Chapter 282 - Flint And Spark (Patreon)

Two serious chapter titles in a row! I gotta make the next one goofy for sure. And we're back! We're gonna do about 2 more Shin Ren chapters, and then hopscotch right on over to Raika and the really weird shit she's having a lot of fun with. Welcome to Arc 8! I'm calling this the Rebellion Arc!

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A man with three Souls of flame stares at a man with a lump of cold in place of any Soul at all, and wonders how much it would take to survive that winter.

Shin Ren is strong. He can acknowledge this as truth rather than arrogance, no matter how much he fears the latter. Against any Nascent Soul realm cultivator, he can safely say he almost always has a chance of victory, and he knows that the amount of Qi he holds is nothing short of exceptional. His techniques, while still limited, grow by the day, and his talent, now that he knows himself, is not far behind the best he has seen amongst those manning the Wall.

The man before him is in the Nascent Soul realm as well. But it doesn’t feel like it.

There were great beasts and monsters arrayed against the Wall, beings deep into the Warrior realm or its equivalents, who did not provide the sheer sense of depth in front of Shin Ren now. The mountain of a man, standing at nearly half Shin Ren’s height over him, exudes a sense of Qi so carefully controlled it is barely visible- but so dense is it that it feels almost physical, a radiance turned from energy to something with mass, crystallized into something so powerful it feels dangerous just to be near it.

Shin Ren, with three Souls and three Cores, each of them approaching the Warrior realm at an admirable pace, feels like he could drain every ounce of Qi he possesses and come up barely visible to the amount within the towering presence he shares the room with.

And yet, the man only smiles, his teeth wide and flat, glinting the same color as his horns.

“Please, sit. It’s always good tidings to meet someone as highly regarded as the Flame Atop the Wall.”

Shin Ren bows at the waist, a bead of sweat running down his forehead- and quickly erased by heat and mirage. “This one is honored by your regard, senior. While I am but a lowly soldier, who has not heard the name of the great Runemaster Boriah in the vaunted halls of the Division of Altered Cultivation?”

The man waves a giant hand, as if shooing away the compliment, even as he gestures for Shin Ren to approach the small table at which he sits. “I’m grateful that such an old title has spread amongst the ranks, but please, call me Researcher. While my skill at runic arrays is not small, I would be embarrassed to think that it surpasses my official title in the minds of treasured juniors.”

Shin Ren nods, acknowledging, and steps forward towards the table, seating himself slowly and demurely.

The room the two cultivators are meeting in is surprisingly small, more cozy than the vast and sweeping chambers many higher-ranking cultivators prefer. The walls are made of a traditional wood, the grain strengthened by the hands of some skilled craftsmen and adding an aesthetic flair to the blue and white coloration of the carpet and drapes. Beyond this, there is only one feature to the room: a small table, set with two pillows for comfortable kneeling, holding a simple tea-set.

Without needing to be prompted, Shin Ren follows the rules of etiquette, holding to nobility and grace as he pours the tea first for the man he is here to meet, and secondly for himself. He waits for one of the few Senior Researchers of the Division of Research and of Altered Cultivation takes a sip before he takes one for himself. 

With the bounds of propriety met, at least as much as Shin Ren feels is necessary,  he clears his throat politely.

“I… appreciate our meeting, honored one, but I’m curious as to why I was summoned here. I’m afraid that my duties with the Division of War are myriad, and the breach along the Wall-”

“Progresses as planned. As you well know.”

Shin Ren takes a slow breath, slowly sipping at his cup. The tea is simple, unspiced and without much in the way of Qi, but still, good tea is good tea, and it helps to have a moment to think through the meaning behind the statement. He feels a tug deep inside himself as the Smiling Noble looks through his eyes, it and its Soul/Self roiling in their / its core. 

Boriah smiles, and Shin Ren pauses. Did he see something? Notice something? He can’t detect any threads of Qi or awareness around them, but… there are rumors about most of the Researchers. A Senior Researcher is a whole level beyond.

“I’m afraid that I don’t entirely know what you mean, Senior Researcher. It is not my custom to assume at the plans of the Empire.”

“And yet, you do anyways.”

“...Perhaps this junior might be forgiven for having some small flaw, then.”

Again, that wide smile, the bovine features stretched wide. It feels… not fake, but perhaps staged. Like one of Mei Yu’s masks, the ways she hides a real reaction by mixing it with a rehearsed one.

“Oh, I’m quite certain that those who see you as I do would be willing  to forgive you very much, Shin Ren of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect. It often takes a cultivator years, sometimes decades, to form even one Nascent Soul- far be it from me to neglect to congratulate you on forming three.”

Shin Ren stays very, very still.

The smile dies, disappearing from the Senior Researcher’s face- but somehow, the amusement lingers. “Don’t worry. Your ‘secret’ is well hidden. Plenty of individuals wonder, of course, how you can grasp such a variety of Daos and techniques, but most tend to attribute it to your talent. They’re not wrong, in a sense. It takes luck and skill in near-equal measures to go mad quite as precisely as you have, a trait that I find quite valuable in a cultivator.”

…He’s surprisingly direct. Shin Ren was expecting… well, someone either much more eccentric or much more proper.

Senior Researcher Boriah’s reputation has followed and preceded him nearly since the breach of the Wall, and some say before that. The first cultivator in Nascent Soul realm to become a Senior Researcher- a maestro of runic arrays, one who surpassed all expectations at the Scholar’s Academy. A cultivator that has dedicated his life to the Divisions of Research and Altered Cultivation, with no known history before emerging from their halls and acting as one of their Researchers. Nowadays, first and foremost, a capable and talented logistician, willing to take on the work of many and provide superior results in handling bureaucracies and resources. 

All things point to a model citizen, a paragon of the Imperial ideal that politicians and researchers alike could stand to envy. Now, faced with the overwhelming weight of the man’s cultivation, Shin Ren expected someone who could talk circles around him, and who would require a very careful application of word-choice, propriety, and care to keep at arm’s length.

When he received the summons, he was surprised, but not overly so. He figured it was about time someone asked him about his three-part Souls, and considering Boriah’s involvement with the war effort and the logistics of managing the breach, it wasn’t entirely unexpected that it would be him.

Now…

“I don’t suppose you might have anything to do with quelling some of those rumors, senior?”

“You should never suppose when you can know. In this case, knowledge is cheap- yes. You’re much more useful drumming up support and helping at the breach than you would be in someone’s lab, especially considering what it likely took you to acquire your particular pantheon.”

Shin Ren nods, clenching his jaw a bit at the memory of who helped him survive the self-generated Tribulation of his rebirth. “It… is not something I would be comfortable replicating.”

Boriah nods. “Nor should it be. As much as the Empire has and will continue to standardize things, there are some transformations that come from within, not without. Cultivation is made stronger by the presence of knowledge and others to walk the path alongside, but it is made yours by the Truths you understand- about the world, and about yourself.  And despite what some of my fellow Researchers might tell you, the price of replicating a Truth is often impossible to pay, and rarely cheap.”

“Then if you don’t mind me asking, senior- why have you summoned me? I am grateful that your actions have allowed me to remain active on the field, but if you have no wish to study my cultivation…”

Senior Researcher Boriah looks at him. The tea, which has sat untouched since its first sip, trembles in its cup, ever so slightly.

“I called you here to ask you a question, and to make you an offer. The answer you give to the first will change what I say in the latter.”

Shin Ren feels his Qi coil inside him, the Corpse Aflame and Smiling Noble both on edge and careful. The same sense of impossible weight from before is beginning to creep back into the room, like the sheer amount of Qi being held back is enough to force tension into the air around Boriah.

Still… better to go forward than retreat, more often than not.

“Then please, senior. Ask your question.”

“If you could kill the man who took your master captive, would you?”

The room grows warm. The cold of impossible vastness is pushed at, twisted, by the presence of heat, roiling beneath a surface like barely contained wicks of flame, for that is what it is.

Shin Ren meets the strange, bovine eyes of the man across the table, and sees in them something made entirely of cold, calculating Intent. Like looking into the eyes of a training dummy, or at a particular complicated part of an equation.

“If such a person could be found, then I-”

He pauses. Looks again into the eyes of the strange being staring so intently at him.

“…Yes.”

The room flickers.

As if summoned by that word, a thousand-thousand miniscule scripts light up against Shin Ren’s Qi senses, illuminated as if they were always there. There are so many, and so many of them are so small, that there is no way he could possibly understand them all in time, or comprehend how they were hidden, but-

Oh. They weren’t hidden.

The being sitting across the table, behind cold tea and strange eyes, wrote them all in the second it took for the room to flicker.

And Shin Ren didn’t even feel his Qi as he did so.

The array surrounding the room vibrates with barely-contained power, reinforcing and changing the space in a way that he can’t quite comprehend-

Two doors open.

Shin Ren notices that there is no door behind him. When did he enter the room? Where is this place?

Out of one door, to his left, comes someone he recognizes. Wyld as he first knew her, or Maen, as he knows her now. The memory of his last Tribulation is shaky, at best- while he could see and comprehend and experience so much in that higher state, he and Raika, the strange creature he still owes a debt to, shared memories and thoughts, and some of that related to Maen. What he remembers now, however, might be best classified as an impression rather than concrete knowledge, but it’s enough that he feels a deeper recognition than he maybe should as she enters the room.

From the other door, to his right, comes a man he… is fairly certain he’s never met before. Except that he has. Not that long ago, actually. He was the one who saw Maen and reacted on-sight, the one that she called…

What had she called him? What had he looked like?

“You’ve already met Maen, I know. Or Wyld, as she decided to name herself.”

Maen rolls her eyes, sitting at a pillow that wasn’t there a moment ago and sighing as she rests her chin on the table. “I’m never going to live that down, am I? It’s related to one of my techniques, it’s a fine name, and you’re all rude.”

Boriah smiles, simultaneously more natural and yet colder than the one he gave to Shin Ren. “To your right, on the other hand, is one you might not remember. His name is-”

“Hao… Hao something,” Shin Ren mumbles, staring intently at the man on the right side of the table. “We… we’ve met once. When you and Maen-”

“The very same!” the man says, and suddenly, as if a switch was flipped, Shin Ren sees him, remembers him. He’s wearing a jacket of fine furs, but the style is rugged rather than extravagant, leather and a collar of heavy brown fur making for something both comfortable and protective. The man beneath the coat matches almost entirely- he has a beard that’s somehow both well-trimmed and wild, highlighting a robust physique and a wide, predatory smile. “Hao Nera is the name. I’m surprised you remembered! I put some real fuckin’ elbow grease keeping you quiet to it, and I’ve gotten pretty good at that. Me and Maen go waaaaay back. I’m dating her boss!”

“He was never my boss, and I barely know you.”

Hao Nera’s smile widens, all canines and bright white. “Everyone barely knows me. That’s how I like things.”

“Enough.”

Instantly, both of the newcomers go silent. The doors behind them disappeared at some point, though Shin Ren isn’t sure exactly when. In either case, the room becomes still, as if the two new additions to the table had simply been here all along.

In a room with no doors.

How did he get here?

“Flowery speech does not suit me,” says the man in front of him, who quite suddenly doesn’t seem to fit the shape of the man who spoke a few moments ago. “I am a brusque man, for I have much to do and there is always less time than one might like in which to do it all. I can tell you where your master is being held. I can deliver you unto the Fourth Blade, Kai the Mage-Killer. And I can, to some extent, prepare you to survive such an encounter.”

Shin Ren can feel his heart beating.

“...And in exchange?”

“ I have enough chaotic elements to juggle- from you, I ask only what you have already promised. Maen offered you an introduction to your benefactor, and Hao Nera here claims to have come to offer an alliance. Circumstances, or perhaps Fate, have found fit to synchronize these events. 

“I offered you a feather from the Last Phoenix. I offered you some of the techniques you have mastered. I will sponsor you into the Warrior realm, and in return, you will only do as you have done before. On occasion, a letter or note will be found in your possession, and in it will be instructions. Where before you had only to humiliate the occasional brat in the Academies, or check on an ongoing situation, now, you’ve proven yourself far more than that.”

“And what does that mean, hmm? Not every Flame burns indiscriminately, Runemaster. I am my own, no one else’s.”

“As every cultivator should be. Our lives should be our own, to offer or to keep. That is not, and never has been, the reality of the world into which we have been born. The world cannot be fixed, but I intend to make it just a bit better, and to do so will require you to do things you question, things that hurt. I will demand of you no more than I have and will of myself, but you are in far less danger if you know only what you need to know.”

Shin Ren breathes in. Once. Then again.

The third time he does it, a small plume of Flame sneaks out of his mouth, Black and Red and Blue and Gold and Purple.

Five of the seven colors of Dao, all relating to Flame. Even still, he can nearly taste the others on his breath- Heat, Mirage, Destruction. Maybe others- the names, as of yet, are meaningless.

He isn’t strong enough.

The Fourth Blade still hovers over the battlefield, watching death en-masse from an endless advance through the breach.

His master still lies trapped somewhere.

The Empire, just like his old sect, rings hollow against the honor he has bound his shape and form to.

“I accept no leash,” he says, his voice crackling with the sound of strange fires. “I accept no chains on me. You want my power, and I want your knowledge, but I will do nothing unless I know exactly why I’m doing it.”

For a moment, the room is silent.

And then, a clinking of cups. Shin Ren blinks, finding himself holding a cup of wine that he does not remember grabbing.

“I’ll drink to that,” says Hao Nera, throwing back his own cup. “Whoo! Strong stuff. Gotta say, Taurus m’dear, I’m liking the kid here more and more. You’re going to have to work hard to keep up. I accept coins, Qi stones, or some more of those delicious elixirs as replacements for hard work.”

Maen growls, the sound feline and deep, but it comes off as more annoyed than actually angry. In fact, she too turns to look at the man at the far end of the table, whose name does not fit and who Shin Ren can’t help but feel intimidated by, even now.

But he only laughs, low and bassy, the sound like rocks tumbling down a steep, sharp ravine.

“Are you certain, pretty boy? I make no guarantees for your safety if you decline my offer, should you learn too much.”

“To cultivate is to face danger,” Shin Ren says. He throws back his own cup of wine, grimacing at how fucking strong it is before slamming it back onto the table. “I don’t fear the Heavens, and I no longer fear myself. What is death in the face of that? What are you?”

This time, the smile is slow. It does not fit on the face of a herbivore. It does not fit on the face of anything that isn’t dangerous, and it fits the horned man far too well.

“There are things much, much worse than death, boy. But if you want to know, who am I to impede you, hmm? Let me tell you of the death of an age, and what part I aim to have you play in it.”