231. The Beauty of a Carnation

To his credit, Georgios acted almost as fast as Alistair. Despite his hefty plate armor and his enormous warhammer, he flew like the wind, smashing one of the crabs into the stone ground with a terrifying swing.

Alistair activated [Dharmic Gaze], analyzing the crabs.

Name: N/A
Species: Metalbound Crab (Beast Ruler 1st Evolution)
Class: N/A [Primary Attribute(s): Constitution]
Level: 120
Special Ability: Shells are almost impervious to damage, underside is highly vulnerable.

Seeing this information, Alistair called it out to his new teammates. Georgios was already scratching his head as he saw that there was barely a dent in the metallic crab’s shell.

It was then that he learned Elektra’s true identity. White clay erupted from the ground, pushing one of the crabs up into the air so that Georgios could smash it from underneath.

White clay? Surely in the entire multiverse, many cultivators used white clay, but everything was too perfect.

Elektra was Haley, the woman who fought beside him on Nuevo Invierno. Alistair couldn’t help but wonder where the real Haley was. If she was replacing a real person, then were the other three members of her team actually Clear Water disciples or maybe even Endless Horizons disciples? That would be a twist.

Not sure how to snap her out of her trance, he focused on the crabs. Just to test himself, he launched himself toward the nearest one and sent forth a full power [Force Fist]. The thundering punch blew the crab into the wall with a slam.

As the text of his inspection said, there was barely any damage to its shell. Though Alistair smiled when he saw the dent was almost the same size as the one Georgios made, despite being a much lower level.

But since the punch launched the crustacean up onto its side, the underside became open to attacks. With a singular [Blood Hand], he pierced the soft underbelly, destroying the crab’s organs from the inside out.

Dozens of crabs flowed out of the dank halls, swarming every inch of the umbral environment. Not a single piece of the walls nor floor, nor even ceiling was naked, covered entirely with chitin.

Anna and Letredeas huddled behind the other three, not used to combat. Alistair hoped that some of the trials in the temple were non-combat, or they were going to be in a world of hurt.

Haley protected them with a solid dome of clay while Georgios spun in a circle, bashing scores of crabs in a whirlwind. However, even his massive warhammer barely did any damage.

Even Alistair’s full punching speed, where he delivered hundreds of fists per second, there were still tiny gaps in which the sea of pincers nipped him.

At least, they tried. With his upgraded [Steel Body] now annulling 35% of all Mana-based or purely physical attacks, they too could barely make a dent. Their claws just broke the skin, and nothing more.

However, Alistair was faring around as well. With so many attackers, he couldn’t aim his punches toward their underbelly. The beasts were far, far heavier than they looked, and despite their base intellect, and understood that they should keep low to the ground.

That wasn’t all. As they continued to bite and stab him, he began to feel pain. The crabs seemed to learn that their physical attacks weren’t working, and he felt a spiritual aspect to their claws as they stabbed at him.

They can go spiritual on top of their strong carapaces? How unfair is that?

A bunch of ideas came and went—he knew that he had to act fast. Anna and Letredeas weren’t exactly non-combatants, but this situation couldn’t continue for much longer.

“Get behind me!” Alistair shouted. Without waiting for a response, he began to draw upon Ashendar’s power. With [Reality Sense], he felt none of his allies in his path.

600 points of fire affinity Mana gathered in his palm, full of reality-singing heat. Instead of forming it into a concentrated ball first, he simply breathed out Ashendar’s flames from his mouth like a true dragon.

The devastation was instant. Despite their metallic shells, they could not resist a red dragon’s fire. Despite containing no Dao energy, the flames of a Visionary dragon, even while dead, touched on a greater concept.

Elder Aylesfort’s lesson flashed through his mind. According to the cycles of the Wuxing, fire melted metal. And melt his fire did. Everywhere his flames touched, crabs turned into molten steel, dying near instantaneously.

His allies behind him watched in both awe and horror at the sheer destructive power contained within the dragonfire. In five seconds, he had cleared almost all the crabs, even the ones further down the chamber that were hidden by scores of their brethren.

Alistair began to clean up the rest of them, which was a much easier task now that he had enough room to flip them over and spear their underside. Georgios and Elektra, and even the two more academically leaning women assisted.

“Your fires,” Georgios said. “That’s… impressive. I’ve not seen such a powerful attack from an Early Adept before. You are Early Adept, correct? Forgive me if I intrude. Your aura is unusually strong, yet it is not condensed enough to have reached the liquid stage.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Alistair replied. “I am an Early Adept. My ghost friend helps me out a lot.”

He hoped that got some suspicion off his back. From what he had gathered, even relatively educated people like Nenna Spindoller had called his ghost cultivation broken, though Dev'rox had claimed she meant something different.

None of them looked entirely satisfied, but he wasn’t going to give away all his secrets. Anna snorted. “I always liked ghosts, but my path was etched since birth.”

“What is your path?” Alistair asked as they trekked down the narrow passageway, only lit by a portable lantern that Georgios carried above his head.

“Nothing as glorious as yours. I follow the Dao of Preservation. It’s perfect for holding together decrepit artifacts even in hostile conditions, and I can keep wounds stable. Even if you had a Profound realm plague ravaging you, I could probably keep you alive longer than a normal healer.”

“Good to know.”

——

After their eventful start to the trial, over the next day, nothing happened. They just kept walking and walking.

The passageway, dark and damp with an unpleasant odor, a mix of wet dog and burning rubber, felt like it went on forever. As far as they were concerned, it did. It never changed in either its width or its appearance.

The only thing that did change was its direction. With his keen senses, he could feel slight deviations in the angle. They weren’t going in circles, but the path they were tracing also felt very random.

Along the way, he got to learn more about the members of the team. They had been together for over two years, with Elektra recruiting Georgios and Letredeas at the same time as they were a couple. Anna came a little bit later as Elektra had found her after she got kicked out of the Outer Clear Water Sect a couple of years ago.

If the woman had a grudge against his sect, she hadn’t shown it thus far. Despite his prodding, he couldn’t get them to reveal if Elektra's or Haley’s abilities were different. They seemed not to even understand the question itself, suggesting a meddling of their minds as the elders had done to them.

“Don’t worry about that,” Dev'rox said. “They’re Visionary, but they can only do that at this level since they all worked together. Even then, it’s likely no easy task to actively manipulate thousands of Adepts like that.”

Alistair slowly prodded Elektra/Haley’s memory, giving her hints of who she really was. He wasn’t sure how she had gotten to the Clear Water Sect, as she had given no indications of wanting to come before.

They paced themselves at a steady but fast jog, over fifty times faster than a marathon runner pre-initiation. Even so, they were starting to get discouraged; however, two days into their temple run, they came to a three-way split.

Their current passage widened into three separate tunnels. Each looked identical, shadowy, and mysterious. No obvious differences could be spotted, even applying the full brunt of [Reality Sense]. Consulting with his ghosts proved no better. As usual, Ashendar fell silent when not being used in combat.

“Finally, a chance of pace,” Georgios grunted, setting down his lantern and stretching his arms.

Letredeas stepped forward, her sharp elven features as unmistakable as her ridiculous height and slender frame. “Let me take a look.”

From a spatial storage ring, she withdrew thirteen preserved eyes from all manner of beasts. Some large and some small, Alistair was most intrigued by the compound eye of an enormous insect and a serpentine eye that made his bloodline slightly stir.

“The eye of a dragon-basilisk hybrid for detecting living dangers.” Letredeas motioned to the serpentine eye, her voice taking on a scholarly tone. “And then we have a stormcrow eye for seeing through illusions, and... ah, the deep cave fish eye for changes in temperature and humidity.”

She spent several minutes examining each passage, switching between the different eyes with practiced precision. At the end of her study, she shook her head in frustration.

“I hate to admit defeat, but they’re identical. Not to self-aggrandize, but I can’t imagine that there are that many Adepts with better perception than me, in this category. I’m sorry.’

“You’ve never let us down before,” Elektra said, which Alistair couldn’t help but find funny, as her identity was at least somewhat made up. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out.”

They stood there for thirty minutes, debating the merits of each tunnel. More accurately, they debated what to do at all, as no one could find a reason to favor any one over another.

This can’t be right, Alistair thought. Perhaps there’s some secret behind this, but we’re getting nowhere. I can’t imagine this is another test of our patience.

Plus, Elder Aylesfort instructed in his combat class, the most successful cultivators were those who could make quick decisions and stick with them. Analysis paralysis had killed as many promising talents as bold action.

“I’m just going to choose one, is that okay?” he said finally, drawing their attention. “My Karmic cultivation gives me good intuition for these things.”

Alistair likened his [Karmic Battery] to having one’s luckiest day of the year every day of the year. It wasn’t magic, but simply Fate bending itself around his will, at the expense of all his active Karmic Skills.

“Let’s go down the middle one,” he said, letting his ego out of the way and letting his gut decide fully.

Georgios hefted his warhammer and nodded approvingly. “Lead the way, ghost boy.”

And so he did. For three more days, they jogged through seemingly endless tunnels. The passage twisted and turned, sometimes climbing steeply upward, other times descending into deeper darkness.

They were attacked multiple times, though none proved to be as challenging as the metal crabs. Against a group of faceless humanoids, Anna used a crystal affinity and a Dao related to Time to freeze them in place so that Georgios could smash them with his hammer. His force affinity and Dao of Momentum made him a terror in close quarters.

Letredeas used her eyes to greater effect than with choosing the tunnels, detecting threats from even further away than Alistair himself.

Their greatest challenge was an unusual foe. Who would have thought he would ever fight a flower? Though to be honest, he had high expectations for the sheer weirdness of the multiverse and wanted to encounter more mind-bending concepts.

In a small chamber where the walls were covered in what appeared to be harmless flowering vines, they encountered a massive carnation, easily ten feet in diameter, with petals that shimmered like oil on water.

They were immediately lulled into a false sense of security. Like Red Harmonia, this carnation produced not a drop of aura. All except Alistair, who recognized how dangerous auraless creatures could be.

“It’s beautiful,” Anna murmured, stepping closer to examine the iridescent petals. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The way the colors shift and flow...”

“Stop!” Alistair ordered, but it was too late. A shimmering force had overtaken the entire room, and he knew the flavor. Pure nue.

The rose-colored carnation had spread a wave of nue thicker than anything he had ever seen before. There was an oppressive sense of unadulterated intellection, a will so powerful that no one could resist.

Unlike a human mind, a plant’s mind had no divisions. The carnation dominated them as a predator consuming its prey. However, a sinister note rang out—not born of some composite part, but of the interaction of the world of mental forms with the Physical Plane, borne of the flower’s univocal will.

In good fortune, this secondary command was for Alistair to help the carnation drop his new teammates into the carnation’s hidden mouth like a slave.

“Heroism” came into effect. Such an action qualified as subverting his heroic nature, and thankfully, his Badge nulled the entire mind control effect. He returned to his normal mental state, seeing his four comrades walking listlessly toward the carnation.

The flower was fast. The moment that it realized that he wasn’t under its spell, he had them attack.

Even though they had their mental faculties completely shut off, fighting off four Adepts was no easy task. None of them had as solid a foundation as him, but they severely outleveled him.

Alistair was forced to use his Skills, swapping with Dev'rox to confuse the flower as he punched them.

Wanting to take it easy on them turned out to be a terrible idea. Slight injuries wouldn’t keep them down. Georgios fell down from a thundering [Force Fist] to his breastplate, but shot right back up as the carnation used their abilities together. Wherever Letredeas’s eyes saw was instantly relayed to the other cultivators, making surprise attacks impossible.

So Alistair didn’t use surprises. He followed the Tune of the Fight, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of his opponents.

For Georgios, he used the metal armor to his advantage. Heavy and nigh-indestructable, Alistair used the common method of mages against knights—heating the platemail to the point of searing burns.

With a healthy dose of dragonfire, he almost killed the large man, only stopping at the last second to let him live.

Letredeas came next, swapping places with Dev'rox faster than she could react, firing ice senbon at her eyes. He hoped that they weren’t so fragile to be permanently damaged, and finished her off with a combo of [Force Fists] and [Frozen Claws] perfectly crafted to dismantle her qigong-style defenses.

For a non-fighter, her forms were masterful, emanating a powerful Buddhist life force that relied on the essences of vitality and ichor. Sadly for her, he saw exactly the weak points, delivering ice needles into her meridians with perfect precision and battering her with thousands of Spiritual Fighter’s Echoes.

Once it got down to two, he switched tactics. Instead of trying to stop Anna and Haley outright, he used Dev'rox to send them as far away from the battlefield as possible to deal with the carnation.

Alistair could only see one path forward.

The flower’s nue was simply too potent, forming a mirage-like barrier that looked like heat haze of the Sahara Desert. As nue severed the Dao, and Dao transcended Mana, Mana was the antidote to Mana.

Ashendar stirred, sensing his intentions. “Their ashes will serve as our bridge.”

All of the red dragon’s remaining Mana gathered on his fingertip. Aside from his finishing Skill, which he didn’t want to release yet, it was his highest Mana cost.

The dragonflames compressed into a sphere no larger than a marble, reality itself seeming to bend around the concentrated heat. The air shimmered and warped as Alistair drew upon every last drop of Ashendar’s power, the ghost dragon baring his fangs in glee.

What emerged wasn’t the controlled dragonfire he’d used against the crabs, but something far more primal.

The lance of fire that burst from the sphere was fire qua fire in its most distilled form. Nothing could compare to a dragon. The plant’s psychic defenses held out for three seconds, a testament to its impressive will.

Then the carnation simply ceased to exist.

The wave of fire washed over everything. Alistair dashed away in the opposite direction to avoid his own flames, dragging along Georgios and Letredeas’s unconscious bodies.

The big man groaned, his armor still radiating heat but no longer searing his flesh. Letredeas blinked rapidly, her vision clearing as the ice needles in her meridians began to dissolve.

After the flames subsided, he looked back at the room.

Where the massive flower had stood, only a blackened crater remained in the stone floor. Elektra and Anna returned from their Dev'rox-initiated vacation, looking very confused.

“W-what?” Anna said, looking at her hands like she was a stranger in her own body. “What just happened?”

“A sentient plant just took over your mind, and I burnt it to a crisp.”

“Oh.”

The room still felt sweltering hot from the lingering effects of the flames. However, the strange part was that there wasn’t an exit. For every passageway and chamber they had traversed, there had always been a next one.

“Will your eyes be okay?” Alistair asked Letredeas.

“They’re sturdy,” she said. “They’re soulbound to me. As long as they aren’t completely obliterated with the Dao, they’ll heal. Speaking of my eyes…”

The sensory cultivator directed one of her most human eyes to where the plant had once stood. “There’s something under there.”

A shirtless Georgios, his corded muscles rippling as he ditched his armor temporarily because of the heat, went over to the scorched spot. He grabbed onto the tile, his muscles straining under its immense weight.

“A little help?”

Alistair obliged, taking up the opposite side to carry the weight. Elektra summoned a clay hand to assist, but suddenly stopped in place before she started lifting.

“Alistair?” she asked.

While he was thankful that his prodding had finally led to something (he guessed that seeing her giant clay hand had probably prompted a memory), he was a little indisposed at the moment.

With Elektra of no help, he and Georgios had to dig deep to lift the stone slab. Despite being only around a foot thick and twenty feet on each side, it felt as heavy as a castle. Clearly, it was a sturdy kind of rock he had never heard of.

Alistair thought he might have strained a few muscles, but with Georgios on the other side, they managed to heave the slab two feet from its initial position, revealing a narrow chute underneath.

Seemingly ignoring their employer’s plight, Letredeas looked down at the uncovered mystery. “Well, I suppose we know why the plant was there. I can’t imagine what could be down there. My intuition says something good.”

He gave Elektra, no Haley, a look. She seemed to understand, internalizing the strange imparted memories of Elektra into her normal personality.

Letredeas sent her eyes forth to make sure the way was safe. After a few minutes, the eyes returned and she grinned madly. “You’ll want to see this for yourselves.”

The chute led down into a circular chamber that made Alistair’s breath catch.

Shelves carved directly into the stone walls held artifacts that gleamed with power—weapons, armor, bottles filled with swirling liquids, and build manuals bound in exotic materials. The air itself hummed with concentrated Mana, golden artifacts floating in the air.

They soon realized they weren’t the first to arrive.

A group of seven scarlet-haired men and women, so close in appearance it was clear they were siblings, were already ransacking the treasure trove.

The moment Alistair and his team entered, the room became bright with fire.