Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

It's a fishhook. Larger than the average human, large enough to have its crescent be far too wide for conventional use even for fishing- and yet here it is. The point of the hook embedded in his shoulder, his friend's leg severed as if by sharpened wire, and the researcher's armor shrieking with warnings and the squall of metal being cut.

That's the third time in as many minutes that he didn't detect someone in this place. He'll have to work on his sensory abilities next. It would be a shame for such an event to repeat.

If you survive, he reminds himself.

And then he is pulled through space faster than should be possible. The wind cuts him like a blade, the pressure forces Nascent Soul realm flesh to compress and tear under its force, and he blacks out for the half-second it takes to cross miles of the thorn forest.

Quiet.

Then- pain.

He wakes back up to the sound of screaming, a thousand keening voices wailing out of burnt tissue and ruined material. A Corpse Aflame has manifested [Burning, Grasping Ruin], the most physically dangerous of his Souls rampaging through the landscape. It's causing as much damage as it is growth, the obsidian black steel of the thorns sprouting along the movements of the hundred-armed mass of molten bodies, rearranging the landscape. It has wrapped itself around something in front of him, throwing out his heart demon's Qi without reserve and without hesitation-

And yet the hook reels a second time, the wire unharmed, and he is dragged forward again.

He lands on the surface of [Burning, Grasping Ruin]- like all Souls, it is real and not, physical only if it is relevant to its concepts, and his armor shrieks as the talismans on it begin to fail on contact with the manifestation. He braces, feeling the hook scraping through flesh and bone far too easily, but it buys him a half-second of tension without movement.

He stops holding back.

Whoever this is, they attacked five cultivators, each of them powerful enough to be on a mission outside the Wall, without Imperial support, fighting against Nascent Soul level enemies or higher. And none of them saw him coming. That requires stealth, speed, or more likely both, at a level that implies something beyond the conventional enemy.

It speaks to someone old and talented and unique- or someone in the Warrior Realm.

Or, worst case scenario, both.

Three Souls emerge from one body, and the world ignites.

His meridians scream, his Dantian shudders and feels about to crack under the pressure of manifestation, his mind is drowned in the agony of power far beyond what should be possible at his realm- and he holds on anyways.

A hundred bubbling geysers of tar emerge from the air itself, washing over [Burning, Grasping Ruin] and reinforcing its half-torn physique; the world changes colors and appears bright as noon under the radiance of a pillar of perfect, near-irridescent Flame that consumes the world into the [Divine Purity Of Flame]; perception and meaning and attention and concept warp and drown in misdirection as a [Gilded Smile Of Delusion] dances out on bejeweled limbs that are-and-are not.

With a force of will and the birth of his innermost pieces, the world is forcefully changed.

The thorn-trees bloom orgiastically, spasming into being a thousand-thousand more branches that reach in towards the damage he's doing, towards [Burning, Grasping Ruin]- and [Divine Purity Of Flame] reduces all to a fine ash. Its very nature drinks greedily from Shin Ren's Qi to impose itself on reality, demanding that his comprehension of Flame and self turn towards burning away all things dark and foul. In less than a second, he is explosively surrounded, a dome of blacksteel thorns caging him in a central valley burned clean.

He feels the fishing line tighten, catching on newly-formed blacksteel- and unlike the Imperial armor it practically swam through, the line seems to actually struggle to pull free of the thorns.

"Ha! Well I'll be piss-damned and treat'n myself to a damn drink, if it ain't a clever little wriggler!"

Shin Ren turns, staring out of four different sets of perceptions to try and find the source of the voice. Nothing. It's like it comes from out of nowhere, from whatever point he isn't looking at- even as the fishing line remains taut.

"Done hooked ya good, pretty boy. Sorry t' say, but y' won't be goin nowhere notime soon. How's about you tell me some'n 'bout what you're doing here, so far outside ya shoal?"

The Smiling Noble reaches out through his organs, swimming into his face even as Shin Ren's mind catalogues and ignores the question. If he can just find him, find a place to strike, something to burn that isn't the damnable hook and line-

"I'm afraid, honored one, that we are not in the habit of identifying ourselves to ambush predators!" The Smiling Noble says through his throat, removing any trace of pain from out of his voice. "Perhaps if you could show yourself, offer us the honor of a fair fight-"

A snort, followed by a storm of giggling. "Well damn, sunny! They don't call me Fisher for lettin' lil wrigglers sprog away. You're hooked, line n' sinker- only question's if I'm doing catch 'n release, or eating supper propa."

Focus. Full manifestation like this can last a few minutes at best, and that's without his Souls spending Qi like they're drowning. He can feel [Gilded Smile Of Delusion] doing its best to alter the idea of where he is, strengthening his existence along the idea of an armored, invincible soldier, but there's only so much to be done- he's hooked.

It hurts. Sharp and harsh and tearing all up and through him, digging through his shoulder blade and back out through a lung. He can taste bone and blood on his breath, his cultivation struggling against the collapse of the organ as the hook yanks. His skin is torn, his armor partially overloaded from the force of the yank.

He shifts [Burning, Grasping Ruin], turning its many limbs outwards. Molten-wax bodies, carbon-black and darker still by the bath of tar, reach out in every direction, stretching and breaking to reach certain areas.

It will be expensive, but he has an idea.

As [Ruin] touches ruin, touches Blacksteel, it begins to build.

To make rather than unmake is at least mostly counter to the Soul's existence. It can do it, but it costs more Qi- but Shin Ren intends to make it worthwhile.

The cage around him thickens, the little light from outside quickly starting to fade as Shin Ren forms a dome of blacksteel around himself.

Again, that snorting laugh.

"Not the first wriggler done got in a shell, pretty boy!"

"And yet, I find myself certain that you have never had a 'wriggler' like me," the Smiling Noble says, voice too smooth for the moment.

"Mebe not! But hey- that's half the fun o' fishin, innit?"

The stranger seems far too giddy at the idea of Shin Ren fighting back. There's no hint of concern, just curiosity and seemingly genuine contentment.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He is, in fact, hooked. He's bound, in a sense.

The cage begins to close entirely and-

"Ah! And here's your friends! Now there's a shell- ya know how hard it cn' be to find metal I can't cut with my line? Still click-clackin though!"

Fuck.

No no no no-

Shut up, he commands himself.

If they break if they shatter if they burn we will-

Shut up, he commands again, this time tamping down the thoughts of his alternate pieces.

He's not going to get them.

Whoever this is, he's stronger than Shin Ren is. Maybe by a lot. Surprise and blitz attacks are the best shot that he can see.

He summons his Guandao back out of his storage ring and swings out a Cut.

The dome surrounding him spawns new branches inwards- and catches on the fishing line again.

Using it as a brace, digging his feet into the fleshy exterior of [Burning, Grasping Ruin] as he commands it to hold him tight, Shin Ren tears himself down and out from the hook as hard as he can.

Everything goes white.

Everything is pain.

It's been a while since he felt like this. The all-consuming soreness of exhaustion, the ever-accumulating number of lesser wounds he heals through on a weekly basis, they don't compare.

He feels his rib cage shatter, his lung tear itself into shreds, and his collarbone literally rip its way out of his body.

And right alongside a chunk of him, the hook is pulled free.

"Woah now! I-"

No hesitation. No time for the pain. Don't think- focus.

A perfectly cylindrical pillar erupts from out of the tar below, colored in Gold, Purple and Blue, and makes part of the dome simply vanish as Shin Ren launches himself out. A dozen illusory soldiers follow along, disguising his real location, and grasping limbs of molten matter follow alongside him to scrape along the thorn-dome and form new bulwarks.

The outside of the dome is chaos.

Bullets fire from halfway to the horizon, arcing supernaturally as they zig-zag to try and follow a hidden target. Waves of mist and illusory techniques have washed over the metallic jungle, flitting movements barely visible within.

The sky is falling.

Sky-Blue is falling down onto the world.

He hears Gou Mai roar, louder than he's ever heard him speak. He catches a glimpse of him, his leg still missing but not bleeding, somehow holding his weight in spite of its nonexistence.

His sworn brother lands like a meteor against a section of the woods nearby, shattering it into fractals of obsidian. The mists below roil in waves around the site, and for a moment, the jovial tune of running commentary is silenced.

Mei Yu manifests beside him, half-real. "I can't find him, you're- fuck, Ren I-"

A line of fishing wire, so thin as to be near-invisible, flashes by like a lasso, and the illusion is dispelled as it is Cut.

It wasn't the real her. It wasn't.

But Gou Mai screams in pain from the mist.

Shin Ren unleashes.

His Guandao trembles at the amount of Qi moving through him, its edges starting to burn and its blade glowing as he channels three Souls worth of concepts into a technique. Six of the seven colors of Dao light up the world, carving furrows into it that spawn more death-thorns.

And then he cuts again.

And again.

And again.

Not his most adept use of technique, perhaps- but he is, above all else, a hell of a bruiser.

And then the hook is back in him again.

He's yanked by the thigh through the air, the world burning his colors even as he's whipped violently down into a cluster of fresh bomb-fruits that detonate on contact. He feels the flame singing at the parts of him exposed to the air, through his armor which is starting to flicker, in the parts of his body struggling to repair themselves- and then he impacts.

And then he cuts off a chunk of his thigh, the fishing hook reeling away rather than striking.

"You're a hell of a-"

He doesn't let the "fisher" finish talking. He is the central, finite point of a gigaton detonation, his Souls trailing behind and through him. A sea of carbon-crippled limbs tear at the world as [Burning, Grasping Ruin] follows behind, abandoning its central body- the space around him is and isn't a battlefield, is and isn't an execution, an officer's tent, a gilded throne that's bleeding- he is emitting Flame that purifies all it touches.

He moves so fast he feels his blood pulled out through his wounds behind him.

Halfway between where he heard Gou Mai and where he got launched to. Follow the line. Extrapolate.

There- the place that hurts that does harm that allows us is there there-

He silences the Corpse Aflame by giving her what she wants and exploding the world with a Cut.

Everything burns- even DIVISION.

The world is split asunder-

And a notch is carved into a fishing hook, as well as the body of the man behind it.

Wearing little more than shorts and a sort of lower-body toga, skin tanned to a rich, lively brown, his eyes aglow with a hint of anger and a deeper truth of enjoyment, is the Fisher.

He grins wide, even as he bleeds from a still-smoldering cut down his chest.

He goes to speak- and then the sky falls.

All-Blue collapses onto the world as limitless Above turns to here and now, and a figure coated in blood and missing a leg at the knee strikes the earth with the heights themselves, and turns the ground into a void going down.

The fisher's hook comes out of the hole, the man behind it nearly teleporting out from it with a tug- but Shin Ren is there again, the weapon his master gave him half-rent by the force he imbues into it. A dozen other illusory, half-real weapons follow along, gilded by jewels and Delusion, and the tar keeps bubbling, and-

The fishing line flashes out faster than he can see, carving through fictional versions of him- even as one of the illusory blows strikes true and becomes real, carving open the fisher's hip.

The man bleeds moss.

Thick, choking clumps of it, heavy and bright and algae-bloom green. It burns at the cut on his chest, ignites on contact with the air- but so much of it Chooses not to burn, in spite of Shin Ren's Truth.

That's ok. That's what the violence is for.

"Hell of a technique, boyo!" the Fisher yells, even as he is surrounded by a whirling hurricane of fishing line. "I can see why your secty bastards sent ya!"

"I apologize, but I believe that without surrender or parlay, there is no conversation to be had," says the Smiling Noble.

"Well, I reckon-"

The crack of a gunshot, somehow louder than all the chaos surrounding things.

Shin Ren briefly glimpses the glow of enchantment, his Qi-senses alerting him to the density and complexity in the bullet. The fishhook comes up faster than sound, ready to parry-

And the first bullet, made of mist and lies, dissipates into nothing.

And the second one, right behind it and an inch to the left, hits the fisher in the eye.

He doesn't hesitate. He feels Gou Mai manifesting again, the third appearance of whatever world-shaking technique he's using, and swings his blade in synchronicity.

He is a hundred different possibilities, cloaked in Delusion. He is wrapped in Ruin, its many-grasping hands slick with the tar of his pain and glowing with fires of death and harm. He is glowing out of every pore with a light so pure it hurts to look at.

He summons a Cut.

The world is severed.

The world Burns.

The heights come to earth one more time, the stars above lightning-hot passengers on impact.

A sea of cold nothing billows out of the mist into the abyss the heights have caused and the gap the Cut has left.

And dead center in the middle of it all is a man, with a broken fishing line, a scarred fishhook of bone, and half his body torn open and unmade from the world.

He isn't smiling anymore. No anger, but his gaze meets Shin Ren's out of his one remaining eye.

Acknowledgement. Apology. Appreciation.

Shin Ren flinches back as the illusion of light nearly blinds him. A moment where his Qi senses are so overwhelmed that he can't help but feel like everything has gone white, even though his normal vision shows no such thing.

And then something echoes across reality.

[Domain Of The Fisher's Pond].

In a place of infinite and hungering repose, something breaches the surface of reality. Something colored by Dao, dappled in too-bright and too-dark scales, and with far too many long and sinuous fins along an impossible number of tails.

[Joyous Swim Through What May Be] dances into the world, and everything changes.