PtM Book 16 - Chapter 26: The Raging Tide Sect

3/3 this week.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that I'll be taking a one month "holiday", and will therefore be pausing contributions. 

I didn't think I would need to do this, but apparently moving countries is incredibly stressful. Go figure. We're moving in two stages. This one involves moving from our place in Beijing to our inlaws place in another city. The next will involve moving to Canada at the end of October, so I'll likely do the same thing then again.

Once again, apologies. I hope you all understand. I tried writing in these conditions but couldn't due to crippling anxiety. I'll keep posting chapters next week, then pause for about a month before continuing again. 

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What started off as half a dozen fiend attacks in scattered portions of Cha Ming’s protectorate quickly devolved into a month-long hunting expedition, with no time for rest or exploration. The fiends were merciless, and like the Taotie from the Ling Nan Plane, they had a sixth sense for dense sources of energy, which, unfortunately, included dense packings of life forms.

They left devastated sects, ruined forests, empty towns, and tarnished lakes in their wake, and regardless of how long it took for Cha Ming to complete the missions that were issued, it was never quick enough. Every fiend that emerged would result in thousands of deaths. He was just too slow, and it weighed heavily on his mind and spirit.

Days passed, and his dour mood began to influence the Seed of Iridescence in his spiritual sea. His Iridescent Aura, which was highly attuned to his emotions, became incapable of reflecting happiness.

A similar change occurred in the white seed representing Cha Ming’s Aura of Inspiration. What should have been a tool to encourage the poor and the downtrodden instead became a receptacle for all the gloom in their hearts. There was a hopelessness there that had taken root and festered over decades.

Cha Ming gradually grew numb to it all as his Savage Deity Seed reclaimed its territory in his spiritual sea. His actions grew increasingly cold and calculative. Since his heart couldn’t handle seeing so many die, he began to see them as numbers instead. These weren’t deaths, but a loss of points that were frustratingly eating away at what would otherwise be a profitable hunting expedition.

Finally, a month later, there was a lull in the spontaneous emergence of fiends. Cha Ming was uncertain about what to do with this sudden freedom, but his calculative mind stepped in and reminded him of what was most important: Reconnaissance. Knowing the terrain. Understanding external threats.

Fiends were a known quantity, but what about the sects and cities and other places on the Chasewind Plane? He would need to understand them all if he was to survive and excel in this competition.

He spent the next few days hopping from city to city and questioning any cultivators he came across. He eventually managed to piece together some rudimentary information on the Chasewind Plane. His protectorate, he learned, was in fact known as the Azure Tempest Territory. It was named after the top sect that managed the area.

The Chasewind Plane was different than the Inkwell Plane. It did not favor the water element or demons, but instead favored wind and lightning cultivation. The plane had a balanced human and demon population.

Geographically, it had few oceans. The air was generally parched and dry. The Chasewind Plane was known for its high-intensity winds and a few lightning-covered territories.

The culture of the plane was vastly different from that of the Inkwell Plane. Here, cultivators did not involves themselves in mortal society – or at least the humans didn’t. Here, cultivators mostly kept to sects, and when they did deign to take root in a city, they set up cultivator-only zones.

For the most part, the sects kept to energy-rich mountains and the cloudy regions where spiritual energy was densest. Most sects were cities unto themselves, and mortals were not allowed inside them, even to perform the most menial of tasks.

Conversely, cultivators took no part in the management of cities or countries. Most countries were monarchies and passed down titles according to bloodline. Cultivators were specifically forbidden from ruling a country, and any who tried to do so would be captured by the sects and killed if found guilty at trial.

The system intrigued Cha Ming. It was vastly different than the Crimson Lotus Empire, where mortals and cultivators mingled, and even farther removed from the Mendin system and demon cities, where practically everyone was a cultivator.

After a week of aimless travelling, Cha Ming decided to pay a visit to a mortal city. The city was small compared to those on the Inkwell Plane. Its name was Soaring City, and it was the capital of the Soaring Eagle Kingdom. It only housed ten million residents, and that was if you included all the towns at the outskirts that were folded into the city’s management structure.

Cha Ming was initially confused as to the small population. After all, this was a transcendent realm, which meant that transportation should be cheap and food growth and preservation easy. Then he remembered the stern separation of mortals and cultivators, and everything began to make sense.

Technology and artifacts were not common among the mortal populace. Basic artifices for healing and cooling were few in number, and typically remained in the hands of the wealthy.

The city did not facilitate flying ship traffic. Almost all vehicles were landbound, and the few flying ships and flying cultivators that went in and out of the city did so in an uncontrolled manner. Mere mortals were not allowed to dictate the actions of the powerful.

When Cha Ming reported this to Huxian, Huxian told him of a very different demon city environment. There were few humans where he was located, and apparently, initiation realm demons were much rarer on the Chasewind Plane. As such, three quarters of the residents in demon cities could only assume bestial forms. What was most amazing was that they could speak, think clearly, and were sometimes able to manipulate demonic energy.

The buildings were shorter in Soaring City, since they did not have the technology or runework to build beyond a certain level. Even using an initial rune carving geomancer to erect a structure would allow them to increase their population density by over fifty percent.

The cost for doing so wouldn’t even be high, since such a low-level geomancer wouldn’t cost more than a few hundred spirit stones a month to hire, including their material expenses. Even so, it was never done except for large businesses locations and wealthy manors.

There were some exceptions to this low technology rule. The Chasewind Plane was, after all, a transcendent plane. Relying on local transportation and the local economy was one thing, but if you were going to transfer goods from one city to another across the wilderness, it was impossible to do so safely without cultivators. The merchants in the city typically hired cultivators from local sects to escort them, and these cultivators would often provide the flying ships required to traverse these long distances.

Cultivators were expressly forbidden to join either the city guard or the kingdom’s military. Since the safety of a city on a transcendent plane could not be trusted to non-cultivators, each city contained a small detachment of cultivators deployed by nearby sects. It was they who hunted the powerful monsters that encroached cikties and hunted down rogue cultivators that broke the rules.

Have you noticed anything odd about the cultivation system here, Huxian? Cha Ming asked as he walked through Soaring City, scanning mortal after mortal and evaluating their cultivation potential.

Yeah, it’s messed up is what it is, Huxian replied. I did some asking around, and apparently something happened a few thousand years back. This was tens of thousands of years after the plane got hit by whatever blew its top off.

Anyway, the plane got weaker, and suddenly, peak fusion demons couldn’t live here anymore. The same happened with the transcendent qi cultivators and demigods. A few hundred years later, it got worse, and the strongest demons that could survive were middle fusion realm demons.

That explains the lack of strong cultivators, Cha Ming said. But I was talking more about the lower levels. There are core formation cultivators on this plane, Huxian. Most mortals aren’t born with a complete core. Those who manage to cultivate their core can use mortal qi and are known as martial artists.

That’s…

Impossible, I know, but not unusual if you consider the lack of higher-grade cultivators, Cha Ming said. The upper limit decreased with the plane’s ambient energy, which is very low. Mortals don’t need a complete core to survive here. I bet you you’d find the same if you looked at demons. It did not take long for Huxian to confirm this.

All this new information was a lot to take in, and Cha Ming was still quite tense form a month of hunting down fiends and dealing with their aftermath. It had been a long time since Cha Ming had frequented a mortal business, so he took a seat at a wine house and ordered their finest wine, which could barely intoxicate him. Then, realizing he had a complete lack of mortal currency, he directly created said currency using his creation qi, going so far as to mimic the formation stamps that could be seen on every coin.

Cha Ming became a frequent patron of the wine house over the next few days. He did not speak to anyone and kept to himself but consumed an endless flow of the most expensive wine the wine house had to offer.

He did not interact with anyone and remained content with listening.

Here in Soaring City, things were not so desperate. The people were safe and hadn’t seen a fiend attack in years.

These mortals were not worried about survival. Some came to toast to happy events like promotions or newborn children, while others came to sit in a dark corner and drink away their sorrows. Old friends came to reminisce about old times, as each year was precious and significant to them.

The tension in his body gradually released as the Seed of Iridescence in his spiritual sea became less lopsided. The Seed of Inspiration, which had grown dull over the month of fiend hunting, grew brighter as it was exposed to the hopes and dreams of these mortals.

It even went a step further and gave these people a slight nudge. They felt their doubts fade and their future grow brighter with every minute they spent in the wine house. These mortals could not understand what was happening, but they could feel it, and many even returned several days consecutively to bask in this feeling.

It was a week after he entered Soaring City that he encountered the first unpleasant group of cultivators. Indignant shouting came from two floors down, souring the transcendent mood he’d managed to cultivate.

His irritation only grew when he discovered that the perpetrator was merely an early rune carving cultivator. He was a fly that would never think to cause a ruckus on the Inkwell Plane, yet here, surrounded by mortals, he had the capital to show off and bully people.

“You dare insult this cultivator?” the young rune carving cultivator said to a martial artist whose core was halfway to completion. “You’d better apologize now while my mood is still good.”

“Sirs, please accept my most sincere apologies,” the mortal proprietor said. He was sweating profusely and clearly wishing he were somewhere else. “Your drinks are naturally on the house, esteemed cultivator. Along with any drink you order in the future.”

The proprietor offered him a jug of fine wine, but the cultivator sneered and slapped it to the ground. Pungent and expensive wine splashed across the floor and onto the robes of shocked patrons.

The middle-aged martial artist sneered. “You may be a cultivator, but there are limits. I did not say anything insulting. I merely speculated that if we worked at our martial arts, one day we might become cultivators. Is there anything wrong with ambition? Is there anything wrong with wanting to better oneself?”

“The comparison is frankly insulting,” the rune carving cultivator said. “Tell me, would you compare a swine and a human in the same sentence? Us cultivators and you mortals are a different species. Apologize, or I will be forced to punish you.”

A few in the crowd stirred angrily. Like the middle-aged man, they too were core formation cultivators. Yet their status was no different from that of other mortals. Transcendent cultivators did not consider them true cultivators and did not allow them to call themselves thusly.

All of this was very ironic to Cha Ming, of course, because he knew that before a rune gathering cultivator, a rune carving cultivator was practically a mortal. His seniors should have told him this, but instead, they allowed him to run rampant.

The core formation cultivator refused to apologize. “What gives you the right to come here and bully us mortals? Aren’t such actions forbidden by your elders?”

The rune carving cultivator laughed. “I am a member of the Raging Tide Sect. That is all the right I need to do whatever I wish. As for the prohibition… By all means. Submit a petition and demand enforcement.”

“Your sect has sworn not to get involved in the affairs of mortals,” the core formation cultivator said. “All sects have. What makes you think that you are the exception?”

The rune carving cultivator sneered. Then, to Cha Ming’s surprise, he stepped aside and showed the man the door. “Then by all means, go ahead and report the matter. There’s the door. If you can leave this place in the next thirty breaths, there won’t be any need to report this matter. I’ll personally apologise. Otherwise…” He grinned. “You only need to kowtow to this cultivator and cut off a finger to apologise. Then I will consider this matter written off.”

“You!” A burst of flames erupted from the core formation cultivator and struck his opponent’s domain. The flames were powerful – strong enough to scorch the wood in the winehouse – but before a transcendent’s domain, these flames were lacking.

“Well? I’m waiting,” the rune carving cultivator taunted.

There’s some kind of class conflict going on that’s been stewing for a long time, Cha Ming realized as he observed the confrontation and tracked down karmic threads binding everyone present. There were many crimson threads connecting the core formation in the room with the individual cultivators in the city. These confrontations were not uncommon. Things were also different than he’d imagined – here, a core formation cultivator’s status was lower than that of a mortal.

The core formation cultivator was in a bad condition, but it was hard to get off a tiger when you were riding it. So he grit his teeth and walked towards the exit.

His muscle bulged and strained as tethers of water wrapped around him and pulled him to the ground. Ten agonizing seconds passed, and with each one that passed, the man grew weaker, his skin grew darker, until it became a bright shade of violet. His opponent was suffocating him.

Cha Ming was a newcomer to this plane and didn’t want to stand out, at least not yet. But he was very much against bullying. It only took the slightest effort on his part to destroy the rune carving cultivator’s restraints. The backlash caused the young man to cough up blood and gave the core formation cultivator the opening he needed. He rushed out of the wine house, and the rune carving cultivator, indignant, knocked the wine house’s brittle wall down with a single fist. “You think you can insult me like this and live?” He didn’t even seem to notice that it wasn’t the mortal who’d o broke free form his domain, but a powerful cultivator that had interfered.

“Aya, it finally came to this,” one of the other core formation cultivators in the room said. “He should have bowed his head down as we always do.”

“What garbage is this?” Cha Ming muttered as he watched the rune carving cultivator fly towards the fleeing middle-aged man. He decided to put an end to this conflict.

Flying through the wine house to catch up would be too inconvenient, so he directly teleported out of the wine house. The rune carving cultivator was currently chasing after the middle-aged man. His domain was small – only fifty meters wide – but it was enough to trip and entangle the other man. No matter how much power he poured into his crude fire-based attacks, it wasn’t enough to break through the vast chasm between mortal and transcendent cultivation.

This continued on for a good minute, and in that time, no less then twenty spiritual senses grazed the area, confirmed the situation, then proceeded to do nothing. The local law enforcement seemed like they wanted to help, but ultimately were unable to justify intervening in such a small manner involving a sect cultivator.

“I grow tired of this chase,” the young man finally said when the middle-aged cultivator was out of qi and could go no further. “I won’t kill you, but I’ll cripple your core and sever your arm.”

That was when Cha Ming decided to step in. He appeared behind the young man and tapped him on the back, sealing his cultivation and knocking him unconscious. The middle-aged man, frightened at the sudden development, decided running was the safest option. Cha Ming did not stop him from doing so.

Attacking and sealing the cultivator naturally naturally drew a lot of attention. Several cultivators mobilized from different points in the city and flew over on flying swords.

“Who dares pick on a member of our Raging Tide Sect?” one of them asked. He was a middle-aged rune gathering cultivator.

“I do,” Cha Ming said. “Since he dares pick on the weak, I dare do the same to him.”

“Attack!” One of the men said. There wasn’t even a bit of hesitation. Their actions were shocking to Cha Ming, since attacking someone who’s cultivation exceeded yours by so much you couldn’t sense it was a definite red flag.

There were twelve cultivators in total. They mostly cultivated water and had water-related artifacts.

These were naturally no threat to Cha Ming, who could probably just stand there and remain unharmed. But stupidity had to be punished, so he took it a step further.

“Break!” Cha Ming commanded, and every sword, technique, and artifact shattered, as did their domains and half-competent world projections. All twelve cultivators fell to the ground coughing up blood as they were struck by the backlash of their own techniques.

Cha Ming paid them no attention, however, because an old man whose cultivation was a half step into the law stitching realm was quickly approaching. A half-complete law-tapestry could be seen hovering around him. It took the form of crashing waves and an angry sea.

“Who dares attack members of my Raging Tide Sect?” the elder said. They were basically the same words as the others had spoken. He summoned a rune-covered flag, which he waved at Cha Ming, summoning forth brackish river.

“Are you not going to bother asking what happened?” Cha Ming asked with crossed arms.

“I don’t need to know what happened,” the elder said calmly. “Strength is everything, youngster. I don’t know which god clan you’re from to reach the peak muscle empowering realm, but this half step in cultivation realm is unbreachable.”

“Strength is everything…” Cha Ming muttered. “I think I understand how things work around here now.” He stared at the man, and for the first time in a long time, he directly activated his Savage Deity Aura. This wasn’t a soul attack, but a manifestation of his presence, which caused the old man to tremble and shake and nearly lose his connection to the flag controlling the brackish river.

Cha Ming summoned the Clear Sky Brush and began painting lines of earth. A dam appeared in front of the brackish river before it could strike his body. Unfortunately, Cha Ming’s qi cultivation was lacking compared to the old man’s, and the dam began to crack and break.

He directed the brush to paint a bridge leading to the old man then stepped onto the bridge and used his powerful body cultivation to stabilize it. It took three steps for him to close the distance between them, after which he took another step and entered the old man’s incomplete law projection.

The law projection’s half-complete rule asserted itself. The rule stated that whoever entered the law projection would need to endure the onslaught of the raging tide. Wave after wave struck him at random angles and made it difficult for Cha Ming to gain stable footing.

“Trying to prevent me form doing anything is laughable,” Cha Ming said. He activated Savage Deity Rush and used the strength of his body to break through the waves and attack the old man directly.

“Impossible!” the elder yelled. He jumped back and pulled back his brackish river, just in time to block Cha Ming’s staff strike. Now that the gap was closed, Cha Ming naturally wouldn’t give up on his offensive – he continued executing Savage Deity Rush to pressure the old man, and occasionally used lightning and wind form to break past the brackish river or change his trajectory.

Somehow, the man was able to hold on, and Cha Ming realized it was thanks to the banner he wielded. The characters on the banner identified it as a raging tide banner.

At his level, crushing this old man wasn’t difficult, but Cha Ming had no desire to start a conflict with the local sects. He therefore limited himself to probing attacks and painted boulders and the like to directly attack the artifact.

“I refuse to believe that a peak muscle empowering Dao god can do me in,” the old man said. He began burning his soul force.

By now, Cha Ming had accumulated a lot of earthen paint streams, and the boulders did not disappear after they attacked the Raging Tide Banner. He clenched his fist and combined them. Rivers of earthen ink flowed to form a lake of ink. And this lake happened to be an earth dragon.

The Earth Dragon let out a loud roar as it attacked the shocked old man. Cha Ming flashed over to the man’s other side using lightning form and pincered him. The two-pronged assault broke through the man’s defences and allowed Cha Ming to severe his connection to the Raging Tide Banner and shatter his half-complete law projection. Doing so greatly injured the elder.

Dealing with qi cultivators could be tricky, so Cha Ming decided that enough was enough and summoned the Ninesky Seal. All nine skies condensed into the form of a stamp, which he pressed onto the man’s navel.

For a few moments they struggled back and forth. Cha Ming’s cultivation wasn’t strong enough to seal him by force, but Cha Ming was so powerful that if he wanted to, he could directly crush the man’s windpipe. In the end, the elder could only give up and allow his cultivation to be sealed.

“You are bold to attack our Raging Tide Sect,” the elder said. “Don’t think that you can hold me for long. The Sect Master will sense my death and pursue you until you perish.”

Cha Ming massaged his brow. “Why is everyone around here so violent? Whatever happened to talking thing through?” He looked around and saw a crowd of stunned mortals and even more cultivators flying their way. “I’ll give you two choices, elder. The first one is that we stay here and I capture your sect members as they come. The second choice is that you instruct them to stop harassing me, and we go to your sect’s headquarters in this city. You will receive me as a guest, call this all a misunderstanding, and then we can have a nice conversation about what happened. Your choice.”

Cha Ming wasn’t used to dealing with sects, but he’d been told they cared a lot about face. His guess proved spot on, as the elder immediately agreed to his proposal. “Very well. Since you are a guest, please release my seal, and I will lead you back to our sect for a friendly meeting.” Cha Ming did so, and the elder’s haggard expression disappeared, and his flicked his sleeve and bundled up his sect members.

“Elder!” one of the incoming cultivators said. “We received your distress signal. Just say the word, and we’ll teach this outsider a lesson!”

“What distress signal? What are you blabbing on a bout?” the elder said in a fit of rage. “This is clearly my good friend from out of town. If you make up nonsense again, I’ll hang you by your ears for three days and three nights. Do you understand me?”

Their trembled and bowed in apology. “Of course, elder! How could we not recognize our esteemed guest from out of town?” one of them said. “It was all my mistake. I will accept the blame and punish myself when we return.”

“Very good,” the elder said. “As for these miscreants, take them away and punish them for daring to insult my good friend, forcing him to teach them a lesson in my place.”

“As you instruct!” the man said.

Cha Ming was bewildered by the abrupt about face but decided to play along. The elder introduced himself as Elder Choking Tide, an elder of the Tier 3 Raging Tide Sect, and began sincerely treating Cha Ming as a long lost friend.