CH5: Ambush

With enough time and effort, I could turn a cave into a fortress, a castle into a bastion, and a ship into a lighthouse within a storm. Resources and time were the determining factors. With blood, chemical X, and lots of carving, I had to keep my expectations tempered. Having a purpose to direct my will through did help.

I turned the seventh cup I crafted and blew on the wood shavings. My blood mixed with concentrated Chi lit the seals and began the activation process. I devoted my will to it, wishing for the cups to draw in and filter the Malevolent Heavenly pressure. The trinity of my will, blood, and work managed to create a great success—something that worked well beyond the norm.

When the isolation lids fit snugly atop them, I flipped up a section on the top using a wooden henge. Cool spirit water flowed from the cup without exposing Chi to the world. I locked my old cup in a chest for safekeeping. 

Diary, I was tired. My arm throbbed from broken bones, and I wasn't even close to done. Chi Gathering was so distant. So, I directed my will to push my Chi against the first lock. As with my other attempts, my chi didn't move.

I shouldn't have the tools to do it. Only a peak body tempering should be able to do anything with Chi. What else was there to do with a broken arm? My bones were slow to heal, even with regeneration.

My regeneration fragment was doing its job, but resources were the bottleneck. I would be limited until I reached 10% body tempering.

I felt my bones scrape together as they slid back into place. Ants bit at my nerve endings as new cells formed between the broken bones and filled in the cracks.

Soon, I would have to break my ribs, knees, and toes. Then, it would be skin-flaying time. I had to do it by my hand to cut off my connection to mortality. That was the 7th lock, and it took a long time to break through it. No elders could give me Apotheosis Keys to bypass to unlock the bottlenecks.

No matter how much I knew about seals, I couldn't speed up the process with time, even if I had all the needed resources. Enduring suffering for power was a part of the process. Those who took the easy way out were weaker in their realm.

My percentage was still less than 3% of my body. Little cracks weren't enough. I needed to move faster. Putting on muscle mass was helping, but not a lot could be gained in only a few weeks.

Only 5 hours after breaking bones up and down my arm, I was whole again. The regeneration was getting faster. It was a passive fragment and took time to progress.

I jumped at the sound of a heavy knock. "Atom, you are going with the scouting party into Tabasco tribe territory," a messenger for Cortes said.

"Understood," I said, tying my rusty sword to my hip.

Plans to upgrade it were made, but they had to wait until we stopped somewhere that wasn't constantly rocking. I needed more corpse puppets—enough to make an isolation field with their bodies alone. Corpse puppets could be turned into arrays.

I left to visit the girls. And stopped outside their door to hear them whisper.

"We shouldn't tell him. Do you want him to die? We could be free."

I knocked on the door to my closet. I moved them there and had them make a cloak for me. I cleaned it up and removed all the rats. Those who remained on the ship were the ones who could hide their Chi. Besides the cocoon, there was nothing to worry about. I carried a box filled with cups similar to my own. I also had a few wooden rings with isolation seals on them. I wore one as well in case my boots failed.

Oh, the swamp took my boots. Well, guess what? I have a ring.

"These are gifts for you." I pulled my cup free and laid the rest down. "Drink, and you will see and feel things others can't. Drink, and you will suffer more than you thought possible. Drink, and you could live forever." I said.

 It was more like a drink; maybe one in a billion would become immortal. The rest would live slightly longer, while geniuses and prodigies might live for centuries.

Venus took her cup and tried to remove the top until I flipped it up for her. She smiled and tipped it up. "That's the cleanest water I've ever had."

"It will refill to the lid every time you drain it. So long as you have it, you won't run out of water."

The cups held precisely 5 liters of water and fit in the palm of the hand. They also weighed a maximum of a cup of water. There was even an indention to strap them to a belt. I was proud of my little artificer experiment. Sealing properties and isolating space was fun. I was sad when I finished the last one.

Maybe Cortes will screw something up that I can secretly fix. I may have messed up with Captain Corpse puppet. His introduction of pickling meat has already taken off. Sugar cane wasn't exactly hard to come by, and they already knew how to boil away water for the salt. We had a goat already soaking in several jars of brine. Anything we had to slaughter because it wasn't doing well was jarred and saved.

The men working on the jars talked, and morale was high. Food was one of the most important factors because no one wanted to fight on an empty stomach.

"I feel different. How do we do what you do?"

"Exercise with simple pushups and squats at first. You don't have to push yourselves too far. Oh," I clapped my hands. "Always wear your rings, or the sea monsters and spirits will attack you. You're attempting to rise from being mortals, and they will try to drag you down." I said.

I preferred to frame it like they were competition instead of soul-devouring predators. Diana pulled up her skirt, showing off her firm, dusky legs. The shine from the candlelight dragged my attention to all the skin she was showing. My mind went blank, and I felt myself cross the room.

Diana put a finger on my lips. "Not until you're chi gathering." I could rip her clothes off and take her on the spot. I almost did.

All the stress mounting from this place was becoming too much. Then I remembered the men in the water dying, and the fire of my need simmered down. Waiting, planning, and striking were my religion. I was a cultivator of the Thunder Eagle sect.

"What do you think of your cloak?" I turned my attention to their work.

My eyes went from a dotting senior to a professional. Before I opened my mouth, I gave a few compliments to ease the blow. "This stitching is tight. If I didn't know you were working on it, I would think it was professional. This tight stitching is well-centered, and I can see that you've learned to use the measurements I gave you. This is your best attempt yet. You're off in these places; do it again. The dyes I managed to get were only enough for one cloak. Captain Alvarado came through and snagged us some from a crate that drifted to shore. So if you perfect one, then immediately make six more. We have the dye now." I said.

I sat down on the bed and sighed. Being mean was exhausting. I wouldn't say I liked it, but lying to make them feel better wouldn't help us.

One of the Venus girls sat in my lap, and I groaned under her. "Oops, Master, I sat in your lap by mistake. Too bad we can't," she ground her behind on me. "continue this until you're chi gathering." She rose, and the other girls giggled at the look on my face. I held the covers firmly and shook.

"You're the only one who wants to wait." Venus, the lithe one, rubbed her legs, raised her skirt, and rubbed her legs together. "If only someone would rub my thighs with that wonderful coconut oil. I guess Venus will have to do it for me. At least until the master is chi gathering." They all laughed at my expense. Getting them to relax took time, but it was worth it. No one wanted liars in their home.

I peeled a few coconuts, ground the meat into a paste, added spirit water, boiled it, and strained it until we had oil. It was so easy.

The girls liked to rub it on themselves and me. We were able to store a few crates of the stuff. All was well until I felt the cocooned parasite stir.

…

My knife work and practical sealing methods were getting better every day. Blood flowed from my wrist into a mixing bowl filled with spirit water. Some flour helped the mixture thicken into a creamy red paste. I added salt because salt was the bane of spirits and filled in the seal molds.

Instead of panicking over the parasite's metamorphosis, I used it to see what seals worked on spirits. As I suspected, something other than physical or Yang symbology worked. I needed to knock that out to prove I wasn't entirely in the dark. The thing hadn't moved in weeks, more than long enough to almost forget about it. From what I could tell, it was nearly ready to hatch, which was no good.

Already, I wasted several hours on it, which could have been used to get the girls up to speed or break more bones. Pain was becoming an old friend. I could feel the power in my limbs increase, and this problem was getting in the way.

I tried a final yin-yang conversation with the spirit to see if anything happened, only for my latest attempt to fail. My seal pulled at the Yin within the creature but failed to do much. A seal's will wasn't more potent than even a parasite's.

Mortal blood, even mine, only carried small amounts of my will. The resources weren't up to par, so technique would have to fill in the gaps. Yin was my only method of dealing with the creature.

When broken down into its base units, the creature was a pattern holding onto spirit energy. All the patterns wanted to replicate themselves into that energy, growing and repeating themselves exponentially. The pattern had no name; it wasn't large enough, which gave me some hope that it wasn't intelligent.

Adding an unknown element like Chemical X could do anything. I tapped it with my boot and watched it jiggle from side to side. The creature was somewhat physical. It made itself somewhat physical.

I stared at the thing, and it bulged in places, and I shot to the door. Only when I didn't sense it move anymore did I pause. More than one cultivator lost their life because they didn't know when to withdraw.

The pattern it boasted was black, unlike the colorful patterns of more complex predators. It held a single desire: to consume.

 I carved a small seal and placed it near the cocoon. The vessel reached out and dragged the seal inside itself, and it began replicating. A single spark of yellow appeared for a moment, and then it, too, was consumed. That was another failure but a step in the right direction. Where did I go wrong?

After taking 100 crosses, I carved several different varieties, and another one did the same as the one before. I fed it the repeated seal first and saw a similar reaction as last time. Then, I began presenting cross after cross with slightly different seals and watched it.

I doubled the time the yellow spark appeared within the cocoon and stepped away from my project. The yellow spark was fear. I wanted it to fear cultivators and avoid us. So far, its pattern has been stubbornly holding on to its limited emotion to consume. I was half tempted to grab another parasite to test if the fear lasted longer because the cocoon was becoming more complex or because of my efforts. More test subjects and some safety equipment would be great, but I settled on another strategy.

With much deliverance, I slid a bag under the cocoon, lifted it, and put it in a chest. I placed an array within the chest to strengthen it and locked the monster inside. Then, I debated whether or not to throw it in the ocean.

…

Dear Diary, I had no terminal goal concerning the creature. It was a mystery and an accident. For all I knew, it could be the doom of all life as we knew it. By adding fear to the pattern, I hoped to ensure it never saw cultivators as prey. The creature remained stubbornly resistant to any alteration to its pattern. If I were an alchemist, I could make a solution close enough to Chemical X to alter it.

My knowledge remained niche, built for a sect with my nich craftsman. We had alchemists who had their niche in human body pill making. Of course, I stayed well away from them.

Sometimes, I wished I was an array or talisman specialist with the training that entailed. If I had taken a second profession instead of focusing solely on seals, I could have solved the problem. I am one man and can't do everything myself. Was that why I went against my instincts and gave spirit water to Venus, not to my girls? Was all it took to pry resources out of me, teasing, pretty faces, and comfort?

I left the isolation closet and had a meal in the great hall on the upper gundeck when a hand grabbed my shoulder. Turning, I felt a gauntlet-clad fist slam against my face. I felt several teeth crack; one came loose, and a few broke as my lip tore. Teeth cut through my lip, and the pain was immense. Another blow took me in the gut, and others joined the first, ramming my face.

Laughter managed to get through my ringing ears as one grabbed my bottom lip and pulled. Flesh tore, and he threw that piece of me against the wall.

"You're not so handsome now, are you?" Someone pushed Diego forward. He had two black eyes and looked rough. "Hit him and make him tell us where the women are, or we'll cut you up and toss you in the sea. Every other man shared his girls, but Senor, you are selfish."

The rattling was calming, and the pain stretched every moment that my heartbeat and blood dripped out of my ruined mouth and down my chin.

"Tell him what we're going to tell the Captains." One of the men said.

"We're going to tell them we saw you mistreating those girls and rescued them from you. They were so thankful that they decided to thank us the only way they could. You should have shared, and this wouldn't have happened to you."

Six men dressed in armor had cornered me. They knew my path through the ship—it wasn't hard to figure out. I stared at half of my bottom lip on the ground. One of the men raised his boot and prepared to stomp on it. Pieces could be reattached but not regrown.