Sacred Sand and Iridescent Flame. The first concept hinted that at something holy, something greater hidden beneath. It also held that everything was connected in a way that transcended gods and men, and even karma. Iridescent Flame, on the other hand, represented the individuality of each grain. The unique spark that set them apart. One advocated unity, and the other diversity.
In Cha Ming’s opinion, these concepts were easy to merge. Didn’t uniqueness indicate that each grain was sacred? And did a sacred origin not make every grain special and unique? Their union would therefore be just as wondrous as their separation. The carving started off disjointed, but each added line unified everything.
The Concepts of Inky Rain and Iridescent Flame were more challenging. Ink and flame had a subtle relationship. Rain was the root of all life. Ink told a story. Flow and change were at its center. Iridescence, on the other hand, was destructive and violent. It changed and distorted and diversified. Yet couldn’t colored ink be used to create vivid paintings? Did emotions not have a place in stories? Emotions, when overdone, ruined even the simplest of tales. Yet when doled out in proper amounts and with sufficient variety, they were the spice that created true masterpieces. Stories were nothing without emotions. Characters without diversity were nothing but cardboard cut-outs.
Cha Ming finished both patterns simultaneously, and the moment he did, they snapped into place. They glowed black and white, completing his fifth carving and prompting a surge of energy. His core glowed a fierce, destructive black, but also a unifying, healing white. Energy from his surroundings rushed into the now-completed core, and his connection to it deepened.
He felt it deep in his soul, in his spiritual sea, surrounded by all the concepts he’d ever comprehended. There were dozens, but five main concepts floated around him in a circle. There was an iridescent flame, a swirling pile of sacred sand, a radiant masterpiece of a music box, a slow recirculation of endless inky rain, and a glimpse of the starry sky taken from the point of view of the Sage constellation.
Now, they were connected. Meshed together by his carved core. This artificial merge allowed Cha Ming to see how they joined and how they came apart. Within the circle were fused concepts, and the carving added to them. First came the second-order concepts, which merged and fused until there were ten in total. Then came the third-order concepts—there were ten in all as well. Then, fourth-order concepts, of which there were five.
Finally, all five concepts merged into two fifth-order concepts: a circle and a star. The circular concept he called the Concept of Assembly, and from it sprung a transparent rune. He knew in that instant that he could use it as a focal point if he wished, breaking through to become a rune-gathering cultivator, assuming he had the energy.
As for the star, it represented the reverse process. The Concept of Dismantling, a destruction concept. Anything that could be built could be unbuilt. He felt great power in this concept, and like the white one, it, too, had its own embryonic law rune. They repelled yet attracted each other. They needed yet loathed each other. And with their birth, he felt a searing in his mind as two of his most powerful techniques were overwritten and empowered.
Words of Creation became more specific. He gained the First Word of Creation: Assemble. Speaking it would empower his crafting skills and allow him to put together ingredients and runes and materials more easily. His ability to spontaneously make talismans rose by a step. The process would be quicker and more efficient. He would be able to handle multiple additional creations, assuming he had the creation qi to do it.
First Word of Destruction: Ruin was erased. He had not pursued the path of ruin, and this placeholder’s name completely changed. Now, the First Word of Destruction was Dismantle. With it, he would be able to pull things apart more easily than he ever could.
There was so much to both these runes. So much he didn’t fully understand. With these concepts, the possibilities were endless. They were not an end point but a springboard to something greater. He couldn’t help but laugh as he played around with them in the hidden realm, relishing in their power to assemble and deconstruct the five elements. He’d earned these powers through blood and sweat and tears. Through heartache and misery.
On a whim, Cha Ming reorganized his cultivation technique. It was so easy now that he could tear it apart and reassemble it. It merged seamlessly with his fivefold domain. With his five-element domain and its tailored cultivation technique, cultivating became as easy as breathing. Any kinks initially present in his cultivation technique worked themselves out, and now, he could comfortably cultivate at fifty percent of the theoretical maximum.
In fact, why don’t I optimize even further? Cha Ming thought. He still needed all five concepts, but now that he had the Concept of Assembly, he could improve upon that. He worked in threads of the concept and improved the technique by another ten percent. There, he seemed to reach a hard limit. Some kind of restriction or wall.
This got him thinking of his own limits. Hadn’t he thought that perfectly merging all five elements was a limit? By adding creation, he’d surpassed it. He felt the invisible restrictions in his core, and the urge to transcend to the next cultivation realm. At the same time, why did that need to be his limit? Couldn’t he aim higher?
Yes, he decided. I’d be foolish not to make the attempt. Especially given my upcoming duels, and the fact that if I break through to the rune-gathering realm, I’ll need to face a tribulation, and my cultivation will end.
A week passed since his entry into the pocket realm. A mere seven days out of the 365-day year. He wouldn’t let any of the time he’d bought himself go to waste. He began to cultivate again, first replenishing his stores, then expelling all his qi in rapid bursts as he practiced the five elements and their fused qi—creation and destruction. He became more skilled in using the flexible white qi and the destructive black qi. He had much more of each of them now that he’d completed the fifth carving.
All five elements worked in tandem, assembling his qi. Destruction had no part in this process. Once, he’d believed refining qi was essential, but now, he realized that much could be done with careful manipulation and reorganization.
He refilled and emptied his core many times over the next few weeks, refining his increasingly dense qi. Now that it had reached the peak of the rune-carving realm, he had the power of a half-step-rune-gathering level. A small zone of warped space surrounded his body, and with just a single step more, he would be able to zip around and trap and cage his opponents via world projection, thereby overcoming the fearsome gap between rune-carving and rune-gathering cultivators.
It was at the end of the second month when Cha Ming began once again.
Are you sure about this? Sun Wukong asked.
Yes, I’m sure, Cha Ming replied. He initiated the rune-carving process once more. He had never heard of doing such a thing, and the Monkey King hadn’t either, but then again, he wasn’t the most knowledgeable or the most helpful teacher. Besides, Cha Ming had a good feeling about it. His intuition supported the move, and he could see the threads of possibility and their likely destinations.
He was in the space with his carved core once more. Now that his carvings were complete, he could see why cultivators did this in the first place. An uncarved core, even a runic one, was inefficient. Carving runes would enable a core to better mobilize its power in much the same way as an alchemical seal. The improved elemental manipulation ability resulted in a domain.
Strictly speaking, his carving was beautiful and effective. He was able to use it to form a five-element domain and increase his qi density. He’d used it to gain inspiration on two powerful runes. If there was one flaw in the overall design, however, it was the paleness of the creative circle and the destructive star. Could he not use his new concepts to enhance them? Could he not improve on their carvings? He clung to that thought as he poured another portion of Grandmist into the Clear Sky Carving Knife. As much as he had for the previous carving.
Cha M
ing encountered resistance then. His core protested. It was complete. It was whole. It didn’t want to change. Fortunately, his Clear Sky Carving Knife was no longer a rune-carving treasure, but a rune-gathering one. Using its newfound strength, the Clear Sky Carving Knife coaxed his core into submission. The resistance lessened, and he could carve it again.
He began to carve flowing lines of pure whiteness using the Concept of Assembly. It pulled the Concepts of Inky Rain, Starry Sky, Iridescent Flame, Sacred Sand, and Radiant Construction together. His carvings not only joined allied elements but bled across three, and sometimes four or five elements. His every stroke was pristine white, and it did what it was meant to—it assembled. The runes lost their individuality and became something better. The white circle became a world of its own, complete with inky waters that flowed, with masterpieces that glowed radiant gold, and with sacred desert temples lit by iridescent fires. The starry sky shone overhead, connecting it all. Cha Ming could only weep at the beauty of it.
The moment he finished the last rune, the circle let out a blinding white flash. In an instant, Cha Ming’s domain merged and connected. No—that wasn’t right. Its different components shifted and assembled in a brand-new way. He could use the five different elements individually or together. He could also join them in their final form—a white domain aligned with creation.
He called it an assembly domain, and the moment it appeared, everything changed. The might of it was staggering. The pocket realm he inhabited trembled fiercely at its appearance. For a moment, he wondered if his tribulation would come early, and it was only after several minutes that he dismissed the possibility. Once it was clear that lightning wouldn’t suddenly strike him down for his impertinence, he inspected his domain. It was now monstrously large compared to his original one. He was a half-step-rune-carving cultivator now, which gave him a base domain range of two kilometers in diameter. This white domain, however, was an exception to the rule. It was three times as large than it should be, a total of six kilometers in diameter.
In that moment, Cha Ming understood the fearsome gap between rune-gathering and rune-carving cultivators. It wasn’t all about the world projection. With such a large domain at their disposal, how could rune-gathering cultivators possibly be weak?
This wasn’t the only thing that changed. His newly carved core contained much denser energy. It also came with a world projection that was a hundredth of the size of his base domain, twenty meters in diameter. He tentatively teleported like he had when breaking his limit in the trial. Doing so was much easier now and required not much conscious effort on his part. It would be a huge addition to his battle repertoire.
I wonder how fast I can cultivate now, Cha Ming thought. He used his powers over assembly to instantly reorganize his cultivation technique. It was still only sixty percent efficient, but he could use it with a domain three times larger than a standard one. That meant he could draw in energy nine times faster than a cultivator with the same domain and cultivation technique. The implications were staggering. Not just to his sustainability in battle, but also his options. Taxing techniques like Raging Waves of the Inky Sea and Searing Sands of the Sacred Desert would now require much smaller portions of his qi pool. They would no longer consume everything he had. In fact, he could probably start scaling up their power instead of limiting them. He used weaker versions at first, worried at first that it might threaten the stability of the pocket realm. It did not, so he practiced away.
There was one other advantage to this domain. Not only could he replenish his five-element qi that much faster, he could also replenish his creation qi just as quickly. He began using Words of Creation to summon a variety of battle talismans that would have been wasteful did he not have so much qi to spare. Whereas before, he could only summon single talismans, now, he created them in waves. He might not know powerful techniques, but a flurry of talismans was a force to be reckoned with. As for destruction qi… he hesitated. No, he didn’t want to try that just yet. That would come later.
So, he sat and cultivated. The increase in cultivation speed meant that he had a lot less downtime than before. His qi was much purer, however, so the sheer amount of cycling required to purify it further slowed down his cultivation. It took a month to fully consolidate his qi. Then, he did the obvious—he summoned the Clear Sky Carving Knife to complete the star on his carved core.
He filled the Clear Sky Carving Knife once again, praying to the heavens that what he was about to attempt didn’t kill him or ruin him. Creation wasn’t likely to hurt him, but destruction was vindictive. He began to carve, using nothing but black marks and the Concept of Dismantling to cut everything and anything apart. He cut apart ink and stars and flames in all their colors.
He cut apart the divine connections that were the core of sacred sand, and he dismantled every construct, every edifice the star encompassed. He was left with broken masterpieces. With ruins and sundered oceans. He was left with a broken sky. Any semblance of a whole had been taken apart and dismantled. There was nothing left when the last of the Grandmist ran out.
The moment he finished carving out every sense of order from the diagram, the black star glowed a frightening black. His core vibrated and threatened to break apart. If not for the shallow star he’d started with, indicating that destruction could indeed coexist here with creation, he would have never attempted this.
A darkness was born then. He didn’t break through the rune-carving and into the rune-gathering realm. The destruction simply refined the qi in his core, and many impurities that had once existed were no more. The moment the carving was finished, the five elements in his domain rearranged, birthing a domain of nothingness and emptiness.
This “dismantling domain” could not control qi. Any energy within it became chaotic and unstable. It was also a much smaller domain than his creation domain. In fact, it was ten times smaller than its base, a mere two hundred meters in diameter. Yet inside this small space, he could now fully control his destruction qi. It would never run rampant again.
“I don’t know what to say, kid,” Sun Wukong said, appearing beside him. “I didn’t think what you were doing was possible. I’m not a big expert on all this, obviously. We did things differently in the immortal realms.”
“You were born in the immortal realms?” Cha Ming asked, surprised. “What was it like?”
“It was like… being a mortal and doing cool things, until one day, you weren’t, and you went somewhere where you wouldn’t obliterate half of society,” Sun Wukong said. “It’s difficult to explain. You’d have to see it to believe it.”
“It’s something to look forward to,” Cha Ming said. “For now, however, I have something else to try. I have another carving to finish.”
“Another?” Sun Wukong asked incredulously. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because it’s necessary for me to grow stronger,” Cha Ming said softly. “As I am now, I may be able to defeat Burning Lake, but I’m not leaving that up to chance. If I’m willing to go through all this to exceed him, how naïve would I be in thinking he doesn’t have a few aces up his sleeve?”
So he began cultivating, repeatedly cycling in and out with his much thicker qi. It was difficult to move through his core now, since it was far thicker than rune-carving qi had a right to be, even if he was a half-step-rune-carving cultivator.
By now, three months had passed in the independent space. Two to cultivate, and an entire month combined to perform three core carvings. Three more months passed by in flash. Cha Ming constantly filled his qi stores and practiced his techniques and talisman creation. He also practiced manipulating and controlling his unstable destruction qi via the Concept of Dismantling.
It was slow going, but in his time cultivating, Cha Ming broke down his techniques and reassembled them, constantly cycling through various iterations. With time, he fully remastered his Temple Sand Clones, Clockwork Nightmare, and Ink-Splattered Cage.
Then, in the sixth month
of his seclusion, Cha Ming summoned the Clear Sky Carving Knife one last time. He stood there in the vast emptiness, his knife full of Grandmist. His core was there, perfect and resplendent. It refused his knife’s advances. Fortunately, he wasn’t looking to carve the core itself. Instead, he looked at the world around it. There was something else in the air. Something else he’d birthed back when he’d performed his initial rune carving.
Words floated there, not of creation or destruction. They were an intangible carving of the soul. They took the form of a violet mist that amplified his other poetic carvings.
Tender heartstrings tug on the wandering mind;
Right and wrong are cast aside,
With only faith to guide the way.
Now, he had other words to speak. Or rather, he had a story to tell. He poured the various emotions he’d experienced throughout the Trial by Ancestral Fire. He poured in the essence of iridescence. He spoke of his failures and his triumphs. He channeled his pain, his vulnerability, his helplessness, his disappointment, and finally, his deepest sorrows. The story he wrote transformed them into comfort, resilience, empowerment, satisfaction, and joy. They didn’t overwrite his prior negative feelings, however. Both were necessary to the story.
Cha Ming didn’t physically carve anything. Instead, he poured his heart and soul into the carving knife. The Clear Sky Brush knew him. It understood him more than anyone else. It had gone through thick and thin with him and had accompanied him through at least two lifetimes. As Grandmist drained from the knife, it carved the story into the violet mists. The words formed intangible runes of heart and spirit. He gained no additional qi reserves. His domain didn’t grow. His base core remained unchanged.
Instead, Cha Ming gained something better: Heart. Emotion. Amplification. Willpower from all that he’d been through that affected his body, his qi, and his soul. And with these feelings came a domain-like aura. It overlapped with his five elements, with creation, and even destruction. It augmented everything he created. It diminished whatever he destroyed. It would accompany him forever as a manifestation of his soul.
Claddings of Light : Book 12 of Painting the Mists Page 55