Chapter 450 – Introductions Are Indeed In Order (Patreon)

Welp, I fell down the stairs at about 1am monday morning and now my body hurts. Sorry for the late chapter y'all.

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Power goes hand in hand with disregard. 

That’s not the same as saying it’s evil. It doesn’t cause evil. Power is no more evil than art or water– it just is. But there are many things we do because we must, and power above most things allows us to disregard them. 

Salting and curing meats is something one does to compensate for scarcity. If there is no scarcity, it can be disregarded. To some, people are much the same as salt. Useful when needed, absolutely, but something simple to toss aside when they aren’t. Rules are things that some listen to for self interest, to protect themselves from reprisal or consequence, to gain access to societal goods, and when those things can be achieved in another way, they are eager to do so. 

I have heard it said that power does not corrupt, but it does reveal. I agree, but it’s missing a piece. It also refines. It heightens what you already are, unburdened by the things another you would be forced to carry. The powerful disregard not due to villainy, not due to loathing, not even due to disdain– they disregard because it’s less effort, and they have something they can replace that care with. It just so happens that people are in just about everything, and so disregard for anything comes with consequences of their own.

Consequences that power often allows one to disregard in turn. 

Hand in hand.

It interests me to note that to most, this does not disincentivise the pursuit of power. Quite the opposite, actually. 

What a pity that without burdens we find ourselves so often vile. What a pity that the ability to be underburdened often comes most easily to those who benefit from it the least.

-Original Writing of Titan-Philosopher TaX ZudXng (name redacted and quarantined as an Ontological Hazard Attempt At Restriction) pre-quarantine by the Imperial Mandate GREAT COWARD Emperor Itself for High Treason Disagreement and Cognitohazardous, Ontological, Theoretical and Practical Hazards. Access restricted to 7th-tier Halos or above by order of the Emperor less and less.

Glory Be

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Raika’s smugness feels pretty well smothered under all the boring. 

It’s annoying to have to listen to all their little voices. 

In some ways they’re still interesting, but honestly, her interest keeps dwindling the longer they go unharmed. It’s hard to pay attention to so many things that feel like they don’t matter at all.

Either her acolytes will find a way to bring her into the screaming un-sun above, or she’ll do it herself. Which comes first is just a matter of circumstance. The purpose of their expedition was to get her here undetected, and now that it’s happened, there’s so much that’s so much more interesting to Raika than the words of little things that don’t particularly matter.

There’s the screaming sun, obviously. While she might not remember the exact events surrounding it, it’s easy enough to recognize that it’s a part of Her, and likely one of the stronger ones. Other acolytes are approaching other sites, but none of them are quite as loud as this one, though others tend to mirror it in terms of scope and scale. Enough safeguards have been eliminated to know that the Watchful Fields Sect was close to Her before her Death, and it’s easier still to track the smell of older pieces that have emerged from here. Blood and bone and other bits have left the barest hints of their presences, even months gone, smelling less of Raika and more of the woman that was the Raika before her. 

This is very likely where she was unmade. 

Then there’s the beast tide, coming in at a close second for interest. Even from miles and miles away and behind a barrier, they are fascinating. Shapes and ideas that have no business intermingling or being organized as they are, somehow managing to exist separately from what existence conventionally allows. Like puzzle-pieces built into works of art that move and become more complex and artistic as they continue through time. Most of the swarm she can taste isn’t all that special, but all at once, in such numbers as to flow like water across the horizon? Delicious.

And there are particular bites in that oncoming tide that she can’t help but salivate about. Things whose presence in existence makes the soup of all-that-is taste different, even with their proper scents and flavors blocked by the arcane defenses she’s kept under. Things whose presence rivals the greatest of the cultivators behind the barrier, and whose flavors rival the screaming sun for complexity and uniqueness. 

Then there’s the absence of the Fengs. The site is entirely public as far as she knows, and comparative to the weapons she knows they can wield, its defences should be negligible to the full force of the emerald legion. And yet, it’s been untouched by them. No part of her detects that evergreen poison anywhere near the site. 

Why?

She’s not sure. Some political thing, maybe, or saving the best for last, or some entirely unknowable reason she has no chance of predicting. 

But it’s interesting.

The voices of people around her are not.

They’re talking about jobs, about places to be, jockeying for power and authority, being escorted here and there, waiting and explaining and babbling. Sometimes there’s even small talk and pleasantries, as disgusting as they are wasteful. 

On some level she likes helping people. She can recognize that much about herself, in spite of how little she seems to like people. But helping can be inspiring and fun and engaging.

Except she’s already helped these people, and they’ve already helped her, and she likes other things too. She might like other things more than helping people.

Actually, that’s not a possibility. It’s just true. 

Some part of her feels uncomfortable about that, but there’s no safeguards in that direction and she’s too busy to waste time examining that.

She shudders and dies.

As Yu Guanyu and his posse (and the ever-dour immortal Zhong Li, who sort-of counts and is technically the most interesting, if only because she wants to see how her work on him turns out) sit where they’ve been brought, waiting to negotiate with more pieces of her, she lets her focus drift. 

There are a few miles of her currently spreading under the surface at the moment, kept almost empty of Qi to avoid detection. Tendrils of muscle grow beneath millions of running feet and through whole landscapes of farmland and rice paddies, as close to empty of vital energy as possible while still guided and grown with intention. Even a mortal tree’s roots can break stone given time, and given intention and forethought, Raika swims out through soft soil much more easily. 

The barrier down below tingles beneath her, as it does as she approaches its edges from the inside. With the way her body resists foreign Qi and the minimal Qi saturation she’s let these pieces have, getting too close is pretty painful, but it’s just Pain, and its song tells her plenty. She has no idea what any of the magic involved does, but she can detect the energies of it just fine, and she tracks the almost-living nature of the construct in detail.

She watches joyfully as the first waves of the Beast Tide arrive.

They vanish into ash the instant they touch the barrier.

More than that, the energies of the construct seem to drink their cultivation up, adding parts of it into the defensive array that erases the next wave. 

It’s not perfect, and Raika can feel where impurities and imperfections are absorbed into the array, but it spends some of the energy it gains from the slaughter to remove them, or add them to the chaotic, destructive force it uses against following waves. 

It’s absolutely thrilling to watch.

She shudders and dies.

Some of the beasts further back try to turn from the barrier, but the crush of bodies forces them onwards nonetheless. Like disposable chaff, tens of thousands of alien entities are evaporated by the defences of a millenia-old sect of the Jiang’hu, leaving just enough room for the next wave to arrive.

And yet, it’s not sustainable. There’s more beasts than there is land, more beating wings and thudding paws and hooves than there is ground to stand on, going as far back as she can perceive, and they’re going to break through eventually. Of course, there are probably added defenses that will kick in before that, and after them, there’ll be elders and Warrior Realm experts at the minimum coming out to reinforce the line. 

Then the big tasty beasts hidden out there will make a move, and then so on and so forth or some combination thereof. 

The barrier will come down, though it’s hard to tell exactly when.

She spends some time analyzing the Pain of being so close to the barrier and the sounds of the dying things just outside it, enjoying how interesting it is.

Then she switches focus.

Spread out across so much that isn’t her own body, it takes a few seconds for her main awareness to travel from one point to another. Distractions are rife, what with the occasional farmer stumbling across one of her buried veins or random critters digging up pieces to nibble on, but none of it’s as interesting as what she’s switching to, so she ignores it all as she “travels”.

She’s reached the base of the mountain beneath the screaming sun.

She shudders and dies.

Maybe she should start calling it something else. After all, she only knows of two other suns, and one is technically sort-of a moon, and the other is also screaming. It’s just harder to hear because it’s far away.

This sun in particular feels cozy. Familiar, even. The glow of orange and crimson and purple washes over the landscape, painting it like a sunset made eternal, and the impossible spiral at its center lets out a pleasing hiss of agony as it moves. The Pain of it is tremendous, but that actually makes it feel more familiar than not, and it’s kind of nice, feeling so much suffering from something so like herself. 

It’s almost enough to blur the boundaries. Pain can do that. 

On closer inspection, still keeping herself as hidden as she can, she can tell a little more about the floating impossibility. For one, it feels like it’s collapsing. The Qi emanating from it has a lot more flavors than just Flesh, but it still feels very much alive more than any other concept, and yet it feels like the sort of living thing that’s in the process of being gored through. At the same time, the spiral at its center holds tight to the agony, a fraction of what it’s experiencing leaking out and telling Raika what it’s doing.

At its edge is the blood, torn free from its body by spasming heartbeats and damage absolute. At its center, an iron will, beyond sapience, which drags that blood back inwards and suffers the Pain of regeneration, rebuilding the impossible as it comes apart.

And good thing that it does. She can’t tell how deep it goes, but it goes deep, and just the energy leaking out of it is enough to change the local flora, to increase the vitality and Qi reserves of those close to it, to change the world’s shape. It’s not as strong as the barrier around the sect, but that’s probably been fueled and refined over thousands of years, and the screaming sun isn’t very far behind in terms of sheer potency.

She inhales through some of the veins that have reached the mountainside, the whistle of unnecessary air mingling with the hissing suffering of the sky above. 

Positively lovely.

She starts to extend roots into the mountain proper.

She builds more of an exterior, making the veins and muscle fibers tough enough to dig into stone without mulching entirely. Beyond that, all she does is start to transmit her Dao of Pain through the tendrils, forcing the rock to come apart in shuddering agony.

Qi is easy to detect, but Pain is specific. Beyond that, it would take a lot to not be eclipsed by the star of agony above her. 

She climbs.

She shudders.

She doesn’t die.

More and more, the safeguards are falling away. More and more, she finds herself diverting resources away from unlocking old memories and instead opening up pathways of thought. As much as she’d like to be able to remember Her history, there just isn’t enough time, and always ever so much more to do. Here, in this place, confronted with what She was and with who she now is, more and more of the blocks she designed into her own being keep getting triggered, melting down whole neural nets before they’re stopped. The more doors she opens, the more the ones that remain become vicious, designed with far less nuance than their later iterations, and being here, in the presence of something that is almost Raika and is almost Her, they fight and flail and dig out her mind over and over and over.

Continuity of consciousness is a myth. She dies, and she wakes up. She sleeps, and she dies, and she comes back someone new.

She’s still Raika.

She leaves behind more pathways as she keeps climbing higher.

Her acolytes are talking again. Something more animated this time. It’s hard to care. If and when they start using the pieces of themselves she’s improved, it’ll be nice to see how she’s helped them, how she might help them further, but she just doesn’t care to listen to arguments with random people she couldn’t give a shit about. 

So many people in the world, all with their own stories. So many flavors of existence that her synesthesia feels near-numbed. 

But she just doesn’t much care. Not when it would waste energy digging through thoughts in those directions, not when she has such absolute focus. 

The screaming agony in the sky is power. Power kills the Fengs. Power keeps Raika alive. Power means she can transform the world as she pleases, even if that’s only to find out what she pleases. 

Between the dying yowls of beasts and the hissing suffering above, she grows, dying and tormented and utterly ambivalent to all but the most specific concerns. 

It’s kind of freeing. Satisfying. As much as that vague discomfort pervades her, so does a blend of general satisfaction. 

She is herself. She is hers. She is here. 

She doesn’t need to be anywhere else, or care about anything she doesn’t want to. She can just build.

She can be the Raika that’s free.

The thought makes something in her giggle.

She’s almost halfway up the mountain when she is suddenly somewhere else.

A single vein pokes through a wall that doesn’t physically exist, and suddenly finds every other part of herself muted. That one piece experiences the vertigo of no longer understanding where it is in reference to itself, and Raika’s focus is half-dragged and half-pushed into it, curious.

It’s interesting, after all. And even if it isn’t, she should understand how best to deal with it.

In the time it took to realize something had happened and paying attention to it, a small table has been set before her, with a small, ceramic cup of tea placed upon it. 

The tea smells nice. Earthy, herbal, rich. 

“And what might you be?”

The vein wriggles, synesthesia offering her a view of the space around her and also telling her literally nothing. It’s like she’s in a room with a teacup and a table and also in a wall-less windowless nowhere.

She tries to retract that piece, only for the strange sensation to magnify.

“Ah! There you are. Interesting spatial warp. Internalized, yes? And with so little Qi, too. It’s very impressive for a Beast, if that’s what you are. It seems a beastly sort of technique to have.”

More of her is in the room now. A solid chunk of vascular systems, enough to cover a good mile of terrain, suddenly compressed into a bundle in a place what is nowhere while also in a room much too small to fit all that material.

Attacking blindly doesn’t seem smart, especially if he hasn’t found all of her yet. And she doesn’t know the nature of the threat, either. No hint of evergreen scent colors this not-place.

She forms a mouth and eyes out of some of her tissues.

“Hello,” she says.

Her eyes see a room. Simple wooden walls with hanging calligraphy and paintings. They’re nice, except when she looks at them too closely, notices the depth of detail, enough to make her heads hurt. The tea has a bit of steam rising from it, wafting in the air.

When she speaks, her voice echoes, like there’s too much and too little around her to hear it.

“A speaking beast, then?” says the voice, holding a smile. “Or perhaps something new. There have been ever so many new things of late. Makes an old man feel his bones. Perhaps you can help this frog in a well to glimpse more of the sky, little beast.”

“I’m not a beast.”

“Good to know. Why, then, are you here? And why so soon after the Beast Tide comes knocking at our door? To what do you owe allegiance, thing of Flesh and Pain?”

The way he says it is too pointed. Detection, then, clear as anything.

It comes to her, far too slow, that she doesn’t see a man here. She doesn’t see anyone here.

And then she does. Like the thought made space for him, and something larger than the thought has slipped into it.

There is a second table, holding a second cup of tea and a small tea tray, little tea pets next to a beautiful black teapot.

The man, who does not look old, takes his cup and sighs as he raises it to his face, inhaling some of the scent. “It’s good tea, if you’re interested. Not very strong, but I can’t exactly bring out the good stuff for just every mad flesh-construct that wanders in, especially not in this day and age. I’d run out of tea before you all ran out of meat, for one.”

“Who are you?” she asks.

“Hmm. Not very subtle, for something that isn’t a beast. Too articulate for a construct, though, especially with all that Dao in you.”

“I’d rather you answer my question before I answer yours.”

“Well, we all have things we prefer. So rarely do we get to have them whenever we will it. You are the invader here, after all.”

That makes the discomfort in her, that vague feeling of wrongness in her soul, ache.

“I am less an invader here than any of you,” she hisses, lungs forming in the flesh-mass to add depth to the hate.

“Oh?”

“I’m trying to be nice sometimes, and I help, but you keep being in the way and treating me like I’m wrong. I’m not wrong. I’m building and I’m doing it well, and it’s annoying having to deal with you all the time.”

“‘You’. Interesting. I had thought you dead, little beast.”

She growls. “I’m not–”

“Eminently not. Or perhaps she still is. A fate like hers was a rare one.”

The man smiles, his features starting to exist as she wonders about them. 

Physically middle-aged. His body is tall, taller than most, with long, silken white hair drifting openly down his back. Slender fingers, beneath simple but well-made robes. He takes a sip of his tea as the idea of lips forms from her, and she tries to look deeper–

Nothing. He’s not empty. There’s no space inside him to be empty. 

Just nothing.

He puts the teacup down, smiling. 

“Introductions, then, since parley can be had between us. I am Grand Elder Zhen Zexian of the Watchful Fields Sect, and you have come to my home without guest right and without announcing yourself. Problematic as you have ever been, flesh-thing. Have you not bothered my juniors enough, that you should try to haunt us in death as well?

“Or do you think yourself someone different now? Names are troublesome for ghosts, however fleshy they might be. Does the name Raika the Bloody mean anything to you anymore?”

Tangerines

Stain on the wall

Cat of black hair, smiling

Black jade and smoke and whispers and–

The doctor

She shudders and dies. 

Raika chokes on her own tongue for a moment, recovering enough to glare at the man across from her, to start to prepare something against him–

But there’s nothing. 

Just him and the room and the her that is here. 

His smile is not kind, and it holds the smugness of victory.

“Forgive an old man his joys, but it is ever so good to be right sometimes. You should try the tea. It works rather well as a funeral drink.”