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218 - The Divine Emperor in the City of Glittering Petals Pt. 4 [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-04-23 08:15:47 +0000 UTCThis time, he placed the objects he conjured from his sleeve upon the table with his own hand.
Shen choked on his baijiu. His pupils constricted, his face went white. He knew that scroll.
“Did you not intend this for yourself, or should be unable, for your eventual heir-to-be?”
“Of course, I already practice it myself. However, I was able to simply force my way past the breakthroughs one after the next, thanks to my mastery of the Wuxing Supreme Law. I wish to watch a new practitioner walk this path in order to ascertain that it is viable and so that I might adjust it as necessary.”
“Call it what it is: The Walking Way of Five Elements. We are not in public.”
Xiān Dì smirked in such a devious, yet genuine manner as Shen had not seen in centuries: “It would not do for the Divine Emperor to practice an art devised by the Ankhezians. Indeed, their Walking Way of Five Elements was naught but egregious misinterpretation of the Dao, whereas my Wuxing Supreme Law is the true form. This is not a lie - one could never reach my state or degree of power through the Walking Way of Five Elements.”
"You are not one to take foolish risks. Even a seemingly perfect subject might be led astray. If a practitioner of That Law suffers qi deviation or becomes possessed by a heart demon, it could spell catastrophe."
The aura of facetiousness which he had exuded suddenly evaporated, and his usual ultra-stoic personage returned. He gestured next to the scroll, and an artifact fell from his sleeve.
“Of course not. That is why this hand mirror is the first artifact I chose to accompany the manual. It functions as a scrying mirror, as the highest grade of storage artifact, and it contains a logic automaton over which I have direct control. The Heavenly Dao shall guide this mirror’s bearer. As for the second…”
Another gesture. A small peach-wood box fell out, with the imperial seal carved into its lid.
“The Unending Pill Box. Whatsoever pill its owner requires shall appear within within days if he offers up a prayer to it; that is to say, I shall send it to this box. Lastly…”
Xiān Dì rose up from his seat, and took from beneath his robe a weapon with a round gold-coloured grip wrapped in dark, faintly iridescent sharkskin. A strange, round gem was set into its pommel, and its circular guard was even stranger. Rather than just one, it had two guards; the one closest to the handle was made of green jade and set with four spherical gems identical to the one in the pommel, while the guard closest to the blade was in the shape of the imperial seal and wrought of golden metal.
“This rod… I shall leave its name to its rightful recipient. Dantian-piercer, meridian-severer, blade-shatterer, forged with one-hundred and eight Jade Dragons arrayed into thirty-six trigrams, quenched in the blood of a hundred and eight enlightened sages. Fang of destiny, to be bared against devils who would seek to undermine its wielder’s fate…”
“Whose soul-seeds are those?” Shen asked, already knowing the answer.
A smirk.
“The Five Immortals of Mt. Qu-Bu, of course.”
They were the only conceivable source of five identical soul-seeds. They had cultivated for three centuries for the purpose of eventually becoming part of the Imperial Regalia, as they owed their lives to Xiān Dì. The Five Immortals of Mt. Qu-Bu weren’t just renowned or famous, they had long passed into the realm of myth and legend. They were - or rather, had been - quintuplets, born as the consequence of a mad Ankhezian thaumaturge attempting to subvert the very magic which had rendered his people nigh-immortal and nigh-infertile. The consequence of Ozrai Kerrun’s work was a small, yet prosperous Ankhezian enclave near the borders between Pateiria and the Ankhezian outlands. Its name was Alnasta.
Their births were just as infrequent as those of normal Ankhezians, but always produced at bare minimum two, and often three children. Their women, as a result, practiced a form of body cultivation called the Walking Way of Kishimojin from a young age in order to ensure that they and their offspring would both survive. Over the course of a century, an Alnastan woman would have ten or even twenty children.
Despite Xiān Dì’s highly pragmatic, even callous nature, Shen knew that Tian Feng had rescued those children from a situation of near-certain death, after their parents had been slain by a rampaging bioweapon of another Ankhezian splinter-state. At that time, he had argued that it was better if the Ankhezian enclave believed that the children had also been killed, as this would spur them on to destroy the other party and take their resources, thus benefitting the Ankhezian race by diverting resources to a faction which could actually grow its population.
It wasn’t the callousness of this act that had taken Shen aback, but the fact that Xiān Dì turned out to be completely right. That village had, in the present-day, become the second largest Ankhezian state after the faltering imperial heartland. The fury of body cultivator mothers over their children was truly a terrifying sight to behold; meanwhile, those same children had been spirited away to Mt. Qu-Bu and left in the care of monks.
This same pragmatism was also why Alnasta was one of the places which had generally amicable relations with Pateiria, managed by Xiān Dì himself. They were a buffer state and a means of sourcing Ankhezian resources without dealing with the imperial remnants, which rebuked him at every turn.
“The rod. Show me.”
“It is not a savage weapon. There is no spirit which dwells within. After all, it is intended to grow with its wielder,” Xiān Dì smiled, pulling the weapon from its scabbard. A bian with a needle-like tip, split into subtly concave segments, the ridges between them edged with gold and sharpened to beyond a razor’s edge. Its endmost segment was substantially longer than the others and shaped like a diamond with concave sides, to permit for cutting. The entire weapon’s taper was so subtle and gradual it could not have been produced by anyone short of the Blacksmith Immortal, Vasalery, an Ankhezian defector who had lived in Pateiria since the height of the elven imperium. Shen could scarcely imagine what leverage Xiān Dì had put against the elf to make him forge this, as the ancient’s power, wisdom, and skill made him able to refuse even Xiān Dì without fear of reprisal.
Comments
Akaso Industries
To be perfectly fair to the Emperor, he's basically going "I might as well break out the nice stuff if I'm gonna revitalize cultivation in my empire".
Marble
Lots of new toys for new enemies, but they feel gross and counterfeit.
