Book One, Chapter 29 - Hammer The Metal And Stoke The Forge

First new chapter in a while! Brand new! Yippeee! Gonna aim for some quick edits before bed, but I am glad that I finally gave myself the opportunity to follow through with a potential addition. Trying to let myself just be, even as I try to control the word count and balance the ways that publication needs this formatted. Still great to do something fresh!

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Division of Divination, Oracular Pools, Third Ring, North-Northeast Division, Priority Response Required:

Middle-Tier Conceptual Manifestation detected in Paleblossom City. Abnormal Qi Saturation of local terrain indicates deviation from planned growth metrics. Potential danger to local populace established. 

Risk of annihilation of district: 03.57%

Risk of annihilation of Paleblossom City: 16.94%

Risk of unsustainable loss of population: 46.20%

Risk of critical threat manifestation… 0.2377649. Above minimum threshold, but below critical response levels.

Threshold for escalation has been met.

Local resources deemed sufficient for escalation. Paleblossom City Imperial Palace and assigned Scion are granted permission to utilize Middle-Tier Conceptual Manifestation and Imperial Un-Existence Engines, Spheres 1-3. 

Deploying-

Hold. 

…

Division of Altered Cultivation assets already en-route. Runemaster Boriah, Researcher-Rank member of the Division of Altered Cultivation has laid claim on the manifestation for purposes of study. 

Claim registered.

Divining likelihood of Imperial benefit… 

31.7043%. That is… impressively low. Oracular recommendation- 

Local override established. 

Override acknowledged. 

The Division of Altered Cultivation has taken control of the situation. Runemaster Boriah has priority claim, superseding established response protocols. 

Glory Be.

-Division Of Divination Priority Response Record, Established due to Unforseen Manifestation. Emergency Manifestation occurring at Imperial City: Paleblossom. 

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The world becomes covered in an impossible light as an elder of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect forces his cultivation against the rules of existence.

A glowing sun, shaped like a spear of arc-welding heat and colored blue and indigo, manifests behind Elder Ren Quan, leader of the medical pavilion, relative to the bleeding figure in the arena, and Nascent Soul Realm cultivator. Hints of the Daos of Purity, Cleansing, and Heat all manifest in the space around him as he vanishes from his booth, appearing instead directly before the figure charging blindly at his distant grand-nephew.

The boy is bleeding, partially gutted, with perforations of his abdominal wall, but he’ll survive, especially as impure elements are purged from existence by his proximity to the elder and the creature before them both is forced back. Like a twig struck by a great wind, what was once human is thrown chaotically across the arena, spraying bits of tainted flesh and leaking blood as it does. 

It lands limply, like a puppet with severed strings- and starts to get back up.

Ren Quan frowns at that. Its resilience doesn’t match its properties. The entity is enduring past the point of no return for a mortal burn victim, nevermind the other traumas enacted on it, but its strength and speed fail to rival that durability. It’s also… hard to sense. Like the Qi around it is moving through it without an effect, or bending around it somehow. It’s there, present to his senses, but it emits nothing, not a drop of vital energy, and that makes it read more like something inert and irrelevant than what it clearly is.

A threat. Meant to disrespect the sect, to cost them face, to cause problems. Likely a play by one of the other sects amongst the city, building a trap to force the hand of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect and require them to set up this trial, only for the trick to be unveiled at the last moment. The fact that it went undetected is a loss of face already, but the gain that whoever takes credit for this thing will take, managing to sneak it past their safeguards, past multiple elders, past an Arbiter of Law, will make it a profound victory.

The damage has been done. All that can be done is to prevent further harm. 

The time between his arrival to the arena and the current moment is less than three seconds.

The creature stirs, and he moves.

A Cauterized Wound Does Not Bleed.

The Truth echoes through him, a personal belief made real, proven factual, and he appears behind the abomination as it tries to rise up.

A beam of light, flame made beyond flame by Heat and purpose, burns a perfect hole into the arena floor and the sky above it.

 He does not need to wave a hand- he simply wills it, and it is.

The creature is a wound. The loss of face is a wound. With an exercise of being, he wills them Cauterized, and feels reality bend against him.

The light of the beam vanishes.

Something throws itself out from the hole towards his face.

He moves, and has already places himself behind it before it has time to register that he is no longer where he was- and yet its head turns, too fast to be mortal, too jerky and twisted to be natural. The movement should be restricting its airway, forcing strain on its spine, but the creature doesn’t seem to care. Its face turns to follow him, even as he vastly supersedes it in strength and speed, and its mouth is open. 

By the time its body is turning to match its head, he’s already lifted his hand, forming another beam of flame at a perpendicular angle to the last.

The world flashes white, bright enough that several of the attendees in the stands will require medical attention for retinal damage. It is a bit exaggerated, perhaps- save that the creature should not be. It should have been vaporized already. 

He is not in the business of underestimating a surprising opponent.

He feels the technique waver.

Not break, or rebound as if dispelled by force- it wavers. Like a river, shifting around a rock that stands tall enough in its pathway, flowing around it. 

He hears, past the sizzling of flesh and that which is no longer flesh, the clicking of teeth. The sound of a step as something comes towards him.

The beam fades, and the creature lunges, its throat glowing like molten magma even as he watches it swallow down a piece of the attack he just threw at it. He takes a single step back as it lunges, sharpened bits of bone jutting out from its ruined body swung as if to impale or cut him, and yet it keeps advancing, moving faster than natural, unaugmented nerves can send commands. He hears something, behind the clacking of its teeth as the half-shattered ruins of its mouth are launched at him by a missile of flesh, as the entity throws itself through the air jaws-first to try and bite at him.

He hears the rumbling of a stomach. 

He hears its hunger.

Well. That escalates the matter from a loss of face to a declaration of war. Whoever sent this thing, modeled after so many dark techniques, can only mean one message. 

Why else would they send an abomination such as this?

Perfect Purification Technique: Sterilization Of The Operating Field.

The technique, his own invention, pulls the Qi in his meridians and his core into the shape he desires, into the shape of him, and becomes part of the world at his command.

There is a quiet, hissing wave of pressure that emanates out in a perfect circle from a center-point he decides. The construct, creature, beast, whatever it is, in an instant, falls to the ground limp as every bit of unwanted mess before him is sterilized and burnt to nothing.

To his surprise, as the sudden flash of heat and drifting smoke fades, there is something still there. A stick-figure of pure black, missing an arm at the elbow, charred so thoroughly that he cannot even see blood or bone in its construction. 

Durable indeed.

He can feel his fellow elders approaching. The fight has taken less than ten seconds, but already, miles have vanished beneath the power of Nascent Soul level elders, all of them responding to his actions. Justified or not, for whatever reason, the unleashing of one’s full cultivation, at their level, requires explanation and oversight, lest the sect itself be damaged catastrophically by a conflict involving them. He feels their presences manifesting in the air above him, different artifacts and techniques keeping them airborne over the arena.

He senses the mercurial touch of Shiru Hei of the research pavilion, the harsh and abrasive existence of Gào Yáng of the punishment hall, the illusory haze that follows Xiàng Lìfēng of the external pavilion. A small selection, relative to what he has heard about sects of the second ring, but each of them a powerhouse in their own rights, each of them a crucial part of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect’s strength.

He turns to address them, tilting his head slightly as he sends them compressed signals of Qi to communicate faster-

Something hurts.

A sharp cut against his arm brings him back in time to swipe with his hand, empowering the movement enough to shatter stone. The skull of the entity, which should be dead, ricochets off of him- but there is a hint of red in its maw, and a hint of pale, cold white along its jawline.

He feels something cold running through him.

He looks down at the piece of his arm that has been ripped away. 

The entity is so hard to detect. Even still, he should have been on higher alert, his senses awake to the sounds of movement. It shouldn’t even be able to move- the equivalent to sixth degree burns have overtaken all of its body, leaving flesh melted off and bones visibly cracked where they emerge from the rock-like mass of burnt tissue that is its form. 

And yet- it swallows something, the carbonized shell of its skin crackling to reveal blood and cooked biology beneath.

A pillar of flame comes into existence as his Truth proclaims itself to the world-

A Cauterized Wound Does Not Bleed.

He stops. The flame vanishes.

What?

His Truth. It feels… off. Damaged. Like something struck it, scraped against it.

The broken, ruined thing turns itself towards him, moving forward on flesh that should not be considered flesh anymore. Its mouth hangs open, its jaw compromised by the heat, tendons near-obliterated, and in its jawline, he sees sharp-edged teeth tinted a pale white beyond color. 

His blood goes cold.

It… ate part of him. Maybe in the first flame, maybe now with his flesh, maybe-

It doesn’t matter. He is not of the research pavilion. The loss of face has only worsened. His own weakness allowed the beast to strike at him.

He lifts a hand, forming a ring with his fingers, and whispers in his soul.

Perfect Purification Technique: First Touch Of Obliteration.

He feels the arena’s higher-tier arrays activating, shielding the crowd as best it can from the effects of his technique. He feels the way that his elders empower the arrays further, layering further defenses of their own creation on the exterior even as they begin to manifest portals and pathways of flame to teleport away any valuables or particularly important artifacts from the vicinity, even as several disciples scream at the sight of his technique and are robbed of sight, many robbed of superficial layers of skin alongside. 

The stone of the arena floor begins to glow, ever so slightly, and soften.

His hubris has been proven. No words are required. Only action.

It has been seventeen seconds since he entered the arena.

The world goes colorless and warm as Heat beyond heat, tinged with Blue and Black in spite of its purple hue, manifests into the world.

And is stopped.

The world tilts to one side as its very nature is unmade, and Ren Quan manifests a thin film of ultra-heated plasma around himself in response to his Qi-senses telling him something overwhelming has arrived. His original technique, performed seriously, at his normal output, vanishes from existence as the wall of runic symbols that has come into existence between it and his target finishes consuming it.

The invisible form of an array, existing outside of the visible spectrum as raw, shaped Qi, briefly glows with the same impossible light that Ren Quan wields- and then it is gone, the entire construct vanishing as if it was never there to begin with. 

The smell of something almost too sweet hits him like a perfume, wafting past his defensive technique and the layers of protective enchantments he has woven into his robes to brush delicately against his esoteric senses. 

There is someone new in the arena.

They are slim, lithe, androgynous to the extreme, such that Ren Quan finds himself curious about what quirk of genetics or cultivation was required for their appearance, and wearing robes of peach pink, white, and Imperial gold. Eyes like molten pools look up at him from above a sly, quiet smile, which promises much and implies far more, and their skin-

Their skin, in patterns reminiscent of vitiligo, matches the peach-and-gold of their clothing, weaving intricate biological patterns across snow-white flesh. 

He cannot tell their realm of cultivation. All he can feel is the quiet, broad touch of that unknown sensation, which he can feel only with his Qi senses.

Three other sect elders are here as well now. Each of them holds their Qi tightly, but he can sense the weight of their existences, the way that lethality is only an instant away. And yet, they all wait.

The figure is wearing Imperial gold.

And, to Elder Ren Quan’s surprise, the charred corpse is… still. Unmoving. Save for a mild gnashing of teeth, which even now calls to his attention as something deeper and more real than it should be, grinding bone against the air as if restrained.

“Greetings, esteemed elders of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect,” says the stranger. “I apologize for the interruption to these proceedings, but I’m afraid that this lowly servant of the Emperor must cause you some difficulty.”