You know where we are by now, right?
Year 11, Day 37
Root carefully pulled the string of Qi. With a silence loud enough to hear a pin drop, he carefully lifted one of his roots before- ‘Now!’ Like a spear, his root moved forward. It was an instantaneous thrust, the tip of the root glowed softly with Fire Qi and Light Qi, and the moment it impacted the center of the giant Hell Spider's nest, he tightly closed every available exit for the spiders with his roots. He wrapped the giant nest tightly with his roots, and from the center of the nest, this bright light shined. “It is officially happening, folks! Right from The Watcher Eye I bring you bright news! The Spiders from Hell don't seem to like heat, Father, however, has given them the warmest of hugs!” Root felt a little amused by Tahsm's tactics and quirks as he announced through the bonds like a radio head: “With this attack, the nest is going to be fully destroyed, and if we are lucky this shall be the last time we will ever see these Spiders from Hell!” Root, just to be sure, overflowed the nest with his Nature Qi before changing it to Fire Qi. It was like lighting a match in a room full of gas, the explosive force of the flames annihilated every single spider that lived inside that nest!
Just to be sure, Root decided to give it time and increased the heat.
Meanwhile, on the surface, he connected to his Seedling Trees and focused- Remember when he created Seedlings and told them to plant themselves on the floor? Well, they have grown a lot! Even the trees that were infused with Lesser Nature Spirits seem to have formed a pseudo consciousness that was equivalent to an animal's consciousness, while the Seedling Trees had the consciousness of a curious child that didn't speak with words, but with emotions, thoughts, and more. His [Mycorrhizal Network] technique allowed him to connect his roots to the roots of all the trees around him, which was how he could feel his entire forest! Like a green dot in an endless sandy desert, he stood out like a sore thumb. He is pretty sure that the end of this ‘Drought of Death’ is coming, he feels deep into his bones too.
Like a memory long forgotten, slowly returning to him… He is sure of it.
“Father, it seems my siblings require your help!” With the same 1950's radio voice, Tahsm continued: “They have found themselves in a prickly situation.” Immediately shifting his senses to where he felt his children, Root saw a scene that was both a little bit hilarious but also a little bit worrying- Leaf, his oldest son and strongest too, was awkwardly surrounded by several thorny vines that sprouted out from his body, impaling several spiders all at the same time. The funny side to this was that Ahteus was also there, but he wasn't completely impaled, no, the thorns of the vines didn't seem to pierce his skin, which instead got him trapped within Leaf's many thorny vines.
“So, what happened here?” Root chuckled softly as his control over all of nature overpowered Leaf's own control over his own Qi, Root simply turned the vines back into Nature Qi, dissipating them: “Ah, Father… I didn't know I could do that.” Oh, so Leaf found something new about himself?
“What do you mean by that, Leaf? I know you have enough control over nature to grow thorns.”
“Uhm, I didn't want to do this… It happened.”
Moments before.
“Simple Cut - Windslash.” With the [Rough] and [Hard] intent on his blade, Leaf made a simple cutting motion- A blade of wind cut through thousands of small little spiders that, like a sea, kept moving forward. They were small but looked like nightmares! Seriously, what kind of demon created this thing!? It looked like the combination of a spider, scorpion, and had wings of a moth! Seriously, the big ones were even bigger than a mortal human, and they could fly! Thankfully Zylph and Lumin were taking care of them while they killed the ones on the ground. “Ahteus!” His brother simply raised his enormous weapon before striking the ground with his enormous physical strength: “Mountain Weight!” His control over Gravity seemed to be improving a lot, seeing as with a single strike he managed to kill a few thousand of them.
“Push.” With his palm open and aimed down, Ahteus pushed his own body upwards with a surprisingly quick updraft- Once he reached 15 meters (That's 50 feet in Freedom per Shotgun units) his whole body seemed to glow with a purple light as he grinned: “Meteor Fall!” One moment, he was there, and on the other, he wasn't. Leaf only had time to shield his eyes from the dust (Although he could easily see without his eyes, since nature were his eyes) in reflex- Soon, dust settled as he flexed his hand, controlling the dust around him to quickly fall down. Before him was a crater of 5 meters deep and with a diameter of 12 meters (That's 12 feet deep and a diameter of 39 feet in Bald Eagles per Hamburger units) and in the center of said crater was his brother Ahteus.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
“...Ahteus…” Leaf held back the urge to laugh: “You're covered in spider goo.” Indeed he was! He had, accidentally, kept the gravitational pull around his body as he had fallen and crushed a lot of tiny spiders. The gravitational pull pulled sand towards his body and the spider blood too, which was filled with Poison Qi. However, as Ahteus was literally made out of stones and precious metals, he was pretty much immune to this type of Qi. His whole body was, however, covered in the black-blue blood of the spiders, which painted his whole body.
“Fuck, I hate when that happens.” Ahteus tried to clean himself with dirt and sand, but the goo stuck to his stone body, making him wince at the sickly feeling it gave him- It was like there were thousands of tiny spiders crawling on his skin! “Oh fuck, there are!”
Even when dead, their numbers keep growing because their very Poison Qi is filled with small, microscopic eggs that hatched the moment their Qi entered in contact with anything other than Poison Qi. “Uhm, Leaf? Some help here?” Leaf nodded before he spread out his Qi to kill the small spiders that were trying to pierce through Ahteus’ stone hard skin: “Its itchy as fuck though, maybe I should call Namis-” Before he could even finish his sentence, water enveloped his body in a cocoon, pulling away all the tiny spiders and the good too! “Thanks bro!”
“You're welcome, Ahteus-” Leaf didn't know what had happened. He felt something touch his body before this stabbing pain filled his mind. He blinked, the pain was gone, but his entire body had these thorns sprouting out- He looked around and there were thorny vines everywhere! In a radius of 22 meters (72 feet in yehaw units) around his body, vines and thorns everywhere. “Uhm, Leaf?” He turned to look at Ahteus who was also trapped within his vines. “Sorry Ahteus-” He tried to pull the vines back, but for some reason, his body refused to obey him?
“...Tahsm? Can you get Father here?” Knowing that his youngest brother was in charge of the newly made “Radio Tahsm”, as he liked to call it, Leaf asked for his help: “Very well big brother of mine, I shall call forth Father!” Leaf had to sigh, because it seems Tahsm found something he really liked to do, and that was speaking like a 1950's radio host. It took Father a few moments, but once they both felt Father's presence, they heard his words: “So, what happened here?”
Present times
“-and that's what happened.” Leaf finished recounting what had just happened to him as he clenched his fist. Root thoroughly analyzed Leaf's entire being! From his body that was healthy as it could be, to his mind that was as healthy as it could be, until he reached his soul… and that when he found something interesting.
A tiny little hole- He backtracked to analyzing Leaf's whole being once more, this time he looked for small holes. He found one! In
Leaf's left foot he found a small hole where one of the small scorpion spiders had carved a way in. It seemed to have crawled all the way up to Leaf's head and somehow entered his oldest son's mind, and from his mind space it entered his son's soul… That was what caused Leaf's whole body reaction, his soul reacted to the threat of the scorpion spider within him and it eliminated the source of danger, and like an electric shock, Leaf's mind and body reacted.
Root knew then… He had to develop some sort of protection for his children's souls.
‘Maybe I could give them each a lesser sibling that is complete and pure spirit that will then live inside their soul and protect it?’ Root thought about it for a few moments, then he called Leaf: “Leaf, come here…” Immediately Leaf obeyed, standing before his Father's main body and waiting for his instructions: “I will grant you a new sibling, that like Tahsm, will live inside your soul.” Leaf's eyes widened as this sma and pure white seed fell from one of Root's branches into his hand: “Take care of them.” Leaf nodded as the seed seemed to sink into his hands-
-Immediately after, Root watched as this small sank into Leaf's mind- It was like watching a white dot of light sink deeper and deeper into this weird jelly-like sphere that also had a white dot in the center. When the first white dot touched the second, it was like they became whole, and Leaf's soul grew in size-
-and Leaf blinked. “Huh…” He touched his chest, where the heart would be in a mortal human, and thought for a moment about what had just happened. Meanwhile, Root felt his connection to Leaf's soul get stronger as this secondary connection fused with the first connection he had with Leaf. “This…” He reached into the connection and pushed his awareness into it- Soon he found himself in an endless white sea that he knew to be Leaf's Soul Realm. There, he found this small white tree sapling, and beside it, a small transparent-white… bug? It looked like a small caterpillar, sitting at the base of the small sapling. “Huh.”
Pulling back, Root simply let Leaf sink into his own consciousness and see his Soul Realm for himself and get familiar with his new soul protector.
???
The Great Emptiness.
The Null.
The Void.
Chaos.
Call it what you will, there is no denying that the endless vacuum of nothingness seems almost alive in a way. No one could truly live in this endless expanse, since it served its purpose of separating realms, worlds, dimensions, and much more from one another. This place was also where many souls would go through when moving between realms.
It was a law of Heaven that when a cultivator ascends or descends, their soul and body moves enveloped in this thick barrier of pure Qi that stops outside forces from stopping the ascending/descending process. A process with a 99% success if all steps are taken to prevent failure of ascension by the cultivator himself with an extremely small chance of failure due to outside forces interference…
Well, it happens.
As the cultivator was about to ascend into a new realm to further improve his cultivation, an eye opened. The red pupil stared at the shooting star that was trying to ascend, and it blinked. Immediately, the shooting star shattered into a thousand pieces, killing the cultivator instantly.
But a small shard floated through the void before it fell too, into this small dust cloud of chaotic purple Qi… Only the Heavens know what would happen to it.