Cognosticon

Chapters 513-516


Chapter 513: The Depths of the Brightwind Vault


As they delved into the deeper vaults, the three of them remained together, less because they needed security than because it was fun to explore together. Zae Zin Nim had stories about the materials and Omilaena never missed an opportunity to needle Cloudspire when she thought a name was ridiculous. For his part, Kai was just enjoying the company.


Of course they spread out at times as well. Omilaena wandered among a set of metals and Kai went with Zae Zin Nim as they explored a cabinet of heavily locked pills. Most of them were just of high intensity, but they found something labeled a Jade Key Pill that allegedly unlocked higher forms of cultivation. That sounded like every other pill to Kai, but it seemed to intrigue her, so he left Zae Zin Nim to figure it out.


The most valuable thing he found on his own was actually a teleportation talisman, lumped in with a pile of jade. It had qi like so many other items, but the fundamental teleportation was based on mana, so he had noticed it first. As far as he could tell, one part was a teleport anchor like he knew from home, but the other was a talisman designed to be broken.


Meanwhile, Omilaena was coming back with an armful of junk.


"What have you found?" he asked her.


"Oh, plenty of things." She tucked away the majority of what she was carrying and held up a sort of cauldron, covered in ornate carvings of dragons and phoenixes. "I stole all the poisons I found in the alchemy section, of course, but this is the real find."


"Is that a pot? Like for soup?"


"It is a pill furnace," Zae Zin Nim said stiffly from the side. "They can be used by alchemists to strengthen their pills or other concoctions. It is not for soup."


"You could probably make powerful soup in it, though," Omilaena said. "Mainly I want to figure out how it works. Maybe melt the thing down to absorb, maybe not. I've seen a few of these, but they were all relatively weak. This is the first one that impresses me."


The three of them headed deeper into the main chamber, searching for anything that had been missed. There was still a final hallway at the far end of the vault, but they seemed to be avoiding it by unspoken agreement. Meanwhile, they looked for treasures that would be useful on Deadwaste - Zae Zin Nim picked out a few technique scrolls, Omilaena took a golden sword, and Kai found a potion that allegedly "awakened inner talent" that might work on Goralian Classes.


Before they reached the final hall, they were interrupted by Inafay flying in from another of the side halls. "I found something great!" she said cheerfully. "Help me get it out!"


They weren't all necessary, but they followed her together anyway. At the end of a weapons hall, a contained tornado sped around what appeared to be a bright green folding fan. Kai could feel a formidable power within, not insane but more potent than the other weapons.


"Ah..." Zae Zin Nim nodded as she stepped closer. "I know of this. The Fan of the Bright Eastern Wind is a weapon that enhances wind techniques, even containing some of its own. My father offered it to me, before it became clear my talents lay more in martial arts. A potent weapon, for the right wielder."


"Then is it alright if I try it?" Inafay asked. "I don't want to step on your toes if this is a family thing..."


"No, better you than someone from the sect." Zae Zin Nim not only disabled the wind barrier, she actually smiled at Inafay as she handed it over. They'd gotten closer than Kai had expected while he wasn't looking.


While Inafay began testing out the fan, blowing herself off her feet half the time, the three of them ventured to the final part of the hall. There wasn't much there, each item placed on a solid jade pedestal. There were a few qi pills, each with a grand name, but Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena snapped all of those up before he had time to look at them.


Beyond that, they reached a stranger treasure: it looked like a coil of bright blue string, yet it thrummed with a power that resonated in his bones. This one was labeled, and the words immediately connected with something he had seen in Zae Clen Ban's soul: Brightwind Meridian Perfection.


"This is the most unique treasure of our sect," Zae Zin Nim explained. "Perhaps not the most powerful, but the only one that is unique to us. A secret passed down from the very first ancestor of the sect, it is said."


"How does this work?" Omilaena poked at the coil, then pulled her finger back, shaking it. "Not pleasant. Feels like it's connected to Physique, but this is one thing I don't want to stick in my body."


"I am unsure. It was said that only a pristine cultivator, such as my father, could survive their integration. It is... possible that I will no longer be compatible. There are secrets that I do not know, and those secrets may have died with my father."


"Bah, I'm pretty sure I can figure it out eventually. Even if it doesn't work for you, we can definitely get something out of a secret like this."


They gingerly sealed up the coils for Omilaena to inspect later, then continued on. Kai remained alert for any sign of monster cores, but he was beginning to think he was out of luck. Everything was all polished jade here... so the ugly spiked pill he spotted next stuck out like a sore thumb. He bent forward to read the label: the Twisted Immortal Carnal Seed.


"Sounds like a good time," Omilaena said. "Hope it's not a suppository."


"Curious..." Zae Zin Nim pulled a scroll from her sleeve and pored over it for a time before finding what she wanted and nodding. "There is a record of this, and it connects with stories I recall. An ancient alchemist of our sect was attempting to produce a path to immortality through cultivating the fleshly body. What he produced was powerful, but so dangerous that it killed all who attempted to consume it."


"Definitely Physique-aspected, and a nasty bit of work." Omilaena picked the pill up to examine with her goggles, wincing all the while. "It feels like a fucked-up cousin to what you did with the Blackblood Physique, so I don't think it would be compatible with you. I'd like to say I could unravel the thing for resources, but it feels pretty lethal. So..."


She tossed it to Kai and he caught it instinctively. It burned in his hand, but the pain wasn't much, so he merely inspected the spiked pill and/or seed. Definite element of chakra, and he could feel some of what Omilaena had said, including the Physique aspect... and the lethal part.


"If you can survive that," she said, "it would definitely give you a Physique boost. You might be the only one who can, so it's a good find."


Kai placed it into his spatial ring to work on later and they continued inward. But there wasn't much space left: at the end of the hall lay something that looked like a golden marble until Kai realized that it was a glass sphere that contained incredibly intense qi. Except it wasn't qi alone, there was mana and chakra burning within it. The pedestal didn't have any label, which didn't seem to matter to Zae Zin Nim.


"This is qi for Heavenly Cultivation." She spoke in a soft voice, respectful for the first time. "It is said that only a Sky Soul can dream of harnessing such power, and even my father had only been able to cultivate a small amount of it."


"But you killed him, so I bet you can do better," Omilaena said, then nudged Zae Zin Nim with her hip. "Go on, take it."


"I will, for all three of us." Zae Zin Nim enclosed the sphere in her hands and then let out a breath. "We must all walk our own paths of cultivation, but I won't be happy until all three of us have attained those heights."


She hadn't meant it as a romantic line, but Kai still moved inward and put an arm around her shoulders. Omilaena immediately slipped in as well and Zae Zin Nim didn't resist, only smiling at them. These treasures were the end goal of many cultivators, the sum of lifetimes of conquest, but for the three of them this was only another stepping stone.


"Not that I'm objecting," Omilaena said eventually, "but are we going to grab everything and leave the Brightwind Sect to figure out the rest?"


Zae Zin Nim nodded. "I have no qualms about doing so if necessary."


"Actually," Kai said, "I had an idea about that..."


Chapter 514: Leaving the Eastern Plains


The courtiers of the Brightwind Sect had been on high alert ever since they heard the news, spiking ever higher when the errant daughter returned. Had she been Zae Clen Ban, half of them would no doubt have been dead already. His daughter seemed less violent, yet no softer, and they realized with growing horror that she was truly indifferent to every enticement or threat they could offer.


She would not strike any of them down by her own hand, but it seemed very likely that she would abandon them.


When he first heard the news, the head of the treasury had considered taking whatever he could and simply fleeing, escaping to the Northern Expanse or perhaps even the Heavenly Mountains and Lakes. The fear of the Zae family stayed his hand, in particular their ability to hold a grudge - the old patriarch had sent a great many cultivators across the world to hunt down his daughter, after all. Perhaps if he had fled immediately he could have gotten away with it, but now he was enmeshed in a new era of conflicts.


Unlike some fools in the court, the treasurer realized that Zae Zin Nim was completely indifferent to wealth itself - like many cultivators, she only cared about what power it could buy her. Given that she had immediately gone to break open the grand vault, that put the head of the treasury in a weaker position.


Instead of making any direct approaches, he made attempts on the new matriarch's consorts. Some of the others, imbeciles that they were, gossiped about the strange relationship and what exactly it meant, but he had no time for such drama. The three of them appeared to have a strong bond of trust, so a path to either of them was a path to the matriarch.


At first he'd thought that this was his path into the new court, as the woman from Rosemount had seemed interested in the military intelligence he offered. She was even flirtatious, which he judged to be a test and thus ignored. But when he didn't respond she seemed to lose interest, and he realized that she had seen through him from the beginning and was only toying with him.


Next he had tried approaching the male consort, but the enormous barbarian had just stared at him with very tired eyes. The head of the treasury had decided it was better not to bother him.


So with the matriarch and her consorts indifferent, where did that leave him? They seemed likely to rule in a hands-off fashion if they ruled at all, so there was space for an ambitious courtier to make something of himself. The problem was that he couldn't count on stability, certainly not in sect politics and possibly not even with other sects. Even though the three had utterly broken the Redstorm Sect, cultivators were rarely satisfied for long.


Before he could find any solution, the head of the treasury heard that there was to be an announcement and ceremony. The matriarch and her consorts saw off their friends in their strange vessel - he'd heard much worse things about flying vehicles from Deadwaste and was shocked at how advanced this one appeared to be, but unfortunately there was no way to add it to the vaults. As the Deadwaste barbarians departed, the matriarch and her consorts entered the sacred land in order to cultivate and increase their strength further.


Shocking as it seemed - and he had gotten confirmation from stronger cultivators - the matriarch had not yet reached Sky Soul. Her consorts were also extraordinarily powerful, so given time to cultivate in the sacred land, they could shake the Eastern Plains. Zae Zin Nim herself gave instructions to the sect to handle their own problems while she cultivated, then it was over.


The great barriers were raised, and he thought that he sensed something, a subtle power. After some thought, the head of the treasury decided it was better not to think about this.


With all their allies gone, the courtiers were left to try to put together the pieces they had been given. Their wealth of treasures had been reduced, but their strength had been restored by all the new cultivators from the Redstorm Sect. That itself was another problem and the head of the treasury pivoted to granting them his remaining assets in order to buy new friends.


As he worked, he needed to meet with the head of the alchemy division. The old woman was, if not a friend, then at least a steady ally in the constant changing court. She could undoubtedly have helped him with an alliance, yet she seemed distracted, staring out toward the Brightwind sacred land.


"The foreigners use very strange arts," she observed quietly.


"Yes," the head of the treasury agreed, "they do."


"One could use their reputation as leverage to accomplish a great deal."


"Especially if one moved fast."


"But," and the head of the alchemy division finally leaned forward, "do you think they're actually in there?"


"I think," he said calmly, "that we should maintain the barrier and not question our matriarch."


After a time, she nodded in slow agreement. The Brightwind Sect would not be what it once was, but perhaps it could become something new.


.


..


.


Kai stood at the back of the Clanless, staring at the retreating land, and felt the waves of relief pour over him. Finally they were putting Cloudspire behind them.


In the beginning he had been sure that it couldn't possibly work. They had entered the "sacred land", which was apparently some sort of region specially suited for cultivation, as a ruse while their allies returned to Deadwaste. Of course, they had no intention to stay, as it didn't take them very long to take everything of value. The three of them together had rapidly absorbed the qi pools and Kai ate a few sacred beasts that didn't even survive his hunger to grant him an ability.


Then, when the final barrier went up, they had activated the teleportation talisman. It had apparently been easy for Omilaena to key it to the teleportation anchor on the Clanless, so they invisibly crossed the space to catch up with only a surge of mana.


While the others had relaxed, Kai waited with bated breath, sure that the cultivators would realize and come after them. Or that some new enemy sect would notice and immediately launch an attack. But either the cultivators didn't notice that they had disappeared or they chose not to notice, because no one stopped the Clanless from flying east and leaving the continent.


Now that he was satisfied, Kai turned back to the ship, and to his surprise he found that the others were waiting for him. Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena sat together, Omilaena wrapping an arm around their wife's waist and teasing. Inafay and Orotaisin were together as well, experimenting with some of the Brightwind technique scrolls, but looked up as soon as he turned.


"The plan hasn't changed, right?" Kai asked the group. "We head back to Darkmist Island as quickly as possible, pick up all the trainees we left there, then fly to Krysal. From there, we'll have to contact the Frontier elites and make a new plan. The only question is how fast we can do that, as far as I'm concerned, so we only need to talk about keeping the qi engine running."


"Already handled," Zae Zin Nim told him with an officious nod. "Inafay and Orotaisin will fuel it daily for qi training, though they can't continue at that intensity for long. I should easily be able to handle the rest, cycling between my own cultivation and the weaker qi resources we took from the vault. The engine room should be so overflowing that the two of you could use it to cultivate as well."


"Oh... good work, then." Kai scratched the back of his head as he mentally shifted all his plans forward. "At top speed, the trip should only take about a month. Once we get back to Deadwaste, we'll only have four months remaining before the incursion."


"Four and a half," Omilaena corrected. "We didn't spend that long getting out of the Eastern Plains."


"That's true if it follows the average, which you know we shouldn't depend on. Anyway, I was going to say that our attention will be drawn in different directions once we reach Deadwaste, and every nation will be demanding solutions. So I think that the trip back is the time to try wilder training, see how much we can figure out before we develop a new training regimen for ourselves."


The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


Zae Zin Nim folded her arms in her sleeves and he thought her stern expression represented approval. "I will focus primarily on how the Heavenly Qi and Brightwind Meridian Perfection might be used. Though I will require some help from you, I should be able to handle the majority of it."


"We'd better focus on ourselves," Inafay spoke up for the first time, raising her scroll as if registering her attendance. "We'll have a hard enough time just solidifying the gains we've made so far."


"I want to play with you two a little," Omilaena said, "but otherwise I agree. And it goes without saying that I have my own projects."


With that settled, Kai realized that he actually didn't need to give them any other instructions: he was actually the one who needed to set a plan for himself. As he walked across the deck of the Clanless, he considered his soul again.


<


Name: Kai Clanless


Total Power: 915


Monstrous Hunger - XV (omicron)


Cultivation: Nascent Foundation 26% (258)


Savage Heart: 22 (221)


Physique Level: C-8 (340)


Beggar King's Robes: +3 (15)


Soul Level: 9 (81)


Behemoth's Heart - X (kappa)


Thunderbird's Wings - IX (iota)


Baleful Breath - VIII (theta)


Manticore's Spine - IV (delta)


Tyrant's Claw - XII (kappa)


Famished World - IV (delta)


-


Direboar's Strength - XIV (xi)


Void Gaze - VIII (theta)


Mutefang's Stealth - XV (omicron)


Isulfr's Bite - IX (iota)


Sahagin's Soul - XII (mu)


Lizarkyl's Tail - VI (zeta)


Wallcrawler's Feet - III (gamma)


Abominalgum - I (alpha)


Rose Piranha - III (gamma)


Cloud Piranha - III (gamma)


Bloodtrap - III (gamma)


Slime's Immortality - I (alpha)


Silver Demon - I (alpha)


Voidmaw's Bite - I (alpha)


Great Cetae - II (beta)


>


Deadwaste, and in particular the abyss, was probably a better place to find monstrous essence, so he was focused on improving the human side of his soul during the journey. His cultivation had a long way to go, and he didn't have any new methods of training the Savage Heart, so his best chance was to continue training his Physique.


Of course, all of this was likely either overkill for an incursion, or far too little for the gods. That didn't change what he needed to do.


As he reached the front of the ship, Kai rolled the Twisted Immortal Carnal Seed in his hands, feeling the spikes. This was definitely the next step, he just needed to figure out how to take it. But there was no question that the step would be moving him back toward Deadwaste and his original destiny.


Chapter 515: Training Toward Darkmist Island


As he blinked awake, Kai realized first that he was in the main cabin of the Clanless, then that they were still passing over the ocean. He'd taken multiple trips over the ocean at this point, from the relaxed journey after their honeymoon to the mad rush through the Blood Current. Most recently, he'd desperately flown the Clanless back to Cloudspire, hoping his wives were still alive.


Now, going in the opposite direction, he maintained an unusual sort of relaxed tension. Everything was fine, yet the incursion still loomed in the future, four months away. It felt wrong to slip into a routine, but acting more aggressively wouldn't get them there any faster.


The first step in his routine was getting out of bed, which was trickier than it seemed. Zae Zin Nim was asleep against his chest, an arm and leg wrapped around him, and he didn't want to wake her. While he carefully extracted himself, he noticed that Omilaena was awake, and she took the opportunity to extend a foot out to his thigh to tease. He smiled back, but shook his head, so she rolled her eyes and flopped back under the covers.


Once he slipped free of Zae Zin Nim she shifted restlessly, stretching until she brushed up against Omilaena and promptly latched onto her instead. Kai smiled at his wives cuddling together as he let the Beggar King's Rags wrap around him, then headed out onto the deck.


There he discovered Cragrila on watch duty, going through a training exercise with her new spear. It seemed that she had dismantled two legendary weapons and fused them into a single spear of wood, jade, and crystal. "Another day," she said conversationally.


"Another day," Kai agreed.


They began to spar, a final challenge for her and a warm-up for him. She was a real threat to cultivators, in general and especially with her new spear, but the gap in power made it easy for him to keep control of the fight. It was rare for them to say much of anything during their sparring matches, yet he looked forward to them.


After the match, she returned to meditate until her watch was over, so Kai shifted to his own training regimen. He focused on his familiar Physique routine, even though those exercises wouldn't get him from C-8 to C-9 no matter how many times he repeated them.


The reason he trained was because of the new item burning in his spatial ring, the Twisted Immortal Carnal Seed. He had experimented with it a little and was fairly confident he knew what it would do: if he swallowed the twisted pill, it would extend roots of power throughout his body, which could easily be lethal if he couldn't endure the pain and absorb the power. He thought he had a clear grasp of the ordeal and could definitely survive it, so the only question was if the "Immortal" aspect of the name was meaningful. That was a task to discuss with Omilaena when she could be distracted from her current pill obsession.


Even though he was in new territory, he was fairly sure that the normal rules of Physique would apply, which was why he was waiting to consume the Twisted Immortal Carnal Seed. It would likely help him break through a level, so he wanted to use it to reach B-0 instead of wasting it on C-9. To do that, he'd have to train his body and find the absolute limits of C rank.


That much was obvious... whether or not it was the right strategy from a broader perspective was less clear. Zae Zin Nim had managed to unlock an entirely different type of Physique and Omilaena was convinced that there was something else that most didn't understand, so she would use her own methods.


For whatever reason, that didn't seem to be his path. Kai wasn't sure if he even could follow a normal path, given the unique nature of his monstrous body. What he did know was that the boost of reaching B rank Physique was the power most available to him, the jump he was most capable of making before the incursion.


As for whether the fundamental limits of his soul would be a problem... that was something else that worried him, but there was nothing they could do while traveling. It seemed certain that when his human soul neared 999 Power he would begin to reach limits, and both Omilaena and Zae Zin Nim had required very specific help to expand their souls. What kinds of things would apply to him, he had no idea.


If he did, though... having greater than 2000 effective Power would put him in the top ranks of the world. That goal kept him pushing himself to the limit throughout his exercises.


Once he finished, he went to check in on the others, which had become another step in his routine. Inafay and Orotaisin had locked their door, so he gave them their privacy and moved on. Omilaena was in their bedroom, still wearing just her nightgown, but bent over her new pill furnace experimenting.


"Do you even see yourself?" Kai asked as he moved up behind her and put his hands on her hips.


"If I'm not teasing you two, what's the point?" Omilaena shot a smirk over her shoulder, but she was clearly much too focused to play around. "I actually think it might be possible to use the pill furnace to refine energy from dual cultivation, but I haven't figured out the mechanics. Definitely too busy for playtime."


"You didn't seem to agree a few hours ago."


"Definitely too busy."


After playfully bumping up against her one more time, Kai left her to her work. He was curious if Omilaena would unlock any more secrets with her study of alchemy, and how much that overlapped with the other arts he knew. From their past conversations he knew that she was only somewhat familiar with Goralian potion brewing - she hadn't ever met Juray, as odd as that seemed to him.


Since she was busy, Kai sought out Zae Zin Nim instead in the engine room. She had a routine as well, because she basically spent all her time cultivating. When he arrived she was in the middle of a cycle, so Kai sat down and began his own cultivation - he'd planned to swallow one of the qi pills from the vault, but there was so much power overflowing in the engine room that it wasn't necessary.


Zae Zin Nim's cultivation was growing by leaps and bounds, but she needed lots of jumps like that to reach her next goal. They hadn't explicitly said that she could make herself an unparalleled cultivator if she reached Sky Soul, but it was obvious and she seemed pleased.


"I am finished," his wife said abruptly, though she was still soaking in qi after her cycle. "Did you have anything you wanted to talk about?"


"Not in particular," Kai said.


"Your own cultivation is proceeding well?"


"Still slow, because my soul is consuming a lot of the qi, but nothing unusual. You?"


"That is somewhat more complicated." Zae Zin Nim slipped a blue coil from out of her sleeve and examined it. "It was said that an Earth Soul couldn't survive the perfection of their meridians, but I have tested, and I definitely can... but I don't want to waste the power, and using it now might."


"You mean you might absorb it for your advancement, instead of developing a secondary capacity?"


"Yes, it is meant to be a great technique that differentiates Sky Souls." His wife frowned and shifted. "However... Omilaena says that this may not be necessary or ideal. She thinks it's a way to get around the 1000 Power barrier."


Kai was familiar with the 999 barrier, but that was new, so he cracked an eye. "Is that a cultivation thing that I somehow still haven't heard about?"


"Oh... no, it is not, apologies. Omi and I have been discussing the strongest fighters we have seen, and we observed that many individual abilities seem to reach their limit at 1000 Power, same as that of a perfect Sky Soul. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence."


"Yeah, it was the same with the great powers of Rosemount, and they used a wide variety of different systems. I don't think it can be like the overall limit to the soul, can it? I know each capacity of the soul is limited, but surely people would notice if they had a maximum size."


"That is not clear. There are not so many who have reached those heights of power, so there may be much we do not understand. I am cultivating as much as possible while we explore other possibilities."


They discussed those as they continued cultivating: apparently there was some chance that it might be possible to obtain Brightwind Meridian Perfection as a core part of one's cultivation, yet there were enough details uncertain that they didn't want to attempt it. Another problem they would hopefully solve before they reached Deadwaste.


Busy with cultivation, Kai almost forgot lunch, but the sounds of the others drew his attention. Everyone on the Clanless ate together at lunch - even Nirka, who otherwise stayed out of the way - and it was generally a good time, a moment to relax from all the other training.


In the afternoon it was back to work, trying to push his Physique in new ways. That day it was testing training methods from the Elemental Nations, but it could just as easily have been pills with Omilaena or his personal explorations with his monstrous abilities.


The evening meal was usually taken separately because everyone operated on such different schedules. Kai and Zae Zin Nim managed to pry Omilaena away from her experiments, and once they did she ended up pulling them all into bed. Yet as soon as they were done, she leapt up restlessly, fiddling with her pill experiments even before getting dressed again.


Intimacy was itself a method of training the Savage Heart, as Kai still hadn't gained all the benefits of dual cultivation from his wives' recent advancements. After that, however, he was on his own trying to experiment with new chakra arts. Without direct sources, it was difficult to advance, but he couldn't afford to ignore the Savage Heart.


He managed to eke out minor advancements and gained further control of transforming his body, yet always ran into the same barriers. There was no way to gain a direct Power boost without giving up control, which was a risk he only took while flying away from the Clanless. As for the larger transformation he'd experienced in Floodisle City, that seemed impossible unless he had large amounts of energy in the region to drain.


Some days he went to sleep much later, but that day he ended up returning first. Zae Zin Nim finished her cultivation like clockwork, returning and sitting next to him comfortably to meditate. Sometimes they all got together in the evenings, but Omilaena was working feverishly - he had no idea when she went to sleep, he just always woke up with her in bed with them.


And so he drifted to sleep, having extracted everything he could from another day. One day closer, both to Darkmist Island and to the incursion.


Chapter 516: Wind Attunement


Omilaena sat with her arms folded, glaring at her materials through her goggles, willing them to cooperate.


Now that she had extra-spatial storage space, she could accumulate all kinds of junk, which meant she had a whole collection of pharmaceuticals from across Deadwaste, Rosemount, and Cloudspire. There were connections between them, some obvious, some obscure, and some annoyingly teasing at the edges of her conscious theory. Those were the ones that currently pissed her off.


Growing up on Rosemount, it was just taken as a universal assumption that you could absorb physical materials into yourself. There were stories of nobles seeking the rarest spices to awaken new powers, and the poor would often chew on a favored material in generally-doomed attempts to find some little-known ability.


And things just didn't work that way elsewhere, or really any location where chakra didn't predominate.


Mana on Deadwaste hadn't been all that hard to understand: it was basically pure energy compared to chakra, more intense but less permanent. Concrete forms of mana could produce surprising results, and there was actually more to explore there, but she had discarded them as short term boosts. When mana potions produced enduring Power it was solely as a catalytic.


Now that she had spent some years on Cloudspire, however... qi was more obnoxious. Qi pills weren't themselves formed of qi, they needed a physical substrate, so they weren't like chakra pills. Every theory she'd read or heard on the subject was frustratingly vague: cultivators just seemed to assume that qi was in everything, or at least everything affected qi, so they couldn't explain the details she needed most. They overwhelmingly fused qi into solids to make pills, but she didn't know if that was a necessity or they just preferred that form.


If only she could uncover the principles underneath all these traditions, she was sure that she could gain meaningful insight that could help them with further breakthroughs. And yet all the arts she had learned remained separate, refusing to cohere into a meaningful deeper theory in her mind.


She wasn't going to make progress now. Omilaena sighed, took off her goggles, and went to refresh her mind by messing with the others.


First she checked in on Kai and they discussed potential methods for him to advance his chakra arts, which always kept her grounded. He had an understated intelligence and perceptiveness that her more frenetic mind could play off of well, so even though that conversation was uneventful, it centered her. Omilaena wondered if that was the sort of thing that lovey-dovey spouses should tell one another explicitly, but decided against it. She could pay him back for it later, in a more fun way.


After that she would usually work with Zin Nim, but their wife was involved in boring cultivation that left her unable to talk. Eh, Omilaena wasn't going to break through any time soon anyway. That fucking "Brightwind Meridian Perfection" was another thorn in her side that she didn't even want to think about.


Instead she went to check on the Deadwasters. Starting with Cragrila, who was her favorite experiment: the crystals were still growing well, but no dramatic developments. After that she hunted down Inafay and Orotaisin, who she found seated opposite one another, holding hands.


"Oh my!" Omilaena covered her face in mock-horror. "Am I interrupting something?"


"It's just attunement," Orotaisin said with a shrug.


"What's that?"


"A traditional training method in the Elemental Nations."


"Ah, and after years of training you can move past the 'hand-holding' stage and advance to, I don't know, a kiss on the cheek?"


"We've kissed more than that," Inafay said with a wry smile. "What's up, Omilaena? You just looking for someone to harass?"


"Trying to figure out something, not sure what." Omilaena sat down between them and put her hand over theirs, mostly to tease them and partially to feel the energy, yet she couldn't. "Hmm, so this isn't open to a threesome?"


Unfortunately, neither of them rose to the bait - she generally couldn't get them, though that didn't stop her from trying. Inafay only frowned and looked over at her partner. "Is it possible to attune with more than two people?"


"It can be done," Orotaisin explained, "and frequently is in the Wind Nation. But the more people you try to attune, the greater the similarity required. Between the two of us, we can bridge the gap to your Goralian wind abilities, but with three we couldn't."


"Hey now, this is the first I've heard about this." Omilaena looked between them eagerly. "I know you two have been 'attuning' regularly in your room, but what's this about?"


So the three of them talked theory for a while and she filled in a few gaps in her knowledge of the Elemental Nations. She had already known that Elemental powers operated differently from Essence powers, achieving advancement through methods other than absorbing more of the substance. Apparently one of the methods was attuning to another source of the relevant element, which could be another person.


She'd joked about it, but the two of them really did get stronger by fucking each other. That was just another tantric art, or dual cultivation, or whatever. What interested her more was how this attunement seemed to be purely spiritual, modifying their souls in some way she couldn't exactly measure, even with her blue goggles.


"So what about the physical changes?" Omilaena asked. "I know you Elemental Nation types get weird hair and other things. If the two of you stick together, will Inafay get wavy hair too?"


"They told me probably not," Inafay said, but her eyes wandered to her partner.


"Elemental powers change a person," Orotaisin said. "It's more difficult for people from other nations, so we don't usually see any differences. The body needs to be suited to the element, and it takes great discipline for the body to change."


Omilaena nodded along. "So the physical changes are a side effect, right? Flame hair doesn't make someone stronger, but someone with fire hair has changed their body to be better suited to fire?"


"That is my understanding, yes."


"That's not far off what I'm doing. Could I found the Poison Nation?"


"I don't think it would be a popular one," Inafay said with a smirk.


Actually, Omilaena had only been snarking - her abilities were based too much in essence, even if she had moved into elemental abilities with the Heart of Poison. So her heart had actually changed, and probably begun running poison through her veins...


Abruptly she sat upright and began tapping her fingers against her thigh as the thoughts fell together. Inafay and Orotaisin weren't used to her behavior and looked over in concern.


"Obviously everyone has methods of 'perfecting the body' aside from Physique," she explained distractedly, even while she was figuring out the answers herself. "The power, whether it's qi or fire, has to flow through some sort of channel, so how well-suited the channels are to the ability itself makes you fundamentally stronger."


Orotaisin nodded in agreement, while Inafay frowned. "I'm not sure if I've heard of anything like that for Classes," she said.


"I think it's a universal principle, even if it doesn't exist in every location. So chakra growth is the same principle as elemental attuning... and so is the Brightwind Meridian Perfection."


They both sat up straighter, understanding the importance of her revelation even if they didn't grasp the details. Actually, given their wind focus... maybe they did understand. Omilaena whipped out the blue coil and began waving it between them.


"Cultivators use meridians to channel qi, but even they need to use chakra to maximize their overall power. Seems like the Brightwind Sect figured out a way to make themselves attuned to wind, which probably strengthens them as a side effect. Fascinating."


"Then... would it work for him?" Inafay glanced between the coil and Orotaisin with a smile.


"It also might make you explode," Omilaena said, "but let's find out!"


In the end it took them over a day of experimentation, but she was sure of the basic principle within minutes of starting. Making the body suited for a given element seemed to be a universal, it was just a matter of using the proper methods for a person's balance of power.


And, like Inafay had intuited, the Brightwind Meridian Perfection was an unusually good match for Orotaisin. The coil might risk killing a cultivator, but Orotaisin had been breathing wind elemental power since he'd been a child. After some work, he managed to absorb part of the coil into himself, which shot through the spiritual veins of his body and made them suited to wind in an entirely new way.


With a lot more conditioning, maybe a year or more, Inafay might be able to do the same thing. But they had a limited amount of the coiled material, and Omilaena had a higher priority anyway: their main goal with this had always been Zin Nim.


"So this would make me more suited to wind," Zin Nim said once she understood. "That... may not be good. I already access fire via the Coldfire Corona."


"But if I'm right, we can purify this coil." Omilaena waved it eagerly before tossing it into the pill furnace. "You throw in your mana fire and we'll reduce it down to the essence. It should make your meridians more powerful without specifically conditioning them to wind."


"Is that wasting the material, though?"


"Only by the sect's standards. I think this should help pave a road upward for you, preparing you for your next breakthrough."


They set about figuring the details together, and fortunately the mana flame proved compatible. In fact, the whole thing was pleasingly symmetrical: the coil was fundamentally chakra, the refinement method used mana, and the end goal was a qi channel. There were a few problems to figure out, but the principle was sound.


That was great, and Zin Nim was quite pleased, smiling regularly at her. Unfortunately, that also made her eager to cultivate instead of mess around, and Omilaena couldn't exactly fault her for that. So as soon as she'd done her part, she left Zin Nim to work and headed out.


Not that she wasn't going to celebrate. Omilaena found Kai and tackled him to the deck.