One thing they don’t tell you about the whole multiple-stomachs thing? Time.

Bestial cultivation is a hassle, no matter what orthodox cultivators might say about its benefits, the quickened growth and potential of it. There’s a reason it’s not often the focus of one’s pursuit of power, even in the families and bloodlines that focus on breeding. It takes resources.

In all the world, with so many variations and unique interpretations of transcendence of mortality and authority over reality, Orthodox cultivation rules for one reason above all others. It is not the most unique, the strongest, the fastest, the most dynamic. It is, however, easy. Drink in Qi, swirl it around, some meditation and inner peace, ta da, you can break rocks on your forehead. Its versatility is top tier, of course, with Qi circulated so freely able to be used in almost any way its user can imagine, but as a cultivation style, it’s not the best at anything save that anyone can learn it. The enlightenment of the journey is no longer personal, and instead can be refined into a thing that is bland and universal and in some ways more powerful for it.

Bestial cultivation, on the other hand, takes resources.

And well-developed jaw muscles.

As Taurus chews the same pound or so of spirit grass for the fourth time, he can’t help but sigh.

The more you eat, and the higher its quality, the more your body’s natural powers develop, mutate, spiral out under loosely-guided control. Eat the right thing, and one’s body can even absorb its properties. For carnivorous-style bestial cultivators, this manifests most often as hunting powerful beasts to eat, or consuming vanquished enemies. For herbivores, as Taurus has chosen to be, it’s a bit simpler; eat plants. Better plants work better. The vast and immediate gains of a carnivorous-style cultivator are offset by the stress and dietary needs of it, while the slow and far more gradual growth of herbivorous-style cultivation is offset by a much higher efficiency in the digestion of Qi and the properties of one’s food.

Taurus, of course, was born with a bovine physique, but he didn’t always have four stomachs. That was a choice. Heightens the efficiency much further, and didn’t take much to activate his body into growing them. It is, however, a choice that requires a lot of chewing.

Meditative, but annoying. More habit-forming than anything. He had to stay awake a week once to break the habit of grinding his teeth.

He swallows just as the elevator reaches its destination.

He steps off the platform, its edges glowing slightly with power and subverted heat, and takes a moment to look out over the city.

It is a city. They call it other things. A superstructure is a popular name, though only amidst the higher-ups. A facility, or institution, are both neck and neck for second place. But it’s a city. This many people, this many buildings, calling it a campus or a superstructure or a research institute isn’t wrong, but above either, it is a city. Packed full of the mad and the geniuses, crammed beside each other by the thousands, fed and allowed to rest only as much as they need to maintain efficiency, but a city nonetheless.

It is haunting to look at, because despite all that it is and all it spreads into the world, it is beautiful.

Central sits on the central pillar of the First Ring. It is technically on the second due to not being atop the plateau, but it is built into the side of it, a continent-sized supermountain with a fungal divinity spawning from one side of it. Its buildings are white, pristine, dug into the side of the cliffs or expanded beyond it on levitating platforms and intelligent architecture, and its design is something between brutalist and biological. For every aspect of concrete and harsh angles, there are sections of surprisingly organic contours, buildings grown from out of other buildings, roots extending between places and remade into avenues.

And, of course, there is the lightning.

It’s not obvious if you don’t know it’s there. A product of masterful control and even greater design, it blends into the city like a second set of veins, like arcing rivers and waterfalls and pillars. But from the highest peak of Central, from within a dome that holds something that looks like a star turned to dusk, a star made into an a bloody eye, there is lightning. Branches of it extend into the city in shades of white and gold like architecture with impossible right angles, like veins, like… well, sometimes like branches. Some of the strands of heat and light and electricity are so vast and so static that they work as bridges and supports, growing more buildings ever higher.

It is a tower-city, a construct of impossible power, and there are hundreds of thousands of people that live in it, like ants scurrying through a hive, like neurons in a mind that sprawls and grows and sculpts itself. It is a marvel, invented and sustained by the hands of some of the Empire’s grandest powers. It is among the greatest achievements of the modern age.

It is a horror.

Taurus turns from the window and keeps walking.

The hallway he walks down is stark, as so much of Central is, utilitarian to the extreme. Brutalism dominates this building, highlighting everything in cubic structuring and right angles, and in every way it speaks of a sort of mindless accuracy, even as it possesses its own form of beauty and order.

Taurus takes a right turn, away from the glass window that spans the hallway, and walks a full three minutes exactly.

At the precise second of the third minute beginning, he turns left, into a stone wall.

For that single second, an angle is there, and as he turns, he turns into a new direction, and moves sideways to what is, into what could be.

He feels the weight of a Domain immediately. It took him years to control it properly, to bind its effects into language and formula and tie them to reality from where he found it. The soul empowering it is vast, its Qi thick in the air around him, and he feels more than one Dao’s effects lingering in the space’s construction.

The impossible weight of power and madness and wisdom unfold from an angle just left of existence, and he finds himself in a room with a chair.

It is not a traditional seat. Its seemingly grown from the ground, perfectly smooth concrete rising into a chair that allow one to lean back in rest if one wishes. It’s almost egg-shaped, with half removed and the seat kept, with grey leather covering the front of it seamlessly.

It rests in a small circle, set maybe three inches beneath the rest of the floor. The walls, ceiling, limits of space; all are lost in shadow, save for a single corner with something curled up in it.

Taurus does not look behind himself. He knows the hallway is no longer there. He takes a seat in the chair, and waits.

The shape in the corner moves, slowly and slightly.

It rises, into a crouch, still collapsed against the far corner, the only wall or structure in this place besides the chair and the floor.

The man is not well.

The first sign of it is the bleeding. From his eyes, his nose, his ears, he leaks a viscous black tar in place of blood, every breath labored and wet. The second useful sign is his skin, long turned the pallor of death, the veins beneath it oozing black spiderwebs across his body.

But above all else, of course, is the sword, speared through his back and out through where his heart should be.

He smiles, faint and tired, and slumps back.

“Fancy seeing you here, boss,” he says. He breathes with a slight wheeze, but otherwise seems almost remarkably capable of speech, even as the blood on his shirt keeps coloring the wound in a large circle of black.

Taurus says nothing. He sits across from the living dead man and waits.

“Yeah, fuck you too,” the man says. “How long’s it been? Huh? How long, in here? Hah. Maybe if it was someone else, it wouldn’t hurt so much, but of course it’s you. What a joy it is to yet live, you fucking bovine bastard. What a privilege, to be in your little cage.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Taurus says nothing, and waits.

His face curls into a snarl, one that looks almost painted on with the trails of black tears running down his face and chin. “All this time, and you still won’t even talk to me. Just sit and look at me, asking your fucking questions. What’s it mean to you, keeping me here? Why won't you let me be? Fuck you. Die. Rot. Fall to ruin you fucking abomination.”

Taurus says nothing, and waits.

The tirade looks like it has exhausted the corpse-man. He crumples a bit, falling against the corner until his face is nearly on the ground, the sword handle through his back scraping against the bare concrete.

“Fuck you,” he whispers, the blood running down his face taking the place of tears. “Fuck you. Ask your questions.”

“What is the current location of the Gardener?” Taurus asks.

The corpse man makes a sound between a laugh and a sob. There’s a few moments of silence, and then a shuddering, harsh breath. He spits out a drop of black phlegm, the sword hissing slightly and blood leaking further out along its blade.

“Bastard. The Garden. Up on the first ring. Three stories above the root of the Tree, in her room. Wearing one of her nephews, I think, her mind is wandering. That’s all I know.”

“The First Fist. The Second Blade, in the East. The First Blade, in the West. Their most recent wounds.”

The dead man that breathes whimpers, once, and then bows his head. A few more seconds pass, another shudder, and he raises back up, looking at nothing.

“Seventeen broken bones, thirty two lacerations, loss of six feet of intestinal tract, minor blow to third Truth, partially bound Dao. A single cut on her left eye. The First Blade in the West has not been harmed in two hundred and thirty seven years, and remains without scratch or scar.”

Taurus nods, once. Makes a note of it in his mind, and locks it into a room there. He has other eyes on the Gardener, and can check to confirm the results on the Empire’s generals later, through other networks. It’s always good to have redundancy, and a good test of the ongoing accuracy of the man in the room hidden in the wall.

“The Division of Exploration and Discovery. What is the current furthest reach?”

The man shudders, but does not fail to answer.

“Seventeen thousand and sixteen miles into the fifth ring,” the man says, the effort costing him something. He moans, low, and drools some of his blood onto the floor. “Northbound. A few miles shy of your record, you fucking bastard thing. They’re not back yet.”

“Division of Research. Does Grandmaster Tarith plan to kill Errath or Grandmaster Han Shi within the next six weeks?”

“No. Damn you, no. I can’t- fuck. Please. Stop asking. I beg of you. Please.”

Taurus leans forward in his chair.

“Errath’s current knowledge of my bindings.”

The man whimpers, drools, scratches blindly at the concrete floor into well-worn furrows. He has no Qi left, none of his own anyways, but a corpse made undying can have quite a bit of durability to it, and his nails have had a long time to dig.

Eventually he sags, fully collapsed, splayed out like the corpse he would be without interference or the power sustaining him. He breathes, harsh and ragged, though he barely has need of it.

“Fuck you. Fuck you. He doesn’t know. He thinks your leash is still clipped to your collar. He thinks the collar ironbound. He doesn’t know. Please. Let me die, you fuck.”

Taurus leans closer still, his frame towering even hunched forward as he is.

“What does Errath think of Raika the Unbroken.”

The man whimpers, briefly re-energized as if by agony, squirming along the floor. There is silence in the room for a good thirty seconds after.

“He doesn’t- doesn’t care. Yet. A curio. He’ll take her apart when you bring her to Central, like he did you. Wants to see the mechanism for the Flame, and track her Truth. Doesn’t know about her teeth. Doesn’t know about her second Truth. Doesn’t know about her Tribulation. Thinks she’s just a lucky biomorph. Unique but not special. He thinks- fuck! He thinks she’s going to burn out and die. He doesn’t know who she’s killed.”

Slowly, Taurus leans back.

The corpse-man sits on the floor, heaving for breath and crying.

It’s no guarantee. It’s not exactly a trustworthy source. But he has his own way of confirming things, and there’s a reason he saves the most painful questions for when the corpse-man is exhausted.

It’s so he can’t lie.

He goes to stand.

“You don’t know, do you?” the man asks. There is a smile there, even as the tracks of blood down his face and chin are dripping freshly now. “You didn’t guess it? Heh. Fucker.”

Taurus says nothing. Lets the silence sit. Then-

“What did I not guess?” he asks.

The man spasms, a million million possible permutations to the question flooding him. It’s the most painful way he could have asked the question, and Taurus watches, expressionless, as he writhes.

“FUCK!” the man eventually yells, collapsing back to stillness. “Fuck you. That- it hurts when you say that, you know-”

“You started it. Anything I miss here ruins everything. Don’t make me ask again.”

“He’s not dead. Zhoulong. Not properly. Dead like I am, he is. Little piece of him swirling around in her gut, whispering to her. Trying to change her, trying to get out. Barely any left, but he’s there.”

Taurus sits back, resting on the chair. The seat is good for extended rests in it, for when the questions go long into the night, and it’s one of the few Taurus has ever been able to invent that can comfortably hold his weight indefinitely. He sits there, and thinks for long enough that the man with the sword through his heart digs up what is left of his bravery.

“Take the sword out,” the man says. “Please. You’re so close. I can guess, and you’re so close. You don’t even need me anymore. Please. Let it end. Let me go.”

Taurus says nothing.

“What did I even do? Hurt you? It’s how the world works! You know it as well as I do! Suffering is like rice, it goes with every meal and everyone eats it. You think I didn’t know pain? You think I didn’t lose people? Your father, he-”

“Please. I’m sorry. It just- it hurts.”

Taurus gets up and kneels next to him. He raises the man’s face, one finger nearly the size of the crawling thing’s entire jaw, so that he is looking up at the horned face above him.

“I know,” Taurus says. “I understand. And we are very, very close. I mean it when I say that without you, none of this could come to pass.”

With his other hand, Taurus grabs the sword hilt, barely the size of a dagger compared to him, and sends a thread of Qi into it.

The sword drinks greedily, and the man it wears who believes he is still himself screams in a voice gone hoarse and bloody. For a moment, Taurus can feel the tethers. With their source and nexus kept here, outside reality, they are faint and hard to track, but for a moment as he feeds the blade it calls to its like. It took him ages to be able to enchant it properly, to create the formulae that tied the sword to its anchors in a web leading back to itself.

A shard of metal, molten and added to runic enhancements of the Oracular Pools and their many all-seeing minds.

A fragment of its hilt, pulled from it and planted in the shallowest roots of the Tree.

Twenty pieces of steel, forged from the same vein of ore as the blade’s origin, each in a different fort and port and city. Some are in Divisions of their own, while others reach out to the fourth ring and its citadels, but each is so subtle and so minute that Taurus, knowing they are there, with all his control, can barely sense them. Each has been molded into a part of infrastructure or architecture where one could never see it, but where souls of every stretch touch it as they pass.

And one blade, planted in the chest of a man who earned its edge, and carved to make him think he is still alive.

Or keeping him alive as a dead thing. It’s really quite hard to tell the difference, with how much of his Soul the sword drank.

The corpse collapses, moaning on the ground as fresh tar-blood leaks from its chest. Taurus... sighs. Long, and quiet, and tired.

“There’s no malice in this. You know that. You’re right. I might make it where I need to in just a few more years. You’ll last until then, I think.”

The dead man whimpers.

“But you’re dead. You’ve been dead a long time. And I’m willing to take on the sin of a dead man’s torment if it means I get to where we need to go. So no. The sword stays. You exist a little longer. We’ll be done soon.

“When we meet in the Hells, you can torment me all you like in return. But until then…

“Tell me everything you know.”

There is not enough left of the man to scream. He babbles, and moans, and speaks in incoherent strings of disconnected factoids, and as he cries and bleeds and begs and speaks, Taurus places a small, rune-covered stone on the chair. It feels the air move and drinks in every word.

And Taurus leaves the room.

He’ll check on the recording later, cross-reference with his other sources, but the dead man is usually reliable. It just pays to be careful, this close to the end.

He goes over his priorities. Confirming the information, checking in with his “research group”, meeting with Errath scheduled, a few spies and supporters to pay off… and then, something to do with Raika.

Something will have to be done before Errath gets his hands on her. He’ll need to speak to Kaena about the possession as well. So much to do, so little time.

He leaves the room the same way he came in, walking three minutes into the dark and turning left. It is like he never left the hallway, and like the screaming thing that has earned almost as much pain as he was never there at all.