68-76

Chapter 68 Blood

Cai sat in a room with only one other person. He should have seen this coming, and he had, but he was still unprepared for this conversation. Over the past few months, his life had turned upside down and right side up. First, a fourth rank had tried to kill him, then a fifth. He had met an immortal and found a new path to power that would have carried him all the way to the fifth rank. And he had also given up that power, choosing to be weak and safe instead of strong and hunted.

But now was the strangest thing because sitting across from him was Xaio Wang. His sister.

Cai didn't know what that meant. He knew what family was supposed to be, but he had never experienced any of those so-called unbreakable bonds of blood. His blood had only brought him pain so far. This one might be different though. No doubt she had come here to save him and gain some form of favor, maybe she wanted to drag him to the Raging River Sect and raise him there instead. But now that he was crippled, she too would have no choice but to turn away and leave him be.

"I did not know of your existence," she started. "Our father is a bastard dog and one of the strongest members of our sects. He has ten wives and even then they can not contain him. He has more bastard children than we know of."

"Well, surely he is not-"

"He is. Do not defend the man. You are not the first child he has sired within the Flowering Sword Sect, nor are you the last. He is a blight of a man, but he is strong so his baselessness is tolerated."

She raised a teacup to her mouth and took a sip. They were in a newly built house, one that the Honored Master had put together in a matter of minutes. It was made of wood and marble and it shone with slight prestige, though the outside didn't show that. From the outside, it looked like just another peasant's home.

It was where Cai would live, though he didn't know for how long.

"My own mother was seduced by him when she was barely of age, but she was prudent enough to know her worth and disavow the man before any ties could be born from the arrangement. And my existence, as a child with blood from two of the strongest clans within the Raging River Sect could not be so easily discarded. So she had me and raised me to manifest my talents to the best of her abilities. What do you know of our father?"

"His name, and his reputation," Cai replied.

"Qiao Zheng is widely known for being a dog of the earth. But that is only one side of the coin. The Raging River Sect's talent is inherited by blood. Our strength is tied to our parentage, but it takes a very specific breeding pair to pass down that nature to the child. Qiao Zheng acts the way he does to spread his seed and grow as much talent as possible, and he has created several new talents over the years so the Sect tolerates his actions. He is like a champion stallion that no one can tame but is allowed to run free because of his sires. If it were up to me, I would have already castrated the man."

Cai didn't know what to say so he nodded and mumbled an old proverb.

"Fortune comes with no reason, merely blessings."

"Indeed. Fortune does not choose the worthy." Xaio Wang nodded. "But that does not matter now. What does matter is that you were not supposed to exist. We did not think that the Raging River's bloodline technique could arise from a pairing made with a person of another blood. You're an anomaly."

Cai could see where she was going. She was trying to bring him with her. Since he represented something her sect did not understand, she wanted to bring him and study him. Maybe the sect could create prodigies with pure bloodlines out of bastards somehow. He was a tool, a useful idiot to use in search of a stronger bloodline. He would refuse of course. He would not entrust himself to any one of the great five sects. He would rather die in the desert as a lowly second-rank loose cultivator.

But before Cai could voice his thoughts, Xaio Wang bowed.

"I'm sorry," Xaio Wang spoke. "All of these are the reasons as to why I arrived so late. I had only heard of your situation when your Patriarch visited the Raging River Sect for his daughter's wedding. Had I known sooner, I would have been here to help. I can only blame my own ignorance for your suffering. I have failed as an elder and as a sister. Please forgive this Xaio Wang."

Cai's mind blanked. He had been expecting a plead to follow her back to her sect or a bribe possibly, but an apology was the last thing on his mind. No one had ever done that before. No one had ever said they were sorry to him. Not his cousins or his mother. His servants had, but they had to apologize.

"You have no responsibility towards me young mistress Xaio Wang. As you said, Qiao Zheng has many bastards and I am no more relevant than the rest."

"No," Xaio Wang. "They do not bear the burden of his blood. We do. I have gone through what you have and as your older sibling, it is my job to protect you."

"You ask too much of yourself," he interrupted.

She stood up straight.

"You ask too little," she replied. "I've met your mother. I believed my father to have been the worst parent within the Five Great Sects, and yet she proved me wrong. I asked her why she didn't bring you with her. Do you know what she said?"

Cai shook his head, but he could guess.

"She said that she and Qiao could just make another one."

Cai Xuin laughed. Xaio Wang did not.

"I'm sorry," she replied.

There was guilt there, but also pity. Pity was more than what Cai had ever gotten.

"It's not your fault. You knew nothing of my existence."

"You are my brother," she replied.

"Only by blood. We were not raised together. It means nothing-"

"It means everything," she interrupted. "We are blood kin. Just because your parents failed to recognize the importance of that, it doesn't mean you should."

Cai stopped talking.

"My mother has already started sending out agents to monitor the other bastards of Qiao Zheng. Most of them are well, if not for the lack of a father. And none of them show aptitude for the power of the Raging River Sect."

She said the last part with relief in her voice.

"I see," Cai replied.

"That means we need not worry about their safety. They will be well-kept and raised with good care. And I hear your mother is already pregnant with a second child. It's a shame she'd be allowed to have one, but fortune comes with no reason, merely blessings."

Cai nodded, still in a daze of emotional confusion.

"It's a shame we met under these conditions, but I hope to be a good sibling and reliable pillar for you, brother Cai."

That one hit him like Tai Lui's blade.

Brother.

He smiled. He still didn't trust her. The only person he trusted was the Honored Master, and that was because a person that powerful had no reason to lie to him.

Brother. 

The word sat strangely in his chest.

"I thank you for your consideration… Sister-"

"Do not force yourself. My words cannot prove my intentions but my actions will. Be at peace younger brother, Xaio Wang is a fine name to be called."

"I thank you for your consideration, Xaio Wang."

"Please, I do as I should. Nothing less."

Cai nodded and sipped on his own tea in silence.

"The child will probably be fine," he said after a minute. "They'll be trained in the Raging River's technique and well looked after. Mother will look after them like a shiny piece of jewelry. They'll be a symbol of her and Qiao's marriage as well, something that she'll forever cherish."

"Something that she'll cherish?"

"Something that she'll cherish," Cai reiterated. "She's like a child that one, hoping from one toy to the next. She took care of me for a while when I was a child but when I failed to do anything notable, she stopped looking after me. As long as her new child has some talent, she'll care for them for a good while longer, I think."

His sister scrunched in anger, then it turned to sadness.

"Do you hate her?" She asked.

"No," Cai replied, somewhat surprised by his certainty.

"Why?" Xaio asked.

"It's…" he took a moment to formulate his thoughts. "The pain from a loved one isn't so simple. The way you see our father is not the way I see my mother. I suffered from her neglect and apathy, yes. But I also know her love. I don't know if it was love in truth, but she cared for me. She raised me, fed me, hugged me to sleep, and sang for me. And I loved her. I still do in some ways. Whatever disdain I feel now will forever be poisoned by that love."

Xaio Wang's frown slowly left her face and she took another sip of her tea.

"I see," she replied.

"Do you think that's foolish?"

"No," she replied. "I think that's human."

Chapter 69 The Man and His Dao

Gai Jin punched the air. There was no qi within his fists, no power, only technique. His muscles though were refined over and over again, each limb could break hillsides and his full set of martial arts could flatten mountains, without qi.

With qi, he could shatter valleys. And though his strikes hit nothing but air, the impact was still tangible. He moved with such speed that the world seemed to pause as he struck.

In reality, his whole technique had been executed in less than a tenth of a second. Ten thousand strikes within the span of a blink.

He had moved himself to the Desert Mountains at the peak of the Great Desert Strip. These mountains were thin and tall, reaching a hundred miles into the sky. He now stood at the summit, a small plot of land about a mile wide.

Even that was too small for the entirety of his skill. This was where he had practiced back when he was just a young monk. He'd make pilgrimages here beyond his master's eyes.

Anger flared and qi moved into his leg. Gai turned and struck the air and the wind howled in agony.

Anger was a constant companion of his. Sometimes there was sadness, rarely pity, but always anger. Always.

He stood still and breathed. A facade of calmness took over his soul. It was the calm of an unsheathed sword and the burn of an unlit pyre. It would only take one movement, one thought, one spark to light it again.

He carried himself and let his skin soak up the sun. How long had it been since he had felt this? A century, maybe two?

He had been locked away, buried deep beneath the earth with all those demonic creatures.

Bugs, animals, plants, and people who had fed from the corpses of the demons that hid below. Monks, they called themselves monks and yet they allowed such a hell beneath their lands.

The three dead demons lay beneath all of the five regions. The snake, the bat, and the man. The bat had been claimed by those blind bastards who mixed its blood with their own, and the snake's poison had been studied and harnessed by the Hidden Viper Sect, though they were wise enough to separate themselves from the demon's essence.

And the Bloody Fist Sect had been built above the demonic man. It was their job to wear away and destroy the evil qi that built up from that specific corpse. But they hadn't. No, instead they had started to harvest the evil festering beneath the earth, mining the qi vein that was born of demonic blood.

It was wrong. They should have been constantly destroying the qi from such a monstrosity, but instead, they let it grow and in their greed, they gave way to monsters.

Those demonic beasts beneath the pit. They had tossed him there when rebelled.

They thought he would die.

He hadn't.

For centuries he fought through their mistakes, killing hundreds of thousands of those creatures. In truth, he could have left that hell beneath the ground earlier, but he had stayed.

He couldn't let those demonic creatures burst into the surface. If they did then millions would die. The monks knew this. Gai Lu knew this. Yet he had let his greed consume him and risk the growth of these creatures for the spirit stones their ambient qi could produce.

As men of the virtuous path, theirs was the burden of the weak. It was their duty to protect the weak.

And even in anger, even in undying hatred, he could not let that burden go.

Gai Jin struck the air once more, breaking it with his hands.

The Bloody Fist was his technique. It was a body refining technique, one meant to destroy and build one's fists. It was strength and beauty, but it was also misunderstood.

Gai found that every technique had two aspects. One was the physical aspect, the laws and meridian pathways qi had to follow to become p[ower. That was the fuel of the fire and the heat of it. That was the impact.

But the purpose was just as important. That was the man the fire warmed. And to the Bloody Fist, that purpose was perseverance. The fist was bloody because no matter the evil, it would not stop punching.

That was the way of the monk and the core of the technique, for goodness to triumph evil must be defeated.

So he had fought. His vengeance halted for the sake of his dao, his strength resolute, his fury unwavering.

He had eaten demonic meat to live, unable to find any plants within that deep abyss.

That was his path.

But now he was free, having sealed the corpse and killed all the demonic beings beneath the earth. And his anger burned brightly.

Gai Jin moved, with qi this time. All the elders within the five regions could sense him now. Let them. They could not beat him.

The mountain trembled beneath his feet.

How long had it been here? A thousand years? Ten thousand years? It wasn't natural. A thing like this must have been the product of some technique or ancient battle.

The whole of the region was. From here he could see out into the wild and abandoned land beyond.

The Great Desert Strip was a scar upon the land. It was a great deep gash that cut through all qi and presence, reaching far beyond the region and into the lands beyond. It must have been made by someone far beyond the immortal realm.

It had been here before the demons were felled and it would outlast them yet. The Broken Isles of the Flowering Sword Sect were visible from here as well. The technique of their predecessors scarred their land beautifully and the dao of their technique. To anyone below the fifth rank, it would look like nothing more than a mess of islands but to someone of his sense, it was like a blooming field of flowers in the distance.

Closer to him on the same side of the Great Desert was the Raging River's territory. There was Spring Mountain City. It was the most robust city within the region, being the place immortals and powerful out-of-region elders would rest, should they choose to come here.

With his eyes, he could see the buildings, even from thousands of miles away. He'd been there once, and strangely enough, very little had changed. He had been imprisoned when he was young.

But that was hundreds of years ago. All the mortal settlements had shifted and changed from where they once were, but the dwelling of cultivators seemed to stay the same.

Gai Jin struck again. The air screamed.

He was a dark-colored man, unlike his sister he had always been naturally tan and as he had aged, it seemed to be a persistent trait of his skin. But the skin on his limbs was different.

Traditionally the Bloody Fist technique was used only on the hands, but during his fight with those beasts he had learned to use it on his legs, his knees, his elbows, and even his feet.

His limbs were scarred and strong. The demons beneath his land were dead. The old man's demonic corpse was sealed.

Now all that awaited was vengeance.

Gai Jin struck. His fists flowed with qi and clouds fled from the mountain peak with every move.

Once more thunder echoed for a hundred miles. Animals fled the mountain, from the smallest insects to the largest beasts. Gai waited, letting them all leave the land before finally, doing one strike to his strength.

Qi traversed through his body, from his three dantians to his fists. His minor dantians blossomed with strength and energy burst from his very being. Strength from the lower dantian, spirit from the middle dantian, and purpose from the upper dantian.

His fist struck the ground.

It was a silent strike, the sound of a small sack hitting the floor.

And the world turned silent for a second.

Then, the ancient mountain crumbled.

Gai Jin screamed. His sister was dead. His sister was dead and that bastard had killed her.

Fury overwhelmed his soul and the world of dust beneath him could do nothing to calm it down.

Chapter 70 The Great and Small

Barlo Hew was a stranger in a strange land. 

Well, not truly. The mortals changed and varied, but the cultivators stayed the same. Fashion changed in some places, but that also stayed the same. Cultivators, for all their power, were copycats. 

The lower ranks copied the immortals, the immortals copied the gods, and the gods copied whatever bastard ruled above them.

The rich copied the cultivators and the poor did the same. There were variances here in there, but the soul of the sentiment was there.

Face, politics, power. It was all treated the same way.

That was why he was beyond shocked to find two fifth ranks talking in a small village on the outskirts of the region. 

Barlo was new to this region. Normally, traversing this far out into the wilds was something only immortals would dare to do. The beasts out here were weak but many. The sparse qi in this area, along with the already established human region and demonic stench kept the people of the region safe. 

It was one of many foothold regions that served as rest spots for some of the larger region nations even further away. There was low-quality

qi here, a lack of strength or treasures, and an egregious lack of talent. 

Even the Void Blade Empire only taxed the region as a formal action. No resource born of this place could be worth the waste of an immortal's time to come gather it. 

And Barlo himself was at the cusp of the fourth rank. It was nothing grand outside of this region but something worth noting for anyone within it.

So Barlo had treasures, some he bought and some he took. One of the more important treasurers he wore at all times, was the Spectacles of Dark Deception. They were a pair of reading spectacles with a dark tint on the glass. A tint so dark people would have thought Barlo blind at first glance.

The spectacles were circular and cut off the sides of his eyes as well, limiting his vision. They gave him an air of strangeness and a foreign aura. But most importantly they gave him the ability to go undetected by anyone below the immortal rank. 

That was the reason he had been able to run through the wilds unbothered. Even the spirit beasts within the wilds couldn't detect his presence. And their more important secondary feature heightened his senses beyond limits. 

And while he looked like a forgettable man sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a mortal village, slowly chipping away at his bread and meat. He was anything but. 

"He let you live," the older man commented. "That is one mercy."

"It was an insult," the younger-looking man replied. "A reminder of my weakness. It was his way of saying he sees me as such a nonfactor that my death would be more trouble than its worth."

Barlo kept eating. The fifth ranks had done well to hide their aura, but there were other things that spoke of their power. The precision of their limbs for one. Mortals were clumsy and inefficient. They didn't control their muscles to this degree. The posture, the eyes, and the way they carried themselves spoke of centuries of power and practice. 

Cultivators fought with their bodies, and controlling it even out of combat was second nature.

Barlo himself was at the fourth rank. If they were at or below that level, he'd know, no matter how well they tried to hide it. And if they were an immortal, well then they wouldn't be here. 

He could run, but that would be stupid. They'd notice that right away. Someone of their rank could sense almost a hundred miles out, and even further than that with practice. 

No, Barlo had been in this situation before, with both beasts and not men. 

He knew what he had to do. 

Just sit still and eat his soup. Silence was his friend here. 

"That damn bastard. What a waste of a man, what an empty thing to be, an immortal with no pride."

They whispered this, talking hushedly in a room full of mortals, but Barlo heard them as if they were right next to his ear. 

An immortal? Here? 

Barlo frowned. 

He didn't like immortals. They were too prissy. Too fussy. 

"He came with a mortal. An old man."

"How strange," the older man replied. 

"And he mentioned you."

Their food was untouched, but had they been eating, the older man would have choked.

"Me? What? How? If you spoke of my-"

"I said nothing."

Barlo also said nothing. But he wanted to say a lot. Why bother him? Why meet in a restaurant? There were tens of thousands of square miles of unmonitored wilderness for them to use. Why gather here to talk of such private and important business?

He had no desire to hear it. 

But Barlo knew why. To them, this was the wilderness. To be among mortals was to be among insects, and no one cared if an ant heard their secrets. This was a setting, they preferred over trees and rocks. 

And they trusted their own power too much to ever doubt their abilities. 

Barlo ate. At least the noodles here weren't bad. Many villages had their own cuisine and this one was no different. The noodles were boiled in a mixture of bone broth and local herbs and spices and it was worth his time more than the ramblings of two backwater cultivators. 

"He's arrogant," the younger one spoke. "He appears out of nowhere then he declares the whole of the Great Desert Strip to be his? And those rules, those inane useless rules. To fight is the way of the cultivator, to strip us of that right is an insult."

"How did he know then?" The older man asked. "How could he know about us?"

"I don't quite know, some divination technique, I assume. I felt it touching my soul."

Two lovers denied their right to be with each other? How interesting, Barlo thought. 

"Does he know of our plans? I cannot have him interfere any more than he already has." 

Plotting power-hungry bastards. How boring.

Barlo sighed and put his spoon into the soup. They wouldn't come after him, not unless they could see through his treasures effect, and there were no chances of that happening. He just hated having his meal spoiled by some prissy pissy bastards. 

He slurped. At least the soup was good.

"And what of the Great Desert Strip?" The older man asked. "Is it true what they say about it being guarded?"

The younger man nodded. 

"It is guarded. He says no violence is allowed within the place. I couldn't sense anything, but his senses must be covering the whole strip."

Now that was interesting. 

"Why did the crippled bastard choose to settle here of all places," the younger man said.

"Who knows," the older man replied. "He probably wanted to find a place where no one would bother him."

"What do you suppose his dao is anyway? I've never heard of a dao breaking beyond the immortal rank." 

"It's a rare thing but it does happen. We have some old records within the sect, but not an immortal breaking their dao. It frightens me that such a thing is even possible."

"Do you think Gai Jin broke his dao?" The younger man replied. 

"No. He's still a monk, I'm sure of it."

"You're that certain?"

"He has immense talent."

There was a moment of silence as the two men contemplated something. 

"Do you think he's let it go by now? It seems trivial to fight over such a mortal. Surely a price can be paid to settle the debt?"

"He's a monk of virtue," the old man replied. "He will not forget the misdeed so easily."

"And you are not?" The younger man replied. 

"I am. And I've come to regret my choice over the years… but she was a whore. She was spoiling the boy. A person of such talent should not be raised by such a woman."

The younger other man snorted. 

"So you killed her because she was unseemingly?"

"She was an impurity on a bright and clear jade. If it wasn't for the other one…"

"Is that why you let her flee?" 

"Yes. Gai Jin was already rebelling back then. She had already ruined him."

"Why not kill her still?"

"It would be unseemingly," the monk replied. 

"Is face truly the only thing you care for?"

"Virtue shines among sins. My actions and nature reflect myself and my sect. If I, the pinnacle of the Bloody Fist Sect am not seen as virtuous, then who can be?"

Barlo almost laughed at the conversation. What a strange pair. Face and Ego. Pride worn on the outside and in. 

But what interested him even more was this immortal. 

An immortal with a broken dao? Now that was rare. Daos could break for many reasons, but the most common reason was a refusal to execute. If your dao was justice and your actions were not, then either your dao would break or it would change. But even then, daos were like people constantly changing and filtering as a person did. Unless you violated the very fundamentals of your dao very quickly then breaking it was near impossible. 

And even then. Good could turn to evil, and evil could turn to good. You could rebuild or rediscover what you were. Barlo's dao was greatness. He was great, this was undeniable. 

But if he were to one day suffer and break his dao, he could rebuild it. A dao, a way of life was not a singular thing. It was made out of many things. Your understanding of the world, the truths of life and nature, all you knew, and all you wanted were a part of it. 

Unless you discarded your very self or gave up a core part of yourself, then you would not break your dao.

But someone else could. That was much more common. 

And yet, this immortal spoke of rules and actions, even interfering in people's affairs. Would a man with a broken dao do that? Barlo did not know. 

But he wanted to. 

The two kept speaking. They talked of plots and betrayal. They talked of demons and wars. 

But mostly they spoke of power and how to obtain it. 

They were two foolish men who wanted nothing but power and greatness. 

Two things that would come naturally to Barlo Hew. 

Eventually, he left and feigned sleep in one of the rooms above. Their sense would reach his private room. He waited till they left, then left the village, heading for another place about thirty miles from this one. 

Once there, he rested and after a bit of thought, made way for the Great Desert Strip. It had a strange immortal there, after all, surely it would be worth his time.

Chapter 71 Conversations

Po Pen smiled. Po Pen found joy in his work. People found it strange, repugnant even.

But Po didn't care. The joy wasn't in the work itself, but rather the result. The clean streets, the fresh soil, and even the rot of waste into life were a beautiful thing to see. He had started the job as a way to make a living.

He was quiet, too quiet. He couldn't work most other jobs, because he hated talking and partly, he hated listening.

People were selfish most of the time, talking only about things that they cared for. And since they rarely understood his nonverbal rejection, they'd talk for as long as they wanted about whatever they wanted.

Po just had that effect on people.

But Xi Lu was different. She was quiet when he was tired and when he wasn't, she talked to him, not at him. She spoke of things that interested him, teaching him about plants and rot, sometimes she talked about unimportant things like the food they ate or the weather in the region and even that was a fun enough thing to talk about.

He said nothing, often nodding in reply or looking towards something in the distance, but she seemed to yank meaning from his gestures and would reply to him concisely. It was a first for the man, he not only found a person's company neutral but pleasant as well.

This rainy season had been the hardest one that Po had ever seen. There were easily ten times the number of people here and the same could be said for their beasts of burden, and yet they had almost no trouble accepting them all.

And a major reason for that was the maidens. Seven capable women descended from the hermit's home and aided the village in all their needs, it was a mythic thing. But Chin hadn't cared, the old man had put the girls to work before they could even introduce themselves. Rin Wi was always with Medin and Lin Tai was responsible for managing the forest, though Po didn't think a forest needed much managing, but what did he know?

And Xi Lu had been aiding him in clean-up. But the rest of the girls had been helping with the generic work and that had caused a stir with the young men of the village. The girls were stronger, more capable, and far too beautiful for their own good.

A few men had tried to harm them, but they'd all been firmly rejected, and then later visited by Chin carrying an old stick. Everyone now understood that the women were off limits, but still, their ability to aid in anything made them stand out anywhere they went.

All that made everyone suddenly shift their attention to three locations, where the four women were, where Rin Wi was, and where Xi Lu resided. That meant that Po had been getting stopped much more often than before and asked questions about that mysterious cultivator girl he spent so much time with.

To which Po would shrug and try to turn away.

Even when he enjoyed one person's presence, the world seemed to find a way to ruin it. Though it wasn't a bad price to pay for her information.

"Po Pen! Hello!" Xi Lu smiled.

She always did that, even if he had been gone for only an hour she would greet him with enthusiasm.

It was strange at first, but Po had quickly gotten used to it.

He nodded with a slight smile on his face. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, it was just a small tensing at the end of his lips. But she noticed somehow, much like Mister Bill.

"Well, how is it?"

He nodded. That was enough for her to understand his meaning.

"Good! I've been talking to merchants, mainly those from Hidden Viper's territory and they carry an assortment of seeds we can use to add to the cleansing routine. What do you think about that then?"

He nodded again and Xi continued talking.

She went on about the nature of these plants and their various abilities and Po listened eagerly. He watched as she showed him various seeds and their effects and she even had books, books she had purchased from the trader with her own wealth.

They had started planning and scheming about a new form of sewers. Caverns filled with streams and fresh flowing water, stuffed with underground plants that fed off of all types of waste and filth.

And she also talked about breeding bacteria. He was aware of their existence, but he normally thought of them as bad things that caused illness. But he was wrong, apparently, these things were vital to most humans' existence. And they were just as vital outside of it.

"Well, I don't know how they do things in places like these but I can think up of a few ways to create a good environment for them."

Po gave her a questioning look.

"Oh well, where I'm from we never really had to deal with such… problems. People didn't poop."

Po gave her another look.

"Well, they just didn't. Maybe some did, newborns at least but powerful people are different. You don't defecate after the fourth rank."

Po frowned. That didn't sit right with him. People were people and people pooped. What type of person didn't need to poop.

"They're very clean back there, which was ironic when you think about the things they dealt in."

She said things like this sometimes. Statements about her past followed by what seemed to be fear and guilt. Po had learned to stop asking. She clearly didn't want to talk about it and Po didn't want to talk about anything so who was he to pick and prod?

And clearly, there was pain there.

But it would rot, like all bad things did. Time would take the filth and turn it into life, it always did.

He nodded and sat down next to her, listening as she quickly changed the subject back to seeds. There was still guilt and some flashes of horror, but a little less than last time. It would always be a little less than last time.

Mister Bill had come by a while back and spoke vaguely of the maiden's situation. Po didn't understand. How could he, he was a village peasant, the shit man. But for the first time in Po's life, he felt like he wouldn't mind just listening, even if all she wanted to talk about was herself.

After a good amount of talking, Po went off to unload the feces. There were about twenty thousand people within the valley at any given time now. That meant there were thousands of pounds of feces produced on a daily basis.

Chin had given him a higher budget for the clean-up work. His workforce was double what it used to be and while they wore waterproof gloves and large leather workwear, they still occasionally managed to get something on them.

It was unfortunate, but it was a part of the job. But Xi had made this strange paste from some strong-smelling plants. When they smeared that just underneath their nostrils, they would smell that instead of the wagon of shit they wheeled behind them.

It was nice, humanizing even.

He didn't hate the job but the smell was always something he could do without.

Then there was the beast dung. That was a whole work of its own, but Chin had already gotten an area cleared out for them to stay at. And since qi beasts tended to be smart on average, they were all trained in using a single area as their dump spot.

It was downwind of the village, but even then Po was coming up with methods to fight back the smell, and so was Xi. She talked all day long about what they could do to quicken the composting process, walking by his side as he went about his daily route.

And eventually, when evening came they said their goodbyes and went to their homes. It was a good day overall.

Was this how other people felt when they talked? Being heard was nice and having someone who wanted to hear you was even better.

Maybe that was why people kept talking to him.

Po Pen smiled as he used the soap to wash over his whole body. It was one of the few luxuries he consistently enjoyed, a daily shower.

He was also finding himself more tired than most days. A part of him he never really knew ached a little. Conversations drained him, even if it was with Xi, but he didn't mind.

In fact, he looked forward to being tired tomorrow too.

Chapter 72 Awakening

Babies are weird.

Nai had been fighting with my tail for the past three hours, and the poor girl was losing. The appendage had a will of its own and as soon as Nai had recognized that fact, she had started to battle with it.

Small balled fists grabbed onto the tail, but the limb wrapped around her hands and brought them up to her head. Then, it went for the kill striking at her pudgy little belly. Nai laughed and giggled and the tail didn't slow down the offense.

Eventually, when tears started to come out of Nai's eyes, it decided to stop and release her. After taking a minute to catch her breath, she growled and attacked and the cycle repeated once more.

The tail had been weirding me out for a while now, to be honest. It was mine, I knew it was mine, but it was also not mine at the same time. It was like having an extra consciousness attached to my own. Technically we were one and the same but we also weren't.

I didn't feel threatened by it. I just didn't understand it. It was simultaneously me and not me at the same time. And when you got to where I did, you understood the very center of your existence with no doubt in mind.

Yet here was a strange new part of me that I couldn't grasp. It made me feel like a kid again.

After twenty more minutes of the tickle cycle, Nai fell asleep all weary and tuckered out. The tail gently carried her to my hands and I swaddled her up and took her to her crib. She was growing substantially, a little more each day I saw her, but children didn't make good immortals. They could still age once they became an immortal but expecting a child to pick a dao was dysfunctional.

She had to age before she did that, she had to believe in something.

After putting her to bed, I made my way down to my basement.

That was where the door was. The door was unnecessary, but I liked it. It was the way to my pocket dimension.

And within it was the array. I would call it my array but it was starting to think. I couldn't own something like that.

But today would be the first movement, the first stirring of a nearly there child.

Well, not my child, but sort of like my child. A simulated soul.

I was giddy.

Souls were common, making a soul was common, but the nature of that soul was the same. Most beings were a reflection of one of the four primordials, human, beast, plant, or insect. And the soul, the mechanism by which consciousness operated, was based on those beings as well.

You could change forms, become stronger, influence bloodline, and do all other manners of transfiguration. But souls were hard to change. They were complex.

Even Dane, a being of the twelfth rank had trouble with altering his soul. He had understood it, but altering it was something else entirely. You could understand how a wheel works and you might even be able to make it, but making a new wheel, one that wasn't a wheel but functioned like one was a tough task.

It was the same with souls. The four variants of thinking beings are human, beast, insect, and plant. But this was different, something rare. Not impossible and certainly not a new task that had never been done before. There were many thinking beings that had been made to differ from the path of the primordials, but each of those was different, their own iteration of the wheel.

But it was something new.

Something unique to all of reality. My own iteration of the wheel.

The array's heart thumped. A metaphysical web of push, pull and hold, and its soul started to breathe. Its eyes opened for a second, looking and seeing for the first time, and it breathed once more.

Thump.

It was already at the immortal rank.

Bump.

Then it was beyond it.

Thump.

It kept going and going, pushing itself until.

Bump.

It hit the wall of the ninth rank.

It struggled against that barrier for a quick moment, before seemingly settling down.

The array squirmed and shifted, finally looking at me with what could vaguely be described as disinterest.

It knew me and I knew it, even if it had only been awake for less than five minutes.

It asked me one thing and one thing only.

Let me out.

"I can't."

Why?

"You'd get me noticed. Too much attention and we'll both be wiped out."

I had enough sense of mind to tie its existence to my will, at least in part. I could control where the array went and I could see inside of it clearly, knowing every little thought that might flutter.

It was weird. I'd seen the universe eating insects and trees that stood outside of space and time, but this was still different.

Souls dictated nature. A plant grows and insects have no room for empathy or love, merely purpose. Beasts desired strength and humans could dictate their purpose or get consumed by it entirely.

This thing was different. Its purpose was already predetermined, much like a dao angel but somehow still different. Dao angels were locked into their nature unless they consumed more residual daos that would slowly change their nature over time.

Otherwise, they would like Rin Wi's tribulation, tied to one path and forced to follow it no matter what. And she had only broken away through sheer will, tying herself to an interest she had just to defy the path her original dao would have made her take.

This was not like that. It took all the best parts out of the four primordial natures in my view. It took the growth of a plant, the drive of an insect, the lust of a beast, and the empathy of a human.

It had a nature all its own and that nature was still growing.

I had intended to teach it about peace, giving it a lot of rules and boundaries. That was before I had gotten my dao.

Now I could connect to it, and feed it directly.

I had been the King of Arrays but I also had been an expert on souls. I had spent my whole existence trying to change mine, wiping and rearranging everything within it.

In a way this array was what I had wanted to become, everything I had ever learned.

And yet, instead of understanding the array and pushing me down into the depths of cultivation, it was meant to bring peace.

I chuckled, how ironic. The very thing I had been seeking all my life stood before me, only for it to be the exact opposite of what I had wanted in the first place.

There was stagnation, not power. Here was rest, not journey.

The array grumbled, only in a way that an array could. Strange. Barely ten minutes old and complaining already.

Then it moved, breathed, and condensed, shoveling itself into my shadow.

Our existences were tied for now, at least until it matured. It would stick with me and learn, modeling itself to me.

I smiled. There was always the threat it could become, some strange intelligence far beyond my own. But that was impossible unless it grew beyond my own rank. Cultivators were very smart and at the ninth rank, they were practically omniscient of a certain area around them. Our senses could reach deep into the very fabric of existence and untangle its tapestry.

In other words, intelligence was tied to rank. It was no smarter than any other ninth-rank being in existence. But it was different, it could grow much faster than most other lifeforms.

And like a realm, it would provide the area with its own growing bundles of laws and understanding as it aged. There was a light shutter in the valley as it awoke and its presence strained and stressed till it reached the very bounds of the great desert strip.

"Keep to the immortal realm and produce the same aura as me, otherwise we'll be found out."

The array nodded, merely agreeing instead of obeying. It was reading me, searching for what it could take from my existence to make its own more complete.

And I let it. It fumbled through some of my memories, honing in on earth before quickly moving on to my dao. That it tasted eagerly. It took in my understanding of peace, turning it in its own mind before settling down, and…well the only term I could use to describe what it did would be digesting.

It was digesting my experience, and understanding my peace.

Quickly it moved on from me and ran around the whole of the Great Dessert Strip, taking from anything that would let it. Some of the more powerful divine beasts warded it off, but most of them didn't notice. Then it went to the ants beneath the ground, the birds in the sky and the little rodents in the fields.

It went to the villagers and the merchants, the pack animals and the mortals, and even the plants. It studied them.

Then it went out into the desert and touched every living thing within it. From the crabs deep beneath the sand to the massive hoards of cultivators that were crossing the Great Desert Strip. Lots of them traversed the strip without coming by the valley.

It touched upon billions of lives, mostly plants, and bugs, but animals too, but people seemed to take it the longest amount of time to understand. Eventually, it came back to me and wallowed.

It seemed dissatisfied.

"Did you think everyone would offer as much as I did?" I asked it.

It shrugged and grumbled, then it fluttered, noticing my tail. It jumped into its shadow as well.

Chapter 73 Awakening Part 2

The array did not have a name. Why would it need that? It wasn't a man or a beast.

It was an array. An execution, an act given life.

It breathed, it lived, and its creator was irrelevant to its act.

It was meant to provide peace, but what was peace? Well, peace was a concept, that it knew. And it had learned what its creator thought it was.

A paradox, restricting freedom in three parts. And while that was true as far as the array could sense, surely there had to be more.

Billions of lives, and it had tasted all of them, scrounging through their memories and thoughts, searching for this thing called peace.

And yet most of them thought it was a feeling. A sense of stability, a predictable tomorrow, tranquility, social balance, a lack of war. All things that could fit in with its creator's understanding of peace.

It was looking for something more. Something concrete larger than a feeling but consent of it. Something beyond mere definition, it was looking for an action.

It was still an array, after all, it was within its nature to act.

So it had seen it. The tail, something he hadn't touched. It was his creator's limb but it had not come from him. It was someone else's, someone different.

Surely they had something to offer.

"Well well well," a voice spoke. A monkey man sat in the distance eating a peach and staring at the little array construct.

"So you've woken, have you? I was wondering when that would happen," the monkey man laughed.

The array stared at the being. He was there but he wasn't. The array could not feel his soul or presence. The image was there as well as the sound and the weight of the being, but the array could not perceive even a glimpse of his soul.

"That was a joke. I knew exactly when you'd awaken."

Humor was a human thing and so was fear.

The array ran towards the being's shadow, trying to shove itself into its mind and read all the monkey man would allow.

Only for the array to slump into the floor and feel… nothing.

"Hahaha," the monkey laughed. "What a funny little thing you are!"

The array huffed. It didn't have pride, that was a human thing. But if it did it would be very offended right now.

"Look around kid, you're already where you want to be."

The array studied the area, once in confusion and then once more in…awe. Yes, that was what it was feeling, awe.

This was not the soul of a God-Imperium, this was the shadow of a soul, the small presence he had left behind.

And yet it made its creator's soul look like nothing in comparison. The array ran, searching for memories and ideas, hungering for growth and yet it found itself failing. Here was a place where it was too small. Here was the shadow of a being, an imprint of its presence, and yet the array was still too small.

It was lost in the gaps between thoughts. A single idea from this being's mind would overload it, redefine it, and shape its nature to its own. But the Monkey King kept his thoughts at bay.

This was a shadow, an infinitesimal fraction meant to hide its creator. And yet that shadow overwhelmed all that the little array could conceive.

"This would be much too overwhelming for you little fellow. How about a guided tour then?"

A door manifested and another person stepped through. Its creator walked into the world and stopped, looking squarely at the monkey man.

There was a moment of thought in its creator's eyes though the array could not tell what the man was thinking.

"I see," its creator finally spoke.

"Do you know?"

"In a way," its creator replied. "You are Wukong, correct? A piece of him?"

"A piece is too strong of a word. More like a footprint."

"But you are still him, right? There is no difference."

The Monkey King nodded.

"And the tail, I've been trying to understand that for a while."

"A shadow of a shadow of a shadow of a shadow, I'd say. If you were to look up to what's casting it, you'd see me. I see you've gotten your bearings."

"You let me live," its creator replied. "I doubt there's anything I can say that would change that."

"Yes yes, there are things you could have done, but not now. Not anymore. Not with the path you've chosen."

Its creator smiled.

"I figured."

Then the monkey king turned to the array.

"Now where were we young thing? You were looking for something right?"

The array agreed and though it had no voice or head to nod, the Monkey King seemed to understand it anyway.

"Peace is it?"

The array agreed once more. That was its purpose, its sole reason to exist. It was meant to bring peace, to protect it. And while peace was simple in the vaguest of terms, it was also complicated.

Bringing all those things together, the feeling, the state, the security, and even the peace that came after a struggle was something it couldn't bring together.

"Well, peace is a bad word for it, don't you think," the Monkey King asked. "Who would tie your existence to such a vague word?"

The array looked toward its creator with false disdain and Sunwukong smiled.

"You see little thing, the man who designed you is not the man who stands before you. The person who designed you had no dao, no experience with the concept he wanted you to achieve. So instead of choosing a feeling or a path like the dao angels or making you pursue a certain state of dominant rule like a beast, he designed you to look for peace, a word filled with different meanings."

Then the Monkey King turned to its creator.

"Do you know why the dao of peace is so rare?"

"It's too vast and unrefined. More than that it's paradoxical. Things like virtue and love, or even the path of strength or freedom focus on pure concepts, paths that do not fight themselves," he replied.

"Yes," Wukong nodded. "Peace is justice, yet peace is also freedom. Peace is in the mind and yet peace is also within a land. Peace is rest and yet peace is also struggle. It is an end and a process. It is the sky and the earth. It is a lifetime and a moment. It is a thing unique to every living thing and somehow all the same, and yet you've burdened this poor fellow with protecting it, how can it do that now?"

Its creator looked down at it.

"I thought it was a simple thing," he replied.

"For a human yes. You humans are quite blind to that lying mind of yours and it allows you some strangely fictional things. Peace, what a useless word. You see little fellow, for mortals words like peace and justice, while meaningful are not clear. They are not real, merely ideas. To cultivators, their daos are much more than those words, they are paths. And when your creator made you, he had not touched that path of peace yet, so he left a lazy substitute, a word."

The array knew this already and agreed.

"I can redefine it-"

"You can not, changing its soul now would be the same as killing what it currently is and you cannot kill it."

The array knew this as well. What the Monkey King said wasn't a command but a description. Its creator had a dao, a path, and that path would not allow the murder of innocent life.

That had been the original plan. The creator had planned to configure it after its creation. In truth, the array would have preferred that.

"But your creator has also fallen for the same trap. He has chosen the dao of peace as well and though that dao can change and get whittled down to one direct uncontradictory path, he has not done that."

Both array and creator stood there in silence.

Peace. They both sought it and while one could find it, it would be only one part, one element cut from the rest. And the other stood there fastened to the whole world, an amalgamation of ideas that fought over each other.

"Do you know why I fought the Buddha?" Wukong asked.

"It was done to rebel against the two factions," its creator answered. "The war between good and evil took countless lives. Every cultivator within existence had to fight for one side or another, it was an eternal war raging across existence."

"True," Wukong said with a nod. "But, I also could not live under them. I could not be defined by either side. I wanted my own power and the freedom to be my own. And yet I still aided the Buddha, creating a middle ground that would grow stronger than either side. While good did not win, evil was averted, and while evil still thrives, good was restricted. In this was freedom, something good that allowed for the existence of evil. A paradox."

Wukong looked towards both man and array.

"Daos are not so small as to be defeated by a paradox. To reach for a dao that folds in on itself is a daring move, but not an impossible one. It will be difficult to tie your existence to it, but it will also be rewarding."

Then the Monkey King started fading along with all the world around him.

"But I will tell you this, where there is peace, suffering ends. Start there."

Chapter 74 To Cultivate Part 6

Man, that guy was terrifying. 

I looked at the array and the little thing growled at me. 

'You fucked up my existence,' the thing said. 

"Wukong helped with that," I replied. 

The array meandered over to me with expectation.

"No," I replied. 

Then it… nagged at me, pulling at the fabric of my being like an angry small dog. 

"I'm not abandoning my path just to fix you," I replied. 

Defining peace and tweaking the array was something I had planned to do from the get-go. First I would bring it to life, then I would train and trim it as necessary, cutting off the bits I didn't need.

I was going to edit the array's soul, and I would have been fine with it. But now I had a dao, a path. 

A restriction. 

It was irritating. Throwing away a dao wasn't hard, people abandoned daos all the time. But when you have a desire to follow that path, it becomes much harder to discard. 

And I simply did not want to give up peace. 

"Having a dao is all the trouble I thought it was," I mumbled. 

The array looked at me and grumbled. It didn't have the values I held. It didn't care about living itself and would much rather be changed on a fundamental level to be more efficient at its job. Living was only an unfortunate necessity for its goals. 

And I was one of the few people in existence who could be trusted to edit its soul. It was like a living program that couldn't edit its source code. 

"Well, the only path forward is cultivation ya know. So, sit tight, cross your legs, and ponder the nature of your existence or something."

The array, for the first time in its existence, expressed emotion. 

Dismay.

Poor bastard. I felt bad for it, but it would work through it. I knew my arrays, living or dead and I knew this one would find a way to persevere. I'd put literal billions of years into its creation. This would be nothing more than an early road bump, I was sure of it. 

The array expanded, covering all of the valley and the Great Desert Strip in one length. 

"Nothing beyond the immortal rank!" I yelled out to it. Ah-Marin was home to a few decently sized multiversal sects. Communication with the grander multiverse was common here and I didn't want to risk getting any of the higher-up's attention, even if I could defeat them all. 

I could have been a big fish in a small pond, but the pond was an endless ocean and big fish attract sharks. 

It would listen. I knew it would, I had hard-wired that part properly at least.

Then, with a sigh, I walked off.

********

Chin was a very annoyed man, at least that was what most people thought of him. In truth, he was calm and mostly happy, as long as he was farming or with his wife. 

Anything else felt like a waste of time. He didn't mean to be rude, that wasn't his nature, but he couldn't help but see the potential of time. 

Time that could've been better spent out in the field, directing other farmers or clearing out the fields. People could always use more food, and he was eager to provide that. 

Sometimes he felt okay with Mister Bill. He didn't think about farming too much when the two talked, but that didn't mean he wasn't annoyed. That old man had a way of grinding his nerves unlike any other. 

Chin may have looked older and his body may have been weaker, but Mister Bill would forever be an old man to him. He was ancient, regardless of how he looked. 

Chin sighed and dug his hoe into the earth, then his hands went into the hole and pulled out a handful of black soil. 

Living, his senses told him. 

That was new. He could normally tell the quality of the soil by looking at it, but this wasn't just his sense speaking. This was something else, it was his qi. 

He could feel it leaking passively from his hand and into the earth. He could feel it mingle with the life within. He could sense the traces of life it had once held and the life it could hold today. 

This field had once been the dumping place for feces. The insects the traders rode through the village were hive-like, meaning they could be instructed to treat one place as a collective dumping ground for their remnants. This was one of those places. 

Chin would rotate the fields every five years, leaving a few sets of fields to compost for the next five years while they all planted their crops on the new one. 

This was how they worked. He knew what this field was, but now, with his qi, he saw what this field was.

He felt the life beneath him, and more so, the potential for life. He knew what crops would grow best here, most he had already planned to grow, but some he had never even considered. 

He saw the height of the harvest come next season and the way the water flowed deep beneath this plot of land. 

He saw life, and more importantly, he saw death. He saw the harvest, the dung, the waste, the rot. Years of death hibernating, waiting for a chance to spring forth as a living thing. 

Chin's mind reeled back into the moment. 

"OOOH looks like someone had their first moment of enlightenment," a voice teased. 

"What?" Chin replied. 

He didn't need to turn, he knew the man was behind him already. 

"Enlightenment, you just touched upon it. A little peak at your dao buddy," Mister Bill replied. 

Chin stood up and frowned. That was the most suitable expression around this man, a firm and ever-present frown. 

"What does that mean?" Chin asked. 

"Enlightenment, you just saw the edges of your being, your dao and you touched on some very complex laws there Chin, very talented."

Some more teasing Chin assumed. That was why this man annoyed him. The teasings.

"No, I really mean it. That takes quite a lot of talent. If any of the sects here had known what you'd done they come and scoop you up immediately. Give you a youth potion and call you young master or something."

"The Five Sects?" Chin snorted. 

"Nah, not them. Some of the bigger guys," the old man replied. "Anyways Chin, welcome to the first rank, and what an entrance I must say. You barged in like a Champ."

Mister Bill always had strange vernacular. Chin had heard 'champ' before, it meant some kind of champion or man of ability or something. A shortening most likely. 

Chin was an educated man, after all, he made sure to read the language almanac every year from cover to cover. The language almanac of this year had just arrived, but he'd gone through it already. 

Language almanacs were how the empires instituted law and language over such vast regions. Every child was expected to study the Imperial Language, also known as the common tongue throughout their younger years, and the yearly update was taught to the adults as well. 

That was Renk's job, one of his many duties as Light Master. 

"I don't feel different," Chin replied. 

"And yet you are, entirely different from who you were ten minutes ago. Definitely new."

Chin stared annoyingly at the old man. He had read some fairy tales where old folks talked in riddles and hidden meanings, sometimes that old man reminded him of those beings. 

"Look inside yourself Chin, you're practically spilling you qi out," Mister Bill said. 

Chin did so, and as he looked he could feel his dantian overflowing. He could see his meridians flooding with qi. 

"Normally you'd be puking up some impurities right now, but I already got rid of those when we first started. Now start closing your meridians and holding in as much qi as you can. Keep it contained and cycle it through yourself in that formation I taught you-"

"The Fat Camel Shape?"

"Yes," Mister Bill replied. "The fat camel one."

Chin smiled internally. He rarely managed to get one over Mister Bill. He remembered the original name of the technique having five or seven words in it. Something Mythic Heavenly Divine something something. 

But when he connected the cycle through his meridians, it ended up looking like the torso of a camel with two humps, one on top and the other on the bottom. 

So that was what Chin called it, the fat camel cycle. 

It was hard at first, but Mister Bill had made Chin exercise that specific pathway a whole lot during the past few days, to the point where it was almost instinct for him now. 

But this time the qi was immense. He could have never imagined the human body could produce so much of it. Much less his own body. 

Power gushed through him. His joint ache was washed away. His tired back melted into heat. 

And from the sheer amount of energy he had suddenly received, he stood and nearly jumped. 

Then without a second thought, he took off running. He outpaced a horse instantly, and he wasn't tired by the slightest. He jumped and the crops below him moved away, as if he had tossed the earth away with his feet. 

Then he landed. 

Chin was in awe. He looked, he saw, and he smiled. 

"Someone's happy," Mister Bill chuckled.

"Yes, let's celebrate."

"Oh yeah, I'm sure Medin would love to make some fried meat or something, maybe Rin could-"

Chin smiled and hurled his hoe at the man. 

"Oh come on!" Mister Bill exclaimed, catching the hoe with an outstretched hand. 

Then he made the lazy bastard work till the sun went down.

Chapter 75 Survivor

Madam Rose sat in her tent quietly. It had been that way for the past few days.

All the other workers had given her space. Magney, the half-dwarf, and her ever-present companion stood outside the tent, warding off would-be pursuers.

The local village chief had been stringent with the negotiations. She had thought him to be a mere farmer at first, and she turned out to be right. But he was also the chief and fairly well educated for living in such an isolated area.

He had given her a plot of land, under the condition that she and her worker helped clear a large section of the land. Apparently, they were to be part of a new group of settlers and they would help clear the land for those that would come after them, in return for one of the better spots in the area.

She had expected a lot of noise and distaste. According to that Bill fellow, everything would be left up to the mortal chief to decide.

That had scared her for a bit. She was more than ready to seduce him to ensure her safety, but that had proved unnecessary, the man had been more than reasonable.

It was a strange relationship her people had with mortals. The stain of a whore on the glory of a cultivator was a dichotomy too large for their minds. Succubuses were one of the only groups of cultivators who even mortals routinely shunned.

It wasn't open of course.

They would still welcome them with smiles, and let them shop as they needed. But other cultivators were given invitations to inns and mansions. In larger cities, cultivators would receive gifts by the handful, they would be tolerated at worst and hired at best.

A mortal in power was a fearful thing for her.

But the old man had been fair if a little firm in creating the rules. The consequences were laid out. The usual village rules applied here, no murder, no violence, no indecency. He had also asked her to not tempt any of the village men or women.

"If they come to you, I won't care but I'd rather not have old men and housewives yelling for me to get rid of you because their lover couldn't keep their pants on."

That was what he had asked for. And he had asked, not demanded.

It was a pleasant interaction. No lies, no bargaining, no seducing.

She couldn't keep track of how many men had tried to seduce her over the years, thinking their sword would be the sharpest of the bunch. It was like a beggar trying to cook for a chef and expecting the chef to say it was the best meal they'd ever had.

But there was none of that this time. She had felt a little insulted and a little surprised, but some people were just different.

Then she had learned.

Gai Fang was free. She still thought of him by his old name, he would be Gai Jin now. Lee Heng had come by a few days ago. She had been happy then. This town- this village was paltry for entertainment but at least she was safe.

But that had turned into an afterthought in an instant.

The joy, the relief, the eagerness to build something permanent-- all of that had slipped into the river that was Gai Jin. She wasn't even worried, that was too defined of an emotion.

She was anxious, scared, worried, happy, sad, and terrified all at once. She didn't know what to feel so she felt all those things at the same time.

Overwhelmed would be the proper word for it. Her people, her clan as they sometimes jokingly referred to it, held little actual power. She had heard rumors of seduction sects controlling parts of major empires in the past, but that was not her people.

They were just outcasts, all lost and broken coming together to make each other whole. They had fallen into the job out of necessity but they had taken to it, and those that hadn't did different things, like Magney. She was strong and had a hefty build so she served as security. All cultivators had some power, but the ones here didn't practice any fighting arts, Magney did.

After Gai Fang had been captured, she had fled. She had cried, she had screamed, but more than anything, she had abandoned him.

Guilt weighed upon her some nights, guilt with the weight of an ocean. If she had remained silent if she hadn't told Gai Fang about her discoveries. If only she had said nothing, he might have been free right now.

And in one swooping instant, that had changed.

He was free, her younger brother was free.

Would he see her? Did he want to see her? Did he even know that she was alive? What torment had he been through?

She had lived out here peacefully, troubled but still, peacefully, and she had done nothing. She could do nothing. That was what she told herself.

Was that true? She was a cultivator of the fourth rank, she could have tried something. But the monks would have killed her before she could even speak Gai Jin's name.

Flashes of Li Fang's body came to mind. Her elder sister one moment, a corpse the next, that was the power of a fifth rank.

Fear, guilt, shame, horror, and sadness all coalesced into one overwhelming river of emotion. Self-loathing thoughts came into her mind and hungered.

And all she could do was stand there.

"Lui?" A voice came from the opening of the tent.

Magney walked in with speed and quickly wrapped her arms around her, her wide torso cradling her body.

She didn't ask what was wrong. She knew it already. She'd known it for the past few days.

"It's okay sweetheart, you're okay."

Madam Rose, Lui Yong, melted into her friend's shoulder for the moment, the half-dwarf's shoulders helping the storm in her soul.

"I should have done--"

"There's nothing we could have done. That sect would have killed us the instant we stepped foot in that city."

"I could have gone alone and--"

"No, you couldn't," Magney interrupted. "I'd never let you."

The two held still for a second.

"You've got to wait, Lui. He'll come back. He's free. Why wouldn't he come back? You'll see him then and he'll be happy that you're alive."

"...Will he?" Lui whispered.

"Of course he will. He's your brother Lui. Have faith."

She sometimes wished she had died that day with Li Fang. Dying was no worse than living in fear, and dying was far better than living in guilt.

Even if she had no reason to feel the way she felt, even if she was truly helpless against the sect, she felt guilty.

She was alive and free while her older sister was dead and her younger brother was imprisoned.

Why should she be so lucky as to have slithered away untouched?

"You lived, you got away and that is a good thing Lui, that is a great thing."

Lui Yong flattened against her friend.

Yes. She was alive, for better or for worse. And she would face him, eventually, for better or for worse.

Lui Yong knew this, and she would not run away this time. She would not lose her brother twice.

Chapter 76 In The Beginning

"Okay, where do we start?" I said. 

Chin sat opposite me across the table. We were outside, right by my home, with a small cup of tea in each of our hands. It was a nice windy day, the kind that would cool you off but wasn't too chilly. 

I wore a simple gray robe and Chin wore his classic sleeveless shirt and vest. His skin which used to be old and tanned now seemed just tanned. The moles and blemishes had faded and the old muscles on his arm seemed to be more defined. 

His wrinkled face seemed tighter and his eyes burned brighter. He was old and withered, but he looked like a tree stuck between winter and spring, both sprouting and bound. 

"At the beginning," he replied. 

"The beginning of everything?" I asked. 

Chin nodded. 

"Chin, I have no idea as to how existence came to be," I replied. 

Chin frowned, seeming genuinely surprised. 

"You don't?"

"No, do you think I know everything?"

"You act like you do."'

"I know a lot," I shrugged. "But not everything."

"Then how do you think the universe started?" Chin asked.

"The universe?"

"Everything I guess, or whatever came before it. You talk about it sometimes and it makes no sense to me, it all seems so…vast."

I sipped my tea for a moment. I could get that. The grander multiverse seemed so wide and vast, and it was. It was infinitely immense, more so than anything else out there. 

"I guess we start at the beginning then," I started. "Or at least what we know of it."

"In the beginning, there was a fight. A fight amongst beings so grand and terrifying that expressing their power in words wouldn't help you understand even the shadow of their being. But there was a fight among a myriad of creatures. Not just man, beast, insect, and tree, but other lifeforms as well. Things that lived and breathed in ways we didn't. Life itself was eternal and spanning in its forms," I stated. 

"But in the end, only four remained. A man, a beast, an insect, and a tree. Everything else had been broken and destroyed, all meaning had been depleted into something called primordial qi."

Chin listened, that meant nothing to him, but I could tell he was trying to make sense of it. I waited for him to ask a question, but he never did. 

"Well, eventually the four primordials realized they couldn't kill each other. They were all powerful and could do anything but kill each other and peace was forced to be had. At least that's what most cultivators believe."

"What..happened to them?" Chin asked. 

"The primordials? They're still around, but you can't really go asking the strongest beings in all of existence for a history lesson. They're not nearly as gracious as I am," I joked. 

Chin took a moment to think. 

"How do you compare to them?" He finally asked. 

"Oh I don't," I answered. "I am small and no words can elaborate on that."

Chin frowned. 

"Are they dangerous?"

"In a way, like the suns or the rain," I replied. "They just are."

"Why were they fighting?" Chin asked.

"Who knows?" I shrugged. "There are theories, but no one really knows the true answer."

"What are the theories?"

"You remember the ranking numbers?"

"Yes," Chin replied sipping some of his own tea. "You build your body, mind, and spirit up every three ranks."

"Yes," I replied. "But what happens at the sixth rank?" 

"Immortality," he answered. 

"Yes, every third rank you face tribulation, and every sixth rank there is a change of nature. From mortal to immortal, from immortal to god. Lots of cultivators believe that the seventeenth rank isn't the end, but rather the final barrier. They believe there is something after it, the True God rank. The eighteenth rank. They believe as one pushes into immortality at the sixth rank, and into Godhood at the twelfth, that there is a hidden boundary past God-Imperium, something only one cultivator can have."

Chin…frowned. That was his default reaction to anything. It was one of his, 'I'm thinking' frowns not an 'I'm annoyed' frown. 

"Do you believe it?" Chin finally asked me. 

"I don't know," I shrugged. "There are lots of things I don't know."

Chin's frown deepened as if he found that thought to be strange. 

"Well… what happened after that?" He asked. 

"Then came the age of the first realm. The Tree-"

"The tree!" Chin interrupted. "How does a tree fight anyways and don't they have names? I can't keep track of beast, man, tree, and insect. Those are things, not names."

"It's a magical tree," I replied. "As for the names, those words are their names, but we can use another language's names if you want to. The Tree is Iurn, the Man Adun, the Beast Drehg and the insect is Vethien. Is that better?"

"So they have names in another language?"

"No," I replied with a shake of my head. "Not names, all those words mean those things in that language."

"What language is that?" Chin asked. 

"The first one," I replied. 

He frowned. My answers kept leading him to questions and he didn't like that. 

"After that, they looked around and found there was almost nothing left."

"What was left?" Chin asked. 

"Pockets protected by themselves. Adun had his people, Vethien had her hive, Drehg was alone, but Iurn had the most beings. Iurn is a tree and trees grow and protect after all. Within her leaves were the remnants of a thing long gone. That is what's called the Primordial Age."

Chin nodded and listened, he seemed resolute on listening now and not asking any more questions. 

"In those days, there were no realms, no universes, just void and chaos. And once the primordials decided on peace, things started to reemerge anew. But now existence had nothing but the primordials and a few remnant beings of the past. The four primordials form echoed throughout infinity. Think of it like a clear lake having four large stones being tossed into it, or better yet. Think of existence like a giant empty farm and the four primordials as the strongest four crops left in existence. Their qi scattered into the wind and the rest of existence started to take shape."

I then took a sip of my tea.

"Alright Chin, listen up," I stated. "This is going to get a bit complicated."

Chin straightened in his bench. 

"Universes are like the ground beneath your feet. They are the fabric of rules and matter that hold you up and allow you to live, yes?"

We had talked about this before, and Chin nodded, having seemed to remember it. 

"Good, now back then, there weren't any. There was only void and chaos, so all things born had to reach the ninth rank under protection and no mortals existed yet."

"What?" Chin replied. "They were just born strong?"

"Around the fifth rank, then over a little amount of time, they would work their way into the ninth rank and be able to wander the void of the multiverse on their own."

"I see," Chin replied. He had questions, he wouldn't ask them. 

"In those days, men and women would pop into existence and quickly push themselves into the immortal rank. They would either be lucky enough to find stable spots of qi and forge themselves into a god or they would be viciously torn apart by the void. Only the strongest survived, and they were called the first gods."

"Now of those first gods, there was a group who sought to make a realm. A stable base for lesser existences to take shape, and that group is known as the First Keepers. Not much is known about them, except for the fact that they, together with Iurn managed to create the first realm, Eden. Shortly after that they disbanded though and a second set of God-Imperiums took their title, these are known as the Second Keepers."

I sighed, this part would be hard to explain. 

"Here's the main thing about the void, it's an absolute. It doesn't have direction or meaning but rather thin lines of connections. A realm exists by itself, in its own bubble of existence. Sort of like a book, each story is contained and finished but you can flip through the story and end up at any particular moment. You see, I tell you this happened in the past as if there is a definitive past within the void. There isn't. There isn't time, past, present, or future. When the primordials fought, they destroyed reality as it was entirely. It wasn't so much destruction as it was revocation. Concepts, ideas, laws, worlds, all of them erased. To us, the world before the primordials is a fiction, like a story that got written over."

Chin took a sip of his tea, thought, then nodded. I could see his brain working on the information. It was too much and it was unimportant, so he would remember it, but he wouldn't bother trying to understand it.

"So the First Keepers, what they did was make a stable realm, one with its own time and space, something that could exist as a total fabric. But before that, you have to understand something called relative existence. Imagine a realm like a home in the village. Each home lies next to a road or close to it, or at the very least there are ways to get there, paths to take, landmarks to follow something."

Chin nodded, seeming more engaged than he had ever been. 

"Those roads, those landmarks, and connectors, within the grander multiverse, that would be concepts. If you pulled yourself closer to the concept of hate and pain you'd end up closer to the hells, if you pulled yourself closer to the concept of joy and virtue you'd end up near the heavens. But the First Keepers came before that. Eden, the first realm, was full of its own unique concepts. It was isolated, and so it was lost. It was meant to be stable and isolated and unlike any other realm, and more than that, it was complicated. It was like a house that was the size of a mountain built thirty miles underground, and because of that it was lost from the grander multiverse, it only exists relative to itself, nothing else."

Chin nodded, his brain turning in whatever way it could to understand my words. 

"Now, we move on to the other guys, the Second Keepers. They had a much more unique idea. They wanted to create a living realm, a lifeform so strong and powerful, that its existence would be echoed throughout the multiverse, and more than that, they wanted these realms to be connected. To have some sort of shared experience."

"Like a village," Chin replied. 

"Exactly, they wanted to create realms that would always exist relative to each other and they did. That's when the Keeper's Sect was born. You have the Keeper of Time, the Keeper of Earth, the Keeper of Light, any common physical property had a Keeper of sorts. Being embodying a certain law and each of them wove into each other to create the tapestry of the first realm. There were around a thousand of them and they were all God-Imperiums. Then the first Celestial Realm was born, and that Chin, changed everything."

"Remember how I said realms are like the ground beneath your feet?"

Chin nodded.

"Well, this realm was even bigger. Think of a house so big that the roof of a room looks like the sky and so wide that the walls look like mountains in the distance. It would be its own world. That's a celestial realm. It was wide, it was infinite and it was a thing all its own, and more than any of that, it was alive. It produced qi and resources and power and people would kill any to have it."

I took a sip of my tea. 

"Now the First Keepers had known this, and that was why they had kept their realm a secret, but the Second Keepers had a solution all their own. They created a second Celestial Realm, one that was not under their control. And all knew that fighting over the unclaimed one would be easier than trying to take the realm the Second Keepers controlled. And that Chin, that is where the history of cultivation begins. In this realm, all the weak gathered and in this realm, all the weak fought. There were other realms, but this one still dominated them all. It was home to God-Imperiums and it had been bathed in primordial qi and God-Imperium blood. That Celestial Realm was the Realm of Imperium. To this day there is no realm more powerful or more wanted than that one. But eventually, somebody broke it."

"Somebody broke it?" Chin asked. 

"Yes, the Sage who Split the Heavens and the Hells, Sun Wukong."

My tail perked at the name. 

"The Monkey King?" Chin asked.

"The one and only," I replied. 

"I thought that was just a story," Chin replied. 

"It is," I said with a shrug. 

"A story with some truths and some lies. Now listen, we're almost done with the boring stuff. Next comes the final layer of the Grander Multiverse, the Antithesis Edge. Remember how I said there isn't any real substance within the void, just relations and connections?" 

Chin nodded. 

"Well, that's how you navigate the multiverse. When Sun Wukong broke the Realm of Imperium, he divided it into the Heavens and the Hells. Righteous and Evil, right and wrong. Instantly both halves of the realm were pushed to the very edges of reality because relative to the Heavens, nothing exists less than the Hells and the same was true for the Hells."

I drew a small circle on the table between us and set my cup at one edge and Chin's cup at the opposite end. 

"If my cup is everything your cup could never be, and your cup was everything my cup could never be, then all other cups exist somewhere between them, does that make sense?"

Chin nodded, slowly.

"If my cup was black and your cup was white, then any other cup would be left in between them," I reiterated. 

"What if it was a red bowl?" Chin asked. 

"Well, then it wouldn't be here. A red bowl would be Eden, the first realm of the First Keepers. It exists on its own spectrum. But since all other realms exist as children of the Realm of Imperium, they have some relation to it, even the Heavens and the Hells."

Chin nodded again, with a little more certainty this time.

"Now there are also other realms that are antithetical to each other, the Dead Sea and the Life Fire, the land of Dreams and the Halls of Order, the Yin and the Yang, essentially. And if you're willing to, you can navigate the multi-realm by feeling where you stand in relation to these realms at the Antithesis Edge, and that's how people navigate around the void."

Chin leaned back, sipped his tea, and sighed. 

"I don't get it," he replied. "But it does seem a bit more simple now."

"Does it?"

"Yes," Chin replied with a nod. "No matter how vast or how large this reality may be, it's all connected. That makes it more real."

I understood what he was saying. It was like an ant being told of an empire. The idea that there was anything beyond the hill you occupied was strange. But when you looked at an empire and thought of it as an ant colony, then it made a little more sense.