Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

Shin Ren can't properly remember the last time he slept a full night.

It used to be a sort of point of pride that he could stay up for days on end, even at a lower cultivation level. He would power through, over and over, spending his time in meditation and training, pushing himself to the absolute limit rather than allow himself to rest, so that he would get to the point of peak exhaustion, pushing himself to the maximum. A prodigy, acting as a prodigy should, making himself the ideal that he sought after.

It's honestly a little embarrassing, thinking back to that time. Thinking that he had pushed himself to a real limit, rather than an imagined one. It was performative, in a sense- he could have done the very same thing, but maybe better, if he actually got himself some rest. He pushed himself because he could, making his growth into a vanity project of sorts, like so much of who he was.

Now, he wishes he had the leeway to choose to ditch sleep. It's long gone from him. He's lost track of when he "should" be tired, because the sun in the sky or the glimmer of night makes no difference to when he gets to sleep. Weeks and weeks and weeks, always on, always taking exactly as much rest as needed to keep himself up and active.

And he needs to be. He's the Prince of the Wall, after all.

Not an official title. Not one that gets so much as whispered amongst anyone in high command. As someone still technically on loan from the Academy of Soldiers, he's lower on the totem pole than even the infantry on the Wall. If someone gives him an order, no matter who it is, he's technically supposed to just… obey.

Not exactly how things have turned out.

In spite of his official rank still being in limbo, most everyone under the rank of Captain tends to ask politely rather than order him to do anything. That's if he has to take requests at all. For the most part, he just… gets reports, and acts on them accordingly. Things that, in theory, would make it to the bounty boards back at the Academies, things that a still-training soldier might be asked to do for merits or other rewards, except that they end up in his hands before that happens. And then, he acts, until someone commands or asks him to retreat.

It's a strange feeling, acting as he does. He feels like a grain of sand in a vast machine, wearing down the cogs even as he's forged into something valuable by the pressure. He has his own quarters, has cultivation resources whenever he wants, has other students who join him in the hopes of tutelage or rivalry. He has additional weapons, treasures, things offered as rewards or lost on the way to depots or off of paperwork.

He wonders what his sect would think of him. What Elder Ren and Elder Hei would think to see him now, wearing more value in artifacts than their sect produces or sees in a decade. What Patriarch Shen Go is getting in merits and opportunities from the face that his actions have brought the sect.

It's an idle thought.

Immortality is a long time. Maybe someday, they'll matter to him again. Maybe the history they have will bring him back there.

He's not so sure. Looking back, all the politicking, the vying for favors, the competitiveness against other sects, all for control of one little city…

It all seems so small.

He exhales, the breath in his throat begging for the release that he can offer.

Choice Is Universal.

The oxygen and carbon dioxide and nitrogen all ask, desperately, for what he can grant them, for the transformation that exists only in his being and around his very self- and he assists them in their choice.

Everything Burns.

All the air in a radius of a few hundred feet turns to Flame.

Black and Red and Gold and Purple and Blue and Orange.

Six of seven colors of Dao, reflected in one's eyes but only partially in reality. Six colors, infinite and beyond compare, which are real and not real, which exist in the comprehension of reality as filtered by a living mind, which paint the sides of his Flame evermore.

The battlefield transforms.

Shin Ren steps forward, leaving behind footprints of molten bone and glowing metal, armor and Qi-altered materials both altered by his passage. Arrows, meter-long and black as pitch, hit the edge of the territory he's ignited and turn to ash, the cores of them falling as drifting embers. Bullets of a dizzying array of materials flash by overhead like constellations, firing past him and out into the wider battlefield, many of them igniting as they pass over and carrying the flame out into the wider battle. A trio of beasts, vaguely canine but with birdlike features, throw themselves at him, unfamiliar Dao attempting to overwhelm him- and all three ignite as they come into contact with the barest lick of flame.

It's not a Domain. A Domain is expensive. A Domain is something best used against a worthy opponent, or, at the very least, by someone desperate.

Shin Ren isn't desperate.

This is just another weekday.

Another reason why it's hard to tell when to sleep.

Sometimes, there is no night sky. No day.

There's just ashen clouds, rising from a thousand-thousand pyres.

He contributes some ashes of his own to them as he walks, burning a trail of iridescent destruction across the world.

Six of seven colors. All but one. All but Green.

All but the Green of Harmony. Of Balance.

What Harmony could there be, in a place like this?

Truth and Mystery, Limitlessness, Change and above all, Death and Harm. But never Harmony. Some part of him… refuses to even look for it.

Not from this. Not from this place. Never.

He walks forward, and swings his Guandao.

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It has shifted in the time that he's held it. It'll never be truly ideal, never be truly capable of channeling all he is. It's not designed for his arts, nor for his cultivation base.

And yet, in spite of all the offered alternatives, in spite of how many have tried to curry favor with him by offering grander and grander tools of war, he still wields his Guandao. It's a reminder, and a gift, and a burden, all at once, and in spite of how far he's advanced, in spite of how the channels carved into it fail to properly hold or control all of his power and singe the edges of it more and more, he continues to wield it.

He swings his Guandao, and the world bends at the weight of it.

He Cuts.

The world bleeds.

In a horizontal line in front of him, a hundred or more undead constructs are cut in half, bones layered over themselves like wax-dripping scales cast aside contemptuously by the blow. Another Cut, and the second wave behind them falls just as dead, a sliver of the army of the dead crawling along this portion of the Breach dying a second time. He walks over the bodies, forward, forward, forward, and ever-more does he torch the world, turning the fallen into molten matter and ash.

In the smoke and the Death, she laughs, glorying in it. It's nice that at least one part of him is enjoying this, no matter how ghoulish that part may be. A Corpse Aflame dances in his peripheral vision, not yet emerged but present to his senses, her flesh crackling louder and louder. Since their time here began, she's gained color and definition, parts of her tissue hollowing out and being replaced with pure fire, as if she's fuel for a great blaze rather than simply someone killed by heat. Charred skin has turned to charcoal in places, giving her an undead and inorganic look that mirrors many of the dead they face every day, and as they are burned away, he feels the smoke and ash and the blaze from their bodies being pulled into one of his Cores.

She has eaten well in this war.

She is not the only one.

Shin Ren walks over bodies of fallen enemies and allies alike, and in his wake, they all turn to ash. He's long since stopped trying to preserve the corpses- any remains in the field are tools for the enemy necromancers to renew their assault, and leaving too many bodies uncovered leads to a multitude of Echoes and other manifestations of death. It would take months, maybe years, to properly comb through the booby-trapped terrain of the battlefield to recover the fallen, and in that time, more dangers would arise from the unburied dead.

So many dead.

And yet, his Souls are not the only ones to have eaten well. For every hundred that fall, one rises above, and Shin Ren has met Foundational Realm cultivators who volunteered for the front lines which have shot up multiple Realms, multiple Nascent Soul experts which have transcended to the Warrior Realm, and everything in between. Those who survive this war are those that feed on it, on purpose or by sheer luck, and so the wheel keeps turning.

Slowly, he reaches the top of the breach.

It's been months since the war began, and still, major mobilization has not occurred. He's starting to think that it won't, that maybe this is just… the norm. Enemy forces have managed to push all the way up to the base of the wall, crawling into and onto the remains of the fortress city to enter the third ring. Still, the stalemate continues. For every three steps forward the enemy takes, the Empire's forces shove them two steps back and one to the side, forcing constant evolution. Still, the same sort of growth that happens on the Empire's side happens to their enemies, too, and they are adapting constantly, innovating new ways to advance.

So every day, multiple times a day, Shin Ren walks back into the breach, burning a trail of Flame behind him and Cutting his way deeper into enemy lines. Every day, he helps to just-about reset a never-ending stalemate, filled with the bodies of thousands.

He sighs, and the exhale re-ignites the air around him, pushing his radius of destruction further out. He feels A Corpse Aflame glorying in the death and destruction, absorbing more and more Dao as he cycles Qi, not even bothering to stop cultivating for such low-level techniques. A fortified bunker made of prismatic glass and the remnants of the Wall melts, trapping screaming technicians and panicked spirit beasts inside as they cook and asphyxiate. A series of traps, their circuitry carefully hidden beneath fallen bodies and ready to unleash a swarm of curse-imbued autonomous darts, flash-fries in his presence. He continues walking, taking his time to clear out the space in his way rather than rushing past out onto the front line, and hears screaming coming down a seemingly-abandoned tunnel he passes, a thing with a hundred faces and twice as many arms struggling to crawl away as it catches fire from his Truth.

The bodies on pikes, put up as warnings, turn to clean ash as he walks by them. The barbed wire, crawling and half-alive, melts to powerless slag as it tries to strangle him like the corpses already torn open on their spikes. Those too entrenched or too arrogant to get out of his way are burnt away, or Cut open and cast to the side, as he advances.

Always cultivating. Always growing. Always tired.

He pauses, almost stumbling over one step.

There. At the edge of his technique.

He pulls back his Qi, stepping forward slowly and carefully to the thing he senses.

It is a hand. No body, just a hand, just a hand that's much too small for a soldier, much too small for even an adolescent. On its wrist is a bracelet woven of simple fibers, with long-dead flowers wrapped in them.

Choice Is Universal.

Despite its proximity to him, the dry fibers do not burn.

Such bracelets would not choose immolation. They're supposed to be forever. In a child's mind, at least, they're meant to be forever.

His vision grows blurry for just a moment, and one of the talismans on his belt lights up as a curse technique held at bay by his flames manages to slip through. A dart takes advantage of his hesitation, and the armor he wears flashes with a fractal change, forcing the projectile out the other side of him without harm.

He takes a long, deep breath, and looks up at himself.

His other Soul has changed too.

What was once an arrogant princeling has changed, wearing proper armor and wielding a spear not unlike their shared Guandao. Still, he holds that same self-assured smile, but where before it was a thing of arrogant disdain for others, it's now something bolder, more heroic. The sort of smile that tells you that what you're doing is right, and needs to be done.

[Gilded Smile Of Delusion] pushes out a bit of his energy, turning the air hazy with heat until there is no hand at all. Just more terrain to walk through, more space to clear, more enemies to push back.

It's fine if it hurts.

It's fine if it hurts.

Just don't think about it. Just focus.

It's fine.

He keeps walking, letting the flames extend past him again and offering the world the choice to Burn.

As he nears the top of the breach, the sound of charging soldiers, gunfire and techniques echoing behind and to his sides as other soldiers use him to push up, he senses something. While most of the major fighters in this conflict hold themselves back, preparing to ambush each other unless their line is truly about to break, they do on occasion appear. When they do, the skies thunder and the world cracks beneath their tread, and all those beneath their attention have no choice but to cower and wait to see how the battlefield changes.

Two such conflicts are ongoing now, with a Commander of the northern fortress city from the breach clashing against a carp with a hundred human legs, crystalline eyes running up and down its form, and another battle to the south, with two Warrior Realm Imperial combatants struggling to push back a trio of sorcerers, each of them wielding a cloud of insect-life and shadow-magics. It's only in such circumstances that Shin Ren can approach freely, up to a point.

A beast lands in front of him, having leapt from nearly the horizon to land directly against the breach. There are smoking wounds where anti-air defenses struck it, but the spirit beast shrugs them off, its body like a hairless ape and an Oni mixed together. It holds a massive cudgel, artfully carved with a hundred thousand little scenes on its surface, and growls through a mouth that is all molars.

There will be another beast behind it. And another behind that. There will be more sleepless days and nights.

But he has to hold.

He has no choice but to trust those he has aligned with to hold to their promises, and to hold to his own in turn.

Shin Ren crouches, holding his Guandao at a ready position to Cut, and summons up his first Domain.

The world shines in six of the seven colors of Dao as he unleashes himself unto the war.