Chapter 449 - The Taste Of Upheaval (Patreon)

Aaaaand we're back, y'all. Earlier than promised, but what can I say, peer pressure is a hell of a drug, especially when that peer pressure is my bank telling me about my finances! I'm still a bit burned out from the move (haven't even finished setting up my room yet) but I'm trying to keep some momentum and push for progress again, cause lords know I needs it. Wish me luck, and your support means a lot.

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Resistance is beginning to escalate. The wisdom of these barbarians is notable but limited. They have been permissive of our efforts on the condition that we do not interfere with any anchors of power, and we have not yet caused damage that will last more than a few centuries. However, the breach of their barrier offers an added layer of chaos to the proceedings. Some of the intruding entities are formidable in their way, but all of them present additional disruptions. The likelihood of retaliation from the threat level Five to Seven elements from within the barbarian republic is increasing the longer the operation progresses. 

The Branches listen, and we obey. Our objective has been met, in spite of the discordant agent and local resistance. This Branch offers humble analysis: to remain here, without roots, offers unfortunate risk, and to retreat now would allow us to return with minimal losses. There are still some aspects that remain unharvested, but they diminish exponentially in utility and frequency as we enact your will, and while there is no doubt that your orders shall be followed and executed, to do more would likely create a situation in which escalations of force become necessary. 

Awaiting your word.

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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Raika can taste the violence incoming, the distance to the horizon making very little difference in her ability to detect what comes from beyond it.

Thumping feet. Perspectives and distances transforming, shrinking and magnifying exponentially. Blood and iron in the air, matched by the hot breath of running bodies. The stink of sweat and joy and fear and hunger, intermingled in that language of feral need that is survival. 

The death of thousands, spreading like a plague of gnashing teeth and stomping hooves.

Coming for that twisted sun in the mountain, around which greed and desire have made homes from mortal lives.

Her acolytes find their way into the lines of desperate and retreating lives. The mortals, of which there are millions in this area alone, have all begun a mass migration towards the Watchful Fields Sect’s main compound, seeking shelter amongst those that promised them protection in exchange for service. They are not the only ones, however. Visiting dignitaries, groups of powerful warriors, and cultivators from all across the Republic are finding their way here, each and every one of them trying to keep their dignity while moving like prey. 

How much money has been invested into this place? How much power and influence built into every one of these expeditions, come to plunder and harvest, to treat the marvelous thing that She became as just another mineshaft to pick at, just another lake to siphon dry? How much have they been gaining, given their ability to invest in such trips again and again? 

She is almost horrified. She is almost overjoyed. 

It’s also a bit liberating, seeing how much of Herself is present here. Between the incoming beasts, the defensive arrays manifesting, and the inverted sun glowing in the sky, her chances of being found by something she can’t defeat are lower than ever. So long as she doesn’t try to draw too much attention to herself, there are simply too many other things too similar to Her for Raika to entirely stand out. 

As millions of people move in half-organized herds and convoys and packs, those with power fly over them or sprint past them, marking themselves as alien in comparison but earning far more expedient trips. They’re not helping matters. Even if they weren’t often willing to move through the occasional unlucky soul to get where they’re going, the simple fact of the matter is that cultivators running, en masse, is guaranteed to cause a panic in anyone that isn’t objectively stronger than said cultivators. 

Her acolytes are a bit more careful, though not by much. A young woman gets bumped into on accident in their mad dash towards the sect in the distance, and half of her rib cage gets shunted up into her lungs. A child trips and is trampled as several people try desperately to get out of the way of the approaching superhumans. A man burdened by a few heavy sacks of grain is incapable of dodging or even moving aside in time and is simply pushed away, in what is a relatively gentle movement on the part of Lei Hai.

That doesn’t stop the blow from stopping his heart or malforming his spine, of course, but it does limit the damage so that he still has an intact corpse. 

She fixes most of the damage as they run, but she doesn’t tell them about it. It’s interesting to see how they act when they’re panicked and think there aren’t consequences. Raika wonders if maybe there’s some sort of parallel between how she feels about her acolytes as her acolytes feel about “normal” people; useful until they’re in the way, and it’s not that bad if they get broken.

They could slow down enough to stop hurting people. It wouldn’t be hard. Each and every one of them is in the Core Formation Realm, and that’s more than just some increase in physical might or Qi. A body, mind, and soul are all transformed in each distinct Realm, and they’re capable of moving faster than a Qi-Gathering Realm cultivator can perceive, capable of transmitting complex techniques over vast distances, capable of reflexive action that would fundamentally erase any need to harm the people they’re running through.

It’s hard to keep it in context, but amongst a city of only mortals and those in the Qi-Gathering Realm, a Core Formation Realm cultivator could rule a city-state unopposed. They can carve apart terrain, reform natural landmarks, slaughter thousands, go weeks or even months without rest or proper food, and break steel on their skin without effort.

The mortals die anyway. They get pushed aside anyways. Sometimes another cultivator will pass by in such a manner that all that’s left behind is paste where there used to be people.

A stain on the wall. 

It saves somewhere between a nanosecond and an instant for those who feel they have the right to travel in such a manner.

Though obviously that’s just in the areas where people congregate. For all their millions, there aren’t enough people to blanket the hundred miles between the far edges of the defensive array, the farmlands, and the Watchful Fields Sect and the city grown around it. Most people do follow the highways and quickest straight paths, though.

So there are still… incidents.

She can’t fix everyone, and she wouldn’t anyways. Being able to extend out beyond her acolytes by a few meters is different from fully manifesting herself, and it’s better to remain hidden. So… she’s sort of doing the same thing.

It saves her a bit of inconvenience to not save all of the hundreds that die in a province-wide stampede towards safety.

As Yu Guanyu, Dai Yuhan, Lei Hai, and Zhong Li run, she observes, waits for a good moment, and then casts off a piece of herself.

Just a seed. Barely a scab’s worth of blood, encased in something that’s almost wood, except that she’s not familiar enough to get it quite right.

Little seeds of herself get left behind, over and over. Some of them start to roll in the opposite directions of the crowds, towards the distant view of the incoming Beast Tide. Others go parallel, looking for other angles to reach the edge of the array in. Some start to wriggle in the soil, pressed down by stomping feet into mud and muck to burrow down into the ground.

She releases no spores for now, but thousands of miles away and from inside each seed, she prepares them. Enough to paint the sky red.

Well. Redder than it currently is.

As she spreads slowly and methodically through the abandoned plantations and rice fields, towards abandoned villages and towns and over hills and valleys, she also experiences the particularly interesting sensation of being around a whole landmass of meat that isn’t herself. As her acolytes arrive near the sect a few minutes from when they began, they start to slow, Qi senses emerging to try and greet other cultivators and local arrays properly. 

They land from leaping thousands of feet into the air to come back down, or emerge from out of the watery stream of mist they turned into, or simply slow their runs into something that leaves them a blur rather than borderline invisible, just long enough to be acknowledged. The city is basically integrated into the sect, and is less of a mortal institution than it is a structure designed to house servants and supplies. Still, it has some impressive fortifications, massive alabaster walls climbing up out of the earth and towards the heavens to block the sect proper from the eyes of the lessers kept outside. Most people stop and start to try and find places to hunker down near the walls when they realize there’s only so much room and that most aren’t getting in, but her acolytes each receive a brief burst of Qi from a distant figure atop a rampart.

They, like many other cultivators arriving, speed back up, following instructions Raika can’t directly perceive as they’re acknowledged by the local higher-realm disciples of the sect and told where to go. 

It’s interesting to feel. She can taste that it’s happening, feel the intentions and the Intent behind it, even get a sense of the flavors of the cultivator doing it (rich grapes on the vine, bursting through unwelcome soil to drip heavy colors onto the roots below), but not what’s actually said. Someone with true meridians, a Dantian, all that, can feel it as its own sensory type, but even now, she has to translate through senses both duller and sharper than what they use. 

It’s sort of funny that way. She can sense things they can’t, and vice versa, overlapping just enough to know what is and isn’t but not understand.

Her acolytes hustle through the gates of the sect, letting dozens of complex arrays and magics wash over them as they do, and arrive in the sect proper.

The sky is a different color here.

The inverted sun, high above, shines its light heaviest down at its base. The Watchful Fields sect, built not far from the massive, cloud-piercing mountain on which most of the cultivators are located, is bathed in that quasi-orange crimson-gold light, defying description but washing the world in the colors of a damaged sunrise. 

Raika can taste the pain in that light. 

It’s Her. It’s what’s left of Her. It’s a piece of Her. It’s no more or less Raika than Raika is, but that’s not a very specific form of measurement, and this particular piece feels both larger and shallower than she does. 

Reaching out to that light, she pushes herself towards it. A distant light, glowing like a black hole in the daylit orange, full of Pain.

That feels specific. That feels important.

But Raika can’t touch it.

This Pain feels different than hers. Less… informative? Specific? 

Less cold. Less clinical, maybe. 

The inverted sun that was Her is screaming its agony for all to hear, and Raika can’t help but feel like that’s a rather strange thing to be doing. Better to remove it, keep it at an arms length, utilize it properly. 

Maybe this part of Her is just less efficient than Raika. Hard to tell.

She feels a little hum of joy at the thought of diving into that screaming thing to find out what makes it tick. 

“Purpose for your arrival?”

Her attention snaps back to her acolytes, shaking off the distracting thoughts to focus on them again.

All four of them are standing before three members of the Watchful Fields Sect that are similar to them in level. Core Formation Realm cultivators all, they have well-formed foundations, a decent depth of flavor to the Dao she can feel leaking off of them, and a lovely amount of adrenaline running through their veins. 

They’re stressed. Understandably, perhaps. There’s a world-ending bunch of stuff heading their way, and it probably isn’t very relaxing to have a giant glowing ball of ethereal screaming floating right over their heads for however long it’s been. Most bodies just aren’t built for that sort of stress, and most cultivators just don’t know how to fix that, even as they change themselves.

Huh.

That’s a thought.

They… are changing themselves.

Raika sets a mind to working on that idea, and finds that it very quickly gets pulled over by a few others that seem to have similar projects. That’s nice. 

“– and beg the patience of your esteemed Sect as we happily volunteer our services to your worthy cause.”

That Yu Guanyu really loves to talk. 

“Your offer is appreciated. Take this talisman– your housing and responsibilities will be granted to you through it soon.”

Apparently he is also fairly good at it, even with people who aren’t her. Useful, that.

He bows, graciously accepting the talisman while the rest of her acolytes keep quiet behind him, most of them looking a bit tired from the mad dash towards the sect. Zhong Li, her little immortal, looks particularly stressed, though Raika kind of assumes that anything stressful just affects him a bit much. If she didn’t swap most of his little cells for better ones, that sort of stress could definitely shave some years off his life. 

“Understood, seniors. But if I may ask, is there perhaps any way we might seek to pay homage at the grand altar above? We are weary travelers, you see, in search of the auspicious divinity of the Sunlit Flesh, and–”

“It doesn’t matter,” interrupts the lead disciple. “As you reap the benefits of our protection, you will repay the Sect with service or payment commeasurable. By the state of you, that means going to where you’re told and listening to the requests and opportunities to obtain benefits as granted to you by us, as your hosts.”

“Ah! So payment is a possibility?” Yu Guanyu asks, coming up out of the bow just enough to flash a smile.

“Going by the state of you, I find that doubtful,” sniffs the disciple.

“Brother Fen Rai, give this wandering cultivator some face! Would I bother you with such presumptuous statements if I did not have the good fortune to provide?”

Before the disciples can protest properly, Yu Guanyu has snuck a hand down into a pouch at his waist and retrieved a small fruit, its edges glistening wetly with meaty textures. Free from the bag and the inscriptions within it, a small wave of life and Flesh aligned Qi washes over the disciples of the Watchful Fields Sect and her acolytes alike, drawing a few intakes of breath.

“Perhaps there are some whom we might speak to about providing payment commeasurable with the benefits your sect may provide, hmm? And surely, one who acts as a messenger and aid to such auspicious individuals and auspicious circumstances might find themselves laden with commeasurable benefits, no?”

Raika doesn’t need to feel their brains moving to tell that Yu Guanyu has them. 

She didn’t even have to work very hard to make that particular flesh-bulb. Good to know they’re valuable. 

“Apologies for my presumption, brother,” the disciple says, bowing ever-so-slightly. “Perhaps a mutual exchange of benefits would indeed be in the best interests of all parties.”

“Wonderful. I believe, then, that introductions may be in order with someone who perhaps could direct us up the mountainside?”

Raika, miles away and inside herself and in his hand, smiles.

Maybe this whole acolyte thing was an even better idea than she thought.

She lets herself feel a bit of smugness, finding that it blends rather well with the broken thing screaming in the sky. Lovely flavors all around.