Treasures Of Heaven And Earth

An unrestrained voice sang out cheerfully from within the Immortal's cave under the Heaven and Earth Vine, accompanied by splashing sounds.

"Scrub, scrub the blood,

Scrub, scrub the dirt;

Skin like jade, fair and white,

Only this makes the girls eyes bright…"

The sound of singing tapered off quietly to be replaced with a contemplative yawning sound. "Yaawa… Hey Mountain - can you still talk?"

The walls of the cave vibrated with an echoing basso profundo. "YES. WHY?"

In the bathing pool of the cave, Chún dropped the used soapgrass into the hot water, wincing. "Trying out new voices? Speak a little softer with that one, please?" He looked upward through the steam rising from the water and leaned back against a convenient rock ledge, closing his eyes.

A rustling and brush of breeze was accompanied like a sonorous, horn-like hum that distinguished itself into words after a moment. "Is... this an... improovement?"

Chún laughed quietly. "A little, but you sound like someone speaking through a bamboo pipe."

"I doo noot have a throoat oor moouth too speak with. I have too use oother ways of making soound," the Mountain Spirit answered a touch defensively.

Chún raised an eyebrow, "So, what - you really are blowing air through a pipe?"

"The vent at the toop oof the cave that alloows the air too circulate; the air makes different soounds depending oon hoow the wind bloows throough. Befoore - I vibrated the walls oof the cave," the Mountain explained.

"Huh. Well, you can just use our connection", reminded Chún, "Unless you wanted the Silver Snake to hear you?"

A somehow derisive hiss sounded out from the ledge above the pool where the Silver Sapling grew, lighting the cave.

"He does not seem impressed - lets just communicate like this unless we need someone else to hear," Chún thought down the link to his locus.

"Yes, Chún. Is that all?" floated back down the link along with a sensation of disinterest.

"No. I wanted to ask..." There was an embarrassed pause.

"Yes?"

"I just noticed... what has happened to my skin?"

"You will need to be more specific."

Chún's face flushed in embarrassment and he blurted, "Why does my skin look like it belongs to some Consumer hero from one of Storyteller's tales - all jade white? I am an orphan peasant! Not to mention, jade white skin is for girls..."

"Channelling and manipulating Essence - Cultivation - destroys the impurities in the body, bringing it closer to perfection. You have advanced a great deal in the past few weeks. Your body has been completely rebuilt multiple times by Essence waves, each time brought closer to the perfect form according to your Dao.

You have channelled a planet's worth of Essence - more than any average Consumer would encounter in their lifetimes. You look nothing like that orphan boy who used to hunt on my hills."

Chún's eyes flew open in shock. "I look like a Cultivator?"

The Mountain sent a distinct sensation of rolling eyes down the link. "You ARE a True Cultivator."

Chún raised a palm up in front of his face and studied it intently, turning it this way and that.

Fine, crystal clear skin, with no visible pores or hair met his gaze. The muscle was clearly defined, the fingers long and well shaped.

Chún softly asked, "Can you show me what I look like?"

An Essence image of a man leaning back in the clear waters of the pool formed above him, looking back down at him.

He looked about sixteen or seventeen summers old to Chún's eyes; A face that was all smooth angles - high forehead, striking dark eyes up swept at the corners with thin, platinum coloured, sword-like eyebrows, high cheekbones and a sharp, proud nose, slightly upturned at the end.

Chún tentatively raised a hand. The man raised a sparkling white hand and arm in response, sharply defined muscles rippling smoothly under the porcelain-like skin as they both moved their hands back together, running it through the thick, platinum hair that hung down to their shoulders.

Chún pulled a strand in front of his eyes. It gleamed in the light of the Silver Tree, like a fortune of silver moulded into hair.

The Mountain hummed, "The hair is a new change, but given the amount of Essence you were the conduit for last night, understandable. Creatures exposed to a lot of Essence in short period of time lose pigment - the more Essence, the paler their hair and skin gets. Incidentally, when the Essence rebuilds you it also makes you tougher - I doubt your skin would take damage from anything short of the most intense Essence attacks from Sky Level Essence Beasts or Consumers at this point."

It paused and continued, "I would not recommend anyone but a True Cultivator attempt this method of Cultivation though - a True Body is designed to channel Essence. Ordinary humans and beasts would simply vaporise - even after Cultivating."

Chún dropped the hair and let his hand sink back into the water. "I thought Teacher told me True Cultivators follow their own Dao - seek to draw closer to perfection of their Dao. Not change who they are? Is that not what Consumers do?" he asked in confusion.

A sense of reassurance rolled down the link. "This is who you are, Chún. You have never been more 'you' in your life."

Chún shook his head, yawning. "Then why do I look like… a prince or a demi-god… or something? Why do I not look like me anymore?"

The Mountain was silent a moment in the link. "This is hard to explain."

"Try. I feel like I have been replaced with someone else."

The Mountain sighed in the cave, a gust of wind from above blowing ripples across the surface of the pool, sending Essence motes dancing.

"All creatures in the multiverse once started out as perfect. What you would call Dao. Over a very long time, even as I measure it, things went wrong - and some Dao became - less."

The Mountain paused and sent a sense of incomprehensible amounts of eternity being involved.

"At some point someone decided that things needed to change. That life needed to build up instead of falling down. So then Essence was put into every living thing."

"Essence halts the corruption. If there is enough, it raises the life form higher. Closer to the original perfect form - its Dao. We call this Cultivation."

"If your parents, their parents before them and theirs before them - had never started to become less - never had damage, pain, hurt or unfortunate encounters and never passed that damage onto their children; who never did the same - with each generation becoming further from Dao - then this is how you would have been born. This is how all of the universe is supposed to be - perfect."

The Mountain sighed again at Chún's confusion. "Watch."

Another Essence image appeared, one Chún recognised faintly from memories of reflections in water - thin, stunted and wiry, skin yellowed from malnutrition and dark and blotchy from exposure, black straw-like hair, heavy forehead thick eyebrows and sunken eyes, flat nose and thick cheekbones.

"That is me!" exclaimed Chún in recognition. "Not that other… whatever…"

"That WAS you", corrected his locus patiently. "Now watch - this is what happened after each time you absorbed a lot of Essence, linked to me… or were tempered by an ignition wave…"

The figure started to straighten and grow taller, its skin growing paler with strong muscles and veins forming visibly under the skin that glowed with health. The hair grew out dark, thick and shiny, cheekbones lifting as the nose reshaped itself. Lips thinned and the mouth changed shape as new straight teeth grew; eyebrows thinned out, the eyes growing darker, larger and sparkling with Essence.

But Chún could still recognise himself, even though he had never looked so good in his life. He could see himself in that face, if only as an idealised version.

"OK. I can see myself there - even if I look like - the handsomest man in the village. But…"

"That is how you looked when you went to the village three days ago," interrupted his locus.

"Oh! Well, I guess that explains a few things - like that tailor's weird reaction," Chún said thoughtfully, suppressing a yawn and splashing in the water as he gestured in sudden understanding. Then his face fell with a realisation, "Damn! That means I wasted time learning that Unimportance Manifestation - no one would have recognised me anyway!"

"You said yourself, you could still recognise yourself as Chún there," his locus prodded him, "What would have happened if someone else in the village recognised you?"

Chún's eyes widened. "Ah… that would have been trouble. They would have been sure I had found something special. Especially with the herbs and furs…"

"And your staff."

"Yea...hang on, what?"

"You think a staff that looks like its been forged out of an unknown metal by a Master Smith into the likeness of a tree trunk would be considered ordinary?"

Chún binked. "Oops. Umm, I did not add the Manifestation to the fur, the herbs or the staff…" he winced, "I made a mistake… maybe a bad one."

The Mountain hummed thoughtfully again. "Maybe. As long as you were holding them, no one would consider any of it important. No one will be able to remember anything important about you either - unless they had a very strong will or had some protection against Manifestations that affect the mind - and that would need a much stronger Formation than an average Consumer could build against it."

Chún blew out a sigh of relief, yawning immediately after. "OK. I will worry about it later - I am feeling very tired, still."

"Not surprising, given you slept outside next to the fire-pit last night, on top of everything else. Your body is still recovering."

Chún shook a fist, the other covering his yawn. "Hey, I knew I did not want to dirty my bed. I was too tired to wash last night. I ate and jumped straight in here to wash once I woke..."

"Halfway through the next day…" the Mountain said dryly, "...but the point is, the Manifestation is now more important than ever, unless you want all of Greater Xia coming after you next time you go down to the village."

"Because I look like some sort of demi-god descended, now - and you have still not explained why…"

The Essence image shifted in response - flaring with white light. As if in a fire, Chún watched as the recognisable him seemed to burn away - anything that could be considered ordinary features - scars, body hair, pores, hair colour. All the softness carved away, his body becoming a collection of perfectly symmetrical lines, cheekbones sharpening, eyes widening again and sweeping up into phoenix shape, nose becoming perfectly chiselled, eyebrows carrying an air of superiority.

Oddly enough, now that Chún had watched it happen, he realised he could still see echoes and traces of all of his features there - just corrected and perfected. "I am still me, after all,'' he said wonderingly, "OK I understand - that was after repairing the battle, closing the rift and everything yesterday, right?"

"Yes." Another longer pause. "Chún, you came extremely close to dying. No other True Cultivator would have survived."

"Oh. There was not anything else to be done, though."

"Right."

"No point worrying about it then. I expect I am much stronger now after that, right?"

"Yes, it is extremely unlikely that you could be exposed to enough Essence to do you harm ever again."

Chún opened his mouth, then closed it, lifting a finger towards the ceiling as he stood and walked towards the pools edge. "I am going to pretend you did not say that. The Heavens love to test comments like that. How is it that I am smarter than an ages old Mountain?"

There was a long silence, then an abashed feeling came down the link. "You have a point. Sorry."

He rolled his eyes as he walked out of the pool. "Have mercy, Heavens, my locus did not mean it." He looked down as his foot stepped into what felt like coolness and slowly lifted his foot out of the puddle of Essence mist, smoke and motes that was his cloak, carefully putting it down without treading on the slash of night sky that lay on the floor next to it.

Chún squatted down, shaking his head. "Well, I definitely am not taking you guys into the village - both of you look like the opposite of unimportant."

There was a moment's shiver from both items - between one miǎo and the next an ordinary leather cloak and black wood staff rested on the cave floor.

He frowned and slung the cloak around him, blinking as the sensation of Essence heavy mist curled around him; picking up the staff, he still felt the cool lacquer-like surface.

"Hmmm. What does anyone else feel if they touch you?" For a moment the cloak and staff became utterly ordinary objects to all his senses - even his Essence Sense could detect nothing from them.

"Ok. Feel free to dispose of any evil types that get their hands on either of you. Guess, I can wear you anywhere after all." He yawned and hung the cloak up next to his sleeping nest, leaning the staff on the cave wall next to him.

"I am exhausted, keep a watch out for me, everyone? Silver Tree… I know it is the middle of the afternoon, but could you please pretend it is night time?"

Chún closed his eyes thankfully as the light dimmed agreeably. "Thank you everyone - good night."

The young boy drifted off with a murmured, "Sleep well friend," whispering past his ear as the cave fell into darkness.