Book One, Chapter 32 - The Division of Altered Cultivation

Man, on "rewatch", this sure is a HELL of a review chapter. I tried to reflavor some bits to keep people interested, made it more of an introspection and overview thing, but it is very much "hey, you remember what this book is about right? You remember the plot right? Here just in case-"

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Each of the Divisions serves a specific function, created by the wisdom of the Emperor Of Emperors and established under the watchful eye of the chosen champions of our nation. This is not to say that all Divisions are made equal, or that they were all born at the same time. 

In the beginning, there were four. 

The Divisions of War, of Creation, of Research, and of Divination.

With these four, the Empire was founded, and on their backs did we build a world that is worthy of that which created a better world for us all. 

After the painful birth of our nation was complete, new needs emerged, new growing pains formed, and with great wisdom, the Emperor Of Emperors created further Divisions rather than overtaxing the many still-toiling heroes of the first four. The Division of Mortal Affairs, followed by the Division of Education, both built the bones of our road forward from the very ground, and the Division of Exploration helped us scout the trails ahead. 

Now, we see the birth of yet another Division, mirroring one of our oldest. The Divination of Altered Cultivation stands as a fulcrum around which all that fits outside the definitions and purviews of other Divisions orbits. That which is unexpected, which is alien, which is potentially unseen and even more potentially subversive, is now matched by those best equipped to find and confront it. All that slips past the cracks of the profound and vast eyes of the other Divisions can be made whole here, to be included in or removed from the Empire as best suits us.

Glory Be to the wisdom of the Emperor Of Emperors.

-Official announcement of the foundation of the Division of Altered Cultivation, spoken by its founder and Grandmaster, Grandmaster Errath of the Research Division

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“What is it you want from me?” Raika asks her cell.

“First and foremost, I want to make it clear that we have no intention of ending your journey of… ‘self-improvement’, as it were.” the voice responds. “From what we’ve found of your history, that seems to be a bit of a trigger for you, yes?”

“It is what it is,” Raika replies. “I Am Me, I Am Mine. If you intend to try and take myself from me again, don’t expect me to take it lightly.”

“Ah, yes. I’d heard rumors you might have found something like that,” the voice mumbles. “That phrase. ‘I am me, I am mine’; did you hear it somewhere?”

She frowns. “No,” she says. “It’s something I made up a while back. Feels right. As people, the only thing we truly have is ourselves, and defying the Heavens and those who lay claim to what I should be is what cultivation is.”

“Mmmh. Perhaps. But most wouldn’t phrase it as you have, or with that same… weight, hmm?” 

She’s not really sure how to respond, so the silence drags for a moment, before there’s a surprisingly harsh “huff” from the illusory voice. “Considering the chances of you stumbling onto information about the concept, I doubt you know much about it. But, good news; I do. I’m the local head of the Division of Altered Cultivation. Have you heard of us?”

She frowns. “Rumors, maybe,” she eventually responds. “Not in a few years, but I never paid attention to that sort of thing. Something about the Empire trying to fix or improve weird cultivators, or qi deviations or something?”

“Something like that,” the voice agrees. “If it’s alright with you, I’d prefer to talk about this face to face. If I go in there to talk to you, can you promise you won’t try to take a bite?”

Raika shrugs. “Try not to look too delicious,” she says, “but I promise I don’t intend to attack unless you do so first.”

The voice laughs in a deep, vibrating baritone. “Fair enough,” it says. “See you in a moment.”

The chamber goes quiet, and she takes a seat against the wall facing the door, trying to look nonchalant and casually threatening at the same time for whoever this new arrival might be. Supposedly, the voice belongs to an Imperial officer, someone she should be even more subservient to than the sects she’s been a part of. Even more so since it would seem it’s only by the Imperial Judge in the sect that she’s still alive, but… she just can’t find it in her to care too much. Three weeks of isolation and a general disdain for every authority figure she’s had to deal with since her crippling (and some before) have left her… somewhat disillusioned about the utility of subservient respect.

Then a new door, one on her right, opens just as seamlessly and invisibly as the one in front of her, the portal it opens up glowing a blinding, opaque white light. 

Its brightness warps as something steps through.

She scrambles to the side, new control of her body making the movement simultaneously disjointed and impossibly smooth as she spins into an aggressive, almost animalistic crouch to face the surprise door.

“Ha!” roars a massive, booming voice, loud enough to make her ears hurt. “Hells. Watching through formations does not do you justice.”

Stepping into the room, as at ease as if they were having a casual conversation beneath an open sky, stands the tallest humanoid she’s ever seen. Easily seven and a half feet tall before you factor in the horns, and said horns are barely the tip of the iceberg. The figure before her, dressed in official-looking robes stretched to form-fitting stature by the sheer bulk of the body they’re wrapped around, is an absolute giant, and yet they walk in with impossible lightness of step. His feet and hands are bare, hooves clopping softly against steel and his visible skin covered in incredibly soft-looking fur, rich brown and caramel smooth all the way up to the top of his head. And what a head it is; the face is a strange mix of human and bovine features, leaning more towards the latter, like an animal’s head atop a human body.

It looks, by turns, both deeply natural and deeply alien. He’s not the first beastkin cultivator she’s met, but he is the most… ‘developed’, the one furthest from a baseline humanoid biology. His eyes are all-black, with white only at the very edges, his nose a fully bovine snout, and the aforementioned horns curve almost like a crown around to the front, wrapped in curly hair that goes down to his shoulders. Each horn is almost a foot tall in and of themselves, forcing him to duck under the already large doorway as he enters, looking like he’s growing stone monoliths from his skull. 

“Holy shit,” Raika gasps; “you really are built like a bull.”

“Yes, and my squadron is likely to never let me live those comments down,” Taurus replies. “For future reference, some things are better left unsaid over open communication runes.”

“How was I supposed to know you were being serious!?” she complains. “A mysterious voice shows up in an empty room and tells me they’re called Taurus of all things. What did you expect my reaction to be?”

He shrugs, moving so much muscle mass to do so it’s like a mountain shifting. “In my line of work we learn to expect all sorts of things. But yes, I suppose it would be a little hard to believe, especially with someone who, as you say, has a specific history with… certain pick up lines.”

She leaves her crouch, falling back into a seated position against the wall. “Yeah, yeah,” she huffs. “Sorry for not getting up, Runemaster of the Altered Cultivation Division, but I’m pretty sure I’d still have to hurt my neck looking up at you either way. Still, this one greets honored cultivator Taurus. Unless… do you prefer Boriah? I’m not clear on that.”

He huffs back at her, the sound like a gust of wind. “My preference is for the former. In front of an audience, or amongst those of this sect specifically, you may refer to me as Researcher Boriah, but in more informal or direct encounters, this is unnecessary.” 

As the door closes fully behind him, he takes a seat as well, sitting in a proper lotus pose against the wall opposite her. Even seated, he’s well over a foot and a half taller than her. 

“And what do you prefer? Raika? Rai Ka? I’ve heard both said by different voices. Or perhaps something more fanciful? ‘The Bloody’, as it were?”

She shrugs. “Just Raika. No space, it’s… all one name. ‘The Bloody’ was… more something offered to me than chosen.”

He nods. It’s weird; for how alien his eyes look, it’s easy to see his thinking in them, the way he’s taking note of her every response. “Tell me, then, Raika; what do you think happens next here?”

She pauses. To lie, and perhaps look a bit better, or tell the truth, hoping he’ll respect that more… She’s had weeks to think about this, in between the torment of self-imposed physical therapy and relearning her body, and to figure out the angles of what might be to come. With only so much information about the outside world, it’s obviously been a limited thought experiment, but…

“Well,” she says, “I imagine there’s three major directions to be taken on your end. I’m considering that you’re the most important factor here, since you’re the one in here talking with me and you’re not a member of the sect that I’m currently being held in. So, there’s you deciding I’m not enough of whatever you’re interested in, and the sect wins face and gets to kill me, probably in a nasty execution, after you give them a little extra verification. Second, there’s you thinking there’s something too interesting, and I get to stay in this cell or something very like it while I get cut up and examined. Or, option three, I pass your test, or meet your judgment, and I get the privilege of working as someone’s subordinate. You’re hoping it’ll be as your subordinate, if we go that route, but I don’t think it’s a guarantee, honored cultivator.”

He nods along. “Insightful. It’s good that you’re not carrying any illusions about your situation. You missed one possibility, however.”

She blinks, then takes a half breath and freezes as pressure enters the room.

Since her crippling, Raika has had limited ability to engage with Killing Intent or Qi pressure. She knows it exists, but it’s like holding her hand over a candle; if she can’t feel pain, she won’t know she’s being burned, and most candles can only burn so bad, so its effects don’t last. The one exception so far was Shiru Hei, who hit her with the full concentrated force of her Qi pressure on arrival to her fight with Lu Feren.

Taurus is not a candle. The smell hits her like a truck, a sudden, violent scent that smells almost entirely of overwhelming force. Taurus smells like a hurricane wrapped in flesh, like muscle and stone strong enough to crush mountains barehanded, all wrapped in a package that smells like open woodlands and some sort of…

There is a beast there, at the center of that idea, of those open fields and shattered mountains.

As soon as she smells it, it knows she’s there.

By scent alone, she can feel it move. Feel the presence of something animalistic and vibrant and old, so very, very old turn towards her, turn to face her. It towers above her, above the room, above the ceiling and the building and the sky.

 In a moment, there is no furious hurricane except the wind in its fur, no mountains to crush save the pebbles beneath its hooves, and she is but a small thing outside the pack that has dared to touch it with her awareness, with her mere existence. It has seen her, and it has deemed her an insult.

And then the scent begins to dim, and Raika realizes that she can feel her entire body trembling. Every muscle feels sore, her throat feels like she’s been screaming though she knows she did not, her head pounds with an ache like she dove beneath a lake, and her heart is scrambling to compensate, beating way over its resting rate. She coughs, slightly, before looking up at Taurus again.

“There’s always the path we take where I kill you before we ever leave this cell,” rumbles the Nascent Soul Realm cultivator across from her.

At least Nascent Soul Realm.

He lets her take a moment to breathe. It takes… longer than she expected.

Smaller than the thing she saw. Smaller than the eye behind the Cold Sun, but so much closer, so much more aware of her specifically.

Inhale. Exhale.

When she looks mostly recovered, he continues. “It isn’t uncommon,” he tells her. “Something happens, and I get called in to deal with it. A demonic infestation turned parasite, a hidden Dao uncovered and malformed, some strain of Qi infecting and mutating someone into something dangerous. Some things are better left unknown, or at least out of the hands of those who would misuse it or fail to contain it. So, sometimes, I enter a room a lot like this one, interact with something a bit like you, and when I leave, the problem has been… removed. And all the Divisions, my masters, or the Emperor itself asks of me after are three forms I need to fill out and sign.”

She says nothing.

Eventually, he smiles, wide, flat teeth in a too-human snout. “I am not a fan of paperwork. This is to your benefit.”

She… simply nods.

“Good. Now. Tell me how you’ve managed to survive this far, and what you’ve done to do so.”

She takes a deep breath. It’s not a secret; hell, she’s talked about it with Li Shu more than once, openly, in public even, but… there’s a difference between the ramblings of a madwoman and a proven idea. And whatever she’s doing, it’s proving something. A part of her, a part that remembers the struggle for even the most basic of martial texts or cultivation techniques at the Hungering Roots sect, tells her how valuable any technique is, ever. Another part agrees, demanding that she keep it; it is hers. She made it, she should have the right to keep it.

A much larger consensus remembers the scent of that impossible, looming thing in the soul of the man in front of her, and recognizes that she doesn’t have much choice.

“I tried to make a natural formation,” she eventually says.

“...go on,” he says.

“I’m not a formation expert,” she tells him, “but I know they exist, and that they were invented by studying natural formations. So, I used a tuning fork-” (Dink, her trusted second, still missing in action)- “and my own heartbeat and bloodflow to try and… well, to try and make one happen inside my body. I figured since I had no Qi defenses or inherent Qi of my own to reject energies coming in, it was worth a shot, trying to make a pattern and movement that would cause an effect inside me like it would an environment.”

He cocks his head, the horns on it almost comically tall and wide and making the movement much more than it would be on a normal humanoid. “How is it that you survived it?”

No hesitation in believing it’s possible. Then again, she is living proof, so perhaps he’s just better at accepting things at face value. 

She shrugs; “I almost didn’t. First time it worked, I woke up shitting blood and with my whole body on fire, covered in that pins and needles sensation. But it didn’t kill me, so… I kept doing it.”

He looks at her. “You just… kept doing it.”

She gives him a bit of a look in return. “I didn’t have much else to do, honored cultivator,” she tells him. “I was crippled and homeless in the middle of winter, and it clearly did something. Something that hurts is better than nothing that doesn’t.”

“Deeply circumstantial and often incorrect, but go on,” Taurus replies.

“Well, it took… most of a year, I think, for much to change. Kept varying up the meditation and the nuances of the tuning fork, seeing what worked, what left me unconscious for longer, that sort of thing. Gradually I started noticing I was a little stronger and a bit healthier. It got me through the winter mostly intact, and sometime in that period I started being able to smell Qi, I think. I don’t tend to smell it constantly, but near someone who is actively using their cultivation or around formations, I tend to be able to get a feel for their scent.”

He nods at that. “Does it tend to be simplistic, like how they normally smell but magnified?” 

She shakes her head. “No. The stronger the Qi, the more complex the spell, at least usually, and sometimes they smell like they’re a little off or a little gross, but most of the time they smell like different flavors. Ozone and fire, leather and a clean river, wind on a grassy hill with a big dog on it, that sort of stuff.”

It’s really hard to read his face, but she thinks his expression changes a bit at that. But all he says is “Go on.”

“There was a fight at the cultural festival in town about six months ago,” she goes on. “I… it was strange, and I don’t know how to describe it, but the cold sun looked… well, it looked wrong, and no one else seemed to notice. And then those things attacked. Qen Hou wounded one, but I could tell it was still alive, so I grabbed it to try and kill the thing, because it threw me through a wall.”

“And just to be clear, you were still crippled, yes? Not at the level you demonstrated against a…” he seems to check his memory- “Lu Feren?”

She shakes her head again. “No, just able to hobble a bit better, but I don’t like it when something throws me through a wall.”

He… nods eventually. “Understandable.”

“Then, since I contributed, I got to come to the sect. Worked as an assistant in the medical pavilion, kept up the tuning fork routine for some more months, eventually came up with a theory about Qi and how any living thing makes it just by being alive, even without meridians, and how Qi seeps into everything if you leave it long enough, and I figured if I could survive a lesser version of that… I could survive something stronger. And I made that ritual to use on myself.”

At the last line, she waves her hand down at her body, showing off some of the remaining scar-tissue in the shape of the ritual carvings. He doesn’t look down- which she’s pretty sure isn’t because she’s still in the nude, and at least a little bit because he genuinely doesn’t need to check.

“I saw it. Smart work, though it looks more like an extended curse ritual. Uses a modification of the “Inverted Curse of Blocked Breath”, plus a lot of twisted qi infusion runes and some rudimentary concepts from barrier formations, yes?”

“Sounds about right,” she agrees. “Had to take some pills to make sure my blood kept flowing and my lungs could still draw in air.”

“I was informed by one ‘Li Shu’ that you were unconscious for several hours during the procedure. Is this correct?”

She hesitates. Should she… no. She makes a decision.

“Yeah, it was like I was asleep, following my blood into the runes. When I woke up, everything felt different. I could tell it was doing something because the pain increased, but my skin got… weird.”

He looks at her, quietly, for what feels like too long a moment. Does he know? How? She told the truth. Mostly. 

Slowly, he nods. “Do you believe you understand how this led you to regenerate?” he asks. “Nothing in what you’ve said or your history indicates it was a skill you had. Increased Qi density, sure, but you’d need a lot more than an improvised natural formation and tougher skin to survive the damage you went through.”

This time, she can be honest without any issues. 

“I don’t know.”

Taurus smiles, a broad expanse of bone in an even broader expanse of inhuman flesh. His teeth, she notices, are like his horns; they look more like stone than enamel or bone.

“Luckily, I think I do,” he rumbles. Without another word, he rises to his feet like a leviathan breaking the surface, standing again at that towering height.

“Come on. The rest of my squadron is looking forward to meeting you.”