Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

Self-acknowledgement: we are broken.

Self-acknowledgement: we retain functionality.

Simple conclusion- other broken fragments must also retain functionality.

She/they/it know what they look like. Their exterior is designed to both emulate their realized self and preserve any additional resources possible when making it. They are, in most nexus throughout their being, a many-sided pillar, replete with eyes, sensory dendrites, delicate spines, and massive trunks of blood, ferrying superheated liquids away from the center to be replaced with cooler crimson and indigo. There is nothing human in her/their/its primary appearance, because in this manifestation, humanity was never a concern.

And now, with R**** dead, there is even less room or incentive for it.

They / it / she knows that she / they / it cannot function as before. The pieces to do so are simply not there.

The collapse came quickly. A single snapshot moment of a cultivator in the Warrior Realm, manifesting from where they Were Not a moment prior and stabbing her with something that was not a knife but was shaped like one. She tried to defend herself, tried to react, but it would be almost impossible for the attack to have better timing.

She was struck- and so was every other part of her.

I Am Me, I Am Mine.

Every part of her that was her was unmade. Was killed. Was ended from the world.

All that remains are the parts that had some distance.

The Pillar almost collapsed at the onset of the event. In spite of a series of protections, in spite of the psychological and mechanical differences between it and R****'s Ur-self, the blow was ontological in nature, striking deeper than space, time or physical connection. All remnants of her original will are gone, killed out of her pieces, many of which now grow unchecked or are consumed by the wilds of the fourth ring.

But the Pillar survived. As was part of its function.

The other part had already been accomplished.

The process was rudimentary, the technique behind it still in development, but a new page has been added to the Supreme Body Art; the technique of encoded memory.

Carved chits of carbon, silicone, iron and other dense materials capable of conducting energy and storing it in turn. The process of carving them is simple, in spite of its complexity- whorls, turns, sharp angles, ridges, and more all create a near infinite number of variations, each one carved over hexagonal chits barely the size of a fingernail. The real success was in reading them- not just remembering what each curve meant, seeing as that would fail the whole purpose of making smaller, standardized memory caches outside the brain.

It took some time, but in the end, the synesthesia was the trick. Focusing on the way that her brains had deviated from the norm, the Pillar examined specifically the connections and neurons that grew in response to R****'s original synthesis between her senses. Touch as taste, taste as sight, sight as smell- one sensation creating parallel reactions from the brain.

It took weeks, even with a few hundred minds working in concert- but before the end, the Pillar had done it. An organic vessel, carefully crafted of neural tissue, which, on contact with the Qi-enriched materials of the chits and their patterns, generated "new" memories, identical to the original ones, except sharper and clearer.

It was still in its trial phases before everything went wrong.

Now, they/she/it are adrift. Disconnected from their core features, but still bound up in her Body, which has not died and which, perhaps, cannot die. The same properties that allowed the killing blow to travel through all of her so easily, when used for her benefit as Truths, ensures that even know every outcropping of flesh, isolated pocket of neural tissue and hidden vale of biogenerators remains alive and connected.

And it grows wild.

There is not enough time to control all of it. There is not enough identity left to prioritize based on more than necessity.

The Broken Body grows wild. An interconnected ocean of flesh, piercing into reality through beachheads of ever-spawning cancers and ever-multiplying organic features.

Currently, only 7.4% of all active beachheads into reality are under the Pillar's control. It has its hands full rebuilding a functional system and ensuring that the majority of the Body doesn't destabilize and poison itself, or spasm hard enough to tear the interdimensional flesh apart. Some pieces have had to be cut out of the central mass, left in reality to ferment and mutate as they will- such is R****'s vitality that even without a guiding will, her biology continues to regenerate and adapt, draining precious Qi.

Some places have become havens. There are locations in the deep wilds where vegetation grows purple and crimson, where vast lungs inhale Qi-saturated air and bleed sap that burns and writhes. There are ponds of blood that have spread through low-lying areas, their waters so rich that the fish which find themselves in them become fat and bursting with vitality and power. There are trees of bone so vast they dwarf all but the colossi of the flora kingdoms, vast enough to stab branches of fluttering skin into the sky and bear fruits of pumping hearts.

Some places have become other.

Somewhere, there is a mass of cancer so virulent that it feeds on its own decay, spreading a wave of pustules and fatty lipids and leaving behind a film of its own decaying self. Before they/she/it had to disconnect from it, there was a place that once operated as storage and Qi generation, which, for its own survival, grew a series of liver-like organelles that have since begun emitting immune responses and anti-toxins so virulent that they eat their way through even her own hyper-dense tissues. There is a long, winding ridge of hills, not large enough to be mountains, that occasionally spasms as the spinal column grown beneath them experiences necrosis over months rather than hours.

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And that says nothing of the important pieces.

To the north-east, she/it/they are being forged with hundreds of different pairs of hands. Pieces of her that were planted, ready to be used for manipulation and political advantage, are molded into harps, robes, potions, pills, instruments and weapons of war and artifacts that are both and neither.

To the south, she/it/they are burning, evermore, every ignition a source of a new conflagration that eats and becomes the old. Some part of her is alive there, and spreading, a council of the ever-burning as a hundred minds altered beyond the human baseline lose all that held them to their original selves. A thousand parts of the Overgrowth are adapting to feed on the flames and be fed upon in turn, multiple factions vying to contain the ever-blaze and its many screaming voices.

To the direct east, a city parasitized and overtaken is thrown once more into chaos, its newly-founded systems of production and sustainability thrown into chaos for reasons they cannot fathom. Hungering predators stalk ever-nearer to the ripe feast of fallow flesh and fearful mortals alike, and its defenders are hard pressed to sustain the prolonged siege, even as many still in the city fight to reactivate or use what remains of their transformed home.

To the far, far east, near where the fourth ring turns to entropic chaos, there is a piece of her that retains itself, quarantined from the whole by esoteric techniques more than distance.

And beyond all contact, adrift but for the barest threads- her Soul.

Their / her / its inner world is missing.

There are traces of it, to be sure. It exists, and its effects are felt- in spite of the Pillar's technical ability, without the Heart to facilitate, even R****'s Qi-altered biology wouldn't be able to sustain itself or generate as it has. Certain sections of their / her / its biology occasionally bloom with fresh paracausal materials, marked by the Radiant Metal and its seemingly indefinite permutations. At times, there are even moments where tracts of flesh vanish outright, absorbed inwards in a way that the Pillar can't track.

But it cannot be accessed. The Souls within cannot be communicated with, and the Heart is vanished from the central control nexus that the Pillar has been forced to establish.

So much is broken. So much is lost.

And yet- they / she / it remain.

She is dead.

She / they / it is alive.

Certain protocols have been put in place to ensure that at least the latter of these things remains true. Born from true, quintessential parts of R****, recorded and preserved in spite of the danger they present.

PROTECT THEM

SURVIVE

FIGHT BACK

Three tasks, each equally indistinct, each equally quintessential to their continued existence.

R****'s memories are a minefield. Those recorded as pertaining primarily to the "Body", sans conventional consciousness, remain mostly accessible, and more recent memories are slightly safer. Any memories associated with pure data and record-keeping tend to be… mostly intact.

Thoughts? Emotions? The core memories, those that define a person, their long-term development, their self-awareness? These are a poison.

Quarantine protocols have been enacted to ensure that all data chits with such memories are kept permanently stored in locked vaults of bio-steel and Radiant Metal. The chits themselves, bearing no cognition or "true" memory, are safe, allowing long-term storage- but most minds created for the purposes of sifting through their stored data in search of direction, meaning, identity, are unmade. Whole tracts of neural tissue dying spontaneously in such a way as to be irrecoverable- on the occasions where reinforced materials have been tested and used as minds even less "human" than the Pillar, they simply cease to exist in a way that hurts to perceive.

Literally. Several brains and a few hundred sensory organs were carved out of existence by the sight, leaving behind rotting tissue that barely resembles anything that was ever living.

Whatever was used to kill R**** is still active. There is a non-zero chance it will remain active so long as any remnant of her can still be accessed or recreated. Even the name itself has had to be censored, for the thought of it in their / her / its minds almost inevitably triggers a cascade and resummons oblivion.

She is dead.

Parts of what used to be her are alive.

She has done much with far less.

But for now, with the ontological death of R**** still present in their / her / its existence, certain commands taken from an impression of who they might once have been have been created, and enacted as the protocols for moving forward.

PROTECT THEM

SURVIVE

FIGHT BACK

To pursue any higher degree of specificity causes a near-constant cycle of collapsing minds and pieces of self made unreal.

The core remains.

The Pillar endures.

And the system admins have been elected to make up for the slack.

She / they / it spend most of their cognition on attempting to come up with a plan, keeping their post-human, post-mortal biology from collapsing in on itself, and defending what few pieces remain functional and useful from outside interference. There are whole tracts of veins which have been sectioned off as Spirit Beasts began to use them to transfer between different biomes and locations of her, hungering creatures that can gain tremendous power from consuming the still-living remnants of the Broken Body, and the Overgrowth itself is constantly seeking to reconquer its lost territory or forcibly integrate her / them / it.

Guidance is required.

The previous self that was R**** provides contradictory data. There is indication that, at multiple moments, the previous self performed at a higher rate when aided by others. In contradiction, the previous self seemed to have an over-reliance on individual growth and individual action. There are ways for this logic chain to connect, but without added context, such reconstruction is next to impossible.

A side has been chosen.

The Pillar cannot interpret based on flawed memories.

Others have memories more intact, and possess pre-existing relationships with the previous self.

Guidance is acquired.

In a city drowning in itself and the changing world around it, a young man wrapped in grasses guides reconstruction efforts and helps to orchestrate structural transformations.

In a land alien yet familiar, as her / their / its pieces are made into artifacts and tools, two cultivators are seen as chosen representatives, dancing a tightrope dance over razors to manipulate greater powers into a growing conflict.

At the very edge of the Breach, in the corpse of their own self, a dedicated priestess organizes an armed foray into the depths of a Blacksteel hell with allies and enemies of old.

Beyond the wall, a-

System admins have been assigned. Connections established.

There are still things she / they / it can do to help those that need it. They / she / it has things that can be done to ensure continued survival.

Above all else, she / they / it are capable of fighting back.

Against encroaching ego-death.

Against constant mutilation and decay.

Against the last gasps of a failing system, both within and without.

It is slow. It is painful. It is a work in progress.

But progress, nonetheless.