PtM Book 16 - Chapter 33: The Azure Tempest

1/3 this week. Sorry about the delay ^^.

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The Azure Tempest Sect was a large and powerful sect that kept mostly to themselves. In his dealings on the Chasewind Plane, they’d seldom come up, and even then, only in passing. Despite their general policy of non-interference, it was possible to drum up a fair amount of information with relatively little hassle. They weren’t secretive – they just didn’t like troublesome interference.

The Azure Tempest Sect was a Tier 1 Sect. Cultivation families excluded, it recruited most of its members from the elites of the neighboring Tier 2 and Tier 3 sects. About half their elders were taken from other sects whenever they broke through to the early rune gathering, since it was difficult for such cultivators to remain subservient to sect masters with the same cultivation level.

There was little traffic into or out of the Azure Tempest Sect, despite there being an open invitation for all to visit. This was because to enter the sect, one had to prove themselves worthy. The test? Simply enter the outer sect by crossing the border mountains. This was much easier said than done.

“Independently, the mountains aren’t very threatening,” Crimson Tempest explained from the prow of their ship as they travelled. “But together, they form a Four Winds Misdirection Formation. Any who try to enter will find themselves unable to proceed inward unless protected by an artifact, a law-stitching realm cultivator, or a body cultivator or demon of comparable strength. There aren’t many of these artifacts in existence, so the basic requirement is the support of an initial law stitching cultivator.”

“That explains why the sect recruitment events are held in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 sects,” Cha Ming said. This grand event took place every decade and was conducted in the top eight neighboring Tier 2 Sects.

At the center of the four mountains lay a sprawling city. It was a city where only cultivators resided. Millions lived there in addition to the land the sect owned just outside the mountains.

According to the reports Cha Ming had read, mortals weren’t forbidden entry into the sect – it was just impossible for them to survive.

The four mountains didn’t just protect the sect – they also protected those outside the sect from the deadly winds within. These winds were deadly to most mortals – those in the sect raising family members had little choice but to step out until their children were grown or step up a protected area for them to live in.

The source of these strong winds was none other than the Azure Tempest that floated several kilometers above the outer sect. It was several tens of kilometers wide and filled the entire area with sheer winds that could tear apart shell marking demigods if they weren’t being careful enough.

Cha Ming got his first taste of these winds as the ship tore through the mountain formation, and Elder Crimson Tempest deactivated the shields. “Even from this distance, the winds are so deadly that even initial rune carving cultivators would have a hard time,” the elder explained. “It is said that the maelstrom was once a rank 15 wind elemental – that’s the elemental equivalent of peak law stitching. The elemental was the sect master’s spirit friend, and upon her death, the elemental agreed to being sealed inside an obelisk where it could protect the sect for all time.”

Simply remaining in the Azure Tempest’s proximity is the best training environment for their disciples. Wherever Cha Ming looked, disciples were floating about, attuning themselves to the wind.

Most were deep in meditation, though closer they got to the tempest’s borders, some were actually risking their lives. There were three light barriers just outside the tempest that appeared to be markers for some sort of competition. “Is there a reward for breaching the light barrier located 500 meters from the edge?” Cha Ming asked Elder Crimson Tempest.

The elder smiled. “Yes, there is a reward. Those who breach the 500-meter mark do not need to wait for the decennial competition to enter the inner sect and can enter it directly. Moreover, they will gain an identity as Progeny of Wind and receive special nurturing.” As he spoke, a disciple was closing in on the boundary, but Cha Ming could tell that with his power, there was no way he could make it.

“Aren’t you going to stop him?” Cha Ming asked.

“He is free to overestimate himself and suffer the consequences,” the elder said grimly. The disciple in question was caught up in a random gust of wind and pulled into the tempest, where he was torn apart limb from limb. His blood scattered in the wind and splattered the nearest disciples.

The others attempting to breach the light screen paled when they saw the gruesome display. The less confident ones retreated, while the more confident ones schooled their expressions and continued advancing to further temper their wind manipulation arts.

“What a brutal competitive environment,” Cha Ming said. To which the elder simply laughed and shot him a bemused expression.

“You’ve never joined a sect before, have you?” the elder said. “No, don’t answer that. I can tell by your reaction just now. Let me tell you, Clear Sky – compared to other sects out there, our methods are actually quite tame.”

The ship continued on its way. It pulled up to the edge of the maelstrom where the winds were on the verge of tearing through their shields. Elder Crimson Tempest pulled out a badge and opened up a tunnel leading into the inner sect.

“Shall we?” the elder said. He didn’t seem rushed to enter, and judging by his expression, Cha Ming’s answer mattered.

Cha Ming thought a moment before asking a question of his own. “Elder Crimson Tempest, I wonder if the Sect Master provided a deadline for my arrival.”

“She did not,” Elder Crimson Tempest said.

“Then I will remain outside for the time being and see if I can gain my own epiphany on the Azure Tempest,” Cha Ming said. “This is a rare opportunity, and since we are not pressed for time, I would loathe to miss it.”

“Feel free to do so, fellow Daoist,” Crimson Tempest said. “Unfortunately, my own time is limited, so I will go on ahead without you. Once you’ve finished your meditation session, you can either wait for an elder to return from an assignment to enter, or if you are feeling brave, you can breach the light barrier; This will alert an elder who will come retrieve you.”

“Many thanks for the advice, Elder Crimson Tempest,” Cha Ming said, then stepped off the ship and pushed himself backwards to a place where the winds were less deadly.

There was a total of three light barriers on the outside of the Azure Tempest. The outer most barrier doubled up as a shield and eliminated most of stray wind blades from the tempest, thereby protecting the outer sect. There were hundreds of platforms that disciples could meditate on just inside the light barrier.

Cha Ming took a seat on one such platform and began to contemplate the tempest. The azure winds inside it were fierce, and most of those sitting inside the barrier used their domains as a shield. Cha Ming’s body tempering made that unnecessary.

The outer light screen was 2000 meters out from the edge of the Azure Tempest and qualified more as a rest area than a tempering area. Beginners would start off here and eventually make their way to the middle light screen 1000 meters out from the edge, where a second set of platforms were floating in the violent winds.

The inner-most light screen was 500 meters from the outer edge of the tempest. Those who breached it would find themselves on one of eight platforms, and each platform had a large azure bell and a wooden bell ringer that could be used to alert the sect’s elders of their success.

Cha Ming ignored the winds as they cut at his skin. To him, this barely qualified as a tickle. Cha Ming wasn’t here for tempering, however – he could easily obtain better body tempering opportunities in the Heartforge Realm. Instead, he was enjoying the rare opportunity to paint something unique on the Chasewind Plane.

Cha Ming did not use a normal canvas, for the winds would easily blow it away. Instead, he used the sky as his canvas and dozens of high-quality inks to paint his interpretation of the azure winds. Hundreds of bladelike strokes emerged form the Clear Sky Brush. They flowed counter to the tempest and resisted its wind.

The shearing force in the Azure Tempest is impressive,Cha Ming thought as he painted. That it can maintain such power tens of thousands of years after the sealing of the Azure Tempest elemental is a testament to its strength and the concepts imbued within it. With the All-Heaven’s Eye technique, Cha Ming could see some of these concepts in the wind. Some, he added to his tempest, and others he could not capture, for they were ephemeral and beyond expression.

He began with a skeleton. A raw sketch that captured the shape of the tempest. Such a complex item was impossible to paint in fine detail – Cha Ming could only make up for it by capturing the tempest in his mind and painting his understanding onto a canvas.

The inner ring was where he started. This was the origin of the wind and the only place with true substance. The outer winds were simply the result of the original tempest, an illusory extension of something real.

It took a day for Cha Ming to paint a small version of the inner ring that was fully stable. It was only ten meters wide, but when he added complementary winds, the entire thing was fifty meters in diameter. Any farther out and the winds grew too weak. The final size of the tempest depended on the strength of its origins.

Cha Ming attempted to expand it anyway. He reinforced the center and continued outwards. Alas, the foundation of the tempest was unstable, and the tempest began to break apart.

The ink hadn’t set, so Cha Ming retrieved the ink as it broke down. He knew that this was due to a flaw at the inside of the tempest. but he did not immediately try to correct it. Instead, he waited as the tempest wore away at his painting bit by bit, exposing many more flaws that could be corrected.

When the tempest completely collapsed, Cha Ming stepped forward. He did so slowly, with a ponderousness that could not be seen on any other disciples trying to make a break for te thousand meter mark. The further he walked, the more violent the winds became.

He painted as he walked, continuously adding wind blades from a central ring to increase the friction between it and the Azure Tempest.

Cha Ming did not strengthen the painting with his qi. Instead, he collected the ink and used it to strengthen the painting’s core and make up its flaws. He continued to do so until the originally fifty meter painting was whittled down to a tiny ten meter painting.

At this size, his painting was strong and stable enough, and with its protection, he was easily able to breach the light screen at the thousand-meter mark without relying on his strong body.

The winds intensified once again. Cha Ming strengthened the core a final time before expanding the painting to its maximum size once again. This time, it grew until it was a hundred meters in diameter, despite the much stronger winds running counter to it.

The process many days, because simply painting what he saw wasn’t enough - he needed to feel the strength of the wind on his skin, then add these feelings through abstract brush strokes that sometimes complemented his previous work and sometimes contradicted it.

“I’ve reached the limit at the thousand-meter mark,” Cha Ming muttered when he stopped expanding. Five days had come and gone. “I can’t strengthen the painting anymore because the flaws are no longer apparent. The painting collapses at the edges, but that’s the nature of a tempest.”

Cha Ming decisively stepped out another three hundred meters, nearly halfway to the 500-meter barrier. The edge of his painting violently shattered, leaving behind only the initial ten meters of the tempest protecting his body.

It wasn’t enough to protect him this time, and Cha Ming’s golden blood flowed as the azure wind bit into his muscles and his bones. If he’d been a Daoist, the gust of wind would have killed him. His eyes brightened, however, because only by feeling the raw destruction of the tempest could he understand its essence.

Every blade that struck Cha Ming’s flesh deepened his comprehension. He began to see the Azure Tempest not as a natural phenomenon, but as a manifestation of a technique. Through his mind’s eye, he could see azure wings flapping in the wind, propelling the wind elemental several kilometers with each flap. The tempest wasn’t even the goal of the elemental – it was simply a consequence of its intrepid flying abilities.

Cha Ming wasn’t sure if what he’d seen a was real – but that didn’t matter. What mattered was his own interpretation. His goal was not to copy a technique but to capture what he saw and felt into a painting.

He took his pain and poured it into the damaged ink and added it back into his tiny tempest. The tempest expanded before breaking, and Cha Ming repeated the cycle once again.

The image of this imaginary elemental grew stronger in his mind. He saw its sinuous body and twenty-three pairs of azure wings. It was these wings that generated the azure tempest as it flew.

It took time, but eventually, Cha Ming managed to build the painting back up until it was a hundred meters in diameter. He then began taking one careful step after another. Now that he had a better understanding of how the Azure Tempest worked, he directly added corrective strokes whenever he spotted flaws using any ink that broke off.

Six hundred meters out, and only hundred meters away from the final light screen, his hundred-meter tempest breached the light screen and clashed with the more violent winds inside it. His painting collapsed in an instant. But in that small moment, Cha Ming caught a flicker of something dark and familiar.

Is that… destruction? Cha Ming had painted many things before, but it was the first time one of his paintings showed a hint of destruction, even if it was generated via a combination with external forces. No. It’s something else.

He continued advancing, and the further he went in, the more of this special darkness he saw. He determined that the shearing force was so intense between his painted tempest and the Azure Tempest that it resulted in spatial destruction.

It didn’t take long for Cha Ming himself to breach the tempest and stand beside one of the eight floating platforms. He glanced at the azure bell and wooden strike but did not ring them. Instead, he closed his eyes and focused on the picture in his mind.

He saw two tempests generating a dark fissure where they collided. It was a type of destruction in creation, the purest he could think of.

When he opened his eyes again, they were clear and free of confusion. He took out the Clear Sky Brush and the same ink as before and started a new painting. This time, he painted two tempests not one. Each had twenty-three wings, and only a small distance separated them.

As both tempests expanded, they inevitably collided. Cha Ming gradually pulled them apart as he increased their size, knowing that the larger the tempest, the greater the destructive shearing. Eventually, the shearing grew too intense. His paintings began collapsing at the edges.

But this was Cha Ming’s goal. Where this collapse occurred, black lines appeared. This was the spatial destruction he sought. To think that paintings could generate such a powerful offensive force. He continued expanding the tempests until the area of destruction manifested as a blade of turbulent black wind. When he held out his hand to touch it, it pulverized his skin and muscles and began chipping away at his treasure-like bones.

He continued growing the tempests until they were fifty meters in diameter, and the black rift became a randomly shifting wedge of shattered space. He suddenly wondered how this destructive shearing would match up to the tempest itself.

A single painting wasn’t enough, so he created a copy of the twin tempests behind himself and to his right and left, overtop and below.

There were six tempest pairs in all, each with its own destructive wedge that chased away all other winds, creating a low turbulence zone at the center.

It was impossible to completely block out the Azure Tempest’s influence, especially without the help of the final light screen. But he walked forward anyway, passing the azure bell and receiving what his six tempest pairs did not destroy with his body.

The winds that snuck through gradually grew more violent, and soon, they didn’t just chip his bones, but chopped off entire limbs. As a demigod, he could regenerate these limbs, however, and continue onwards towards the violent edge of the Azure Tempest.

At last, he reached that final frontier By then, it wasn’t just six blades of destructive interference that surrounded him; the outer edge of every tempest pair was also covered in dark destruction.

Cha Ming took in a deep breath and took a single step forward, forcing spatial destruction directly into the tempest, causing it to shudder and shift.

The resulting turbulence caused all six of his twin tempests to shake and show signs of collapse. But compared to the instability introduced into the Azure Tempest, this was nothing. Cha Ming realized that he’d overestimated the tempest – after all, the origin of its winds was over ten kilometers away.

The tempest could not correct disturbances so easily at its edges – Cha Ming had encountered a similar problem with his won paintings. The Azure Tempest began warping and wobbling, shaking and shuddering, forcing Cha Ming to stop his advance.

“Who dares cause all this ruckus!” a voice boomed. A gust of wind pushed Cha Ming backward despite the presence of his defensive tempests. One of the tempest pairs even broke apart and shattered, costing Cha Ming all its expensive ink.

“I was merely testing my limits, esteemed elder,” Cha Ming said, clasping his hands to the elder that had appeared. “Stopping and ringing the bell is a little unsatisfying, and only by experiencing extreme shear could I further refine my painting technique.”

He retreated to the platform where the bell was located and pulled the five remaining tempest pairs into the Clear Sky World, where he collected their core and skeletons and pressed them into a canvas for future use. The more qi he utilized, the faster these twin tempests would spin, and the more destructive shearing they would generate.

“Oh… um… yes,” the elder said, then frowned. “You don’t look like one of our disciples.”

Cha Ming clasped his hands in a greeting gesture. “My name is Daoist Clear Sky, and I hail from the Heartforge Realm. I came at the invitation of Sect Master Azure Wind and Elder Crimson Tempest allowed me to stay here and contemplate the Dao of the Azure Tempest.

“Elder Crimson Tempest said that the fastest way to enter the sect would be to challenge the limits of the maelstrom. Are you the elder responsible for escorting those who ring the bell, or should I call someone else?”

The elder gave Cha Ming a hard look before turning around and opening a tunnel into the inner sect. “You can call me Elder Golden Tempest,” the elder said. “Follow me and stay as close as possible. I won’t be held responsible if you get sucked into the tempest and torn to bits.”

Evidently, he wasn’t impressed, and Cha Ming’s goal of creating a good first impression had backfired.

***

The Azure Tempest was several tens of kilometers wide and several kilometers thick. The innermost edge of the turbulent religion was built like a wheel, with inner spokes that connected it to the floating island at its center, preventing it from wandering about and destroying the inner sect.

The inner sect was home to only a few thousand cultivators, of which about a hundred had entered the law stitching realm. Cha Ming had no idea how many elders there were in addition to these people, since they were too powerful for him to even sense.

They were joined by an embarrassed Elder Crimson Tempest the moment they arrived in the inner sect. “Apologies, Elder Golden Tempest. I lost track of time and forgot to go retrieve my charge.”

“It’s good that you admit your mistake,” Elder Golden Tempest said coldly. “Because of you, I’ll be spending the next week repairing the north-east spoke.”

“Quite right, the mistake is mine,” Elder Crimson Tempest said. “Please accept this azure blade flower as an apology.” He sent out a clear box containing a ball of azure energy. Judging by his pained look, this item was exceedingly precious.”

The ornery elder accepted the box, then left in a huff. It was obvious that while the flower was precious, there would be more than time involved in fixing the damage Cha Ming had caused.

“I was brash,” Cha Ming said. “Please accept my apologies.”

“It’s only a small matter,” the elder said amicably. “It would be best if we don’t delay further, however. Please follow me.” He flew off to an azure and gold manor at the center of the sect. It was located on the highest point and radiated a similar wind to the Azure Tempest. Assuming the story about the sealed elemental was true, this place was where it was being kept.

There was no welcoming party. There were no servants in the manor. From what Cha Ming could gather, only the sect master lived here. The garden was certainly worthy of a cultivator at her level, even by the standards of the Inkwell Plane.

Crimson Tempest led Cha Ming to a stone hallway. It was several tens of meters long, and noticeably absent of furnishings or decorations. The elder stopped immediately before the hallway and made for Cha Ming to go ahead. “I have been told to wait here. Please go ahead. The sect master awaits you at the end of the hallway.”

Cha Ming sensed that something unusual was going on. He stepped into the hallway and wondered what trick was being played. Though he could feel no animosity in the immediate area, his intuition was setting off all kind of alarms.

It was only when he’d taken the first ten steps that he noticed why the hallway seemed so odd. The stones weren’t just barren – they were worn.

A light wind sprang up once he was twenty steps in. While it wasn’t strong, it hit Cha Ming like a black of concrete and stopped him in his steps. The pressure only faded when he put his foot back down but mounted when he went to take another step.

The hallway was a test, he realized. But unlike the azure tempest, he had no choice but to take it.