Chapter 414 - So Maybe It’s Not A Normal Day Actually (Patreon)

Alright! It's super late as well, can't seem to sleep before 2:30am, but I'll keep trying as I keep writing. I'll be traveling for next week and part of the next, so I'll do my best to keep up updates over that time! Wish me luck on some backlogging, babes.

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What are the differences between hidden realms?

What some will try to tell you is that the universe fits a certain standard, one which can be easily put into boxes and labels and statements, which can be understood by simply listening to the words of one’s elders. This is not only stupid, but profoundly disrespectful to the intelligence and well being of everyone involved. There is no such thing as easily understood. There is no such thing as fitting into a single standard. The world is a big, complicated, messy place, and anyone who tells you they have the secret to how it works is deluded or, worse, attempting to con you. 

What is a hidden realm? That’s a foolish question. It’s whatever is called a hidden realm. It could be a valley, it could be a place not on a map, it could be a pocket realm, it could be an Emperor realm master’s personal Domain, it could be a spatially-warped laboratory or a natural wrinkle or a crack in a wall. Inheritance, ancestries, those names simply highlight the point of some of those hidden realms. It’s a farcical attempt at categorization, desperately dumbed down to match the lowest common denominator amongst one’s lessers. It’s insulting.

The example could not be clearer than with the breakdown of definition that a sacred site provides. A spontaneously formed series of challenges, rewards, and inhabitable biomes, each filled with unique, inhuman, often downright esoteric materials and techniques and insights- and it’s lumped in alongside some Nascent Soul realm bastard’s hidden laboratory. To even have to acknowledge that they’re something different is to say that your control of the terminology has failed. 

There are artificial pocket realms. There are spatially distorted chunks of the material world. There are reality distortions of all types and sorts. There are places where someone’s death has created a little concave, too-dense corner of all that is. 

And then there are sacred sites. Which are not any of the above. 

Idiot teachers create wisdom from out of nothing, making towers without foundations and damaging the building blocks of all that trust them. True fools will find ways to pretend that the world is simple enough for them to wrap their little minds around. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who tells you that they know everything and that they can teach you any part of it, is a liar or a fool. The truly wise will tell you that they know nothing, and offer you a piece of their nothing for you to make your own. A true teacher will give you questions rather than answers. 

Simplicity is a lie. Ignorance is truer than fact. You ask me about hidden realms? The only ones that are understood in the slightest are the ones we create. If you find an unknown one, or something truly wild, truly alien, your best defense is not to rely on the idea that the world is simple and its categories comprehensible, but on the fact that you don’t know anything at all until you know it, and quite often, the path from one moment to the other will kill you quite thoroughly. 

-Impromptu lectures on hidden realms in response to Elder Tan Jiang’s lectures on Cultivation, by Elder Dai Jie of the Broken Skies sect.

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“We’ve been getting too much of a windfall to risk it all on this,” Lie Hai says, her arms crossed as she glares at Geng He. “Every hour we cultivate here, my body is growing and healing and getting stronger, and that’s crucial to my cultivation. The resources here are going to set us all up with months worth of spirit stones at least, nevermind what we’ve gotten from other cultivators. This whole place has seemed wild and alien, and then you find something like this and think it’s a good idea to throw us all into it?”

“It’s an opportunity!” he yells, barely holding himself back from lashing out, screaming, doing whatever he has to to get them to understand how stupid they’re being. “Of course there’s risk, but there’s also a genuine chance to find something unique here. Something real, that can set us up for a lot more than just a few months. There are some things that are worth it, and this could be one of them!”

“‘Could be’ isn’t enough!” she replies, standing still in the face of his frustration. “We’ve been here hours, and we’ve seen no sign of anyone else here, no tracks leading to this place. No one else has come here! Maybe some of the sects told each other about this place, about it being too dangerous. Maybe there’s nothing in it and they know that. Maybe no one knows about this place, and it’s an absolutely life-changing windfall in there, but its defenses are so strong it’ll kill us unless we can plan around it. It’s not worthwhile, not on a total roll of the dice.”

“It isn’t a roll of the dice!” he insists. “We know our abilities! We’re all stronger than we’ve ever been. We’re healthier, better equipped, better prepared than any of us has ever been before. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and taking it could get us killed, yes- but it could also be what we need to be more. Kill those pursuing us. Find safety in power. Set up a village or a sect, even if only a small one! Get the kind of foundations that could set us up to immortality! And you want to, what, play it safe!?”

She snarls at him, her lips pulling back to reveal her canines, her muscles rippling beneath what’s left of her robes. 

“None of that will happen if we die. There’s risks and then there’s suicide, and I have no intent to end my journey early. If you want to court death, feel free, but I have someone waiting for me already.”

Yu Guanyu leans forward. “Well, personally, I-”

“Then leave!” Geng He roars, not caring about hiding their location or what dangers the sound might attract. He’s beyond that, his head pounding, his frustration holding his guts in a vice. “Leave! Walk away! Find some puddle to meditate in while everyone else passes you by, until they find you and take you apart! Because they will! If you’re not strong, there is nothing you can do against the rest of the world when it comes for you, and it will.”

“And if I leave, will you throw yourself in there alone?” Lei Hai asks, staring him down.

Geng He feels his teeth clamp shut. He opens, then closes his mouth. 

“Yeah. Because alone, it’s too much of a risk. All of a sudden, when you have people you can throw behind you when you run, or ahead of you into a trap, you’re a lot more comfortable all of a sudden.”

“I- Yes! Of course! Because the four of us have enough strength, enough coordination, to have a chance. Alone, maybe none of us would have even made it in here.”

“Without us, maybe you wouldn’t have made it in.”

“You dare-”

“Enough!” Dai Yuhan says, her hair splashing at the ground behind her with the force of her yell. “Enough. That’s enough. We’re wasting time. Arguing amongst each other is literally the least productive thing we could possibly be doing right now. Let’s vote. Do we go into the temple, or do we leave to pursue safer pastures? Aye for the temple?”

Geng He turns to stare at the sight on the horizon that has them all arguing, glaring at the temple.

It’s unclear if it was designed wrong to begin with or if the passage of time has warped it beyond recognition. A lot of the angles seem off, for one thing. Some parts look like they’ve fallen over, but like they’ve done so without seams or cracks. Some parts warp inward, while others bend at angles that natural stone cannot support. The entire structure is deeply asymmetrical, with molten-wax like spires and half-finished amphitheaters and walls dotting the landscape. The entire thing looks like it’s made out of some sort of limestone or basalt, simple stone made into something ornate and alien. 

The grass of razor-hairs goes right up to the edge of the stone, partially obscuring the foundation of the temple, partially blocking out the first few steps leading into a main archway. 

Since he caught sight of it, he can feel the pressure it exudes. Like it’s heavier than the rest of the landscape, like it’s loud, even in the too-perfect silence of this strange place. 

“Aye,” he says.

“Aye,” says Dai Yuhan.

Geng He’s head shoots over to her.

“I also think it’s the right choice,” she says simply. “I didn’t come here to do things safely. I need as much as I can get, and that place feels like more than the rest of this place. There’s something in there, and if we approach and it doesn’t attack or exude any Intent, we should explore it.”

“Right! Yes! I- Yes. I’m glad someone understands.”

“Well, I also vote aye,” says Yu Guanyu, smiling casually as he raises a hand in the air. 

Hei Lai turns to glare at him, brow furrowed. “Guanyu, I-”

“We enter the flesh of the Bleeding Mother, find a temple, and don’t explore it? Seems almost shameful. I’d rather at least get a look, try to understand things. A cultivator so powerful, so strange, as to create hidden realms like this deserves to be understood, and is most certainly a path to power.”

“Ugh!” Lei Hai throws her hands up. “Fine! Fine. I’ll come. And if this kills me, I’ll come back and haunt all of you.”

Geng He isn’t even done listening to her before he starts walking off towards the temple.

He doesn’t know how he knows it’s a temple. He doesn’t even know why he knows it’s a temple. He can just tell, like a feeling, deep in his guts. 

The sky is the sky. The ground is the ground. That strange, alien building is a temple. 

He hears the others behind him, and uses that extra drop of certainty to walk faster. 

Maybe they all think him a fool. Maybe they all hate him. Maybe they’re all looking to waste away rather than aiming for the highest heights, and consider him mad for trying otherwise. 

It doesn’t matter. Even if they all part ways after the temple, that’s fine. If he can get the use out of them he needs, enough that he can be more, he doesn’t care what it costs. 

The temple casts a shadow, even in a place with no sun. It has weight, understanding, even in a place where all things seem equally strange and unknown. 

He sees a room beyond the archway, and does not so much as slow down before taking the first step onto the temple’s stairs. 

Immediately, it’s like his body weight has doubled. 

He clenches, tightening his core, grabbing hold of himself as completely as he can. His neck strains at the feel of whiplash, pulling his entire body downwards into the steps. 

But he stays standing, and that’s all that happens.

Slowly, carefully, making sure he doesn’t unbalance, he steps back, off of the first step.

“It’s… weight,” he says, his voice a bit quieter than it was. “It makes it harder as you move up. I don’t know how much. It’s weight, though.”

He doesn’t bother waiting for the others behind him. If he’s going to be stupid enough to do this, he’s going to be brave enough to do it properly.

The first step up, he feels his personal gravity magnify. 

He grunts- and takes the second step.

Again, it doubles. Maybe not literally, but it feels like it- his knees shake a little bit as he forces himself forward another step. His back bows a bit. His head starts to hurt as every part of him feels like it’s being smushed down. 

He lifts his leg, and takes another step.

This one almost takes him to his knees. He groans, feeling like he’s carrying a tree on his shoulders, or two. 

Inhale. Exhale. 

It’s harder. Like his chest is being compressed inwards as much as he’s being compressed towards the ground.

He cycles his Qi, using it to augment his body, and takes another step.

Three more to the top.

The primordial forces of existence swirl through him, demanding more from his flesh, proclaiming to reality that Geng He’s will matters on the same level that things like biology and energy and weight matter. 

Another step.

He’s so close. His legs are trembling, his arms held stiff at his sides to keep them from feeling like they’ll be dragged off. He’s not sure if the sensation is literal or all in his head, but the danger of getting dislocated shoulders from angling his arms wrong is too real to ignore. He feels a bit of blood start to leak from his nose, his whole head pulsing to the rhythm of his heartbeat and the blood pressure within.

Another step.

Just one more. He can see the archway. He can feel some sort of breeze coming from it, cool and smelling of strange flowers and sweet nectars. He can feel its gaze upon him, taste the judgement it levies down at him from a place beyond what his eyes can perceive. 

Geng He cycles for force and bone in his concepts, dragging the ideas out of his Qi and into reality. His technique is half-functional, its pieces half-realized, but it’s still enough to make him a cultivator. He defies the Heavens. He defies the will of the world. He defies those who consider themselves his betters, those born with all the advantages, those above and beneath him who tell him he’s a fool for even trying. 

The walls of stone are so close. He can taste iron on his tongue. His teeth are clenched together so tightly that they could break rocks, tight enough that he can feel his jaw starting to cramp. He can’t breathe. It feels like his heart is struggling to breathe.

The organ at his side pulses. Geng He burns into his reserves to push more power through his limbs, to enact yet another ounce of force against the pressure that has him half-bowed.

It hurts to raise his leg. He has to do it fast, so he doesn’t fall over, but even getting his back foot onto the same stair as his forward is enough to make him feel like his bones are creaking. 

It’s a trial. A test. Whoever passes it gets to go inside. Is proven worthy. He will be enough if he just tries harder.

He pulls from out of the Qi he left untouched in him, as deep as he can reach. Too poorly digested to be of use in combat, too heavy to discard, just right to keep in his Dantian for now. An investment for later.

It burns in more ways than one as he uses it to force himself further.

Just one. More. Step.

Just one.

He can do it.

He has to do it.

Droplets of blood are falling from his eyes and his nose and his ears and-

Just one.

Inhale.

His chest feels like a vice. It won’t expand. He can’t breathe.

Inhale.

The barest wisp of air. Not enough to do anything more than hurt him.

Exhale. 

A wheeze.

One more.

Geng He very nearly throws his body over the final step. 

As soon as his body enters the temple’s archway, all pressure vanishes. He gasps, then curls over and vomits, partially inhaling some. He coughs, spits, pukes, coughs some more, trying to keep his airway clear, tasting blood and bile all down his throat. 

It hurts to breathe. It hurts to be. It is an absolute and complete relief to have all that pain suddenly vanish, even with all that it leaves behind. 

A minute or so later, he has his airways clear, his breathing restored, and his face at least partially wiped off. 

He gets up, breathing heavily, and waves behind him, staring down the three who have yet to follow him.

“It’s a trial,” he says. And then he starts walking into the temple.

He doesn’t want to leave them behind, per se- but if they’re too late in following, and he finds something they might have wanted for themselves? Their loss is his gain. 

The archway becomes meaningless behind him as he turns into the chamber.

It’s partially open to the sky. The impossible light from outside flows down into the vast central room, dozens of arches and curved, almost biological angles, making shadows flow sinuously along brighter-lit paths.

He can hear the others struggling up the stairs behind him. His time to have someone he can use is not yet here, and the moments where he might be free of them long enough to take something are few.

He steps forward further. Out into the chamber.

Something shifts. 

He turns, and sees a little divot he didn’t see before, a crack, a deformation that makes something almost like a corner or small room. 

His sword is up and his hackles raised and blood in the back of his throat and the opportunity to be more is so close and he’ll only stop if he must. Nothing less.

He has to be-

The upper half of a woman looks at him.

She’s large. Dark-skinned, with vast cornrows, colored like sunset. Rivers of muscle and bone run beneath her skin, too much bone to be human, too many muscles to be anything un-altered.

Two eyes of sunset gold look at him, and her head tilts to the side that has an arm.

That’s all she is. A head. A collarbone. An arm.

The rest of her is part of the room.

Those eyes look at him, and the stairs’ pressure wraps around his soul rather than his shoulders.

“Who are you?”