Unseen Cultivator

Itinay turned the rounded river rock over in her hand, feeling the foreign characters inscribed atop the surface. These did not possess the familiar forms of the sect script she'd used all her life and had dominated the old world. The origin of those marks was something truly obscure, a lost language that she did not know. It was fascinating to discover such a thing not only existed but still found use. Elder Su Yi had provided a translation of the inscription, perhaps unaware of how much knowledge of the language could be gleaned by learning even the handful of words the message contained. Not that she intended to reveal this, it was a good thing for the elder to possess a private secret, and this linguistic obfuscation ought to suffice to fool the demonic cultivators in the unlikely event they intercepted one of the scouts.

Four short physical descriptions. That was the totality of the content in this report. The identities, if the broad strokes could be parsed, of the demonic cultivators who waited beyond the gateway Itinay stared at even now. It was not difficult to grasp their distant disciple's intent, given the nature of the first line. 'Hungry Ogre-Man' was surely a reference to Snow Feast, who might be the most ogre-like cultivator to have ever lived. Three similar short descriptive monikers followed the first: 'Blood-Eye Crystal Woman,' 'Glowing Face Windy Bandages,' and 'Fragmented Woman Eye-Hands.'

"A dangerous group," she admitted to the hearing of her sister Artemay, who stood sentinel at her side before Mother's Gift's only access point. "Snow Feast, Desolation Gale, and Ocular Shard. Two in the fifth layer and two in the sixth, a stronger force than has ever attacked us before." This was an understatement of some significance, for the assault led by the Fuming Shade held the previous record, and this one included stronger subordinates and a second cultivator in the extremely dangerous sixth layer of the celestial ascendancy realm. "And they have vastly increased the size of the horde behind them. The previous report suggested as many as one million demons. They must have driven them like cattle across half the continent to bring so many."

"Gluttons can be surprisingly good at sums," Artemay smirked, though the amusement radiating from her had a hollow core. She knew as well as any of them how devastating the blow would be if allowed to fall unimpeded.

That would, thankfully, never happen. The sect's advanced knowledge of this horde was unprecedented, and with such resources in hand, a vast array of new options unlocked. Four demonic cultivators, all very powerful, but with known identities, tendencies, and even some abilities.

They could be surrounded, pinned, and destroyed from nearly the moment after they entered Mother's Gift. With the aid of the bright and shiny shield Bloody Roam had kindly donated to their armory, replacing the stopper after the enemy emerged was far less risky than ever before. Should the four attack, they would not survive.

That did not mean the cost of such a victory would not be high, gruesomely so. It remained a far better outcome that they should not enter at all. "Do you think," Artemay questioned, light but genuinely speculative. "That this little ice alliance will endure if the flood sweeps away their horde?"

"No. It should not." Itinay found herself rather amazed that it had formed at all. "Ice Wraith and Desolation Gale hate each other." The two had claimed the opposite poles of the world for a reason. Their relationship was legendary, the fallout of one of the old world's greatest bedchamber betrayals. "And Ocular Shard hates everyone." She had fought that one during a large skirmish midway through the war. Even among demonic cultivators she was a notably harsh being, one who ruthlessly slaughtered any subordinate who failed to take their objectives when she announced an assault. "Snow Feast must have promised them a great deal, to bring them here."

"One immortal each, obviously," Artemay grinned slyly. "He must assume we have at least three, probably four, but I think it goes further. The enemy's numbers decline, and they must surely know this better than we do. Those hidden lands that remain are few, and likely most are small and weak. Chances to grow have grown rare. The ice-crossed lovers despise each other, but they are strong. Once, they fought well together. If they managed to reach the seventh layer, as a pair, don't you think they'd strike?"

It was a possibility, one Itinay found herself mulling over carefully. "They would divide the world between them, northern and southern halves. Ocular Shard, if she lived, they would give the moon." That demonic cultivator was perhaps sufficiently deranged to desire dominion over a lifeless dust-covered orb. "But what does Snow Feast gain from such circumstances?"

"I think, sister," the hood-wearing immortal sounded strangely distant. "That he gets to eat the world."

It sounded ridiculous when uttered, a poor joke, but Itinay knew her sister and could read when she was, and was not, being humorous. Those words, as odd as they sounded aloud, were relayed in complete seriousness.

Examined in that context, it was eerily plausible. Qing Liao reported that every time Snow Feast touched the ground he left behind a circle of devastation carved out by absolute gluttony. Aggressive, narcissistic, and self-indulgent daos of this kind were regrettably far from unknown. In the old world they had been common among those rare cultivators born as a child or other close relative of a powerful cultivator. Given everything from birth, they tended to become warped, unable to accept loss or failure. Such people usually failed to advance their cultivation much beyond the vitality annealing realm, and if they did reach the point where they could attempt a tribulation almost invariably perished, but, of course, the plague shattered such natural limitations. It would allow a glutton to achieve immortality. Truthfully, such a mindset was almost a perfect match for its endlessly hungry dao. Yet this was not the deep insight Artemay had offered. That a snow monster driven by ceaseless hungers might see the entire world, from whales to worms, as his buffet, was hardly a grand discovery. Nor was it a leap to recognize that he might accept the inferior role in a group if granted the indulgence of his lusts. Such destructive behavior patterns were well-established.

The surprise was that, recognizing Snow Feast's dao as one attuned to absolute consumption, he had not done so long ago.

Itinay had read everything Qing Liao ever reported, multiple times over, despite the maddening tedium of the disciple's artless listings. Those words revealed, very clearly, that the Ruined Wastes were not, as least as far as wild lands counted, properly worthy of the name. The afflictions of the plague remained, of course, but life had rebounded in all other possible ways.

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Vast forests of towering trees, oceans teeming with fish, giant flocks of birds tens of millions strong, and even a herd of wild horses vast enough to blanket every scrap of ground between two rivers on the steppe to the north, these things were clear evidence of the changes. The old world, the world of the sects, had indeed been ruined, and the works of humanity laid waste. Even the great cities were now little more than piled up lumps of earth-covered stone. But the earth itself, the natural world untouched by the influence of human vital qi, that remained and had regained the grandeur of pristine wilderness.

Itinay, and all members of the Celestial Origin Sect who had any understanding of the world beyond the gateway, had long ago accepted that as the ordinary course of events. Of course the world, haunted by demons only interested in absent humans and divided among less than one hundred demonic cultivators, would revert to a natural state. That had been their assumption, one born out of the rewilding that followed the collapse of the great sects during the war.

An assumption, she now realized, was in error. They were the Celestial Origin Sect. Their qi, their dao, their power, it all came from the stars. Nothing in their techniques and practices demanded any sort of transformation of the world, and so they had not made any such great changes. Truthfully, Itinay recognized that in designing life within Mother's Gift they had simply copied such communities as had existed within the basin's bounds before it fell. The only tweaks they had made had been those needed to accommodate the enclosed nature of the hidden land.

At the time, this choice had seemed obvious.

But, she recognized with a sudden burst of insight that shook her to her core and made her entire body tremble, no demonic cultivator followed such a distant, purified celestial path. Their desires, formed from those who had been stymied by the rules and nature of the old world, were hideous things that joined them together in opposition to it. Such things were an absolute prerequisite, for otherwise how could they possibly welcome the plague, which stood opposed to humanity at its very core, its qi, into their souls?

Such beings would not, if given free reign, simply leave the world to its own devices, to allow nature to run wild as it had in the time before humans took form and the First Sage revealed qi and cultivation. No, they would master nature according to the dao of its new overlords, doubtless across a wild range of wretched variance.

Snow Feast wanted to eat the world until only stones remained. Ice Wraith and Desolation Gale wanted to freeze it. Ocular Shard wanted to shatter it. The Fuming Shade had wanted to burn it. Black Howl wanted to hunt it down and feast on its heart. Itinay could, if she wished, go back further and add many other foul desires to that list. Every demonic cultivator she had ever encountered would have, if granted the freedom and power to do so, inflicted horrors upon all the world in accordance with their dao. It was a chain that traced back all the way to the original seven great traitors. Every one of them would have reshaped the world, it had been the genesis of the plague itself. The Entwining Blight would have covered all things in black vines, forever stabbing and bleeding each other.

Despite all of this, despite the abandonment all but the least fragments of the world to the rule of the demonic cultivators, the wilderness remained unharmed. It had changed only in that it had been restored to a prior state, as if humanity had never been. The wild was allowed its own dao and to grow freely, untouched.

And there was only one possible explanation as to why this had happened.

"Bloody Roam has chosen to let the world remain as it is," she whispered, staring at her sister, wondering how long this possibility had rattled around beneath the concealing hood. "Though why he would choose that path remains elusive to me."

"A warrior born, one who requires conflict, even if only as an observer," Artemay took up this thread and unraveled it to the critical knot instantly. "The name, a name from before the plague, lays it clear. Perhaps," dark speculation haunted the shrouded expression. "He has even worked to aid our survival, subtly, over the course of time. I suspect, if the plague allowed it, he would fill the world with mortals and force them to wage war upon each other, as the oldest tales say they once did, and watch over it all and laugh."

The idea that their greatest foe was in fact silently their protector, motivated only out of the desire to prolong their torment, as a cat might play with a mouse, struck Itinay as only too plausible. It certainly explained why he had never ventured to this region and attempted to lay siege to Mother's Gift in person. Beneficial though this was, in some sense, it was also true that cats almost always killed their playthings, eventually. Itinay did not believe Bloody Roam's final action would be to exercise mercy. More likely, he sought some grand final campaign, a chance to end the war once and for all while claiming the great victory the Entwining Blight had denied him long ago.

"It would," she whispered. "Be better if someone did manage to conclude a coup." It was a forlorn hope. She did not think any assembly of hidden lands still existed with the strength within sufficient to elevate a demonic cultivator to the seventh layer, save only for Mother's Gift itself. Nor did she believe anyone would ever attempt to challenge Bloody Roam without at least that much strength at hand.

"Fate is unlikely to deliver us such a gift," Artemay agreed softly. "We can only seek to buy time and increase our strength before the dice finally land in the wrong place. Neay remains steadfast. I suppose the rest of us must follow her example."

"You do not believe I will succeed in raising up an assassin to secure our deliverance?" Itinary did not mock by asking this question. She truly wished to know her inscrutable sister's honest view of the matter. "This flooding scheme of his seems well-devised."

"It is, and so long as it succeeds he has earned himself a hero's place in the tale of Mother's Gift," Artemay looked toward the gateway. Then, slowly, her gaze drifted upwards until her head was bent nearly vertical. "But the rest, no, I have no confidence in it. He is a fine young man, but fine young men do not become elders. As it is I see no path for him to achieve the spirit tempering realm, and without strength, he cannot be the weapon we need, only a fulcrum over which the lever of schemes are laid."

Sayaana would not let Qing Liao attempt a tribulation unless she believed he was ready. Itinay did not believe she would lose her weapon to heavenly lightning. Whether she would lose him to a bottleneck, however, that remained unanswered. "He has a full realm to go yet," she countered. "And he has finally been brought to the edge of something truly terrible. Matters will change." Slaughtering animals by the tens of thousands, perhaps millions, through plague and flood would not leave a person unscathed.

The dao contained horrors in just as limitless infinity as wonders. All learned that eventually, it could only be hoped Qing Liao was not to learn this truth too soon. He would grow or he would break. The flood would succeed or they would battle in the Killing Fields again. Only fate would determine which occurred come spring. "Truly," Itinay groused. "I utterly despise gambling."

The winter promised to be the longest in a millennium.

Artemay's laughter could be heard all the way to the Starwall.