Sly was having an excellent discussion with a compatriot from the Hardened Crown Sect. She’d been of the opinion that her right hook could hit him in the jaw, and Sly had to admit that she was correct. What she hadn’t prepared a response for was the knee to her gut followed by the elbow to her ribcage.
She took a moment to think and perhaps realign some broken ribs before continuing the debate with a kick to Sly’s leading knee. However, despite how it looked he wasn’t resting the weight of his argument- or his body- upon it. As she overextended without meeting proper resistance, Sly took a moment to inject a surprise uppercut into the conversation.
She responded with some incoherent yelling, which was not the worst option for their current debate format but a somewhat inefficient use of her time. At that point she decided to call in the rest of her debate team.
That was a mistake, because bringing those with weaker elocution onto the stage meant Sly could leverage their weak arguments against the team as a whole. One of them he grabbed by an ankle and used to sweep wide areas around him, providing plenty of space for him to lay down his own arguments.
They continued, uselessly, to insist that they were still the proper main branch of the Hardened Crown Sect. Sly pointed out that he’d fulfilled the requirements to be elected to the highest position when Kigal was defeated.
Nobody was listening, though, so he kept adding them to the pile. All in all, it was a very effective diplomatic session. The Hardened Crown disciples stood firm to their principles until he made their bodies soft like jelly and they couldn’t stand at all. Ultimately, of course, they had to admit that Sly was the most persuasive individual that they knew.
“Besides,” Sly said, as he sat atop the hill sized pile of groaning disciples. “Even if I had been a lower realms sympathizer at the time, wouldn’t it have made sense? They really started kicking the ass of everyone who messed with them. Before that, even. Relocating from that prison was the only responsible move, given I was falsely accused and far too talented to set aside. In short, you’re going to play nice with the Scarlet Alliance because otherwise they’ll send someone much more murdery than me next time.”
Sly supposed it would be a bit more difficult to send others into the Exalted Quadrant’s territory. In normal circumstances even he might find it a bit difficult, but with several of the border sects being seriously crippled at the moment nobody else was really prepared to monitor their own travel except for specific individuals. He looked and felt like part of the Hardened Crown Sect, so nobody bothered to inspect him. The Scarlet Alliance had way better identification methods besides merely checking cultivation style. And no, fancy tokens didn’t count because those could just be ripped off a dead body.
If the Hardened Crown Sect actually caused the Alliance trouble, though, they would probably be out of their own territory. In that case, there were probably millions of people who could cause them quite a bit of harm. Maybe a couple dozen if it was restricted to those who could do it alone- or with just one ship. Or a few all controlled by a single individual, though there weren’t too many people who tried anything like that.
“I know some really good methods to repair bones,” Sly commented. “The Scarlet Alliance will happily trade the materials to make some good potions with you. Oh, and they’ve got super soft sheets. Perfect for when you’re recovering from injuries in bed.” The Hardened Crown Sect didn’t forgo luxuries all the time, even if they were tough on themselves during training. Recovery was important. “They’ve got all sorts of good food, too. You’d be surprised how much upper energy can fit in a meal without it feeling bloated. Probably cheaper than the Forest of Death and at least ten times less likely to be poisoned.”
There were probably some better plant cultivators to reference, but Sly would bet that the Alliance could outmatch all of them. Nobody in the Exalted Quadrant was an Integration cultivator focused on farming. Such jobs were left to lesser disciples, or at best watched over by an elder who was not personally invested in making the fields the very best they could possibly be.
The Alliance had more people focused on things like that than they did on the whole fighting and killing end of things, yet they still had plenty of the latter sort. Too bad some of the better ones had died. Chikere and Tauno were both great warriors. Hopefully Durff would quickly recover to a proper state when he finished getting new organs.
-----
Durff could feel his heart beating. Any proper cultivator could. If he didn’t know better, he would have assumed it was his original heart. At least, until he intentionally inspected it with his energy.
It was still his heart, even if it wasn’t made of flesh. Among other things, he’d picked out some colors and other stylistic elements. Durff might have insisted on something like that to begin with, but the doctors actually recommended it to increase ‘synergistic mental acceptance’ or something like that. In short, the opposite of that thing where cultivators destroyed things they didn’t think belonged inside them.
It made sense now why they couldn't just replace his heart with a newly grown one. The proper state of his new heart, even if it was made from a lot of artificial things, was easily compared to the surrounding veins and arteries. Where they were attached, it went from a smooth and healthy look to a war torn battlefield. Some of the irregularity was just living bodies being weird, but there was some clear scarring.
A bunch of blood cells got stuck on the edges sometimes. His new heart changed its pace and pressure to free things up whenever that happened. There were probably a lot of other cool features, too.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
It was probably easier to replace a bunch of important organs one at a time than to replace his everything all at once. And there was a lot of everything. There were veins and blood vessels, muscle, bones, organs- one of which Durff had just noticed for the first time- and all sorts of things inside people. And outside people. If they wanted all organic stuff it would be easier to just make a whole new body and scoop out his brain.
Durff was pretty sure there were rules against that, since the body would probably come with a brain. Though maybe he should ask a doctor about that.
His brain probably needed some fixing, too, but it was the main physical component that made humans what they were. Though cultivators also had to worry about metaphysical stuff like the dantian and meridians. If everything else was replaced, what would happen with that? Doctors must have really hard jobs. Good thing he had them to think about the hard stuff, while he could just hit things that needed to be hit. It was an efficient division of labor.
-----
Aconite paced back and forth in front of Chidi. He didn’t follow her movement with his head, since he only did things like that when he was intentionally displaying his attention to others. It’s not like it did him any good. “You seem quite agitated for someone who is doing well,” Chidi commented.
Aconite’s words were more on the whiny spectrum, though she still had to produce soft growls for proper diction. “I have a significant opportunity that I cannot fail to take advantage of. If I am successful… I may be the first wolf to match up among the ranks of Domination cultivators.”
“Really?” Chidi asked. “Wouldn’t your parents get there first?”
“Hmph. Consider your own age relative to your parents,” Aconite commented. “Ours share the same age, aside from some small number of decades. You yourself are already capable of competing with Domination.”
“So were you,” Chidi pointed out. “Without you, we certainly wouldn’t have been successful.”
Aconite shook her head violently. “It is not the same. Pulling a single successful trick is not a proper contest. Just because the man’s filtration organs were insufficiently empowered doesn’t mean I matched Domination in any regard. I mainly took advantage of your Negation.”
“Fair enough,” Chidi admitted. “But why do you have to be first? As you mentioned, your parents…”
“Lack sufficient opportunities. Perhaps if they had faced down the individual known as Titan, there might have been something. Or if father faced the flames of Koronis. Their contributions were no doubt necessary to the success of the war, but came with no promise for their short term advancement.”
“Right,” Chidi said. “But it doesn’t need to be short term. You don’t need to rush.”
“It is not a rush,” Aconite said. “I still have inside of myself traces of the augmented poisons of Shelach. But they will not persist forever.”
“... Should I be worried?”
“They are merely samples. Isolated and small, as my body eradicated the rest… eventually. It would not take me years to recover from any poison that didn’t immediately cripple me.”
“Right, so… you’re going to do something with those poisons?”
“Perhaps,” Aconite said. “Certainly, that would be an opportunity. I cannot simply make more because they have been altered slightly by his energy, in a permanent manner. Methods only achievable by Domination… though meant to kill those who responded with energy more than their own bodies.”
“Yeah. Other Domination cultivators… or anyone weaker, obviously. So…” Chidi drew out the word. “What do you need from me? I will help if I can.”
“I’m not sure if you could-” Aconite began, but stopped herself. “Actually, that might be perfect. I may need you to wipe out rampaging energy within me, for the safety of others. However, before that I must determine if I should construct a human anchor.”
“Well, obviously I wouldn’t expect it to be just like humans’,” Chidi pointed out. “And there’s a variety anyway. A big throne, some stellar platforms, a nebula… some sort of planet full of eggs? Whatever Shelach had. And the Swarm. I’m not even sure if there is a style, except for something tangible. Though at pretty much any scale.”
“Hmm, yes. Interesting thought.”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean by that,” Chidi commented. However, Aconite already seemed to be lost deep within her head.
-----
The lower realms exploration project was going well. A majority of stars within a hundred lightyears of Alliance territory had been visited at least briefly. They hadn’t sent out actual millions of ships, though they were getting closer. The biggest hindrances weren’t the total number of vessels they could create, but their maximum range. Even if they could gather energy from systems they visited, ships eventually ran into issues.
Something would break, and there were only so many backup parts they could carry. Disaster was inevitable on a large enough timescale. Thus, outposts of sorts had to be established to help increase the range of ships. Known safe routes would be traversed by supply vessels, who would leave behind their payload which could include physical needs and sometimes qualified personnel. A few year stint away from civilization was not as hard on the mind of a cultivator as it was on those who had lived shorter lifespans. If in a high energy environment, there was always cultivation to occupy the mind.
They were still limited to a short number of years for the most part, at least for a single assignment. Those who were ultimately determined to handle the isolation well long term could choose if they wanted to take on additional cycles. It was never necessary, because there were trillions of individuals to draw upon. Even if one in a million wished to try, they would have far more people than they needed.
There were a few discoveries of other inhabited systems- not surprises, especially as they reached further west towards the Chaotic Conglomeration. As far as they had explored, the area was clear of threats. They weren’t expecting anything that could compete with Assimilation or Enrichment cultivators, but it was possible. Caution was warranted, though at a certain distance they simply had to avoid drawing any negative attention.
