The insane ambition shown here in very in-character
By normal Cultivation speeds, Third Realm Qingge will have died of old age centuries before her daughter reaches the Seventh Realm, let along the Eight.
But I too support the "Ling Qi will beat Shenhua's speed record" goal !
EDIT: Actually, I couldn't find the quote on when exactly a normal genius is expected to reach the Seventh Realm. So if Seventh if long, a Third Realm could maybe still be alive? Not sure.
But the time taken to reach the Eight Realm is definitely far longer than the lifespan of a Third Realm.
I think it's within 350-500 years for White? I'm not sure too. But, yeah, we can maybe reach Prism/White in Qingge's lifetime if she reaches Green. Which would be cool.
Has Yrs said anything about when Qingge & Co. will come to Snowblossom? There was this one interlude in which Min Hua remarked that they weren't going to stay in the sect for long, so I assume they are not going to wait until LQ gets her personal fief.
Will they come when the Manor is ready? That would kinda make sense since CRX would otherwise have to import a bunch of servants. Our maids are at least very unlikely to be spies or saboteurs.
Also, I'm amused be the idea of Qingge working directly under the heiress of the Emerald Seas.
The mist expanded. It flowed from under the hem of her gown, shrouding the grove, it billowed from her sleeves, as a flute of translucent ice crystalized in her hands. A dusting of frost rippled out from her tread as she took a single step forward. She observed Dzintara silently as she raised the instrument to her lips.
The woman in front of her tilted her chin up, acknowledging her challenge. Her hand drifted to her waist, where a single bladed hatchet hung from a loop of leather. She too stepped forward, and the soft gray mist turned darker, condensing into a darker clouds, fat and dark with ill contained rain. The wind kicked up as she spun the haft of the hatchet in her hand. Sparks crawled through the ornate knotwork forged into the iron, and the spin of the axehead made the wind keen. Lightning cracked, striking Dzintara directly and sparks leaped between her teeth and danced in her hair.
"Hah, show off," Sixiang murmured.
Ling Qi smiled. There was definitely something to be said for simply clashing cultivation directly. She believed in words, ut a great stock in them, but there was an unrestrained comfort to letting your will and self simply crash against another.
Ling Qi began to play, drifting through the mist like a wraith. Deeper notes, a song of marching, footfalls in tandem. It was both martial and ordered. She acknowledged what her people were. Power, power could not be denied or ignored. Those had it and those who did not. It was impossible for there to be no division there. A sharp, hard note, like a blade cutting the air. The melodic beat of a hundred hundred hammers building roads and carving mountains. A song of glaring light, burning away shadows and mist.
Dzintara circled with her, solid and heavy despite the thinning weft of the waking world. Her footfalls were thunder, rumbling in the belly of the clouds. A second axe was raised, the weapons spun, something between a kata and a dance, and the skirling sounds of clashing steel were as the howl of a blizzard through the clustered pines, punctuated by the sharp report of exploding bark. A thousand axes striking wood. A sturdy shieldwall against the dark. This was power. Power stood outside the firelight. Power was inhuman, dangerous. A berserkers howl and the sound of tearing flesh.
Division, Power wrought it, cut it into the world. They agreed on this, where then, did divergence come?
Men and Beasts were not so far apart. Power could be contained, it could be channelled, but never put away. Her flute rose, an eagle's scream. Pride was the herald of strife. The strident demand to be the highest and strongest. It built nothing, made nothing, it only took. But to resist those talons, a mighty shield was needed.
The beat of titanic wings churned the mist and the clouds, turned the grove into a churning funnel of cold and damp.
Dzintara eyed her in the dark, eyes aglow in the dark. And to Ling Qi's surprise she raised her voice, a low chant, a song of a sort. Not as harsh as she might have imagined. But strident all the same. Axes clashed with a boom of thunder. To the strongest. To the strongest. The mantra of a demon. The first law is violence, to consume, the second law reproduction, to multiply. Beget and kill. Kill and beget.
Bloody flower petals, sharp as razors whirling in the wind they'd made. Ling Qi was glad, her meaning had been heard, laying out what their conceptions of rightly used power had risen against.
The scream of an eagle was strangled by the creak of wood and the unfurling of cord. Bolt, net and hurled stone. One whose power was wisdom, and wisdom which could not be exercised as a stone monument, but as a leader of men. Who wrought courage and defiance in the face of power. The unity to stand against a God.
The titan shade of the eagle crashed down in the darkness beyond. Unchecked pride was to be brought down by the better Way, the uniting Way, which could spread and be known to many.
Blood and flesh and sweat, their stench swept aside by steel and cold. Over Dzintara, around her, Ling Qi saw a towering shadow, a titan of a woman. The champion could not stand with many. Discipline. Discipline. To accept the evils within, the base hungers preyed upon by the demon and bank them, chain them, command them. To leave the home in the hands of tradition and kin, not the warlords boot. Only in sacrifice of self, can power be tamed. The axes empty of desire cut the demon's flesh. The heart already frozen in one purpose ignores the siren lure passion, the bringer of strife.
The frigid scream of the wind and the tearing of bark deadened sound and buffeted Ling Qi. It might have blown her away, silenced her given time.
There was a crack of division. The Southerners' cultivation was a practice of denial. Sacrifice was core to both. Power could not come for free or without purpose. But self-denial was at the core of their cultivation. For better or for worse, the opposite was true of the imperial way. Which demanded you express yourself so strongly that your Law was imprinted on the world.
Her song rose and the wind shattered to the tune of howling wolves. Unity could mean many things, tradition was another of them. Unspoken, unseen chains could exceed iron in strength. Those who could break such chains were also needed. Where the diviner spoke, unity formed but also broke. Hounds howled, both for and against. A great wolf was dragged down by his own children, guts spilled upon the ground. Violence was the first law of power. Without its capacity, today would only repeat forever.
The Empire's gods enforced it, quarreled over it, were chained themselves by it, and by degrees, those motions wrought difference.
Endless millions of tons of crumbling stone, mountains crushed to gravel. Beasts fit to choke the world, cloven unto rivers of gore, demons sundered to dust in their millions. An echoing inhuman roar torn from a human throat, rattling the earth and sky. Wrath. Mother not of one or a few, but all. Purpose. Singular, immovable purpose, stripped of all the desires of life, stripped of the thunder of conquest, inviolable to the roots of the flower. Striding far from the fires, never to return. Giants had no place in the world of humans, born or made.
Madness for gods to keep such humanity in them, to freely stir the passion of war. So spoke the clashing axes
Madness and arrogance to think that every god could be so pure, rejoined the cold midwinter wind.
Ling Qi's reply came on countless scurrying feet as she stopped, standing across from Dzintara. To be small was not a virtue, to be weak was not a virtue. The vermin's hunger existed in every belly, great and small.
The body of the Vermin God swarmed in multitude, a thousand feet a thousand biting teeth. They consumed and were consumed in turn. The field writhed with fur and hunger. The instinct of the vermin, of self-absorbed consumption, would gnaw through any chain in time.
The vermin swarmed the ground crawled and skittered up Dzintara's legs, bit and gnawed at the mantle shade that shrouded her, chewing not at flesh but solidarity, and the foundation upon which she stood.
Axes carved silver arcs in the world, a million died. The hunger of the mighty could not be compared to the weak, for all that they might be the same in kind. Only in Isolation, in hermitage and immovable discipline could it be mastered.
The flute sang the rats surged, not to consume Dzintara but to flow back on Ling Qi herself. With each pinprick of a bite, their bodies burst, and her qi overflowed. Want could be mastered with understanding too, with mutuality and overwhelming Ways forced to curb on each others edges. Only in keeping the mighty bound in the web of community could hunger be mastered.
+1 XP to Power, +1 XP to expression
The clouds dispersed. The Mist dispersed
"Your ways are wrong, strife among your great souls will crush far more than their interaction might save," Dzintara said.
"Yet, we are able to change, and we are able to stand together," Ling Qi said.
"Yes. If nothing else, you are certainly able to keep to contracts," Dzintara conceded.
"And I see that you are devoted to your prosperity, not only of yourselves, but of the White Sky," Ling Qi acknowledged.
That was not to say there was no personal element too it. After all it was gods who were pure and unsullied by human want. She had no doubt Dzintara had such thoughts on the nature of their high realms as well.
She did not think Dzintara liked her any better, but she did think they could approach each other as neutral peers at least. She did think Dzintara might drive hard for her sides benefit, but not to the point of sabotage.
Meeting the other woman's gaze, she thought a similar conclusion was brewing there. Ling Qi's sincerity had been accepted though.
"My, the two of you argue loudly. You are lucky I was here to offer comfort," Jaromila chuckled.
The both of them glanced toward her, where the older woman was waving her hands, clearing the last of the mist from the hill.
"You have my thanks Sister Emissary," Dzintara said, her axes slipped back into the loops on her belt. "I am not the best synched with this mantle."
"I can grow passionate in my arguments. Thank you Emissary Jaromila," Ling Qi said, letting her flute melt back into snowflakes and water. She shook out her hand, fingers immediately drying. "Are you okay Sixiang?"
"All good, decided I'd just support your song there, no good trying to meddle," Sixiang said.
"You're welcome. I am glad the debate went well," Jaromila said. "Are you ready to speak normally now?"
"I am, we are to discuss our realms more, yes?"
"We are," Ling Qi said. "Though I feel I must bring up the new arrivals in my camp…"
Dzintara's eyes sharpened. "Yes, those. They are of the west."
"Some centuries back a great general of the Empire lead a reprisal against the people of the red garden, the worshippers of the sunflower Goddess, and conquered them utterly instead," Ling Qi said.
"I see," Dzintara said. "Their scent is bloody, but… not quite that of the demon."
"You still know such things?"
"It is passed down from elder to youth, always."
"Makes sense, can probably pass the impression directly if they got dream walking arts," Sixiang whispered to her.
Ling Qi tilted her chin down in acknowledgement. "Good that will make this discussion easier. I feel there is one question I have first though. Are you aware of a great pass in the western mountains and the vast fortress of thorn and vine which cuts it off?"
Dzintara's face was blank as she considered the question, fingernails tapping the head of one of her axes. Jaromila's eyes widened marginally.
"I am. You speak of Mother Fryja. Where she laid down her roots, carving our land from the flower demon's body."
Ling Qi inhaled deeply. "Ah, of course."
Vermin God's Legion: G4
Type: Construct, Zone
Duration: Scene
A heavy song, ominous and fast paced. From every corner hungry teeth and hungrier eyes rise, boiling from the earth, materializing from the sky, a legion of vermin to carpet the earth and devour those who think themselves mighty. The house and skittering of countless rats fills the air. They devour, they die and are devoured in turn, and inspire a cowardice and selfishness in foes. The rats gnaw not only at flesh but bonds, reducing the potency of supporting traits and techniques among enemies the longer they remain. Attacks against the construct gradually degrade its potency.
The user may discharge the technique, causing the rats to devour themselves in a frenzy of violence as the song transforms from one of horror to triumph, bolstering their own supporting techniques and traits as well.
"Some centuries back a great general of the Empire lead a reprisal against the people of the red garden, the worshippers of the sunflower Goddess, and conquered them utterly instead," Ling Qi said.
Tbf they have left it more or less alone at this point. As long as they continue to do so things will be fine. I don't expect Shao to poke a sublime tier entity for no reason. So we've probably got at least a couple centuries before there is a good reason.
Does this actually matter? Sun Shao already took a look and decided he wasn't going to pick a fight with her, for now at least. If Fryja even notices the common soldiers poking at her she probably thinks their 'attacks' are adorable.
Does this actually matter? Sun Shao already took a look and decided he wasn't going to pick a fight with her, for now at least. If Fryja even notices the common soldiers poking at her she probably thinks their 'attacks' are adorable.
kinda, now we have interacted with the greatest Soul of War the Polar Nation has without permission. Consider how they were very respectful of our request to not bother Xia Ren ?
"Alright, the second thing. This pass through the mountains. It's blocked apparently, did you see it?"
"From a distance," he replied frowning. He scratched at one of his scars. "It's like the biggest thornbush I ever saw, considering it was higher than some of the mountains, and extends back a long way. Dense and black, fulla thorns….. It was fuckin cold too. I could feel the chill from a couple leagues off. According to some of the other guys, lower realms… folks without shen, can't get within a few kilometers before they start to die."
"Have the Western Soldiers made any attempts on it?"
"Some high realms poked it, from what I heard." Ji Rong said. "Infested with spirit beasts. Big flying two headed lizards, spitting ice and lightning and black fire. I saw a skull one of the Fifth realms was showing off. Was as big as your obnoxious turtle."
"Hunting the outskirts for sport," Ji Rong corrected. "You've seen these guys, out west they expect you to hunt the material for your kit yourself. I even got something being made. But nah, too many of them further in, and their wary of the hedge itself. Shao apparently took a look at it, but decided not to do anything yet. Just to set a defensive line for if the uglies came out."
It was certainly no joke, if the high realm military officers of the west had chosen to defer the challenge. And that was something to ask Dzintara about Ling Qi supposed. She had a feeling it might have something to do with their goddess' battle with 'the flower demon'.
The parts about Mother Fryja from our chat with Ji Rong earlier.
I'm curious if the two-headed flying lizards are aspects of Fryja, or if they're remnants of what she fought against that adapted to survive in her ecosystem.
Also, kinda super badass that anyone without shen starts dying from just getting too close.
The Southerners' cultivation was a practice of denial. Sacrifice was core to both. Power could not come for free or without purpose. But self-denial was at the core of their cultivation. For better or for worse, the opposite was true of the imperial way. Which demanded you express yourself so strongly that your Law was imprinted on the world.
The contrasting approaches to seeking higher realms of power is very interesting, both seem quite valid with certain foibles and issues. Polar Nations saw the potential conflicts between high realms and Isolated and emptied themselves of Want. The Empire embraced it, because of the powerful things that could be done through Want and Expression of Self.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So now we have some more end-states for the Sun Shao situation:
1. Sun Shao cultivates and trains his armies and himself to the peak of performance and declares a war on the Bai in the last years of life with the aim of triggering Granny Serpent and causing immense devastation on his way out. Potentially denies his body to Red Garden in the process, possibly kills Granny Serpent or drives her away from Bai ability to connect with her. Either way, looking to cripple the Thousand Lakes for long enough for an heir to rise and keep his people safe. This is a terrible outcome, but perhaps less existentially threatening as some alternatives since a campaign can at least be fought against (and potentially defeated). This was mainly the one I was hoping for, but seems increasingly unlikely compared to the next option.
2. Sun Shao is marrying Red Garden and may give himself and his people fully over to Red Garden as her Carrion King. This route would contrast with the prior by not purposely spending his last years with an assault on the Bai, but rather seeking a smooth Ascension with the intent to have the body he leaves with Red Garden be the perpetual sentinel against threats to his family. We don't know what that would look like in practice, but it would secure the safety of his family from the Bai by making the Jungle scarier. Red Garden is fairly expansionist, Dzintara expounds on the first two laws of the demons. This will end poorly in the long term for all neighbors of Red Garden, as well as the non-Sun residents, and may require cooperation from Polar Nations, Empire and Thousand Princes combined to re-contain after an initial breakout that happens when the active Sublime-tier entity gets her hands on a Peak-White Avatar of War with a freshly-ascended imperial-style Great Spirit of War to back her up. If the Sunflower Goddess decides to fight Fryja with the Carrion Lord and the backing of the Spirit which Sun Shao ascends as, she might be able to win. We don't know how Red Garden is contained on the Thousand Princes end, but a new Carrion Lord and Spirit Patron would surely make resuming raids on Thousand Lakes fairly trivial. War against Thousand Lakes would potentially wake Granny Serpent like in the first outcome, but with much greater power backing up the Red Garden side. Truly a bad end. Fitting though, that the Bai would be ruined by a man whose story so mirrors Yao's, except in that Sun Shao found a deadlier woman to marry than Granny Serpent.
3. Now that we know about Fryja, Sun Shao could choose loyalty to his subordinates over loyalty to The Sunflower Goddess as he chose with Bai Fuxi and seek patronage with one that would be better for his people in the long term. Have his people hole up in the spear-wound mines while he works with Fryja to truly carve pieces of Red Jungle away from the Sunflower Goddess. Connect with the Isolated Fryja who will never return to the fires of home, perhaps she can find camaraderie on campaign. Give his body and peoples to a union with Fryja in the hopes of pushing the Sunflower Garden into even tighter quarantine, and firm up the border against Red Garden on the southern end. His people end up with Fryja, The Carrion Lord, and a Great Spirit of War as patrons against the Sunflower Goddess, who will re-assert control of her domain and resume raids on the Thousand Lakes. The new Red Garden will probably also be able to call upon the new Great Spirit, but hey maybe not. I'd call this one very very hopeful thinking.
4. Liling could pull a Sun Shao and betray her family (Sunflower Goddess) for the sake of her family (most everyone else but especially the non-Sun Western Territories people that rely on her) because she knows what's best for them, and seeks shelter for her people in that region of The Wall near the spear-wound-mines (the mines being bulwarks against Red Garden) or even further seeking shelter among The Pines as fellow humans that fought The Sunflower Goddess to a standstill. Bank on the fact that The Carrion King won't be able to act directly against your well being, and petition Fryja for patronage against Grandma Garden. This end state would remove some of the population (maybe the majority of the Imperial population) from the Sunflower Garden's control, would remove a lot of the cultivators that the Goddess would otherwise have access to, but would still result in the Sunflower Goddess reasserting control over the Jungle with The Carrion King and a new Great Spirit of War alongside her. On the good end, the quarantine of the South would be reinforced and bolstered by cultivators that should immediately be able to draw upon the same new Great Spirit of War (as opposed to the forces of Bai and Thousand Princes that might need to learn how to or otherwise be incompatible with it) and may be safe from direct Carrion King intervention. On the bad end, the Sunflower Goddess would still be able to expand in two directions and even with some of her strength stolen from her she'd still be likely to breach containment and require coordination to re-contain.
I think some variation of number 4 is probably the best general route to reasonably hope for. Liling splinters her people away from Red Garden and somewhat lessens Red Garden's strength before The Sunflower Goddess reasserts control of the region. Important overlapping themes with our own story are: Chosen/Found Family vs Bloodline, Reforging Connections after Deep Betrayal, Recycling Old Power into New Contexts, Understanding and Working with Foreigners/Outsiders/Others, Forming and Defending Community, Heir vs Genius-Head. And of course, Imperial Solidarity / Trying-To-Salvage-Good-Parts-of-Qin's-Empire
I have a feeling this will be a storyline we're consistently pulled in for by Ji Rong, even if the Emerald Seas has their own threats to worry about. Namely, the Shenhua bomb.
Do we know that when an Imperial Cultivator ascends they leave behind a White-tier avatar AND ascend into a Great Spirit as two separate(ish) entities?
Do we know that when an Imperial Cultivator ascends they leave behind a White-tier avatar AND ascend into a Great Spirit as two separate(ish) entities?
Through the imperial method they just ascend as a great spirit. No white tier avatar. Only the very strongest of great spirits (the moon, sun, time etc) can create an avatar of that power at great cost.
Ah, but don't forget that Fryja is holding back the Red Garden. So it'll be 2v1 of some sort. And no one outside of Sun Shao actually wants the Red Garden to spread any farther.
Do we know that when an Imperial Cultivator ascends they leave behind a White-tier avatar AND ascend into a Great Spirit as two separate(ish) entities?
No. We know that cultivator bodies are powerful reagents, we know that Great Spirits are able to produce lesser spirits out of shards of themselves (like Sixiang or The Emerald Dancer), and we know that Red Garden wants Sun Shao's body after he departs (either Ascension or death). My assumption is that The Sunflower Goddess is enamored of Shao enough to not dismantle his body when his spirit leaves, which honestly makes sense for a Carrion King. He is both the King of Carrion and Carrion himself at that point.
The Sunflower Goddess is anomalous to Imperial Understanding of Sublimes because she is so active all the time. Both Sublimes and Great Spirits in the Imperial understanding are limited in their ability to leverage their power upon creation, but the Sunflower Goddess appears to have a work around for the torpor that Sublimes generally fall into. I suspect that the body of The Carrion King will be a potent device that a spirit of whatever-Shao-Ascends-as could inhabit just like the mecha-suit that Sixiang wants us to order from Li Suyin. The Carrion King is fueled by Carrion, is made of Carrion, is ruler of Carrion, there will probably be rites and a cost to getting it up and running but so long as there's Carrion it should be able to repair itself. It will probably not always be on due to ruinous cost in lives, but I won't underestimate the capacity of Red Garden for Blood Sacrifice.
It would be fitting for The Sunflower Goddess, in my opinion, to have a husband that is also weirdly dangerous and active despite Imperial understanding of metaphysics
I'm a bit lost. But this is my current understanding. Pls correct any incorrect asumptions.
1. Sun Shao preparing to ascend into a Great Spirit, but has tied himself to the Sunflower Goddess. In doing so he plans to leave behind a psuedo-sublime ancestor (?) in the form of his discarded body?
EDIT: Is this the Carrion Lord thing @JowKeen?
2. The enitity the Western Kingdom is fighting is a Polar Nation 'Sublime tier' cultivator (Mother Fryja) whose job/duty is to quarintine the Red Jungle?
3. This MIGHT be a part of plan to incite a fight with Grandmother Serpent and make the Bai and the Thousand Lake's into the new Golden Fields?
I'm a bit lost. But this is my current understanding. Pls correct any incorrect asumptions.
Sun Shao preparing to ascend into a Great Spirit, but has tied himself to the Sunflower Goddess. In doing so he plans to leave behind a psuedo-sublime ancestor (?) in the form of his discarded body?
EDIT: Is this the Carrion Lord thing @JowKeen?
The enitity the Western Kingdom is fighting is a Polar Nation 'Sublime tier' cultivator (Mother Fryja) whose job/duty is to quarintine the Red Jungle?
This MIGHT be a part of plan to incite a fight with Grandmother Serpent and make the Bai and the Thousand Lake's into the new Golden Fields?
The Shao stuff is pure speculation currently and the western territories as rent fighting Fryja right now, they seem to be ignoring it at this point thankfully.
Sun Shao has the resources of his entire province and the secret help of a great spirit of his own while Friya would be alone, not to mention she is unused to fighting Imperial cultivators, so the battle would actually be pretty even. It's likely Sun Shao already knows what the "weird sentient wall of thorns" actually is and seeks (among other things) to screw over the new friends of the snakes with plausible deniability. People that powerful and influent are usually quite well informed.
Ah, but don't forget that Fryja is holding back the Red Garden. So it'll be 2v1 of some sort. And no one outside of Sun Shao actually wants the Red Garden to spread any farther.
Good point. Telling as many people as possible that Friya prevents the spread of the Red Garden will probably force the Westerners to avoid any open confrontation with her. "Open" being the key word.
