Destiny in Cinders

”Oh? Something attacked my drone.” An Jing refocused his attention and squinted. He wasn’t angry, just curious. ”What could it be?”

”A fey beast,” Yvelbane said. ”A small one native to this area at that.”

”Huh. To think that there would be some feys who chose to stay behind instead of leaving with the beast tide.”

”The snow calamity is cold, but nothing more. It’s not like it exterminates all lifeforms,” Yvelbane reasoned. ”It’s frozen off the surrounding mountains, but the forests that span Brokeblade Mountain are akin to a great fey and wouldn’t die just like that. At most, it would fall into slumber and enter a state of stasis, much like hibernation.

”Sizable feys like dangkangs need to be able to move around actively, however, so they had no choice but to migrate. Other smaller feys that subsist on minerals don’t really mind the snow calamity. They can probably live off whatever already exists within the forests for tens of thousands of years.”

”I don’t really know much about feys,” An Jing said. While he understood the reason many of them migrated, he hadn’t imagined that there were those that could ingest minerals and ores as sustenance. In an exaggerated tone of curiosity to stoke Yvelbane’s teacher-like persona, he said, ”I thought they only consume minerals to replenish some bodily salt or other mineral nutrient needs. Are they actually eating them like food? Wow, as expected of an ancient sword soul! You sure know a lot!”

”Hehe. Indeed I do!” Yvelbane said excitedly. ”Great Immortal Void Embrace once said that humankind had once been one of the branches of the lines of fey. Human cultivation techniques originate from the same source as fey cultivation techniques. Later on, humankind became the leader of all sentient life and shifted their primitive cultivation techniques to immortal cultivation techniques of qi refinement. Many feys that accompanied powerful humans also learned about qi refinement and used that knowledge to rework their ancient fey bloodline cultivation techniques.

”Purity is a requirement in immortal cultivation. Using spirit roots, one extracts pure and untainted essence and fuses it with the qi essence within the body, establishing the foundation for qi refinement, paving the way to elevate the psyche into the void and achieving resistance against decay before accomplishing a dao merit that transforms one into a being impervious to rot, destruction and malfunction. In other words, a cultivator of the Primordial Deity Realm.

”Fey cultivation techniques, on the other hand, are more aligned with nature and do not rely on spirit roots. Instead, they rely on their bloodlines to accumulate the various types of qi in the natural environment through acts like consuming metals or magma to forge their bones, flesh and sinew to the point that their bodies become unified with the various types of qi they consume. By doing so, they are able to forge a fey core and ultimately coalesce a single drop of true-spirit blood.

”Nature encompasses the totality of all things under heaven and on earth. Since heaven and earth are able to produce all kinds of spirit and lethal qi, it goes without saying that the body of flesh, a microcosm of heaven and earth, is able to do so too. Fey cores, in essence, are solid masses that feys produce once they comprehend the true essence of the balance of nature by leveraging a mixture of different types of spirit and lethal qi. True-spirit blood represents pure life itself, the path of balanced yin and yang vitality that straddles the balance of nature.

”Feys that balance a hundred types of qi can build an immortal foundation, while fey cores with a thousand types of qi can attest to the purple mansion. And only after achieving a state of balance between ten thousand types of qi will the core be fully in tune with nature to be able to produce true-spirit blood, transforming them into a true spirit that’s immune to decay.

”Hence, every fey cultivator is akin to a microcosm of heaven and earth, causing other forms of odd lifeforms to congregate around them. Recall the six-fanged white boars that you saw. They led other animals in their group and paved a grassy path across the snow terrain for them. At the end of the lifespan of fey cultivators, they are able to create large swathes of spirit land that give rise to all kinds of life of different species.

”Another example is the Void Embrace Ancestral Dragon with the Vita Ex Nihilo lifearc. A new type of true-spirit blood arose in the place that the dragon passed through, giving rise to a whole new branch of humanity. That is why the dragon is jointly revered by those on the immortal and fey paths as a truly sacred being.”

Yvelbane pondered for a bit at that point of the explanation. ”This body resembles heaven and earth... and also somewhat resembles the martial path of the current day? Then again, the martial path also has a microcosm formed within the internal body formation, and body refinement techniques developed later have similar elements to fey cultivation techniques...”

It didn’t take long for the sword soul to smooth out its recollection. ”Even so, the martial path is an offshoot of the immortal path. Though it also centers on bringing the body into alignment with nature, it starts off with the purest thread of spirit or lethal qi, proliferating it and causing it to branch out. It’s quite unlike the fey path that prioritizes collecting different types of qi to condense them into something pure, the complete inverse. Think about branches and roots. Both come from the same source, yet they grow in different directions due to their distinct natures.”

”Oh well, it’s the same but different, so not that important.” An Jing didn’t really mind the intricacies. ”You make humans sound like just another species of big monkey. The martial path is a new development, right? Surely it’s expected to contain some elements of human and fey cultivation that came before. But after hearing your explanation, it sounds like fey cultivation techniques can be used by humans too.”

”Humans are true spirits of wisdom, after all. Broadly speaking, humans can also be considered a kind of fey.” Coming from Yvelbane, who considered itself a sword, those words had an objective flair to them. ”The bodily constitution of humans is much stronger than that of many smaller feys, so humans can naturally use fey cultivation techniques too. However, humans possess wisdom that is much more powerful than their natural bodily constitution. Unlike feys that attain wisdom after growing stronger by relying on their primal instincts, humans are much better suited to proper immortal or martial cultivation.”

An Jing found this line of discussion much more interesting. ”Conversely, doesn’t that mean that the more universal fey cultivation techniques which even wisdomless feys can use are better than techniques of the immortal and martial paths that expect a certain degree of talent?”

”Indeed. That’s why fey cultivation techniques still get passed on to this day. But techniques that do not require much from their practitioners also don’t have high ceilings. As far as humans are concerned, they’d be much better off using a basic body refinement martial cultivation technique like Longevity Fist.” At the end of the day, Yvelbane didn’t know that much about the martial path, not that it really minded. ”To sum it up, feys can consume all kinds of things, not just mineral ores. Even true carnivores like mountain tigers turn omnivorous after achieving fey status. They’ll be able to feed on spirit plants to assimilate the qi within and sustain themselves on lethal qi of yin water. Once they become feys, they’ll have transcended the cycle of nature and the food chain. Similarly, feys that can sustain themselves on mineral ores or terrestrial-vein qi aren’t afraid of the snow calamity in the slightest. At most, they’d just live in hiding instead of migrating away from their habitats.”

The second drone that An Jing had sent off earlier in the discussion arrived at the last-known location of the first destroyed drone. Upon closer observation, An Jing found the culprit: a tiny squirrel covered in loose, gray fur with a silver tint. It gnawed into the first drone with great satisfaction to get to the metallic parts within all the while its fluffy tail wriggled around and pulled the other metallic fragments of the drone together with a kind of magnetic force. It then placed the metallic shards on the ground where the ore gatherers grew, presumably to use them as fertilizer.

”Huh, so this is what guardian feys are like.” An Jing recalled hearing about beasts that guarded bountiful areas from old hunters and foragers long ago. Presumably, they were referring to spirit beasts like these that had a symbiotic relationship with spirit plants. The silver-gray squirrel went about its life gathering metallic shards to fertilize the ore-gatherer plants and keep other beasts away that would seek to disrupt their growth. In return, the ore gatherers served as a kind of food store for the squirrel during hard times. It was also likely that squirrels like it were involved with collecting ore-gatherer seeds and planting them around.

”This is an ashen-white squirrel,” Yvelbane said with a surprised tone after it saw through the beast’s nature. ”They’re quite rare in our time and can be split into two types, one aligned with the metal aspect and another aligned with the earth aspect. They’re quite sensitive to different types of mineral ore. Lacking though the world of Void Embrace might be, it at least retains a good ecology. Ashen-white squirrels of my time dwindled in numbers as their habitats gradually vanished. Who knew that I would end up seeing one again at Brokeblade Mountain.”