Chapter 435 - So Many Options, So Many Treats, So Much To Hurt! (Patreon)

Damn! Apparently, my freshly increased meds, which majorly help to regulate hormones, decided to remind my body that I have a period! You know what that means! My sternum and tummy hurt and my emotions are Jokers Wild right now, and lean towards mean!

And yet, here I am! A new chapter! Family visited! Friends spent time with! Love accepted in my life! And serving cunt to boot! Muahaha! Suffering! Also, having a reason for why my whole system suddenly went "panic panic pain nausea panic anger panic" actually helps alleviate a lot of those emotions. Knowing what's causing stuff is WAY less stressful than going in circles trying to figure out tf is happening or if it's happening. Take notes fellow tgirls!

PS: I dunno about the last paragraph or so of wordles in here! Lemme know if you think it felt abrupt or if you'd like more insight into what happens / is created before next chapter, i.e. in this one, and I'll hit it with some edits!

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Alternative forms of cultivation are not, in truth, “alternative”. They are just as central and, in some ways, just as “orthodox” as what we consider to be “true” cultivation. Those in the Jianghu and in the distant so-called Empire, they gain power by absorbing powers that they are attuned to, and then transforming their inner selves into something greater. 

Then there are those who create something separate from themselves, and then bind it to their being. Users of what is called “Craft”, separating part of themselves out and then transforming it into a higher avatar, which they control. 

Beasts consume with less regard for attunement, devouring what they please and letting it elevate their whole selves as one to a higher plane. 

Some grab hold of singular concepts, grasping the Dao and personal ideas, and define those as grander than what reality naturally claims them as, embedding their identity into a new set of rules. 

All distinctive, and made all the moreso the more they develop. Each being’s identity is inherently unique, and this only becomes more true and more dramatic as they gain additional rules, additional layers, additional pieces of reality to add to themselves and additional pieces of themselves to add to reality. 

But that’s the trick to it. It’s all the same thing. 

It certainly doesn’t feel like it. It certainly doesn’t look like it. But they’re all the same. 

We interact with the world. We shape it through our experiences, and are shaped by it. The more we become, the more we become. 

Some might call this perspective reductive, or insultingly bad at describing what actually is. Some have done so to my face. That’s understandable. When one factors in the lower levels of cultivation, which require such extensive understanding, training, learning, factoring in spiritual organs and rigid array structures and necessary treasures and ingredients. When one is looking at ants, it’s difficult to describe the whole jungle, or the seas beside it, or the deserts and mountains beyond. 

So stop looking at ants, and you will see. 

The more we exist, the more we exist. The more we become, the more we become. 

Qi is existence itself. Awareness is existence itself. Identity is existence itself.

We are existence, manifested through the delusion that we are unique, that we are distinctive, that we are alive in a way that’s different from all the rest. The illusion is thus true, obviously. 

More Qi is more existence. More awareness is more existence. More identity is more existence. These things do not and cannot exist in a vacuum, so we interact more with the world, and become more, even as we add to it further.

All power is different. All power is the same. All people are different, and all people are the same. All the world is different, and all the world is the same. 

That, as close as I can tell, is what Dao is. Though maybe that too is just too limited a concept. A word, invented by children to try and understand things too far beyond them to be conceived of.

I honestly don’t know. That’s part of it too. Knowing and not knowing are also sort of the same thing, in a way. The world’s fun like that. And fucked up, obviously.

 -”Path Of The Deathless”, primer on Cultivation of all forms, written by Sun “Murder The Heavens And Eat Their Thrones” Dailou, Burning Ambitions Made Flesh, The Screaming Sunlight Turned Sweet And Savory. Redacted by official Imperial Decree, held in perpetuity amongst the Divine Vaults.

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“What about the weapons? The artifacts?”

Raika tilts a head inquisitively at Aria, curious. “What do you mean? The stuff in the basements? It’s nicely shaped, but I don’t-”

“Can it be of any use? Maybe you could fuse them together, grant them more strength? If you can do in seconds what it takes days to build, then the formulas we’ve designed might be able to serve as a foundation for something.”

“Hmm. Not a bad idea. I can probably make another me to go check it out, but I’ll need a moment to get her right. This is taking a lot of effort, even with modifications.”

As if on cue, an echoing scream rises up from the floor below them, where sounds of squelching, changing flesh and crackling crystals make themselves known.

Aria pointedly ignores the noises, keeping her eyes locked onto the quasi-humanoid Raika in front of her. 

“Is it the safeguards you mentioned?”

“Mmm, no. It’d be easier without them, but it just takes a lot to make new me’s, and they’re taking up a lot of my attention.”

The mansion trembles ever-so-slightly at the sound of the dome breaking up above. Bone and sinew snap with the sound of thunder, the sky filling with a screaming wetness as they pull back together and force the outer shield back into place.

The screams from within the mansion are unceasing, but they almost seem to harmonize with the agony of the Flesh above. 

Raika siphons some more Pain from out of them, modifying and deadening nerves but focusing primarily on her comprehension of suffering to minimize theirs. 

In the end, only eight out of the almost two-hundred spouses volunteered. A few of them seemed desperate, a few delusional, a couple of them with clearer eyes but obviously taking a gamble. The blue-haired woman with an entourage of servants; the gold-skinned young man with sharp eyes; a jade beauty with a smile like knives and hair like midnight, who doesn’t scream; a bright eyed almost-child, younger than most and more afraid. 

Beside them, two warriors, each of them spurred on by the other, young masters with skin of ivory and eyes of gold and black; a tall woman, whose outfit is less extravagant and stylized distinctly from the others; a young man with long, lanky limbs, his hair draped over his back in an unkempt bun, his teeth filed sharp. 

Eight in total. She didn’t learn their names. The names aren’t important. 

Changing them without breaking them is.

Each body is unique. Each one is flavored distinctly, and she tracks every taste, discovering every ingredient, every combination. She tastes minerals and metals and water and air, mingled in scar and hormone and age and diet. She tastes fear and pain, she tastes dream, tastes joys and favorite moments and greatest agonies. She tastes concepts, interwoven through organs deep into the spirit and back out into the mind, each one cooked in almost alien shapes from the kitchens of perspective.

She has to refocus a bit. 

People are delicious. 

She feels like she knew that already. Or like she knew it at some point. 

Probably doesn’t matter. No safeguards in that direction. 

Each body is unique. There are also some factors to them that are universal. For one thing, she can’t make them into obelisks, so there’s only so much she can add to them. For another, shaping them a bit too sharply outside of their general anatomy seems to elicit some intense panic reactions, which is counter-productive. 

Luckily, she’s had practice. 

Raikas back in the trials are transmitting ideas back to the whole all the time, each theoretical upgrade and modification counterbalanced with the practical expertise of healing and transforming. 

For one thing, Raika grows a layer of her quartz over their spiritual organs. Not literally, of course- she can’t reach that layer, but she can replicate in their bodies, adding a new system alongside the nervous and lymphatic. The crystals are small enough to keep the tubes flexible, interlocking with sinew and fats rather than as single-state constructs, and as their Qi circulates, it starts to fill those same crystals with their flavors. 

Next, she opens up room in their abdominal cavities, improving the liver and kidneys and then shrinking them to open up extra room, refining the lower intestines to need a few feet less to finish digestion with. In the ensuing gap, she forms a multi-sided node, connecting the crystalline secondary organs into it like a brain or heart. Its chambers are more digestive than vascular though, intaking Qi-rich crystals and enriched flesh and outputting it back, increasing the speed of circulation and making it partially automated.

With their new, secondary spiritual organs established, she moves to the rest of the body. Embedding bio-crystalline proteins into more organ systems makes them artificially more conducive to Qi, while re-woven tissues allow for more strength, more velocity, more control. Nerves are optimized, twitch-speed reflexes lined with Qi-rich calcium and running on unique chemistry. Bones are made denser but lighter, internal architecture making the improved material look honeycombed, boosting the amount of marrow that’s produced and oozes out into the body.

It’s pretty fun. It’s a good thing she doesn’t need them to fight right away, because they’d be a mess while adjusting, but in the process of turning them into batteries and generators in one, she gets to make all kinds of little improvements. 

Though, again, their combat capabilities aren’t that important right now. It’s the Qi.

The crystalline proteins especially are more Her than they are them. Designed to allow Qi through it, unlike the rest of her, which exists on a spectrum from resistant-to-impenetrable to the energy, it’s eagerly drinking in their cultivation. Not enough to drain them entirely, because what would be the point? The more Qi they generate, the more she can use to add to her internal “flavors”, which makes more Qi overall. They need to have as much Qi as they can handle, more, so they create more and more and more until they’re flooding her with the extra.

So she optimizes, and leaves them their power and improved bodies, even as she feels the concepts flavoring them leaking into her being. 

The formless all-light inside the fold in space shifts, gaining rays and shaped to sunlight. 

The waters grow smoother, flowing faster.

Heat starts to remain where it’s formed rather than dissipating, sticking to specific features. 

The sky begins to crackle with energy and moisture.

The air, previously still and moved only by the flexing of Flesh, starts to flow. 

Crevices gain deeper shadows, more fluidity in their darkness. 

Distant mountains anchor themselves in a miniscule, undefinable way, only just beginning to grow heavier. 

The soil of flesh grows ever-so-slightly more porous, more receptive.

Eight new sources of Qi, entering her domain of self, of Flesh and Space and Pain. Each has distinctive features, unique traits and perspectives and thoughts, but they don’t matter to her nearly so much as their effects.

She goes from bleeding almost thirty percent of her generated Qi out through the manse, down to twenty-five.

Then down to twenty-two.

Then down to twenty.

It has been three minutes since the assault began.

The exterior shield of the array is near its breaking point, reduced to little more than a disruptive zone of malformed concept and chaotic, destabilized Qi. 

Immortals move slowly, even as they attack faster than she can intercept, dropping weapons almost as dangerous as the bombs she herself used a scant few hours past. 

Raika moves fast.

“Do you think that you could put together the best of those artifacts you mentioned? Maybe have some explanations about what they do ready? I’ll meet you down in the workshops in a bit.”

Aria nods, taking the quick break in the conversation in stride. “I can do that. Would it be more useful to narrow down the options without making active selections? I don’t know your capabilities as well as you do.”

“No, you’ve got a good brain, you can do it. Besides, you’ve designed them, so you’ll be able to explain them faster to me than I might be able to feel them out. Whatever you think is most useful or would go best together would be best.”

“Understood, master.”

And with that, Aria’s gone, vanishing at superhuman speeds off to wherever in the manse they keep the fancy stuff. 

Which is… interesting, because Raika can’t feel anything important over where she’s heading. Huh.

More important things to worry about.

The screaming in the manse’s inner courtyard keeps ringing off the walls, but she’s already switched focus. 

As that Raika remains in charge of optimizing their fresh new batteries, the Raika who is currently being skinned and flayed and burned and electrocuted by the failing barrier feels the rise in Qi levels and complexity, and starts to move. 

They have stood there, entirely unwilling to even engage. They have stood there, outside the range of any possible reply or counter-attack, bombing a compound full of people powerless against them. 

They have hurt her again.

A few selective safeguards shiver or melt into proteins or start to pinch off nerves at that thought. It remains powerful enough to endure anyways.

They’re hurting her again.

She hates them.

Hatred is a fun little tool. It makes it very easy to prioritize things. 

She reaches through the connecting veins and fibers she’s infested the defensive array with, and wrenches things apart.

The array lets out a final shriek of agonized energy tearing through ionized air as it dies, imparting a fresh layer of scar tissue on the flesh-dome.

The moment after it collapses, the flesh has transformed to armor, chitinous plates and hyper-reactive scales taking the place of exposed tissue that had the sensitivity and fine control required to push back against and manage the array. The bombs land, and instead of hitting agonized magic and tormented biology, they make a profoundly different sound as the dome compresses and then expands back out the moment the explosion is done. 

A pause in the bombing comes. Barely noticeable, more of a hiccup in their firing rate than anything, owing to the thinking speed of high-realm cultivators, but there nonetheless. 

Raika takes the opportunity to reach through her armor, touching the Space that is touching her Flesh, and pulls.

The world distorts, the current wave of bombs falling into a single pocket- and the armor opens a a piece of itself as it approaches. A maw of scales and chitin and crystal and bone, deeper than should be possible for a dome only twenty feet thick, and the bombs vanish down her gullet. 

A cloud of crimson ash ejects from her the moment after, swirling across the burned-out plateau surrounding her manse, rising up slowly into the air. 

Beneath the mansion, lungs the size of buildings grow in a space squeezed to no more than the size of a marble inhale air from halfway across the Jianghu, only to expel it out through a thousand throats simultaneously.

The word spoken echoes for miles.

“WEAK”

Cheap tactic for sure. 

As the next wave, after the hiccup, lands on her shield-dome, she broadcasts her laughter across the skies. 

And she eats them, too.

The few that escape, thrown in a wider range to explore this new defensive measure, pressure the dome and force its exterior to respond, compressing, interlocking armor plated, flexing beneath the heat and force- and then returning to its former shape seamlessly after. 

She laughs and laughs and laughs.

It is not a sane sound.

The volunteers within her are added to the two she already possesses, placed against and alongside the inverted pyramid below her center. 

The flow of her being grows the slightest bit more complex, the slightest bit more harmonic, the slightest bit more discordant.

There’s something there about the vibrations, especially along the parts of her that are close to metallic. A tickle of a memory, something around her neck-

The Raika that had that thought experiences her brain turning to bloody slush as the safeguards liquify her ability to think.

Another Raika is born, taking over the memories of the former and working on breaking down said defences, even as she avoids repeating the thought. 

The bombs stop falling, and her laughter, louder than thunder, is the sound that remains in the aftermath.

“PATHETIC”

The word is loud enough to disrupt some of the smoke that remains, pushing the red mist out further from her, stirring the ash around her. 

She won’t talk to them. What could she say that would convince them to change their behaviors? What words can she offer that she’d be willing to speak with Intent that wouldn’t lead to further violence?

She hates them.

They are here to kill her, and if they care why, she has not felt it in their attacks. 

A campaign of extermination is burning through her, and she cannot allow it. She wouldn’t even if she could. She has things to do and learn and be and they don’t get to take that from her again.

Haha. That thought sort of tickles.

She infuses every ounce of Intent she can muster into the following word.

Intent to Insult. To Harm. To Belittle. To Kill. 

“UNWORTHY”

The echo makes the world bend away from it this time. Everything that gets too close, including the world itself, suffers the Intent placed within it, and in the distance, three small figures sway.

Not a lot. Barely the bobbing of a boat on a rippling lake, unbothered by even a wave. 

But she still sees it.

And she means every word. 

From out beyond her range, two Warrior Realm and one peak Nascent Soul Realm cultivators activate artifacts, touch upon arrays, and open wide the gates of their cultivation. 

Techniques begin to form, free from the burden of needing to react to damage, free to take their time in crafting absolution. 

The rain of attrition failed, so her enemies seek to wipe her out in a conjoined burst of force, all of them taking the assault seriously in the echoing aftermath of her speech. 

It’s just so perfect.

Deep inside herself, part of a pyramid stabs inward, carving a cutting of a tree of shadow and murder and impossible green. 

Ten different nodes of cultivation cycle through her demi-divine Flesh, shaped in impossible patterns through Space.

They hurt her.

She hates them.

The dome opens just enough for something to emerge. 

What comes forth is not a person.

A serpent of limbs. A typhoon of blades and metals and violence. A screaming mouth that is laughing, crowned by antlers and horns and spiraling knives and sobbing forestry.

Raika, brand new to the world, born not a full minute prior, cackles as she slithers free of herself and flies into the air, imbued with all the power and Soul at her disposal. 

She hates them.

What a joy it is to exercise that hate.