Chapter 430 - Who Doesn't Love A Fun (Moral) (Loop)Hole? (Patreon)

Haven't done so overt a joke in a title in a while. I'm fucking hilarious baybee! Feeling much calmer today, but also energized in a good way. This whole "I don't have to spend hours un-rationalizing my brain's desperate attempts to understand why it's experiencing constant anxious panic" thing is pretty dang neat. Anyways! Chapter! Wahaha! We've got plot incoming with the next chapter, but enjoy some more characterization and fucked up shit in the meantime!

_________________________________________________________________________

This should not be happening. 

That is the simple nature of existence boiled down into its most quintessential building block. This, all of this, should not be happening. The original state of creation, that from which all else was formed, was formlessness. There was everything, and all of it simply was, and it would make no sense to us because we are born of the perversion that came later.

I have seen through the stars. I have seen the dark that lies beyond them. Existence, out there, is… we would call it madness. Beyond madness. Madness as a symptom and consequence of even seeing it. Except that’s not how it works, is it? We’re the mad ones. It is our existence which defines madness, not the other way around. Perhaps the rest of existence is sane, and madness is what defines our ability to even exist. 

Infinity is alien to us. Infinity is inimical to us. We exist in a bubble that is always shrinking, always on the verge of bursting and letting us fall back into formlessness. Maybe that’s what we should want. Maybe that formlessness is the true nature that we avoid, and becoming more as cultivators is approaching that same formlessness from a different position. Or maybe not. Maybe the transitory, alien nature of our existence in comparison to existence as a whole.

This should not be happening. Existence, by its nature, is defined by what shouldn’t be. We are the exception, not the rule.

Is this sin? Madness as virtue, or as damnation? Is it worth it, to exist, when we are so profoundly unlike all that is? 

I believe it to be a blessing.

I believe it to be a sin. 

This should not be happening, but it is. We are. Existence is. 

Should be, should not be… who can say? Perhaps we’re the ones that decide. 

Perhaps I am the one who decides. Existence should not be, but I am, and I say I should be.

May you be mad enough to say the same.

-Titan-Philosopher XXX XXXXXX (name redacted and quarantined as an Ontological Hazard)

____________________________________________________________________________

Two days is a lot of time. 

It’s also kind of no time at all, especially not when you’re biologically immortal. All three of the elders seem completely unbothered to stay floating outside in front of her space-fold.  Maybe they’re just enjoying all of the life-Qi she’s pouring out, getting some boosts to their own vitality, though she’s not sure how that works with them being the way they are. Inhuman and alien, but they are still flesh, at least to some degree, and she’s got great Fleshy goodness, so they’re probably benefitting. 

Between that and keeping her contained inside a formation, they’ve mostly just stayed still in their encampments, a few miles around the crater above and below where the plateau used to be. Close enough that a Warrior realm movement technique can have them right back on her within milliseconds, far enough not to be blatantly annoying. 

They have some of their allies with them, the more powerful ones perhaps, or the ones they want to help grow from the energies around her as well. She’s not exactly sure, and she doesn’t really care. 

More of her focus is on the formation surrounding her.

It manifests as a dome of Qi, invisible to the naked eye but brilliant to her synesthesia. There’s so many symbols on it, literally millions of them. They interlock, shift into place and then disconnect, transforming into more complex letters and symbols and then breaking apart into new ones. It’s beautiful, like a constellation flowing in and out of focus, partially alive, partially something like a river’s currents. 

She has absolutely no idea what any of it means.

And luckily, it’s not all that important! Hasn’t even touched it, actually. There’s no reason to expand outwards yet, especially not through the mundane world. She’s got some vague plans about trying to make a bridge through that vague inner space around her “edges”, where she saw some of those strange lights and distant shapes, some of them fading away, some of them abruptly being snuffed out. They’re only tentative, though. 

Frankly, she’s got a hell of a lot going on already, and she’ll either have time to do more or she won’t. 

The pyramid remains intact. Contained and functional, in spite of how messy it is, getting refined more and more with every few seconds. New frequencies of screaming, fresh doses and types of Pain, infusions of Flesh and Space to keep warping the interior and diverting more and more Qi into generating more empowered bio-materials. Still not enough to kill the Feng inside it, but as it continues to ramp up its attempts to cast formations and adapt to her methods, she keeps wearing it down, bit by bit, and the process as a whole continues to feed her more of its concepts.

It’s delicious. Genuinely. It’s like… tasting the flavors of an entire forest all at once, tinged with the themes of shadows and magics, aged, empowered… delicious. 

And hard to describe.

Then there’s the boulder. 

Using what she’s learned in the last two days to refine it properly, it’s gotten even more efficient. Her inner world grows and grows wetter, ideas of water and depth and cold and liquids. More Qi, yes, but she can generate more Qi already. She can brute force it.

This feels different, though. Like it’s… becoming part of the environment. 

It also generates more Qi, but differently. Usually her process is to just sort of grind Qi together, the most forceful and constant use of it she can manage with her biology, and it interacting with itself makes more Qi. If someone were using it to cast something, the Qi can be spent to cause an effect, but even in that scenario, a little bit more gets created. 

But having forests and waters and other ideas, other states of matter, blending against her… that’s a kind of friction too. Kind of. In a different way? It feels different, but also the same. 

She’s generating more Qi around areas she’s infesting with that foreign Qi than before. There are some ways where it fights her, and that kinda makes more but not as fluidly, not as consistently, not as well, so she avoids those. Changes them into different forms, imitating nature in some ways, doing things her own way in others. 

There’s a system to it. She’s figuring it out, bit by bit. In fact, if she figures out a way to add more boulders, there’s probably even more combinations and tricks to make even more Qi, that she can eat, that she can be a part of, that can be a part of her. 

So she’s been watching the disciples. Looking for one that fucks up. 

They’ve mostly been good, though. She’s been keeping track and while there are lots of them that absolutely do suck, lots that she very much dislikes, but none quite as bad as the one that led her to her water-obelisk. None that she can entirely justify putting to sleep and using so directly. 

She’s trying, though. 

When one of them stabs another in the back, leaving them for dead and taking some of their supplies, she watches. When two start fighting, filling the trial-tunnels with thunder and knitted ash, she watches closely to see what the victor does, and holds back when they end up not killing their opponent outright. Three disciples corner a weaker one, beating them and taking their storage rings- but they stop and leave just before it would lead to a crippling.

It’s hard to find the right criteria because she doesn’t know the right criteria. It doesn’t feel right to just grab one of them and transform them, but it did that one time, and she wants more of them, and some of them get close. She doesn’t really care about them, that’s not it. They’re interesting, and they give her great ideas, acting as lovely inspiration, but she doesn’t really know them as people, and doesn’t want to. They’re just sort of… there. 

They’re not important. They’re barely even real.

But it feels weird to just pick them up and turn them inside out. And she’s not sure why.

No safeguards slamming down, no active subversions breaking down her brain when she tries to think things through. Something behind said safeguards might be causing it, some trickle-effect of the existence of her memories even if she doesn’t actually have them, but that’s just a theory.

So! The thresholds.

If they murder someone in cold blood, she can use them. If they assault someone, she can use them. If they torture someone, they’re free game. Anything less and she starts to feel… off. 

Maybe she should push through it, though. Maybe. She has to push through her safeguards, after all, and maybe this is some kind of stranger, subtler blockage she doesn’t remember putting in place. 

Two days without finding even one viable target has that possibility looking more appealing, but then someone triggers her awareness to zoom in.

In one of the rest areas, seven disciples face off against each other, though one in particular is a bit further apart than all the rest. 

The body language, the smell, the hum of Qi and the Intent to cause harm… it’s the perfect seedbed for a fresh conflict. Considering how few of the disciples smell like they want it, it also indicates some of the unfairness (is that the word? Maybe?) that she’s looking for, tempting her all the more sweetly.

The attention of a world turns inward, highlighting a cavernous chamber filled with flesh-fruits, padded cushioning, a small spring, and the possibility of murder.

_____________________________________________________________________

“Leave your storage rings and your weapons and maybe you’ll make it out of here alive.”

“Ha! Is this a fucking joke? Bow to me a thousand times and tear off your own face, then maybe I’ll forgive your stupidity. Who are you to make threats to a disciple of the Peaks? What merit do you have to even attempt such a thing?”

Geng He grinds his teeth, feeling the new bones growing out of his arm shifting and scraping against each other in sympathetic pain. 

They’re laughing at him.

He heard them snicker as he and his team entered the rest area. The way these disciples looked down on him, on all of them, with disgust at having to share the air they breathe. Like they’ve seen some disgusting little rodent crawl out from beneath a rock in the field they’re resting in.

Geng He has had a very confusing week. 

He’s gotten more vitality, more power, more progression, than he has in his entire life over the course of the last few days. He also has killed more people in the last week than he did in the preceding three years combined, and got trapped for days in a lightless pit of spikes where he fell endlessly. He’s wandered through nightmare tunnels of monsters explicitly designed to kill him and his allies, who, stupidly, he’s actually begun to worry about, and came within feet of something so beyond him in power it almost killed him by existing.

Whorling steel and leaves and shadows and a forest that never ends and the canopy is the sky and it is filled with only hunters, hunters and the things they eat and they eat each other and the leaves are brilliant green and they shape the shadows-

He growls, centering himself.

It’s been a difficult week.

And when they found their next rest area, they found brown-robed cultivators. 

Black, brown, gold, and iron. The colors of the Peak of the Iron Tortoise.

And they looked at him like the fact that he didn’t immediately bow, or turn around and leave, is an insult. 

Like his existence is an insult.

“You don’t get to dictate terms here,” he says instead. “We’re the ones in the majority. Hand over your storage rings, or I’ll take them from your dead bodies.”

“Geng…” Yu Guanyu says, even as Lei hai growls with genuine anger behind him.

It doesn’t matter. They don’t understand, and they’re strong enough that this fight won’t go so simply for the disciples of the Peaks. And frankly, every one of the people behind him deserves the resources these privileged bastards have hoarded their whole lives. If they aren’t bold enough to take them, he’ll be the one to push them forward. 

The woman at the front of the trio of Peaks’ disciples snarls, stepping forward fearlessly. “You dare? At least your companions know how to act their place. Snapping dogs get put down, and you’re just a toad lusting for swan flesh while starved of common sense.”

The two behind her are also stepping forward, beginning to cycle their Qi ever-so-slightly in preparation for a fight.

“Having earned the attention of a mad spirit doesn’t change what you are,” says the woman seemingly acting as the leader of the enemy trio. “We have cultivated in the best environment with the finest tools and instructors since we proved worthy, while you are only now scrounging some half-decent treasures. A pig may find a truffle on occasion, but that does not make it less of a pig.”

Before he’s even realized he’s done it, Geng He has taken a step forward.

A hand grabs him by the shoulder, holding him back.

“Stop,” Lei Hai hisses, her flesh already starting to deform and twist. “This is a rest area. We aren’t here to entertain your grudges. We’ve all been fighting for hours since the last one, and there’s room enough here to share.”

“Ha! You think we’ll share with you?” says one of the Iron Tortoise’s disciples that hadn’t spoken yet. Their Qi is a bit lower than the leader’s, a bit less developed, but still higher than Geng He’s. 

They’re all nearing the peak of the Core Formation realm.

He doesn’t care. It only makes him angrier.

“Now, fellow cultivators,” Yu Guanyu says, bowing politely as he steps forward. “There’s no need for such animosity! We apologize for our traveling companion’s demeanor, but surely we all have better things to do than nip at each other’s heels. Might we all step back and take a moment of rest?”

A sneer is his answer.

“You come here, insult us, after your betters deigned to even allow you entry to this place, and then make demands? You are lucky we do not demand your heads as restitution. Instead, you can apologize for your dog’s behavior with his own demands- give us your storage rings and any natural treasures you’ve stolen from the sect’s trial grounds, and we won’t strike you down where you stand.”

Geng He spits on the ground at their feet. A cultivator’s physique makes sure the phlegm lands on the very edge of their sandals, in spite of being launched from almost twenty feet away.

Two of the three disciples color red in fury, the third one going cold and emotionless.

Geng He’s sword comes up. 

Yu Guanyu gives a long-suffering sigh. 

Movement techniques flare, Qi cycling through bodies alongside blood and adrenaline, and weapons flash. 

Kill or be killed.

_________________________________________________________________

The fight ends quickly. 

Geng He coughs up blood, and it isn’t even due to his wounds. Just his mind, body, and cultivation at war with each other. His belief in himself and what should be, scraping against reality and biology alike.

There is also a spear through his stomach.

Lei hai is missing an arm and unconscious. Dai Yuhan’s water has been turned to sludge, which is currently being used to strangle her, the choking sounds making Geng He want to throw up. Yu Guanyu is still putting up a fight, his triple-whip flashing with organic fury and his cultivation, still so secretive, spinning up for some technique or other.

The disciples of the Peak of the Iron Tortoise aren’t unwounded. One of them has lost a chunk of their robes to the kinetic blast Geng He used, and has accumulated dozens of small cuts. Another is heavily waterlogged, bruises already forming from heavy impacts besides. 

They’re wounded, yes. But they didn’t lose.

The leader, currently standing over Geng He, her spear through his stomach, smiles wide. Adrenaline and pain make her eyes wide, her breathing aggressive, but she still leans over him slowly.

“And yet again, the stupidity of one’s lessers illustrates the truths of the world. You were never going to be good enough, outsider. Weakling.”

He tries to speak, but the spear is through his guts and it hurts. It hurts less than he knows it should because it’s in his organs it’s through him it’s inside him, but it hurts so much.

She twists it a bit, her grip on it tightening and the blade dragging through his insides. He can’t help himself.

He whimpers in pain. Gasps. Moans. 

He hates himself for it. Is disgusted by the weakness it expresses in the face of this bitch.

It hurts so bad.

“And yet, you dared to waste our time. To make demands of your betters, and not even have the strength to back your foolishness. Even the toad in the well knows of the sky, but a bug beneath stones can’t understand that which is above it.”

He tries to snarl. Tries to circulate some more Qi, his system drained to dregs but still trying, still spasming through the pain-

“I think that demands restitution. For daring to place a mark on your betters, make demands of us, to interrupt our rest and to sully our air with your presence… I think I’ll take your eyes.”

She leans forward, and her smile is cold and hateful and proud. Her eyes glimmer, and there is hunger and anger and satisfaction, and it scares him very much.

Her hand is cold on his orbital socket. 

They push in.

Dai Yuhan chokes and Yu Guanyu tries to talk and Geng He screams.

Pop.

The pain doesn’t disappear- but it does abate. 

He tries to growl, tries to threaten, tries to do anything, and when he opens his remaining eye-

She’s gone.

There is still a spear in his guts, but the woman wielding it has vanished. 

Dream Qi, cycling desperately along with the rest of his affinities, briefly splashes through his senses. A brief flash, but in it, he thinks he catches a glimpse of a body distorting and warping, turning long and screaming as it vanishes into an impossible point.

The ceiling makes a wet sound as something emerges from it on a long column of spinal material.

It’s not even pretending to be human now. Spinal tissue into musculature into a nest of twisting limbs and sharp-ended claws, a dozen mutations of arms and hands sprouting from a central core. The one concession to personhood offered is a face, extending out on a limb of its own to hover in front of Geng He’s remaining eye.

The face is smiling, but the eyes are cold. Empty. Like it knows the formula for smiling, but doesn’t have that which might fuel such an expression.

It scares him more than the Iron Tortoise’s disciple ever could.

“Hello again!” the spirit of the realm says, its eyes terrifyingly blank. “I do keep finding you all! It’s rather interesting!”