Unseen Cultivator

"Beavers," Su Yi made no attempt to hide how ridiculously amusing she found this statement to be.

Zhou Hua directed a dark, steel-eyed and stone-faced expression across the low table at the elder in response. In the face of Su Yi's levity, the alchemist chose to take the comment remarkably seriously. "The hydrologic map supports the plan," she countered. No mention was made of how she'd personally worked with Grand Elder Artemay to produce that reference. Qing Liao was very aware of that achievement, given that he'd been obligated to donate a considerable amount of blood facilitating that part of the preliminaries.

For his part, he retained a deep uncertainty of the whole enterprise. That he'd been the one to suggest it did nothing to help. The very idea that Grand Elder Itinay would adopt his plan had never occurred to him when proposing it. He had merely hoped to offer something sufficiently plausible to deflect the fury of her terrible attention.

With the scheme approved, they were now faced with the need to successfully transport ten thousand beavers across the basin in order that they should build the dams needed to produce an immense flood in ten years' time. Shirking this duty, assigned directly by the grand elders, was impossible. Lives depended upon it, too many to think upon. They were tasked with stopping a demon horde using a bizarrely conceived flood and the efforts of a truly immense number of rodents.

"Yes, I am aware," Su Yi answered without bothering to look directly at the alchemist. "I have been informed of the particulars by a quartet of grand elders. Ohlay has committed the resources of the husbandry pavilion to great effort and expense. It falls to the four of us to carry it out. It is just," she smiled, a manner and motion that somehow mimicked a flower opening up before the dawn. "Such an unreasonably perfect plan to be Qing Liao's."

"That is true," Zhou Hua's sharp tone, an edge above her normal academic emphasis, conveyed her agreement. It also proclaimed an equally obvious displeasure at the present state of affairs. "Have you developed a plan to carry everything out?"

It took a great deal of effort for Liao to keep his neck from swinging back and forth amidst this exchange. There was something between the two women, some sort of bizarre rivalry he could not entirely parse. It involved him, somehow, though the one piece he could grasp firmly was that it was not a matter of romance.

Su Yi might represent something resembling his ideal fantasy woman, at least on the surface, but this somehow served to banish all romance from their relationship rather than the reverse. As for Zhou Hua, whatever sparks they had previously shared had been most thoroughly smothered. She had advanced to a stage of her life where liaisons no longer belonged.

Beyond that, he struggled to identify the source of their animosity. Both women were smart and capable cultivators. Zhou Hua was talented in mathematics and other deeply intellectual pursuits, while Su Yi possessed a formidable martial presence. They worked in two different, but complimentary, pavilions. Both had a restrained, elegant presentation and temperament.

It seemed, to his eyes, that they ought to be friends.

"They are jealous of each other," Sayaana, seated on the technically empty fourth cushion, provided the answer to the unspoken question. "This one," she pointed a bright green nail at Su Yi. "Too pretty. That one," her hand drifted back to Zhou Hua. "Too good at cultivating."

The declaration made a great deal of sense, in a disappointing manner. Su Yi's progression through the spirit tempering realm had been somewhat sluggish. She had reached only the second layer, though she was close to the third, a below-average progression. Given a century or two, Zhou Hua would likely rush past her. That would surely be embarrassing, though such events were quite common. It happened to almost everyone, eventually. Liao fully expected that he would be surpassed by a younger cultivator in the next two decades. There were several strong candidates.

As for appearance, Su Yi's beauty had only increased in potency as she grew into the fullness of elder status. She was now, due to various shifts among the elders, considered fifth among the great beauties of the sect. Though it was not something she actively pursued – Liao knew she took pride in her appearance but made no effort to flaunt it publicly – it could hardly be avoided in face-to-face contact.

He supposed those were reasons as likely to foster rivalry as anything else, and that he should be grateful he was not at the center of such a conflict. Whether it was women or men, fighting over the affections of the opposite sex always ended in tears.

"The husbandry pavilion has set aside space and resources to raise the required beavers," Su Yi explained, not rising to the bait. She appeared, instead, almost effortlessly relaxed. "The four of us," Liao greatly appreciated how she acknowledged Sayaana as a person and part of the little group. The pair continued to exchange letters he could not read, a critical friendship to sustain the remnant soul. "Are responsible for transporting the beavers to necessary sites, ensuring dams are constructed manually in key locations, and triggering the flood when the horde has fully gathered."

She turned her gaze upon Zhou Hua, thoroughly serious despite her calm and untroubled demeanor. "Much of this work hinges upon your predictions. We have maps now, but it falls on you to identify the precise points where the dams must be placed. We also need to, between the four of us, devise a way to restrain the beavers properly for transport. They cannot be stuffed in storage rings, and dozens of screaming rodents in cages carried hundreds of kilometers would be problematic at best."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

That, Liao recognized, was a severe understatement. Screeching, backpack-hauled beavers would eliminate any chance at stealth. Worse, cages carrying active animals would incur severe limits on space, and a single glance at Zhou Hua's preliminary target map made it clear he needed to transport as many animals as possible with each trip. "If we put them to sleep," he suggested. "I can make gloves and bags of such softness that they won't wake up when moved." It would require careful craftsmanship, but the concept was sound. He had made several such pairs of gloves on the request of fellow pavilion members caring for newborn children. Beavers would be, he suspected, much easier to appease than human infants.

"There are powders that can be mixed with feed to induce slumber," Zhou Hua supplied this following a swift glance from Su Yi. "They are sometimes used on sheep, but anything smaller will produce difficulties in managing the dosage. Alchemy struggles with the precision of the small." It was a long-established problem, one that summoned up grim memories of Liao's parents and the failure of the art in those cases. Any pill, if too strong, changed from medicine to poison, and measuring out precise quantities for animals little more massive than rats was difficult even for preternaturally steady cultivator hands. As a creed focused on the stars, which were vast, the Celestial Origin Sect lacked mastery of the tiny.

"A formation can be used to provide better control," Su Yi adopted a variant of the initial proposal. "They are sometimes used in cattle and horses. All that it needs is for the animal to walk over a frame. I believe I can construct an array suited to beavers." She looked back toward Liao, her serious expression warring with amusement dancing in her dark eyes. "Can they be baited to cross a planned path?"

"Yes," Liao knew beavers well. He had handled them a great deal, though only rarely alive, and had read everything the library contained regarding such animals. They were, like their kin the rats, unexpectedly cunning, but they responded well to the smell of food. He had trapped many. They made excellent hats. "It should not be difficult."

"Then the first objective will be the construction of a sleep formation," Su Yi decided. She did not sound especially enthusiastic, though few would be after assigning themselves such a laborious task. "We can test that option as soon as next week, moving a handful of animals around within Mother's Gift."

A tight schedule, to produce the necessary bags and gloves, but Liao was confident he could accomplish it. This plan dropped a few grains of warmth into his chest. It seemed Su Yi continued to follow the progress of his craft.

"That allays the simple problem. The other is considerably more challenging," the lovely cultivator's face turned grim and drawn. "We need to arrange a means to breach the dams all at once, triggering a catastrophic flood." Su Yi's scowl deepened. "Grand Elder Itinay has offered a starting point. If the beavers are slaughtered in the autumn, their dams will weaken over the winter. She implied that this would allow a few targeted acts to trigger a massive cascade."

Attention focused on Zhou Hua as the elder reached her conclusion. "Is that possible?"

"Yes," the alchemist pointed at several locations on the map provided by Artemay's scouting, drawn through observations made from high in the sky. "If large dams are positioned at the confluence points of the major tributaries, then, when they are burst, so long as a dam on the Great Eastern River is sustained, the waters will ravage the whole of the basin. It will be like pouring several smaller bottles into a larger one all at once, with the basin as the funnel."

Having observed as Zhou Hua performed exactly that mixing process on several occasions, Liao recognized that being caught in the funnel, even very briefly, would surely go extremely badly for the demons. The key points, counting the Great Eastern River itself, numbered only six. That number felt manageable to bring down all at once. His time serving as a laborer repairing the Starwall made it clear such rapid acts of deconstruction were within the powers of masonry, even improvised. He would, of course, need to go to Elder Kuai Sheng for advice, a challenge that already filled him with trepidation.

"So, it is possible," Su Yi sighed gracefully. The entire discussion seemed to compel an immense weariness. "In that case, all we need is a means to kill tens of thousands of beavers, scattered across a space several times the size of Mother's Gift, in a single season, deployed by one pair of hands." She shook her head. "I dislike such conceptions of slaughter," these words revealed the true source of her weariness. "These are not demons, but mere animals. It is a heavy duty that we have been asked to bear, but if it must be slaughter, better rodents than humans." She stared down at the table, her qi shaking. "Any ideas?"

"Poison," Zhou Hua's response carried none of the elder's morally induced qualms. "Introduced far upstream, it could kill all the beavers down to the ocean if formulated properly."

"It would kill too much," Liao found his voice as he offered this objection. "Every fur bearing animal in the rivers, and many that simply stopped at the shore to drink. The waters would choke with death. The devastation would be obvious, even from high above, and," he considered an additional element swiftly. "Such a poison would be a powerful alchemical creation. Its qi would be detectable, at least near the source point. This extermination, it must appear natural, just like the flood. Snow Feast must blame the wild, not interference."

Those words struck three tongues to silence, a gap that a fourth chose to fill with a single word. "Pestilence."

Liao turned to Sayaana. The green-stained remnant soul's apparition gripped the table hard, and her face was a stony mask leaking horror, but her resolve flowed through her qi, unbowed. "Unleash the foul spread of pestilence throughout the basin's beavers. Let death rise and wash through the waters. It is natural, it happens every few decades at least. We've seen it ourselves. There will be nothing to notice."

They had seen it. Valleys, whole river systems, swept over by an invisible cloud of death conveyed by life too tiny to be observed, but potent enough to be readily felt. It ripped through vast regions, killing more than nine in ten. Mice, bamboo rats, civets, and more perished at the undetectable touch. None were spared, certainly not beavers. Such diseases had existed since before humanity, making it ideal for hiding their involvement.

The thought of using such a method left Liao wanting to vomit. When he relayed Sayaana's suggestion to the others, Zhou Hua lost control sufficiently that rushed from the room and emptied her stomach into the privy. They returned to the table after recovering, and silent nods passed around the table. No one wished to speak, but all agreed.

"It will work," Su Yi summarized, accepting the terrible path. "May the Celestial Mother forgive us. I am certain Grand Elder Itinay will approve." The icy immortal would surely not hesitate to grasp even this most profane of weapons, one that, Sayaana's careful circumlocution aside, bore the same name as that of their greatest enemy. "Now, let us lay down the necessary orders and begin.

Sworn to the grim work of survival, four souls agreed.