Chapter 323: Battlefield (Patreon)

Chapter 323: Battlefield

Blood spilled.

It didn’t need to, but it flowed without ceasing. Fire and ice, light and dark streaked across the sky with one target. Someone who was almost human, clad in black and white, with eyes that burnt through the mask that hid them.

Snow fell. It landed on the white sand, as waves of ice crashed inwards, onto the beach. And blood flowed across the beach like a tide. 

Mercury had been dismembered a dozen times in seconds. His limbs were already strewn about, blood pouring from his body with the ceaseless beating of his heart. He was riddled with holes, wounds that no human had any right surviving, grievous enough to make even hardened butchers pause.

But he didn’t even blink. Mercury didn’t feel the pain. It was white noise against the bastion of his mind. Where the world was cast in white and red, where prismatic abilities turned monochrome, agony lost its meaning. 

A sword chopped for his neck. It split open his skin, impacted his spine, and stopped dead against the metallic bone. Mercury reached out with his hand, with his mind. Liquid metal flowed along the blade, and the cultivator tried to pull away - but the muscles had already mended against the cut.

Liquid Mercury crashed against a white-robed chest as a thin stream, dug underneath skin, and then unspooled it. Strings flew into Mercury’s hand, and another cultivator dropped from the sky, left with nothing but a tough enough body to endure the impact.

Blood littered the ground, yet Mercury had not inflicted a single note of brutality. The ceaseless violence of the powerful was inflicted upon each other. Despite the fact that Mercury was there, the cultivators didn’t unlearn their habits.

They still fought each other. Mercury unspooled people trying to kill him just the same as he unspooled people on the verge of death, placing their body in stasis as he held the threads in place. It was a thankless job, since it literally involved getting chopped to bits. 

Seven spears were lodged in his chest. His body was battling and burning against 16 different lethal toxins. His beautiful, veiled hat had been torn by a tiger-spirit, leaving tattered strings of translucent silk hanging through his blood-matted hair. His wooden mask had cracked, a spiderweb of damage spreading across its surface.

But despite that, his purple eyes found cultivators. Those who Juno held in place, those who Zyl disarmed. Blood sprayed from his companions and the cultivators. Zyn lost scales and teeth, sword chipping his draconic hide. He couldn’t even summon his crown, for fear of turning them all to ash.

Ancestors fell upon each other when grudges that had been held for centuries came to a head. MuCheon, the heavenly demon, faced a young woman with pink hair and flowers embroidered on her robes, in a storm of sword-slashes that drew streaks in the bloodied snow and cut down half a dozen idiots who stepped too close.

Old Bai from the Skyflame Monastery cloaked his calloused fists with flame, evaporated the sea around him, and struck down a thieving demon who had torn part of his qi from him. Blood sprayed, turning the icy ocean a frothing red. It seeped into the sea with graceless abandon, drawing rivers in the monochrome sand.

Snowflakes landed in Mercury’s hair, the ice melding with his silver. He caught a spear with his hand, only to have his bones shattered by the technique propelling it. Fragments of metal lanced through his muscles from the inside, then snapped back into their proper shape a blink later. He grasped the weapon.

<Rain Fell> on who faced him, and the drops unmade them. Skin turned to string, flowing into the glowing map of thread that spun around Mercury’s crown. Silver and amber hung in the air, surrounded by a golden tapestry of interrupted cultivation.

Dantians and techniques made temporarily inaccessible, hoarded for something. Another thieving cultist appeared behind Mercury, trying to take a grasp of other’s ideas with their sticky fingers. The thread spilled through their body like an infection upon impact, unravelling the arm, unravelling the technique used to steal, and dropping another body into bloodied sands.

One by one the cultivators were unmade. Like plucking a bouquet of flowers from a hill. Each one added a new shine to the set of strings that orbited Mercury like half a cocoon. They spun and whirled and intertwined above him, stories and strengths accumulated over decades and centuries.

Ancestors came next. They battled each other with abandon, but seeing their juniors fall - children, grandchildren, and so forth - they, too, turned their fury upon Mercury. He saw the realm past Bladesoul, saw what a cultivator at Spirit Unity was like. 

They were storms of violence and power. Strength that erupted so viscerally it drove people at Golden Core to their knees. Mercury took their blows and his body incinerated. And then it regenerated.

[<Mind over Matter> has levelled up! <Mind over Matter lv. 5 -> 6>]

His bones came back tougher, and when another punch from some ancient woman who looked like skin and bones landed on him, instead of simultaneously rupturing all the internal organs he had, it only broke his heart in two. It snapped back together. Blood poured from underneath his mask, his mouth still filling with it. It poured from within his robes, seeped out from his pants.

Like a waterfall, it trickled down from him. His nosebleed, caused by overstraining his mind, was forgotten. It didn’t matter. He simply stretched himself further. His crown buzzed and spat angry understanding at him.

With the third impact of the fist, he’d comprehended the technique, routed an anti-cycle of his origin Qi around the weapons embedded in him, and when the blow landed, it caused the old woman’s skin to crack. She looked at him with shock and horror - then came undone.

It caused a ripple of fear to spread out for the first time. Yet another body with open eyes, falling to the ground, reduced to a mortal. Like a puppet with their strings cut. Some cultivators began to try to flee, properly. Movement techniques and all, booking it entirely.

None of that mattered.

Liquid silver froze this path of the world. A hound of living darkness stalked its edges. Anyone who ran was dragged back in, sometimes kicking and screaming.

The buzzing strings above Mercury brightened with every ruined cultivator. The ocean darkened, blood turning the water a brackish black. The stark lighted washed colour from the world. 

Black blood sprayed as cultists clashed with the righteous. Flames struck flower petals. Swords carved wounds from flesh. And whoever fell, their string rose from their body, drawing pillars in the sky.

Light blossomed where people who should have been corpses fell. They blinked as their hearts vanished from their chests, unmade. There were some who still tried to get up and leave, but the world was locked in place.

Perhaps the metal could not have stopped a peak Spirit Unity cultivator, but they were too busy fighting each other and Mercury to think to run. Even if they did, there was always a bit more violence waiting for them.

Cultivators were like vultures. Whenever one of them turned their back, half a dozen others descended on them, aiming to tear their items from their corpses. The martial world was brutal and violent, and in this specific, singular instance, that much was in Mercury’s favour. 

He breathed in, then out, as the snow around him intensified. Crystallized flakes fell on the beach, fresh snow hiding the blood before getting soaked again. He shattered a sword made from starsteel by targeting its weaknesses, he unmade twin energy-bound snakes that lunged for his throat, he pried a spear from his chest and swung it to cut through a man’s hair-manipulation technique. 

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

People he knew came to fight him. Kang did it for the sheer thrill, appearing from behind Mercury in a wonderful illusion. The peak master’s dagger carved a long, bloody gash across Mercury’s skin, and qi flooded the wound to prevent his healing, setting off a series of explosions in him.

Kang grinned wildly, even as the skin mended. Like a virus, the damage spread through Mercury’s insides, ripple after ripple of energy forcing blood to leak from his face like an open tap. 

The mopaaw smiled. “Strong,” he praised. A third spike of his silver crown manifested over his head.

Mercury’s body screamed at the force of it. He felt his bones twist and strain, his mind expanding yet again. Agony and understanding flowed through him, crashed over him. It was like facing a typhoon with nothing but a rowboat, the force of it so severe Mercury could feel his body splinter like rotten wood in a storm. 

Still, he stretched himself. Energy roared up from within his chest, the <Grain of Infinity> roaring to life. It send ripples of energy coursing through him, restoring his body where it failed. His mind stretched and twisted as the information flooded in, but Mercury adjusted. With every moment that passed, he sorted it faster, grew stronger.

[<Mindbloom> has levelled up! <Mindbloom lv. 6 -> 7>]

It was a war of attrition with himself, against his own erosion. Against the explosions that Kang had implanted in his chest - but in the end, he understood them, too. They were somewhere between a blood-curse and a healing technique. Multiple seconds passed until the technique clicked into his place, and by the time he stopped them, his body had been torn to shreds.

Bloody holes where his own bones had splintered outwards riddled him, his skin stretched in bulbous protrusions where it had just barely not broken. But then, the violence halted. Mercury breathed in, then out.

The violence rippled over him in reverse. Broken bits of skin and flesh streamed back into him as his will reassessed itself over his physical state. Kang watched in shock as Mercury started to stop falling apart, and come back together.

A moment later, the peak master of Honest Treachery fell from the sky with his chest reduced to strings. It was roughly at the same time as another three cultivators of similar strength fell.

Pali tried to eat Mercury, but was shut down by Zyl. Keiko didn’t even bother to fight. Shiro and Kuro united their powers, a great yin-yang symbol burning against Mercury’s chest and reversing his energy flow in a way that would cause him to catastrophically consume himself - until he reversed it again using the little trick from <Grain of Infinity>.

It caused the energy to ripple right back across the connection, and Mercury stopped it only a blink before it killed the women, taking a punch through his chest in thanks. Old Bai dug a flaming fist right through Mercury’s ribcage and out the other side. 

Bloodstained snow gathered on the beach, Mercury’s blood smoking with heat in the winter air, boiled by the flames that encased the arm that impaled him. But despite the blood, Mercury just smiled. His eyes were wide open. He had pulled away the veils of the world. Old Bai was strong.

Not strong enough.

With a flick of his hand, Mercury <Carved> away the fire, then he turned around. His mask split open at his will, the wood stretching as he beckoned it, and revealing his teeth. Mercury bit old Bai.

Of course, the monk stepped back, but Mercury had pried away the veil of separation. He simply linked his movement to old Bai instinctively, and when the monk stepped back, Mercury followed. Inescapably, his teeth clamped down on the man’s neck - and promptly turned him into a set of strings that fell from the sky.

[<Bite> has levelled up! <Bite lv. 8 -> 9>]

[Level Up!]

Mercury felt the energy from his newly gained level revitalize his body. His wounds closed and he breathed a single easy breath before his own crown incinerated him again. His eyes began to liquify, yet it didn’t stop him from seeing at all. He breathed in, then out.

Keiko was turned to strings when he had a moment to spare. Zyl talked Pali out of trying to eat Mercury, and when the girl’s cultivation was pulled away from her, most of her hunger faded. To some, taking their arts was a favor, to others, it was the greatest cruelty.

In a single breath, Mercury spun. He stole from thieves. Energy poured outwards from him in an endless flow, so much that it seared his meridians, only to have them snap back into place. With every rotation, his body adapted. With every moment that passed, he grew tougher.

His Skills wore him thin, the erosion showing, and yet, his Skills also made him grow. Mercury saw the world, saw every piece of it, and picked at it with loving abandon.

That was the truth. Every cultivation technique he found was a thing of beauty. Intricate patterns so perfectly tuned for what they were meant to do. To elevate someone beyond mortality, beyond humanity. A crystallization of beliefs that had to be adhered to. Every single time he unmade someone, he caught glimpses of their life, their choices, their very identity.

And almost all of them had done horrible things because of the world they lived in.

These weren’t horrible people, Mercury caught himself thinking. But it was a cruel world, a martial world, in a way that turned their actions into those of monsters. Even the kind old Bai had killed hundreds. Keiko, a healer, was a butcher, and Mercury caught glimpses of her cutting through armies in a frenzy. 

Su ShouFan, the woman who had so kindly shown him what it was like to live with Mutilation, had a ferocious rage that burnt inside her. It wasn’t even misplaced. It was understandable.

Everyone here had been wronged by the world and had wronged it in turn. It was an idealized cycle of violence, that raised those who suffered it into its perpetrators. Mercury couldn’t abide by that. It was simply too disgusting, to see a system that was so entrenched so needlessly.

He unmade and unwove. He pulled at the seams, even as his own energy tore him apart. Cultivators dropped like flies, dozens, hundreds of them piling on the bloodied snow as mortals, scrambling for safety.

There was panic and peace down there. Fear and placid understanding. Powerlessness meant death in the martial world, and those most used to it simply waited for that inevitable fate. 

MuCheon finished their fight. The pink-haired beauty laid injured before them, her sword shattered. The arrogant butcher grinned, ear to ear, when Mercury’s strings touched down on their counterpart.

Strings left the woman’s heart, and the wound in her chest vanished with them. Her breathing steadied, her eyes wide open. MuCheon’s face twisted with rage and indignation.

A demon of flame appeared behind them, power spilling out that surpassed the greatest of ancestors. They had a special constitution, that of a born killer, of a raging monster set to destroy the world. Purple flames turned midnight-black, and wove into the shape of a great demon behind them, with eight arms and a faceless visor of braided metal rods. 

Violence incarnate spilled forth, and the flames would have turned the unravelled cultivators to ash, had Zyl not stopped them. MuCheon didn’t care. They only saw an enemy in the sky, their footsteps swiftly carrying them to Mercury, their hatred crashing down like a wave.

Blood spilled. Mercury’s mask finally cracked, bisected by a single cut that he failed to dodge. His face split open along its middle, his brain bisected, his thoughts hitched. 

Power spilled through him.

[<Grain of Infinity> has levelled up. <Grain of Infinity lv. 4 -> 5>]

His chest lit up like a star. Silvery light poured from it, and Mercury enveloped himself. <Astral Advent> activated unbeckoned. Mercury’s presence doubled and redoubled again. It pushed outwards, making the demonic silhouette fold in on itself.

The sheer pressure of his existence cast a shadow on the world. Mercury took the depth from techniques around him. Knives that would have reached him simply didn’t have the presence to carve where he stood. Layers of his own mind enveloped Mercury and spilled outward.

Demonic flames of the killing asura wavered in the face of Mercury’s magic. The mopaaw hidden in human skin took a step forward. Half of his cracked mask fell off his face, revealing bleeding eyes. But his iris was clearly in view, a clean, beautiful purple with as much depth as the night sky.

A breath and a heartbeat passed. He stepped forward. <Magic> spilled from him in waves as his brainstem reconnected with itself. A technique that split the ocean in half, that had carved a distant island in two, flickered like a candle flame in front of him.

“I see you.”

The words spilled outward with physical presence. A bucket of ice water was poured onto hot coals, and the fire flickered again. It was thin, pressed down to two dimensions, like a sheet of paper before Mercury’s otherworldly intent. The snowfall intensified, turning into a blizzard that stole the light from the world.

Thin iridescence sparkled over the snowflakes, spilled by the tapestry of glowing string above Mercury and his <Silver Crown of Understanding>, but the Blizzard diffused and swallowed even that. 

A second passed and MuCheon was all alone. And they were cold. Snow fell onto them, and the heat was leeched right from their bones. A second later, their teeth clattered. Another second, and they had to wrap the demonic fire around themselves like a second skin. A third second, and they were extinguished, leaving them a pitiful, shivering thing.

Mercury unspooled them, too. With his <Astral Advent> active, his ethereal mind had no trouble spilling outwards and wrapping around everyone. It reinforced his body, even as it wore away his mental stamina. But while it remained, he was a bastion.

The world turned paper thin in his presence, as though he was the only one with any depth remaining. Colours turned to nothing, with him as the only thing that was still allowed to glow. A terrible blizzard consumed all techniques, all qi, as cultivators were unspooled. Their presences winked out like candles in a storm. 

Fear ripped over the battlefield. Before it had been a thin, partial fear, gripping only the hearts of those who had already lost. Cultivators were used to risk, after all. They gladly risked their life for rewards - and killing Mercury here would be a reward of its own right.

But they all felt it in their bones now. The doom that would befall them at the hands of the monstrosity that they had roused. It was like watching a titan rise from the ocean, a hand so large it eclipsed the sun crashing down on them. An inevitable, absolute premonition of doom.

Only to have that fear stopped at the last moment, as the hurt never came.

Instead, their techniques disappeared, and they landed in a heap of soft snow and dry sand. The ice cushioned their fall, though the blood they’d spilled stained their robes. It was funny, then, how white and black stopped mattering. When everyone was rolling in the mud, they all looked the same.

Righteous and cults stopped mattering. It was all turned into one by the blizzard and the light in the sky. 

A minute after MuCheon fell, only the strongest of the ancestors remained. Spirit Unity one and all. They were monsters that had survived thousands of battles, that had slaughtered their way up the ladder with violence and brutality on top of it. Each and every one of the four was strong beyond strength.

Still, they felt fear.

Still, they fought.

And fell, one and all.

The first was a woman, with a void-lightning aspect. Her magic ripped open holes in the world that Mercury swiftly travelled along, stitched close, and then used to <Carve> out her heart. She spat blood for a moment before the wound vanished, along with her power.

Second came an old man. He wielded a strange affinity that allowed rot and decay to take hold of whatever he touched. Mercury understood it within half a minute - the abyssal withering style, it was called. The air he touched was infected, and half of Mercury’s body had rotted away into a slurry of meat before he understood it.

Unfortunately, once he had it, Mercury had an advantage. <Origin Qi> held vitality in it, and so, Mercury’s Reforging art was especially suitable to counter this one. When he cycled the decay-infection through his meridians, it swiftly became meaningless. Defanged, the man was <Unravelled>.

By then, the pressure of all the strings Mercury held was becoming nigh unbearable, but he kept it together. His astral form overlaid on him, invisible depth stretching out in reality. The third to come at him was a righteous cultivator, their hands holding onto thin strings of celestial light.

The material acted almost like metal when it cut Mercury’s body into chunks. The affinity burned his mind, his astral self, and everything at once. He felt searing lines of damage being carved into his thoughts, and it was almost impossible to regenerate from it.

So he didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his will tight around the strand, then <Assimilated> it. His <Mind> asserted itself over its <Matter>, pulling it into his body. The cultivator usually relied on the rarity of their affinity to avoid losing control. No one had ever been dumb enough to challenge them when it came to handling the material.

Mercury, however, was dumb enough. When the righteous cultivators pulled to tear his body apart, the celestial light drew taut, and Mercury rooted himself. Instead of cutting Mercury to ribbons, the light-user was instead suddenly pulled towards him.

A moment later, they came apart in ribbons as shiny as their affinity.

The last cultivator was a woman. She had perfectly white hair, and an aged, wise face. Her affinity was one that Mercury had emulated before, one he knew was absolutely necessary for his project. He stood in front of her. And she engaged him in a battle that was both of their fields.

Karma. She dug her fingers through every single deed Mercury had ever done, and found him wanting. She found all his cruelty, spitefulness, every unkind deed he’d ever committed, and twisted them against him. 

His own actions wore down his skill, his will, his existence all at once. Mercury was afflicted with karmic retribution. 

Except, of course, that  he was rather well-versed with that style of fighting as well. When she reached for him, then drew up a connection between the two of them. <Tapestry> made their fates meet, and the thread connecting them thickened. From there, he could see her angle of attack, understand it in moments using his crown, then <Carve> away at it. 

The knots she twisted in his fate came undone, the horrible repercussions latching onto the nearest target: her. But before her own blood could twist out of her body as though she was a wet rag being wrung dry, in that brief lull where her attack failed and her own powers came crashing back at her, Mercury <Unravelled> her, too.

He took a deep breath in, then out. Below him was a sea of mortals in a welcoming blizzard. Above him was a nascent star made from the cultivation techniques of the greatest of the great, each of them usurped and unspooled. Holding it in place stretched his mind to the point of nearly breaking, but he was not yet done.

One more miracle remained.

Weaving karma into the martial world as a whole.