Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
Du Qin Hadal stepped out of the aero, watching the giant machine fight with a figure that seemed miniscule from such a distance.
“How convenient,” he muttered. “Two in one place.”
He walked swiftly but unhurriedly towards a bridge overlooking the battle, still watching as it progressed. The small figure dashed to and fro on the titan’s form, like a small stinging insect, unable to even pierce the great beast’s hide. If Du Qin were to wait, he would surely witness the Riverfiend’s death.
But of far more importance than the unorthodox spirit refiner was the impending decisions the Staiven would surely make. Before they took action, he needed to rescue Juen, and ideally Keitel as well. His upcoming plans heavily relied on the boy’s continued survival. Was this event part of a conspiracy targeting him and his faction, or had Juen simply been unfortunate? He would have his subordinates look into the matter once this was over. Du Qin Hadal was a man who repaid both debt and grudge in equal measure.
Du Qin scanned the area, searching for signs of any condensed souls. He glanced again at the forms of the Riverfiend and the titan, noticing a very odd, large soul in the area. From this distance, it appeared vaguely spherical, and was sucking and emanating ashata in a peculiar manner. He had never seen anything like it. Could that be the Riverfiend’s soul, he wondered? If so, there must be some secret to it. That was not his focus, however, so his gaze moved onwards, seeking out the evidence he was looking for.
Juen, he knew, had the soul of a Hadal genesis practitioner. Their singularity method was among the best available, and only practitioners of other paths like Du Qin would choose a different one. Throughout his long life, he had seen hundreds of spirit refiners who used the method, and even at a distance could easily recognize such souls. It did not take him long to spot what he was looking for. There were two souls in the area which fit his criteria, which matched with the presence of Juen and Keitel. As expected, the two were standing near one another. Trusting in their joint abilities, Du Qin turned his attention to the titan. Since he was here…
Carefully sliding his legs over the metal railing of the bridge, Du Qin set his feet on the lip, and launched himself from the surface at high speed, cracking the stone surface behind him. He had no techniques to enhance his body, nor any for his motion, but what Du Qin did have was a true manifest body, and as he pushed off from the surface, there was a burst of purple light as a metal lotus flower appeared suddenly between his legs and the bridge, launching him away.
Du Qin slammed into the titan’s side at full force, buckling a large portion of the metallic beast’s structure, but not breaking its defenses. It would take more than that to defeat such a machine. Above, the Riverfiend rocked on his feet, but his balance was excellent, and held firmly. Where he had collided with the massive machine, an oversized steel lotus almost the size of an aero had formed around him, wrapping its petals around the various limbs and gun emplacements of the machine in an attempt to render it entirely restrained. Now that his momentum had been bled away by the impact, the lotus petals slowly slid open, blooming in place like a silvery tumor which shimmered with purple light.
He stood on the flower’s stamen, inducing the shifts in his soul to cause changes to the world around him.
Du Qin’s soul was a vast lotus, one matching the metal flower around him in every aspect of size, shape, and form. He could perfectly control the shape of his soul, and the metal warped to match. His had been a self-created soul refinement method, and one he had used to great extent, its nature perfect for his path.
Restrictions, to Du Qin, were merely paths to greatness.
The petals draped around the titan’s sinuous limbs, squeezing tighter and tighter as if they wished to return to bud. The lotus’s stamen extended, providing a path for Du Qin to walk onto the rugged surface of the titan’s frame, glancing towards the man before him.
“You are bold, Jin Luo, to believe that you could escape the consequences of your actions,” he said, disdain clear in his tone.
Though Du Qin had taken the time to speak, the expression of his soul continued to crush and restrain the titan’s motion. His manifested steel could only last so long against the might of the giant machine, but it was more than enough time to speak with the man who had interrupted several of Du Qin’s plans. He could have engaged the man in physical combat, but Du Qin would only do so if he were desperate.
For rare practitioners like Du Qin, the term ‘martial’ artist could be considered misleading. His body could only keep up with that of most practitioners a stage below him, but Du Qin had never preferred to be so crass.
In the past, he had been called a coward for it, and it had cost him the position of Patriarch. This would forever be one of Du Qin’s great regrets, but he believed that it was the blindness of that generation’s elders who were at fault, not his own actions.
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“It is a pleasure to meet the mighty Supreme Elder of the Hadal Clan,” replied the young man, his previously constant motion pausing, now that the constant gunfire had ceased for the moment. “Might I ask if you have business with me?”
Du Qin snorted, slightly amused. The words were disgustingly proper, the sort of memorized line that mortals on Canvas would say to a cruel martial artist they had the unfortunate luck to run into.
“I’m afraid so,” he said, as he continued to step forward.
Without warning, another lotus formed from the purple mist surrounding Du Qin, budding on the surface of the titan as if it were emerging from the water’s surface to bloom. The thick violent smoke hissed from the steel flower as the Riverfiend was forced to dive away.
Another lotus formed before the weaker practitioner, right in the man’s path, but the formless master proved fortunate, as at that moment the titan finally fractured its bonds with a burst, the motion leaving Du Qin unsteady, and tossing the Riverfiend away from the fatally dangerous position he had been entering into. He landed on the edge of one of the titan’s legs with a sickening crunch that heartened Du Qin.
Annoyed, Du Qin decided to ignore the weakling for the moment and focus his attention on the primary threat.
Sparks splashed across the lotus flowers as Du Qin twisted his staff, driving the lotus petals to tear deeper into the contorting titan, splintering the heavy bronze armor and damaging its internals. The machine smashed itself into the side of the nearest stack, as if it were attempting to tear off the rest of its bindings. All it accomplished was to free one of the guns, and leave the stack with a great many walls and pillars reducing to rubble, causing the structure to groan in an extremely concerning manner.
From the corner of his eye, Du Qin witnessed the Riverfiend making his escape, diving off of the titan’s limb during the collusion. He rolled as he landed on the lower level, and Du Qin lost sight of him. He scowled, but let it pass. The Riverfiend would be a short-lived enemy, and there were priorities much higher on Du Qin’s list than to take his life.
The titan’s pilot wasted no time, and soon bullets tore through his steel, digging further towards Du Qin, but wordlessly he simply directed his manifest miasma through his cores, driving the lotus he stood upon to slide across the titan’s metal surface, maneuvering himself beyond the gun emplacement’s field of fire. Meanwhile, the razor-sharp edges of his petals began to dig deeper and deeper into the titan’s structure, hoping to take the life of its occupants.
Some manifest practitioners spread out their abilities, choosing techniques of summoning for several different materials, but Du Qin had always, and could always, only produce steel. This was a limitation tied both to his path and to his comprehension, but one that he felt did not hold him back. If all he could produce was steel, he simply had to produce more of it, and with far more control than anyone else. Any technique, no matter its limitations, became great when utilized with the power of an earthen immortal.
His staff raised aloft, Du Qin felt his blood roil as droplets of purple sweat felt from his skin, lilac mist draped upon him like a shroud. The titan before him groaned the sound of warping metal, limbs tearing free from their floral bonds. Steel flowers rose from the mist surrounding him, in numbers far greater than they had before, and as his staff lowered, the flowers bloomed in unison, turning the orange-hued abyss into a vibrant purple field that spread far in all directions, growing from not only the titan, but from the walls of the stacks, from the stairwells and from the bridges. Du Qin himself was a violet star, the new center of the ochre world he had thrust himself into.
Though a titan was a powerful weapon, even an immortal-level combatant could fall to a sneak attack if it failed to prepare, and this machine was no exception. Though the battle was not over yet, Du Qin was confident in his ability to win.
As an earthly immortal, Du Qin was a pinnacle powerhouse of the corporeal universe, but he knew that he was nothing compared to the true power. This titan that was a difficult opponent for him was nothing before the true might of a divinity. In his many centuries of life, Du Qin had become privy to numerous secrets about the cosmos, and was well aware of his position in the universe.
He was a king of the physical world, but a king must bow before an emperor, and an emperor must bow before God. But like a true practitioner of the Seiyal path, he wished to ascend the hierarchy of life, and would not allow his plans to fall through. The Celans were mere dogs, short-lived weaklings with no progression system, no hopes for aspiring to something greater. They disgusted him, and their very existence as a threat to the clan was demeaning, and spoke of their weakness. His weakness.
Another droplet of violet sweat dripped down the pale skin of Du Qin’s brow as he expanded the field of his power further and further, until the final bound had been stretched. Du Qin’s control shattered, and the range of the ability collapsed inward, while the power of his technique only continued to grow. It was a trick he had learned by applying elements of his clan’s genesis techniques to his own abilities. Though it was draining, he believed it would be worth the effort.
On the center of the titan’s surface, a vast lotus grew, wide enough to swallow the titan up, and pressing into the stacks on either side, in hopes of stabilizing them. Du Qin smiled, stepping off of the titan’s surface and onto the structure beneath.
Now, he thought, it was only a matter of waiting to see the response.
Soul Manifestation: [A powerful ability only usable in the spirit refinement realm and above, a manifest practitioner must fuse this unusable technique with their cerebral dantian during their core formation, and practice a relevant refinement method in order to acquire it. Soul Manifestation allows the practitioner’s soul to mimic their manifested objects, creating a temporary conduit and allowing for the objects to be altered post-manifestation, a matter which is normally impossible outside of normal physical interaction. The objects are stuck in the general shape of the practitioner’s soul, however, providing a new limitation to the practitioner’s abilities. This ability is famous, and the technique is well known, but fitting refinement methods are all but unknown, with only a few proven to exist. Despite its power, few manifest practitioners are willing to acquire it.]