Feng Chun is proud of both of her names.
One is obvious, self-evident, even. The Feng clan is one of the great noble houses of the Empire, and the very form of their name has been and will be a thousand different statements on power and majesty. In older times, it once meant “abundant”, or “wind”, but it has expanded as their power rose, as her ancestors proved themselves greater than all their would-be equals. The Feng name can be “conferred land and rank by the Emperor”, or “phoenix” (whatever that is), but always her family has held one meaning above all others.
Feng means ‘plants growing up to their utmost heights’. The shape of their Souls, the method of their power, has always been that of deep roots climbing towards the sun, above all others.
And her personal name, Chun, matches the hopes that have been placed on the sapling she once was. Chun means “spring”, and to name a child such is to say that the child will bring forth growth and good tidings.
She grew. She became strong. She proved her parents proud.
And then the wall.
A bottleneck. Not in her power, for what could possibly eclipse the growth of so mighty a forest as hers? No, she reached the Warrior realm at her expected age, meeting the standards of her noble line. In her soul, she knows for a fact that her family, with all its vastness and all its glory, will support her into the Emperor realm, a realm she knows she can achieve as one of the few allowed every millenia, and all she must do for the privilege is to continue to prove herself.
But then, the bottleneck.
Most cultivators that believe themselves talented wither away in the Nascent Soul realm, never completing their avatar, never becoming more than impressive mortals. She surpassed them without difficulty, and will continue to do so forever and ever.
But how does one prove themselves in a family that has everything? Already in service to an Empire above all?
One must go beyond. One must further the pursuits of power, lest they become stepping stones for it.
The Wall is for soldiers and fodder, and she is neither. Feng Chun has no desire to waste herself aiming for the position of General, for a position at one of the four great Bastions, the only place anywhere near worthy of her.
So when her mother told her of the Patriarch’s desire to expand their family’s power, the opportunity to gain greater power to compete against the other great families and earn the Emperor’s favor? Feng Chun leapt at the chance.
And then, the nightmare began.
The fourth ring is a wasteland. Full of primitive savages, opposed to the enlightenment and growth the Empire brings with it, content to wallow in a chaotic hellscape of factions and mutation. The cultures are stunted, and the only prey she is ever allowed to hunt are weaklings who can neither bring down the attention of the greater terrors of this place nor advance her cultivation.
So, she does as any good leader should. She delegates, and sequesters herself for secluded cultivation. Even with her family’s arrays, it might still take her decades to advance, but for all that the fourth ring is a waste of space, the richness of its Qi is… somewhat desirable.
And then the alarms went off. After she explicitly told her lessers, those under her command, to not interrupt on penalty of subordination, on penalty of a court martial and her personal hand around their throats.
And then she saw the thing. The monster. The beast of ruin, harbinger of the downfall of all her accomplishments. Her lessers put up a fight, that much is clear from two of the bodies splattered on the floor, but the other three that should have been here are nowhere to be seen. Cowards. She swears to herself that their families will have one of their generations wiped out. One at least.
But then she has to focus.
The fourth ring is a palace of waste, a ruin of potential. It is worth only what can be taken from it out of the hands of the undeserving and the vile.
But there are monsters here. Grown fat on the chaos and the violence.
The monster, its face made into a parody of a saint or statue, crowned with gelatinous eyes, smiles at her.
Feng Chun feels the abyssal rage that can only come from disrespect. That can only come from something not acknowledging what she is, what she is owed.
This thing has come to hold her back.
She sharpens her Killing Intent. Just as all Aspirants of the Cut learn, she too knows how to force her will unto the world, how to push reality to experience her desire for murder. It is the truest language, and as is only fitting of a language of power, it has only one word.
She manifests her Domain, a [Forest of Perfect Dark And Hunting Things]. She summons up her comprehension, the Dao of Control and Dao of the Hunt reshaping reality to her understanding of their patterns. She calls forth bottomless Qi, feeling her Soul writhing and matching her outrage, a long spear falling out of a spatial ring and beginning to glow with the light of growth and the shadow of death.
And then she launches herself at the thing.
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No time for training.
All out.
She goes from six minds to double that. From Overclocking one system to multiple. She starts burning up, her blood evaporating and needing to be vented, her organs suffering from the amount of energy she’s using, but she can heal it later, it doesn’t matter now. Dao, bladed weapons, and Guns all bloom from her, six limbs moving as one in sequence, armor rippling defensively.
And then she clashes against the Feng, and the whole fort shakes.
She can taste Dao in the air, and even as Killing Intent reshapes the world, and as the Feng pushes her back, every mote of dust, every bit of air and wind follows the motion. The world falls into order, following a pattern of Control, and everything orderly feeds itself into the ongoing manifestation.
What was once concrete flooring is now dense root structures as Raika lands, thrown to the ground. Trees are blooming out of trees, out of space itself, turning their surroundings into a pitch-black forest of evergreen trees.
And then the scent of Dao shifts, and a new pattern emerges.
The Feng rips off one of her arms as she dashes by.
Not Control. That’s busy enforcing the Domain, shaping the ground and air itself to fight against Raika. This is something else, a different pattern she’s using in conjunction with the forest-
A second limb is removed.
This time, Raika was ready. As the limb is torn off, the pockets of Qi in it spark against Blacksteel and detonate. It elicits a grunt out of the Feng, briefly illuminates some of the trees, but the Qi is dense enough, the Dao of Control refined enough, that the True Flame is quickly smothered.
Hmm.
Her enemy comes for the head, a direct ambush like a predator catching up to fleeing prey, and Raika doesn’t stop her.
Her head is torn off, thrown away in preparation for another explosion- instead, she regrows a body from it, landing amongst the trees as her old body detonates, the Radiant Metal and Blacksteel making it into a shrapnel bomb that stabs True Flame and Dao into a thousand trees. The world shudders as the pitch-dark forest is lit up by a violent sunrise, and she hears a grunt of exertion from somewhere above her.
No time to hesitate. No time to worry about the cost. Her enemy is here, and death eagerly awaits one of the two of them.
Get rid of everything holding her back. Don’t worry about efficiency. Don’t worry about appearances. Don’t think about what might be.
Raika forgets tomorrow. Forgets the price of her abilities, her stock of resources, the worries about failure. There is only power, and the pursuit of the corpse that dares to keep breathing before her.
A dozen minds, each one near-boiling with the speed of their processing, divides into clusters.
Raika multiplies.
One Body becomes three bodies, each taking a set of limbs and adding new ones. One of the clusters of brains expands quickly, removing the Blacksteel armor to use it as bullets instead, extending itself out along a sinuous spine. In seconds, something like a snake and a centipede is flying through the Domain, dodging predatory limbs and strange shadows, a hundred Guns and the Dao of Lightning thundering from its body and many legs.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The second body begins to glow, the edges of it turning into a translucent sheen as it takes all their mutual comprehension of the Dao of the Blade and spawns a dozen threshing arms, each limb and joint becoming edged. It sprints forward, True Flame flickering on its blades and tearing apart every tree it comes across, daring what Hunts them to try to take a bite.
The third body, what was once the original whole, keeps the majority of the brains, forcing them into further overdrive. As they begin to melt from the heat, she opens her Reactor, Supreme Body Art: Specialized Enhancement using CHANGE and raw Qi to transmute liquified grey matter into reinforced neurons and fresh tissue. She begins to glow, the Dao of Flame and CHANGE warping reality itself.
She is not bound to one flesh. She is not bound to one form.
I Am Me, I Am Mine.
Always, she is her.
Three bodies move in perfect synchronicity, burning the Domain around them. Her radiant form, almost entirely glowing with the Dao of Flame and the iridescent aura of CHANGE, sticks close to the Gun-snake, both Daos feeding into each other and destroying their surroundings. The dozen limbs of the Blade body rip and tear through reality, cutting into trees left and right, and between all three of them, the Domain quickly weakens, more and more of the darkness pushed away by destructive light.
The head of the Gun-snake body is torn off in another bite from the Feng, the Dao of the Hunt trying to turn them to prey. One of her Blade-limbs is torn off, dissolved until its edge is unmade by hungry roots and shadows.
For a moment, it’s almost like a stalemate. A battle of attrition.
Then the dark begins to move.
A Warrior Soul manifests into the Domain of the Feng.
Like in Cragend with Feng Gao, it manifests as part of the forest. Its shape is defined by the rustling of leaves and branches more than any definite form.
This Soul, however, is dark. The depths of it are darker than shadow, black as pitch and deeper than night.
[SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] appears as if it was always there, and Raika’s light begins to dim.
The strength of a Warrior realm master presses down on her.
She is Hunted. She is Controlled. There is [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS], and where it reaches, pieces of her die and are unmade. There is a Feng out in the dark, and every few seconds, her spear flashes with Qi and bloodlust and takes away another chunk.
It is an overwhelming display of force, like the entire world has become a place designed to kill her. The Warrior Soul is so far beyond the Nascent Souls she’s faced, not something halfway-birthed; it has shape, depth, and there is so much of it hidden from her sight. Each body, disconnected from each other, feels feedback constantly from their senses as every shadow becomes part of [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS], and the damage to the Domain begins to regenerate. Its wielder has a dizzying amount of Qi, and so far, Raika has failed to land a touch on her.
But one thing stands out.
Her Killing Intent is weak.
It’s weak.
Raika almost messes up her own Killing Intent with the joy of the revelation.
The privileged little bitch is weak. Her Killing Intent is like that of a petulant child, all arrogance and wounded pride. Its strength is born of the fact that she truly does believe that it is both right and inevitable for Raika to be killed by her here, and that is nothing.
Even a touch of that Intent is still enough to reshape the world, to add lethality to everything it touches, but Raika understands one thing clearly now- she can win. There is at least one way in which she’s better than this thing.
All three of her come to the same conclusion.
They need a distraction.
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The “core” of her, the spatially-altered lump of meat from which she hides her deeper organs and creates new material, is in her radiant body, riding atop the Gun-snake and aiding her in its protection. There’s a benefit to the division, but ultimately, only one body can hold that core part, so only one body has access to their resources. The Gun-snake is missing chunks, the cannons along its spine melting under constant fire and being torn away by the Warrior Soul they face. The Blade-wielder, by way of being the furthest out, has the least resources to work with, even as she carves apart the world and takes a chunk out of the Warrior Soul with every piece it takes of her.
Right now, all three of her bodies are struggling to hold their own, even going all out- but it’s not enough.
She doesn’t need to survive. She doesn’t need to win. She needs to kill this person dead.
Her Killing Intent is like a wave of razor-blades against the world, and all three of them realize at once what they need to do.
[SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] rips into the Gun-snake body, tearing that Raika in half and turning the pieces pulled away into food for the roots. The ringing of gunfire and electrically-charged bullets begins to fade, gradually getting overpowered even as Raika exudes Flame and radiance as far as she can. A gap of even the time it would take to bring out other tools might lead to both of them getting dragged beneath the roots or into the shadows; Raika wonders if she’s still remembering to breathe.
And then, it can wait no longer.
Raika looks out through the trees at the glowing sun that is her. At the serpentine biomech that she has become that tears through the world. At her own halo of arms and swords and spears, cutting through the world.
She doesn’t want to die.
But all three of her have made their choices. Now for the consequence.
Now for the killing of a Feng.
Supreme Body Art: Pressurized Indigo.
She doesn’t bother to contain it, doesn’t use pressurized valves to limit the bloodloss. Her seven remaining arms open in slits, and jets of dark purple blood, filled with shards of bone and Blacksteel, cut across the world.
Except that the brains chosen for her to split apart from her other selves weren’t random. They were the brains focused on comprehension, aided by brand new minds to support their control of the body.
Raika doesn’t use a Blade, but she does [CUT].
The Dao behind the Dao of the Blade rings out into the world as Raika burns her life force, every drop of awareness she has and a Killing Intent worth dying for into a single act of DIVISION.
There is a scream made out of shadows and the breaking of tree trunks. There is a shriek of all-too-human agony.
The Domain is torn open and made into so much wasted Qi.
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In an instant, the sharp edges of Killing Intent become something more. There is a moment where the color indigo glints out in the dark, where one-third of her finds itself in a moment of destructive oblivion. An unknowable and nearly nonexistent amount of time later, the world is DIVIDED by translucent lines, and the alien trees of the Feng’s Domain begin to fall apart.
As they do, the light of the moons slips through them, and Raika’s own light begins to drown out the shadows.
Raika is dead.
Long live Raika.
I Am Me, I Am Mine.
I Can Change.
We Are What We Eat.
No words are needed. What was once three, and is now two, becomes one again.
Supreme Body Art: Gigant.
[IGNITION].
[INFUSION].
Ignition is the name she gave the experiment that created her reactor. True Flame and Blacksteel, life and death, consumption and transformation all igniting into CHANGE.
Infusion is the name she gave her efforts to imbue that energy directly into a weapon.
In the collapse of a [Forest of Perfect Dark And Hunting Things], Raika rises up higher than she has ever stood.
Fifty feet of height. Three separate tails, each of them like serpentine-centipedes with Guns for legs, aiming in every direction at once. Six arms, each of them wielding a weapon: a spear of Lightning, a whip of mouths and Flame, a Blade of glowing DIVISION, a Gun of massive, spinning barrels blossoming like a bouquet, and two hands, clawed and glowing with the radiation of CHANGE.
She sees the Feng. The Feng sees her.
In a burst of Qi and the adrenal stink of fear, the Domain rises back up. The Warrior Soul within it tries to strike at her, strong enough to pull her apart if it gets close- and with tendrils of Gunbarrels, Flame and CHANGE, it cannot approach.
She is not part of the forest, and there is no darkness in these woods. There is only the radiation of transformation.
Her face is not covered by statuesque hands this time. Her crown of eyes sits between horns of Radiant Metal, flowing down into a face both beautiful and deeply inhuman. The angles are all wrong, and there are four jaws, and it is half-mask and half monster and half saint empty sockets full of crawling talons.
She feels the Feng gathering her strength. It takes energy to hold back the forest and the thing in it, and she can feel the Reactor in her Heart beginning to dim, the Qi-batteries in her veins begin to run dry- but she is here. She is whole.
For a moment, she feels a shifting landscape of evolving creatures and starlit rain press against her skin from the inside. For a moment, she understands that she is about to die. She understands that she could be more.
The spear that the Feng was using rings out with a Truth, as the Dao of Control and the Hunt are forced into chaos, as the Warrior-realm techniques of Domain and Soul are negated temporarily.
I Will Take What Is Mine, whispers the spear. Screams its wielder, hatred and an anger born of pride and fear dancing across her neurons.
As her brains continue to melt, one of them mentions that she has three seconds before her current form collapses.
In the first second, the world is remade in Gunfire and bullet impact. The Domain and the base beyond it are turned to ruin in the face of the might of the Gun and the Flame which stands behind it.
In the second second, Lightning and Flame, colored by CHANGE, turn all that they touch into molten slag from which impossible life begins to grow and mutate. It takes all the Feng has to endure it, cutting off her own arm as it begins to turn crystalline, then magma-hot, then into color and sound and thorns.
In between the second and third beats, the Feng actually steps forward. Her Truth rings out, and a complex weave of Qi flows through her. The forest of her Domain collapses into a point, Dao, Truth and cultivation all coming to a single point of perfect darkness of a wood you will die in, and she moves to throw it at Raika.
The radiation begins to fade. Her bones start to quake under their own weight. Her Mind is on fire. Any moment, the Feng’s seemingly endless depth of Qi will allow the Domain to return and tear her apart.
In the third and final second, Raika swings a Blade through her [INFUSION], and a riot of impossible color turns the world to oblivion.
As her brains collapse, her organ systems malfunction, and she loses control of her Gigant technique, Raika feels the world CHANGE, and a final burst of Intent makes sure that it unmakes a tiny shadow of dark green.
And then- oblivion.