AIR 119-120

Chapter 119

“Nowhere around her,” Forn quickly replied. 

“The Hills of Life are our territory. You can hunt a good distance away, just a little ways off of where we met, but anything closer than that is our land.”

Again, space and time didn’t exist here. What existed was the facsimile of both. The concept of the forest held and connected things together. It lets them interact in a way similar to space-time. 

If I were to make a map of the forest, in front of me would be the Grove, and past that would be the deeper territories of the Hills of Life. That was where Forn’s father had gone. 

I wasn’t stupid enough to head deeper into the Hills, that would be death. Even fighting that dragon had been a bit of a risk on my part, but its clear feral nature and madness had convinced me to fight it. 

And if I were to go deep into the Hills, I might encounter a similar fate and be corrupted by higher powers. 

“Is it safe?” I asked. 

“Depends on where you are,” she answered. “If you want to be safe, you should leave the forest.”

That sounded mean but I could see through her words. She thought my sudden change of heart came from her father’s words. She believed I would go and die to prove her father wrong. 

“I just need my ability to defend and escape to be relatively guaranteed. I haven’t fought in an eternity and I just want to test my strength.”

Forn looked at me curiously.

“Did you just recently advance?”

“Yes,” I answered. 

That wasn’t a lie. I had hit the thirteenth rank relatively recently. Well, recent compared to how long I’d been alive for. 

She nodded in understanding. It was common for cultivators to consolidate their realm, which often meant understanding the exact limitations of their abilities and pushing themselves to their limits even though it became unnecessary at higher ranks. I knew my strength and power, but there was a difference between knowing and expressing. 

For me to completely understand a mortal’s limit, even an immortal’s limit wouldn’t take anything more than a glance. But as a person’s power grew, so did the complexity of their being. The thirteenth rank was still within the order of less of godhood. 

First through fifth were the mortal realms, sixth through eighth were the immortal realms, nine through eleven were the demigod realms and twelve to fourteen were the realms of Gods. 

There were qualitative changes at each realm but these gaps meant even larger changes. 

An immortal stopped aging both in body and soul. A demigod could walk outside of their realm, free of physical laws, and maintain their existence within the void without a voidwalker technique. A god was unique, in the absolute sense of the word. 

Immortals were freed from life, demigods were freed from laws, but a god was free from everything. Even if you cultivated fire or water and the keepers of the law of water were suddenly destroyed, while it may dry up many lakes, it would not dry up your water.

In a better sense, everything was an echo of something. Life, fire, humans, forests, everything was informed by a higher being. By being a god, you cut that connection and become a thing truly your own. 

You could even become the propagator of your own concept. 

That was all to say that the thirteenth realm didn’t bring me something entirely new. 

I was still the same type of being by all classifications, but I was different from before. 

Qualitatively different. 

“Well, there’s no such thing as safe hunting, but the creatures there max out at the third step of the thirteenth rank. You should be able to flee from them safely, if worst comes to worst. Follow me and I’ll show you.”

She stood up and started walking. 

“It is a hunting spot for some of our youth, but its unclaimed territory.”

Unclaimed territory was a universal term. It just meant that the land wasn’t sought after by higher powers so it could switch owners rapidly and the stability of its condition was up to the whims of those more powerful. 

Ah-Marin used to be a thriving realm in its golden age, but after one too many battles, its major sects had abandoned it over and over again until it eventually became unclaimed territory. Now it had a new power structure with powerful sects and rulers, but the only reason it wasn’t settled by more powerful sects was because it was too small of a realm with too little resources. 

The most powerful person there aside from was a tenth rank demigod, which meant they were barely qualified to venture out into the void. 

“Is it stable?”

“Yes,” she said as we jumped over an infinitely deep pit. 

I could see something blinking at me from below and looked away before it could catch me with its eyes. 

“You just have to mind the ecosystem.”

“The ecosystem?” I asked. 

“There’s still a balance between forces, even within a forest. In a mortal forest, the fear of death and the need to eat drive nature forward. Here it is very much the same, but the need to eat is replaced by the need for power. The animals seek to grow in their own way. If you create a large enough power gap then some other creature from another region might come in and fill it.”

I nodded. It was unclaimed by the factions that surrounded it, but that was human politics, not animals. Animals settled wherever they could and you had to have the right mix of creatures to have a stable ecosystem. If you removed the wolf, you’d have too many deer and they would overgraze and kill the local fauna. 

It was the same concept but on an immensely larger level. 

“What are the beasts there capable of?”

“That particular patch is filled with darkness and life qi and the plants within the area are very much the same.”

For this place, the basic laws and qi characteristics naturally found within the area would inform what type of creatures lived within the area. 

That meant that all the plants and creatures that lived there sought after a certain quality of qi, and that meant that they used a certain type of attack. 

This wasn’t a certain truth, but more of a general set of assumptions you could make about most of the environment. 

Just like the Desert Crabs within the desert strip and how their life cycle had developed to work around the lack of qi, I could assume the creatures here had a similar relationship with the place. 

The nature of Dark meant that they could be countered by light, but the nature of life would mean that they would counter death as well. Qualitative opposites like this were the basic foundations of conceptual fighting. It was why Forn needed my help to defeat the dragon, even though she was immensely stronger than me, her qualities of laws and daos coincided with his.

It was like two oceans throwing water at one another. But the dragon was stronger so given a long period of time, his quantity of power would outlast hers. I came in and attacked it with opposing concepts which it couldn’t ignore so easily and that gave her enough of edge to strike through. 

Her ‘growth’ seeped into his ‘wound.’ Making my initial strike much stronger than it had originally been. Even then, it could have won, but it was partially mad and completely corrupted. 

The nature of a thing consists not of its power, but the definition of its power. Opposing laws and daos, even if they were significantly weaker were much more effective against these beings. 

“I see why its remained unclaimed,” I replied. 

To defeat and claim this area would mean that you would need a creature adapt at both light and death concepts. And that was significantly rare. 

Concepts weren’t exclusive to one another. Light could be evil and dark could be good, but they had general associations. 

Light was revealing, freeing. Light gave life and sight. The concept of light was often tied to the concept of goodness and growth, and darkness was tied with evil and rot. 

Those who practiced light based techniques often didn’t deal in death laws and the same could be said for those who practiced death based techniques. Death and light rarely mixed. 

So the two semi-opposing natures being present in this patch of land meant that the creatures who lived there had probably adapted to it. So a qualitative counter to both darkness and life was necessary to truly have an edge against the creatures of the forest. 

That made taking over the area more effort than it was worth. 

“Light based attacks are enough of a deterrent for most beings within the area but they heal fast so taking them down requires both death and light.”

I nodded. A quality of light was its pervasiveness. It was that one thing that spread farthest in most universes, one of the fundamental forces of preception you could say. Stars shined for billions of lightyears, and if untouched, their light would travel forever. 

So it made sense that the creatures there would scatter from the light, assuming it was of a high enough nature. 

But how to mix that with death?

Well, I had some arrays premade, both of light and death. I could use them both at the same time, but the creatures of that place probably had more developed natures, something that mixed both life and darkness together. 

A dark growth. Fungus. Black holes. Living devouring shadows. 

I wondered what laws I could gather? I wonder what natures awaited?

As we ran across the forest, I found myself a little excited. 

More than worry, more than caution, I found eagerness bubbling up within me. 

The part of Dane that studied arrays and the nature of existence was curious, the part of Bill that loved to explore the many impossibilities of the world was curious. 

And in the truest sense, I the whole of both was boiling over with interest. 

Then I frowned. 

I was just about to make a mistake again. 

Chapter 120

Forn sat next to the strange man as he stirred over a bubbling cauldron.

She had met many cultivators of many different paths. The Hills of Life attracted many types of people. 

And yet she found this one to be the strangest of them all. 

And it wasn’t because of what he could do or what powers he possessed, though Forn found that strange as well. 

No, he was strange because of what he lacked. He seemed scattered, fearful. Lacking in some fundamental way. You could feel a beings nature and the strength of it at this realm. 

She knew what she was and what concepts made her. Wild, growth, strength. A singular dao and a few connected laws weaved together to make the essence of her being and while she could hide it, she couldn’t remove it. 

But this man, he lacked those things. Sure there was that strange contradiction of a dao within him, but aside from that an almost infinite amount laws floated around him. 

It was like looking at a persons torso and finding many small holes where the organs were supposed to be, only to find that the organs were there, but that they were damaged and still working just fine. 

It didn’t make sense. 

And that fight, in truth she hadn’t thought that he would be of much help. She was only hoping to make him run to her grove and use him as a reason for her father to intervene.

Having a wild dao was both a matter of nature and a matter of pride. To be wild was to be free from both protections and restrictions. If her father had intervened on his own the progression of her dao would get damaged. 

Heart demons could be born. His actions to save her life could cause a limitation or change to be born within her heart and her nature could become tied to his forever. 

A great cultivator like her father had to be careful to not ‘taint’ lesser beings with his nature. If she wanted freedom to develop, she needed to separate herself from him. And while she was already in the god ranks, he was still powerful only beneath the realm of Imperium. 

He could corrupt her. She could take his traits and follow in his footsteps as some of her brothers and sisters had, and they were all the more powerful for it. 

But she sought to walk her own path. 

And so she had called out to make her father intervene for this person’s sake rather than for her. It would offset the damage significantly and would be practically harmless to this fellow. After all, the only reason she would get corrupted is because of her dao being against her father’s protection and her innate tie to him. 

She was like a dragon trying not to be a dragon, or a fish trying to walk on the water. Her father’s nature was already within her and it limited all she could be. 

She could never live in a city or become a celestial bureaucrat. She would make an awful smith or solider, but she could change her nature to be something of her own while not being tied to her father. 

That was all to say, he was merely a distraction. 

But he had surprised her, helped her defeat the dragon with those multifaceted attacks. He had thrown up laws and daos that opposed the dragon’s very being out of nowhere as if he practiced them all to perfection. They were minor, only at the tenth, maybe eleventh rank, but a storm of dust would still choke a man. 

And she had used that opportunity to kill the dragon and undo whatever damage she had done to her dao by asking someone for help in the first place. 

While Drean wasn’t her father, he was still a person who had aided her due to some rule of kindness or pity. It would have been worse if her father had done it under the rule of parenthood or leader. 

Those concepts directly trampled on her own sense of freedom. 

In the end, he had benefited her, turning her possible suffering into a boon. 

A dao was a path and she had almost walked off that path in need of survival, but the man had intervened. 

She watched as he made the soup of Soulsween and various other herbs, some kind of alchemical concoction. He had leveled the area of any laws and sealed it with extreme efficiency. 

He was an array master, that much she could tell from how he worked and his wide and generalized mastery of laws and daos. He had sterilized the area before operating, almost cutting it off from the Cosmic Forest entirely. 

The Cosmic Forest was an omnirealm, a realm so big it was almost everywhere at once, and it substituted itself for concepts such as time and space.

Its fabric was so fundamental that even God-Kings would struggle to rip it apart. What he had done was more like patting it even. It was still a piece of the Cosmic Forest, but it was flattened and trimmed as if it had been patted down into a campsite. 

It wasn't like he had defeated the forest. He had merely claimed such a small part of it that even the forest wouldn't even notice the change. 

It looked like he was mimicking the effects of a grove. The area was clear of any overbearing law or dao like a small campsite swept free of debris. He could claim it for now, but as soon as he left this place, the forest would take it back. 

He was making something, some kind of potion with the soulsween. She didn’t know why, soulsween could be used as a supplement for many potions but it seemed like too weak of a herb to be used by a god. And he was making it the main ingredient.

She almost scoffed at him but then she thought about it. His nature or his lack of one, maybe that was caused by some ailment of his nature and this was the first step in the recovery process. Yes, that was an acceptable conclusion. Conditions like that were rare but not unheard of. 

But then how did he fight with such a damaged nature?

Generally, a cultivator's strength comes from both their power and nature. The power was determined by their rank, and nature was both their dao and laws. Forn’s dao of the wild kept her free and unchained. It made it easier for her to reject law-based attacks of a similar level. 

Fire burned less, and water couldn’t drown her easily. Any attack trying to bind her or limit her would weaken significantly. Her law of growth and plant life allowed her to create a forest of trees and manipulate them in a way that suited her needs. She could make her attacks grow, her qi grow, and even the weakness of the enemy could be forced to grow if she got close enough. 

That was how she had killed the dragon. She had given Drean’s attacks strength and they had grown. And as the dragon was focused on destroying them, she had struck with her spear, mixing it with not her own nature but the small laws that Drean had thrown. 

And then the wound was there, and that was what she made grow. 

Nature was an important thing for a cultivator, but Drean’s was weak and hurt. He was lacking, almost mortal like in his existence. 

“Done,” the man said after some time. 

She watched curiously as he raised the cauldron to his mouth and downed the whole thing. He had used all the herbs she’d given him, even the ones that weren’t soulsween but he had cut out different parts of the plants so that a pile of sticks and leaves from various herbs were left. He had used a small drop of the water from the river, and that had been enough to nearly overflow the cauldron. 

“What recipe was that?” Forn finally asked. 

“Recipe?” He replied.

“Surely that’s a recipe you're using? You’re not just mixing down herbs are you?”

“Ah no, the most powerful plant here is at the eleventh rank. Their natures aren’t hard to grasp.”

She took a second to understand the meaning of his words. Recipes were used only when you didn’t understand exactly what was going on. He was implying that he knew the exact nature of their of plants and the consequences they would have if mixed together. She wasn’t an alchemist but some of her grove were and they would occasionally do the same. 

“You’re an alchemist?” 

“No, but the job is very similar to being an array master.”

“I suppose they are.”