Heart of Cultivation 77. Exploration (Patreon)

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The fog men had been dispersed by fire fueled with spiritual energy. Jian didn't know if it was the fire or the spiritual energy that had done the damage, but he could test that easily enough. He pulled supplies from his pack and put together a torch, lighting it with his firestarter. After a moment's thought, he gritted his teeth and tied a spirit stone to the end of his walking stick. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary to use it, but it was cheaper to lose a spirit stone than to lose his hand if he had guessed wrong.

Meirong watched his preparations with an enigmatic smile. She didn't say anything, but set off with a spring in her step once he indicated that he was ready.

The torch didn't do much to help them see better. The light reflected off the fog to create an eerie, all-encompassing glow that was obscured more than it illuminated. The flickering of the torch and the smoke it threw off just added to the confusion. Jian kept feeling like he had almost seen something coming at him out of the fog, but no matter how he swiveled his head he couldn't find anything other than the swirling mist.

At least the crackle of the flame gave him something to listen to other than their footsteps. It was nice to have a small reminder of the normal world crackling next to his ear.

The next round of monsters only appeared after several false alarms. Jian barely reacted as three fog men drifted towards them. By the time he realized they weren't just a figment of his imagination Meirong had ignited her sword and already cut down the first monster. She took down the second on the backswing, then backed away from the third.

The last surviving monster didn't flee in terror, as Jian had half-expected. It was clearly wary of Meirong's flaming sword, but it was unwilling to simply let her be. Instead it kept drifting toward her, continually moving to attack only to back off as soon as Meirong interposed her sword.

Jian waited patiently as she led the fog man in a half circle. Once she was backing away from him, Jian made his move. The monster had followed Meirong with dogged fascination, leaving its back wide open to attack. Jian plunged his torch into the monster's back, hoping to send it up in smoke.

The foggy figure didn't react. It might have blackened further, just a little, from the smoke the torch was giving off, but it obviously hadn't been damaged.

Jian tossed the torch to the side, then grit his teeth and struck forward with his staff. The glowing spirit stone traced a bright line in his vision as it plunged into the monster's back.

Again, the monster didn't react. Jian frowned and took a step back. His frown deepened when he saw that the spirit stone on the end of his staff had lost its luster.

He was pulled out of his contemplation by a battle cry from Meirong. As he watched, she cut a great swathe through the fog man. She dismissed the flame from her sword as it vanished, then bent over, placing her hands on her knees and breathing deeply.

Jian was still frowning as a wave of well being washed over him. Their reward for defeating the monsters was just as rich as it had been before— perhaps even richer, to reflect the extra monster they had defeated— but Jian couldn't enjoy it with peace of mind. If the only way they could defeat the fog monsters was through Meirong's technique, then it would soon be time to retreat. If they even could.

"It wasn't bothered by fire or spiritual energy," he said. Sometimes thinking out loud could help him work through a puzzle.

"If anything," Meirong replied, "it got stronger at the end. I cut it down before it could grow too powerful."

Jian glanced at the dim spirit stone. Not only had the energy failed to damage its target, he had even strengthened it.

"They're probably trying to get hold of us for our own spiritual energy," he said. The attitude of the fog men had struck him as being akin to a pack of starving wolves. It seemed they weren't after their flesh, but rather their spirits.

"Good thing they can't eat my fires," Meirong said, giving her sword a flourish. Indeed, if the fog men were able to snuff out her technique then the two of them would have been in dire straits.

"They didn't have that problem with my torch," Jian said. The useless weapon was still burning weakly where he had tossed it to the ground.

He untied the spirit stone from the end of his walking stick and gave it a sullen look as he returned it to his coin purse. Fire was anathema to the undead. He'd never seen anything precisely like these fog-like monsters described in his reference books, but he'd been confident that they were some form of unnatural abomination. The cleansing nature of fire should have purged their taint from the world.

He grunted as he picked up the torch and snuffed out the useless thing. Obviously, fire alone was not enough. Most of what Jian had read suggested that in the case of an undead who was powerful enough to shrug off the effects of fire, it was best to flee and hope that a cultivator who had completed the refinement of their core was close enough to tackle the beast.

These fog men didn't seem to be that strong, though. Meirong had killed them easily enough. Her attack was impressive, but it didn't have the sort of awe-inspiring power that a cultivator with a fully refined core could bring to bear.

"Is there anything unique about your fire?" Jian asked. He wouldn't have pried into such a delicate topic, but the situation was rather urgent.

"Other than my natural talent and grace?" Meirong asked, a cheerful smile blossoming on her face. "There shouldn't be. The Phoenix Sword cycles fire-aspected spiritual energy along the edge of the blade. It takes a delicate balance to maintain the flames at a constant level. You have to construct the initial framework according to a fairly precise ratio, then maintain a steady flow of spiritual energy according to—I think I have the scroll with me—"

Jian held up a hand. "I didn't mean to pry."

"It's fine. You're my fiance, after all," she replied. "Besides, the technique is hardly a sect secret."

She started digging around in her pouch as though to pull out the technique scroll, but Jian refused. It was one thing to talk about a technique in generalities, but quite another to share the instructions. He wouldn't be able to learn it in a day, or use it even if he did, but Jian still didn't want to pick up yet more forbidden knowledge from the Heavenly Sword Sect.

What he needed to do was to understand why her technique worked on the fog men. He thought she'd already given him enough to go on, there.

It was also a little galling that she was so willing to share the details of her techniques when they had a duel pending. Jian tried to tell himself that it was because of the urgency of the situation, but it was hard to avoid the thought that she didn't take their duel at all seriously.

He shook off the thought and focused on the challenge they faced. As embarrassing as losing their duel would be, it would be even worse if his petulance got them killed here in the secret realm.

A structured technique that produced fire. Jian hadn't had any luck attacking the fog monsters with fire. He would have liked to try with a structured technique of his own, but he'd never bothered to learn anything beyond the most basic body reinforcement. It might work, but he wasn't going to stick his hand straight into the maw of a monster that devoured spiritual energy on such a thin hope.

What they needed to do was to conduct a finer test, to figure out how to hurt the monsters without expending an overwhelming amount of spiritual energy to produce an overwhelming effect.

Jian thought for a moment, then scrambled in his pack. His firestarter was right on top, right where he'd left it after lighting his torch. He grabbed it and presented it to Meirong.

"Try using this," he said. He twisted the spirit stone fragment set into the butt of the device, causing a candle flame to bloom at the business end.

She looked down, a trace of skepticism in her eyes. "It's a little small."

"I don't think it's the fire that hurts them," Jian said. "When this is active, there's a construct of spiritual energy that stretches down its whole length. It barely takes any power to keep it active."

Meirong looked interested, now. She took the firestarter from his hand, studying it closely. Jian had refined the design since his first rough prototype, but the basic structure hadn't changed. It was a cylinder of iron, about the length of his forearm and as big around as his pinky finger. one end was wrapped with leather to create a comfortable grip. The activation mechanism was at the very butt of the device, where a rotation could attach the spirit stone to the heating formation. If it worked on the fog creatures it would provide Meirong with more of a dagger than a sword, but they weren't in a position to be picky.

She fiddled with it a few times, turning the flame on and off. Satisfied that she knew how it worked, Meirong returned her sword to its place on her hip. She held the firestarter in front of her as she began walking through the fog once more.

Jian followed behind, anxious and eager at the same time. He was worried about what would happen if the firestarter didn't work, but also excited at the possibilities if it did. He took a deep breath and did his best to emulate the calm composure that Meirong was showing.

They didn't have to walk far before the next set of fog men showed up. As Jian had been half expecting, there were four of them this time.

Meirong activated the firestarter. She didn't cut quite the same intimidating figure as she had wielding a flaming sword, but the change of weapons hadn't done anything to diminish her abilities. She danced around the initial attack from the fog monsters, circling around until she was able to get one of the monsters lined up more or less by himself.

She didn't waste the opportunity, darting in and slicing across its neck with the firestarter. The weapon passed through its target and Meirong whirled away before the monster could retaliate.

The beast staggered, clutching at its neck. The movement was oddly human. Jian pushed down the twinge in his gut. Even if this were a person and not a monster conjured up by the secret realm, he would hardly regret the death of somebody who wanted to kill him.

Mist continued to seep out between its foggy fingers. The monster took a shaky step backwards then dispersed back into the mist. It wasn't the dramatic death that Meirong had been able to inflict with her flaming sword technique, but the monster was still just as dead.

"It worked!" Jian said.

Meirong had already been setting up her second target. Hearing Jian's declaration, she soon lashed out with another mortal blow. Jian watched, a little intimidated by how easily she swept through the remaining two monsters, leaving dissipating fields of mist in her wake.

Once the last of the monsters was thoroughly dead, she turned to face him with a smile. There was no trace of exertion or weariness in her expression, this time. Wielding a weapon was no doubt much simpler when you didn't have to set it on fire with your spiritual energy.

"Good work," Jian said.

Meirong preened at the compliment. "Now that I have this weapon, we can charge straight forward."

Jian would have sworn he felt his heart leap out of his chest, if he hadn't already had it removed. "Let's not be hasty."

"What is there to wait for?" she asked.

"I'd like to have a weapon for myself, just in case," Jian said. Back in the Devil's Teeth he had always kept a few firestarters with him, just in case there would be a chance to make a sale. Unfortunately, he'd figured there was no need to bring more than one along on a trip where they were sneaking into the jungle.

However, the structure of the spiritual energy within the firestarter was extremely simple. Now that Jian knew that such a basic formation was enough to harm the fog men, it was a simple matter to engrave a basic formation with a similar level of structure and make a weapon that could hurt the fog beasts. Jian didn't have anything with him of the same size and shape as his firestarter, but he had brought plenty of ammunition for his spiritual crossbow.

He braved Meirong's impatience for long enough to modify three bolts to be effective against the fog men. In a pinch, he figured that would give him two chances to shoot at the beasts, while the last could be used as a short dagger.

Not that it seemed like there would be any immediate need for Jian to pitch in to the fight. Once they started moving again, Meirong relished the chance to take out her impatience on the fog men as she plowed through the next few groups with brutal efficiency. There were five monsters in each group, which wasn't nearly enough to threaten her.

Jian stood by and watched, enjoying the comfortable feeling as each defeated fog monster helped to refine his spirit. After the fifth group of five had been defeated, he could see almost thirty paces through the fog. Not that the fog had gotten any less dense, but his vision was sharp enough to see through it.

He had reaped such a magnificent harvest without even lifting a finger. Glancing to the side, he didn't see any sign of resentment on Meirong's face. If anything, she seemed happy at the conclusion of another successful fight and excited at the prospect of more fights to come.

Jian shook his head. It was fine as long as she was happy. He'd long since committed to do his best to avoid going through with their duel. This was just one more piece of evidence supporting his decision.

They continued forward. They walked far enough that Jian expected it was about time for another attack. Then the same distance again, still with nothing troubling them. Jian's shoulders were starting to tense up when he realized that he was seeing further through the fog than ever. This time it wasn't that his vision had improved, but rather that the fog was starting to thin out.

"We're almost through!" Meirong said. She picked up the pace. Jian sped up his own footsteps, staying just a few paces behind. Letting her take the lead was just common sense, but he didn't want to risk getting separated.

The fog men were dangerous, and the improvements to their spirit were valuable, but in the scale of a splinter plane, what they'd gone through so far wasn't much. Jian was certain that there were much greater rewards ahead of them. Unfortunately, he was also pretty sure that those rewards came along with great peril.

Still, he was excited for the opportunity. Between Meirong's strength and his caution, the two of them ought to be able to get through whatever lay ahead.

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