Chapter 618: Seeking the Foundations of Cloudspire

As she returned to the Brightwind Sect, Zae Zin Nim reflected on how much her life had changed. Once this had been a place of great terror and, after defeating her father, it had been a place where she vented her past emotions. But compared to the incursion and the invaders, the squabbling of cultivators seemed simply inconvenient... all she wanted from them was their resources.

When she drew close, she was glad to see guards in Brightwind robes, proving that the sect hadn't been overrun in her absence. She had only to step out of her ship for them to begin bowing and scraping, and some rushed back to the central pagoda to assemble a proper welcome for her.

"We're so glad to see that you have finished your secluded cultivation, Matriarch," one of them said. "We have cared for the sect in your absence, of course, but there are a few small matters..."

"Do any of them threaten the survival of the sect itself?" she asked.

"Well, no, but..."

"I will deal with them in time. First, summon our scholars, historians, and trainers of cultivation."

They looked terrified by that order - her father had frequently disparaged such professions, and once executed a historian who disagreed with him on a small matter of ancestry. But the majority of such people were from families that had been in the sect for generations, so without the ability to leave, they had taken smaller roles or even hidden themselves. Now, her subordinates had to be thinking, Zae Clen Ban's daughter might be rounding them up to execute them all.

As the specialists arrived, Zae Zin Nim did her best to reassure them that she was interested only in the truth. It was easier than she expected - the bizarre ethos of Deadwaste must have influenced her more than she knew. She sent them out to bring her histories of the continent and cultivation manuals, particularly those considered heretical or bizarre.

With all of them sent off, she next met with the diplomats and second tier cultivators who handled the borders of the Brightwind Sect's lands. There was more continuity with her father there: they were still a sect that lived on the strength of its leaders. She advised them to extend olive branches to neighbors that were not hostile, and to make clear that the matriarch was interested in ancient scrolls.

When it was done, Zae Zin Nim sat in her father's chair, marveling that it had all taken less than a single day. That was the advantage of maintaining a sect - how long would it have taken her to travel through libraries and crypts and assemble all that herself?

"Alright," Zae Zin Nim said to the courtiers who were still watching her nervously. "You said there were some small matters for me?"

"Yes," one of them said, "there are some vassal sects on our northern border that have been acting up, not believing in your magnificence. We have maintained order, but we are stretched thin, so their insolence has been-"

"Very well." She rose to her feet again to deal with the politics. At least it would give her something to do while the scholars returned with the information that mattered.

.

..

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In the end, they didn't even occupy her: Zae Zin Nim took more time traveling to each problem's location than actually solving it. She didn't need to use her father's brutality: just arriving and displaying her full power was enough to make the sect's opponents crumble. No one would accuse her of being weak when she kept cowing opponents into submission.

That left her back at the Brightwind Pagoda, continuing her cultivation as she waited for the scholars to return with useful documents. Thankfully, it didn't take too long before some returned, and when Zae Zin Nim didn't react negatively - or murderously - to strange histories or cultivation manuals, they responded enthusiastically and brought her even more.

Soon she had a dizzying array of scrolls laid out across one of the sitting rooms - her father had used it for lounging and enjoying his court, but she had no need for such things. Though she hadn't found any clear or simple answers, she was uncovering truths that had been long buried.

Most of their history was basically accurate: Cloudspire really did have a cultural history of thousands of years as she had been taught. But when it came to the earlier records, there were inconsistencies, lies, and strange details. It seemed increasingly believable that her ancestors were different than she had been taught, even if she was not yet certain if they came from the outside world.

It seemed wild that all of this could have been hiding in plain sight, but Zae Zin Nim almost immediately understood how such things could happen. Powerful cultivators wanted legacies that flattered them, and it only took a few acts of violence to create a culture of fear where no one dared to contradict them. She imagined that her father had not even been aware that he had created an environment that replaced all truth with his own desires.

Alongside the new history, there were many unusual paths of cultivation that had been cast aside. Most of them for good reason: they were simply inferior to the pure Brightwind Sect methods. She read more than a few manuals that were clearly written by the mad or foolish. But there were others...

That was why she had gone to all this effort, of course. Yangix had told her that all of them were on the wrong path of cultivation and suggested that it was purely inferior to the true cultivation of the outside world. If that was the case, she needed to understand more of the fundamental principles and find out if the pure Brightwind cultivation was actually a dead end.

She didn't want to believe it. Zae Zin Nim feared that she might be her father, treating all facts he disliked as misinformation, but she tried to face the truth no matter where it led.

So much of the cultivation she had been taught was based on doctrine being handed down from above, laws and rules that were simply accepted by fiat. Why did Body Refinement come after Qi Condensation? What did "Nascent Foundation" actually mean beyond improved strength? She was not the only person to consider these questions, and as she read, Zae Zin Nim found a new appreciation for the wisdom of Cloudspire... even if it was wisdom that was buried in pursuit of power.

After days of work, she was convinced that the methods she had followed were not wrong, merely incomplete. Yangix had suggested that every stage of cultivation she knew was actually part of Qi Condensation, and that made sense: the fundamental element in all the cultivation methods she knew was condensing qi within one's dantian.

But the other steps were not useless: cultivators improved their dantians, strengthened their bodies to use more qi, and built up their meridians. She presumed that the ancient cultivators who came to this place and found too little qi to reach higher stages had instead searched for any edge they could, building up their power in smaller stages.

The only question, and one she might not be able to answer with merely these resources, was whether this all represented a dead end. Was Yangix actually right to scorn her cultivation as minor tricks compared to the real thing? Was it possible that if she broke through to Sky Soul, she would actually limit her own development? The fact that Sky Soul was the endpoint of cultivation no longer seemed like a glorious peak, but perhaps an ominous cliff.

In the end, after coming up with no easy answers in all the scrolls, Zae Zin Nim was left with her own instincts. Reaching Sky Soul meant cultivating an enormous amount of qi, then completing a breakthrough ritual that saturated it more deeply into her body and soul. If that harmed her cultivation, she was incapable of seeing how.

Then again... when she looked over the hidden scrolls about peak cultivation, both just before and after Sky Soul, she found herself occasionally frowning. Once this would have struck her as shocking: a woman only thirty years old challenging the wisdom of the ancients.

That attitude no longer gripped her, not when she had been married to someone as irreverent as Omilaena. It occurred to Zae Zin Nim that some of the methods that were recommended to jump up to Sky Soul were very similar to the medicinal pills that burned out part of the soul. She also found herself reading some "laws of cultivation" and being unable to find any principle that justified them. At some point, of course, one could only face the truths of cultivation etched into the world, but sometimes the ancient scrolls didn't speak of the fundamental shape of the soul, they simply handed down dictates.

And so Zae Zin Nim, even as she cultivated ever closer to the final limit, pondered what that meant, and whether it didn't need to be final after all...

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..

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For a time her work was wonderful, a sort of cultivation advancement that Zae Zin Nim had never known she was missing. The only way it could have been better was if her spouses had been present, but she dedicated herself wholly to her craft in their absence. She felt like she made progress, perhaps true progress of a sort that hadn't been seen here in millennia.

Occasionally she felt a flicker of disturbance thinking about what was happening on Deadwaste, but that was a continent away... until it wasn't.

"Matriarch?" The servants were always anxious to interrupt her in her studies, even if they knew she wouldn't kill anyone for it. "There is a matter... news that is sweeping across the Eastern Plains."

"What is it?" Zae Zin Nim asked irritably.

"Perhaps just a small thing, just idle rumors, but... they say that foreigners landed in the Northern Expanse and seized a vast territory for themselves, setting up a new sect. The stories are wild, some not to be credited. They even say that they faced the Iceiron sect and crushed them, but surely this is an exaggeration to-"

"No." Zae Zin Nim rose to her feet and sighed. "No, the reports are very likely true. Tell me everything."