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Fates Parallel Chapter 66 - Spirit
🕑 Added 2021-04-28 20:31:20 +0000 UTCSpirits—they were odd things, and not well understood, even in the cultivation world. Humans cultivated by gathering essence within their bodies, minds, or souls—all three in Jia’s case, and she was beginning to wonder if there was any true distinction there at all. Magical beasts formed a core, which drew essence into their bodies automatically, while elementals were cores that had formed independently and developed their own intelligence.
Spirits didn’t fall neatly into any of those categories. They didn’t have cores like elementals or magical beasts, nor did they meditate to gather essence like humans did. Instead, spirits were beings that formed—seemingly spontaneously—from spiritual energy, and took on a form that superficially resembled a soul.
They couldn’t really be categorized in the way of cultivators, neither by stages nor as houtian or xiantian. They were enormously powerful in some ways, and yet extremely limited in others. Unfortunately, Lee Jia had not been very diligent in her study of spirits, and was not currently aware of what kind of limitations those were.
She knew that the three nations all dealt with spirits differently. Qin treated them no differently than beasts or elementals—just another kind of monster for cultivators to slay, albeit a more dangerous and unpredictable foe. In Yamato, they called them Kami, and venerated them almost as gods, coexisting in an uneasy sort of peace. Goryeo—well, they largely ignored them, actually.
Lee Jia had almost never had to concern herself with spirits, growing up. Even as a homeless girl, she’d spent almost her entire life under the aegis of Goryeo’s famous shield formations, which kept beasts, elementals, and spirits well clear of the cities. It had never occurred to her before, but obviously her ancestors—the human ones—must have consorted with spirits in some fashion a long time ago. However, the actual origin of the half-spirit race was lost to history, and the subject of a lot of extremely boring scholarly debate.
None of that was helpful now, as Lee Jia stared the giant panther spirit in the face. It hadn’t attacked her yet—she wasn’t even sure it could, at least in the ways that she was so nervous about. She felt the blood dripping from her nose—a painful reminder that it absolutely could harm her—and was afraid to move to stop the bleeding for fear that it might pounce on her.
It was an irrational fear, since the panther’s body wasn’t real. Unlike an elemental—which had a sort of body composed of the manifestations of its essence—a spirit was made of raw spiritual energy. The panther she saw was just a mimicry of life—an odd quirk of spirits was that they almost always took forms that resembled animals. Still, it seemed to exude a sort of pressure that made her feel like it would crush her all the same.
She’d felt the very real weight of that pressure once already, though she didn’t think that had been an attack. She thought that it might have been trying to communicate with her, but as her spirit half had pointed out—rudely and repeatedly—she was too weak to handle whatever method of communication spirits used. She had been able to muddle through an oddly stilted conversation with her inner spirit, but only because it was still intrinsically a part of her. This spirit's attempts shook her to her core, and she’d barely managed to grasp one tiny piece of whatever message it had been trying to send.
Kin.
Her own spirit half had said the same thing, but she had no idea what to make of it. Was it describing her as kin? It seemed presumptuous to think that just because it was a cat, but then her spirit half had said it after showing her a vision of the mountain. Did spirits even have a concept of family? She really needed to study more.
The spirit huffed, and though it was right in front of her face she felt no movement of air. It began to pad around her in a slow circle, and as it stepped aside she could see her friends watching on in horror. Rika was actually physically restraining Eui to keep her from charging in, and Jia reminded herself to thank Rika for that later, if she survived this. For some reason she couldn’t hear them at all, which was odd.
The panther completed its circuit and sat in front of Lee Jia. She felt the pressure of its domain lift from her slightly, and as her own domain expanded to fill the freed space, she sensed a dense cloud of shadow element mana. It was orders of magnitude more than she had offered the spirit, and Lee Jia now felt a bit self-conscious—had she insulted it with such a paltry gift?
The spirit continued to stare at her—expectantly? It quirked its head to the side curiously, as if it was waiting for something.
“I don’t understand. What am I supposed to—”
Lee Jia felt another surge of alien concepts and emotions crash into her and cried out.
“Wait wait wait! Stop! I’m too weak to understand that!”
The feeling stopped, and Lee Jia let out a sigh of relief.
“Just nod or blink or something. I’ll try to only ask simple questions, can you do that?”
She felt weird speaking to the spirit like this, but if it really was trying to communicate, then she’d make an effort to cooperate. It was better than dying, at least.
The spirit blinked once, slowly.
“Ok, good. So you can understand what I am saying?”
Blink.
“I apologize for trespassing in your territory here. May I leave if I promise not to come back?”
The spirit stared at Lee Jia without blinking and after a pause, she realized that this wasn’t the most expedient method of communication.
“Why not? Have I done something to offend you?”
No response.
“Okay...that’s good at least. Are you...going to kill me?”
No response. Lee Jia let out a sigh of relief.
“So you’re not going to kill me, but I can’t leave, so...there’s something you want from me?”
Blink. That was a start at least, but what was it?
“Is it more shadow essence? I don’t have any left, I offered everything I had.”
No response, but what else did she even have to offer? She wasn’t getting anywhere with this line of questioning, so she tried another direction.
“What you were trying to say earlier—I only understood part of it, something about kin, or kinship. Was that referring to me? Because of my spirit half?”
The spirit let out an unsatisfied huff, but blinked. She wasn’t sure why she was able to intuit its body language like that, but it was helping her to understand its intentions.
“Sounds like I am only part right—well, there was a lot you were trying to say, so obviously there’s no way for me to interpret it from just that one word.”
Blink. The spirit stood and leaned down until its face was mere inches from hers, then its domain let up a little bit more, revealing more of that dense shadow essence to her.
“Wait, are you...returning the favor? Do you want me to cultivate this?”
Blink.
“What? But this is so much more than what I offered!”
Blink. Lee Jia sighed—she knew it had been an insultingly small offer, but she didn’t understand why the spirit was doing this.
“Is there...something else you want in return for all this?”
Blink. Of course, as inscrutable as spirits could be, even they wouldn’t offer something for nothing.
“Do I have a choice? Can I turn this offer down and just leave?”
The spirit sat down again and continued to stare. Apparently whatever strange bargain was being offered was not one that she had the option of refusing. Lee Jia glanced back at her friends and saw them looking as confused as she felt. They tried to call for her when she met their eyes, but she still couldn’t hear them. With a sigh of resignation, she sat down and adopted a meditative pose. Before she began to meditate, she cracked one eye open and regarded the spirit archly.
“And you are going to let me go after this?”
Blink. Well, she supposed that would just have to be good enough. Lee Jia closed her eyes and concentrated on the area within her domain—not that there was much of an area for her to sense. The mana was so dense that she had to start slowly, to keep it from overwhelming her, drawing just a little bit in at a time.
It was the first time Lee Jia had ever cultivated raw elemental mana before—most of her lessons had emphasized balance, and the mana in the environments she cultivated in was usually fairly well balanced anyway. She had already been refining shadow element qi for Steps of the Stalker, but cultivating it directly was an odd feeling.
The shadow essence was cold, yet comforting. It gave her an unusual sense of security, and she felt safe, for a moment, from those who would seek her. She hadn’t known that raw mana could carry such deep meaning, and wondered if she had been missing out on potential insights when she had been meditating before.
Most of the energy went to her domain as usual, apparently building that inner world where she had met her spirit half. The rest, she tried to carefully store within the meridians she used for Steps of the Stalker, not wanting to disrupt her regular cultivation with an overabundance of one element. The essence was so dense that even after refining it to match her second stage cultivation, it had completely filled the meridians by the time she absorbed it all.
When Lee Jia opened her eyes again the sun had set, but only just barely—the meditation had taken around an hour or so. She checked her surroundings and saw the spirit sitting in exactly the same spot it had been. Her friends were still waiting for her, and Eui seemed to be alerting the others to her movement.
“Okay, I did it. Now what?”
The spirit stared at Lee Jia for a moment before standing and turning away from her, vanishing from sight after taking a couple of steps. She stood cautiously and looked around, but there was no sign of the spirit except for the presence of its domain still suppressing her own.
“Uh...is that it? I thought I was supposed to do something else.”
When no response came, Lee Jia edged slowly towards the ledge that would lead back to her friends. Nothing stopped her, and with only one curious glance back at the strange bush she’d been forced to leave behind, she crossed the threshold again and returned to her group.
Eui nearly tackled her off the ledge with a hug when she made it back to them.
“Jia! You’re safe! What happened?”
“I don’t know! That spirit surprised me and I didn’t know what to do, but it seemed to be a spirit of shadow, so I gave it some of the shadow essence I’ve been cultivating.”
Rika’s eyes widened.
“You gave the kami an offering?”
“Uh, I guess? Is that bad?”
Rika’s expression became a worried frown as she shrugged.
“That depends on the kami. You looked like you were talking to it, did it ask or offer anything in return?”
Jia nodded.
“I don’t know why, but it wanted me to cultivate some of the shadow essence there before it let me go.”
Dae and Rika both winced as Jia spoke and she looked between them with confusion.
“What? Did I do something wrong?”
Dae sighed and scratched the back of his head.
“Perhaps not but...well, spirits aren’t just errant souls, hehe. They are beings of actual living spiritual energy. The shadow essence it had you cultivate wasn’t just some mana that it was hoarding, it was part of the spirit itself.”
Lee Jia paled.
“Wait, so I have part of that spirit in my soul, now?”
Rika, Dae, and Eunae all nodded. Eunae put a hand on her cheek and frowned.
“It might not mean anything. Spirits don’t really differentiate between raw and refined mana. You gave a part of yourself, so it did the same in return. It can be very difficult to understand their motivations. You should have that conversation with Kim Yongsun as soon as you’re able—he really is quite knowledgeable about spirits.”
Jia sighed. She’d been putting that conversation off, mostly because she didn’t have a very good impression of Kim, but also because she had no idea how she would even broach the subject in the first place, since they weren’t particularly well acquainted.
“I’ll think about it. We’d better try to get back, though. It’s already dark.”
Dae nodded.
“I sent a message to Hayakawa explaining our delay, but I agree. It’s probably not safe to move around the mountain at night.”
With Eunae and Lee Jia leading the way with their superior night vision, the group made their way back to the plateau. As they did, Jia reflected on the strange encounter and wondered just what the spirit wanted from her, and what it had been trying to communicate. If the essence she had taken from it really was a part of the spirit herself, would it be possible to commune with it as she had with her own spirit half?
She had a feeling she’d be finding out sooner or later.
---
Yan Yue sat in silent meditation. Of course, Zheng Long had decided to make their own camp separate from the ‘beasts and savages’. She had been surprised to note that Xin Wei seemed so uncomfortable with the derogatory language—she thought he had seemed like the type to look down on others, but perhaps there was more to the sarcastic boy than she realized.
Yue had no intention of sleeping alone in the wilderness with a bunch of men, so she was instead taking the opportunity to get some proper cultivation done—or at least, that’s what she was pretending to do. Instead she was using a clairvoyance technique—an ability that could project her awareness far outside of the usual limits of her perception. It wasn’t very useful in the academy, since any xiantian cultivator would discover her immediately, but out in the wilderness, she could gather information at her leisure.
The first thing she observed with her technique was, of course, her ‘allies’. It was her personal policy that the closer someone was, the less you should trust them, after all. Zheng Long and Han Yu had been acting suspiciously, and she wanted to know why. Her spiritual projection slipped effortlessly through their shared tent. It was warded, but she was the one in charge of making the wards in the first place—bypassing them was no trouble.
“How long are we going to spend on this wild goose chase, Senior Zheng? The demon, if it ever existed, is long gone by now.”
Zheng Long chuckled affably at Han Yu’s complaining.
“Due diligence must be observed, Han Yu. Perhaps there’s no demon on this mountain, but I have a feeling we’ll discover something rather interesting either way.”
Ugh, she knew that tone. He knew something already, but he was trying to be mysterious about it. If she had him alone she’d be able to coax something out of him—he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he thought he was—but Han Yu was far too guileless to even bother trying.
“Hmph, if you say so. Are you sure we can trust those two? That damned Xin was completely standoffish when I questioned him before. You’d think a disgraced noble would have some humility.”
“Haha! Have some tact, Han. He was probably just trying to banter—I rather enjoy his company, actually. But no, I don’t think we can trust them. They are technically here on Miss Lee’s invitation, and I doubt that they would take our side if it came to a fight.”
Yan Yue bit her thumbnail—which did nothing in this form, but habits were hard to break—why would it come to a fight? Were they planning something? Why would they exclude her if they were? At least she knew they were plotting something, if not what.
“What about Miss Yan? You’re sure her behavior isn’t suspicious? I think she’s up to something.”
“You always think she’s up to something. I swear, if you two fought any more often I’d think you were courting each other.”
Yan Yue felt physically ill at the prospect, and was glad that she wasn’t present in person or she would have audibly gagged.
“I would never presume to—”
Zheng Long waved off Han Yu’s protests.
“It was a joke, Han—don’t take it so seriously. Aside from wasting her time with body cultivation, her actions are within my expectations—there’s nothing to worry about.”
An ominous way to put that, though it might just be Zheng Long’s penchant for melodrama. Yan Yue shook her head ruefully—Zheng Long and Han Yu’s mindless patriotism did them no favors. Unlocking her ki and her mana sense had been a huge benefit, and Yue was even a little disappointed that Lee Jia had yet to make good on the promise to continue training her.
“Anyhow, let’s get some rest. We’ll have the entire day tomorrow to search the rest of this mountain. Perhaps we really will find our demon, and if not—well, at least you’ll have those materials.”
Han Yu nodded in acknowledgement.
“That’s true. Master was exactly right about this mountain—it’s a completely untapped cornucopia of magical materials. I’ve already got enough to make a few high grade elixirs.”
“Haha! Do it tomorrow, Han. I plan on sleeping tonight.”
“Of course, Senior Zheng.”
Yan Yue sighed. Nothing more to be gained here. She wandered off in search of something else. Perhaps Xin and Guan Yi would be more interesting, or perhaps she would push herself to try to observe the plateau.
It was going to be a long night, and unlike Zheng Long, Yan Yue was not going to waste it.
