Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

War is hell.

Shin Ren has been in hell for months.

Not the slow, plodding march of advancement. Not the careful violence of assassination, or the distant destruction of being behind a shelling line. He has been in the trenches, in the Breach, in the broken ruins of a hateful wasteland that tears apart all it touches, and his killing has been close enough to touch. He has spent months barely sleeping, barely leaving the front lines, barely even having a moment to breathe- and when he does have some, stolen from out of the chaos, it's spent with other soldiers. With the people he cares about, who also fight, and who also suffer, and who might be stolen from him at any moment.

Months in hell. Watching people die. Killing. Waving a hand and unmaking life, and knowing that at any moment you could be next, that the people you're fighting alongside might already be dead and bleeding behind you. A thousand more times unto the breach, and every time might be the last, and even if it isn't, you're going to spend every moment trying to make people become less, all for the sake of things that you cannot touch or even feel because you are in Hell. And those other things aren't.

It's enough to drive a man mad.

It's enough to imprint Ruin and Delusion on one's soul.

It's enough to make all the tar inside oneself bubble up to the surface.

If he were whole, he would have broken. As it is, he came to hell broken already.

The parts he has made from out of his broken pieces, the parts that are organs and are people and are himself, fed richly on hell, and what it did to him. They took that madness, and by accepting those parts of him, the parts he holds truest to his identity, to who he wants to be, have remained.

Ruin.

Delusion.

Purity.

Death.

Lies.

Nobility.

Pain.

Belief.

Honor.

For months in hell, Shin Ren has grasped tightly to the plans others have given him. Has trusted in those with their own visions of reality, that they would deliver unto him the salvation of another, the vengeance he desires, the peace that always eludes him.

It's not enough to allow others to decide his fate for him.

It is not enough to do things the way that is reasonable. To toe the line of what is rational, of how people tell him they'll make change for him.

Choice Is Universal.

It happens always and any time. It is present in every moment of every being.

He can choose.

It's never too late to choose the world that he wants. But for that, it's not enough to follow a trail set before him. He has to blaze his own.

He thinks back to the war, and all it has taken from him. All it has taken from the world, even as it has been allowed to fester, allowed to seep into the earth evermore.

He thinks back to the ways that he's understood people better. How he has learned to play with the systems of power, learned to navigate their faults and isolate their virtues as best he can. How he has learned of the complex machinery of people, and the lies they tell, alongside their truths.

He thinks of his ideals, so rarely glimpsed and so tightly desired. The ideas of honor, of nobility, of making a better world for the sake of others. Of being an example of what might be, of what should be, above what is.

And he takes the avatars of who he is, born from the parts of him he has so carefully crafted and allowed to exist and be, and manifests his beings onto the world.

Everything Burns.

Out of the marshland of the [Domain Of The Fisher's Pond], the Flame that was held back and buried bursts out into vast and towering pillars. Marble and gold and jade and limestone, quartz and glass and obsidian, manifesting into a landscape all its own, fusing in ever-shifting patterns of architecture that are somehow both orderly and chaotic at once.

The sky above glimmers with an aurora- twilight, sunset and dawn all blended together into a series of colors that paint the world above, that make the sky a place of wonder. Between the pillars, rather than walls, there is horizon, the spaces surrounding the Domain magnified until the distant world seems barely a step away.

Above all the rest, somehow below and above the pillars, the aurora, the space itself, there are three thrones.

On one, there sits a corpse, bleeding from every piece that is still recognizable, carbonized and smoldering from every other. It holds in its hands a gun and a knife, and they are both broken- and yet they are deadlier for it, and fused to the limbs that hold them by scorched meat. Its face has fallen inwards, such that there is little more than a cavern there, glowing with all the colors of a bonfire fueled by living meat.

Her throne is made of molten flesh, broken ruins, and discarded weaponry, molten together like a pillar of black wax and Ruin.

Opposite it, both shorter than the highest throne, there is a man, dressed in all the ranks of nobility and authority. Pendants and medals and beads, jade and gold and crowns, tiaras and a veil and robes that are a dress that are a king's garment, and in its hands is a scepter and a fan and a ceremonial sword. Beneath all of these things, there is a smile, and it promises that everything is good and right and will be well- and it only lies when it is hungry.

His throne is made of gold and banners, glimmering in even the dimmest light, but all the words mean nothing- and everything, as needed.

Atop the third throne, highest of all, there is nothing.

The back of it has been torn away. The edges of what a throne is have been worn down and broken, until all that is left is the impression of a seat, bereft of any figure that might sit atop it. Its shattered edges and broken pieces now hold candles, lit in vigil, made of rich white wax of perfect purity, and they glow with so many colors- and they all reflect the flame at its center.

A simple shrine-flame. Or a bonfire. Or a campfire. Or a hearth flame. So many Flames, so many fires, and always, it lies in an honored place, its light the light by which the space moves.

Its light- which, like its candles, glows in all seven colors of Dao.

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And at the feet of the thrones, there is a person.

He is half-collapsed by the strain. He is half-broken by the weight of it. To be born is no small feat, and to be born again requires much more effort on the newborn's part.

He raises his head, drenched in tar that bubbles up and out of him and into the world, where it dissipates into the air. The tar is not black, not really- it is the dark of too many colors mixed together, the pitch of a whole rainbow of off-color reality reshaped and cast aside. The tar is all the things that he cannot stomach, all the parts of the world that do not fit him, that are bound to him by the laws of what is rather than what should be- and it all oozes out of him in a terrible mud, a horrific reek that can be matched by nothing real and nothing natural.

All-colored smoke so blended it is no-color wafts off of him and into the air. All-colored mulch leaks from him and falls into the earth, taken away. All-colored liquid falls out of him and drifts off into like falling rivers into the world around him.

And then the tar is gone, gone at last, taking with it the version of him that came before, the version of him that the world forced him to be, and reveals something truer beneath.

He feels…

Whole.

He feels strong. He feels complete.

The puddle of all-color that is no-color that smells of every impossible thing that is not him… vanishes. Gone at last. Free from him at last.

He looks up from where he kneels, beneath the thrones of what he is and what he's chosen, and looks up.

At the edge of his Domain sits a fisherman, his hook idly at his side, an iridescent carp floating in infinite possibilities above him. Its wounds, and his, are minor, barely notable- but they are there.

And Shin Ren exhales.

And the flames that are pillars that are every material he cares for, rich and common, valuable and worthless, glow with seven colors.

And his Flame is iridescent. It is True.

Shin Ren kneels in the [Domain Of The Divine, Burning Court], and is more himself than he has ever been.

Fisher smiles. "Well damn, boy. Not often I see some'n pull that off."

He sighs. Long and slow, and where his breath leaves his body it glows with Dao. With Ignition, Conflagration, Detonation, Consumption- all these things and more, for all these things are Flame, and all these things are part of his Flame, which is True.

"Why didn't you attack?" he whispers, and the world trembles with his voice.

"Bad fuckin manners, innit. 'Less you got a real deathwish on somebody, just rude to interrupt a breakthrough."

"That… that was…"

"Eyup. Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Figures- with the amount a' juice you got, was surprised you weren't tryna move up already. Ain't heard of anybody tryn'a pull three whole Souls at once, not even a Demon cultivator- most times it's just for nifty techniques, or a way to offload thangs. Two Souls, sure, who ain't seen a hungry bugger try'na get extra. One in a milli even makes it- but three? Damn."

"I… I admit. I wasn't exactly… thinking it through when I started."

Fisher nods. "Feelin it out, huh. Yup. That's the way. All the plans and all the intentions- end of the day, it's gotta be you. Errything else is just advice. Usually good advice, get you where you need to be to walk proper- but still gotta walk your own way."

The Warrior Realm cultivator bows, lightly but sincerely. The Carp above bows with him, flickering between all that could be and all that is- and choosing to acknowledge him.

The Warrior Realm cultivator in the court of Flame and meaning bows back.

"Ready to get back t' it?"

Shin Ren sighs. Then he stands, beneath the thrones, and takes a stance.

Once again, he summons the gift that has brought him so very far along. He holds his Master's weapon, its wood turned black from its previous red richness, but its arrays and blade glowing with far more color and life than before.

The Fisher swings his fishhook casually, beginning to imbue it with… something. Not quite Killing Intent, but… similar?

There is a whipcrack of the sound barrier breaking-

"WAIT!"

It physically hurts to interrupt that sort of momentum- but not this time. This time, in his Domain, he has simply already stopped, because he has willed it so. The Fisher is just as frozen, his fishhook going wide.

And there, standing at the edge of where their Domains meet,, is a woman in the colors of the Divine Veil Sect. She emerges out of impossible mist that both is and is not there at all, and she holds a blade to the throat of a beastkin woman wearing strange robes who has too many joints in her arms, and a snout in place of a human face.

"Surrender," Mei Yu says. "Now. Or I slit her throat wide open."

The hands of the beastkin shift, and she pushes a sort of… thing out from her. Again not Killing Intent, but… not too off? Not too alien from it?

Fisher, in turn, immediately drops the fishing line. His Domain retreats until it's barely a puddle, right at his feet, and his Soul shrinks with it, turning almost the size of a regular carp.

"Woah now! No need for all that mess. My friend you got there says yer good friends. I'm only here doin a solid for someone what gave me decent company a while back is all."

Shin Ren doesn't want to pull back, at least not just yet- but he has to. Holding the manifestation is expensive, even with three Cores, and his recent breakthrough makes everything feel shaky. Like it's way easier and also way harder, like the moment where one goes from strumming chords to trying to play whole symphonies. His Domain too collapses, and he falls to one knee, sweating and half-breathing in short little gasps.

"I need you to surrender your weapons," Mei Yu says, her eyes sharp. You need to-"

"I need doin no such thing, pretty sect girl. Ain't nobody takes my hook- not you, not all the devils of the world, not the Heavens themselves. But hey, I'll do ya one better-"

He puts the hook into a pouch on his waist and takes a seat, balancing perfectly on a single thorn from the wasteland all around. He takes out a pipe, waving it over towards Gou Mai.

"Your friend there's in pretty rough shape. The two over thataways are pretty tapped out, too- they ain't quite so tough as y'all, though I wouldn't bet 'gainst them in a weirder sorta fight. I'll leave you to tend to your bud there, and we'll have a nice chat while ya do. Don'tcha think, Many?"

Shin Ren blinks, trying to figure out who he's talking to- only for the beastkin to nod, seeming altogether much too at ease for having a knife at her throat.

"Besides- she got some things to say to y'all, apparently. And since y'all can't hear her non on account o' being deaf and half-dumb, I figure I might still be o' use. Gotta be easier than y'all trying to pin me- I'm down for a good wrastling, but your boy there's about wiped, prodigy or no, and I doubt you got handcuffs in that pretty getup o' yours.

The beastkin nods, once again seeming surprisingly at ease.

"In case you haven't noticed, I've got a blade to her throat. Considering you're trying to negotiate, and the amount of security around her in particular, I think we have the advantage here."

Fisher smiles, a wafting line of light green smoke wafting off of his pipe. "I reckon you do. But if you don't want to listen, that's on yer head."

"Mei Yu."

She looks over at him, just out of the corner of her eye.

"It's… it's alright. I think… if he says he won't fight anymore, then he won't. He… prefers the quiet."

A sharp smile responds. "Up till I gotta get loud, anyways."

It takes her a few seconds. Mei Yu really looks at him, and he can feel how, deep down, she wants to confront him about this, wants to glare him into doing the thing that makes the most sense.

But she sees something in his gaze.

And she vanishes back into the mist, leaving the beastkin there.

The well-robed half-human shudders, running a hand along her throat- and then bows deeply, from the waist almost to the ground, to Shin Ren.

"Sneaky little biddy you got there. I know she's round and I can still barely even tell. Get her somethin' sharper than her pigsticker there and maybe she could worry somebody."

The beastkin waves a limb, sending another wave of that… not-quite-Killing Intent at them.

"Yeah, yeah. Paid ya back after this, though. Figured I'd help out a bit, tit for tat, not go up against all the crazies of the whole world."

She makes another set of signals.

"Mmh. She says there's someone wants to meet you. The person 'n charge o' this place, this whole operation. Might be you could do some negotiation while you get your boy there patched up. Then we can talk properly, about the real shit, ye special little fucker."