Chapter 41: The Bastard
The sound of liquid splashing into the Mountain's artificial saltpan echoed around the small 'workshop' clearing as Chún upended a large pot over the slightly concave expanse of obsidian, the hot spring water flashing into steam as it hit the dully glowing Fire Dao patterns that slowly shifted around beneath the surface of the black rock.
"Right, Mountain," declared the young teen boy as he set the pot down on the ground, wiping condensation from his forehead, "that was the last pot of water - the saltpan is full. What is next?"
"You need to go hunting and looking for Essence Plants that are worth selling. Do not forget to take some of the Dao pots with you," instructed the locus.
The teen nodded and set off for the clearing, "That means cloak, staff, sack, rope and pots. How should I carry the pots? I could just put them in the sack since the good ones do not break, but that will not work once they are filled with soil and plants - the plants will just be damaged and soil lost."
"Essence manipulation training," answered the Mountain brightly. "You can carry them with you with your Essence energy."
Chún froze as he crossed the treeline into the Essence mist filled clearing, ignoring the Dao patterns of concealment floating past his face. "Mm, that… very difficult. I can barely carry pots more than a li or so and that is if I am walking slowly. And I will not be able to do that when I need to bring them down into the village…"
"It would be excellent training," insisted his locus excitedly, "you could start with just one and slowly increase your speed and manoeuvring until you can operate normally!" The Mountain paused and said sheepishly, "...I would not recommend using the Monkey Movement while you are doing this. I think smashing a pot at that speed would probably break it even if it is reinforced with Essence."
The silver haired boy shook his head in disbelief. "Right, of course. Are you sure all your Dao Manifestations are operating normally?"
"Did you just… I am not crazy!" An indignant pulse came down the link. "It is a good idea."
"Maybe, but that means going back to walking normally," Chún pointed out as he started across the clearing, "Which means, I will not get very far before needing to turn back to return before the Golden Crow returns to the nest. Which in turn, limits my chances of coming across Essence Herbs worth harvesting. And it does not answer my question about how to get the full pots down to the village next week."
"If you went down to the village a couple of days before Market day, you could buy a gliding horse," suggested the Mountain as Chún reached the tunnel to his immortal's cave.
Chún frowned as he trotted down the tunnel and entered into the silver lit cave. "Doable, but it would not be easy to bring a gliding horse down the Mountain… although I suppose I could lift it across the difficult parts. And I do not need to go down to the village for that - a gliding horse is easy enough to make - I can use Essence to shape the difficult parts like the wheel and spokes."
Picking up his cloak he watched as it tumbled from his arm like a waterfall of Essence mist. Looking at it as it spilled onto the floor like falling clouds, he scratched his nose and speculated. "I wonder if this Essence cloak could hold the pots? It seems to be able to change its shape and form - it might look odd to have a bunch of pots held against my body like that, but I think it could hold them upright, no matter which way I move."
A strong sense of interest permeated the link. "Try it."
Chún threw the cloak on - which immediately turned into a thick, flowing smoke full of glittering Essence motes of the different Elements - curling around him before tumbling down to the ground, completely obscuring his body in a pillar of billowing mist. He looked down and snorted. "I already look like an Immortal like this - walking in clouds."
He strode over to the shelves the Mountain had formed for him to hold the pottery he had made and picked up a well-formed Dao pot. Thinking carefully, he sat on the cave floor, then tried to visualise the cloak holding the pot firmly upright, carefully placing it within the mist on his lap.
The pot sat innocuously upright on his lap with the mist flowing around and over it - looking like some sort of odd incense censer. Keeping a hand under the Dao pot, he slowly began to stand up. The mist around the pot thickened, looking almost solid, holding it in place as his body shifted.
Chún cautiously dropped his hand. The pot stayed where it was, seemingly embedded into the mist. "Huh. It would be better around my waist… oh," his musing cut off as the mist smoothly flowed upwards, pushing the pot with it until it sat upright in the mist, at his right side. Experimentally, he shifted his arms around it a few times, the mist shifting the pot out of a collision each time, until he gripped the pot solidly with his hand and the mist released it.
"OK, this cloak is awesome. I could carry a lot like this." He added a few more pots from the shelf as he stood there, feeling a slight pull on his Essence as he increased the number. Nodding, he Essence into the cloak and back through his body, linking it in a continuous cycle. The Essence motes in the cloak mist flared brightly and the Essence mist billowed thicker in response then flowed out into a slow motion explosion of thick fog that covered the whole cave.
Chún blinked as he felt the Essence mist touching everything in the cave, like a more physical version of his Essence Sense. It almost felt like he had his hands wrapped around each object in the cave.
"This… I was not using the cloak properly before? Then…" The mist curled around his staff and tossed it towards him. He caught it in his right hand and did the same thing as he had done to the cloak - running a circuit of Essence through it and back to him.
The staff hummed and lit up, the black lacquered surface shining with Dao runes, then twisted into the shapes of various weapons as fast as he thought of them. Eventually it turned into a black glove that sank into his skin, resolving into a black tattoo of an elaborate staff that wound its way down his right forearm. The tattoo flashed and the staff reappeared.
"Ah… Can you become a part of me as well?" he inquired towards the cloak. He had barely thought the concept when the mist rolled up and over from all corners of the cave and crashed into him like a breaking wave. He found himself standing there suddenly feeling absolutely flooded with energy with the Dao pot in his left hand and the staff in his right, with the cloak nowhere to be seen.
"What?" He scanned with his Essence Sense as the feeling of being over energised faded away, but could not find any signs of the cloak anywhere.
"Come back, please?" Again, he had hardly articulated the thought when he felt all the pores on his body open and mist flooded out of his skin in a massive wave of Essence.
"That… OK… that means I can be armed and armoured all the time - as long as I feed you guys."
"They will be a drain on your Essence flow capacity," warned his locus through the link.
"Good training - if I get used to the constant load, then I will have that much more flow capacity when I drop them. Just wait until the Crystal Lord gets a staff to the front facet! I will have the cloak hold all the pots and the sack..."
Again, before the thought was spoken, the mist billowed out and retrieved all the usable Dao pots from the shelves and held them in a loose orbit around his waist and shoulders. The sack hung similarly from where a belt would normally be.
"That looks really weird," he said aloud. "Can you disappear into just the areas holding the items? Put any leftover Essence Mist… material, whatever, under my skin again, maybe?"
The mist receded as he had requested and he smiled. "OK! Now I feel like a real Hero from the stories!" He looked down at the pots hanging off his body - in upright positions. "Still looks weird."
"And the hero has to go hunting," commented the Mountain, "if you are quite finished playing with your toys…"
"Do not be jealous - just because I have linked my Essence to these - they are just feeding off it to do what they cannot do by themselves and making it safer for me," consoled Chún.
"I was using that excess," grumbled the Mountain, "Now most of it is being swallowed by those two parasites."
"Look at it this way," placated the teen as he strode out of the cave, with the pots seemingly stuck - still oriented with their openings upward - to his body with thin strips of mist, "Soon my body will adjust, and when I am not using the cloak or staff - you will have even more Essence coming through."
He quickly walked to the edge of the clearing, a sudden thought making him feel uncomfortable. "Mountain - the mist in the clearing, from the Heaven and Earth Vine... is it like the mist from my cloak? Can the Vine feel everything the mist touches?"
A sudden burst of amusement flooded the link. "Yes. Yes it does. Does that bother you?"
Chún winced and leapt for the treeline. "I am not going to dignify that with an answer."
---
Several shi later Chún looked up at the Golden Crow as it floated towards its nest. "I only have about a half-shi of good light left," he remarked through the link, "I have to turn back for the clearing if I want to make it back before nightfall. Looks like we will have to save learning 'Creating' for another day."
"One more Essence Herb - I have marked it on the map," the Essence image floating in front of his eyes flashed a bright dot a couple of li further ahead. "Your gathering bag is full so you can go straight back and save time that way." The Mountain paused, then continued, "Yes, it is a shame the Essence plant gathering has taken so long. But these herbs needed to be removed. And there is always tomorrow. It is more of a pity we could not fill all the Dao pots."
Chún shook his head as he bounded through the trees, his feet, staff or hands barely making contact. "No, three or four Herbs is enough for Market. It also means I do not need to make - another - batch of pots yet. These," he looked down at the herb, small tree and plants standing upright in their pots full of soil as the pots shifted around him to avoid his movements, "are excellent quality and with the soil they grew in the pots with them - as well as the Dao pots drawing in and supplying Essence mixes matching where they were found - they will stay that way."
His locus sent a pulse of urgency. "Seriously - you are so close - and this is the best one! Rare too, but I need the older one removed so it does not kill off the pins and smaller ones. It will work well with the best Dao pot… please."
The teen stopped on a branch, frowning and pushed his hair out of his eyes as he breathed deeply of the cooling forest air. "This sounds important… are you hiding something again?"
"No! It is not like last time - It's just some pruning," protested the Mountain, "sort of the opposite of what you usually do with Essence Ignitions - instead of helping an ordinary plant grow into an Essence Plant, you are removing a mature plant to let the younger ones have the resources it is currently using."
The Mountain explained hurriedly. "Sometimes, when an Essence herb or plant gets old and strong they can starve the ones around it - it strengthens the older plant but kills any younger ones. Ordinary gardeners have to do that sort of thing too."
"Great - I finally found out the 'True' meaning of being a 'Cultivator'," he joked, "It is all about cultivating in the agricultural sense." The Mountain sent a wave of amusement down the link along with a feeling of pleading.
Chún rolled his eyes, but smiled, "OK, but this is the last one," he dropped off the branch towards the spot on the map, "It is not - too - rare is it? It would not cause trouble to sell it?" he asked cautiously as he moved quickly in the indicated direction."
"Maybe," admitted his locus, "but a relic hunter that never finds anything rare at all would be suspicious too, right? And you cannot be worried about anything the villagers might be able to do."
"True," admitted Chún, "but many Hunters go their entire lives without a big find… it is not that suspicious." He dropped to the ground a few strides away from the spot. "Where is it?" He sniffed the air, wrinkling his nose as he smelt a distinctly unpleasant scent of rot and mould. The Essence here felt very Yin, cold and dark. He frowned, the mists of the cloak closing protectively tighter around him
"There." A spot flashed in his Essence sense, and he cautiously parted bushes to reveal a large dead tree trunk, with an enormous blood-orange Lingzhi glowing with Essence, growing out of it. Smaller Lingzhi dotted the trunk around it but they looked pale and wan in comparison. The dank smell and unpleasant feelings were definitely coming from it.
"Oh. Thousand year Ganoderma Mushrooms?"
"The small ones are. The problem one is a Ten Thousand Year Ganoderma," pointed out his friend.
"Well, how do I transplant that?" he asked, "I cannot exactly put it in the pot with soil…"
"Use your Essence to cut out the piece of trunk it is rooted to, keeping away from the other Lingzhi. Place the piece and the Ganoderma inside the pot with the bark against the inside of the pot. Wake the pot," the Mountain instructed.
"You will have to cut the tendrils of Ganoderma that grow outside the marked area and leave the remainder in the trunk - that is OK, the other Lingzhi will absorb the leftover mycelium - it will make up for all the nutrients and Essence the greedy one has been stealing from the others." A large segment of trunk directly around the large Ganoderma glowed in his Essence sense as his locus indicated the cut line, "Cut along this shape here - as deep into the trunk as you can make it and still fit the piece into the pot."
Chún hesitated. "This Lingzhi - who is starving its own kind - will just let me do this? Do not Ten Thousand Year Herbs have their own spirit? It sounds like it is not a good one."
"Well, you could ask nicely, but I doubt the greedy bastard would comply," the mountain agreed. "Fungi usually fight with spores and poison. Ask the cloak to cover and filter your seven orifices and close your pores."
"I hate to raise the obvious, but it is living on you - order it to behave," pointed out the young True Cultivator as the cloak burst out of his skin, covering him from head to toe.
"If I could do that, I would have already. It is not listening. Hence why I am asking you to remove it. The bastard will fetch a nice price and some of the more uppity types will be more compliant afterwards." He felt grim satisfaction from his locus.
"Once again, you have me doing your dirty work without explaining properly beforehand," snapped Chún, "I am getting tired of that."
"This is nothing like last time. It is just a mushroom," protested the Mountain.
"Ten Thousand Year Essence beings are never 'just', anything. You are in my debt for not discussing this with me beforehand," Chún growled as his Essence started cutting into the dead wood around the Ganoderma, his cloak's mist thickening and curling protectively around him.
Almost immediately there was a sharp whistle and multiple impacts into the mist. From the cloak's mist Chún could feel the shapes of wickedly sharp spines almost a hand span long, curved, barbed and dripping with poison sink into the billows of Essence that protected him.
Chún grinned. "All right - bastard. There is no way you do not know who I am. The Crystal Lord showed me respect - let alone a fungus like you. If you want to play it that way? You will get sold to the most unpleasant alchemist I can find." He sped up his cutting into the wood around the fungi, pushing Essence into the cloak just in case.
The Lingzhi glowed an angry red brown and pulsed, a hissing wave of dirty brown spores and gas flooding out of it. The mists of the cloak reared up in response, glowing brightly as they fell onto the oncoming billow of nastiness.
"Ha. I do not even have to deal with your pathetic attacks. My cloak will defeat you on its own," the young teen mocked as he pushed the carving of the dead wood out as fast as he dared.
The two clouds of gas from the cloak and the Lingzhi swirled, curled around and intertwined with each other like a pair of midair whirlpools wrestling. As Chún cut the fungus away from the wood, its attack grew noticeably weaker and the other smaller Lingzhi on the trunk began glowing.
"Wow, bastard, you - were - draining your own children for the energy to fight. I hate bullies," the teen snarled at the creature, "Cloak, the pot..."
The last piece of wood snapped free and the Ganoderma shrieked, undulating like a very unpleasant glowing slug. The cloak snapped harder over Chún's ears, blocking out the worst of it, but he still stumbled from the impact of the sound wave, which felt like it bypassed his ears and stabbed directly into his brain.
He dropped his Essence grip, but the Cloak mists grabbed the evil fungus before it could fall and slammed it perfectly into the pot with barely any room to spare.
"Āiyō. Bastard! I cannot believe a damned fungus hurt me." The teen slammed his hand against the pot and pushed Essence into the pot as quickly as possible.
In his Essence sight, he saw the pot's Dao patterns unfurl and start drawing Essence into the pot in the exact quantities matching the dead tree and the area around it. The Essence flowed into the chunk of wood which immediately started to transfer it to the Ganoderma as if it was still on the main trunk. The fungus froze and then dimmed as it started drawing in the same amounts of Essence as when it was on the dead tree.
The True Cultivator frowned. "Suddenly you are co-operating? I do not trust you, bastard. Cloak..."
As he thought about it, he watched in his Essence sight the Cloak weave patterns matching its own Dao into the pot, linking it with the existing ones. Moments later, the new pattern glowed as it connected with the pot's Dao patterns seamlessly as if they had always been there and a thick film of Essence mist filled the mouth of the pot, preventing anything from leaving - he saw a small curl of red brown mist fall back into the pot in frustration as it hit the barrier.
"Wow, so you can add to patterns like that too… I must try that myself someday! Well done, Cloak! I will have to warn whoever I sell this bastard to, though. Good thing the pots are nearly indestructible… the Ganoderma will not be able to break this pot, right, Mountain?" the teen asked his locus warningly.
"What? No - of course not," scoffed the Mountain, "For all your complaints, that Lingzhi barely bumped you and it was going all out. With its Dao patterns awake the pot is renewing itself constantly - and your Cloak also wove some of its own defensive patterns into it. That pot will not break for anything less than a World level Essence attack now."
"Good," Chún grinned savagely and shook the pot. "Home time. We let this fungus stew a few days all cosy. Next week we find a nice old alchemist to grind up this bastard." He sniffed the air, nodding as he noticed the air was fresher and the Essence not as oppressive. Bowing to the trunk and the smaller Lingzhi he addressed them. "Young ones, I know you probably cannot understand me but you will be able to grow properly now. Cooperate nicely now and do not be like this old bastard and everything will be fine."
There was another muffled scream from the pot and Chún rolled his eyes as he leapt into the trees, the Cloak keeping a firm grip on all the pots. "That was a lucky shot the first time, bastard. You will not get me again like that again!"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
WheeledWriter
WheeledWriter A slightly longer chapter. Once again it hasn't gone quite where I was planning - well broad strokes, yes, but it sort of took a few detours and is not up to where I had initially planned. Just means that this stretch of events might take a few more chapters than I thought. Not a bad thing.
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