Luding needed to know more. He needed his friend in the Yushan fortress to be less coy. Luding summoned birds from the air even as he moved through the woods in the failing light. Now he was climbing summits. The descent on the north side was never as steep as the ascent had been, and he was going higher and higher into the mountains. The trees thinned, and he moved faster as the land opened up.
A pair of ravens descended to his fists as if they were hawks to a beastmaster. He spoke to them, planted ssages in their wise heads, and sent them to the Yushan. No one ever suspected ravens. They rose above him and then soared away to the southeast, and he turned and saw how very high he had co.
He looked out over the wilderness. At his feet – far, far below – was the chain of beaver ponds like miniature lakes sparkling in the last of the sun. The stream that connected them was a thread of silver, visible here and there in the warp and weft of trees.
He turned and climbed higher. The trail was steeper now, and he was not so fast. The stream began to descend in a series of waterfalls at his side.
Finally, he moved himself over a slick rock. At his feet was a pool, deep and black, and a waterfall dropped a hundred feet into it. The spray coated him in monts. He stooped and drank deep of the pool rich with demonic Qi.
A head broke the surface, just an arm's length away, and he started.
"Who drinks in my pool?"
The words appeared in his mind without a sound being spoken. "I am called Luding," he said.
The creature rose from the pool, black water flowing from it. As he moved up the side of the pool he grew and grew. His skin was jet-black and shone like obsidian.
He moved fast yet appeared to be perfectly still; the transitions were difficult to catch, movent always seed to happen at the corner of Luding's eye. And when the creature fully erged, he was a quarter taller than the Specter himself.
A shining black stone golem-like creature called Yanshi, with no face, no eyes, no mouth.
"I do not know you."
"I know a little of you," Luding said. "I know that I need allies. Your kind are said to be fearso warriors."
"I can feel your dark Qi. It is considerable."
"I can see your speed and strength. They, too, are considerable," Luding nodded.
"Enough talk. What do you WANT?"
The mind shout almost brought Luding to his knees. "I want a dozen of your kind as my guards. As soldiers."
The smooth monster threw back his head and laughed, and suddenly there was a mouth after all, with cruel teeth. The stone of his face – if it was stone – seed to flow like water. "We serve no one."
Luding would have smiled if he still had the ability to. Instead, he simply cast his dark binding. Simultaneously, he shielded his mind from the angry attack on his mind that was sure to follow. These beasts were known for that.
The Yanshi stiffened. He scread, and his teeth clashed like rocks in a flooded stream, and his smooth arms grew hands and talons that reached for Luding.
The specter didn't stir. The net of his dark settled in sparkling strands of life Qi of the creature and tightened, and that quickly it was over.
"I will slay you and all your kind in ways too horrible for your mind to encompass."
Luding turned. "No you will not," he said. "Now, obey. We have more of your kind to find, and a long night ahead of us."
The Yanshi thrashed in his binding on life energy like a wolf in a cage. He scread, his bell-like voice ringing across the wilderness.
Luding shook his head minutely. "Obey," he said again, and pushed a little more of his Qi into the binding.
The monster resisted, showing – or growing – wicked black in a black mouth. His whole body stretched for Luding.
To Luding, it was like arm wrestling with a child. A strong child – but a child nonetheless. He slamd his Qi down on the Yanshi's life energy, and his will in the mind of Yanshi and the Will of Yanshi crumbled.
That was the way of the Demonics.
The other Yanshi weren't hard to find, and the second was considerably easier to press than the first had been... but the seventh was much harder than the sixth, and by the ti the sun had set he had a tail of mighty Yanshi and that sense a man gets when he has lifted so much weight that he can no longer lift his arms.
He sat in a narrow gully, and listened to the wind while his blank-faced trolls crouched all around him.
The Shadowmaw hadn't refused him, precisely. But nor were they helping him with any force but a few angry warriors bent on revenge. After getting so rest.
He drew a deep, dark mist through his bony nose he got and turned north, it was ti to move back into the mountains, increasing his speed; he was all but running. His giant body now moving faster than the fastest horse. He could go faster with his special skills by blinking, but he had the Yanshi to consider. He was also wary of using too much power.
Power attracted other power, and in the Demonic Wild, that could spell a quick end – all too often, sothing bigger than you arrived unexpectedly. And ate you.
Even as he sprinted along the forest highways, Luding contemplated about things ahead for example eating JianFeng, the group leader of Yingmo and conquer them like he did with Yanshi .
His attention was also at the Yushan Fortress. But then sothing happened , the power that was as if a dark sun went out like a torch thrown into a pool. It disappeared. He was disoriented, at first. Then again, it shone.
The dark sun had dimd and strengthened, dimd and strengthened, and years of patient growth of his cultivation had taught him not to read too much into the fluctuations in Qi in so areas or power wrought by distance.
Many tis, he had noticed different surges of powers only to realize that the surge was of so skills and spells cast by beings who were so powerful that their power lingered still even after a millennium. These lingered like ghosts of their forr owners.
There were also sotis Qi fluctuations of spirit beasts that moved around; their Qi lingered in the area, so beasts who used Qi the way bats used sound. He was not himself a spirit beast, but similar to that even after he left, so of his dark Qi would linger.
This dark Qi he had paid a high price for. It was his lucky chance. He was one of the mbers righteous factions, working under the old king of Tianqin kingdom; with ti he aged just like all do and his cultivation had stagnated, he thought Qi master was the end of his road. He had made his peace, then he ca across this lucky chance.
He had left the kingdom and decided to explore until he t his end, He traveled the righteous world then beyond the righteous world in wilds, between demonics and Nomads. In one of his travels he found a deep, dark underground cave he had found it because the fluctuation of Qi was so strong that he almost couldn't breathe.
When he found the source, he was surprised it was just a drop, a tiny drop of Qi diluted over million or billions of years maybe, floating around in dark mist. There were carcasses of beasts everywhere who had co and tried to swallow it over the years. He stayed with the drop for years, absorbing the mist, trying to understand it.
As ti passed, his cultivation which had stagnated started to improve, but his physical features changed too. He had beco bony, specter-like. His size had increased so much that he was having difficulty fitting in the large cave. He was not able to absorb the Qi drop, but he was able to break through as a Qi lord; he decided to leave the cave.
A few days after he left the cave, his master ca to him, t him in his dreams, guided him on the path, and ever since then, Luding had found a new purpose in life.
Qi the cause of every desire and conflict. Luding contemplated the effect of surroundings on Qi. There were thousands of natural factors that occluded Qi the way other factors might affect sound. In fact, he thought that the use of Qi and the movent of sound might usefully be studied together.
The thought pleased him, Luding decided to take another rest and he spun off a part of himself to contemplate the movent of sound over distance as an allegory—or even as a direct expression—of Qi.
anwhile, he sat and breathed in the night air and maintained, almost without effort, the chains of power that bound the Yanshi, and a third part of him looked for the dark sun with increasing frustration.
A fourth aspect considered his next move.
The conflict at the fort had now forced a gathering of resources and allies that involved risks and challenges he had not anticipated.
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