Regressor Sect Master

"This is quite the report." Nord Truehaven read the papers, and his face was grave. Tia Truehaven returned personally to relay what she saw and fought against.

"Yes. Somehow, the Verdant Snow's elders are aware of what this is, and approach it fully prepared for battle." Tia sat on the chair next to her uncle. Her flying ship had to be sent for repairs, so she had to charter an express flying ship to get back to the city of the Golden Fists.

"You are saying they know who this enemy is." Nord repeated. The papers were written as she traveled back.

"Yes. At least, they know enough to be able to expect what they will face, and prepare adequately."

Nord Truehaven sat and mulled the report. He paced the room, while Tia Truehaven allowed her uncle the time to think about their next steps. "Did you learn anything else?"

"Yes." She then shared about Tundra's knowledge of the Divine Spiritual Energy Compression, and his use of the Skypiercer Sect's paralyzing lightning.

"This does lend credence to Shurrish's assessment. But I believe we have discussed enough. Come with me. Let's meet our ancestors."

***

Tundra was busy within the workshop, but unfortunately, the treasure within the Phoenixflesh Cauldron could not be stopped halfway.

He heard the report once they returned, and felt it wasn't a bad outcome. The use of Princess Luharl's treasure was a shame, but that was secondary. His friend, Severian, and the rest of them were safe, and that was paramount.

There are many other treasures he could find to fill the gaps. He breathed, and focused on the pill. He could not abandon it, not when he was already so close.

"It's good that they are fine." Julia said, as she returned to her station to continue on other parts of the pill. They lacked the formations and equipment to pause processes midway, and those formations did not last very long.

***

Marin walked the courtyards and passed a place where Hana was playing. Elder Grayne Fallows, sat around a table, under a wooden gazebo where he could have a good look of the child playing.

The two rarely met, but Marin still stewed from the revelation that Celestia was now a fifth realm, while she still struggled to improve her form and cultivation. She really wanted to reach the sixth realm.

And yet, Elder Grayne Fallows was clearly no weakling. The man felt strong, and from Marin's minute observations, it is likely that his cultivation was on par with both Tia Truehaven and Elder Severian, though he thus far remained quietly uninvolved in affairs. So much so that he even refused to assist with the matter of the swamps.

She didn't get it.

Why did a man who was strong and well respected not just leave it all, and instead, devoted his life to a task like being a child's minder?

"You look troubled, Lady Eastheart." Elder Fallows offered a seat. "Come sit with me. I believe we rarely talk."

"We don't. But thank you. I do have some thoughts in my mind."

"We all do. Not all thoughts are good, or productive." Elder Fallows smiled. "Are you a tea person? Or more of a fruit-tea type?"

"Fruit... tea?"

"Ah. I suppose it is relatively new. Princess Luharl recently got hold of certain types of dried fruit teas, pure fruit, no leaves, so none of the usual bitterness of our usual teas. With some rock sugars, they are pleasantly sweet. A great escape from the bitterness of daily life."

"I would like to try that." Marin admitted.

"So, what's on your mind?"

"The world's just... unfair. Have you ever realized how unfair everything is?" Marin sighed.

The older man grinned. "Have you ever thought about the Imperial Emperor, and wondered whether he woke up one day and decided some people should die?"

Marin paused and looked at Elder Fallows. "I don't follow."

"Yes. The Emperor does. And that person will die. It has happened more often in my time than I have been able to count. Look at Hana running about. Do you notice that there are ants and small bugs on the floor that die once she stepped on them?"

"I can't say I noticed it before, but now that you mention it..."

"Have you wondered whether animals contemplated the issue of fairness? Like a pair of birds raising their eggs, and one of them stays back to guard the eggs. The one that stays back starves for days until the other returns. Do you wonder whether their minds considered if it is fair?"

"Are you saying fairness is irrelevant?"

"Yes. We live in a world where the powerful are like Hana, walking about without a care. Just their footsteps will slay a hundred unfortunate insects that happen to be under her feet. What is fair? Even if the ants protested the unfairness of it all, what could they do?"

Marin looked sad. Depressed. "Nothing."

"Yes." Elder Fallows said. "Even I am playing my role. To you, I may seem powerful, but in our world, there is always a bigger mountain, and always a stronger dragon hiding amidst the clouds. We are all pieces of a greater game, and so we play our part. Freedom and fairness is all in the mind. If you believe you are free, you are. If you believe you are treated fairly, you are. The concept of justice does not exist in the world of beasts. The concept of freedom does not exist either. They live, and that is all there is."

"That is such a bleak way to look at the world. Where is our ability to decide? Where is freedom?"

"On the contrary, I like that way of looking at the world. Once everything is framed from the perspective of my role in this society, then I can make choices that help my role. It makes life and all things a lot easier. You, Lady Marin Eastheart, do not want to embrace the role thrust upon you."

"You've been here for a year and you could tell?"

"I overhear the whispers of the disciples, and your stepchildren. I sometimes hear the laments of your fellow wives, and so your dissatisfaction is well known."

Marin looked upset. "So help me. Help me rise into the sixth realm and free me from this misery."

"Misery will follow you everywhere, Lady Eastheart." Hana turned briefly to wave at her caretaker, and ran after Jihan. The two played chase. "Do you know what the maids say?"

She blinked, surprised that people even pay attention to the maids. "What?"

"They wished they were you. I heard more than one that said that they could be a better wife than you are, if only they had your heritage and beauty."

"Foolish mortals. Maids who lack the capacity to know what it is like to deal in the world of cultivators. They don't know what they are in for." Marin could not imagine that anyone would want to be forced to marry someone they don't like and stripped of their freedom.

"The maids are more aware than you give them credit for." Elder Fallows answered and Marin thought she saw a glimmer of disappointment in his eyes. "The palace maids that served Princess Luharl know a lot of things."

"If it were me, I'd rather wish I was born a man." Marin cursed, forever remembering how she was sidelined by her brother all because he was a man, and she wasn't.

"And that is a fair thing to say. I too, wish I was born one of the Princes of the Imperial Emperor. Or one of the talented descendants of Patriarch Whitedragon."

"I do not think those are comparable."

"They are not, and also are. They are things we cannot change. They are distractions from the real choices we have on our hands. For me, the choice is to play a role, or not. And within that choice, are more choices. Whether to play the role well, or not. There are an infinite number of choices in every choice, and freedom is in framing where we choose to make the choices."

Marin blinked at the man, and sighed. She got up and began to walk away. "I really hate old men like you. All you do is lecture me, as if you know my life better than me."

"Not at all." Elder Fallows focused his attention on Hana, who ran about. She looked so young, so innocent. So detached from the cruel world she would soon face. He looked away, a little resigned.

***

Tundra honestly didn't feel time pass all that much. Two months was a bit of a blink, because he was so absorbed in the very act of making a powerful pill.

Zuri Blackpetals left a recipe in there to denote the exact pill she wanted to make, but it wasn't a great recipe, and thus Tundra made fixes to it. He would have to apologize if she prodded, but he believed he didn't need to.

"Are you alright?"

Julia looked tired. Exhausted. Her skin looked pale and drained. Work on such a powerful pill required tremendous focus, and many many steps.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

On top of the various lectures Tundra gave while they worked together, maybe this would've been fruitful.

She closed her eyes and breathed. She channeled spiritual energies into her body, and for a moment, her exhaustion subsided. "I'll be fine, master."

"Good. We're almost there. The last step. The pill is almost ready." The cauldron gave a greenish glow, as the strength of the seed would now be stored, condensed into a set of pills. Five pills. By Tundra's measure of Wilber's talent, he would only likely need to use three of them, but five pills was the standard prescription, as cultivators prepare for whatever that could happen at such a perilous situation.

Julia gave a light nod, and got into position.

Julia would handle the secondary containment of the pill's energies, while Tundra with his higher power would handle the first wave of the seed's energies. "This is the part that drains us the most."

His disciple nodded, and took a pill to replenish her energies. Tundra did the same, and felt a surge of energy.

Now, they needed to wrestle all the various energies of all the different materials, and stitch them together. There were lesser steps where certain compatible materials were already woven into combinations, but now those combinations have to be combined into a larger combination.

Then, they would use the previously processed dragonscales to form the shells that would contain the energy. The shells were already premade, and separated into compartments such that these energies would only mix once it is consumed.

"Let's go." Tundra declared. His spiritual energies dived into the cauldron, and he began to wrestle the energies. Julia followed a moment later. There were many different types of energies, some stronger, some weaker.

His spiritual energies first targeted the strongest energies first. The Seed.

The Old Earthcore Tree's Spirit Seed is a legendary tree that grew in a land filled with volcanoes and a lot of natural fire energies, and sucked up all that fire energy to create an extremely powerful spirit seed. The Old Earthcore Tree, transformed a once-hostile land, filled with active volcanoes and flowing magma, into a land that could be home to farms and forests

All the fire energy is then stored within the seed.

A pure fire seed.

In alchemy, there is an order to how to place the different elements into a seed, and how to separate them.

Single element pills are 'easier', because this consideration is not required, but in higher realm pills, they are often multi-element pills, even if there is a single dominant element. Zuri wanted to create the [Earthcore Firespark Elixir], a pill with the Old Earthcore's seed at its heart, but augmented with a combination of all the other four elements in far smaller quantities.

"I'll go first." Tundra said and his energies wrapped the incredibly powerful Old Earthcore Seed fire into the five pills. They were strong, and the very contact felt as if it threatened to burn his spiritual energy almost immediately. But, if his spiritual energies were properly structured and shaped, his spiritual energies could last long enough to guide it into the pill.

Burn.

It would take stronger fires to melt this steel.

The power of the flame was intense, and with his current seventh realm cultivation, it wouldn't last as long as he liked.

The intense flames were fanned into the pills. Each type of energy had to be guided in a slightly different manner, and even each specific element could display a series of different and contradictory quirks. This flame was heavier. It lightly suggested that the mix of fire where the Old Earthcore Tree was planted came from an area with a heavy mix of earth energies.

The flames slowly settled into it's large section of the pill, and then, once it was all stored in, Tundra guided the dragonscales paste and formed a cover to cordon off the fire element energies away from the rest.

The pattern within even had a specific shape, so that they are released in a specific manner once consumed.

"Done." Tundra declared. Now, for Julia's part.

Tundra felt Julia wrestled the water and wood elements within the cauldron into the five pills. Tundra would have to wrestle the stronger fire element. These parts were weaker, and her wood element worked better with these elements.

Half a day passed, and they were in the final stretch.

"Alright. Almost there." Tundra said, as his disciple finished her part. Julia slumped on a chair, exhausted.

Now, for the finishing elements, and the overall protections to the pill. He doublechecked and triplechecked the balance of energies, and finally completed the casing that wrapped around the five pills.

Five refined [Earthcore Firespark Elixir], likely in the almost perfect grade.

"Send an urgent letter to Wilber Blackpetals, and inform him that it is ready." A core disciple would sprint on a flying sword to the Crimson Lotus Spire's Noria Firefields to carry the message.

***

Tundra emerged from the workshop, his duties fulfilled, and immediately ran to meet his elders. "Are you alright?"

Severian was still nursing some wounds, but with the help of various medical elixirs and pills, he was in good shape. Yavin looked to be in much better shape, and then they briefed him on everything else that happened in the two months.

"That is a good decision." The regressor didn't recall the Zuja being so close to his home base, but then again, he was so busy expanding elsewhere, and he also neglected to support the Mistburn family in his first life, that it was entirely possible that the Zuja was always near the Verdant Snow Sect.

Actually, it made perfect sense.

If the Zuja were so close, it explained how they got Celestia in his first life, and how the Zuja managed to corrupt her.

"There's something else." Severian paused. "The creature referred to Tia Truehaven as a 'mother host'. Would you know what that is?"

Tundra felt his skin crawl, an unnatural, uncomfortable sensation. He had little insight into Zuja's true structure, but could only presume that it didn't mean anything good. "I am not exactly sure."

The problem with dealing with a structure and organization like Zuja was its blind, almost absolute trust in the system, and there was no real way to get an understanding of how the Zuja worked without being a Zuja operative.

What he learned all came from those former Zuja-possessed, but these Zuja possessed never had real authority. True authority was always in the avatars, and he had never successfully reversed the corruption of any of the Zuja-avatars.

His only conclusion was that the Zuja was on the lookout for people who could ascend to be avatars.

"But if I have to guess, it is those who could become the great powers within them." Tundra explained about the Zuja avatars to his small group of elders.

***

"You just went into seclusion for two months and some without a word." Elly said as he met her in his chambers, and he noted her particular sense of dressing. She wore a modest outer robe, but now they were both in his chambers, she removed the outer robe to reveal a low cut, far more sensual robe that revealed more of her skin.

"The situation unfortunately demands absolute urgency." Tundra said, as he looked at the visibly upset woman. He had largely anticipated that his wife would have some opinions, though he understood that she would likely not do something rash.

She stared at him, and clearly there was some anger and dissatisfaction that she didn't seem to know how to articulate.

"And so, you are unhappy." Tundra sighed.

"Yes." Elly said. "How would you make it up to me?"

In the first life's years of constant wars, the Mistburn were left to fend for themselves, and as such, they did not even ask for help. Or maybe they did, but the elders just said they didn't have the resources to do so.

In this life, she looked for reassurances, because he had shaken and upended the order that once was. Even if the previous order was a meaningless one, it no longer held. He looked at her, and pulled her close.

She was playing a game, a game of benefits and advantages.

"Come." Tundra walked to the bed, sat down, and tapped the part next to him.

Elly seemingly panicked briefly, her face displayed a sudden shock. Then, after a few moments of thoughts, she walked and sat next to him.

"I do not particularly enjoy keeping track of things like this." Tundra said, as he held her waist.

She gulped, her body felt tense at first, but softened. She countered anyway. "I don't either." Tundra could sense that was a lie, that she was trying to match what he said. "But sometimes... a woman like me cannot help but think where I am."

Insecurity.

Tundra looked at the woman and saw in her eyes, a worried, insecure girl who seemed to fear failure. A woman who raised Edison, who was tested and failed. Now she is worried that she is seen as the failed one.

Was this something he created?

In the first life when Tundra kept himself distant, Elly was focused on her role as the most senior wife, and with her age and then 3rd realm cultivation, she seemed to have a resigned approach to life. No.

Because in his first life, they didn't do anything at all and faded into oblivion. Was it really better to just fade away, than to ever realize that they were failures?

By bringing them back into the fold, she turned vulnerable. Insecure. She would now live much longer, and have more to plan. More time to face the disappointments in their descendants.

He held the gaze and pulled Elly closer. She was selfish, concerned with her own part of the family and didn't truly consider the rest of the family as part of the family, even if she often spoke with gentleness.

"Jihan is doing well." Tundra said, trying to reassure her. "He has potential."

Elly stopped. "Is it?"

"Yes. I will train him."

"But... what if he's not good enough?"

Tundra decided to go on the offense, then he grabbed Elly tighter. "That is something we'll have to fix, my dear wife. We will have to keep making children until we have a good one. A great one."

Her face turned absolutely red, but Tundra wondered momentarily if this would last. He felt her heart stabilize, perhaps, as his hand started touching her clothes. Maybe she knew it too, because next, she reached to one of the ribbons holding her clothes together and pulled it apart. "...when can we start? You've promised me that you are willing to do it, and yet I've been waiting. I've waited many, many months."

"Patience, my dear." Tundra held his wife, now wearing nothing. He sent his spiritual energies into her body, and examined her condition. Her cultivation was slow, slowest of his three wives. "I intend to give you a bloodline. Something that we can pass on to our children."

"You said that the last time, but only Celestia got hers..." Elly said with a pout.

Like Marin, Elly was also jealous, even if that jealousy played out in other ways, and stemmed from different reasons.

"The search for a compatible spiritual bloodline is not so simple."

"Really?" Elly pushed, and they were both on the bed. She was on top, sitting on his thighs. "Even in Gomerlia?"

"Unfortunately so." Tundra nodded. "I've made some orders, but it will take months for them to be delivered."

"What else do I have to do?" She asked. "Do I need to eat some elixirs to boost my physical condition?"

If demonic cultivators used jade beauties as living cauldrons to create demonic cultivators, Tundra wondered whether the top 50 families' meddling with their wives and concubines' body and womb, all in the hopes of engineering an amazing descendent, was in the same league of madness.

The results don't lie, and it is why they still do it.

Through their meddling, the great families are able to create children who inherited powerful physiques, great spiritual roots, special bloodlines and even combinations of bloodlines. Even if they were just moderately talented, their innate base was so high that they would rise to decent levels, at least the high sixth or low seventh realms with ease.

Tundra acquired this knowledge during the later years when the Verdant Snow absorbed many mid tier sects. It can be done well, though the cost is quite high. It is also not foolproof. Each child is ultimately their own being, but for the powerful families, they can afford rolling the dice repeatedly until they get a result they desire.

"There are some things that can be done." Tundra assured her. "The next thing I will do after this is brew a set of elixirs to improve your body's condition for childbearing. It does not help your cultivation, and in fact, could even slow it down..."

"Please do it, husband." Elly said firmly. "It is a sacrifice I will make. I must."

Tundra nodded.

After a night of brief passion, the very next day he got to work making a set of elixirs.

***