Spiritual plants aren’t treasures, they’re just nature’s most patient monsters. – Elder Tong at the Skyhaven Sect

* * *

Tenri took a deep breath as we faced the tree. Malevolence still clung to the air like a cloud. It would attack us as soon as we were close enough.

“Ready?” he asked softly. I nodded.

I sprinted to the right while he made a direct run at the tree’s trunk. As expected, bursts of silver began to explode around us. I ducked under the shower of qi and continued running towards the bonfire. If I could just get there, maybe I could placate it by putting out the fire.

The wood groaned and creaked, and I felt its attention keenly on my back. Images flashed through my mind so fast I almost didn’t catch them in their entirety. The first was an explosion of qi a few inches in front of me. In this possible future, I ran straight into it and found myself trapped in the prison again. In the next, I managed to dodge the first explosion, only to be trapped between three more on all sides.

This was Flash Forward, one of the two blooded techniques I’d developed. Forewarned of my enemy’s attacks, I skidded to a halt, my feet sliding on the grass. An explosion of lunar qi burst in front of me, but this time, I was able to stop myself before running right into it. I paused, trying to find traces of the follow-up attack I knew was coming. With focus and foreknowledge, I felt the warping of reality around me. It was all around, focused on three points around my head.

The configuration was the same as in my vision. I tucked my head and threw myself forward, rolling and springing back to my feet just as the silver explosions went off.

I reached the bonfire and ducked behind the burning pyre. Step one achieved. Step two, put out the flames. How I was going to do that, though…

Were I an Ascendent still, I would just alter reality so that the flames were no longer burning or write a rule that air could not exist around the fire, thus starving the flames. However, I wasn’t an Ascendent. At Bronze, I was barely even a cultivator. That limited my options greatly.

I peeked my head out from the pyre, only to withdraw it immediately when a silver burst nearly showered me in qi. Tenri must have reached the tree by now, right? I hadn’t gotten a good enough look to see if he’d been taken down or not. The lunar bursts the tree used were difficult to see without eyes that could see qi, making this a treacherous gauntlet. Even I wouldn’t have made it without the benefit of Flash Forward.

One problem at a time, though. My goal was still the bonfire, and if I couldn’t put out the flames, then I would need to resort to other methods to achieve my ends.

My hands began to tremble as I realized what I needed to do. The qi inside my core was still darkened from my earlier escape. It swirled uncomfortably within me, a foreign power that I had been ignoring with all my being for thousands of years. But now…

I closed my eyes and imagined my core. My core was like a second moon inside my body; power radiated like light from my core in my chest, shining its light on every part of me to both connect and strengthen both mind and body. This new power had no light, but I bid it to shine all the same.

A twisting discomfort grew inside me as the dark energy began to radiate from my core. It streaked outward, filling my body with the blackness of the night and connecting it in an entirely new way. It layered itself onto the meridians of moonlight and fused with them.

After a deep breath, I reached out my hand and focused on the bonfire. I wanted it gone. I wanted it to be erased from existence. Hungry darkness surged into my fingertips, searching for its target. I brushed a log near the outside of the flames, and the darkness struck, lashing out like a viper.

I opened my eyes, and the entire bonfire dissolved into ash. Without fuel to burn, the fire extinguished, and only the memory of its heat remained.

Then, I was falling. The destructive energy that had erased the bonfire had also taken a sizeable portion of the ground beneath it…including the very ground I’d been kneeling on.

I tumbled several feet into the newly opened hole. When I finally stopped moving, I stayed still for a long moment, trying to figure out why the hole had opened in the first place. Clearly, I lacked control with this new power. The technique had taken an astonishing amount of my qi and had produced a commensurate result. I’d need to correct that if I didn’t want to fall into anymore holes…

Chiho trilled at me. It left its usual place and flew around my head to poke my cheek.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I assured it. “Or I will be once my pride recovers.” It trilled and nuzzled my cheek, trying to cheer me up. I couldn’t help but smile at its efforts.

With a groan, I put a hand down to try and push myself up. My hand touched something solid. I looked down in surprise. My heart leapt into my throat at the sight of the silver veined root that had been uncovered by my efforts.

The instant I saw it, the tree lashed out. A silver thorn grew at an alarming rate, stabbing into my wrist. I yelped and pulled back from the root, but it was too late. I felt the weariness begin to grow again.

I gritted my teeth in defiance. Even if it managed to knock me down, it wouldn’t hold me for long. It would just be another injury to my pride, but my pride was already bruised enough from my unceremonious fall. I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction!

Slowly, I pushed myself upward, careful not to touch the root again. The hole was only about as deep as I was tall, and, under normal circumstances, I should have been able to easily climb out. Even a Bronze could do that much!

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My first attempt to climb was met with crumbling ground, as was my second. The dirt was not steady. Nothing short of a flying leap would get me out without assistance, and my limbs were already leaden.

“Fine, weave your prison, you stupid tree!” I hissed. “I’ll break out again and we’ll be right back where we started!”

I sat down and waited for the dream to overwhelm my senses. However, as I put my hand against the root once more, another thorn jabbed into my palm. The tree was determined, I’d give it that.

The lunar qi suddenly shifted, and, at first, I thought another burst of qi would open up above me. Instead, the qi in the root seemed to reach inside me and latch onto my moon qi. I stared at the root, unsure of what it was trying to do…

Silver sparkled in the veins of the tree. In the next moment, the dream took hold, and I was suddenly in…the forest? The blue leafed trees waved in the wind, the sparkles of moonlight dancing in the boughs. Only, some of the trees sported bare branches, and others had patches of black decay in their canopies.

I looked down and discovered why. An enormous mound of dirt before me was crawling with ants with pincers that reflected light like a sharpened sword. If this colony of ants was nearby, then it was no small wonder that the tree wanted to grow towards the farm instead of this. Pincers of metal qi were a fairly common enhancement for many insects in their early stages of cultivation, but it would leave a nasty bite on even an Iron Stage artist.

As soon as I’d seen the anthill, the vision vanished, and I was back in my hole. The leaden weight in my limbs vanished. The tree had released me.

“Thank you,” I said, putting a hand on the root. I pushed myself back to my feet and backed against the wall. It wasn’t much of a “running jump,” but it was enough. Qi-enhanced muscles could complete any number of feats mortals never could, and soon, I was out of the hole and laying on the grass. The malevolent aura was gone, and the tree was calm.

Nearby, Tenri had his hand pressed to the trunk. No doubt he was also learning of the anthill. As I approached, he turned his head ever so slightly towards me, though his eyes were still closed.

“I know why it’s growing this way,” he said softly.

“Ants?” I asked.

“They’re in the fields further in.” Tenri turned his head back to the tree. “I need to help it retract its roots from the more problematic parts of the farm. Could you deal with the ants? Then it could grow that direction, and we can coexist.”

“Consider it done,” I agreed. “I’ll be back soon.”

The tree didn’t bother me as I strode past the trunk and into the woods beyond. It was incredible how powerful the tree was. Trees and animals were certainly capable of cultivation, just like people were, but without intentionally working towards advancement, it took them a lot longer. A natural spirit beast could advance in a few decades to the point of Bronze or Iron, but a tree? It needed centuries.

Not only that, this tree had successfully developed qi of both Wood and Moon, something that most artists considered a waste of time. Wood aura is part of the Elemental Cycle, resting between water and fire. Moon aura is completely different. Resting on the Celestial Cycle, the power of the moon is governed by entirely different forces than the auras of the Elemental Cycle. For that reason, few cultivators ever mastered the use of two auras of different cycles. Those who tried often crippled themselves by trying to balance the two opposing forces. However, this tree had done exactly that. Given a few more centuries, it could become even stronger and serve as a potent source of qi for both cycles.

But only if we could find a way to allow it and the farm to coexist. To do that, we needed to give it more options.

It didn’t take long to find the ant colony. It was just a matter of finding the trees suffering from root damage and following the line of dying trees until the canopy opened and bare branches clawed at the sky.

There, a mound of dirt was crawling with black and red bodies. A shudder went down my spine and I tried not to look too closely at the hill. Bees and wasps, I could handle. Even spiders were usually solitary creatures, and so were a problem of limited size. Ants? Beetles? Other creepy crawly creatures? Not so much.

Being the only boy amongst my siblings, it had often fallen to me to deal with any insects that got in the house. My older sister had a crippling fear of all insects, and my younger sister was only fond of insects outside the house. Anything that made it inside was mine to deal with…and my most hated enemy of all were the ants. They were like a plague. Kill one and ten more take its place. Wipe them all out, and they’d just appear again the next day! It had been an ongoing war, and one that I hadn’t won until I’d become a cultivator.

These ants were even worse. From the look of them, most of the colony were either mundane or in the earliest of the Manifestation Stage, the stage so low that most weren’t even considered cultivators at that point. If I had to guess, the soldiers might be near breaking through to Forging, and the Queen might be Bronze. At least…I hoped so.

“Well, Chiho,” I began, “I suppose I’ve just learned a great technique for digging holes.” Chiho trilled and vibrated in my hair. With a sigh, I inched closer to the mound.

The destructive qi within me circulated through my body, filling every inch of my person. This time, it felt more natural, more comfortable as it radiated outward. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried by that development or not. In a similar way, learning to use lunar qi had been much the same all those years ago. Maybe acclimating to a new form of qi was always like that and I was too consumed by madness to notice last time.

Qi spread into the ground, weaving and dismantling the mound. A few moments later, it was gone. The nest reacted. Though many of their brethren had been slain in an instant, the nest was far larger than any I’d seen before. The carpet of chitinous bodies roiled, making my stomach churn. However, they were no threat to me, and so I stilled my heart and approached the next section of the nest.

This one fell just as swiftly as the first, and I felt the void ki becoming more and more receptive to my commands. As the mounds were reduced to dust one by one, they left behind more void qi, which I then absorbed back into my core to use on the next mound.

A spray of earth erupted from the last mound and an ant hurled itself at me with incredible speed. It was large for an ant…meaning it was the size of my palm instead of being too small to even see. She beat furious wings and snapped at me with angry mandibles that had a sheen like hardened steel.

The queen wasn’t as big as I’d thought she would be. After seeing the bees and hornets in the woods that had grown to the size of a fox, this was extremely underwhelming. I swatted the ant away with the back of my hand and she went flying.

She quickly corrected herself, however, and dove at me once more. Flash Forward revealed to me her path, which was a direct one, and I stepped back, ready to strike. Just before I put my foot down, Flash Forward revealed another possible reality…one that bit me only a moment later.

A pain erupted on the back of my neck as a soldier ant bit down hard. Instinctively, I slapped the area and brushed away the corpse. In that moment, the queen had the opportunity she needed and she struck. Her mandibles sank into my neck, and I panicked for a moment…only to then realize that she was too small to really hurt me. I pulled the creature off me and held her between two fingers. She struggled and snapped.

Void qi dripped from my fingers at my command, and the queen disintegrated in my hand. Once that was done, I reached down, and the last mound of the ant nest joined her. Before leaving, I bowed my head. They’d fought well and had died honorable deaths. Then I turned to report their end to Tenri and the tree.