บท 35: The Essence of the matter

A series of thunderous impacts echoed out over the mighty roar of crashing water as a massive spume of spray of water was blasted away from the face of the waterfall, startling the wildlife in the forest along the river bank. A complex array of sounds from creatures fleeing the area sounded out, with flocks of birds bursting from the tree tops in alarm.

A moment later, the staff embedded into the river bank blurred and shot into the waterfall; the cloak hanging off it disappearing into mist.

Inside the cave behind the waterfall Chún pushed his Monkey Movement to its utmost, barely escaping the jagged edges of moving crystal that stabbed and ground towards him. The guardian had not bothered to move from its initial location in the centre of the cave full of Essence crystals - enormous limbs of razor sharp crystals sprouted and lashed out from its central 'body' at various intervals in an attempt to skewer the frantically leaping True Cultivator.

Twice Chún had aimed for the exit, but as it required him to intersect a specific and predictable location, the crystal protrusions had leapt for him eagerly each time, completely blocking the entrance of the crystal node.

The second attempt had caused two attacking limbs to collide as they attempted to crush him; the resulting blast of Essence released from the impact had sent him tumbling back in midair, unable to control his fall.

Chún only had a moment to wish he had his cloak and staff with him; he also wished he had specified 'non-lethal' as a condition of the spar.

"The Guardian is not attempting to kill you, Chún. It is merely much stronger than you." An amused sense of interest flowed down the link.

A sudden rush of coolness flowed over his body as Chún's as a thick mist suddenly rushed upward and caught him in its embrace, forming into his cloak before most of it turned into a nearly opaque fluid armour that covered his body from head to toe. Two of the crystal strikes that had him dead to rights seemed to veer off course as they made contact with the remaining curls of Essence Mist, missing him by a hair.

The third limb burst in a shattering impact that sent chiming crystals in all directions - without quite understanding why Chún extended his right hand towards the still expanding crystal shards - and a familiar staff slapped into his palm.

There was a moments pause as the limbs - including the shattered and broken crystals - retracted back into the Guardian's body.

Chún settled into a defensive position warily, wondering what the crystal guardian was doing. "Mountain, will fighting here cause any damage to you?" he sent up the link, realising that it was slightly late to be asking that.

There was an amused sensation from the link. "The crystals soak up and stabilise wild Essence - and from your standpoint are unbreakable - it is literally the least damaging place you could be blasting Essence around in."

"But the Guardian's arm… oh never mind…" he cut off his question as he noted the crystals reassembling themselves as they rejoined the main mass.

Chún felt a grin pull his lips taunt. "Oh, it is so on," he muttered to himself, then looked up at the crystal giant. "Hey, Guardian… you want to try that again, now that I am ready for you?"

The Crystal Lord tilted its 'head'. "Weapons... permitted?"

Chún looked at the creature, then at his staff. "Fair enough."

"Challenge… Accepted."

This time, he was expecting the lashing of the crystals that came spearing towards him, much faster than the last time with a crackling scream that reminded him of the sound that the ice-crack grass made. He slammed the butt of his staff into tip of the incoming mass, which exploded into shards in all directions and allowed him to borrow its momentum to rocket away from the point of impact.

Wielding his staff like an extra limb he flung himself up the cave walls as the crystal spears came for him. This time some of the limbs glowed with Essence of different Elements - explosions of Fire, water and blasts of wind burst out as they made an impact on various surfaces.

Chún realised that within the relatively small confines of the cave he was at a disadvantage - he could not use the Movement Dao to its full extent and the chains and spears of crystal kept blocking his path.

In frustration he snarled. "To the hells with this!" and rebounding back from a near miss that would have cooked him without the cloak, he jumped on the currently retracting spear of crystal and began running down it towards the centre of the mass.

The crystal spear instantly shattered into dust, another dozen or so sharpened chains immediately whirling in to stab at him from all directions as he lost his footing. Instead of trying to avoid them he pushed his Essence through the cloak; for a miǎo he was surrounded by a billowing mass pushing him faster towards the nearest chain, which then reformed into the 'water' armour, protecting him from cuts as he splintered the hungrily seeking tip of the crystal limb with his staff, running on it as he handed in a spray of crystal.

This one shattered as well, but he managed to gain another few strides towards the centre; he repeated the same trick a third time and had to desperately send off a blast of razor ice shards to smash the smaller spears that stabbed up at him from the surface of the limb as he landed and started running again.

A sudden flash made him look up as a wall of crystals literally exploded out of the giant, breaking the air with screams as they travelled towards him; the glittering shards reminded him of the ice-crack crystal throwers and he blanched, whirling the staff in a desperate attempt to block the oncoming wall of death.

The impact lifted him off his feet even as he felt the cloak take hundreds of hits. The following impact with the cave wall drove all the air out of him and he crashed to the ground among the tinkling of shards, unable to process for a moment what had happened.

Thankfully, no follow up attack came. An amused rumble announced his opponent seemed in good spirits. "Challenger... fails."

Chún shook his head in a futile attempt to stop the ringing in his ears. "I accept... defeat," he gasped out as he slumped on the ground.

There was that crystalline grinding sound again and when he got his breath and looked up, only crystals were visible.

"Well… wish you could have been there at the last battle," he said wryly, "we could have used a giant swarm of indestructible killer crystal razors."

"Crystal Lords can only exist within close proximity to a large amount of Essence Crystal," reminded his locus.

"Just saying - maybe next time you sense a rift forming like last time - maybe you could form an Essence crystal or two? If it soaks up wild Essence, then they will multiply fast as the rift grows - if I understand how those things work they would probably slow the rift from forming because the crystals are draining it, right?"

He walked to the entrance of the cave and slipped through, gesticulating as he walked to the edge of the alcove.

"That would give you time to summon reinforcements - and pretty quickly you would grow enough crystals to have a giant crystal death beast there wiping out the Enemy - and a lot less Essence mess in the aftermath. You could absorb them afterwards, right? There is not any odd restrictions on growing crystals?"

There was a startled silence. "It is a… workable idea…" the Mountain agreed as he jumped into the waterfall, his cloak pulling him effortlessly up the flow of water. "As long as there is enough Essence Crystals can be formed - I just never considered creating them in the open where anyone could get to them."

Chún snorted. "If there is a great muthering battle going on, no one will care about Crystals unless they want to die due to distraction. You do not have to put them in the open either… I would suggest forming crystals as small as possible all over yourself in concealed locations and putting them in a pattern covering an area - like sentry posts."

Chún frowned thoughtfully. "They react when Essence starts to saturate right? They would be like seeds that would grow immediately when the Essence got too high. You could have Crystal Guardians growing and taking care of problems all over the place even before you were aware of the problem."

"They would reduce the amount of ambience Essence as they soak it up - even the smallest crystal requires a lot," pointed out the Mountain, "and you are suggesting placing them everywhere."

"And in our current situation - is our problem not enough Essence or too much?" he shot back as he reached the location of his sack and shot out of the water. "You have already mentioned saturation issues - we do not have Consumers coming in here culling things like a regular treasure land - and I got the impression that will be an issue soon."

"Yes. It would become a problem soon within the next year or so - recent events have accelerated the usual process beyond normal time frames. I was planning to just release as much as I had to, back through the door to Golden Crow Planet, but that would also attract unwanted attention."

Chún picked up the sack and started running to leap back into the trees for his journey back to his cave. "There you go then. I do not really understand what you just said, but I am sure it means crystals to soak up the excess Essence is a good idea."

The exertion building as he picked up speed, he grunted, then sent his next thought directly down the link. "If you are worried about balance - start with small amounts around areas that have potential for rifts and work your way out. Do not grow so many crystals in any place that it damages or starves anything else… maybe work them into reinforcing your Dao patterns rather than just random placement - I do not know - you are the expert with this sort of thing."

"Yes. It is a magnificent idea. I will become much more powerful and able to defend myself better - and with so much extra reserves… Chún?"

"Yes? Oops, tree! Āiyō!"

"Your ideas are scary sometimes - but I am glad you are my friend."

" - I - am scary?... hah."

---

Back at the clearing a short time later, rubbing the bump from crashing into the tree had given him, Chún carefully dropped the three still flopping carp onto the clearing. "Something different, landlady," he joked.

Within moments only a small pile of fish fillets and a handful of brightly polished scales of each type lay on the grass. "Meets with your approval, I see. I will try to bring more." As had become his custom, he bowed to the Vine then picked up the leftovers. Scales went back into the sack while he quickly slathered the filets with spices and oil, then wrapped them in large leaves to let them bake slowly in the coals of the fire pit.

"That reminds me," he said as he was covering the last fish. "Is there anyway we could boil water from the hot spring in the cave? I would really like some salt."

"Use your new pottery pot to fill another stone pot like this one?" offered the Mountain, "Just put it in your 'workshop'. Your landlady does not want any more fire here."

"Excellent! That greedy merchant is going to regret bragging about his salt being boiled from only the finest seawater and I get another trade good. More importantly, I get to season my food!" Chún cackled like some sort of Evil Consumer from one of the Storyteller's tales as he walked over to the cave entrance to drop off his cloak, staff and the sack.

For a moment, he regarded the cloak and staff soberly and then made a small bow towards them. "My gratitude to you both for today," he thanked the Essence Treasures.

"You fixate on the strangest things. The clay balls are ready to be made into shapes by the way."

Chún nodded and straightened up. "I suppose I have had enough excitement for today. What do you suggest I make?"

"The same as last time - just in case this last lot does not work out entirely," suggested his locus, "I had a few go unstable, but the mess was much smaller since everything was divided - only a couple of pots and a bowl. The biggest one made it through… I think. Until the cooling process finishes we can not know for sure."

Chún walked out to his workshop - munching on some dried meat snacks, fruit and water - looking around. "Right. So if you have something like twenty kilns down there, how come there is still only one chimney?"

"All the vents from each kiln eventually join up."

Chún shrugged and picked up a ball of clay from the drying pit shelves with his new 'Essence Grab' that he had practiced during his trip through the forest. It was much harder as the clay was a lot heavier, but it saved him from jumping down and back up from the pit.

"Good. I have a strong suggestion - do your best to shape the clay without ever touching it." The Mountain's 'voice' was uncharacteristically serious.

Chún blinked as the ball hovered above his palm. "Um.. can it touch anything else?"

"The work stone, dry clay, old pottery and wood ash. Try to avoid having it touch anything else," instructed the locus.

"That… OK. But that makes this much harder." said Chún with a wrinkled brow.

"It is important," assured the mountain, sending a pulse of confidence and encouragement down the link.

"Well I - was - getting bored with making pottery the ordinary way even if I was pushing Essence into it. So, first…" He picked up the wood ash with Essence - easy enough to do given it was light - and swirled it across the work stone. Then he used his Essence to cut off a small piece from the ball and started to manipulate it into shape.

The first thing he noticed was that it was surprisingly easy to manipulate the clay. The small piece did not weigh much and it readily soaked up the Essence, stretching and moving with it. A stray thought crossed his mind and the Essence shifted to match the image.

A moment later he had a little statuette of the Crystal Lord floating in the air, perfectly detailed.

"Ah, this…" suddenly he felt exhausted and barely managed to lower the figurine to the stone before his Essence gave out.

"Stop." Instructed his locus calmly. "Focus on the Essence flowing into you and through you and back out again."

Numbly, he let his Essence Sense draw inward and just let the Essence wash through him. A moment or so later he felt the exhaustion lift and energy return, his sense showed he was almost glowing with Essence.

"Is...that was like the tales. When a Cultivator in those stories runs out of Essence… but Yijing said that did not happen to True Cultivators…"

His locus pulsed comfort and reassurance. "If you are igniting an Essence Spring, you get more returned to you in the ignition than you spent. With manipulating Essence, you must learn to draw more in to match what you are pushing out. Otherwise…"

"But what about burning out?" questioned Chún hesitantly, "The old man said if we have too much Essence running through us…"

"It is a danger, but as long as you do not exceed your capacity - in other words, as long as you do not take in more than you can hold at any given time - it will not happen. It will feel the opposite of how you felt now - too much energy, burning literally," explained the locus. "But you have a very large capacity and it has only grown and strengthened each time your body was remade."

"OK. I understand. I will stick to simple shapes," said the young teen.

In a shi Chún had completed moulding all the clay into shapes. Some of the bowls, pots, vases and other containers he made were thin and delicate compared to the hand worked pottery he had made previously. Some were etched with elaborate patterns of various plants and animals he had seen in his recent experiences. There was even one very large platter showing the entire vista of the waterfall from the river bank he had seen today.

"That was… wow, if these work… I can see why you said it is important…" Chún stared in awe at his creations arranged on the shelves of the drying pit.

"Pick up a rock." Instructed the Mountain.

"Eh ...? OK?" He bent down and picked up a small rock that was by his feet. "Why?"

"Do the same thing to the rock you just did to the clay." Ordered the Mountain.

Chún blinked, then his mouth dropped open as comprehension crossed his features. Then his face set and his hand began to glow.

"More. More. More. The rock is resisting, but…" Chún closed his eyes and opened himself up to the Essence around him - more rushing in to replace everything he pushed into the rock. "No, do not force, there is its pattern… fill it…. Become part of it… now, we are rock… we want to become.... More..."

A Kè later he opened his eyes to hold a perfectly formed flower - seemingly carved out of rock.

"You understand now." The Mountain's voice held quiet satisfaction. "With this you have truly taken the first steps to becoming a True Cultivator - to commune with the world and convince it to want to be more. Be better. To grow and Overcome the universe's natural tendency towards death."

Chún nodded in agreement. "Yes." But he then he shrugged and put the flower down on the ground. "But I'm hungry, dirty and tired. So food, bath and bed. We can explore the Universe tomorrow."

"Deal." There was a quiet pause as Chún walked slowly towards the clearing.

"Hey Mountain?"

"Yes?"

Chún stopped and looked towards the sunset, placing one hand on the ground affectionately as he watched the Golden Crow fall towards the earth. "I am glad that you are my friend too."