Chapter Sixteen: Edge of the Ocean
Water stretched out before Qing Liao's sight, endlessly. He stared and stared, searching for the end but never finding it. Using qi to enhance his vision made no difference. It revealed the presence of small islands to the east and west, clinging to the shore. In the distant southeast, barely visible as a shadow amid the haze and spray, the outline of a much larger island, covered in substantial mountains, partially resolved. In all other directions the blue kept going to the horizon and beyond no matter how high he climbed and jumped.
The coast extended to the east and west, outlining a vast bay, but directly to the south the water seemed to extend absolutely forever.
His mind struggled to reckon with this. Water wrapped around the world, an expanse so endless that it dwarfed the totality of the land. A blue world, as shown on the globe. He believed it, sometimes. At other moments it seemed a fantasy.
Standing on the shore, it felt real at last.
"What lies to the south?" he dared to ask Sayaana, seeking to find an anchor in the remnant soul's experience.
Her green-shifted form projected into being beside him. She looked outward, watching gentle waves roll along the sands of the narrow beach. Though it was far from her first glimpse of the ocean, she had not seen the salt water in centuries. She drank in that moment with a level of wonder that mirrored that of the disciple beside her.
The answer emerged only slowly, teased out between the rolling crash supplied by each wave. "Past that island," she pointed a green finger toward the southeast. "There is a wide sea, one filled with many other islands, some so massive you would believe the land went on forever. Beyond that there is another sea hundreds of kilometers in width before the waters give way to the Desert Poison Continent."
Her expression became wistful, dredging the depths of memory. "That is a very strange land. South of that is the Southern Polar Sea and then the Ice Plate Continent that covers the bottom of the world. Dangerous places those," she cautioned, expression suddenly grim. "Mighty demonic cultivators claim them both." She turned then and faced directly to the east. "If you went that way, you would cross several lines of islands, but after that there would be nothing. Ten thousand kilometers of open salt water with no land anywhere until you reach the Western Continent. I'd advise against ever going there, for Bloody Roam lairs in that land."
Liao could imagine thousands of kilometers of forest. He had, after all, just crossed a wide distance of mountains that was almost entirely covered by a closed canopy. He could even, if he stretched his imagination, expand his experience with grasslands until they reached a similar vast size, as the maps said were found in the immense lands that existed in the west.
Those formations, the terrain of the land, he understood. This, endless waters, he did not.
The very idea of so much water, it overwhelmed. He had thought the oceans would resemble a lake, simply one expanded to giant size. The waves, the salt spray, the cacophonous cries of the shorebirds, these gave the lie to that reasoning. Ocean, a simple word, but something far more than that. It was a world, one greater than the land in scope and surely one that hid even more secrets than the terrestrial expanse of the Ruined Wastes.
"Sixty years of experience in the forests," he mumbled, knowing Sayaana could not help but hear. "None in this place. I'll have to start from nothing." That would have been fine, welcome even, assuming that he had years to work on the process as he had amid the bamboo, but he needed to turn back and head north in a mere five days.
"Step by step," the green bark woman instructed. "Two goals right now. Find a tree for your mother and hunt sharks for the sect. Ignore the rest."
Sound advice. Liao believed the first task should not be too difficult to manage. While the shoreline vegetation, gathered into dunes, marshes, and bizarre half-flooded forests was strange and offered nothing even remotely suitable as a grave marker, there were elevated cliffs in some places that sported suitable forest vegetation. He suspected it would take no more than a day to find an appropriate rare tree.
The other task would be far harder. He knew how to fish, of course, but only in lakes and streams using line and rod. This would be different, vastly so, he could feel it. The ocean radiated a distinctive qi of its own, one unlike any lake he'd ever seen.
He had brought line, net, and spear with him, and copies of old books Zhou Hua, who had a steady copyist hand, had made that pictured different forms of ocean creatures. None of that inspired much confidence. Sharks, based both on description and the skins he'd seen sewn over Artemay for battle, were large creatures. Several times the size of any fish he'd ever seen, at least. They also had large teeth. Liao was not exactly eager to dive into the waves in search of a confrontation.
Instead, he began with a small test. Sayaana was no more a skilled seaborne hunter than he was, but she knew the motions and patterns of the tide well enough to set up a net trap in a small inlet. It would not catch anything sizeable, but small beginnings were suitable enough. The net would gather up whatever the tide swept in, and in the interim, it gave Liao free time to explore the coastline.
While the vegetation immediately adjacent to the water was unfamiliar, a consequence Liao agreed with Sayaana's suggestion was most likely due to the presence of salt in the ground, they found that after moving slightly upslope the land transitioned back into forests little different from those found on rocky ground and thin soil throughout the surrounding region. He'd seen many similar groves while moving across hilltops over the past several days.
Enough to notice that which was new to the coast.
Years spent living off only what the bamboo forest could provide had taught Liao a certain profound truth about the world. The eye could not discern all the differences among living things. There were countless varied kinds, animal, plant, and even fungus, that might appear perfectly identical even to a cultivator's sight on the surface but were unique strains within. Their qi, unlike the results of surface senses, revealed this truth. Different forms of bamboo required different methods to remove their toxins from the shoots prior to consumption. Nausea and bouts of brutal diarrhea had inscribed that lesson deep into him.
He assumed that the lack of differences on the exterior was not mirrored within, that there was some shift in internal spaces or variations in tiny features his eyes could not observe. This did not matter. Qi was certain, better than any evidence a crystal could possibly provide.
In this way, sensing the strings of qi that the life around him produced, he discerned that what appeared to be an otherwise common horsetail pine growing atop an unremarkable bald hill above a tiny cove was not what it seemed.
Outwardly, it seemed much like the horsetail pine, a common enough tree he'd encountered many times in past years. It was a proud tree of modest height with long paired needles growing in bushy clusters. The branches spread out widely, providing the form a broad, gentle, and distinguished appearance.
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Though Liao recoiled slightly from the thought, he considered this graceful form a most suitable monument to take shape above his mother's grave. The newly discovered variety revealed variation only in possessing a slightly deeper red tinge to the bark and cones that were perhaps a fraction broader and bulkier, but that was enough to satisfy his need.
Cultivators could recognize those features as unique, able to detect the salty touch of the ocean that lay upon its qi.
He gathered up a double dozen worth of cones, in various stages of opening, by scrambling through the branches. These went into his personal storage ring, the bracelet he'd found first of them all, the only one he wore on his wrist rather than carried in a bandolier. Nothing else, on the entirety of this trip, would he keep for himself. Some priorities were best measured by exclusivity.
Satisfied by his discovery, he walked slowly back down to the sea. He had secured the honors his mother deserved and could return to his duties to the sect with a clear conscious and focused mind.
As the sun set and the tide began to recede, Liao took in his net for the first time. The bounty of life it contained astonished him. There was easily ten times what he'd seen local fisherman take from any of the lakes within Mother's Gift through similar methods, and that without any real skill.
"Is the ocean simply richer?" he questioned Sayaana. The greenish remnant stood on the other side of a stone pile at the edge of the beach as Liao struggled to sort through the fish and other creatures he'd caught – there were a great many crabs – in the fading light. He did his best to match their forms against the pictures Zhou Hua had provided and used his qi sense to group each one according to its own kind. Some, he imagined, would be found to possess valuable skins, scales, bladders, teeth, or other organs. It was simply a matter of testing to discover which ones.
He discarded the crabs, shrimp, squid, and even some clams that had managed to make their way into the net. Doubtless those too had value to someone within the Twelvefold Panoply, but neither he nor Zhou Hua had made any provision to collect such creatures. Lacking any better plans to deal with this bycatch, he simply tossed them lightly back into the water in the hope that they would survive.
He extended the same procedure to extra fish from those variations he managed to recognize, as there was no need to kill additional specimens that might have no value. He did keep all those that had perished by thrashing themselves to death against the net, as there was no point in wasting such sacrifice.
Everything else went back into the water.
This, Liao discovered as night fell, was a mistake. Water is not like the air. It conveys substance and scent in a manner that neither the trapper nor the remnant soul knew, with consequences they were unable to anticipate. The dead tissue tossed into the inlet unleashed a mélange of indicators, all of which served to draw in scavengers.
Birds were the first to arrive, led by raucous gulls whose loud cries split the twilight. Other shorebirds, diving from high above, sought to carry off dead fish, crabs, and entrails alike. Liao gathered wet grasses from the dunes and built up a smoldering fire whose smoke served to drive away such airborne interlopers, but assembling this tool pulled his eyes away from the unsorted catch for several minutes.
Long enough for a strike to come rising up from below.
He did not expect it, for the beast hid in the shadows and moved about almost entirely hidden beneath the waves. Only the eyes and the tip of the snout emerged above the surface, the rest of concealed by dimness and refraction. The qi too, was unfamiliar, different. It lacked the hot iron-blooded tang he associated with all large animals and caused him to discount the threat.
Liao only turned in time to watch as this massive foreign creature surged out from the surf and onto the beach in a single charging motion. It opened gaping jaws and, in a brutal lunge, gulped down half the remaining catch in one sweep of the head.
Swearing in a mix of surprise and anger, Liao's daggers jumped into his hands. The blades seemed small indeed compared to the size of the beast, vast and dark, that now charged up the beach.
An elongate animal, easily three times in length as Liao's height, counting the broad serpentine tail, it had a robust but flattened body with stumpy and sharply bent limbs terminating in powerful claws. The immense head, huge compared to the overall size of the body, was backed by a flexible, muscular neck able to twist and thrash across an immense angular range. Sharp teeth, many of them extending beyond the edges of the triangular snout, filled that maw. The beast possessed small eyes, but its gray-green skin was thick and topped by hardened scales forming an armor-like outer layer.
Vaguely, it resembled a lizard expanded to monstrous size, but Liao's eyes found a thousand faults with that comparison even in the first instant he while he dashed backward to avoid the expansive toothy maw. He had no idea what this beast might be, having never even seen it in imagery. His mind reeled as he tried to find some label for it, some understanding of how it moved and fought. Daggers clenched hard beneath his fingers as he raced to discern where he would need to place his strikes upon that hardened hide.
The beast possessed no such hesitation. It spun about, the shockingly sinuous spine bent easily with this motion, enabling a turn no cow or wolf could match. The follow-up lunge invoked a burst of speed that belied the awkward presentation of the low-slung body and stumpy limbs. Jaws wide, the teeth snapped down at the climax of this charge, poised to grab, twist, and tear.
But light was faster.
Liao stepped forward against the lunge, not back, and blasted past the long ivory teeth even as the wide jaw was still stretching to its maximum extent. Bending down, he let his legs fall, loose and sprawling, and his body shifted into a slow roll across the armored back. With daggers in hand, arms propelled by cultivator strength drove down hard. Blades forced their way between knobby scales and, when they failed to find a gap, drew on qi to pierce straight through.
Steel blades pierced down until only the hilt remained exposed, jerked back and forth within the flesh by the mighty animal's own great momentum. Liao did not pause but repeated the motion over and over in a flash. A dozen terrible wounds opened wide in less than a second.
Rolling off and to the side, Liao shifted his invocation of the Stellar Flash Steps and bolted away. The beast tracked him swiftly, guided by the formidable nostrils rather than the small eyes, and pressed down hard against the sand to launch another charge.
This the cultivator evaded, easily, three times more. Having seen the furious attack once, it was all too easy to sidestep when repeated. The variations that animal intelligence could offer were too limited to even distract the human foe. Liao could prance aside faster than even the nimblest of gazelles. Though the hardy amphibious predator was remarkably spry for a creature of such bulk, it had nothing like the speed needed to keep pace.
Certainly not while on land.
Dark blood stained the green-gray back, thickening with every motion. The cuts were deep, and though Liao did not know the internal arrangement of the organs, the jerking coughs that spasmed the beast between attempted strikes suggested a punctured lung. The matter was decided. There was no need for him to return to the fray, minor though the risk might be.
Half-a-dozen lunges later, the animal itself recognized this. Its fury faded and it flopped down on its belly. In a final, desperate, action it attempted to crawl back into the ocean, but blood loss finished its work first. The beast slumped mid-step, limbs giving way beneath its weight. A moment later, the eyes and mouth fell closed. Soon after that, the ribs ceased to stir.
This was death, neither swift nor slow. It was not a pleasant end, nor the one Liao would have preferred to inflict, but recklessly seeking the heart or brain of such an unknown shape might well have been worse.
He refused, however, to work against such a burden in the future. Taking the cutting tools from his belt, he resolved to spend the rest of the night unlocking that puzzle in all its messy, bloody detail.
As he made the first cut, at the base of the tail, he posed a question to Sayaana. "You do not recognize this creature?"
"Recognize, yes," the green projection of the remnant soul appeared beside the fallen beast. She walked back and forth along its considerable length, studying the shape. "Know? No." She shook her head swiftly. "I have seen its kind before. There are several types, most are smaller than this. They live on the coast, in rivers, and in marshes, but only in hot regions. They must have a name, but I never learned it."
Another thing that must be rectified. The play of knife and shears swiftly made it clear that the hide was quite remarkable. If the archives hid the secrets of this beast, Liao intended to unearth them all. Perhaps, he mused, it might possess properties complementary to shark skin.
Sayaana assessed the matter and returned a very different, but more immediately useful, observation. "This beast is as big as any shark, and it just showed you how we can catch them." A wicked smile rose to match Liao's unspoken question. "Bait."