Heaven's Laws - Lifestone - Chapter 37

They next saw Dvora the next day sitting on the bench in the fire cultivation chamber with her face veiled. She didn’t make any movement in the presence, even after Chao began to play. He had to focus extra hard to keep the feelings of anger out of his music. Thankfully he’d already played in the water cultivation chamber, so his heart and mind were in a good state to face her.

How long had it been since they’d had a sense of normalcy to their lives? Finally, after training in the Frigid Moon Mystic Realm, fighting nine overlords and two tribulation realm cultivators, recovering his hearing, confronting the Sun family, being poisoned, saving his assassin from execution, ridding a town of an army of lingering spirits, and being drugged by a seductress there was a time of peace. After everything that had happened, they were constantly aware that danger could be lurking around every corner, so they took extra steps to be ready.

One of the easiest most basic practices they implemented was to keep their defensive auras active. They limited them to the earth realm, but it was more than enough to keep things like airborne powders from being unwittingly breathed in.

They had both continued cultivating during their travels, but, despite their diligence, their cultivations had slowed. They had that problem no longer. Chao especially found himself in a near perfect environment. The sixth floor very closely mimicked the divine realm and was rich in heaven and earth qi. Two days after the incident with Dvora, he was breaking through to the fourth level of the Sky Realm.

There were three notable breakthroughs within any large realm. Small success was at the fourth level, large success was at the seventh, and reaching the peak was at the limit of the ninth level. They were substantially different than minor breakthroughs. Even these minor breakthroughs were beneficial, giving person more qi to work with, but during a notable breakthrough a cultivator would gain more qi then in all the minor breakthroughs combined.

That was only the most obvious and easiest to measure difference. There was also an increase in power and control. These jumps in power were harder to observe for there was no categoric change in their martial techniques or qi. A fire cultivator for instance might have their flames change in color when advancing large realms, but small realm breakthroughs might only improve their fire’s intensity and temperature. For someone like Chao, it was even harder to measure since he didn’t focus on a single element.

Sitting back-to-back with his Huifen on the sixth floor, his fingers were laced with hers. There really was no need for her to help in his breakthrough. The floor’s pressure put uncommon stress on his body and meridians, so she was close by just in case she needed to shield him with her aura to give him some breathing room. It also gave them a chance to practice circulating qi at high intensity together.

The only practical danger was his tendency to slip into an overly focused state and lose himself in spinning his core at the fastest possible speed. With Huifen present, that wouldn’t happen.

It went exactly as they hoped. His breakthrough went smoother than ever. The pressure seemed to help stabilize his circulation and even though his core spun faster than normal, Huifen didn’t have to lend him a hand.

Once more, his mother’s technique proved its worth and he was without impurities after his breakthrough.

“Your turn, my Fen’er,” he said with a chuckle.

“Are you going to stay there?” She asked as she began removing ice artifacts from her spatial ring and surrounding herself with them.

“You don’t need me?”

“I’m only breathing through to the third level. I don’t even need ice qi. You just want to keep your shirt off while staying close by in hopes that I’ll be energized after I’m finished.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to delay your breakthrough a little longer?” He gave both her hands a squeeze.

She swatted at him, but he was up before she reached him. “I still need to focus, Tao.”

“I’ll be over here standing watch.”

She glared, but he could tell that it was her playful one. Still, he’d wait. He didn’t have to wait long. She began breaking through within a few minutes. Gathering the excess qi from her qi artifacts took much longer.

He was careful to keep an eye on their surroundings with his perceptions. He could barely pierce the divine material the tower was made of, but since the floor was one grand room, it made his job easier. In the end, it was a common breakthrough. It’s just that overlords required so much more qi so it took longer than his own.

After their breakthroughs, Chao was able to return to his tinkering in earnest. The next few days had them visiting the lower floors for an hour or two, but the rest of the day was theirs. They were still determined to focus on their own projects for a time before attacking the Divine Spire head on.

In many ways it was like the sixth floor was specially made to prepare one for the Divine Realm. Chao didn’t just test his space laws, but all of his elements and martial techniques. The cost of qi was greater. Not to the extent large uses of created space was though. There was also the benefit that he could recover qi much faster. His qi gathering had never been so smooth.

He found himself spending almost half his day dedicating himself to his sound. The new music, theory, and martial techniques were unlocking a hold new world for him and what he considered his most advanced law. Even though it wasn’t at the same love as space, a prime element, he could control space through his sound, and every other element for that matter.

Instinctively he wanted to spend most of his time on sound’s martial techniques for he’d never had any official ones. Master Songsmith Koo had spoken of using his new pipa and playing to attack a person directly. He’d always just compressed sound or blasted it so that its natural frequency could affect his opponents. But he found with each new song he learned, what sound could do was opening up to him.

The problem he had was the number of songs he’d learned growing up was limited. Each new one he learned had its own features and patterns. The emotion they could entice added range beyond what he had realized. He really was a boy who’d grown up on a farm. That didn’t undermine anything his mother had taught him, but there was an entire world to music, and he’d only started his journey.

His favorite new song was called The Rice Farmer’s Battle Hymn. It was written by a mortal king many centuries ago while they were being invaded. By the end of the war, half of the king’s population had been killed. He’d written the song in his fury and grief. His son had died leading his men. It is said that the song caused such inspiration that commoners rose up under its influence and fought like maddened beasts and drove back their conquering army. In the description of the song, the author of the book said that what actually happened was that a traveling cultivator caught wind of the song as what remained of the king’s ragged army and inquired about local events because it moved him. There were many self-written songs later released under the king’s name.

What intrigued Chao about the song was its intensity. It didn’t start soft and build but bombarded its hearers from the very start. That didn’t mean it didn’t build. It was the fact that it started so hard and still was able to that had him so interested. Playing it with his pipa gave him a sense of exhilaration, but there was more to the music than that. There was a place for drums.

He hadn’t even touched the drums Master Songsmith Koo had given him since they left the Golden Palace, but today he was finally tempted enough to bring them out. His music usually inspired joy, grief, and drowsiness. He could share his own emotions through any song, but that was through a manipulation of his laws, not the song itself. This song aroused a different emotion entirely—a brutal frenzy. Rage.

As he removed the barrel shaped drum that sat on the floor and came up to his waist, he wondered if he would’ve even understood this song two years before. If it would’ve meant anything before the Sun family had assaulted his Huifen.

Then he remembered what he’d told her after they’d arrived at the Divine Spire. He didn’t like it that Sister Genji considered him solemn, but then why was he drawn to this battle hymn that was exactly that to the extreme?

He’d changed, but the way he saw himself hadn’t caught up. Then how did he see himself?

He continued to think about it as he removed the two thick sticks used on the drum. They were made of no common wood, for this was an overlord rank instrument. Not that Chao really understood what that meant. His instruments didn’t possess separate arrays, so it was ultimately a drum that could stand far more of a beating than any regular instrument.

Shielding Huifen from the noise of his practice, he began to test the drum according to a primer card jade he’d read. Where you hit from outside of the drum face to in made different sounds. The closer to the middle of its face, the deeper the sound and evenly spread the vibrations.

According to sound cultivation theory, these vibrations could be channeled and directed for an attack. The more one played, the more energy they could gather, then strike out with it in a more powerful assault. He’d never used sound in this way, but drum vibrations seemed had the right frequency naturally to make such techniques easier. At least, that’s what he thought.

He was getting distracted. It took an hour messing around with the drum before he was playing the song as originally intended, and that was many mistakes. He wasn’t making use of the drum’s capabilities, but just playing it as a mortal might. Because of this, he didn’t grow tired. Every drummer he’d ever seen back home, or in his travels with Huifen, had always done much more than just playing along. Their playing was a performance, a dance. He wasn’t playing to impress other people. He was interested in one thing, how the song made him feel.

Despite his mistakes, it was enough. Master Songsmith Koo had been right. He’d always love the pipa, and it would remain his main instrument, but limiting himself to playing just it was a mistake.

The song with the pipa alone was intense, but with the deep thrumming of his drum, it encouraged his heart to beat in unison with that long dead king’s dreadful purpose. It didn’t require a high cultivation to feel. As the minutes passed, Chao felt a kindred connection to the man when he’d considered all he’d been through.

It wasn’t the battle against the Monolith Continent’s overlords that as most closely represented in this song. It was his days in the Training Construct surrounded by hundreds of overlords. Their battle against Emperor Sun had been desperate, but their life wasn’t in constant danger. They’d had a choice when to attack and when to defend. The overlords in the construct never stopped coming. He’d died hundreds of times. Soon he was reliving those deaths as his playing gradually improved.

It took Huifen stepping through his sound barrier and calling out to him to get him to stop. Even after he ceased playing, he heard the drumbeat still playing in his ears.

“Are you alright?” She asked. “You’ve been playing for hours.”

He looked down at the drum, sitting the sticks on its face. As he opened his hands to release them his fingers were stiff. He put the drum away in his spatial ring then gave her a sad smile. “I’m okay. I just got carried away. This song and the drums have a different feel than everything else I play.”

“Mmm. Did you want to spend some time on the second floor tomorrow in the element meditation chambers?”

He then noticed she was holding a blooming red Azalea in one hand and a lotus in the other. Their root structures floated just above her palms and were feeding directly of her nature laws. “That sounds like a great idea,” he replied, walking over and taking a closer look at the flowers. “You’ve taken a sure step toward working with non-yin heavy plants.”

“It’s just supplying a seed with nature qi.”

“For someone that doesn’t cultivation nature qi, that’s a near miracle in itself. And you’re not supplying it nature qi at all. You’re using the nature laws to enhance this plant’s nature so that it can use your qi to grow. You may never be able to directly create a non-yin heavy plant but borrowing from the source then enhancing it to make use of your ice qi is almost a guarantee.”

She didn’t say anything but tilted her head to the side and he watched as her nose gave a happy flare. He’d observed her long enough to be able to tell the difference between its happy and angry tics. And she should be delighted. The reason he cultivated heaven and earth qi was because and elemental focus would limit his laws in a similar manner. She was working with the limitations and finding ways around them. “Already touching on the enhance law of nature. My Huifen is incredible.”

She rolled her eyes as if annoyed so he struck. “I was going to offer to play with your hair, but if you don’t consider this something to celebrate…”

“Rub my back first.” She fell against him, resting her forehead high on his chest.