Author's Note: Been reading a decent amount of Cultivation stories and as an anthropologist I have some bones to pick with some tropes and their complete uncritical engagement with the worlds they are existing in.
Plus I had a long home game with this Monk character where we accumulated a lot of bonus rewards past level 20 (bonus feats, stats, etc) so I thought it would be cool to play around with Red.
You might recognize the tone of some of the early internal dialogue as similar to how the Doctor acts post-regeneration. That is the point, I am doing that on purpose.
Chapter 1: I Got Fused with My Level 20 Sun Soul Monk in a Xianxia World
Unknown Location
It started with a hazy afterimage in the air. Almost as if the desert were producing one of its countless mirages, though in the middle of the cloudless night with the dual moons of rust red and almost mirrored silver hanging above that would be highly unlikely.
After a few moments the hazy air burst alight with a strange purple fire and spun into a vaguely oval shape, the interior as silver and reflective as the moon.
In that mirror one might have seen it flickering between two figures. One was human, with long black curly hair. Blood seeped from holes in the torso. The other had red skin and wavy hair vaguely smouldering at the ends. Golden eyes widened in surprise. The two flickered back and forth until slowly they merged together. Creating a new form. One with lighter, more orange than red, skin and the dark and curly hair from the human form now smouldering away at the tips as well.
The new form was spit out of the mirror and the flames abruptly extinguished and the mirror shattered, strange eldritch glass falling to the ground and then dissipating into the moonlight.
And that is how I was born. Two forms, connected by threads of story woven across universes. Slammed together by some cosmic accident or plot.
On my hands and knees I howled as two minds were merged into one, that process not being completed until after my bodies…body fused.
Images of a world without magic with only natural wonder. Of deserts explored for the remnants of ancient human life. Of thousands of young minds molded and taught to value history. Of a gunman invading the place of learning. Placing my body in front of my charges.
Images of a world with magic warred with the world without. A youth spent with a circus, learning secret martial arts from a hidden master. Dragons fought and cowed. Ancient primordial gods sealed away from escaping once more. Foolishly drinking the blood of one. A body on fire. A body of fire. Reaching the pinnacle of mortality and brushing just the slightest bit past it.
I was Isaac. No I was Red'neran of the Golden Glow. Isaac Drake, archaeologist, teacher, mentor. Red'neran son of Ashira, apprentice to Mal'dornak the Slumbering Vermillion Bird.
I was…neither. Both. The pain subsided and I looked down at my orange-tinged skin. Both. Definitely both. And neither. I was new.
I needed a new name then. One that called back to both. I wouldn't do something goofy like Isred or Redaac. Isaac may have enjoyed Dragonball Z but he would have recognized that whatever situation I was in it was NOT an action-gag manga.
Though…the syllables of that second one were somewhat pleasing. Certainly something that shortened to Red would work. I'd workshop the exact second syllable and spelling.
I pushed myself up onto my feet and surveyed my surroundings.
I had been cast out of whatever cosmic nonsense portal I'd gotten sucked into, slammed together within, and spit out of at the edge of a desert oasis. Looking up I finally registered the strange moons of this world. Certainly I was no longer on either of my two planets of origin. The first world had only one moon. And the second had only one functioning moon, the other having been shattered into millions of rocky pieces that formed a ring around Red'neran's home planet during the Origin Wars.
So, to summarize. I was a newly formed gestalt being, on a planet alien to both of my originating parts. Spiffy. No that tasted wrong. I wasn't a 'say spiffy sarcastically' kind of guy. Hmm, I'm going to have to figure myself out.
I turned my perception inward, checking my body out. I still felt my Ki circulating through my body like pure liquid fire. I clenched my fist and focused. Yes, all my level twenty Monk power was still active and well practiced. Stillness of Mind was likely why I had calmed myself down so quickly from this strange birth. Rebirth? Birth.
I felt no discomfort from the heat. I was in some kind of fire-adapted body per Red'neran's Fire Genasi species. So that was no surprise. I also felt no thirst from the dry air. Normally in a desert I would…no, Isaac would have. Red'neran had perfected his Monk class. He had a Timeless Body, and so did I it seemed. That explained the lack of thirst or hunger.
If this desert was anything like the deserts of Earth or Arnacton I would also be rather glad of Purity of Body, making me immune to disease and poison.
I could sense as well that I wasn't functioning under some gamified Dungeons and Dragons adjacent System. I just had the traits that Red'neran had had, with none of the number crunching that Isaac had utilized.
My Ki reserves had been quantified as 20 units of Ki, but I could sense no way to actually quantify or interact with that number. I could safely assume that also meant my health, speed, initiative, and stats were all similarly Real as opposed to Quantified.
To test the integration I fell into one of the stances of my Rising Phoenix Form and began to go through the motions of the one-hundred and forty-four movements. Swiftly the side of me that held Isaac's knowledge provided that the descriptions he had given for Red'neran's martial arts had been heavily based on the Wing Chun style he had seen from Ip Man and Bruce Lee in films of his world. There were an excess thirty-six movements to Rising Phoenix, compared to Wing Chun, all of which were conceptualized as specialized movements used for superhuman and monstrous combat.
Hands up in a classic protecting hands vertical style and body in a high and narrow stance I immediately overlaid the two styles. Indeed, Isaac had in the lore document for this character written them to be almost identical for human to human combat.
I ran through the classic and deadly darting fingers of the third form and into the extra movements of the fourth form, the one unique to Rising Phoenix, high kicks eschewed by Wing Chun, but very effective against slow and cumbersome monsters; as well as acrobatic flips into axe kicks and hammer fists that were meant to break and crack armor.
As I did this I circulated my Ki throughout my body, priming it for my different techniques, but then pulling it back at the last second before releasing it.
The push of fiery Ki to my hands and the sweeping motion I would use for my Searing Arc Strike. The swirling of radiant Ki I would use to charge my Radiant Sun Bolt. The burst of it I would use, hands raised to the sky for Searing Sun Burst. The full body circulation and sudden widening of my stance I would use to push out the Sun Shield.
I even ran through my Ki-empowered racial techniques. Where I used my Ki to empower and supplement my racial talents of Produce Flame, create a Flame Blade, create a wave of fire different from Searing Arc Strike, and even fuel my stolen Cleric spells of Cure Wounds, Sacred Flame, and Spare the Dying.
With a confident and pleased nod to myself I stopped, returning to a relaxed and prepared posture. I was in peak condition, or at least the fusion hadn't reduced my capabilities below Red'neran's. Though, perhaps I was imagining it, but it felt like my Ki was a bit more volatile and explosive. And there was a strange sense tingling in the back of my mind that the land itself had Ki infused in places. For example the oasis behind me felt like how it felt when I saw a Way of the Four Elements Monk utilize their water whip technique. Very strange.
Grinning, I glanced around at the desert and the small oasis near me. I needed to pick a direction and see what lay that way.
I was Red, full name pending, and I had an entire new world to explore. I could try scouting with Astral Projection, but in a world where I was not spiritually connected or aware of all the ins and outs I was leery of that technique.
Something shifted in the strange Ki feeling in the oasis behind me. Perhaps my decision was being made for me, I thought as I leapt forward to dodge something attempting to strike me from behind.
The strike I had dodged appeared to be a malleable horn of darkness and water that quickly retracted back to the oasis pool, from which rose a strange creature.
The horn solidified to a single one atop its head, looking as if it were a strange mix of a rhinoceros and an antelope horn.
The head was a strange elongated hybridized monstrosity. The shape of an antelope, the beak of an eagle, and the mane and teeth of a lion. The long neck reminded me of an okapi, with the structure but not the length of a giraffe's neck. This led down to a body that was leonine in fur and build, but had two black wings sprouting from its shoulder blades and tapered down into four cloven feet on skinny legs, similar to an antelope. And affixing its rear end was a strange shrimp-like tail, clad in carapace.
"What are you, the tutorial boss?" I quipped. It felt good, too. So maybe that's who I was. A warrior who made quips. I could work with that.
"Oh shit!" I dodged to the side once more as it unexpectedly let out a shrill roar and dozens of smaller tendrils of dark water shot out to assault me.
I bent backwards to dodge one, hit my hand to the ground to bounce myself up into the air to dodge another, and charged Ki into my hands and waved them, sending a wave of fire out to intercept the remaining whips.
The attacks canceled each other out in a burst of steam. This gave me an advantage, I knew where the creature was, but it was not as agile as me.
I kicked back up off the ground as I landed and soared above the steam.
I gathered my Ki into my hands, pushing it to take on the Radiant aspect, "HADOKEN MOTHERFUCKER!"
The blue-gold orb of Ki shot out towards the head of the creature as I cringed. I wasn't a loudly yell out curse words guy. That felt weird. Was not gonna do that again.
Regardless, the orb swiftly slammed into the head of the beast, rocking it back and temporarily blinding it, or at least I hoped it did. It would make this next part kind of awkward if it was at full reaction speed.
I pushed fiery Ki into my feet and activated my Step of the Wind technique, shooting forward using that Ki as propulsion.
More Ki gathered in my heel as I used the Step to rotate me through the air building up extra momentum for a Ki-empowered axe kick, right to the top of the creature's skull.
CRACK!
The sound echoed through the desert night as both the skull and the neck of the creature shattered under my power. I landed in a classic superhero landing.
Strangely enough the creature began to dissolve, and it left behind a small orb, about the size of a softball, of swirling black and blue colors. Walking over in curiosity I picked it up.
"Well hello there…what are you?"
There was…some kind of distorted Ki inside of it? That was weird.
Author's Note: For genres based heavily on mythology and spiritual philosophy Xianxia and Wuxia have a stunning lack of creativity, self-reflection, and actual philosophical rigor involved in their execution a vast majority of the time. No sociological or anthropological reflection either. Like I am sorry, ANYBODY with the right resources can ascend to godhood and break a continent? And you still have discrimination based on anything other than money or power? Women are almost entirely constrained to being 'Jade Beauties' or 'Not Like Other Girls' Mulan figures? When all things equal they are just as statistically capable as men to be able to fucking trash a large city and suplex a dragon with a spell? Power, money, and Face; those are the only three things a society in a world with a power-scaling so insane but also equal as Cultivation should care about. Race, sex, gender, sexuality, non-Cultivation based disability, none of that shit should matter. And if it does it's just you pulling in your own biases as an author instead of crafting a world from the ground up based on logical extrapolation from your initial premise. This genre, and utilizing Eastern mythology and philosophy as well, has a lot of potential that is constantly held back or outright sabotaged by bringing in real world biases.
Chapter 2: What Do You Mean It's Called Qi?
Before I continued on I decided to take full stock of my equipment, Red'neran's clothing had come along with me, but what else?
I had my two magical rings, my Dragonhide Belt, my Cloak of Protection, and my Shoes of Spider-walk. The rings were just a small armor boost and another holding some light and fire based spell-effects. Nothing groundbreaking. But the Dragonhide Belt could partially replenish my Ki, which is always useful to have.
Most importantly I had the small Pouch of Holding, far smaller than Red'neran's party's big Bag of Holding, but still useful. I moved the strange orb over to the pouch. Unfortunately however, the pouch was completely empty. No gold, no potions, nothing of that sort.
Finally, the most priceless item Red'neran had owned, the electrum chains wrapped around my forearms and lower legs, were there. They acted as gravity enhancers for training. Keeping the wearer slower and incrementally training up their strength, endurance, and speed. Red'neran had claimed them as a prize from a Golden Lung Dragon's hoard after saving the creature's favored half-breed daughter from some demon cult that was going to use the "dragon blood" for a nebulous ritual.
These would be very important, as now they were functioning under actual physics, as opposed to the tabletop homebrew rules of 'increases strength by 1 and movement speed by 5 for every year of downtime worn'. They would function more like the anime training weights of Naruto and the gravity chamber of Dragon Ball Z that I remembered Isaac basing the concept on when he pitched them to his DM. They'd been almost purely a flavor item for the campaign, as a year of downtime rarely passed and Red'neran had only gotten one boost out of it the entire tail end of that campaign. Me? I was going to get full value out of these suckers.
I flexed, they didn't even rattle when I moved, and when dispelled to get my full strength and speed back would sink into the skin as tattoos so long as they were still bound to me. Perfect.
I turned my attention back to the desert. Time to explore.
The biodiversity and geology of this desert was fucking weird. Even for a magical world.
It primarily reminded me of the Gobi Desert, with a mix of sandy dunes and rocky cliffs jutting out. But then every so often there'd be an inexplicably giant mesa just sticking out of the dunes. No geological explanation whatsoever for the placement. Unless the sand dunes had blown in and migrated to cover up a more Sonoran Desert style desert. Shit, should I be worried about Mongolian Death Worms or Tremors style monsters? I glanced down at the sand underneath my feet. Maybe I should be extra careful. Luckily the Shoes of Spiderwalk combined with my martial training meant I was walking across these dunes without sinking in and with far less noise than a standard mortal would.
The flora was equally confounding. The non-dune areas were covered in a variety of scrub. I normally would have categorized most of it as saltwort, sagebrush, and needlegrass, but many of them were odd shades of color that made me think that whatever passed for chlorophyll inside of them was utterly alien compared to what I was used to. They also had that same weird feeling of low levels of Ki energy as the oasis and that beast that attacked me. A world where everything was suffused with Ki instead of Mana? Was that possible? In Red'neran's world Ki had only been generated through intense internal processes brought about from severe training in living things. And of course there were the oddly shaped cactuses that could SHOOT their needles out. Now I'd seen some knock-off Cactuars as Red'neran, but non-monster plants that did it? Annoying.
To see grass with as much Ki as a level one Monk's early techniques was confounding.
Monsters using Ki were even more surprising, the generating of Ki had required a level of focus and dedication I had not ever seen in a prior life.
The fire breathing mountain goat-like creature with the scorpion tail had even tagged me when I dodged the flames instead of the tail like an idiot. I was functionally immune to fire up to a rather high level of magical saturation. Of course, I was equally immune to poison and toxins, so the only thing I suffered from my slip up was a small hole in my loose martial arts pants that eventually magically patched up.
The normal fauna was not any more normal. Deserts always came alive with animals at night. Many of the creatures reminded me more of post-dinosaur early mammals than of any normal creatures. And some even reminded me of dinosaurs themselves. But not…quite a one to one comparison.
For example I thought I had seen a bird that reminded me of Dilophosaurus, the dinosaur with the frill that spits venom. But instead of spitting venom the thing had razor sharp ends of its feathers and they were used defensively like a porcupine and it could shoot its tongue out three yards to snatch some weird rodent-like creature out of a nearby shrub.
Disgusting. But also fascinating.
And every creature had at least the amount of Ki churning through their bodies that one would expect of a low-level Monk. It was…disconcerting.
One of my lives had been no stranger to worlds of monsters of course, but they'd had Mana or been mutated or just monstrous branches of evolution. This…this was weird. How could these creatures be generating Ki? Did it have something to do with the low-level infusion I was feeling in the landscape itself? Almost as if the entire PLANET was some kind of creature capable of producing Ki?
I shook my head and carried on with my wandering, it was not anything I could answer by myself. I needed to find some kind of civilization to inform myself of my new world. I knew there had to be some kind of magically advanced civilization around. Some of the plateaus and mesas and gorges I had crossed were too uniform in dimensions. They'd obviously been created by spells or techniques or artifacts.
Now, what that meant for me was anyone's guess. A civilization capable of that type of terraforming was a little scary to consider. Hopefully it was only the highest tier of spellcasters or artifacts that could pull those stunts off, or I would be going from the top of the totem pole of power to the bottom.
I found even more evidence of civilization as the sun began to rise. The change from cold desert night to hot desert day did not bug me the slightest, I had inherited quite the constitution both racially and from class features.
It did however allow me to notice something reflecting off in the distance. A thin line of the sun reflecting off of something long but reflective.
As I neared and it came into my perception range I raised an eyebrow (to nobody but myself) it was some kind of long white wall.
Putting on a burst of speed, far surpassing my previous leisurely pace, I was there within half a minute. Sand puffing up into the air in my wake. I examined the wall. It was approximately half a mile long before it descended into a broken mess of stones. The stone was likely marble, quite the achievement of engineering or magic, and was inscribed all over with strange defunct runes that I could not recognize. Likely this civilization and world had a different runic language than I was used to. It was a spiraling almost Eastern looking system, it quite possibly was logographic as opposed to phonographic based on that resemblance. And yes…the spiraling pattern must be part of the inscription system as it would make no sense transcribed onto paper for actual reading. So likely the logograph-runes moved mana through some kind of pattern to create the intended effect.
Fascinating, but it did speak to a fallen civilization as opposed to an active one in this desert. Meaning I might have to be traveling for quite a while before I found people.
While my body may not be uncomfortable and Light might be one of my primary elements, I still kept my hood up to keep the sun out of my eyes. If I focused my Ki on them my eyes would resist the glare, but that felt like a waste of Ki when I could just keep my hood up. Sometimes the simple solution was the best.
I saw the mirage a little after midday. However, focusing my attunement to Light and my Ki into enhancing my perception I was able to tell it was some kind of unnatural mirage. Perhaps even a full illusion spell meant to mimic a mirage. That intrigued me so I pulled my cloak tight around me and began moving swiftly, with my body bent low to the ground.
The edge of the mirage rippled as I passed through it. I was suddenly in another oasis, a watering hole surrounded by rocks that had likely been moved by humans to help keep it from drying up. Some of the strange local plants that resembled palm trees, though with wider-based spade-shaped leaves and smoother bark, dotted the shoreline as well.
A collection of humans wearing a sensible mix of what seemed to me to be early-Han dynasty silk peasant wear and turbans meant to adapt to the desert environment were fighting off strange troll-like creatures.
The humans already had a few dead strewn about, with some strange looking draft animals baying and braying in terror. Their few warriors were mostly fighting with spears of a medium length haft and long almost barbed metal tips. Though one fought with what I recognized as a rather traditional style of jian-sword.
The troll-like beings were rather horrendous to look at. Cyclopean with flat foreheads and an almost conical shape to their skulls. They had coarse, curly black hair over much of their bodies, but their centerline going down their chest almost to their loincloth covered crotches was near bare, like a gorilla. Their hairy legs however ended in broad, clawed feet, almost like that of a bear. They also had orc-like tusks jutting up above their bottom lips.
They seemed to be brutally strong, grabbing and snapping spears, few of which could pierce their hides. And then beating the humans over the heads with their own spear shafts in many cases, grunting laughter echoing from their slavering maws. A larger brute, with even darker fur and eyes than the rest, stood back, watching in glee, a large tree trunk sized club in his hand.
I took all of this in a moment and made my decision. With a burst of speed and a puff of sand I shot forwards.
Suddenly I was in front of one of the humans who had lost their spear to the grasp of their attacker. The beast was jabbing the spear down, tip first, towards the top of the human's head, the man's eyes were wide in fear.
The monster blinked in confusion and surprise when the spear jerked to a stop. He looked down slowly, and saw me there, intervening between him and his target. The tip of the spear held steadily and firmly between my index and middle finger of my left hand.
"Huh?" Ah, they could understand language, allowing my Tongue of the Sun and the Moon to let me understand and be understood in turn.
Well, unfortunately I didn't have the luxury of going easy on or negotiating with this many foes. Especially when the leader had appeared so bloodthirsty.
With a smirk I crossed my fingers and the spear tip snapped off of the already broken haft. As the local version of an ogre reared back its other fist to try and bring down a punch I leapt forward into its guard, my right hand coming up with Ki swiftly transforming into an enhanced version of my racial Flame Blade ability.
The brute shrieked as my flaming knife hand pierced through its eye socket and scorched its brain. Even as it was dropping to the ground dead I was still moving. Withdrawing my hand I kicked off of the falling corpse and spun in the air, sending the broken spear tip soaring through the air into the eye of yet another slowly reacting monster.
Darting from creature to creature I dismantled their defenses and their lives with a swift mix of flame blades, axe kicks to crack skulls, and improvised weapons to pierce eyeballs.
Only three were left by the time the boss began to truly react to my presence. He let out an ear shattering roar that had some kind of aspect of Ki to it that pushed against my mind. I quickly shrugged it off, but the humans around me were not so lucky, all fell to their knees holding their skulls in agony.
I flipped forward and landed in front of the brutish leader, a perfect superhero landing, cloak billowing, hood still on, one hand braced against the ground, and the other thrown out to the side flame blade active.
"Flee while you still have your lives, oaf." I demanded, with a cold tone that contrasted against the heat of the desert and my assault.
He raised his club, then hesitated as I pushed my Ki out into the aura of my Sun Shield. A yellow-orange fiery corona radiating off from my body to scorch the land within range.
He took a step back. Then another one.
"R-r-Retreat!" He called out to his remaining minions and they all turned tail and ran.
I stood up slowly, dramatically, and continued to stand watching their departure in silence as the humans got their wits back together.
One, who I noticed out of the corner of my eye was wearing slightly better quality clothes and jewelry than the rest shakily walked up to me.
"T-truly the Great and Divine Ancestors have blessed us, to send a wandering Foundation Cultivator in our time of need! None of us, even our warrior guards, were above the second level of Qi Gathering! How can we repay you, Wandering Master?"
Wait…Qi? Cultivator? Oh fuck. I'd transmigrated into a damn Xianxia world.
Author's Note: Lore Dump for both Red and the readers.
Chapter 3: The Wandering Master
"Indeed, I am a wanderer. I come from a land far away and would gladly join you in crossing the desert to your next destination, as I have no maps of this land."
"A land far away? Where you know not even what lies on the other side of these Great Sands? Not to question the Wandering Master, but I would be very curious to hear of these lands as a merchant who has traveled from the Endless Grass Sea of the North to the Grasping Jungle of the South! This one is Shang Kao, and I would gladly invite you to join us for the remainder of our journey. In return we can all swap tales of the lands we have visited!"
I laughed at his naked curiosity, I found it refreshing, even if his manner of speech was oddly rigid and stilted to my ears.
However, I had decided to cultivate…in the layman's sense of the word, an air of mystery, leaning into the concept of a foreign Wandering Master they had placed upon my shoulders. This would help me excuse social faux pas and to gather more information about where I now was.
As I helped them regroup and bury their dead I also used some small castings of Cure Wounds to stabilize some of the worst injured. I couldn't bring back a lost hand, but I could stop the blood flow and restore some vigor. They were immediately even more grateful for this. Apparently, a Wandering Master like me deigning to move so low as to help them with healing was a great mercy and kindness.
The creatures they were using as pack animals were apparently called allocamli and came from some western steppe region. But they definitely looked like humpless donkey-camel hybrids. They had the long flickering donkey ears, a just slightly more narrow head than a donkey, and the robust body of a camel, merely minus the hump. They even had the tannish coloring.
They were also, lending credence to this, fucking assholes. They brayed, they spit, and they bit. But as everyone in the crew had at least gotten far enough into the Body Tempering stage of Cultivation to give a discount Super Soldier serum from the MCU a run for its money everyone treated it the way one might treat a silly kitten hissing at a grown adult.
Which made sense, some of those creatures, apparently called Arimaspu, some type of demonically influenced humanoid race under the rule of some demonic cultivator named The Black God Almas the Almighty who had apparently…spawned them from his corrupted body cultivation method? I absorbed this information around the campfire that night as they regaled me with tales of the lands they had visited.
Apparently the lands on either side of this desert had been fought over by two Divine Empires for centuries. The Fatian Qiyun Shengwu Huangdi ('Interpreter of the Heavenly Law, Initiator of the Good Fortune, Holy-Martial Emperor), son of the Taizu (Supreme Progenitor) of the Whole Great Nation Under the Wings Protection of the Sky had been warring until recently to complete his father's conquest of the southern region. They actually owned half of the old empire south of this desert at this point, so we were titularly within their empire's borders. The remnants of the southern empire were known as the Holy Regime Blessed By Southern Stars, under an Emperor Deji, more a scholarly Cultivator than the martial conqueror his foe was. Having apparently been the Ninth Son of the Supreme Progenitor and the strongest warrior of all his children. I would be mentally referring to these empires as the Sky Empire and the Southern Empire for simplicity's sake.
Apparently the Progenitor Emperor had been born with an 'innate understanding of the Dao of War' and had swiftly risen through the ranks of the northern Endless Grass Sea nomadic cultivators and had conquered them under one banner before sweeping out of the Grass Sea and over the desert to crack open the Formation Array Walls of the old version of the Southern Empire and two hundred years of bloody war followed, until recently where a tentative ceasefire was agreed upon at the line of the Golden Divine River a few thousand miles to the south, about halfway to those jungles that Kao had spoken of.
It was obvious they were using this information dump to butter me up for their own questions, but I was willing to give some…interestingly evasive answers.
"Wandering Master, how might we call you and whence is this far off land you say you come from?"
I grinned, showtime.
"You may refer to me as Red. A family name inherited from my father. A great martial artist and specialized kind of Cultivator. My wanderlust comes from the other side of my family. One of scholars of old and lost things."
They nodded along, this all made sense within their world view.
"As for whence I come? The land I came from is across great seas. To the East of the East and to the West of the West. So far from here it may as well be another world," I'd glanced at their maps as they were packing up, the known world for them looked suspiciously like a heavily scaled up version of East Asia from one of my originating worlds. If this was the case…perhaps there was Cultivation America and Cultivation Europe? What would that look like? A fascinating idea.
"Great cities of stone rise from a varied landscape. Machines fueled by Spirit Stones in turn fuel society and transport. I came to these lands far away to seek the natural state of the world to commune more closely with the inklings of Dao I have so far discerned."
Both lives that merged to form me had been skilled in acting and theater. Between musical theatre in one and growing up in a circus in the other, the masks I could slap on and the bullshit I could spew was as immeasurable as this Grass Sea they spoke of.
"Inklings of Dao? As a Foundation Realm Cultivator? Truly you are a Wandering Master!" One of the lackeys gasped.
I nodded sagely along, "Indeed, my family had tempered a fine and fiery body constitution over many generations. So it feels as if I was born with knowledge of the flame. From there I have begun to chase the Dao of Light as well. Hoping to culminate one day in the Grand Dao of the Sun."
I was so full of shit. And these poor saps were eating it right up.
"Your techniques showed such efficiency, Master Red! And…well I did not wish to broach this earlier, but when you speak it is as if I do not know your words but instead simply understand what you mean? Is this some trick of Qi or the Dao?"
I nodded again, "Indeed. I have Cultivated the Dao through my mind such that all things that Speak and Hear under the Sun or the Moon…s," Hope they hadn't heard that almost slip up before I pluralized it, "Can Understand me and in turn be Understood by me!"
My best play here was to cultivate a reputation as a mysterious and powerful foreign Wandering Master who had strange supplemental techniques that made me seem above my actual power level. The fact that these guys only pegged me as a Foundation Rank Cultivator and not Peak Foundation meant that my power was not even at the top of the tier I had entered this world at. A tier that is often only the middle rank in an exponentially more powerful as it grows system. And often culminates in various Divine Ascension tiers afterwards. Of which it was confirmed could happen in this one as well. I was a medium fish in a medium pond right now in the wilderness. But if I went to any of these Imperial Capitals he spoke of, I would need to grow to Peak Foundation before I would even be looked at as more than a gnat.
Apparently this Supreme Progenitor hadn't actually died. No, he had consumed the Qi of an entire defeated army of Golden Core Cultivators to fuel his Dao of Conquest and Ascended beyond the Nascent Soul stage into…a pillar of Divine Light and Lightning to never be seen again. Supposedly ascending to an entirely higher realm. So probably some kind of Dao Enlightenment style of Cultivation stage. They didn't have a name for it here. I wasn't going to fuck with Golden Core and Nascent Soul Cultivators for a while if I could help it.
Apparently Sects were a thing, both in the Southern Empire and in the satellite former tributary states to the south and west who had fractured off of it and could no longer be forced to pay taxes. In the Sky Empire however they were all called Clans, and functioned rather similarly, except that all new members had to marry into the family after a certain amount of time or be kicked out.
I was starting to think that this was a pretty standard and cliché Xianxian world when one of the younger and slimmer soldiers, returning from night watch duty, took of their helmet and revealed that they were a woman. I'd been half expecting this to be a world full of Jade Beauties and angry entitled Young Masters and Protagonists reaching for the Heavens. But here was a young woman, serving as a caravan guard, not even hiding it, and nobody was blinking an eye. That was interesting.
I'd gathered so far that these people were members of a desert nomad tribe that had fallen under the purview of the Sky Empire when they began expanding in the first wave of expansions. They had adapted swiftly to the expansions and had become traders and merchants moving across the hazardous desert that split the new borders of the Sky Empire almost in half, barring a small strip of fertile land down the sea border.
Those types of populations and small societies had a tendency towards either egalitarianism or very rigid and hierarchical clan structures. It appears that these people had split the difference a bit, to survive they had a very hierarchical structure built around encouraging and organizing a meritocracy of power and contribution. This allowed for breaking rank on other types of hierarchy like sex, gender, sexuality, and caste. In such a small clan there was no inner and outer division. There were just the strongest members, the people they directed their nepotism at, and whoever else could manage to contribute. Their contributions were even actively encouraged and fed to grow to greater future heights in many cases. They were all encouraged to give as much as they could back to the clan, and those who refused to give back would be exiled. Where they split the difference on egalitarianism was that everyone's contribution expectations were based on ability. Not on flat numbers.
I used all of Isaac's ethnographic skills and training to slowly pull these pieces of information out of the night watch as shifts changed throughout the night.
This world seemed to function on some kind of base three system. The days were twenty-seven hours long and the hours were still the same, thankfully. The powerful numbers for Cultivation and the World seemed to be three, seven, and ten. You might ask, well why two moons? That's the wrong way to think about it. Including the sun, that's three major celestial bodies. There were even six planets visible in this system, a number divisible by three, for a total of seven planets and ten celestial bodies. All of the planets had a number of moons that were either three, seven, or ten. Often in ways that made the planet's distance from the star plus its number of moons, divisible by three or ten. The Isaac memories combined with Red'neran's memories fully supported that this system and likely this entire universe or dimension were intelligently designed. Other than Fibonacci Sequencing and the Golden Ratio Earth's dimension did not have this level of structure.
This was especially interesting, as when I had, under the guise of 'explain to me your people's theories of the many realms', the female guard, Shang-Chien Wu, explained to me that they believed that lower realms held more Chaos and higher realms held more Order and that is why only Cultivators who had grasped the knowledge of the Order amongst the Chaotic Surface of the Dao could ascend higher and higher. Both through reincarnation/transmigration of the soul upon death and by direct ascension. Like the Supreme Progenitor.
This merchant clan, this Shang Clan, were quite chatty in the face of possibly gaining some kind of Deep Insight from me through conversation. I wasn't going to let the chance slide through my fingers.
As I explained to yet another Shang clansmen on the fourth and final shift of the night when they asked me why I had chosen to travel so far from home, "A wise fellow countryman of mine once said, 'Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor'."
I could drop pithy platitudes like that till the cows came in. And from the eager look on that young man's face it seemed I should do so.
Chapter 4: Dune
The trading city that we were heading towards was still a few days of travel away. Apparently it had been founded on orders of the Supreme Progenitor two-hundred years prior to serve as a waypoint between the two halves of his growing empire. It was named Qibola, a name which gave me pause initially until I saw how it was written on the map, a pure coincidence. But it was where the Shang Clan had their home base of operations, as this region had been their nominal territory as a wandering nomadic tribe for generations. The higher power Cultivators in the family apparently even served as some kind of city administration, just below the City Lord.
I'd noticed that the Tongue of the Sun and the Moon was a little…finicky as I got used to a new language over time. It seemed to cycle through synonyms as I learned more cultural context through conversations with the merchant group. It was quite the fascinating phenomenon. I supposed Red'neran had never spent enough time using it with a new culture or immersing himself in one to notice. Isaac had spent some time doing ethnographic work amongst the Zuni and Pueblo of the American Southwest, so with those memories I felt right at home getting to know yet another desert people.
The next night I decided to sit down and meditate with the Qi Gathering Realm Cultivators of the group. It was Kao, the female guard Wu, and two other men who I discovered were named Shang Shen and Shang-We Jung. They were in the early stages of the realm, with Kao being the highest at halfway through.
I reached out and tried to feel for what they were doing with their Ki…nope, it's Qi here. I had to remember that.
I retained Red'neran's skill to sense Ki in other people. He had used it mostly to sense the taste or aspect of another martial artist in his world. A Way of the Shadow Monk had Ki that felt different than a Way of the Four Elements and so on and so forth. Now, with more Qi all around me and within everything and everyone the contrasts between different aspects was starker but also mixed together and harder to parse at times.
Most of the Qi within my traveling companions seemed to be unaspected, or…filtered in some way? As I tuned my senses it seemed as if they were bring in the general environmental Qi from around them, mostly Heat, Earth, Wind, and a little bit of Light Qi from the moons, and were purging it of their aspects and mixing it in with their existing Qi. I noticed that Shen had a heavy Earth aspect to his personal Qi and was not purging that aspect and was instead incorporating it. A fascinating procedure. He was the largest and sturdiest looking of the bunch, was that from having aspected Qi? Was it a natural inclination? The Spirit Roots that many stories spoke of?
I didn't have enough information, even with as forthcoming as this group had been.
But I could understand what they were doing. They were drawing in local environmental Qi and then filtering into their systems to merge with and strengthen their own personal Qi. This explained some Cultivation tropes Isaac had read. Stronger, aspected artifacts probably gave off purer aspected Qi than just local environments. People who had body tempering of special natures used Qi that was closer to those natures to accelerate the process.
…Probably. I was making a lot of inferences and logical leaps here.
Most importantly though, I was able to kind of Cultivate.
I noticed that my pathways that my Qi moved through were a lot more stable, condensed, and quicker flowing than those around me. I was used to circulating it through my Chakras to get different effects and emphasis of traits from Red'neran's training.
I was able to pull in the Heat Qi that was slowly dissipating into the night, the reflected Light Qi coming from the moons which felt subtly different from the same Light Qi produced by this planet's star, and lastly I was able to pull a bit of Fire Qi in from the campfire. None of it was particularly strong, I probably should not actually be Cultivating with it at my level of strength.
In a way, Red'neran's Dungeons and Dragon Plane was the perfect preparation ground for a Cultivation world. It was heavily based on Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist spirituality as well. In fact, it was as if I had merely taken one step up a ladder but slightly diagonally from a LitRPG-Xuanhuan world to a Xianxia world.
Case and point, upon gaining the level eighteen, Empty Body trait, the Astral Projection had been flavored as achieving the first tier of control of Prākāmya, the ability to project one's mind or body to anywhere in the world. One of the eight classical Siddhis of Hinduism. They'd been called the 'Eight Pillars of Enlightenment' in the DND-Xuanhuan plane, but they were identical in conceptual power.
If I could finish the enlightenment that my progenitor had been moving towards as well as using Cultivation to push my techniques to higher tiers…I could definitely compete with the forces of this plane. And possibly one day ascend just like the guy that I was starting to feel had been a Cultivation-flavored Genghis Khan.
I had quite the step up on accessing and understanding Dao, which many settings sidelined the actual spiritual aspects of in favor of brute forcing. However, as I connected to the three primary Qi aspects I held I began to sense that my own gestalt nature was going to help me with the deeper spiritual understandings of these.
Isaac, while not a physicist, had a level of knowledge of what made Heat, Light, and Fire scientifically that was far beyond the standard fare of a Cultivation setting. Meanwhile, Red'neran had meditated long and hard on the natures of the powers that came with his combat style and heritage. He had understood intrinsically the symbolic, spiritual, and metaphysical nature and weight of these aspects.
With these disparate forms of knowledge combined…I felt that I was already on the brink of some kind of higher understanding. Even beyond what I had already shown from breaking free of the numeric restrictions of tabletop and RPG-style powers. With this understanding I felt that with some more meditation I could fluctuate the heat of my skills with greater specificity, mold the flames and light I created into more complex shapes and control them from further from my body. I could go full Avatar the Last Airbender within a few years I wagered.
As I meditated I focused on the spells that Red'neran had stolen from the Cleric-list through a feat. I focused on how they felt to use and what they did with my Qi. I frowned as I traced the complex movements of the Qi as I triggered Cure Wounds. There was something…extra about it. Was this what official Cultivation Techniques looked like? They forced your Qi into a traced pattern that you may not actively understand? That would be interesting, and these patterns, were they Formations? The logographic runes I had seen on that wall in the desert were certainly the Heavenly Defensive Formations that the Shangs had spoken of the Supreme Progenitor breaking through in his first invasion.
I sensed Shang-Chien Wu move, and then suddenly the aspect of Qi she was pulling in and circulating changed. It appeared…sharp? I found that odd and so I opened my eyes and glanced over at her. I saw that she was not exactly pulling in Qi from her sword but instead, there was some methodology here I was missing. If I had to guess I'd say she was using the visualization of the sword to filter her unaspected Qi into…Sword Qi? That felt ridiculous but there it was.
Sword Qi, that was very interesting. I didn't use weapons for the most part, though I did use the Butterfly Sword style of Wing Chun in my Flame Blade combat-style. Red'neran had owned a blatant Ruyi Jingu Bang knock-off staff, but it had not been pulled through with him to create my gestalt. Likely because it had been hanging up on a stand in his temple he was building, as opposed to being on his person.
Being in the desert I certainly wasn't going to find a branch I could use as a replacement, so I would have to wait until we got to the city. Just a few more days. Maybe I'd even have this Cultivation thing down a bit better by then?
WIth that thought in mind, I turned back inward again. Once more struggling with my identity as this gestalt progeny of two worlds.
Isaac had gotten Red'neran's name from very specific sources. Wanting to go 'overboard' one of the few times he got to play the tabletop game instead of running it he'd gotten a little silly and excessive. Something he would jokingly call a 'try-hard parody'. An ironically created Eastern hero named after gods, heroes, and mystics of the West.
Red for the Red Hand of Ulster. A lot of Isaac's lineage was Irish.
N for Nuada, first king of the Tuatha de Danann. God of so many pieces of other gods and heroes. Pieces of Woden, pieces of Tyr, pieces of Mars, pieces of Neptune, falling back through language and history to perhaps even Sabazios.
E for Eochaid Ollathair, the Dagda. The father, the king, the druid. The wise bringing of civilization. A god of farming fertility…a god of…Cultivation?
R for Rhiannon, the otherworldly pseudo-fae queen of mythical Wales. Intelligent, cunning, generous, a patron of the arts. A loyal wife and mother, bearing great burdens for those she cared for.
A is of course for Arthur the Sleeper, the idealized ruler upon the shining hill. The unattainable ideal of a just civilization.
N once more, now evolved, now pseudo-historical like Arthur before it. Niall Noígíallach the origin of the banner of the Red Hand of Ulster. Progenitor of the Uí Néill who would rule Ireland for centuries. A symbol of resistance to later British rule.
Names were integral to who one was. How they presented themselves. The expectations you were born into your world with.
I'd wanted to keep Red for my fire.
I wanted the rest of the name to keep to my spirit and honor both of my progenitors.
Do I take from merely Isaac's world for inspiration? From fictional worlds within his world? From Red'neran's world? That world had had heroes and sages as well!
I ended the Cultivation meditation without a resolution on my name. And the next day we returned to our travels.
Neither life I remembered had been people of exceptional positive luck, and so both had to turn bad luck into opportunities many times over, a skill I would soon learn that I must ingrain within myself as well.
Not five minutes after we caught sight of the city walls in the distance a few days after my first 'Cultivation Session' I sensed a rumbling underneath the desert sand in the distance. Coming towards us at quite the clip as well.
"Merchant Shang," I began, "Are there perhaps aggressive creatures that can travel underneath the sands of the desert?"
He turned to face me, and blinked his eyes underneath his turban, "Well…there are the Momentous Death Wurms, but they never come this close to the city, Master Red!"
Well, shit. Mongolian Death Worms were a thing here.
"Merchant Shang, you may all wish to proceed with haste to the city," I spun around a hundred-eighty degrees to face the desert behind us, my cloak billowing dramatically.
"I…what?"
It was a miracle these guys had lived this long, honestly. Oh, well I guess I had been that miracle a few days back, huh?
"Flee, you fool!" I stomped heavily into the ground to draw the approaching creature's attention to me, assuming it was going to function like a Dune-style worm, and threw my hand up into the air to charge a Searing Sun Burst.
As a DND character, Red'neran had only been able to pump so many 'points' of Ki into the technique to stop munchkinry. I had no such limitations. It hit the basketball-sized orb that would normally have been the maximum and kept growing.
As the cloud of sand from my stomp settled, I was revealed once more to the eyes of the merchant group, their eyes widening as they saw the beach ball sized orb of pure Radiant Light Qi hovering above my raised hand palm. I even had to add my other hand to stabilize the orb.
Something like two hundred yards away from us an enormous form erupted from the earth in a plume of sand. Strange insectoid looking blood red prismatic eyes glared at us from a black carapace covered head that slicked back over a long tubular body that was similarly sheathed in shifting rings of carapace.
I threw my hands forward and the orb of light shot towards the monster, exploding right in its face, causing it to toss its head back and roar in surprise and I hoped pain.
The shockwave of the creature's momentum and the explosion meeting rippled back and knocked my hood from my head.
This meant when I turned to yell at the merchant caravan for standing there gaping at me they saw my face for the first time.
"So young…" I heard one of them mutter. Both of my progenitors had always looked young for their age, so a gestalt face averaging about thirty for them probably looked like the mid-twenties. Plus I had Red'neran's clean shaven face.
"Fly, you fools!" I yelled at them, "Leave me to handle this! I will meet you at the gates!" As I said this I planted myself in Horse Stance and circulated my Qi through the chains around my limbs. I layered it over the Qi that was settled into the artifact and pulled that Qi back into my body.
As I went through this process the chains slowly began to glow gold, the process looking as if golden paint were slowly dripping across their surface from an unseen source. Once they were entirely suffused with my current Qi and I had a hold of the stored energy I pulled it all back into my pathways, feeling the energy suffuse my Chakras. And with that the chains blinked out of existence, the only remnant of them tattoos in their place.
The energy suffusion visually manifest as a light glowing aura, like a mild anime power-up.
My smoldering hair whipped around in the wind as I spun back around to face the recovering wurm.
"Time to ditch the kid's gloves."
I kicked off the ground as the merchants finally got their shit together and fled towards the city. The wake of sand I kicked up dusted their backs as I shot the opposite direction.
Flaming knife-hands pointed straight at my new opponent.
Shang Kao, Year Under the Sky 283
Shang Kao was a middling talent third son of another middling talent from the main branch of a decently powerful and wealthy frontier clan. Which is to say, not much in the grand scheme of the Empire or the Realm. He had always been okay with that. He was thirty-five and hadn't even reached the Late Stages of the Qi Gathering Realm, sometimes called the Qi Condensation Stages. If he didn't reach Foundation by forty he would be assumed to have plateaued and any clan resources assigned to him for Cultivation would be reassigned and he'd have to scramble for ivory chips and contribution points to continue beating his head against that inevitable wall.
Which is why he was thinking ahead, making himself useful for intellectual skills and trades. A haggler, a salesman, a cartographer, and a survivalist. All things that helped him run successful caravans out across the desert to the northern half of the empire, the southern half of the empire, and most importantly, out west to the Sky Piercing Peaks to trade with the strange Stout Men who knew ways through the mountains to even further civilizations in the west.
Except this time everything had begun to go wrong the moment they started their return journey.
First a giant Two-Headed Thunder Roc had spotted their larger pack animals and decided it would be a great time to snack on some delicious multi-trunked avataphants.
This left them down their two strongest guards and with only half their merchandise. Which was frustrating, because the Stout Men of the Sky Piercing Peaks traded heavily in Monster Cores that held significantly pure Earth, Darkness, and Metal Qi and could easily be refined into the less dangerous form of pills and Qi-filtering Cultivation formations and could be traded further along to the wandering Reflective Azure Soul Sect who, rumors had, turned them into secret monster-technique talismans. They were worth quite the pretty sum in both ivory chips and spirit stones.
The shameful trek back across the desert had been bad enough. And then they were ambushed by of all things a band of Arimaspu? Truly Shang Kao had begun to believe they were cursed under the Heavenly Ancestors, or being put through some kind of trial or tribulation. Most of their remaining warriors of any strength fell early to the ambush. The hordes of Almas the Black God lived in the Peaks to the far north of the Stout Men, almost into the Icicle Steppe of the White North. What had a band been doing wandering into the desert so far from the mountains? Kao knew that it did not bode well for the Emperor's Peace moving forward.
But that was tomorrow's worry, today's worry was that a Momentous Death Wurm had come so close to Qibola and was bearing down upon the Shang Clan group with only the Heavens Blessed protector, the Wandering Master Red, between them and the beast.
"I am sure he will be fine!" Kao urged his compatriots, "We must give him space to fight!"
They ran towards the city, hoping perhaps the militia or another Cultivator of strength might make it out to help Master Red in time.
'Master' Red, Year of Fuck If He Knows He Hadn't Asked Them About the Calendar System Yet
'Sha-la, hed-cha-la,' I hummed under my breath, probably super wrong that life had been tone deaf, and sang in my head as I slid backwards along the head of the huge beast, one of my Flame Blades carving a furrow through the forehead of the beast as I slowly came to a stop using my Spiderwalk Slippers and their effect. This allowed me to treat any solid surface as stable ground. Though, I did retain my imparted momentum, hence the skidding as I landed from my charge, but momentum from the surface or gravity were not going to impact me.
Magic, Qi, whatever form it took, supernatural shit was really neat.
But uh…I really didn't know how I was going to kill this thing? I was one cut into a possible death by a thousand cuts method, but that was incredibly sub-optimal. Sure, Red'neran and his party had killed a Purple Worm at level eleven, and this was definitely looking like a comparable creature, Hells, if it weren't for the weird eyes and different mouth I'd have assumed it was a Purple Worm. But they'd had a Cleric, a Barbarian, and a Sorcerer and Red'neran's role had been mostly confusing it and dodge-tanking. There wasn't a lot I could do if I couldn't pierce down into something vital. There was just so much carapace and flesh between the surface and the internals of this beast.
There was no Barbarian to smash the scales with a giant fuck-off hammer. There was no Cleric to send anyone down its throat with Protection from Acid. There was no Sorcerer to cast Haste.
It was just me. Between this thing and the only people I knew in this world. People, who while they did owe me, had been quite kind and forth-coming. In a society that I knew didn't necessarily reward that. They could just as easily have been stiff, formal, and fearful. But they'd quickly warmed up and through their campfire stories I'd learn a lot about my new world. Or…my birth world maybe?
Yeah…I had been born here. This was my world. And those were my friend…ly acquaintances.
I wasn't Isaac. I wasn't Red'neran.
I was the Wandering Master Red…as I reached for the rest of the name I wanted, having an entire metaphysical crisis in the middle of slicing my way down the back of a giant monster, a story that Isaac's grandfather used to tell him came to mind. A connection to a long off folk hero or ancient god, depending on who you asked.
Walter's own grandmother Anna, had been taken far from her home to be 'civilized' at Carlisle Indian Industrial School all the way across the lakes from the plains in Pennsylvania. Isaac had found evidence that some Sioux had indeed attended and died, and the marriage license for his great-great-grandparents had indeed been from Pennsylvania, so he'd accepted this bit of family lore.
What he hadn't accepted was that one day his grandfather's grandmother, Anna, had gotten out of characteristically drunk and begun sharing old Native American folk tales with his grandfather. He'd thought it far more likely his grandfather had found them on his own and used it to fill in some family history gaps with something he liked a bit more than the Presbyterian Church.
But…they had been nice stories. And one struck a chord with me as I pondered this strange fresh life.
A youngest brother of many, who walked with two human faces upon his ear-lobes. Speaking and laughing as he went about life. One day the brothers competed for the hands of various and related beautiful women, and another brother, jealous that the youngest had gotten the most voluptuous woman, tricked him into being captured by evil spirits. There was a whole lot of shenanigans that ensued. Some symbolic breaking of chains, escaping the underworld, traveling a bunch, some animal friends, but in the end it boiled down to He Who Wears Faces As Earrings and his two loyal brothers becoming stars, likely the Morning and Evening Star, ironically usually the same planetary body not a star, and either Jupiter, still a planet, or Sirius, which finally was an actual star. The disloyal brothers all got turned into symbolically disloyal animals.
Two of his other names? Red Horn and Red Man.
Red. Red. Red. The name of the fictional progenitor. Red'neran. All these connections felt important.
I shook myself from this thought as I juked up and down the wurm's body, looking hither and thither for some kind of weak point I could exploit.
After what must only have been thirty or so seconds of recreating a trip to JumpZone Isaac had once taken his youngest sister to, I gave up on finding a natural weak point. I decided to try and make one.
I began slowly taking slices at the hide of the beast, attempting to create divots that went all the way down to the muscle and connected to each other in a triangle shape. Hoping I could maybe sear the connecting tissue off and pop the scale out of place, giving me a place to shove a giant Radiant Sun Bolt.
I must have been doing something right, as I had to fall out of the repetitive pattern of slicing and dicing at the wurm's carapace as I treated balancing on the body like a log roll obstacle. For the thing had finally pinpointed my exact location as I returned to the same spot over and over to try and loosen a plate and tried to skewer me with its pointed end of its tail. Seriously, what a Purple Worm knock-off.
I dodged easily, and noted that its own tail was apparently not made identically of the material of the carapace, as it created a large gouge in the side of the beast where I had formerly been standing.
I smiled, there was an idea.
Now, where was I? Ah yes, my identity crisis.
Red, was a throughline in many myths, legends, historical figures, and characters that had been important to Isaac. Thinking back to my Cultivation meditation from the night before I wondered what I should do to make it my own? Do I keep the apostrophe? Split it? Hmm…keep the acronym style naming scheme? Yes, there we go.
Who from past lives would I most wish to take into my new self?
I felt at home with the flame, light, and heat of Red'neran. I enjoyed the Sun theme he'd been striving towards. I would take his path and exceed it.
Isaac's path had been that of a scholar and teacher. I should honor him by selecting wise deities, sages, and scholars who fall under those elements.
Deciding to table that thought process for another time, I began working on trying to bait the beast into another tail strike by harassing it with Radiant Sun Bolts as well as the occasional Flame Blade. Now that I was moving Qi for the technique I was not limited as Red'neran had been to the limits of a DND realm's per day spell slots and per rest Ki points. I could easily switch between techniques. Each time I did they became more and more seamless in transition.
I was the Wandering Master, from the East of the East, from the West of the West, He Who Has Two Voices Whispering in His Ears, Progeny of Warriors and Scholars, Sun Chaser, I was going to find a name within this growing identity some day. Soon, I hoped.
The Shangs had spoken of something, how many lower realm Cultivators had to use mantras to channel and access techniques, and how if a higher realm Cultivator used one it was either to show off, to intimidate, or because it was such a powerful technique even they needed the mantras to focus.
As my identity solidified, so did my Qi, it settled. It became more at peace with being inside of me, being a part of me, because I was now more at peace with myself. I wasn't perfect yet. I didn't have the full identity, but I had the start.
My Qi followed my lead. It began latching onto pieces of this identity I had cobbled together of the past few days.
I understood that certain symbolic forms would be easier for me to mold my Qi into, because symbolism was power here in this world.
And I understood something then, as my Qi circulated more powerfully latching onto the concepts I understood in intricate patterns, symbolism had always been powerful. In every world.
Manly Hall had been fucking right, about reincarnation, about a lot of things. But especially about symbolism. Symbolism is the language of the Mysteries, in my case Qi. Symbolism allows us to transcend language and communicate directly with both each other and the universe itself.
A picture is worth a thousand words. And a symbol is worth a thousand libraries.
No individual invents symbolism, it is the universal activity of the human mind through all of history. No, through all of every history.
I carried within me the collective symbolism of two worlds, and through it I could connect to that of a third.
Isaac's logic. Red'neran's spirituality. I had been working to merge the two. I believe I was finding a way. I was having a revelation.
I dodged the tail as it struck towards me once more.
Hubble had been a deeply spiritual man of science. And he had once said, "All nature is a vast symbolism: Every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth."
This was my solution. My reconciliation of my two warring sets of memories.
Light was a spectrum that split into many forms, it contained photons. Within that spectrum also existed all the beauty of the world through how it was reflected.
Fire and heat were merely some vibrating atoms with some type of fuel or conductor around to allow it to manifest and affect the world around it. But it was also the dual destructive and life-giving force of the Phoenix Red'neran had semi-worshipped.
These facts did not have to exist independently of each other, separated by worlds. They were both true in both worlds. They were both true in all worlds. They were both true here.
Something within me clicked, and as I rotated, spinning around the striking stinger like a dancer around their partner, I focused on two aspects of Light.
Light as revelation, the bringing of truth, of cutting through lies.
And another aspect of Light that could cut through things, grounded heavily in science.
Motherfucking lasers.
The flames around my left hand shifted as I spun, transitioning into pure light radiating off of my hand, pure light that tightened, focused, and narrowed. Until only the narrowest of beams extended six inches out from my middle finger.
"Claíomh Solais!" I cried out, invoking the symbol of the mythical Sword of Light. The beam broadened slightly at the exact instance of impact, as I sliced the stinger off of the creature and with a kick sent the barb spinning chaotically into the air above the creature.
Letting the Sword of Light fade, I kicked off with a flame enhanced Step of the Wind, rocketing myself into the air after the barb.
I reached out and grabbed the base of the barb, using the jets of fire from my heels to alter and change our angle, mid-air. I made sure the point of the barb was aiming straight down at the now thrashing wurm's skull.
I braced the palm of my other hand against the severed base of the barb.
"This hand of mine is burning red! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory!" Time to bullshit a mantra to supercharge a technique. Because I had about one shot left in the tank, and I needed to make it count. Luckily, I had a familiar technique. One of Red'neran's racial techniques that he had mastered with his Ki would be perfect to take to the next level with Qi.
"Erupting Burning Hands!"
Flames shot out of my palm, and with the stabilizing grasp of my other hand, the explosion of fire rocketed the barb down towards its original owner. And straight through one of those faceted red eyes.
It shrieked and strange alien green blood gushed from the gaping hole left behind as the barb had continued all the way through the beast's head and into the shifting sands below.
I focused just the slightest bit of my remaining energy and my fall slowed significantly. I drifted towards the ground like a leaf on the wind. Carefully angling myself to land away from the no doubt very dangerous blood.
I landed gracefully, and knelt down as my energy waned. No, I hadn't had a lot left in the tank at all. But it hadn't all been normal expenditure.
Those two new techniques…I'd been wasteful with my Qi when using them. They could be better, more efficient. I understood much now. I could understand more and tighten my combat to degrees Red'neran had never even dreamed of.
As I took a breather I noticed a group of people rapidly approaching from the city. With a small grimace I pushed myself back up to my feet. I had to portray strength here. I only hoped I had had enough of a breather to fake it.