Chapter 440 - The Wine Of Sweet Temptation (Patreon)

So I did mention that this wouldn't be a true villain arc. This Raika's not evil, after all. Buuuuut. Well. What if Glados was a bit less self-aware, just a scooch more conflicted, but still very much interested in doing what she really wants to do (and can do, and is designed to do, and what would feel suuuuuper good to do)? That's more the vibe. I think it's working, but we'll see! About 20 more chapters until we're wrapped up with arc 10, so let's see where this goes!

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Yes, I do understand that there is an ongoing crisis. However, as any one of my fellow elders should well know, a single crisis is never more than an invitation for its fellows to swarm. While I do not deny nor detract from the nobility and strength of my cultivators in defending our sects from the roving attacks being perpetrated upon them, we defend our borders with such vigor and force for good reason. There are elders within the Warrior Realm stationed so far from home for a reason. I understand it may be easy to forget, ensconced so far away from the venerable castles and barricades with which our territory is defended, but the sacrifice is not made for nothing.

The recent invasion has destabilized our barrier. So many presences in the Divergent Paths passing through so violently, wielding such distinctive and foreign magics, has had a prolonged effect that may take weeks to properly resolve, even if we were to work with our greatest formation masters immediately to rectify it. It would take far more than such a vulgar and undirected disruption to cause a proper collapse, but there will be gaps and small bubbles through which foreign contaminants and opponents may sneak in through our borders.

That, of course, is only if the disruption remains as is. Should it be worsened, there is every possibility that the Jianghu of the Republic of Morae may be left exposed to alien airs for the first time in millenia. 

Which is why I once again am writing to my fellow elders, aged in wisdom and power, to inform them of the fact that one ongoing crisis is no excuse to ignore another, and that there are beasts circling us. 

This is no metaphor. I see them now. There are roaming abominations and transcendent monsters actively making their presences known along the outer edge of our defences, and in numbers I have rarely ever seen before. Some of the beasts might even require direct intervention from my august self and my fellow walkers of the Divergent Paths, and there are more appearing across every point I can ascertain. As they gain numbers, our allies lose their own as elders and guardians depart from their posts, whether summoned or not, to try and combat the rampant madmen assaulting our people and enemies alike. I beseech the council and the honored Patriarch to reach out to our allies and even those we might consider foes in kinder times, that we might bolster our exterior defenses and stop the dogs from biting at our wounds while we try to fight off infection.

-Elder Tan Jiang of the Broken Skies Sect, in a written missive teleported at personal cost to the remains of his Sect.

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“Alright! Trial’s over! If you haven’t gotten the stuff you wanted, that’s too bad, learn to deal with it and get ready to leave!”

The statement coincides with thousands of artificial life forms suddenly falling still, losing all of their previous agency and beginning to quickly dissolve into slurry. The few disciples and wandering cultivators in the process of being actively modified get to finish their procedures, but everyone else experiences the environment changing dramatically all at once.

 For most, she simply pulls them out of her inner-interior into her outer-exterior, but some do get a chance to see the Twin Blood Pagoda drying up, or the Profound Musculature Pavilion spasming and collapsing inwards into a crushing ball of meat, or the Licentious Layer of Livers start gushing acidic fluids all over itself and dissolving. So on and so forth. She did set up a lot of little areas for people to get goodies from. One of her had a lot of fun with the alliteration.

As they’re “teleported” into the open fields of her outer-inner layer, many of the cultivators outright collapse. Almost all of them are still in the Core Formation Realm, after all, and going for days on end without light or sleep or proper rest can have that effect on people. Those who don’t are usually those who were in combat rather than trying to navigate environmental hazards, their adrenaline still pumping as half-aborted techniques shoot out and then dissipate into the open air.

Most do eventually end up sitting down to meditate, which is nice. Solidifying their gains and all that. Others are eying up their rivals or potential targets, seeming ready to incite further violence. She neither stops them nor encourages them. She could certainly use some more Qi nodes, but frankly, she’s got other shit going on right now. 

Like the technically-not-dead stuff she’s holding onto.

While some Raikas are working on finishing upgrades and modifications to the last few cultivators, Raika takes a look at what remains of those she’s preserved. Fortunately, all of their heads are intact, the brains preserved, oxygenated, and left in a sort of unconscious stasis by her control of Flesh. Unfortunately, she got a bit… overzealous against the Fengs.

Several of the dead are missing whole chunks of their meridians, with an unlucky few missing close to ninety percent. 

In her defense, they made good explosive abomination-monsters. 

Less-so in her defense, she did get pretty enthusiastic with that sort of thing.

And unfortunately, she… still can’t make spiritual organs.

Not really. Kind of. Technically. Literally, it’s a no, but theoretically it’s a maybe, except, practically, it's definitely not. 

Kinda.

She can make flesh that’s more conducive to Qi than it otherwise would be. She can make materials out of that flesh that are even more conductive, which tend to appear as quartz-like crystals. She can make channels of that through a body, and she can replicate a body by feeding it energy, letting it follow its own instructions, and then modifying it as needed as it grows.

But she can’t touch the layer where everything is. 

The spiritual is connected to the physical, that much is obvious. Without that, she wouldn’t be able to yank out meridians by yanking out the corresponding Flesh-locations, nor would she be able to manipulate the levels of Qi saturation she has, or move it around indirectly with her Dao and physiology. 

But the meridians themselves? Different layer. Connected, but not the same, and she just can’t quite bridge the gap yet. 

Kinda. 

The first steps go easy enough, of course. She rebuilds the bodies, doing her best to avoid enhancing or modifying them too severely. The temptation is too great in a few little examples– a corrected bone there, an enhanced digestive tract here– but for the most part, she just rebuilds their bodies as their bodies tell her to rebuild them. Qi-rich blood, flooded with concepts of Flesh and adjacent growth and healing, help her to rebuild them without interfering too much.

She keeps them unconscious for now, and then goes back to puzzling about the bigger issue.

She could just give them physical Qi channels. Wouldn’t even be that hard at this point, she’s gotten pretty good at it. But… it’s just not the same. And it wouldn’t be as intuitive for them, and it would be admitting defeat.

And she literally just had to run away from a fight. 

So she takes a little longer to think.

Not so long that Aria has to knock more than once. Not so long that any of the cultivators on her landscape get up the nerve to start murdering each other or exploring too far.

Then… she reaches into one of the dead.

Their brain is shockingly like hers, without the active scarring and mutations and inbuilt self-destruct mechanisms. The neurons work more or less the same, if significantly slower than her own. Even the shape of it is familiar, albeit they’re missing most of the additional neural clusters and side-brains she likes to work with almost by instinct. 

The first issue comes out when she starts to wonder where she is, and why her body feels strange, and where her meridians are-

Another Raika, there as a backup, snaps her out of it, and both pause to reexamine the brain.

Apparently they also think like her. The thoughts were different, obviously, but it just felt like she was the one thinking them. Because she was. 

She was as much their brain as she is their bodies as they are Hers because they’re in her and We Are What We Eat. 

All that sort of thing. 

This time, she sets up some neural lag by developing a physical connection to one of her own brains, allowing her faster processing to outpace the slower brain and compensate for stray thoughts.

That goes better.

It’s still really confusing to be herself and also be this thing, this impossible being that’s wearing her like a puppet. 

Suppressing the panic response isn’t too hard, though.

Next, she makes “herself” start cycling Qi.

The obvious issue arises that this body doesn’t have almost ninety percent of her meridians anymore, but she still has some. Namely, her Dantian remains intact, as do the meridians in her head.

 The Qi in her head cycles as normal, but then rapidly bleeds out of her and into her body as soon as it reaches the edges of it. 

The Dantian shows more promise, though.

It almost seems… self-contained. Like it just exists independently in her spiritual layer, completely separate from everything else, and yet, entirely within “her” control. She moves Qi about inside of it, and tries to push it out and into the body, which-

Hmm. Same issue as the head. Still, it’s easier to control, and she can feel the “edges” of it pretty clearly.

So, Raika takes the next step. She pushes some natural-treasure-level blood into “her” body, and then uses “her” brain to think of transferring that energy straight to the Dantian.

And it works. The Dantian absorbs it, though sloppily. So she gives it more.

And more.

And a lot more.

At first it just fills in the layers of the core, but it’s stagnant, unwilling to circulate without pathways to circulate through. And yet, as time goes on, as seconds turn to minutes, the Dantian starts to… spread.

Along the curve of a liver, she feels the spiritual organ stretch and pinch a channel. Mirroring veins and neural pathways, little cracks spread through the invisible layer where Qi exists so freely, resolving into tubes slowly.

It’s… not as good as before. Not as clean. But she senses that it tends to drift towards areas that she herself wanted to correct in the body she’s inhabiting, and held back from. Some subconscious instruction it’s getting from the Raika part of her, or something it does naturally? Do spiritual organs do something different in a broken body, where they grow from scratch and quickly rather than over months in the womb?

All great questions.

Then she pauses. 

She severs the connection to the body, recovering her stability of identity, and stops to think.

If she kept some of the Dantians…

And she went “inside” some of the brains connected to those Dantians…

Could that be a way to cure her inability to touch Qi? Could that be a solution to restoring that the Feng took from Her so long ago?

The brain dissolves a microsecond after, failing to properly address the block around that memory. The other Raika, who had been observing, corrects the flaw in herself and transmits the knowledge of how to all the others she’s connected to, and picks up the thought where the last one left off. 

She could touch Qi again. She could cultivate more directly.

She could touch that layer of mystery that was taken from her so long ago and which has stayed gone. 

The way that the brain of this random cultivator felt it…

No synesthesia. No sense of smell or touch or sight or sound. A wholly different sense, one that she didn’t even recognize she missed, didn’t even realize she was using, because to this nobody cultivator who died, it’s as natural as breathing. 

There aren’t words to describe it properly. It was…

Magical. Alien. Divine. Transformative.

And they take it for granted.

And they’re dead anyways.

They are. Dead. They died, and she preserved what was left of them before they faded entirely. She might as well consider them hers, because if they do have lives, then surely they owe them to her, and if they don't, who could blame her for using the unclaimed resources left on her doorstep?

She could fix herself. 

She could be better than She ever was.

Raika waits for something to slam down on her neurology, something to wipe her out for a thought that feels like blasphemy.

But nothing happens.

And it doesn’t feel like blasphemy, really. It feels like it should feel like it, but it doesn’t.

There are no neural blocks on the idea of being more than She was. More than the Raika-of-before could ever have been and more than she could ever be anymore. 

More.

And all she would have to do is keep what’s already hers by right. What could be hers entirely. 

Two more Raikas split off from her, each one turning to a different direction. 

She emerges from the ground in front of the remaining “intact” cultivators, emerging as a crowned and antlered head which smiles down at them from atop a spine of complex limbs and combined biologies.

“You’ve all done wonderfully to survive and achieve so much!” she says, grinning with as many teeth as she can manage, which is a lot. She’s very excited. “Your elders are getting annoyed, though, and it has been pretty much a full week since you guys went in, which I think is about as much time as the last group got, back before I could think or anything. So… goodbye!”

She moves to one side, and opens the fold in space back out to where Aria is waiting.

“That’s it?”

She tilts her head curiously to look at a rather familiar figure. He’s managed to get an entire arm covered in the exoskeleton she gave him, and has gotten a few new scars to match his particularly rough demeanor.

“Yeah, that’s it. Bye now.”

“We could do more. I could do more, here, and-”

One of the other people he was traveling with steps in front of him, putting one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other calmingly between him and Raika. “I apologize for my companion’s outburst, honored spirit. We–”

“Honored spirit, if you allow it, I will fight every battle you place before me. I’ll walk through every fire and acid and chamber you demand, so long as you let me grow!”

Geng He, that was his name. He’s actually not the only one, either. Now that he’s started speaking, others are starting to look rather interested in the idea.

The smarter ones seem ready to leave, though. Good for them. Good brains.

“Nah, that’s ok. I don’t really need any of you. You can leave.”

“I’ll be away, honored spirit!” 

One of the smarter ones, leading a few dozen of his fellow sect-members. He’s not the only one- groups start to leave, fast, even faster when she doesn’t immediately strike down the first group to leave. Another Raika is watching them leaving and Aria’s reaction to it. She’s already turning to the elders, tracking their reactions, all the smart stuff that she really doesn’t have the patience for right now.

She’s thinking. 

But some remain. A few wandering cultivators, mostly. Notably, Geng He, and the others beside him, though they seem a bit less eager than he is. Still, as she doesn’t actively teleport them out, they seem to wait, hopeful or curious.

Raika lets out a big, performative sigh.

“I really would rather you all leave.”

“Bleeding Mother… if I may, perhaps those of us who remain might dedicate themselves to you for further contribution? Your merest scraps would be a great gift and boon to those such as we!”

And she can see it in their eyes. It would be a boon to them. She can almost smell the hunger in them, the way that they almost salivate at the thought of more. 

Hunger. It’s right next to Pain, really. They’re sisters, almost. And they’re literally asking to stay. They’re literally asking to be made more a part of her. 

Some of the remaining sect members seem tempted as well- but apparently, the presence of elders from the Peaks that they either live below or work for is enough to keep them motivated. Still, a few linger, and a few of those who were already lingering seem bright-eyed at her lack of overt refusal.

She could be more. 

All it would take is to accept what’s being given. Accept what’s hers by right anyways. 

The other Raika, still rebuilding bodies and infusing Dantians one by one into growing, almost feels the same. Even as some of the brains that she makes herself a part of have to be sedated and calmed at the thought of not being themselves but instead being her, even though they’re already her and just don’t know it.

The thought feels wrong.

But the temptation burns and whispers and runs through her soul like wine, bitter and freeing.

She could be more.

Hunger and Pain are sisters. She can almost taste where the line between the two begins to blur. 

She doesn’t need to keep the ones she’s lost. Not if someone is volunteering. 

Raika confers with herself, speaking with a language deeper than thought and closer than synchronicity. 

The Raika actively repairing the bodies down below consolidates, putting more energy into them, letting them repair themselves, or at least begin the process. They’ll still be recovering by the time their sects get them, but they will recover. 

What a joy. The best of both worlds, isn’t it? She can let that bitter taste go and drink deep of exactly what she wanted anyways. 

Above the ground, she gives a little giggle. 

“Yeah, alright. If you want to stay, you can stay. That’s fine.”

The bodies of those who “died” are sent up, appearing from out of the earth like bubbles out of water. Most of them remain unconscious, and will stay that way for at least a few hours more- but Aria is already acting, seeming to be intuitively understand and begin to negotiate on her behalf. She senses foreign Qi entering her system, up through her flesh, and allows it entry just far enough to wrap around the bodies. They float off the ground, carted away and out.

“Yeah. I suppose there’s things I can work with. There are some projects you could help with. I suppose… I suppose we could be more.”