Chapter 411 - A Totally Normal Hidden Realm (Patreon)

Hello! We got a few more with the lil guy before we hop back to someone more familiar- bear with me and enjoy, cause this has actually been very fun to play with!

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The years of peace leave it eternally the second child, behind strife. 

While we pursue enlightenment as one, we do so as individuals. Each path is its own, as each Dao is its own, and it is inevitable that conflict arises from existences that are opposed. Against more imperfect Daoists, the concerns of material wealth, political gain, and emotional turmoil find themselves as seeds from which violence inevitably sprouts. 

Faced with such overwhelming destruction, how is legacy to endure? How is knowledge to be disseminated to the next generations, how are resources to be gifted to those who might best use them?

As with many things, the answer is manifold, but it rises above all else from inevitability and honor. 

It is inevitable that all will either ascend this layer of creation or die. It is honorable to make one’s passage to the next life meaningful to others. 

Upon the death of a powerful Daoist, or upon their abandoning of resources they no longer require, the opportunity rises to present a challenge to the next generation. Experts that might have to spend centuries cultivating their Daos and accumulating supplies can instead benefit from the steps left behind by those who have walked ahead. While the method of preservation can be nearly as varied as the materials and knowledge preserved, these treasure troves can generally be classified into three overarching categories:

Hidden realms; Ancestries; and Inheritances. 

Each one distinct, each one possessing different intentions. A hidden realm is a catch-all term for a pocket of space and time kept pristine and separate from the world, holding any number of possible materials. An Ancestry, on the other hand, is often designed around the idea of propagating an ideology or bloodline, designed to benefit those who most closely connected to the Daoists own beliefs or alliances. 

The last, and rarest of all, is the Inheritance. A part of reality dedicated to finding someone upon which the greatest treasures of a now-past Daoist can be granted. While a hidden realm can hold anything from a simple warehouse of resources to a pocket world, and an Ancestry is designed to support a group or create a resource to be shared by many, an Inheritance is a singular series of trials, designed around providing its ultimate award to a single participant that proves themselves above all others, whether through force of arm, purest intellect, or by a philosophy and being so similar to that which the Daoist has built the pocket of reality around as to be its one rightful heir.

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The fold in the fabric of reality bends open a little wider. Twice as large as a man now, and broader than a horse. It pulses, and the weight of the Qi that emanates from that one moment is already enough to send several of the unprepared stumbling backwards. 

Geng He feels the pulse of energy run through his body, making the organ tied at his waist shiver with a sympathetic resonance. His Qi inside of it lightens, moving a bit more smoothly for a moment before returning to the improved but still sluggish pace that all of his cultivation takes. Even that one breath was enough to stir the artifact connected to his meridians, and the force of the Qi that emerges is almost wholly flavored with the concepts of life and flesh, making any exhaustion flee from him and making his heart pound.

Simply entering this place will be a boon. Whether or not he will be able to is dependent entirely on the other sects (and on not being assassinated by anyone the moment the portal opens), but that they haven’t set up any kind of cordon around it is a good sign. Not valuable enough that they’d bully their juniors, perhaps- but that doesn’t make it any less vital to him. 

Yan Guanyu seems to keep the exact same energy he had before, altogether too jovial for Geng He to really feel comfortable around him, but even then, the way that he stiffens in the face of that breeze of Qi is notable. The other woman clad in robes of pale white and sunset ribbons has a similar reaction- subdued, but definitely in response to the hidden realm opening wider.

Their other recruit beside Geng He has a somewhat stronger reaction. She flushes, a slight hint of crimson flowing through the long, flowing waterfall she has in place of hair, and shivers very slightly. 

A lack-luster physique, perhaps? Unbalanced, either through trial and error or by birth? Or perhaps her cultivation, whatever technique or mutation makes her hair literally liquid, has somehow weakened her. 

Geng He keeps track and takes note, watching carefully to see if he can measure any similar incongruities in his “allies”. In the face of opportunity like this, any connection they have is and must be temporary. Eventually, they will face each other over the resources hidden within this challenge, and when they do, diplomacy might fail to win the day. 

And there will be some rewards simply too powerful to risk falling into another’s hands.

Later, Geng He reminds himself. No reason to be noticeably hostile. The more carefully he plays this, the better his chances to act boldly later. 

“Smell that air!” Yu Guanyu says, laughing lightly. “A gift already. Say what you will about the Bleeding Mother, but the benefits she provides to one’s physique are second to none. I dare say that all but the best alchemist would find themselves outmatched by the mere presence of some of her more potent reagents.”

“You don’t need to commentate every single moment, brother,” says the woman dressed similarly to the sycophant, who said her name was Lei Hai. “We already wear her colors. People do understand that we follow the Bleeding Mother’s treasures, they don’t need you blaring out your devotion every ten minutes.”

Geng He does his best not to snort out a laugh at that, mostly succeeding. The waterfall-haired woman, who called herself Dai Yuhan, just shrugs. 

“Some enthusiasm has its place,” she says, her voice quiet and subdued.

“Quite right!” Yu Guanyu replies, smiling. “I may not need to speak my opinions whenever I please, but what Daoist isn’t bold enough to have a proper stance on the wonders before them? Even a toad can marvel at the right sort of fly. Here is a meal fit for demigods- why not show one’s appreciation?”

Lei Hai rolls her eyes, but doesn’t comment. They return to an uneasy silence, each of them preparing in their own way for when the inevitable comes to pass and the hidden realm opens at last.

Another pulse. Only minutes apart now. It won’t be long.

Geng He breathes deep, cycling the Qi into his body as quickly as he can. Rather than adding it to his cultivation base, he guides it to his muscles, his bones, taking that one breath and adding to his biology directly. 

With just these few breaths, he’s started to feel a bit lighter, a bit less stiff. His bones and joints ache a bit less, years of hard living and constant conflict healed-over wrong suddenly starting to correct itself. 

All this just from being near the portal.

Some of the other groups start to approach the fold in space, eagerness overcoming good sense. A rogue cultivator breaks from his pack, stepping nearly up to the center of the cliffside, only a few feet from the source of the life-giving energy flooding the mountainside. 

A cracking sound follows, and what’s left of him tumbles backwards like a falling stone, tossing and ricocheting off the landscape. He lands at the far edge of the cliff, several of his limbs visibly facing the wrong directions at the wrong angles, his spasming gurgling with the sound of ruined lungs trying to breathe. 

Floating a few feet above the fold in the fabric of space, a stern-faced man glares down at the assembled cultivators. 

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. His gaze is enough to lock everyone in place, the weight of his aura flattening the grass across the entire plateau. 

His robes make no secret of his allegiance. The dusky sandstone, bright yellows and stone-brown mark him out as a member of the Stone Gate sect, owing their allegiance to the Peak of the Iron Tortoise, and his strength marks him out as an elder.

Not even a member of the true Peaks, but the message is clear. 

Know your place.

A similarly potent but far more overwhelming weight starts to rise from the ponds and waterfalls of the Peak of the Azure Serpent. It’s matched a bare instant later by someone from inside the Iron Tortoise’s ziggurat, and for a tense second, it seems like the two forces might clash more openly. The Stone Gate sect elder hovers in place, exercising authority from the implication of his allegiance, for a moment more. 

And then the second passes, and he vanishes as quickly as he came, returning to his camp. 

The Peaks, unwilling to dirty their hands even with the labor of keeping themselves above others, decide all that happens on the mountainside. Their forces will enter first, then those who owe them allegiance, and if it does not descend into conflict between the two sides and their lesser components, then there will be a chance for rogue cultivators to enter.

They’ll have to be quick, though. More likely, they’ll be stopped by something, and Geng He intends to aim for that moment where the high and mighty interrupt someone else’s attempt to make his own.

The fold in space pulses, growing again.

Nearly the size of a hut, now. Each growth makes the corresponding pulse of Qi all the stronger, and Geng He hisses as he feels his teeth tingle, his nails and hair getting slightly longer. The grass around the center of the field rises, growing a good foot in less than a minute, its colors changing and parts swelling or hardening. As the portal grows, the landscape around it mutates to match its interior, with purple and red colors leaking out into the nearby flora, which start to develop little flowering buds and other, stranger growths. 

Even the slowest to rise have gotten to their feet. Many of the sect encampments have started to empty, their disciples stepping out to the edge to prepare themselves. Even those most assured to make it in have started to move, the tension escalating step by step. 

Geng He breathes in. Then out. 

In. And out. 

He can do this. There will be a moment. He just has to grasp it.

He cycles the newfound life-infused Qi through his body, letting it give him even the tiniest possible edge to make it into the hidden realm faster. 

A pulse.

Again and again, closer and closer each time. Some of those who stood closest have stepped back, the rogue cultivators not quite bold enough for reprisal still having to retreat in the face of the pressure the portal is exerting.

It’s more than he expected. By the looks of some of the people around him, Geng He can tell it’s more than they expected, too.

The Peaks start to move. 

Both camps open, though in different ways. The lakes and rivers of the Peak of the Azure Serpent wind closer, unmaking the ground and liquifying matter into ethereal water to form a trail directly to the edge of the portal’s predicted growth. The Peak of the Iron Tortoise’s ziggurat unfolds like a geometric pattern, opening in a fractal and pulling reality to make sure its edge and the portal’s are closer than space says they should be. 

Robes of deepest blue and brightest white stand opposite robes of pitch black, gold and earthen brown. 

Everything feels tight. Tense. 

The fold in space beats almost constantly now. There’s a pattern to it. Pulse-pulse. Pulse-pulse. Like a heartbeat.

Without warning, reality flowers open. 

The fold in space unbends, its edges blurring impossibly as the distortion warps to create the passage. The flood of Qi is enough for several cultivators to step back, some of them sitting right on the grass to begin cultivating the bounty that the hidden realm’s mere entrance provides. 

It does look like a flower. Like part of the sunrise has coiled into a whirlpool, and begun to bleed. It glows there, hanging in the world like a new horizon, everything beyond it obscured by the spatial warping still present.

The Peaks move first.

Geng He and his allies brace themselves as the plateau detonates. The simple act of using their movement techniques sends high-pressure jets of water, rumbling earthquakes, and outright explosions of force echoing through the plateau, uncaring of who they strike. 

The ground rumbles and part of the mountainside breaks off, sliding as a small avalanche down the side of the cliff, and then they’re gone. 

They didn’t even stop to trade pointers or keep each other from entering. Each Peak took the opposite side from the other, leaving enough room that they didn’t officially have to bloody each other.

Their myriad lessers have no such niceties prepared. 

Blades, techniques, magics and formations ignite as dozens of different camps take off, several of them attacking each other on the way. For a greater inheritance or an ancestry, maybe the elders would care to provide some semblance of order, but here, their juniors are allowed to fight for the chance to be next into the hidden realm.

Geng He feels the plateau shudder as one disciple is hit by some kind of warped bubble that collapses, knocking them off the cliffside into the clouds below. He doesn’t even have time to dodge as a slash cuts through the ground just a few inches to his left, cutting a limb off of someone behind him as the world literally inverts inward along the edge of the attack. 

Not yet.

Dai Yuhan, Lei Hai and Yu Guanyu all are braced, each of them holding steady. Yu Guanyu has that spinal whipcord held tightly in his grasp, its sinuous coils unfolding into something like an armor or exoskeleton around him, while Lei Hai has started to grow, her muscles bulging as her frame shifts to accommodate the added mass. Dai Yuhan’s hair floods the ground around her, turning it to mud, and she kneels as if preparing to sprint forward.

Geng He has less than even that. His Qi pulses through him, prepared to empower him into movement, but he has only one real movement technique, and holding it ready would diminish its effect. He keeps a hand on his blade, eyes darting to and fro, looking everywhere for the right moment, for incoming threats, for anything he can react to. 

Some of the sects have made it in. Most of the disciples that remain are those without great movement techniques, and most of them are wrapped up in battling each other, trying to keep their rivals from entering the portal. 

Not yet.

The gate pulses. A feverish heat rises from the grass around it now, many of the too-fleshy blades of it starting to droop and steam, making the air smell coppery and bitter. 

The first of the rogue cultivators starts to move. 

A group of five, all of them armed with basic equipment that leaves them looking more like mercenaries than cultivators, dashes into the melee to try to reach the goal.

One of them falls only a few steps in, caught by a stray bolt of some sort of crystal that makes his body crack like salt.

The other four make it almost to the outer edge. 

Pressure from the elders all around the camp comes crashing down, and the space around the portal suddenly calm. Techniques die, unraveling around it, and the pressure makes those last few steps all the harder- and yet safer simultaneously. 

A gift to their disciples, those that lag behind- and tacit permission for the rogues to take their chances. 

Not yet. 

Dai Yuhan slides forward slightly, sinking up to her elbows in the mud, but Geng He’s arm shoots out, a palm out to stop her. It’s not time yet. 

His timing is proven right as a few more groups of wanderers charge in, the melee briefly intensifying as they run too close to the sect disciples. Not all the disciples surpass the wandering cultivators they meet, some of them even surpassing the strengths and techniques of those from the sects, but in the chaos, that barely matters. 

Three groups of rogues make it in, and then another few disciples, bodies left scattered on the field, blood along the grass and the chaos of Qi flying all around as others try to follow.

Now. 

Force, brightness, dreams, lightning, and bone. Geng He’s chaotic mess of a foundation flares up, and he simply vanishes for an instant, transmuting parts of himself into a flash of lightning and illusion while launching himself forward. 

He feels his “companions” moving with him, right behind him, taking some of the focus away from his vanishing act and forward movement. Already they’re paying off. 

A sword comes for his head as he re-manifests and he ducks, just barely avoiding it, letting some of his hair float behind him from the cut. He doesn’t even have time to attack back, forced to leap over an explosion that burns his arm, forced to duck beneath a massive, glowing limb that carves through air and ground in its path- 

And then he’s recovered enough to launch his second movement technique, and three other bodies are close to him, and he’s through the bleeding sunrise into what’s beyond.