Chapter 427 - Interpersonal, Weirdly Intimate Hate, Of Course (Patreon)

Hello! I've got a party I'm off to after psyching myself up HARD, but the meds are stabilizing and I'm all dolled up so not gonna psych myself more! Raaaah! Anyways, here's a chapter!I had so much fun thinking of this high-level interplay, and then having Geography!Raika be a clever brute about things anyways, lol. Hope y'all have as much fun with it as I did!

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Thousands upon thousands of years have gone by since the creation of Morae's original foundations. The land which has become home to the Five Peaks has existed since time immemorial, a beautiful paradise for cultivators and unique treasures alike, envied by billions. Wars have been fought over the land that many now perceive to be the whole world, and which has granted untold blessings unto generations of the powerful and meek alike. 

When the sun was high, this land was bled for. When the winter-endless was beaten back, this land bled for us. When the many wars against the Heavenly Demon Cult were won and lost, the Five Peaks remained. When the ancient dead rise, The Republic of Morae stands. An alliance, forged in strife and suffering, between the five great powers that each hold supremacy over all others. 

When there were still stars in the sky, there were the Five Peaks, and beneath their shadows, the path to ascendance.

And yet, it is crucial, always, forevermore, to remember that we are not alone. And that what is not us will take what we have taken in turn, unless we are strong enough to endure.

-”Truer Histories”, by Elder Mo Xiang.

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Raika briefly wonders if the people inside of her will be alright if she takes the branch head-on.

Probably not, considering she won’t be ok either. Moving space around her doesn’t shift her interior- why would it? There are plenty of little people still running around, fighting battles and facing obstacles, even if she’s gotten a little half-hearted about the intricacies. Most of her is focused out here, after all, and even the parts that aren’t can’t help but wrestle with mental blocks and emotional overload at the amount of hate flying around.

A branch larger than the sky lazily swings down at her, moving faster than should be physically possible without lighting the world aflame. 

A sea of blood flies up out of a decimated forest, drowning the leaves and building a lattice of flesh and bio-steel from rapidly transforming tissues. She flexes, diverting every part of space she can grab and throw to one side so she’s as far towards the edge of the domain as possible. No thought can be spared for the Feng or for attack, only defense and escape.

She pulls a few ten-thousand feet of space, building a forest-wide second canopy of Flesh, pushing as much Space as she can reach up towards the swaying branch. She radiates Pain towards it, enough that it actually registers to her as more than just basic data, her own inner labyrinth clenching with the use of her comprehension.

It still hits her.

The forest is endless, because the forest is the world, because that’s what the person who made the Domain believes and imagines when he makes it. It has a boundary, but it's non-spatial, just like how earth and sky are separated by more than distance, but a conceptual block.

And the branch is bigger than the sky. 

She doesn’t register the impact so much as she experiences a moment where nothing makes sense. 

Up isn’t up. There’s one direction where movement happens and another where a wall is forever. 

The blow travels into her through the fold in space. Distance is meaningless to it, as is something so banal as a wrinkle in the world, and strikes all of her at once. 

The impact echoes forward, somehow, like it doesn’t end, like it’s repeating over and over, like it’s hitting through time as much as space. 

It’s bigger than the sky.

She’s not that big. 

Everything is broken. Every part of the lattice she made falls apart, casting more shadows. Already, the Soul of this place treats the shards of her own flesh as leaves, unmaking more of her even as she’s still processing the blow. 

By the time she’s rebuilt her brains, consuming the old ones for memories and materials to jump past the issue of traumatic brain injuries, a massive chunk of herself has been splayed out through the forest. Fields of swaying crimson, pools of massive, blinking eyes, part of a mountain made of scabs and iron- a whole chunk of landscape has emerged, an island of Flesh in the forest. 

The mountain has been cratered, left to crumble like a kicked-over ant hill. The pools of eyes have all been splashed apart, the cavities they filled broken and swelling. Every part of her hurts, but some parts more than others, and her system screams at the agony of being.

Unfortunately, the agony of being is getting overtaken by the [Blessed Shadow Dances Beneath Leaves]. More of her is beneath the shadows, after all.

And her brains keep killing her.

Her name is Raika.

She is broken beneath a Feng.

The safeguards keep slamming the fuck shut and forcing self-lobotomies from outdated survival methods and it slows her down.

The Domain is still up. The Soul is still unmaking her with Heavenly Dao and the colors of Red and Black above all. 

Everything hurts.

She pulls herself back together anyways.

The branch is gone, back above the sky. If she tries, she could track where the atmosphere becomes wood instead of blue sky and light, but she doesn’t care.

The Warrior realm Feng is there, if she focuses. The canopy is back, but the mountain part of her is just a bit above, rapidly getting whittled down by a [Blessed Shadow Dances Beneath Leaves], but she can, for a second, peek above the leaves.

He’s healed already, but he’s weaker. She can feel the echoes of his Pain, telling her about how he aches. His body is… different than a human’s. Like it’s designed around the idea of a human body, but made to not make sense in very distinctive ways. She can’t tell much more from this far, but even if he’s fixed his body, the pain is deeper than his flesh.

The Domain is fraying. The Soul is acting in accordance to what it is, but even this costs Qi, and Warrior realm or no, very few cultivators have the same amount of Qi that a landmass can generate.

He pulled his trump card, and it didn’t kill her.

She bleeds freely into the forest, gushing scarlet through the trees. What’s left of the swarm she implanted resumes devouring, her comprehension of Pain further distracting the Domain from sensing where and how it’s being destroyed. 

“Bastard thing,” she hears, whispered from above.

She ignores it. It’s just air out of a thing that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.

For a moment, the shadow beneath the leaves starts overtaking her. The Feng floating above has his face screwed in concentration, swallowing pills that glow to Raika’s Qi senses like miniature stars. She can feel them working on him, reducing pain, increasing his reserves, but it doesn’t get him back to full fast enough.

He can’t summon that branch again. 

Flesh needs fuel to grow. Flesh eats plants. Plants are Flesh.

And her blood is soaking into the soil.

The trees around her start to change colors. Green leaves become red, and then start to shrink, and then turn to nothing as the branches come alive and devour them. 

The soil drinks the blood. The roots eat the soil. The soil becomes the trees. 

The blood is the soil is the roots is the trees is Flesh. Because she says so. 

Because, as the Feng takes a moment to recover, she digs at the foundation of his concepts in a way he didn’t prepare for, apparently. Not many people can simply understand themselves into being a forest, after all. Or understand a forest into being her.

When he notices, the Pain still dulling his ability to sense her, his eyes widen, the shadow’s efforts gradually being forced away from a central node she’s building.

“All that waits for you is Death!” he roars, his fury evident.

It hits her hard. The words. 

Intent suffuses them. The world, already born from and of him, gains that extra edge against her, the shadow’s efficacy multiplying for a brief burst and carving away an island-

Which explodes.

The forest shakes, but cannot be broken without breaking the Domain. Any clearing is just more space for the shadows, which are everywhere and divine. 

But she laughs anyways. 

A thousand mouths open wide, even as teeth and tongues are pulled from them and dissolved away in shadow.

“Fuck You Anyways.”

She lights up like a festival. 

Bioluminescence shoots through all of her, obliterating the darkness beneath the canopies, and the Feng screams in agony.

She’s burning through meters of caloric tissue to provide the light, but that’s fine. In [Domain Of Woods Both Deep And Dark], for a moment, it is not so dark, and the concept of the spaces pushes back against her hard. The woods must be deep and dark for that is what this place is and she is in this place- but she’s weakened him enough that it buys her a few seconds. 

Light that would blind for a hundred miles outside the forest buys her a few dozen feet of space to expand to, even as the shadows of the woods become darker in contrast with the light, and the leaves remain above her.

That’s fine. 

She pushes Pain into the light, making the act of dissolving shadows be one of torment rather than a simple binary. She chews her way into tree trunks and eats them from the inside out, she bleeds, she floods the world with her existence as her weight emerges from the fold enough to push back at the Domain.

The Feng, still so very far above, still so very far away, looks angry enough to spit blood. Funny statement, that. Maybe it has to do with how higher-realm cultivators have their biology and minds so much more linked. 

He takes another pill from his pouch, the glare from it blinding to Raika’s Qi senses, and swallows it whole. In a flicker of movement, an elixir and a leaf go down his gullet next, and he starts to get louder, his smell sharper. She tastes him supercharging himself, pushing a strained system back to full capacity with treasures that might found minor sects on their own, even as his body is holding together poorly after summoning that greater branch. 

She almost respects the dedication. The sheer resource expenditure. The sheer waste of it all.

Then he pulls out his Jian.

By now, the forest has managed to partially push her back. Even in the screaming, writhing trees she’s eaten her way into and the infection of blood she’s poisoned his soil with, the leaves are blooming again, and the light is pushed back further. She expands, taking every inch she can, but the pressure increases, pressing down upon her, and the shadows only grow darker from all the light, just at the edge of her perimeter, waiting to strike.

She’s ready. She can take the hit. She’s planned for this, and-

He stabs himself with the Jian. 

Maybe she didn’t plan for that, specifically.

His body drinks it in like quicksilver, and he lets out a grunt, even as the Pain she tastes from him multiplies. It’s familiar Pain, she thinks, the taste stale, and it’s not her priority right now anyways.

His flesh blooms.

The quasi-human biology of the Feng Warrior stops lying about what it is, whorls of tissue and jagged edges forming a labyrinth that the Jian flows through, until he blooms.

In the second heartbeat after she ignited her light and pushed back the Domain, the Feng becomes one with his blade.

Like a series of… whirlpools. Like fingerprints in the shape of a person, outlined by the metal running through them and defining them, tinting them ever-so-slightly green. And at the outer edges of each whirlpool, a place that becomes jagged and sharp.

She could almost respect it. She could almost love it. She could almost think it beautiful.

Unfortunately, she can do all of the above and still hate more.

The Feng opens a mouth made out of swirling patterns and swords and roars words into the world. His sword edges clash, what were arms extending into hypnotic patterns of blades and metal that form a constellation of sigils above her.

Imperial Style: Blossoming Blade Of Truer Form

Imperial Technique: Cascade Of Lesser Meaning

Imperial Technique: Symphony Of Higher Understanding

Imperial Technique: Long-Range Array Manifestation

Imperial Technique: Necessary Measures Undertaken

And a half-dozen more whose “names” she loses in the tide of meaning and danger coming at her. 

A blitz and final attack all at once, as the Qi of all existence follows the curves of meaning he presents, as the darkness of the woods gets deeper, as the [Blessed Shadow Dances Beneath Leaves] replicates the arrays across a world of woods and gets all the more dangerous for the light that holds it at bay. 

So. Apparently, she can feel fear beneath the hatred. 

Beneath it, though. 

Carnal desire and unhinged loathing intermingle as what’s left of her, a fold in space and a mile of landscape terraformed wet and crimson, laughs at the world. 

“You Are Delicious,” she says, and her Intent sends a shiver through the woods even as they collapse in on her. 

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, and there wouldn’t be time anyways. A wave of elemental properties grows a hundred-thousand elemental trees, all of them sharper than should be possible, and the shadows come inwards as her light dims in the face of [Domain Of Woods Both Deep And Dark]. 

It’ll definitely hurt his cultivation, but apparently, he thinks she’s worth it. Who is she to deny the same courtesy?

From the little bit of blood left over on his body from her earlier gambit, staining his pretty black robes, she pulls.

The armor screams, more Qi than most Nascent Soul cultivators can hold shoving against the spatial distortion and the Dao it carries. A mirror glows jade beneath his robes, trying to reflect the technique back on itself. The sharp edges and whirlpools of his Imperial Style: Blossoming Blade Of Truer Form cuts at the blood and at the act of pulling and at space itself. 

It doesn’t matter. She is a mountain range and valley and sea and subterranean labyrinth and ecosystem and she has enough Qi to multiply anything the Feng can hold. 

And quite suddenly, the Feng isn’t in the woods anymore.

There are mountains in the background.

There is a field of swaying, crimson grass. 

There are pools of eyes, which roll blindly in battered sockets that lead out into-

That is all he has time to notice. Being able to think and move a thousand times over human baseline is not always enough to react in time, not when the opponent is a world which hates you. 

The Feng isn’t in the woods anymore. 

The Domain can’t protect him here, and there are no leaves for his [Shadow]. 

Raika shifts her weight by the barest amount, and a small tectonic plate shifts up.

The Feng is under the world, and there are things waiting for him there, too hungry and too dangerous for the rest of her body to sustain. 

And though he fights, and struggles, and hurts her, it is just pain, and the world hates him, and it is bigger than he is.

And he is delicious.