Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS

Despite my coaching, neither of my disciples had managed to activate the technique. This was not unusual, of course. I myself had taken days of persistent practice before first activating the Heart of Rainfall, and in my case it had only been the second technique I learned, rather than the first. Gen and Lin made good efforts, and I had faith they would be able to comprehend the technique’s profundity.

“The storm,” I had told them, “is a battle. It is the cyclical flow of water from the heavens to the earth. It is enraged, and it is calm, depending on where you stand. The core of this technique is to turn the dantian in your heart into such a storm, but composed of miasma. Once the meditation room is repaired, I would recommend you turn it into the storm, and simply feel it wash over you. The greater your understanding of a storm, the easier it will be to form the technique.”

I turned to Rachel, then, and asked a question.

“How long do you think it’ll be until it can be fixed?”

Rachel turned, appearing as if she had been snapped out of a reverie.

“What? Oh, right, it should be about a week. We need to finish handling our gains from the gangs we took over in the past few days.”

At this, I nodded, and then turned back to the disciples.

“That’s a matter for later. Continue practicing on your own. Next time I give you pointers, you may ask me any questions you have.

“Thank you, Master,” said Lin.

The two bowed, and quickly left the room, replaced by the ever solitary form of Blake Wan.

“Greetings, Master,” he said, with a polite bow that I waved off. He was always like that in front of me, solemn and composed. Unlike Lin Wuyuan, however, according to Rachel, Blake never came out of his shell in front of anybody else, either. This represented a problem for my intentions of promoting close relationships between sect members in order to increase loyalty.

Blake, unlike his peers, had little interest in such behavior, or at least, had pushed away social interaction as much as possible.

He was here for one reason: to gain the strength to achieve his goals, and he had no intentions of losing track of this. This posed problems to me, as it was more difficult to build up that sense of loyalty, and also increased the odds of damage to his mental state. For a formless practitioner, this was an important consideration.

Of course, I had taken him in as my disciple fully aware of this. I smiled as I remembered it. This was a young man who had dedicated his entire life to revenge to the exclusion of all else. It was hard to say that he was like me, because as I had recently realized, I was not truly bound by my desire for revenge, real as it was. Instead, I was a man bound by my instincts. Still, Blake amused me, and I would use his talents for my own benefit while dangling the opportunity for revenge before him.

Mutually beneficial arrangements were enough for me. Though I still would prefer he interacted more with the others. I would not have minded another layer of security.

I glanced over at Blake, and could tell he was clearly unnerved by the intensity of my gaze.

“I’m sure you understand the social repercussions this ability might cause you,” I told him.

He nodded firmly.

“In addition, be aware that the ability cannot do much at this stage. At most, you will be able to ripple your facial muscles such that you appear to be a stranger. This is a technique which only excels at the higher realms.”

“That’s good, Master,” replied Blake. “I don’t wish to be recognized.”

At this, I could only sigh.

“Fine, then. As I’ve said before, the core of every technique is a visualization. For the Ripple Disguise Art, you must imagine a pond. A still, smooth body of water.”

Midway through the explanation, I realized that Blake, a native of Tseludia, had undoubtedly never seen anything like a pond.

“Rachel, can you-”

She obliged, and the image of a green pond appeared in the empty center of the room. While the image was perfect, the lack of any remarks almost felt off-putting coming from her.

“Is something happening?” I asked. For a while now, she had been acting as if she were extremely distracted by something.

She glanced at Blake, and then back to me.

“It’s not pressing. We can speak about it later.”

I nodded, and returned my attention to my student.

“Imagine that this pond is you. You are still, you are calm. The world is the same. All is the surface of the pond, unaffected by the exterior world. Then the miasma enters, like a cast stone.”

As I spoke, I mimed tossing a rock into the pond, and Rachel followed through, showing the ripples in the world that resulted from the action.

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“With this, the natural order has been interrupted, and a new order is displayed.”

I mimed another rock tossed, and a second set of ripples appeared on the pond. A third and a fourth stone were cast in, and the once still waters became turbulent.

“As so,” I explained, “the miasma is cast into your body in pulses, each one dispersing out to affect the area around it. Each influence is slight, but they accumulate to cause great change. Here is what it looks like in practice.”

I rippled my own flesh in tune with the water, a grotesque image that left Blake taken aback. Behind me, I heard Rachel giggle. My skin and bones shifted slowly as the ripples in the pond did, and Blake peered closely at my face, which did not appear how I normally did. I seemed bulkier, my jaw and cheekbones firm, wrinkles on my brow and deep bags under my eyes. I looked almost the spitting image of Kein Huang, if he were to have the dark skin of a farsei.

“I’m not using the Ripple Art, of course. I’m merely replicating it with the natural talents of a formless physique at my level. If you were to make this art one of your cores, you would be able to do far more with it than merely this.”

In the time since I had become a spirit refiner, I had repeatedly practiced the limits of my physique, and had learned that I could roughly approximate the appearance of another Seiyal, enough to fool someone who was not a close acquaintance. In theory, I could do the same for other humanoid races such as the Jobu or the Reth, but I simply was unable to alter the color of my skin, hair and eyes. For that, one would either need technological assistance, a dedicated technique, or the help of an extant practitioner. With the demonstration complete, my skin rippled again, before I returned to my regular appearance.

“The trick to this technique is to fully still the flow of miasma within your body, and then finely shift how it interacts with the meridians within the part of your body you wish to affect. It’s a test of fine control, and depending on how you alter the establishment of your meridians, it might become easier or more difficult.”

Blake watched with what was clearly some sort of morbid fascination. Body alteration was certainly a powerful ability, but it came at a cost. It was easy to make a mistake and damage one’s own foundation, and also to be stuck in the form one had changed into. I had never observed any of the rumored legendary formless arts that allowed one to transform into a monster to increase battle strength, but I could estimate the side effects of such a transformation.

“Keep in mind,” I continued, “that this alteration is permanent. You must change yourself back on your own. It is wise to keep in mind your true appearance, or you might lose yourself. It is said that this is what drove the Many-Faced Demon into insanity. Of all the paths, the formless path is most prone to this, for more reasons than one.”

After explaining the art to him, I helped Blake for about another hour to physically comprehend the complexities of it. Like the others, I didn’t expect him to truly succeed with the art for at least another week, and it would take a few more for him to do anything more than make his appearance extremely unsightly. This would not, I estimated, do much to help with his poor social skills.

After I finished teaching him, I returned to my office, followed by the still oddly quiet form of Rachel. I rested my elbows on the desk, clasping my fists together in a manner my master had once done.

“Tell me what’s happening,” I said.

In response, Rachel gave me an awkward smile, scratching the back of her head.

“It’s really not anything important. I’ve just been sorting through the information that the Magister told me. There’s quite a lot that we did not know about the Epon. If this is true…”

“Is there anything I would care about?” I asked.

Rachel shook her head.

“It mostly relates to their main branch in the Janaste system. Though, you might be interested to know that Lao Feng, the man you met the other day, was actually a Celan.”

I nodded.

“Obviously. He’s a Celan operative.”

Rachel smiled coyly.

“Not quite what I meant, Cyrus. He’s the results of experiments in implanting a Celan mind and soul into a Seiyal body.”

I paused, blinking for a few seconds as I parsed her words.

“Are you serious?” I asked, my words quiet and my reaction subdued.

Rachel nodded.

“It’s actually quite the innovation. My people came up with it centuries ago, of course, but our souls are incompatible with the method, obviously.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, this was cruel experimentation performed on the body of a man of my race, and on the other, I didn’t particularly care about what happened to someone’s body after their death. If nothing else, this did serve to explain some of the questions I had left after my interactions with the man.

“Did he know how many of these… infiltrators there are?” i asked.

Rachel laughed at me.

“My, you’re acting quite serious about this, Cyrus. But no, Lao Feng is apparently one of only three here on the station. The surgery can only be performed in the Janaste system, and only on mortals, so you don’t need to worry.”

Hearing this, I relaxed. I could handle the idea of a few mortal deaths, particularly if it meant no aliens were secretly infiltrating my sect. Still, I didn’t allow myself to relax completely. If the Celans could do this, what was to say others could not? The Staiven, after all, were extremely interested in acquiring other progression systems, and their technology was no weaker than that of the Celans.

I met Rachel’s eyes once again.

“If there’s two others on the station… who are they?” I asked.

Rachel smiled.

“You might find this rather interesting.”

Soul Replacement: [Created roughly thirty years ago, according to the Pantheonic Calendar, this cutting edge technology is controlled in utmost secrecy by the Epon, and allows them to swap souls and engrams between humanoid bodies. One of the two bodies is destroyed in the process, and one of the souls is as well, though this is not considered an issue. Sufficient testing has allowed the Epon to use this on Jobu, Korlove, and Seiyal, though insufficient quantities of test subjects have rendered them unable to use it on the Reth so far. Despite their visual similarity to the humanoid races, the Staiven are not effective targets for the technology, as their brains are simply too different from that of humanoids for the process to operate smoothly. Similarly, using the technology with Korlove can cause locomotion issues due to their physical differences with Jobu and Seiyal. In addition, attempting the process with a soul enhanced by a progression system inevitably causes the process to fail, destroying both bodies and souls.]