Cultivating Chaos 6 -ch 7-

Seven

Ash looked down to the ocean below him. He was hovering in the air with Chunhua on his left and another Bride on his right.

The two of them were working in tandem to keep him aloft while holding to him tightly.

Of course Chunhua was holding onto him in a very overly-familiar way and the Bride he didn’t know was holding to him in a much more respectful way. Which really wasn’t surprising to him.

Any Bride that wasn’t part of his immediate circle, or that he knew, often treated him in a very different way.

“Alright, I think I’m ready,” muttered Ash as he stared downward.

He’d been thinking about this a lot.

About how to do this and to make sure he didn’t shift or change the world here. To bring catastrophe to it by something as stupid as building a new island.

Just imagine that.

Being new to this world and ended up sinking an entire coastline because I wanted to make my own island.

Seriously, super villains don’t even understand how easy it would be to ruin the world.

Permanently.

Just imagine dumping an endless amount of earth into the trench. It’s not like they could dig it back out.

Do it right and they’d never even know it was happening.

Ash reached out with his Dao that felt a lot like an over-wound spring at the moment.

It’d built up momentum for so long that it was eager to be unleashed. To be let loose and change the very fabric of the world to fit his needs.

Without a care for what it’d do to anything or anyone else.

Which was precisely why Ash was treating it more like a hydraulic spring for a car. Keeping it tightly compressed and not giving it a chance to spring free and obliterate anything around it.

Holding tight to it, he let it spiral outward slowly toward the ocean. Through the water and into it’s deep and dark depths.

Slicing ever deeper it corkscrewed around as it went.

Upon reaching the sea-floor Ash solidified the Dao with his Qi. All of it had originated from his palm. Which meant to everyone else it looked as if he were only now doing something and it was with his Qi.

In seconds the Qi had joined his Dao at the bottom.

Even as he utilized his Qi he felt a great many Brides all cultivating and pushing their overflowing Qi at him. Clearly Locke, Liu, and Gheist had planned for this occasion.

Ash noted there were a number of new Brides that were sworn to him that lacked the Bonds of Sheng, which he corrected with a casual thought. Bringing them straight-way into his Dao.

Expanding the pillar he grew it out slowly. Letting his Dao dictate the pace and flow of it and how fast or slow it should be.

Gradually, it became a column of Qi that was nine-feet in diameter.

Pure Qi without a speck of anything other than Qi itself.

“Bring us in,” Ash said, not releasing his grip on the thin strand that led from his palm to the column.

While it was embedded quite deeply into the ocean floor beneath them, the currents throughout it were causing a great deal of stress on the Qi. In opposite ways at different depths no less.

With more than enough force to snap the Qi column in multiple places.

Chunhua and the other Bride glided them in smoothly to the top of the column and put Ash there. Setting him down on his feet.

No sooner than his feet made contact with the pillar then he felt a collosal shift in his Dao.

That it was no longer bound up as tightly as it was and then the flow had resumed. Momentum was now being gained once more.

“I’ll begin laying out the formations we agreed upon,” Ash murmured as he closed his eyes. “Please bring everyone forth to have them begin working.

“Locke, I’m sure we’ll need to displace a great deal of water so we don’t ruin the world. Send it to the Ocean plane. We made it, we might as well use it. If we don’t end up needing it, or we take too much, we can always return it.”

There was a communal chorus of agreements around him.

Ash tuned it all out.

He had his own job to do at the moment.

This island would be another Sheng fortress.

Built from the ground up with formations and Carvings laid into the land itself.

As if he were carving into the bones of a Cultivator, then the flesh above, he would shape this land to be part of the Sheng Alliance.

Ignoring everything, he focussed entirely on his task on pushing out a massive formation that would be the extreme edge of the island they were forming and criss-crossed throughout in patterns.

Patterns that would identify those who went against the momentum.

Provide benefits to those who aided it and worked to keep all Qi and Essence inside, inside. That it would allow none of it to escape elsewhere and would draw it back into itself.

As if this world had no Qi to begin with, adding any at all, would bring a change to it.

No different than the ocean, in fact.

Losing himself in the work, Ash ended up paying almost more attention to his middle Dantian. He had practiced what he’d need to do a few times at a smaller level and working it at this larger level was easier if anything.

Any mistake he made he could correct later, but he didn’t think there would be.

As he gazed at the golden rotating column in the center of his Dantian, Ash once again noted that it was made of the Brides.

Bricks were interspersed between them where they couldn’t fit.

He idly wondered why the Brothers of Sheng weren’t here. Or those in the Sheng Alliance who were Cultivators who likely had sworn, but were part of neither the Brides nor Brothers.

There was a popping noise, followed by a number of statues flashing into existence in his middle Dantian.

One and all they were crowded around the column and pressed in tight to it.

Pressing hands, bodies, or heads to it. As if they were going to physically push it further into the sky with brute force and willpower.

Those further out were pressing themselves to those who were closer.

Ash had a momentary flicker of awareness that his lower Dantian had a great many more people in it in a similar position. Except they were also standing atop one another. Feet to shoulders and all of them pushing toward the column at the center.

All he could see here in the middle Dantian was the top of the base.

His Dao let out a soft boom, followed by a shift in the middle Dantian. The entirety of it shifting to change again, though its surroundings.

The Hall now existed here in the middle Dantian, or at least a representation of it.

Looming above was a strangely giant ghostly apparition.

That was him.

Watching over the Hall and all those who held up the golden Dao pillar.

The two silver pillars began to expand again. Bricks filling them in quickly and with perfect accuracy. Expanding until they were nearly half the size of the golden one.

Through all that, Ash heard a whisper.

A strange fluttering thing that he only barely caught at times.

“Lord Sheng” was what was being said.

It tickled his senses in a way that felt odd but appropriate.

In a way that also made him feel stronger with each repetition of the word.

Ash had lost all track of the work he was doing but he had the impression that he was still proceeding with it. That his body was continuing onward despite him now being spiritually separated from it.

“I hear you,” he said in response to the whisper. He wasn’t sure who was saying it, but he felt he needed to address them.

A frantic burst of energy ripped through the Dantian.

“I am here,” Ash tried instead, wondering just what was going on.

The golden pillar at the center began to shine in a way that was as if it were lit from the inside. No longer golden, it was more white in color.

As if in response to the change in hue, the two silver pillars suddenly shifted into a golden color.

“Lord Sheng,” came the voices again. They were no longer whispering though.

They were shouting.

“Lord Sheng!”

Calling out to him as if in fear but also in excitement.

“Yes, I’m here. Ash is fine though, Ashley to family,” he mumbled, feeling a bit out of sorts. He focused on the voices and where they were.

Only to realize it was the statues that held the column up, the Brides that were part of the column, and even the Knights who stood at the nearest possible edge to the Dao.

Which suddenly angered him.

Angered him and made him frustrated that despite his best efforts, he still hadn’t been able to bring the Knights in.

Recognizing one particular voice, the First Knight, Ash singled Tan out from the chorus.

Grasped him with his senses and his Dao.

There was a brief struggle from the runes and carvings that’d been put upon Tan before they collapsed outright. Under the sheer weight of their creator and his attention, they resisted no more.

And Tan was brought into the Dao.

The First Knight’s statue was now inside of the middle Dantian at the edge of the Dao. A statue of absolute pure blackness that faced outward that looked akin to a guard standing sentry.

So dark in it’s pitch and hue that it almost had no features in a way due to the lack of light.

It was an opposite to all that was in the Dao and part of the Dao, yet still of it.

Ash could feel First Knight Tan just as he would a Bride.

Not wanting to lose this moment, Ash greedily snatched up all the Knights. Every single one of them.

Then drew them across into his Dao after forcibly collapsing their defenses in an instant.

As if the knights were angry soldiers suddenly finding their commanding officer standing in front of them, they all came across with almost no resistance.

Once they were all inside the Dao Ash felt better.

Though strangely, he was receiving Qi from them now.

It was all slightly damaged, or in some cases shredded, but he was receiving Qi.

“Ash, focus! I’ve embedded the cores in the land! Everything is prepared!”

Ash jolted upright just as his body started to slump forward at Locke’s words.

Straightening his spine he put his focus to his work.

Only to realize he had only to activate the formation. He had finished it’s construction.

Opening his eyes, he saw a vast open green-space around him.

Grass fluttering in a strange ocean breeze in almost every direction.

Lifting his left hand he casually struck his palm against a flat and sharp section of his Qi construct he still held, then flicked his bleeding hand out toward the ground.

No sooner than his blood struck the dirt than the formation was activated, the cores activated, and the island itself became more akin to an artifact of extreme power.

“The isle of Sheng has been founded,” whispered Siu, standing not far away. She turned to look into what was clearly a camera crew. “We grow. We are momentum. Until we have found our channel, our desired shape, we will carve away all that stands before us.

“Please continue your cultivation for as long as you wish and explore the truth’s that you were shown through Lord Sheng’s awareness. For as you now know, he hears you.”

The light on the camera that was a bright red began flashing, then turned off.

“Done,” Locke said as a Bride let the camera point to the ground. “Although, my goodness Ash, I didn’t expect you to unlock another deity aspect in that moment.

“The poor Knights. I think they were all knocked flat when you brought them over. I’ve already received more than a few reports from Brides that the Knights don’t effect them anymore as they did previously.”

“It would oppose their momentum,” Ash whispered, the answer coming to him easily. “For a Knight to oppose a Bride, is to oppose themselves. Their own momentum. A Bride could not oppose a Knight either with their Qi. At least not with the intent to harm.

“We’ll… we’ll need to set up-up a training area for them to spar in. One that allows the-the momentum to-to shift. They… they… that—”

Ash blinked several times, then sunk to his knees in the grass.

“I’m so very tired,” he mumbled and looked up to Xiuying who had come out of the camera crew. “I want to sleep.”

“Mm, yes, I’ll put you to bed,” Xiuying said with a wide smile and put her hands to his face. “And when you wake up, you can go say hi to Na, Mei, and Jia. Our dear Rou made a breakthrough while you were building the formation.

“Or I suppose when you went all deity on us, that is. Either way, there was a breakthrough.

“All you have to do now is let the Bridal Parties build out the isle and structures.”

Xiuying smiled at him and began to pet him and Ash realized he wasn’t willing to go to sleep quite yet.

“They’re awake?” he asked.

“Yes,” Xiuying confirmed, smiling.

Ash forcibly stood himself up and put his hands to Xiuying’s shoulders.

The last he’d heard or seen of Rou, she had Xiuying sitting next to her. Much as he had always felt and believed when it came to his Fortune’s Chosen, all he had to do was trust in her that she would always be where she was needed most.

While her Fortune didn’t seem to be helping with their situation in the world, it seemed to be ever working for him and the alliance as a whole.

Ash pushed himself into the Hall, taking Xiuying with him.

“Oh! Ah… hm. Well,” Xiuying murmured, realizing she’d been brought with him. She shrugged her shoulders, smiled at him, then pulled her hands off his face. She carefully pulled his arm around her shoulders, stuck herself firmly against him, and supported him. “Off we go!”

Xiuying quickly began guiding Ash away from the main “living room” he often would take himself to when he visited the Hall.

There was an entire section of it that’d been listed as his personal apartment and bedroom. It was generally off-limits but it wasn’t guarded or patrolled.

Exiting the main building that he often used, he found there were a large number of Brides moving across the grounds. Talking to one another or going about duties or tasks all their own.

A few vanished, others appeared, clearly coming or going from the Manse.

Xiuying eagerly led the way across a small field to the medical building here in the Hall. It was attached to the massive warehouse that stored more than enough medicinal pills to supply a great many people for a long time.

“I’ve been trying to add a bunch, by the way,” Xiuying chirped out as they walked. “To the warehouse, that is.

“I’m doing well! Just not in the way I wanted.

“I was playing around with a bunch of pots and things and just kept making messes trying to pour them into other containers.

“When I went to clean up it’d all formed into a solid sheet on the table. I broke it up into little pieces with Bride Xinah, you’d like her by the way, after some testing!

“I put in lots and lots of pills so our supplies are doing good! I don’t want you to worry about your Brides, Brothers, and Knights, cause I know you would.

“For the Knights I’m trying to make civilian style medicines. Things that would work for them. It’s going slow, but it’s going. I’m opptomistic.”

“You’re an ever bright and sunny ray of sunshine, my dearest Xiu,” Ash said, staring hard at the side of her face.

Which caused her to go up in an immediate and full faced blush. Then she started gnawing at her lower lip.

“Uhm… can I come over tonight? I know I came over last night but sex is a lot of fun,” she mumbled. “As a reward? Like-like how you reward, Hui, can I come over as a reward?”

“That’s fine,” Ash confirmed as they entered the medical building.

He found Na, Mei, and Jia all in the beds they had been in.

Each of them were seated now though and watching a TV that’d been put on the wall here.

They all had a somewhat weak, thin, and worn look to them, but they were clearly alive.

Alive, awake, and aware.

Mei’s blue-black hair was bound up behind her head in a bun that’d kept her hair away from her neck and face while she slept.

Her light brown eyes were as light as they came, to the point that they practically glowed and at the moment were glued to the TV.

A normally overwhelming figured had been muted with a lack of movement and being bed-bound. Which was always and odd contrast to Na, her cousin.

Na looked significantly similar to Mei, though far more slim and athletic.

Her own blue-black hair had been cut short at some point and was at the level of her ears. Her gray eyes had already locked to Ash and were boring holes into him.

Lastly, and surprisingly to Ash, was Jia in the closest bed.

She had already gotten up and out of it and was stumbling her way toward him.

Her normally thin figure was even more so now and the gown she wore seemed almost large on her. Her midnight black hair had been unbound at some point and hung behind her while her dark black eyes gazed at him in a way that Ash could only describe as hungry.

When she reached him, she just about collapsed onto him, holding to him.

Her face came down and pressed into his neck.

It felt like she was going to fall to her knees and Ash reached down and put his arms around her.

“Ah, there’s our hero,” Rou stated from the far corner of the room. “I just woke them up a few moments ago. Since you were occupied and not forcefully injecting Qi to everyone, it seemed like the right moment to do it.

“There’s still a blockage in their upper Dantian, mind you. I’ve only solved a symptom, not the disease. In this case though, in solving the symptom, I confirmed the disease and know what I need to do.

“Just not the how of doing it. Not yet at least.

“It’s fine.

“I’m a Qi Healer with an extraordinary amount of talent in it, found by the Chosen One. Lord Sheng. The Dao Lord of Momentum.

“Which, when you think about it, means I’m the Qi Healer of momentum. How could I not be fixing the momentum of a thing, if I can’t even wake up a sleeping patient.”

Rou said it all with a wide grin.

As if her rambling statement made perfect sense and was a perfectly acceptable answer.

Even though it didn’t really answer anything.

He was currently hugging Jia tightly while slowly walking over to the other beds. His plan was to hug them all one by one, put them back to bed, and spend some time with them.

There was no denying that he’d missed them all.

Things had only just started, but the momentum of the Sheng Alliance had been restored to an active state.

Everything was moving again.

Movement, was of course, forward momentum.