Unseen Cultivator

Journeying through the mountains offered up a bizarre form of dangerous monotony. The landscape was much the same across thousands of kilometers of travel. Low, rough peaks coated in semi-open alpine forest repeated endlessly. There were few towering summits, and those that did exist Liao avoided carefully. Instead, he led Amami Yoko through countless valleys and over numerous ridges. Deer, goats, weasels, and birds formed the majority of the wildlife they encountered, with the occasional wolf pack or leopard that preyed upon such game startled by the passage of the humans. The land was not especially wet, but neither was it parched, and they worked their way around numerous ponds and across hundreds of tiny stream. Fire scars, blowdowns, and even occasional cairns marking the existence of the long-lost trails of the old world served to offer such spice as the journey provided.

Demons were few in these rough lands, and they were mostly concentrated near villages tucked into river bend flatlands or surrounding the mountaintop ruins of former cultivation chambers and training grounds. The travelers avoided both types of remains, giving them a wide berth. Those ruins they glimpsed from far away were generally in very poor condition, shattered by the many centuries of wind and rain. Low stone walls and foundations tended to persist, however, for there were no rivers on the heights to bury them in mud.

The work needed to clear the demons from the path, even few as they were, was constant and wearying. Though Liao controlled their pace to avoid overexertion and the qi depletion it could induce, the strain of constantly slicing through the surrounding hordes weighed upon the mind day after day. If not for the strengthening aspect of the awareness integration realm and its control over information intake, the stress would have grown to overwhelming levels.

Even with the demon threat largely mitigated, the plague itself slowly ground down upon them. Liao came to recognize, as he watched Amami Yoko's endurance steadily fray, that only an immortal could persist under such strain indefinitely. It put his gift, his invisibility, in perspective. The immunity was more potent than he'd long believed, for it defended not only the body but the mind as well. The suspicion grew in him, as the kilometers wound away beneath his boots, that it also shielded his soul in some manner he was yet able to properly comprehend.

"Why build on these high places?" Amami Yoko eventually asked after they'd passed by dozens of ruins clinging to mountain summits. "They are far from food and water, isolated from other people. To maintain them, to bring up what those who lived there required, it would take endless labor."

"Isolation, easy access to earth, wind, and stellar qi," The reasons were the same ones that drove members of the Celestial Origin Sect to build mountaintop cultivation chambers. "The old world had a vast number of people. The histories claim there were over one billion mortals at its height." A maddeningly huge number. Liao had seen flocks of geese that he guessed might well be a million strong. Imagining one thousand times that remained an almost overwhelming challenge, and people were many times larger than geese. "I suspect labor, whether waged by mortals or initiates, was abundant." It was plentiful enough in Mother's Gift, especially with so many new cultivators.

This drew a nod of understanding from the water cultivator. The mountains were less than convenient for her own cultivation. She was obligated to spend time soaking in frigid pools, murky swamps, and rock-laden streams just to sustain her strength, and Liao strongly suspected she was jealous of his ability to cultivate essentially anywhere. As they were obligated to locate such water sources every night, this further slowed their progress by degrees.

Water-based cultivation was eminently reasonable, ideal even, when one lived surrounded by ocean on all sides. The journey, however, made its limits clear and made Liao doubly glad he'd avoided attempting the roundabout but potentially faster route across the open steppe. Amami Yoko would quickly weaken in a such an environment, with only irregular rivers to draw upon. Even in the mountains, with the demons few, she needed to fight everyday and her reserves dwindled slowly but steadily. Though the overall journey was short enough that he believed this would not become a critical issue, he continually worried that some unforeseen obstacle might jeopardize her ability to function properly.

He had no desire to carry her across the gateway.

Such a humiliation would not be forgiven, ever.

The giant they encountered at the Great Silt River did not help.

The demon, which they later learned was standing atop an obelisk buried in many meters of silt that served as a perpetually glowing memorial marker claiming to demarcate the birthplace of the First Sage in a long forgotten and isolated mountain village – a highly dubious possibility at best – discovered Amami Yoko as she descended the ravine down toward the riverbank and charged the water cultivator with a terrible roar.

Rushing up the slope, a heavily eroded hillside offering little purchase even to clawed feet, towards an archer perched upon the heights was a poor strategy. Only a demon, driven by primal hunger rather than reason or instinct, would choose such a self-destructive method. Amami Yoko, quickly recognizing this tactical reality, chose to dash back and forth parallel to the hillside until Liao systematically crippled the giant in both knees. Then, she ended her enemy in a single unexpected attack.

Crashing Waves Arts Third Form: Riptide. This move launched her directly backward at extreme velocity, swords reversed and striking behind her with furious momentum. Vicious spears of razor-sharp water qi stretched out from the back of her arms, massively increasing the number of deadly points stabbing into the target. The unexpected reverse motion brought Amami Yoko completely inside the giant's guard and saw her tear gaping holes through the demon's chest.

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Impressive, and usefully swift, but the blow came at a cost in qi not soon recovered. The river, which ran brown and so silt-choked that anyone who slid a hand through its flow would bring up fingers coated in grit and grime, was unable to serve as a proper source of water qi. Its impurities were simply overwhelming. Small streams feeding it from the nearby hills served better, but the land here was drier than those regions closer to the coast and the strange rusty soils of this region coated everything in grit.

When they paused for the night that day, at the edge of the mountains that marked the edge of the modestly sized but historically famous Heartland Basin, Amami Yoko sent a spear-thrust hard question straight at Liao, unexpected and brutal. "Am I a burden to you? A warrior must not be a burden to her lord."

The dangerous nature of this question would have been obvious even if Sayaana had not hissed wordless warning across the edge of Liao's consciousness. He sat silent for a moment, considering, pondering a proper answer than attempting to bluff past the dark piercing eyes of the warrior. Su Yi had trained him, years ago, better than that. "You should never try to deceive a woman," she'd told him. "Disarming honesty will serve you better." She had held a rather different sort of contest in mind, but even in these tense moments, it was the best advice Liao could grasp.

"You are a burden to this journey, not a burden to me." He spoke slowly and deliberately, recalling how Neay had instructed him, long ago, on the purpose of his journeys through the wild. "And that burden is this journey's purpose. I am a hunter, on behalf of the Celestial Origin Sect, tasked to bring back from the Ruined Wastes anything that might serve to increase its strength and defeat the demons. I have an entire list of items," he forced a weak smile across his face. "The scroll is longer than you are tall."

"I am not coral, shell, or sword," the indignant nature of the water cultivator's response was equally blatant. "My weapons could strengthen your sect. If that is all you seek," she extracted the blades and knelt down on the rough earth, placing the wrapped swords crossed before her. "Then take them and go on. I do not need your help to choose a place to die."

"Do you think lives are not a resource?" The vehemence in Liao's answer, and the swiftness with which he pushed the swords back against Amami Yoko's knees, flesh covered in woven bark strips, surprised them both. This surge of fury did not last. The night channeled it away quickly, but even in its absence it illuminated. "Every cultivator's life is a chance at immortality, and you have already progressed further than most and faster than nearly all. You carry swords worthy of an immortal. If you reach the spirit tempering realm, you could threatened a demonic cultivator, at least for a moment. That matters. It would be a measurable increase to the sect's strength."

He could almost feel the words emerging from Grand Elder Itinay's mouth as he emulated the ice blue immortal. Liao hated it, the reduction of lives, of people, down to numbers on a tally, but war, war between immortals who saw the world from heights where the sky turned black, demanded that wretched calculation. "If you are to choose a place to die, choose to fall in battle with the plague, at the peak of your strength. No one knows what may come of cultivation, of tribulations, bottlenecks, and the infinite dao. If I save one who reaches immortality, how could that be a burden?"

After this, Liao was left strangely breathless. He was not used to speaking with such force for so long.

Rather than contest any of this, Amami Yoko looked down, staring at where her swords lay in the dirt. "Immortality is a long ways off. Sixteen steps toward the dao. I do not know if I can endure that, not having lost all that I have."

Knowing he had no answer to that, Liao could only fall silent. However, a means of reply came from another source. "Sayaana," he tapped the turquoise stone strapped to his brow. "Wishes me to relay her words directly."

"Cultivation is selfish," the remnant soul proclaimed. "To defy Heaven and live forever means losing your home, your friends, your family, even all your cultivation comrades. Your dao, every dao, is unique, a road walked alone. You've lost everything now, but you would always lose everything eventually. Continue, or do not, but don't think that this was ever avoidable. Seek vengeance for lives cut short, for the others who lost their chance, but not for what you left behind. There was no keeping it, ever."

The hatred in the dark eyes of the last survivor of the Nine Peaks range could have spawned a dozen hurricanes.

"She survived the devastation of her home, as I did, yes?" Amami Yoko demanded confirmation.

"Yes," Liao knew that wretched story all too well. "Over twenty-thousand lives and nearly three hundreds cultivators were slain, though their attacker was overcome even as the land collapsed."

"Then," Amami Yoko asked, abyss roiled toward cruelty. "Are you, Sayaana of the Endless Needles Sect, a burden upon Qing Liao?"

Liao did not wait for the remnant soul to answer. "She saved my life, and yours, facing Shingo. It has not yet been a month, and that was far from the first time. Even without a body, she has more than served the cause of overcoming the plague. You can do as much and more. The plague, the demons, that is an enemy everyone shares. An immortal, standing where you do now, would imperil this journey just as much. Worse, truthfully, since your qi draws less attention. I can go where others cannot, but it is an accident of fate, not a skill, that provides that power. In the Celestial Origin Sect, your lord will not be me, but the Twelve Sisters, and to them you will simply be another disciple among hundreds."

Introspection struck him then, reflecting on those words. "Your service to me, you are to consider it ended the moment we enter Mother's Gift. Such debt a vow as you have made, it is prohibited by the teachings of the Celestial Mother." This was quite true, Orday's writings made it clear that such obsession led almost inevitably to bottlenecks, and looking upon Amami Yoko now, Liao could see that blockage taking form. Imposing such a rule on a member of another sect was perhaps inappropriate, but the Great Waves Sect was gone. To survive, the water cultivator would have to join their fellowship.

"So be it," Amami Yoko bit out the words, vibrating visibly in fury. She said nothing more then, but when Liao came to wake her in the night after she'd slept immersed in a small and chill stream, he found her motions were lighter and freer than at any point he'd yet seen.

One loop of the knot undone.