Waterstrider

Basements, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

The river that my lower dantian had begun swam around my body, helping me increase my control over the torrent of miasma which continued to course through me. The battle that had previously ended in surrender flared up once more, as the identity of Cyrus began to assert itself against the nature of the miasma inside of him.

There was a chance that he would succeed in taking over for me, but I did not care. Part of the nature of formlessness was to accept whatever forces were imposed onto it, and to be subordinate to the soul’s will was not a problem should it occur. While much of Cyrus' understanding of formlessness revolved around the concept of freedom, confinement was just as true a portion of its nature. I had been acting as him, anyway. This was a natural development.

I moved on to the second dantian, located right next to my heart, and forced the natural treasure into it. The pain was just as intense as it had been with the lower dantian, but I ignored it. I activated my Heart of Rainfall technique, causing the miasma to roil up and course far faster. This made it much more difficult to keep control of the fine, careful movements that I needed in order to properly merge my dantian into the core.

The Heart of Rainfall was a microcosm of the Downpour itself, an eternally roiling rainstorm which flooded the area, pounding away with great force at all that was beneath it. I imprinted this force onto my fragmenting dantian as I merged it with the core. Fragments began to float away, turning to dust which became clouds.

The clouds swirled around the remnants of the dantian, growing as more and more pieces flaked off. Finally, the last piece shattered, and all that was left was a field of clouds within which a mass of miasma roiled. It was as if there was some sort of disconnect, something holding me back. I knew that my core was not complete, that it was not right.

The true Heart of Rainfall would not be complete without the rain.

I knew that the more I exerted my energy now through this technique, the harder it would be to create my cerebral core, but I had no choice. I drove all my energy under the influence of the Heart of Rainfall, driving the technique to its limits. Finally, the mass of miasma within the cloud unglued itself, splintering into tiny droplets which began to fall from the cloud.

Anyone else might have had lightning flash within the depths of the storm, but my rainstorm lacked it entirely. The Downpour was not a thunderstorm, it was nothing but the endless fall of rain, a force far greater than any mere thunderhead could muster. It was a power created by gods and ascendants themselves, the true fury of water.

My second core was complete, and it quickly formed a system with my Water Striding Core. The endless storm within my heart poured miasma into all of my meridians, becoming the truest center of my body. The rain of miasma coursed down my meridians, contacting the river that flowed within. The water striding river expanded and split. Rather than being located only in one small part of my body, it suffused each and every meridian, fueled by the Heart of Rainfall.

So this was, I realized, the unique nature of a formless path. The other miasmas were forced into the confines of the path that Ceirra had set for martial artists, the physical and spiritual biology that she had designed. But a formless practitioner chose their own path, remade themselves to suit their will.

Perhaps this was the true reason it was unorthodox: formless practitioners tore down the very designs of divinity. Both my power and my control over it increased exponentially, and Cyrus’ grip on his own sanity became firmer. If we succeeded in joining the final dantian to the system, I knew he would be able to return.

I could feel my bones crack and sway under the pressure of the rivers, turbid energies roiling within me. I still leaked miasma, and would do so for the rest of my life unless Cyrus truly regained control. My soul continued to melt into itself, and I knew the pivotal moment had arrived.

My senses stretched up to the cerebral meridian, noting the damage and repair it had undergone. The Downpour Sect actually had few suitable techniques for the cerebral dantian, as we excelled in the domains of the heart and the body. There had only been one at the pinnacle of quality, suitable for a core that one could take to immortality.

It was a technique that my master had not wished me to learn, because it was a technique which should never be practiced or used. I had of course done so anyway.

It was still difficult to say whether I regretted it or not. Another part of me certainly did.

The technique was the Soul Severance Art. It allowed its user to remove portions of their own soul to use as weapons and constructs. As the soul could not regrow, use of the technique had left deep scars upon me and annihilated a good deal of my lifespan. It was the reason I had been at the edge of madness for so long, and why my soul was so small and scarred. I did not even still have the original soul sword I had sliced away, and my soul was so damaged that I dared not ever use the technique again.

But it still remained the only suitable technique for ascension that I knew, and my overuse of it had led me to understand it greatly. I activated the technique as I pushed the final treasure into my cerebral dantian.

My senses strained, and I felt my control over my soul increase. As a formless technique, the Soul Severance Art in fact related to controlling the shape of one’s soul, and using that to split off smaller chunks that were also controllable.

Formless arts did not all need to fundamentally relate to water. That was simply a habit of the Downpour Sect, one that my master and my companions had passed on to me. The techniques simply made more sense when I related them to things that I understood. Unlike the Heart of Rainfall and the Water Striding Steps, the Soul Severance Art was not created by our sect. We had acquired it by trading techniques with another formless sect, though I knew not how they envisioned the arts. But it had not been designed based upon insights about the flow of water.

Still, I wanted it to be. I could not help but tie my insights on techniques to the liquid. Whenever I closed my eyes, I still found myself back within the Downpour, watching the rain through the windows of the sect.

Ever since he was a child, it had always fascinated Jin Luo. He had watched the clouds, the raindrops, the rivers and lakes which constantly formed and reformed as they sank into the mud.

To me, the Soul Severance Art was that very diversion and splitting of rivers, tributaries which broke apart, never to recombine until they either sank down to the depths of the earth or crashed into the ocean.

The repaired fracture tore apart earlier than I had expected, causing chaos to resound throughout my body. A flicker of sanguine miasma appeared, and I had to split my attention to suppress it while still grinding away at my cerebral dantian. My soul continued to shape and reshape itself under the influence of the art, contorting like a puddle hit by a rock.

I heard another scream in the distance, the stress and pain dragging it from me as if some integral piece of myself was being stolen. Spikes dug into my bones, my flesh feeling like it was raked with embers. Fingers dug into my eyeballs, and I could feel my own hands wrenching them from my sockets as the soul severance art continued to become one with my final core. Suddenly, the river finally split, and I screamed once more as I lost all control of my body and my Soul Severing Core fit into every single meridian node in my body.

I was one with my body and my soul, the inside of my body having become the Downpour itself. I felt control over every aspect of my being, and suddenly knew that in slight ways, I could shift the shape of my body as if I was a Tovus. It was a formless constitution, one beyond that of a core formation practitioner.

I laughed, realizing that I had finally succeeded. I was a spirit refiner, that final step taken. I had overcome the bottleneck without dying or being crippled, and I had given myself a new lease on life, and new improvement to my lifespan. As a spirit refiner, I would have at least another decade to live.

A smile lit up my face, and I opened my eyes, returning from my meditation to become part of the world around me once more. Before me sat Rachel, who rested in a similar pose. She gave me a congratulatory smile.

“It seems you succeeded,” she said.

“I have.”

A slight shadow was cast upon her expression.

“Are you… yourself again?” she asked.

“I believe so. I’m no longer thinking of myself in the third person, at least.”

She sighed, a weight clearly leaving her shoulders.

“Good. Surrender is a death sentence for most. It was good that you were able to advance.”

I nodded in response, still distracted by the change in my very being. I held a hand up before my eyes. My hand was strong and firm, the dark skin calloused and weathered by decades of training. I shifted the course of the rivers within, severing some tributaries and creating others. Before my eyes, my hand shifted, becoming thinner and more delicate, and then far longer and bulkier than it had ever been.

I could only perform minor changes, and not drastically shift my features, but the ability would still be incredibly useful, particularly as a combat trick to lengthen and shorten my arms and legs. The spirit refinement realm truly was a different world to anything before it.

I smiled again, closing my fist after returning it to its natural state. My ambitions would be far easier to realize as a spirit refiner, but more than anything, the advancement had brought to mind a feeling I had not felt in a very long time. The joy I had once felt at taking a step further down the path. I closed my eyes for a moment and remembered the past.

Surrender: [The nature of surrender is largely secret information within sects with ancient roots. It is a rare occurrence where a martial artist loses their grip on their own power, but are able to regain themselves by allowing it to influence their minds. For most miasmas, this influence drastically shifts their personality according to its nature. Surrender for formless miasma is said to be the easiest to return from, as it often manifests as the affected user attempting to act how they would normally, or how society wishes them to. Because of their affected minds, surrendered individuals face a heightened flow of miasma that makes them more powerful, but also causes damage to their soul that will ultimately kill them within a week in most cases. For those who have weak or damaged souls, this can occur far more rapidly. For this reason, if a surrendered individual does not regain control within this time, they will die. In ancient times, those who surrendered were generally used as elite suicide troops, as they were more powerful than usual, and returning from surrender was not considered a likely occurrence. Surrendered sanguine practitioners are usually immediately killed by those around them, even by their own sect members, though the particular reason for this has been largely lost to time.]