Chapter 320: Dogfight (Patreon)

Chapter 320: Dogfight

“Die cultist! <Tiger Wheel Fist!>”

“Kihihihihi! As if a righteous cur like you could ever hope to match me! <Asura Flame Erasure>!”

Two women were flying in the air, one wearing white robes, the other purple ones. Flames spilled from the demonic cultivator, and the righteous one was cloaked in the bright, golden aura of a tiger. Her fists and robes were stained with blood, a half-dozen bodies littering the ground beneath the two elders, disciples having already killed each other.

The ground was carved with furrows so great that the bodies were unrecoverable. They’d been stripped down to their skeletons, torn to pieces and hacked apart. It was a sad damn sight.

When their attacks clashed, the sky cracked and the earth shook. They were powerful. Among the peak of the martial world, probably a half-step into the Bladesoul realm. And they were wasting their fucking time killing each other.

Mercury appeared between them with a single, elegant step. It was a rapid approach, a leap through the sky. His foot tapped on a platform made from his will, and his <Crown> tore open the path. <Itinerant> made the world his to travel. And when Mercury wished to move, the world would blur around him.

He held out both his paws. A fist and a flaming sword crashed down on his forelegs - and cleaved through them. On one side, his elbow shattered and snapped, giving out entirely. The punch folded his leg and crashed into his ribs, cracking them. On the other side, the sword split his wrist clean open, splintering bone and carving halfway through his leg before getting stuck.

Both cultivators met the sudden appearance with shock on their faces. Instantly, there was a martial weariness. They wished to withdraw, to reevaluate and fight another day, but Mercury would not allow it. He was in a really, really fucking bad mood then and there.

<Mercury> unfolded around him, silver metal spilling out and building a reflective prison. The walls were perfectly smooth, made from polished metal. It interlocked with joints and cross-braces, stabilized with his crafting experience, the silver metal weaving into more and more shapes bit by bit.

It was a miniature cityscape, walls and flooring cutting outward from the metal on repeat, then compressing down into it. Layer after living layer built itself as the cultivators tried to withdraw. 

When the sword left his body, and the golden crackling tiger fangs withdrew from his ribcage, Mercury’s body snapped back into place. The wounds should have been grievous, should have shattered his dantian or cracked his foundation, but he stood there, unharmed.

Cold eyes regarded the two women. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.

The reply came in the only form the martial world valued: Violence.

Purple flames formed nine skulls, each of them exploding against his skin, tearing at the raiment. The righteous, golden tiger roared in a way that ruptured the mopaaw’s eardrums. It hurt, but the pain was washed away on a <Babbling Brook>. They couldn’t hurt him in a way that mattered.

Oh, certainly, the damage should have lingered. But <Rain fell> on Mercury’s back, washing away the blood and grime, wrapping his body in cleansing winds. They were trapped in a box with a storm, and lightning was just about to start striking them.

Mercury wove a fragment of his crown into existence - a second gemstone joining the iny fragments of metal above his head. Even with just two of the nine he could make, the mental load was immense. Blood spilled from his eyes, his mouth, and his ears, but his body remained intact, at least. 

Instantly, the attacks around him fell apart.

Turning his hateful gaze to the violence, Mercury <Unravelled> it all. Asura flames turned to smoke and ash. The golden tiger was defanged, then subsequently dismantled. Violence disappeared into smoke and mirrors, rain dousing the battlefield of silver.

But, of course, cultivators didn’t understand that. Defense, no matter how absolute, never got through to them. Even now, Mercury found himself with two idiots baring their fangs at him, wet hair sticking to their shoulders. His rain didn’t fall straight through them, mainly because he didn’t let it.

He could have pelted them through a bunch of bulletholes, but that missed the point. No, instead, he withdrew his lightning javelins, carved from wyvern bone. Had the cultivators been at their peak, they would resist them, perhaps. But they weren’t at their peak. They were pathetic shadows of themselves, with their techniques and qi dissipating the moment they were summoned. 

Two pieces of bone shot outwards, launched by <Throw> and an application of <Force of the Hecatoncheires>, accelerating them during their flight. 

Two humans attempted to dodge, only to find their feet wrapped in liquid metal. Two shoulders were pierced through by bone, and two ragged screams split the air as two bolts of lightning fell with equal, heavenly fury.

That got their attention. When both of them fell backwards, skin charred and smoke rising from them, their eyes finally opened. For the first time, the realization set in that they might die - and, of course, they immediately tried to activate their strongest, most destructive techniques.

Which Mercury promptly took apart. Radiant gold and purple fire was reduced to aimless flakes of qi. Nothing to them. A pathetically meaningless display of power.

That process repeated another three times. Attacks being broken, followed by another set of javelins, and another set of lightning strikes. Each time, Mercury attempted to strike a conversation. Each time, he was met only with more violence.

Only after both women had been impaled and struck by lightning five times each were they willing to listen. What a fucking pain cultivators were.

Standing over them, Mercury at least had the decency to numb their pain, take back his javelins, and heal their flesh before talking. But he did not let his rainstorm stop - and only unsummoned a single point of his crown. 

“You ready to talk now?” he asked.

The righteous woman spat at his feet. “It is only expected of a beast like yourself to cloak yourself in righteous colours, then capitalize on a fight. Why speak if you’ll just kill us both?”

“Kihihihi! Yeah, if I were you, I’d be plundering our treasures already. What are you waiting for, beast?”

Mercury quickly shut that line of conversation down. “What in the name of the gods is wrong with you people?? No, there will be no stealing. Jeez. No. I’m neither righteous nor a cultist! I’m a rogue cultivator, and you two were about to blow up my house!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Fucking idiot kids. How old even are you two?”

The women looked at each other, then shrugged. “A century and a half.”

“And you’re still dumb enough to fight first, ask questions second?” Mercury felt his anger boiling again. Which was almost impressive - he was a really rather peaceful person at heart. But this stuff could really get his blood boiling. “You were both so perfectly willing to kill me here, based on a dang assumption.

“You don’t verify. You don’t ask questions. You don’t double check. You look at someone’s appearance, think ‘Ah, if I were in their shoes, I’d kill them’, and then just expect it to happen. That’s insane! It’s completely insane! Why were you even fighting!?”

The righteous woman of the golden tiger, dressed in white, answered first. “Well, I was transporting a 1000 year ginseng to the outer sect. As a reward for the tournament of grace. And I was sent to escort our disciples to it-”

“Through our cult’s territory,” the demonic woman scowled. “Am I meant to simply let a righteous cultivator pass through here without trouble? We have staked this out as our training areas, ambushes are to be expected.”

And indeed, they had expected an ambush. Why else send along a cultivator at Bladesoul-Realm? Then, they’d gone about slaughtering disciples, back and forth, and come to a clash in the end.

“Why not take another route?” 

“All routes lead through demonic territory.”

“Why not simply let them through?”

“The righteous will take and take. Should we hand our lives over to their axes when they ask politely?”

Mercury was getting a headache. “Why not broker a peace?”

“With her?!”

“With her?!”

A goddamn identical answer. Identical. These people were actually so caught up in war they couldn’t even fathom the idea of anything else. To both of them, their actions were necessary as much as they were self-defense. It was a constant battle of retaliation after retaliation, and every action or inaction was seen as a sleight.

It was so exhausting. 

Mercury stood there, watching them growl and flash their teeth at each other even when they were laid out on the floor. It didn’t matter if they were beaten and battered. Cultivators had the mindset of “never giving up” baked into their very bones. 

Usually, that was a good thing. Perseverance was a virtue. Using that virtue to try and bite someone’s throat out if you’ve lost your arms, though, would generally be called a little excessive. SBut how could Mercury put a stop to it?

Everywhere in the martial world he went it was corpses stacked on top of corpses. Old fossils trying their best to cling to just another breath of life, hoping that their disciples will find immortality from them. Idiots siphoning life from others to get a little stronger a little faster.

And for what? 

Life, of course. It was all in service of living a little longer. That part, at least, Mercury could respect. Clinging to life with this… teeth-shattering determination was almost impressive. Cultivators almost always had suicide attacks, and almost never used them. Even now, both the women in front of him could blow themselves up.

But they still believed they’d survive, that they might find a way out if they just regenerated enough qi. What could Mercury do about that? In this world of people who were so maniacally geared to fight and fight and fight… What were his options?

The simplest, of course, was to simply <Unravel> them all. He could take away their ability to commit violence, or weave on bits that would make them more empathetic. Something like what he had done to Oberon. 

It would, however, be the cruellest thing he’d ever done. To fundamentally alter so many personalities would be a horrific thing in and of itself. And yet, at the same time, he had the general feeling that cultivators were unlikely to become reasonable without magic solutions to their problems.

Where did the violence even stem from, he wondered? Was it just age-old culture? Of course, there were some battle maniacs like Gun-Byeong, who threw himself into any fight he could find just for the thrill of it. But not every cultivator was like that. Mercury had found plenty of them who were placid and kind.

So, what made some of them different? What made one person kinder than another? Did it have something to do with the techniques they pursued? Were there mental effects to those, turning people into spiteful caricatures of themselves?

Perhaps, perhaps not. He had no easy way to verify that much. Instead, he had two idiots who had just killed a half-dozen teenagers each in front of him. Neither of them looked even a little bit regretful about it. 

“I’ll shatter your cultivation,” he muttered.

At those words, their endless bickering stopped. Their eyes opened wide, heads shooting glares towards him. 

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“That’s a fate worse than death!”

Was it, though? Was it really? “Alright, then I’ll kill you.”

“No!”

“You can’t! My sect will come after you!”

Always the same. Every time. You kill someone and then their father shows up. Then their grandpa. Their ancestors. Their ancestor’s ancestor. A whole world built upon layers and layers of fossilized power, where people were used as nuclear deterrent. That ancient power was the only reason factions rarely fought - because they were so prone to wiping each other out.

It was saddening. The fact that these people didn’t just have weapons, but that their whole lives were built around them. Why construct anything if you could just take it from someone else, after all? Legacy building on legacy, blood money on blood money.

Perhaps that was the solution then - to erase cultivation as an idea? But that’d be cruel and awful in its own way. He’d kill thousands who were simply too old to live without that supernatural force. Then again, it was good for things to die, sometimes.

Cultivation was, the way it was here, the art of taking. Taking lifeforce, taking qi, taking resources and medicines. Were there cultivation techniques that built upon doing good? 

Perhaps that was an idea. Instead of twisting the people, he needed to twist what gave them rewards. Change their techniques so that when they kill and main and hurt, it will only damage their foundations. Anyone who attacked another would simply face pain. Escalating punishments based on how much damage is done. 

A drunken swing at someone might just give you a black eye. Cold-blooded murder would fry your meridians from the inside. Was that something he could enforce? Turn a technique upon itself when used for excessive violence?

He’d done something like that for the last life-absorption cultivator he’d crushed, using Zyl’s flame and karma as a venue. But if he wanted to do it at a mass-scale, then that probably wouldn’t be enough. To use a new bit of dragonfire for every single cultivator would wring his boyfriend dry rather quickly.

Mercury sighed. “What to do, what to do,” he mused. “I hate this martial world, you know? I hate it, I really do. I hate how casual everyone is about murder and the end of life, when you all are so desperate to cling to your own. You’d sacrifice everything for another year. Most cultivators would slaughter thousands of mortals just for another day.”

“I would never!” the righteous one cried.

“Even if those mortals lived in demonic territory?” 

She bit her tongue, instantly, averting her gaze. The hypocrisy was incredible. It was so blatantly cruel. 

“It’s all resources and power. I’m sick of it. Entirely sick.” His eyes turned cold. “Both of you, go to your sects, your cults. Tell them a simple thing. They have ten pages. Ten pages, then they are to gather at the edge of the ocean. I want every single sect leader, elder, and ancestor there. Every peak master, and elder cultist. And anyone who doesn’t attent… I’ll kill them or erase their cultivation.”

Until now, Mercury had never threatened that many people. Half a continent’s worth of hidden monsters would hear of it and seek him out. Maybe they’d even ally against him. If they did, he was fine with that. 

Perhaps the martial world needed a bit of shaking up, perhaps it needed an outside threat. If he had to, then he’d be their great horror.

The single point of his crown hovered above his head like a miniature silver obelisk. It was a totem to how serious he was, his <Truth> broadcasting loud and clear that he meant what he said. For the first time, the two women in front of him felt proper fear.

“The… entire martial world…?”

“All of it,” he nodded. “I don’t care about the disciples or the deacons. They’re simply not strong enough to matter yet - but bring any prodigies, too.”

Both women gritted their teeth. “We’ll… kill you!”

“I’m sure you’ll try,” Mercury nodded coldly. The silver was beginning to dissipate, the locks around the women loosening. “And when you do, I’ll be happy to break your weapons.”

The prison dissolved, and Mercury disappeared, letting the two women drop softly to the ground. Their weapons were broken, and he stole the fragments of metal they’d been made from. Lucky, they were so tired they just ran home, wounded and bloodied. 

News of the “Silver King’s demands” spread like wildfire.

- - -

Mercury was left with a good bit of time to figure things out. Ten pages, a hundred days, and he wanted to shift reality as a whole to be kinder. That was something he couldn’t do just yet, not that easily. He could change individuals, techniques, maybe even how people in general remembered them.

With <Tapestry> helping him out, he could reach into connections between people and ideas, then exploit those. If he was skilled enough, perhaps he could simply sever the conceptual idea between cultivation and violence or killing… but he wasn’t. 

At the end of the day, Mercury was just one mopaaw. A spirit beast, according to most cultivators who saw him, garbed in his Raiment. It was hard to earn their respect that way, but spirit beasts did, generally, come with a reputation of fairness. Arrogant fairness, but fairness nonetheless.

Mercury could work with that. If he simply decreed all the martial world as his territory and forbid fighting in it, he’d wager that many of them would listen. Of course, then he still couldn’t change cultivation techniques, or stop sects from stashing away ancestors like nukes.

And wasn’t that a sad sight? People being used as a murderous deterrent. If only this world were a little bit kinder, it had so much potential. Cultivation was so wonderful. It included harmony with the elements, the ability to shape the world. It would be so easy to build, cook, heal and create with it.

He just needed to convince people to actually do that, instead of bashing each others’ skulls in. Mercury sat in the soft grass of the forest, wind brushing his fur. “You got any clue, Zyl?”

The dragon stared at the sky, eyes tired. He hated violence, maybe even more than Mercury did. “I don’t know,” he said. “I could imagine just killing people who break it, but…”

“Ideally we don’t need police,” Mercury thought with a small smile. He wanted to believe that the average person was kind and didn’t enjoy murder. He didn’t want to create an institution with the right to it - hell, he didn’t even think he should be killing people himself.

Of course, he did do so. But it was important not to see it as the casual solution to problems. Especially when he had a few methods of properly disarming people and ensuring that any harm they could do was minimal. Namely, removing techniques, people’s memories of them, and even changing how they functioned at a base level.

Mercury’s rezil was about changing the world. If he simply synchronized with an idea, then he could change its resonance and how it participated in existence as a whole. In effect, there were then two ways he could go about this whole thing.

He could cripple most cultivators, ripping away their nukes and all their power. He could erase all memories of their techniques, and develop new ones that were entirely different, promoting creation over destruction.

Or, alternatively, he could still cripple a handful of them to make an example, focusing the martial world’s attention on him. Then, by understanding cultivation and his rezil well enough, he might be able to shift the entire direction of the idea of it towards something more positively.

That sounded… kinder to him. He didn’t want to wipe out the memories and effort of hundreds, thousands of geniuses who had poured their lives into things. He didn’t want to wipe ancestors off the map, and make it so they never saw their grand-grand-grand-grandkids. 

Something had to change, though, and while in an ideal world, he would just shift everything associated with cultivation to something a little more positive, Mercury did not think that was the world he lived in. Most likely, when he organised this meeting, there would be fighting and bloodshed.

But he’d manage. They would try to kill him instead of each other, and that was useful. If he was that much of the locus of the martial world, then perhaps… perhaps he could change something about it. Perhaps.

Mercury breathed in deep, then smiled faintly. “I think, Zyl, I wanna change what it means to cultivate.”

The dragon gave him a long look, then snickered. “You know, if it were anyone else saying that, I would call them mad. Luckily, though, we both already know you’re a little crazy.”

They laughed, for a long moment, then hugged for another one. And then, Mercury set to work. He had a good bit of practice to do. He dove into his internal realm.