Sky Pride

Chapter 26- A Furnace For Demons

Heavenly Demon set up one of his curious formations around the empty pond. He had Tian and Liren help placing various prepared items at mathematically exact points- the minutely inscribed piece of obsidian must be at exactly this point at that angle to the bit of deer antler that burned without consuming anything, and both had to be oriented relative to a particular colored rope that also had to follow strict geometric rules. Tian didn’t know much about formations, but he could feel the difference from the daoist variety. There were much fewer things like flags or talismans. More natural goods were used and carefully modified. Both relied heavily on mathematics, however, and given the way Heavenly Demon would toss a handful of knucklebones, examine them, scoop them up and toss them again, it seemed divination was also part of the process.

Burning Heaven mostly kept out of the way. It kept looking up at the hole in the roof. Tian thought she was cultivating, but he was too busy to pay her much attention.

Fire was less of a theme than Tian thought it would be. Light was the predominant element. Light and pressure. Heat was an unwelcome byproduct, one that might damage the formation. It had been carefully accounted for, naturally, and steps were taken to force the heat up and away. An odd sort of furnace, Tian thought, but Heavenly Demon had been working on this for a long, long time now. Tian left him to his business. Once the main formation was set, two smaller ones were created on either side, linked to the main formation.

“Your job will be to provide energy and keep the main array balanced by shifting energy around. You will also need to break up impurity build ups, as they can impede the flow of energy through the formation and lead to it prematurely self destructing. Use the prepared refined spirit crystals to keep the array active.” Heavenly Demon waved a hand and two minecarts full of refined crystals landed with a thud next to him. Tian did some very quick math. If the ratio of ordinary spirit crystals to refined ones was roughly a thousand to one… his brain seized.

He simply had no way to understand such an outrageous amount of wealth. What could it even buy? Ascension, apparently. That was worth spending on. Tian gave the carts another glance, then looked over at Liren. “Will it be alright if we position the carts next to the sub formations? Or will that affect the greater working?”

“Good question, that daoist! No, it will be fine. Keep them immediately to hand, as any spiritual entities drawn in will surely attack This Demon, and by extension, the refining formation. Keep it up, keep it steady, guard me well. Oh, that little spirit wolf of yours? You might as well turn it loose here. It will benefit from the energy of the mountain.”

“And it might draw attention away from you if predatory spirits arrive?” Liren’s voice was bone dry.

“Would they chase an insect when meat is before them? This Demon offers you a benefit. Take it or don’t, it is all the same to him.”

“Grandpa?”

Do it. I was going to suggest it too. Remember what I said about spirits being drawn on a slightly different layer of rice paper? Imagine the sheet of paper you live on had a wet spot that kind of semi-dissolved and fused to the sheet below. We are in a spot that is kind of both sheets, but more the sheet below, is what I am trying to say. The energies aren’t particularly healthy for you at this stage of your development, unprocessed, but it will do the puppy a lot of good. And it might find something. This demon kid was dead wrong about quite a few things, including what this place actually is. Starsieve… Heh. Well. You will find out. What an ass Black Iron was! What an absolute buffoon! Go on, Grandson. You are in for a trial, but the benefits are significant. Though, that Liren girl will have the best of it. You will see.

Tian turned the wolf puppy loose. He immediately zipped around the cavern, sniffing at the edges of the formations. He then sneezed once, shook himself mightily, and raced out the entrance of the cave. Tian could hear a ghostly scrabble of claws on the rock, and the slide where enthusiasm exceeded grip in the turn.

“I wonder what his name will be.” Tian murmured.

“He’s still a long way from even knowing what names are, or even knowing what knowing is,” Burning Heaven said. “Right now, he’s all instinct and a memory that’s like a patchwork of sensations. This smell is associated with warmth, this smell with food, this sound with danger, and so on. He’s smart enough to get some things, like finding where things are buried and chasing after things that smell good. Treasures, if you are a human. That he can do. But names? He has a long, long way to go.”

Tian familiarized himself with the formation he would be securing. It was pretty straightforward. It protected him from the harmful qi of this place, much like the wards that protected the bases in the wasteland. And like those wards, it let through a surprising amount of qi, more than enough to keep his cultivation circling. It wasn’t as comfortable as up on the mountain, but it was certainly better than anywhere else he had been since then. There was a place to dump refined spirit stones to fuel the main formation if necessary, and a bone wand to control the flow of the strange not-qite-qi that powered the whole thing.

The chamber was suffused with that energy, Tian noticed. If it really was an amalgam of undifferentiated Qi and Shen… how was that possible? Was this the fabled primordial energy that combined all three of the great energies- vital energy, qi and shen? It didn’t feel like it had vital energy. There was something else happening, something he wasn’t understanding.

Heavenly Demon jumped down into the empty pond, and looked up at Tian and Liren. “This Demon will undergo a mortification of the flesh and spirit. It will look like I am suffering unspeakable agonies, or even have died. DO NOT, under any circumstances, for any reason, up to and including my actual death, DO NOT let the furnace array collapse prematurely. Do not attempt to give any sort of help. Do not try to save my life. Even if you do, you might as well kill this Seat yourself, as you will have cut off my path to advancement. It would be better if I died in this place. It would be a short trip to join those great ones above.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Tian and Liren nodded. They understood.

“Expect illusions of something sounding like This Heavenly Demon pleading to be released, or to be freed or some such sort of thing. This is normal in the rare cases when someone assisting a refinement ritual is not initiated into the cult. It’s a trick. Keep the furnace array going. That is all.”

“A lie from one of those evil spirits?”

“No, it will be me. Sort of me. Once the array goes up, don’t listen to me… this Seat. Not one word. Treat them as the ravings of a madman, or an enemy bent on This Seat’s destruction. It won’t be This Heavenly Demon speaking. It will be everything about me the furnace must refine away.”

“His diction has changed a bit. He’s started referring to himself as ‘me’ or ‘I.’” Tian messaged Liren.

“He’s scared. The persona is crumbling.”

“Why would someone so strong bother with a fake persona?”

“Don’t know.” Her thoughts were curt, the energy was rising fast in the formation. “But I guarantee it wasn’t because he thought he had to impress someone with his status.”

The formation blazed, and above the hole in the mountain, eight stars shined through the veil around the hidden realm. Arranged in a strange formation, a constellation unknown to Tian or Liren, their light fell like spears of judgement and pierced the beautiful man standing below. The formation lines changed from salt and rope to channels of silver light, then even the light started whisping smoky white tendrils as the light itself smouldered. The starlight spears fell, and filled the empty pond. They kept falling, becoming denser, the light brighter. It built and built until it burst into a blinding blue-white flame. The formation groaned as it took the strain, the refined spirit crystals growing dimmer at a visible rate. The furnace was lit. The Heavenly Demon’s refinement had begun.

Tian steadied his breath. “Did he mention how long this would take?”

“He did not.” Liren’s voice was wry. “It will go until it’s done, he dies, or both.”

The stellar furnace was silent. Tian instinctively felt it should be loud. Fires blazed, the air rushing through the furnace, the hiss of wood not yet dry enough, or the soft crumbling of charcoal. Not here. The demon’s furnace was silent as an ambush.

There was a soft grunt. A minute later, another. A few minutes, and it was a groan. Tian steadied his heart. The screams would start soon. Ah, he was mistaken. He could hear the unmistakable sounds of legs breaking. Heavenly Demon choked all the sounds down, deep in his chest. The furnace was noisy after all. Tian could hear the ribs snapping like twigs. The groans were getting more desperate.

There was a wet crunch, the pelvis? And that was more than Heavenly Demon could stand. The scream ripped away from him. Tian’s stomach clenched. Usually he was causing the sounds, suffering the sounds, or making the sounds end. But now, all there was to do was listen. Listen as-

“Here they come!”

Tian was yanked from his spiraling bleakness by the arrival of thousands of worms made of moonlight, specifically the yellowy sort of moon you got some days, not a pale white. The yellow of old bone and faded ivory. Long, longer than Tian was tall, thinner than his pinky, and each with a circular maw holding just three triangular teeth. They came through the walls of the mountain, avoiding the pillar of starlight rising through the hole but, like moths, unable to resist the heart of the flame. They headed straight for Heavenly Demon at the base of the pit.

“Am I supposed to kill these things or something?”

Nah, just control the formation. Watch.

The dreadful biting worms swarmed in by the dozens, and were evaporated in the blazing light of the furnace by those same dozens.

“Oh that’s interesting. Is the density of that strange energy increasing?”

A bit. See how the energy flow is getting a bit clogged up in the formation?

Tian did, and quickly used the bone wand to coax the energy through the blockage. It was an easy enough manipulation of qi.

Different sheets of rice paper, slightly different energy sources, all getting refined. Waste products build up in a furnace, you know. Got to clear away the ashes and dregs.

“But he said guarding. We are here as guards, not as glorified formation tenders.”

These are the equivalent of tiny worms that live in the dirt and eat rotting food that falls to the ground. What about greater spirits? What if his enemies in the Cult use some means to send curses or demons of their own to disrupt his ascension? He was going to rely on the divination shrouding magic of that toad to stay hidden, but now he’s blazing in the dark. Anyone with sufficiently powerful magic to reach through the veil around this place would find tracking him trivial. The fact that he was worried about it suggests you should too.

The waves of worms became more dense, coming in hundreds instead of dozens. The draw on the furnace was definitely up, but not as dramatically as Tian had feared. Some of the energy created by their destruction was being used parasitically, to fuel the formation. It was still a losing game, but the formation would be able to hold up under this level of abuse for weeks.

“Where there are worms, there are usually birds.” Liren’s voice startled Tian, making him whip his head around. He couldn’t see her well, she was blocked by the blaze of light splitting the cavern.

“Do you see something?”

“Not yet. Have you tried cultivating?”

“Not yet.”

He could hear a grin creeping into her voice now. “We’ll take turns stabilizing the formation. Give it a try. I have a feeling.”

Tian sat down and settled into the rhythm of the Darknorth Sea Spell. The kun opened his wide mouth, and swallowed. Tian’s mouth dropped open too, his eyes flying wide open. The qi here wasn’t just dense. He could feel it nourishing his energy body in ways he didn’t have words for. More than that, he felt his thoughts getting clearer. His heart calmed, the cycle of the spell flowing effortlessly.

“Shen. Whatever the energy of this place is, it’s dense with shen. And because of the special nature of this place, the formation, something, we can cultivate it. At the very least, we can absorb it into ourselves a bit. What Heavenly Demon can do with his aura, we can get a little piece of that, before we reach the Human realm. I can’t even imagine what our transcendence into the human realm will be like. We will be so far ahead of everyone, we’ll have such a better foundation, comparison will be pointless. This is more than a fateful encounter. This can change the destiny of the whole wasteland. And we are the poor innocents in possession of a treasure. The bandits will be coming, and soon.” Tian breathed out the last few words. He could feel the arrows at his back already.