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Soul of Blades - Chapter 45: The BloodSeer’s Conquering Test
🕑 Added 2024-03-01 23:28:43 +0000 UTCAuthors note: this was another chapter that ended up being much longer than originally intended (about 6/7k words!), so I’ve had to split it in two. I’ll try to get part two out tonight but it will most likely be posted tomorrow as I want part two to have a bit more focus and impact. (p.s. This character is pretty important also!)
Chapter 45: The BloodSeers Conquering Test
Jin felt at his navel with delicately scarred fingers and marvelled at the constant flow of energy that suffused his being. He would never get used to it. The Treasure stored within his dantian would give him dominion over an entire world. It would claim a world and label it as ‘his’.
He had learned that the cultivators of old had stumbled upon a vast civilisation that exceeded them in everything but strength and acted as all cultivators did in such circumstances; they destroyed them. They used the treasures buried within the ashes of victory to found their Martial Empire.
But that was long ago, so long that records were buried or lost. Much was lost and forgotten since the decimation of that long-dead civilisation countless eons ago, but their World-Treasures remained.
The treasures were a by-product of a bygone era, creations of a foreign civilisation that preceded the very nature of cultivation as they knew it. They were the only devices in existence capable of converting Mana into Qi, an impossible feat. The repurposed Qi could not be used for cultivation, as many had discovered. It would always lead to Qi deviation of the most devastating kind.
But it could be used for body strengthening.
The world treasures Qi would constantly strengthen its owner, reinforcing and remaking their being until every cell in their body was suffused with Qi, giving even someone at the Qi gathering stage the physicality of the weakest cultivator many stages above their own. Qi gathering stage cultivator with attuned high-ranked worlds could bear the physicality of a Nascent Soul Cultivator. They would have none of the Qi within their pitiful dantians, nor the techniques, knowledge, expertise, mastery, or even a tenth of their capabilities. But they would be strong. With a World-Treasure attuned to your being, even the most casual of swings was filled with uncontested power.
Many had tried to replicate the treasure's capabilities but all had died in the attempt, regardless of their cultivation. Personally, Jin did not see a point in even trying; if that lost civilization had been so great, then how did they lose to cultivation?
They could grant a single person a portion of the power, strength, and physicality of an entire world. Anytime a denizen of this world levelled up through their system, a portion of the being's mana would be funnelled straight into his treasure and repurposed. Every time they levelled up, a portion of their mana would be stolen. And when they inevitably fell in battle, the largest portion of their mana would be claimed.
It could often be beneficial to wipe out a world entirely to claim the entirety of its Qi, but that brought far less returns than possessing worlds for centuries. After all, sentients birthed, died, and levelled by the minute.
The world-treasures had made them much more than the cultivators of old. It had made them uncontested and unbeatable, it turned them into the first world conquerors.
And now, finally, Jin had joined their ranks.
***
Jin really hated water worlds.
The vastness before him was an oceanic expanse sprawling beyond sight with the dappled light of the sun brushing illusionary waves along its surface, it did little to stir his admiration.
He had just arrived and already found himself missing the feeling of stone floors beneath his feet. He missed his home realm, where the elements of fire and earth reigned supreme. He brushed away drops of water that landed on his hands, honed by years of rigorous training and battles that had etched permanent scars upon both his body and soul.
On this body, anyway. Once he ascended his form to the next stage, all blemishes would be erased.
He breathed in deeper and inhaled the air and energies of his new belongings; His World-Treasure, his world, and his latest conquering test.
The horizon vanished as a colossal wave, rivalling the largest structures of Jin's distant home world, surged upward to blot out the sun. It eclipsed his vision and crashed into him. He chanted under his breath, his palms glowing red as a robe of hardened blood materialized around him- not only would it be useful in navigating the depths without being touched by water, it was usually impervious to conventional attacks and would act as a transparent barrier against the oncoming wave. The wave crashed into him and his world shook with its passing.
“Gods, I hate this place,” He muttered to himself and the planet, in case it could hear him.
It wasn't personal, really. Jin could appreciate the aesthetics of a world completely submerged and its many well-constructed underwater metropolises as much as the next omnipotent teenager.
But it was just so… wet.
It was everywhere. The damp clung to the air and attempted to seep into his every breath, even as he hung suspended miles above the ocean's surface.
He sighed in dismay as he floated, suspended above the blue. Everywhere he looked held waves the size of nations and creatures that could swallow cities whole. While he held mild respect for the necessity of oceans and the beauty of their still surfaces, an entire world covered in a single unending deluge was simply overindulgent. And gratuitous. Not to mention the fact that beneath such a world’s watery surfaces lay even worse creatures and experiences.
It was basically one big monster soup.
Monsters weren’t really a problem for even the lowliest of the empire's cultivators. But in water worlds, sometimes it got… weird.
He had to destroy this world so they would grant him another. His disdain wasn't born from a grandiose epic but rather from the mundane irritation akin to finding one's sleeve perpetually wet. Perhaps his next Serf-world would be a high-ranked metropolis of some kind? He had heard they were fun.
Observing the expanse below, his intent was clear— there was no way he was spending the next few years shackled to this realm.
It had to go.
There he floated overlooking a realm entirely alien to his nature and pondering the simplicity with which he could assert his will. His perspective was one of detached curiosity, akin to observing an ant colony through a magnifying glass.
How should he do this?
Reaching deep within and far deeper without, Jin connected with his Dao. It was a Dao that the entirety of existence told had a name; the Dao of the Heavens.
His eyes flashed white with light as heavenly insight infused every facet of his consciousness. Jin’s gaze pierced through the veil of reality, focusing on the ebbs, flows, and weave of the water world’s particular corner of time.
Time was a fabric woven from the threads of potential realities, where each thread represented a different sequence of events or choices made by conscious beings. According to Jin’s discoveries, time was not linear or fixed but a dynamic and interactive tapestry that changed with every decision and thought. It was a concept some had called ‘multiversal’ and some less knowledgeable serfs called ‘quantum mechanics’. Jin knew it as the realm of forms.
It allowed one to directly experience the potentials inherent in the causes of things; and to witness many potential close futures.
Jin suspected that time was not a sequential flow at all. His introduction to the Dao had left him with a creeping suspicion as to the true nature of time. Times true nature seemed much more complex and multidimensional.
Peering into the many near-futures was a deeper form of accessing the realm of Forms, where true knowledge existed far beyond the sensory world. The experience, he felt, elevated the soul closer to the divine truths.
All moments in time could exist simultaneously, with the past, present, and future being mere illusions of human consciousness. From this viewpoint, time is a singular, vast expanse in which all events are interlinked and accessible.
But that was merely a suspicion.
Jin was merely capable of gazing at times tapestry with minimal understanding and not much else. He could not navigate it as one did in a stream. Not yet. So he gazed and peered at the potentialities of the future.
Jin was lost in a trance, lost amidst time's canvas, a drop of paint swayed by the paintbrush of the heavens- he had no control over what he saw and where he went, only where he was when his Dao-trance began. Jin's trance deepened, his features smoothing into a mask of deeper peace. He peered at possible near-futures with the casual interest of observing how quickly he could erase them, how effortlessly he could rewrite the narrative of a civilization. And how far the power of his blood could extend.
A droplet collided with Jin's cloak, scattering into a mist that caught the light, reflecting a spectrum of choices yet made. Jin mused on the duality of knowing the future. This foresight, a heavy cloak he bore, weighed on him with the burden of freedom and the sharp sting of choice.
Each vision of what could come to pass—a flash of light in the ocean's endless depths—taught him the profound responsibility of shaping destiny.
He realized that foreseeing outcomes did not just empower him; it demanded the creation of his values and reality.
As each possibility unfolded before his mind's eye, Jin confronted the absurdity of existence. The vast, uncaring universe stretched out beneath him, indifferent to human desires for order and understanding. Yet, in this confrontation, he found a strange solace. The act of peering into what lay ahead became his will to power, a defiant claim over his destiny amidst the chaos of an unknowable future.
knowledge of future events challenged the absurdity of existence, yet it also reaffirmed the need to create meaning in a meaningless world through actions and choices. It exemplified the burden of freedom and the anxiety of choice, as seeing the future forced one to confront the responsibility of shaping it, embodying existential freedom, and encouraging will to power, where foreseeing future outcomes would empower an individual to shape destiny. The experience embodied the creation of ones values and reality. The act was a confrontation with the absurd, where the knowledge of future events juxtaposed the meaninglessness of the universe with the human desire for order and understanding.
Peering into the future was akin to seeing the shadows on the wall of a cave—a limited perception of true forms. True knowledge came from understanding the eternal forms, not fleeting future events, but Jin wasn’t there yet. This Dao was new to him.
His eyes shone bright, a gateway to all reality. His gaze alone set the stage for transformation.
***
Jin's fingers hovered over the water's surface, a droplet of his blood mingling with the ocean, sending ripples across the stillness.
Jin had a secret. He had several, same as any other imperial, but only one secret mattered to him. He judged secrets by their consequences and the consequence of this secret’s discovery would spell the end of his cultivation and his life.
Jin was a demonic cultivator of the most bloody kind.
Blood was his path, woven into the very fabric of his being—his past, present, and future intertwined. From the moment his feet had ventured onto the ascendant trail, blood had seeped into the roots of his cultivation, becoming as essential to his ascension as the air he breathed. Moreso, in fact.
It was the basis of his cultivation.
Jin commanded the sea's endless creatures with a thought, seizing the blood of all within his range and influencing large swathes of life within the endless ocean. The marine beasts were titans of unimaginable scale, their circulatory systems now moving under his sway to become unwilling agents of chaos. Schools of Kraken accelerated erratically to collide with structures deep beneath the ocean's surface, their massive bodies now instruments of landscape-altering destructive forces.
Jin opened his eyes in disappointment and removed himself from time’s gaze once more. A seagull's shadow briefly intersected with Jin's, the bird quickly altering its course as if encountering a wall.
“Death by Fish? How droll,” he muttered as he hung suspended in the air by subconscious movements of Qi. Jin tutted and considered the water world below with a critic's eye. That particular future has been unimaginative and taught him nothing of the extent of his capabilities. He surveyed the expanse and considered the actions he’d witnessed with a teenager's impatience... He found it dreadfully monotonous.
There had to be a more artistic way to end them all.
Jin had always skirted the edge of the forbidden, unknowingly. But he had never been able to truly experiment with what it could do for he was always wary of discovery. His only opportunity for experimentation was whenever he visited serf-worlds. So what if his actions were recorded? He could always erase the records before evaluation.
Demonic cultivators hidden within orthodox sects were almost always rooted out, eventually. Jin had always moved with caution, knowing the stakes. Discovery meant a swift and brutal end, often preceded by torturous interrogation. Yet, Jin was alone, with no masters or secretive elders to guide him—only the ancient manuals he stumbled upon in childhood. Everything he knew came from self-teaching, experimentation, and ingenuity, leading him to venture deep into the realm of blood arts. His exploration knew no bounds, from exploring its power to bind and destroy, to curse and protect, to unveil mysteries and transcend all other paths, seeking not just to understand but to master powers that could read for heights untold, beyond even the limits of the vast heavens.
Blood was the basis of life, providing nourishment and warmth to the body, and was central to the concept of life force in living beings. It was the key to transformations of all kinds.
Jin closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath as the cool air brushed against his skin. he drew on the essence of life that pulsed within his veins, feeling the control it granted him over life itself, a dominion as vast as the ocean beneath. Then closed his eyes once more and opened them with the light of his Dao, gazing into the future.
***
The underwater cities were marvels of construction and engineering, they stood proud and defiant and were designed to withstand the unimaginable pressures of the world's deepest trenches. Jin's influence reached into their very foundations.
City after city collapsed and the world became a bloody tomb encased in blood.
“No.” Jin opened his eyes and ceased to gaze at times ebbing weave. More than once during that particular erasure of the world, the pressure and debris-filled currents had cracked his shell to douse him in bloody water.
That was unacceptable.
This was supposed to be his path to reclamation, to tear down the facades of order and morality that bound all worlds using the very essence that connected him to the ancient, chaotic origins of the universe. His path to transform and unify all.
His destruction of this world had to be perfect.
His gaze penetrated the depths but wasn't met with resistance. There was no clash, no battle—only the calm before the inevitable. The water teemed with life, it was his playground and his castle of sand, awaiting the inevitable swipe of his boot.
And now that he had finally joined a sect and gained further guidance to apply to his demonic arts, Jin had a pretty big boot.
So how should he do this?
Jin contemplated not with malice but with detached curiosity as he searched through the endless threads of time. How brilliantly could he flay this world? With a mere thought, he could undoubtedly unravel the fabric of this world, yet he sought a different path—a demonstration of power, brilliance, and transformation.
His power, after all, lay not just in destruction but in the artistry of control; in the dominion of blood. He wanted to explore the furthest edges of his it’s reach.
Drawing a dagger, he let a single drop of blood fall to the ground, watching as it soaked into reality, then he watched it as it fell, and gazed further than his Qi-filled eyes would allow. His gaze pierced through the drop of blood even as it landed in the ocean to merge with its waves. He gazed at the drop of blood's future.
***
The first city fell in hours. Mer-warriors rushed to defend their home, their spears piercing the endless flows under the water's surface. Jin smiled. The destruction had begun.
A mer warrior charged, trident poised. Jin countered, his hand gripping the weapon, twisting it free and striking its owner down. Some tried to submit and join him, but Jin only cared for transformation. He twisted their blood and tore through their skin, turning them into great weapons of cursed coagulation. He sent these weapons crashing through the city with mere waves of his hands.
The second city took a little… longer, much to Jin’s shame. An entire day to destroy a single city. His first act had been subtle; a single merperson guard found his life force ebbing away as Jin merely glanced his way. The guard's blood betraying him to answer Jin's call. A scout’s light illuminated his form within the depths. Jin's hand moved in response, casting a dark wave towards the approaching merperson. The scout was thrown back, his blood twisting as he was crushed to a ball, life extinguished in an instant. He moved through the water, a spectre of death. Every wave of his hand ended a life through the twisting of blood, and his glances swept through the blood of legions.
Until the Mer armies amassed. Their numbers were vast. They fought hard, for a while, and their weapons were formidable until Jin’s gaze connected with their blood. His laughter was silent and travelling no further than his protective shell as he pulled the blood from all among the frontline, unleashing whirlwinds of dark blood to decimate their ranks with each pass. Before the final stronghold, Jin paused. With a gesture, the walls shattered, defenders falling amidst their ruins.
As silence fell over the last city, Jin surveyed his work.
“3 out of 10”, he muttered in disappointment.
***
In the present, as his eyes scanned time’s tapestry searching potential futures, Jin's fingers hovered over the water's surface, a droplet of his blood mingling with the ocean, sending ripples across the stillness. He watched the phenomena through the Dao, the red merging into blue to mix with the denizens of the sea. His drop of blood became something much closer to water, its life becoming death and then turning to life again.
He needed to unlock his path's true capabilities. He wouldn’t get another chance like this for years. He sought answers and explored the possibilities until one near-future caught his eye. His mind screeched to a halt and he jerked out of his Dao-trance with a smile.
“That’s it. That’s how they’ll all die.” He spoke a whisper of satisfaction, his eyes reflecting the sun's soft light through the clouds as he focused on the crashing waves below.
Jin considered the future he had witnessed with growing contentment. Soon, this place would end due to the mischief of a youth with too much power at his fingertips. Billions would die to the whims of a god-child wielding power with the nonchalance of youth.
Some might call it unfair, or ‘evil’, but that didn’t bother Jin. Not really. After all, he really hated water worlds.
He plunged towards the ocean's depths.
It was time to complete his conquering test.
