Unseen Cultivator

For several minutes Qing Liao lay on the floor, struggling to hold himself together. It was not something he'd practiced, extending a soul out from his own qi channels to do battle within a crystal. He had to forcibly circulate qi throughout the entirety of his body and mind to insure Sayaana's soul had returned to its proper place and that the rest of him remained whole. He felt overwhelmed rather than victorious.

Though it was impossible not to at least partially share in Sayaana's rush of triumph. "Most fun I've had in centuries," the remnant soul declared joyously. "And I can hardly think of any scum who deserved it more, not counting demonic cultivators."

Silently, Liao could only agree. Shingo's experiments had been horrid, the same sort of investigations that had unleashed the plague in the first place. Death was part of the dao, to be sure, he knew that well, but it could not be allowed to dominate it. That path led the world to the sort of lifeless ruin that lay outside this fortress.

Nor did he believe, thinking about it, that Shingo could ever have benefited the Celestial Origin Sect. He had strength, certainly, but that was all. He lacked the will or means to share in the critical unity fostered by the sisters and their students. His presence would be a net negative even if he was somehow restrained from tearing Mother's Gift apart.

Eventually, he rolled over to find Amami Yoko standing above him. Her swords were back in the storage ring, now, but her heart-shaped face had taken on a firm, grim countenance. The fixed expression yielded nothing. Extending an arm, she reached down to help him up.

Liao let her pull him to his feet, welcoming the warmth of her skin compared to the pallid nature of the chamber's other occupants. He watched the warrior carefully, noting that she was unharmed. The cuts and bruises she'd received during the fight had already healed as if they'd never been, and she'd faced neither serious injury nor qi depletion from battle.

That was the easy assessment. Whether or not he'd poisoned her against him, against the Celestial Origin Sect, he suspected that would be far more difficult to discern.

"Sayaana," he offered by way of explanation. He tapped the gemstone on his brow. "That's her name. Formerly, she was a grand elder of the Endless Needles Sect, based in a hidden land far in the north. I regret concealing her presence, but it was not truly my intent." He could not find, in himself, a satisfactory reason as to why he'd not mentioned it. "Truthfully, I simply had yet to find a proper chance to explain. It is…sensitive."

"It has not been long," this admission leaked out between hard dark eyes. "We both have many secrets." Turning, she looked at the massive quartz plinth instead. Her expression did not change, but her qi wavered and twitched, slithering like the waves as the tide turned.

"Do you think I made the wrong choice?" Liao asked. In doing so, he affirmed, inwardly, that he'd made the correct tone. He was not the messenger of death and refused to carry such doom back to Mother's Gift. "Should I have bargained with him?"

This question saw the water cultivator fall into a lengthy silence. Amami Yoko spun about, and then walked a complete circuit of the chamber, stopping at the plinth, meteorite, and the two bodies on the floor. Eventually she came back to stand beside Liao. "The strong have an obligation to the weak." She spoke slowly, audibly uncertain. "I was taught this, every day as a cultivator, for in life lived below the waves all must hold to their place, and all must work hard in order to survive. When I put that question to him, he evaded. If he had simply rejected that statement, perhaps a bargain might have been struck. Honesty and virtue are not required to make a deal. But could a vow have held one whose dao is death? I do not know. The world is wide and strange, and I know too little of it."

For a brief moment she turned away, then, swiftly and suddenly, she switched back. "Do you believe the strong have an obligation to the weak?"

Liao sheepishly realized he had not considered that question, even though he ought to have anticipated it. Surprise halted him regardless. The obvious answer, the one taught in the Celestial Origin Sect, slipped away from his lips and tongue. As a lone wanderer the bonds that held the sect together were not his. He was tied into a different web, one that demanded a different answer. One he had been taught by the horrors of Snow Feast and his pointless slaughter of those who could never oppose him.

"Life is tied together; each part connected to other parts. I do not know if obligation is the proper word, the correct way to describe that interdependence, but if those connections are severed then only death, as we have seen here, remains." Liao paused, then hurried to clarify. "That is my answer, but I am out here, walking the Ruined Wastes. If you want the answer of the Celestial Origin Sect, then, that is simply yes. That is what the Grand Elders believe, and it is part of the Celestial Mother's teaching. She wrote 'the stars must not scorch that which they shine upon' and though I was never the best student of her words, I believe that matches." Orday's writings, when not tied directly to cultivation, tended to put Liao to sleep even when it was Su Yi doing the reading.

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"I do not know this woman," Amami Yoko turned back to the quartz plinth. Her expression softened somewhat. "But this immortal did. Was your sect's founder famous?"

"She is the Celestial Mother," Liao blinked. The question was so impossible, so foreign to his mind, that he struggled to find the frame from which to answer it. "She is the Fifth Sage who ascended on the last day of the Demon War."

"The Fifth Sage? The founder of your sect?" The heart-shaped face went wide. "Our sect head knew that there was a fifth sage, he felt the ascension, but no more than that. To have direct access to such teachings, the heavens have blessed you."

"The Grand Elders consider it their obligation to destroy the plague," Liao offered in the hope that an explicit intention would ground matters. "A goal I share. That will surely benefit the mortal populace more than anything else we could do."

A series of swift, shifting blinks met this statement. "You are correct." The water cultivator looked back at the remains of Taro and Toru. "I do not think he would have pursued that, not unless it granted him ascension. That is enough, I believe, for now. We should leave this place."

That, at last, was an easy decision to make. Liao, however, knew there were steps to be taken first. He turned to the meteorite, considering the heart of the formation. "We can keep the lights," he pointed to the gems on the wall. "They should be useful." He ignored the quartz plinth. Even without a remnant soul within, it held too much qi for any of his storage bands to contain and was too awkward to try and carry outright. That, helpfully, eliminated any question of whether or not he ought to preserve such a thing.

He could shatter it to pieces, though it would require considerable effort, but shards of quartz were not anything especially rare.

The meteorite was far more interesting. It possessed a unique, or at least extremely rare, form of qi. Disconnected from the formation, it ought to be possible to break into pieces he could store and transport. He had the space available, given that there would likely be no further harvesting opportunities throughout the rest of the return trip. Not while guiding Amami Yoko.

He just had to find a way to do that safely, without causing a massive backlash when the formation failed. "We need to separate the meteorite, the source of the formation's power, from the circle." It was the simplest option available, and also the least violent. It should simply cause the formation to fail gradually as qi depleted, aiding their escape considerably. He doubted that it would take long. The power necessary to operate thousands of stone puppets had to be immense. This approach also had the side benefit of depriving the meteorite from external qi flows, making it easier to transport. "The easiest method is to simply push it off the riser."

"Simple is often best," the warrior stood beside him. "It seems heavy, but we are two, and we can use the spears." She pointed to the weapons of the fallen puppets.

"Good idea," Liao agreed. With the spearpoints removed, the qi-strengthened shafts would serve well as levers.

Setup took no more than a moment. The irregular surface of the massive stone allowed them to easily locate proper bracing positions. Qi, used to strengthen the improvised poles, made it certain they would not break.

After that it was nothing more than a matter of pushing and shoving.

A slow process, especially as they had to pause frequently and duck down as raw blasts of qi dispersed away above their heads. The rock weighed several tons, which required carefully deployed qi reinforcement to push, but was manageable with diligence and cooperation. The strange, deadly qi the thing gave off made Liao glad they used the spears rather than pressing their hands to the surface.

When it finally slid off the altar and clanged against the stone floor the meteorite rumbled and vibrated wildly. They ran from the room, past the now open door, and sheltered behind the stairs as pulse after pulse of qi blasted out from containment. When it ceased, Liao returned to find the star stone had already cracked apart in several places and that many stones forming the walls of the chamber now possessed lines of glowing, opalescent color. Lacking the time to study this strange reactive phenomenon, he simply shattered the remaining pieces with his shovel until they could be confined and shoved them into his storage bands while wearing the thickest pair of gloves he owned.

He hoped that someone would find the study of that material useful. Such deadly qi might, he suspected, make for a powerful weapon if handled by a master smith.

They left Taro and Toru's armor behind, allowing the chamber to serve as the tomb of the long dead elders. Liao suspected, and Amami Yoko agreed, that without the formation to reinforce it, the fortress and its chambers would eventually collapse due to the push and pull of the tide.

He was rarely as glad to see the stars above as he was upon emerging to the surface once more. Leaving the Endless Mysteries Sect behind for good could not come soon enough. "I don't like underground spaces," he admitted as they emerged.

"A weakness to work against," Sayaana whispered into his mind, betokening many difficult journeys to come.

"The deep is preferable," Amami Yoko responded, surprising him. "Dark and cold yes, but water still touches all and joins everything together. I will show you, sometime."

"Soon, perhaps," he could feel the formation collapsing above their heads. The change in the region's qi was obvious, and the quantities in motion immense, far larger than he'd anticipated. A dangerous miscalculation based on his weak understanding of formations. "This will draw eyes to us." He pointed upwards to where an aurora had emerged in the sky as the released qi mingled with the high clouds. "We need to move. The islands are narrow here. We can run north to the ocean and cross the sea that way. It is a long way to the coast beyond," he recalled that much from the maps. The journey, by moving northwest, would be long indeed. "But it favors your knowledge."

"Agreed." She turned to the northwest, matching the direction Liao indicated. "I am prepared. This place, it aided us, but it feels unclean, oily. A long swim is a good way to grow clean once again."

Liao had never considered this before but found that he agreed fully. They stepped out to the edge of the sands and swam.