Chapter 431 - Spirals Look Like Circles From The Wrong Angle (Patreon)

And hello! Guess what, babes? We're pushing RfR's backlog up for the first time in MONTHS! That's right, our highest tier is at last gaining an all-new, all-ahead chapter, meaning that the "official" chapter count is close to us once more! Everyone loves more chapters more than bonus content, and I'm happy to be more accurate. Glad that we can do this again! I'm excited! Strong portents for the future, this be. Enjoy!

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Nonhuman cultivation is almost universal, in spite of what certain purists will try to tell you, but what some people classify as “artificial” cultivation is rare. Plants and beasts and rivers and mountains and all sorts of things accumulate Qi and gain what can be recognized as patterns to it, and orthodox cultivation is only one style that can occur, in spite of how we hold it over all other forms. 

I am perhaps an exception to the traditional ideals, as I consider even formations a way of creating an artificial cultivation to a place, rather than viewing it as a simple extension of its creator. But there are some who take things a step further. Flesh-crafters that create unique biologies, golemancers that generate thinking constructs, illusionists that shape existences that don’t need to adhere to traditional physiks. Can these beings also cultivate?

Almost universally, the answer is yes. 

Do they practice orthodox cultivation? Bestial cultivation? The cultivation of plants and animals and air and water?

Almost never. 

Unique entities tend to cultivate their uniqueness, whether or not they intend to or are designed to. Human beings and our derivations often see so much difference between each minute aspect of ourselves that we sometimes forget just how broad the realms beneath Heaven can be, and all the things that can fit in them. In the big picture, we are all so very alike, and only as we grow beyond our origins can this idea even be challenged. 

“Artificial” constructs remain just as real as we are. Many of them put evidence in the idea that anything can cultivate, however it might appear to an ignorant observer. 

However, there is something to note: beings designed to be thoughtless have equivalent difficulty in cultivating or becoming more than they are. 

Interesting, no?

It calls into question ideas of sentience. Is a mountain thinking? Does it ruminate in the shifting of geological plates? Is a formation a thought, expressed in symbol, a one-dimensional sentience that shapes the world around it? What is “thought”, and is our understanding of it as limited as the understanding of some about cultivation itself?

Perhaps that is what Daemons are. An absence of thought, filling itself with the concepts it consumes as a vacuum consumes its surroundings. Though that does make me wonder- is the absence of thought itself a form of cognition?

A question for another chapter, perhaps. 

If you are to take anything from my writings, let it be this- the world is vaster than you can comprehend, and stranger than can be described. All things that can be, and much that cannot, exists within it, and thinking that it all can fit within a narrow worldview and simplistic definitions is the height of idiocy. 

Open your eyes. Look upon the Dao. All else is shackling yourself.

-Titan-Philosopher XaX XuXXng (name redacted and quarantined as an Ontological Hazard)

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“You know, I didn’t explicitly say you couldn’t fight each other in the rest zones. I don’t know if I like that or not.”

The remaining cultivators are all frozen, which was the intended effect when she deployed this version of herself. She made sure to give it some more potent biological tools, scales and claws and pheromones and venting steam, and having more than four limbs tends to freak people out, as she understands it. 

“On the one hand, it seems to make you all really mean to each other, which is great. Gives me more to work with. On the other hand, it probably makes the rest areas pretty counter-productive to the original intent. Having everyone operating at their minimum standards isn’t exactly what I’m looking for all the time.”

The cultivator on the floor coughs something, blood bubbling up through his esophagus. He’s the one she gave the exoskeletal frame to, and he’s clearly been feeding it consistently, which is great for her research as she experiences its growth. His organs being perforated will probably get in the way of its later development. 

“On the third hand,” she says, raising another limb, “keeping the possibility of danger present from each other while removing the danger from me sort of fits the spirit of things, and means I don’t have to rework the rules. So there’s things to consider. Plenty to think of. What do you all think?”

Some of them stutter, but they’re mostly looking shell-shocked or actively unconscious. The one with water-hair and the muscle-cultivator are both doing quite poorly, as is the exoskeletal one, but there’s still three people on their feet and aware. 

“Well?”

“Ah… honored spirit…”

Hmm. The one with the spinal whip. Simple design but high skill ceiling, and it’s learning from him pretty quickly.

“Perhaps it might be best to allow some places to truly recover? Even if it is the honored spirits desire to push everyone to their limits, allowing rest and improvement creates new limits to be pushed more thoroughly. Keeping the rest areas as places of true safety will be beneficial to the participant’s ability to solidify their foundations and finish integrating their rewards.”

She snaps some of her fingers, the springs in the musculature making the sound harsh enough to make the cultivators wince.

“Excellent points! Great work! I appreciate your willingness to not waste my time! Here’s a reward.”

“Wai-”

Then he’s unconscious, because modifying unconscious brains is way easier and all it takes to make it happen is move some of the oxygen out of his brain for a little wink. By the time he wakes up, his motor systems will be rewired to allow him to have synesthesia through any objects he’s holding, which should make him way better with that whip and let him do other stuff someday maybe.

As he collapses, the two fancy-robed cultivators left stare at him, then at her.

Then one of them (the one with less adrenaline) bows to her, letting the water-haired cultivator fall out of his technique. 

“Honored spirit, may this lowly one ask why you have separated us from our Dao companion?”

“You may!”

“...Honored spirit, why have you separated us?”

“As punishment, mostly.”

“With all possible respect, honored spirit, we were not the ones to incite this conflict. If one must be punished for initiating the disruption to your ‘rest area’, it would make sense that it be the one below you, rather than our boon companion.”

She laughs softly. The lungs aren’t quite conventional in this body, so there’s a lot of hissing and purring that comes with the noise, which is pretty fun. Though it does make all three of the cultivators still conscious pale a bit, which is also fun.

“That’s true, if she were being punished for fighting! But she’s not! If I change the rules so fighting isn’t allowed in the rest areas anymore then maybe that would be fair, but the fighting isn’t that big of a deal, especially since I didn’t stop it.”

The bowing cultivator starts to smell a bit frustrated, but he tamps down on it super quickly, which is very impressive for someone at his apparent age, biology, and cultivation realm.

“Of course, honored spirit. Is there perhaps any way that this lowly one might inquire as to his companion’s fate?”

“There might be! I can’t think of one, though. I might just tell you if you ask, but I’m not sure yet!”

“...Honored spirit, what was my companion and fellow disciple’s fate?”

Raika grins. The smile is wider than it should be, and sort of spirals a bit as it runs into a spatial “muscle” along the edges of her. 

“She’s being put to use for the sake of the realm. Yes, that’s a proper way to say it. Would you like to join her?”

The cultivator who really is rather strangely unemotional doesn’t quite get terrified, but he does start smelling a little more afraid, which is nice. Good to know she’s eliciting the right reactions. 

“This one would rather remain a participant in your trials, honored spirit.”

“Good word choice! I don’t actually care that much but it is nice to see someone being careful with it. Just don’t be too careful. That’s boring.

“As for you!” 

She turns to Geng He, even though she’s been perceiving him directly and completely the entire time.

“You really should be more careful when and how you pick fights. Or pick less of them! Being lucky isn’t a very good excuse for why you almost-but-not-quite killed everyone you’re with and died. Can’t really count on luck.”

He makes a gurgling, crimson sound.

“Try to do better next time, ok? Since I did get new material, I’m not too mad, but stupidity isn’t a very good trait in a person.”

She unmakes and remakes some of his blood vessels, just enough to keep him from bleeding out or drowning his own lungs in scarlet. She does not numb his nerves when she does it.

His face goes pale, his eyes roll back, and then he’s unconscious and no longer as interesting.

“Alright, that’s all! Have fun! Bye!”

And with a wet sucking sound and the movement of squirming flesh, this body is reabsorbed into her wider mass and she’s gone. If they kill each other, they kill each other. So long as they’re not too mean about it, it’s probably fine, and she’ll just collect the would-be-corpses and put them back together later. 

Or use them. They did die, after all, more or less, by conventional definitions. Who would fault her for collecting would-be corpses? 

No safeguards on that thought process. That’s good thinking, that is. 

Not enough resources to make a whole new Raika just to think about it, but close. She can work on that after she’s done with her current project.

Fresh harvest.

The first thing she does is wipe the consciousness center of the screaming body. Removing pain receptors and actively altering the chemical makeup of the stomach and blood contents leaves the body mindless, or close to it. She’s pretty sure the memory centers are all still intact, most of the grey matter entirely untouched- it’s more like the frontal lobe has gone into a coma, ever-so-slightly deprived of awareness-granting oxygen, proteins and calcium. 

In comparison, transforming the rest of the body is easy. 

The sleeping mind becomes the central node of a series of ever-increasing pathways, meridians spread out into complex weaves and synergizing with organic quartz, designed to hold and allow the passage of Qi. It takes less than an hour for the transformation to complete, reworking every organ, eliminating unnecessary tissue, and rebuilding everything up into an obelisk of bio-steel, chitin and hardened scales. 

And, as designed, it starts letting out its Qi, generating more at an exponential rate compared to the humanoid form. 

She flexes the same combination of spatial “muscles” around this obelisk as she did the watery one, folding it inwards and leaving its connection to the world barely the size of a pin. Said pin she buries deep inside her tissues, down near where the idea of “flesh” and “ground” have become interchangeable and helped her create the landscape above. 

As the water obelisk started leaving moisture and puddles all around, abyssal droplets making a moat and feeding concepts into her wider form, so does this new one change its environment. Sharp-edged stone crystalizes and breaches from the ground, minerals multiplying in the presence of Qi that has been trained / shaped to make it true that there is stone around it. Jagged cliffs form in miniature, each one cracking in turn, only to fill with dust and a thick sort of moss that binds the stones back together more potently than their original forms. 

It’s beautiful.

It’s delicious.

The screaming bones of her pyramid-cage all crack in sequence. Massive pillars crystallize in an all new form, adding more structure and stability, filling in with biology and moisture to enhance their architecture further. The blood moving in currents and tides around and through the prison gets that little bit smoother, interfacing with the expanded repertoire of concepts.

Both of the new sources of Qi she has are niche. It’s not all stone, it’s specifically sharp, craggy stone that cracks and has things growing in it, for example. But even then, those concepts tie into other things, which tie, into other things, and even the idea of those connections is enough to help her grow.

The friction of existence in harmony is more than the friction of forceful contact. Grinding random Qi together as best she can doesn’t do nearly as much as the cycling of Qi that happens naturally as she forms a truer environment, her flesh denser with minerals, sharp-edged and symbiotic already yet further enhanced.

And she could make more.

There are so many spiritual organs she could use. So many that are just sitting in storage, and maybe she could even learn to mix and match them properly, learn to make new Qi batteries. 

The thought is almost as delicious as gaining a new organ of her own to play with. 

It’s also sort of… off.

Again something stops her. Again, something inside her, maybe a more subtle form of control, maybe some part hidden away by the safeguards, says not to, though she doesn’t know or feel why, just that it’s off.

It’s also not very smart.

Even as she introduces new concepts into the prison-pyramid, she has to undo and remold some of the changes where it’s weakened rather than strengthened it. The shadowy, scalpel-edged forest within that inverted core pushes at any weakness, no matter how minute, and she’s actively having to learn how to comprehend and use these new facets she’s pumping into herself. They are not of her, even as she adds them to her wider system, so her understanding is limited.

She can adapt. She already is. But adding dozens of other new cultivator-concepts, if not more, will only destabilize her. 

But that’s not the main reason she stopped herself, which is annoying.

With two elemental nodes in her body, both of them hidden in Space and Flesh, she changes her makeup a bit. Re-orienting some connections, reshaping some pieces, she places the nodes in alignment with each other, both obelisks pumping energy and concepts through different pathways out into the world. She makes sure that both trails of Qi bump into each other at points, enjoying the fresh flavor and pitched sounds that they make as they interact, and where they meet, more pronounced changes tend to form.

Two dreaming minds meet, and their mutual madness, touched by mutual power, makes music.

It’s ever so lovely. 

Also frustrating.

She still can’t touch it. 

It flows along pathways she designs, sure, but that’s not the same thing. She can’t just will it to move, can’t imbue it with active shapes or form techniques with it. It’s in her and of her, but it exists on another layer, one she can sense but not touch. The more she has, the more notable it is.

If she could touch Qi as she does flesh, she could unmake her prisoner through sheer will alone. She could form out of pure nothingness whatever she has the energy to fuel. Instead, she has to work through layers of interfaces- from will to Flesh to harvested organs to concept. 

But it’s mostly delicious, and progress is progress.

She could probably make so many bombs. 

The thought makes her do the metaphysical equivalent of smiling within herself. The chances of another cultivator crossing a line are much higher than zero, and once she’s done assimilating these new nodes properly-

Tap tap tap.

…

“What the fuck was that?”

Tap tap tap.

There. On her… membrane? The weird un-space that defines her edges. 

Tap tap tap.

There’s something there. Something bumping up against her boundary, something that glows with an inner light that feels oh-so-familiar and which smells of Flesh and Space and other things.

The sensation is so new, so alien, so shocking, that she almost doesn’t realize that the tapping is being replicated on the trees outside of her spatial fold.

Tap tap tap.

Two Raikas form, immediately spawning in at the two equivalent points she’s being contacted from.

At her inner limits, a long, slender tendril of Her moves through the nothingness, between the fuzzy islands of light and dark and nothing and everything.

Outside of her, at her “entrance”, a man that stinks of bells and sharpened swords blinks as she forms a body right beside him.

“Oh. Well shit. Hello master.”