Sky Pride

Chapter 39- Admiring a Demon

Tian and Liren were exhausted, battered, and emotionally worn out. Heavenly Demon looked like an eagle with access to alchemist grade stimulants and an unlimited budget. Tian could feel the situation teetering. With a conscious effort, he poured his vital energy into the little lamp in his heart, and pulled out the wine.

“Congratulations. Truly. Congratulations. Your advancement seems to have been an overwhelming success. I’m sure whatever wine you have is miles better, but this is the best wine us two daoists can offer to toast your achievement. Drink it in good health.”

He gently tossed the jar over, the gold-colored ink on the red paper top glittered in the strange light of the hidden realm. Heavenly Demon’s hand moved so fast it blurred, but he caught the chest sized jar one handed. A sharp finger ripped a hole through the seal, and he drank. The wine spilled down his chin and evaporated into nothingness on his chest. He kept drinking, drinking past the point where it would have sent most cultivators reeling and vomiting. He lowered the jar from his lips with a little sigh and a smacking of the lips.

“It’s not the worst thing This Demon has ever drunk. What did you put in it?” Suspicious eyes narrowed at Tian, but they were human eyes, now.

“My qi. You know how I gave you some hard looks when you were difficult over dinner? I take hospitality and compassion seriously. You just needed a little reminder of the human side of things. Besides, we are seriously happy for you. Not joking with you or screwing around. Really. You worked hard. You suffered. You achieved something amazing. Well done.” Tian cupped his hands and bowed.

Heavenly Demon gave the interior of the wine a hard look, the bowing daoists a disbelieving one, then raised the jar and his hands towards the heavens, giving thanks to the Primordial Demons for their many miracles this day. Then glared at them.

“You treacherous daoists kept the array going!”

“Yes? That was our job. Defend you, keep the array going. Job done, very successfully. You are welcome.” Liren collapsed backwards and closed her eyes again. She had just woken up, but exhaustion was still heavy on her.

“The array is designed to fail. It is designed to reach a certain point and then collapse. You… daoists kept it going! You nearly killed me. My soul was hanging on by the barest thread. My psyche was pounded into near-nothingness, a single thread of determination to survive, overcome, and take my rightful place in the Heavens.”

“We kept it going until it failed. It worked as designed, and we did our parts to keep it active. We eventually ran out of crystals and the impurities overloaded the array.” Tian decided not to mention that he had been knocked out for that time. It didn’t seem relevant.

“It was designed to fail sooner, and you know that!”

Liren propped her head up and looked over at Tian. “Did you know that?”

“No.” Tian shook his head. “I wondered about it, but then I remembered our employer was very clear and firm in his instructions, so I stopped thinking so much and kept doing my job.”

Liren nodded along with him. “Right. If he wanted it to end sooner, he would have said something.”

“I, This Demon did say something! Hundreds of times!”

Tian shook his head. “I was specifically instructed to ignore any lies and ravings coming from the pit during the refining process. I even verified the instructions, chatting with some of the personalities that emerged. There were some good conversations, certainly, but none of them were properly you, or fully reliable. You may rest quite assured, there was absolutely no danger at any point that we were going to listen to the voices and stop the array. It might have been scary, but you were in safe hands the whole time.”

“We were very dedicated. The reason I’m so shattered right now is that I forced an evolution in my body cultivation art to better destroy the impurities that were overwhelming the array. Meanwhile, Brother Zihao has been fighting without rest to weaken the incoming shen constructs to maximize the speed and efficiency of the array. You can’t say we didn’t give our all.”

“Yes, we truly gave it our all. We could see your determination. Every cry and whimper from inside the pit, every scream, we could hear how committed you were. Not an ounce of retreat in you. Very inspiring.” Tian was very earnest, even if he had to control his right eyebrow’s urge to twitch violently. How was Heavenly Demon even taller now than before? Tian shrank when he went through body refinement. At least, he had one of the times. How was it fair that Heavenly Demon got taller? Was this the benefit of a more advanced Cultivation environment?

“Yes, drink some more wine. Your throat must be very raw.” Liren encouraged. “It was weeks of screaming.”

“This Seat remembers. Vividly.” Heavenly Demon glared at them, but did take a few more gulps of wine. His eyes were still glaring, still glowing gold, but Tian reckoned he had relaxed from “Eagle with an expensive yet disgraceful habit,” to “Hawk in need of a good cup of tea and a quiet room to compose themselves in.”

“But really, your transformation is quite spectacular. Constellations on your organs, pitch black bones speckled with stars, blood flowing like purple mercury and your musculature, tsk tsk! Extremely fine. I have to imagine the changes to whatever you use to hold or generate aura have been equally dramatic.”

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Heavenly Demon opened his mouth to snarl something, and froze.

“Don’t worry, nothing will fly in.” Tian reassured him. The tall man’s mouth shut with a snap.

“Winter Night Bones and Heavenly Omen organs, you are sure? Be sure!”

“I am very sure.” Tian blinked. He could hardly mistake it. “They were being stitched together with what looked like streams of starlight. You had the Heavenly River running up your spine. You don’t see that every day, or at least I don’t.

“No, that’s pretty unusual, even in the Northern Expanse.” The demon nodded casually, a smile spreading across his face. It would be fair, Tian thought, to describe it as “diabolical” even if it was a bit on the nose. Under the nose, actually, because that’s where mouths go. Yes, once again, aphorisms and metaphors were proven unreliable. The rising laughter was unquestionably sinister, however. No two ways about that.

Heavenly Demon formed a series of mudras with his hands, a storm of aura rising around him and filling the room. “Oh yes! Yes! Just you wait, you bastards! Did you get nice and fat for me? Did you gobble up lots of good things these last two hundred years? I hope so! I hope your hearts have some fucking flavor to them when I rip them out of your chests and eat them in front of your fat faces! And THEN I will go claim my new station. Oh yes, I will have all I am owed!”

The laughter was only getting louder, Tian noticed. “He did say he ate mostly flesh, didn’t he? But he wouldn’t eat the fish as a religious obligation.” Tian spoke silently to Liren.

“Yes. Though he didn’t explain what meat he ate. Did we just make a better cannibal?”

Tian really wished the answer didn’t seem obvious. It would be so nice if this was a misunderstanding.

“Two hundred years of patiently waiting, looking, and lying low. Oh, I’m sure those imps thought they were demons, feasting and looting my peculiar. I must return and show them how a real demon lives.”

Tian silently prayed the unnamed imps had a smooth reincarnation, and asked “Your peculiar? I don’t know that term.”

“Private land under This Seat’s control that He received from the Cult. It is still cult property, and within a larger organizational fiefdom, but it is considered mine. Some dead dogs have been rolling in it while This Demon was away, treating it as their plaything. Except they wouldn’t dream of abusing their own things that way.”

Tian glanced over at Liren and checked on the groggy Burning Heaven. “Give us a day to recover and we can head out.”

“This Seat finds that acceptable.”

“You might want to use the time to prepare. I suspect we will be ambushed on our emergence. I’m sure of it, actually.”

“This Heavenly Demon finds that delightful.”

Tian started by taking his own measure. Other than being excessively tired, he seemed to be in excellent shape. Not so excellent that he could understand why Palace Lord Song was convinced he could clear the field of others in the Heavenly Realm, though. He was forensic in his examination of his body and meridians, and didn’t see anything unexpected.

Why are you looking there? Aren’t you curious where those leaves went?

“Actually… yes. Where did those spells go?”

Where haven’t you looked?

Tian groaned and turned his awareness towards his Upper Dantian. It always felt a little weird, like turning your eyeball around to look at itself. He nearly screamed when he did. How had he not noticed? His upper dantian had swollen, looking as much as a fifth larger than before. There was a hint of divinity to it. He had noticed it for a little while now; ever since his treatment with the earth milk, he had felt his upper dantian had a hint of something immortal and holy to it. That hadn’t changed, but there was considerably more of it. Floating around the periphery of the upper dantian was a pair of leaves, green, edged and veined with gold.

The seal script on them looked as mysterious and inviting as it had in the dream throne room. Not any more intelligible. But still beautiful. Tian was utterly certain it completely outclassed anything the Ancient Crane Monastery might have in its scripture library. He sincerely doubted that even the daoist masters had comparable spells. Whatever the ‘guidance’ was worth, Tian was certain he hadn’t lost out by taking the spells instead.

He was caught up in admiring his upper dantian for a full minute. Then it clicked.

“Oh hell. Burning Heaven, let me examine you.” She made a grateful whine as he stretched out his hand. She didn’t take her head from Liren’s belly, though.

“Ah… yep. You sure do have a headache. But there is a good thing about that. I don’t know that this is exactly what you would call an upper dantian, but your… seat of spiritual wisdom, I guess? Is bigger, and the physical organ it is attached to looks pretty inflamed. Must be all the violent stretching and growing it did as you absorbed the energy of this place.”

“Am I going to be okay?”

“Definately. Better than okay, in fact. I have a feeling your spells are going to be startlingly more powerful now. We just need to let it rest and calm the inflammation. I will make you some cooling dishes… hmm. Cooling dishes for all of us I think. We need to balance our organs, and I’m seeing a lot of yang imbalance in all of us. Heavenly Demon, would you like a vegetarian plate?”

“This Demon isn’t hungry, but will condescend to eat.”

Tian snorted at that, and forced himself into action. A little rice, some cooling cabbage, a good handful of water cress and pickled mustard greens, accompanied by some quickly fried bean curd and a mellow sauce. Peasant food, but with the exception of the rice, it was all at least Earthly Realm ingredients grown on the mountain.

“I’ll make you a medicinal tea, to take the edge off the headache, but the real cure is going to be time, cooling foods and rest. So rest well, and figure out just how this place has changed you.”

Tian was doing his best to calm everyone down, but his own mind was buzzing. There were a thousand things to consider, but he kept coming back to one inane thought. When they left the hidden realm, should they wear their uniform robes, or pretend to be wandering cultivators? Because the consequences of either choice were hard to guess, but in either case, the consequences would be severe. He ran in circles trying to think through all the possibilities, but there was always the quiet whisper in the back of his mind. The voice of the Palace Lord never quite left his thoughts.

Whatever robes he wore, he would be attacked. All he had to do was kill them all. Things would be much easier to manage afterward.