Unseen Cultivator

"Beavers?" Ohlay looked across the spread of the small table at Itinay with a bizarre, and irregular, expression of confusion spread across her golden features. "You want me to breed thousands of beavers?"

It did, Itinay admitted, sound somewhat nonsensical when announced in such a way. Both Artemay and Neay, who she had also called to join this unofficial meeting in the back room of the elder hall, looked at her with lesser, but still distinctly curious, expressions of incredulity. She had offered them all a preliminary explanation of Qing Liao's plan, but it seemed the full impact of the idea had failed to penetrate immediately.

"Thousands of beavers to build thousands of dams, correct." Thankfully, Itinay found she could explain the idea without offering the least concession to the absurd. It had, admittedly, taken some practice to reach that point. She confessed, within the confines of her own thoughts, that the idea the disciple proposed had genuinely surprised her. A very rare occurrence indeed.

Only her predetermined rejection of countless more conventional schemes as inadequate, doomed to failure to meet one of her many requirements, allowed her to entertain this outlandish possibility. "In this way, the entire water system of the surrounding basin will be changed. It will be converted into the largest stoppered bottle ever fashioned. Once the plug is removed, it will wash the horde away, sweeping it downstream out to sea."

From the very moment it was proposed, she had examined the idea with incredible care, scrutinizing all possibilities. Even models of sand and clay had been crafted in order to examine the idea. These experiments suggested it was possible. The outflows from the mountains of the west certainly provided sufficient water, and the soil and stone of the plateau allowed their conversion into a massive reservoir. Most important of all, the very nature of the Great Eastern River, and the huge gorges it had cut through the land to the east, suggested the very sort of flood the disciple proposed had happened in the past, more than once.

"It is possible," Neay agreed, though tentatively. "There is sufficient water. A powerful flood would, at a minimum, sweep the river course to the east, and likely most of the floodplain. If the beavers can build dams of sufficient number, size, and strength, then a basin-wide flood is possible, such a water management scheme existed here during the old world. But something on this scale is not simple. It requires carefully taken measurements of the topography, and we cannot use the ancient plans. The rivers are no longer where they once were."

Though, like many of Neay's comments, this was in many ways merely a statement of obvious truths – everyone present understood that unmanaged rivers migrated their courses over time – it also fostered a useful seed. Itinay grasped it at once and seized upon that little kernel as a secondary argument to advance this scheme. "It is past time we updated our understanding of the surrounding landscape. If an invasion does come, we will need to know the terrain intimately. Qing Liao is not a mapmaker." Regrettably, the disciple's mindset did not flow in a suitably analytical spatial fashion, but that art was not something that could be forced upon the unwilling by rote practice. "But the women we have placed in his orbit possess the requisite skills." Zhou Hua, especially, had already provided an entire portfolio of updated maps based on Qing Liao's wanderings.

"If we combine ground readings with aerial surveys," she glanced carefully at Artemay and received the expected support from her sister. The hooded immortal enjoyed the view from on high. Such excursions required exquisitely planned timing, given the distinct limitations of concealment methods, but they could be arranged. "We can properly map the basin and surrounding mountains as needed for defensive planning."

"You are asking the formation pavilion to provide a single elder, and the alchemy and textiles pavilions a single disciple each," Ohlay objected. She spoke without rancor, having not raised her voice in anger outside of battle in over a millennium, but her deep-seated opposition was clear. No auditory emphasis was required. "But it will be the members of my pavilion who will be taken from their work and tasked with breeding out thousands of gnawing swamp rats. A great deal of labor in support of a plan whose efficacy I find highly dubious that falls entirely upon me. I am not convinced this is at all wise."

It was, Itinay admitted, a thoroughly reasonable argument. This plan relied heavily on contributions that would be drawn from a single source. Ohlay, as a master of the art of husbandry, could breed almost anything. However, like most in her position, she had distinct preferences. Animals that could not provide food, labor, or companionship were drastically de-prioritized in her designs. A single glance at her tower sufficed to reveal this, for it contained over three hundred resident cats.

The knowledge to operate a beaver-breeding program existed. Itinay had checked in advance. Fifteen hundred years ago a pair of dao companions had operated such an enterprise, admittedly on a much smaller scale, as part of a centuries-long gift exchange involving fur coats and hats. Memory suggested that the much more expansive program the dam-building scheme required would be cumbersome indeed. Animals of such dramatic personal industry were not easily contained.

"I believe this approach is superior to the alternative," she kept her response carefully measured. Ohlay, she knew, understood sacrifice in the way that only one who worked with animals must, but her vision of the nature and purpose of the Celestial Origin Sect differed considerably from Itinay's own. "And even should it fail, the only real cost is in lost labor. A sudden rise in the beaver population will not provoke Snow Feast's suspicions. If I have understood your Commentary on Breeding Cycles correctly, changes of that sort happen periodically without any intervention." Though her interest in animal breeding was rudimentary, Itinay habitually read everything her sisters placed in the library, no matter how obscure.

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"If this effort succeeds, the labor time it will preserve in success will be far greater than that expended in preparation," she worked hard to keep her arguments carefully narrowed to the practical. "For the whole sect, but also your pavilion. Is it not the nature of husbandry to trade labor in the present for rewards in the future?"

Even in the dark confines of the back room, Ohlay's golden hair shone bright. She did not wither in the face of the shadows. She grew and spread. It could be hoped that an argument for growth would be persuasive.

"Frustration, disruption, chaos, and perhaps the restricted cultivation of talented initiates." Ohlay counted, sliding each word free slowly. "These are the costs. They can be borne, but they are not small. You are right to say the cause is worthy, but I recall previous attempts to destroy the demons using floods. The Sacred Torrent Sect attempted that, to our north, and their work of many months did nothing but scatter the armies of the enemy for a few weeks. I saw it happen," she closed her eyes against the pressing weight of such dark memories. "And I do not believe beavers will achieve what battle-hardened cultivators could not."

Itinay had no answer to this. She had not been there. Neay, however, had been a part of that campaign. It was the reason her presence at this meeting was absolutely vital. Her support, already secured, was utterly essential to bringing this scheme forward to successful implementation.

It was not a pleasant thing, maneuvering her sisters in such a cynical manner. Whatever disagreements they might have, and there were admittedly many, she loved them all, icy though the nature of her love might be. Necessity, however, demanded it, her private sacrifice. Victory over the demons was more than a family matter, more than her mother's charge. Humanity, ultimately, was the unique piece, that one that must be preserved above all, lest everything end in forgotten darkness. Cultivators were more potent than beavers, to be sure, but they too could be sacrificed.

"The Sacred Torrent Sect swept the demon army out to sea," Neay spoke quietly, summarizing as always. "The deep, empty sea of the Bay Between. In such open waters the ghouls simply spun through the waves over and over, there was nothing for them to strike and die against. They simply sank to the bottom when their momentum exhausted and walked back to the shore. Even then, had Engulfing Whirl not been present, the sect would have reaped a vast harvest from those scattered demons." A powerful demonic cultivator who moved about surrounded by a perpetual waterspout of coal-black color; he had been perhaps the greatest oceanic warlord of the demon host.

"We have hundreds of kilometers of gorges to the east upon whose stony walls the ghouls will be battered to a pulp, and if Snow Feast attempts to intercede, so much the better." Neay brightened, glowing streams on her face and neck fearsome in their starry luminosity. "Then we can simply kill him."

That was a possibility Itinay had considered, and then carefully left aside for her sister to raise. As a cultivator aligned toward ice and snow, Snow Feast might well try to hold back the flood using his abilities. That would not work, of course, natural disasters at the full height of their devastation exceeded even immortal capabilities, but if arrogance brought the enemy within their reach, they would never turn aside such an opportunity.

At the conclusion of Neay's short speech, Ohlay relaxed slightly and let loose a low murmur. "This is not a council session. There are other plans to address the coming horde. This is a proposal to utilize our own resources, mine most of all, a private plan between us rather than any action of the sect itself. Very well then," she smiled, with the slight wickedness that the sun always brought forth on the brightest of days. "We can make a private bargain between us sisters. Elder Su Yi will purchase ten thousand beavers from the husbandry pavilion, in good health and suitable for relocation." Though Ohlay was not normally one for intrigues, no one reached the heights of the celestial ascendancy realm without grasping the nature of the game. "What shall be the payment?"

This was, in the end, an ideal framing for the negotiation. An elder could, after all, place an order for one thousand cattle or horses, and the breeders and trainers would provide. Not instantly, but they would and had filled such contracts many times. Indeed, almost every horse and ox currently found within Mother's Gift traced to a breeding program with over two millennia of depth by Guan Cong, one of the first elders born in Mother's Gift who perished attempting to achieve immortality. Beavers, being small, could be bartered in much greater numbers.

Itinay felt somewhat regretful for treating Su Yi, scheduled to finish her current sect obligated formation work at the end of the month, in this manner. The elder deserved better, but she had proven her loyalty to the sect absolutely and was protective of Qing Liao as if he were her younger brother. She would not flinch from this assignment.

In time, Itinay hoped to find a way to compensate her.

"What do you require?" It seemed best to allow Ohlay to present the fullness of her dream demands.

Given the chance, the golden-haired immortal did not hesitate. "Ten elephants, ten two-humped camels, ten yaks, all of a mix with eight females and two males. One hundred quail. One hundred koi fish. Once the horde is gone, it should not take Qing Liao more than a decade."

Quail and koi were creatures of the Sunfire Islands. Catching them and bringing specimens back meant allowing the disciple to cross the sea. Given that prospect, he would never object. "Agreed," Itinay concluded the bargain without hesitation. This too would benefit the sect.

"One final question," Ohlay was not quite resolved past all doubt. "How does the disciple trigger a synchronized mass flood? He cannot breach hundreds of dams all at once."

"Simple," Itinay had determined this answer within moments of hearing Qing Liao's proposal. "Kill all the beavers before the onset of winter and wait for spring."

Three heads turned, brought into brutal agreement as they acknowledged this grim calculus.