Chapter 471 – Mom Energy… Climbing… (Patreon)

And so it begins! Whatsoever might survive the trials and tribulations of... NESTING RAIKA!

And also, yes, it is very fun and engaging re-grounding the story without crippling her for once. She still has all her powers, even! And new shit besides! Just gotta give us a bit of a refreshment, let the horrors build in the background a bit more than the foreground for once!

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Cultivator families can be extremely complicated. When one can have children all the way into their upper millenia, bloodlines can get properly byzantine, requiring a scholarly touch to even follow or understand. One’s great-great-great grand-uncle might, in fact, be substantially younger than oneself, and one might find a match on the other side of the world, only to uncover a shared ancestry however many generations back, which might even still be alive, and who might not consent to the marriage. 

Then there’s the fact that some cultivators simply don’t think about that sort of thing. A particular story I’ve heard spread about the second ring’s rumor mills is of a Warrior Realm elder who began a sordid dual-cultivation with a promising young disciple of the sect, only to later discover that it was her own direct descendant. Worse, though she birthed his grandfather nearly three centuries past, he was still her direct great-grandson, since future generations also found themselves moderately successful at cultivation. 

And that’s only the superficial aspects. Between transformative physiques, centuries-long lifespans, and more, even direct family can be nearly alien. Can there truly be any familial connection between those that can go centuries, live through births and deaths, without ever meeting? It is no surprise that many argue for an "ascetic" separation from such "mortal" affairs. Some argue that such can only lead to misery and imbalance, while others argue that it’s overly conservative to demand such a thing, and that imbalance is and always has been tied to the nature of a specific relationship’s context, rather than such broad generalities. 

I visited my great-great-grand-niece recently. I sat at her bedside as she breathed her last, and I remember her skin. Dry, and aged. Wrinkled, with liver-spots that even the alchemies she purchased at the end could not stave off. 

I was there at her birth. Her mother’s birth. Her grand-mother’s birth. And so on. And so on. 

And I saw her die, her body infinitely younger and older than mine. 

Love. Family. Parenthood. Their norms do not survive immortality any more than hunger or sleep.

–Researcher Ao Shahu, acting in his role as Imperial Scholar to the Wang family.

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It is a slightly more involved affair than she might have implied to clean her home.

Firstly, she has to get up from where she was laying, which is always annoying when one is covered in dust. Not much– whatever weird time-dilation shit is happening to her when she reaches out to her other parts, it distorts her awareness of it, but not to the point of total collapse. She won’t miss weeks going by, but a day and a night only take a quick conversation, it would seem. 

Getting up and cleaning herself off, she stretches, feeling all the ways her muscles and the knots in her joints creak. It was a desperate, improvised gamble, recycling parts of herself to survive being cut off as she was, and the effects go all throughout her body. 

She could fix it, now. Even without her other aspects, maybe. But… there’s something about it. About having a body that has limitations, and pains, and annoyances, more than something that changes at her whim. It’s… grounding. 

Limping a bit, she lights a small fire, placing a pot of water above it to boil with a few tea leaves scattered haphazardly inside it. 

Then, she takes a seat in front of her window, and watches the sky. 

She has good timing. It’s that early pre-morning light of dawn, before it paints the sky all the wonderful colors that she feels so deep in her soul. Just the dark of night, lightening up to something brighter. 

The first wisps of red and yellow have begun to creep together to the far north by the time the pot has started bubbling. 

She lets the sound soothe her for a bit, and then gets up, walks over, and lifts the pot out of the flame. 

The heat tickles her hand as she holds the metal in her bare palm, leaving a light tingling sensation until she finally pours some of the tea within into one of her few mugs, letting it rest on her countertop thereafter. The tea, steeped to shit and much too hot, feels refreshingly soothing as she sips it, enjoying the mild flavors and the way it warms her, even if it burns her tongue a little bit. 

Just a little. Not enough to bother her. If anything, that part might be what she enjoys most. 

She frowns. Can’t have that when the kids are over. Cultivators or no, people tend to have opinions about tea, especially bad tea. And in spite of having her preferences, Raika’s pretty familiar with the fact that her preferences are not to most people’s tastes. 

Ok. 

First steps. 

The whole goddamn house is at least a little dusty.

And everything’s out of place. Which is how she likes it, but since her kid’s coming, that’s…

And the plants! So many of them are only half-grown.

Not that that really matters. Or that it would make any real difference otherwise. It’s not like they’re not…

Hmm. Well, objectively, they aren’t that impressive. Or that big of a deal. And even if they probably don’t compare to whatever they’ve been engaging with over past the Wall, that doesn’t mean she has to try and match up, because that’s obviously not the point of these plants. 

Which is fine. And normal.

And the space! 

She hasn’t had much reason to change anything, but a living room mixed with a kitchen and a small bedchamber are pretty much all she’s needed. And it’s not like cultivators or high-power beings like the ones she’s going to be babysitting really need sleep, or much food or anything. 

But. 

She takes another, longer sip of tea. 

It is unfortunately no longer quite near boiling, but she can taste it more this way. 

Bitter, poorly blended, and steeped too long. Refreshing, as a sort of reminder of her state. A taste that she can logically understand as bad, but which, to her senses, is as enjoyable as most others.

Even cut off from herself, she’s still far from human. It’s long since stopped being an issue of power, and become an issue of transformation.

What poisons others is likely to have no effect at all on her. Things that humans and beasts evolved to avoid using senses like taste are no more toxic to her than salt or meat would be, and her system can find some sustenance from almost anything. 

She takes another sip.

Objectively terrible tea. And yet, to her, the flavor is lovely for precisely that reason. 

Maybe it’ll be like that for Jin. An objectively terrible house, that he’ll still enjoy because it’s hers.

She grumbles to herself. Chances are that’s exactly what he’ll say, the polite little brat.

Damn him and his helpful maturity.

One last sip. 

Then she pours the rest of it out the window, scalding the poor grass, and gets up to go to work. 

Just because the little shit would find it lovely and perfectly acceptable sure as shit doesn’t mean she has to not try and make it better for him. And if the others also benefit then that’s fine too. 

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“Uh… miss Rai?”

She turns her head, looking over her shoulder up at her visitor. 

“Yes? I’m sorry if you’re here for medicine, I’m a bit busy at the moment.”

“Yeah, we, uh. We can see that, miss Rai.”

She recognizes him then. One of the young men from town, by the name of La Ru. Nice young man, straightforward, and generally good conversation around a bonfire. A little stiff, he doesn’t really stretch and he’s one of the harder workers, which has him a bit shorter than he technically should be.

Otherwise, he’s very normal. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A couple scars. Like she said, normal. 

“Well? Is there something you wanted?”

He looks down at her from the lip of the hole she’s in, then at the mounds of dirt all around, then back at her. 

“Mostly to just… ask you what you’re doing. Got some folks down in town a little worried.”

“My son’s coming to visit.”

La Ru blinks. Then his brow furrows, furiously, the way it does when he’s doing some heavy thinking.

“I didn’t know you had a son, miss. …Nor do I see how digging a massive hole in the hillside has to do with it.”

Raika looks around at the pit she’s dug. 

The hillside she lives on has been transformed, and rather dramatically at that. She’s at the furthest side of the village, as far as she can be without actually leaving the village’s safety and proximity. To one side of her, there’s nothing but farmland, at the far end of which is the wilds that surround the lake that all four of its villages are named after.

In that direction, she’s carved out a few dozen tons of stone and soil, leaving a semi-neat square of excavated earth facing away from the village center. 

All in all, it’s nearly five times the size of her cabin.

“Well, I don’t know how to build with wood,” she says, like it’s obvious. “And my kid’s coming over, and I… technically haven’t seen him in years. He’s half-grown already, I’m not hosting him in my room. Not if I can make him someplace with some space!”

“Um… I guess I’m just wondering… should we… bow?”

She snorts. “I’m no cultivator, idiot.”

Well. That’s only sort of true nowadays. At most. It’s… complicated. And weird. 

“Ok. So. I’m a little bit. Or I used to be? Doesn’t matter, don’t bow to me, and definitely don’t bow to him. He’s still a brat, and I won’t have him getting arrogant. He’s my kid, and I’m the weird old village witch that taught you how to properly season your damn roasts.”

“My roasts have always been perfectly fine!”

“And now, they’re good, you brute.”

He goes to grumble, and then pauses as the fact that she admitted to being kinda-sorta a cultivator hits his brainstem. 

“I– I don’t really…”

She lets him take some time to process, swinging her staff down and using it to lever up another chunk of clay-like earth. 

By the time he’s done, she’s started using her water bucket to tamp down the earth properly, making a flat, even surface on the bottom of the massive cutout. She’s pretty much done excavating at this point, now she just has to get some clay, make everything smooth, and start compressing some of the dirt she dug into tiles. 

Then she has to start working on the ceiling, and make the second floor, and the stairs, and–

Raika briefly considers the fact that she may have overcommitted to this decision.

“I’ve never met a cultivator before.”

She turns to look back at La Ru, meeting his eyes. 

He doesn’t flinch. 

“Some of them are bastards. Some are monsters. Most are people.”

He takes a second to process that, then nods.

“Well. Need some help?”

She raises an eyebrow. “I…”

“Sorry, I don’t really know when your kid’s gonna be here, but, you know. Just. Figured. Since you walk sort of slow.”

Raika throws some of the mud at the bottom of her bucket at him, splashing him and making him flinch back.

“Wha– you’re the one who said to treat you like normal!”

“And since when do you normally call me slow, you idiot?”

“Do you not want help?”

“Oh would you– just go tell people it’s fine! If my kid or his friends act like idiots I’ll just break their knees or something. I’m… no one in the village is going to get hurt.”

He pauses at that. She’s not sure if it’s because he was scared to bring it up before, or if it genuinely just finished processing for him.

He takes a breath, before squaring his feet and looking down at her. 

“Do you promise?”

She matches his gaze, approving of the steel there. 

“I Swear, On My Body And Mind, That No One Of The Lake Shall Be Harmed By My Son Or Those I Bring To This Place.”

La Ru visibly flinches back at the sound of her voice. The weight of it, the way that her tones echo in a way deeper than sound should carry… 

She swore it with Intent, and enough Qi that she feels a bit lightheaded. It rings as close to Truth as it can. 

He takes a deeper breath than before, and sighs it back out. 

“Alright then. If you’ve promised.”

And then, he turns around and walks away. 

Refreshingly rude, that guy. She doesn’t mind it at all. 

She is surprised by how little she minds it when he shows back up after, with quite a few new sets of footsteps beside her as well. 

She looks up over the edge of the excavation, catching sight of the folk coming over the hill.

Familiar faces, one and all. A dozen strong men and a few women, carrying supplies in buckets, tools, bags, and whatever else they thought they might need. She recognizes the materials from the last time she saw them, a few years prior. 

Back when they volunteered to build her the cabin she’s in.

She sighs, turning her head away so no one sees her make any sort of expression that might embarrass her. 

“Heard you’re building a place for your son?” asks La Gao, La Ru’s uncle and elder. “Could’ve just said so! Just the sort of thing that people need right now. The weather’s been too mild! All these younguns need something proper to get some sweat on their skin and some ache in their backs!”

“You know that sort of attitude is what has you coming back to me for soreness relief all the time, right? It’s not the worst thing in the world to get some rest, old man. Healthier than drinking that many herbs.”

“Look who’s talking!” he says, waving a hand at the mess she’s made. “Don’t think I don’t see you limping on that knee of yours, you madwoman.”

She snorts, but doesn’t refute him. 

“I’m working with dirt and clay more than wood. I don’t intend to bother anyone with it, alright?”

He and most of the others he’s brought with him all give a laugh at that. 

“Come on. We’re lake-folk! You think we don’t know clay better than some newcomer? Gai Teng, you start pressing that dirt over there. Someone get on those walls, they’re rougher than a beast-cat’s scratching tree! You, get some water ready, and you, I want some fresh logs here in no more than two hours!”

The sounds of assent and tromping feet fill the hillside faster than she can bear to say anything, so she just sighs, and smiles, and tries not to let on just how nice it feels to have people who just… help. 

“Alright then. Fine. If you’re going to help this time, don’t expect me to just sit back! It’s my kid coming over, and I intend to make him as nice of a room as I can! He might be a brat, but he’s my brat, and a damn good one!”

“You heard the lady, chop chop! And you, Rai! I expect a fresh batch of herbs for everyone here. Whatever these louts ask for. And the recipe for that spice rub you used last festival!”

This time she can’t help but laugh, shaking her head. “Alright. Consider it a deal, old man.”

“I’m in the prime of my youth! Don’t go throwing about those kinds of accusations, you brute!”

She lets him ramble at her, turning back to keep carving and tamping and preparing. If she’s going to do this, and with so much help to boot, she has no excuse not to make this something worthwhile. 

She knows that she’s a little anxious. It’s not exactly a surprise. It’s almost funny, to be envious of a different part of herself, especially when they share all their memories now, but…

Well. It’s her first time seeing him “in person” in almost half a decade. It’s only fair to be pretty goddamned anxious. 

She just hopes he doesn’t mind all the extra preparations she’s putting up. A house dug into the hillside proper is one thing, even if she’s going a bit overboard for basic lodgings for a few disciples of hers, but as for the rest…

Well. She has to keep it simple and slow, just to make sure that nothing is noticeable or disrupts any local Qi flows. 

But her mind keeps working, building up ever-larger series of patterns and circuits. In her imagination, ready to emerge into reality and anchor itself to the parts she’s carving as far underground as her senses can reach, she’s building fresh arrays and new runic weaves large enough to…

Well. In theory, large enough to hurt anything, ever, really fucking badly, at the minimum.

And she has anchor-points for miles. 

She keeps building as she tamps down the wet earth. 

She swore it on her body and mind that no harm would come to these good people. 

She swears it to herself on her very being that no harm will come to her son.