Chapter 432 - Negotiations Are Best Done From A Position Of Strangeness (Patreon)

Oof! Almost got me! Got a little busy today and a little low energy but burnout is far from me and joy is easier to reach, so consistency remains and so do I! Chapter time this fine monday, with 10 minutes to spare!

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One of the local organizations outside of the conventional power structures of the Republic of Morae that has rapidly begun to escalate frictions is often referred to as “the Crimson Manse”. They do not seem to have a sect or clan designation, but have been actively engaging with the target sites before our arrival, and seem to have a degree of proficiency with it. Consisting of two primary individuals and a series of lesser “spouses” that have been promised to the former main target, they’ve had consistent success in controlling, influencing, and economically benefitting from the target’s remaining mass, and have used a considerable amount of the political influence derived thereof to respond swiftly to our arrival. Their current threat rating is relatively minimal- however, their clout and social influence has placed them as a tertiary target for elimination.

This lowly one estimates that this assessment should be reviewed, upgrading them to a secondary target and diverting a small detachment to deal with them directly as part of our first-wave efforts. That they were able to respond within an hour of first contact with the primary targets implies a more profound amount of control or awareness than expected from what were previously believed to be conventional opportunists. Whether or not these individuals possess a more impactful pre-existing relationship with the target is secondary to the fact that they pose a threat now, however minute.

Responses from other locals have been diverted and some of our less entrenched operatives have been uncovered in the process. The resistance we’re encountering is organized quite distinctly from the theoreticals posed pre-deployment; this lowly one requests a censure of our agents in the Oracular Division, and a proper re-review of local conditions. There are too many factors interfering with operations to be treated as coincidence, and the circumstances are shifting rapidly due to the unforeseen variables present in the field.

Notably, one such variable remains the primary asset. It has been… mercurial, and difficult to interact with. While this lowly one understands that this is crucial to its function, it has kept us from proper cooperation, and its actions as disruptor and assassin have been missed in the field. Several Warrior realm targets marked for elimination have not yet been taken off the board, and those that have were… messier than this lowly one has come to expect of the primary asset’s work. This, coupled with the shifting socioeconomic pressures being wielded by the tertiary targets, has allowed the primitive factions of this “Jianghu” to hold back or disrupt several encounters with the primary target.

A full-on assault is, at this point, possible, though this lowly one dares to recommend that it be avoided for now. With proper informational supremacy and closer cooperation between the chosen tools of the Clan, the operation can still be completed on the original timetable and with disruptions within the acceptable margins. 

Awaiting orders. 

For the Glory of the Family.

-Operational report from forward assets of the Clan’s military operation in the Republic of Morae to higher command.

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“You doing alright, boss? You’re looking sort of… off.”

Raika stares blankly at the figure standing in front of her.

“You’ve just been sort of looking at me. For like, five minutes. I know we live a long time but we have a lot to do, so is there anything I can do to hurry up whatever this is?”

Her head tilts, like part of the neck muscles have stopped responding. A ship listing to one side, rather than an intentional action.

“...Boss?”

“I know you.”

He blinks, then nods. “Yeah. You do. Or you did, at least. We both look a bit different from the last time we saw each other like this.”

She nods, slowly and carefully. She has to weave her thoughts through cheese-wire to do so, doing everything in her power not to think of what it means that she knows this person.

She doesn’t need the context, or the history, or the details. She just needs to find his identity, buried as it is behind the same safeguards that keep all of her memories hidden away. 

She knows this person. She’s met them before. They know her, and he seems to know her to an extent that their behavior is connected to each other and relevant. He expects her to have a specific response to his presence. They have preexisting connections. He’s tall, seemingly male, has short hair, bells decorating his armor, and a very large sword on his back, and he smells of ringing and cuts from off angles. 

Recognizing his scent is almost enough to make this part of her collapse- she redirects her thoughts at the last millisecond. She allows the distraction to last exactly as long as it takes her subconscious to return to where the blockage is and rewire the proteins and calcium that make up her self-lobotomy programing. 

That part of her brain unravels and then rebuilds itself properly, and suddenly she remembers.

“Ko. Your name is Ko. You… work for me.”

Ko shrugs. “Pretty much. I came here to find you.”

“Why?”

“We’ve been doing what we can to keep the pieces you left up and running, but now there’s a bunch of weird, strong guys going around attacking you. A lot of the pieces of you that you’ve… left in our care have been wiped out or taken somehow, and they’re moving in on a lot of the other ones. I don’t really know who they are, but-”

“Feng.”

The rocks around her bone-trees crumble to sand and break apart. Stone becomes pebble as wind becomes still air, her Intent murdering parts of the world around her. 

Ko has to take a step back from her, flinching just a bit. A shield of his Qi wobbles slightly against her Intent, destabilizing for a moment from the sheer strength of her hatred. 

“If you say so, master. This… piece of you? Or this you? Is one of the stronger parts we’ve met. I’ve come to meet with you and connect you back to your other pieces.”

“Connect… to the other pieces. That’s what’s knocking? Inside?”

“I… think so. Probably.”

Raika turns back inside herself, letting the body and mind on the outside go still for a bit as others of her confer. 

There, at the outskirts of her existence, is a vague, fuzzy shape. It’s pushing up against an invisible barrier around her exterior, stretching out into the poorly-defined distance, weaving in between the other out-of-focus islands and lights out there. 

It’s pushing, and that’s making the knocking sensation, but it’s just bouncing off over and over, unable to enter her domain. 

“That bridge. It’s you? It’s from you?”

“Yeah. Aria sent it over, she’s way better at talking to you than I am a lot of the time.”

That… doesn’t sound quite right.

“...No. I liked talking to you more. You say things more directly. I liked that.”

Ko doesn’t really seem to know how to respond to that. Instead, he just waits, letting her process it on her own time so long as he doesn’t have a ready response.

Yes. She preferred speaking to him. Back when she was Her. 

“Ok. How do I connect to it?”

Ko shrugs, then seems to think better of leaving it at that. “It’s… different parts have different densities. Levels of Qi and stuff like that. I think you’re probably stronger, so you could lower your defences a bit for it.”

“And what will this cause?” asks a new voice.

Well, not a new voice. She recognizes them.

Floating above them both is a figure in black, gold, and brown robes, flanked on the opposite side by another figure in deep blues. 

“We are not in the business of providing favors to upstarts that seek to deprive our precious disciples of the resources they need to grow. Nor are we willing to extend the courtesy of patience forever. Disciples of the Peaks are held within this… fragment. I will not have them put at risk for your sake.”

“Nor shall the Peak of the Azure Serpent allow its protected and chosen to suffer such a thing,” says the man in blues. “At the very minimum, compensation must be addressed for the defense of your master’s lesser duplicate. After you’ve returned to us our disciples, of course.”

“But they’re not done.”

Ko turns to her, his face bad at emoting but the raised brow saying plenty on its own. The two elders also raise the pressure of their existence by a bit, letting some of their weight leak out against the world in a show of force.

“Does this… construct-spirit speak for you and the Crimson Manse, Xun Ko?”

“That is certainly not entirely the case, honored elder.”

The pressure increases.

“Then deliver unto us our disciples,” says the mountain that bridges the Heavens and the earth, “or we shall finish what the upstart outsiders attempted, with far more righteousness and violence than they could conceive to muster.”

Raika’s almost entirely certain that that’s an exaggeration, because the Fengs weren’t exactly not violent. Even now, the prisoner she holds likely has some life-saving measures and trump cards held in reserve for when the digestion becomes too dire to bear or to be activated by a signal from his allies. But the elders of the Peaks do have a sort of weight to them that the Fengs didn’t. It feels like…

Hmm. The mountain tastes like a complete picture. It exists in its own context. The broad rivers across from it, depths unknown and beasts slumbering within, is the same- a whole and complex artwork, a meal of multiple courses which simply do not exist outside of each other.

The Fengs felt like they were referencing something. Calling to something higher, and acting as reflections of it rather than standing wholly alone. It doesn’t make them weaker or lesser, but it does make a difference- and she wonders just how far the Feng she’s captured would have gotten without that big sky-branch he hit her with. 

The elders of the Peaks are peaks themselves. Singular, and beyond compare. The Fengs seem like extensions of something else, something greater that they have dedicated themselves to. Neither is weaker than the other, but one-on-one… maybe she’d be more worried about an elder.

“Honored elders, I’d like to say-”

“I can ask them if they want to leave,” Raika says, interrupting Ko. Xun Ko? That’s a fun new name for him. Matches the title of the thing they mentioned. “Crimson Manse”. 

“They are safe, then?” asks the blue-robed figure that is a boundless river.

“They are very much not, but that is very much the point. The ones left have gotten a lot stronger than when they started.”

“The ones left?”

The mountain stirs, its glare intensifying to the point that Raika’s weight seems to increase faster than she can compensate. “How have you deceived the life-lanterns, construct?”

“I haven’t deceived anything,” she says, forcing her body back upright even as the tree she’s parasitized cracks and starts to crumble into splinters. “Some of them did die. The others I still have. I can put them back together, but they lost, so their pieces are getting looked at while the ones who can still grow are going through the trials or wandering.”

The elders don’t look directly at each other, but she recognizes the flickering flavor of Qi-based communication. Traveling at the speed of thought, the two elders speak to each other, in spite of the tangy hatred that sits between them.

“We were not informed of any trials from previous disciples,” says the river.

“That makes sense. They’re new. Someone seemed confused I didn’t have any, and it seemed like a pretty decent idea, so I decided to try it. They’ve given me a ton of new ideas to work with, and I got to use some of those ideas to give them cool new pieces. I’m pretty sure everyone that’s still actively participating at this point won’t die from aging for the next century or two, even if they don’t advance at all. If they do? They’ll get old before they start getting old.”

“Such rewards are hardly of any use to the Peak of the Iron Tortoise if you are to keep them prisoner. We will not allow the Crimson Manse to kidnap our disciples any more than we would allow you to possess them indefinitely, construct.”

She makes shoulders so she can shrug. “That’s fine. They’re interesting, but I don’t really need them at this point. I can ask to see who’s ready to leave, or I could just vomit them all up.”

“Except the ones who lost,” Ko says.

He has just enough time to grunt before the pressure of both Warrior realm elders focuses on him, driving him down to one knee and cracking one of the talismans he’s wearing.

“You dare?”

“Who are you to stand before us and impose conditions, junior?”

Ko struggles to breathe, barely able to move. Raika starts to siphon a bit of power from her other selves, preparing to act if it looks like the elders are going to try and kill him.

But then-

“Insurance.”

The word leaves strained lips. With what feels like a begrudging reluctance, the pressure lightens, just enough that she can feel his biology go from imminent failure to agonizing strain.

“Respectfully, honored seniors,” he gasps, “this junior would… rather have something even… the Peaks desire.”

“And you think you have the daring to withhold them from us?” asks the mountain.

“I literally have their severed heads,” Raika says.

The pressure shifts back to her, then multiplies, pressing down on both of them. Ko seems to try and give her an incredulous look, but he’s mostly fighting through a collapsing set of ribs and probably isn’t thinking straight, so she doesn’t take offense.

“Most of them killed each other. The ones who died to the trials got plenty of warning, and I’ve made sure that they aren’t too far beyond their limitations. Probably. Either way- they’d be dead entirely if I hadn’t made sure they aren’t. Now, they exist, and can be put back together, but if I disconnect from them as they are, you’ll just have very fresh corpses. They lost their lives, and I’ve been polite enough to keep them going on credit. Why should I return them if you’re just going to keep being rude?”

The pressure increases, the mountain proclaiming existence to its shape- but the river retracts. 

The mountain follows along a moment after, begrudgingly letting Ko breathe through his broken ribs (and partially shattered pelvis, and dislocated knee, and broken hand, and a few other fun little contusions she can fix). 

“Great! Glad we’re all being polite! But since you were rude, I won’t ask your disciples if they want to leave.”

“You-”

“The survivors will all get kicked out in two days,” she says, forcing Qi-enriched blood through herself to push through the weight of the elder’s words. “The others will be returned once you’ve offered me a good trade for them. And either way, I’m going to do stuff with Ko, and if you want to stop that, you’ll have to deal with everyone in my body dying. Or staying with me. Which, honestly, I think they might dislike more.”

Silence. 

She smiles wide, her eyes glowing and blank as a doll’s.

“Great! Anyways-”

The Raika that was put in charge of figuring out the boundary and densities issue real quick takes the talking-Raika’s cue, and the distortion bends. 

A bubble of existence inside her lightens, going from that same thick haziness to something a bit clearer, and the tendril of flesh pushes forward one last time- popping the outer membrane in a perfect circle. 

It’s not very well designed. She can see why it had issues getting to a “higher density” area of Raika, considering it feels almost watery, it’s so under-enriched. Still denser than any below the Nascent Soul realm, but when pretty much the only thing she can do with Qi is make more and drink it deep, other parts of her should be more advanced than this, no?

Questions for later. 

The tendril touches the mountains at her outer edge, and she softens the tissue so that neurology can bridge through the gap between both of them-

And then she’s more herself.

She’s here.

She’s beneath an expansive mansion. And in the walls of it. And in the gardens. 

All is true at once. She’s just more.

Immediately, Qi tries to drain away from her main existence towards the near-vacuum of the mansion, and she has to forcefully try and restrict it, dedicating more Raikas to the task.

On the surface, Raika turns to Ko, who is looking like he’s healing rather quickly for someone in so low of a realm. 

“Alright! All done. Bye now.”

That body collapses, its brain and body both dissolving back into the mass.

Ko blinks. 

Then he looks up at the elders, who remain eminently grumpy.

He sighs.

“Gods but this job sucks.”

And then Raika’s melted entirely, and the parts of her monitoring her exterior aren’t all that interested in the conversation that goes on.

She has so much more to figure out now. And she’s on a timetable with her experiments! All good things. 

And apparently, there are even more Fengs to kill. Always a lovely thought, that. Not a safeguard in sight.