His perspective changed slightly, and he felt less like a prisoner and more like a guest in his own head. He became detached from the fighting and was able to pay greater attention to his surroundings and the ambient qi he absorbed.
Cha Ming’s cultivation technique was self-made, and he used that same technique to draw energy from the surrounding trial world as he battled. He first condensed droplets of heaven-and-earth qi using the Concept of Inky Rain, then used the Concept of Sacred Sand to attract qi and build upon the droplet. He used the Concept of Starry Sky to expand this gathering field, creating a steady trickle of droplets, which he then joined into chains using the Concept of Radiant Construction to pull into his body, replenishing his qi stores.
As things stood, he could get by. He could fight the elementals and absorb their essence, and with the qi he pillaged from his surroundings, he could more than sustain himself. In fact, he could probably handle six more elementals. He adjusted his pace so that he was fighting eighteen at once, after which he zeroed in on his main problem: As things stood, he could only absorb qi at fifteen percent of the theoretical maximum rate. This was well below the thirty-five percent he’d achieved after integrating the Concept of Starry Sky into his cultivation technique.
But why? He inspected the process. It was the same as before. What had changed? His domain had changed. His environment had changed. This resulted in a few problems. First off, forming droplets was more difficult using what he now called an iridescent flame domain. Fire was vibrant and energetic, not malleable like water. He didn’t have the same control over this domain as he did his four-element domain.
Each other step in the process had an additional problem. For starters, expansion was more difficult due to the inherent stability in his domain. Fire burned away at the Concept of Starry Sky, weakening his reach. His iridescent domain also interfered with the Concept of Sacred Sand. It caused dissimilarity and disagreement in the environment, making it difficult to build upon the individual droplets he coalesced.
The biggest hit to his gathering system, however, was to the chains of qi he tried to pull in. Using a four-element domain, they were strong, but here, they were weakened by fire. A quick adjustment to their thickness allowed him to compensate, but even then, they were slower to pull in.
I need to adapt each of these steps to my domain, and I need to integrate a fifth step, he decided. I’ll need to do so while fighting on this bridge.
He first slowed his pace so that he wouldn’t approach other participants while he was distracted. Pace adjusted, he proceeded to tinker with a few ideas. How would he encompass the Concept of Iridescent Flame? Should he integrate emotions into the cultivation method?
No, that’s silly, his intuition replied. Gathering energy is a mechanical process. If you had to be passionate and emotionally involved the entire time, wouldn’t you start to lose your sanity?
He agreed with that assessment. Even if it was a legitimate way forward, he wasn’t willing to pursue wholehearted cultivation. That begged the question: What else did the Concept of Iridescent Flame represent? Pills with iridescent seals were stronger, but only because they empowered the ingredients with emotions. There had to be something else.
The question gnawed at him. It was a big problem, and the further he went, the more numerous the elementals became. It wouldn’t be long before they halted his advance. He would need to discover something before his pace deteriorated and he was forced back into another competitor.
An hour passed before he discovered an answer that satisfied him: color. Iridescence represented the simultaneous presence of many colors. It represented a balance in extremes, a coexistence between differing pieces. To integrate this concept, he wouldn’t need to introduce a fifth step. Instead, he would need to change and exaggerate each component so that they played to their strengths, yet somehow retained their harmony.
It’s best to start at the center, Cha Ming thought. The spine. The bones. Without the structure, everything else would fall apart. He focused on the chains of qi and thought about how he could make them different. How he could allow them to better withstand the fire domain. He could make the chains thicker, but that would also require energy. Moreover, the process would be slower and less efficient.
Think beyond shape, he thought. Energy is the material. Could you shape it? If this was a weapon, he would inscribe it with runes, but alas, this wasn’t something physical. Then again… could he somehow form the chains into runes like he did with runic alchemy? He spent the next hour testing out hundreds of options, eventually settling on a structure that, while not optimal using a different domain, would be best suited to the iridescent flame domain he needed to survive in this environment. He worked it into his overall cultivation technique, and his cultivation speed grew to twenty-five percent of the theoretical maximum. It made a huge difference, and his mental burden instantly lessened.
The second problem is condensation, Cha Ming thought. It was a difficult problem to fix. Water was the antithesis of fire, and the simple process of condensing energy ran against the nature of his domain. To solve this, he adopted another mindset. Were there not many types of liquid that required heat to be liquid? Was lava not liquid? Could sand and metal not be melted? Moreover, the boiling points of such thick and stable liquids were nonexistent. They would be very compatible with his iridescent domain.
He began to condense thicker droplets than he would using his other domains. Then, he moved on to adapting the Concept of Sacred Sand. Normally, it focused on similarity in components, using that sacred spark at the core of everything to build and join them together. It was, now that he thought about it, very compatible with the Concept of Iridescent Flame. Iridescence was the coexistence of all colors. As such, even different forms of energy could be considered part of the same energy family. He used this insight to adapt the droplet agglomeration process, and in that instant, his cultivation speed shot up to thirty-one percent of the theoretical maximum. He wasn’t sure how many fire elementals he could tackle now, but he knew that should he choose to do so, he could surpass the next Phoenix clansman without a problem.
That only leaves the Concept of Starry Sky, Cha Ming thought. The Concept of Starry Sky was abstract. It had nothing to do with literal stars, and everything to do with growth and expansion. How did iridescence mesh with expansion and the creation of roads? He struggled with this problem for two full hours before he managed to think of how to tie it all together.
It’s the differences, Cha Ming thought. All places are different. All roads are different. Expansion is about joining different places and forming a united whole. With that thought in mind, the efficiency of his technique rose to thirty-six percent of the theoretical maximum. It wasn’t perfect, but with this absorption speed, he was much more confident in facing the remainder of the trial.
Eight hours had passed since he’d crossed into the last third of the trial. There were ten competitors and two elders between him the finish line. Since there was little to be gained from further optimizing his technique, he resumed active control of his body. The experience was jarring—he went from peacefully contemplating the Dao to violently struggling with two dozen fire elements.
On instinct, he flashed between a pair of them and snapped up a pair of fiery shields using his alchemist fire, blocking twin jets of magma. He threw a serpent of iridescent-gray flames to consume three swordsmen that charged him and plunged through their ghostly remnants using Clockwork Boots of the Golden Dragon, barely dodging a burning greatsword from a flaming skeletal giant.
Did I get better at this by just fighting passively? he wondered. On instinct, he could summon several flame shields. He could also fire explosive lotuses of flame that consumed groups of elements. He could use cages and arrows of flame. Sometimes, he didn’t even use full shields to block, instead using fences of fire against melee elementals who couldn’t force their way through them. He picked up the pace and left, choosing to fight less often since he was n
o longer reliant on the elementals to replenish his energy stores. He began to close the gap between himself and the other competitors.
It wasn’t long before he overcame the tenth-place competitor, and then the ninth. At the sixteen-hour mark, he overtook the eighth-place competitor, leaving seven more and one elder—Iridescent Torch—in front of him. At the twenty-hour mark, it seemed like he was about to catch up to the remaining competitors. It was then that he entered the final tenth of the trial, and everything changed yet again. His environment grew hotter still, and the fire elementals became stronger and more diverse.
His progress slowed to a crawl. In this harsh environment, it was difficult to breathe, let alone make any progress. He could barely hold back the intense fires that threatened to burn him to cinders. There weren’t only elementals here but tiny iridescent phoenixes, projections sent by the Iridescent Ancestor. You could evade them, but you couldn’t destroy them. They wouldn’t stop coming.
He needed to change his tactics if he wanted to make progress. He had a few options, he decided. First, he could make better use of his divine abilities to increase his speed and evasive abilities. He could channel starlight through Crown of the Starry Sky to enhance his intuition as well. The disadvantage being that Clockwork Boots of the Golden Dragon burned dragon metals, and both his abilities would require large reserves of divine energy, which he didn’t have. Using Thirty-Six Heavenly Transformations was also an option, since the one and a half sub-realm boost would allow him to manipulate space and quickly gain ground. Assuming he was satisfied with five minutes of activity before running out of energy.
His domain was currently tied up, and the only thing keeping him alive. His alchemist’s flame was tied up fighting elementals. That meant most of his techniques weren’t useable, but then again, there was one that seemed perfectly suited to the task.
“Yes, it’s time,” Cha Ming muttered. He’d been avoiding its use, but the race was coming to an end, and the other competitors surely had trump cards. “It’s probably safe. The Iridescent Ancestor wouldn’t let any Tiger clansmen infiltrate.” He braced himself and activated Dazzling Light of the Weeping Flame.
His environment instantly changed. He poured his joy, his hopes, and his dreams into the fire. It began to glow like a beacon, draining away his positive emotions just as it burned away the heat all around him. The elementals and the phoenixes fled. They couldn’t stand this flame. Though the drain on his qi reserves was massive, not actively fighting meant that he no longer spent as much energy.
The experience was draining on many levels. It numbed him to the world, taking away any sense of urgency he had. Every single step he took was forced, and every breath was agony. The only thing that kept him going was necessity. If he didn’t finish before the others, he wouldn’t get the Iridescent Ancestor’s inheritance blood.
Cha Ming’s speed increased. He quickly pushed past the seventh and sixth place contestants, who had decided to team up to reach the end of the trial. The light of his technique was distracting and caused them to falter as he passed. They slowed, giving him space before continuing. He hoped they didn’t bear a grudge for his interference.
As his speed grew, Cha Ming realized there were other things he could use. For example, the absorptive properties of his flame. He used Dazzling Light of the Weeping Flame to not only burn his surroundings but actively attack elementals and pillage their burning energy. This allowed him to progress even faster, eventually overtaking the fifth-place contestant. One more rank, and he would be able to obtain his prize.
He was making good progress, and was even catching up to the last group of iridescent phoenixes when he finally reached the ninety-fifth percentile of the road. When he did, his surroundings became an unbearable inferno. His speed lessened substantially, and after some quick calculations, he realized this approach wasn’t going to cut it. Creatures began to attack him once again, and they were massive compared to the ones earlier on in the trial. Moreover, his skin began to burn despite his domain’s protection, and the heat wore away at not only his body, but his soul.
This was the last push. Cha Ming had to give it his all. He activated both of his divine abilities, channeling a portion of starlight and burning a steady amount of dragon metal to evade the aggressive monstrosities that were now dragons and phoenixes of physical molten lava.
He unleashed both levels of Thirty-Six Heavenly Transformations, and his domain expanded. His ability to channel heaven-and-earth qi skyrocketed, and a faint world projection appeared. He tapped into its power to teleport through the battlefield, evading splashes of lava that hissed and sizzled when they hit his skin. He quickly caught up to the main group, who, like him, had almost reached the end. They, too, had executed some sort of limit-breaking technique, for each of them was wearing a suit of phantom armor and manipulated their environment like an investiture-realm expert would.
They ran side by side with Iridescent Torch as they raced to the finish line, Iridescent Virtue leading the pack. Above him, an iridescent phoenix shone like a beacon. The phoenix was crying, burning everything around her to ashes. Cha Ming approached them, knowing full well the danger they posed, but also knowing that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t make fourth place.
While the bridge itself was a hellish place, full of monstrous creatures that wouldn’t hesitate to burn him to ashes, the bubble that surrounded these four was something else. For one, the overlapping dominions were larger than Cha Ming’s own massive domain. For another, there existed a fragile peace between their dominions. They worked together to rid everyone of common threats as they raced to the finish line. They raced forward, attacking each other with flames and flame-aligned weapons. Only Iridescent Torch took no part in the fighting, and Cha Ming wasn’t sure if that was because of her status as elder, or because of the greater suppression on her. Regardless, she was an arrogant phoenix. She wouldn’t meddle with the younger generation. He ignored her and pressed forward.
The moment Cha Ming joined the group, the dynamic shifted. Investitures didn’t clash with domains, but they could detect it the moment he entered their immediate vicinity. They joined forces to crush him, forcing him to use Dazzling Light of the Weeping Flame to block ash and fire and molten lava as he used a short burst of teleportation to close the gap. They were much faster than he was—they were demons, after all. This exchange continued for a few minutes until they grudgingly accepted his position among their ranks.
The two in the lead broke off suddenly, knowing full well that the other two would need to deal with him before them. Iridescent Virtue was one of them, and the other, he didn’t recognize. Cha Ming fell into a steady rhythm. One of them was an alchemist, and she threw about her cauldron as a weapon. Cha Ming replied by summoning his Clear Sky Cauldron, wondering why he hadn’t been using it as a bludgeon all along. He could use his fire at the same time, couldn’t he? One of the other four was a spiritual blacksmith, and she did the same with a massive hammer. The one flame artist in the group used concentrated soul fire as extensions of her feet, claws, and wings.
They fought fiercely. Cha Ming used his domain to constrict and repel, while the demons used physical force and bursts of flame to do battle. They made subtle changes to their environment that were difficult to detect compared to Cha Ming’s blatant manipulation. Demons were also fast. A demigod would find himself hard-pressed to match them. Their environments helped them.
They were also comfortable in this extreme heat. They could take blasts of flame that would burn Cha Ming alive. Cha Ming was forced to teleport time and time again, but even then, he suffered deep burns that manifested as Dao scars and wouldn’t heal right away. It took time, but he finally caught up to the fourth-place competitor, and by then, he was exhausted. His body burning. His soul aching.
“Give up, human,” said a Phoenix clanswoman he’d never had the pleasure of meeting before now. “It’s nothing personal, but I need that phoenix blood.”
“What a coincide
nce,” Cha Ming said. “I need it as well.” He sent a burning cauldron flying at her, but she batted it away with an iridescent hammer. She rushed at him, using her high speed to close the gap. Demons were strong, and he knew he couldn’t block her hammer with his domain.
Cha Ming teleported away, but she pursued him and blasted him with iridescent flames from her wings. The technique was far more powerful than most he’d witnessed thus far and must be one of the Iridescent Ancestor’s techniques for the trial. The flames struck his iridescent-gray fire and pushed her backward toward the other three. She was a natural strafer, and she used these skills to keep him back as she closed in on the finish.
Cha Ming needed that blood. Without it, he was doomed. He concentrated on his burning cauldron and focused Dazzling Light of the Weeping Flame, which had been active this whole time. It drained him, leaving him shaking and cold. The sudden intensity of it blindsided the phoenix, disrupting her mental state. He teleported beside her, summoned the Clear Sky Cauldron, and swung it by the handle. It smashed into her demon armor, cracking it and sending her flying to the ground. She was a high-ranking demon, so she recovered quickly, picking herself up after only a few seconds. By then, he was long gone.
Just a little closer, Cha Ming thought, setting his eyes on the finish line. The other three contestants were too far ahead for him to catch up. After two minutes, Iridescent Virtue crossed the finish line, followed closely by the skillful fire artist. This left only the alchemist ahead of him and the blacksmith who was gaining ground behind him. Almost there.
So focused he was on the finish line that he forgot to take into account a very important variable. A column of hot flame came out of nowhere, and he could only summon his cauldron to block it. It knocked him out of the air, stunning him. The spiritual blacksmith rushed past him.
Claddings of Light : Book 12 of Painting the Mists Page 52