Destiny in Cinders

Even though An Jing felt that collecting the Cosmic Heart wasn’t something the bearer of the Seven Ruins Arc should do, there was still an uneasy feeling in his heart. Surely this is a task for the Lord Under Heaven, right? It won’t be up to me, no it won’t.

Eventually, he landed at the ruins of what used to be the True Fiend Cult’s base in Brokeblade Mountain, the former hunting campsite, which was situated at the boundary of the deeper and shallower parts of the mountain range.

The corpses of the fiend followers were covered up by layers of snow, frozen solid. At the center of the site was a major formation that still operated. It had helped the massive serpent gather dragon qi for its advancement. The formation appeared like a vortex in An Jing’s spirit sight.

Deep in the ruins, an automaton worked away to clear out the frost and wreckage. The terrestrial-vein qi that the formation provided could be used for all sorts of experiments apart from fuel for the massive serpent’s breakthrough, so it was more than capable of powering a few automata. An Jing finally realized how useful they were. Automata were difficult to deploy in Skysource because of how rare spirit stones and spirit veins were, but terrestrial-vein qi was abundant in Void Embrace. Even a single terrestrial vein could power tens of thousands of automata without drying up. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Apart from that, Skysource’s evergreen wood proved to be an incredibly potent spirit plant in Void Embrace as well. It could be used for pillmaking or as an ingredient for talismans. On top of that, its vitality could be used for healing and even help spirit beasts and feys like dangkangs break through.

”Hmm... If evergreen wood is able to grow in such a horrible environment like Skysource, what about Void— Wait!” A spark of inspiration suddenly entered his mind. He finally noticed what the odd feeling he had was about. ”Is Skysource’s evergreen wood really able to grow in Void Embrace despite the environment being filled with inert fiend qi? Shit. Don’t tell me what I did just gave rise to a fiendfallen great fey... That would be tragic! The Heavenly Daos of both worlds are not the same, so I have to look into it! Old Snowfang, don’t die!”

An Jing immediately rushed to the automaton that continued working away in the snow. If the evergreen wood within it appeared anomalous, An Jing would have to hurry back to Climbing Snowfang to warn it. Fortunately, the evergreen wood appeared to grow normally, seemingly unaffected by the fiend qi in the slightest. Instead, it seemed completely nourished and even began to sprout from its abundant vitality. That was probably why Climbing Snowfang had been able to sense its presence in the first place. Perhaps the spirit plant that had struggled in the harsh environment of Skysource finally got a chance to thrive in the rich and untainted world of Void Embrace.

”Seems like evergreen wood is incredibly resistant to fiend qi,” Yvelbane said. ”I guess we won’t have to worry about things going wrong given how different the two worlds’ environments are. It’s doing far better in Void Embrace than in Skysource, which isn’t surprising. Skysource’s fiend qi is active, not inert. Not to mention, we have quite a lot of other types of untainted spirit qi on top of the inert fiend qi.”

An Jing reeled from the unwarranted fear, shrugging off the excess worry. Even so, the enhanced growth rate of evergreen wood did put him on guard. ”We have to be careful about bringing in things from foreign worlds that can propagate on their own. I wouldn’t want to cause an ecological disaster by introducing an invasive species.”

The minor scare served as a good reminder for An Jing to be more careful about using things from Skysource in Void Embrace. On the flip side, this realization also meant that he could easily get some fiend-qi resistant seeds from Skysource to get a farm for spirit plants going in Void Embrace.

”I can’t do it in Riverside though.” Though tempted, he discarded the notion. ”Seeds aren’t like drones, automata or my hoverbike. I can wave off those things by saying I got them from my master and the Brightmirror Sect, but it’d be harder to explain abnormally successful crop yields. I have to find a secluded location to plant them. Far too many people have their eyes on Riverside. They’ll easily discover it.”

He decided that he would do some farming experiments once he returned to the Brightmirror Sect. If it worked out, he would be able to establish another stable source of income and wood-aspect spirit items.

All of a sudden, the thought of his father occurred to him. ”Oh, yeah. My father’s still alive. I heard he’s working as an aide for a chieftain of an Irondawn tribe. If it’s him... Well, I’ll think about it when I reunite with him. I hope he’ll stay safe until then.”

Then, he began planning out his exploration of Palespirit Cave. Before long, a long-distance-operation drone rose into the air and flew deeper into Brokeblade Mountain. There were no human settlements in those snow-covered parts. In fact, it was so deep that the snow calamity didn’t permeate the forests too thoroughly.

The ancient trees were so tall that some stretched through the cloud layer above, blocking out much of the sky and forming a barrier that separated the area in the shade from the rest of the world. Not one ray of sunlight or flake of snow made it through the dense trees and shade, allowing the area to maintain an ambient temperature above the freezing point. The snaking roots that crossed one another countless times on the ground formed pathways much like those traveled by the migrating beasts, the result of thousands of years of the ecology feeding off the spirit energy from the land.

Naturally, all this was temporary. If the snow calamity lasted a few more months, even the entirety of Brokeblade Mountain would end up buried in snow. By then, the beast tide would no longer be able to flow at the current rate. It would be a mad stampede for survival, everyone for themselves.

Unlike forests of the world from An Jing’s past life, forests in Void Embrace were akin to massive and sluggish great feys that couldn’t move. Knowing that, he didn’t enter it right away and used a drone to navigate through it with reference to the map Climbing Snowfang had provided. The drone traversed the beast path and avoided many dead ends and traps.

The depths of Brokeblade Mountain really weren’t habitable for humans. There were poisonous plants every ten steps of the way and miasma every hundred steps. All sorts of luminescent or barely visible fungi as well as different floral growth hid in the many ditches or under the mesh network of roots, waiting for unsuspecting passers by to fall and get trapped there, eventually reduced to fertilizer.

Colorful mists visible to the naked eye wafted between the leaves and fruit. When the odd fruits detected moving objects, even things like stealth drones, they burst open and ejected multicolored liquid that turned the immediate area into festering rot. Fortunately, the scout drones that An Jing bought were resistant to corrosion.

After the drone passed through the area filled with toxic smog, An Jing could see some odd shapes ahead in the uneven terrain through the feed. They appeared to be metallic plants shaped like ore veins. Those spirit plants were ore gatherers that grew by feeding on minerals and ores, possessing many different functions.

The extensive root networks of the towering trees spread deep enough to unearth lots of ore veins, and not all types of ores were useful to the trees, at least not at the moment. That was how materials ended up building in deposits such as those. As those ores often possessed powerful corrosive lethal qi, most spirit plants weren’t able to grow in their presence.

The solution that the forest provided were ore gatherers, plants that grew by absorbing those ore deposits to the point that their surface properties reflected the kinds of ore they assimilated. They were filled with vitality and spirit power but were also harmless to lifeforms in the vicinity, making them among the favorite finds of local mountaineers. They made for great materials for vitality-rich artifact weapons or catalysts for manifesting wood-aspect or metal-aspect wonders.

Since most of the ore-gatherer plants near the outer reaches of Brokeblade Mountain were already harvested, they could only be reliably found in the depths. An Jing easily spotted three such plants in the fifteen short minutes he sent the drone in.

”Those ore gatherers will be really useful to you,” Yvelbane said. ”It’s not as good as jadeslice steel, but there’s enough of it to make up for the quality. It can’t hurt to use them for forging artifacts either. It’s better than letting them be consumed by beasts and wasted.”

”True.” An Jing made a marker on the jade-slip map. He would harvest them once he finished his exploration.

Right as he was distracted and stopped actively controlling the drone, however, a pitch-black figure swept across and destroyed it, causing the feed to black out completely.