Chapter 109: Meeting
Chún woke slowly the next morning, with a current of unease running through him. Stretching stiffly in the dim light of the silver Tree that lit his Immortal's Cave to match the outside daylight, he groaned, "I have not felt this unwell in a while." Slowly pulling himself out of his bedding, he frowned as he realised that his discomfort was not entirely his own.
"Tai? Is everything alright?" Chún focused on his bond with his locus and was astonished and concerned to realise that something very much like pain was running through their shared link in an undercurrent of agitation and discomfort.
"I may have… underplayed the effects of the plane collapse," admitted his locus, "The local Essence is severely disturbed - a lot of destructive or violent, wild Essence has been released into the immediate area around my original site on Golden Crow."
The young teenager sat bolt upright in alarm, "What - like when we fought those devourer creatures and we wound up being flooded with dangerous levels of Essence," he asked rapidly, remembering the corrosive effect the flood of pure, uncontrolled Essence had on the very reality of the Mountain.
"Not quite as bad as that - it was only a planar collapse, not an entire planet," Tai reassured him, "additionally, there were multiple venting points all over the Golden Crow Planet - quite deliberately it seems. It appears the Grass' siege forces' strategy was turned back on them. So the excess Essence from the collapse - including the Essence of many destroyed high level Consumers and their equipment - was released all over Golden Crow."
There was a strong pulse of discomfort through the link and his locus groaned slightly before continuing, "between the multiple dispersion points and the relatively lower density of the Essence released - compared to our own incident, that is - Golden Crow is not in any serious danger in the long term, but at the moment the wild Essence is causing havoc around each of the vent points."
Chún shuddered and winced, "what do you need me to do? I assume you are telling me this for a reason?"
"You need to go back to Golden Crow Planet and perform cleansing and re-channelling of the excess wild Essence into the land," instructed Tai, "if you can refocus the extra Essence safely into the land, it will greatly help Golden Crow's overall largely depleted Essence levels."
"What about the other areas on the planet?" asked Chún, already heading over to his World Tree Staff and Essence Cloak stored near the entrance of the cavern.
"Hopefully other True Cultivators will be able to do something similar in other areas - otherwise it will take time for the Wild Essence to naturally be absorbed over time. A lot of the Essence will cause damage, create dangerous areas or dissipate into the environment in the interim, unfortunately, to say nothing of the increased chances of twisted Essence Beasts, humans - or worse - wraiths," his locus paused, "in the long term it will be a net positive as the planet will have a dramatic improvement in its Essence Levels, revitalising it in general - but it is the sort of secondary positive effect generated by a flood or a fire - after everything is wiped out, nature is replenished by the mud or ash. If we can improve the retention of Essence and reduce the destruction…"
"Understood," answered the young True Cultivator grimly, walking with his Staff thudding solidly on the ground as he walked through the entrance cave tunnel with the Cloak swirling in a cloud of Essence mist as it settled on his body and immediately noting the uncharacteristic agitation of the Heaven and Earth Vine as its vines shifted in an invisible wind, its leaves rustling as they brushed together.
The Essence Sprites darted around the clearing frenetically as a large swarm darting in all directions at high speed. Evidently all the Essence sensitive creatures could feel that something was wrong.
"There are a lot of small battles breaking out, mostly between Essence Beasts defending their territories against others driven mad by overexposure, injury or the beginnings of Essence twisting," Tai warned, "that is why there were so many casualties yesterday."
Chún nodded as he moved quickly out of the clearing, "Anything else?"
"The sudden massive flood of dense and violent Essence into the area added to the original mountain site's own much higher than average Essence levels - due to Hidden Mountain's existence - has combined to temporarily, severely slow the flow of time in a large area around the original mountain site, including the village," warned his locus.
Chún stopped short, "This was not important to mention before?"
"The amount of complications have been unexpected," admitted Tai, "the one benefit is that we are not being swamped with wounded Essence Beasts as it is taking them a very long time from our perspective to reach the stable rift point in the old geese pasture - it is still the day of the plane's collapse, below the mountain."
"That is almost two days difference," the young teen choked out, "is it even safe for me to leave the Mountain?"
"It should be fine," replied his locus distractedly, "my vassal Essence Beasts are arriving safe enough if they survive to cross into the stable rift."
"How large an area is affected?" asked Chún in concern, "can I fix it?"
"As you cleanse and channel the excess Essence into the Land, the Essence weighing down the area will be absorbed safely and time will resume its usual flow; at the moment the Essence is pooling, weighing down space and slowing time down," explained Tai pedantically and Chún winced as the link suddenly burgeoned with concepts and odd ideas that he could not even begin to recognise - other than the fact that they were causing a headache to bloom between his eyes.
"Okay, okay… sorry I asked," grumbled the young True Cultivator, "I guess I will just deal with things as I go - same as always," he started moving quickly down the path towards the connection to Golden Crow again.
"The rate of slowing is uneven," warned the Hidden Mountain, "it is worse where more Essence has collected in a small area," the Hidden Mountain paused and Chún suddenly found himself strongly recalling a memory of spending a lazy afternoon watching the water where two streams met, their currents clashing in swirls, rapids and eddies and digging out sinkholes as the confluence flowed together.
The young teen rubbed his head as his headache intensified slightly, but he brightened in understanding as he pushed himself into the air, skimming lightly above the path and using Monkey Movement of the trunks and branches of the forest to move even quicker.
---
"Hng, this is tiresome," snorted Chún as he smacked yet another snarling Essence Beast with his staff as the half crazed animal pounced at him. Long weeping wounds wept down its side, scraping against the detritus of the forest floor as the almost unrecognisable beast - some sort of canine - tumbled along the ground, drawing a scream from the animal.
"Come, I will heal you," he spoke firmly, pushing a feeling of reassurance and safety into his Essence, reaching out towards it. The animal spat and twisted away from his reaching hand, darting off into the highly disturbed forest.
Chún sighed and planted his staff firmly on the ground, pulling in the local wild Essence quickly and pushing it back out in the familiar pulse of neutral, constructive Essence. The area around him stilled momentarily, but within a fēn he could feel a more wild and destructive Essence rushing in to disturb the area he had cleansed.
"It is impossible to clear out this much Wild Essence with a single channeling - you would need to be a high rank World Cultivator as the Consumers measure such things to begin to have a hope of making a permanent adjustment at the moment," explained his locus as he shook his head in frustration and continued walking through the much thicker forest than he recalled that surrounded the original mountain site.
"How do you suggest I deal with this then, Tai?" he asked absently pulsing his own Essence to stay stable against the onrushing current of violent energy that was rushing to fill the gap.
"Just keep cleansing the Essence as you go - even though the effect is temporary, it helps," reassured his locus, "I am using the Essence you are pushing to the Land to quickly power and extend beneficial Dao Patterns out from the original site - a lot of the patterns are growing to draw in and purify the excess Essence - a slower form what you are doing. I am using that extra Essence to quickly grow natural defensive and dimensional Dao patterns for several hundred lǐ around the original mountain and the village. I am also allowing as much of my own Essence as I can safely push through the rift without attracting attention as well. With a disaster of this magnitude no one will notice a large amount of calm Essence hiding behind the explosion of wild and destructive Essence - and such a large amount of my own Essence is pushing the wild Essence back from the original site - and limiting the damage, which is good."
Chún frowned and then realised his friend was taking the opportunity to basically co-opt the entire area for its own purpose; the Mountain had mentioned this in the past, but had been talking about such a gradual obscuring that no one would notice that a section of the wilderness had gone quietly missing.
The young teen let his mind sink deeper into the link as he trotted towards where he sensed an area of greater disturbance was, flaring his Essence as several branches grasped for him whispering in rustling, groaning voice just on the edge of hearing, slamming his staff down again to pull in the wild Essence and push out clean Essence out. Once again the immediate area stilled - although this time there was a definite sense of a knot or dirty puddle being removed - and the flash of white Essence was much more pronounced - as was the momentarily feeling of wellbeing.
"That was definitely a bad spot," he thought to himself, "but only a tiny one. There are larger spots further west…"
"Yes, though it would have quickly drawn more destructive and wild energy to itself and become a serious problem in the current situation," answered Tai, the tone in the link between them sounding almost as if it was exerting itself, that sensation of discomfort emanating strongly, "keep pushing more pure Essence into the Land - it is helping it resist the destructive effects of the wild Essence as well as revitalising it."
Chún moved another half lǐ, then slid into a halt, planting himself into the horse stance as his Essence Sense screamed at him in warning. Gale force winds seemed to come up out of nowhere from multiple directions simultaneously, blisteringly cold and hot as well as razor sharp - tearing at the Cloak which splashed out in all directions as it shifted into its dense Water Element form to protect him.
Giving out a loud fā shēng, he slammed his staff into the ground and pulled at the Essence.
The resulting miniature tornado of Air Essence flashed into an absolutely massive ignition that sent his meridians prickling with strain momentarily before it was washed away from being at the center of another neutral Essence burst.
The forest around him gave an almost audible sigh of relief and the plants and trees around him visibly perked up, glowing with green motes of Essence that spilled out of every growing thing - many of which appeared to spontaneously unfurl from the soil as if a year of growth was occurring all at once.
The blast of Life Essence rushed outward and for the first time, Chún saw the wild Essence rushing into to fill the calmed area splash up against the outgoing untwisted surge of Essence like - waves against cliffs, the image popping into his thoughts despite never having personally seen the sea before.
"It is working," spoke Tai in satisfaction, "make enough strong adjustments and cleanses and the areas will start to reinforce each other and start consuming the wild Essence instead of being damaged by it."
"You are using the extra Essence to push your plans forward," realised Chún as he started moving again, "you are banking on any Consumers writing of this area and the village as wiped out by the destruction of the secret land - if they even bother checking. If what you say is accurate and this is happening in different locations all over Golden Crow, they will be concentrating on the ones that had negative effects on cities before they look at places in the wilderness."
"Only Hujian - that minor second tier city the villagers were talking about, will be affected by this particular gate collapsing - and there will only be relatively minor effects," agreed his locus somewhat smugly, "between the mountains and wilderness between this area that channeled the worst of the blast away from the city - the gate that exploded was almost three thousand lǐ away from Hujian in any case. Perhaps Kè's worth for a Peak Sky Rank or a few shi's worth of travel for a higher ranked Earth - but almost ridiculously far away for anyone else to bother, even ignoring that it was in an inhospitable mountain wilderness."
"And they have their own part of this mess to be concerned about," remembered Chún, going over the old news in his head, "you are going to take over all of this land?!"
"Having so much Essence to work with and freely release is something worth taking advantage of," replied the Hidden Mountain pragmatically, "keep cleaning up the messes - I think working in a spiral with the mountain site at the center is best - the cleared areas will be able to link together and establish a balanced zone of much higher Essence levels. I will use everything I can to grow out Dao Patterns to establish stability for the whole area - I am considering a minor dimensional shift."
Chún once again was reminded that his locus did not 'think' in terms of human concerns, although he could see the opportunity now that Tai had laid it out. The Mountain was using this opportunity to essentially create a lower ranked 'secret land' that basically completely obscured the Hidden 'Treasure' Mountain planet.
"If we are not hiding anymore, the larger and higher leveled Essence wilderness around the mountain will be found sooner rather than later, no matter what defenses you grow. You will need stronger defending forces," warned the young teen as the Mountain's scheme became clear to him, "try to convince as many of the powerful Essence Beasts that are escaping the collapse of the Secret land as you can to stay."
He paused, absent pulling in Essence again as he thought hard. The now almost routine flash or revitalising Essence sharpened his focus, "you need to come up with a way to allow people to leave and enter the village for trading and expansion without being aware of the situation - or able to follow people who we allow to stay back."
"Keep working on the Essence, young man," rumbled his friend, "by the time I am finished with this masterwork - only people who wish to interact peacefully will be able to even find the village without everyone knowing."
"We still need human fighters," groaned Chún as a bunch of screaming, deformed Essence Beasts leaped out of the underbrush, "speaking of which…"
He stabbed out his staff in a blur a half dozen times, sending out heavy clubs of air Essence with each strike, sending the front line squealing back the directions they came. He stepped onto the air avoiding the follow up attacks of the ones behind those as his Cloak exploded into Essence Mist. A series of muffled thuds, told of the creature's defeat and he slammed the staff down into the ground below him.
The resulting blast of cleansed Essence was even bigger than the last with an even more marked regrowth as plants, vines and grasses literally devoured the fallen Essence Beasts, reminding Chún of how the Heaven and Earth Vine fed, dragging the warm and bleed corpses below the earth and then blasting out a massive ignition of almost every Element that broke up and swallowed the surrounding wild Essence like a fire consuming dry tinder.
"They are not even fighting like Essence Beasts," observed Chún in some concern, "the wild Essence and constant fighting has driven most of them back into acting like ordinary beasts."
"Any Essence Beast strong enough to keep its mind will not be seeking battle in this chaos," agreed Tai, "but you must be on the watch for Essence Beasts who have gained unnatural abilities or strengths above their advancement level due to Essence overexposure. Such will become more likely the closer you get to the worse affected areas."
"Wonderful. Because this is so wonderful already," remarked the young teen sarcastically, "remind me to say 'I told you so' when the Consumers find us and we start regretting risking this expansion."
"We were created to fix Golden Crow," his locus reminded him, "we cannot do that if we keep the Essence to ourselves - we need to push as much as we can back into the planet. This is an excellent opportunity to increase the health and Essence levels of Golden Crow with a ready made 'explanation' as to 'why'."
Chún did not bother answering, too focused on healing a large wounded Essence Beast that he had stumbled on - evidently a defeated combatant in the constant battles he kept running into. The animal snarled weakly and tried to snap at him with blunt, thick teeth - evidently a herbivore of some type.
After a moment he gave up and deliberately did a quick cleanse on the area, with his staff brushing against the side of the fallen creature. The resultant pulse of white Essence flushed through him as always and he saw it had done what he had hopped, healing the animal, which lumbered to its feet after a few startled blinks of it's large, round eyes.
It snorted and lumbered off toward the east. Chún watched it go, disappearing quickly into the thick vegetation before he sighed, "I hope you are not planning to send me everywhere this has happened?"
"There are other True Cultivators and even high level Consumers working on fixing this mess - even if some of them are using the Essence in negative ways. Golden Crow is also quickly using the excess to grow its own Dao Patterns to deal with it - something it has not had an opportunity to do in the past - it has been many thousands of years since this much free Essence was available on Golden Crow for it to work with. If it uses it wisely, it might even be able to ignite much stronger Essence sources - like myself - which would help it recover its overall Essence levels."
"All well and good until the Consumers come along and cut the new resources out for their own use," pointed out Chún, "probably before they have a chance to help the Golden Crow become more stable, if everything you have told me is true."
"Well that is what True Cultivators work to prevent," answered Tai, "even Eradicators in their own way - I have no doubt they will be using the chaos from such large groups of Consumers being severely wounded to push a lot of other groups into expending their own efforts to grab for spoils - a long period of infighting among the humans means they are not plundering the planet."
"War is expensive," contradicted Chún, "they will be burning resources more than ever."
"Of course, but they will have less time to go and harvest new resources without interruption, hoarded resources will be spent which means the Planet will finally have access to those treasures and resources again. Not to mention, when a Consumer dies or blasts out battle techniques, their Essence is released into the land, unless they have employed techniques to cheat death - sadly a common occurrence among the high leveled Consumers, but…"
"A lot of them will die - and even wild Essence is useful eventually - just like this scenario," realised the teen, "was… the collapse of that sect - both sects - part of a bigger plan?"
"There are patterns in the Dao," admitted Tai, grunting in discomfort, "but only as possibilities, rather than deliberate planning as you think of it. Now - enough philosophy - a spiral please, keep cleansing - and watch for the more dangerous threats."
"En," acknowledged Chún as he started moving quickly towards the next feeling of turbulence in his Essence Sense.
---
After several shi and several dozen serious 'violent' Essence 'confluences' cleansed - three with serious battles beyond the simple maddened rush of crazed animals, though none dangerous enough to actually injure him - Chún was completing the third spiral out from the mountain.
Despite the Essence Cleansing process refreshing him each time it was performed and washing away fatigue and discomfort from repeatedly channelling large quantities of Essence, Chún was feeling distinctly scraped raw.
"With three rounds, the cleansed areas have become self-reinforcing - the Wild Essence between the spiral tracks is steadily decreasing as the cleared areas absorb it and expand. The spiral has become self-sustaining and has started a natural circulation as it expands, pulling in the Wild Essence around if and feeding it back out as balanced or Elemental Essence," congratulated his locus, the underlying feelings through the link much less stressed or in pain, "you should take a rest."
"At last," murmured Chún as he leaned against a tree trunk of a very large tree, looking up into its branches at the early afternoon crow-light, "is it just me, or are these trees a lot bigger than I remember?"
"Increases in Essence levels in the area have affected growth and health of all the plant life," agreed Tai, "keep a watch for Beasts wanting to fight - they are mostly calming as they cross deeper into the cleansed areas, but not all of them."
"How big a mess has all this caused, Tai?" asked Chún offhandedly, "I mean - will we be dealing with this for a week? A month?"
"The damage in the immediate area is already balancing out with your assistance," answered the Hidden Mountain, "but…"
Tai paused and the hairs on the back of Chún's neck stood up as a whisper of warning brushed across his senses. He pushed away from the tree trunk and looked towards the west where a feeling of disturbance was coming from.
"Tai? There is something…"
"A fight - but not beasts. I am detecting Consumer Techniques," replied his locus intently and Chún stiffened in alarm, "Consumers? Here?"
"One of them… may be Grass," added Tai and Chún immediately leapt into the trees, bounding off the branches as fast as he dared towards where his senses felt the disturbance growing more intense - and moving on almost a direct course across the spiral he had just finished building towards the center where the original mountain site was.
"Grass? How? You told me you were monitoring for them!" Chún hissed into the link.
"I am not certain," admitted Tai, "I am not picking up those tattoos from either party… but one is definitely using what I recognise as 'Grass' techniques - the other…"
"What about the other?" snapped Chún as Tai trailed off again, but he became distracted as he felt a rumble of discomfort through the link, "what was that!?"
"Their fight is throwing out a lot of disturbed and violent Essence," answered Tai, a strong sensation of alarm flowing through the link, "it is starting to destabilise the spiral - they are cutting right across it - no matter what Dao Patterns I put up, one of them is going around them like they are not even there. The Grass one is getting caught in everything, but then they just go straight for the other one and," there was another rumble, "he is a violent idiot!"
There was a muffled explosion up ahead and what sounded like someone male and extremely angry swearing furiously and at length. Chún sped up to his top speed, becoming a blur as he ricocheted off the trees.
The link became filled with outrage and Tai bellowed angrily, "Consumer turtle with no mother and less sense than an ostrich! All his violent thrashing about is going to destabilize the spiral! If it collapses…"
Chún paled as his mind was flooded with a picture of the spiral of Essence collapsing inward and dragging in all the wild Essence with it in a great rush - exploding outward in an explosion that made the earlier collapse of the Secret Land, or when the devourer's world was destroyed, look like the firecrackers people lit for good luck at the new year.
A wind appeared out of nowhere and the branches of trees whipped wildly. Chún snarled and burst into Essence mist which coalesced in a small clearing where a larger male Consumer was shouting something triumphantly as he loomed over a smaller figure, his sword blazing with some sort of flashy looking technique.
Chún had lost none of his speed as he appeared in a burst of Essence Mist. The World Tree Staff lashed out with all the force he could put behind it - combined with the speed of his entry.
There was a thunderous cracking sound as the staff displaced air so fast it appeared to glow pure white - and the man was instantly vaporised - as the World Tree Staff passed through his body head first, leaving behind a faint bloody scent in the air.
The World Tree Staff plunged into the ground and Chún immediately pulled in as much of the disturbed Essence as he could, wrapping it in a tight spiral that pulled the entire trail of damage into the staff, even as the spiral of cleansed Essence that he had spent all morning wobbled threateningly.
A very large pulse of White cleansed Essence pulsed out of the staff and into the ground, immediately pushing the spiral back into balance as a large burst of exuberant plant growth occurred as per usual. Chún sagged in relief - barely noticing the usual rejuvenating pulse as it cleared away the strain of just having pushed himself beyond his limits - as the violent wind that had sprang up died away and Tai's own relief flowed through the link, "the spiral is stabilising, by Heaven's decree - but if we had been a niàn later…"
A small sound beside him reminded him he was not alone and he immediately jeked upright in alarm, whirling to strike as he lifted his staff…
...and found his body frozen with the staff poised to deliver the killing blow, even as Tai's voice rumbled implacably through the link, "True Cultivator, HOLD!"
The young teen found himself looking down at the ground in front of him where the other cloaked and robed Consumer was frozen, in the act of moving the upper half of their body raised off the ground where they had fallen.
Chún gazed under a worn and bloodied hood that had seen better days, into a pair of huge, phoenix curved eyes wide with fear and desperation, a small gloved hand held out to ward off the strike.
"Wait. Please…" The voice that came from under a mask was young and almost arrestingly feminine - even as Chún tried to regain control of his body, part of him marveled that the woman's voice reminded him of the old Storyteller's improbable tales of Cultivator Fairies with the voices of orioles.
The female Cultivator shifted in some way that Chún could not describe and suddenly was standing in front of him, despite the staff held above her head. Despite the exhaustion and youth of the voice, he noticed it was unyielding - despite the fear the eyes had shown - none of it showed in either voice or posture as she bowed her head, her hands held out in front of her with her left fist held inside the palm of the left.
"Spirit of the Mountain, I apologise for my trespass, but my need is very great. Hear my plea."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
WheeledWriter
WheeledWriter And so...
One of the primary drivers for writing this novel for myself personally is to try and build characters - particularly the leads - with full three dimensional characters, backstories and motivations of their own, independent of the other leads or even supporting cast.
Too many books focus entirely on a single lead, whether male or female and everything is told in relation to their viewpoint. It then becomes very hard to see other characters - even opposite leads or antagonists - as anything but carboard cutouts the lead moves around at their lesiure.
I do not know if I will be successful, but I hope to write the storty of two heroes combining into something more - with both the male and female main characters being heroes in their own right.
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