บท 65: Growth
There was a deep bass reverberation. A harmony that resonated - like the crack of wood in that last miǎo before the tree falls. Maybe it was more like the vibration of a taut rope snapping, or the report of pottery shattering.
Perhaps it was not a sound at all. It seemed to bypass the ears and arrive directly in one's soul, echoing the sensation of many fine threads parting under great stress.
Beyond a doubt, something under great pressure and tension had broken, shattered or snapped - all at the same time, perhaps.
Then a god breathed out. A ripple passed through all of space and time, all of the planes celestial and infernal - acknowledging and heralding the ascent of a new Heaven.
---
Chún roused from unconsciousness slowly. Fitful sparks of conscious thought darted through the fogginess of slowly rising awareness.
As thoughts slid into place, his grogginess lifted, although he was still disoriented. Some instinct penetrated the confusion though, an awareness that something was not right.
Awareness slammed into him somewhat like being on the receiving end of a bear's charge. He groaned, then shot upright into a sitting position, looking around wildly.
It took a few moments for him to realise what was wrong with this.
Or rather, what should have been wrong, but was not.
He tentatively patted himself all over. Slowly and cautiously at first, but then with greater haste and force, astonished to find not a single bruise or scratch. In fact, he felt - energised - for the lack of a better word.
Granted, his body's toughness had been tempered to something approaching the toughness of a Sky level treasure according to his locus, but the force of the attacks on the Mountain moon and subsequent effects had been very powerful - especially at the last moment...
...He dimly recalled lava and poisonous gas filling the cave, the ceiling collapsing and extensive damage from being thrown into the cave walls. But here he sat, seemingly unscathed - as was his Immortal's cave…
...wait. Chún stopped looking for non existent damage and slowly got to his feet, looking around carefully.
Ever since his last advancement, following the events of the Invasion, his memory had been perfect. There was no such thing as misremembering for him, not anymore.
And that memory was telling him his cave was wrong.
The first thing that was immediately obvious, now that he was not panicking anymore, was that the cave was much larger - it could easily be considered a cavern now. This affected all the familiar features in the cave - the pool was at least double in size, the rivulet that had been coming in from outside was now more of a stream and the hot spring was much larger and closer to a small fountain, than the previous calmer bubbling, with a thick plume of steam rising from the fountain of water.
Chún shuddered at the memory of molten lava spewing from the hot-spring. It seemed surreal that all the damage had disappeared as if it had never happened. Then he corrected his thought, not disappeared - recreated.
Slipping into Essence Sense he could see that the flow of Fire Essence from the hot spring was likewise increased, fountaining upward to spray immaterially against the now balcony-sized ledge where, judging from the bright silver light that reflected off the cavern walls, the faint crackling and bell like tinkling sounds he could hear the Silver Tree remained.
Raising an eyebrow. he used the Monkey movement Dao to leap and ricochet his way up the now five or six arm spans of cave wall required to reach onto the ledge above his head - which could probably be considered a second level of the cave now, it covered such a large area.
A fully grown tree, resembling an Oak made of silver, bronze and gold and around eight to ten arm spans high grew there. It towered over the teenage true Cultivator, its topmost branches scraping against the ceiling of the greatly expanded cave and making soft chiming sounds as the metallic leaves swayed gently, brushing together in a non existent breeze.
The growth was not the only change. Thin arcs of lightning moved up and down the trunk and between the branches and leaves - surging in and out of a softly crackling ball lightning that floated like a tiny star, centred in-between the fork that split off from the trunk - into the smaller branches and leaves making up the crown of the tree. The ball of energy pulsed with the same silver of the lightning that he remembered watching crashing into the Mountain.
He stared and then shook his head in resignation. "I suppose that is one way to get a lightning core…"
He looked around with concern, but he could not see Shé Yin. Sighing, he jumped off the ledge and looked around the cavern in frustration, realising that although everything seemed to be back to 'normal' - he had probably lost everything he had not stored in his cloak.
He frowned, then mentally asked the cloak to carefully release everything it had stored, bracing himself for shattered trash to appear.
The familiar cloud of Essence mist appeared around him and left behind the items he had stored. Amazingly, nothing appeared broken. It appeared his locus had been correct about the cloak acting like a spatial storage - isolated from events occurring in the outside world.
The cloak itself seemed to be acting oddly though, its mists shimmering with an odd shine that made it seem to have an almost oily sheen. As the cloak retracted back under his skin, its Essence felt oddly charged… almost lighter, purer?
An odd hum from his Gliding Horse attracted his attention to the Dao Patterns in the wood seeming to activate by themselves; the Dao pottery in the cart holding herbs also glittered with the light of activated patterns, the herbs and plants they held visibly growing more robust, budding flowers and fresh leaves within moments.
"Something seriously odd is happening," he muttered to himself. The sight of the Dao pots reminded him that before all this insanity hard started out of nowhere, his locus had been firing the last batch of clay work in the kilns, including…
...a startled curse dropped from his lips as he spun on his heel and ran through the entrance tunnel, releasing the cloak back out for protection as he ran. He noticed that the entrance tunnel had also similarly almost doubled in height and width, making it feel more like an extension of the larger immortal's cavern than the original cramped tunnel. It was also definitely at least double in length, surprising Chún with the extra time it took him to reach the end of the tunnel.
He slowed and cautiously poked his head out of the exit between the familiar cover of Heaven and Earth Vine leaves.
Nothing was moving and nothing appeared threatening, but what greeted his eyes was a scene that he could not recognise.
Slowly he pushed the leaves aside and stepped out into the clearing, slowly turning in a full circle to take in the extent of the changes.
The cliff that the Heaven and Earth Vine grew down had increased in height significantly. It also seemed to have been shattered or smashed in several places, leaving steep slopes and jagged outcroppings punctuating the once solid vertical face, with several portions sunken or raised higher than others. If it were not for the presence of the Heaven and Earth Vine, he would have thought that his Immortals Cave had been moved into a small mountain range.
The Heaven and Earth Vine seemed at first glance almost unchanged, it's large vines and leaves still falling down from the cliff in a profusion of greenery, but then Chún realised that it had to have grown in proportion to the now greatly enlarged cliff to appear the same. He noticed that it seemed in surprisingly excellent health considering what had happened - in fact he thought it looked even more robust than he remembered, an odd glowing luminescence attracting his attention to look closer at the leaves. He slipped into Essence Sense and watched the familiar Dao patterns of Concealment, invisibility, hiding, confusion and so on swirling through the structure of the giant plant.
He could see the Dao patterns were rapidly repairing and adjusting themselves. They seemed much more clearly defined and more solid than he remember them being before - all of them glowing with that odd shine that did not seem to quite fit into the familiar Elemental types he was used to seeing. It was almost a - shiny glow - like a pearl reflecting light, or like oil… the same way his Cloak's Essence had seemed to change once he let it out.
Watching, he saw waves of this pearl-like energy being gathered from the air and ground and incorporated into everything. It seemed to have some very strong regenerative ability, because he could see with Essence Sense the ground and the Vine healing damage at a rapid rate.
Where was this strange Essence coming from? He looked around - trying to pinpoint the source and trying to not get sidetracked at how much larger everything seemed now, with the land immediately outside the Vine's clearing basically raw earth and shattered wood - what was not smoking ash or cooling lava. There were no standing trees left to the horizon as he turned - in fact, the Vine's immediate area was a green anomaly in a cratered and jagged wasteland that seemed to stretch in all directions as far as he could see and sense.
He guessed that unless his locus had hidden his food stores in very secure locations, he had probably lost those everything that had been outside the immediate clearing. Her Highness had pulled in the protective barrier towards the area immediately outside of the Vine at the end to increase the strength of the shield. He supposed that she had decided to cut her losses with the outer edges of the clearing - including the fire pit also being destroyed.
Winds blew curls of dust forlornly over the devastation, the sound of water flowing through the creek that now flowed into the clearing unmuffled by vegetation, or other sounds or scents besides than what came from the Heaven and Earth Vine behind him and his garden plot.
It was fortunate that he had positioned it right at the base of the cliff next to what had been a stream and was now a creek, or it would have been lost as well - although now it appeared to be a much further distance from the cliff.
One of the things that his Essence sense was confirming was that everything was massively increased in size from what he remembered - searching for familiar landmarks, he was not finding anything in any location he expected it. At first he thought that was because of the destruction, but then he began recognising familiar spots that were either three to four times further away than he remembered and/or massively enlarged themselves.
Even as he watched, he could see the 'grass' of the Heaven and Earth Vine spreading outward in all directions to cover a much larger area than the original clearing. He supposed the Vine was taking the opportunity of the destroyed forest to claim more land - or perhaps it was just regrowing to govern the now expanded area.
His vegetable plot and apple trees with the ancient Essence plants arranged in a gathering Dao Manifestation was an example of this. It was almost three times the original size, with all of the plants growing visibly. The apple trees were fully grown now and everything had that odd mother of pearl sheen to its Essence - including the ancient and powerful herbs he had planted. They were visibly flourishing, even though the Essence gathering formation seemed to be… inactive? In his Essence Sense it was present, though distorted by the changes, but it seemed to be repairing itself and growing in complexity even as he looked at it.
It was odd to see those older herbs almost shimmering with that new Essence. He had thought they had needed a lot of concentrated Essence to have any hope of advancement, but they seemed to be gathering in the new Essence almost as fast as the Heaven and Earth Vine, instead.
The stream that had marked the boundary of the clearing where he had placed the garden was now a creek that disappeared into the cliff face, explaining why the water source inside the cave was more of a stream than a rivulet now.
"What is going on… everything is larger… there is this new Essence that I have no idea about… Mountain? Are you… OK?" Chún tried to probe the link between him and his locus, but only felt a very faint sense of complete exhaustion and dormancy.
The young teen bit his lip. It appeared he was on his own for now - and with everything such a mess, perhaps without any immediate way of replenishing his supplies. He had noticed in passing that her Highness was missing the usual large bell shaped flowers and fruits the Vine normally had - either destroyed or used during whatever this calamity was.
He kept scanning. He was actually finding it very hard for his sense to penetrate very deep into the ground - it was absolutely glowing with Essence and energy - almost as if everything that had come crashing down had been absorbed if it had not been used at the end. But it seemed to be quiescent as if waiting for something.
A sudden ping off of his Essence Sense made him blink and he pushed his World Tree staff out of its tattoo on his arm as he started walking towards what he had found. With the ground so broken up and clear spots of heat still smoking or steaming, he used the staff to probe the ground ahead for hidden pitfalls.
As he walked over the broken mess, he could see that odd Essence soaking into the ground. There were occasional shifts and rumblings underfoot - his Essence Sense showed the pearl coloured Essence combining with the other types to slowly heal the disrupted and shattered earth.
The staff started humming, its Dao patterns growing bright. Chún could see swirls of that same mother-of-pearl Essence being drawn into the staff as he walked.
After walking almost four li, he found what had registered on his sense - the collapsed crater that was all that remained of his workshop clearing. The old creek where he used to dig for clay was now another li away, instead of a few arms pans, but it was now a mighty river, rushing swiftly past.
The drying pit had completely collapsed. There were shards of the obsidian that the Mountain had used to make it visible here and there, but otherwise it was just rubble.
Chún sighed then started digging through the mess, checking for anything salvageable. Something had registered on his Essence Sense here.
Shards of pottery turned up but nothing useful - until his staff slammed into something hard. He cleared the soil around a lump with some Essence manipulation and found the Cauldron that he had basically created as a legendary artifact by accident. Despite being in the kiln at the time, it had survived where everything else had been destroyed.
It now appeared to be made of a solid black ceramic that could pass for iron until it was hit. The 'carvings' growing from its surface were now much more pronounced, covering every inch of it. Fantastical beasts which he recognised as charging down from the… he sighed and admitted it to himself - there was only one name for what had happened.
He had seen the creatures that now adorned the artefact as they had plunged out of the Heavens to smite his friend; somehow the Mountain had triggered a Heavenly Tribulation.
Lightning and other types of Essence crackled over the Artefact if you looked at it too long, lingering appropriately on the variously disturbing and lifelike carvings.
Fire Essence lingered on the Feathers of the Vermilion Bird, Water Essence dripped from the Shell of the Black Tortoise, Lightning glittered on the outline of the White Tiger and the Dragon carving never seemed to stop moving with Wind Essence twining about it, always growing and shifting.
"Well - if you were only a low level legendary artefact before, you are certainly more than that now, Cauldron," Chún observed aloud then froze in startlement as that mother-of pearl-sheen seemed to flash over each of the carvings as the artefact rolled itself upright and all of the carvings suddenly were looking towards him in various poses. He could even see the head of a Qilin poking over the top from the other side, Essence of all types outlining its shape.
"I do not suppose you can explain anything?" he asked rhetorically, squatting down on his haunches and thrusting the staff into the broken ground, where it hummed and glowed.
Surprisingly, all the heads of the carvings on the Cauldron fitted to face the East. Instinctively, Chún followed their gaze to look at the distant silhouette of the World Tree, unobscured by intervening vegetation - and a shimmering length of mother of pearl Essence shaped like an enormous chain hanging limply from the sky behind it.
As he watched, the link at the end of the chain shivered. A soul piercing chime that seemed to come from heavenly bells resonated from everywhere and nowhere at the same time; then the shuddering chain link that dwarfed the World Tree - burst - into a massive wash of mother-of-pearl Essence Motes that exploded out in all directions, racing into the horizon. Chún flinched as the wave of pearl Essence slammed into him, but he only felt refreshed and renewed. In its wake, the land shifted and settled looking less damaged, tiny shoots of vegetation appearing all over its surface.
The World Tree staff hummed energetically, sucking the new Essence in, then jerked itself free of the ground. Chún leapt forward and managed to grasp a hold of it, just as it shot into the air and sped like a streak of lightning towards its parent, dragging the young teen with it like an attached banner, yelling in surprise and shock.
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