Shen analyzed the chains' movements, found their rhythm, and flowed around them—or at least he hoped he was flowing.
In his Rupture guide, as he had taken to think of the pages that the Drow Maiden had given him, "Flow" was shown as a river coursing into new pathways and a water mass changing its shape to match different containers. Comparing that to his Path let him infer flow was about both fluidity and taking the path of least resistance. In such a perspective, the incoming chains sought to stop his flow, and he kept a continuous movement while avoiding them.
Shen slowed his speed to become just fast enough not to get caught. He didn't want to just dodge. Rupturing a Concept would require him to really reconnect with it.
The slowness wasn't just to reconnect with Flow, though. "Unidentified Gentle Breeze" showed leaves and hair being blown by a soft wind. Shen flowed as slowly as possible, ensuring most of his dodges were by a hair's breadth.
His nimble dance was dozens of times as fast as the sound, yet he felt like he was moving as slow as a turtle. It was also as soft as possible. Shen kept his focus on the feeling of the wind on his face as he moved and the air displacement he left in his wake.
Lastly, he tried to reconnect with "Boundlessness." It was shown as a few arrows pointing outwards from a circle and as a balloon blowing up.
He failed on that front.
The Drow Maiden had recommended he leave it for last, and he quickly agreed. If he understood the drawings correctly, he had to place himself in a mindset where he wanted to overcome barriers. He would need to actually feel constrained to Rupture that Concept, but since dodging was so easy, he felt anything but.
So he let go of "Boundlessness" for now and concentrated on "Flow" and "Unidentified Gentle Breeze."
The chains homed on him, actually assisting him further. They never stopped but kept moving smoothly. They had a Flow of their own.
In fact, each chain had a Flow, and they all together made another. It was like the water molecules in a river. The entirety of the group had a Flow, a purpose, a goal, a movement. That was only possible because every molecule moved together.
Shen himself was also like that.
He was a whole, yet also the union of many different parts.
Atoms, molecules, cells, organs, tissue.
Sentience, sapience, willpower, goals.
Human, Spear, Wind, Water, Lightning.
He was each separate part of himself moving individually, Flowing in its own way, while collectively Flowing through Reality as a single entity pursuing a unified Path.
Shen flowed gently. Split instants turned into dozens of seconds. He couldn't stay in the same spot for long because the chains would surround him. He was often forced to jump or even float away.
Eventually, he understood that just like "Boundlessness," "Gentle Breeze" also wasn't supposed to be used the way he was doing it.
Wind and Water were similar in going around obstacles, especially when they tended to the slow or soft side like his Concepts, but they had a significant difference.
Shen couldn't be sure which Laws his Concepts had come from, but right now, he found he could hear whispers if he paid attention. His Gentle Breeze seemed to come from a Law of Wind that existed to sweep things away, like in raging storms and hurricanes.
The Gentle-Breeze-like Concept obviously wasn't as powerful as a tornado, but it sought to push things nonetheless. That was evidenced in the drawings' leaves and hair being blown away. The Gentle Breeze only went around obstacles if it failed to move them.
Shen even guessed that no one would know whether the wind was gentle—and thus defined as a Gentle Breeze—if it didn't touch anything other than air. Knowing the wind was blowing somewhere without seeing its effects, be they visual or auditory, wouldn't let one know whether the wind was soft.
His Flow, on the other hand, came from a Law of Water that sought to just kind of... keep going? Keep existing? It was harder to identify what that whisper meant. Yet, that was enough to understand it was more self-contained.
Flow just wanted to keep on going unhindered. That was accomplished by always seeking the path of least resistance. Gravity pushed things down, so something would only flow upwards if there was no other choice. Whenever water found something solid to one side and mere air on the other, it moved towards the latter.
Shen's Flow had to push things on the way, but only out of necessity for its continued existence—not because it sought it like the Gentle Breeze did.
The best way Shen thought of exemplifying that to himself was by using modern power plants.
Gentle Breeze would "feel" proud if it ever moved a wind turbine.
Yet, just thinking of a hydroelectric power plant made part of Shen's Path seethe. Flow resented the way such admittedly marvels of engineering used it. Such power plants used water turbines to extract Flow's energy at the cost of slowing the Flow down. Flow considered the turbines no different from pesky leeches.
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That wasn't to say that Shen's understanding of his Concept's intents was all that Flow and Gentle Breeze sought.
Flow and Gentle Breeze came from multiple Laws from Water and Wind, respectively. However, Shen had heard only "whispers" of one Law from each element; the pushy and the continuous Laws. They were simply the ones he felt a greater connection to, even if he hadn't noticed it so clearly before now.
Recalling when he first connected with Gentle Breeze...
Gentle...
No.
Breeze...
No.
No!
Zephyr.
That Concept was called Zephyr.
Recalling when he first connected with Zephyr evidenced how he had initially taken advantage of its "pushiness." Back then, he used it to feel his enemies' position and movement. That required Zephyr to touch them. Contact was always there, soft as it was.
Obviously, Shen didn't always use it in ways that required contact with something that stood in its way. For instance, he used Zephyr to adjust minute movements in his body. However, more often than not, his Zephyr pushed things.
It constantly pushed air out of the way so he could move faster, whatever was below him so he could float, and incoming attacks sideways to dodge or weaken them.
Suddenly, Shen understood that his Zephyr came from the Law of Propelling of the Laws of Wind.
Shen felt his mind expand—for all of a single instant. Then, the process was blocked by a thick, unsurmountable barrier created by his own Path.
His Path's Coalesced Concepts prevented him from touching a Law, just like the Drow Maiden had said would happen. That's why the Rupture Pilgrimage was needed in the first place.
Shen had just Ruptured his Concept of Zephyr, causing it to separate itself from the rest. However, it was still intrinsically linked to everything in a way that all its advantages synergized while its flaws were covered by the other Concepts. That connection prevented his mind from touching on something grander.
Shen guessed either something would happen when all Concepts were Ruptured, or he would need a special technique to move forth on his Path.
That was frustrating, but only slightly. Sheen didn't really care about it. Rupturing Concepts was easy, anyway, and he had even almost touched a Law. He doubted feeling it again later—or maybe even another Wind Law—would be more complicated.
Once more, he had to give it to the drow; their Rupture Pilgrimage was magnificent.
Rupturing Zephyr made him realize how his movements, despite being improved by the drow techniques, had been rigid.
His entire Coalesced Path had been Zephyr but was also all other Concepts. Therefore, when he had tried to make his movements minutely precise, they ended no better than a mace trying to cut something. A mace with a small edge to one side, maybe, but a mace nonetheless.
Now that he knew better, he started overhauling his movements to take better advantage of Zephyr, using the proper tool at the right place. He immediately improved, just like Rupturing Sharpness had made his attacks sharper.
Shen also paid attention to the whispers of the wind around him to help him locate chains, even without his aura. He had used it like this a very long while ago. Why had he stopped doing it? He didn't know. Maybe he had just focused too much on his spear and body to care for anything else. Zephyr made him move better, and that had sufficed.
In a way, Rupturing a Concept felt like relearning it. It gave clarity to previously forgotten parts. It reopened him to those parts of Reality instead of focusing only on himself.
It was marvelous, and Shen was actually glad he had to do it before touching on a Law.
It felt right.
And another thing that felt right was the Flow all around and inside him.
Witnessing and being part of the potentially lethal yet smooth dodging dance gave him a clarity he had been missing for a long time. Shen realized the chains were Flowing as a mere side-effect of their goals and his Flow. They wanted to grab him, not keep moving, but they were forced to Flow because he kept dodging. Furthermore, the way he moved kept them fluid instead of making brisk, rigid moves.
They Flowed because his own Flow demanded it.
He suddenly realized the same had happened while fighting the gnolls in the Rift. What he had perceived as their very adaptable Flow was a consequence of his own Flow, of his control over the battlefield.
War, Shen comprehended, had a Flow of its own.
Flow and War Ruptured at once. Shen felt himself being stretched thin somehow, but the sensation quickly disappeared.
War wasn't just the battle, conquest, and hierarchy shown in the Drow Maiden's drawings. War was control of one's movements, prediction of the enemy's movements, information gathering, planning, waiting, and action. War was tactics and strategy. War was doing the right thing at the right time.
It had a flow, a rhythm of its own.
It had goals, victories, and defeats. It had an enemy.
And right now, Shen was at War.
He often idealized glorious victory in grand battles leading millions under his banner, but that had never been his War. He had pulled the Concept of War into his Path because he wanted to fight multiple enemies in the tutorial. He vividly recalled how he had assumed that he would sometimes use War to fight beside Alicia and maybe, just maybe, others in the future. But Shen's War had always been about him winning against superior numbers.
His War didn't need allies by his side. It didn't need subordinates. Shen would take them if he could, but he was War onto himself.
Just as he was Comb—
Zephyr whispered danger from above, and Shen dodged to his side. The danger followed. He pushed himself as fast as possible while dodging the qi chains and barely avoided the ridiculously fast-moving thing that struck the ground from above with fury and thunder.
The earth shook, and debris was shot at him from the newly created crater.
The damaged magic formation blinked out of existence.
Shen didn't stop moving. He looked back and saw the splintered remains of a watermelon-sized metal ball. That's what had almost struck him, and to be as fast as it had been, it had either come from far above or been thrown by a mighty enemy.
He felt danger again, this time from where he was moving to. He didn't even turn his head before taking a turn.
When he did look its way, however, he found a woman standing still.
She looked both young and middle-aged at the same time, and he recognized the trace of agelessness shared among long-lived cultivators. She wore a black robe inlaid with a silver tiger, was tall, her hair was fiery red, her eyes blue, and lightning constantly surrounded her. A silvery laurel crown rested on her head.
| Yinhu Lanfen (G) — 3000 / 3000 HP
Yinhu Lanfen didn't even look like she had exerted herself. She kept her hands behind her back and looked impassively at Shen.
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Liya was sitting in her empty meditation room in her smithy, focusing on the wooden spear shaft in her hand. Suddenly, she felt the strongest cultivator in the world make a brisk move. A closer look revealed the Chinese empress was moving against Feng Shen, whom she was actively ignoring.
Liya considered intervening but decided against it.
The woman had power comparable to an early C-rank. Even with the training Liya had given Shen, he was much more likely to die than survive. Yet, he had a chance, and if he did triumph, he would benefit significantly from it.
This was a very good match for him considering his future in the Alliance. Being outmatched was par for the course. It was now up to him to walk his Path on his own legs.
She ignored the battle and went back to her work.