Chapter 322: Snowy Beach (Patreon)

Chapter 322: Snowy Beach

The days passed by quickly after that. Mercury kept his mind split, parts of it consistently working away at reality manipulation. Finding that soft resonance, the way his paws slipped in the gaps where the world stopped making sense, was tricky. It was like trying to hum along to a song you didn’t know.

Often, reality would twist and turn and slip out of his grasp. Other times, he’d manage to synchronize with it for a longer time, gently pushing it some direction or other. It was an experience even he found disorientating, so he used the outside world to anchor him.

As always, when Mercury needed something to occupy himself with, he turned to crafting. He didn’t return to Daryel and Itsu yet, although there was more work to be done on the house. They didn’t need to see him like this. Right now, Mercury knew he had that obsessive gleam in his eyes.

Zyl didn’t comment on it. The dragon was a stalwart companion, even when Mercury didn’t sleep for days, refused to eat or drink, and simply sustained himself off of his frustrations. Every day, he came up with ideas on how to go about things, then discarded parts of them. He tried to put certain edicts in place, failed, then tried again.

While he moved forward with reality manipulation, he practiced herbalism more. Every day, he headed into the forest, checked plants, compared them with his notes, and built a bigger and bigger repository of knowledge on common plants and remedies. He didn’t do any proper alchemy, but he made salves and little teas.

That was something that kept him grounded, too. Every evening, he’d have tea with Zyl and Juno, the three of them sitting together on the forest floor and enjoying a small meal. Sometimes Mercury even cooked. But that was a rare thing.

Zyl and Juno still needed to eat, of course, but neither of them needed much. The wolf simply hunted a small animal occasionally, and Mercury contributed some foraged roots. That was enough. 

The mopaaw also built a meagre shelter against the elements, but they still got rained on plenty. Despite that, neither of his companions complained - even though Zyl really wasn’t a fan of the travelling lifestyle. The dragon yearned for a warm, soft bed, Mercury imagined, but even then, he toughed it out.

If anything, the dragon’s hatred for violence eclipsed that of Mercury, after all. Zyl was someone who was good at battle. He was overwhelmingly strong and destructive, and it was one of those things he often mourned about himself. The dragon wanted nothing more than to be gentle and create and indulge in things that were beautiful.

Seeing how cultivators had that potential, the capability for making things, and squandered it all on pointless violence was more suffocating to him than to Mercury. It was such a waste. Such an incredible, unfathomable waste of potential and resources and life. 

Knowing that the martial world needed to change, Zyl practiced, too. Sometimes, Mercury could see him manifest part of his crown, then lose control. <Desolation> would spill out into the world, and Zyl contained it in his body. The dragon’s skin would crack like a porcelain doll, dark blood dripping from wounds that refused to heal for days.

For his own part, Mercury also kept a fragment of his crown summoned. The single spike of silver floated above his head, holding a single gem, and helped him with his focus and enlightenment. It even made it so that the herbal medicines he prepared helped somewhat alleviate Zyl’s pain.

[<Herbalism> has levelled up! <Herbalism lv. 5 -> 6>]

Smearing salves on the dragon’s back and watching the paste mix with red blood had an odd influence on Mercury’s mood. It didn’t change what he wanted to do, but it affirmed that, despite all his worries, Zyl and him were on the same page.

Juno was the same, although for her it looked different. The wolf would disappear into the shadows for longer and longer stretches of time, usually emerging with flecks of darkness still clinging to her. Despite that, she never voiced a complaint. Even when her injuries were grievous and infected with black rot. Even when she got a fever and Mercury spent days to heal her back up, even with his considerable skill.

It wasn’t a fun time, preparing for it. All three of them knew what the martial world was like. Just how bad it could get. If they threatened the cultivators’ capacity for violence, there would be a fight. Almost certainly. Some would try to flee, others would instantly attack, and perhaps a handful would simply accept it.

There was a good chance Mercury would meet people from the Cult of Infernal Flames and mess with their cultivation, too. A chance that Gun-Byeong might try to rip his head off, or that Kang would try to pull his eyes out again. Almost certainly so, even.

But that was okay. They knew what this was all about, so Mercury accepted the risk, and practiced.

Silently, he also advanced his cultivation. After all, overwhelming force was the only viable deterrent in the martial realm - if he was in Bladesoul rather than Golden-Core, then the respect these martial artists would have for him would be far greater. Of course, that meant that some of his time even in the outside world was dedicated to growing his power. Which was a little sad, but what was there to do about it.

Bladesoul was the next realm for him to reach. It was a sharpening of one’s truths. The ‘soul’ part was one that Mercury was very ready to replace with ‘mind’ or ‘path’. It was not really a thing that floated in one’s body, after all. Bladesoul was about using one’s core values to carve forward.

Golden Core established them. Bladesoul was the following execution.

Mercury breathed in, then out. He gathered his values, the weaknesses he held in his heart, the anger and spite and hatred and grief and guilt he held dearly close. And he tried his best to let them go.

It wasn’t a perfect process. Feelings didn’t just disappear when he wanted them to. But as he cultivated towards Bladesoul with a part of his mind, he reevaluated some things. Bits of decisions that he had almost forgotten.

His wanderlust, for one. The way that he wanted to face problems, too. Mercury had, some time ago, thought that this trip to the east was lovely, even with all the horrors of the martial realm. That mindset was no longer quite the same.

Not that he regretted the trip, of course. But it was a bit different now. After all, part of his core values was solving problems he found when he could. And by now, he had found a rather large-scale problem with the martial world itself. The way that war perpetuated itself there was simply depressing.

But despite his anger for it being rather useful, he decided to try his best to let go of a little of it, too. He breathed in, then out. The anger was unproductive. It clouded his judgment, and it made his ideas more violent. He wanted wars to end, and he didn’t want to do so by just killing everyone.

As the pages passed by, he consolidated that thought. He didn’t want to kill every cultivator.

Perhaps he could. It would be rather hard to hide from him, and he didn’t feel particularly threatened by any cultivators. He could spend a few years exterminating them all like vermin. And, perhaps, if he had been a cultivator at heart, he’d even have considered that an acceptable solution.

A lot of them had a seeming penchant for wiping out families or clans or sects, after all. So it was important that he differentiate his own thoughts from that mindset. He could and would do better. 

Days passed one by one. A page went by, and then another, as Mercury went about his routine. He built a few things to get his mind off the frustration he felt. He meditated. He practiced. He foraged in the forest, and then helped Zyl and Juno recover from their training.

The routine gradually became more comfortable and less dreary. Mercury decided that he was hopeful for the future. Dealing with cultivators was a chore, but he’d see it through.

As time passed, the days gradually grew colder. In the morning, a faint frost would cling to the leaves for longer. The winds and rain grew more intense, sometimes turning to sleet, and their little shelter only proved adequate because all of them had superhuman physiques. 

That was fine, though. It got colder and colder, and Mercury slowly got the burning bonfire of anger in his heart down to a gentle burn. In the end, it didn’t matter. His rage was all meaningless.

After all, he’d set himself a course of action. All that remained was to try his best and move forward with the consequences.

The thought was the closest he’d gotten to Bladesoul yet, but even that one wasn’t quite enough. By the end of the ten pages, Mercury had made substantial progress - his Silver Core brimmed with power, and he sat at the very peak of that realm. Not quite at Bladesoul, though.

While his cultivation only placed him at a realm equivalent to peak masters of the Cult of Infernal Flames - or perhaps lower than them, even - he was more than confident in his ability to deal with anything thrown at him. 

Chill had crept in wholeheartedly by then. The world was cold, and faint snow coated the leaves of greenery that was slowly giving its last goodbye for the chapter. With the cold, the forest turned more quiet and contemplative. The insects silenced their songs, the wind had fewer leaves to rustle.

It was a sombre season for a sombre event. Ten pages had passed. Mercury rose on the dawn of that final day, seeing the sun crest the distant mountains to the west, and slowly rose from the forest floor.

There was a world for him to turn upside down.

- - -

One question Mercury asked himself was whether to go in his human disguise or as a spirit beast. The first had the advantage of being more relatable to the cultivators. They often respected the words of a fellow humanoid more. On the other hand, if he appeared as a spirit beast, then his words would carry more meaning.

After all, spirit beasts usually stayed away from civilization. Many of them asked for small tributes, but the vast majority simply didn’t interact with humans. They hunted what they needed to hunt and sat atop naturally generated resources, enjoying their benefits without harming anyone in particular.

Communicating his wish for less violence would probably resonate more if he was a spirit beast requesting it, so they’d be more likely to believe him… but less likely to adhere to it.

In the end, a human guise was easier, since he didn’t think convincing them would be hard. His <Silver Crown of Understanding> was an evolution of <Truth>, after all. So, he could simply project an understanding of his true intentions to those around him. 

So, with his bones snapping in a dozen different ways, and digging more flesh from his <Assimilated> stockpile, Mercury reformed the guise of a human he’d worn before. He even turned the Raiment into robes and the Dream of Starvation into pants again. Then, he took the veiled hat from his inventory, and wore it once more.

Zyl squeezed his hand for a moment. “Ready?” the dragon asked.

Breathing in deeply, Mercury forced a smile and nodded. He squeezed back. “Ready.”

With that, they were off.

- - -

At the easternmost part of the eastern continent, there was a shore. It was the edge of the ocean, a crescent-moon shaped piece of beach where the waves lazily bit at the white sand. Historically, there had been a massive battle fought in the ocean that had wiped out the original coastline, leaving this smooth, curved indentation for the waves to spill onto.

The sands were a pristine white, high in quartz and crushed jade powders. They were sharp enough to cut the feet of mortals, but to cultivators, they were not even enough to be irritated. Perhaps some desperate fools could try to purify them into workable gems with extreme fire techniques, but it was a pointless endeavour when there were easier sources of jade to be found.

So, in the end, it was a desolate place. Pretty, but often mostly devoid of life. Except, that day, the handful of crabs that usually frequented the beach and sifted the sand were nowhere to be found.

Instead, the air was thick with killing intent. 

Cultivators from all avenues of life stood upon the shore. Mercury had called upon the strongest of them, but for fear of being hunted, some rogue cultivators had shown up, too. Mercury had called for the strongest, and everyone there was at least at the Gilded-Realm. Most were above.

It was the most prodigious gathering of cultivators in the last thousand years, and all of it was perpetuated by rumors. Rumors of a spirit beast, of a man with a veiled hat, of the threat of death being uttered upon the strongest of the strong, and yet, no one could find the man to retaliate.

So, these powerful, prideful cultivators were forced to wait. Clans from the mountains, sects from the plains, cultists and criminals, rogue demons and ancient monsters. Some factions had even brought a portion of their ancestors to this event. 

And they were giving each other death-glares. The righteous sects and the cults stood apart, each grouping flaring and posturing, sending packets of qi. Probing things that were just barely underneath the status of attacks. Thieves tried their luck, and swords were moved a thumb’s length from their sheathes.

The pressure in the air was palpable, and yet, speaking was hushed. Each faction determined that the others were unworthy of hearing their plan, and none of them wanted to take that first step of allying.

Every moment seemed like it’d break out into violence, and yet somehow didn’t. There was a balance of power here. So many cults and so many sects. Both were terrified that the unaffiliated might descend on them like harpies the moment they got a victory or a loss. It was a dangerous thing to be at the meeting - and that danger made it safe.

Until, of course, it kicked off.

In the defining moment of it all, snow fell from the sky. The clouds gathered, thick and dark. It was truly freezing, the sea itself covered in a thin layer of frost. The waves carried plates of ice to the beach, where they stacked and crashed over each other, forming a slurry of frost. 

A young cultivator wearing the bright robes of a righteous sect covered her eyes, looking at the sky. A snowflake landed on her nose - and then a shadow fell over her. She blinked for a moment, then stared up to where the sun should be hiding behind the clouds, only to see someone hovering there.

With a yelp, she stepped back. “Him!”

Instantly, a thousand eyes snapped to Mercury. Demons who had been lounging on larger rocks. Righteous elders, standing upon floating swords, with long bears. Ancient monsters and young prodigies. Cruel murderers and two-faced killers. Each and every one of them turned and looked at Mercury. 

People he knew. The peak masters from the Cult of Infernal Flames. The Joo and Yung clans. The Lilac Sky sect. Old monsters from the mountain clans, where he’d travelled with Keiko - the old woman herself, of course, was also watching him from the crowd. So were the other monks from the Skyflame Monastery. Even the woman who’d made his and Zyl’s masks was there.

High above them all, he stood. The clouds flowed around him, forming a robe and a shawl. His legs were coated with liquid metal, dark as the night. His face covered by a veil and a mask. He stood upon his own willpower - a cultivator merely at the Silver Core realm.

Instantly, some of the people down there sneered. They snickered to themselves, whispers rising into louder noise. “Hear hear!” an older man called. He had thinning raven hair and a scar across his forehead. “The bastard who called us here is just at Golden Core! What gives you the audacity to call upon the whole martial realm, huh?!”

Mercury tilted his head. They’d actually all come. It was somewhat surprising, but he supposed that cultivators were a curious bunch at the end of the day. And he had absolutely mopped the floor with an elder from a cult and the righteous sects. So there was that. 

The Silver King. That was his nickname with them, that was what the story spread. He wore a veil, and underneath that veil, his hair was silver, and he wore a mask of pale wood. 

Turning his gaze to the rowdy voice, Mercury answered simply. “I’m a sorcerer from the west. My cultivation is what I’ve acquired after being strong enough to wipe the floor with any of you.”

With that, the first guy shut up. However, an older woman, with hip-length shale-white hair sneered at him. She stood at the Bladesoul realm, and wore the robes of someone from the righteous sects. “Wipe the floor with us? Young people these days oughta be taught a lesson, brat. If you kowtow to me, I’ll consider forgiving you for wasting my time.”

Instead of gracing it with a proper retort, Mercury simply nodded. “Right, of course. This is the martial realm. All of you probably only listen to violence, don’t you?” He knew it was true. After all, MuCheon, the cult leader of Infernal Flames, the heavenly demon, already had their sword drawn. 

It was Gun-Byeong who put everyone’s thoughts into words. The beastly man slammed a fist upon his chest, the noise spreading like a gong. “The world belongs to the strong! Might makes right! You threatened to kill me, right?” Mania glinted in the man’s eyes. “Then prove that you can.”

With the single proclamation, the killing intent thickened further. There were a thousand cultivators down there. They had grudges and hatred for each other. They were greedy, cruel people, just waiting to exploit each other at even a slight sign of weakness. Thieves and sycophants all.

Mercury breathed in, then out, and smiled. Swords were unsheathed. Spears and bows summoned from spatial artefacts. Elemental qi spilled outwards, so thick it formed a thin haze in the air. Of course, from the start, the answer to cultivators had always been violence.

But Mercury didn’t fight fair.

He stretched his hand outwards towards Gun-Byeong. “<Unravel>,” he said. And the martial world saw the most bizarre technique.

They knew about esoteric cultivation arts, of course. There was void qi, karmic bonds, time-aspected cultivation techniques. But what they saw was more bizarre than any of that. Gun-Byeong… unspooled.

Not entirely, either. Instead, from his chest, his flesh turned to string. Spooled outwards, attaching itself to Mercury’s hand like some kind of spiderweb travelling in reverse. A gaping hole was left in the Beast of Slaughter’s Chest. And despite that, the giant man didn’t fall down.

Gun-Byeong looked down at himself, at the string that connected him to Mercury, the thread that the mopaaw now held in his hand. “What in the…?” He waved his hand through the thread, and it simply passed through.

Mercury smiled. “There. I’ve won.”

“What?!” 

Instantly, everyone’s positions turned more wary. The killing intent was dissipated like steam in a breeze. Snow fell from the sky, the frost gathering on the white sand in a thin layer of fresh snow. 

Zyl was the next to appear. The dragon flapped his wings once, then stood next to Gun-Byeong. Zyl, too, wore his mask. Orange flames travelled up its side. Reflexively, Gun-Byeong went to strike him.

The dragon caught the blow effortlessly. Then, he pressed. Gun-Byeong strained, gritted his teeth, but was brought to his knees all the same. And it was effortless. Zyl didn’t even strain. “You… you weren’t this strong before!” the beast said with a grin. Despite everything, he seemed happy.

“It’s not me that’s stronger,” Zyl corrected gently, his voice cold. “You’re simply weak.”

His words crashed over the crowd with sheer horror. To see a Reforged-Realm cultivator bring someone on the cusp of Bladesoul to his knees so effortlessly… it was unthinkable. Fear started to spread in the crowd.

“What I hold in my hands is Gun-Byeong’s strength," Mercury said. This time, he didn’t speak loudly, but the truth of his words crashed over everyone present. Someone turned to run, only to have their chest turn into threads, too, tugging them back. 

[<Unravel> has levelled up! <Unravel lv. 3 -> 4>]

Mercury’s silver crown buzzed above his head, a second spike manifesting. His body creaked under the strain, blood sizzling against his bones, but he remained outwardly okay. The pain was meaningless, hollow. He breathed in, then out.

The snowfall intensified. Frigid particles crashed onto the beach, and the cultivators began to understand. “Some of you may try to run,” Mercury said, with a pointed look. “I’ll target those next. I can hold onto these pieces indefinitely. I can hunt you down with connections to the people you know. Even now…” His eyes glimmered. “Each and every one of you is within my range.”

Someone ran. Mercury <Carved> their cultivation out of them as a spool of silk. Another thread wrapped around his fingers. 

<Unravel> had never been meant for this. It was a wholesale immobilization Skill. Something that was intended for single-target usage and to reveal their entire being. But Mercury had twisted it.

[<Scope Expansion> has levelled up! <Scope Expansion lv. 1 -> 2>]

Another cultivator tried to run. Stealth techniques activated. Rogue cultivators dashed aside. But what was stealth before the <Silver Crown of Understanding>? None of them were good enough. None of them could hide or run. 

<Tapestry> and <Carve> let Mercury hit anywhere he wanted. With his mind deep in ihn’ar, the veil of separation was pulled aside. Mercury was already everywhere he needed to be - and whatever he missed was dragged to him by Juno. Zyl was his display of force. Juno was his failsafe, for anything he missed, the wolf prowling the shadows.

The next time someone ran, she leapt out, but their shoulder, and tossed them back onto the beach.

Snow piled higher, suspiciously gleaming. It thickened, trapping people’s boots. Fear slowly spread, as Mercury confiscated power. One by one.

As he cut off routes to escape, violence bubbled to the forefront in those who could still fight. MuCheon lit up with baleful fire. Old Bai from the Skyflame monks raised his fists. Sect leaders and elders prepared to fight, and Mercury simply smiled.

That was fine. Phase one of his plan was well into its beginning. All he needed to do now… was survive until he weathered the onslaught. Then, the true battle would begin. 

Another cultivator unspooled. As if they’d been waiting for that signal, a thousand warriors and seasoned killers descended on Mercury in a flurry of violence, blades, fists and death. 

This was the martial world. There’d never been another way out.

Mercury would meet them on this battlefield.