Temple of New Light, the best preserved temple of all voidborns after the rupture, and one of the biggest open-air temples standing near and under the protection of the bastion of Gwai-Mon.
There were pillars with a great variety of relief sculptures on them all over the temple, as well as altars of different shapes and sizes. The whole temple and everything in it was built with the same kind of white sturdy looking rock with a shade of grey, there were only a few visible linings in the entire temple to show that it was not carved out directly from a whole piece of stone, but was indeed built with several carved out pieces placed together in a beyond meticulous way.
Professor Atkinson and Dolores walked into the temple, carefully behind their guid Lin’Er, while both keeping their curious eyes on their surroundings. There were countless other elementals in this temple, and everyone of them looked quite powerful or with some kind of noble status, or both. Before they came here, Lin’Er told them that there would be elemental lords attending the occasion, yet none of the attending elementals they encountered or saw reminded them of Paulo Chang - they were all take the shapes of unique fantastical creatures with clear manifestation of their elemental powers, not even one of them took the shape of a human man, not to mention a human man who’s fond of drinking from his gourd and likes eating hotpot.
“So, Lin’Er.” Dolores asked with a low voice: “Can I ask you a question about Paulo Chang?”
“Sure, but I might not be able to answer it in full detail. I would suggest you ask him directly if you’d like true and whole answers.” Lin’Er nodded and said: “I think he will be coming back to the edgelands for some business soon. You could ask him then.”
“Nonono, it’s nothing that urgent or important.” Dolores shook her head with a smile: “I was just wondering, what made him take the shape he is in right now.”
“Oh, that.” Lin’Er appeared to be slightly embarrassed, a facial expression Professor Atkinson and Dolores saw for the first time ever since they met her: “It’s uh, his personal choice, when elementals got to the level of power as elemental lords, they would have great control over their appearances. Most of the elementals of the same power level simply did not care enough to choose an image. But right after Lord Chang completed his tribulation, he went to the human world and got addicted to movies - and he decided he wanted to take the shape of powerful and mysterious Kungfu masters. So...”
“I - I could definitely see it.” Dolores almost laughed out loud.
“I was wondering, how often does this ritual take place?” Professor Atkinson looked around and asked: “And how many births will each of these altars give? Because by my count, there’s less than two dozen altars here. So if each of the altars will give birth to one elemental today, then at most, you will have this many newborns. That’s hardly enough for elementals to keep going and keep up the prosperity. I didn't mean to offend, but this is just my math.”
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“Keen observation, Professor.” Lin’Er shook her head: “This ritual happens every thirteen Earth days to twenty one earth months depending on the fluctuations of the energy fields, and each altar could produce at least one elemental. But you should know that, first we elementals have much longer lives than humans on earth; second we have similar birthing altars in our own realms, and this is not the only source of our newborns. The birthing ritual here is more ritualistic, a way for us elementals to remember the days when we were one, when we were still proud to call ourselves voidborns.”
“Do elementals born here have different characteristics than the elementals born in their own realms?” Dolores asked, but Professor Atkinson immediately stopped her from asking further with a “shush” sign.
“No worries on the human customs and social sensibilities.” Lin’Er nodded: “Yes, there are some differences - the elementals that are born here are more likely to possess the elemental properties of multiple elements, like me. I was born with the power of lightning and fire, and I was born right there.” Then she extended her hand at an altar with relief sculptures of fire and volcanoes on the side.
“Look! There’s one!” Dolores pointed at an altar at the right side ahead, surrounded by an unknown elemental whose body was made of some kind of fog energy, an earth and fire elemental, a wind and water elemental, and another elemental whose body seemed to be completely made of small dark pieces of metal shards: “That one seemed to be giving birth already!”
Three of them quickly approached the altar to observe the new birth of an elemental. A cloud made of light blue energy appeared on top of the altar, and it slowly started to turn and spin. As the light blue energy cloud spun and turned, it became thicker and a few big droplets of more dense energy started forming.
Both Professor Atkinson and Dolores held their breath and had their eyes fixated on the altar as they watched the cloud of energy gradually take shape, as if they were in fear that one breath or one blink could disturb the process or make them miss a major detail.
More energy droplets appeared in the cloud, and a lot of them started merging into each other, into bigger droplets. Eventually the whole cloud became a floating blob of light blue energy liquid, which was still slowly growing in size.
A dark spot appeared near the center of the blob, and dark streams of energy started growing out from it in expansion, like some kind of nervous system within the blob. The exterior of the blob started to grow into shape as well, they could see two tentacles protruding from inside, the main body became longer, and two fin-like extremities were formed. Before long the blob of energy liquid turned into the shape of a fish like creature, with two tentacles at the head, two fins on the side of the body, and a long tail. The black nervous system inside reached almost every corner of the body - except for one very noticeable hole at the belly. This fish-like creature with two tentacles spun in the space above the altar for a while, then it flapped its tail and “swam” away, with no regard to any other elementals around it. None of the elementals around even tried to stop it.
The elementals surrounding the altar were murmuring and talking amongst themselves. Though their facial expressions could a lot of times be different from that of humans, both Professor Atkison and Dolores could clearly tell that they were distraught at what they saw.
“It’s a husk...” Lin’Er’s voice was trembling: “... again.”