By the time I woke up fifteen minutes had passed. I took a bone and an internal organ pill to deal with the last of the damage, the other two pills having only slightly helped the situation, mostly because the blood pill stopped the internal bleeding. Another minute passed and I got up. The ground and my clothing was soaked in my own blood, and I was extremely hungry from all of the healing I had to do. Level two pills didn’t have any ability to replace the nutrients used in healing, that feature starting at level three when components of satiation pills started to be mixed in due to the high likelihood of malnutrition from using them. I took a satiation pill from Earth out of my bag and ate it, but the hunger only partially went away. I would have to see if Shingua was willing to cook something for me or if I needed to eat more pills.
I put on my set of dress robes, as my travel robes were now partially destroyed, and used the cleaning technique to get most of the blood and dirt off of me, then returned to where the others were. Unfortunately my seal plate had flown into the water, being separated from me when I was hit with the beam, so I would need to dive to retrieve it. “Well, I guess I’ll have to fight underwater now.” I said.
Mishana looked over at me from where he was staring at the central tree, like he was disappointed in me. “Please try to not harm the other snakes if you don’t have to. Some of your sect mates are trying to work with them so that they can be brought back to the sect, but they shouldn’t be harmed unless you have no other choice.”
I looked at him and realized that he must have went through something traumatic to be acting this way, so sad and contrary to how he acted before. “Did something happen?” I asked. “Did you suddenly realize that you helped take a life of an intelligent being and are having a moral issue with it?”
He shook his head then shrugged. “Not exactly, but it isn’t something I wish to talk about right now.”
I didn’t know at the time what he had spoken to the flood dragon about while it was dying, nor that he had spoken with it. “Ok, then.” I said, “But if you want to talk about it, I’m here to talk.” He nodded and went back to staring at the tree in the center of the lake.
I walked to the edge of the water and looked into it. Below to surface I saw several water snakes of various sizes, but not the seal plate, the silt in the water combined with the darkness blocking most of my sight. When I tried concentrating on the flags, however, I found that I still had a connection to the plate, but that it couldn’t protect me at this range. I got a general direction from the flags, put a metal barrier around myself, as the water would quickly neutralize a fire one, and went into the water.
Once I was under water I started swimming towards the seal plate. At this level all of the snakes were level one, but there were level two snakes after ten meters of depth. I tried stretching out my senses in the direction of the seal plate, and sensed a large amount of qi in the water. During the heat of the battle earlier I hadn’t realized that this was early level three spirit water. That explained why most of the snakes were level two, but not why there was only one level three.
Still, I could use this fact. About twenty meters down, where it was too dark for the others to see me, I altered my shield to only protect against the pressure, then started drawing in the qi as quickly as possible. Every strike of lightning caused me great pain, like a hundred hot needles being stabbed into me at each location, though my skin took little damage from it, being mostly adapted to this level of lightning. Rather than send the qi into the seeds and risk breaking through here, knowing that the realm had some protection against cheaters, I only used it to rapidly refill my soul sea and grow its seed. There were dozens of flashes of bright light, one for each tribulation strike, before I was satisfied enough with my progress. Hopefully the light was blocked by the silt in the lake, and no one would ask questions. My soul sea more than doubled in size before refilling completely, and I could tell that the true meridians connected to it were starting to stretch, as if they wanted to grow as well. If I had more time I would continue to cultivate them, but we would likely need to leave soon. While I would love to keep this valuable cultivation resource, I couldn’t think of how to do so without dumping things from my storage bags.
With no choice but to ignore the cultivation value of the water, I swam down. While before I started drawing in the tribulation the level two snakes were watching me, looking for an opportunity to attack, now that they had seen me ignore lightning that they couldn’t survive they decided to leave me alone. I started swimming downwards towards the seal and whenever I approached other snakes they cleared out of my path rather than risk facing me in combat.
About fifty meters down, at a point where the level two barrier technique was starting to get stressed, ran into a school of fish. These fish were all rainbow colored, and I assumed they were the food source for the water snakes. There were also several types of spirit plants down here, far more variety than I would suspect, including at least three varieties of kelp. Some of these plants must be the food source for the fish, drawing in the ambient qi to grow without the need for sunlight. I knew that most spirit plants could do this, at least once they reached level two, but these likely could do it from the time they sprouted due to growing in level three spirit water, as the qi was so abundant.
I kept swimming down. I was about fifty meters from the shore and ahead of me was an underwater chasm, like a twenty meter wide canyon carved on the lake’s floor. A typical level two barrier device was only rated for sixty meters of depth, but the fact that the caster was peak level two and the fact that I used metal qi allowed the barrier to be strengthened a bit beyond that. Still, I doubted it would hold up past 100 meters. About twenty meters deeper, though, I saw a metal pentagon laying on the lake floor. I swam towards it and stood on the ground, then picked it up, inspecting it for damage. After verifying that it had none I put it back in my robes, leaving it turned off. Its energy was mostly depleted, but sitting in level three spirit water had allowed it to restore itself back to early level three strength. I didn’t know if it could absorb tribulation lightning without damage the way I could, or I would have tried to speed up its recharge cycle. After all, we didn’t know if we would come under attack again, and a level four barrier was better than a level three barrier.
Something seemed off about the bottom of this canyon, though. The slight curves of the walls were too perfect and parallel, not at all like stone would do if eroded or broken. The floor was also perfectly flat. I could probably hold my breath for another hour if I had to, so that wasn’t stopping me from investigating, but I didn’t want to delay the others. Instead I knelt down and brushed the dirt of the sea floor away. Underneath it was a metal surface. That would be evidence in favor of my Dyson Swarm theory, as it meant that this place was artificially constructed. I used my two spirit roots to examine it, and found that it contained neither iron nor hydrogen, the elements corresponding to my metal and fire roots.
Several months before leaving Earth I had developed a technique to mimic different spirit roots, a technique which Liza and Dave had converted into a series of formations to power the different chemical conversion devices. While it wasn’t very energy efficient in its technique form, I could use it to mimic every element’s signature if I could remember the periodic table well enough. I would just have to brute force the energy requirement to get early level one levels of energy with a false master or heavenly spirit root.
I quickly cycled through the different elements in order of their place on the periodic table to see if I could essentially run a spectroscopic analysis of the metal and find out its composition. Helium? No. Lithium? No. Boron, no. I went through as many as I could remember, sometimes forgetting details like the number of neutrons, but always getting the number of protons right, thus securing an average quality false spirit root for most of the elements.
After five minutes I had broken down the formula. It was mostly titanium, with a bit of uranium and osmium mixed in for hardness and tensile strength. Titanium was the main ingredient in most level four and five alloys, as, while it was only moderately qi conductive by itself, when certain elements were mixed in it could greatly increase its conductivity. There was also a fourth element which was added to the mixture, iridium, though I wasn’t quite certain what it was used for. My best guess was that it helped with the qi storage capacity. Iridium was quite rare on Earth, though, so hopefully it could be omitted and still produce a high quality material.
If I had seen any of the material lying around I would take a piece with me to be analyzed on Earth, but there wasn’t so much as a filing down here for me to take. I had memorized the rough percentages of the different elements, though, so I should be able to finish reverse engineering the material once I returned. This metal was at least a level five material if not a level six, so if we could patent the formula we could make millions in licensing fees. The presence of this metal did explain why the water contained so much qi, though. This water was in direct contact with what was likely the hull of the artificial world, and drew directly on the world’s energy stores. The flood dragon might have even meditated in this canyon or while touching the hull, allowing it to draw in exponentially more qi than its brethren and advance far more quickly.
My barrier started to form a few small cracks from the pressure, so I quickly returned to the surface, knowing that my body likely couldn’t stand that pressure at all. Once back on the surface I swam over to the island. After getting out of the water and ending my barrier, I removed the water from my clothes. If I had a water root it would have been easy to do, but one could improvise by using the Cleaning technique, as it was meant to remove objects and chemicals from surfaces.
Once done I witnessed a monk punch the tree and, when leaves fell, jump onto the leaves before pushing off of them to go higher. This strange technique allowed them to go five to ten meters up the tree and reach the fruit that were hanging there without the need for a flying technique.
I floated off the ground and up to the tree. Most of the fruits were gone now, everyone else having picked their fruit already. I asked a monk that jumped nearby why the fruits were different colors, and he explained. The colors were related to which topic they offered assistance with understanding, or as many people put it, which Dao they offered enlightenment for. Fruits could be multiple colors, as well, but the enlightenment offered would be split among those Daos proportionally, and might contain knowledge of a combination of the two instead.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
After thanking him I looked over the fruits that were left. I was one of the last to choose, before we collected all of those that were left to split up later, so I didn’t have much choice left. I considered one with a blue top that was mostly yellow. I could feel a bit of qi leaking from it that contained the concept of fire and lightning, like how the strand from Xiao contained parts of cultivation seeds or how a jade slip might contain knowledge on those topics. I wasn’t sure if I would get much out of that fruit, though, as I already knew how those worked scientifically.
Not seeing another good option for me to use, however, I went over to pick it, then noticed that inside the leaves, almost hidden from sight, was a pitch black fruit the size of a grapefruit. Most of the others ranged from the size of a grape to the size of an apple. I assumed the once a fruit grew it could stay on the tree almost indefinitely, slowly getting larger and stronger. If that were the case, this one must have been missed the last time the fruits were picked, as it was so much larger than the others. The concept coming off of this one was Nothing. That didn’t mean that it lacked a concept. Its concept was quite powerful, it just had a very strange one, the concept of nothingness, of emptiness. I was tempted to call it the nothingness of deep space, but knew that it was even more of a void than that. It is what remained after you stripped away all of the matter and energy, almost the opposite of a black hole, refining reality to its most basic form.
“A chaos fruit?” asked the monk that was retrieving fruit earlier. The others had finished choosing, so once I did as well he would strip the tree of the other fruit. “A strange choice, though not necessarily a bad one. The sheer size of the fruit means that it is quite old. I would guess at least thirty years. That means that it will enhance your mind far more than any of the others, and do a better job than the others. The Chaos element, however, is a worthless element. While many have studied it, the only ones to get any benefit from it are the level five cultivators who explore the heavens, as it can help you in some rare instances.”
Something told me that this fruit was the one I should go with, though. I couldn’t explain why, but when I touched it, considering picking it, my true meridians reacted, almost twitching with excitement. Or possibly fear. As they were a part of me, and not actual living beings, it was difficult to assign them emotional states. At best, this was like saying your stomach was happy after a delicious meal, but I felt like this time it wasn’t just a metaphor.
I put both of my hands on it and pulled it from the tree. “I’ll take this one.” I said, and put it in my storage bag.
“Very well,” the monk said, then started agilely removing every remaining fruit.
I landed and Mishana walked over to me. “I have something I must discuss with you.” he said. I responded telepathically, asking what he wanted to talk about, and he sent me his memory of the conversation with the flood dragon. I didn’t know that memories could be transferred directly, not using a jade slip as a medium, but now wasn’t the time to ask about that.
‘So she worried about the future of her people, and blamed us for their previous destruction and genocide.’ I asked.
Mishana nodded. ‘And now we are doing as she feared, looting their resources. Your sect is even trying to capture as many water snakes as they can. It is better than killing them, but you are still destroying their society and going against her wishes and everything she fought for.’
I nodded. ‘In a way we are. But what about the monks? You are raiding the tree. Shouldn’t you be preserving it? If nothing else, shouldn’t you be throwing the left over fruits into the water so that the ones there can refine their brains, understand new concepts, and advance to level three so that they can have a society?’
‘A race does not require rational thought and language to form a society. Even at level one and two, they already have one.’
‘Sure, but it does let your society flourish. At least by taking a few of the snakes away, back to Ilarya, we insure that they survive, that they can’t be wiped out in the future.’
‘I don’t think she would agree with you.’ he said, then paused for a few seconds. ‘I don’t think she would agree with us either.’ He sighed and looked at the sky, which was clear and sunny like it always was. ‘How does one respect all life while also living their own? Does our need for cultivation resources have to harm others, or can we find a better way?’
This conversation was getting into deep philosophical territory that I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into, especially now, when doing so might prevent us from reaching the exit in time, but I needed to respond. ‘You offer them another option. Resources are not a zero sum game. Everything can be a resource to someone, and you simply need to spread them out so that everyone has the resources they need in abundance. Take this tree for example. We had to fight over it because there was only one. Why can’t we just plant more of them, though? Sure, it would take a few years before they start producing, but every time they start producing more fruit, we can plant more of them from the seeds of the old ones. Exponential growth of this cultivation resource means that no one has to fight for it, because there is enough for everyone.’
‘Except it won’t work, not in this case. Many people have tried cultivating Rainbow Enlightenment trees in the past. Almost every time the tree that grew only produced fruit which helped refine the mind and acted as a source of qi. None of them offered much incite on the dao. Which means that the additional trees will not stop the demand for naturally occurring Rainbow Enlightenment fruits.’
I sighed, smirked, then patted him on the shoulder. ‘Then you will need to use jade to teach others what you know. Spread your knowledge so that others don’t have to fight to be able to learn.’ I started walking towards the tree. ‘Come on, lets go gather our people. We need to get to the center of realm before the portal forms or we will get left here.’
He nodded. ‘Very well. We can continue this conversation later, if you wish.’
We gathered everyone at the base of the tree so that we could set out as a much larger group and hopefully avoid losing more people. Thankfully, this time the only person that was seriously injured was me, but I had already recovered. When we were almost gathered someone came over and had a brief telepathic conversation with Mishana, and he asked me to follow him over to a place within the tree’s roots. Once we were there the other Buddhist disciple moved a rock from above a gap in the roots and revealed four water snakes coiled up inside. All four of these showed signs of dragon bloodlines, having horns that would later become antlers or heads shaped like dragons, or scales that were far more powerful and pronounced than the small ones water snakes normally had.
“Well, that explains it. She was protecting her children.” said Chu Van, looking over our shoulders. “No wonder she was so territorial.”
I nodded. “In that case, we need to take care of these children for her.” I said. “They shouldn’t suffer just because we took their mother from them. Even if it was a misunderstanding which lead to self defense.”
Chu nodded. “In that case, shouldn’t we split them, two for each of us? Two of them can be raised Buddhist, and two can be raised as companion beasts.”
“If we did that, then we would leave the snakes here without a leader. One of these should be left behind to guard the others. Otherwise the other races might come to hunt them.” Mishana said. “If you wish, then our sect can leave behind one of our snakes. A single flood dragon protecting our sect is enough.”
After a bit of discussion, we decided to leave the highest level one, a female at initial level two, here to carry on the work of protecting their people. To that end, however, we didn’t want to leave her on her own. One of the monks gave me a simple jade disk they kept in hopes of turning it into an artifact one day, and I placed my memories of everything that had happened here inside of it, minus the time I spent in the lake. I did, however, leave a note that the bottom of the trench in the lake would be an excellent location to cultivate, in case the new queen found a way to get down there. The monk Mishana also left everything from his perspective in it. The new queen should accidentally touch her qi to the disk at some point and discover that it contained a message. Mishana also took one of the small green water fruits from the monk that was picking them and gave it to the young flood dragon. After it ate the fruit it seemed to relax and closed its eyes, no doubt meditating on its new knowledge.
I set the jade disk on the roots of the tree so that the flood dragon would find it, and went to discuss what would happen to the other three. After a bit of discussion we settled on one returning to the White Tiger sect, one to the temple, and one going with me. I helped Mishana form a companion contract with the young flood dragon so that it could follow him as his disciple. While he wasn’t actually allowed to have a disciple yet, this trip was meant to test if he was ready to be an elder before he advanced, so, assuming he wasn’t severely reprimanded for the deaths the monkeys caused, he would soon be able to take disciples.
I gave my snake some of the lion meat, then offered it a servant contract, which it accepted. I then put it in the beast bag and removed the lion cub. Shingua had brought me a flood dragon skewer, the only thing she could cook on short notice, and I ground up some of the meat into a paste in my hand, then let it eat. Once it finished, I offered it the servant contract as well and it also agreed. Now that they were both my servants, I could place them both in the bag, and even place Xiao in there with them. Despite the fact that cats generally didn’t like snakes, and liked to eat birds, now that they all worked for me they shouldn’t do worse than be hypercompetitive.
I took Xiao out and gave him a piece of flood dragon meat. He had been staying in the berry bush ring since we got to the clearing, and had eaten several berries as well, so likely needed a nap. When he ate the Flood Dragon meat, though, he closed his eyes and looked tired, so I put him back in the bag so he could sleep.
I took a bite of the flood dragon skewer and an immense amount of qi flooded into me, completely refilling my meridians, dantians, and soul sea, and pushing several cultivation seeds to further develop. I had to stop after a single bite to focus the qi into developing my soul sea and true meridians, things that were invisible to outsiders. Like with all spirit beasts, the energy also brought multiple cultivation seeds with it. While many were for muscles, skin, or the nervous system, some of them even modified the souls sea or true meridians. I could only assume that these changes were part of the dragon bloodline, and perhaps all legendary bloodlines, as it would allow them to become far stronger than other spirit beasts at their level and aid in further cultivation.
I integrated the seeds where they were meant to go and reinforced them, putting the skewer in my belt for now. Everyone was almost ready to set off, and several of them had already consumed their fruits from the tree, so I went to several of the monks and disciples from the sect and asked to buy their seeds. These fruits had a single seed, much like a peach, in the middle of them, so I bought twelve of them for ten stones each and went around the outer ring, where the berry bushes were, planting each of them. The people had already sucked on the seeds to get all of the fruit juice off of them, so they were all clean when I planted them, pushing my finger into the ground about twice as deep as the seed was tall, then putting them in the holes and pushing dirt in the hole to cover them up.
Once everyone was back in the outer ring in the direction of the gate, I took another bite of flood dragon meat, then followed the others out of the clearing, our two groups traveling together for the extra safety. We didn’t have any spare time to waste, so we couldn’t risk getting into fights anymore.
