Chapter 442 - Healing Is A Prolonged And Very Non-Linear Process (Patreon)

Hey! We're back! After the writathon frustration (for those who don't know, I completed the writathon challenge but got my times messed up and submitted too late to win it!), it's nice to have fresh chapters and keep the productivity. Enjoy, y'all! This chapter is maybe a teensy bit therapeutic for me, just maybe, you don't know.

________________________________________________________________________

One of the harder things to recognize about existence is how little of it is tailored to our experience. The senses of cultivators can plunge deep and wide and high, given the time and the inclination to grow in such a manner, but we are all born in specific conditions so precise that they are almost literally impossible to replicate without experiencing them first. 

There are places where the world is so heavy that air itself becomes a liquid, naturally and without Qi to infuse or initiate the process. There are suns that glow other hues than our own, and around them, existence defines itself differently. I have found landscapes which possess almost the exact same conditions as what might once have been our primordial, pre-life homeland, and found that missing a single component or having even the most slightly unbalanced mix of reagents transformed those places into alien things, bereft of life or filled entirely with things far stranger than I can describe in words.

The conditions for life as we understand it are, as best as I can determine, an unbelievably specific blend of happenstance born from infinity and intention born from madness and malformed thought, beyond our comprehension to interpret. 

It goes deeper, though. Even in these places I have described, certain things we hold as permanent, foundational truth are in play. If the spaces between our smallest pieces were only miniscully smaller, nothing we can comprehend or envision could exist at all. If the forces between fundamental pieces of ourselves were to vary in any direction in the slightest possible degree, all of reality would be something so unknowable and utterly inhospitable to life that the very idea of beings such as we could never come to pass, even in billions of years’ time.

Existence is a single moment, brought about only by the size of all else that is and the will of all those who have made it be. And yet, in that infinitely small slice of possibility, all the variation and beauty and wonder and complexity of being rests and grows and transforms. Imagine what worlds we have yet to find. Imagine what mysteries we have yet to experience. Imagine, for a moment, what all of this means.

-Original writing of Titan-Philosopher TaX XudXng (name redacted and quarantined as an Ontological Hazard) pre-quarantine by the Imperial Mandate for High Treason and  Cognitohazardous, Ontological, Theoretical and Practical Hazards. Access restricted to 7th-tier Halos or above by order of the Emperor.

Glory Be

_____________________________________________________________________

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea to put people in there.”

“But it’s so hard to tell if I’m doing it right if I don’t have anything to test it with! I have to adapt myself to make any of this work in the first place, and it takes hours to recalibrate my ability to feel any details properly.”

“Can’t you use your Dao of Flesh to do it?”

“Yes, of course. It’s just not as easy to write notes about.”

Aria glares at her, hands on her hips, her eyes bloodshot and exhausted.

Even for a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator, there’s an upper limit to the sort of stress and exhaustion that can be endured. Weeks without sleep aren’t a problem, nor eating or resting, so long as one is willing to slow down their cultivation by burning a bit of Qi. Alchemy and natural treasures can absolutely counteract some of this by invigorating and empowering flagging systems, and Raika knows that Aria has been drinking more of that super-tea that the elders of the Peaks gave her during negotiations.

Well. “Gave” is a strong word. Apparently they demanded concessions for it.

Still, Aria looks to be nearing her limits without proper rejuvenating sleep. Even her hair, usually kept utterly immaculate, has started to look a bit frizzy and chaotic, her makeup matching it for minor flaws that a cultivator could not help but notice.

“So you don’t know what it does,” she “asks”.

“I know what it should do. What it actually does I’ll only know in detail once someone goes in to test it.”

“And you want it to be one of your new… volunteers,” she “asks” again.

“They are literally volunteers, so I’m not sure what you’re implying.”

“I’m stating that you’ve taken a bunch of desperate Core Formation loners and want to shove them into a room inside your body that, in your words, ‘should crush anything inside to a degree that would make it easy to identify all the parts and how long they lasted’.”

“And… you’re also… disagreeing?”

“YES.”

The wash of Intent that comes with that word is enough to almost tickle Raika, and certainly enough to make the body currently being used to talk start to bleed a little bit. Barely a droplet emerges before everything’s been repaired and transformed back into full functionality, but still.

Raika makes that body sigh, waving a hand at the translucent membrane and the room beyond it. To any exterior viewer, it looks like a simple white-ish chamber full of absolutely nothing, unremarkable in the slightest.

Supreme Body Art: Compression differs with this assessment. 

Raika bends a piece of herself in a direction outside of normal directions, pulling a piece of debris from the crimson manse’s original structure into the chamber.

A small, shattered splinter of a wooden floorboard collapses inwards with such violence that it transforms faster than the eye can see into a perfect sphere.

“I know that it’s working,” she says, doing her best to keep her eyes wide and pleading. “I know that I can do it again. But I don’t know how it feels, properly, because I’m biased! Any piece of myself I send in there is going to just be me being in there, except with meat. I need an outside perspective! Someone who understands pressure and force like this. And the best way for them to understand it is to experience it!”

“The best way for them to understand it is to study it. Safely. While conscious. And not getting compressed to the point of turning into a wet ball.”

“Actually, it’s interesting you say that. Turns out, if you get certain liquids into this much pressure they sort of stop acting entirely like liquids! They get chunky pretty easily but there’s probably a lot more to it. I think if I can get it pressurized strongly enough I could maybe make a gas start to act like a liquid, too.”

“And… how does this help anything?”

Raika’s body shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m just working on stuff. This is the main thing that I thought could use your input. Do you think Ko would be alright with going in there?”

“No! And he’s not studious! And he’s not a pressure-user or whatever this is! He’s a sound and steel cultivator! It would literally offer no benefit. Where’s this coming from?”

Raika shrugs again. “Seems like an interesting idea.”

This time, Aria doesn’t back down. Whether it’s due to exhaustion, frustration, a conscious decision or a blend of all three, she instead sighs, crosses her arms, and turns to look up at Raika’s body above her.

“What’s really going on, master? You’ve been… I know you’re not entirely yourself, and I respect that you haven’t explained why. Surviving death probably does that to a person. But you’ve been erratic over the last two days. We’re still scrambling to organize everyone and start mobilizing the alliance- is it fear? A desire to create more weapons, faster? I don’t understand some of your thoughts.”

“Are you supposed to?”

Aria blinks. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

That’s interesting. Raika was pretty sure she was asking a genuinely useful question. 

“I… I suppose not, master. But I also can’t help you if you don’t help me understand. When the attack came, I was… I was powerless. I can organize and I can talk and I can politick just enough to keep things from falling in at us, but against raw force like that… all the money and preparation in the world wasn’t enough to stop someone stronger from coming in and crushing us. If there’s something I can do to help, then I’d like to.”

“Do you think you can find someone that can help me study this pressure thing?”

There’s a slow, deep inhale of breath. It exhales out almost as slowly again, filling the room with the scent of stress and acidic bile and exhaustion. 

“No, master, I’m sorry to say that I cannot assist at the moment. I’m actively engaged in negotiating with our allies and several potential allies to secure more funds and force for the alliance, and hopefully get us included into whatever the Peaks are planning in response to the attacks. If not that, I’ll be assisting with our current relocation, and if not that, I’ll be checking in on our agents to see what other pieces of you have been located. Seeing as I have all of these responsibilities, I find myself unable to secure a volunteer for this… research.”

Raika frowns. Usually when Aria talks she does so much more quickly, and much more organically to boot. This time, she spent extra seconds enunciating her words and stating her sentences slowly and clearly, and Raika’s not really sure why.

“Alright then. That’s okay. Thank you for doing all those other things. Bye now.”

She turns away before Aria’s even moved to leave, unbothered by her presence or lack thereof. Since she can’t help, and Raika is technically always literally a part of her and beneath her and right next to her whenever Aria’s anywhere within her Body, it’s not like saying bye is even really necessary. Still seems like the polite thing to do, mostly, and some parts of her still think that’s very important.

Aria walks away, and Raika folds a bit of space together to allow the exit of the chamber they’re in to be the same as the entrance to Aria’s new office. She had to replicate a lot of the papers that got destroyed, but Raika’s fairly proud of having managed to keep so many, and to have remade it so almost-exactly. 

And then her focus goes back to the pressure room.

The Supreme Body Art, when tuned to the level of biological control and scale that she has, offers a lot of possibilities. Early Raika sure did do a pretty decent job securing it, and one of the new Raika’s did an even better job recognizing its value and the weight that techniques can have on existence. This particular use of her Compression technique was an idle thought until it wasn’t, leaving her with pockets inside herself where the air, fluids, or solid materials are kept in a state of constant pressurization by compressed Space and Flesh.

She’s pretty sure it would do a lot of really really horrible things to anyone who went in there below the Warrior Realm or its equivalents. Even if it doesn’t break any bones or crush their organs, it would make it almost impossible to breathe, and if she’s understanding it right, would make things like ears, eyes, and internal blood flow all suffer a lot of issues. 

But still, it’s not good enough. Just a start, if that. It’s not like she can just pull anyone in there, nor like she can forcefully keep them there without a fight. It’s got to be more than it is. 

It’s not good enough.

She’s– 

Raika blinks as Ko lightly waves a hand in front of her face. 

“Oh! What’s up, Ko?”

He points to the wriggling centipede-snake-cat that’s wriggling on a nearby rock, shrugging his considerable shoulders. “You were telling me about what you’re doing with the beasts in here and why they’re getting more aggressive. Then you stopped in the middle of your sentence and started staring at nothing.”

“Right! So I’m trying to increase the ambient Qi density in certain areas because I’m trying to grow more things ‘naturally’. I’m still working on building flesh-constructs and stuff, but most of the stuff roaming about inside me happened more or less on its own, and if I can encourage that, chances are I’ll end up with a bunch of much more interesting ideas different than I could come up with in the time I have.”

“And why is that making them more aggressive?”

“It isn’t. I’m doing that.”

Ko stares at her. Unlike Aria, unlike most people, he doesn’t smell of fear or stress when he speaks to her. He still has all the same emotions, she can taste them just fine, but there’s a sort of trust in her, or in some pattern she doesn’t understand, that make him one of the only people she knows who doesn’t actively mind talking to her. 

Eventually, he finds his words.

“Why?”

She smiles. She just loves how straightforward he is.

“I’m infusing some creatures with Flesh Qi directly. Others I’m leaving as they are, but forming pools of high Qi concentration they can fight over. Then, I’m adding some all new creatures, my attempts at making these semi-independent sort of beings. It’s disrupting the systems in place. They mutated over months to exist as they do, and I’m adding conflict and chaos to speed things along.”

“It’s because they’re stressed, then.”

“And the more stressed they are, the more they’ll CHANGE.”

She has to figure out a different way to say that. Ko’s hair has shifted a few shades in certain patches, and he shivers under the weight of the concept in that word.

The feline-snake-centipede shivers too, sprouting a set of antennas, losing some legs and gaining small, fleshy bulbs on its back–

A mouth at the end of a long, algae-like strand swoops past them and eats the creature in a single bite, leaving behind a few stray limbs and part of its butt. She watches the lesser construct crying and trying to fight as it’s swallowed up, up, and away, dissolving as it goes towards the sky-snake-underwater forest that flies above.

“I… didn’t notice that was there,” Ko says, his voice a bit quiet. Now, there’s a hint of fear in his scent.

“Yeah, she’s gotten quite sneaky. I think she’s moving through blind spots, or blending into the environment around her so much she’s camouflaged in open air.”

“Are you keeping all of this apart from the Manse?”

Raika smiles a bit wider. “Sort of! The Qi-fonts in there are just for you all, after all. I made sure to keep the density a bit lower around there so nothing gets too curious, but there’s a pretty good chance that something will still get curious or want to get at those sources. It’ll be good training!”

“I don’t think it’s very useful to have aggressive monsters roaming around while people are trying to recover and prepare for things.”

“Hmm. I disagree!”

Ko nods.

Raika nods.

Then Ko rings a bell, vanishing into the soundwave as he travels back to the Manse he’s been mostly in charge of managing.

He’s a good egg. She’s glad that an earlier Raika spared his life. Hard worker. 

She’s pretty sure that in a few months of resources and fighting, most of the people in the Manse will stop being dead weight or temptation. 

They’re not good enough. They need to be more.

She–

A block of biosteel shears apart, its upper corner carved through at last.

The one with the bone armor has been doing great. It’s grown almost to his shoulder, and he’s been using it pretty intensely, storing force in it constantly. His latest technique seems to have focused on sending that force through his cuts while strengthening his blade with Bone Qi, though that’s been a bit less consistent. 

The upper corner thuds against the floor, denting the soft tissues of the open field. 

“Great job!” Raika says, emerging out of the flesh-bulb she was storing her body in while she works on new materials. “I thought that would take you a few hours less, but you got there eventually!”

The bone-armored cultivator, his cultivation still a muddied mess, growls at her, having learned that it doesn’t really bother her. “If this blade wasn’t so weak-”

“The blade is fine! I made the block specifically with it in mind. But! If you want a different blade to fail with, I have some interesting suggestions!”

He rolls his eyes into a glare directed at her. “I don’t want to replace my hands with swords.”

“That’s fine! You’re probably more versatile like you are anyways.”

Out of the “soil” in front of her, several new swords emerge, hilt-up. Each one’s hilt and crossguard has been shaped from spiraling bone, but each blade is different, formed from a distinctive material. Some are a dull, leathery black, while others seem to almost have wood grain, one shining with golden light and another of an ever-shifting silver.

“Are these… for me?”

“Mmm, it’s more like you’re for them. Test all of these and tell me which ones feel like what, alright? Or don’t tell me and just use them, I’ll look in your brain for how they work later.”

Supreme Body Art: Transmutation allows her to treat organic and inorganic material the exact same, including transforming one into the other. Turning pieces of her biology into replicas of every interesting material she has in her body was easy once she had the idea and the technique clicked into being.

Another Raika pokes her through the neural net, proposing an idea, and they both share their memories and understanding. It would be interesting if more creatures had access to more and distinctive materials to be built out of. She’s pretty sure that Supreme Body Art: Specialized Enhancement will evolve into something new pretty easily once one of her gets into it.

Geng He stinks of fear, but as always, the smell of need overrides it in him. He steps forward to one of the swords, hefting it in his non-armored hand and testing the weight.

“If I manage to cut through the block faster than last time, will you allow me to keep one?”

She shrugs, forming shoulders for the action and dissolving them away right after. “Sure. I can always make more.”

He smiles, and it is not a nice smile.

Does he have to be nice? It isn’t enough to just be nice.

It isn’t enough.

She’s not–

All across her ontology, hundreds of Raikas perk up at once as they are all pinged by a fresh wave of thoughts. 

The one that was sitting in the middle of her landscape doing nothing productive has sent out an idea. 

Instantaneously, hundreds of identically distinct minds think, rationalize, and vote. 

A conclusion is reached. Consensus and compromise, mixed with the same overwhelming fear-scent she always smells, no matter who’s around her.

Does she still emit a fear scent? She hasn’t really checked. Maybe she should.

Consensus arrives near instantly. There are more important things to focus on. She already knows that she’s afraid. Confirming if it has a smell or not can wait.

With a thought, one of Raika stretches out and back into conventional space, popping her head out of the wall of Aria’s office.

“Hey! How many other pieces of Her did you say you found?”