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

[occipitallobe]

So this turn I asked for recommendations from others, and picked the one I felt was the most convincing. This is from @Insane-Not-Crazy, so thanks for the rec!

---

The Good Seed Cultivator Management quest has a wealth of talented writers producing incredible content. As a questor being asked to just recommend one to author's work to read is almost paralyzing when I'm spoiled for choice. Daunting task it may be I finally settled on putting forward Siual's Aristoteles 'Aris' Kalokagathos as my pick.

I will be honest that one of the reasons I made this choice is because Siual was one of the contributors to help me get over the hump of actually setting up a Good Seed of my own. The advice they gave me in setting scenes and writing descriptions allowed to produce my first omake and realize that i had something worthwhile there. But to more relevant matters, Aristoteles is an incredibly well realized character who shows the grey morals of the Golden Devils. The story of the Clan that is being written tends to place a spotlight on the Good Guys like Rina Callista or more tarnished figures like Minervina Barda aspiring towards heroism or grander ideals. Aris is a loyal killer for the Clan, a ruthless commander with the lives of his men, a self-confident aristocrat who approves of his status and more.

Siual certainly is not the most prolific author with only 15 omake to date but they are consistent in updates. The writing for Aris features some of the best scenery and action sequences I've encountered in this quest. Aris makes you feel, the greatest achievement of an author. Love him or hate him, you likely aren't going away apathetic after reading his story. I will selfishly admit that I am also enamored with his status as one of the frontrunners in the race to reach Core Formation. More narrative weight never hurts interest.

 

[occipitallobe]

"Leave."

The word came down from what was now above.

Jingshen Gao cursed the black heart of the worthless old man who had done this to them. They and theirs had lived in their homes for millennia. Who were the Golden Devils, invaders to their world to cast them out? Still, the Jingshen Families, those still dwelling in the Underworld Spirit Palace, from north to south and east to west, the word was simple.

"Accept our tainted blood and become a devil like us, or be cast out."

They had stood strong, though. Strong against the murderous creatures who had shattered their forts, who had killed their much-beloved Grand Elder. The offer had come to so very many cultivators, and yet only one in Core Formation had accepted. Almost five hundred in Foundation Establishment, he had heard, and fifty or sixty thousand in Qi Condensation. A number far beyond what he had hoped, but below what he had accepted. In turn, a massive caravan of cultivators had left the Jingshen lands, every last cultivator of the Jingshen threatened with death if they stayed.

Hundreds of Foundation cultivators and a few Core Elders had fled south, forming new bandit groups, hoping to find a way to fight back against the invaders.

Most of them, however, had taken the option to go to the Great Battlefield and be sorted into the various powers there, either as guest elders or outer sect cultivators. One-twentieth of their number would be moved each year by the Golden Devils, to avoid a massive breakout or attempt for the unified Jingshen Clan to strike against them.

Gao looked down at his daughter. They hadn't named her yet, as was tradition. Before the second year brought death and ill luck, this much was known.

His brother, Jingshen Hazen had risen up the year before. Or at least, he had tried to. Brought Elders together, had meetings in the dark.

The Devils had found them out somehow, and the four Elders and nearly two hundred Experts involved in the uprising had all had their dantians shattered, left as weak as mortals. As examples as to what would happen to them if they dared try and resist.

Gao would have taken the blood, he knew. If it had just been him. Not his daughter, not his wife, not his two sons. Surrendering yourself was one thing, but surrendering your sons and grandsons to come into becoming devils loathed by Heaven was unconscionable.

The shout came down from above.

"Jingshen Gao, Jingshen Yongling, Jingshen..."

The name list was read out. The Golden Devils preferred not to let you know when you were going - those who found out tended to flee into the desert, to become bandits or to resist. Instead, Devil cultivators showed up bearing their weapons and armor forged from corpses, shining unnaturally in the torchlight. They took those who were to go, coming every day into their homes, seizing those who had refused their monstrous blood.

Only mortals were spared, but for those who headed households as cultivators... who could leave their family to the depredations of the devils? Their intent was clear - to cultivate, one must take the Blood. In a scant few generations the Jingshen mortals would forget the truth of the Heavens, and come to serve the monsters. Only by taking your family with you could you preserve them.

He stood outside his house, looking at it one last time. It was no great mansion, merely a set of caves carved from stone. At the front, a threshold he had carried Luoyang across when they had first gotten married. He remembered her smile, the joy at finding a place of their very own. His rise into becoming a cultivator, mining in the deeps. Fighting monsters made of Qi and rage and little more.

The time he had come home wounded, and Luoyang had wept and screamed at the hole in his gut. He'd barely survived, and only after she had recovered did she let him know she was pregnant. The first of two sons, and the second had killed her.

She hadn't been a cultivator, but this had been their house. A place where two boys had grown up, though Gao had only known how to make them obey, not to make them love him. They had wanted to fight as the war came to their lands.

Gao had forbade it - neither of his sons had fought. A fractured arm and a broken rib had ensured that.

Gao had fought, of course - he had been at Haoshen Fort when it fell. He had seen the awful power descend from the skies, and so he had fled. What could a man do against that? A monster made of shadow and wrath had stood in the sky, and its attention had reaped the lives of men like wheat. He had fled, but not as a coward. He would happily face off against other men, cultivators or no. If they were faster and stronger as he was, that was one thing. They were all warriors, though, all setting their lives against one another.

He hadn't understood what the words 'Nascent Soul' had meant. Oh, he'd read the histories, but to see it... one man capable of killing everyone you loved, and the only thing keeping his attention from you was the fact that you were beneath him. It's not that he wanted you alive, just that you weren't worth killing.

That man had taken Luoyang's house from him. That man had taken his new daughter's father from him, a man he considered a brother in arms. Guanting had been snuffed out as easily as he would've blown out a candle, killed with an idle blow that he doubted the monster remembered.

He knew the name Guanting had wanted for her.

"You will be Jingshen Ah Lam. Not yet. Not today, but soon, daughter."

The shout went out again, and Gao looked back at his home. It contained no riches, nothing he wanted to keep beyond three figurines and a blanket that Luoyang had loved. He hefted the little girl onto the basket on his front, nestling her inside the blanket, the figurines there to entertain her. He left what remained for the Golden Devil vultures who would no doubt pick over the meanest of his possessions.

He bowed at the door.

"I'm sorry, Luoyang. I'll find them a better house. The house you always wanted, something amidst grass, with a view of the sky."

Time to leave.

 

[occipitallobe]

He trembled as he grasped the lightning.

It should not have been possible.

He remembered the bottle. Delivered by a peculiar flying artifice, no bigger than his hand. It had landed next to him as he left the Council of Righteous Elders, leaving a bottle and note. He expected it to be some sort of intrigue, but instead... well, he had read the letter.

You don't know me, nor do I know you. But let me cut to the chase by saying I am the greatest genius to ever exist, or at least I will be once I figure out the Law of Time, so you should listen to everything I write down here and do it. Anyway, this was the first batch of the Silver Blood I managed to make. The strongest by a huge amount, but after testing it on myself, I determined more than the slightest droplet would kill anyone without complete compatibility with it. Given the cost of it was ten or twenty times the entire Clan's yearly income, I decided to split it into other, weaker lots. This didn't work, and I found the blood - once made - only lasts about ten years. So I built my little Blood Compass, from some funds I filched from the Jingshen when we knocked their house over.

Anyway, this letter is growing and growing, but the long and the short of it is this. Whoever you are, you have the greatest compatibility with the Blood of Silver in most of the Region. You take it, you become a Golden Devil. I know, I know, it sounds bad, but the power is very real. You're in the Plains, so I'm assuming you don't like us very much, but my Compass showed you were only in Foundation Establishment, so this is your CHANCE. Take it, and become one of the most powerful Golden Devils to exist!

Also if you happen to actually be a Golden Devil it's your duty to the Clan to drink it. Write down everything and if you die make sure somebody is there to pick up your corpse and bring it back to me. I need to study it.

- Destasia Duca

Tisamenos had of course understood the true context. Some manner of secret message delivered via compatibility with the Blood of Bronze, something of supreme importance and difficult for an enemy to hack. Using a false possibility of power to ensure anyone who captured the message would consume it and probably die, thereby removing any possibility of interception. Contextually? It had to be something important regarding the Jingshen.

So naturally he took it to a private area, walled off and guarded by a few of his own Qi Condensation guardsmen, and drank it. He was curious to see what message that the Elders had considered so important to deliver to him in such a roundabout method, and drank.

Fire ran through his veins. For a moment it was pain, but not the worst pain. Like sore muscles after overuse, the pain of breathing in deeply after running as fast as one could. A growing, strengthening pain.

It quickened, and ran through his flesh, feeling every capillary light up with a sort of tension, the blood pumping, circulating, moving far faster than he had thought it could.

He seemed caught between a dream and reality, power searing gloriously into every last inch of his being, and when he opened his eyes a moment later, three months had passed.

His two Pillars thrummed with power. The Truth-Seeker and the Liar, in perfect tension. There would be no room for a third. He had never planned one, for the greatest power lay in truth and lies. The truth for yourself, so that you might lie perfectly as needed, to tell and seek a greater truth in turn. A snake birthing it's own head, growing ever-longer as it deceived and as it saw.

The power was unimaginable. He felt as though he were at the very peak of what his Pillars could contain, that there were no further steps to be taken on his path.

As he awoke, he felt the wrath of the Heavens descend.

Tribulation?

Tribulation?!

Yet the word did not inspire fear. It inspired a peculiar emotion, one Tisamenos was not much used to.

As the clouds gathered above him and cultivators fled like ants before him, he sneered. Contempt filled his mind, and he flung open his doors, striding into the great meadow where he was housed, and where the Golden Devil troops ferrying back and worth were encamped.

Lightning crackled from the sky, and Tisamenos reached out-

He trembled as he grasped the lightning.

It should not have been possible.

It danced in the palm of his hand like a trapped rat, striking from finger to finger to palm. He clenched his fist, and it disappeared.

The next strike was worse, tenfold. And yet he found himself moving out of the way almost intuitively, the lightning striking but simply unable to kill him. As though the worst it could muster was simply not enough. The third thunderbolt he took head-on, striking it as though he were mad.

Was he mad?

Was this a dream?

He chuckled.

The truth was it didn't matter. The lie to be told if it were true was that he had never suspected it to be false.

Who could explain this curious sequence of events?

He knew the tribulation from Foundation Establishment was to form a Core, an inviolable set of beliefs embodied in a static organ. This was a painful and difficult process, striking at contradictions and problems within one's philosophy.

For him, this felt... different. As though it was merely trying to kill him, and the power within the lightning tempered his Core, gave it weight. Gave it strength it should not have.

Bolt after bolt came at him, and each one strengthened him, making him more than able to face the bolt that came after. A tribulation unseen since the Single-Pillar Kings came to slay him, and he dismissed it as though it were a servant. No, less than a servant. A stray mongrel, deserving only a kick for the impudence of trying to steal his meal. For days, the yapping dog danced around his heels, yet he gave it no respite, beating it until it fled with its tail behind its legs.

The final bolt came, and with it Tisamenos felt his Core fuse. The Liar and the Truth-Seeker in one. He hadn't named his Dao, hadn't ever felt the need to. Some did, to try and give them a focus, purify their journey through Core Formation. It felt... unnecessary, almost. His Core was not his Dao, it was something more.

As the dust settled and the clouds disappeared, he looked down at his hands. His skin. His arms and legs and feet, for his clothes had been long burnt-off.

All looked as though it were cast from the purest silver.

 

[occipitallobe]

As the clouds faded, disciples ran back towards him, gathering around him to gawk.

Tisamenos's voice rang out, clear as a bell.

"Fetch my robes."

The disciples stiffened, one and all, running off to do his bidding. Normally they had the presence of mind to send one of their number to complete a task, but he supposed it was an unusual circumstance. Not that you could expect much from the dim-witted Bronze-Bloods, after all.

He froze.

That was... odd.

Well, he had formed a Core, and that was bound to leave some marks on his thought.

Moments later, a Bronze-Blood dashed across the ruined meadow, carrying a simple toga. Old diplomatic wear, the sort he had taken for formal parties but had never actually worn. It felt right, though. How had the disciple known to fetch it? Peculiar.

He quickly robed himself, and as the disciples buzzed around him, he noted that they were completely silent, waiting for his word. Another little oddity to be understood, yet he knew deep down it was right. The Bronze-Blooded should await orders.

Dashing across the field came Elder Baozhai. He could feel her strength, now. Mid Core Formation, nothing of note. She rushed to him, and shouted.

"You damn fool! You think you have the right to summon tribulation right next to our Strength Purity Sect! You could've killed people! Hurt people!"

She was infuriated, her face red and her voice loud. She reached out a hand in fury to slap him, and Tisamenos moved.

Moments later he had her hand grasped, and with his other hand held her aloft by the throat, observing her. A bubbling rage grew in him, a contempt mixed with shame. Shame that this mean creature dared to judge him, that this insect thought him an equal in her eyes.

"You do not judge me."

Baozhai struggled and squirmed, and Tisamenos's grip tightened.

"You are not fit to judge me."

His hand tightened like a claw. Tighten much more, and Baozhai's neck would snap like a twig, no matter her personal cultivation.

No. He shouldn't. There was too much at stake here. Yet she dared to insult him? A creature like her, born from an animal!

Presence rolled across him, and an unassuming woman stepped down from the sky.

"Dear Tisamenos, one must always keep up appearances. Don't you think this is a bad look for the Golden Devils?"

He had only seen Scarletglyph twice before, but it was enough to shock him out of what he was doing. The moment passed, and his hand released.

He cast about for words, understanding the truth and spinning it into a slight lie.

"My apologies, Nascent Lord Scarletglyph. There has been some... Dao-related feedback from my ascension into Core Formation merely moments ago. I am not yet myself."

She inclined her head, and ruffled Baozhai's hair.

"There, there. It's been a shock for all of us. I think it'd be best if your second took over diplomacy for the time being, Tisamenos. You should go home and figure out... whatever has happened to you. Don't worry, this doesn't need to be spoken of."

He felt the urge to fight subsiding in the face of absolute power.

"...fine."

---

It was the first step he took into the Colossus Footstep Path that showed him how substantially things had changed.

The ancient bells that had not rung for millennia, the smallest ones a thousand times the size of a man... they had hung, silent and immobile well out of living memory.

Tisamenos took a step through the shattered gate, and a clear note rang out.

A single sweet note that gave him welcome, that made all others know that he was the one welcomed here, that they were mere interlopers.

Vermin.

All across the gate, other cultivators shivered in fear, knowing in their bones that they were doing something wrong. That they were trespassing somewhere not meant for them, and that retribution would soon be upon him.

As he saw their fear, contempt intensified in his mind. He had spent some time thinking on it. It had to be the blood. The Silver Blood that now ran within his veins loathed the world it lived in. He felt it when he saw those with the normal Blood of Bronze, as though they were naturally his subordinates. When he spoke, they obeyed. To others, he felt contempt. Slaves, and unworthy ones at that.

When he reached the Obsidian Tower, six Blacksmith Core Formation Elders were arrayed there against him. He was permitted to go around it only, not to approach.

He threaded his way through Doorway City, though he found in peculiarity he did not despise the mortals. They were beneath his notice - it was only the other cultivators of the world that gained his ire. He had begun to learn to tamp down on it, anyway. Through the Doors Between, which hummed happily at his approach, casting him through, splitting space itself to save him time and letting him emerge just before Reverse Flow Falls.

The Falls where the few Bronze-Blooded traitors brought merchants up and down, their blood permitting them transit.

Tisamenos saw the waterfall heading upwards, and smiled. He could feel the spirit within the waters sleeping, lazily letting by the Bronze-Blooded.

He raised a hand, clenched his fist, and spoke.

"Wake up. Obey."

In a single roaring moment, the massive waterfall reversed, throwing off merchants and Bronze-Blooded alike, sending them plummeting to what would surely be their deaths.

Tisamenos quickly spoke.

"Save them. Now."

Tendrils of water came out, grasping hundreds of falling merchants and their goods, returning them to their boats as though nothing had happened.

Tisamenos breathed heavily. The power within his blood wanted to be used, desperately clawing its way into his head, screaming at him to command the worthy, to sweep the unworthy away. To fight and win. His breath quickened.

No.

He was in command. Not the Blood. It crept into his mind, that was the truth. The lie was that it commanded him. The truth was that he was Tisamenos, scribe and truth-seeker. Not some throwback to the ancient Sea-Conquering Army, blessed be their name by the Imperator's-

He cut off the thought ruthlessly.

"Back to sleep."

The words were breathed out heavily, going against everything the Blood wanted.

Still, he was Tisamenos more than he was Silver-Blood. He would master the Blood. He would not be mastered by it.

He travelled at tremendous speed, running the rest of the way into Clan territory. It would be months before he made it back to the Dawn Fortress, but on arrival the old man wanted to talk to him.

"I feel an urge to submit to you, Tisamenos."

The words hung in the air, and Tisamenos did not know how to respond. This was Manuel Konstantinos! The ruler of the Clan for centuries, the man who had killed three Nascent Souls and recovered the entire Desert! Even to Tisamenos who had met him, he was a legend!

Yet...

"I feel as though you are beneath me naturally. As though it is natural that you should obey."

The old man nodded.

"Mmm. I have resisted worse, so don't worry yourself overmuch. I suspect given how it feels at the moment I should be able to resist it if you should rise into the Nascent Realm, though I cannot say for certain. There are two ancient fragments of poetry regarding the Silver-Bloods. Read them, and tell me what you think."

Manuel sat two pieces of parchment that looked completely new and painstakingly copied.

"The first is from a speech given to the Clan in the Fifth Sea at some point in the past before battle. I do not know the context."

"Silver-lord, they deserved thy galling chain,
To live thy slave, and still to serve in vain,
I'll not submit to each unjust decree:
Command thy men, but command not me."

Tisamenos nodded.

"Now bid thy Silver-Bloods sound the alarms,
They call the squadrons sheathed in bronzed arms;
Now seize the occasion, now the troops survey,
And war against heaven, thy blood directs the way."

Forgive my butchery of Pope

Manuel leaned forward.

"Unjust commands, but commands all the same. Squadron-leaders, warring against heaven. Your power of command and the desire to command, I think, comes from the same place."

He ran his tongue over his teeth, thoughtfully.

"Tisamenos, since ascending, have you led a formation?"

"No."

Manuel face turned into a genuine smile.

A few hours later, he led Tisamenos out, to six Core Formation Elders, among them Destasia Duca.

"A Hoplite Formation Elders, if you please."

Tisamenos felt them form up, and he joined them in the rear, preparing to provide Qi.

Yet he slipped almost naturally to the front of the formation, and all the Qi flows came towards him. It was not like a normal formation, where one led but each other had to follow properly - where a formation could collapse due to the inefficiencies in working together. As long as Tisamenos was there, he commanded it. The Bronze-Blooded worked under him, as was proper. There could not be a question of who was in command - he could not have given command over the formation to a Bronze-Blood even had he wanted to.

The great Hoplite rose up, spear and shield in hand. Normally to move it in unison was a thing of long training, and those who did it would have to work together immaculately. That... did not feel as though it were the case.

"Fascinating, fascinating. I don't even have command over my own Qi! I can't even leave the formation without permission!"

Destasia's voice.

Tisamenos struck, and the Hoplite moved perfectly, moving as he did. Faster than he did!

Manuel sat in midair, laughing.

"Excellent. Truly excellent. Destasia, you have outdone yourself. Tisamenos, if you believe you can overcome the desires of the Blood that Scarletglyph wrote me about, you are welcome to return to the Great Battlefield. We have been relentless in our desire to bow our heads, that the Righteous Path does not fear us that they might love us more. Now they are in desperate straits, and they should not treat us as a mere bag of Spirit Stones and Legions to dip into at need. A little fear might be precisely what we need to set them off-guard."

Tisamenos sighed, releasing his grip on the formation, letting the Qi return to its owners.

"I may take a few months to meditate, Grand Elder. I will need time to have it truly under control."

Manuel nodded, and gestured to Destasia.

"Work with Elder Duca. She is... quite interested in you, and you may yield more benefits for the Clan. If she can replicate what she has done with you, the benefits will be immeasurable."

With that, they dispersed.

Tisamenos shivered. The arrogance, the power, what had happened...

He could barely comprehend it. It felt as though someone else had been thrust upon him, and Tisamenos was struggling with the other man. The Bronze-Blooded scribe battling with some indomitable, arrogant soldier from the past.

The truth was that he wasn't sure if he could win.

 

[occipitallobe]

Destasia grinned.

Oh, it had gone well.

Very well.

Assaulting the Law of Gravity by borrowing the Grand Elder's Spear was easy enough, though the old man found it conceptually difficult to quite understand, but the real difficulty came in targeting it. She didn't want to send him round poking at every single road in Clan territory, after all. No, finding a way to attack the Law of Gravity across all the roads, mapping them out and ensuring that each corridor of loosened physical laws corresponded with an actual road had been difficult.

Costly, to boot. The amount of Spirit Stones she'd used didn't bear thinking about - quite literally. She had just applied for as much funding as she thought she'd need, and then some. She had spent it all, and the thousand Attack-Replication Arrays she'd painstakingly distributed across the entirety of Golden Devil territory were ready to be used. The problem was that these arrays were fairly useless most of the time - they replicated an attack reliably, but used Qi to do so. The Spear didn't use much Qi at all to assault physical laws, which was interesting in its own right.

"Old man!", she yelled.

Manuel growled in a sort of annoyed fashion.

"Stab when the light turns blue. Not yellow! Not green!"

He sighed.

"Destasia, I have ruled the Optimatoi for centuries. I think I can gauge the difference between blue and green."

Destasia raised an eyebrow doubtfully. Surely he was colourblind? Then... that didn't explain the fashion choices. She'd have to tell Heraclius! Oh, right. He was dead. She'd have to tell Sheng Yu! The man didn't care about fashion at all, which was shameful given it was her overriding concern this year. Still, dressing the Grand Elder in something colourful and bright would be very interesting. It might improve his mood, and it was so hard to carry out good studies on Nascent Souls.

Manuel always got snippy when she asked to experiment on him, and even more snippy when she asked to go experiment on Nascents in other powers.

She giggled, and spun coquettishly. Her frilly dress in rainbow colours mixed with one of the mohawks that Casia's people had gotten into was honestly going to set trends, or she hadn't paid that one newspaper lad a few thousand Spirit Stones to spread the style. Fashion was simply a matter of looking aesthetically pleasing with a regular injection of novelty, but how quickly could you inject the novelty? How long did it take to propagate, and could fashions subsume one another? Ultimately she had been forbidden to build the Fashionable Nascent Puppet, a puppet capable of using Nascent-soul level thought processes to analyse social trends in the Clan and use them to predict and pre-empt new fashion trends, so she had to figure it out herself.

It would've cost barely twice what the Gravity project cost!

Right, right.

The lights. The lights were still yellow, and Destasia raised her hand. In reality, it didn't matter when the old man struck, but she had needed a way to test the colourblindness theory.

The light flashed green for a tenth of a second and then blue.

Manuel raised the Stone Spear and struck at something beyond her sight, and a sense of deep wrongness made her vomit all over her clothes. The meat-porridge she'd had for breakfast along with the three acids that would combine on a successful attempt at vomiting to form a poison capable of killing any Core Formation cultivator she disliked came up, and she whirled around, spinning up and down in the air.

The moment passed, and she fell back to the ground in a puddle of poison and vomit.

As she lay there waiting, she felt one of the rings on her finger pulse. The ring used a constant stream of Qi to try and loosen gravity's constraints, just below the point where it'd do anything. She'd used a sympathetic linkage to eighty-two other rings across the Clan's territory to have them do the same, such that all the rings would move together, and if even one didn't move, none of them would. She'd read a very interesting book on the Gates of Logic and how they could be used to forge such items, but that meant it had worked.

Yes, excellent. Flight would be possible for Core Formation cultivators in a practically unlimited sense, and large flight items could be used very cheaply. Still not cheaply enough to justify hauling this and that on them, but enough that it would be far easier to ferry cultivators around, or Legions if need be.

She felt her vision dimming.

Oh, right. The poison.

"Manuel, be a dear and fetch the green vial from my quarters. If I don't get it in the next two minutes, I'll die."

He looked at her, nodded, and vanished in a burst of impossible speed.

Darn.

She really hoped he wasn't colourblind - the yellow one was just more poison.

 

[occipitallobe]

Artemis Gnaeus skipped along the road.

Well, walked.

If she was being honest, she was sitting. She'd had enough of walking hours ago, so she was dictating impressions into a spiritual jade once more. Expensive for a cultivator of her rank, but as a member of the Neo-Magistrianoi, she could afford it. She knew there were four (or five, depending on how one counted) other orders of spies, all serving various purposes. Two (or three) external, and two internal. Not the least of them spying on one another occasionally. The Magistrianoi had been an order a few thousand years ago that served under the various Legates, a unified intelligence service for internal matters. As the Clan had grown weaker, their membership had been culled in one particularly destructive Trial and had never been refounded.

With the influx of new wealth, Xie Xinya had taken some and refounded the order. While spies were mostly internal for the purpose of destroying the Blood Path, mostly each Legate found out about their own territory as needed, using their Legion to do so. Or perhaps hiring some other Legion. Xinya had sworn them all in, and let them know that their purpose was to look for minor trends, minor enemies. The Magistrianoi were not the cleverest and best of spies, but rather the newest and often the weakest. From their ranks the best would be drawn to serve the other branches. They would look for minor Blood Path enemies, minor issues, hunt down things that Legates might leave untouched, and turn them over to the Legates to action.

Not that Artemis had done any of that. Instead, she had been walking for six years. Six years walking around the desert! Six years since the new Coloneia had gone out, establishments of cultivators and mortals alike, great wagon-trains heading south along shoddily-made roads that the Clan was going to take decades to properly improve. Six years of heated misery, despite the verdant landscape that surrounded her.

The Southern Jingshen lands were... peculiar. These lands had been made hostile. There was no better way to put it. The cities were traps, the Qi mines were traps, the Spirit Herbs were all trapped, and once she'd drunk from a well that had exploded.

Exploded.

She'd spent nearly fifteen Contribution Points on texts and essays trying to figure it out, and had written her own analysis of Jingshen strategy in the south. Apparently their perennial rival had been assuming that there'd be no desperate invasion designed to smash them down quick, but rather a long and drawn-out war designed to slowly draw down their strength, strangling them from each of their outlying territories one by one while the main trade routes went unmolested. The sort of war where Nascents weren't involved as to not draw the ire of the other powers, and the only desire of their enemy had been to buy time.

Despite the traps, she had done her best. Unfortunately, the best she had done was survey hundreds of little mortal bands and villagers - nobody lived in the great hollowed-out cities, and the terror in the faces of the band who had seen her had been enough to make her more careful about trying to greet them.

They had shot at her with bow and arrow, but such a thing couldn't hurt her. She'd left, and found other bands. She'd tried to greet almost fourteen bands, only to find there were six different languages spoken! On surveying the two cities she had seen, each had a different written language and spoken language. She could only imagine how impossible it would be for cultivators to rise up and unify themselves against the Cannibals against a hostile power that ensured they could never even talk to one another, even if they left their cities.

They were peculiar languages, too. She had quietly stalked each band for a week or two each with different word ordering, one without the tones of the Turtle World tongue, one language not letting the tongue touch the lip at all, with tattoos gracing the lips of the speakers. The mouth remained open and the tongue never touched the lips, the speakers making a peculiar variety of clicks and whistles to communicate.

I mean, she sort of saw it. Trap everything, leave raiding forces with a hundred strongpoints and constantly prevent the Clan from winning. The Jingshen didn't care about these lands at all. That much was clear. These lands were peculiarly verdant, even for a desert. Rains came at specific times, and rivers rose, letting food be grown en masse. Forests sprung up everwhere, covering over emptied cities that had once housed millions. However, the resources for cultivators were few and far between.

It was almost a paradise for mortals, she thought. Seeds grew carelessly and without any effort, forests sprung up, land had been painstakingly shaped to bring rain to where it was most needed. She began to dictate.

"It seemed clear that this was Old Cannibal's core strength, an area far from his hated enemy where he could raise his own troops, devour mortals as needed and continually grow in strength. Despite a lack of Qi, it seems clear that he was a genius in the fields of land-shaping and agriculture. The Clan could not raise this sort of landscape without tremendous expenditure, though having more mortals to protect is not always a strength. Raising new cities here will be easy enough, and there are still a few mortal survivors. My estimate after surveying much of the landscape is that each city must be individually cleared and resettled, and since each former city occupies a piece of choice land, rebuilding new cities is probably implausible or at least cost-ineffective. I suspect if Legions encamp near the major cities of these lands and clear them one-by-one, we can make these lands home to millions once more."

There. That'd do for today. Artemis leaned back, and nodded off. Her Alarm Array would warn her if anyone approached, and by the Imperator it was too damned hot to do any more...

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

Name this area

[ ] The Elysian Fields

[ ] The Verdant Lands

[ ] Emerald Paradise

[ ] Write-In

 

[occipitallobe]

Old Cannibal stretched, and cracked his neck.

Ahh, it was a good feeling.

A pity he'd had to do it after being beaten like a dog all the way south, but that was no matter.

He hadn't managed to get his latest... acquisition killed, despite his best subtle efforts. Old Fish was canny, and almost assuredly out for his blood.

It just so happened the other man was a coward, and unwilling to give his life up to his efforts. He'd rather try and kill Diaxing when he was able to rise to power himself, rather than risk his own life for the revenge he so desperately sought.

Diaxing yawned. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining down, and rain shone on the grass underfoot. Life was springing up all around him, and he delighted in it. There was something to be said for fresh flowers, even if they'd made him sneeze awfully when he was a mortal.

With a slight exertion of will, the water flew off a man-sized patch of flowers, and he lay down, looking up at the sun. A few white clouds hovered overhead - no threat of rain, just enough to occasionally shade him from the sun.

Glorious.

He closed his eyes, and thought about what had happened.

Honestly, too much had been outside of his expectations. Winning as much as he had in the Verdant South had been possible, but never likely. The Righteous Path had been a pile of loose sand, and until lately he had acted as he had pleased.

He had met Scarletglyph, who was one of the most impressive Early Nascents he'd seen since his disciple. He missed the boy, still. A dull pain, the sort you ignored but was always present when you thought about it. If she had fallen to the Mists, he thought he would've taken her on. A little flashy and overwrought in her speech, but nobody was perfect. He was surprised she'd matched him for so long - only a few blows in the end, but enough for the whole combat to fall down around his ears.

Old Fish had taken a wound from Seven Stars Dreaming, the leader of the Joyful Blacksmiths, and Xinyue had been impaled on some sort of bizarre halberd-harp wielded by Truepath Sevensong, the Divine Tunist. He'd had to rescue her, and then Gengxin had tried to poison the Bear King, who had shattered her skull in a single blow. She was still animating herself with pure will and Qi alone, fusing the bones back together with various poisons. Idiot girl. The man was known for being slow and powerful, she could've danced around him forever and kept him from the rest of the battlefield. Greed for his blood had left her over-aggressive, and so she'd suffered.

He'd faced Glorious Strike, Scarletglyph, and Firebelly, the Great Drunkard who breathed flame hot enough to incinerate Blood Clone after Blood Clone. Despite his superior power, Scarletglyph was frustratingly good at blocking a single blow at opportune times, and Glorious Strike was dangerous for any man to face - her Bitter Strike weakened him over the course of the fight. The momentary weakness when he switched from clone to clone, that awful point at which he could be killed before he acclimated to the new body he had known far too many times. He'd managed to wound Scarletglyph quite badly in return, but the cost had not been worth it.

In truth, he could've died. Instead, he had fled, taking his disciples and Old Fish with him. He had left Hu Ai in the south, watching over the cowardly Early Nascents who crept around his territory so fearfully. Hunting and killing them would've tempted them to unify, or obey the Righteous Path's dictates - leaving them alone to forge pills or cultivate had yielded dividends. The bandits and the ascetics didn't care that much about him, provided he didn't offend them.

He cracked his knuckles, thinking about Gengxin's idiocy. It was disappointing. So many sought immortality and power for no reason than to seek more immortality and power, or for some far-off abstract goal that would never change their lives. Diaxing knew the truth, though. You gained life to live it. You taught students, raised disciples, and went on adventures where you destroyed your enemies and took their power. You cared about those you loved, destroyed those you hated, and sought satisfying revenge.

His students even now thought him some cold machine, animated by the prospect of theoretical ends to unify a new Blood Path power. Oh, he couldn't deny that was what he was doing, but it wasn't why. He enjoyed teaching, enjoyed fighting, enjoyed victory and glory. When he was younger he had loved plotting and cleverness, and as he had grown older he had found a quiet but true joy in raising up the young seeds, in teaching and guiding them. Sometimes their lives had to be cut short, of course, and that was always a moment for sorrow.

The Devil Twins - and didn't calling them that nettle them - didn't quite understand. They'd never had true power, so their entire life had been struggling and slaughtering those above them, or contesting with an equal. It was no way to live. It wasn't simply that trust empowered people to act together, it was also that being able to trust was joyful. Of course, a fool sought the joy and died because of it, but that something could be done foolishly didn't mean it couldn't be done well.

Being beaten helped you learn that. He had suffered so many times at the hands of Konstantinos, but the other man wasn't invincible. No, the problem he had was that Konstantinos understood him, but the reverse was not entirely true. When somebody could be inside your thoughts, but not you inside theirs, you were guaranteed to lose every battle of thought.

The victory in the east had been far beyond his expectations. The fall of the entire Jingshen Clan? It seemed likely Junjie had been a paper tiger the entire time, and a single push had seen their house of cards fall over. It meant the other man was far more a threat, but...

That could wait for later. He wriggled comfortably in the grass and flowers, enjoying the feeling against his skin. He'd enjoy the feeling for awhile before he went back to work.

 

[occipitallobe]

Report after report on his desk, and Sheng Yu couldn't help but groan.

Demands for more Legions to be dispatched, for his valuable Scorpion-riders to be sent to deal with unruly bandits.

Of course they were unruly! They had been bandits for centuries before the Clan had taken over their land, and they weren't about to stop now. A few idle alliances weren't going to change that, and it was obvious that the bandits of various stripes had hoped to use their expertise in the lands to assist the Clan in return for endless Spirit Stones while the war against the Jingshen raged. That hadn't happened, and so they'd started raiding caravans. Two new Coloneia burnt to the ground, and six Experts lost. The Bandit Kings gave assurances in person, and then turned around and started looting before the envoy was even out of their lands.

Oh, they'd taken to the notion of holding lands and resources well enough in theory, but in practice...

It had been a disaster. The consistent demand for troops that Sheng Yu didn't want to spend meant he'd deployed another Legion there, one he had felt would do nothing but march up and down pacifying the lands for the next few decades. Still, they'd managed to establish a good cordon around the Dreamlike Tower, and Seven Temples had fallen in line, as much as could be said for the little city.

There were always more requests, too, but... crushing their erstwhile allies for a few raids would go down poorly. They'd simply have to bear it. He had pushed for the use of Seven Temples as the single powerful vassal in these lands, but the Council and the old man had thought differently. And now they were bleeding cultivators every single day while these new bandit kings tested the limits of their power.

The Trade Palace had gone little better, with the Scorpion Sect mostly walling themselves off, though apparently a quarter or so of them were willing to take up the banner of the new Trade Palace. The rapid development in their lands... well, he'd send out some land surveyors in the next few decades, get some sort of military report on what he was facing if they did decided to rebel.

At least the old man had listened to him on unifying the Alliances. Those fractious idiots had been worthless from the start, but at least getting them into a state where they could resist uprisings and work together on occasion would lighten his workload. Their new Grand Federation Seated Council of Immortal and Worthy Core Alliance-Lords had centralised power quite a bit, though the name made him want to spit.

He chuckled. Old men and women who couldn't even decide on a name and instead had it decided by chance. The unification had proceeded slowly, but the main thing was to appoint some sort of head, and perhaps give them assistance from the Clan. Station a Legion, have them assist the official Alliance leader with everything, making the seat valuable enough to covet, and so give the leader some credible authority. Over time, the authority would become more and more entrenched in the minds of the others. Hopefully it'd at least keep the area calm.

It wasn't that he didn't have enough Legions, it was that he didn't want to station them in the backwater lands of the Clan where he could avoid it. The war in the Plains was the focus of all, and having too many Legions sitting out east would mean they'd be useless when the time came.

Not much happened here. I'll be doing Sect and Alliances maps with more in-depth updates next turn, so I figured I'd just leave them mostly alone now.

---

Manuel looked down at the Array. He had honestly thought it very clever, the initial Century Oasis Formation - at least, once he'd looked at. Inspired and brilliant work, just not impactful enough in the environment of the poor Organ-Meat Desert. A case of brilliance dampened by its environment.

He'd actually had the thought while exploring a Jingshen mine below where the Core Formation elders of the former Clan refused to go, looking for greater wealth. Unfortunately, his searches beneath the sands had yielded nothing, but the flows of Qi he'd seen amongst the stones had inspired him.

But now... he'd had a chance to incorporate it into his Array-crafting. He was by no means brilliant himself, preferring instead to seize the ideas of others and combine them with conventional thought. The main advantage was his ability to carve many things perfectly at once, an economic engine unlike any in the Clan. Of course, most Arrays didn't want to be carved simultaneously and at once, and so this was a less useful skill than one might imagine.

Still, the Qi-Draining Array was useful in the extreme. Oh, useless in times of peace. The real key was inspired by how a Formation could shape Qi or seize Qi in various ways, and key that into an Array. The Qi-Draining Array was not strong enough to impact combat as such, but it was useful enough to clear entire lands of Qi from a distance, allowing those entrenched in cities to regenerate their Qi much more easily. It had a limit before it broke, and was fragile besides. A single blow would shatter one from almost any cultivator.

It was no work of great genius. But in an era where the Righteous Path was under siege, building them powerful tools to resist sieges would never go awry. It took the Qi ever-so-slowly, and leeched it from the lands around at a truly pathetic rate. However, four faced in the cardinal directions would be able to almost double the Qi the defenders of a siege would have access to ordinarily, for almost twelve months. They could be charged and used sporadically, enabling many defenses to be held for longer than they would've been before.

The sort of thing the Righteous Path could make, but likely simply hadn't. If you didn't have a lot of Array-Smiths, you ended up spending all your time in war repairing old works and desperately building new ones on the frontline, not experimenting with curios. He'd already sold a huge number of them, and because they didn't rely on anything but the direction you pointed them in, they were easy enough to mass-produce.

He'd made tens of thousands, his will carving the same thing out across hundreds and hundreds of bar of copper - wound around by meticulously carved jade wire. Array after array after array. He'd then sent them to be sold, and was quite content. He'd made a tidy profit. Nothing special, and he doubted the Righteous Path would need any more of these any time soon. Still, better to sell them in bulk for a moderately favorable price... then if they started failing, why, he had his own Array-Smiths to earn his money once more.

 

[occipitallobe]

Kleisthenes thought this would've happened earlier, in all honesty.

Weeping Anvil was the Mid Nascent remaining to the Sorrowful Blacksmiths, and he had been hunting his former second-in-command for a decade. Hammer Strikes Anvil Ten Thousand Times Righteously was the Blood Path Nascent's former name, though he'd taken on a new one, Bloodhammer. Falling to the Blood Mists seemed to have made him less loqacious, though no less melodramatic.

Bloodhammer had largely avoided Weeping Anvil, consuming cities here and there before simply vanishing for the better part of a decade, coming out only twice to devour a Core Formation elder each time. He had plentiful Qi stored up, and so could wait.

Weeping Anvil had only agreed to meet with her after his grandson had died to the second strike of his apprentice.

He was a young-looking man cast entirely from iron, which made her feel some commonality with him.

It was all lost in moments.

"So. The vulture arrives, demanding coin for aid. What do you want? My pass? My lands? My secrets? Come, make your demands, Kleisthenes of the Golden Devils."

She was taken aback momentarily.

"I come in good faith, Weeping Anvil. None of us want to see more cities consumed by a monster."

He snorted.

"I doubt it. If you wanted to aid us, you could just aid us. Why bother with the cost?"

Kleisthenes felt a desire to clench a fist, and let it pass. The inheritor of the Coalition who had cast them out of the Mountains entirely said that? No, she would normally not countenance it. Still, she was here for a reason.

"Our inheritances."

"Hmmph."

She began speaking, gaining speed.

"You can't access them, and they're for the most part bound to our blood. If we assist you, we want access to them."

"I'm not letting you in the Tower. Not for all the Spirit Stones in your coffers and your aid!"

She gritted her teeth.

"Fine. But the lesser legacies? The arms and armour of our fallen ancestors? I myself know of the Gravebone Panoply, an item useless to you yet valuable to us. Why not simply grant us access, and whatever knowledge you've gained about these sites so we might reclaim them?"

Weeping Anvil smacked a hand into a fist with a clang.

"You lost these legacies in a war, Kleisthenes of the Devils. You think yourself so bold to come and seize by guile what your ancestors lost by force?"

She drew power in on herself, and decided to speak a different language.

"Did you wish for polite requests, Weeping Anvil? I can come making demands if you wish."

He laughed.

"Hah! You think Strength Purity would tolerate you demanding anything from me? Invade the Pass, see where it gets you."

Kleisthenes let a thin smile move onto her face. Manuel had given her a few secrets, things not to be used if negotiations weren't working. But she could feel this, Weeping Anvil just wanted a reason to dismiss her. To avoid them taking advantage of the Righteous weakness and recovering their legacies.

"Have you heard of the Droplet of Rust and Ruin?"

Weeping Anvil froze.

"How have you heard of that? How?"

She smiled, superiority clear on her face. Despite his head-and-a-half of height over her, she looked down upon him, eyes gleaming.

"Fascinating thing. Your cultivation method is so powerful, and yet it has weaknesses. Severe ones. The problem with being strong everywhere, I tend to find, is it makes you very weak somewhere. Wouldn't you agree?"

His fists were clenched and she could see him considering attacking her.

She smiled daintily. Imperator Above, she loved being able to do that. Her old body could at best intimidate, this one had real daintiness potential from time to time. Not too much, but some.

He moved, and she stayed still.

A blow half-launched and left undone. It would've wounded her, she estimated. But Weeping Anvil was obviously testing her.

The fist hanging in front of her face still, she spoke.

"We are no longer the Golden Devils beneath your notice, Weeping Anvil of the Righteous Path. We do not scrape and bow when you demand, no matter how you might be used to it. We are willing to treat you fairly, but not with slavish servility. I offer a fair bargain. Aid when you call that we might put down your former ally, and secure your lands. In return, we will gain access to twelve legacies of our choice, excluding the Tower."

He snarled.

"You think I'll fall in line? By what right do you think you can do this, Devil?"

"By what right did you and yours come spilling over our mountains, slaughtering us like dogs when we had lived in peace with you beforehand? By right, me and mine should be coming back to what was once ours, driving you out and shattering your Righteous Path for its endless sins against us. Instead, we have held our peace and offer aid. That we offer it with a price should be no concern of yours, unless you wish to return what was ours in its entirety. If you do, why, I'd be happy to aid you for free. Now, twelve legacies. What do you say?"

"Four. We've spent centuries trying to dig some of those out!"

She smiled, winsomely this time. No, it hadn't worked, she could feel it on her face. It was just an intimidating grimace. Oh well.

"Ten. I'll leave you two out of the kindness of my heart."

"Five, and I'll go no higher!"

"Seven."

"Six, damn you. Six and no more."

She had hoped for eight, for there were in truth eight moderately interesting legacies around the area. To open them entirely would be drastically expensive, but at least they were available now.

Unlocked Legacy Purchases - These require a lot of Wealth to unlock, though Nascent Actions can often make them substantially cheaper. They will be available from next turn onwards.

 

[occipitallobe]

Chenglong shuddered and shivered.

He'd been trapped in this damp cell for weeks, after he'd been trapped.

The Mists had come down and what remained of the Chuan Clan had died. He had been an Elder, one of the few Core Formation men left, and he had torn into his juniors like a mad beast, the haze in his mind causing him to rip and tear at the flesh of those he had sworn to protect.

Despite his apologies they had tried to kill him, and failing that had managed to convince him to meet with one of them in a room - a trap, where young Ai had drawn him to to 'talk'. As they sat down the trap came down, and he was left in here to die with her.

He had tried his best, but after a few weeks the hunger had come upon him.

He had endured it for a month, and then he could endure no longer.

She had been a sweet girl, and a brave one. He'd made it quick.

So they'd left him here to die, slowly running out of Qi. He didn't know what the cell was made of, but it was impervious to his fists, and he had little else. His arts were mainly focused on the use of fire, but without a flame to draw from they lacked strength. He had worked on amplification rather than creation, a useful choice in any situation where he had access to a small flame. He had blackened the formerly-grey walls, but it had simply used his Qi faster.

The hunger was coming on him again.

He had nothing to eat, and the gnawing pain in his dantian was screaming at him to consume. He had seen this happen to Blood Path rebels in better times - a slow, agonizing death as their bodies attempted to consume themselves, becoming emaciated skeletons far quicker than one might have thought. His muscles would slacken and shrink, his skin would hang off his bones. His eyes would sink into his skull, and he himself would shrivel into some ancient-looking man before his bones began to melt. Eventually he would become flesh made into a cancer writ large, every part of it consuming the other until there was nothing left but a pool of stinking liquid flesh where a man had once been.

A scream from outside.

He ignored it. He had heard similar things before, and nothing had come of them - they had been traps, he suspected. Or rather, attempts to get him to burn his Qi faster so his former companions could leave this place. It wasn't like he hadn't offered. To help them, to only eat the Blood Path enemies who had hurt them all! But the Blood Mists had made them wary of him, even if they had felt the same compulsions. No matter what he offered, they refused him!

Another scream, and a gurgle.

Footsteps, coming closer and closer to the cell.

A screech and a thump, as the door was simply wrenched off its hinges.

A man stood there. Handsome, though not especially so. A large nose, hair falling down around his shoulders. Not the sort that would've made young women swoon, but certainly enough to make their mothers blush. Set in the face were eyes of deepest brown, with long, curling lashes.

The man smiled, showing teeth that were just a little too pointed.

"Ah, Elder Hu. An unexpected benefit."

It was-

"Old Cannibal."

The Nascent Soul laughed, and gestured with his hand. One of his Experts floated down the hallway. Hui Zhen. He was a large man, muscular and brave. Chenglong saw his pants were stained with urine, and his eyes moving around desperately.

"I came here out of goodwill, young fellow. Eat."

Chenglong frowned.

"You think I'll just do what you say?"

The laugh grew louder, echoing around him in a way that no human voice should.

"Of course not. Kind, brave Chenglong Hu. The Elder who led the last of the defiance against me, saving so many. Honestly, you evaded little Ai'er so well it made me think she was lying about not being able to find you."

"Ai'er?"

"Oh, the Corpse-Devouring Fairy. No, she was probably lying. Girl lacks... commitment. I found you as easily as turning over my hand, but this works quite well for me. Now, if we're done talking, it's about time for you to eat."

Chenglong breathed in. The hunger was taking him, but...

No, better to die here. He wasn't going to play this monster's sick game.

"Kill me. I'm not obeying you, monster."

Old Cannibal shrugged.

"I left all of your people alive, you know."

"...what?"

'I didn't kill anyone coming in here. Oh, I snagged you a meal, but every single one of them lives. Either you eat now, or I go back on my decision."

Chenglong laughed now. The sort of painful, angry laugh that came when it was that or screaming.

"Why would I believe you?"

Old Cannibal spoke, cracking his knuckles before he did.

"Three reasons, Chenglong Hu. The first is it that it is wise to always keep your promises, as a Nascent Soul. If you cannot, you cannot, but such a reputation serves you well. Only an idiot would abandon it for their own entertainment. The second is that sparing them aids me. Rebels who my own disciples and experts can hunt down and kill are worth more to me than mere scraps of a meal. And thirdly, why would I bother antagonizing you so if I wanted to recruit you?"

"Recruit me?"

"Yes. You show your... dedication to abandoning your former cause, and I'll spare all your comrades. I'm not telling some ridiculous or trite lie where I've set up someone else to kill them once they get out, either. They get to leave, and none of mine know where they are. If they die or live from then on, well, I don't care."

Chenglong went quiet, thinking.

"Now, there is a limit on my offer. I'm a busy man, Elder Hu. I'll give you thirty seconds to start eating, or I start killing. Maybe once you see the consequences of inaction you'll be a little less intransigent."

Chenglong looked down at Hui Zhen. He was so hungry. And if would save the rest of their lives.

Ten seconds passed.

Then twenty.

With five seconds left to go, he decided. He bit down, blood gushing out of the neck of Hui Zhen. He felt his Qi rise within him, and lines of cutting force emerged from his hands, that same force neatly slicing through Hui's throat, and slicing pieces off him after that. With a mere effort he compressed them, turning them into dense cubes of meaty Qi that he gulped down one after the other. He ate and ate and ate, and it seemed like hours before he was done. The satisfying feeling of pure Blood Qi within him, bringing him to the heights of power and quickness once again.

Old Cannibal smiled.

"Now, to my offer."

Chenglong looked up at the man, hate burning in his eyes.

"You think I'll want to work for you? After this?"

"Of course. I'm offering you an... administrative position. The sort of position where you can subtly rebel against me and help your friends and family from the Chuan Clan evade my clutches. Why wouldn't you?"

Chenglong found himself speechless. What?

"You see, Hu Chenglong, the art of making a good offer is one that both people benefit from. I need an administrator for much of my new western territories. An administrator who will fulfil my will, gently and kindly raising up the cities of mortals without unlimited consumption that drives them into extinction. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a good administrator. Of course, if you misuse your position to preserve your people, that's of no real concern to me."

"You... want me to treat mortals as cattle for you?"

Old Cannibal clapped his hands.

"Precisely! Though, perhaps not in the way you were thinking. Did you know that as a mortal, I was a cowherd? A simple job, herding the thirty-two cows of the village from safe area to safe area, avoiding Spirit Beasts and the like. One must treat cattle kindly, make sure they avoid disease, the predations of beasts, and theft from one's enemies. The cow should know nothing more than kindness, for you are the only thigh they can cling to in a world of hostility and fear. In the end, you eat them."

He shrugged.

"Mortals are much the same. The Righteous Path often complains that what I do is evil, but by what standard? As a boy, two of my cows - named Red Rose and Linglong - were the best of friends. They awoke in the morning together, and spent all day with one another. They enjoyed one another's company in a way human beings do, and when it came time to eat, my father slew Linglong and we ate of her body. Rose was inconsolable for months, and the loss of her friend seemed to impact her deeply. Yet we ate her friend, and we were the better for it. Cows and mortals both have friends, care for their children, and live tiny mayfly lives. That we consume them is no monstrosity, merely part of the cycle of the world."

Chenglong shook his head.

"Accept the offer, Chenglong. You will, or at least lie to me and say you will. It'll move this conversation along tremendously."

Chenglong felt pressure surround him, the reality that the Nascent Soul could kill him as easily as swatting a fly. He hated this. It was like playing shatranj where the other player knew all your moves, and suggested them to you. If your best move was suggested to you by your opponent... well, it was easy to see what the result of that game would be. Still, there was no other option.

"Fine. I'll work for you."

The man's smile grew wide and genuine.

"Wonderful. Your task will be to keep cities safe and isolated. Ideally, to teach as many as possible to cultivate. And to each city will be taught a language, one different from all others in the world. Let them grow, and when the time comes, we will harvest them."

"And if I teach them to cultivate and fight against you?"

Old Cannibal smiled.

"All the better."

He grasped Chenglong by the arm, and with a gesture shattered the roof above him, energy smashing stones far into the air.

"Everything is within my expectations, Elder Hu. Now, let's bring you to your new domain. I think you'll be quite pleased. You were from Heavenly Pearl City after all, no?"

They flew off, moving faster than Chenglong ever could've imagined, thoughts whirling in his mind.