Chapter 611
In the council chambers upon Xankeshan, Velvet gave the report for spies and other informants in the Harmonious Citadels territory. The reaction has been strong, as expected. Two saints dead practically at once has been difficult for them to cover up. But putting aside their internal situation for the moment, it seems the remaining saints might be taking this war seriously. They wont be moving independently, and seem to be preparing for a proper war.
Xankeshan can withstand a direct attack, Catarina declared.
Im sure it can, Tauno agreed. Now that he had been revealed, he would be staying upon Xankeshan for the most part. But outlying planets controlled by our alliance can still be attacked. We can give them up, but the Harmonious Citadel is not above scouring planets for petty revenge. A mass harvesting of resources and slaughter of the people would lose us more than resources, but also support of our allies. And we dont have enough Augmentation cultivators to match them.
The Harmonious Citadel previously had eight known Augmentation cultivators, though there was potential they had kept another secret. Now they would be down to six or seven, with the alliance having only three they could count on. Moves were being made to sway two of the extremely sparse Augmentation cultivators not tied to either side. They were hoping the recent deaths of saints would factor into their decisions, but even if they got both they still wouldnt be able to match them straight up.This chapter was first shared on the Ñøv€lß1n platform.
Vari shook her head, We also cant count on Everheart to contribute any further. Hes just as likely to cause trouble for us, though I dont think he has any motivation to assassinate our Augmentation cultivators.
Timothy added his own thoughts, He still maintains a grudge with them, does he not? If we can provide an opening, I imagine he would snatch that opportunity to do something that would harm them.
That would be best, Zazil of the Dark Ring agreed. But perhaps we should return to the internal situation of the Harmonious Citadel. They might be focused on a united goal now, but their stability should be at a low point. If we could get a single one to act against the others in a bid for power, she shrugged. Or pierce through their propaganda to cause other internal strife.
Prospero nodded. He had advised the council from his experience even before reaching Integration, and with his advancement there was no excuse for anyone to keep him from an official position. Some people did not like the number of individuals from Ceretos involved, but they did provide Xankeshan as a staging ground. We could also encourage more recently conquered planets to rebel against them. They could suppress any such rebellions with the saints, but that would occupy two or three of them, leaving the rest more easily manageable.
Just as the saints cannot afford to hold back, Tauno added, We cannot fail to take advantage of this opportunity. Waiting has been on our side, with the rate of our development, but now allowing them to fully stabilize would be disadvantageous. I can imagine it wouldnt take more than a few decades, far too little for us to grow to match them in power. Even with certain optimal projections, he looked over the individuals from the lower realms.
At least everyone will have something to do Zazil said. Simply hiding and training is not what cultivators are meant to do.
Agreed, Tauno said. It was a terribly unpleasant time.
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Thinking back to her first attempts at controlling natural energy, Anishka wondered why she cared at all. It certainly wasnt about a desire to grow stronger. At that age, she hadnt even understood the concept. She simply did it because she could.
The lava itself was something she was particularly fond of. It was part of her home, and much different from anything else. She didnt really want to control it, to harness its power. Even now, that wasnt her intent.
She shielded herself from the heat. Then she stretched out her hand, curling her fingers about the molten rock, pulling it upward and watching it drip through her fingers. Then she backed off.
Anishka could only do that in short bursts, but it was so satisfying. Nothing else moved quite like that. A goopy yet almost solid thing. The fact that it was hot she could take or leave it. Who cared?
Then there was ice. Famous for being slippery, yet in some situations it was oddly sticky? There had been a time when Anishka got her tongue stuck on the frozen walls of the sect, the ice freezing the moisture on her tongue. She could at least disentangle herself from that problem now.
If that was where her fascinations ended, she would have still been a perfect child of the Fire and Ice Palace. But that wasnt the limit.
Aniskha moved away from the lava flow, until she found untainted land which seemed to have nothing of note. At least, that was what people claimed. A bit of ash coating the surface- powdery, yet oddly full of life. Plants were poking through it, and she dropped onto her belly to look at them. A poky little weed. A stalk of grass. Both quite different from each other. How did plants even work? Anishka didnt know, even after it was technically explained to her.
But beneath that was the dirt. To some people, that was the most boring thing in existence. Literally nothing at all. But to Anishka, they couldnt be more wrong. Dirt was something. Everything, maybe. The remains of dead plants and animals, or ground down rocks. Lots of ash, of course, but also little bugs and even littler bugs she couldnt see yet. She learned about microbes from Ruteran books, which were much more detailed on the subject than most books from Ceretos.
Anishka blew a little puff of air, stirring dirt and ash. That was another thing. Air. Wind. Her lungs. She could keep getting distracted with everything, but Anishka knew she needed to cultivate. Not because her mother was the head of a powerful sect, or because her great-and-more-greats grandfather was really important. But because she couldnt possibly live long enough otherwise.
What did Anishka need to live longer for? To learn. What did she want to learn? Everything. Actually everything. Maybe not as much about machines and technology and fancy cultivation stuff that didnt extend her lifespan, though she could see such things interesting her at some point. But also about plants and animals and things that werent those and everything that wasnt alive. The closer she looked, the more questions she had. There was always a closer view she could look at things.
And once she knew everything down to its smallest bits, she would look bigger. Planets and solar systems and galaxies and probably just one universe but there were so many of all of those other things that it hardly mattered. She would need to live actually forever to study even a small part of them. Anishka had some moon dirt which was totally different from the dirt outside the sect or the dirt from Sect Head Levs tree or the dirt from Nthandas country, and that didnt even count the other continent or the Archipelago or anything that wasnt dirt.
This was going to take a while. So Anishka prepared herself by circulating the power of fire and ice inside of her, two opposing elements that might just be the same thing if you looked at them at the right angle. And maybe that was true of the whole world. Or maybe not, but Anishka planned to find out. Eventually. Sometime after she was allowed to travel on her own.