When Bull woke up, he kept his eyes closed and remained still. Though he had descended to fifth realm – the thought sent a pang through his chest, but he couldn’t afford to dwell on that now – he still retained enough control over his body to keep his breathing and heartbeat slow. His spiritual sense would alert his captors if he extruded it, but there were a lot of things one could discern by feel alone.
I’m unshackled. There doesn’t seem to be a bag over my head, either. I’m lying on my back. The floor is smooth but uneven; stone, unworked. I can’t feel the sun on my skin, or see light through my eyelids.
He was most likely in some sort of cavern. It fit with his expectations as well; unorthodox sects tended to be underground, in both senses of the word. But why am I not restrained? Even if they wanted his cultivation intact, they could have turned the formation off without removing the physical restraints.
And one last thing: the room was completely, absolutely devoid of qi. Either I’m sitting in the middle of a gathering formation too weak to feel, or I’m being kept in a closed space. Neither were good; his dantian was ragged and empty, and he would need to take in qi before he could cast anything. He was weaker than he had been in years.
…But not completely helpless. My body is in good condition. The bite wound on his shoulder was reduced to a scab; based on how much it had healed, he hadn’t been unconscious for more than an hour.
Alright. I’m alone, underground, being held by an unknown group for unclear reasons. I just went down a realm, and I have no qi. What’s the right move here?
Break them.
Yes, obviously. But I meant in the short term. At the moment his choices were effectively binary; he could either keep playing dead, and hope to surprise whoever came to check on him, or he could get up and investigate his confines more thoroughly. Obviously, someone is watching. But how much attention are they paying me, exactly? In the previous prison Lu had broken a formation and removed the fabric blinding him, and it had still been multiple minutes before anyone came to investigate. I’m in a different location, so I can’t assume I’m being watched by the same people. But whoever it was that captured us was core realm, so I shouldn’t bet on overpowering the guard, even with surprise on my side.
Plan B it was, then. He started subtle, extruding his sense downwards into the stone. Glassy. Volcanic? He kept going down, hoping to come out through a ceiling or find the edge of a formation, but instead about a metre down his sense hit a wall. It was featureless; wall wasn’t even the right word, it was like he had found the edge of reality. I’m in a closed space, then. Basically the worst-case scenario; even if they were negligent, nobody with a working brain would design a prison space not to lock itself from the inside. Even worse, he could be literally anywhere. He could be riding around in someone’s pocket right now.
Fuck, this is worse than the last one. And Lu isn’t here to break any formations for me.
…I guess I’ll have to go with Plan A after all. Bull remained laying on the stone, doing his best to feign sleep.
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A cursory inspection of the formations revealed little. There was a spacial component, which he had assumed would be there, but underlying it was a layer of forms that were incomprehensible to him.
There were some that were common in healing spells, but even more that were completely unfamiliar. More than Elder Persimmon’s formation, even. But it’s simpler. And the environment isn’t bad; I can refill my qi reserves and puzzle out the individual forms, given enough time.
…Not that he would assume the cloaked man would just give him time. No, he would need to go as fast as possible, discarding safety. If I just break it, I’ll be trapped. Can I isolate the non-teleporting sections? And assuming that I can, would that even be useful? It came down to whether the mysterious section barred people from activating the array, or allowed them to. Is it a lock, or a doorknob? It was also possible that this was the formation preventing him from teleporting himself, and it had nothing to do with activating the rest at all. I have no way to tell.
…Yet. I have no way to tell yet; I can reconstruct it as a spell, work out the effect manually. It was dangerous, but he was in a dangerous situation. And I’ve done it before! I’ve invented new spells from scratch, just copying one right in front of me should be easy! That’s right, as long as he kept a positive mindset, he would be fine.
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The healing bits, I’ll start there. Near the edge, there’s one new form wedged between two I already know, and based on what they do it shouldn’t be too dangerous to test. He constructed the little three-form spell in his mind, and cast. No observable effect. I’ll have to keep adding more of the formation- no, first, I’ll add it to the end of a normal healing spell and see what happens. That should give a comprehensible result.
…I really hope I don’t teleport out all my blood.
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There was someone in the room. Their footsteps hadn’t made a sound as they entered, but Bull could hear their heartbeat and feel the heat radiating off their body. Sound's off. Some sort of heart condition? And based on where they sounded like they were standing, he was getting way too much heat as well. A heart condition and a deadly fever? No. More likely that they weren’t human. A demon? I could have been smuggled into Hell somehow. The Hell’s Gate Sect kept a tight lid on it, but they weren’t faultless.
No, I’m ignoring the obvious option. If there’s something inhuman out to get me, it’s most likely the one I’ve already pissed off. Or at least one of his countrymen. They had achieved something approaching diplomacy, but this wouldn’t be the first time a personal grudge had been taken care of under the table. Is that you, wrinkled goblin man? He had heard the swamp dweller’s leader’s name at some point, but he wasn’t feeling charitable enough to use it at the moment.
The person approached. Again, their footsteps were so faint he could only barely detect them. Dampening that sound, but not the rest? Sloppy. The heartbeat was five metres away, three, two-
“I know you are awake.” The sound was barely identifiable as a voice, definitely not human. “No, I am not human. You should stand up, and speak with me.”
Fuck. Mind reading? Mind arts were permitted under a certain level of strength, purely as a matter of utility, but something strong enough to pick up on casual thoughts would be unorthodox by definition.
“Unorthodox, hmm? We have different standards here. My clan brothers would be quite uncomfortable at how you worship the sky, for instance.”
Worship the sky? What?
“The heavens? The part of the world above the clouds?”
Bull gave up on feigning sleep. They were responding to his thoughts in an overt manner; obviously, they weren’t bluffing. He opened his eyes. “Heaven shares a name with the sky, but that’s because ancient people thought it was up there. We know better now.”
The light was incredibly dim, but there was just enough to see. His captor – he was assuming he was still a captive, even without shackles – was indeed inhuman. Not obviously, like the swampmen, but in a subtle way. His eyes were a little too small, too far apart, the iris taking up the whole thing. The face was too flat, the jaw too wide, the neck too short and thick. Bull couldn’t see his body, as it was covered in loose robes, but he assumed it would be similar. Off, but if you gave him some cosmetics, a wide-brimmed hat, it might have passed a casual inspection.
“Ah, I understand. Another world, yes? How many are there?” Bull clamped down on his mind, but it was so hard to not think the answer, even just in passing- “Six? Yours, ours, this Heaven and Hell… What of the others?” Ha. That was one question he couldn’t answer. The man’s brows rose. “You don’t know their names? Interesting.”
“What do you want with me?”
He smiled. His teeth were narrow, crowded, the gums black like a sick animal’s. “You’ve already intuited most of it, as far as I can tell. Don’t worry, You’re quite safe in here.” He gestured to the room – a cave, the walls smooth and melted-looking, “But don’t attempt to escape; you have no armour, now.” No, I don’t. This cave is the only place my cultivation won’t overload, then? “Just so. I’m sure you’ll have some companionship soon, once they send Lu over.”
His tone seemed too familiar. “You know of him?”
The man nodded. “Yes, we spoke briefly while he was a visitor here. I would say I owed him a great debt, but I believe I paid him in full.”
Someone Lu met. Reads minds. Gave him something. “You’re the psychic grandmaster, right?”
He went completely still. “You know..? Ah, I hadn’t thought he would tell the story in full. He kept things closer to his chest, when we met.” His teeth scraped against each other, a low grinding sound that made Bull’s eyes water. “Who else..? Everyone?”
Didn’t expect that? Hah, you don’t know people as well as you think, do you?
Agitated, the grandmaster’s body rose up off the floor as it took on a purple, electric aura. Distantly Bull was aware of something abrading against his dantian, grinding it down even further. But before a second passed, he seemingly snapped back all at once, the aura disappearing as his face became placid. “Perhaps. We are entirely different forms of life; it would be unreasonable for me to understand you perfectly from the first moment.” He drifted, like seaweed, his body held weightless by whatever force he was exerting. “Excuse me, it seems I have other duties I must attend to.” He floated backwards, towards the sole entrance to the cave. “We will speak again shortly, Bull of the Steadfast Heart. My understanding is that your kind do not require sustenance; if I am mistaken, I can only ask you to hold out for the time being.”
The next moment, he was gone. The tunnel cut off to a black void, which the psychic had disappeared through.
“…Fuck,” he muttered. Mind readers, how was he meant to hide anything from mind readers? And how did I even get here? Did other tunnels open up? Do other sects have their own entrances? That would be bad for their world, but good for him; more than one way home would multiply his chances of success. I shouldn’t rely on that. The parley.
I need to get to the parley, somehow.