Using Instructor Lu’s lightning machine was not at all like being struck, either by actual lightning or by any spell she had ever encountered. Jiendao would know; not only had she experienced the real thing recently, but lightning arts were quite popular among the martially-inclined core disciples.
Lightning struck in a flash, and held extreme destructive power – and the only real downsides, low range and difficulty with aiming, were for the most part mitigated simply by the increase in realm. There were very few martial artists who didn’t keep a Lightning Palm, at the very least, in their back pocket.
So she could tell that what the wheel-thing was doing was on a much lesser level than a real bolt. She was experiencing only slight discomfort as she turned the crank as fast as she could, wires wrapped around each of her wrists.
I suppose the heart palpitations might be dangerous if I were a mortal… One of advanced age, at least. But I can’t help but feel skeptical.
Still, she closed her eyes and tried to meditate on her stomach; nothing she had done up to this point had shown any effect, so what did she have to lose? The sect wouldn’t have sent me to this man without good reason. I’ll extend him a little trust.
Even after months of effort, the bundle of energy in her centre was still mysterious. She could not bear to touch it with her spiritual sense, so she was reduced to fumbling around like a first realm, blindly pushing with her soul and observing through effects rather than direct observation. It would almost be nostalgic, if it wasn’t so consistently frustrating.
The tingling sensation of the less-than-lightning, the exertion of her arms turning the heavy crank, the fluttering of her heart… all these things dropped away as she narrowed her perceptions, until all that was left was the meat of her stomach.
It had changed slightly following its spiritual awakening; the organ was fatter, more symmetrical, with a sharp difference in colouration between it and the surrounding flesh. And while it still digested food perfectly well, she couldn’t help but feel that it was doing so… differently, somehow. Focusing on it felt disconcerting, like suddenly noticing a sixth finger on one hand.
Then as her meditation deepened, things seemed to lurch in place. Suddenly her proprioception was back, but what she was feeling wasn’t the relation of her limbs to each other; rather, she knew through experience that it was the bits of lightning flowing naturally through her nervous system. In this state, the machine in front of her blended seamlessly into her body, currents travelling like blood through a network of veins – a network that had suddenly gained a second, much stronger heart.
The shock of the extra sense appearing threatened to jolt her out of meditation, but she calmly drew breaths in and out, and within seconds she had settled.
The sheer weight that the copper wires had to her consumption immediately had her doubting her earlier conclusions. If her own nerves were thin threads, then each glass-enclosed wire was like a tightly-woven rope, ten times more lightning flowing into her body and out through her feet than she felt was natural.
But the next moment the emotion passed. She had felt something like this before, when she had a sect sister strike her with Heavenly Punishment, a high realm combat art. That had been brief, a fraction of a second, but in that one instant her body had all but disappeared next to the monstrous thing.
If the disciple hadn’t controlled the spell, kept it to the outer layer of her skin, then she would surely have died. It was power more than equal to the alien bolt that had awakened her. And yet she had not moved a single step, unable to skim off power the way she knew she should be able to.
And here, again, was that same hollow emptiness. She could feel the power, knew that she should be able to add it to herself somehow, but it danced seemingly beyond her reach. Some of the lightning was even flowing directly through her stomach, but she couldn’t touch it.
Frustration boiled over, and she lost the rhythm of her meditation. The alien sense disappeared, merely a dream, and her lips curled in an involuntary snarl.
“Not making any progress, Lady Jiendao?”
She did not jump, but it was a close thing. One more breath, blowing emotion out as if it were air, and then she turned.
“Not that I can perceive, sir.”
Her teacher, Lu of the outer sect, was handsome. But it was a very insecure sort of handsome; the man’s face was hidden under so much makeup it could have looked like anything, and his robes were more gaudy than beautiful despite their expensive make. In short, he was trying too hard. It made him easy to look at, but equally easy to look away from.
He put a hand to his lips. “Ah, but what can you perceive? Can you feel the generator at all?”
“Yes, I can feel it just fine.” Frustration threatened to build again, but she mastered herself. “The problem is taking anything in. I know it should be possible – the swamp men explained the process to me exactly – but I can’t seem to actually do it. It is… taxing.”
Lu hmmed. “Yes, I can imagine.”
“So how do you do it, sir? You’ve progressed much further than us, so surely you must know the method?”
----------------------------------------
Lu’s brain seemed to ground to a halt, his student’s question a thick iron bar shoved between its turning gears.
Ah, that’s the question, isn’t it? How to progress, how to grow your consumption. How to take ki from outside, and put it inside. Digest it, make it part of yourself.
As for my own answer…
He didn’t really have one. Thus far he had never successfully digested something into spacial ki like a Salt native would; his ki came either from the spiral motion of his enchanted stomach, or from absorbing ki fluctuations which seemed entirely automatic.
All he could do was subtly shake his head. “The path of consumption is far more personal than that of cultivation. Earth’s qi is simply qi, but Salt’s ki is myriad; my own consumption of space bears little relation to your lightning foundation.” Jiendao's face scrunched as she processed his words. “Ah, but it isn’t as if I have no guidance at all. Tell me, have you ever managed to cast a technique? You might need to empty your bowl before filling it again.”
Her face scrunched further. “I have not. How do I do that?”
Lu spent an hour guiding her, only leaving when she began to form fluctuations of her own – this close to the breach, they were almost as perceivable as in Salt itself.
Good progress, good progress. He could feel Jiendao attempting to match the pattern of the first realm Shocking Palm, the precursor to the Lightning Palm enchantment that was the core of her consumption.
It wasn’t very close yet, but he had faith in the former core disciple. Though I’m a bit disappointed the generator alone didn’t seem to help, I’m confident that some aspect of my experiences will be applicable.
I do wonder why Jiendao and the twins hit a wall, though. Hom How is understandable, having had so little time in Salt after his stomach formed, but the other three had weeks or months. I was growing my consumption the day after I performed surgery on myself, so what’s the difference?
It can’t just be the Grandmaster’s impartment, right?
Lu didn’t want to acknowledge such an emasculating thought, so he put it out of his mind for the moment.
----------------------------------------
It had been so long since Stingy had fought a proper swordsman.
Not just a man with a sword, those were five-to-the-disk, but a swordsman. A martial artist, someone who built themselves around their weapon like it was their spine.
Cobo was not a martial artist, neither was Lu. Not even Lu’s friend Bull Guanyin was up to her standards; he leaned too heavily on techniques and muscle power. He was strong though, and the closest to a human martial artist she had met… until now.
Righty and Lefty were good good. Some men held their swords like they were part of their bodies, but the pair dashing wildly around her moved their bodies as extensions of their swords.
Actually, they might be better than me. No, they definitely were; she was stronger, mostly faster, and more durable. The only way they were still standing was a pure difference in skill.
Righty came at her from behind. She recognised the feint, then the second feint, but mistook the next slash as a third instead of the real attack it was. Steel cut through her scales in a way it really shouldn’t have, a deep gash opening in the bottom third of her tail, and before she could take advantage of the human’s extended arm his partner came in from her front.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Lefty wasn’t quite as good as Righty, but he was still probably better than her. He blocked, she went for the disarm, but his sword stuck to his hand like it was glued in place – and again, before she could take advantage of her superior strength to simply bash one into the ground, the other came in, their blade too dangerous to ignore.
This was a fight she could lose, and her blood was up. She used her legs, her tail, even her teeth when it made sense, but still she was being taken apart one cut at a time.
If her stamina wasn’t also better than theirs, she’d have gone down already – but even with all her advantages, it was still anyone’s fight.
She slashed, trees falling, and for the fiftieth time the two switched places with a technique she didn’t understand. Righty blocked the hit that would have taken Lefty’s arm off, while Lefty, now behind her, cut a chunk out of her thigh. Her mouth opened and she roared, forcing them away with sound alone to let her regeneration work.
Yeah, I could lose this one. Her thoughts were manic, almost too fast for her body to keep up. Her pulse raced, and all her instincts were screaming at her to use the Quickening, or one of her Cuts, or any other secret technique. She ignored them.
I want to win this with just my sword. Skill against skill. The humans weren’t exactly playing by the same rules, but neither were they throwing fire or blinding her with lights – it was as fair as it could be with them being a quarter her size.
She swung her sword again, the metal singing as it cut through the air. A dozen trees crashed around them as the fight continued, then a dozen more.
----------------------------------------
Oh my. Should I maybe set up an isolation array, or something? Stingy and the twins had moved far out from what little clearing had been made, and were now properly amongst the trees. As such, they were making rather a lot more noise as giant hundred-year-old evergreen oaks crashed against each other, uprooting smaller fern-like silk trees as small critters scurried away. Lu spied a single spirit squirrel, identifiable by its huge size, amidst a crowd of its more mundane brethren.
“Don’t worry, there’s no-one around.”
Lu’s spine went straight in surprise. “Senior brother, please don’t do that!”
Giro raised a single brow. “Do what? I walked up to you properly, in full view.”
Lu’s eyes went back to the running battle. He would have thought that the tight confines of the forest would benefit the twins, but it seemed that was naive; Stingy was more than strong enough to simply bull through any barrier. Forgive me for being distracted, senior. Anyway…
“I didn’t expect them to be this skilled.” They’re first and second realm, but even just one of them would handily chop me to pieces before I could cast a spell.
“They’ve been martial artists for ten times as long as you’ve been alive. If you underestimated them, that’s your fault.”
Lu didn’t know how to feel. And Stingy is what… three years and change, most of that living with Cobo in the desert? He was caught between admiration for the humans for keeping up with the huge monster, and admiration for Stingy for being their equal in a fraction the lifespan.
And of course, unease. Stingy may or may not be exceptional, I simply don’t know. But if Salt can train up a generation of women half as strong as her every three years… He had been deliberately not thinking of the logistics, but seeing the woman fighting two of his quasi-seniors to a standstill made it hard to ignore. She rambled on about her mother’s lessons enough that I started tuning it out, but if I remember the numbers right…
About one sharpie a day. About one sharpie in thirty emerges from pupation as female, after between ten and fifty days of sharpie-hood – let’s say thirty days, to make the math easy.
One woman becomes two in two months. Then four after another two months. Eight, sixteen…
One stray woman could theoretically turn into over fifty between one spring and the next. And that’s ignoring all the men! Cobo and Ded and Sulphur weren’t exactly strong, but I’d say they were at least equal to the average first realm, twice as strong as a mortal human and with some few paltry techniques.
A particularly loud crash did very little to jolt him from his introspection.
How strong is the average Salt warrior? Junk Dog had a reputation for being weak, but their elites were somewhere in the general area of core realm. Bo would be at least fourth or fifth realm, is he closer to the average? And still, he’s less than a decade old. One woman could make three-thousand of him in the time it takes a human to become capable of fighting at all.
Part of his mind was attempting to calm him down, to assure him that the Elders would take care of the war, that a violent confrontation between two entire realities was too unlikely with only man-sized breaches to act as chokepoints, but the rest of him couldn’t stop tallying the numbers with growing discomfort.
Breaches like this one… How many of them are there? How many can we possibly find, if they’re all as hidden as this one?
When armies begin pouring through, how many will we catch? Has it already started? If I was Sir Bones, and I wanted my worshippers to subvert an enemy population, and I was willing to cast away any moral concerns…
Open breaches in out-of-the-way places, places the enemy didn’t – couldn’t – live, then send a single woman through each. Then simply… wait.
Lu swallowed thickly as the fight finally wound down, Stingy’s superior stamina allowing her to outlast her opponents. Ban Do went down first, a tail-flick catching the exhausted man in the leg, and without his twin’s support Kai Hiien was taken out with two heavy overhead chops, one smacking his sword away and the other breaking his shoulder with the flat.
No, no, I’m being pessimistic. Salt isn’t any more united in itself than Earth is; for all I know their divinities will start squabbling like roosters left in the same pen before any invasion can be organised.
Stingy was at least a gracious winner. She picked the two up and then a gush of words came from her mouth. Presumably about the fight; she hadn’t yet put her fragile translation necklace back on, so nobody could understand her.
And they might break up for any number of other reasons. It isn’t like they’re a theocracy; most of Horrible Swamp sided with us over Sir Bones. There are probably plenty of clans that see their vulnerable neighbours as a juicier target than some theoretical other world that they’ve never been to.
This isn’t like the invasion of Hell, where we’re fighting complete monsters born from the lowest depths of human cruelty. These are just people – barbaric people, yes, but not unfeeling monsters. Things won’t escalate to some sort of extermination attempt.
But although each of his self-reassurances made sense, Lu couldn’t help but continue feeling anxious.
Argh, this is why I didn’t think about it! It’s not like I can affect anything, so why even bother being anxious? I’m an outer disciple, an outer disciple! I should be thinking about how to train my students, not the logistics of a war!
I’ve never even been in a war! What in Hell’s name am I supposed to do?
----------------------------------------
Giro watched the young man’s expression morph as the two-on-one duel concluded. I mirror your sentiments, junior. Though their bodies are weak, that they could fail while holding a numbers advantage is distressing.
At least this one was on their side. More solidly than some of their other allies, anyway; the neighbouring sects wanted proof of what they were claiming, but how could they offer proof without offending the Heavens? It was straining the sect to the breaking point producing as many anti-divinations as they were, any more and the whole thing would fall apart like the hollow bark of a rotting tree.
As if mocking his thoughts, one last tree, half cut-through by the young lady’s weathered sword, finally lost the battle with its own weight and collapsed to the ground.
And yet, how can we blame them? To go against Heaven is to go against the natural order, and they do not have Patriarch Steadfast Heart to act as a shield. Why should they move without proof?
It was an increasingly terrible situation on all fronts. He had no idea how master Winding Wind and his peers could manage to make a single decision within this quagmire of equally-bad options.
Perhaps we should simply capitulate. Salt has shown hostility to us, so why should we protect it? Honestly, from the very start-
His cynical thought was cut off by the slightest movement on the edge of his perception, a single hair out of place for a fraction of a second. Without moving a muscle in his neck or face, his eyes snapped to the treeline, his sense smoothly and softly undulating to encircle a single tree while hopefully remaining unnoticed.
As the outer disciple spoke to the pair of former core realms, Giro’s eyes did not move from the treetops. Long minutes passed as he examined every millimetre with his sense.
There appeared to be nothing, but he didn’t become Winding Wind’s favoured disciple by a lack of paranoia. A spellform built itself out in his head, and a moment later the treetop was turned to ash – except for one thing, a small speck of black.
It darted immediately, quick as a core realm hummingbird, but it failed to account for the one-way barriers he had set up for exactly this situation. It struck the formation with an almost-comical splat, and while the disciples were still turning their head towards where his Field of Terrible Heat had struck, he smoothly plucked the interloper up between two fingers.
Jiendao was slightly faster in terms of putting things together, and bounded to his side while the others were still stunned.
“What is it?” Her eyes flashed as she recognised the thing he was gripping, but he still answered.
“Looks to be a lesser imp.” Between his index finger and thumb was something a bit like a bat and a bit like a scorpion, fur and chitin blended with an ugliness that couldn’t be anything but deliberate.
It squirmed, and despite being no larger than a fingernail spoke with the voice and volume of an adult man. “Fool, you court the wrath of Hell! Do not restrain me!” Its teeth, no larger than grains of sand, cut into his thumbnail and managed to draw blood. “I am a great duke, powerful beyond mortal understanding! Release me and I shall grant you three wishes, cross me and-”
He did not allow the tiny thing to finish. Smashing the imp between his hands, four closed spaces appeared between his palms, each intersecting the others.
Space broke, and his palms turned into a substance unrecognisable as anything that used to be alive. But the imp did not die right away; it thrashed, crying out with a blood-curdling scream that made the mortal Hom How fall to the ground and the rest clutch their ears.
Only after a full ten minutes of enduring the shredding field of spacial turbulence did the thing finally begin breaking apart. It was actually higher realm than him; its status as a Hell Duke proved itself not entirely a lie, and only the disparity in size and shoddy construction of its home-made body had allowed him to keep it trapped. The disciples watched pale-faced as it turned to black smoke, the sight unobstructed by his long-atomised hands.
He let some of the tension in his frame go as he felt its soul disappear, no doubt retreating back to Hell; hopefully it would be damaged enough to not recall the last few hours.
But most of the tension was still there. Was it there from the start, or did it slip in when my guard was down? Catching it had been pure luck. His hands grew back as he turned to the disciples and their guests.
“I’m afraid this training mission is over. I can no longer guarantee your safety, so we will be returning to the sect.”