Forn sat next to the strange man as he stirred over a bubbling cauldron.

  She had met many cultivators of many different paths. The Hills of Life attracted many types of people.

  And yet she found this one to be the strangest of them all.

  And it wasn’t because of what he could do or what powers he possessed, though Forn found that strange as well.

  No, he was strange because of what he lacked. He seemed scattered, fearful. Lacking in some fundamental way. You could feel a being's nature and its strength of it in this realm.

  She knew what she was and what concepts made her. Wild, growth, strength. A singular dao and a few connected laws weaved together to make the essence of her being and while she could hide it, she couldn’t remove it.

  But this man, he lacked those things. Sure there was that strange contradiction of a dao within him, but aside from that an almost infinite amount of laws floated around him.

  It was like looking at a person's torso and finding many small holes where the organs were supposed to be, only to find that the organs were there, but that they were damaged and still working just fine.

  It didn’t make sense.

  And that fight, in truth she hadn’t thought that he would be of much help. She was only hoping to make him run to her grove and use him as a reason for her father to intervene.

  Having a wild dao was both a matter of nature and a matter of pride. To be wild was to be free from both protections and restrictions. If her father had intervened on his own the progression of her dao would get damaged.

  Heart demons could be born. His actions to save her life could cause a limitation or change to be born within her heart and her nature could become tied to his forever.

  A great cultivator like her father had to be careful to not ‘taint’ lesser beings with his nature. If she wanted freedom to develop, she needed to separate herself from him. And while she was already in the god ranks, he was still powerful only beneath the realm of Imperium.

  He could corrupt her. She could take his traits and follow in his footsteps as some of her brothers and sisters had, and they were all the more powerful for it.

  But she sought to walk her own path.

  And so she had called out to make her father intervene for this person’s sake rather than for her. It would offset the damage significantly and would be practically harmless to this fellow. After all, the only reason she would get corrupted is because of her dao being against her father’s protection and her innate tie to him.

  She was like a dragon trying not to be a dragon, or a fish trying to walk on the water. Her father’s nature was already within her and it limited all she could be.

  She could never live in a city or become a celestial bureaucrat. She would make an awful smith or soldier, but she could change her nature to be something of her own while not being tied to her father.

  That was all to say, he was merely a distraction.

  But he had surprised her, helped her defeat the dragon with those multifaceted attacks. He had thrown up laws and daos that opposed the dragon’s very being out of nowhere as if he practiced them all to perfection. They were minor, only at the tenth, maybe eleventh rank, but a storm of dust would still choke a man.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  And she had used that opportunity to kill the dragon and undo whatever damage she had done to her dao by asking someone for help in the first place.

  While Drean wasn’t her father, he was still a person who had aided her due to some rule of kindness or pity. It would have been worse if her father had done it under the rule of parenthood or leader.

  Those concepts directly trampled on her own sense of freedom.

  In the end, he had benefited her, turning her possible suffering into a boon.

  A dao was a path and she had almost walked off that path in need of survival, but the man had intervened.

  She watched as he made the soup of Soulsween and various other herbs, some kind of alchemical concoction. He had leveled the area of any laws and sealed it with extreme efficiency.

  He was an array master, that much she could tell from how he worked and his wide and generalized mastery of laws and daos. He had sterilized the area before operating, almost cutting it off from the Cosmic Forest entirely.

  The Cosmic Forest was an omnirealm, a realm so big it was almost everywhere at once, and it substituted itself for concepts such as time and space.

  Its fabric was so fundamental that even God-Kings would struggle to rip it apart. What he had done was more like patting it even. It was still a piece of the Cosmic Forest, but it was flattened and trimmed as if it had been patted down into a campsite.

  It wasn't like he had defeated the forest. He had merely claimed such a small part of it that even the forest wouldn't even notice the change.

  It looked like he was mimicking the effects of a grove. The area was clear of any overbearing law or dao like a small campsite swept free of debris. He could claim it for now, but as soon as he left this place, the forest would take it back.

  He was making something, some kind of potion with the soulsween. She didn’t know why, soulsween could be used as a supplement for many potions but it seemed like too weak of a herb to be used by a god. And he was making it the main ingredient.

  She almost scoffed at him but then she thought about it. His nature or his lack of one, maybe that was caused by some ailment of his nature and this was the first step in the recovery process. Yes, that was an acceptable conclusion. Conditions like that were rare but not unheard of.

  But then how did he fight with such a damaged nature?

  Generally, a cultivator's strength comes from both their power and nature. The power was determined by their rank, and nature was both their dao and laws. Forn’s dao of the wild kept her free and unchained. It made it easier for her to reject law-based attacks of a similar level.

  Fire burned less, and water couldn’t drown her easily. Any attack trying to bind her or limit her would weaken significantly. Her law of growth and plant life allowed her to create a forest of trees and manipulate them in a way that suited her needs. She could make her attacks grow, her qi grow, and even the weakness of the enemy could be forced to grow if she got close enough.

  That was how she had killed the dragon. She had given Drean’s attacks strength and they had grown. And as the dragon was focused on destroying them, she had struck with her spear, mixing it with not her own nature but the small laws that Drean had thrown.

  And then the wound was there, and that was what she made grow.

  Nature was an important thing for a cultivator, but Drean’s was weak and hurt. He was lacking, almost mortal like in his existence.

  “Done,” the man said after some time.

  She watched curiously as he raised the cauldron to his mouth and downed the whole thing. He had used all the herbs she’d given him, even the ones that weren’t soulsween but he had cut out different parts of the plants so that a pile of sticks and leaves from various herbs were left. He had used a small drop of the water from the river, and that had been enough to nearly overflow the cauldron.

  “What recipe was that?” Forn finally asked.

  “Recipe?” He replied.

  “Surely that’s a recipe you're using? You’re not just mixing down herbs are you?”

  “Ah no, the most powerful plant here is at the eleventh rank. Their natures aren’t hard to grasp.”

  She took a second to understand the meaning of his words. Recipes were used only when you didn’t understand exactly what was going on. He was implying that he knew the exact nature of the plants and the consequences they would have if mixed together. She wasn’t an alchemist but some of her grove were and they would occasionally do the same.

  “You’re an alchemist?”

  “No, but the job is very similar to being an array master.”

  “I suppose they are.”

  is 28 chapters ahead, but they will be getting a four chapter dump on Thursday

  ALSO CHECK OUT THE NEW FICTION. I just released a new chapter for it.

  Its got about 17 chapters so far, about 33,000 words so far. Give it a go.

  It's a superhero fic, with as much worldbuilding as an epic fantasy. Trade the swords for guns and the kingdoms for cities and the wizards for flying men who don't quite understand how underwear works and you get something like this.

  New chapter of AIR coming Thursday.