Kai saw the foreign spiritual energy an instant before it flooded his body. It entered the empty core in his abdomen and ran rampant through his meridians. Unlike his golden prismatic energy that flowed easily through his meridians, this foreign energy seemed to crash and carom around his meridians as though looking for something.
He sent his newly refined energy to intercept the chaotic invasion, covering and suppressing it. With ease, his golden energy coated the destructive force, allowing him to control it. He pushed it into his empty abdominal core and flooded it with more energy to tame it.
He felt a pulse thrum through his spiritual body and an unshackling of his spirit; he had created his fourth core. He inspected it. He could see the foreign energy trying to contest his control, but his core rotated in a never-ending cycle, grinding away at the alien energy.
Kai saw a glimpse of spiritual energy at the edge of his awareness. He focused that way and saw a massive network of meridians with a solid core, not human. He recognized it as a spirit beast much larger than the previous bird, which didn't have any meridians now that he thought about it. The enormous spirit body leaped up next to him. Its energy was intense, a pure blue-white that pulsed around its meridians.
Then it ate him. He saw his spirit body get swallowed and settle deep inside the beast's network of nodes, somewhere past its core. Blue-white energy surrounded him, attempting to suppress and control his energy like he had done himself.
“Can you believe this?” Kai thought. “First stolen by a bird, which was destroyed by that foreign energy, Now swallowed by this big guy.”
“I think the bird took several attacks that were meant for you. The last one was the only one that got through.” Relay had been reviewing the data from the bird before. The same kind of energy had struck the bird while the bird was holding Kai’s body.
“Why is someone trying to attack a dead body? That makes no sense.” Kai puzzled.
“A quick timeline review shows the first attack happened precisely when you progressed your A’nah Core.”
“Oh?”
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Ai looked back at Yunfei, who strained under the continuous release of her energy to fuel their speed. The young cultivator’s hair was pulled back into two braids; she gritted her teeth, sweat forming on her forehead.
A flash of light illuminated the sky. Crack! Thunder crashed across them, forcing Ai's mouth down into a frown. She pulled the flight foils back hard to gain altitude.
Bao ducked out of the cabin and locked the hatch behind her. “Song passed out,” the tall girl rounded on the captain, “you’ve been pushing her too much!”
Ai tried looking around Bao, the bottom edge of a floating isle frequently had its own ecology rife with aerial spirit beasts best avoided.
“Can’t be helped.” she responded calmly, “hopefully, she can get some rest in there, though.”
The sloop emerged from the island’s shadow, pulling into the light along the island’s edge, then pulled up over the edge above the island. For the first time, the whole island came into view. It was a forested island, temperate, with occasional mountains but mainly foothills. It was small. There were thousands of small islands in the nation of the floating isles. Many, like this, were not on any map and had no civilization.
“Keep your eyes open for spirit beasts,” she warned.
Bao opened her mouth to argue but couldn’t. As pained as she was to admit it, most of Song’s exhaustion was brought about because the priestess-in-training was pushing herself too hard.
Bao stepped to the bow and looked at the island sprawling before them.
Crack! Another flash of lightning lit up the horizon.
“There they are,” Yunei yelled from the back. “On that distant hill.”
Ai had just piloted toward the lightning when she felt her bird expire. She lifted her hand and cycled her energy. The ink she’d used on the king sparrow returned, entering her palm.
The wind stilled when the third strike crashed; the sloop’s sails fell slack. Ai looked up at the sky, the three dark rings of clouds expanding.
“Bao, with me,” Ai yelled forward. The two cultivators stepped quickly to drop the main sail and jib. Just as the jib was stowed, a headwind began to pick up.
A fourth lightning strike hit. Ai could make out the casket on this hill, see the strike pierce it. “Can we go any faster?” She looked back to her wind cultivator.
Yunfie didn’t answer; gritting her teeth, she wiped her brow and redoubled her efforts.
Bao was looking forward from her bench on the port side, excited about the opportunity to vent some of her frustration, when she glimpsed a starry tiger leap into the clearing. She stood up, her expression freezing on her face. Fine hairs stood on her arms, and she felt a cold sweat break out.
The strength of a spirit beast was determined, in part, by its bloodline. The Starry Tiger was a rare bloodline, a tiger with an affinity for space, time, and void energy. A rare bloodline lineage would naturally grow unstopped until it became a divine spirit beast. Progeny of rare bloodlines started stronger than weak bloodlines could ever get, even with a lifetime of maturation. By comparison, had the starry tiger been a cultivator, it would skip two realms and started life in the third realm.
That’s where they started. The one before them was no pup. This was a full-sized adult starry tiger. What that meant to Bao was obvious. In the best-case scenario, their whole team might be evenly matched against the tiger. They might be able to fight it to a standstill or escape from it if pursued. Judging by the size, she didn't think it was a best-case scenario. They wouldn't stand a chance if the starry tiger matured to the mythical realm.
She closed her mouth and swallowed, then watched as the tiger bent down and flicked the casket into its mouth.
It was too big. A mythical beast, then. Bao braced herself as the sloop swung hard to starboard. She turned to look at Ai.
“Change of plans,” Ai replied without missing a beat. She piloted the air swoop to give the spirit beast a wide birth.
“We’ll watch from the side for a while. If we find an opportunity, we’ll snatch it.” She explained her plan.
Bao looked down at the canopy of trees below. If there was one mythical beast on this island, there were likely more - all it would take would be two beasts to struggle. We could snatch the prize from two wounded beasts.
“Slow us down, Yunfie,” Ai called back, “nice and easy. Let’s watch and see.”
Yunfie relaxed in her harness and slowed her cycling, opening her eyes for the first time. She looked at the sky. Four expansive dark rings circled a dark cloud formation that was still growing. She concentrated on the local winds, felt them pulling in high above them, focusing on where the dark clouds were pooling, then pushing down from there and out. A stiff breeze blew from the clearing towards them, and the wind picked up speed.
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“What does that mean?” She asked. Yunfei was in the middle of the energy cultivation realm; heavenly tribulations were problematic for core realm cultivators and above. That was two realms away, a problem she wouldn’t face until far in the future.
“Middle core formation realm,” Ai guessed by looking at the rings. That was impossible. She was a foundation-establishing cultivator, the most advanced on their team, and the oldest at fourteen. A seven-year-old boy that could advance to middle core formation? That was the same realm as her father, who was hundreds of years old. She looked at the sky again. Something was wrong. The clouds were not dispersing; they were getting darker.
The air sloop skipped in the air; a sudden gust picked their sloop up and dumped it back down.
“Cursed Soulforgers!” Bao yelled over the building wind. “Maybe we should move further back?”
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The starry tiger was focused on refining the foreign spirit energy she’d ingested when she heard the rolling of thunder high above. She looked at the sky, then jolted upright. When she’d closed her eyes, she was sure the dark clouds were dispersing. Now the sky was black. The storm was even worse than during the previous heavenly tribulation.
The tiger turned from the clearing and pounced into the forest, picking up speed to leave the area. She knew this area well. There were places to lay low in the woods where she could hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. She feared only a few others; she could go anywhere if she avoided their territories.
The tiger’s ears pressed back against her head as she heard the rumbling coming from above her again. She glanced through the canopy. The dark clouds seemed to be following her.
Alarmed, she started sprinting. Then she blipped; one moment, she was deep in the forest, the next a kilometer away, flying in another direction. She looked back, saw the dark clouds behind her, and kept running.
There was a river ahead and downstream of the river, a waterfall, beneath which a large cave could shelter her. She blipped again. Hiss. The dark clouds were right above her. Impossible, she thought, then she realized they were getting larger and larger, covering a quarter of the island. She jumped across the river, blipped again, and stopped at the cliff's edge where the water fell. She looked down and blipped, finding a location alongside the river to arrive.
The Starry Tiger turned and roared at the top of her lungs into the waterfall cave. She prowled outside the cave, occasionally looking to the sky. Rumblings came faster, with occasional lightning balls exploding high above. She roared again, clawing at the earth in front of her.
A lightning bolt crashed down; the tiger blipped across the river, but when she appeared, her fur was smoking, a burned line across her flank where the bolt glanced off her.
She was growling and starting towards the cave when a furious roar erupted from the depths pushing all the water away, breaking the fall into a million rivulets flying horizontally away. The tiger’s hackles stood on end; she glanced once up to the sky again. The four dark rings were pushed out to the island's periphery, and a storm covered half the island.
The tiger started retching, dry heaving, and coughing to rid herself of the poison pill. At first, it seemed to work, but the splintered casket lodged itself near her core, along her esophagus, and wouldn’t budge.
Crack! A lightning bolt slammed down, more potent than the last - the thrumming blue-white energy crackled with powerful destructive force as it ripped into the starry tiger. With a whimper, she danced in circles, rolling in the dirt to put the fire out. She righted herself, moving slower - an injury penetrating her resistant flesh and scoring deep burns into her shoulder.
With a building growl, she pounced into the cave, determined to fight the occupant for the right to shelter inside.
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Kai looked at his newly advanced crown core; the refined energy contained therein was both faster and thicker, a seemingly contradictory state of existence. He’d tasked Relay with monitoring his spiritual sight to verify their hypothesis; advancing one’s core incited a reprisal attack. The moment he completed his second core advancement, they registered the attack.
With that confirmed, he turned his attention to his uncompleted cores. He’d unlocked his abdominal core accidentally in response to the first reprisal. Foreign energy still circulated in that core, though it was slowly being refined away.
He still had three unopened cores; one in his pelvis, one at his sternum, and one in his throat. He sent energy directly from his tether to his throat to open that. His plan. While sheltered inside this spirit beast, he would use its extra defense to unlock and advance all his cores.
There was no point in waiting. Kai’s body couldn’t get more dead. If I don’t take advantage of this opportunity, I might have to wait a while before I get another chance.
So he cultivated. It wasn’t hard; his soul tether provided all the energy he needed. It was a cheat, Kai knew. It was a secret big enough that if cultivators knew, he’d be tapped as a permanent battery by stronger cultivators and sold around and traded as a priceless spirit treasure. That thought frightened him, but not enough to not take advantage of his own circumstance. He was tired of being the person things happened to - he wanted to make things happen as he liked.
“We won’t be able to tell the effects that will have on your body until we restore it. It’s a risk.” Relay registered an objection to the plan.
Kai appeared beside the white fox in his soul space.
“Huh, that’s interesting.” Kai looked down at the Eternal. “I seem to be able to cultivate from here now. Huh, I guess I never really tried before.”
“I think there’s a reason they take cultivation slowly. Your body isn’t capable of withstanding the energy your cores contain, and that was before all this. Now, I imagine it will be worse, but your control will be better. Probably balances out, but the body is our biggest problem now.”
“You mean my dead body?” Kai smiled. “Any solution that can change its dead status can help us with the weak status too.”
Kail looked over at the screen. “Are you analyzing that burst of energy from the beast's core earlier?”
“Inconclusive,” the fox swiveled his head, “maybe a technique of some kind, but I couldn’t tell you what.”
Kai frowned. With only visibility into spiritual energy, they couldn’t see the impact of that energy on the everyday world around them.
“I’m going to reapply the motion modifier so we can better see what’s going on.”
He concentrated on the six-segment pyramid connected to his eye core. Energy flicked through it and stabilized with a thought. He didn’t create it as before, one segment at a time; this seemed to come alive simultaneously, energy permeating every part in a single action.
The misty grey outlines of motion vision came into focus, allowing Kai to get his first good look at the spirit beast that had swallowed him. A tiger?
“Poor kitty,” Kai laughed. The cat prowled around nervously, scratching at the ground. “You’re about to have a bad day.”