bit too old for this to be a noble's first foray into slumming it and it wouldn't explain the beat up robes.
Ah. Beaten up clothes plus the veil? Perhaps his potential target was injured? But why go so far with the veil when it would only draw more attention than an actual injury? Unless… well there were a couple of possibilities. First, the injury was severe enough to disrupt their spiritual control to the point that suppression was all or nothing. Second, he might have advanced recently and be unable to finely control his own madra, especially when injured.
Mentally, Erphon raised his estimate of the man's strength to high gold. It might not be needed, but in his business overestimation was less dangerous than underestimation.
Still, it did seem odd. Erphon casually angled himself to parallel the stranger, keeping him in sight without following him too obviously. It wasn't hard to do so, with the wake of near missed crowd members cresting behind him. It took a few hundred paces for Erphon to put together the facts he was struggling with. The torn clothes. The veil. The injury. Finally, he hit upon the answer. The attention grabbing veil made no sense for city streets… but for the backwaters that existed outside the city? Without the crowds but with sacred beasts, remnants and bandits to look out for? Keeping your Madra entirely veiled made much more sense, and probably became a habit.
That slotted everything into place, and told him this man would be a good target after all. A traveller from outside the city, possibly recently advanced but definitely weary and injured would be looking for food, shelter and medical attention. And such a traveller was unlikely to have anyone come looking for him or asking awkward questions. Or at least, anyone they couldn't see off.
Pleased to have resolved the mystery, Erphon began his approach to his target, ready to introduce them to the delights of the city, the Tree of Life inn, and the roots in the basement.
"Με συγχωρείτε, εμποδίζετε τον δρόμο"
Ah. This could be tricky.
——————
That had been tricky, involving several different attempts at language from the traveller, an extended game of charades, and not a little justified suspicion, but he'd managed to get the target back to the Tree of Life.
Getting him to eat the damn food had been a cinch by comparison. He'd eaten part of the stranger's dish to assure him it was safe, his clan's plague ratking iron body easily neutralising the effect of the drug. He'd been a bit worried that the man might actually be a Trugold when he didn't go down right away, but it had seemingly just taken a few extra minutes. Perhaps his own iron body also provided some resistance.
With him safely out of commission, a couple of his subordinates dragged him to one of the inn's special rooms that connected to their basement network and placed him on a plain black slab ready for the next step. There were no chains or manacles, anyone brought down here would never wake up long enough for them to be useful.
Your average person on the street might think that the hard part was over. Kill, harvest remnant, done. It is indeed almost that simple, but simple doesn't mean easy. Remnants are almost universally less dangerous than their originators due to lacking their intelligence, but there are good reasons that Sacred Artists on the battlefield often fear that killing their opponent will only result in them dying in turn to their remnant.
For the 'recyclers' the remnant is of course far more dangerous than the sacred artist it comes from, as those sacred artists are usually drugged to the gills long before they arrived. Remnants aren't usually affected by poisons or drugs that affected their previous bodies. There had been no point in setting up manacles, even ones that inhibited madra usage, remnants were frequently inhuman in shape or emerged from the body in unpredictable ways, rendering such things unreliable at best.
Instead the basement was specially set up with dream formations to control the remnants, and Erphon had, at great expense, even sponsored a couple of his lower level minions to take up dream paths themselves. An investment, he assured himself, as in the long term they would reduce the need to buy scales of dream madra to power the formations, or even negate the need for them entirely.
Checking the arrays were active, Erphon readied his knife and took aim at the throat.
*screek.*
The knife bent against the sacred artist's skin. An enforcer technique that was active even when the user was unconscious? Or an extremely durable iron body? Either way, he had a solution on hand. Half-silver.
Half-silver disrupts madra. So a half-silver dagger cuts right through enforcer techniques by disrupting the user's control. He'd had it reforged from the tongs used by a Soulsmith who was a little too keen on asking questions about the origins of his products.
Reinforcing his upper arm muscles with madra, he plunges the knife down hard. This time, it sinks in.
He withdraws the blade. A spurt of crimson blood arches towards the sealing.
The world burns up in searing light.
——————
Wei Feng wakes up and chooses violence.
——————
The Tree of Life was burning, and it was taking the surrounding buildings with it. Sacred artists fought back the flames with blasts of water. The choking smoke spiralled safely away under the grip of wind artists, while several flame artists ran fearlessly into the burning building, seeking out survivors or trapped victims.
Bellowing guards directed escapees to safe areas and tried, with varying levels of success, to calm them down and get their information out of them. Who they were, which building they had come from, did they know if anyone was still in there? Further out, they erected a cordon, keeping curious onlookers from blocking up the streets.
Guo Fen was rather proud of the response his men had managed. Even more so of their response time. He'd initially been sceptical of the use of having people positioned on thousand mile clouds above the city. Running a cloud constantly meant they broke down far too soon. He'd thought initially that the expense was too high for the benefit, but on days like today it really proved its worth in letting them respond quickly. Less than fifteen minutes since the first reports of the fire, and he'd got everything in place.
As he thought this, several soot-covered men burst from within the tree of life, fleeing into the air on thousand mile clouds. The nearest guards and rescuers yelled and gestured at them to come back and head to the designated safe areas, but the panicked men ignored them.
Seconds later, Fen understood why. Without warning, his spiritual senses were assaulted by a Truegold presence. Shimmying out of the smoke and flame was a centipede-like remnant, holding half of its body upright like a snake preparing to strike, but there was something clearly wrong with it. Two of its upper legs seemed to have been replaced by manlike arms of glowing red light, and several more of its legs were blocky, odd shapes were too obscured by smoke to identify. Whatever it was, it was clearly unnatural.
It roared, a burst of madra flying from one of the oddly shaped arms and piercing straight through one of the figures fleeing skyward, clipping another and knocking them from the sky. Even as the figure fell, Fen was already yelling out orders to his men, bringing them into formation. Whatever this thing was,it was Truegold, which meant it was as strong as the city lord. Dispersed as they were, his men would be easy pickings, only if they grouped up would they have a chance to survive and win. Even a truegold would be threatened by their combined attacks, and together they could shield each other rather than be picked apart one by one.
Even as his men rushed to obey his orders the thing bunched itself up, preparing to leap from the burning building into the streets. It uncoiled in a furious blur. In an instant its head was clear of the building and halfway towards Fen. Then its head slammed into the ground as something inside the smoke grabbed it from behind and dragged it backward into the burning inn.
There were a few moments of struggle, chitinous coils flashing in the smoke, two more powerful beams of madra blasting holes in the roof of the rapidly decaying inn. Then silence, the crackle of flames all that could be heard as a figure strode out of the smoke.
A man, rimmed by smoke and outlined in red and orange fire. Terrifyingly, Fen feels absolutely nothing from his spiritual senses. This man has just taken down a truegold in a few moments, and yet he can feel not even a hint of madra. For a second he wonders if he is under the effects of a dream technique, before the figure reaches down, picks up the remains of a half burned chair and flings it at the fleeing figures in the sky, bringing yet another crashing back to earth.
One of his idiot men panics, loosing a striker technique that slams astream of gold light into the figure and does almost nothing.
"Μην ανακατεύεσαι" The man yells at them.
Another piece of debris is scooped off the ground and thrown. Another of the fleeing figures falls. Only two remain.
Guo Fen knows his duty. Those people fleeing through the sky are owed his protection. Stupid as it is, he has to do something. He takes a deep breath.
"In the name of the Emperor, HALT!" He yells.
He is summarily ignored. The man picks up another piece of debris, but Fen barks an order and dozens of striker techniques blanket the air the projectile must pass through. Few of them hit, but the simple projectiles cannot survive the few that do.
"Wǒ shuō nǐ bié gānshè. Nǐ xiǎng ràng nàxiē zuìfàn táopǎo ma?" The man yells again, his tone rising in the interrogative at the last.
"I said HALT!" Guo Fen responds, holding his authority clear in his voice. He's impressed at how even his own tones are. No one else could possibly know that he was practically pissing himself. Whoever he was, this man had taken out a truegold creature in moments. If he and his men fought him, at best, a lot of them would die.
Backlit by the flames, he saw the figure's eyes narrow.
"Ηλίθιοι. Τους επιτρέπεις να ξεφύγουν." His response is quieter than before, but Fen sees he is weighing up his choices, and inches his formation slightly closer.
"Look," Fen still has to yell slightly to be heard over the fire, but he moderates his tone. "Whatever this is, I'm sure we can sort it out." His tone is the important thing. He hasn't understood a word this stranger has yelled at them, and he would guess that the same was true for the figure in flames. His tone is the important part. Appear calm and he can de-escalate the situation.
"Boss," his second whispers " -doesn't the city lord have that dream tablet that Lady Mute Dawn left behind? The one that was meant to help us understand other people?"
"Send someone for it." The tricky part will be getting their very clearly dangerous visitor to happily activate a dream tablet. Guo Fen gestured to the stranger to come out of the burning building, and simultaneously indicated to his formation that they should retreat partway down the street.
The man glared at the sky, and then at Fen before stepping forward out of the burning remnants of the inn. As he came forward Fen saw that some of the fire came with him, clinging to his body and surrounding it in a fiery outline.
"Quam debilis sis et pugnare temptas vel plus temporis in periculo meo casu occidendi omnes te legere non possum. Videtur quod iustitia hodie differatur." The Stranger spoke again, his tone was even, but his eyes blazed like the flames that surrounded him, and once again it took everything he had to maintain his composure. His spiritual senses still insisted the man was nothing but a part of the environment, which could almost lend him courage until he remembered his senses said the same while the man had destroyed a truegold creature.
A standoff held for the next ten minutes, until the crash of a house collapsing reminded Guo Fen of the other ongoing emergency. In a moment of extreme tension, he split off a few of his members back to firefighting efforts. The stranger's eyes observing all the while, but thankfully he remained where he was.
Finally, the runner arrived back with the tablet.
Now for the next tricky part, getting him to use the tablet. Oddly enough this part would have actually been easier if they had fought him and lost. Offering up a treasure after you'd lost in hopes that the victor would spare your life was not uncommon. Most sacred artists would be much more wary of a dream tablet offered up unprompted.
Well, nothing for it. He gestured most of his men back, bringing his second, Falin, forward with him. They stop about ten feet from the stranger, and Fen holds up the tablet for inspection. Then, turning to Falin, he holds it out to her, and together they activate it.
He has a brief moment of feeling himself sat at a too small desk, with his second at her own too small desk beside him, a woman with skin the texture of bark stands in front of them, before a blackboard holding a pointer. Then suddenly he returns to consciousness. No time had seemed to pass in that moment.
The stranger continues to observe them, making no indication what he is thinking.
"Falin, go halfway back toward the line. I'll hand it over." He says quietly. Not a whisper. A whisper might imply secrecy. "Don't go fully back to the group, we don't want him thinking you're getting back into the group as an ambush."
Fen waits a few moments for Falin to fall back before beginning to advance the final few paces. He bends into a bow, holding the tablet in his cupped hands. He waits, head bowed for a few moments.
Eventually, he feels the stranger touch the tablet. Right then here went nothing. He fed the tiniest trickle of madra through the tablet connecting his hand and the stranger's hand, and it activates. The world falls away and he is once again before the bark skinned woman standing before a blackboard.
This time the stranger is at the desk beside him. The woman raps the blackboard sharply, and an image of a dog appears, floating in the air.
"This is a dog. D-O-G".
———
A cultivator who cannot keep their head in a crisis will soon find their condition literal - Author Unknown
———
Wei Feng brooded.
In many ways he'd been lucky. Communications could have been far more difficult to establish, and admittedly the situation did not look great without any context. Fortunately the criminals had left more than enough evidence behind them to prove his assertions, once he could actually communicate them.
The guards had been lucky too of course. He was truly sorry about Captain Guo's ribs, but at least he'd managed to pull his punch enough not to kill the man. Many cultivators would not have been so restrained in his situation.
The ones that got away itched at his dao of course. Justice delayed was always irritating, but he just hadn't been sure of how much he'd have to restrain his strength to not kill the locals who had clearly just been doing their jobs. And he could hardly have expected anyone so weak to have access to even limited flight without the aid of a spirit beast. The lives of a few dozen innocents were more than good compensation for one lost lead. It was still damn lucky that his backhand had only broken Guo's ribs.
Yes, in many ways he'd been lucky. That artefact had given him enough basic vocabulary, and the people here had been accommodating enough to his questions to let him understand his situation. Even if it was a shame those accommodations were clearly motivated primarily by fear of his strength.
The locals, thankfully, clearly had no idea about the contents of his cave. This was both good and bad. A good thing for the clan if he could make it home, but bad, as he still had no idea of how to do so.
It was also clear that whatever power these locals used, this: "madra" was not qi. He had seen its effects but to his senses it was still almost completely absent. Which left him with a very large problem.
Time.
Two years. He had brought with him Two years of cultivation materials. It had seemed a more than sensible number for his expedition into the mines. Two years worth of material might allow him to fully empty his reserves and recharge himself almost two dozen times. It was… to be frank, an extravagance for such an expedition. He had carried greater amounts with him on expeditions, but only rarely, on visits to secret realms or similar.
Two years worth of advancement. Perhaps triple that if instead he rationed them, seeking not to advance but only to keep his own cultivation stable. Six years. Six years to find a way home… if he didn't have to fight once. If he had to truly fight, to go all out and drain himself? Every time would cost him three months.
He had six years to find a specialist in the local version of arrays that he could trust, that might possess the skills needed to understand the natural formation and open a way home. If that was even possible, and the portal was not on a timer like so many secret realm entrances.
Six years to understand what he could of this strange new world and their strange cultivation and artefact creation. To bring back to the clan everything he could.
Six years before his cultivation would begin to crack and fall away. He might become mortal again. Or perhaps the drain of his own physique would simply spill out his life entirely.
Six years to find a way home.
——————
The World of Cradle - Extracts of Wei Feng's prepared reports for the Grand Elder
Madra and Aura
Summary:
Madra and Aura appear to be two distinct but related forms of energy that are able to be manipulated by the locals to effects not unlike qi.
Aura appears to be present in the environment, and is influenced by local conditions to an enormous degree. The locals can then harvest or 'cycle' this aura into Madra. Madra appears to be a slightly higher (or perhaps denser) form of energy, capable of 'ruling' aura, and gives its wielders access to a wide variety of effects similar to qi manipulation.
All local inhabitants appear to be born with at least an elementary ability to create and store Madra, barring some few with medical difficulties. As such all inhabitants are in some regards cultivators, although the local term for cultivation appears to be the 'sacred arts'. This stands in stark contrast to qi manipulation, which only around one in a hundred are capable of at even the most rudimentary level.
Aura
Aura is part of the environment and appears to come in a large number of varieties, linked to the natural environment. For example, I have encountered such aura types as: blood, life, fire, water, wind and shadow aura. However, there are clear limitations on the number and types of aura. As an example, there is no such thing as 'pure' aura, although children are born with 'pure' madra.
Aura is also extremely susceptible to environmental conditions, including artificially induced ones. I have heard multiple accounts of "slaughter artists'' who butcher villages to influence the local aura towards 'blood' and destruction, which they then harvest to advance their own power.
Madra:
As mentioned, Madra appears to be primarily used as a form of energy by the locals to create effects such as enhanced speed and strength, energy or elemental projections, and increase their lifespans. In this it is broadly similar in application to our own qi.
Madra appears to have an extreme, perhaps almost infinite, set of varieties. Such that almost every 'path' the locals follow (a set of unified techniques and cultivation methods practised by a sacred artist of a sect or clan of such) appears to have its own specialised variety. At least, the variety is far greater than that of aura. However, it is somewhat unclear if all these varieties are truly specific 'types' in their own right, or are simply names for the specific combinations and amounts of Madra 'ingredients' used by a specific path.
Locals are born with a 'madra core'. Despite its name, this core appears to be similar in function to the dantian rather than condensation of philosophy that is produced by our own Core Formations. To create their esoteric effects, madra is run through channels, presumably similar to our own meridian system.
Perhaps the most unlikely claim of the locals, and one I am still sceptical of, is that Madra can create more of itself without being harvested from the environment. Users are able to refill their cores, and even potentially expand them without any use of aura although with much greater difficulty and lesser efficiency than cycling of aura. As I said, I am sceptical of this, and feel it is more likely, though still extraordinary, that their bodies perform some form of automatic cultivation and purification of the local aura into their preferred Madra type, though I lack any sort of medical expertise to confirm this.
Should this report ever make it to the grand elder, I would recommend sending some of our own doctors to study the medicinal knowledge of this new world. Even if the dream of such an automatic cultivation technique is unlikely to ever come to pass.
Remnants
Remnants arise from the corpses of slain sacred artists, beasts and any sort of plant or animal that was capable of Madra manipulation in life. They appear to retain some of all of the originator's skills and techniques, and possibly even some of their memories in the case of remnants from stronger artists.
I was at first deeply concerned when I learned that absorbing a remnant into themselves is a key part of advancement within the local's cultivation system. However, while superficially similar to the blood path, it does not appear that this has any of the associated psychological effects of the blood path, such as the need to continue feeding on others, sociopathic or megalomaniacal tendencies beyond the usual for cultivators, nor to attract the curse of the Heavens.
Most remnant's are perhaps best compared to Wills left behind by powerful cultivators in terms of not being truly intelligent yet still having enough ability to use the techniques they did in life. The chief difference is that unlike wills, remnants are capable of cultivation, advancing their power, realm and intelligence. Indeed one of the "Monarchs" , the faction leaders of the great powers of this world, is called the "Remnant Monarch" as she is one such remnant who has travelled such a path to its end, at least as far as this world is concerned.
——————
AN: 5235 words. Please excuse my terrible use of google translate for Wei Feng's attempts to talk in Greek, Latin and Chinese.
In cradle canon, Emriss Silentborn goes around Cradle teaching people to communicate with each other. Since I thought it was a bit early to meet a monarch I decided she'd leave behind dream tablets to help the job along.
The ending also addresses the question of Wei Feng's ability to recharge I mentioned in the last chapter.
Erphon and his crew are based off a short mention of a mission the team takes on in Underlord against a gang that was killing people for their remnants.
