Chapter 413 - But Then, What IS A Normal Day Anyway? (Patreon)

Helloooo. Sorry it's so late. Enjoy!

________________________________________________________________________

There are, of course, naturally occurring hidden realms as well. These don’t quite fit into the ways we have explored Inheritances, Ancestries, and other forms of man-made hidden realms, designed as fallbacks, defenses, or otherwise as a boon to their lessers, that other generations might experience some windfall from the opportunities left behind. In truth, naturally formed hidden realms often possess little of value in comparison, and are exceedingly rare, though there are those who claim they are more common outside the bounds of the Jianghu, in the wilds of the outer chaos. 

For something to possess the weight of Qi and formation-workings to create the spatial warping that defines a hidden realm is exceedingly rare beyond the grasp of those with sentience. Still, my lessons would be remiss were I not to address these forms of the phenomena. Usually, they spring up around particularly rare natural reagents, often due to the actions of powerful spirit beasts that seek to guard them or lair around them. Lairs are another fine example- some spirit beasts, should they manage to elevate themselves to the status of “divine beasts”, qualitatively above their lessers, can learn to warp space and matter, creating defenses around old nests, dens, and other forms of burrows and homes. 

In each example, a single element creates the hidden space, often as a form of defense or preservation, making them similar to more conscious efforts. The rarest form of a hidden realm, however, embodies both forms of creation. It occurs without the intervention or generation of mankind, and generates resources, rather than simply being born from them. These hidden realms are often seen as true treasure troves, and can even be designated as holy sites, kept from generation to generation in the hands of sects capable of holding on to them. Their origins are hard to determine, and, historically, impossible to predict, and the exact resources always seem strange. However, even moreso than “traditional” hidden realms, these naturally formed sacred sites tend to be guarded jealously from within. While manmade hidden realms often have traps and constructed guardians, these natural sacred sites often have unique beings, alien in form and function, and “traps” that are often best defined as environmental hazards, though they can express a dizzying amount of complexity and unpredictability that put even rogue Qi storms to shame. 

Where these treasure sites come from, and how they differentiate from hidden realms that manifest around distinct objects or from intentional creation, is unknown. Their value is not inherently superior those artificially created, but their unpredictability of their contents, as well as the complexity of powers within, makes them a distinctly more dangerous and tantalizing opportunity than all but the oldest and most famous hidden realms made by man.

-Lectures on Cultivation by Elder Tan Jiang of the Broken Skies sect.

__________________________________________________________________________

Geng He smiles, exhausted but joyous. His wounds ache- he’s got at least one broken rib, and dozens of lacerations covering him, many of them tearing apart his robes, leaving him covered in blood stained rags. His sword has chipped a bit, the edge of his blade slightly dulled, and there’s still blood coating it from his last conflict. 

Blood coats everything here, though, so it hardly matters. His boots, especially, are absolutely coated in it, a thick film of red sludge formed from hours of walking. The longer they walk, the heavier they get, the more he feels the disgusting warmth leaking through to his feet even through the heavy leather, once so expensive. 

And yet, he’s smiling. How could he not be? 

His hands are holding a half-dozen rings, coated in the blood of the corpse he took them from. 

Some outer disciple from one of the sects aligned with the Peak of the Iron Tortoise. No one of any import- if Geng He really tried, he might be able to remember them, but frankly, he doesn’t care. Some gold and red-wearing nobody, but a nobody who had everything. A nobody who had all the money, all the resources, all the protections and care and training and safety that Geng He has never had. 

A nobody who is dead now, and whose spatial rings belong to his killer. Geng He. A man who came from nothing. A man who has had to fight for everything. And now…

He sends his Qi, sluggish and heavy, down into the rings. Without its living owner, with his concept pulled further from reality by his death, the bonds break easily, tying the rings to Geng He’s Qi instead. 

He doesn’t hesitate to look inside of them, turning his inner eye out of his own spiritual organs and to the extensions he has just claimed. 

The first thing he sees are the spirit stones. 

Dozens of them. Then hundreds. Piles of them, orbiting inside each of the rings like little moons, floating through nothingness. More spirit stones than Geng He has had in his entire goddamn life. More than he’s ever been able to save, more than he’s ever been able to hold, more than he’s ever seen all at once. Enough to slingshot his cultivation up another stage of his realm. Enough to buy a place to live and have enough left over to buy some servants, some weapons, maybe enough for a dowry for a wife. 

They pale in comparison to the other resources. 

Most of them entirely useless to his cultivation- stone pears, flame-heart fangs, slivers of enchanted metal filings. Still, they’re expensive, valuable, powerful, worthwhile, something he can trade if nothing else for tools he actually might be able to use. 

Geng He chuckles, smiling, and-

A hand touches his shoulder, and he starts a swing behind him, reacting instantly. 

Yu Guanyu steps back, his hands raised, a disarming smile on his face. 

“Woah there, brother!” he says, much too calm for the sword-swing that he just barely stepped back from. “I didn’t mean to encroach.”

“They’re mine,” Geng He says, his smile dead and his sword still extended. 

“No challenge to that,” Yu Guanyu replies, still keeping his hands visible, his smile subdued but still visible. A bit too much teeth, Geng He thinks, though he’s not sure where the thought comes from. “To each their own, after all. Our alliance need not demand a shared pool.”

“Then what do you want?” 

“Simply to tell you that we’re ready to move on, if you are.” 

Geng He looks past Yu Guanyu for the first time, seeing behind him their two allies. Dai Yuhan and Lei Hai both look almost as messed up as he is, robes torn, bodies healing with the aid of medicines and cultivation. Their scars are matched by the bodies around them, each of them equally victorious, though he’s not sure if they’ve gotten the rewards he has. 

And he doesn’t care. Not before they leave, anyways. Then…

“Yeah. I’m ready.” He gets up, swiping his sword to cast off some of the crimson. The sword still rings cleanly through the air, despite the chipped edge, and the blood falls off to join the flood of crimson everywhere. 

Yu Guanyu smiles “normally” now, exposing more teeth in a seemingly sincere show. “Good! Whatever that plant-thing is, it’s been advancing, and I’m fairly certain those fighting it will either run our way or kill it. We’d be better off elsewhere before that happens.”

Geng He nods, his breathing still calming after the adrenaline of thinking he was under attack again. Turning his gaze outward, he pushes back the soreness of his broken body, plucking a healing pill from out of one of the rings he just claimed. It’s not exactly tailored to his cultivation, but neither are the cheaper, shittier ones he carries, so it doesn’t much matter.

True to Yu Guanyu’s word, the strange nest of vines they diverted around is still active. Hundreds of whip-like tendrils, coated in open wounds and jagged edges, are currently flailing through the landscape, ripping up more of the flesh-coated ground and adding it to its own mass. Each bundle of vines is focused on a different member of a group, different disciples carving into the mass and aiming for its center, hoping to kill their way through to whatever core it might be hiding. 

The lands echo with the sound of thunderous impacts, yells of martial valor, chanted techniques- all draw attention for miles around, making no secret of their battle. 

It helped to cover for the kills Geng He and his group accomplished, but all of the fighters are at a much higher level than any of his group, and the mass of wound-vines seems fairly likely to win out. Not exactly a winning proposition. 

Looking away, there are several other landmarks that can be seen. Beyond the flat, skin-coated flesh of the landscape they all landed on, there’s fields of grass mixed with hair mixed with strange thorns, surrounding most of the original landing zone and the eye-pools most of them landed on. Beyond it, the landscape shifts, space warping to force perspective to fight with understanding. Distant mountains, no more than a few steps away, surrounding the landscape in a valley, are matched by strange rivers that are larger than they appear, flowing crimson, purple and, on occasion, clear water-blue. 

Barely an hour into the hidden realm, and already, there are bodies littering the fields. 

Inter-faction conflict took a few, but the landscape has gotten its fill. Some of the eyes closed over, their skin too tough for some to escape and morphing into plain skin, trapping people beneath the surface. A cloud of wasp-like things, with too many too-human teeth and wolf-like limbs (far too many) divided some of the groups, and other environmental dangers have taken their toll, further driving groups apart.

Those that arrived first took the brunt of the initial dangers, but also made it off the landing area the fastest. The Peaks’ disciples and their closest followers have already taken off towards the major landmarks, guided by prior knowledge or instinct, leaving behind their competitors. 

Already, Geng He has gotten more than he truly expected. His body feels flush and rich in vitality, healing faster, changing faster, adapting to match his cultivation bit by bit. The spatial rings he’s putting onto his hands now have more riches and resources than he’s ever had. 

Not enough. He needs more. 

“We should head to the mountains,” he says, gaze scanning the “horizon”.  “Climb up or dig down, there’s a chance we’ll find something valuable there.”

“It’s also where most of the disciples of the Peaks went,” Dai Yuhan says, crossing her arms as her hair washes off some of the blood on her. “And, assumedly, where most of the greater challenges are. I’m not trying to get myself killed lusting over swan flesh.”

Geng He snorts, rolling his eyes- and then just shakes his head as he sees the ways that Lei Hai and Yu Guanyu start nodding along. 

“Agreed,” Lei Hai says, her arms still healing some of the open wounds that her muscle-expansion brought about. “We should try and explore. I hear the hidden realm will be open for a few days now, right? We can take our time to scout things out.”

“If we wait too long, we’ll lose out on every opportunity,” Geng He counters. “We should try and follow behind some of the Peaks. The resources they discard behind them will be enough to strengthen us, and when they slip up-”

“They won’t slip up,” Lei Hai says, “and relying on them to leave things behind is stupid. They might be rich, but the rich don’t stay that way by throwing things away. They’ll eat everything in their path and leave nothing but crumbs. We should search for something more on our level. Getting too greedy will just get us killed.”

He almost growls at them. He has to stop himself, but the rage squirms inside of him at the thought that they’re giving up so easily.

“Where’s your boldness?” He asks instead of cursing at them. “We could catapult our way up right now. As wanderers, we’ll never get access to resources like this again if we don’t dare now.”

“My boldness is all around us,” says Lei Hai. “It’s what got me here. Now that I’m here, throwing myself blindly at the next thing I want to kill would just be stupid.”

He takes a step forward, the challenge implicit in her tone putting his hackles up. 

“You dare-”

Yu Guanyu steps between them, palms out to each of them.

“Fellow cultivators! Such bickering is beneath us. It’s simple enough- if we have differing opinions of where to go, we can always part ways here. If we’d rather stick together, some cooler negotiation would likely do us all better than this heated debate. We’re all tightly wound- killing will do that to a person. Let’s head towards a landmark, find a place to camp, then begin to plan properly. Everyone else with any sense will try to do the same in a few hours at most- we’ll lose no time by being better rested and more prepared than our competition.”

Geng He almost snarls at him, but judging by the way the others are looking at him…

His mind jumps through possibilities. He tries to track and figure out how he can spin this. What he can do without them is…

Nothing. Not yet. Any advantage that would be gained by going out on his own would be undercut entirely by the loss of distractions and firepower. 

He shakes his head, but puts his sword away, taking a deep breath rather than tell everyone how fucking stupid they are. 

“Fine. Let’s find a campsite. We can find a way to catch up after.”

The rest of the party, already in agreement, have practically begun moving before he’s even done talking. 

The landscape keeps shifting as they move, over and over, making it impossible to tell where they are in relation to conventional space. Only by tracking through Qi senses does it make any sense at all, and by following the ways that energy flows through the landscape, they find where walking simply propels you forward rather than bending you laterally across a hundred meters, or warps you inside-out. 

There are opportunities along these rivers. Sometimes they’re literal rivers, flows of magical flesh, waters, and stranger substances, along which strange fish swim, pearls dot the riverbeds, and occasional mineral deposits can be found. Sometimes, they’re chunks of “farmland”, groves shaped almost artificially and full of fruits, roots, and thick-stemmed flowers that bleed when cut, each product equally bright and full of Qi. Once, they stumble upon the den in a strange hill, seemingly made of piled guts and rotten intestines, and the closer they got, the more something inside of it began emitting Killing Intent. They had to turn away from that, finding another path.

Hours go by before they find anyplace that looks even slightly defensible. A field with a ditch in it, with a curved dip to one side, makes for a decent enough space- if they were walking on the road out in the real world. Here, with unknown dangers around any corner and the very real presence of other cultivators hunting alongside them, it’s… less than ideal. 

They set watches for the first night, each of them taking two hours to allow the others to rest and consolidate their gains. By the time “morning” comes around (there is no sun, and the light in the hidden realm never dims), the others have all ganged up once again and convinced him that they should wait a while longer, so that they can all meditate properly. 

It’s infuriating. It would be more infuriating without the fact that it’s a good idea.

His Qi is moving through his body at what feels like lightning speed. Geng He imagines that it’s still not as good as it would be in someone born with better meridians or who had a stronger set of resources to begin with, but compared to just a few days ago, it’s like day and night. His body feels more in tune with itself, every breath bringing in more oxygen, every heartbeat pumping more fluidly, infusing more energy through his system. Tendons feel more flexible, his muscles have gained a bit more definition in just the two days they’ve been here.

All of that doesn’t even include how the artifact at his hip has grown, integrating more fully with his meridians, connecting more intimately into his body. The way that his awareness feels broader, like his spiritual sense has expanded. 

The entire place has already put him into a new level of competence. Even without elevating his realm, the way it’s corrected his flaws, added to his foundation, is immensely valuable.

It still doesn’t feel like enough. 

It isn’t enough. 

All of this, and they’re still wasting time. Content with what little they’ve gotten their hands on. He needs more. 

Enough that he can always protect himself. Enough that he doesn’t have to feel on edge with everyone who passes him on the road. Enough that he can live.

On the third “day”, everyone decides to move. Geng He has to struggle to hold back his relief, or the way that his dependency has begun to chafe more than he can stand.

They travel further, walking farther out into the chaos of the hidden realm. At one point, they find a strange puddle, deeper than it looks. Touching it almost dissolved Lei Hai’s lower robe, but when she leapt back defensively and a splash of it hit Dai Yuhan on the cheek, nothing happened. A quiche sheen of light, and then it faded into her skin. 

Geng He had to practically demand that they stay behind as he disrobed and leapt in, bringing only his sword with him. The glow of it illuminated the landscape in every direction, and when he emerged, it was like his blood was fire, and the tingling of it a reminder of its potency in his every movement. 

Yu Guanyu went next, then Lei Hai- though Dai Yuhan declined, and by that point, the light had started to attract movement through the grasses of razors and hair. 

A pack of something like rabbits, but which have not-enough eyes and skin that wriggled off of them like ropes they could wield, slowed them for a few hours, the horde numbering in the dozens and burning through some of their Qi reserves. Not long after, something serpentine and covered in long, kelp-like fronds flew by overhead, snatching some of the rabbits with mouths emerging from the ends of the kelp, and began exuding a pressure equivalent to a Core Formation realm expert. 

They ran, and it didn’t follow. 

Similar events play out, over and over. A piece of the landscape gets up, turning joints too jagged and too asymmetrical for anything natural, and begins walking on a dozen legs, each at an odd angle from the next, towards one of the mountains. They stumbled onto a grove of bone-like trees, a few of which shattered into violent shrapnel that had to be carved out over hours, all of which tried to sprout from their bodies. On the horizon, a piece of the landscape, mountains, rivers, grasslands and all, folds over itself like the page of a book, rising, closing over itself, and then vanishing entirely.

Geng He kills twice more. Once out of necessity, in an ambush, and another time out of opportunity. 

He ignores any looks that get sent his way. He’s the one leading them to more strife, more opportunities, more rewards. That they don’t understand what’s really at stake isn’t his fault.

Geng He feels the flow of his Qi getting smoother, faster, more powerful. Feels his body advancing in tandem with his every breath. Feels himself becoming more.

It’s not enough.

And then, over a hillside, they come upon the temple.