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Quest Update — Partners in Crime

Janna Jin has been taken to the Azai clan compound in Silk Flower Town for questioning. The choice is clear, risk life and limb to save her from her sentence, or be on your way. The rational decision would be to abandon her to her fate, as she is not essential to your quest for the Quintessence, and the Azai facility is well defended. What is more important, practicality, or loyalty?

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The system did not prioritize good or evil, practical or impractical, it simply interpreted reality through the framework of a role-playing game and generated quests accordingly. Sunwhisper had received the notification as soon as he learned where Janna had been taken. It was something he could have easily ignored, a side-quest, but it was forcing him to question himself.

Not long ago, he would have left her. Janna had not been his companion for very long, and even if it had been Betamax or Optus that was taken captive, his fathers would have counseled him to leave them behind. The mission took precedence over personal relationships. Sunwhisper had the compass, and it was his duty to move forward whatever the cost.

But he did not want to leave her behind. There were rationalizations which could support that decision. Janna was useful. Recovering her from the Azai compound would provide him with an opportunity to test his new skills. There was a potential for information gathering. While not untrue, none of these ideas provided a basis for motivation. That is what made them rationalizations. Sunwhisper didn’t want to leave Janna behind because he didn’t want to leave Janna behind. That was how emotion worked. It was, by its very nature, a circular argument.

The fallacy was plain on the face of the thing, and yet, Sunwhisper found himself compelled. Abandoning a friend, and he found that he did think of Janna as his friend, simply felt wrong.

Before venturing into the Kicking Dragon, Sunwhisper had spent some time with his status screen. Because of his training on the, as well as his performance in combat, new options had appeared in his technique tree. On the Path of the Honing Spear, he had unlocked Impurities Attraction Method, Eight Mines Honing Edge, and Copper Mantis Stance. Every technique he used regularly was connected by a glowing line to a new skill for him to train, whereas Grandfather’s Cutting Elbow, which he had never used, had become a dead end.

Impurities Attraction would allow him to draw metal objects toward him by the same means that he repelled them with Impurities Rejection, and Eight Mines Honing Edge was a very straightforward improvement to the cutting edge of any weapon he enhanced with the use of Eight Mines Clutch. Copper Mantis Stance was a little different, as there was no limit to the number of stances he could learn, but he could only have one stance active at a time. So if he chose to use the Mantis Stance, he would have to switch between it and Lead Grasshopper as he fought.

Lead Grasshopper Stance improved his body in a way that increased the distance he could jump and his ability to resist the impact when he landed. It was a great way to keep mobile during a fight. Copper Mantis enhanced his striking speed, but didn’t do much to make him more durable. There was utility to all of his new abilities, but he was most intrigued by Honing Edge, as it stacked with the Eight Mines technique he already used to enhance his spear.

The salient fact in all of this was that none of these techniques had been explicitly a part of the Path scrolls he had memorized. The Cultivation System was taking the information he absorbed and using it to extrapolate new techniques. They might have been similar or even identical to cultivation techniques that already existed, but he was coming by them on his own, without having to collect new manuals or petition a mentor.

He wasn’t sure how far his System could go in this universe, but it seemed to be adapting just fine.

The two techniques that branched from Hand of the Gentle Sage were Soul of Placid Water and River of Agony, but they had both been grayed out, and he assumed that was because he had never actually used Hand of the Gentle Sage on anyone before. Hago was his first.

Before leaving the Kicking Dragon, Sunwhisper asked to be given a moment to prepare himself to see his sister, and he visited the privy.

He had used the Hand of the Gentle Sage to take Hago’s pain into himself. Along with his continually updating Dao Rating, that was enough to open the two techniques in his status screen. He barred the privy door behind him, and read what was available.

Soul of the Placid Water was a purification technique, a more specialized version of what cultivators did automatically as a part of the process of channeling, whereby mana speeded the natural operations of healing and recovery. In addition to nullifying toxins, the use of this technique allowed a cultivator to dilute and ultimately erase the pain and distress absorbed via Hand of the Gentle Sage, or experienced as a result of traumatic injury or an attack from other spiritual or mental cultivation techniques.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

River of Agony, on the other hand, allowed a cultivator to pass their own suffering, or the suffering absorbed via Hand of the Gentle Sage, on to a chosen target.

While Sunwhisper was already immune to most poisons, his first instinct was to use both, as either technique could be recommended as optimal strategies in various imagined circumstances, but the System had given him an ultimatum.

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Warning — Some techniques are not compatible with others of the same path. Choosing either River of Agony or Soul of Placid Water will forever bar you from advancing in the alternative branch.

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He disliked the idea of making a choice he couldn’t take back, or at the very least, defray the cost of with future choices, but that was the situation in which he found himself. There was a limited amount of time he could spend in the privy deliberating over his advancement without arousing suspicion, and all things considered, the decision was not a difficult one given the tactical preferences he had already settled on when he had only had a metal affinity to consider.

He placed a scrap of cloth in the windowsill as a message for Karasu before rejoining Hago.

The Azai clansman was light on his feet as they proceeded down the largely deserted street to his compound. Sunwhisper understood the man’s elation, as he was currently laboring under significant strain from torment he had taken from him. Hand of the Gentle Sage was not a healing technique in the usual sense of the word, as it did not treat the root of whatever the problem had been to begin with.

In the case of emotional distress, momentary relief could lead to a real and lasting benefit in the psyche of the one who was so treated. The most acute sorrow can be overcome in a moment of clarity, or at the very least, a moment of crisis can be averted and never revisited when the transitory impetus for rash action is removed.

Sunwhisper would not have to live with the pain of those he relieved if the source of that pain faded in the natural course of things, or if its original victims found ways to improve themselves in the absence of their hurt. It is an unfortunate fact of abnormal psychology that negative patterns of thoughts and feelings are often self perpetuating, self sustaining. But by the same token, individuals afflicted by those patterns often grow out of them quite abruptly, discovering one day that their minds have changed, ostensibly of their own accord.

Removing the distress could be enough in itself to cause the root of that distress to wither, in which case Sunwhisper would be freed from the burden he had taken on as part of the cost of the technique.

In the case of physical pain, the same rule held true, that the pain he took on would fade as the source of that pain was healed. Hago’s agony, however, being the result of a botched healing, would never get better on its own, which meant that Sunwhisper would not be free of it either.

There were several possible solutions to this. Starscream presented one in the form of murdering Hago, which would certainly be one way to quiet his tangled nerves. Another was to perform dangerous and complicated surgery which Sunwhisper did not have the skills or resources to undertake. But the simplest was to sever the link between them.

Hand of the Gentle Sage created a spiritual link between the cultivator and his subject, and while that link did not require concentration to maintain, it did call for a negligible but continuous investment of mana in its support.

Sunwhisper could return Hago’s handicap whenever he chose by refusing to pay for it, or if he used River of Agony, he could pass it on to someone else instead.

Despite the late hour, Hago secured entry to the facility by removing a jade pendant from under his shirt and presenting it to the guards at the gate. Sunwhisper noted that It was the same kind of necklace that he had taken from the scribe outside the warehouse in Fringe Village on a whim, the same that he now carried in a pouch at his side along with the remaining spirit fruits.

He might have stowed it in his chest compartment, but that space was already crowded by a compass and a companion.

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Janna was being held in the basement level behind a heavy steel door in a room guarded by something that occasionally rustled in the dark. She had heard noises that made her think of knife points being tapped against stone, but had so far been unable to identify whoever was in the cell with her.. She looked up at the sound of the door being unlocked, and blinked as the beam of a shaded lantern found her eyes.

It was impossible for her to make out more than the silhouettes of the men behind the lantern, but she recognized the voices of both.

"There she is, unharmed as of yet. For both your sakes, I hope you talk some sense to her."

That was Hago, but he sounded different than before, almost friendly, under less strain at the least.

"I believe she has more sense than you give her credit for."

Her heart sank when she heard the second voice. It was Sunwhisper, he had been captured as well. Why hadn’t he fled immediately? Could it be that he had tried to rescue her, only to be made a prisoner? Her feelings as to that possibility were mixed. It would have been the wrong decision, of course, but the idea that Sunwhisper cared for her enough to risk himself brought an unfamiliar warmth to her cheeks.

The way that they were speaking to one another did not carry the sense of captor and captive, however.

"Now that we are together," Sunwhisper said, "I believe we can come to an agreement that is suitable for all parties."

"You can lead us to the fugitives, then?" Hago didn’t sound as if he believed it, and Sunwhisper did not answer right away. Janna held her breath.