When we returned to the Mertalian’s office, he sat down at his desk before speaking to us again.
“Now, I assume that you all are ready to work?” He asked us. We all nodded, no one wanting to say anything out of turn.
“Good. The guards will escort you all to some empty houses you can stay in while you’re working here. I expect you all to be on your best behavior.” He said before going back to the paperwork on his desk.
The guards at the back of the room opened the door and led us back outside where they handed us off to a small group of guards. The new guards, a pair of cerulean Mertalians, one purple mertalian, and one bright blue Mertalian, took our group and headed off towards the south end of the city.
As we passed by the rows of houses and buildings we could see that the humans in the city had created some kind of small community centered around living within the dome. There were stalls selling various low grade spiritual items found in the area, some sold grilled or fried fish, while others offered services you’d find within a normal city above the water.
We were led to a group of squat buildings in the south western quadrant of the domed city and the Mertalians took the liberty of dividing us into pairs to live in the houses together. Zi Fu was paired with the captain, and luckily as two of the only women in the group, Jia and I were paired together.
Pair by pair the gathered humans went in to inspect their new houses and place down any items they had brought with them from the surface. When it came to Jia and I’s house, we walked in and looked around. It was a small house with a tiny living area in the middle, a kitchen area off to one side and two doors leading to what I assumed were bedrooms. On one side of the room was a small bookcase with many books laid upon it.
I didn’t bring anything down underwater that I couldn’t hold in my ring so Jia and I didn’t take long in the house. I turned around to go back through the door and join the group again when I was frozen in my tracks.
Engraved into the door by shoddy craftsmanship was a familiar double helix symbol.
Were the Mertalians part of the church of the one true dao? That didn’t make sense, we should have heard them talk about the church already. I needed to know.
“What are you acting so flabbergasted about, girl? You should make your escape from these stupid fish already!” The demon who had been blissfully quiet up until now decided to pipe up then. Before I could answer the demon, Jia walked up next to me and inspected the symbol herself.
“Do you think the Mertalians are part of the church?” Jia asked me. I shook my head.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. We should check though.” I told her.
“How are you going to check?” She asked. I smiled at her.
“I’m going to ask them!” I told her. She gave me an exasperated look but didn’t refute my idea. We walked out of the house swinging the door open as wide as possible as I motioned to the symbol.
“Hello mister Mertalian, what does this symbol mean?” I asked the light blue Mertalian who looked the nicest of the bunch. A couple of the humans in the group looked like they recognized the symbol and were about to speak up when the Mertalian beat them to it.
“We have no interest in your human symbols. We found this city in ruins decades ago. Now if you’ve finished in your house, we must go to the spirit coral fields now.” He told us before walking away.
The group followed him and Jia and I shared a knowing look with Zi Fu.
We followed the guards to the southern end of the city, and because we were still under the effects of the esterwal root we all swam out from the dome and into the depths of the spirit coral forest.
Schools of fish slalomed throughout the trees and small boulders. Rocks pock marked with holes housed some of the more solitary denizens of the deep. The illumination from the lights on the tips of the spirit coral branches cast the world in an eternal glow that kept the encroaching darkness at bay.
The guards stopped at a point in the forest seemingly at random and we all looked around at the coral around us. One of the Mertalians, the cerulean one, pointed at the coral.
“This is spirit coral. It has a similar effect to the pills your kind love to ingest, though because this coral is a natural treasure it comes without the side effects of those pills.” He told us. A murmur susurrated throughout the group of humans at his words. A spirit pill that wouldn’t disturb one’s cultivation foundation was unheard of, but the Mertalians claimed this spirit coral was just one such treasure.
“You all will have to turn in a specified amount of spirit coral a day as your quota. We do not care how you get the quota, only that you must reach this quota. I will now demonstrate how to properly harvest the spirit coral. I will not be showing this a second time so pay attention.” The Mertalian continued.
He walked up to the base of the coral and placed his hand on it. I felt the movement of qi change in the area and moved my qi to my eyes to more closely examine what he was doing. He was using his qi to coax the energies within the coral up to the glowing bulb at the tips of one of the branches. When enough of the qi converged at the tip, the bulb of the spirit coal fell to the ground. It still emitted the same ethereal glow, even when it was picked up by the Mertalian.
Without another word, the Mertalian popped the bulb of the spirit coral into his mouth and swallowed it whole. I couldn’t see what happened within his body, and I had never taken any spirit pills that improved cultivation before so I couldn’t guess what effects the spirit coral would have.
After swallowing the coral, the Mertalian looked over us all and spoke again.
“You are not allowed to eat any of the spirit coral. We have patrols keeping watch over all of you in the forest, and should anyone be caught stealing what is rightfully the property of us Mertalians, they will be punished accordingly. The quota of spirit coral per day is seventy five pieces for any foundation establishment realm cultivators, one hundred and fifty for any core formation cultivators, and three hundred for any nascent soul realm cultivators.” He said. Seventy-five didn’t seem so bad, but Jia having to collect double what I did made me worry.
I raised my hand and the cerulean mertalian rolled his eyes and pointed to me.
“You, human girl, speak.” He said.
“What happens if we don’t reach the quota?” I asked.
“What a stupid question.” The demon in the ring answered within my head.
“If anyone does not reach their quota, they will be punished. The first offense is twenty lashes, the second is fifty lashes. The third failure to meet the quota would result in death. We have no use for wastrels who cannot even do something as simple as harvest spirit coral.” He responded, not an ounce of sympathy or mirth on his face.
I looked over to the spirit coral trees and thought about how many spirit corals they must be getting every day.
“How long does it take a spirit coral tree to grow back after being harvested?” I asked. The Mertalian nodded at me.
“They grow back after a few days, that is primarily why we have not run out of them after harvesting them for many many years.” He said.
He looked around for any more questions, but when no one raised their hand or indicated they wished to ask something he nodded again and began swimming back to the domed city. We all walked through the boundary between the domed city and the water and gathered into a group once inside.
“As a courtesy, you all will not have to provide any spirit coral for the day, it is late enough that some of you would not make it in time. Rest for the remainder of the day and work hard starting tomorrow!” He said. A bit of excitement in his voice. I wondered why he seemed excited but judging by the way he quickly ran off after giving his impromptu speech, it must have been that he no longer had to babysit us anymore.
Our group of humans separated into their natural cliques, though the Captain joined Zi Fu, Jia, and I for some reason.
“Do ye have a plan to get out of here yet lad?” The Captain asked Zi Fu in a hushed tone. Zi Fu shook his head.
“I see no way that we could make it through the tunnel without them pursuing us. They have many more nascent soul realm cultivators than we can handle without additional help. I’m afraid we’re stuck here for the time being.” Zi Fu said as he pulled a gourd out from within his robe and took a draught of it.
We decided there was no use talking about it any longer if no one had a plan and decided to bide our time. Jia and I returned to our home and I spent the rest of the day reading some of the more interesting books from the bookshelf within the home. Jia for her part was cultivating, probably doing her best to advance to the nascent soul realm, though we both knew it was going to take her much longer to cultivate to that level than we had time to be stuck down here. The water qi was abundant and immensely pure down here, but without wind qi she would be unable to grow the size of her core.
I picked up a book without a name on its spine and blew off a tremendous amount of dust that had accumulated on it over the years. It seems the Mertalians didn’t care much about the cleanliness of these homes.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I leafed through the book and was surprised to find it was a journal. I picked a random page within the book and started reading.
It’s been fifty six days since I was relocated to the undersea branch of the church. I’m not entirely sure what our purpose down here is, but from what I’ve gathered from the others living here we’re protecting something. If I were to guess, I’d say we’re guarding the spirit coral that can be found here in abundance. I’m meeting Cerithel to go harvest spirit coral soon. It is immensely helpful to my cultivation even after reaching the nascent soul realm. I can only hope that my time here underwater will be helpful and increase my standing in the church.
It made sense that the church would build a base down here to harvest the spirit coral. I still wonder how the church built this entire base underwater. I leafed forward in the journal skimming the passages until I found another that mentioned what the church was guarding.
It’s been one hundred and twenty days since I was relocated to this undersea base. The attacks and patrols from the sea beasts have become more frequent as of late. It’s becoming more and more dangerous to harvest the spirit coral from within the darkness. Cerithel is most likely dead. She disappeared within the dark waters and never returned. I can only hope she’s hiding and biding her time before she can return to us. The elders have assured us that as long as we continue harvesting the spirit coral, we will be rewarded handsomely.
I’ve come to realize something during my stay at this base. We routinely send out spirit coral to the surface. I’ve heard from those that have transported it that we trade them with other factions besides the church. I can’t fathom why the higher ups would give away something precious like the spirit coral instead of using it to bolster our forces. I can only surmise that the spirit coral isn’t that important to the church. Should this be the case, why would we need such a well guarded and fortified base down here at the bottom of the ocean? The sea beasts we have encountered are not strong enough to be dangerous to the domain creation realm elders. I can only assume that this base was created to guard something other than the spirit coral. What that is, I do not know. I will try to find out more from the elders.
I read through the passage, completely engrossed by the words of the mysterious church member. I thought the spirit coral was important enough to be guarded, but devoting multiple domain creation realm elders to guarding a forest of spirit coral hidden below the sea seemed like overkill. I skimmed through the journal but didn’t have to look for long before finding another passage mentioning what was being protected. The page I turned to was written much more hastily and blood was covering parts of the page.
Day one hundred and thirty two. I snuck into one of the elder’s halls today to dig for information about why this base exists and what we’re protecting. I was caught by an elder just as I found an important piece of information. The only thing that was mentioned on the piece of paper I found was the location and structure of a hidden prison in the south west of the coral forest and mention of a prisoner being kept there. That was all I was able to glean before the elder caught me. I was disguised and he held back, otherwise I’m afraid I would be dead. I barely made it back to my house in one piece. Tomorrow I will be heading out to find this secret prison to see for myself what, or who, we’re here guarding.
I was curious about the location of the prison and what the journal writer found there so I quickly flipped to the next page, but was shocked to find that no more pages were filled out in the journal. Did he die on his way to the prison? Or did something else happen? I wanted to read more so I flipped back to the penultimate page and started reading.
Day one hundred and thirty one. The elders have told us that a few powerful sea beasts are currently coming toward our base. We don’t know when they might attack, but one thing is for sure, we will not be able to survive their onslaught. In order to preserve as many lives as possible, the elders have decided to abandon the base within the next few days. If I want to determine what we’re truly protecting here on this base, I’ll need more information. Information only the elders have. I’ve been coming up with a plan to get that information. I’ll have to enact it soon though.
I see. The base must have been abandoned before the sea beasts attacked. I wonder how the Mertalians protected against the powerful sea beasts that could even threaten the church’s elders. Then again, I didn’t know how long ago this was, nor if those powerful sea beasts even exist anymore, though I had an inkling that they did based on what I saw in the darkness today.
By the time I finished my reading, it was late enough that I was feeling tired despite the eternal pseudo daylight the entire domed city was subject to. I saw Jia was no longer in the common area. She must have gone to bed so I followed her lead and fell asleep myself. Tomorrow would be the first day of spirit coral harvesting.
I woke up and stretched, confused as to what I was looking at around me. Then I remembered where I was. I looked around at the shabby room. It was adorned with a simple bed with thin, old sheets. A small table lay next to the bed and the rest of the small room was bare. I walked out to the common living area to find Jia already waiting, laying down on the ancient couch left in the space.
When she noticed me come out of my room she stood up and together we walked to the southern edge of the city. We found Zi Fu and the Captain waiting for us along with the rest of the crew of The Dread Moon’s Revenge.
“Good morning everyone, you all ready for spirit coral harvesting!?” I asked the gathered group, forcing a little cheer in my voice to stave off the bad thoughts about our current situation. The group looked at me like I had grown a second head, but they seemed mostly used to my chipper personality so they just ignored me instead. I saw they were all holding onto some kind of cloth sacks and I picked one up too when the Captain motioned to the pile of extra bags on the floor next to the exit into the water.
“Now that the two lasses are here, let’s work together to make sure we harvest enough of the spirit coral for everyone.” The Captain ordered. His crew affirmed the plan and as a group we all ventured out into the coral forest. As we swam up to the first coral trees, we noticed they were all bare. We had to swim for a minute before we found any trees with spirit coral still on them.
In front of each of these trees stood a solitary cultivator working diligently to harvest the spirit coral. They looked at us warily as we approached, but relaxed when we moved past them deeper into the forest. It was all surprisingly orderly and it wasn’t until I saw the first patrol of Mertalians that I understood why. The Mertalians made near constant patrols around the areas where the cultivators were located. This was most likely to prevent anyone from stealing any of the spirit coral that should be turned over to the Mertalians.
We swam deeper into the coral forest until we found a suitable group of coral trees that were not occupied by another cultivator. We each took one tree for ourselves and started harvesting the coral.
I landed on the floor of the ocean, the sand shifting underneath my feet as I approached the coral. I put my hand on the tree and tried to repeat what the Mertalian had shown us. I felt for the energies within the coral tree and though they were there, I found it difficult to grasp them with my own qi. I injected more qi into the tree and tried to wrestle with the energies inside the coral but to no avail. After ten minutes of trying to wrangle the energy within the tree I had to take a step back and frowned at the tree in consternation.
“What am I doing wrong?” I asked to noone in particular. One voice resounded out in my head at the same time text appeared in my vision. My head was spinning from the intermixing information.
“One at a time! Demon you first, then Text.” After a pause, the demon’s familiar voice resounded through my head.
“You’re stupid.” He said.
“Thank you, that was very helpful.” I responded back. I could feel a sense of smugness emanating from the ring on my finger and I rolled my eyes. Then the same text appeared in my vision again.
“The method observed from the Mertalian was much more gentle than your method. I suggest being gentler when trying to handle the energy within the coral.” Text said.
“That’s much more helpful! I told Text, making sure to praise the semi-sentient inheritance spirit or whatever Text was.
I looked out to the others around me and it seemed they were all struggling similarly to how I was, though it appeared that Jia, the Captain, and Zi Fu weren’t having any issues as a trio of buds fell down to the sea floor, one for each of them.
I put my hand back on the coral tree and closed my eyes again. I sent my qi within the coral and this time, instead of trying to force the energy to obey my qi and move where I wanted it to I moved my qi toward the direction of the nearest bud and tried to bring the energy within the coral along with my own qi, guiding the energy to where I wanted it to go. It was slow, but within ten minutes I was able to guide enough energy to the coral bud and it fell to the sea floor. I jumped up and down in triumph before looking around to see the sailors and my friends looking at me with a confused look on their faces. I blushed and went back to moving the energy within the coral tree.
Each coral tree had approximately twenty five buds on them. Some trees had a little more, some had a little less, but the average was twenty five. I improved my speed as I practiced moving the energies within the coral and by the time the seventy-fifth bud had dropped by my feet it only took me a minute to make one of the buds drop. All in all it took me around four hours to obtain all of the spirit coral I needed for my daily quota. I swam over to Jia whose tree was right next to mine and found that she had collected one hundred and twenty some coral already. She was clearly much more proficient at harvesting the coral than I was. I was proud of her, she was doing a great job and she’d easily hit the quota soon. Most of the sailors had already finished collecting their coral or were close to finishing.
None of them looked like they were ready to head back to the city so once another half hour to an hour passed and Jia finished collecting her coral we swam over to the captain and Zi Fu to find them both over halfway done collecting their coral. Their speed was much faster than either Jia or I’s but it would still take them both more time before they would be ready to head back. They told us we didn’t need to wait for them to finish and that we could go back and hand in our quota for the day if we wanted to.
I looked over to Jia and she shrugged. I shrugged back and together we swam back toward the city. We passed by the remaining cultivators harvesting the spirit coral and I waved to a few as we passed. As I expected no one waved back but it didn’t hurt to be nice. Similar to the cultivators, none of the Mertalians we passed gave us a second glance as we passed them and entered a part of the forest that had already been harvested. We traveled for a few minutes before we were forced to stop swimming as a group of cultivators appeared from between some trees ahead of us. Altogether there were five of them.
“Hey girls, my friend here got injured yesterday and because of that he’s become unable to swim out far to harvest the spirit coral, do you think you could spare any coral for him so he doesn’t get punished? He’s already missed quota twice in the past.” The center man asked us as they approached. I felt bad for the guy, if he didn’t make quota then he would be killed! I could go harvest some more coral after all.
I was about to speak up when Jia beat me to it, she put her arm up in front of my face as though anticipating that I was going to speak.
“He doesn’t look all that injured, and if you’re such great friends then why don’t you all harvest some extra coral for him?” Jia shot back to the group.
“Well we would, but we got out here too late, and by the time we collect our own coral today it’ll be approaching the end of the harvesting time. We can only rely on the good hearted nature of cultivators such as you two ladies in this trying time.” The central man said.
Jia didn’t look convinced and said as much.
“I don’t believe you. It isn’t that late into the day, if all of you are foundation establishment realm cultivators you should easily be able to make up for one companion between the other four of you. Speak. What do you want from us?” Jia said.
The man who had spoken’s face morphed from one of pleading to one of anger as he spat on the ground.
“I thought they’re going to be some soft girls since they look so pretty, but I guess there’s nothing else to be done. Give up your spirit coral and we’ll let you live.” He said and as a group they all unleashed their auras. The four men on the periphery were all foundation establishment realm cultivators, but the man in the middle was a core formation realm cultivator.
Jia and I both unleashed our auras as well and prepared for a fight.