Dont glare at , said Laughing River in a hurt voice. I gallantly left you alone after helpfully pointing out your mistake, and you wasted yet another opportunity by complaining about . I an, honestly, I dont know what more I could have done to help you there.
Li Yi Nuo had spent the last two days glowering at Laughing River and Sen, far less amused than they had been about the things theyd said to her. With a quick exchange of glances, the two n had co to a mutual agreent that they would pretend that it wasnt happening. However, it seed that Laughing River had run out of patience with the ga. To his credit, he had lasted a lot longer than Sen had ever thought he would. The fox seed to have a very limited attention span, although Sen thought that it was mostly a guise that Laughing River put on. After all, who would suspect clever planning from soone who got distracted by everything? Sen got around that problem by assuming that everything the fox said was a lie, a sche, or a misdirection. It seed to be working. Li Yi Nuos strategy of directing baleful glares probably didnt protect her from the Laughing Rivers lies, but it had seed to discourage any more observations about her personality or behaviors. At least, it had been working. With the foxs latest statent, all of her ire landed directly on the fox.
Help ? Help ! By doing what? Calling my character into question? Suggesting that I should be promiscuous with a
When Sen gave her a sharp look, her voice cut off like hed seized her throat in one of his hands.
Do tell? A what? asked Sen in an unfriendly voice.
Stranger, she said weakly, the fire suddenly going out of her.
Sure, said Sen, before he looked over at Laughing River and pointed. That direction?
The fox glanced in the direction Sen pointed. That would be the one.
Ill go scout.
As he started moving into the woods, he heard Li Yi Nuo.
This is your fault.
Laughing River laughed. Oh, dear girl, you did that all by yourself.
Not even remotely interested in hearing any more of that conversation, Sen hid and took off in the indicated direction. He didnt think there was much chance of finding anything as Laughing River just let him wander off alone. Sen focused on looking for signs of spirit beasts of which there were surprisingly few. When he thought about it, they hadnt encountered nearly as many as he would have expected given how deep theyd co into the wilds. They werent near the true heart of the wilds. The way the kingdom had organized itself, civilization followed a loose ring around the edges of a vast area of untad and arguably untamable land controlled by the spirit beast. Even though they had been traveling on an inward course at cultivator speeds for days, it would take weeks of travel to reach the true heart of wilds. Of course, that would also be a probable death sentence since the oldest and strongest spirit beasts in the kingdom were thought to rule there.
Sen tried to remind himself that they were likely seeing places that no one but nascent soul cultivators had seen for thousands of years. Of course, it would have been a lot easier to get excited by that if what they were seeing looked less like hundreds of miles of primordial forest with trees towering hundreds of feet in the air with trunks bigger around than a house. Not that Sen was feeling entirely sad about the journey into the wilds. He had taken the opportunity to replace a lot of the dicinal plants hed used over the last year with their much, much more potent brethren inside the wilds. Hed assud that the spirit beasts would have consud most of them, but the sheer volu of them that could be found in a single section of the pristine forest had shown him how foolish that thought had been. He imagined that this kind of environnt was what the earliest cultivators had braved to make their versions of modern pills and elixirs.
The experience also gave him so insight into why alchemy had beco such a vital field among cultivators. He was almost dizzy with the possibilities the powerful ingredients would open up for him and dismayed with how poorly most of the ingredients he had used over the years would stand up to the new ones. If the earliest cultivators had used plants like the ones he was gathering, no wonder those pills and elixirs had beco things of legend. As the dicinal herbs and alchemical reagents available to sects and wandering cultivators in the civilized world got weaker, though, alchemists would have had to refine their techniques. They would have needed ever more complicated processes to purify and amplify the benefits of those plants and reagents in a bid to replicate what had co before.
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Sen was honestly impressed by how far they had co. He also knew that it was a losing ga. Yes, an alchemist could improve the potency of the ingredients to an extent. Hed done it himself with clever combinations of complentary plants and reagents. That was to say nothing of his thod of manipulating the processes and even underlying structures of pills and elixirs. Even with all of that generational knowledge being passed down to him and the advantages of his unique thods, there were still limits. Try to concentrate sothing too much and youd simply destroy it or, worse, turn it into sothing toxic instead of beneficial. Alchemy frequently had to straddle that line in its bid to offer benefits, routinely relying on the sturdier constitutions of cultivators to process out the toxins over ti or through the use of body cleansing pills. Of course, those pills often left toxins of their own, simply of a different kind.
Using what hed gathered, Sen could avoid most of those pitfalls and make things that could rival the achievents of old. Elixirs that could seemingly resurrect the dead, although he knew that they rely rekindled the almost extinguished spark of life inside soone. Treatnts that could possibly restore limbs and potentially even restore damaged qi channels. A feat long considered a re fantasy among wounded cultivators. Pills that could shatter hopelessly impenetrable bottlenecks. The more he thought about it, the more excited Sen beca. He had to force himself back from that excitent, though. He knew full well that giving such elixirs, pills, and treatnts to the wrong people could an instant death. Worse still, it could an a lingering, excruciating death as the seeming alchemical miracle overwheld a body that was too weak. There were new opportunities, but those enhanced opportunities ca with enhanced risks. Hed need to be more careful about what he made and for whom, not less. Still, he moved through the forest with a smile.
The change happened so fast that it felt almost instantaneous even to Sen's enhanced mind. Primordial forest gave way to open ground that gently rose to reveal ancient ruins. Sen struggled to put a word to what kind of ruins. He wasnt sure if he was looking at the surprisingly intact remains of an ancient city or perhaps a temple that had once been the size of a city. Not that it was perfectly preserved. So of the structures had collapsed. Many of them were overgrown with vines and mosses. One building had a tree that had grown up straight through it. The branches spread over the walls like a verdant, living umbrella. Yet, most of the buildings still looked sound from a distance. There was one structure that rose up from what looked to be the very center of the city. It had a tiered tower that rose toward the sky like a supplication. Each tier was a masterwork of intricate craftsmanship that showed from even miles away.
Beyond that, though, Sen could feel that this place was holy, genuinely, truly holy in a way that most temples and shrines failed to achieve. Of course, anything that holy would also attract things that wished to see it desecrated. There was a horde of wailing ghosts and devilish creatures that looked like they surrounded the city. It was a veritable tide of evil the likes of which Sen had never encountered. He simply stood there in a tangle of reverential awe and abject revulsion. It was only harsh experience that let him drag his eyes away and stumble back into the cover of the forest. Standing out in the open with so many things that would like to see him dead nearby was like an open invitation to death. He did his best to shake off the awe and the revulsion. Then, it beca a struggle to control his anger.
By the ti he got back to Laughing River and Li Yi Nuo, he barely trusted himself to speak. He stord up to them. Laughing River opened his mouth to say sothing and Sen just looked at him. The white-hot rage in that glance made the spirit fox take three quick steps back and raise his hand in a gesture of peace and surrender.
No, said Sen.
Sen, said the fox in a friendly, reassuring voice.
I said, no! roared Sen. I owe you a favor, but no favor is worth that.
Sen stalked over to Li Yi Nuo, who looked terrified that he was going to attack her. She looked terrified and confused when he grabbed her hand.
Lets go. Were leaving, said Sen and all but dragged her away from the flabbergasted fox.
Li Yi Nuo didnt try to fight Sens inexorable montum. Instead, she tried to get a handle on the situation.
What is happening? she asked. I dont understand whats going on.
That bastard wants us to rob a temple.
What? demanded Li Yi Nuo, not even attempting to hide her shock.
You know, he wants us to just causally steal from a sacred ruin after we fight our way through an army of spirits, angry ghosts, devil beasts, and the gods only know what else. Well, you know what? Fuck that!
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