Elder Cultivator

Of all the places in the Scarlet Midfields that were wrecked by the great powers during their most recent war, there was one place that remained relatively untouched. Or perhaps it was better to say there was no point in returning since some previous time. The Bloodsoaked Nebula had been fully ruined long in the past, with only dead planets to show for it. Most of the planets were scoured of life in a manner that made resettling them difficult. Others were fully destroyed, shattered into chunks drifting around their local stars, or even tossed into the void between systems.

Even the Scarlet Alliance hadn’t found it worth their time to revitalize the planets. The nebula was inconveniently located for proper incorporation into the Scarlet Alliance. Instead of trying to settle the planets, they’d simply made use of the malice remaining within the area to strike against any members of the great powers who were trying to pass through. A long neglected formation that had provided value they could only estimate, since getting hard numbers would be impossible.

Now that they were planning to fill out more of the Midfields, it was an area that deserved a closer look. Catarina had thoughts about spreading its influence further into surrounding territory… but she also had concerns about the side effects of that. Perhaps if they could directly bring enemies into the center of the Midfields, but overlapping formations on the scale of multiple systems seemed like it would result in severe instability.

Rather than any of that, Catarina was interested in the region for its origins. She didn’t want to have other regions that were full of death and hatred, but she wondered why they didn’t exist. Had all of the lives lost during the recent invasion counted for nothing? Perhaps so. Few planets had been exterminated to the very last person, with the main exceptions being wherever the Swirling Swarm went. There was theoretically some point at which it pushed beyond a ‘normal’ level of slaughter into a lingering curse.

She had no intention of finding what that threshold was, but she wanted to learn about the area’s history. The only issue… no traces of history remained locally except ancient battlefields with energy full of hatred lingering far beyond its time. Nor was there anything to be found in the records of the great powers- at least not what could be feasibly obtained by the Scarlet Alliance.

Even if there had been records, most of them would have decayed. Even enchanted tomes needed to be maintained over the course of many centuries. The events in the Bloodsoaked Nebula were more than a millennium past, so only the old sects would have access to that information.

The Guardians of the Veiled Brilliance had shared what they possessed- but even Ratna didn’t know much. The events had happened before she rose to prominence, so they didn’t know much more than the forces of the great powers clashed the most strongly there. That was obvious enough to anyone who visited, even so far removed. But perhaps they might dredge up more information.

For the moment, Catarina was surveying each planet- including those that were shattered. She didn’t work on her own, as there were many archaeologists interested in the area. It had simply been too deadly, full of natural dangers and cultivators hoping to pick out powerful remnants of ancient societies, or obscure herbs like Dubet’s Heart. With the people of the Midfields and the great powers both greatly reduced in the Bloodsoaked Nebula, it was feasible to have warriors escort the experts.

Catarina wasn’t actually the best to unveil the history, except as far as the flow of energy led to interesting revelations. She did bring along an individual by the name of Ilja who might be able to learn more from any ruins they found. If he would stop looking at rocks. “I thought you were supposed to care about the effects of humans,” Catarina commented as he dug out yet another rock and looked at it closely.

“Does it?”

“No,” he tossed it over his shoulder. “It’s just a rock. Or at least it is now. If this planet hadn’t spontaneously developed a corrosive atmosphere, perhaps we might find something usable near the surface.” His head turned, and he suddenly leapt forward, stabbing his arm into the dirt below up to his shoulder. His energy continued far deeper, reaching down to pull out…

“Another rock?” Catarina asked.

Ilja wagged his finger. “Not so. This is a shard of pottery! A sign of people!”

“Wouldn’t the scanners have already logged that? Actually, don’t you have to keep track of where that came from?”

Ilja made a face. “A machine can only do so much. The true value of an artifact is only revealed in the hands of an expert.”

“So?” Catarina asked. “What is it?”

“A shard of pottery. From a pot.”

“Did it contain pills?” Catarina asked. “What was it used for?”

“I don’t know… yet,” Ilja sniffed it. “No scent of any value.”

“I’m sure there’s more down there,” Catarina said. She could actually feel a few things herself.

“It will take time to properly survey this area,” Ijla continued, carefully setting the shard of pottering inside a sealed container, only then extracting his protective energy. “Fortunately, we can move far faster than older techniques would allow. We can advance meters instead of millimeters.” He looked towards a nearby toppled mountain, or at least the melted remains of such. “If we’re lucky, we’ll find some well preserved artifacts.”

“What about records?”

“That depends on how many stone tablets they carved,” Ilja said. “And I’m not just joking there. We would expect to find a least a few. Perhaps the Alliance should make stone tablets.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“We have backups and copies of everything,” Catarina said. “I’m sure the archivists have it covered.”

It wasn’t going to be a short task. And maybe, they wouldn’t uncover anything important. But now that the Alliance had a bit more ability to move freely, it was only proper that they try to learn more about those who came before. Though they might just find broken weapons and armor from vaguely familiar sects of the great powers. There would certainly be a good amount of that.

Perhaps they wouldn’t find anything but a reason to keep up their vigilance… but that was a lesson that Catarina knew she would never forget.

-----

In the lower realms, Ty Quigley was exploring. What else was he supposed to do, with nobody that needed fighting? If he ran across some distortion beasts he could keep his skills sharp and save other people from some trouble. Plus, he had a ship… so why not?

It could absorb natural energy for fuel, and its internal systems were durable. It could handle journeys of at least a few years without needing maintenance, and even then Ty could perform about half of it. Anything that didn’t need new parts… except those few that he kept spares of in the storage. You could fit quite a lot in a little space by treating a compartment like a storage bag.

Most of the time, it was boring. Ty took it as an opportunity to practice cutting through space. Each system he went to he sent out some little probes that recorded information. If there was a planet that felt particularly special, he might go look at it. Unless, of course, there were humans.

That wasn’t his job. Humans were fine, of course. They were the ones most likely to have other sword cultivators. They were also the most likely to have spies from the upper realms, and Ty was not meant to deal with spies. Unless they were terrible spies, he wouldn’t find out who they were and thus couldn’t kill them.

The same issues were true for the eastern explorers as well. Ty simply chose to go west because it seemed like the most open direction, at least until they reached places under the influence of the Chaotic Conglomeration. Regardless of whether or not they actually occupied any of the planets, the upper realms would influence those systems ‘beneath’ them. And if he saw it, he could cut them.

But it was better not to, unless there was someone to come take care of things. It was like a surgery, really. Cutting the right things was only half of the operation. The other half was stitching things back up. Well, and probably a million other things Ty didn’t really specialize in. But cutting and sealing things was the basics. If he cut out bad guys, he might just leave open wounds. Better to report to the Alliance and let them organize something.

That was always the plan, but he had discretion to act as necessary. If something was happening right in front of him, what else could he do but interfere? At that point, doing nothing was probably worse.

As it turned out, Ty ended up in a system where there was a ship under attack by a distortion beast. It totally wasn’t his fault, because the ripples of his subspace traversals wouldn’t even have reached them yet.

Ty went into the battle with the assumption that the people shouldn’t be eaten alive. Or dead, really, since distortion beasts rarely cared to make a distinction. He briefly noted that the ship was far more on the tech end of the spectrum than the typical cultivation option of sea-ship with flying formations and an air source. They were firing projectiles at the distortion beast.

Silly, really. Not because projectiles couldn’t work, but because they were so slow that even a baby could have dodged them. At least, a baby who could sense them from millions of kilometers distant. A distortion beast certainly could, and had no trouble just… not being in real space when the attacks arrived.

Ty flipped some switches that limited the energy signature he and his ship displayed. To off, of course. He needed his full power to combat the… mountain ranged size blue tongues sweeping through vast swaths of space- some of which contained the ship.

One moment he was approaching two uncomfortably moist tongues, the next he was already past them. They maintained the momentum even after he severed them from their source. Muscle spasms rippled through them as the body parts began to recognize that they were no longer attached. The ship’s maneuverability seemed to be compromised, and they were still at risk.

Ty pitched backwards, flipping until he was ‘upside down’. Though of course, there was neither up nor down in space. The particular maneuver was fastest for redirecting his orientation, and the ship quickly redirected its relative velocity in his intended direction. He rolled to spin the wings as he extended his energy, slicing through more of the distortion beast as he did so- and even intentionally failing to slice occasionally to impart some pushing momentum to slow the incoming scraps of tongue.

Then he locked his position relative to the local ship. He instinctively pressed the radio, but unsurprisingly their ship wasn’t compatible. He only took half a moment to note there weren’t any relevant transmissions in the area to just extend his energy outward.

“You alright?”

“We thank you for the aid,” came a creaky old voice. “Our lives were imperiled. Yet we must ask… has the barrier fallen?”

Barrier? Ty hadn’t noticed anything like that. He hadn’t cut through it, had he? No, it was fine. He traversed through subspace. And his ship logs helpfully showed how he bypassed some sort of barrier- though he hadn’t scanned it until he was inside. Very interesting.

“It’s probably fine,” Ty said. “I just skipped it.”

“That is… no less concerning,” the individual replied. Ty took note of her natural energy levels. They were definitely post Life Transformation. Which either meant that these people shouldn’t have any influence from the upper realms, or they really needed to be reported on. Ty sent a quick long range transmission, in case he got ‘disappeared’. “In what manner were you able to bypass it?”

“Same way as the distortion beast, I imagine,” Ty pointed out. “Unless you grow those guys locally?”

“We do not… grow them locally,” the lady replied. “Where is your allegiance owed?”

Ty noticed she used a lot of old words. Combined with the barrier thing, and he might have found a disconnected system. Cool, that was worth bonus points. Probably made up for the thing where he was immediately revealed. “The Lower Realms Alliance. You probably haven’t heard of us this far out.”

“Indeed we have not. Where do you make your home?”

“Some hundreds of lightyears distant,” Ty explained. Being more specific than that might be asking for trouble. He didn’t know if these people were decent individuals just yet. Even the most foul villains might speak politely to rescuers while waiting for an opportunity to stab them in the back. But if they tried Ty would just cut them apart, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Unless he misjudged this particular woman’s danger level. Then he might die, but that was just how things went sometimes.