They made their way through the bog, stepping over fallen trees and jumping from one stable patch of land to another.
Core formation in two years. Yu Han couldn’t get that out of his head. Are they all protagonist templates? Is inborn talent really that… discriminatory?
With his common talent, it would be lucky if he could enter the foundation building realm in his lifetime. Why was talent related to qi in the first place? Why was it qi affinity and not essence affinity? Or lifeforce affinity?
“Orthodox sects don’t prioritize talent as much as you’d think,” Fang Zhao said. “There are a few outliers, like the August Light Immortal Sword Sect. It is one of the top ten sects in the whole world. They only accept disciples talented enough to cultivate an August Light. Most other sects in the top ten—which are all orthodox, by the way—don’t put much stock on talent. In fact, such indifference towards talent is common across the board for orthodox sects, even those outside the top ten.”
“That sounds too good to be true,” Huang Niuniu said. “Even common talents like us can enter?”
Fang Zhao nodded. “An ethical disposition. A cultivated discipline. A righteous heart. Most true orthodox sects, more so the top ten, have unique heritages where conventional talent, which is calculated with only the qi affinity trait, doesn’t matter as much. They have enough resources to upgrade even the most common bloodline trait to the top. If not that, some will have faith-based cultivation, like the gods, ghosts, or otherwise, in the Divine Courts. Others employ strange and esoteric methods that care little for qi and more for lifeforce and essence. Where talent is secondary and will of the body and mind is paramount. There are many more mystical pathways to cultivate immortality in this world and beyond. Having good qi affinity is just one way; having a better bloodline is another. Some can cultivate their godheads and divine sparks without either. To allow even the most talentless mortal to ascend—that’s what differentiates a top-grade sect or clan from the rest of the riffraff. My Fang clan, the Stormy Reef Sect—how can we ever compare?”
“M-maybe if the sect master succeeds in turning our sect into an orthodox one…” Huang Niuniu’s gait had slowed down. She stopped halfway through her sentence and didn’t continue.
“The Stormy Reef Sect is… unique,” Fang Zhao said. “It is intentionally fractured, allowing institutions like courtyards, pavilions, and palaces. This fractured state comes from its origin, starting off as an alliance of the five core clans. Somehow, it managed to come this far. But further progress needs unity. Something the sect sorely lacks.”
Not necessarily, Yu Han pondered. That definition of progress is too narrow.
The group kept moving. They encountered a monster while Li Yao was crossing from one raised bog dome to another, hopping over the muddy water pooled beneath. The crocodile had lain so still that none of them had noticed, not even Fei Rui.
It snapped its metre-long mouth open, but the giant crab was on it before it could crunch Li Yao’s leg apart.
“Nasty,” Li Yao was huffing on the other side. He hugged the crab’s giant leg. “Crabby, I owe you one.”
Fei Rui was stuck. Four of his legs were trapped in the moat-like lag zone around the raised dome. The other four had sunk into the peat of the dome itself. He was too heavy for the soft earth here.
Fei Rui shrank, then climbed up Yu Han’s coverall until he was perched on the helmet.
The group became more careful as they traversed the many hummocks and hollows of the bog. Bubbles would burst in their path, sometimes with noxious gas, and other times with groups of tiny mosquito-like monsters that would attack with abandon. Bigger monsters, the group could handle. But they didn’t have a good way to handle these smaller creatures—no area-of-effect attacks.
Fang Zhao made torches out of a bone-like branch from a fallen tree, and they swatted the bugs away. Fortunately, the proboscises of the monsters couldn’t penetrate their coveralls.
From time to time, they would see large, raised domes covered in woody vegetation, rising from a series of alternating ridges and pools oriented perpendicular to the slope, gradually forming a hill. All they had seen were lone domes, though—none that looked like twins. They hadn’t encountered any Redgrass Viper Hawks or Redgrass Beak Vipers yet.
The first night, they made camp in a cave between two ridges of a drier hummock. The original inhabitant had been a moss-green python. They’d encountered around sixteen monsters along the way, and about half as many primals. The crocodile monster was definitely Level 3 or higher, but the crab got most of the pure qi for it.
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They alternated guard duty, and Yu Han practised reading directly from memory pearls in his Deep Sleep. The skill had progressed well; now he could read about fifteen seconds of content without Fei Rui needing to project the memories outside the pearl. His other focus was on Thousand Petals Awareness.
The next day, they set off searching again. Around midday, Li Yao spotted a patch of red grass far south of the hill they were on.
The team hurried over. The grass was shaped just like any other weed in the area: wide bases, thin top blades. Some had ears of strange grains, others lay flat against the dry hummock patch.
“These aren’t Lesser Nurturing Bloodferns, but those beasts have Redgrass in their names,” Yu Han said. “Let’s search this area.”
Two hours later, Fei Rui located their first Redgrass Viper Hawk. The beast peered at them from up a lone branch in the lush canopy.
“Is it a primal?” Li Yao said. “Damn, wish I had an arrow.”
“My whips can’t reach it,” Huang Niuniu complained.
The Redgrass Viper Hawk didn’t attack them. It was a strange bird, with the body of a half-metre-tall hawk but the head of a long-necked viper. Its serpentine tongue fluttered out from time to time as it peered at the group. It had blood-red feathers intertwined with crimson scales on its neck and the base of its wings.
As they searched the area, a log came alive and ambushed them—another crocodile. This time, the group killed it without Fei Rui’s intervention.
“Wait, don’t store it,” Yu Han said. “Leave the corpse.”
They stashed the corpse in the area where they had seen the first Redgrass Viper Hawk and hid about a hundred metres away.
The first beast to appear was a carp monster. They killed it, then left the corpse there, too. The next few interlopers were various monsters and primals, but no Redgrass Viper Hawks.
Finally, after a few hours, a slithering form broke out of a shallow pool in the bog. A viper-like body with crimson scales, but a hawk-like head with red plumage. It looked around, finding no one. Then it dived back again.
“Is it wary?” Huang Niuniu was clutching her whips, gritting her teeth so hard that she would probably gnaw on a nail if not for the helmet.
The beast returned with more of its kind. Redgrass Viper Hawks and Redgrass Beak Vipers. They picked up the corpses and headed west.
“Follow.”
Yu Han’s group weren’t the stealthiest. After half an hour, monster versions of the Redgrass beasts started appearing. They took out the ones that attacked them but left the primals alone. It wasn’t always possible, as monsters and primals were hard to differentiate at their level. Some primals were just as ferocious as monsters and attacked on sight.
The initial group of Redgrass beasts had long vanished, but the humans were deep in the beasts’ territory now.
After killing the mobs and circling the whole red-grassed area of the bog, they finally found their target.
One large, raised dome, not really a mountain. The peak had cracked into two, giving an illusion of twin hills. It was a few hundred metres wide, with ancient woody trees growing on top.
The number of Redgrass Beak Vipers increased. They fought their way to the base of one hill and climbed up. It wasn’t a steep climb, the edge of the hill rising slowly from the muddy pool water of the bog.
Huang Niuniu whipped Lotus Razor. It clipped the wing of a Redgrass Viper Hawk that raised a cry in anguish. As it fell, Yu Han chopped off its head.
More monsters and primals kept coming. Ten, twenty, a hundred. Fei Rui rose to his full height and wrought carnage.
“There’s too many!” Li Yao yelled as he slashed two of the low-level Redgrass Viper Hawks.
Yu Han had already lost about a hundred lifeforce. If not for Fei Rui, they would have long been overrun.
Are we the bad guys here? Yu Han had to question his actions. They had come here uninvited and started killing this species en masse. Imagine the reverse.
Yu Han shuddered.
Huang Niuniu had taken some distance from the group. She swirled around with the Lotus Razor, trying to keep the Redgrass Viper Hawks at bay. She had the longest range, after all. Fei Rui would keep an eye on her.
Li Yao and Yu Han fought back-to-back, Yu Han mostly defending, and Li Yao attacking the horde of bloodthirsty noodles.
“I found it!” Fang Zhao called. He jumped down from a raised ridge on the mountain. “Let’s retreat!”
The group fought their way out again. It was a shame to leave so many monster corpses to rot. Fang Zhao had only managed to stash ten out of the hundred or so they’d killed. They hid in another cave after forcefully evicting the original inhabitants.
The next evening, each of them used one of the elite-grade concealment talismans. Fei Rui made himself small and sat on Yu Han’s helmet.
They snuck onto the twin hills again. Following Fang Zhao to an area devoid of any pools of water. Instead, there were only dried patches of moss and algae, plus many trees and foliage.
Fang Zhao moved apart two giant sundews with sticky leaves. Many other plants made this bog their home, too. Ferns of all types, leather leaves, cranberry-like shrubs, and highly toxic bog rosemary.
Beyond this patch of shrubs, there was a giant hole in the ground. It was narrow—about two metres at its widest—but long, stretching away from them for hundreds of metres.
They cut away shrubs and followed this long hole, finally reaching a cenote entrance.
Steam rose from the opening. Hidden with their talismans, they saw Redgrass Viper Hawks carrying the corpses of their fallen brethren, throwing them through the cenote opening from the air. The dead would fall, and then a splash would sound.
They neared the edge and peeked down the cenote’s throat.
The limestone walls descended in rippled curtains, stained dark with centuries of organic matter. About forty feet down, the vibrant crimson pool roiled and pulsed, sending up occasional bubbles that burst with soft, wet echoes.
The blood-red water wasn’t still—it moved with an unsettling rhythm, as if breathing. Yu Han could smell the thick stench of blood even with the coverall.
“Finally,” Fang Zhao said. “Finally.”
“Quiet,” Li Yao warned. “How do we get down?”
“There.” Yu Han pointed at a speleothem. The metal-rich stalactites hung from the curved walls like ancient teeth, their surfaces tinted rust-red from minerals.
Some of them, perhaps where they’d dripped over millennia, formed columns that stretched down to meet the surface of the red pool. Some broke through the surface, while others hovered just above it, their tips catching the dim light filtering down from above.
They would climb down those.