Chapter 11: Truth or Consequences
"If this scheme of yours does not work out, foreigner, believe me when I say I shall have your blasted head! The only reason I am even giving you a chance to prove I should do otherwise is that I have never seen my sixth son so motivated!" My first time meeting Shang Feng, the head of the entire Shang Clan, was to be verbally dressed down for my recklessness and presumptiveness.
Which…fair. I had been pretty rash here. And while avoiding an outright conflict on the streets was something I had succeeded at, I had potentially set up the family for a dramatic loss of face as opposed to simply being the aggrieved party where they could have saved face. All because I had lost control of the strength of my Gravity Qi when bled into my aura.
"Lord Shang!" I stated as I came up from my bow, "I firmly believe that I take Yanjing's currently weak Alchemical Flame skills and uplift them into a flame that could purify all it finds before it! He is bright and only his lack of confidence due to his slow early progression is holding him back! In one month's time he will be transformed! Perhaps not a prodigy or a monster of combat, but at least a scholar capable of leveraging their full mind towards combat when necessary. Outwitting, out leveraging, and outplaying any foe within the same Realm that he faces! This event shall humble the Yang antagonists of young Yanjing and simultaneously boost his confidence!"
The Clan Head grumbled under his breath, "The art of fighting without fighting you described it as? I suppose such a style could benefit my little scholar. The point stands though, if this fails I will have you drawn and quartered."
Well that felt…a bit medieval but I supposed that was fine. I just had to not fail. No big deal. It was obvious that Lord Feng had some kind of soft spot for his sixth son. I just had to train Yanjing to beat a middle-tier Qi Gathering Cultivator in a month.
That was my dismissal so I left his conference room and found a very nervous Yanjing hanging out just a bit down the richly decorated hallway. They were big fans of tapestries apparently. And porcelain.
"He…he gave his permission?" Oh man, the first thing we needed to cultivate for this kid was a spine, "I-I wasn't sure!"
I waved his concern off, even though it absolutely had not been as chill a conversation as I was about to make it out to have been.
"As long as we are successful he was quite interested in seeing you get stronger and learning to leverage your intellect towards all aspects of Cultivation."
This brought a smile back to his face, he even bounced up and down on his toes a little bit in excitement.
"Then we can get started! What are we doing first, Master?"
I grinned, "We're stopping by the kitchens."
"The kitchens?"
"We'll need supplies for our Highly Spiritual and Intense Training Montage!"
He blinked at me in confusion. I don't think there was a translatable phrase for 'training montage' that properly portrayed the context here.
Two hours later…
"Tranquil as a forest, yet on fire within."
We stood meditating in crane pose between giant cacti in a grove of the strange plants. If we were not completely still they would fire their needles at us and we would have to dodge or deflect. Which could in turn cause other cacti to shoot more needles and so on.
The goal was to Cultivate heat and fire Qi from the bonfire I had built in the middle of a small clearing and from the sun as we held our poses.
Yanjing was…looking a bit like a pincushion. If he collapsed I would get him away from the cacti and remove the needles and feed him one of the alchemical recovery potions I had procured for this training excursion. Every few hours I would also have him eat one of the fire Qi attuned Cultivation pills to 'stoke his inner fire' so to speak.
He knew one real technique, the Alchemical Flame, used to light a fire under an alchemy cauldron with a flame that was 'self-contained' in that its Qi did not escape the bounds of the flame and contaminate the brew. It was an interesting concept I was excited to explore and experiment with as I taught him more about our shared Qi nature.
The goal was to have him trained up to the equivalent of a seventh level Monk. With the equivalent fire-based techniques taught to him. I likely wouldn't get him attuned to Light Qi unfortunately, but just the fire and monk techniques would work for our purposes.
This would mean he should learn physical combat techniques like Flurry of Blows, Stunning Strike, Deflect Missiles, Slow Fall, Qi Empowered Strikes, Evasion, and Patient Defense to keep him protected in melee and range. Step of the Wind for mobility, though fire jet flavored like mine most likely. Stillness of Mind to supplement his existing skills in meditation and protect him from mental attacks. And finally, Searing Arc Strike to give him a repeatable technique to fall back on. I was hoping I could also teach him the Qi-control variant of Flame Blade as well.
"Once you find your center, you are sure to win," I repeated the rest of the mantra I had been using for this section of training.
This section here was meant to help with Stillness of Mind being active at all times, Evasion, and Patient Defense. If he did really well we could move onto Deflect Missiles. However, I got the impression we'd be here a while though.
We used almost six entire days on that exercise. However, Yanjing was showing a level of confidence and fluidity in his movements and had managed to permanently put himself into the state of Stillness of Mind. The first step of making him immune to such mental attacks, allowing him to dispel them at will.
Very importantly, as he mastered Evasion, we had managed to move onto Deflect Missiles, which had actually been our entire extra day out here. He was knocking and snatching them out of the air, though throwing them back at other incoming needles was currently not particularly accurate or effective.
Next would be an exercise that focused on Step of the Wind, Deflect Missiles, Evasion, and Slow Fall. A little bit of Patient Defense as well, but not a main focus.
"You must be swift as the coursing river," I calmly stated as I sent multiple stones hurtling through the air at my student as he leapt from stone to stone across the raging Jari River to the east of Qibola. All while balancing two buckets of water on a quarterstaff and another on his head.
"Ow!" Splash.
"Ow!" Splash.
"Ancestors whhhyyyy!!??" Splash.
"You must maintain the strength of a raging fire!" I called out as he crawled back out of the river once more, shivering from the freezing waters.
The physical and meditation and Qi control training were of course not all we did.
At nights and over meals we would have vigorous discussions about philosophy, symbolism, folk tales, myths, legends, mathematics, alchemy, formations, and science (which was rather Cultivation based here).
One night in particular he surprised me when I was discussing the Purifying symbolism of Fire and Heat because of how they destroyed tiny sickness-causing creatures.
"We know about them!" He interjected, "Germs," Is how it translated, so now I knew what that word was in their local language, neat, "About two centuries ago a Golden Core Cultivator had focused so deeply upon the Daos of Sight and Perception that he was able to develop techniques using those Dao and Light and Glass Qi to see microscopically and telescopically. That is how we discovered the final planet in the system. It is barely visible with the unaided eye."
I was floored, that was…super cool.
"That's amazing, what happened to him? He still around and kicking?"
Yanjing grimaced, "No…his head exploded one night and apparently his journal entries suggested he was investigating some kind of 'black void' deep past the Shroud past the final planet."
Okay, so Cultivation Universe black holes were Bad News™. Noted.
The goals of these discussions were to broaden his perspective, knowledge, and understanding of the Daos of Heat and Flame (or Fire) and create a foundation for effective, efficient, fluid, and powerful manipulation of those Qi types. It was already showing benefits ten days into training. He was holding the Heat Qi in his core (not Core, normal physical core) to save himself from freezing his ass off in the river. Better yet, he was finally discovering the hidden goal of the training. He was moving that Qi through his entire body to keep his limbs limber and energized. He was beginning to deflect my stones with the staff instead of just dodging them.
Everything was proceeding according to plan. I'd honestly baked some extra time into this, I was fairly certain I could accelerate a Qi Gathering Realm Cultivator's skills by a solid amount in just two or three weeks. But only because they would have already had the foundation to quickly rocket to a refined level. I couldn't take a full mortal to this level in even a year I wagered. No, I was only pulling this off because Yanjing had been primed and ready for my kind of individual tutoring. He knew the moves of the baseline martial arts the Shang taught their children, he knew how Qi worked, he could already manipulate it in small forms, all he had been missing was the motivation to fight. Family honor, getting stronger, those were all ephemeral goals to him. A deadline for a fight with his bully? That was a real kick in the pants.
Twenty days into training…
"Strike with all the force of a great typhoon!" I called out as I demonstrated combining Qi-empowered Strikes with Stunning Strike to do a lot of damage and inject the disruptive Qi into the enemy on a boulder, which shattered.
"Keep your movements as mysterious as the dark sides of the moons!"
I was shooting around in the air, using jets of flame from my feet, hands, and elbows to juke and turn and redirect my movements.
"This allows you to attack from strange and unique angles that your foes will not see coming!"
"Yes, Master! I shall endeavor to strike like the Frog-Tongued Emu!" I am guessing that was the very poor translation into my context for the weird frilled bird-like creature that had the frog tongue.
Thus we began the final stretch of our training on day twenty-two. Combat training. Amplifying his Alchemical Flame technique with his new control skills and working it into combat.
Revelations about some of the scientific aspects from Isaac's world had really helped Yanjing understand intellectually the element that he already had a decent instinctual and metaphysical grasp on. However, it was sharing some myths and legends that helped him connect the two disparate points of view.
"According to our legends, Prometheus was the first ancestral Cultivator to attune to the Dao of Flames," I ruthlessly adapted a story one evening over some tea.
"The other Godly Ancestors did not mind this all too much at first. In fact another took the concept of fire from him even further and Cultivated so closely to the Sun that he became one with it. Yet as strange as that story is, it is not this story. This is the tale of Prometheus, who in defiance of his Godly Kin gave the power of Fire to the mortals who toiled below the first Cultivators."
"The mortals didn't know how to make fire yet, Master?" Yanjing said in shock.
"Indeed!" I answered, "For this was many many hundreds of Cultivator lifespans in the past! When humans had barely grown past monkeys and barely developed the speech and higher thinking necessary to touch upon Qi at all!"
He nodded reverently, "What a long long time ago!"
"So Prometheus taught the mortals how to harness and control fire! How to move sticks and strike rocks and cause sparks and to grow those sparks into flames! He taught them, all behind his brethrens' backs, how to burn out dead brush with controlled wildfires, how to stoke a campfire, how to cook a roast, and even how to cauterize wounds. The mortals flourished under his nurturing! And yet, Prometheus's nephew Zeus, the king of the Godly Ancestors, caught wind of this. And enraged, for these mortals should not know the power of the Gods, for as the Gods had once been them they should not give out knowledge that could challenge them. He had his son, Hephaestus, a forge-master, create magical and immutable chains with which Prometheus was chained to a rock by Zeus. And every sunrise as punishment, a giant eagle would fly by and eat Prometheus's liver. Which would grow back every time he slept."
"Punished merely for sharing such basic knowledge? To uplift the mortals from the dirt?"
"And yet…is that now how many Sects function? Would they not draw and quarter a member who spread a secret?"
"But that's…different?"
"Is it, young apprentice? You do not seem so sure."
"I…need to think."
And so he did. Yanjing thought long and hard after all of these sessions.
After a more scientific discussion the next night; the idea of heat being agitated and swift moving particles radiating that inertia outwards had really given Yanjing some interesting ideas. He swiftly came up with a way to leech the Symbolism of agitation and energized movement out of the Heat Qi and into a technique that made his entire body move quickly. I quickly picked it up myself, and we dubbed it the 'Heat Flash Step'. It was fascinating what you could do with the metaphysical side of Qi techniques.
The Alchemical Flame experiments were going rather well as we wound down our final few days of combat and technique training. Searing Arc Strike had been easy for him, it was merely a controlled wave of flames, and we were getting close to being able to use the Alchemical Flame technique to tweak the intensity and properties of the wave.
We were getting him to consistently be capable of turning the Arc Strike blue, which represented a temperature that would be extremely dangerous to an opponent. As if fire in the first place wasn't dangerous.
"The purifying aspect is the final thing we need to incorporate. The way I envision this is burning away any Qi that is not yours. Unraveling techniques, destroying formations, and purifying foreign Qi or poisons within your own body."
While he was working on that, I would be working on my own attempt to teach myself the Alchemical Flame technique. The self-contained nature of it was fascinating to me, especially from the aspect of being able to control Qi-bleeding. I could do a lot with that ability with Gravity Qi for example. Right now it was a blunt instrument, with this facet of Alchemical Fire I could possibly turn it into a more targeted element.
"Master! I did it! I burned through the Barrier Talismans!"
I looked over, and sure enough, the paper formation talismans were slowly smouldering on the ground, their projected barrier no longer in existence.
I stood up from my meditation pose, where I had been hovering a green Alchemical Flame above my palm.
Showtime.
Chapter 12: Yu Mo Gui Gwai Fai Di Zao
"My my, this was quite the little conundrum you got yourself into wasn't it?" Shang-Chien Goh lightly chastised me as he ran into me on our way to the box where the Shang family audience members would be sitting for the public spar.
I sighed, Goh was…someone I felt a bit of a connection with. We had as close to a similar origin as I would to anyone in this world. He was also a former outsider, though I planned to always remain so. At least to this clan.
"Yeah…I messed up. Can I share something with you?"
He raised an eyebrow but then nodded, "Of course young Red."
"None of this was some dramatic plan based on my misunderstanding of politics as a foreigner! I meant to slow and hold them with my aura but I hadn't refined my control of Gravity Qi enough! I just kind of had to make up a plan from there that wouldn't result in outright blood on the streets or a duel to the death! I didn't want to have to kill that Jun guy!" It all spilled out as verbal diarrhea once I began.
Goh looked at me in shock, then understanding, and then the man had the audacity to start laughing!
"O-oho, wow. That's…Oh I'm sorry, son. That's one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. Everyone finds you so mysterious as we have never even heard of this 'Amur-aka' you are from that they gave you all the credit of some kind of master manipulator and unknowable master and just…ahaha…ancestors above. That's…it's rough in this nation when you're new isn't it? All the honor, the face, the politics? Sometimes I miss Zhemla, but politics chased me out of there, too. Killed the wrong guy to protect one of my sisters. Had to leave. I don't regret it though," He placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Traveling the world is marvelous isn't it? The new cities, new places, new people. It's all wonderful and teaches you so much on the path of Cultivation. But, the different societies, well. I was in Kanto a century back and got chased out because I mistook a concubine for a courtesan, so I do understand. You seem bright and reflective, you'll catch on quick."
He paused then tilted his head slightly and continued, "Well…if you were a good enough teacher. Otherwise you won't get the chance," He patted my shoulder again, "Good luck to the young Yanjing then, yes?"
He chuckled and kept walking, leaving me there to lightly smack my head against the wall a few times before continuing on to the observation box myself as well.
Unfortunately, this entire situation was now out of my hands and firmly into the hands of my student.
I had pretty high confidence in Shang Yanjing. He had been a dedicated and intelligent student. Our discussions had helped him hone his understanding of the Daos of Flame and Heat and I had solidly taught him up to about the seventh level of Monk abilities. Furthermore his newly created technique that could accelerate him more consistently than Step of the Wind and his Fire Qi-based Dispel technique would certainly serve him well.
I took a few deep breaths and finally joined the rest of the retinue in the box.
I recognized many of them. Shang Kao and Shang-Chien Wu had almost certainly attended for my benefit, and they made room for me to move to sit between them as I entered.
Clan Head Shang Feng and his wife sat in a higher set of seating along the back of the box, he leveled a mild glare at me. I knew he was at the low Golden Core Realm so he could definitely make good on his threat.
"Two rival families! Two young masters! One grudge match!"
The call echoed out from the arena before us and I looked down and saw…what I supposed must be the Cultivation world equivalent of a WWE announcer because he was hyping this shit up.
A short and slender man down below was wearing a set of black robes with a strange cylindrical looking yellow hat. He had a talisman carved out of what looked like obsidian from here, that he seemed to be using to amplify his voice so that the entire arena, which included a couple hundred seats up in the amphitheater-style stands.
"From the Yang Clan, we have the fourth son of the clan leader and direct disciple of the clan heir, Yang Hàoyú! And from the Shang Clan we have the sixth…son of the clan leader and direct disciple of a mysterious wandering Foundation Realm Cultivator who has recently joined that clan! Shang Yanjing!"
The crowd cheered for both in what felt like equal groups. I think they were mostly just here for a fight.
"This is a fight for honor! In response to some supposed insults from Yang Hàoyú towards Shang Yanjing, Yanjing's master in a terrifying display of aura sent his whole entourage crumbling to the ground!"
That was…a summary I supposed.
"And now we have the honor match! First to three points! Points are scored from contact to the lethal points of the head or heart with an attack technique, a ring out, or holding the opponent still for a ten second count! Combatants to your corners!"
Third person POV
Shang Yanjing could see Yang Hàoyú across the arena from him, wearing billowing combat robes instead of the baggy but not quite billowing martial arts uniform favored by his master. Yanjing identified no less than twelve extraneous points to grab for optimal grappling if need be.
Hàoyú's stance also didn't appear to be a martial one, this was a stance that Yanjing recognized from his clan combat training. The stance of a ranged specialist of some kind, likely focusing on Qi-techniques, talisman activation, or alchemical bombs. A ranged weapon specialist at their Realm would likely have their weapon visible.
And with the Yang Clan specializing in Formations, Yanjing was willing to bet that his opponent would be throwing and setting talismans for traps and remote Formation effects. He felt a flicker of hope, his Dispelling Alchemical Flame technique might be uniquely suited to such an opponent.
The judge called a match start, and Yanjing leapt forward into motion, trying to close the gap with Hàoyú quickly. His opponent seemed surprised by his speed, hastily grabbing for something inside his belt sash and throwing it forward.
Two wooden talismans, Yanjing categorized as he saw them hurtle forth into the arena floor in front of him, anticipating some kind of effect he leapt high, clearing a solid ten feet in an arc.
Sure enough, a seven foot tall barrier wall of lavender Qi shot into being below him. As he came down with an axe kick, Hàoyú leapt to the side to dodge. Yanjing swiftly kicked back up off the ground and spun around in the air to launch a hammer fist down towards his opponent's head, aiming to give absolutely no breathing room to the apparent talisman specialist.
However, the Yang scion pulled out a copper plate talisman and held it up in front of himself, causing a convex shield of that same lavender Qi to appear in front of his body, Yanjing's fist struck it like a gong and he leapt backwards to dodge a thrown wooden talisman that landed where his feet had previously been and sprouted writhing vines.
Both combatants paused and analyzed each other, the opening salvo now over, both were realizing the breadth of their opponent's skills.
'His Qi…' Hàoyú thought to himself in this brief pause, 'It's grown so much just in this month? Perhaps that bumbling foreigner really did know what he was doing like Brother Jun suggested?'
'I really didn't think Hàoyú would fight so…tactically, he's always been such an arrogant bully. Even back when…no I need to focus on the battle, not memories.'
For the next exchange both fighters prepared actual, true Qi-techniques.
Hàoyú threw his arms out wide and strings of lavender Qi shot from his fingertips into his sash and folds of his robes.
"Thousand Talisman Dance!" He called out.
Meanwhile Yanjing took a wider stance and waved their palms through the air in circular motions, gathering Fire Qi. As the Qi settled through his palms he spun around, "Searing Arc Strike!"
Two dozen talismans shot out from the Yang teen's robes, nowhere near the amount called for from the ostentatious name of the technique. However, two dozen was a scary amount. As the Qi-strings remotely activated them with a speed and dexterity not possible from fully remote activation as well as moving them and their effects about.
Three Qi-barriers stopped the roaring blue flames that shot out from Yanjing's hands.
A dozen of the talismans were scattered to strategic locations across the arena. These were likely being set as traps for the Shang fighter, just their mere presence would limit his mobility now.
The remaining talismans wove through the air around Yanjing sending out bursts of elemental attacks. A fire bolt from one, a vacuum wave from another, a lightning bolt from yet another one, and even a jet of water.
Yanjing wove through the attacks, occasionally deflecting them with a burst of flame from his palms if he couldn't dodge completely.
Back in the stands with Red…
"Qi Gathering Realm fights are so…tame." I heard a Shang clansman I had never met comment on the other side of the box.
"No, nothing too dramatic here, I fear." Another responded.
"Young Yanjing has certainly improved though," A third commented, "It's impressive to see his Cultivation recover at all from that…setback a few years ago."
"Hmm…true, I thought he'd merely become an alchemist of decent utility after all of that. Thought his body would never catch back up to his mind."
I…was apparently missing some backstory for my student, but I didn't really care. He'd met and exceeded my expectations, I was confident he could win.
"Oh! And there it is, the first point! Yang Hàoyú tags Shang Yanjing along the temple with an Earth Spike talisman! Both drawing blood and striking one of the two targets for points! Can Yanjing tie the match back up?"
…I was still confident. This would be fine.
I could feel Shang Feng glaring at me from behind.
On the arena floor…
Yanjing was chastising himself over letting that Earth Spike through his defenses. He'd underestimated the amount of Qi reinforcement of the construct and had failed to break with, attempting to conserve his Qi and not putting enough into the Qi-Empowered Strike he tried to use to deflect it. It was time to stop messing around and conserving energy.
"Mine is the fire that burns away all ills! Purifying Alchemical Arc Strike!" His fire roared out in a larger wave than before, a teal color now, tinged with alchemical concepts and the concept of purification.
The talisman shields that Hàoyú brought up were burnt straight through and he had to jump back to dodge the flames, but he miscalculated. The wave of flames had been large enough to box him in and force him out, for fear of a complete loss due to the damage sustained.
"Ring out! Point to Shang Yanjing!"
"Blasted foreign techniques!" Hàoyú spat as he stamped out the smouldering ends of his robes before leaping back up onto the arena to restart the match.
The match began again in earnest. Now neither was holding back or conserving energy. Fire flew, talismans burned, lightning lanced out, barriers melted, vines shriveled, and then Yanjing scored a second point by revealing his personal variant of Red's Flame Blades.
"By the heat of the desert, this lash burns bright! Flame Whip!" A whip of flame lanced out, curving around two defensive talismans and snapping Hàoyú across the chest, burning away the front of his robes.
"Second point to Shang Yanjing!"
However, soon things were tied up, a pentagram of trap talismans activating and creating a wind vortex that shot Yanjing out of the arena. He tried to shoot himself back into the arena with Step of the Wind, but his midair control was more about redirection and not distance, he fell just short of catching onto the arena edge.
"Point to Yang Hàoyú! Two points each! Next point will decide the match."
Now Yanjing further prioritized burning trap talismans, but the longer the fight went on the more time there was for Hàoyú to scatter random talismans.
'How does he have so many? The judge checked our gear for anything that was a treasure not attuned to our Qi, did he just spend the last month making talismans?' Three talismans arranged themselves in the air in a triangle and blasted out a gout of fire, a blast of lightning, and a beam of ice. He barely cartwheeled out of the way of the three blasts.
Right into the middle of a set of four talismans that immediately activated. He felt the air around him slow, until every movement felt like he was trying to swim through tar.
"That looks like an immobilization! I'll start the count! Ten…"
'Shit shit shit…I can't expel fire to dispel them if I can't move my arms!' Yanjing screamed in his mind, trying desperately to move enough to channel Fire Qi.
"Eight!"
He forced himself to calm down, to release the panic into Stillness of Mind, to focus and plan and then execute the plan.
'Remember what Master Red said! Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within. Once you find your center, you are sure to win. This is a slow effect…what if…could I overpower it by moving fast? By agitating…yes…let's do it!' Shang Yanjing used his master's words to psyche himself up.
'Circulate the Qi, meridians aren't developed enough to do this easily, it's easier with the hand signs and mantra, but I can do it. I created the technique. Come on! C'mon! I have a soul of fire! It rages within! That rage spreads and empowers every mawleqewl! Every a'tam moves with the fury of my flames!'
Yanjing would not know until years later that he'd been pronouncing those scientific words from Red incorrectly, because the ancient Cultivator had only managed microscopic control not electron microscopic control before he died, so they hadn't had words for atoms and molecules.
Back up in the box with Red…
"Six…"
The glare I felt from Feng was intensifying, he was angry that he was about to see his son lose after putting up a Hell of a fight. Obviously everyone here could sense Yanjing was trying SOMETHING with his Qi, but I was the only one that knew exactly what he was trying to force. It would definitely work if he could start the technique in time.
"YOU GOT THIS, KID!" I called out, hoping it would help.
In the arena…
"HA!" Heat Qi flooded his entire body and he felt himself accelerate through the slow effect to normal speed, he shot a fist out and teal fire erased one of the talismans from existence, ending the trap.
Now he was free, with a blur that left behind a mirage-like heat haze as his sweat boiled off of his body he shot forward at over five times his previous max speed.
"What the shi-" And a punch took Hàoyú right in the face, sending him shooting out of the arena and skipping across the grass like a stone before slamming into the wall.
"Oof! That's the final point to Shang Yanjing! What an upset! We really thought that the final trap had him on the edge!"
Yanjing wheezed through parched lips. One of the downsides of Heat Flash Step was if he pushed himself too far and fast he quickly dehydrated himself. He was going to have quite the headache later. But he'd done it.
In the Shang box…
"HE WON! THAT'S MY BOY!" Shang Feng's booming voice echoed out so loudly the other clansmen nearby were partially deafened as the sound wave continued off across the arena for all to hear.
I slumped back in my seat, that had been…too close. Yang Hàoyú had been quite talented with those talismans for his Cultivation level.
Chapter 13: A Prickly Job
For all this world felt like a story, I had to remember that I was not the protagonist, and that this world was not going to just blindly follow half-remembered tropes and cliches.
That had been far too close a match, and while it did feel like a shonen manga protagonist pulled a hail mary in the bottom of the ninth inning, I had perhaps subconsciously relied too much on the idea of Xianxia tropes. Of the bullied young master gaining a mysterious mentor and curb-stomping his bully after some face slapping.
Feng had threatened to draw and quarter me if things didn't go well, which was heavily leaning me towards accumulating the resources I needed and then getting the Hell outta dodge here. Even a reasonable seeming clan having that as a possible punishment for losing face? Unless he changed tunes real quickly and apologized at some point I was not going to want to stay in a clan he was leading. Though I suppose it could have been an exaggeration made out of anger at his youngest son, who obviously had a special place in Feng's heart, being put in danger. That I could easily forgive, we'd see how it pans out. Feng hadn't spoken to me at all since the duel.
It was time to keep my head down for a bit, generate some Clan Contribution Points, and gather resources so I could leave and further explore this world.
My…tentative standing in the Clan had been damaged and then repaired, in fact those repairs had shot me into higher standing than previously. So hopefully I could stabilize at this level by just taking some jobs and missions.
Unfortunately for my point income I apparently now had a full time apprentice.
And a diplomatic minder.
"So…the Major Domo-"
"Outer Clan Coordinator," Wu corrected.
"Has decided that I cannot be trusted left alone to my own devices,"
"More or less, mostly more," Yanjing helpfully added.
"And I need to take missions that allow me to take the two of you along? Which means C Rank missions with the addendum that they can be completed by D-rank members as long as they have a C-rank leader?"
"That's correct."
"Which means the points are also split?"
"Not evenly, you get half as the leader and then the other half is split with us."
I sighed, guess I wasn't going to be hunting any big game in the near future. I'd been hoping to get more of those rarer monster cores to sell.
C rank missions with D rank team members and a C rank leader were usually more like caravan protection, clearing out newly discovered dens of weaker monsters, nabbing a scouted resource from the middle of the desert before a competing clan could get it, things of those natures. There was no fighting a giant Purple Worm knock-off. There was no delving into ancient hidden realms that had freshly opened or been rediscovered. You know, the fun stuff.
I looked at the other two Cultivators on my new 'team' then I sighed again.
"Fine, but we're not calling ourselves Team Seven or Xiansentai got it?"
They looked at me in befuddlement, but both moved to follow me as I walked out of the library where they'd ambushed me. I'd originally been researching a bestiary for future monster hunts. Gonna have to put a pin in that. Well, the fun big monsters at least.
Early afternoon of that next day saw me casually playing with sparks of flame along my knuckles, sending them skittering back and forth like how some magicians would play with a coin. Wu crouched to my right and Yanjing to my left upon the ridge we had settled atop to ambush our targets.
We'd taken an alchemical reagent collection job. It promised five points per quill we retrieved from a strange dinosaur-like creature that inhabited the dried river beds that used to drain into the main river. If this plan went off without a hitch, I would have enough points to get a proper spatial storage treasure, a significant upgrade from my pouch that had been brought over with me. Thus, we were waiting for a large pack of them to pass us by. Then we would strike. I had scouted this pack out earlier with Astral Projection.
The problem of course was, two of us were pyrokinetic specialists, and killing them with large AoE fire attacks would ruin the quills. I found the challenge interesting, and a fun one to pose to my apprentice. Wu would have no issue, being a Sword Cultivator. Sure the quills at the location of any of her cuts would be ruined, but she wouldn't ruin the entire body's worth of them.
That's where the contraption Yanjing and I had come up with came in. There were several alchemical reagents that Yanjing was familiar with that were extremely stable until set ablaze. And once on fire would explode, violently. However, Alchemical Cauldrons were made of a special metal that was further reinforced with Formations that allowed them to contain these explosions.
So I'd had Yanjing help me jury rig a few of these cauldrons into improvised shrapnel cannons. The curved shape of the cauldrons was actually perfect for setting off a shaped explosion, and with a rack of throwing daggers and throwing needles set at the mouth, they would set off a shrapnel barrage that would shred through any beast that was not significantly defensive or Qi-blessed. Sure, the entry wounds might break a few quills, but with the size of this pack if we got even half the quills off of each beast we would make an absolute killing.
The goal was the shrapnel would kill as many of the weaker beasts in the pack as possible, allowing the three of us to focus on the stronger monsters with the higher-tier quills in one on one combat. These creatures were fast in a straight line and so most teams would only ambush and kill a few stragglers or isolate the stronger members of a pack and lose over half the pack as they fled. We intended to take out at least seventy-percent of the pack. You had to leave a breeding population behind after all.
Thus we had four cauldrons set up on little wooden stands with the racks of ammo set in front of them, ready for Yanjing and I to light the fires at their bases and heat the alchemical equivalent of nitroglycerin inside enough to explode.
"Here they come," I whispered to my companions, as the dust cloud moving down the gorge began to reveal the pack of swiftly moving creatures. These creatures looked quite horrifying. Like a cross between a parrot and a porcupine they had sharp quills in the place of feathers. Their curved macaw-style beaks included long and vicious front teeth. Their front limbs ended in raptor-like claws as well, and their hind legs definitely reminded me of cassowaries. Vicious looking bastards all in all.
And just like parrots they were fucking loud.
"Squaw! Squaw! Squawk!" Echoed around the ridges and walls of the gorge as an eleven foot tall specimen led the mostly seven foot tall pack racing down the dried out river bed.
"On my mark…" I started, waiting for the head of the pack to be just slightly past our firing cone.
"Now!" I lit my two cauldrons, Yanjing lit his, and Wu launched herself off the ridge towards the head beast. Priklepex? Was that what they were called? Something like that. I could never trust the way proper names for creatures that I had no context for translated to be honest.
"Thuk! Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!" The sound of hundreds of daggers and needles blasting out of the cauldrons and whistling down towards the strange dinosauroids would have been intimidating if anyone else had been around to hear it.
"Squawk! Squa-Eeeek!"
We shredded the middle of the pack like Papa John on a block of mozzarella cheese. The sounds of dying fowls echoed off the ravine walls now, instead of their earlier cries.
Wu was down already, facing off against the pack leader, dodging and deflecting his fired pin missiles. She'd had a fire lit under her by Yanjing's rapid growth and was trying to get herself fully to the Peak of the Qi Gathering Realm, the Qi Consolidation Stage. Prepared to finish compressing her chaotic Qi pathways into proper Meridians and move into the Foundation Realm soon after. Therefore, she had asked that any strong beast below the level of that Momentous Death Wurm be left to her, at least initially.
I had no problem with that, anything below the Death Wurm wasn't necessarily worth contributing towards my Path anyways. I was only on these quests for the sweet sweet Points.
As I put a few of the crippled but not quite dead dinobirds out of their misery I glanced over and had to admire her combat style. Sword Cultivation certainly did not lack flair. I needed a proper weapon, my Flame Blades were great at cutting, but they did not really have mass. Using them to block things was essentially me forming a Qi-barrier around my hand in the center of them and praying I had more Qi than the opponent's attack did. Not very efficient. Or safe.
One way I had been experimenting around this was-Oops got distracted, I thought to myself as I dodged a barrage of needles from a beast that still had some vim left in it. I swiftly blasted its skull off of its skinny ostrich-like neck with a Radiant Sun Bolt.
Right, so, one way I had been experimenting with giving my Flame Blades mass was by combining all four of my Qi-aspects I had experience with. Flame, Heat, Light, and Gravity to try and create a kind of lightsaber arm-blade out of plasma by superheating then controlling the superheated natural gasses around my body.
It wasn't going bad, but it wasn't going well either. Turns out naturally occurring gases in just the air are very dispersed. A sort of 'No shit, Sherlock' moment for me admittedly. So I had to take a lot of time to use Gravity Qi to pull in gasses to even get enough to ignite a tiny ball of plasma. Let alone create a full blade.
Claimh Solais had the same exact problem of the Flame Blades and the same exact solution. I had to figure out this plasma thing. The next thing might be to try and find out if some kind of Gas Qi was connected to and could be sectioned off of Air Qi and work on Cultivating control of that like I had with Gravity.
Cultivation truly was a long and convoluted road.
"Master! I think that was the last one, we should start collecting now!"
Ah yes, my young apprentice was right. Looking around, Wu had wrapped up with the leader, finishing it off with a rather impressive looking knock-off Octaslash. And no living creature remained in the killing field with us, the survivors having long fled. All in all it looked like we'd be getting quills off of thirty odd bird-things and then the higher quality ones from the leader. A good hunt.
Several hours of grueling plucking later we had finally finished and made our way back to the clan compound and turned in the loot. Thankfully Yanjing already had a spatial treasure, an elegant looking spiral bracelet that went about three inches up his arm from his wrist and had a few rubies in it to serve as focal points. Otherwise we'd have had to pull the quills out of my pouch by hand or pour them out on the ground. Similar spatial treasures in this world apparently had some compatibility functions and could transfer through direct contact of the gems. It was neat watching the quest board clerk for the clan tap a jewel topped talisman to the bracelet and read off a crystalline piece on the back the amount of the item that had been put into it.
"Impressive," They remarked, and then allocated the points to our badges with another tap-based device.
Finally, I had enough points for my own spatial treasure! I needed one to begin slowly reducing my reliance upon the clan. I had the money from those cores, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to be secure and independent by the time I dipped out of here.
The Contribution Store had quite the interesting selection of styles for spatial treasures. Small ones had the most variety. Rings, earrings, anklets, and such with one gem could all hold about what a large trunk could. I'm not sure if this was universal or just how it was with the artisans available out here, but bigger space meant a bigger accessory with more gems as well.
I found a pretty cloak pin in the shape of a sun-burst with five gems total, one in the center and one at each of the four points of the longest sun-burst arms that basically ate all my Points from my entire stay here. Including the lessons. But it was worth it in my opinion. Plus it looked snazzy and was on my aesthetic.
"M-master Red! Huff…huff!" I turned around just as I finished the transaction and attached it to my cloak to find a young page, the kind of pre-teen given a small part-time job as a messenger to interact with and become better known to members of the clan or something.
"Th-the Clan Lord! All Foundation Cultivators and above are summoned to an emergency meeting! C-center Conference Hall!"
Oh…okay, I thought to myself, this sounds interesting.
Chapter 14: Expedition Fifty-One
"One of our desert scouts finally found it." Shang Feng stated as the small group of Foundation and above Cultivators of the Shang Clan finally settled in the main Conference Hall of the Inner Clan compound.
Oh good, we're using pronouns for things I don't have context for, goody. I thought to myself as I decided I was just going to be sitting back and trying to piece shit together and then I'd interrogate Goh about it later.
The Clan Lord held up a strange looking gold and jade…object? It looked like some kind of talisman the size of a cantaloupe but it had strange leg-like attachments wrapping around itself.
"The key to the Mystic Realm of Zhang Tianxiufu!" Dramatic gasps abounded across the room.
Mystic Realm! Not Hidden Realm! Oops, I'd been calling them the second thing for a bit. So much new terminology to learn, it was like being three beers in and having your roommates pull out a Kickstarter board game you'd never played before and having to catch onto the rules real quick while tipsy.
I blinked as that analogy fully filtered up from my subconscious. Isaac's college years had apparently left a strong disdain for games with fiddly-bits and rulebooks with double digit page numbers.
"Normally, for a foray into a Mystic Realm of so vaunted a past Cultivator we would send multiple Golden Core Realm Cultivators in to lead large teams. However, many of our Foundation Realm and almost all of our Golden Core Cultivators are serving at the border with Kojosŏn for the Emperor's current offensive push to consolidate the bordering lesser kingdoms. Thus we will be sending a single Golden Core Realm Cultivator to be the expedition leader, with Foundation Realm Cultivators leading the smaller teams of higher Qi-Gathering Cultivators. This is not optimal, we may very well have to retreat and lock it back down."
Feng seemed deadly serious about the significance and the difficulty of this expedition.
"To that end, my sister, Shang Khulan will be the expedition leader. The rest of you will follow her directions as if they were mine. We will send the teams out different gates over the next week to reduce suspicion. The treasures of this Mystic Realm could accelerate and uplift our family. We cannot have this turn into a fight with the Yang, Li, or Tumeds. Your team rosters will be given to you by the expedition leader within the next day. Dismissed."
He waved us all off and turned the 'key' over in his hand, seemingly quite distracted.
I made sure as we left that I sidled up to Goh's side and whispered, "I am going to need a whole lot of context for that."
He nodded, "I suppose you would. Have you read about the Supreme Progenitor's initial conquest of this region before moving south?"
I nodded, but not confidently, "I mean I know some of the major battles, duels, and the general pacing. Was this Zhang Tianxiufu from that generation?"
"Precisely! Zhang Tianxiufu was known as the Grand Marcher Lord of the Chi-tzu Dynasty, the Holy Man of the Wall that Inspires Awe. He was the warrior, sage, and military mind in charge of the defense of the Wall that cut through this region. In particular he controlled the methods with which the Formations were kept charged and maintained."
Okay, I was following so far, so I motioned for Goh to continue his story.
"After twenty fruitless assaults upon the Wall, the Supreme Progenitor realized no technique or Qi-charged catapult could topple it from without. Thus he decided upon a ruse to take it from within. Many years before he had taken in exiles from a sect to the south of the wall. These former members of the now Southern Empire held deep resentment within their hearts. And one of their daughters was a mighty jade beauty. Capable of powerful Cultivation and alchemy. He tasked her to infiltrate the defenses of Zhang Tianxiufu's stronghold and bring it down from within."
"I take it since we are standing here talking and there isn't a giant wall cutting through the desert in anything less than twenty pieces she was successful?"
"Indeed!" Goh exclaimed, getting really into this story for some reason.
"She entered posing as a merchant and over time seduced Zhang Tianxiufu's second son, Zhang Sidao and gained knowledge of where the center of the Formations were hidden. Eventually she deactivated them, and the great Wind-Horse Tumen flew down with the Supreme Progenitor astride his own great mount and rained death upon the Wall amid the explosions of many alchemical catapult bombs."
Classic move that.
"Zhang Tianxiufu was forced to ride out to meet the Supreme Progenitor in single combat, knowing he would lose. That fight is what broke the Wall into more pieces than the catapults did. Zhang Tianxiufu was a master of the Metal and Wood elements. He turned every weapon on the battlefield against the Supreme Progenitor and yet still he was killed. But just before the moment of his death he declared, 'You may take my castle, but you shall not take my knowledge!' and activated a talisman that did two things. First, it caused his stronghold to self-destruct, spewing pieces of itself across the desert. Second, Zhang Tianxiufu's body burnt to ashes and was sucked up into the spatial treasure upon his neck, which then flew off into the sky. Never to be seen again."
That was…overwhelming amounts of information.
"So how did you guys find his hidden Mystic Realm?"
Goh smirked at that.
"The Shang were a nomadic desert tribe that served as scouts under the Supreme Progenitor. The Clan Lord's own grandfather saw where the spatial treasure fell, a giant lion's head made of sand rising up to swallow it. Upon investigation it was discovered to be a locked, trapped, and hidden entrance to a Mystic Realm."
"Huh…" I eloquently responded, "So uh…he found the key just now then?"
"That appears to be the case, yes."
"Neat."
"Truly your ability to succinctly summarize events is boundless, Master Red."
He was teasing me. Rude. I just rolled my eyes at him in response, like a mature double adult or whatever.
Goh and I kept chatting for a bit after that, I asked him how big he expected my team to be, he didn't think I would be put in charge of too many people directly. Likely a skirmish and exploration group for quick responses to help other teams or fall back and guard the base camp of support personnel that would be established at the first safe area of the Mystic Realm that they could establish.
Eventually we fell into more companionable topics, as I got him to tell me more about the Enlightened Mandala Kingdom of Zhemla.
"Zhemla…is fluid. The large and powerful city-states controlled many little and ever moving tributary cities and their hinterlands for millennia before the old Empire forced them to pick a central ruler to pay tribute to them directly instead. Once the Supreme Progenitor broke the old Empire we broke away from the weakened Southern Empire, no longer paying tribute. But our centralization was imposed from outside. So now the old city-states are starting to rear their heads again, in opposition to the centralized power of the Angk Sect's central family that had ruled for the centuries we were under Imperial rule. Dayavarman III currently rules from the capital, Jayendrapura, and its monumental stone pyramids. But he does not have a strong heir. Which is part of why my own family, inner but not core members of that Sect, were under so much pressure to marry into the core branch. Which is why I killed Dayavarman's fourth son, when the leech tried to force a marriage with my sister by means of despoilment."
I looked at him aghast, "W-what? How did you escape?" Killing a prince? That was insane, I had no idea how he wouldn't have immediately been captured and executed.
He chuckled darkly, "My sister is one of the rare members of my family who was born with the Dao-blessing of our family's founder. Our first Cultivator was a great Enlightened Master. He obtained Nascent Soul and eventually transcended. Unfortunately his children and grandchildren were untalented so we fell from power in the city-state we used to rule. Every few generations however, one of the Siddhi that the Originator possessed shows itself as a natural talent in one of our bloodline. My sister was blessed with trikālajñatvam, the power to have visions of the past, present, and possible futures. She saw the prince coming to claim her, warned me, and we came up with a plan to ambush him and hide the body and evidence for long enough that I could escape."
I froze, this was my first time hearing of Siddhis in this world.
"The…Siddhi, these are conceptual powers the are separate from specific Dao-concepts and Qi-affinities, correct?"
He nodded, "There are many, and how they are categorized and given importance vary greatly. The great domain to the west of Khemla has great Gurus specializing in unlocking many of these, as opposed to chasing the Dao."
Fascinating, powers based entirely on inner enlightenment as opposed to wresting control of the Dao. Now, he had not said these Gurus and mystics ignored the Dao. Merely they used these purely internal forms of enlightenment as well. Sounded a lot like my astral projection. Which had itself been based on the Siddhi of Earth, which seemed to be exactly what these were, merely dialed up to eleven in capabilities.
I probed him for more specifics of these for a few more minutes, before we eventually parted to rest for the morrow. Cultivators after a certain point could go days or even weeks without sleep, but most of us enjoyed the luxury of it when possible, and even those who didn't partake often used the quieter nighttime hours to meditate and Cultivate.
Tonight I chose meditation. I felt like I was making a breakthrough on self-reflection and consolidating my identity and picking a name. I astral projected my consciousness and observed my meditating form while contemplating the last month and change as well as all the new information I had learned lately.
The skill of astral projection in Red'neran's world was about shedding one's earthly ego and desires, recognizing that while they exist they hold little to no importance in the greater cosmos. And yet to maintain the connection and return to our bodies we must recognize that they exist, that they must be acknowledged and analyzed, and only the virtuous actions and actions that would not generate negative karma be indulged.
I…was not sure I was living up to that. No, I need to be honest, I knew I wasn't. I had done things for personal prestige, things that put other people in danger. I had made mistakes in that vein. But I could be better. I could live up to Red'neran and his 'I aid all the needy whose Karma puts them in my path' and Isaac's goal to 'Make sure my life is lived to ease the burdens of those around me most efficiently'. There were connotations in both of those praxes. Isaac had burnt himself out young being too much of a people pleaser, he had had to learn to put his own oxygen mask on first to keep his ability to help his world sustainable. He didn't volunteer for every after school activity once he became a teacher, just the ones he knew would have the greatest impact balanced with not overwhelming his work-life balance. Red'neran did not refuse gifts of gratitude, merely refused that they be treated as payment for his services. I would find some similar path and walk it in balance. Neither praxis they preached felt fully correct for my interpretation of how I wished to generate Karma without burning myself out, but I would use them as guidance to find my own.
So I moved on from self-reflection into standard meditation. A favored style of Isaac's from a book, and one he had ported over to Red'neran as well. The Flame and the Void, which refers to the visualization of a single flame of a candle into which you can throw all your emotions, fears, and obstacles which block you from performing a task. All concerns, thoughts, even pain and the concerns of life and death; can be learned to be fed into the flame. This allows you to perceive reality cleared from everything distracting. Starting from this technique you could achieve the Oneness with a weapon, fighting style, goal, or magic…and possibly Qi-affinities or the Dao if I could port that technique over. It was the foundation of Red'neran's Stillness of Mind and Empty Body techniques. I had talent with it, but I had yet to fully adapt it over to this world and the way Qi and the Dao worked here.
I figured the better I adapted it the stronger I could potentially make my soul-form as I astral projected, and I could use that skill to explore extra secrets inside the Mystic Realm of this Zhang guy.
The next day I was assigned my team to lead on the expedition. Like Goh theorized, I was given a small rapid response style team that was made entirely out of people I had already interacted with. My minder, Wu, my apprentice, Yanjing, and then the two other high-Qi Gathering Realm guards from the merchant caravan. Shang Shen, a scout specializing in desert environments, and Shang-We Jung, a giant slab of muscles that walked around with a crazy spear that when twisted a certain way multiple branching tips would shoot out. It was called a Lang Xian or something like that.
This was a good team composition, in my opinion. We had Yanjing and Wu as melee and mid-range DPS, Shen on long range and detection support, Jung to tank, and me to perform flexible roles including emergency healing.
We were assigned to be one of the teams that left in two days time, so until then I was going to have us running teamwork and synergy drills in the sparring yard. No point in going into the dungeon…umm…Mystic Realm completely green about working together.
Delving the depths of a secret pocket dimension full of a higher realm Cultivator's special treasures sounded like an amazing opportunity to me.
It was a blessing, in my mind, that we were a smaller team. The expedition as a whole totaled fifty-one people if we included the leader. Four teams under Foundation Realm Cultivators and then some miscellaneous support personnel. The first two teams had slipped out earlier this morning, to what we believed was no suspicion from the other Clans. Though that remained to be seen.
Chapter 15: Rally Point
The only coordinates we were given physically were a completely false location in the wrong quadrant of the desert. Verbally we were given the location of the rendezvous point, where we would be led to the actual site of the Mystic Realm by one of the lead scouts once the entire group arrived at the end of the week.
Our stealthy trip through the desert went entirely uneventfully. This was of course a very good thing, as apparently monsters and beasts in the desert had been getting stirred up lately. As my fight with that Death Wurm so close to the city showed.
As we were one of the middle groups to arrive we still had a few days of hanging around the camp before we went to the true location of the Mystic Realm. So we decided to just kick back and relax and just treat it like a camping trip.
Well…I decided that at least. Some of the others were a bit jittery. For Yanjing it was his first important mission. Whatever weird thing from a few years back that had hindered his progress had led him to thinking he'd never be more than a laboratory alchemist, so not only was this his first mission in the wider world, but it was a type of thing he'd never expected to be able to do.
During the day we would run forms from the Rising Phoenix Style and at night I would adapt more myths, folk tales, and stories from Earth to Cultivation standards. I was not as worried about things not being perfectly adapted, as with my conversation with Goh it had been revealed that there were many many different paths to using Qi for power than just the standard Cultivation we saw in these pseudo-Chinese and Mongolian empires. Wu started joining us for these about half-way through the first night's story as well.
"And so, wishing to atone for the murders he committed in the fit of madness caused by Hera, the wife of his father, Herakles sought a great seer who served the Divine Sect Head of all seers, Apollo. This great seer was called the Oracle of Delphi and lived in a lavish temple-palace dedicated to her service to Apollo. He asked how he could atone and she said that he must go serve his cousin, a distant king, and complete any and all labors set upon him by his cousin. In return not only would his sins be forgiven, but he would be guaranteed to finally break through to the Nascent Soul Realm, achieving an immortal soul."
"Apologies for jumping in late," Wu interrupted, "But who did he kill in that rage from his father's jealous wife?"
"It's no bother, Wu, Herakles in that blood rage killed his wife and children. A crime most cruel to have him inflict upon his own family."
She gasped, "A vile spell indeed to force a man to do such!"
And so began my tale of the Twelve Labors of Herakles, and I would continue that each night. Using the proper Greek spelling, or at least the closest to correct without actually speaking Greek, which Isaac couldn't do. Though…if I tried to focus really hard on Greek would my Tongue of the Sun and Moon accommodate that? Interesting experiment for later. Regardless of that ADHD fueled tangent, another lovely thing I had inherited from both sides, Isaac had been a bit of a Byzaboo in regards to history topics so apparently that preference for original spellings and pronunciations had carried over to me as well.
Not that I had much to do when I wasn't sparring or telling tales. So I often let my mind wander in an unfocused and non-meditative manner. Not to say I didn't meditate and Cultivate as well, I just also allowed myself moments of daydreaming and relaxation as we waited for the proverbial shoe to drop and the dangers of the mission to truly set in after we entered the Mystic Realm. Both sets of memories stressed the importance of downtime and not letting yourself become burnt out.
Goh's team was the last group meant to come through before we headed off to the mystic realm. However, on the noon of the final day they were two hours late. Quite the concerning development as they were one of our strongest teams.
"Rawlk! Rawlk! Rawlk!" A strange call echoed out of the desert as we turned towards the source. It was a scout riding one of the stranger dino-birds used as mounts out here. Unlike what I had hunted previously it was truly feathered, brown and yellow feathers adapted to the desert background ruffled as it continued its strange call, the longer ones of its vestigial 'wings' and broadly feathered tail puffing out. These beasts were roughly twenty feet, or sixish meters, long, as tall as your average man at the haunches, and could weigh almost a full ton. Even with all that weight they could leap three or four times the length of their body in distance, twice in height, and come down with a blistering combination of talons and teeth that would overwhelm anything at the same tier of beast Qi as they were. Beast, as far as anyone could tell, did not Cultivate, they Consumed cores and treasures and Qi to get stronger. It was a messy process though, as usually they did not have the intelligence for long term planning of their paths and grew or evolved strangely past the beginnings of the comparative power level to the Foundation Realm.
The rider eventually as they neared began to waving the orange flag representing danger, but not direct and immediate danger.
"That's one of the ravening birds from my father's group!" Wu called out, "Something must have happened to them!"
I sighed and pushed myself up onto my feet.
"Get a group together to gather information and then follow as reinforcements, I'll go ahead, I'm one of the fastest here that isn't the head of the expedition."
And needless to say we were not going to risk her running off into a trap!
"Don't be stu-and he's gone."
Wu began and changed her statement as I cycled my Qi into an overcharged Step of the Wind and blasted off past the arriving rider and down along the path they had followed to our rally point.
One mile, two miles, the dunes are eaten up and kicked back in a furious wake as I run along the tracks of what I was almost certain was a Cultivation-world suped-up velociraptor or similar dinosaur, and towards the errant group of clan members.
I saw a cloud of sand and dust ahead of me, with the occasional glint of metal in the sun as I ran. I gathered my Qi around me and triggered my Sun Shield, not knowing what I was running into.
I entered the cloud, and my blindsense triggered and I immediately dodged to the side, a chitinous pincer retracted from where I had stood just a moment prior.
Some kind of giant scorpion.
However, that was apparently not all, as I turned and caught an obsidian-lined club in my right hand. An arimaspu, one of the cyclopean trolls of the northern mountain range, gritted its teeth as it tried fruitlessly to yank the club back from my grasp.
I used that second of possessiveness over its weapon to my advantage. I yanked the club forward, the corrupted man-beast came along with it, and slammed a combination of fingerpoint jabs into its sternum and throat. It fell back, gargling and clutching on its crushed windpipe.
I whirled around, flipping the club so I held the handle, and slammed the implement into the jabbing tail of either the same or a different giant scorpion than earlier. The chitin creaked and cracked but did not fully break. The scorpion(s?) were stronger than the cyclops-trolls it seemed.
"Goh! It's Red! What in the Hells is going on here!" I called out, knowing the enemy apparently had some way to see in this mess from my instant double ambushing. Possibly a triple.
"Red?" Goh's voice called back, then in a swirl of blades the cloud temporarily cleared in about a fifty foot radius a couple dozen yards away from me, Goh standing in the middle as his dual blade style hacked off limbs of arimaspu and scorpions alike.
"It's an ambush, and they have a high tier beast-shaman with them! I'd say his Qi is about as potent as mine, though obviously he isn't a duelist, so if we can get him one on one we can kill him and send the scorpions out of their control!"
Unfortunately the lack of visibility from the obviously Qi-empowered sandstorm was something we in the business liked to call a complicating factor.
I had a lot of things in my bag of tools, but nothing that I could think of would clear this localized weather system.
"Where's the rest of your team?" I instead called out to Goh, he was the only human I'd seen so far.
"Scattered or dead!" He called back, "We got our scout out and a few more as well, but more of the arimaspu chased them into the sands. I stayed back to stop the shaman from joining the chase."
I clicked my tongue in annoyance, we couldn't even use fellow clan members in a Marco Polo-style to sound off if they saw the shaman then.
"It has to run out of scorpions eventually!" I yelled over the buzzing roar of the shifting and flying sands.
"You would think that! But I've killed eight of these beasts and you are on at least two, right?"
I surprised another one trying to ambush me, it wasn't ready for me to respond before it was even fully emerged from the sand, spiking a Flame Blade down between its carapace hidden eyes, killing it instantly.
"Three!" I called out. That made eleven dead total. How did the shaman even find this many? The giant scorpions, I'd read from the bestiary, were rather territorial and solitary outside of brooding season for them.
It took five more dead scorpions and three more of the cyclops-trolls before our foe revealed themselves.
The sand shifted strangely, different from the rest of the unnatural sandstorm, and we both threw up defensive techniques. Goh created a wall of screaming black blades from seemingly nothing that minced the cohesion of the sandy spears that shot out at us, and I once more summoned my golden shield technique, Pridwen.
My graven image held much better than it had against Goh a few scant weeks past, the sand spear pulping itself back into individual particles upon the Mother.
Unfortunately, we did not have a perfect trajectory on our foe even now, as those spears had formed out of the dune and not been shot straight from the source.
However, Goh and I both were decently sensitive to Qi utilization.
"Somewhere over there!" We both called out, then grinned at each other. He swiped his blade through the air sending a caw-ing blade wave moving forward, and I leapt up to get a partial visual, charging a Searing Sunburst above my head. I pushed far more Qi than Red'neran ever could have into the attack, forcing it to the size of a small boulder in my upraised hand.
I saw a ripple in the swirling sands below and ahead, as if it were avoiding the blade wave.
There! I shouted in my mind and flung my hand forward, "Those who cannot reach the sun, the sun can still reach!" I used the small mantra to imbue my intent upon the Sunburst orb. Connecting a small amount of Qi to seek the echo of Earth Qi I could feel from where I thought my foe was.
The orb curved slightly, just enough to hit the object creating the wake of swirling sands dead on. The explosion likely blinded every other creature and Cultivator inside the storm, which quickly dissipated.
I used Step of the Wind as the sands fell to pivot mid-air and rocket down towards the epicenter of the explosion.
It was a good thing I had because in the center was not a corpse, merely a dome of sand. The shaman had dropped concentration on the sandstorm technique to create a defensive barrier at the last second. Rather intelligent.
I flipped to generate momentum, and fire Qi gathered around my heel as I came down with a vicious spinning axe kick upon the top of the dome.
The dome, already partially glassed from the Sunburst explosion, cracked into a few hundred pieces. I heard a guttural cursing from within as my momentum continued and I landed next to a surprised looking arimaspu.
The beast was lankier than the brute that had commanded the raiding party I had stopped soon after my arrival to this world, but also taller. It had curling black ram horns coming out of the side of its head, a novelty, and wielded a gnarled staff with bone spikes jutting out of the top. Said staff swung out aiming for my skull with surprising speed and strength. I bent backwards dodging underneath the swing and kicked my left foot up to try and take the shaman in the sternum.
Sand swirled up from the ground nearby and intercepted my foot. I was strong enough it did not catch me, but it slowed my strike down long enough for the shaman to dodge back. Some kind of automated defensive technique he was now maintaining concentration on, I mused.
I lunged back in, pulling Flame Blades up on both hands and jabbing knife hand strikes in, glassing his defensive sand over and over, hopefully draining both his Qi and his concentration.
In a distinct bout of anticlimax, I pushed him back yet another step and a black saber sliced through his neck and removed it from his shoulders. The fool had completely forgotten about Goh, the much stronger opponent he should have prioritized.
I sighed, dropping my flames and looking over the falling corpse at Goh's grinning face.
"Kill stealer!"
"You were taking too long! Besides, I need to look awe inspiring in front of my daughter sometimes, or you will steal her away from me too soon!"
Blinking, I turned and looked, sure enough, Wu and a small group from the main camp had just crested a dune in time to witness the end of the shaman. I panned my vision around the area and saw that we did look pretty cool, surrounded by the corpses of giant scorpions and arimaspu.
"Yeah, alright, old man. I'll give you this one."