Sky Pride- A True Legacy (Alternate POV Chapter) (Patreon)

“A man needs a creed. Without a creed, he’s lost. So let me ask you, Daoist Kong, what’s your creed?”

“Immortality at all costs. And yours, Daoist Gobek?”

“Don’t have one. I’m lost.”

Daoist Gobek, as he was known in Stillearth Refuge, smiled thinly and took a long drink of wine. He didn’t consider himself a fussy man, but a lightless room inside of a rocky hill decorated in accumulated loot nobody wanted was distasteful. And the people who filled it were worse. Still, you had to do something to pass the time, and he wouldn’t have the privacy needed to cultivate. Drinking and chatting it was.

Daoist Kong laughed, a merry, tinkling noise. “You can’t be that lost. Not at our level.”

“Oh, but I can. Let me refill your cup.” Maiden’s Tears was an adequate wine, and more importantly, he wasn’t buying. The subtle sweetness and lingering burn certainly was more palatable than the fermented mare’s milk he grew up on. “My art is the same as anyone else’s. Stack up enough resources, burn them all, and ride the smoke to immortality or Hell.”

“I object, I object! Ah, thank you. Another round of snacks?” Daoist Kong reached out and gently picked up the clay cup and sipped appreciatively. He wasn’t paying for the wine either. “My art requires careful breeding of a variety of Gu, bringing together the five elements, yin and yang, astronomy, the birthcharts of my breeding vessels, the investiture of certain demons and spirits to stand as gods over the ritual, even the emotional relationship between master and Gu, all are crucial to achieving immortality.”

“Can’t say no to more snacks. Who knows when the mobilization will be? But that’s a dull subject. Let’s see, what I’m hearing is that you stack up a lot of complicated resources. And burn them down. Somehow I don’t see many of those Gu and vessels and whatnots surviving long enough to see you tackle your next breakthrough. But does all that work satisfy you, Daoist Kong?”

“Satisfaction?” There was another tinkling laugh. Chiten covered knuckles rapped on the table and the daoist shook his head. The compound eyes set in his skull never blinked. Gobek could see his reflection perfectly in them. “Never satisfied. There is always the hunger, and always the knowledge that the only thing which can sate it is to leave the cycle of life and death. Immortality.”

Gobek nodded. His ancestors had believed something similar. Then one of them discovered it, and nothing was ever the same.

“But Daoist Gobek has achieved a small piece of immortality, so you know this. What made you agree to old Heavenly Zombie’s scheme?”

“I need a big pile of resources to burn, and that depot will either have what I need or get me enough money and Iron Marks to let me buy it back in the Gorge.”

“What a bloodless way of looking at things. You think I overcomplicate matters, but am I not simply taking my satisfaction in them? Whereas you act like cultivation is something to be endured.” Daoist Kong lacked an eyebrow to cock at Daoist Gobek. But it was clear from his facial ticks that he had not come to terms with that truth yet.

“Because it’s all so damn empty. Cultivation is an act of desperate faith that if we just keep doing the same things over and over again for an eternity, eventually something will change for the better.” 

Daoist Gobek ripped a heart off a skewer and chewed mechanically. He didn’t ask what sort of animal it came from. He didn’t care either.

“Faith, from a man who professes no creed?”

“Yep. Here is a question- Does this world make sense to you? That some are born with heaven’s blessings and some are not? That some nations prosper because of an ancestor’s villany, while others vanish because of a present ‘virtue?’ Does this truly seem like the product of an all knowing and just heavens or universal Dao?”

“Put that way, I suppose it does not. Power, like food, is far from equally distributed. If I recall correctly, some peoples never produce immortals. The nomads of these wastes, for one.”

Gobek ignored the unsubtle probe. 

“They don’t. But that’s to my point. The world is madness and illusion. The more we embrace the world, the more mired in lies and misery we become. The only reasonable course is therefore to escape. To find what’s on the other side of the illusion. And that takes strength, and time.”

“Ah, faith in the lack of true things to believe in. A creed that rejects creeds. Your initial question was a trap- by your logic we are all lost and need infinite time to find something worth believing in.” Daoist Kong “smiled,” showing no human teeth left behind his distended lips. “How fortunate that time is something you have in abundance.” 

A brassy gong sounded, filling the Stillearth Refuge. “Time is another illusion. And it seems ours is up.” Daoist Gobek stood and straightened his robes. His were simple and utilitarian, more suitable for a horse archer than a cultivator of immortality. Yet the materials they were made from were so precious, they could have bought a mortal dukedom with change left over for a brace of baronies.

Not that they could be exchanged for mortal things. Not at his level.

“Heh. Not even time to finish the jar nor the snacks. Ah well, I don’t mind wasting someone else’s money.” Daoist Kong seemed to need too many knees to stand straight. It was an impressively, or unsettlingly, liquid movement. 

“More satisfaction, Daoist Kong?”

“And yet, I am still hungry.”

The cultivators assembled outside the refuge. A giant hawk lay on its belly, some beast that had flown into the wasteland, became demonized, grew to giant size feeding on other giant beasts, then was slaughtered and transformed into an undead version of its already unnatural existence. Green furred zombies, long fangs and blackened claws dripping corpse poison, stood in neat rows behind Heavenly Zombie, the necromancer leading and sponsoring the expedition. Under contract from even more mighty personages, it was understood, but with dozens of Heavenly Person level corpses behind him, his fist was big enough by itself to keep his employees in check.

“I won’t talk nonsense,” Heavenly Zombie’s divine sense whispered in everyone’s mind. “We approach under the cover of wards. Corpse poison will take down the wards, then the Zombies, then you lot rush in. Our experts, that is you, will lock down their experts who, when the zombies are included, are outnumbered nearly three to one. As for the earthly tier slaves… I don’t care.”

There were chuckles at that. Nobody cared, but just to be thorough, hundreds of lower tier cultivators would be attacking from the hidden bases closer to the depot. They had been moving for weeks now. But then, life is hard when you are weak.

“Since I know some of you ‘brave souls’ won’t go unless I say this, yes, I can make a Heart Demon Oath that the Killing Note Sung has been drawn away by Senior Hei. I wouldn’t be risking my own neck if I wasn’t certain of victory. So now that all stupid questions have been preempted, stick close to the bird. We move out. Now.”

Gobek admired the idol in his storage ring. It wasn’t conscious, just the habit of centuries. It was proof. That was the most important thing. It was a single point of reality that proved the unrealness of the world. Superficially, the idol resembled certain demons or spirits. Idealized, yes, but still recognizable. Something that would lord over the lesser creatures he bound and compelled to his service. Only superficially. The deeper one looked, the more the truth was revealed.

This was something that transcended reality. It didn’t exist at a higher level, or a deeper level or any of that nonsense- it was outside of it entirely. It took centuries of experimentation. His tribe thought it a mere curiosity, then a tool for suppressing demons. 

Once they bound their ancestral demon, reversing millennia of slavish service, they learned better. Demons were like anything else in this world. Food. Merely food. And with that, they flourished. He was merely the latest in a long line of truth seekers. There were others of his tribe out there. Gobek was just the strongest. And, he hoped, the one closest to the truth.

The illusion had gone on long enough. It would shatter in his generation.

Gobek slapped a gourd hanging from his waist and smoke poured out. A horse made of ash and ember formed, dragging its hoof in the sand and shaking its head. Gobeck swung up onto its back with utter ease. The hawk finished swallowing its passengers. With a sharp flex of will, the raid set out.

Gobek rode across the sky on his mare of smoke and ash, leaving burning hoofprints behind him. It always gave him a thrill. How many other tribes still scurried around on the sands, sacrificing any hope of power in exchange for the protection offered to cattle? How many generations had been born, suffered, and died in their little pen? Barely able to stick their heads through the fence and nibble at the sweet grass all around them. 

Subsisting on what was tossed into the enclosure, and what meager fodder could be foraged. A thin life, and a short one. Until they found it. 

He let the hawk pull well ahead. Timing would be key, and he certainly wasn’t going to test the defenses while they were at their strongest. He waited until he felt the array fall. Then he rode in. 

Long arrows made of abyssal stone and hellish wood, fletched with feathers ripped from the wings of vultures who spread plagues they, themselves were immune to, were nocked to a string made from the guts of an old enemy. The string pulled back a bow made of the bones of the first woman to ever truly love him. 

Every time he touched the bow, he remembered how his mother’s bones hadn’t responded to the spell. 

The arrow flew out and punched through a warrior’s chest. He tried to slap the arrow away with his saber, summoning a vast golden blade made of metal qi to chop away the death coming for him. It was too weak. How could a mere illusion stop Gobek’s true arrow?

Just in case, Gobek shot him again. The arrows were expensive to make, but still cheaper than his life. He called the dead cultivator’s storage ring to his hand with a thought, his saber with another, the treasured pendant and ancient white crocodile leather boots too, all came with his thought. The arrows ripped out of rapidly rotting flesh. Still usable, though they would need a good soak in a blood bath before being fully returned to strength. 

The whole exchange had taken less than a breath’s time. Before a mortal could understand what they were seeing enough to scream, he was running down the next victim, a new arrow nocked and pulled back to his cheek.

The depot was similar to what most outsiders constructed in the desert- wood framing brought in by sky barge, vast quantities of bricks, plaster, tile roofs, all of the cheapest sort. Then reinforced with remarkably expensive arrays. Those had to be made on site, and each cost more than an average Heavenly Person cultivator might acquire in a year. 

He briefly considered smashing some of the arrays. Just because he could. But then, he wasn’t being paid for that, and every arrow wasted on an array was an arrow that wasn’t earning him iron marks and storage rings. He drew another to his cheek, sighting down the shaft at a woman with a hatchet in each hand and a desperate, wild look in her eyes.

“Windmother! I can see Windmother coming from the southeast!”

The divine sense message nearly startled him into a missed shot. He didn’t loose the arrow. He just turned and ran. Any direction would do, as long as it wasn’t southeast. 

Windmother wouldn’t be here unless she was carrying Killing Note Sung. Elder Hei hadn’t managed to hold her for long enough. This raid was over.

He had made a little profit at no expense. The time wasn’t wasted. Someone was setting off explosions in the depot. Trying to buy time for the escape, or sheer malice? He didn’t care. His burning steed set off across the sky. He could hear the furious cry of a hawk in the high distance. 

“Too Late.” Gobek didn’t grin. It wasn’t worth celebrating. He could ride faster than most could fly. They would take the brunt of Sung’s wrath. And he? He would reluctantly pay for the next jar of Maiden’s Tears to toast their memory with, back at the refuge. And a few skewers. The hearts were pleasantly chewy.

There was a note, and his demonic steed staggered under him. Then the music cascaded over the wasteland, covering it in a green tide of spring. Gobek had spent a lifetime training to resist the snares of the Grand Illusion. Sung shattered his defenses in just two notes.

Spring rose up around him. More than just an attack using wood qi, it was spring. Spring after a fire ripped through the steppes. Spring after a hard winter when the frozen ground cracked under the sudden heat and buried shoots climbed from their hidden beds. From death comes life. From extreme yin, supreme yang.

Gobek was one steeped in yin and death. They all were. The song carried not just qi, but an understanding of the dao so profound, the very flesh of their bodies was helpless to resist it. From yin is born yang. A moment of spectacular brilliance. An explosion.

He could hear the screams of the others as Sung ripped them apart. He could hear his own screams. He kept his mare intact until he was a bare hundred feet above the sands. Smashed into the hard ground going fast enough to leave a wake behind him. He felt pieces of him go- an arm, his legs, his guts, everything below his ribs ground or exploded away. Other things broke in him, the secret alterations to his body that gave him the edge in so many desperate fights. 

“I am going to die. The illusion won. I am going to die here.”

He slammed to a stop against some rocks. His treasures were scattered around. His bow and arrows had shattered into nothing, destroyed utterly by the song. All that was left was a few backup pieces… and it. Proof. The key to the jailhouse. It took sacrifice to study it. Terrible tests of will, severing away one’s ties to the world. Refusing to be bound by compassion or, worse, sentiment. But it was necessary. It was the only true thing in the whole world. A legacy that couldn’t, couldn’t end with him.

If it did, who would take revenge for him? Who would find the master of the illusion and rip them limb from limb?!

He tried to gather what little strength he could. Tried to hold on, to find someone, anyone. They would be looting the battlefield soon. Ancient Crane would send out their servant disciples to tidy up and harvest resources. It would be easy to persuade one of them to keep a little something back. Promise them a path to the heavenly person level. He would be sincere too- a path does not guarantee reaching the destination, after all. And they would be desperate. That always helped.

A boy appeared in front of him. A child. Endless hate in his eyes. Crushing darkness. Already mutilated, probably bullied for being plain compared to the pretty cultivators around him. The raid must have killed someone he cared about. Maybe everyone he cared about. He would be desperate for power. 

Perfect.

“No need to play games, boy. I’m not going to live any longer. All I ask is that you receive my legacy. Use or or don’t. Just be sure that-”