Of Foxfire and Cultivation Ch.18 (Patreon)

Onari and Yu Wu didn’t actually manage to get North Korea to escalate to the nuclear option. They spent the couple of hours left until morning flying at a leisurely pace and batting everything North Korea could throw at them out of the sky. By the time the sun started peeking over the horizon, they had racked up four more missiles, one or two ground-to-air defense systems, and even a couple artillery shells that they returned to the pitcher like this was baseball.

“Awwww,” Yu Wu pouted after an hour of silence from the regime. “I think they finally realized how pointless their efforts were. Such a shame…”

Onari chuckled, patting Yu Wu’s head, “I’m sure we can get them to respond if we ever come back. Hell, if we make this a regular vacation spot, they might eventually resort to nukes.”

“You really think so?!” Yu Wu’s smile at the idea of being nuked was blindingly bright.

“If they don’t, I promise I’ll sneak into their facility and nuke you myself.”

“Aww, that’s how you know it’s real love.”

“Ladies, get yourself a man who will unironically nuke you?” Onari teased.

“Ha! What a wonderful sentiment! Truly, my beloved goes above and beyond in his pursuit of making me happy!”

“A nuke is a small price to pay…”

“Indeed. I would not hesitate to do the same for you, darling,” Yu Wu nodded as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. She then tapped her chin, considering something. “I wonder… Would absorbing the radioactive material within a warhead help progress cultivation?”

“I… believe it would actually. At the very least, it would provide us with a surplus of energy. I guess the real question is what the Qi nature of radiation is…”

“Probably something to do with Death and Decay. So not inherently corruptive, but definitely something to be careful around. It might also give insights into the concepts of Matter and Time because of the nature of radioactivity and half-lives.”

“I must admit, this idea has piqued my curiosity,” Onari mused, rubbing his chin. “The only hurdle would be acquiring such sensitive materials.”

Yu Wu shrugged, “There are plenty of mortal governments that do not deserve the potent weapons they currently possess. It would be simple enough to stage a heist. We could even try and find some of the hundreds of nuclear weapons that the Soviet Union and Russia have lost over the years.”

“... We could actually do this, couldn’t we?”

“We totally could.”

“And it wouldn’t even be a meme. Like, this might actually be productive for our cultivation and profound understanding.”

“Yup, we just have to get our hands on some murder-rocks.”

“Well… We are in one of those undeserving countries at the moment…”

Yu Wu smiled viciously, “Oh, darling. I believe a small tribute of nuclear material is only fitting from these people who dared to harm us… The fact that they failed miserably at that task does not matter.”

Onari matched her expression with a grin, “Why, I find myself agreeing with that idea, love. Surely this ‘rich’, ‘rich’ country could spare a couple of kilograms of enriched uranium for a pair of poor cultivators. They were the ones who wronged us first after all…”

“Yes, quite,” Yu Wu said pompously before devolving into giggles.

From there, it was actually quite easy for Onari and Yu Wu to find North Korea’s ‘secret’ nuclear bunker. North Korea wasn’t a great power. It wasn’t even a power. It was a tiny, isolated country ruled by a regressive regime that wouldn’t know supernatural security if it slapped their Supreme Leader across the face and declared “I am your daddy!” The fact that they even had nuclear capabilities was a miracle in itself.

For such a militaristic regime, North Korea didn’t actually have that many locations where they could be secretly keeping nuclear materials. All Yu Wu and Onari had to do was search the country for North Korea’s missile silos. They then hovered over the silo, blatantly disregarding any ‘laws’ or ‘restricted airspace’ while sensing for Death and Decay energies.

They hit gold on their first missile silo. Yu Wu grinned eagerly at her beloved, taking out the sword she actually used for battle and preparing to cut her way through a couple of meters worth of steel. Like all things Onari made for his fiancee, Yu Wu’s battle sword was a work of art.

It was a Jian-style straight sword, with a one and a half-handed hilt and a small crossguard. The blade was 70 centimeters long and forged from a single piece of jade-steel alloy. The jade used in the blade usually would have made the sword quite brittle, but Onari had utilized multiple methods of strengthening the blade. Not only was the jade infused with Onari and Yu Wu’s combined Qi, but Onari had also drawn a long series of characters and runes along the length of the blade that enhanced its durability.

The jade-steel did not sacrifice style for function and even enhanced the blade’s function through Onari’s efforts. The alloy still bore the clear, characteristic beauty of jade, but was actually stronger and sharper than steel. The characters and formation work Onari had done on the blade made it even more survivable and reinforced the concept of ‘Sword’ that the blade carried.

The final result was a beautiful, deadly, and surprisingly sturdy piece of weaponry. It was perfectly crafted for Yu Wu specifically. Onari had taken advantage of the Qi Yu Wu infused into the sword and the bond he shared with her to tailor the weapon to her soul. It was so well-matched with Yu Wu’s being that it would even grow in strength alongside Yu Wu’s soul and cultivation.

Yu Wu’s blade cut through the thick silo doors like a shrill musical note in a quiet room. As the steel parted eagerly for Yu Wu’s sword intent, Onari melted the excess metal out of the way with his profound flames. The inside of the launch silo was revealed in seconds.

The silo’s blaring alarms were ignored by Onari and Yu Wu as they hovered there, observing their prize. They slowly descended until they were close enough to touch the missile. Onari absently blocked off the access corridor that connected the rest of the bunker to the silo with a wall of solid fire.

“It’s… smaller than I thought it would be,” Yu Wu commented.

Onari nodded, “Yeah, I was expecting like 15-20 meters… This thing is barely 10 meters tall. I guess it is fitting that it’s Soviet-made though.”

“Still, this is what we came for. Let’s just cut off the warhead and get out of here.”

With a casual swipe of her sword, Yu Wu separated the nuclear warhead from the actual missile. Just as casually, Onari picked up the 300-pound bomb with one hand. A thought had their flying swords rising out of the silo and racing into the distance to find someplace where they could experiment with their prize in private.

In a matter of minutes, the pair of cultivators had left North Korea and flown across the border into China. They had to be slightly more cautious at this point since China actually was a great power, both in the mortal and supernatural worlds. Still, it was easy for them to avoid detection with the slightest bit of effort.

They flew until they found a mountain that was isolated enough for their purposes. The mountain they chose wasn’t very tall. With its gradual incline and almost flat peak, it was more of a very large hill. It would work perfectly well for their experiments though.

The mountain wasn’t tall enough to have snow cover and finding a small clearing they could use was simple. They gracefully touched down at the summit of the mountain, dismounting and storing their flying swords. They sat down in lotus positions, facing each other, and Onari set the warhead down between them.

“So… how do you think we should do this?” Onari asked.

Yu Wu shrugged, “We could just set it off. I’m sure we could survive a small nuclear explosion and that would be the fastest way to expose ourselves to the energy.”

“... Let’s make that Plan B. What if I slowly burn it, absorb the energy that burns off, filter it to you, and then you cycle it back to me? And then we just keep doing that until the energy is depleted.”

“Won’t that just blow it up?”

It was Onari’s turn to shrug, “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m honestly just guessing here.”

“What about a formation?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what if we put it in a special seal designed to absorb the energy and Qi, set it off, and then use the saturated seal to profit?”

“That would probably be the most efficient way to explode the thing… And we wouldn’t have to absorb all the energy at once. We would even be able to carry the seal around as a sort of emergency reserve…” Onari mused, rubbing his chin.

“Can you create a formation like that?” Yu Wu asked.

Onari slowly nodded, “I’m… pretty sure I could. It’ll take a bit of time though. And I’ll probably need your help powering it so it can contain the explosion.”

“But it’s possible?”

“I believe it is, love.”

Yu Wu clapped and grinned, “Can we watch it explode?”

Onari winced, “That… might be a bit harder to manage, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Yay!” Yu Wu cheered, smothering Onari’s face with kisses. “You’re the best, hubby! I’ve always wanted to see a nuclear explosion!”

Onari sighed. Now he had to succeed. He pulled out his formation-crafting tools and materials. Yu Wu watched from behind him, hanging off his back with her arms around his neck. Onari took a calming breath and inked the first stroke of the formation.

Since this seal had to be strong enough to contain a literal nuke, Onari chose his best material to be the base of the formation. It was a small cube that was half ivory and half ebony. The cube had a strong relationship with Yin-Yang energy. Onari and Yu Wu had both spent years filling the cube with their respective energy type while maintaining an exact balance between the two primordial forces.

Onari coaxed his Qi to the surface, picking up his brush and dipping it in a pot of gold ink. Qi flowed from his core, down his arm, and into the brush and ink. Onari marked each face of the cube with a single stroke. The ink sparkled with hidden power.

Yu Wu watched as Onari began to draw several intricate designs. The completely white and black sides of the cube contained the formations designed to absorb the energy from the nuclear blast. The sides, where the ebony and ivory met, contained the seal that would keep everything within a pocket space.

Concentration was plastered across Onari’s face as he slowly built the custom array from the ground up. The pocket space sealed within was expanded enough that the explosion wouldn’t immediately burst the seal. He took the energy absorbing portion of the formation from another formation that he had made to help Kunou train in Senjutsu.

The Qi absorbing formation had greatly improved Kunou’s skill and ability to train Senjutsu. With the formation, she no longer had to gather Qi naturally, which meant she had more Qi and more opportunities to train with that Qi.

Since Senjutsu was a skill-based art, Kunou’s power level had improved by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. Onari and Yu Wu could only use Senjutsu to heal and unlock their Touki, but Kunou could do that and so much more. She was basically a master with illusions, foxfire, nature magic, self-reinforcement, and tracking.

The most important aspect of the Qi absorbing formation was that it acted as a vacuum that sucked energy through a funnel and into a set storage space. For Kunou, the vacuum was aimed at the outside world and that storage space was contained within her body. For this nuclear-containment formation, the vacuum would be aimed inward, at the seal’s pocket space, and the storage would be the cube of ebony and ivory itself.

An exhale from Onari breathed a breath of life into the sealing array. Lines of gold ink seemed to dance on the Qi-saturated material. There was a short, inaudible hum like the universe was satisfied with Onari’s work. In an instant, two hours of work came together beautifully.

Onari let out a sigh of relief, allowing the Qi he was gripping to slowly fade back into his core. He set his brush down and hovered his hand over the cube. Even without touching it, he could feel the formation thrumming with life.

“Well… That should be good enough. Do you want to do the honors?” Onari said.

Yu Wu jumped to her feet behind him, “Yes! Let’s get this nuke on the road!”

She picked up the cube and walked over to the nuclear warhead. A touch of Qi was enough for the seal to suck in the warhead. Yu Wu brought the cube back over to Onari. He would have the easiest time ‘lighting the fuse’ because of his affinity for fire.

Onari took the cube and reached inside the sealed pocket space with his Qi. After observing the warhead’s makeup for a few moments, Onari found that igniting the mechanism was as easy as snapping his fingers. Yu Wu’s hands joined Onari’s on the cube.

They both started pouring Qi into the sealing formation to reinforce the matrix. Onari shared his view of the pocket space with Yu Wu through their bond. Yu Wu was basically vibrating in place with excitement.

“2… 1…” Onari counted down.

There was no sound from the nuclear explosion. Even as a force of nature unleashed its full might, the vacuum inside the seal was eerily quiet. A blinding flash of white filled their mental vision. With no air to fuel it, the explosion died out relatively quickly. It still felt like it lasted an eternity to Onari and Yu Wu’s observing eyes.

Nature raged within the seal. The very building blocks of matter were split from their partners and they lashed out at the world with a vengeance. Time seemed to freeze as Onari and Yu Wu bore witness to one of the strongest mundane events in the natural universe.

Even for a cultivator, there are no words to describe a nuclear explosion. Many will try and all of them will fall short of the true mark. It is one of those unfathomably powerful events that could only be replicated by high-level cultivators or supernatural beings. And as Onari and Yu Wu watched the explosion unfold in their mind’s eyes, they realized that they truly weren’t that far off from being one of those unimaginable beings…

Onari felt the Qi absorbing formation kick into overdrive to try and take in the sudden surplus of energy. With the aid of Onari and Yu Wu’s reinforcing Qi, the formation was just barely able to handle the energy of the initial explosion. And as the initial stress of the explosion faded, they watched as the radioactive particles created by the blast began to race to the ends of the seal and back the way they came.

Absorbing the energy within these particles would be slower and more difficult for the formation. It was still possible though. And that was why Onari created such a large area of sealed vacuum within the formation. The particles could race each other through the sealed space and be absorbed by the formation at its leisure.

Still, the amount of energy already absorbed by the formation felt like it was enough for a mortal to breakthrough into the Third Stage. Of course, a mortal wouldn’t even be able to harness or contain the wild radioactive energy in the first place. Onari and Yu Wu had both surpassed ordinary mortality a long time ago though.

Onari looked at Yu Wu with a determined steely gaze. Now that she had seen the potential of nuclear material, Yu Wu was much more cautious about trying to utilize that energy for their own gain.

“I want to be stronger…” Onari said, sensing Yu Wu’s discomfort through the bond. “I won’t leave you behind to obtain that strength though. We can always find another way.”

Seeing and feeling Onari’s determination, Yu Wu took a steadying breath, “N-No… I’m ready. Let’s do this…”

Onari nodded. His hand joined with Yu Wu’s while they both kept one hand on the cube. The cube was brimming, almost vibrating, with energy. Slowly and carefully, Onari began to draw the tiniest strand of energy he could into his core.

He was intentionally drawing a small amount to start with. There would be time to test his limits later once they knew what they were dealing with. The energy bucked and writhed and bubbled as it settled into Onari’s core.

Onari took in the energy in time with his inhale and he forced the energy to comply with his exhale. The violent nuclear energy was tamed and processed surprisingly easily. Yu Wu was right when she thought the energy would contain large hints of Death, but surprisingly it didn’t contain much Decay.

The Decay within the radioactive uranium seemed to have been blown away by the explosion. Now, the energy was mostly Death and Potential. The Death of an Atom and the Potential for a new one.

As Onari cultivated the nuclear energy, a similar process was happening within Yu Wu. It quickly became apparent that Onari had a natural affinity to Death energy, most likely because of his own death and reincarnation. By the luck of the heavens, Yu Wu seemed to have an affinity for Potential. The Potential of having two cultivator parents. The Potential of bonding with Onari, one of the heavens chosen protagonists in this world. The Potential inherent in all humanity.

As Onari continued cultivating, absorbing bits of nuclear energy at a time before reaching out for more, he began to feel a change. Something was forming within him. Something that propped up his cultivation, that supported the very fabric of his immortal soul: one of his Nine Immortal Bones.

Onari’s first Immortal Bone formed. It manifested as a bleached-white bone that supported Onari’s Void Core from behind. If given a place on his physical body, the bone would be positioned around the small of his back or his tailbone.

The Immortal Bone was then quenched by a waterfall of Onari’s Qi and the steady stream of nuclear energy he was pulling from the cube. It began to turn gold, shining brighter and brighter as the quenching process went on. Eventually, the bone dimmed and ended on a dark gold that seemed to radiate feelings of solidarity and support.

As the Immortal Bone settled into place in Onari’s body and cultivation, a needle-like prick of sword intent extended from one end of the bone and poked into Onari’s Void Core. This sword intent was a normal consequence of Immortal Bone quenching and if done improperly, it could completely rupture a cultivator’s core.

Luckily, the connection between Onari’s Immortal Bone and his Void Core was established flawlessly. A long, bony extension extruded from Onari’s lower back. Smoke began to rise from the dark gold bone tail, coalescing into the form of a bushy fox tail with the golden bone still visible through the smoke.

Across from him, Yu Wu’s cultivation was matching her beloved’s progress. While Onari had taken advantage of the concept of Death after actually facing death, the conceptual potential of Potential was enough to allow Yu Wu to easily keep up with him. She ended up forming her first Immortal Bone at the same time as Onari and her quenching process went just as well as Onari’s.

She didn’t gain any extra special appendages like her beloved did. Her golden bone formed with her chest, overlapping her sternum. Though she didn’t gain any obvious physical traits, her Immortal Bone propped up her cultivation and was still attached to her Void Core.

Shortly after forming their first Immortal bones, the couple cut off the influx of nuclear energy. They slowly opened their eyes, blinked, and stared at each other. Yu Wu stared at Onari for a moment before she covered her mouth and started to giggle.

“What?” Onari asked, ignorant to the new smoky limb that had appeared behind him.

“Nothing, nothing,” Yu Wu said, struggling to contain her giggles. “Though I do have a question. Are you, pfft… feeling a little ‘back-heavy’? Maybe a little ‘foxy’?”

Onari whirled around as he felt the smoke-fur of his new tail brush against the back of his neck. It was somehow solid and intangible at the same time. Still, Onari couldn’t help but notice how good the gold of the bone and the black of the smoke went together.

“Haha,” Onari rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

“Pfft, sorry, sorry. I couldn’t resist,” Yu Wu said, finally gaining control over her giggles. “But really, how does it feel?”

“Like… I’m a bit more complete. Like I’m a tiny bit more whole. Like something that had been missing suddenly slotted into place. I still feel like there’s more left to go, but I think I’m finally stepping into my birthright.”

Yu Wu smiled fondly, “That’s good, darling… I’m happy for you.”

The moment of silence between them was happy as they just assimilated the increase of power that came along with the Immortal Bones. Eventually though, Onari sighed and stood up. Yu Wu followed him.

“We should probably get going,” Onari said. “We’re pretty close to our destination now.”

Yu Wu nodded, resigned but ready to face the family her mother had built in her absence. It would be hard, but Yu Wu promised herself that she wouldn’t judge her mother’s sect because of the complicated feelings toward Yu Long that she was still struggling with.

The pair hopped back on their flying swords and took off into the distance. The rest of their travel to the NTR sect was uneventful and over in about 30 minutes. They touched down at the mouth of a lush valley, stowed their swords, and began walking to the concealed sect.

They felt a ripple wash over them as they entered the valley, like they were walking through a wall of water. They ignored the sensation and kept going. The scenery was beautiful. The valley looked like a slice of the natural world frozen in time at the point before humans had spread from Africa. Obviously, that was impossible, but Yu Long had clearly done a lot of work to preserve the valley’s natural beauty.

When they reached the area where the sect’s compound should have been, there seemed to be nothing waiting for them. All they saw was more untouched nature, but if they looked with their spiritual senses instead of their eyes, they could see a vast wall of concentrated Qi that fell over this portion of the valley.

Yu Wu glanced at Onari. “Go ahead. I’ll back you up, but this is your battle,” Onari’s eyes told her. As Yu Wu approached the barrier, irrational anxiety warred with steadfast determination. She raised her hand to ‘knock’.

Before she could lower her hand upon the barrier, something unexpected happened. The air rippled like a pond. A small fluctuation of Qi was felt by both Onari and Yu Wu, and a young woman walked out of the barrier.

The woman was unfamiliar to Onari and Yu Wu. She had semi-long brown hair. The front half of her hair was in ponytails and the back half was left to fall freely. She had startling white eyes that would pierce a mortal down to their soul. She carried with her a sort of tomboy/street fighter air to her that did nothing to diminish her obvious prowess as a martial artist.

“Hello, young mistress Yu Wu,” the woman greeted. “The timing of your appearance is most fortunate. I feel I must thank the heavens for their assistance. My name is Scarlet. It was bestowed upon me by your mother. I regret having to beg you for aid so soon after your arrival, but unfortunately, I must. Dark times have fallen upon our sect and only you, as our lady’s successor, will be able to help us…”