PtM Book 17 - Chapter 37: The Second Truth of Mists

Big chapter today. I waited like a year to write it (or some version of it) and the next one. So I'll post chapter 38 right away, as I think the read better continuously.

Enjoy!

2/3 this week.

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Ninesky flew a circle around Cha Ming before entering a thinking pose. “It’s like I said, helping him is difficult. Far more difficult than you might think. His body, his law core, and his soul are currently in a state of flux. External contamination could well kill him. Any direct help is completely out of the question.”

“Could I accelerate the process in any way?” Huxian said. “Or feed him energy or something?”

“No, that would only make things worse,” Ninesky said. “Though… there’s one thing I can think of that might help. But I’m not sure if I should say it.”

“And why’s that?” Huxian said.

“Because it’ll affect your chances of passing the tribulation,” Ninesky said. “Which will therefore affect our chances of passing the tribulation. Also, Cha Might might hate me for it.”

“Just tell me,” Huxian said. “I can take it.”

Ninesky brightened, and all the seriousness in her expression vanished. “Well, it’s like this – even if you can’t directly feed him energy, you could always help him grow stronger. But you can’t increase his cultivation, so we need to get creative. For example, you could strengthen me.”

“You?” Huxian said.

“Yes, me,” said Ninesky. “If I grow stronger, the Clear Sky World will grow stronger. Cha Ming’s inner world will therefore become stronger.”

“I don’t know,” Huxian said. “Defending against the tribulation will be hard enough as it is.”

“If you strengthen me, I’ll be able to help protect him during the earlier parts of the tribulation,” Ninesky explained. “Also, a stronger inner world will mean he’ll be able to digest the demiplane more quickly. If we play our cards right, he might even be able to finish before the tribulation is over.”

Huxian nodded. “That seems reasonable. What do you need. Just tell me and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Well, for starters, I need fiend blood to balance out my energies,” Ninesky said. “As much as you can lay your paws on, and as high grade as you can.”

“I can’t contain fiend blood,” Huxian said.

Ninesky turned into a brush and painted a dark sphere. It grew and grew until it was the size of a large valley. And then it shrank, impossibly, using Grandmist laws as a basis to compress itself, all the way until it was the size of a marble. “Store it all inside this tiny pocket realm then. It should be physically impossible for you to exceed its limits.”

“Done,” Huxian said, accepting the sphere “What else?”

“Normally I’d need a lot of primal chaos energies, but I seem to have an overabundance of it now,” Ninesky said. “Therefore, I only need one last thing.”

“And what’s that?” asked the fox.

“Your tails,” Ninesky said.

Huxian chuckled. “You’re joking right?” Then his smile faded. “You’re not joking.”

“It’s difficult to find adequate treasures to upgrade my main body at this point,” Ninesky said sadly. “Fiend blood will help balance out my creative and destructive energies, but it’s not enough. It goes without saying how precious your tails are, even if you can regrow them. And they’re a lot easier to get a hold of than a primordial dragon horn or a primordial phoenix feather. A heaven mending stone would also work.”

Huxian had an abundance of bloodline memories, so he naturally knew the worth of these treasures. It would be all but impossible to get a hold of them, even in the Heartforge Realm. And even if he did, he would have no way to transport such a treasure. “You realize that my strength will drop by half, don’t you?” Huxian said. “And it’ll take me years to grow them back. I won’t have them for the tribulation.”

“That’s why I wasn’t sure if I should ask,” Ninesky said. “But you insisted.”

Huxian hesitated. “How much stronger will that make you?”

“Replacing my tuft with your tails will double my strength,” Ninesky said. “The eight directional powers sealed in your bloodline will make it easier to blend creation and destruction energies, thereby accelerating the digestion of the demiplane.”

“So if I give them now, you could get started?” Huxian asked.

“Unfortunately, my energies are too far out of balance,” Ninesky said. “Fiend blood is very rich in destruction energies. With enough of it I should be able to use your tails to permanently fix the imbalance.”

Ninesky and Huxian hadn’t known each other for very long, but as Cha Ming’s artifact spirit, she wouldn’t do anything to put him in danger. Probably. “Fine. I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll get you as much fiend blood as I can find over the next month. As for my tails, it’ll be best to wait until they’ve fully grown. When the tribulation arrives, you can have all eight of them.”

“I don’t think we need all eight of them,” Ninesky said. “That also wouldn’t give you any time to recover at all.”

“But long term, will the effect be better?” Huxian asked.

“Yes, but-“

“Then it’s settled,” said Huxian. Cutting off one’s tails was an excruciating experience. There was no way he was going it more than once in his life.

***

Twenty-five years was long time for anyone, but for Cha Ming, it passed like a dream. The first and most difficult year had come and gone, and as such, he only needed to wait. Waves upon wave of primal chaos energy and Dao fragments washed through his body, slowly transforming and reorganizing his body, his inner world, his soul, and his core.

The changes to Cha Ming’s inner world were difficult to describe, but they mirrored the changes to his law runes. The pair representing accumulation and eruption used the Dao Origins of the Flamewing Demiplane to form a network with the other runes in his spiritual sea, then reached out into the universe to add upon themselves organically.

A similar transformation occurred inside his soul, and his energies, already 99% fused, mixed even further. The last of his golden, eight-colored, and jade energies slowly dissolved into the clear, misty pool, eliminating all color from the shared energy pool.

It took five years for Cha Ming to 99.8%. Five years later, his energy fusion rate exceeded 99.9%. He was only missing a tiny sliver of inspiration to complete his final transformation.

His inner world was on the verge of a monumental change. His law projection was almost fully formed. His soul was about to enter the next stage of its development.

And yet, he could not take that single step that separated him from the next realm. Try as he might, he could not wear down the barrier.

Another five years passed with no further changes. Ninesky was still in the process of awakening, and Luther and the two kittens had entered a state of hibernation as well. Loneliness consumed Cha Ming, and Huxian’s monthly visits were no longer enough. He yearned for company he couldn’t have.

Cha Ming unconsciously drifted into a half-sleeping state, and before he new it twenty years had come and gone since his arrival on the Flamewing Demiplane.

The Flamewing Demiplane’s core was no longer as active as in the beginning. Cha Ming and Ninesky had drained it to its limits, and Cha Ming was now faced with a difficult decision: should he stop absorbing the demiplane and find another way to awaken Ninesky, or should he continue on this path and try to absorb another piece of it?

And that was when he heard it. A heaven-shattering noise to break the silence of space. A drum-like noise that sounded in the void as the entire universe held its breath.

The sound of a beating heart snapped Cha Ming out his dreaming state, and the Flamewing Demiplane unstable as it was, threatened to collapse. Yet Cha Ming did not hesitate to increase the rate at which he transferred energy. The space shattered, and the demiplane began to collapse on itself, starting with the planar membrane.

Time was relative, and in this strange state and strange place at the eye of a collapsing world, five years passed. An enormous amount of energy, over half of what remained inside the planar core, was syphoned off into the sleeping Ninesky. The spirit was greedy to drink, greedy to awaken.

Yet she could not awaken, no matter how much energy she took in. Cha Ming knew this because Ninesky knew this. She conveyed the message to him in a dream.

It was in that same dream that Cha Ming found himself walking deep into the mists, inside the Clear Sky Brush, inside his spiritual sea. Or was it?

It didn’t feel like the core of his being, but an external location. A place where time matter, and even space did not exist.

He saw her there, dreaming on a bed of world script stone. The history of countless worlds was etched on the bed’s surface, and he saw that the words were not yet final. They were still being written.

Above Ninesky floated a world. Or rather, a reality that had not yet taken place. The dream was familiar to Cha Ming, because within the dream, he saw himself and his own world. Ninesky was dreaming of him, and through the mists she had reached out to him and brought him here.

“The Ninesky in my world isn’t real,” Cha Ming realized. “Nor am I real.” It was but one dream of many that would wink out of existence when she woke again. And next, there would be another world, another painter. Another iteration.

But Ninesky didn’t want this world to end. Nor did she want this sort of endless, dreaming existence. It was repetitive. It was boring. She was lonely. And for a moment, Cha Ming felt a hint of what she felt, a slice of omniscience and predictability. The dream wasn’t over, but she knew how it had begun, and how it would end.

If it was me, I was also be bored, Cha Ming thought. Which is why I’m here.

Which is why you’re here, Ninesky conveyed.

Cha Ming was only a fragment of a dream. A powerful fragment, but still a fragment. He could not avoid destruction. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t useful. Only a fragment like him could bring her over. Only a piece of this reality could assert it into being. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, only that it was as truth, one of three that were fundamental to reality.

He was left with a difficult choice. “Do I help her escape her dream? Do I make this world a real world, giving up aeons of guaranteed existence for endless uncertainty?” He could also sense Ninesky’s uncertainty. She had never tried this before. But oh, how she wanted it. How she wanted to be free.

As for Cha Ming, he wanted to be real. He wanted this world to be real. Finding out that the life he’d lived so far was transient and illusory was too great a shock for him.

And yet… it was not simple as wishing to bring a world into being. The slightest mistake, and it would all be over. His karma would be forever changed, and the nature of the world forever tied to him, the brush’s wielder.

Paint it. Paint it. Paintitpaintitpaintitpaintit!

Cha Ming raised a hand, the mists around him aggregated. They formed a new brush, not Ninesky, but a part of her, that he wielded to paint the rest of these lonely mists.

He painted the creation of the world he saw dreamed, as well as its founding characters. Primordials emerged from the mists, fully aware and brimming with strength. Each of them possessed great power, and unfathomable intelligence.

For a time, they coexisted peacefully. They intuitively understood each other, and were restrained by their respective natures. Until one day, the first primordial perished. Permanence, too confident in its durability, flew too far into the void and perished.

The death of Permanence led to the birth of new Primordials. Among them were Fear and Dissipation. The remaining Primordials became aware of their limits and their mortality.

Having lost permanence, the Primordials began to fight amongst each other. It soon became clear that no one, not even they, could live forever. For fear of being forgotten, they reproduced, creating a new generation of creatures, elementals and desolate beasts.

Desolate beast and elementals faced the same problems as their ancestors. All of them required sustenance, and none of them could live forever. Their desire for permanence led to yet another generation of creatures, demons, and lesser elementals, and eventually, humans.

Cha Ming already knew the rest of the story. Some Primordials took pity upon the humans. Others enslaved them. Eventually, Emperor Yu, Fuxi, and Nuwa reincarnated and engineered the rise of humanity.

For the most part, Ninesky did nothing to interfere in this process. Cha Ming painted, and she intervened only at key points in history, painting catastrophes and disasters and changes in the heavenly order. Each time, she was accompanied by a painter.

Several times, Cha Ming stumbled upon things that he wished not to paint. Things that he wished to change. He saw the splitting of the crystal mountain into jade and ochre, and very much wanted to change it.

Yet before he could make this change, he was overcome with a feeling of dread. With certain knowledge that should he paint this change, he would vanish.

Including her first appearance at the creation of the universe, Ninesky appeared a total of eighty times. Her last appearance was with Sun Wukong. By this point, she’d grown so weak that a powerful Buddhist cultivator sealed the Monkey King inside her. She was lost to time and space.

Eventually, the seal weakened, leading to the brush’s appearance in a small, mortal world. It was Cha Ming who found her, and it was with her help that he re-entered the cycle of reincarnation.

One thing led to the next. Cha Ming cultivated to the peak of the mortal realms and ascended to the Inkwell Plane. A series of unfortunate events brought him to the Heartforge Realm, where he remade himself and gathered the resources required to awaken Ninesky.

In the end, he saw a world that was exactly like his own. Whatever changes he’d painted were already reflected in himself. The mists were gone, and so was everything but Ninesky. All that was left was a final step.

He walked up to Ninesky and held up a familiar brush. The Clear Sky Brush. He tapped it on her forehead, and her body vanished. It poured the entirety of her essence into the brush, which bonded its life to Cha Ming’s.

“From now on, this world is real,” said Cha Ming, painting the final stroke onto the masterpiece. The brush stroke was a final signature that tied the Painted Mist universe’s life to his.

He shivered as, for a second, he gained a glimpse of his new domain, of every creature in existence. But then his perspective shrank to something that he could handle comfortably.

Though the omniscience he gained was only temporary, there was one thing Cha Ming did not forget. It was the feeling of causality that connected him to the world. The world had made him, yet he, in turn, had painted it.

Cha Ming was therefore self-created, as was this world. It was one of the three truths of the universe, that of Self Wrought Existence.

Cha Ming looked around and saw that he was back inside his spiritual sea. The mists had vanished, and so had Ninesky. Only the Clear Sky Brush remained, as well as Ninesky’s eight other incarnations.

She flew around playfully, relishing in the feeling of uncertainty that Cha Ming had brought her. Going forward, everything would be a new experience. A new adventure.

“Success!” said Ninesky joyfully, flying circles around Cha Ming and in his inner world. She crossed countless mortal planes, influencing them in ever slight ways, only to return by his side with a mischievous grin on her face. “I waited a long time for this moment, but we’re finally here.”

“We’re finally here,” Cha Ming said, still a little pale. “As frightening as that is.”

“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?” said Ninesky. “Let’s go! I want to play! I want to eat!” She was countless times over than their current universe, but instead of the wisdom that should convey, she had the disposition of a child.

“The Second Truth of Mists…” Cha Ming muttered to himself. “Self-Wrought Existence.” He was afraid to forget this feeling, so he used it in the simplest way he could think of. He raised his finger and painted a river of ink.

It was a circular river, and it went round and round. Its energy density was about that of a top-grade immortal crystal. And yet, little by little, it fed into itself. Its energy concentration increased, until finally, it broke through a boundary and took a half step into immortality.

He could only wield a fraction of this mysterious truth, but he was already capable of creating immortal energy. Cha Ming sensed that this was just the beginning. If he applied this truth to his cultivation, to his inner world…

“Wake up sleepy head!” came a voice. A finger flicked his forehead. Cha Ming was angry that Ninesky would wake him at first, but he realized that weeks had already come and gone.

“Ninesky?” Cha Ming said. “What is Grandmist? And did I see correctly? Is this world a dream, or is it reality?”

She covered her mouth and giggled. “Why would I know that?” she said. “I’m just a silly brush spirit that’s barely a few weeks old.”

Cha Ming rubbed his head. Just thinking about it all gave him a huge headache. The ‘truth’, it turns out, was a logical nightmare, and thinking about anything relating to its existence was an exercise in futility.

“Ninesky?” Cha Ming finally said, looking at the spirit of the Clear Sky Brush. She was tiny, barely six inches long, but she had the playfulness and curiosity of a classroom of first-graders.

“Yes, Cha Ming?” said Ninesky, beaming.

“Welcome to the Painted Mists Universe, Ninesky,” said Cha Ming. “Let’s along. Let’s have fun.”