Chapter 52: Arc 4: Chapter 1

“My arm… be honest. What are my chances?” Lao Ping asked as the healer tightened the bandage near his wrist.

“Low. With some higher grade pills, you ought to be able to recover fully, but those aren’t going to be easy to acquire prior to delivering the wood to Long Shiyi,” the healer, a man so large and muscular that he almost seemed out of place while carefully tying the bandages around his arm, responded with a sigh, “However, that will take time, and by the time we’re there, it’s likely that it will be too far gone.”

“… Shit. I hadn’t expected that this woman… this demon… would be quite so fearsome.”

“You should see the state of the others. Their bodies are mangled, and even with my best attempts to aid them, four have died and three more are unlikely to live past today. Nine more are injured and will need several days to recover, and five only had surface-level injuries, though they’ll still need some additional care before they’re ready to return to work,” he sighed again, reaching into his pockets and digging around for a while before pulling out a pill that looked comically small in between two of his huge fingers, “This should delay the inevitable for a while, at least.”

Lao Ping accepted it, looking at the pill for a brief while without moving to consume it. Like most pills of the lower grades, it was only slightly removed from simple medicinal balls, and was thus foggy and had a strong medicinal scent. Nevertheless, even breathing that in was akin to cultivating for a minute.

And now, he needed to find something far, far stronger just to avoid losing a vital limb. Perhaps he should be glad that he avoided the other fate that his workers suffered.

“How many lost their balls?”

“… I won’t answer that. However, I expect very few to have children in the future, at least via normal means,” the healer looked away, reaching out and taking a strange book that had so little presence that Lao Ping hadn’t noticed it laying there all this while, “And I have a certain advance over other healers, so count yourself lucky that some still have a chance.”

“Of course… Thank you, Jiang Song,” Lao Ping didn’t hold back his sincere apology, going so far as bowing his head.

Even if he disliked the outcome, he had to be grateful to him. Without him joining their team as a healer prior to this particular job, most of the people here likely wouldn’t stand a single chance at survival. He might not be the healer Lao Ping would have expected at the time, but his methods were undeniably efficient and effective, allowing him and his crew to survive many things that they might not have endured otherwise.

The main reason was undoubtedly that book, or some book that looked akin to it, as there was some power to it that only he could muster, and that permitted him to do things that they were sure would be impossible.

“If you used it… How long would it last? Would it be enough?”

“The Codex is not omnipotent. I could restore the information of your arm to its previous state for three, maybe four days at most. Unless you get absurdly lucky, you’re not going to benefit.”

“Three or four… that’s not enough to reach Long Shiyi, and I don’t know of any alchemists in the region…” Lao Ping looked at his limp hand and couldn’t help but sigh alongside Jiang Song, “And the cost? Of restoring this for a while?”

“If you don’t find something to recover your arm, the information of your healthy state will be eroded. Even the higher realms will be unable to restore it properly,” he responded with a regretful tone.

“That bad, huh… How much time do I have to think about this?”

“Hm…” Jiang Song looked into that strange book for quite a while, never flipping a page and yet seeming to read something different each time his eyes returned to the top left of the book, “You have roughly a day to receive the best effects. After that, the result will degrade over the next three… maybe almost four days, and then it will be impossible for me to restore your arm, at least if I don’t wish to risk myself.”

“Understood. Then I’ll give it some thought, and see what the other teams may have heard about medicinal pills and other healers in the region…”

His voice trailed off as he looked back down to his arm. The injured one was his right arm, his main arm, and the bandages went from the lower half of his hand to the top of his upper arm, all thanks to the terrible energy that had flooded into his body when he had been hit by Bianca.

One wave was enough to leave two marks upon his body, and the first one, the one that damaged his wrist, also nearly cut his hand off. How it remained attached at all was rather amazing, and made Jiang Song’s skill even more impressive. He managed to keep everything more or less in place, but he was unable to fight off the oppressive crimson that was spawned with the Demon Queen’s skill. It had spread throughout his body, seeming to flood into his meridians against his will, and ruined most of the limb before it could be controlled.

Similarly, the others were injured to an equivalent degree. Their bodies were nearly ruined, and those that got away were those that didn’t take the direct hit, or were lucky enough to retain enough energy to be able to fight off the intruding crimson. The energy didn’t seem especially complex or intelligent, but the sheer power contained within made it extremely difficult to recover from.

“Do you think our attempt was worth it?” Lao Ping suddenly asked, though he knew before he opened his mouth what the answer would be.

“Most of the team suffered great injuries, you weren’t able to obtain a single one of the rewards, you even had a bag full of planar shards taken… I hope you didn’t truly offer her the shards you had on hand.”

“No, of course not. I used those strange pieces that you had failed to identify back then. They had enough of an aura that might fool someone on a casual glance… though I suspect that the Demon Queen didn’t do that. She only seemed to look at the bag itself, and then looked at it again when she felt a desire to steal once more…” Lao Ping finally tore away his gaze from his hand and tried focusing on the healer instead, “I have to wonder whether they were ultimately more valuable than actual planar shards would’ve been.”

“That’s not something we’ll be able to know unless she returns after having appraised them successfully,” Jiang Song responded, “But in the end, it was foolish to fight her regardless. You didn’t know enough about her strength, though to note one positive, we did appear to overestimate the third realm kitsune. She did far less than we had initially expected…”

“Maybe her realm was formed prior to reaching the ninth stage, or maybe her aura was false. Perhaps it was an incorrect report from the sects, and it was actually that Bianca who was in the third realm and had held it back… though she showed no signs of an anchor, so who knows,” with little to go on, Lao Ping shrugged, “All three of them were odd, but it’s far too late to contemplate the likes of this. They’ve gotten away, and another attempt to chase them will still lead to more losses regardless of our eventual success. The other groups are unlikely to agree with the plan after seeing our wounded, too. Hence, we should drop it.”

“As your healer, I must agree. I can’t do much with Bianca’s energy using my Codex, so there’s little chance of progress if we simply get more men hurt.”

 

“So… What is this stuff? And… can we please not run into anyone like them again? I do not want to let that out again,” Bianca looked at the strange things within the bag she had stolen, and shuddered as she recalled the actions of her Demon Queen self.

It had been almost a full day since, with the sun beginning to set beneath the horizon once more, but the memory still haunted her. She’d remembered every single thing she had done while in that state, and worst of all, it didn’t feel as distinct from her as the first time that monster had emerged. It almost felt as if this was just her, acting as she wished, albeit without any of her usual reservations or hesitation. She knew that this wasn’t the case – it couldn’t be – but the mere thought of it was utterly disgusting.

“Whether we run into more or not depends on how we behave. Acts like theft are not going to help us in that regard,” Xue Yaling replied, though her tone was nowhere near as harsh as it usually was, “I hope you realise that you keeping that manual was likely what got their attention to begin with, since this… this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

That much, Bianca could agree with, since she’d been forced to accept it already. The first time, at Xi Village, she’d only been able to take a life because she’d stolen a knife. Then, that theft led to the Blazing Skies Sect chasing after her, resulting in the fight between them and Xue Yaling, Song Ming and her, also resulting in the eruption of Song Ming’s physique. Now, she’d allowed herself to succumb to temptation and took a manual, which, while allowing her to survive the battle that ensued, only brought more attention to her and led to her needing to unleash her Demon Queen self just to get through the fights she had provoked.

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She knew that she had done wrong, so much so that she couldn’t find it in her to retort to the kitsune. If she had judged differently back then, they wouldn’t have even attempted to take the planar shards from Lao Ping and would’ve left before they could’ve been attacked.

However, she had looked at Xue Yaling a number of times since, and every time she seemed to be truly apologetic, as if she truly hadn’t known that this would happen. Given that this was one of the first times she looked anything like this, Bianca struggled to doubt her, nor did she see much reason to. None of them benefitted from things going south the previous day, and besides, as frustrating as it sometimes was to deal with her, it didn’t seem like Xue Yaling was outright malicious, so…

“These shards don’t resemble anything that I’m familiar with, at least. It might be pieces of some artefact, or just some material that’s rich in planar energy, but if it’s the latter, then I am not able to identify it at the moment,” the kitsune spent some time examining the pieces, but ended up shrugging, “They could be valuable, but for the moment, I know of none that would purchase this.”

Such a reply certainly wasn’t encouraging, considering that Bianca and Song Ming would be even less familiar with these items. Just in case, however, she still leaned in and had a closer look, going so far as to pick up one of the shards and look at it more closely.

The only thing she could be relatively sure of – and therefore the others would know, too – was that these shards didn’t seem to be parts of a single object. Some had different shades and shapes and textures to others, so unless this was some kind of odd jigsaw puzzle with a thousand more pieces missing, she doubted that they were ever intended to be together. What that left her with was that they were separate items simply stored together for convenience, or perhaps that they were literally pieces of separate items that ended up being broken and discarded.

“Broken artefacts?” Bianca guessed, recalling the word that the kitsune used, “Any reason someone might have these?”

“Chances are, that lot had found them somewhere and simply decided to use them during the exchange to avoid the risk of losing planar shards to you. Whether they lost more or less is… broken artefacts?” suddenly, the kitsune looked up with her eyes glistening, “Oh, this reminds me of a certain something. Want to hear about half-archetypes?”

“… What?”

“I’ve heard of a certain half-archetype related to the Artefact archetype. It is a bit of an odd one, as it is incredibly reliant upon outside items, whereas the majority of archetypes are self-sufficient. Song Ming, do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I’m… not sure why we’re talking about them, but I know. That archetype allows the cultivator to absorb artefacts into their own bodies, right?”

“Indeed. Now, there is something even more unusual, and that is a splinter half-archetype called simply – Shard. The Shard half-archetype, as much of a mouthful as it is, has a similar principle, but instead of integrating whole artefacts into the body, it uses single shards. Pieces. Parts of a whole that may never again come together,” the kitsune picked up one of the pieces and took a step back, tossing it up into the air and leaving it to hover with her planar energy, “The entire premise is to overcome that limitation, and let one piece become greater than the whole once was.”

That explained very little, but the kitsune clearly had more to say, so Bianca just sat down and let her continue until something that she was able to understand was said. Song Ming seemed to understand this better, but she sat down beside her and quietly got closer so that their shoulders touched.

“Simply put, they use projections of the shards as weapons at first, then develop the ability to stabilise other portions of the artefact. They create more and more pieces out of nothing, until they manage to create the whole item with their energy – but the final product isn’t always akin to the original. Sometimes, a piece of a shield can become a sword, or the tip of a sword can turn into one of countless arrows. Better yet, they can accommodate multiple artefact shards, often in far higher quantities than typical Artefact archetype cultivators, and the power of their integrated artefact shards can end up surpassing the originals by whole realms, depending on the cultivator’s own abilities.”

“That’s nice and all… I think… but what’s the import-”

“The reason it is still a half-archetype is that there is a major flaw within it, that being the dependence upon traditional Artefact archetype movement skills and crafting methods. If that issue was resolved, it would be a full archetype, and a powerful one at that. I imagine that one who masters such a thing would be rather renowned throughout the land.”

‘… She seems very interested in the subject. Is she hoping to be the one to do this, and, if so, how come she’s spilling it all now? Has this fuck-up made her decide to trust us? To stick around with us longer than… however long she was initially planning to?’

All this stuff was rather confusing, but she did find this stuff was more comfortable to contemplate than matters relating to planar energy. That stuff was utterly nonsensical to her, and seemed to get more nonsensical with every bit of information that she learned. The Artefact archetype and Shard half-archetype were both ludicrous, and she didn’t know how absorbing items into oneself, or even just ‘accommodating’ them, but there was no reason for artefacts to be going inside the body at any point… unless they were sex toys or something that was meant to be inside the body.

Of course, considering the power they were supposedly able to grant to the user, why anyone would make a sex toy out of them was beyond her.

‘What were we even talking about?’

“Could you clarify for us why this is such a big deal?” Song Ming asked, helpfully providing a way for Bianca to return into the chat, “Artefacts on their own can offer a major boost to strength, so it’s no big deal whether someone uses the artefact normally or integrates them, right?”

“That, darling, is where you’re wrong,” Xue Yaling shook her head, “An artefact used normally is at its limit from the moment a cultivator of the intended realm acquires it. There is no more growth, no more progression, no more development. In addition, the cultivator will not keep it as a permanent benefit to themselves – aside from conceptual items, but that’s a story for another day – and thus they need to amplify their strength through other means.”

“Conceptual-”

“However, the Artefact archetype allows both the cultivator and the artefact to be developed simultaneously, with no need for crafting methods, no need for additional materials, though all can be employed for further benefit. The artefact can grow beyond its limits, and in the process, the cultivator will gain benefits depending on what part of themselves they replaced or added to. The Shard archetype takes this to a whole new level, as it allows for far more growth and freedom in the direction of an artefact’s development. Things that the original creator of any given artefact would never have even imagined.”

“From shards?”

“Exactly. The whole is no longer there, so it is up the new wielder of the shard to interpret what the complete state of the item is. As long as there’s even the faintest semblance of potential within the shard for something, it could occur… and in theory, if you go far enough, you’ll even be able to complete them outside of the cultivation technique as well, manifesting items of unparalleled quality and might. It is a dream worth pursuing, I think.”

“… I… suppose.”

“Wait, are these things artefact shards? Is that why they have this faint aura?” Bianca asked.

“Better yet, they’re potentially items that were previously used by a Shard half-archetype cultivator. In theory, if I could somehow extract the potential stored within, I might be able to pick up wherever they left off and receive incredible powers at the cost of only twelve planar shards. Excellent deal.”

“Nice… Aside from that, though, aren’t we forgetting some topics? Like, for instance, Song Ming’s skin is starting to glow again…”

“Ah, yes… It’s fine for now, but I’ll stop for the moment. Alright, as for our other subjects…”

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