Treasures Of Heaven And Earth

Chún dropped out of the trees as he approached the border of the unexplored area on the 'map' that floated in his Essence sense. The Monkey Movement Dao was useful in the trees for moving quickly, but he was not skilled enough to explore at high speed.

This area of the Mountain's forest was not as thick as the locations around the clearing. The ground seemed rockier, with steeper inclines and large boulders jutting upward from the slope.

The trees were more widely spaced, with less creepers and smaller plants around and between them. More daylight fell to the ground, giving the forest warm, bright feeling - even though the air was crisper and sharper in the nose.

The trees here had more colours in their tall, straight trunks and smaller leaves than green and brown, but very few flowers.

Chún looked back, puzzled. Only a few long strides back down the slope was the type of forest he had grown more accustomed to - more jungle like. That suddenly struck him as odd given that regular forests around the Mountain were actually more like this, though with more closely spaced trees and thicker underbrush. He had not thought about it before - probably because he had been previously less intelligent - but the thick jungle-like forest around the clearing Yijing had put him in did not really fit with the normal landscape away from the Mountain.

"Mountain? Can you show me on the map how far the Jungle forest grows?"

A large teardrop shape, with the larger circular part centred around the Heaven and Vine clearing and tapering away down into the lower reaches along water sources glowed green for a moment.

"Ah. That is interesting." Chún thought quickly and inquired, "Any other strange difference in climate or plant type on you?"

A few dozen other shapes glittered in different Essence colours all over the map.

"I am guessing there would be other Treasures like the Heaven and Earth Vine centred around these areas…" he mused, then shrugged. Another thing to investigate at some point.

"Please pinpoint useful vegetables and herbs, friend," he said as he walked carefully up the slope, prodding through the crunching of dry leaves with his staff. After a moment, he untied the rolled up cloak from his staff and put it on as he walked. "Glad I brought this - temperature extremes may not hurt me anymore, but enhanced senses make it feel worse."

With the cloak on, Chún felt more normal than he had since he had left with Yijing and he found himself singing again, pushing the staff through the dry, fallen leaves with each verse and sending small ripples of Essence out with each thump of the wood on the ground.

"Winter comes, Autumn is here

Harvest in, before wolves near"

"A...hello… what is this?"

One of the staff prods had brushed a cl.u.s.ter of mushrooms exposed.

"Poisonous, eh? Oh, well. Say, friend, where are you taking me?"

A cliff up ahead pulsed in the map, which had switched to focus on an area only directly around Chún. A narrow cleft outlined with a red glow of fire essence.

"Because that is not at all suspicious, Mountain. Is there a problem?"

"Torn…"

The rumbling crunch of the gravel toned voice Chún had only heard once before, echoed down the link.

"Something serious then, for you to speak, even if I do not know what 'torn' means. Is there going to be a fight?"

A distinct feeling of affirmation.

"Well, I will remove the cloak then. Do not need it getting shredded just as I got it."

"Leave...cloak...on."

"Huh? No.. it will only be ruined…"

An image of a small rock just ahead with a larger than usual Essence fountain of Earth and oddly, Water motes.

"Hmmm… You want me to ignite that Essence spring first?"

A memory shoved into his head of him sitting in front of the Silver Sapling in the cave at the moment of ignition, with his Essence flowing through the staff.

"You want me to do that again? Is it possible to add more than one Essence to an object?" He looked speculatively at his staff, which changed into its full elaborate tree trunk form at his thoughts.

A sense of frustration. The same memory, but this time he was wearing the cloak instead of holding the staff; then the location changed to the Essence spring in front of him.

"Oh!"

Chún lifted his sleeve and looked at it speculatively. Thick woven cloth - probably from flax, reinforced with a leather outer lining. If circulating his Essence during an ignition through it worked on the staff that used to be wood, it probably would work for the cloak too, as all these materials were once alive - but would he lose the cloak?

His staff seemed to be more like a real tree living off Essence now, would the cloak become living cows and flax?

A sense of exasperation and an urge to hurry.

He took a deep breath. He could always buy another. With a few quick strides he stood in front of the Essence spring, which seemed particularly energetic.

"This is going to be a big one…. And how do I direct the Essence?" he questioned his locus.

This time the image he got back in response was strange - the staff plunging through the ground next to the rock, sending waves of Essence downward. He frowned. "Very well - what type of Essence?"

A complex strand of water, earth and fire appeared. Shaking his head, he wondered, "How in Dao do the other True Cultivators work this stuff out?"

Looking down at the ground he could see where the staff had to go, so he raised it above his head and thrust it into the ground. In his Essence sense, the staff started glowing with a mix of wood - green and silvery golden - metal - Essences and twisted under his hands, growing roots and budding small branches and leaves.

Within moments, he was holding a small metal-wood tree-staff in his hands - already he could see pulses of Essence coming out of the staff-tree into the ground to the steady beat of the Mountain's heart.

"Oh, hells. Forget big, this is going to be a pile of goat droppings." Chún squeezed his eyes shut and visualised the Essence pulse his locus directed, directing it in a circuit around his body and through the cloak, watching as his Essence began flooding through his cloak the way it did the rest of his body, then back up through his arms into the staff.

The pulse of Essence hit the ground through the staff like the beat of an immense war drum - a call to arms accompanied by the blowing of horns. He was sure that it was not for the fact that he thought he had fused with the tree-staff, he would have been blown off his feet by the force of the thunder - instead the wave of Essence flowing through the tree-staff drained him with each beat as he focused on keeping the Essence mixed correctly.

Faintly, he sensed Essence Beasts slipping out of the forest, forming a large crescent around the cleft in the cliff, with himself and the rock as the centre. He could hear angry roars and cries and if he had control of his body he would have run - but there was nothing but the brightening pulse - and somehow he knew the war cries of the Essence Beasts were directed towards the wrongness in the crack in the cliff, not at him.

As the pulse reached a crescendo he could feel an almost answering swell of wrongness coming from the opening. Just feeling it made him angry and threatened - a sudden flash of determination burned through him in response and he wanted to rip whatever it was it out and strangle it for threatening his home.

As if in response to his feelings, the staff-tree - now flaring so brightly it hurt to look at it, begin shifting into a wickedly leaf-bladed tree sized spear - and tilted forward to point its tip at the centre of the tear of wrongness Chún felt. All the beasts surrounding the cleft roared simultaneously - as the Essence Spring ignited.

Unlike what he had half expected, there was no earth shattering Essence wave. Instead - a beam of pure power funnelled by the spear - blasted into the opening like the hand of an angry god.

The world split into light and dark.

In front, there was light. It had no colour, but was so bright that even with his many times tempered body it hurt, beyond hurt.

Something flowed over his face, blocking out some of the searing white. Chún felt his cloak shift and wrap around him like a suit of armour as the trees around him shattered like dry twigs and an incredible force crashed against his body, but his attention was on the space ahead of him as he felt - something - stop. The sensation of wrongness immediately lessened significantly.

Something else was there though, something moving against the light as it shrank and dissipated away.

Many somethings.

A small flood of chattering, screaming, roaring creatures scattered from the opening in the cliff. Behind them Chún saw the movement of something larger. Where it not for the amount of wrongness he had felt only moments before, he would have vomited at the the twisting sensation of wounds, pain, hate... moving towards him. Instead he merely felt sick and angry, as a pounding Song of Battle filled the link.

He was howling as he charged towards the closest, the spear flaring like a sword as it punctured the aberration into a thousand torn fragments. He was dimly aware of the Essence beasts around the cleft charging with him with equal enraged roars.

A great crowd of mighty warriors was singing a great battle chorus as he swung his spear, water Essence flaring out from his cloak as it blocked the glittering black tentacle of some o.b.s.c.e.n.e amalgamation of spider and octopus; the spear haft crushed it like egg against a rock as the blade bisected a leaping horror.

Battle drums thundered in his head as a wave of Essence Beasts fell and rent the things from every side, red in tooth and claw, brilliant flashes and explosions of every colour Essence flaring and buffeting him as the Beasts used their natural Essence abilities in defence of their home against the invaders.

Chún slammed his spear b.u.t.t into the ground; pushing as much Essence into the strike as he dared - and a huge wave of Metal and Earth Essence crashed against the slinking death, pushing and flinging them back in a hissing, screaming crush. Howls of victory sounded as his allies leapt on dazed or vulnerable enemies.

He was already running up the broad back of a massive bear, recognition flickering both their faces as he ran onto an ursine foreleg while it swiped a monster away like a wet rag. He yelled to the bear he had been running from only a couple of days earlier. "Throw!"

Propelled by the Bear's strength as he flew through the air, he spun his spear in all directions around his body at targets of opportunity, sending ichor splattering from creatures he sliced and crushed, adding new squeals and screams of rage to the bedlam.

He landed spear blade first into the skull of a squashed together combination between a bear, boar and bull, pulsing his Essence to blow the bone beneath open like the shell of an egg - letting lose a nauseating stench - and leaping free as the giant collapsed into a half dozen of its lesser brethren, crushing them to paste in a thundering crash and loud of debris.

A sudden caterwauling and half-seen shadow out of the corner of his left eye had him rolling desperately to the right as a half-dozen wolves pounced over his body to intercept whatever had ambushed him with snarls of rage, his cloak blasting a wave of screaming razor shards of ice ahead of his tumbling body to clear a path. A dozen of the now frozen monsters shattered as he crashed through them like a flung boulder.

"Did that first Essence strike even do anything?" he howled down the link to his locus as rational thought started to creep back, even as he shifted an arm in the same Essence movement that he had just seen the Bear do, smashing the spear haft through a dozen crawling, twisted wolves that screamed as they burst like overfull water flasks.

The image of something big, with creatures spilling out of it coming through the cleft appeared in his mind.

"Demons… the others can not fight that… pull them back! We need reinforcements! Where is his Majesty?"

A momentary flicker of the map overlay his vision, pulsing and tinged with red. The dot representing the Flood Dragon was at least twenty five li away from the battle site.

"Gods in the Ninety Nine Heavens - there will not be enough time… I cannot let that thing out of the defile - nothing will stop it then…"

Essence sense pinpointed a fresh wave of smaller demons emerging from the larger one and Chún sprinted for the gap in the cliff, desperate to somehow block the exit before this fresh wave left the narrow gap.

The roiling turmoil of wildly rampaging of loose Essence that raged around the clearing from the battle sparked an idea.

"Spark... hehe. Pull everyone else back from the entrance NOW, " he yelled down the link, reflexively sending bolts of Metal Essence from his spear into any demon he leapt past, pushing the Monkey Movement as hard as he could, "Get them to focus on the demons in the clearing, keep them off my back… son of a..."

Chún swore like the gutter rat he was, dodging a huge paw that slapped down sounding like a thousand drums going off together - sending a wave of debris rushing at him, some chunks boulder-sized. He felt his cloak's hood clamp down over his eyes and ears to protect him from the concussion and smaller pieces and pushed Monkey Movement to ricochet off the incoming largest slabs - leaping upward like a carp going up a waterfall.

"Going to be close…" He closed his eyes and visualised the Rune for Fire that he had used in the cave, remembering how it had fed on itself as long as the Essence was there.

His spear began to glow red, Fire Essence s.u.c.k.i.n.g towards it from all over the battlefield. He heard the battle chorus rise to a new peak as the demon who had tried to crush him belched a stream of fire directly at him.

"Thank you!" His spear collected the fire in a roaring whirlwind even as it stabbed into the creature's oversized, drooling eye - presumably into its brain - as it immediately began to fall, roaring in agony.

"No time, no time…" Heedless of the toppling giant, Chún aimed his tumble at the mouth of the crack in the rock and focused on expanding the Fire Character over the entrance. He could see the scuttling shapes of hundreds more creatures just behind it.

Screaming "Burn!" at the top of his lungs, he pumped as much Fire Essence as he could into the Essence construct and completed the shape.

Another concussive wave of force blasted him away from the defile as a firestorm was born. He let it push him away - landing staff first half a li away - grounding him in a smaller blast of force which pulverised the few creatures unfortunate enough to be there.

He could hear screaming from the demons inside the narrow passage. Flaming shapes writhed and collapsed without crossing the boundary, the flames leaping higher as more Fire Essence was drained out of the wild Essence around the battle.

He eyed the rate the Fire Essence was being consumed and cursed. Despite the continuing battles around him adding more Fire Essence into the area, the firestorm was rapidly outpacing supply, especially as the Essence Beasts dispatched the remaining creatures left outside the cleft.

Once the Fire Essence ran out, the character would collapse into a normal fire - and the demons would overwhelm them.

He needed to kill the King Demon or whatever it was.

Chún looked around at the panting and wounded army around him. It was considerably smaller and weaker than before, with many bodies scattered around the slope, despite reinforcements trickling out of the forest to join the battle. And the Fire Rune would not last until the Flood Dragon got there.

"Mountain, you and I will have words after this. But for now, can you show me the King Demon?"

A flickering Essence image of a mass twice again as large as the biggest monster they had fought so far appeared. He could see a glowing Essence Rune he did not recognise slowly forming in front of it. There was so much Essence being pushed into the shape it glowed an ugly purple even in normal sight.

Chún studied the image calmly. Just like a street fight, the first to panic loses - he had learnt this a long time ago - there was no space for anything else but choosing an action.

"It is preparing something. I cannot afford to let it finish."

He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, noticing that two thirds of the creature was melted and burnt like a candle that had been left lit too long.

"So. The first attack hurt it. That means it can be killed."

Chún knew without looking that any nearby Essence springs had been destroyed. There was no way to pull the same trick twice.

There was only one thing left he could think of.

Chún sighed and started moving towards the cleft where the firestorm was collapsing.

"Mountain, I need to see it with my own Essence Sense. Please ask the others to keep the smaller demons away… I will only need a tánzhǐ."

Slowly, as he walked towards the entrance of the now scored and blasted cleft that had been scoured clear of anything but rock, the able bodied Essence Beasts joined him.

There was no sound or movement beside the clinking and crack of cooling rock as he entered the narrow passage. Perhaps the effort of creating whatever pattern it was making precluded it from making more smaller demons.

At that thought, Chún started to run as fast as he could, locking a pattern into his mind that he would never be able to forget. He only hoped…

As he rounded the corner, the King Demon suddenly fell into his Essence sense. As he had hoped the familiar patterns of ending, unimportant and completion could be seen within its form - it was dying.

Focusing on the pattern he had learnt only a couple of days ago, he pushed the shape into the creature, forcing himself to ignore the ominous hum of its own rune - and the screams of challenge from all around as the Beasts with him met the charge of a small swarm of monsters that had clearly been guarding the King.

The pattern spun the matching parts of the other shapes into place.

Nothingness flowered again.

Chún sagged with relief as the creature's rune sputtered like a failing sparkler and vanished as the edges of its melted body suddenly became indistinct and drifted up into the air.

"Just like the leaf,'' he whispered as all the creatures dropped like puppets with cut strings, the cleft resounded to howls and cries of victory and the Song of Battle running through the link swelled in triumph.