…What? “Pardon, ma’am, but I don’t think I understand?” Magic dirt?
The priestess, assuming that was what she was, narrowed her eyes. She put one hand on her hip, and pointed an accusatory finger at him with the other. “Don’t try to hide it! The Heavens sent me all this way – you have no idea how hard it was to get up here – to stop it from destroying the world, so hand over the dirt!”
With effort, Lu dragged his jaw back up off the floor. Okay. This is obviously a real priestess – she doesn’t have any cultivation I can sense, and a normal mortal wouldn’t have been able to sneak into my rooms. So I have to at least make some effort to take this seriously. A difficult task; the woman was obviously younger than him, still a child by cultivator standards, and her attempt at a chastising pose inspired second-hand embarrassment more than any feelings of guilt.
“Okay, okay.” He put his hands up, attempting to placate her. “I assure you, I don’t have any intentions of keeping anything from you – but I’m not certain I have what you’re looking for. Could you, ah, be a little more descriptive about this ‘magic dirt?’” Also, what was that about destroying the world? In fact, perhaps we should be talking about that bit first?
She held her pose for a moment longer, still squinting at him, before relenting. “It’s dirt. About this much?” She held her fingers barely a millimetre apart, nearly touching. “There’s no way you wouldn’t recognise it – it has an evil aura, that’s how I tracked it to this room!”
Lu’s face scrunched. You’re expecting me to know about such a small amount of soil in my room? And even if I did – how would I find it, under all the other dirt you’ve dragged in? The floor and walls were covered in clumps of earth and scraps of what had, until recently, been hardwood flooring. It’s lucky I moved all of the good furniture out. Ah, but the arrays! You’ve soiled all the silencing formations, and especially-
His eyes caught on Elder Persimmon’s specially-made anti-divination array, the one that he had slept inside before he had given up the habit. It had been set up around where his bed had sat, and was now in complete disarray. The only reason he had never bothered to pack it away was because it was composed of paper-thin formation flags, and it didn’t get in the way or care if you stepped on them. No, surely not. That was nearly a year ago! “Ma’am, is this soil you’re searching for black in colour? Very black, and dry?”
She nodded. “Yes. Black as the deepest pits of Hell!”
“Contained in a vial, perhaps?”
Hesitation. “Maybe? The Heavenly Emperors only showed me the dirt itself, and empowered me to track it down. I couldn’t say if it’s in any particular sort of container…”
Bah, what lousy emperors. This is why enlightened people don’t take to religion! “And would you by chance, have been searching for this dirt for about a year?”
She blinked. “No, only for two months. It was a very arduous two months, though! I had to journey all the way from Hollow Valley!”
Never heard of it. He rubbed his forehead. “So you received divine guidance involving a potentially world-ending scenario,” which I am skeptical about, for the record, “And you decided to… Tunnel in? Through the mountain?” The hole was definitely priestess-sized, and it went down at an angle as far as his spiritual sense could see.
“Well, I couldn’t walk in through the front gate!” She huffed. “That might have alerted you! What if you were some destroy-the-world cultist, and bolted with the dirt the moment I showed up?”
If I was evil, obviously my response in this situation would just be to- to-! To use violence. “And so you decided that this was the subtle-“ He cut himself off. No, no, let’s not be antagonistic. This is all a very strange misunderstanding. Just a very strange, incredibly disruptive misunderstanding. If this kept him from going on the mission…
No, that won’t happen. Taking a deep breath, Lu composed himself. “Alright, I think I know what’s going on. You,” he pointed, “Will stay here while I fetch an Elder. Please do not make any more holes in my room – in fact, please fix the hole in my room before I return, thank you.”
He turned, walked out the still-open door, and couldn’t resist the urge to slam it shut. But before it could close completely, the rings-within-rings head of the priestess’s staff interposed itself between the door and frame. There was a dull clunk as the soft metal cushioned the impact, and the door bounced back open to allow the veiled girl to follow him out into the hall.
Lu swore he could feel a vein in his temple pulse. “I said stay, young lady. You’ve done enough damage already.”
She somehow managed to look affronted with just her eyes. “I take orders from a higher power than you, cultivator. This is too important for me to slack off. Now, lead the way.” She tapped her staff on the ground.
Anger. Now now, let’s not do anything rash. While she might be much younger than us, she’s almost certainly a well-respected member of her community. It makes perfect sense, from her perspective, to act in a manner that the uneducated mind might mistake as- “That dirt you are searching for is sect property. You have walked – pardon, dug – into here as though you have some sort of authority. You do not. As a disciple of the Steadfast Heart, I am the one with authority. You will go back to the room you damaged, and wait patiently for my return, or I will expel you from the mountain emptyhanded.” –Condescending. Ah, well, that goes for us too, I suppose. “Do you understand my words?”
Her grip on the golden staff tightened. “You flirt with blasphemy.”
“I have never been religious, and I doubt today will change my mind. Do I need to teach you manners, young lady?”
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“Stop saying that.” Her tone, which had been merely annoyed before, turned angry. “I’m not going to be lectured to by a teenager. Young man. There is no Earthly force that can keep me from my holy duties, so take me to this Elder of yours!” She tapped the staff again, harder, and a faint golden aura glowed for a fraction of a second around where she stood.
“Teenager? Wait, do you think-?” Lu sputtered. “I’m Thirty-one! I’m in the third realm, do you think there’s many teenagers who could advance swiftly enough to still be teenagers while standing so high?” Well, actually a good number, indeed the majority- depending on the exact definition of teenager- ah, let’s not get distracted.
Some of the anger left the priestess’s posture. “Thirty-one? You look fifteen…” She ran a sceptical eye from his head down to his feet.
Flattery will get you nowhere! “I have aged gracefully, yes. But our respective ages don’t matter,” and I’m the elder anyway, so I win either way, “Because you are clearly in the wrong. Look at this from my perspective; you’ve basically destroyed my dwelling, and have made nothing but demands of me. If someone treated you like this, would you not be quite cross?”
“The world is at stake!”
He scoffed. “The soil has been quite safely contained for a year now. But since you are so concerned, I will go fetch Elder Persimmon… While you are fixing my room. Which you ruined for basically no reason.”
There was a sort of rippling motion to her obscured figure, which Lu interpreted as hesitation. “Fine.” The staff came around to point at his face, the hanging rings jangling like bells. “But if you try to run away, I’ll know!” She turned and went back into Lu’s rooms, closing the door.
Bah, even when she does what I ask, she manages to be rude about it! For a moment he considered just reporting her and having her thrown out – that threat had been far from a bluff. But no, as much as he wanted to dismiss this ‘destroying the world’ business as nonsense, that would be irresponsible. He let his anger simmer down, before turning on his heel.
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Goldenseed was concocting. This statement was a tautology; Goldenseed was always concocting, even when she was away from her cauldron. For example, take this current moment.
She was examining the newest iteration of the Sealed Beast Coffin Armour, specifically the one that Elder White Knuckle would be wearing for the duration of the peace talks. Ostensibly she was only here to check it for last-minute defects, any flaws in the materials that would result in weak spots or clash with the enchantments or formations – and she was doing that, certainly. But her actual motive was to get a look at the interactions between the moving parts with her own eyes.
Peril breeds genius. One could never reach the heights of their craft without being pushed, and the greatest pushes came from danger. Faced with the corruptive nature of the Sixth Reality, compounded by an uncertain time limit, the craftsmen of the Steadfast Heart had come together and forced a hundred years of progress to fit within the bounds of one. The armour was a masterwork of enchanting, formations, mundane engineering, and yes, alchemy. She had examined each material individually as they were produced, but in order to truly understand she needed to see the final product. Each ingredient contributes to the whole.
The ceramics, for instance, were all somewhat proof from the degradative effect of the swamp-aspected energy, due to already being made of earth. But by layering and marbling the different types, the energy could be completely dispersed rather than just resisted.
Like concocting a pill, the beneficial effects amplified each other when properly aligned.
“The armour is perfect. Flawless.” A small lie; she could have increased the enchantment efficiency by a fraction of a fraction, but it would necessitate rebuilding the thing from scratch. Not worth it at all. Efficiency is king, and efficiency is effect divided by cost.
“Thank you, Elder. I’m glad we could live up to your expectations.” The disciple – she didn’t think he had ever introduced himself – bowed, and she took that as her clue to depart. She set off through the halls, her strides long, her mind occupied with comparing the materials against similar clays and ceramics. The new ink ceramic might be a good replacement for charred clay in Blood Darkening Poison pills. And interactions with the strengthening enchantments imply that the golden plate fourth recipe variant might have good properties for healing pills…
She was halfway between the research wing and her own alchemy wing when she felt it, the familiar sensation of space twisting. From a fold in reality stepped a man she recognised, Elder Persimmon, as well as a disciple of the outer sect she did not. Persimmon spoke with an unusual tenseness, “Goldenseed, there you are. I didn’t expect you to be out of your chamber.”
“I was doing final inspections for tomorrow.” She inclined her head. “Is there something urgent you require of me?” Persimmon was a very composed man, a trait that they shared.
“You recall the soil I had you analyze last year? From the divinity?”
“Of course.” Is if she could forget; the substance had amazing properties. If she had enough to really experiment with…
“Where is it? It isn’t in your chambers.”
She blinked. So urgent that you searched my chambers without my permission? “I destroyed part of it,” accidentally, “And had the rest entombed in the sealed area, where it couldn’t do too much damage. That substance was an order of magnitude more corruptive than anything else I’ve studied.” But not in any useful way, like being able to make more of itself. “Persimmon, what is the situation?”
Persimmon’s sense rippled. “Damn, that’s inconvenient. We need to retrieve it as soon as possible; our own ‘Heavenly Emperors’ are making a stir about it.”
“You mean..?”
He nodded, his expression tight. “Yes, we have a priestess on the grounds.”
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The young man – she absolutely refused to believe he was really in his thirties, he was so petulant – was away for over ten minutes while she waited in his workshop. Just long enough for her to begin itching to follow him. What if he’s running with the dirt? Sure, she couldn’t feel her divine commandment pulling her to pursue him – but if he was some sort of Hellish villain, he might have a way of blocking her connection. She was halfway through deciding to leave, when a curious sensation overtook her, and suddenly the room was rather a lot more cramped.
Between one second and the next, over a dozen people had appeared. She tensed, her grip on her staff almost painful. If it turned out that the whole mountain was in on it, then… I’ve never had to fight anyone before. But if Heaven asks it of me..!
“Eep!” A familiar voice squeaked, accompanied by the sound of something falling into her entrance tunnel. One of the cultivators, an old man, lightly coughed.
Actually, most of the people in the room were rather old. But one stood out in that regard, metaphorical head and shoulders above the rest. Clad in a simple greying robe, a man that looked over a hundred stepped forward and nodded to her.
“Greetings, young lady.” His voice was surprisingly strong, much more than his frame would suggest. “I was not expecting to entertain a servant of Heaven today, but life is filled with little surprises.” Somewhere behind her there was a grunt, and the sound of dirt sliding around. “I admit, my understanding of the situation is imperfect, so I would appreciate it if you were to start in the beginning.” He smiled, and in the back of her head her holy spirit whispered that she was in danger. “Please, explain to me why you are here, on my mountain.”