Despite the many new additions to Tantra’s arsenal of injuries, the group decides that it would be best if they moved on. Well, they decided that after Tantra started to give them an extensive lesson on supply and demand and how it affects the price of healers, since they’re conveniently always in demand, and in this city? There’s no way in the nine hells that she’d even consider wasting so much coin. Besides, she’s in purification! They can bounce back from an injury that would be very fatal to a mortal.
Like getting cut in half.
That’s not even a joke, cultivators with deep enough roots can literally survive and heal from a complete bisection. Too bad that mortal wasn’t one of them. He was an older gentleman, with salt and pepper hair and a slight underbite. He had blue eyes, blue, lifeless eyes. She should have blocked, or just taken the hit, what would it matter to her? She’s recovered from punctured lungs not two months ago. She didn’t think about the people surrounding her, and so one of them died. No one seemed to care, they just kept watching.
How is that okay? A man dies a brutal death in front of your eyes and you just keep watching? How could you not care?
Her opponent didn’t even seem slightly perturbed from the murder he had committed. Like it was simply a matter of course that a mortal would become a casualty.
Maybe it was.
He was throwing around those odd sword techniques with reckless abandon after all. Maybe it’s a blessing that only one died. Is she being sentimental? Should she be fine with being an accomplice to such a pointless death?
“Don’t think about it,” Rakan had said, “it’s hard to stop the spiral once it starts.”
“How can I not think about it?” Tantra had asked, “a man died! For no reason!”
Rakan shrugged, “listen kid, the worlds a fucked up place, people die all the time. Most of them without purpose or reason. He’s just lucky his death was quick.”
She didn’t really like that answer, so she asked Kisrin.
He just stared at the stars and stayed silent for a long time.
“You know,” he said, “back in my village, there was this big duel between cultivators. A lot of heavy blows and blurry strikes. Absolutely mesmerizing, is that the word?” Tantra nods, “yeah, so, mesmerizing. When you ask any of the villagers about it they’d all talk about how amazing it was, how they couldn’t believe their eyes and thank the gods for the opportunity to witness such a fight. None of them talk about Yokrash. He was a carpenter, an okay one, I don’t know. Never really knew the man until the day his head burst from some kind of sound technique”
He went silent for a moment.
“I was probably seven? Yeah, that sounds right. When I think about that fight, I don’t remember the epic exchanges, I remember Yokrash, and how he died”
He sighs, “I guess my point is that it’s more common than you think. The fact you even feel guilty shows that you're doing more than most.”
“I never saw anything like that,” she had said, “and I’ve been a witness to plenty of duels.”
He shrugged, “maybe it’s different in the big cities, where the empire cares about rules and propriety. But out here on its edges? No, unless it gets to the point of a culling, the empire will do nothing.”
Tantra fiddled with a stick, creating lines in the dirt, “why’d you want to be a cultivator then? After seeing that I mean.”
Kisrin’s gaze returned to the stars, “I didn’t want to be like Yorkash, dying some nothing death in the crossfire of cultivators dueling or as a forgotten casualty to a beast tide.”
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“But aren’t you more likely to die as a cultivator than as a mortal?” Tantra had asked.
He laid back onto the ground and put his hands behind his head, “yeah, but at least then it’ll be as a consequence of my decision, rather than some unfortunate accident.”
Tantra chuckled slightly, “that’s surprisingly insightful for a child.”
He didn’t answer that, simply giving her a soft smile.
-
Unfortunately, for the sake of practicality, Tantra’s decided to wear her linen robes now that they’ve finished repairing, leaving her decently infected arm exposed for everyone to see. They actually pass someone every now and then, now that they’re on properly travelled roads and not a glorified merchant route, and even despite her status as a cultivator, they scrunch up their nose in disgust. One actually vomited, and proceeded to kowtow like his life depended on it, which from his perspective it probably did.
Honestly, it was pretty funny.
But she does smell horrendous with all that infected tissue. Almost as bad as Rakan with his still exposed guts. Speaking of guts, hers are in excruciating pain, and walking is not helping with that, at all. They had to stop a few times because of the pain, which gave them time to each further their own cultivation. She’s just been gathering Qi to fight off the infection and to feed her organs, like she has been for the past two months. That’s a long time to have an injury, all her other ones (not including the ones from the duel) have scarred over already, leaving purple patches where the bone spikes pierced through her body, about six in total. Four on her chest, and two on her shoulder. There’s also the claw marks on her chest and abdomen, which luckily weren’t deep enough to leave anything but white marks. They’re still scars, but they're not the ugly purples of the others.
She’ll take that.
“It’s not fair,” Yorin pouts, “you’ve got all the cool scars and all I’ve got is the one on my face and chest.”
“If we could trade, I would,” Tantra says blandly.
“Eh, I don’t know, the one on his face makes it look like he’s constantly smiling. It’s creepy.” Etra says
Tantra gives her a flat look, “compared to the quantity I’ve accumulated? It’s a worthy sacrifice.”
“Don’t worry honourable Tantra, I’ll be sure to dedicate myself to the dao of scars to heal you of your plight,” Kisrin says magnanimously.
“That doesn’t sound real,” Yorin says.
“It is,” Rakan interrupts, “so long as the concept exists then so does the dao.”
Yorin tilts his head, “is there a dao of walking then?”
Rakan shrugs, “and running, and jogging, and even skipping.”
“Who gets those kinds of daos? And how would that work with integration?” Tantra asks.
“No idea,” Rakan says, “the easier the subject, the harder it is to get the corresponding dao. It’s why many practitioners of the sword get their dao before those of the spear.”
“That feels like something you can’t really measure,” Kisrin says, “dao is dependant on the person after all, I could spend years with the spear and not receive one, while a true savant experiences enlightenment after just a month.”
“It’s just an assumption based on a rule kid, to explain why daos of simpler origins are still an arduous process to gain, nobodies actually measured anything,” Rakan says.
“Then it can’t really count as a study,” Tantra points out, “and therefore is moot.”
Rakan rolls his eyes, “find me a cultivator interested in research and I’ll show you a liar. The amount of people who actually give a shit about the minutiae of dao and Qi are composed completely of mortals. Maybe a few cultivators here and there, but no one would spend precious time on questions that don’t advance their cultivation.”
“Vozen’s a researcher,” Tantra points out.
“Yeah, he’s also exclusively researching the paths to find ways to expedite the journey, not the laws of reality.” Rakan says.
“What are you guys talking about?” Erick asks as he blinks awake on Yorins back.
“Just how cultivators are lazy bums,” Etra says.
Erick scrunches his brow, “that doesn’t sound right.”
“Yeah well you're a kid, what do you know?”
Everyone stops and turns to stare at Etra with flat expressions.
"Fuck off!"
-
A thing of purple skin and oozing smoke stares out of the window of his pagoda, taking a slight sip from tea that’s held up by mist. His eyes are a canvas of stars, rather than proper orbs with proper pupils. He lets out a sigh, and it is like the steam rising from a kettle.
“Another one,” He grumbles, “every decade it's the same game.”
“Master?” Says a disciple from behind him, one of his best actually.
“It’s nothing Sasa, I’d just prefer if the Godbeasts stayed asleep for once.”
“As do we all master. No one prays for a beast tide.”