PtM Book 16 - Chapter 13: The Tribulant Yin Demiplane

1/3 this week ^^

The Heartforge Realm, it turns out, was an incomparably huge plane, and in their three months living there, they’d barely scratched the surface in discovering to what extent. The smallest estimates ranged from hundreds of times as large as the Inkwell Plane, and there were rumors that it was actually infinitely large, because it was always adding to itself and shedding off pieces.

The jade and ochre mountains were at the very center of the realm, and beneath them was a city known as Heartforge City. It sprawled out in every direction for tens of thousands of kilometers, such that exploring just this small part of the realm would take several lifetimes.

All manner of service or artifacts could be found in Heartforge City. Fighting outside of designated areas was strictly forbidden, and the city knew not hunger or war.

Despite the relative absence of overt fighting, however, the city was filled to the brim with fierce cultivators that roamed the realm fulfill missions issued by none other than Patriarch Heartforge.

All missions were issued in mission squares; there were several grades of mission squares inside and outside Heartforge City. The one nearest the twin mountains was known as Mission Square One, and it was there that the Invited of the Heartforge Realm could obtain supplementary that gave points.

Cha Ming and Huxian were currently on a reconnaissance mission. They were not here to fulfill any specific orders, but to acquaint themselves with the mysterious Tribulant Yin Demiplane, where it was possible to find a life extinguishing soul needle.

There were four large boards at the outskirts of Mission Square One. This was where most missions were posted, at least the ones available to rank and file cultivators in Heartforge City. The Invited, however, found their missions at the center of the square on a special mission board called the Prime Mission Board. These could only be accepted by the Invited, so there was no real point in other cultivators lurking about.

Huxian and Cha Ming stopped there briefly while they waited for three other Invited that would be accompanying them to the Tribulant Yin Demiplane. “Heartflame Lotus wanted – 2,000 points,” Cha Ming read. “Sixty-year-old Spring and Autumn Branches required. Exact age a must. Five thousand points.”

“Spiritual Blue Silver Grass, 50 points a stalk,” Huxian read on another portion of the board. “Oooh, here’s a list with a bunch of demon cores we could harvest.” A part of Cha Ming was very interested in that proposal, but the dominant part of him, at least currently, shoved that urge where it belonged. This resulted in a twinge of pain in the depths of his soul, which Huxian apologized for before moving onto another sign. “Maybe not demon cores. Let’s stick to plants. Plants are good. Plants don’t feel pain. At least not most of them anyway.”

Most missions were open missions and posted rewards for gathering materials of which an unlimited quantity could be gathered and an unlimited number of Invited could take. Some only permitted a certain number of participants, however, and required those accepting the mission to leave a seal with their Heartforge Badge. These were usually requests for a temporary helper or a guard for the various countries, sects, and even continents in the Heartforge Realm and its adjacent demi planes.

“Finally,” Huxian said after some time. He made a beeline for one of the many assembly posts in the square. Cha Ming followed him over to a group of three cultivators. One was Dao Lord and the other two were Dao Gods.

“This is the fifth cultivator you spoke of?” one of them, a lanky man in practical dark robes, said.

“Yep!” Huxian said. “He’s reliable.”

The cultivator shrugged. “I really don’t really care if he’s reliable or not. As long as you’re both willing to sign onto a temporary non-aggression pact and split the costs of entering the Tribulant Yin Demiplane, you can camp at the entrance and sing songs for all I care.”

“Call me Clear Sky,” Cha Ming greeted.

“I go by Shadestalker around here,” the man said. “These are my companions Bright Autumn and Zephyr.”

“Your team seems to be built around stealth,” Cha Ming said. “Any particular reason?”

“The Tribulant Yin Demiplane is one of the more dangerous demiplanes that can be entered for harvesting missions.” Shadestalker said. “They give us a talisman to escape if things go wrong, but it’s best to be careful. More than a few of us regulars have already died, and I don’t intend to join their number.”

“Many thanks for the warning,” Cha Ming said.

Shadestalker inclined his head. “People like us aren’t destined to end up at the top of the leaderboards, so we do what we can for points. It’s best to be on friendly terms in case a large mission comes up that we need to cooperate on.” He looked to his companions and waved them forward. “Let’s go. I’ll lead the way.”

He explained a few details as they walked into the mission hall, passed multiple rows of desks, and entered a door marked with a glowing circle. Inside it was a room that could fit a thousand people easily. There were dozens of teleportation circles inside it, and each of them led to hundreds of locations.

As invited, they had a priority service desk and queue. Shadestalker went over to the desk and paid their transmission fee. “Here are your return slips,” Shadestalker said to Huxian and Cha Ming when he returned. “Please transfer me 1,000 points each.”

They both tapped their medallions to his and transferred their points. Shadestalker’s eyes lit up slightly when he saw Huxian’s golden medallion and Cha Ming’s clear medallion.

“And here’s the contract,” Shadestalker said, handing them both a document to review. There were no issues with it, so they signed it with a bloody thumbprint, and Shadestalker’s group did the same.

“I’ve yet to go on a gathering mission,” Cha Ming said. “Do these trips usually earn out?”

“It depends how deep you’re willing to go and how long you’re willing to stay,” Shadestalker replied. “If you stay a day, then no. If you stay for a week, then probably.”

I bought a map for 200 points, Huxian sent in secret. It’s a basic map sold by the Heartforge Realm. It has all the different areas and the major ley lines. He handed a copy of it over to Cha Ming, who inspected it.

Anything in the Heartforge Realm could be bought for points. That was especially true on the ochre mountain, which they were technically allowed to visit, but didn’t, for fear that they wouldn’t be able to abide by the non-aggression rule.

Having each signed the agreement, their group headed to the teleportation formation reserved for the Invited. “Destination?” the old man operating the teleportation formation asked.

“The Tribulant Yin Demiplane,” Shadestalker said, handing over his bronze invitation medallion.

“The Tribulant Yin Demiplane again?” the old man asked with a frown. “I told you that isn’t a place to go play around. You got lucky last time. You can’t always count on ideal circumstances. I urge you to reconsider. Wait a few years and come back later when you’re stronger.”

“Relax, gatekeeper,” Shadestalker said. “We all have good escape skills, and Zephyr has a prince-level lightning beast bloodline.”

The old man sighed and shook his head. “Cultivators. Whether human or demon, they always overestimate themselves. Very well, if you’ve made up your mind, I won’t stop you. Get into position, and for the love of all that is holy, don’t stick your arm out of the circle unless you want to lose it.”

A short while later, Huxian and Cha Ming were speeding off on a void ship. They went one way, and Shadestalker and the others went another. Their target was a forest with especially concentrated yin energy that coexisted with the lightning that ran through naturally veins in the earth. Only in places like this did these two energies coexist and therefore produce a large number of tribulant yin crystals.

“Here’s hoping we get lucky,” Huxian said.

“Fat chance of that,” Cha Ming said. “I don’t know about you, but my luck has been terrible. Which is unfortunate, because tribulant yin crystals on their own aren’t worth anything. We might find some tribulant yin threads growing in some, but that’s about it.”

It took around ten thousand years for a tribulant yin thread to grow inside a tribulant yin crystal. Of those, maybe one in ten thousand would mutate to form a thicker soul extinguishing spirit needle. They were literally looking for a needle in a giant crystal stack.

It was a good thing Sun Wukong had given Cha Ming a soul nourishing spirit needle because otherwise they would have also needed to pay a visit to the Sheltering Yang Demiplane. Both needles were equally rare and valuable, and unlike other items, their supply was actually limited.

“I’m just a little worried about the danger,” Huxian confessed. “I’m usually all gung-ho about this kind of adventure, but I’m not as strong as I used to be. When you’re a God Beast, you feel invincible, and I haven’t felt that way since the entrance trial.”

Then there was the elder’s warning, and the fact that the Tribulant Yin Demiplane was filled with spiritual entities. Cha Ming’s soul was quite vulnerable in its current state, even with the peak rune gathering artifact he’d purchased protecting it.

“Should we turn back?” Cha Ming asked.

“We’ll be fine. I think.” Huxian said. “I can still teleport – I’m just less good at it. You also have a few tricks up your sleeve. Plus, I might be a bit weaker than I was before, but I’ve got a lot more tools in my belt.”

Cha Ming had no idea what new tricks the fox had learned, but since he’d been willing to venture out with him in the first place, their odds couldn’t be that bad. “Worst case, we use the return talismans they gave us,” Cha Ming said. “They take ten seconds to activate, but we should be able to buy that much time.”

The Tribulant Yin Demiplane was large for a demiplane. According to the map Huxian purchased, it had once been a full transcendent plane until a disaster had wiped all life form it and changed its natural laws.

It was like Cha Ming’s Jade Moon Garden, in a sense, which could sustain rainbow fish and other creatures, but would never provide enough energy for anything but wood-aligned creatures to thrive.

The Tribulant Yin Demiplane was vast and contained many energy-dense locations where the creatures native to it accumulated. And calling them alive was being a bit generous.

They travelled for seven days in relative peace. The only trouble they encountered in that time was a swarm of weaker yin-aligned birds that both resembled and operated like animated corpses. They stank, and when they died, their bones turned to ash and disintegrated.

Eventually, they came upon an obstacle they couldn’t simply fly over – a large gray river filled with yin energy and chock full of souls. “How do we get past it?” Cha Ming asked Huxian, noting that the yin river extended upwards and downwards endlessly. It was a spatial anomaly.

Huxian puffed out his chest and cracked his knuckles. “Worry not, dear Cha Ming, your savior, Huxian is here. If it were any other fox, you would be doomed, but this fox is a mysterious practitioner of… Spatial Architecture!”

Cha Ming blinked. “You made that up, didn’t you. That can’t be a real thing.”

“Who said it can’t be a real thing?” Huxian huffed. “If I say it’s a thing, it is. The sages might say there are only three thousand great Dao, but I say that the Dao is infinite and a reflection of the heart! Also, I may just be practicing sub-laws in something called the Spatial Law of Heaven and Earth. But Spatial Architecture is way cooler, so that’s what I’m calling it.”

Cha Ming groaned. “Huxian… you’ve only reached the middle of rune carving. Which is super fast since we’re only three months in, I’ll admit, but how is that going to help us?”

“Watch and learn,” Huxian said. His gaze turned serious, and he summoned his combined Demon-Dao domain. It was small, because his Dao Domain was weak, but it was strong.

Demon-Dao domains were interesting in that it had they had the fusion and harmony of demons but the absolute control of a Daoist’s domain. This, in addition to their powerful bodies, was why Dao Lords were so powerful.

Huxian’s control over his Daoist methods was a lot more refined than it had been a few months ago. Whereas before he’d been clumsily sculpting space, now he could create complete pieces with great precision. In fact… “Huxian, did your demon weapon transform?”

Huxian froze while he was in the middle of shaping space with a trowel. “Um… no. You’re just imagining things.”

“Then why do you have a tool belt instead of a shuriken,” Cha Ming continued. “And why are you holding a knife and a trowel?”

Huxian sighed and unfurled his toolbelt. The two tools he was holding were missing from it, but there were four others. They were blurry and had yet to take form. “There’ll be eight in the end,” the fox miserably.  “For now, I have a knife to carve the heavens, and a trowel to shape the earth.”

“Well, I think that’s cool,” Cha Ming said. “The giant shuriken made it look like you were trying to overcompensate. A toolbelt… a toolbelt is just useful.” And besides, Cha Ming’s soul bound treasure was a paintbrush. There was nothing wrong with utility type treasures.

Cha Ming left Huxian to his work and inspected the yin river. He’d heard of such things but had never seen one in person. The yin river was tall, wide, and occupied a special dimension that overlapped with the demiplane.

He didn’t understand the magical physics behind it and likely never would. The yin river was chock full of dull-eyed yin spirits. These were souls of all kinds that had somehow spilled over from the yellow river and had trouble rejoining the main flow.

The river was largely empty of physical entities, but there was one place where a landmass floated like a submerged iceberg. It had a distinct lack of yin energy around it.

“Huxian, do you think you could teleport us to that island instead?” Cha Ming asked.

Huxian squinted but couldn’t see what Cha Ming could, so Cha Ming used their bond to lend his vision temporarily. “There’s a soul-devouring orchid on that island!” he said. The orchid occupied the center of the island inside a field of pink mist. The land right next to it was barren, but outside this death-zone existed a field of silver-tinged grass.

“Is the soul devouring orchid why there’s a dead zone around the island?” Cha Ming asked.

“Yeah,” Huxian said. “But whether or not we want to go there is something else.” Huxian tapped a tinger to Cha Ming’s skull, and Cha Ming saw a flash of images. A memory, transmitted across time and space.

He approaches the mysterious flower that neither spirit nor animal dares approach. He knows that it is a dangerous but powerful treasure. If he succeeds, he will evolve. If he fails, he will perish.

Before he can approach the flower, however, a juvenile yin lightning sparrow descends. It is stronger than him, by a full rank, and he can only watch helplessly as it moves to consume the flower.

But that is when something strange happens. The flower emits a pulse, and the lighting sparrow drops dead. Its soul is swallowed by the soul devouring flower, and its body is reduced to nothingness.

Cha Ming shivered as he processed this and other memories. “I wonder how far it’s attack range is,” he finally said. “I noticed that the silver grass doesn’t grow within a hundred meters of the flower. Further out, the grass is lush.” Seeing that Huxian wasn’t getting it, he explained. “That grass isn’t normal grass, Huxian. I saw a request for stalks of yin soul grass. It’s not super expensive, but we’ve got a whole field of it here. I want nothing to do with that soul devouring orchid.”

Huxian licked his lips. “I’m not sure. But if we stay at the outskirts, we should be fine.” He began making adjustments to the formation he was hallway done making. It was a runic circle, carved and shaped from space itself, suspended in midair.

“When did you learn all this stuff anyway?” Cha Ming asked. “More books?”

“Not just books,” Huxian said. “Lets see, the first thing I bought was a Demon-Dao cultivation art that could get me to Rune Gathering. Then I bought a preliminary Demon-Dao fusion art, which does what your Divine Law Spirit Stitching scripture does, but its weaker and just for my core and demon body. I then got five cheap spatial shaping arts, but I’m only good at three, which is why I reached the third level of rune carving.”

“What three?” Cha Ming asked as Huxian continued to shape the void. He’d never paid much attention to spatial runes since he didn’t have the affinity for the element. As a rune gathering cultivator, he had some control over space, but that was limited to crude teleportation and blanket spatial lockdown.

That was very different than what Huxian did. With his knife and trial, he could carve and shape space with fine precision. He could also create tiny void pockets that acted as reservoirs for primal chaos energy that he extracted form the void. These were connected by small, wirelike tubes that somehow made the whole thing function.

“Void shaping is the first one,” Huxian answered. “You can’t really do anything else unless you’ve got shaping down pat. My second carving has to do with spatial pocket creation. Next there’s one that has to do with void bridging. There’s those five arts, and then I spent a bunch of points on crafting trials to get a few basic Void Architecture skills. It was totally worth it.”

Cha Ming was impressed. Huxian had done a lot in these past three months. More than Cha Ming had at any rate. All Cha Ming had done was train to the point that he could clear all the blue body trials and all the green law trials. He hadn’t touched the soul trials, because they could somehow sense his condition and had locked him out for his own safety.

He could now comfortably clear the 8th wave of the monthly battle trials, which was not that impressive compared to the gains any of the other cultivators were making. After expenses and trying to learn a technique or two and failing miserably, Cha Ming now had a little over 23,000 points, which he hadn’t spent much of.

Huxian was clearly still an amateur at spatial shaping, but after fifteen minutes, he was done constructing a gate that would connect two points with a void tunnel. Once finished, the gate twisted, and a mirror gate appeared on the edge of the floating island.

Huxian maneuvered his void ship through the narrow opening, and soon, they were right next to a wall of thick yin energy and yin spirits and knee deep in yin soul grass.

“Harvest what you can,” Huxian said. “Try to keep to the outskirts, and I’ll work on this void gate and change its coordinates to the other side.”

Cha Ming nodded and began to walk through the field of yin soul grass. He didn’t even bother cutting each stalk but absorbed a portion of the yin energy and the yin-infused soil into Jade Moon Garden and transplanted the yin soul grass to preserve its freshness.

He couldn’t help but feel a faint threat, however. His instincts came to the surface, and his heart grew cold, and his emotions grew numb. It was the danger, he realized. The danger provoked the Savage Deity Seed and upset the balance in his spiritual sea.

Given the situation, he was fine with the change. The Savage Deity Seed was useful, and he was actually stronger in this state. He also didn’t have as many moral hang-ups, which was always a plus in survival situations.

With every few steps, he gathered a clump of yin soul grass. They were only worth a point apiece, but on such a large island, he could gather a very large number. His only regret was that they weren’t all mature, and that the Jade Moon Demi Plane, though great at nurturing plant life, could barely sustain the yin soul grass.

He made a quick circuit around the island and then began to proceed inward, all the while keeping an eye on his surroundings. He noticed that the yin mists that formed the river and the souls inside it were tinged with yellow and bore a familiar aura of reincarnation.

“I wonder what Yama thinks about places like these,” Cha Ming wondered. It was clearly a malfunctioning of the Yellow River and the Cycle of Reincarnation.

Come…

The souls looked so human and so lost.

Come…

In fact, he wondered how much of their sentience they retained.

Come… here…

He frowned and walked over to the yin river. One of the souls was clearly trying to communicate with him.

Come… here… Reach out… Cha Ming’s eyes lost their luster, and his body began moving without his permission. Reach… out… Yellow tendrils had snuck out form the yin river and were now inside his spiritual sea!

This realization forced a gush of great mist out of the Savage Deity Seed, and Cha Ming glared ferociously at a spirit with the appearance of a beautiful woman.

“Back off… or I’ll destroy you!” Cha Ming said through gritted teeth. It took all of his strength to do, because his soul, vulnerable as it was, made it very easy to infiltrate him spiritually.

He wondered how this had happened. He’d purchased an artifact. Indeed, he could feel that it was vibrating and threatening to crack. Cha Ming took a step forward, then another. He continued until he was spitting distance from the yin river, where that special soul was waiting for him.

It was an unfortunate soul. It had been trapped here for so long and had awaited a savior. Cha Ming was that lucky savior.

He held out his hand and reached towards the river. Gray and iridescence warred inside his spiritual sea, one part too compassionate and the other cold and unfeeling.

It was this conflict that saved him, because the jarring, painful sensation led to a spasm of sorts that forced out the yellow mist. His hand stopped inches from the yin spirit – its flesh had already rotted off, revealing sparkling gray bones that even the potent yin energy could not wear down.

“Cha Ming!” a voice called out inside his mind. The bond between he and Huxian thickened suddenly, and the surge of spiritual energy shoved out another more insidious bit of mist. Cha Ming realized that he was still technically under control. Huxian appeared beside him and cut off his arm at the elbow.

Cha Ming sank to one knee and tried to regulate his breathing. His soul hurt. The soul protecting amulet was burning hot and on the verge of breaking. But it was doing its job and chasing the remnant yin energy out of his spiritual sea.

“Thanks,” Cha Ming said.

“Don’t mention it,” Huxian said. “The portal is ready, by the way. All we need to do is pick up the rest of this grass and head on in after we’re done.” He shot Cha Ming a concerned look. “You alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” Cha Ming said. He took a deep breath, and this time, they walked around the island together a few times, only stopping once they’d gathered ten thousand or so bunches of soul grass.

“Should we go deeper?” Huxian wondered.

“No,” Cha Ming said, shaking his head. “My intuition’s telling me to stay away from that flower. It’s feigning weakness to draw prey in.”

Huxian shrugged. “Well, we’ve already pulled in a profit. Who said making money wasn’t easy out here?”

“We almost died,” Cha Ming said. “I wouldn’t call that easy.”

They didn’t dare stay in the yin river longer. Huxian activated the tunnel, and soon they were on the other side of the yin river continuing towards their original destination.

Another week passed by before they arrived at a small forest just five kilometers across. It was not a normal forest, as its trees were rotted, and its soil was filled with death. Eighteen large pits formed an uneven circle around the forest’s perimeter, and each of these pits was overflowing with cold yin energy and the ghosts that thrived on it.

Huxian put away his ship as they stepped up to the boundary of the forest. A cool white mist filled the forest, and upon touching it, Cha Ming felt his medallion turn cold.

There was no life in this place. The trees were dead and had been since they’d first appeared, and cadaverous creatures roamed about without semblance of sapience.

The forest was dead, but it was not empty. In fact, Cha Ming saw signs of travelers wherever he looked. Abandoned campfires, discarded items, and old muddy footprints. Stacks of firewood had been laid out to pay the favor forward to future weary travellers.

“Obviously traps,” Huxian said. “Don’t touch anything.”

“I know,” Cha Ming said.

“Says the guy who almost got possessed,” Huxian said.

“It was an honest mistake,” Cha Ming said. “That ghost wasn’t weak! Besides, there aren’t any ghosts in this forest. It’s practically deserted.”

Huxian clamped his hand over his mouth and hissed. “Not. Another. Word.”

“What?”

“That was a death flag and you now it,” Huxian said. “Something’s going to pop out now. You should have known better.”

“This isn’t a story,” Cha Ming was about to say, but ultimately bit back his words. He’d seen the Dao Origins of the Inkwell Plane and had a pretty good idea of how actively fate was stringing them along. Assuming this was a story, then it was Patriarch Heartforge who was writing it. Cha Ming wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Fortunately, they found nothing threatening in the forest. A few zombies, likely the bodies of other cultivators who’d wandered here before only to fall prey to the forest’s denizens. Time had worn away at their bodies, and it took little to no effort to dispatch them.

At the center of the forest was a large cairn built from gray stones that oozed thick yin energy. A constant draft of cold wind blew out from a single crevice that reached out from the deep earth. Cha Ming and Huxian exchanged a look before tossing a fist-sized stone into the crevice and listened as it tumbled endlessly.

A quiet filled the dead forest as they waited for something, anything to emerge. Nothing did, and neither did the ghosts of the eighteen pits stir. Minutes passed before Cha Ming decided to step into the cave, only to stop as a crippling sense of danger overtook him, and his Savage Deity Aura once again took hold.

“We have to run! Now!” Cha Ming shouted. He immediately pulled out his return talisman and slapped it onto his chest.

Ten seconds were required to activate the return talisman. Ten heart-pounding seconds as their breath misted, the earth frosted over, and their legs froze in place.

A gust of wind blew out from the cave, and with it came a blood-curdling howl that caused Cha Ming’s soul protecting artifact to crack and the soul behind it to shake.

A small river of gray water bubbled out from the fissure like a mountain spring, and with it came death and debris and decay. Then a spectral hand pierced out of the darkness and pulled out a ghostly body alongside centuries of filth and waste.

The spirit was that of woman. She was beautiful but hate and malevolence glowed bright in her eyes. The gray waters were in fact her hair, and it they trailed behind her like a miniature replica of the yellow river.

Seven seconds left.

Cha Ming summoned the Ninesky Seals, the only tool in his possession that was effective against spiritual entities. It shot out just as the spirit howled, revealing its identity as a banshee. Spirit Banishing Intent collided with the soul-rending sound, chasing away all but the tiniest portion.

The seal only held up for three seconds before cracking and collapsing, much like a rock might in stream given infinity of time. Cha Ming summoned the Savage Deity War Staff and threw it out like a spear – he had no desire to touch that deathly river – only to see it pass harmlessly through both the river and the banshee.

“Use fire!” Huxian yelled. Cha Ming used Words of Creation to form and send out hundreds of inferno talismans, and Huxian also used a portion of his fire qi and fused it with his void qi to form void flames.

The two techniques were somewhat effective, but not nearly enough. Two seconds remained before their talismans would activate. The banshee seemed to realize she was on a clock; her ghostly face turned serious, and she focused on Cha Ming and let out a piercing howl.

Cha Ming summoned the only item he had that might counter the deadly yin energy – the soul nourishing spirit needle inside his spiritual sea! It flew out and formed a small, sheltering bubble around them.

Cha Ming was not too skilled in its use, however, so a few streams of deathly gray energy pierced through the shield and headed towards him.

That was when Huxian appeared in front of Cha Ming. Two of the gray streams pierced into his body and caused it to wither visibly. His intervention was fortunate, because the single stream of energy that hit Cha Ming was enough to shatter his protective artifact and invade his soul.

The Savage Deity Seed inside his spiritual sea fought tooth and nail against the invader. The Seed of Iridescence, sensing the threat, joined. As for the white spark that was sometimes black, it fed off Cha Ming’s desperation and grew brighter until it too formed a small seed that occupied a small area and protected Cha Ming’s spirit.

The gray wind assailed Cha Ming’s spiritual body, which was covered in cracks and gaping wounds that were barely stitched over. But when the mist made contact, a jade shield popped up. It was none other than Cha Ming’s Blessing of Tenacity!

One second.

Huxian was hurt but not dying. Cha Ming’s three auras managed to stamp out the rest of the gray mist. They were mere moments away from teleporting when Cha Ming noticed an anomaly on Huxian’s talisman – a strand of yin energy had somehow corroded an important portion.

It was a small portion. Not enough to be an issue. But Cha Ming’s suddenly felt like fate wasn’t working as it should, and instead of helping him them like it should, it was cursing them. His intuition told him that the talisman had a strong possibility of failing!

Cha Ming reacted quickly and ripped the talisman off the still-stunned Huxian’s chest. He immediately pulled the fox through a rift and into his Clear Sky World.

Doing so exposed him to another of the banshee’s attacks. Deathly energy filled his spiritual sea and overwhelmed his aura seeds and defences.

He could no longer move. He could no longer breathe. But the talisman had already been activated, so it whisked Cha Ming away.

He appeared a short while later in a teleportation formation. An elder walked over, eyed him for a moment, then nudged him with his cane. “You’re not dead, are you?” the elder asked.

“No.” Cha Ming managed to say. He summoned a portal with the last of his energy, allowing Huxian to return to this reality.

“Cultivators these days,” the elder muttered. “Back in my day we had a healthy respect for danger.” A cabinet appeared beside him, and he rummaged through it until he found a potion, which he poured onto both of them. A warm sensation coursed through Cha Ming’s spiritual sea, healing most, but not all of the crippling damage.

Only then did the Savage Deity Aura loosen his grip on his spirit and return to its place. The gray mist receded to its original boundaries, then retreated one more step. It seemed to have come to an agreement with the Seed of Iridescent and the new Seed of Inspiration and had ceded a very tiny portion of Cha Ming’s spiritual sea to them.

As the mist receded, memories came trickling back. Memories he would rather not think about right now. Painful memories. But the pain was tolerable, as it seemed that the seed had chosen how much to give back based on his mental limits.

“That’ll be five thousand points for the potion,” the elder said, interrupting his moment of spiritual enlightenment. “Non-negotiable.”

Just like that, half the profits of their expedition had vanished. “Can I turn in materials instead?”

“Of course,” the elder said. “It’s why we send you out, after all.”

“Then I’m going to need a garden or something to transplant about ten thousand bunches of yin soul grass,” Cha Ming said. The elder snorted and tossed him a green pouch that could be used to store live plants.

He sighed and transferred over nine thousand of the soul grass clumps, keeping only a thousand for his own uses. The elder nodded gave Cha Ming and Huxian thirteen thousand points, of which Huxian kept 9,000 and Cha Ming kept 5,000, since most of the soul healing potion’s effects had gone to Cha Ming.

The elder paid them no more heed, because it was at this moment that another emergency portal activated. This time, it was Shadestalker and the others who appeared. He was missing an arm, and one of his teammates was unconscious. The last one looked pale and frightened.

The elder poured a potion on the unconscious person. He woke, but his expression turned gloomy when he heard the elder’s price for saving his life.

“Well that could have gone a lot worse,” Cha Ming said. He wondered about that strange turn of fate and bad luck at the end and wondered if it was an anomaly.

“I think we need to get stronger before we try that again, Cha Ming,” Huxian said.

“A team would probably be useful as well,” Cha Ming agreed. “Immortal Heartlock said I have a few centuries until my soul disperses. Why don’t we wait another ten years, Heartforge time?”

They returned to Huxian’s residence and took it easy for a few days. Cha Ming mostly brooded as he sorted out his emotions and memories while Huxian tried to be cheerful and made coffee.

Lots and lots of coffee.