Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists

by Laplante, Patrick

  You can’t imitate the rest. He has a special constitution that obscures fate. If that could be imitated, everyone and his dog would be doing it.

  Fair enough, Cha Ming said. Aura completed, he moved on to the next part: the soul. He merged his transcendent force with creation qi before picturing the feel of Wang Jun’s mind and personality. Everyone’s soul contained a unique quality that others could use to identify them. He calmed his mind, and the soul-infused creation qi became a blank slate. He wrote it over with everything he knew about Wang Jun: his calmness, his fervent devotion to his family and friends. His dreams for vengeance.

  “How’s that, my dear heavenly teacher?” Cha Ming asked with a flare. “I doubt anyone would be able to see through this wonderful disguise.”

  Unless you tried holding a conversation, Sun Wukong noted. That’s why you’ll need to use the second technique I gave you—soul skimming.

  Cha Ming nodded. Soul skimming was a non-intrusive technique that picked through a nearby person’s recent memories, his aura, and his personality. Not only would it provide him with the necessary tools to imitate a person on a superficial level, he could also use it while speaking to obtain tidbits of relevant information or impressions that would reinforce his disguise.

  What about the plan? Cha Ming asked. Ten years is too much time for me to commit. I know it’s important to build up a reputation, and my debt to Wang Jun is as high as the heavens themselves, but the war could be over by then. We need to act faster than that.

  I have a way, Sun Wukong said hesitantly. But I’d need to take an active hand and alter memories. Given enough time in one location, and sufficiently weak people, I could create a memory of you. That way, if anyone were to pry into your origins, there would be some substance to any false information you plant. As for the rest, you’d need to pay someone to create a fake historical record. Not an impossible thing to do in a big city if you have enough money.

  Tampering with other people’s memories, Cha Ming thought. He was uncomfortable with the concept. What were people, if not the sum of their experiences and relationships? Still, he weighed the tampering with the alternative. If he didn’t act fast, and the South moved on the North, the consequences would be dire. Countless innocents would die.

  Let’s do it, he decided. I’ve done worse things to people. Since they’re innocent, make sure to give them pleasant memories.

  Those take longer, Sun Wukong warned.

  That’s fine, Cha Ming said. I’m only willing to go so far. Even in enemy territory.

  Decision made, they continued walking in the Evergreen Battlefield, and as they did, Cha Ming practiced his new techniques. He became the short, devilish Jin Huang. He became the calm, icy Luo Xuehua. He finished off his acquaintances with Jun Xiezi, the calm painter who had lived many lifetimes vicariously.

  After perfecting his acquaintances, he began to imitate the many soldiers and mercenaries on the battlefield. One moment, he was a spear-wielding madman. The other, he was a competent tracker, a man of nature who made few mistakes. He used creation qi and creation essence to imitate their weapons, their clothing, and their armor. Anything weaker than a core weapon was easy, but core-formation items could take several minutes to imitate and wouldn’t last very long. Time became a blur as Cha Ming lost himself in a sea of new thoughts and emotions.

  A week later, Cha Ming sat by a fire under the guise of a soldier. Sun Wukong sat beside him, invisible to anyone else.

  You’ve got humans down to a science, Sun Wukong said. You’ve imitated thousands of Southern and Northern cultivators alike. You can imitate devilish auras and transformations, the baleful aura of blood masters, and the pure aura of inquisitors of the Church of Justice. The only people who are beyond you are those from the Spirit Temple.

  They’re just too difficult, Cha Ming said, poking at their fire with his spear. There’s something intangible and ethereal to them I can’t quite put my finger on.

  How can I complain about your progress when I couldn’t hide my tail for aeons? Sun Wukong mused. Now let’s try something fun. Let’s try demons.

  Demons? Cha Ming asked, startled. Is that even possible?

  Why wouldn’t it be? Sun Wukong asked, a puzzled expression on his otherwise impish face. You can change your face and your height, and even your aura. You can see demonic energy currents. The Seventy-Two Transformations Technique, when cultivated to its fullest, will allow you to imitate anything in nature.

  But the internals, the bones, the size, Cha Ming protested.

  Just try it! Sun Wukong said.

  Cha Ming looked around for a demon, and the first one he spotted was a spirit wolf. It was only twenty feet long, not much bigger than he was. He scanned it with his transcendent soul and began to transform. Pain was the first thing he felt as his bones began creaking and shifting, realigning to fit the image in his mind. Hair grew out of his entire body, and his nose and mouth elongated. His eyes changed, and his teeth grew sharp. Before long, his balance was off. He fell forward, catching himself on two newly grown paws.

  Then, he grew. His skeleton was like a blacksmith’s puzzle, manipulating it freely until it couldn’t move anymore, then somehow finding a way to break apart. His tendons shifted, and his muscles grew. Even his digestive tract grew. Long strands of sinew linked everything together, his vitality knowing just what to do to complete the image in his mind.

  As the changes in Cha Ming’s body finalized, he became aware of new sensations. His eyes were sharper, and his ears could pick up sounds from a mile away. He also felt a deep hunger for things that revolted the human Cha Ming. He quickly suppressed these feelings and reminded himself that he didn’t need to sate them. His mind was still human, after all. Or was it?

  It took a full minute to fully transform, after which time Cha Ming mirrored the wolf’s behavior and changed his posture and thinking pattern. He was an honorable beast of the forest, a follower in his pack. He kept his head slightly low in a gesture of submission. As for the urge to rejoin his pack, Cha Ming suppressed it.

  Good, good, Sun Wukong said. Very good for a first transformation. Now you just need to learn how to do that about a hundred times faster.

  A hundred times? Isn’t that a bit exaggerated? Cha Ming said. He blinked, however, and realized that he’d already transformed back into a human. It had only taken a fraction of a second. His fur had vanished, and his personality had reverted to normal in the blink of an eye. His qi pathways, which had contorted into their demonic equivalent, were back to normal, connected to his Dantian in its independent space. The entire process seemed law defying, but upon closer inspection, wasn’t everything he did? Didn’t he get his body half destroyed and grow it back again? Couldn’t he lose his head and have it grow back? What was a body to him now that he’d reached the peak of marrow refining? He didn’t need to eat, drink, or even breathe anymore.

  Sun Wukong grinned. Try it again.

  Cha Ming did so. The transformation only took twenty seconds this time. After a few dozen more attempts, the transformation took less than one second. According to the Monkey King, it would only get faster.

  Just like your beast friends can grow and shrink in an instant, so can you, given enough practice. Your first few beast forms will take time to get used to, but soon they’ll become second nature. We’ll spend the next two weeks practicing on this mountain before leaving.

  Cha Ming nodded. The ability to transform into whatever demon he liked would be useful, if only to cut down on travel time. Let’s get started, he said, picking the next form he wanted to try out. It was a fifty-foot-long badger with bloodred eyes.

  Baby steps, he told himself as long claws sprouted out from his hands. The accompanying rage almost overwhelmed him.

  Chapter 5: Pai Xiao

  Three thousand miles away, an eagle soared across the blue skies of the Ji Kingdom. The eagle was a large demon, a fledgling lord-level demon beast that was a long way from home. Wind ruffled its feathers as i
t circled down to the forest below, likely looking for a smaller demon to catch and devour. It was hungry, for it had flown for many days to get here.

  Using its keen eyes, the eagle scanned its potential victims. It ignored anything larger than a few dozen feet long, as it would take too much time to consume before local predators forced it away.

  That’s the one, the eagle thought. It spotted a spirit elk measuring twenty feet long and fifteen feet tall. It was a male with smaller horns than most, meaning that it wasn’t very important to the nearby spirit elk. Its fate was to wander about the woods and attract predators, sparing the other more important elk from an untimely fate.

  The eagle pulled back its wings and lowered itself toward the forest. It increased in speed but nothing major. No need to alarm any beast. Then, when it was a mile away, it pulled its wings back even further, entering a free dive. It shrank as it accelerated, eventually passing the forest’s tall trees, evading branches as it went in for the kill. It managed to dodge most of the larger branches, and those smaller ones it hit broke off as they smashed against its surprisingly solid wings.

  The small breaking sounds were nothing in the grand scheme of the forest below, but they were enough for the watchful spirit elk. The herd bolted, but it was already too late. The eagle’s prey froze in fear as death on wings advanced with unstoppable momentum, holding out its sharp claws and opening its massive beak, landing on the ground with soft feet, and… stopping? Where was the eagle? The creature blinked and realized that, standing before him was a human of all things. The elk blinked again and saw not a human, but an elk. And then a lizard. And then a wolf. The demon constantly transformed until it left the confused elk’s line of sight.

  When the demon finally reached the edge of the woods, it turned into Cha Ming, who stretched out his now-human limbs and walked to a nearby road that skirted the edge of the forest.

  “It doesn’t seem so different than the North,” he said, casting out his transcendent soul and encompassing a nearby city and a large chunk of the spirit woods around him. There were a few groups of adventurers and bandits camping nearby. Outside the woods and closer to the city, farmers tended the lands. And within the city, all sorts of trade could be seen. He didn’t spot the slightest baleful aura among its residents. The city’s residents, and even the bandits in the woods, had a normal distribution of merit and sin.

  As Cha Ming walked, he passed horses and beasts of burden traveling on a well-worn road. On occasion, a few foundation-establishment cultivators passed him on flying swords. Most of them were guards, but others were traveling adventurers who were here to harvest resources from the spirit woods. Overall, the place reminded Cha Ming of Green Leaf City.

  There were some differences, of course. The spirit woods, for one, were far smaller than the large swaths of land near Green Leaf City. The lands were also less fertile. Normal people couldn’t live off the activities of local cultivators and needed to tend fields and grow grain and raise cattle. The land here was divided into large plots that were farmed communally. The many families that tended it lived in central residences, a common practice all around the continent.

  There’s one big difference, though, Sun Wukong said, floating beside him but invisible to anyone but him.

  Cha Ming nodded. Now that he was paying attention, he noticed the brands. Every person tending the fields had a dark brand on their forehead. The same applied to those living in the communal residences. The few guards patrolling the fields weren’t branded, but they bore small marks on their right or left forearms that matched an insignia on the supervisor’s mansion.

  Curious, Cha Ming skimmed the thoughts of those he passed, whether they were guards or peasants. He caught glimpses of normal worries when he did. The peasants who tended the fields worried about this year’s harvest, their children, and the weather.

  The guards, whom Cha Ming had thought were only there to repel predators from the spirit woods, also had another, more important mission: They were there to prevent the peasants from escaping. The peasants weren’t normal farmers but serfs. They were property, branded with the mark of their master. Cha Ming’s expression darkened as memories of Crystal Falls resurfaced.

  Serfdom isn’t an uncommon practice in the vast universe, Sun Wukong said as Cha Ming watched them. The universe is filled with millions of mortal planes. Even good-aligned planes can have a serf system for the lower class. The main issue is that of treatment.

  Slavery, in good-aligned planes? Cha Ming asked doubtfully.

  Justice is not the only virtue, Sun Wukong replied. And there are countless cultures in existence. In some places, serfdom is seen as a kindness to the weak, who would otherwise be unable to take care of themselves.

  Cha Ming looked around. Though the serfs didn’t seem unhappy with their predicament, they didn’t seem blissful about it either. Moreover, he spotted some lash marks and scars on their bodies. Not here it isn’t.

  Not here, Sun Wukong agreed. Knowing that whatever they did here wouldn’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, they continued their journey. The closer they came to the small city, the more cultivators they saw. The nature of the serfs changed as well. In addition to normal mortals, there were also cultivating serfs. All of them were lower than the third level of qi condensation. If there were any at the fourth level, Cha Ming didn’t see them.

  These cultivating farmers used their affinities to harvest more lucrative crops. Low-level spirit herbs and spirit grains were nurtured by wood and water cultivators. Fire and metal cultivators were busy making tools and construction materials, while earth cultivators either erected buildings or tilled the soil. It was all very orderly and efficient.

  When they finally reached the one-mile boundary just outside the city, everything suddenly changed again. They no longer saw any serf marks, and every person in sight was free. Cha Ming passed the guards at the gate using his transcendent force to mask himself. Then, he ducked into a back alley, where he transformed his features to that of a burly man with short black hair. The man didn’t need to enter the city, for he hardly ever left it. Pai Xiao, the man he’d just become, straightened out his dark-brown cultivator robes, for what self-respecting smith would ever wear bright colors? He walked back onto Main Street and took in the local environment.

  Liaoning was a small city of a million people. It was known as an agricultural town with good access to the spirit woods. As such, not only did it have competent spirit arborists, but it was also home to a few supporting professions. Alchemists, blacksmiths, and spirit doctors were the most common professionals, though there were also a few geomancers. Here, runic artists were rare. Talisman artists were practically unheard of, while formation masters wouldn’t deign to live in such a small city. Unlike the North, professionals here didn’t associate with guilds. Instead, they learned their skills from families and companies. To advance, one needed to pass a board examination.

  Pai Xiao, Cha Ming’s new persona and the smith the inhabitants of the city would come to know quite well, had never concerned himself with these exams. The smith had grown up here. No one knew who’d initially taught him, but he advanced through trial and error and had gotten to where he was through sheer experience. His advancement was impressive, given that he’d never hired himself out to any of the bigger families or companies. In fact, he was less than a hundred years old, about middle age for a foundation-establishment cultivator.

  First things first, a forge, Cha Ming thought as he reached the industrial area, where he found a small but otherwise well-stocked forge. He knocked on the door, which was quickly opened by a female attendant. “I need to speak to the owner of this forge,” Cha Ming said gruffly.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the attendant asked.

  Cha Ming shook his head, then released a fraction of the cultivation he wanted to project—peak foundation establishment, peak bone forging. The woman yelped and ran to the back, where the pounding of a hammer could be heard. It
continued for a few minutes before finally stopping. An older man walked out from the back, shielding the timid attendant that had fetched him.

  “Can I help you?” the older man asked, wiping the sweat and soot off his face with a gray towel.

  “You can,” Cha Ming said. “Do you have a private room we could speak in?”

  The man shrugged and led him upstairs.

  “Have a seat,” the man said as they entered his office. He walked over to a corner, where a kettle and a couple of cups sat. The man ran his fingers along the side of a kettle, which instantly came to a boil. He then poured Cha Ming a cup of tea. “What business does a strong cultivator like you have with a lowly smith like me? There’s no way you’d want me to build a weapon for you. It’d break the moment you swung it.”

  “That’s right,” Cha Ming said, taking a sip of the hot tea. He grimaced but choked down the bitter concoction. “My name is Pai Xiao, and I’m a spiritual blacksmith. I’d like to buy your workshop.”

  “Not for sale,” the man said, an air of finality to his words. “You can leave now.”

  Cha Ming nodded, then placed a single spirit stone on the table where they were seated. The man looked confused at first, but then he took in a sharp breath. Though he was only a mid-grade master smith, he’d seen one before. “That’s a top-grade spirit stone,” the man finally said.

  “It is,” Cha Ming replied. The man would need to forge and sell thousands of lesser-grade weapons to generate that much profit. Even then, it would be difficult to accumulate such wealth, given how many resources normal cultivation required, much less body cultivation.

  “I’ll still have to say no,” the man said, licking his lips. “I like this town. I grew up here. I might not be rich, but I have every comfort I need. If I wanted to stay, I’d need to buy a forge from someone else or convince the administration to reallocate land. It’s not worth the trouble.”