Chapter 292 - Bestial Cultivation, A Flavorful Affair (Patreon)

We're back! The sickness is slightly receding baybe! I'm finally back, and I have... ugh, just SO much I want to write, so glad to be here again. So much still to do, so much still to make. Delicious!

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She is in the city of Singheart, a thousand lesser nerve-clusters managing and watching over a city, tracking its nearby predators, feeling and tasting on the air the food that remains, the water that’s needed and possessed, the people going hurt and hungry and healing. She is standing inside herself, in a courtyard, watching a young man (who, she notes, is like barely three years younger than her and just the hottest twink around) show her how he cultivates, that she might make him into something more. She is standing inside herself, offering of her flesh and attentions to her first and only priestess and letting her grow in her own way.

She is walking across alien landscapes, through fungi and ravines and cliffsides and forest and jungle and underground, clad in chosen armaments and chosen chains, that she might be reborn with a greater understanding of all that she is. She is striding, ten legs a hundred feet tall, with a back that gives room for cultivators to battle and learn and teach upon her, safe from an ever-shifting wildness below. She is growing, beneath the earth and through the trees and vines, in a hundred different places, digging deep into the earth and warping the scale of the spaces she has carved, that she might fill them with more factories of herself, full of Blacksteel and Radiant Metals and Qi-generators and more.

She is vast.

Perhaps, perhaps, if she pulled all of herself out into the world, if she allowed the Will of Heaven to see all of her and impose physics and Dao upon her, she might be nearly the size of the fortress city where she was reborn. If she spread herself out, she would be many, many times the size of the Hungering Roots sect, vaster than the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect with all their great and mighty plateau.

She’s not the strongest thing in the world. The vaster she grows, the harder she is to kill. At this point, all of her major mechanisms are off-site, so to speak- losing her “main” body, the strider-form, would be expensive, not to mention painful, but it wouldn’t matter. She’s got brains running alternate sections of her Mind and learning to more-efficiently codify memories halfway across the world from where she is, and her inner world can be accessed from anywhere. It’s not just her Truth- being herself, and being in possession of herself, is only part of it. The internal alterations that her Heart kick-started, the way her Qi-saturation has pushed her natural properties to supernatural levels- all of it contributes together to her ability to always be connected to every separate part of herself. It’s a sort of feedback-loop; her Truths influence each other, with I Am Me, I Am Mine influencing We Are What We Eat, which in turn influences her Heart and her Body and her multiplicity- so on and so forth. 

She is vast.

And as she senses where she is going, she feels her fear, the thought that it isn’t enough, rearing its head again, stronger than ever.

She’s pretty sure that even some cultivators would have taken months to travel the distance she has in the last few weeks. Not for the matter of space, perhaps- a Core Formation cultivator with the proper skillset could likely still outpace her at this point, but it would take a much broader, much stronger skillset for someone to do so in this terrain. Frankly, she’s not sure anyone below the Core Formation realm could even survive here, let alone do more than struggle.

The further out she’s gone from the third ring, the stranger things have become. The desert of death past the Wall was already a vast and strange place, and the towering, alien trees of the edge of the overgrowth only heralded what was to come… but since Singheart, things have escalated.

She clears the top of the canopy she’s been climbing for the last few hours, catching a glimpse of the horizon for the first time since she began. 

Singheart was placed in a sort of sweet-spot, between the more chaotic growth beyond it and the vast, timeless trees that stood guard at its edges. Here, they bloom in full force together, whole forests formed vertically and towering into the heavens. A cloud brushes past, its edge made of fog and the cold touch of atmospheric water, and she looks up, beyond it, at the towering tree above her. 

She extracts a limb from the cluster of vines it’s perched on, shaking it lightly to remove bits of dead skin where the toxins of the growth made it necrotize. Her other limbs are in similar straits- each tree is like a plateau that towers towards the heavens, thinner around than the first ring’s structure but still miles high and miles more around, and this one, like many around it, has whole ecosystems blooming from it, rich with Qi. Each growing thing here has the strength and Qi of a mid-level cultivator- there are grasses that multiply when cut, blooming out of everything it touches, including her. There are flowers that invert space when touched, drawing things in like carnivorous hunters into an impossible maw. Each step is a puzzle, undertaken to the lilting tune of birdsong, insect-life and jingling bells from plants of crystal and metal, in the sauna of heat and humidity and life.

It is one of a few thousand trees in her line of sight, each one taller than the last, richer in life and growth. Some of them are fungal in nature, mushroom-caps and spore-laden flesh climbing along tall branches into the atmosphere. Some are teeming with animalia, life-forms of impossible definition and strange form crawling, reproducing, eating and dying on trunks so vast they might as well be mountain ranges. Even those that might be called “traditional”, clad only in the green of photosynthesis and the brown of bark, still echo with uniqueness, natural arrays, formations, and unique treasures growing from the impossible amount of Qi in the air.

She’s had to seal the platform on her back to avoid infection. Spores, razor-sharp leaves, flesh-devouring seeds- any one of them would be as lethal as the aura of the stone prairie. No- deadlier. There, at least, the dangers were single-faceted, a property of the place’s aura affecting life around it. Here, it’s far more diverse.

She drinks in the air around her, heady with Qi and living things. She can taste it. Richer and more flavorful than any mortal humanoid, full of the barest touch of power. It feeds her hunger like nothing ever has.

She re-checks the seal on her inner rooms, the tunnels and spaces in which she’s storing her allies and loved ones. 

They had to cut a tumor out of Li Shu’s hand a few days ago. Jin’s cultivation started to suffer, and even now is recovering in a room implanted with Blacksteel tablets. The air itself here is rich enough in Qi and Dao to cause life to grow unchecked, lest its own strength can survive its environment. 

She is vast, and here, she is still so small.

She leaps off the side of the trunk, snapping ten limbs wide open in the air and stretching taut membranes between them. She coasts on hot air and patterns of energy in the air, a creature a hundred feet wide looking like a snowflake falling between trees.

The trees, in this case, more like pillars, capable of upholding the sky itself, forcing starlight to dance between their branches and sunlight to fall as if underwater, warping around their trunks. 

She is vast, and it might not be enough.

She can taste where they’re going.

She lands, halfway to the next tree, dispersing the impact with internal lattices and biological pistons which absorb the shock. There, as if waiting for her, a humanoid beast of pure white stands, its hands long and slender and sharp, its eyes pitiless and black. Across the way from it, standing opposite her, the eyeless, pale-green centaur-form of Lord Aurick watches them, smiling at her arrival.

“And? Have you comprehended what you must?”

She forms a fresh avatar out of her body, one of her learner-minds growing out of a bubble of biochemistry and muscle-tissue. “Not particularly, but I’ve comprehended more. I assumed, when you said it wouldn’t take us long to arrive, that you were accounting for my… allies.”

Aurick smiles wider, his face transmitting a grandfatherly satisfaction through Intent. She’s noticed that he talks using more Intent when they’re around the Pale Thresher, as if the added honesty can better speak to it. Or, perhaps, as if it doesn’t properly understand language without them. 

“The world is vast, young beast. Even the strong bow to this truth.”

“So it is. You still haven’t mentioned more about your… Apex. I know that the desire for dramatic reveals isn’t limited only to orthodox cultivators, but I’m starting to think I’d be better off without you holding that information from me.”

He smiles, and shrugs. “Many-Mouths will be familiar to you, I think. Knowing more about them wouldn’t change that.”

“It might.”

The thing shaped like a humanoid to her right flexes a clawed hand, losing its statuesque stillness for a moment.

“No need for that,” Aurick says, raising a placating hand. “I don’t think you’ll need any violent Intent where we’re going, and it would be best not to… antagonize our friend any further. I understand being prepared, but you’ve already committed yourself here. Best to move forward, and be prepared, but ready to fight only if necessary.”

She grumbles, but starts walking again, her avatar sitting atop her strider-form as she continues forward. “You keep saying those things like they’re meant to be reassuring. They’re really not. I understand your Apex are strong, but isn’t your whole job to help us avoid miscommunications? Proper alliances and such?”

“And I believe I’m best served in doing so by not giving you information you might use to prepare to assault my Apex. Otherwise, I would be more than happy to provide it.”

“Oh?” she asks, turning to look at him. “So, if I could be allied with through fighting, you’d allow it?”

He chuckles, hoof-hands flexing and forcing Qi through them to shape the greenery around them into platforms. He seems to harmoniously fuse together their purposes, crafting plants evolved with impossible and unique adaptations into a pathway beneath him, making the wildness of the overgrowth into steady footing. “I most certainly would. Meeting and being overcome by the strength of an Apex is the primary method of the Pack’s growth. You, I think, require different handling- ergo, me.”

“And, just in case- the Thresher?”

He shrugs. “Of course. The only way to ensure useful compliance is through strength, and its two most persuasive forms are need and violence. You have certain needs, and I believe I can meet them, or lead you to the ones who can. If need is not enough, having violence on hand is certainly an advantage.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “So you think it can kill me, then?”

The Thresher twitches, moving as if through a flip-book. It is there, and then not, moving so fast that it is simply where it next stops, and then moves again. It’s even more distinct by the way that its body, when it flickers back into view, is always standing in exactly the same pose. But, at her words, the hand flexes again, pitch-black eyes turning slightly towards her.

Aurick smiles, still just as grandfatherly and relaxed as before. “I think it has a very good chance. And, with my assistance, I see that chance as quite a bit higher.”

“...not to side-track, but I am actually curious and I’ve never had anyone to ask. How do spirit beasts measure strength?”

He cocks his head, turning to face her even without eyes with which to do so. A habit, maybe? Something to put others at ease?

“Are you referring to ranks, like the “realms” that so many human cultivators use?”

She nods, then has to shape a plate of armor on the side of her head as a nearby branch writhes and deploys razor-edged blades made of some sort of sap against her. She clicks her teeth, and the branch is gone, bitten in half by a many-fanged maw and absorbed into her body for study. Little shit moved fast.

“Yeah, that. I’ve heard the term “Divine Beasts”, which is how I’ve classified you and most beasts I’ve met at your level, but now you’ve also referred to these “Apex”. I know that orthodox cultivators work by increasing Qi density until they form a Soul in their cores- how do you do it? Or is it too varied among beasts?”

Aurick shakes his head. “The pathways to power are near-infinite, as any cultivator knows. Some beasts do create Souls, as an orthodox cultivator does- they consume, and from their metaphysical stomachs, grow or compile something from the consumed. Most, however, do something simpler, at least to start- they simply add more to their meridians. Just as bestial cultivation adds power and evolution to ones body and organs, we also add power and evolution to one’s spiritual organs. We add more pathways to meridians, more chambers to a Dantian, multiplying them.

“If an orthodox cultivator functions by condensing and purifying what they have, a Beast grows by adding more and more. As they balance these changes, or fail to, they become stronger- or die.”

She frowns. “So… you add more spiritual veins? And more Dantians?”

“...to simplify, yes. Beasts rarely use words until what you call the “Divine Beast” rank, and I don’t know what scientists from your Empire might call the differences, but I, and some of my fellows, divide it into a few steps.”

“First, there are beasts. Your equivalent of mortals. Then, Spirit Beasts, those who have at least tripled their original meridians and dantians. This is often why so many cultivators at so many varying realms struggle with this rank, and the quality, of course, can vary wildly. A Divine Beast, or one approaching my own strength, anyways, is one that has tripled that number again, or has at least nine dantians. The process of creating said organs almost always has, by this point, also imbued concepts of Dao, Truths, and concepts together in the beast’s existence.”

“But that’s not as high as it goes, is it?”

He smiles wide, full of long, flat teeth. “No. So very few make it past this step, but the range is vast. Techniques, comprehension, and all the gifts of consciousness and learning can take us far, deep into new heights- but to be something like an Apex required more. A Titan, as we call things beyond Divine Beasts, has evolved beyond spiritual organs. A transcendence. Bodies and minds that no longer need Dantians and meridians, because in many ways, they are their power, their every fiber storage for their strength.

“A bit like someone you know, perhaps?”

She frowns, then laughs. “Really? Me?”

He shrugs. “Your process was unique, certainly, but you have more in common with our definition than not. You are not defined by consumption, but it is core to you. You do not grow purely by eating, but it is something you can do. If I had to put words to it, you tend to defy conventional classes of growth. There is something of you of cultivation, with how you circulate Qi inside yourself. There is something of Souls in you, lesser divinity trapped and growing within. There is quite a bit of consumption and mutation, and yes, there in the corners, I even see hints of the Craft in you, in the way that you shape yourself through ritual and through altering the rules you play with. It’s… fascinating.”

“But.”

Again, the grin. “But you are no Apex. Not yet.”

“An Apex is… a title, then?”

He nods. “Indeed. Not even necessarily a Titan, perhaps- but someone strong enough that none can compare. That every other beast in its world must bow, or be consumed.”

“Even…”

He follows her gaze, snorting as he does. “Yes, even things like the Thresher. Strength often does that. Plenty more decided to die, throwing themselves upon their own madness in an attempt to fight. I… believe that our friend, and others like it, realized that they could worship death more ably, and for longer, by following the Pack.”

She looks at the thing “running” beside them, and the way it’s shaped. She can push her eyes, “squint” in the way that Jin showed her, and see some of the Death it carries. It’s not her comprehension of concepts, or her synesthesia, more like… a new language, like Intent. Life and death, living and the shape that is made when something stops living. 

To every other sense except, perhaps, Qi, it is small. Humanoid, though tall and disturbing. 

When seeing that other-place, that place of echoes and stillness, it is… vast.

…larger, at a glance, than she is.

Not larger than her shape when she pulls herself together into a singular form.

But, at a glance… not far enough from it to be comfortable.

And it bows to an Apex. Perhaps the same one she’s about to meet.

Because she can taste what’s coming up.

The pulse of direction is getting stronger. Her Heart is beating, thump-thump, thump-thump, except it is not something that pumps blood. 

A Heart, crippled and chained and shaped as a weapon, fed it a request. A plea. That plea beats now, stronger, louder, as she gets closer and closer to where it leads.

It leads in the same direction they’re heading. That they’re so close to.

It leads to a place that she can taste, getting closer, where the Qi is so dense she can feel it in the back of her teeth, hurting in her throat. It crawls with life, and tastes of strange angles and stranger intent, like an avalanche ever-shifting and made of gears which are made of things that are alive and forming.

Many-Mouths. An Apex of the Pack.

And she’s almost arrived.