The pill settled into his stomach like a bite of river-cooled cucumber. He didn’t bite it, of course, but it still gave him the sensation of watery crunch, sweet and faintly bitter, with an almost indescribable mild flavor. What does a cucumber taste like? Not much, and only itself. As the pill began to dissolve, the flavor on his exhaled breath changed. No longer sun ripened cucumber, it was something a bit more algal. Still sweet and watery, but there was a deeper minerality to it. Tian could imagine it was what a fish nibbling on the side of a rock might taste.
As the pill dissolved, Tian circulated the Vast Darknorth Sea spell, leaving that mysterious hole in the middle of the indrawn qi. Once the outer layers were removed and the animal core revealed, that hole drew in the glowing orb. “Like an ocean plant returning to where it always belonged,” Tian thought, though he had never seen an ocean or an ocean plant. It settled into the energy body that existed around him, but that he couldn’t touch and didn’t seem to touch anything.
“Grandpa, my spirit body, is this like the spirits? Painted on a sheet of rice paper and laid over the picture of me?”
Good thinking! But no, not really. Maybe a tiny bit? But it’s more like a substance you are only just now learning how to interact with. Think of it more like your meridians or your dantians, except a bit less tethered to specific organs. You have always had it, you are just building it up more directly than you could before.
“Always had it… did it always have fingers?”
Grandpa went quiet for a moment. “No, actually. It’s not an exact copy of you, more like a rough outline with most of the details missing. That’s normal, incidentally, totally appropriate for your stage of development. But it was missing most of your fingers when I first met you. That kind of detail is medically significant. You could see how hard it was to grow them back.
“So crippling my hands wasn’t just crippling my physical body, it was also crippling the development of my energy body too.” Tian snorted, but kept his cultivation running smoothly, integrating the new glittering gem of light into whatever his energy body was becoming.
As well as just being hateful, yes. You built up enough momentum to carry a dozen ordinary cultivators through the barrier into the heavenly realm, to say nothing of all the accumulated revelation, had a true, powerful, revelation about the dao, and it still was a close run thing to break through the remaining restrictions on your hands. This may give you some indication about the long term significance of this energy body you are improving.
Tian thought about it, then felt the muscles in his back slowly clench. “And this is why you are suddenly pro-pills after a lifetime of ‘the only decent things alchemists can make is their own suicide notes.’”
I’m pro specifically these sorts of pills, refined well. Notice the complete absence of lead, and while mercury was used in the refinement process, there is none in the actual pill itself. I stand by the rest.
“Including the bit about mastering a time reversal spell, going into the past, meeting their mothers when they were young and finally giving them some children they can be proud of?”
Yes.
Tian wisely let the topic drop. It took about two hours to refine the pill, which was apparently proof of its good quality. It certainly glowed much more brightly, with a deeper, richer color, than the little fleck of light left by the poison core.
“Which one should I try next?”
That one was water-wood, I’d look for a pure wood or a wood-fire aligned beast core next. It helps the digestion process to follow the cycle if you can. There is usually much more to picking and choosing which beast cores to swallow, but the Darknorth Sea spell, like the Kun, simply does not give a damn about minor details like “species” or “quantity” or "continental shelf.” Though thankfully that last point isn’t yet relevant. White porcelain jar with the red stopper and the picture of the deer on it. A Cinder Roe core, I think. A bit meh, but so what? That’s the joy of this spell. Knock it back, and be on to the next one.
“And… I know these all improve my energy body somewhat, but does the species of animal the core came from matter?”
Oh yes. But interestingly enough, it’s one of those situations where the worse your cultivation art is, the more it matters. Something like Liren’s Godslayer art is “picky” in the sense that it wants powerfully yang supplements, but if you think about it, Yang is half the universe, and it’s just picky about quality. Darknorth Sea- less so.
“No, I get that, but what do the cores do?”
Oh, for weaker cultivators? A lot. Most people use them to restore qi, or to provide a burst of very particular qi when casting a spell or to support their cultivation arts. You can imagine someone with a need for wood-fire qi that, despite being a combination that should go up like a literal housefire, still had to have fairly gentle properties. They might find the Cinder Roe core just what they needed.
“So nobody’s using it to, to, to grow horns or spit venom or something?”
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I didn’t say that. Some people absolutely are. People with crappy arts and very narrow paths of advancement. For you? They will be one of a thousand points of light within you, making sure your path forward is wide open and rock solid. For a tangible example, hmm. Let’s see. If you ate, say, two hundred of those Cinder Roe cores, you would find fire spells to be kinda-sorta-ish five percent easier to cast, and you would take kinda-sorta-ish five percent less damage from fire qi. Which doesn’t sound great, until you notice all those qualifiers are lacking a very important qualifier.
“Which is?”
The kind of fire qi. It doesn’t just help you cast earthflame qi fire spells, or waxlight fire, or blue devil fire, or blazing lotus fire, it’s just fire. All fire, within your realm. And the more subtle variations you absorb, the more types of animal cores, the more effective it is at doing that. Not every cultivation spell can do this. Most can’t, in fact. Not for nothing did I rate this an upper second rate art.
“After your modifications.”
Goes without saying, goes without saying.
“And if I ate a thousand Cinder Roe cores?”
Like I said, you never quite reach one hundred percent resistance. It’s always relative, too. Someone equally well cultivated could still slap the life out of you. But they would be few and far between. The Darknorth Sea doesn’t bother with petty tricks, Zihao. Just accumulating a vast depth of power. Treasure it for that. And, while you are at it, see that copper chest over there? Grab it. Liren’s going to find its contents very useful, I think.
It had a whole sunflower head in it. One that actually shone like the sun. Liren dove on it like one of her distant sparrow ancestors and started ripping into it. Tian vaguely knew you could eat more of a sunflower than just the seeds, but he had assumed cooking was involved. The look on her face suggested that anyone attempting to even slow her eating would be eating their own teeth. Tian quietly left her to it. He could feel the moment her cultivation roared into action. It was like standing next to a blast furnace, each squeeze of the bellows making the fire blaze hotter.
Tian just smiled and settled back into refining the cores. Each core did little on its own, but that was cultivation for you. Endless tiny accumulations, slowly building upwards into something incredible. He had an inkling that if ordinary cultivators heard him complaining, they would rise up as one and beat him to death. Who would dare say they had so many supplements that they had grown bored of eating them?
It didn’t take long for Tian and Liren to agree it was time to go back to Burning Flag City. There was a sickly feeling to the fortress, and a worse one on the steppes. They cleaned up, made the best arrangements they could for the dead, then returned to the courtyard and eating up the loot.
They spent two days this way, alternately cultivating using the mountain of supplements, experimenting with the arts they found, discarding almost all of them, but subtly improving their own, more reliable skills. They didn’t neglect to look after Little Han, of course. There really wasn’t anything in the haul that he could use, but Tian took the opportunity to use some of the earthly manuals as teaching materials. If you see this, it probably means that, so do the other thing. Nothing too strenuous. The young man was tired enough as it was. Only a serous bath and the application of scented soaps could barely get the smell of horses off him.
He looked happy, though. Exhausted, a bit battered, but happy. It took Tian a bit to figure it out. Han was rushing around all day being useful. His ability to sense lies wasn’t a liability, it was a massive help. He was running down spies and criminals with the military police, making sure the quartermasters weren’t selling grain on the side, and when there was a fight, he was right there with some good brothers, getting stuck in. Fights he was winning, fast. Then back on the horse, and out for a brisk six hour patrol across the steppes around the city. Scouting, escorting what few stragglers were still coming to the city, and showing the flag. Then home for excellent food in enormous quantities, an amazing bath, and sleep on the best bed in the city. Or one of the best, anyhow.
Tian could understand that kind of happiness. It felt good to know you were useful to your brothers and sisters, and that the work you were doing was appreciated. Tian tapped his lip, trying to prod his brain into remembering what he was forgetting. There was something. Something about Han eating his fourth bowl of rice topped with lamb, eggplant, green onions, and a healthy dose of chillies. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it…
“Right! The food!” He slapped his forehead and looked over at Liren. “We should send that over to whatsisname, the City Lord. All, well, most, of the mortal food we looted.”
“Oh right! It completely slipped my mind. What about the money?”
“I was wondering the same thing. Not like he has anywhere to spend it right now.” Tian shrugged. “Give him some, but keep a few chests just for us, as well as the gems and whatnots. Want to give him the antiques?”
“Some, maybe? I think some of them would actually look good in our cave.”
“Oh? Nice! I miss the Monastery. Didn’t think I would ever say that, but I do.” Tian laughed softly. He looked at the boneless, but curious, Han. “It will keep until the morning. When you wake, have someone guide you to a warehouse where you can drop off some grain and things. We checked carefully, several times. All perfectly safe for mortals to eat. And some gold, but don’t eat that. It’s not digestible.”
Han floppily pawed through his clothes until he found his cards, then pulled out one worn almost to tatters. “How much?”
“Money that we are giving to him?” Tian looked over at Liren, who shrugged.
“It’s not that exaggerated. Let’s say… one chest?” Tian gave a thumbs up, and went back to massaging Han. Han nodded too, already four-fifths asleep. He was probably thinking of a chest about a foot square, an immense sum of money by any ordinary standard.
Come morning, Han, and his back, were painfully reminded that his teachers actively despised the word “ordinary.” The way the City Lord almost fainted when he saw the cart loads of goods was a remarkable painkiller. Better still was the reaction in the hall when Han held up his slate, explaining that his teachers went out and “flattened Fort Askarmand, burning it, toppling its towers, slaughtering the heretics within, and clearing out all the shamans in the tribes around the Fort. Those same tribes were killed by the heretic’s formations, unfortunately. They were swiftly avenged.”
Tian was observing from the roof, and grinning. Then frowned. “Hey, Sis? Are we sure they destroyed those slave forts like everyone says they did?”
Liren blinked, then narrowed her eyes. “Only if the heretics abandoned them for a while, before rebuilding. But… would they really have? And if they didn’t, who’s got enough clout to fake fortresses, plural, being destroyed?”