Chapter 206 - The Best Way To Flirt (Patreon)

My beautiful boy! Look what I've done with my beautiful boy!

Haha he's a bomb now (and also the bomb). Boy fuck it up, I love this kid. Probably gonna be a good three chapters before we see him again but I'm liking the plan to keep things a bit more mixed this arc!

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“Is that not what’s usually requested of you, honored one?”

Mei Yu laughs, a tittering thing that’s smaller than the laugh it hides. Her reactions aren’t fake, not really, but they’re modulated, rebuilt to make for a specific impression, but… he knows. He can tell. A bit arrogant to think so, perhaps; there’s certainly more she’s hiding, more that he can see before actually knowing her. But between the Smiling Noble, a caricature of a young master made of all their hypocrisy, and his own experience playing the games of the Academy, he can see at least a bit beneath the surface.

She’s surprised. More than that, she’s entertained.

“I must admit, young master, it is not. But I’m afraid that I’m not much of a fighter. It would pain my dao heart to disappoint such an honorable opponent.”

He smiles at that. “I find it hard to believe that I could ever be disappointed by a performance of yours, honored Mei Yu.”

She sits up off the sofa, stepping to one side, and he rises to meet her, a burst of heat and Qi propelling him to his feet. Her gaze follows him as he summons his guandao out of his ring, changing the feeling of the space between them.

“...I don’t intend to be harassed, Shin Ren.”

He shrugs, adopting a stance. “Your word is my covenant, lady Mei Yu. All you need do is say that I should stop, to ask me to leave you in peace, and I’ll find myself enamored with the idea of exactly that.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Well, then I’m afraid that I will simply find myself on the path of conflict, with you alongside me.”

“And do you often picture me beside you?” she asks with a sly smile.

He shrugs, his shoulders loose and at rest, his steps light as he hops from one foot to the other. “I have never done so before, but I find the vision surprisingly appealing now it’s before me.”

She laughs, and he can hear the space where a snort might once have been, a long time ago. Or where he imagined one. The danger of a gorgeous, powerful mental technique user is that it’s hard to know exactly what are your own thoughts and what’s intentional, but then, isn’t that life? What a waste it is, to give in to stereotypes when there’s ever so many real reasons to assume danger and anticipate it. 

And he notices that she hasn’t told him to stop.

He twirls his guandao, his Qi rising. It’s half-crippled in this place, considering how much he needs to spare to protect his additional cores, and how little said cores can contribute. It rises to meet his will nonetheless, his control over his own internal world implacable, even in the face of the pressure of his surroundings. It’s certainly not his maximum capacity, but it doesn’t need to be.

Flames, gold and purple, begin to flicker into being around him, his Dao manifesting moment by moment as he begins to ignite.

“Bold, Shin Ren. Bold indeed, to court one such as myself, and with such brutish methods.”

“Court? Who said anything about courting? I’m simply here for a bit of controlled violence against a companion on the path towards ascension. What could possibly be more natural for any true cultivator?”

“And yet, I have had suitors by the dozen who would blush at your forwardness. Surely you might understand that, in both cultivation and status, I tower above you, and can only perceive such a bold approach as a daring move on your part to pull me to your side?”

Shin Ren shrugs, enacting a final flourish with his guandao and dropping into a stance. He’s not going to have more than a few minutes before he’ll need to leave; there’s only so much Qi and turbulence he can spare with his unfinished cores at risk. Common sense would say he’s better off finding another way to do this.

“I suppose the wiser move might well be to retreat,” he says instead. “And yet, perhaps the far more interesting possibility lies behind my reasoning, and behind your hesitation to step away. So, as one might say amidst the dueling rings of my home sect: square your feet, or make them scurry.”

She taps a finger to her lips, pressing them into a thoughtful pout. “But… why, honorable Shin Ren-

“What makes you think we haven’t started?”

The voice comes from directly behind his ear, and he swings a broad circle with his blade over his back. His Qi blazes, igniting the weapon and the air around it in time with his swing as he cuts backwards and illuminates their surroundings in fire.

The chairs are gone. The ornate couches, the paintings, the fancy rugs, all are vanished, as surely as morning dew. They stand now, the doorway to the lower floors behind him, in a featureless hallway that has nearly doubled in width in the time it took his flame to flash before his eyes. 

The spaces in the Academies transform, this is true. The training halls are an obvious example, but the higher you go, the more privileges are afforded to those who earn their growth within. Even still, the changing floorplan is drastic, far more than he expected, and he circulates Qi towards his senses to try and mitigate some of the illusion affecting him.

The room doubles again as he watches.

Either it’s an illusion based on light, one that isn’t directly interfering with his senses, or the mental technique she’s using isn’t so easily dislodged.

Shin Ren smiles. With a flourish, rather than charge towards the likely decoy of Mei Yu ahead of him, he twirls his guandao, the purple-gold fire illuminating it tinged with crimson and orange as it leaves his touch- and is thrown in a wave all across the chamber.

Obviously she’d already enchanted him. He’s a combat-focused cultivator, she’s from a sect of mentalists, and it’s well within her abilities and her rights to launch such a technique against him. In a real fight, he’d have crippled himself by announcing his intention rather than ambushing her- but this isn’t a real fight. He doesn’t need to win to get what he wants.

The letter told him to make friends. It didn’t say how. In this way, he can test a potential ally and ensure a dynamic to begin with. Sort of.

Also, it would be at least a little dishonorable not to be sincere in his attempts at seducing her into a potential alliance. To be noble while still enacting these instructions can only mean, can only demand, that he wield his weapon and his will like this, inviting her into a dance.

His Qi senses reach through the flames, the manifestation of Dao and cultivation together bound as deeply to his self and sapience as anything as banal and human as eyes and ears and neurons. Immediately, the terrain of the room shifts, still transformed but less than half the size that the illusion promised, and with a few pieces of furniture still melting away into nothingness outside his perceptions. His opponent, however, remains obscured. Her presence flickers in and out of his awareness like a ghost, his senses, even through his Qi, muddled and telling him that she’s in multiple places at once.

He doesn’t bother waiting for his senses to resolve. There are only three ways he’ll win: get tremendously lucky, figure out her tricks, or outmaneuver an expert manipulator. Only the first is likely, to say the least.

Shin Ren throws out a ring of fire from himself, making it orbit him. Heat transference and the laws of combustion flicker through the act, the Corpse Aflame and his meditations on the feather granting him a new avenue to express his fire. The ring surrounds him like a halo around his midriff, and it expands through the room like the edge of a chakram, burning against the world.

Even when you know you are going to get hit, there’s still an inherent reaction to the fact. His body bends and he hisses in pain as some sort of dagger punches in towards his ribs, his reflexes allowing him to pull away just in time. The blow, instead of stabbing into his lung, only bleeds him, a trickle of crimson leaking into the world past his ribs. 

He swings his blade, weaving another faux-construct of flame around it and making a series of fiery whips that scream and shriek as they burn the air in pursuit of an illusory target. There are no arrays here, nothing he can truly use to free himself beyond his own technique and inner Qi manipulation, but overwhelming force has a place at nearly every discussion, and his rebuttal scores a series of cuts into the far wall, the stone melting to gold and crimson almost immediately. He keeps up the attack, his staff twirling as the flames he has tied to the end of it tear apart the room with thundercracker-like whips and edges hot enough to cut lava out of rock.

The second hit goes for the throat, and he can’t help but admire that she really is honoring him with a proper fight. He could hardly ask for more.

He cauterizes the cut before arterial spray becomes a problem, and flares the fire lingering over his body in an explosive burst. At full strength it could have filled the entire space, but as is, it barely covers a third of it as he keeps his energy reserves as high as possible.

The Smiling Noble is outmatched and overpowered here, his attentions solely dedicated to helping to keep his own core intact as it trembles under the pressure, but the Corpse Aflame is not so passive.

She cuts him a third time, the sensation of the blade appearing on the opposite side of the actual wound and nearly making him miss the blessing, and the Corpse Aflame shrieks.

Not a human sound, not by a long shot. Not even something a human throat could create. She shrieks like the shriek of steam escaping a trapped and bursting piece of meat, and in that sound, despite the risk, the star-dagger of his demon core flares to life and adds her Qi to his.

Mei Yu has not been content merely stabbing at him with a normal dagger. Even holding back to accommodate his limitations, that would be far too disrespectful. Shin Ren goes to swing his guandao and finds that his body doesn’t respond to commands the same way anymore. He firms his stance and realizes that the signals they send his body no longer match their movements. Even his Qi senses begin to sort of flicker, a harsh and buzzing static disrupting everything about how he sees the world. The kiss of steel touches his neck again, and he realizes the blade belongs to his own weapon, but cannot tell if it is an illusion or if his arm is controlled to move it into place against his throat.

But he smiles. That’s all fine.

All Things Burn.

He’s only had the feather for a week or so. Hardly enough time to truly comprehend it, and even if there were, his comprehension is limited in execution while he holds himself back. But limited does not mean irrelevant.

These two things, together, have advanced his cultivation considerably.

His own Nascent Soul stirs, still in a sort of limbo of nonexistence as he builds his other cores, but the gold and purple Flame he wields begins to grow again, and, alongside his demon core and his new enlightenment, he does something new.

He lights his fire on fire.

Chain Combustion is an interesting concept. Combustion itself is just when fuel meets an accelerant, really, and in this case, the fuel is his own fire, the accelerant, his own Qi. What was once a series of blazing fires all around and cloaking him, wielded as weapons, becomes far more deadly as it begins to detonate.

Fire blesses fire, Flame begets Flame, Mystery and Truth hand in hand as the fire he’s spread throughout the room acts as if its made of flammable alcohol. The second round of flames explodes out, gushing violently over the room in an unstoppable wave of ignition- and then the third wave initiates.

The room breaks.

The detonation is enough that both of Shin Ren’s eardrums pop, that his face and hair are singed despite his mastery, that his body is thrown backwards and forwards as if by a hundred blows. The combustions continue to chain all across the room, and the more fires ignite, the more fire spawns and detonates and further ignites itself into being, until the walls of the academy a full official realm higher than him crack and begin to become misshapen. The stone and ornate designs begin to melt into glowing molten matter which only serves as fuel for more combustion, and as the fourth round of detonations is about to begin-

Shin Ren strangles it.

It’s like holding back a spasm, like breathing during a violent coughing fit. Everything in him rebels against it, the properties he’s controlling and the Truth deep within him and the Corpse Aflame fighting him to act as his reality claims they should act. 

He places his grip around the metaphorical throat of existence as he’s demanded it be and squeezes.

The fourth round of detonations does not occur.

The flames remain, and struggle violently against him. True Flame, by its very nature, matches and informs his Truth that All Things Burn, and it burns his very will- but he strangles it down nonetheless. Slowly, the fires start to dim, leaving only the shimmering cloak of gold and purple he’s wrapped himself in, the ring of flame orbiting him, and his guandao glowing with power.

Slowly, he exhales, a breath of both focus and relief.

Mei Yu makes herself known, not more than a few feet in front of him. For all the world, she looks like the fight between them never happened at all- but he can feel, through his very self, that she has been touched by the fire.

Just a bit.

“Apologies if I surprised you,” Shin Ren says, the Smiling Noble rising up beside him to help him watch her reactions. “I’m afraid, at times, that my passions can be rather explosive.”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes. “If you weren’t such a boorish little nobleman, I’d say that your words are a joke.”

He holds a hand to his chest, feigning insult. “A boor? Why, I’d have thought my jokes would have cured you of that delusion by now. Here I thought you mind-technique wielders were adept at removing those!”

This time, she can’t help it. Above the victory of survival, of Dao triumphing over a distance in cultivation, above even the victory of maintaining control of new techniques, this victory tastes sweetest of them all- she snorts a little bit when she laughs.

He smiles wide. 

A trick? Maybe. He’s certainly already allowed her access to his mind in some degree.

That’s fine. He has no secrets, and between the Smiling Noble and Corpse Aflame, he’s pretty sure he can notice and remove… at least most of whatever she might try to influence him with.

A victory is a victory.

“So now that I’ve so thoroughly entertained you,” he says, “maybe I could interest you in a discussion of Dao at some point? If you don’t have one already, you must surely stand at the cusp.”

She shrugs, smiling back at him with a grin more predatory than courtly. “A true lady never reveals her secrets, junior brother. But perhaps I might be able to offer you a few pointers.”

Shin Ren finds something out about himself, deep down, right next to the honor and nobility he seeks to grasp.

He loves it when a plan comes together.