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Fates Parallel Chapter 436 - Puzzle
🕑 Added 2023-11-08 21:59:34 +0000 UTCJia puzzled over the image in the miniature reflecting pool, glancing between Yue and Dae.
“Well, it’s definitely the moon. I know that dusty patch of wasteland—it’s the place where my soul realm connects to it.”
Before she’d taken control of Chou’s realm and made it hers, it had been anchored to a giant maelstrom in the middle of the sea, and also to the moon. As Jianmo had told her, it was a place where the bottom of the ocean met the highest place in the sky.
They’d moved the earthly anchor to Jiaguo, but Yoshika had maintained the connection to the moon—mostly out of curiosity, but also to give the visiting spirit a way home, if it so desired.
Yue chewed on her thumbnail as she stared at the image.
“It doesn’t look dusty to me. It’s so...still.”
Jia nodded.
“There’s no wind—or air, for that matter. But I can sense the surface, and it’s covered in a fine powder.”
Dae cocked his head.
“That’s odd. If there’s no Air or Water essence to erode it, how would such particles form?”
“Don’t ask me. Maybe there was some huge fight up there that blew a bunch of it up.”
“I doubt it—nobody’s ever been able to travel there.”
Jia grimaced.
“Well, someone did. Chou connected his realm to it, and Do Hye implied that this moon spirit had a former mistress, but I think it was born up there.”
Yue huffed.
“Never mind all that, what does this mean for us? Is this...a success?”
Dae scratched his cheek.
“I...don’t know. I have no idea how it’s even doing this. My best theory is some variant of soul resonance, but that would mean that this image is the only one she can show us.”
Jia hummed thoughtfully.
“Maybe we can just ask her...”
The moon spirit was more alien than most, but Yoshika had communed with spirits before, and even spoken directly to the godly representation of the entire Void element. Although the latter was more like something that had happened to her rather than something she’d done.
She reached out with her domain, focusing on her curiosity as she touched the spirit. The moon spirit’s response was predictably incomprehensible. Nostalgia, novelty, recognition, happiness, melancholy—it was difficult to parse out the nuance of the spirit’s feelings without applying it to a human frame of reference.
“Hmm...I have no idea what she’s trying to say, but she seems pretty excited about it.”
Yue sighed.
“That’s been my experience as well. I don’t even know how we’re supposed to get her out of the formation now that she’s there.”
The moon spirit immediately withdrew itself from the reflecting pool, the image fading back into clear water as it flowed around Yue. Jia giggled.
“I guess it understands us better than we thought. I have an idea—Heian?”
Jia’s spirit daughter materialized next to her and bowed.
“Yes, Mother?”
During Yoshika’s ascension, they’d briefly needed to borrow Heian’s form, and the process had left them both changed. Heian now resembled a young teen rather than a child, and she’d made an effort to behave more maturely ever since—though part of that was out of a sense of rivalry with Iseul.
“I know you’ve tried to talk to the moon spirit before, but you’ve been living in Jiaguo’s grand formation for quite a while now, so maybe you can make some sense of this?”
When Yoshika had taken control of the soul realm, Heian took control of the part of the formation which once housed the administrator of Sovereign Chou’s tomb, and a portion of her essence had remained there ever since.
“I can try.”
Heian held out a hand, and the moon spirit flowed toward her. Their essences mingled for a few moments, and Heian cocked her head, frowning. Eventually, the moon spirit withdrew, and Heian scratched her head.
“I think I get it?”
Jia giggled.
“You don’t sound very confident.”
Heian shrugged.
“She’s weird. Like I used to be, but even more. Big brother Dae is right, it’s part of her soul.”
Dae sighed.
“That’s unfortunate—so we’re back to the drawing board, then. An interesting phenomenon, but not one which we can actually make use of.”
Heian wobbled her head uncertainly.
“I don’t know about that. Let me try.”
She stepped forward and dipped her fingers in the water, infusing the formation with her essence the same way that the moon spirit had. Heian closed her eyes and furrowed her brows in concentration as the pool began to ripple.
It took her a few minutes, but eventually the surface resolved into a perfect reflection of the room they were standing in.
Dae pursed his lips.
“Congratulations, you’ve created an extremely complicated mirror.”
Heian’s cat ears flattened against her head and she smacked him with her tail.
“Shh! I’m not done yet.”
The image shimmered again, shifting into a picture of Jiaguo’s square, then again into Lin Xiulan teaching a class, then finally into Ja Yun hard at work in her office.
“These are all places in Mother’s domain—I can see them through my connection to her. But I think if I try hard enough I can...”
She squeezed her eyes shut and focused. The pool rippled for several minutes before Dae looked askance at Jia.
“Should we—?”
Jia held up a finger and shook her head.
“Shh!”
Finally, the pool stilled and a new image formed on the surface. It showed a rocky plateau surrounded by misty clouds. A large spring burbled on the edge of the plateau, feeding a waterfall that Jia knew flowed down the entire length of the mountain.
She knew that place—the Purewater Spring at the peak of Xin Wei’s sect.
“How...?”
Jia trailed off, the answer coming to her on its own. The shadow spirit—the same one that had given a piece of itself to Jia so many years ago, which eventually became Heian. Its vessel was a flower bush with pale ashen petals—and it had been transplanted on that very mountain peak.
Heian nodded in confirmation, sensing Jia’s thoughts.
“It’s my progenitor’s viewpoint. It’s really hard to do this, though—I’ve changed too much. I’m not part of her anymore. I can only see her because she’s letting me.”
Jia nodded.
“That’s enough, honey, thank you.”
Heian withdrew her essence and let out a sigh of relief.
“That’s as much as I can do, but does it help?”
“I think so. It’s about connections, right? You can make it reflect the things within my domain, or things that are connected to your soul in some way.”
“Mhm. I can’t see Rika, though—you’ll need someone else for that.”
Jia smiled.
“I can think of a few people who might work.”
—-
Despite her confidence, it turned out to be a lot more difficult than Jia had hoped. The spirits had made it look easy by just merging themselves into the formation, but using the reflecting pools that way was a lot more challenging for humans.
Yoshika herself had some experience with it, from when she’d merged with what was now her soul realm, but that had been a much more permanent arrangement, and the formation had been designed for it. This was something else, and attuning the reflecting pool as the spirits had was proving quite the hurdle.
They’d been trying all day, and Dae’s office was getting a little crowded, so Jia called an end to things and they convened in Yue’s house to discuss their progress—or lack thereof.
Jia, Dae, and Yue were joined by Ja Yun, Eunae, and Iseul.
Each of them had attempted to use the reflecting pool to contact Rika, but none of them had managed it. Iseul had come closest, merging herself with the formation as the spirits had, but rather than extending the range, she’d turned herself into an interface—extending the reflection in the pool onto her own body and allowing her to shape herself into a model of the subject.
A very interesting addition, but it didn’t get them any closer to their goal.
Dae let out a frustrated sigh as he laid the problem out before them.
“In theory, the connections that Heian and the moon spirit were able to create is explainable. I based this prototype in part on my previous work with the teleportation formation and by extension the grand ritual that brought Yoshika all the way here from across the sea.”
Jia nodded.
“It lets us draw on our connections to teleport to anyone with whom we’ve formed a bond, right?”
“That wasn’t really the intention, but for you, yes. For those of us who are not semi-divine avatars of unity, it is a very expensive way to join two points in space using sympathetic essence signatures. If I draw the exact same formation in two different places, then with enough essence, I can move between those points. The reflecting pool uses the same concept—the speaking stone attached to it is paired with the one we left with Rika.”
“And if anything happens to it, I can still teleport to her, right?”
Dae nodded.
“Yes, but only you. The rest of us would have no way of following. As I see it, we have two problems—first, no matter how strong your connections to Rika may be, it’s just not going to be the same as actual soul resonance. Second, even if it were, directly manipulating the essence of a formation like that is impossible for anything but a spirit.”
Iseul crossed her arms and pouted. Dae quickly recanted.
“Or an elemental! Sorry, Miss Iseul. Though I should note that the actual methods you employed were very different from that of the spirits.”
The mud elemental nodded.
“Of course they were. Spirits don’t think about what they do—they just do it. My approach was more measured.”
“But less successful.”
“That depends on how you define success in this scenario.”
He blinked. Iseul could get very competitive when it came to Heian. Jia sighed and stepped in before their bickering could go any further off track.
“Success in this case is defined by successfully contacting Rika.”
Iseul’s form melted into an amorphous blob.
“Ah. Then yes, I failed.”
Eunae tapped her lips thoughtfully.
“Maybe both problems are the same. The formation is a blend of arcane and spiritual arts, but our understanding of such techniques is fairly limited. Dae, most of your work expands on Do Hye’s, right? Taking rote techniques you’ve learned from him, and extrapolating them out into broader concepts.”
Dae grimaced at the mention of his former master, but nodded.
“Mostly, yes. A lot of it also comes from researching with Yoshika, and my own first-hand experiences with spiritual arts.”
“I think that our spirit friends have proven that your formation works, in the right circumstances. The essence within the formation needs to have a strong connection to the subject, and the will to bridge that gap.”
Yue bit her thumbnail.
“The essence in the formation already has the connection—the paired stones. And any of us can provide the will, but only the spirits are able to meet both conditions in one.”
Jia frowned. They were going in circles, without making any progress.
“Look, let’s just consider this a success. We know it can work, and we have an inkling of how. As long as we’ve got something to work towards, we’ll solve it eventually.”
Ja Yun chewed on her lip.
“I mean...I’d definitely like to know that Rika is okay sooner rather than later.”
“Of course. We’re not going to give up, and I know that we’re close now. I’m sure you’ll be able to talk to her any day!”
First, they just had to figure out how to solve a problem that Yoshika had been struggling with for years—directly bridging mental and spiritual techniques. She could sense that they were on the edge of a breakthrough, if she could just figure out the missing piece.
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Next chapter: Yoshika does something incredibly reckless, almost dies and figures out the missing piece.
