Apocalypse Cultivation 2, ch 35

Okay, a few things about this chapter.  This is not the end of the book but we are getting close. :)

First, some of you might remember some parts of this plot art from a dream I had like 3 years ago.  Yes, I wrote this book to include that.  If you remember the dream, you might know where this is going.

Second, please forgive any wonky formatting.  I switched between multiple writing programs for this chapter.

As usual, this chapter will have less polish than I usually go for.  My life this year has been a little rough so this book has been a struggle to get through.  Luckily, I'm SUPER proud of how it has turned out.

Thanks all



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Jake stepped through the portal and was taken aback. What he was seeing was not anything like what he'd been expecting at all. Instead of some ancient stone city, or pagodas, like where he'd just come from, he was seeing …modern buildings.  The area around him, other than its obvious age and disrepair, was like something he might see back on Earth.

It really was old, though.  The walls, the very stone seemed to give off a hushed feeling, a sense of weight and time.  There were vines, and signs of decay everywhere. Vegetation had grown through the pavement, actual pavement, and asphalt.  Roads, real roads.

Jate turned slowly, taking it all in. And when he was about halfway through his turn, his breath caught in his throat.  He could only stare because he actually recognized the building he was looking at!

No fucking way, he said to himself, but he was sure.  There was no mistaking the Alamo. He turned again and realized that yes, somehow, he was either in San Antonio, or a city that somehow looked exactly like San Antonio.

Jake had spent a few months in San Antonio before and he’d visited all the touristy spots more than once.  He was very familiar with the spot he was standing.

There were so many implications of what he was witnessing, he had to drop most of them to ponder later.  Now was not the time.  But once he’d realized that he was either in a city he was familiar with or a copy of it, he had also realized that getting around would be a lot easier for him now.

Now that the shock of recognizing where he was wore off a bit, he focused on how the place made him feel.  Even with the amulet on, he still felt weird. Cold, like he was in deep water. In fact, when he moved, it felt a little bit like he was wading through water, like the entire world was covered in a knee deep layer of thick liquid.  He couldn’t see anything except fog, though.

He tried taking a few more steps faster than before.  Yes, it definitely took effort to move. And he could feel the thick death energy in the air.  Jake had no reason to doubt his instinct that he had at least some natural protection to this place.  However, he had a feeling that if he was not wearing a protective charm, he would have just as hard a time thinking right now as he would if he tried running.

Jake started to wonder if he should have have spent more points in the Eternal Struggle Reward System, getting a better defensive object. Or maybe he should have chosen the more narrowly focused defensive ring.

Oh, well, he thought to himself, what's done is done.

He just stood there for a while, trying to take in the feel and sensations of the Fighting Time Dead City…San Antonio.  Nothing moved that he could see.  There was no sky, and it didn’t feel like he was in a massive underground space, either.  It felt like the darkness went on forever.  He was actually reminded a little of the feeling he’d gotten at first in the challenge portal back in the Web Burrows.

Strangely enough, despite being a dead city, he could actually see signs of vegetation here and there.  There weren’t many, but the occasional tree had burst through the pavement.  Vines had crumbled concrete.  Some of this vegetation had obviously died long ago, but others seemed to inexplicably thriving.

Jake decided that it would be a good rule of thumb to stay away from any plants that could grow in a mostly lightless place, full of a death energy so thick it would instantly kill a mortal human.

From where he stood, Jake saw something extremely interesting.  In the distance, a building had been modified, and there was new construction.  It took a minute for Jake to figure out what he was seeing, but he eventually realized that it was tomb.

I wonder how many important people have been buried in this place over the last few thousand places? he wondered.  It sort of make sense why a sect or prestigious family would do such a thing.  All but the most powerful cultivators could probably not tolerate coming to the Dead City and just bumbling around.  Anyone who came to the Dead City would be coming with a purpose.  The odds of randomly coming across too many tombs, much less being motivated to rob them was probably not very likely.

Jake realized he’d been standing there a minute, just staring at the distant tomb.  What Yarissa had told him about the ghosts that inhabited this place still made him nervous.  He decided to move.

Luckily, he had his bearings now. It was still extremely strange that he was in some version of San Antonio.  In fact, if he were dwell on it too much now, it would cause nothing good for his mental state.  But at least he knew where to go.

Jake started out leaving the square where he was currently at and heading for the highway. He had a suspicion that in a dead city like this, the highway would either be the safest place to go–or the most dangerous. He was hoping that before he actually got there, he'd be able to figure out which of the two it was.

As it turned out. He wasn't even halfway there until he had to duck into an alleyway.

Dangerous, definitely dangerous. In the distance, he could see a massive ghost, like a huge apparition of translucent malevolence.  Even from this far away, it radiated anger and destruction. The thing was aimlessly walking on the highway.  Further away there was another one.

Holy shit, thought Jake.  He felt a chill when he wondered if those things could sense him.  The death energy was so thick in the Dead City that even powerful cultivators shouldn’t be able to do much more than metaphorically see their hand in front of their face, but knowing that intellectually was a cold comfort.

If one of the things on the highway were to discover Jake was here, he’d be dead for sure.

He poked out his head a bit later and watched in sick fascination as the mega ghosts ambled around.  They sort of looked like human babies, animal chimera, and demons all mixed together, slowly changing.  Maybe the highway was where the truly powerful spirits went to endlessly walk in circles. Jake could only guess.  The only thing he knew for sure was that it was a place he did not want to be.

After all, even though his amulet protected him from the ambient death energy, it did not protect him from the residents of this place.

Since the highways were so dangerous, he decided to head south so he wouldn’t have to risk crossing under or through any normal mega ghost hangouts.

Jake moved slowly, cautiously.  A few times he thought he spotted movement from windows, maybe a ghostly face here or there.  He remembered hearing that most of the ghosts were asleep.  He was counting on it.

He wasn’t sure where he was going, or even exactly what he was looking for.  Finding fortune in this place was going to require a little bit of luck.  Even if he felt secure enough to just drop down and try breaking through to a Reforged Body in the middle of the street–and he wasn’t, at all–it was not an ideal place energy-wise.

More than just death energy was necessary for a good place to cultivate a Reforged Body, especially since Jake was going to try changing his monster race at the same time.  He’d thought a lot about the gross puddle he’d laid in back in Georgia when he’d transformed into Shadow Ghoul.  He needed something like that.  Maybe he could find a gross puddle in the Dead City.

Luckily, he was getting near the River Walk.

Jake angled his path to interact with the river.  He still felt conflicted about evolving his monster race.  Being a Shadow Ghoul had served him well.  It definitely had its down sides, though.  Not only how he looked, either.

But he had a feeling that anything he transformed into now would be more powerful. More importantly, it would probably help him have a stronger Reforged Body transformation ability.  However, he’d also been thinking a lot about how he’d cultivated Conophta’s monster core.  The energy cocktail of different monsters he’d cultivated even before that point had been weird.  But now he really had no idea what he’d turn into, even with all the new ghoul and vampire cores he’d gotten on earth.

With how big and bulky Conophta had been, Jake could only assume that his own new form might be bigger, too.  Maybe he’d even end up being bovine.  Cow-Jake.  It was kind of freaky to think about.  He’d sort of made his peace with it, though.  As long as he was never a zombie again and could actually use his mind, he could deal with it.  And maybe becoming some huge, hulking thing wouldn’t be quite so bad.

The river walk in San Antonio was basically a sidewalk that ran by the river, peppered by bistros and such back on EArth.  The river was right up ahead now.

Before he got there, Jake was curious about some of the buildings he was passing.  He struggled against the death energy current,  moving to a door that was slightly ajar.

When he opened it, a chill as deep as darkest Winter washed over his  body like a freezing wave of the sea.

GET OUT

A voice full of pain and power rushed through his spirit, chilling his soul and making him feel he ache of the grave down to his toes.  Every fiber of his being screamed that this was not a place for him, not the land where the living were welcomed.

He carefully backed up, bowed, and slowly shut the door.  Hatred remained on his skin, but he knew with supernatural certainty that he had taken the correct action, escaping with his life...and his soul.

Jake was shaking as he took another step back, staring at the door.  Holy shit holy shit holy shit.

The danger of the Dead City had just impressed itself on him in a very real way.  Should I just leave?  The encounter he’d just had…it made his stomach drop.  Asleep or not, the residents of this place were not to be trifled with.

Jake suddenly felt like a baby mouse dropped in a world full of vipers.

His mind was growing heavy with fear.  Jake tried to focus on the mission.  He had come here for something, something important.  Running away was not an option, at least he didn’t think so, but he couldn’t remember why.

He slowly moved toward the river walk.  Now he could hear whispers in his mind, sliding over his defenses like corpse fingers across thin ice, looking for a way in.  Probing, pushing, hungry.

Get it together, Jake.  He did a breathing exercise, ignoring the dust and mustiness of the air.  The effort helped and he felt his spirit growing more settled again.  His thoughts turned a little more clear.  As wary as he’d been before, he knew now it wasn’t enough.  Jake strained to push his senses outward, trying to “see” just a little farther out into the fog of death energy.

His effort didn’t really acommplish much.

At the River Walk, Jake lowered himself down a wall and found himself on the path by the river.  Back on earth, the San Antonio River was never really clear, beautiful water, but in the Dead City it was more like a sludge.  Jake eyed it thoughtfully, thinking of the puddle back in Georgia again.  He had a half-baked idea to try cultivating in the river, submerging himself under water again.

Suddenly, something large broke the surface in the middle of the river, something long and sinuous with spikes.  The moment it was out of the water, a wave of death and hunger rolled over Jake that was so thick, he almost fell to his knees.

Instead he slowly backed up to the wall and focused on making his energy as small and unnoticeable as possible.  The scales slowed down a bit, so Jake also used his mysterious ability to hide in the shadows.  He completely erased his presence, although doing so in this place was taxing and exhausting to the extreme.

Thankfully, whatever was in the river moved on, dipping below the waves again.

Fuck this, thought Jake.  The river is definiately a no go.

He climbed back up to the street and looked back the direction he’d come, where the portal back would be.  Jake thought really long and hard about just going back.  This was turning out to be more than he’d signed up for.  But at the end of the day, he still couldn’t figure out a better way to find a good place to breakthrough a Reforged Body in the murim world, at least not fast.

All the reasons he’d come here were still true.  It would still likely bel far better for him if he already had a reforged body before he got to the Skull of Secrets sect.  Ultimately, his goal was to fulfill his geas to Lady Brima before escaping, hopefully after getting some benefit out of the place.  But he also had to actually make it there alive first.

Jake knew he was repeating his own logic back to himself at this point so he began to wander.  He pushed his senses out, tried to stay open to feeling anything weird or good, and stuck to the middle of the road.

Every shadow and shadowed alley could possibly be a death trap and Jake wasn’t going to tempt fat by just poking into random places like a dumb tourist anymore.

Now that he knew what kind of things were hidden in the buildings, sleeping, his exploration now felt like tip toeing across the face of a terrifying, murderous giant who was aleady having troubled sleep.

Now Jake knew for sure how smart he’d been to keep everything he owned on a need-to-know basis.  If Yarissa had seen more clearly what all Jake had on him, all the energy and items that the slumbering ghost army could use, she might not have ever let him come to the Dead City

Jake was in a residential area now.  Some of the houses’ architecture looked very old by Earth standards.  Of course, with how long this Dead City had been in the Murim World, msot of the shouldn’t be standing anymore.  Jake didn’t know how this place worked, but it was obvious to him that there was some rules.  He could feel it in his bones, and his inner mage, the part of him that remembered his training in his past life, was fascinated.

The mage part of Jake was curious if this place was a naturally occurring phenomenon or artificially created by some incredibly powerful cultivator, or god, or group of either.

Suddenly, Jake spun. He senses had barely given him any warning before something had attacked him with sharp claws.  Needle-like teeth penetrated his hand, but didn’t try to bite down.  It looked like a small banshee or something.  Jake tried to shake it off and almost went for his saber but decided against it at the last moment.  Bringing out a divine artifact in the Dead City might have very unpleasant consequences.

He could feel his synergy draining quickly as the energy vampire fed on him.  The thing was mostly shadow and skeleton, like the freaky flying things in the Harry Potter movies.  It chuckled to itself while it slowly killed Jake, draining him of vitality.

Jake redacted on instinct, trying to defend himself.  His claw passed right through the thing.  His thoughts raced, struggling against the fogged mind, and in desperation he tried to feed on his attacker.  When it worked, he wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised.  The attacker was mostly insubstantial, but Jake cycled his cultivation base even as it tried to escape and grabbed on.  Then he looked into the dead eyes of his would-be killer and grinned as he tried to outfeed it.

“Gotcha, bitch!”  Jake focused, tearing at his attacter’s mind and body in order to save himself, but also started to take more from the ghostly attacker than had been taken from him.

It was a war of survival, a tug of war with nothing but oblivion in the center, and Jake was winning.  His enemy tried attacking him directly, but Jake was always ready to dodge or to deflect.  Finally, with a desperate surge of effort, the dead thing was able to break and escape.  Jake was so tied, he couldn’t keep it from completely escaping but he managed to imbue chi into one claw dans rake it as it vanished.  Its scream slowly faded in the direction it’d gotten off  too, vanishing in an alley.

Jake sat down in the middle of the road.  He hadn’t lost anything from the encounter other than a nasty bite mark on his hand, in fact he’d even gained energy from it.  But what he’d gotten was awful.  Death energy was caustic anyway, but what Jake had just stolen was extra slimy on top of that.  It was going to take him a lot time to purify it unless he incorporated it into his breakthrough, so he saved the energy, aimlessly circulating it outside of his own system.

“Holy shit, fuck this,” he whispered.  There was a limit for everything, and Jake had just met his.  The thing hadn’t just been stealing his life energy, it’d felt like it’d been damaging his soul.  Maybe it had.

Jake began stumbling back toward the exit.  Mistakes were made, he thought.  Abort, abort.  Game over man, game over!

His mental state deteriorated quickly now, his focus had been shaken.  Everything started sliding sideways and the pit of his stomach fell out.  The death energy he’d just consumed was like an uncomfortable weight in his stomach too, like the sensation of eating something really dense and maybe a little off back when he’d been human.

Jake knew he was in trouble when he actually stumbled over a stone in the road.  He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d tripped over something like that.  Did Cultivators trip?  This one did.  Jake knew his thoughts were flying apart but he was having hard time holding on to them.  If he spun his cultivation base to try steadying himself, it actually made the problem worse.

The Dead City loomed around him now, oppressive, terrifying.  Whispers were louder in his head. The extremely dim, ambient light, something of a comfort before, now seemed to beat like a heart. This effect was disturbing enough to begin with, but the frequency of the heart beats was speeding up.

Things moved in the deep shadows.  Jake could feel eyes on him, could feel the edges of thoughts from things sleeping in the surrounding buildings.  Coming here was a mistake, thought Jake.  He was too weak for this.  In the Dead City, Jake was food.  Now he knew that fact down to his bones.  If he hadn’t been a monster would could somehow process energy that should be pure poison, he’d already be dead.  Or worse.

As he moved down the middle of the street, trying with varying success to walk without showing his fear and lack of balance, he saw something that filled him with a different sort of fear so powerful, it temporarily washed away everything else he was feeling.

He’d spotted a little boy up ahead on the street, standing near the sidewalk.  The streets looked super wide with no cars on them, and the boy seemed even smaller because of it.  Alone, scared, helpless.  Panic gripped Jake.

"Little boy, are you lost?" he hissed.  "This is a place for the dead!  You shouldn’t be here.  We need to go!  Right now!"

"Where are my parents?" asked the boy.  He held out his hand.  "Will you lead me?"

The world spun.  "Yes," said Jake. His heart was full of resolution and he took the hand by reflex. Immediately, a feeling of death and inevitability ran up his arm.  His heart and chi stopped.  He suddenly noticed the emptiness in the boy’s eyes for the first time, but it was too late.  The boy’s eyes quickly filled in with darkness, showing nothing but holes into nothingness.  Jake had just stumbled upon one of the most powerful, feared denizens of the Dead City, a revenant.

Even though there was no wind in the city, it seemed a small breeze blew an ancient piece of paper nearby.  The whispers in the back of Jake’s mind were laughing now.  His vision almost doubled and time seemed to stand still.  Jake’s cultivation base trembled, coming dangerously close to a dangerous deviation before slowing to a stop.

The ambient light seemed to darken.

"Where do we go, mister?" said the revenant.  Control of Jake’s body was gone.  He couldn't move a muscle.  The spirit held Jake’s soul in his little hand.  However, through this bond, he also felt a glimmer of something besides hate and hunter.  Sadness.  Longing for the light.  Deep pain over a betrayal.  The boy just wanted to escape and to stop hurting.  But Jake knew the truth–there was no way for the revenant to stop hurting, and all the pain and misery it could bring on others would all be for nothing.

It was a struggle fighting through the fog over his brain, but Jake managed to say, “I am sorry. You must stay here.  I cannot help you."

“You lied, then!"

"No, I was mistaken.  Please accept my apology."  Jake tried to push, to convey his sincerity through the bond that had him in a supernatural chokehold.

The spirit's mouth opened far too wide, showing sharp, black teeth, and Jake felt the fear of impending soul death, but his conscience was clear.  Trickery would have won me nothing, so I had been  honest.

Suddenly, the bond moved again and Jake felt something powerful, angry, and…unstable invade his soulspace.  It was perhaps the most violating thing he’d ever experienced in his life.  The revenant moved to Jake’s mind and savagely ripped open his memories, searching for…something.  The search grew faster, almost more frantic.  Instead of fighting, Jake opened himself more.  This entity had been strong enough to blast right through his protection and had him completely helpless.  There was no point in resisting at this point.  All he could do was try to communicate without words that he’d meant no harm, had been confused by the Dead City, and had just seen a child that needed help.

The boy-spirit slowly leaned forward, as if to devour Jake, but suddenly his features reverted back to human and he started to cry.  "You are scary looking but you are a nice mister.  Thank you for trying, and thank you for being honest, mister.  Thank you for helping other children…not become like me."  The revanant sobbed and met Jake’s eyes, searching for something new.  This time he seemed to find it and nodded.  With that, he released control over Jake’s body and soul, and ran away.  He was gone from sight in seconds.

Jake’s shivering was so strong his teeth clattered.  He blinked, not entirely sure what had just happened.  The only thing that was certain of was that he’d just gotten incredibly lucky.  Ultimately, he could only assume that the revenant was a brand new spirit, and had not yet been consumed with the anger and spite of his kind, the living dead.

He tried to resist it, but he couldn’t help the cold overtaking his body.  His hands were clawed, his muscles spasmed.  What he’d just been through had been traumatic at ever level he could feel pain.  Even his cultivation base shuddered.

Jake fell over onto the ancient, cracked San Antonio street and lost consciousness.