Chapter 23: Lesser yin Reveals White Silver
The cost Li Shun had paid to work out the Lengshan Vessel's cultivation method had been considerable.
But the results were cause for genuine satisfaction.
"With the Lengshan Vessel's qi nurturing the field, the success rate for cultivating a Vessel-Grass, while not guaranteed, approaches one in five.
"The key point is that the Vessel-Grass's restorative effect on the stone statue is roughly ten times that of ordinary Lengshan Grass. In the short term, I no longer need to worry about the wear on the Self-Reflection statue from activation costs. And that security is what gave me the confidence to pursue this research at all."
Above the battle raging in the spirit field, suspended quietly in the air above the direction the Lengshan Grass stalks were all straining toward, was the Lengshan Vessel itself.
"The Vessel, is the King.
"To birth a king, one either enters the world already noble... or,
"Heroes contend; the last one standing becomes the king.
"Of course, if simply letting Lengshan Grass fight each other to the death were enough to produce a Lengshan Vessel, the Great Qian dynasty would not have gone so many years without succeeding.
"The contest for supremacy is only the foundation. The true key lies in three external conditions.
"The first..."
Li Shun's gaze settled on the puppet, which was tirelessly performing the Soul-Splitting Transformation Technique agricultural technique without pause.
"The path of ascension is enormously costly. A Lengshan Grass cannot sustain itself through the process on its own. It requires continuous external nourishment. And it cannot be done crudely, it must be like rain soaking into the earth without sound, without force...
"In other words, it requires someone of absolute mastery in the Soul-Splitting Transformation Technique, working without interruption, day and night, tending the plants with the care one would give one's own lifeblood.
"This condition alone is extraordinarily difficult to meet. The Soul-Splitting Transformation Technique is one learned only by the lowest tier of corvée laborers and those who achieve genuine mastery in it tend to have constitutions so depleted they can no longer sustain such intensive, prolonged casting.
"The second condition is guidance.
"Without a clear destination to grow toward, even grass that has survived to the last of the battle cannot find the path upward. Only with a Lengshan Vessel's qi as a beacon, drawing them toward 'kinghood,' can they evolve in the right direction."
"The third condition and the most critical of all… Is the isolating effect of the Fangcun space."
Li Shun's gaze grew still and deep.
"Above the Lengshan Vessel, there stands something else, a presence at the very end of the evolutionary line, looking down over everything below it. I don't know its name. But its influence seems to reach everywhere. In the outside world, a Lengshan Grass attempting to ascend to a Lengshan Vessel is extremely vulnerable to that influence's interference and fails at the most critical moment.
"But within this Fangcun space… I am the one who decides what happens here."
Li Shun continued watching the brutal contest playing out in the spirit field.
Time passed. As stalk after stalk fell and was consumed, the last remaining survivor began to emanate a quality of light that was distinctly different, a deepening blue radiance, unlike anything before it.
Months of preparation. Win or lose, it all came down to this.
And yet Li Shun's heart was perfectly still.
When preparation reaches a sufficient depth, what was once chance becomes inevitability.
The dried husks of the dozens of fallen plants turned to motes of drifting light as if they had burned away and were absorbed entirely by the victor.
That last surviving Lengshan Grass then began to grow with a speed visible to the naked eye. In the space of a single breath, it transformed from an ordinary Lengshan Grass into the shape of a half-moon, glowing and weightless.
It rose slowly upward, ascending until it hung beside the original Lengshan Vessel as an equal.
Above the spirit field, two moons shone together.
But before Li Shun could even register the joy of having successfully cultivated a Lengshan Vessel, something unexpected erupted.
As though sensing each other's presence, the two Lengshan Vessels did not hesitate for even a moment, they launched themselves at each other with immediate, total ferocity.
Locked in a battle to the death.
At the critical instant, Li Shun's thought moved and he transferred the original Lengshan Vessel, the one that had served as the guiding beacon, instantly into the adjacent empty region.
The fighting ceased.
Li Shun's consciousness swept across both Lengshan Vessels, the newly born and the original, and a clear understanding rose in him.
"Kings do not meet kings.
"When two sovereigns face each other directly, they revert like ordinary Lengshan Grass to mutual slaughter..."
A thought surfaced, and then stilled.
"If I had enough Lengshan Vessels, is there a possibility of cultivating what stands at the end of the evolutionary line?"
Li Shun's heart gave one quick, involuntary beat of excitement and then he shook his head and dismissed the idea.
Even if it was theoretically possible, it was entirely beyond his reach for now.
"Cultivating one Lengshan Vessel consumes a minimum of thirty to forty Lengshan Grass plants. My inventory is already stretched thin."
He looked at the Lengshan Grass growing in the spirit field. Only a small portion had reached maturity. The vast majority were still seedlings, still requiring the constant nourishment of the Soul-Splitting Transformation Technique.
"The puppet can only force five stalks to maturity per year. The pace is far too slow."
For the moment, Li Shun couldn't think of a particularly good solution.
The newly opened region of the Fangcun space was available but acquiring another puppet who specialized in the Soul-Splitting Transformation Technique was not something he could realistically accomplish.
His thoughts turned slowly. He found himself unexpectedly wistful for the state of crystalline clarity he had experienced after swallowing the Lengshan Vessel.
"I need to keep one Lengshan Vessel as the cultivation guide, it can't be touched. As for the other one..."
After a long internal struggle, Li Shun pressed the temptation down.
"Not yet. Wait until another has been cultivated.
"One must always be held in reserve for the Self-Reflection stone statue."
Over these past few months, Li Shun had also become increasingly alert to something wrong about Lengshan County.
"Thirty-seven years in service here, Lengshan has never been hot like this. Something extraordinary has clearly happened. Perhaps connected to the Changle Marquis."
An undefined pressure settled over him.
In recent reversal cycles, he had also gone back to the Jixia Bookshop to check on Zhou Xunzhen's condition.
No one had answered his knocking. The neighbors he asked said the shop had not opened in a long time.
Zhou Xunzhen had, in all likelihood, truly died.
"The Twelve Perpetual Lives technique, it appears to be a sweet poison. It grants a person an overnight return to youth. But when the toxin reaches its end, it is truly terrifying. Losing all of one's youth in a matter of months...
"And yet. For certain people, there is no choice."
Li Shun thought of Feng Guan. And of himself.
Even knowing full well that what lay before them was a poison that would eventually explode — people like them, on the edge of death, would swallow it without hesitation.
"After all what comes later, let later deal with. Dying slowly later is better than dying now.
"And the Great Qian dynasty may well have a solution to the accelerated aging. It would not make sense for it not to."
Li Shun was slowly beginning to understand the words he had once seen Zhou Xunzhen write: "With this method, the Emperor subdued the Hundred Schools."
After a long while of reflection, he arrived at a certain decision.
He was just about to withdraw his spirit sense from the Fangcun space when he stopped short.
"Hmm?"
On the ground of the spirit field half — the half where the Lengshan Grass had fought their way to a Lord — a scattering of small metallic spheres had appeared, emanating a faint silver-white glow.
Li Shun drew them toward him and examined them closely.
"These are..."
He wasn't entirely certain.
...