Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists

by Laplante, Patrick

  “A full prototype,” Cha Ming said flatly. “Amount of time aside, the material cost would be astronomical. You’d need to secretly supply me with the requisite materials without alerting the Blackthorn Conglomerate.”

  “You can’t just have them disappear in some sort of experimental mishap?” Prince Shen said, frowning. “A full prototype is required. With it, and the blueprints, we won’t be beholden to the Blackthorn Conglomerate should they choose to double-cross us. Their management is, after all, from the North. They’re not patriots like we are.”

  “My reputation is impeccable,” Cha Ming said. “If I suddenly started doing something like stealing materials, they’d suspect me. I understand your need for a prototype, but it will need to be built from materials you supply.”

  “I see,” Prince Shen said. “Very well. You’ll need to send me a list of what you need. But before we do anything, I’ll need you to sign a contract.”

  “Naturally.” Cha Ming said. No one did business in the South without a contract. Such an act was seen both as stupid and suicidal.

  The prince placed a sheaf of golden paper on the table, which Cha Ming read through in detail. Aside from his deliverables, it stated Prince Shen was responsible for materials and discretion on Cha Ming’s situation. No one else in the royal family was responsible, which meant that Prince Shen was the fall man in this operation, should anything go disastrously wrong. More likely than not, that was also the case between them and the Blackthorn Conglomerate.

  In the end, however, it was all a smokescreen, as both Cha Ming and Prince Shen knew that with another Royal Seal of Notwithstanding, the other side of the agreement could be made meaningless if push came to shove. Nodding, Cha Ming signed the document. A royal contract mark appeared on his skin the moment he did.

  “Here you are, Prince Shen,” Cha Ming said, handing him sheet of paper listing all the materials he needed and their approximate value. “I’ll be needing these as soon as possible.”

  The prince winced upon seeing it.

  “One more thing before you leave,” Prince Shen said. “It would be best if the prototype and blueprints for Project Breaker be completed in thirty days.”

  “That’s an awfully tall order to fill,” Cha Ming said, frowning. They’d been told just this morning that they had four months. “Is there something I should be aware of?”

  Prince Shen hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “It’s carefully guarded knowledge, but a threatening creature has been rampaging across the northeastern Ji Kingdom. Thus far, we’ve had great difficulty stopping it. From what we can tell, it’s heading toward the city.”

  “Won’t you stop it well before it gets here?” Cha Ming asked, surprised.

  “We’re trying, but the creature is difficult to handle,” Prince Shen said. “It’s possible that it may even reach Bastion. We’ve requested assistance, of course, but the war is at a critical point. Every transcendent is accounted for, and two of the three grand viziers are completing preparations for the final push, while Grand Vizier Zhou is currently convalescing from his injuries. We don’t know when he’ll come, but I assure you, when he does come to resolve this problem we’re facing, it would be best if we had the results he’s looking for.”

  Cha Ming nodded. “I’ll do what I can.” Not only did he not want to face Zhou Li, but this creature, whatever it was, provided the perfect smokescreen for his escape.

  “Good,” Prince Shen said. “Now please, go on ahead. There’s someone else I need to meet with.”

  Cha Ming got up, clasped his hands, and bowed. On his way out, he stepped over the body of a man who’d just passed out from intoxication. A woman was robbing him in broad daylight. He didn’t help the man, as helping would have been out of character. Besides, did the man even deserve his help? Both the Trueblood Tavern and the complex relationship between Prince Shen and the Blackthorn Conglomerate were a stark reminder of what mattered in the South: personal interest. There was little loyalty or shared values. Only the strong prevailed.

  The end might never fully justify the means, but to save the way of life he cherished and preserve it for half the people on the continent, he was willing to bloody his own hands. Even if much of that blood came from the innocent pawns manipulated by their country and crown.

  Chapter 32: Life

  Cha Ming summoned an extra layer of defenses when he returned to his chambers. The stone walls, though enchanted and reinforced, were built only to protect the inside from outside intrusion. Their intricate runes could, to some extent, dampen qi emanations from cultivation. But that was in normal situations, and he was about to do so much more. It was time to complete the first half of the Seventy-Two Transformations.

  As the formation hummed to life, he summoned a portal into the Clear Sky World. Not only would this further dampen the inevitable power fluctuations, but he could take advantage of the five-fold time acceleration within it. He proceeded directly to the mountaintop, where Sun Wukong was meditating.

  “So, you finally got what you came for, did you?” the Monkey King said, peeking through a single open eye from his cross-legged pose.

  “That I did,” Cha Ming said, sitting beside him. He summoned the Gold Essence Core, which shone with a golden light. The liquid within it writhed upon sensing his presence, perhaps out of desire to join with him, or perhaps out of fear for its inevitable fate. He took out the Clear Sky Brush and touched its top to the golden orb; the thick liquid flowed out of the core and into the brush, lighting up golden runes all over its surface.

  Cha Ming began painting. The runic script this time was 1,080 sigils long, each one containing both power and instructions for the transformation. A longer script was required each time in order to balance the various powers already in his marrow. Further, the transformation sigils needed to force their way into an energy-dense medium, a difficult task given how deep Cha Ming’s vitality reserves were.

  In all, the script took a day to paint. The moment the last rune was completed, the script broke apart, allowing the sigils to crash into his bones, where they intruded on his marrow.

  Pain. Cutting pain. Cha Ming felt like his entire body was being sliced with millions of tiny blades. Though only his marrow transformed, it made his bones reverberate and sent shock waves of power through his nervous system. His marrow, which had previously contained four colors—green, blue, red, and brown—now began to show signs of a fifth color: gold. It sprouted from within the gooey substance like tiny metallic flowers, each one bringing stability to the marrow and connecting everything together.

  Metal cut. Wood grew. Water flowed. Fire burned. Earth weighed. All five components began to stabilize, and in that stability, Cha Ming’s marrow took on additional but predictable colors: black and white. Creation marrow appeared, raw energy that could be shaped for anything. Meanwhile, tiny black specks of destruction marrow appeared everywhere, and instead of destroying everything around it, it coexisted with the remainder of his bones. Gray flecks also began to appear, and while Cha Ming could sense tremendous power from them, he couldn’t sense their purpose. They just stood there, taking up space, just like the unusable gray portion of his core that filled the cracks between colored sections.

  The transformation continued for a full day, and at the end, the remainder of the golden energy rushed into the voids within his bones. There, it joined the tiny universe that was taking shape. Metal was birthed deep within the earth of the various planets, and within the meteors floating around space. Golden life forms were born. And with the appearance of gold, wood began to diminish. Agglomerated runic creatures composed of anywhere between one and five elements began to interact with the world around them.

  Cha Ming wondered for a moment if they were sentient. He reached out to the void and discovered that no—such a thing wasn’t possible for him. Creating sentient life was the realm of the gods. What he’d made, however, was a pale precursor. The void network in his bones contained an imitation universe. It flowed,
thrived, raged, resisted, and refined itself, but it was missing a key element: emotion. Sentient beings felt emotion.

  Five elements aside, Cha Ming noticed a pool of energy building up in the center of his makeshift universe. White runes of creation and destruction chased each other in a circle at the center, never making contact but always fighting. And in the center of these, where there were spatial distortions aplenty, a single spot of gray appeared.

  Who would have thought that by refining his bones, he could produce Grandmist energy as well? After all, this wasn’t the transient, misty qi he generated to use Origin Strike. This was stable Grandmist energy, the type he’d used to feed his Clear Sky Brush on Jade Moon Planet. Try as he might, he’d never been able to find any in the mortal world. It was the reason why his Grandmist seals on alchemical pills were one of a kind.

  Three days passed by as his transformation continued. When the final change in his void network was completed, Cha Ming’s bones began to crackle. His blood, which had been completely replaced during his transformation, now contained a faint ethereal wisp of something familiar: divinity. It wasn’t a full drop of divine blood. If it were, he would already be a blood-awakening cultivator. But he knew that, with the slightest effort on his part, he could condense one.

  “So powerful,” Cha Ming muttered. He flexed his muscles and discovered that the air around him was different somehow. His relationship with it had changed. From the air, even within his Clear Sky Brush, he felt respect.

  “By reaching half-step blood awakening, you’ve obtained a trace of divinity,” Sun Wukong said, waking up and stretching out his arms. He yawned deeply. “A single step more, and you’ll become a demigod. Qi cultivators become transcendents, and each transcendent has a domain. Domains represent control, and qi cultivators will gain control over the elements in their surroundings.

  “Demigods, on the other hand, gain the respect of their surroundings. Everything around them will fear damaging them and desecrating their bodies. The universe itself will dampen the damage dealt to demigods and protect them, as their presence is holy. They are personifications of the elements themselves.

  “As a half-step blood-awakening cultivator, cultivating the Seventy-Two Transformations Technique, you now possess a third of the strength of a full blood-awakening cultivator—333,000 jin!”

  “No more threes?” Cha Ming asked.

  “No more threes,” Sun Wukong said. “Three threes are the peak of perfection in the mortal realms—pushing past that limit will require you to transcend mortal limitations.”

  Cha Ming nodded. He looked over his body again and became aware of a third ability granted by the Seventy-Two Transformations Technique. The first twelve transformations had improved his talent and allowed him to change his appearance. The next twelve had given him control over his weight, culminating in giving him control over his shape.

  These last twelve allowed him to increase his size as he wished through stored vitality. His regeneration had increased drastically. Now, he could regenerate his body from his vitality stores if even a single drop of blood remained. Furthermore, he could now transform to any size as large as a demon of his level, even in human form. He could shrink his size down to an inch in length. Hiding would be much easier from now on.

  “With this,” Cha Ming said, “there are very few people I now fear on this plane.”

  “Even transcendents would have trouble dealing with you,” Sun Wukong said in approval. “They might be able to generate the same power as you, but the plane loathes their presence and will fight against them. Anyone who wishes to kill you would need to pay a ghastly price to do so.”

  Cha Ming nodded. He retracted his power until he reached late marrow refining. He lamented in losing the feeling of being special in the eyes of the world. A portal opened beside him, which he stepped through into the stone room filled with protective formations.

  Now that he was powerful enough to achieve his goals without a hitch, he had less than a month to tie up any loose ends in his plan. In addition to incriminating the Wang family, he had important duties to attend to. Finishing the Breaker, or something like it, was at the top of his priority list. The crown prince was counting on him, after all.

  Weeks passed by in a blur, and Cha Ming, along with the rest of the research and development group, worked with inhuman speed. Ceaseless trial-and-error runework, as well as various attempts at smelting and combining many ores, took place in a very short amount of time.

  Fortunately for everyone, they had Shao Qiang. The normally quiet man wasn’t very useful aside from performing calculations, his field of expertise. But as a seer, he made use of his talent to predict relative chances of success or failure. With each prototype piece, their team was able to predict its suitability for its given role, whether it be power generation, distribution, or application.

  This was especially challenging for Cha Ming, who not only had to work to improve the project, but also sabotage it. Each individual part needed to function as planned, and every combination, save the final assembly, needed to work well together. It was a puzzle, and despite the many years that had passed since his rebirth, he loved every minute of it.

  Two weeks in, they reached a critical point in their research. They tested a prototype, which failed miserably. The reason was something not even Cha Ming had anticipated. While each individual piece was fine and well constructed, when assembled, the earth beneath the Breaker was unable to bear the strain of its activation. They puzzled over it for days until Pan Su, of all people, came to the rescue.

  The middle-aged woman, who’d grown increasingly unsatisfied at her inability to contribute to the project due to her major in geomancy, had predicted the problem. She had been experimenting for some time over different base materials in case the increasingly large tremors from the Breaker went out of control. By working with He Yin, and with the help of Cha Ming’s superior runework, they were able to manufacture three bases, one for each of their working prototypes. The concrete-like substance was inlaid both with metal and runes that absorbed and diffused vibrations. The prototype breakers were affixed to the platforms with rather expensive clamps that both held the large contraption firmly but allowed for removal when required.

  “Well, that was an unexpected development,” Shao Qiang said, relieved at their successful deployment this time around. The dust was clearing from the fake wall they’d just destroyed. It was weaker than Southhaven Wall, but only by a half step. Unfortunately, the test pieces they had could only be used for their expected final prototype.

  “If Pan Su hadn’t been here, we’d all be goners,” Cha Ming admitted. Even he, with his many talents and masteries, would not be able to replicate her work. “Though look at how she ignores us now that she’s finished her work.”

  “Only two things excite her,” He Yin quipped. “Things that can’t be destroyed and destroying things. I think she sees it as a challenge. That’s what makes her such a good fit for the project.”

  “And you?” Cha Ming asked.

  “Me?” He Yin thought for a moment. “Nothing in particular. To be honest, I’m not the most skilled alchemist out there. I’ve heard reports that there are at least ten that are better in the South alone.”

  “Surely there must be something,” Cha Ming pressed.

  The man hesitated, then edged a little closer.

  “I may have accidentally blown up a large facility and upset many people,” He Yin whispered. “I needed somewhere to hide, and Boss Tian happened to be interviewing some people at our lab for this same project. He was so impressed by the devastation I caused, and I was so desperate to find backing, that we almost immediately signed a contract, no questions asked.”

  “I think you might be underplaying the devastation,” Shao Qiang said, walking over to them. “A large facility is hardly the same thing as half a city.”

  “A small city,” He Yin said, holding his hands up defensively. “Almost a town. I felt really bad about it
. Haven’t I spent all my wages trying to make amends to their families?”

  Shao Qiang grunted but didn’t press the issue.

  “I guest that leaves three pieces, then,” Cha Ming said. “Power distribution, spear shafts, and ball-bearing projectiles.”

  “I still don’t see why we need those,” He Yin said. “Those spear tips can break anything even Boss Tian can make, if used with enough force. Not that I’m complaining, of course. Making the explosive mixture that drives them was refreshing to say the least. I love experimenting with my life on the line.”

  That last part was the primary reason why he was employed, Cha Ming guessed. Nothing was better for research and development than the willingness to risk your own skin for progress.

  “Without them, there’s not enough devastation,” Shao Qiang said. “One doesn’t kill a peak-marrow-refining cultivator with a single spear to the chest. It takes a lot more collateral damage to destroy their vitality stores.”

  “But that’s a living thing, not a wall!” He Yin protested.

  “A wall with a very large power network and a reserve to draw on,” Cha Ming said. “We need to deplete the local reserves faster than they can be restored. Simple fissures aren’t enough damage—they’ll be healed over in the blink of an eye. A large gap, however, is far more difficult to fix. If the gap is large enough, it might disrupt the wall’s healing mechanism entirely.”

  He Yin shook his head but walked out of the room and back to his laboratory. The past few weeks had been especially taxing on the man. The explosives he’d just mentioned, the ones to propel the ball bearings, were needed in large quantities. This mixture happened to be very unstable, and even someone with Cha Ming’s skill would have trouble mass-producing it. All the man could do was spend what little time he had trying to keep up. They didn’t dare leak the mixture to the Blackthorn Conglomerate’s remaining alchemists, lest their plans be exposed.