When one hears stories of cultivators, one hears stories of violence. The boy hero goes out to slay the mighty dragon besieging his country, returning home with its pearl a grown man. The last survivor of a slaughtered clan claws his way up, his heart swelled with dreams of vengeance. The fair-skinned maiden kills the evil emperor in his bed, her hairpin a secret poisoned needle.
A thousand stories, some real, most not. But always with violence and conflict in their centre.
Hom How feels that those stories are somewhat missing the point.
Because Hom How is a man who has never held a weapon, nor so much as slapped a face in anger. And yet, he sits at the peak of the sixth realm. A respected rising star of the Steadfast Heart’s inner sect, a cultivator among cultivators.
And so when he puts brush to page, Hom How does his best to weave stories without violence. To put back all those things that other authors have left out; of quiet mornings watching the sun peek out from the horizon, of the stars crawling slowly but steadily across the night sky, of the absolute peace of being free from death.
That is what being a cultivator means to Hom How. Peace, and love, absolute and forever. The end of age, and sickness, and mortal frailty.
His brush comes up, and he looks over his work. Not perfect… but good enough.
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The medical wing is a place that one is glad to leave. This is an obvious statement – why would one wish to be ill or injured for longer than necessary? Why should the doctors and physicians not desire a lack of patients?
But equally obvious, the inevitable opposite of its brother, is another statement: the medical wing is a sad place to be.
“Ah, brother How. Bringing another little something for the patients?” The disciple manning the front desk, one Han Gusing, smiles as he waves him through without even bothering to examine his package.
Hom How’s head dips. The older disciple towers a full two heads above his young body, but despite that they are the same realm. A spot of colour rises to his cheeks – it always feels awkward for men and women ten times his age to treat him as an equal, and their grace at his awkwardness somehow makes it even worse.
“Some paintings and short stories, Sir Gusing.”
“Wonderful. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. Don’t let me keep you.” The man’s face is stoic, but his smile is real.
Without further words, Hom How makes his way past the desk and into the wing proper. As his feet carry him, he enters and exits a number of rooms. Some of them are severe, cold and empty. Others are vibrant, filled with art or even plant life.
But in each room, there is a touch of tension. The person within cannot forget where they are, regardless of how well their surroundings fit their aesthetic sensibilities.
Hom How cannot dispel that tension, though he likes to think he can lessen it ever so slightly. At the very least, the words of kindness he receives when he hands out his work is real.
Soon – it actually takes many hours, as some of his patrons like to sit and discuss his work, but it always feels as though it flies by in a blink – his hands are empty. He visits a few more patients simply to give them his ear, then heads out the way he came in.
Han Gusing nods to him again on the way out.
The next day, he composes a play in the morning, and delivers it to the administrators as a gift for the sect. They’ll sell it cheaply to mortal troupes, which will bring some small income to the sect and hopefully some measure of enjoyment for the people of Greengrass.
In the afternoon, he paints a landscape for one sect brother and something a bit less proper for another. Some might refuse to participate in such things, for a variety of reasons, but he does not.
The next day he uses the spirit stones from his commissions to buy more paint and writing supplies, and writes forty-six short stories in a near-unconscious fugue. They are not all very good, but the patients of the medical wing will be grateful for anything; they’ll have long finished the things he dropped off two days ago, even swapping them around.
They are cultivators too, after all.
The next day he cultivates, then the next he paints, then the next he writes. A week goes by, a month, a year. His cultivation grows, and the speed and precision of his hands grow with it.
His landscapes become more real, the eyes of his portraits begin to stare out as though alive. Both experience and increasing physical ability drive him forward – and all the while he is thankful.
This is what being a cultivator is, he thinks idly as he speckles a nebulae onto a blue-black sky in the time it takes to draw a breath. Infinite time to perfect my craft. Immortal patrons, who will recall my works a thousand years from now. No need to eat or drink, or take any action I do not desire to take.
Hom How ascends to the core realms on the same day the call for diplomats goes out. He does not hesitate even a little; who would he be, either as an artist or simply as a man, if he shied away from an entirely new world?
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The first time he sees a man die, he weeps.
The second time he sees a man die, he weeps.
Even now, after seeing hundreds of the Horrible Swamp men cut down like wheat, Hom How continues to weep.
They have been running for days. The outside of his armour is caked with half-dried fluids, and he no longer cares enough to clean it off. Every time he moves his eyes, a novel type of death appears before him.
There, a man is roasted by white flames. There, another is turned to pulp by an invisible crushing grip. There, another is eaten alive by an unending tide of scuttling gremlins, his thrashing only driving them to further frenzy.
It was all going so well. Why is this happening? What great offence did we commit? Even as he thinks it, he knows the answer.
There was never a reason. Meaningless cruelty is simply the way of nature, exactly as man’s nature is to combat that cruelty.
Shining forms light up in his mind, and he does his best to heal the wounded. He has never had any talent as a doctor, but his high cultivation paints over his fumbling with a mask of competence. He saves some men, perhaps a few dozen, before the tide of the massive running battle drags him towards the centre and away from the fighting.
He is glad, and also terribly guilty, to be spared the sight of death.
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The men of Fort Iron-Brick are very strange. So much so that the swamp clansmen, those towering pastel-coloured ogres, seem very human in comparison.
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But they are still men.
“[Does it hurt anywhere else?]”
“[It does not.]” The bundle of rags over metal over flesh shakes itself, and without a single word of thanks crawls away. Hom How allows himself a single moment of befuddlement, before he turns to his next patient. Their ways are strange, but they gave us sanctuary without any benefit to themselves. This is the least I can do.
The next Metal Bite clansman is missing an appendage. The next a large chunk of torso. The next, part of his head.
None of them complain, or show any sign of pain he can discern. None of them thank him, or speak at all about anything not immediately relevant to the situation.
They are almost more like machines than the things they fight; the metal creatures, at least, cry out as they die.
But he continues to heal them, not hesitating a moment to sacrifice his limited qi in exchange for their lives. They fought alongside his sect brothers and sisters, while he loitered safe behind thick walls; this was, at least, something he could do.
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Hom How began to lose his cultivation one week before he left the world of Salt.
It was not a remarkable day, except in retrospect; as the clouds turned purple, heralding the ‘morning’ – such as it was in a world with no day-night cycle – Hom How was painting.
Not for pleasure, or for art; Hom How was painting for war. Lines of ink slashed and curved across the metal tube he was working on, forms joining together in long lines all along the barrel. Even the inside was not spared, his spiritual sense guiding a thin hair-like brush to write forms along the spiral-patterned interior.
After a minute’s work he put down his tools, firmed his resolve, and then pushed with his sense. Formations were hard to make in this world, where the very air ate away at any exposed qi, but he was seventh realm; his sense was like a steel funnel, protecting the gaseous qi as it spiralled down into each speck of ink, turning them into array flags.
He held his breath as he pulled his sense away, but the array held even without his protection. Air rushed out from his lungs saturated with relief; even with ample practice, he was only successful maybe three in four times – sometimes it simply failed, some small flaw in his work acting as a weak point to let a rush of caustic energy flow in.
“[This one is done. Next, please.]”
Another rifle, as long as he was tall, clanked down on his table. And once again, for what must be the hundredth time that week, Hom How picked up his brush and began drawing the forms for a continual-repair array onto a weapon of war.
But before he could finish, he was interrupted. Four disciples, one carrying another while two followed, streaked through the room at a hurried pace – but not fast enough for him to not notice the blood. He caught up to them within a second, his brushes forgotten. “Do you need assistance? I know some healing arts.”
One of the followers, a woman he did not know, shook her head with an expression of mixed anxiety and determination. “His injury isn’t bad. It’s his suit.”
His suit? He looked closer, and saw the problem immediately. The injured man had only a small wound on his chest, but that was because his breastplate had done its job. The centre of it was simply gone, edges smooth like cut glass, leaving a hole you could fit a head through with room to spare.
He cast a spell anyway, the man’s light injury disappearing, and followed them down to the crypt. The man’s eyes darted wildly and he mumbled nonsense; he was awake, but not coherent. Some sort of esoteric attack, Hom How assumed, my spell would have cured a concussion.
The guns can wait. I don’t know why, but I have a bad feeling…
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The crypt was, as the name somewhat facetiously implied, where their Sealed Beast Coffin Armour was tended to. It was a place Hom How was familiar with; as someone with some passing skill in formations work, he had been drafted to repair damaged sections many times.
And so as he entered the cramped space, trailing behind the four junior disciples who were undoubtedly much older than him, he could tell immediately just from looking that the man was doomed. Spare parts were always kept in the same place, out in the open and easily accessible for when they were needed. And Hom How did not see a single breastplate, or even part of one.
As the dedicated enchanters began to extract the damaged piece from the man inside it, one met his eyes.
A small shake, almost invisible. We have nothing. Not enough spare parts to seal this hole, even if we use everything. That was what that small look meant.
A year into their exile, resources were simply stretched too thin. The only way to repair one suit was for another to fail. Hom How’s hands shook at the pointless injustice of it all. He could feel the man’s dantian beginning to strain as energy forced itself inside.
But then the shaking stilled.
“Please, use mine.” I knew this was happening, that people were losing their cultivation. But… not in front of me! Not right before my eyes, where I had the power to stop it!
The small crowd blinked. One enchanter opened his mouth to speak for them. “Respectfully, senior, I don’t think that is a good idea. This man is only fourth realm, and you…”
Silence. Not even the man’s friends spoke up on his behalf, turning their heads down rather than accepting his generosity.
It makes sense. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? I am a core disciple, how could the life of a lowly inner disciple compare?
For the first time in his life, Hom How struck out in anger. His sense whipped forward, cutting a line in the enchanter’s soul. He fell back onto the ground, more out of shock than pain, his eyes wide.
“That was not a request.” His helmet came off, exposing his child-like bowl cut. “I am ordering you. Give him my armour.”
The man’s jaw worked, no words coming from his throat.
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For two days, Hom How spent qi like water. He did all the work he could, and when that proved too time-consuming resorted to turning himself into resources for others. A cast-iron cooking pot served as a cauldron; though he was no alchemist, qi replenishment pills were as easy as boiling water. His cultivation regressed as he poured it out.
There was no regret in his heart; if a man loved cultivation, how could he bear to see it snatched from another? No, there was no regret. Only sadness.
Then, on the third day, the strain was finally too much. His shrinking dantian met the expanding knot of foreign energy, and Hom How let it go rather than watch it explode.
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There was a small room deep inside the guts of Fort Iron-Brick, where a few candles had been set out.
This was not the most unusual thing about the room; many humans lit candles in their private areas, more for familiarity’s sake than any great need for light as their divination-laden armours would let them see in pitch blackness.
No, what was unique about the room was its occupants. Eight humans sat around a low table, not bothering with chairs. One was in white armour, while seven were in robes – or rags, in a few cases.
“Thank you for coming.” The armoured man’s hands fiddled with themselves where they rested on the table, as though he were nervous. “As you probably have heard, we’ve seen some mild success in understanding consumption. Lady Jiandao,” he gestured to a woman in rags, leaning against the wall to his right, “And Sirs Hiien and Do,” two men, eerily identical, nodded in sync, “have even formed spiritual stomachs with assistance. And my understanding is that some of you have as well?”
The man directly to Hom How’s right grunted. He had a prominent scar on his lower lip, his hair nearly entirely grey with age. Hom How did not recognise him; he must have been from the inner sect.
“Very good, very good. If you could introduce yourself, sir..?”
The man did not answer. Instead, his spiritual sense flared out like dog raising its hackles. For a moment there was a palpable air of threat in the room, and Hom How’s heart beat wildly.
But in the next instant the atmosphere went back to normal. The man’s face twisted, and when he opened his mouth his tone was almost pleading. “Don’t make me talk. ‘S bad. Wrong.”
The armoured man, who Hom How knew as Lan through informational osmosis, made a pained expression. “…Very well. I suppose I’ll continue, then.” He cleared his throat. “Through trial and error, it’s been determined that having a strong emotional or personal connection to the thing you are attempting to ‘consume’ is beneficial. It is also better to have it be something concrete, an element or object, rather than something more ephemeral. Though,” another pained look, “that isn’t a hard rule. Things remain frustratingly inconsistent, and it isn’t as though we have a sample size worth mentioning.”
A woman, this one more familiar to him – Hoi’n Kamia, alchemist, formerly sixth realm – broke in. “We are treading new ground, yes. Please skip to the point.”
“That… really was the point, to be honest.” A slow shake of the head. “Just to help each other along. I hope we’ll be able to keep meeting like this, sharing knowledge. Once a week, maybe?”
His words produced a varied reaction, but not even the violently erratic man was entirely negative. A few of them spoke a little bit about their individual efforts, but there wasn’t much to say; the meeting broke up within fifteen minutes.
As Hom How exited the room, a stray pipe blasting him with lukewarm moisture, he was deep in thought. Something concrete. Artwork, maybe? No, that first piece of advice the scholar had given him resonated much more strongly than the second. He loved to create art, yes, but not for its own sake.
He made art for other people, to express things that couldn’t be communicated with words. Paint and ink was simply a medium.
Apologies, brother Lan. I’ll be ignoring your sound advice. What I love isn’t something that actually exists, and I refuse to set my foundation on something other than love.
They never had a second meeting. Two days after he met Lan and the others in that candle-lit room, the sect reestablished contact.