The jade beauty opened her mouth, and the words hit me like a pellet.
"What kind of inner world is this," she said, "what was that tree, and what do you want from us?"
"I'll answer everything," I said, holding up a hand. "But give me a few minutes."
She looked like she wanted to argue with that, but then her eyes moved past me to the Leech-kin still huddled on the Leviathan's back, the children pressed against their parents, the older ones sitting with their arms around each other. The jade beauty looked at all of that, and something in her expression shifted, and she gave one short nod.
I turned away before she could change her mind.
"They're reasonable enough," Azure said beside me.
"For now," I said as I flew toward the Leviathan.
Ke Jun's blood statue was still floating where the Genesis Seed's roots had deposited it after releasing the other souls. The Weeping Root was hovering beside it, his translucent hands pressed flat against the surface, his tears running silently down his face.
"Ke Jun," I said. “Are you going to merge with the statue?”
The blood-red eyes opened.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Merging my soul back together is my only chance to recover my cultivation.”
It didn’t surprise me that he was already thinking about ways to recover his power.
That was the mindset of a true cultivator.
“You actually think you could cultivate again?” I asked.
Ke Jun wasn’t just a mortal at the moment; a crippled cultivator was worse than that. Most mortals could cultivate, even if it was extremely difficult and slow to do so. However, a crippled cultivator usually couldn’t cultivate ever again unless they came across a heavenly treasure, or an old granda spirit like in Wu Kangming’s situation.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Ke Jun replied. “It’s something I need to be able to do.”
I could respect that.
A Civilisation Realm was a god amongst men. It wasn’t easy to forget that and leave it behind. And I didn’t have anything against Ke Jun recovering his cultivation, just as long as he didn’t get any ideas about taking over my body, causing issues in my inner world, or creating chaos in the outside world.
I just hoped that Ke Jun’s story as a blood cultivator had ended. Maybe this could be the start of his redemption arc. Then again, I knew better than to have naïve hope.
"We will have a conversation later," Ke Jun said.
"Sure," I agreed.
With that, he drifted toward the statue, and the Weeping Root followed its master obediently.
Left alone, I turned to Azure. "Let's go talk to the Leech-kin."
***
The Leviathan had settled itself on the lake in the northeast quadrant, which had made the practical decision to expand somewhat rather than argue with something the size of a city block.
The Leech-kin had come down from its back and were now standing at the edge of the water in loose clusters, their translucent skin picking up the light from all three suns in ways that made them look like they were lit from the inside.
Some of them looked at me like I was their saviour, which I guess I was.
Others looked at me like I was the monster they grew up hearing stories about. Which was fair. The Genesis Seed's roots had put on quite a performance earlier, and watching ancient tree roots tear souls out of a statue at speed was not the gentlest introduction to a new home.
Some of the children were already at the water's edge, crouching down and pressing their fingers to the surface and then pulling them back and looking at their hands with expressions of deep suspicion.
One small boy turned around and announced to no one in particular that the water was colder and wetter than he expected and that he wasn't sure he approved.
Some of the older Leech-kin stood still, they were watching me with a mixture of hope and fear.
I landed in front of them.
"I made you a promise," I said, speaking loud enough to carry to the edges of the group. "That promise was that you would be alive to find out what comes next. You're alive. So, we can start finding out."
Nobody spoke immediately. The boy at the water's edge looked up at me.
"You said there would be things to climb," he said.
"There are mountains in the northwest," I said. "I'll introduce you to the people who live there eventually. They're made of stone. You'll probably get along."
He turned back to the water, satisfied.
"You can stay here," I said, addressing the group properly now. "This is your home as much as it's anyone else's home. The only thing I ask is that you don't cause problems for the other inhabitants. My inner world has people in it who were already here before you arrived. I'm not going to explai the full list of rules right now, but the short version is: don't hunt things that are clearly intelligent, don't destroy what other people have built, and if you have a dispute with someone, come to Azure," I gestured to the translucent figure beside me, "rather than handling it with your teeth."
One of the Shaman elders, a tall woman with the charcoal-grey skin that came from decades of toxic-sludge cultivation, crossed her arms. "And if someone causes problems with us?"
"Same rule applies to them," I said. "I don't have different standards for different residents."
She looked at me for a moment longer than the question required. Then she uncrossed her arms, which I took as the closest thing to approval I was going to get from someone who distilled acid in her own bloodstream for a living.
What I said was completely true. It didn’t matter what race, gender, species, or cultivation level they were. I believed that everyone had the right to be treated equally. While I couldn’t change the world outside, I hoped that I could have the inhabitants of my world share the same belief.
Ignis stepped forward, one hand trailing along the shoulder of the person beside him to keep himself upright. His burned eyes pointed in roughly my direction with the slightly-off aim of a man who navigated entirely by senses other than sight.
"My people have had enough of bloodshed," he said. "We are not here to make war with anyone. We are here because the alternative was ceasing to exist."
"I know," I said.
Snik, or as the people knew him, Lord Malachi, cleared his throat.
"We are blood beings," he said. "Blood is what we breathe. It's what moves through us. It's what we eat and what we cultivate with. The water here is," he looked at the lake, "water. It's simply water. I don't know how long we can survive in an environment with no blood qi."
Murmurs moved through the group behind him.
"How will the children cultivate?"
"There's nothing in the air here. Nothing."
"I can't feel anything. It's like breathing nothing."
"It's not nothing," one of the Shaman elders said. "There's qi here. It's just not sanguine qi. It's different."
“Different is bad?” one of the children asked.
"No, different just means we can't use it,” an older child replied.
“How can we live if we can’t use it?”
“I don’t know, don’t ask me, ask the Lord who saved us.”
“Can you ask him for me? I’m scared he’ll get angry.”
Seeing the right time to jump in, I spoke.
"I can't turn my inner world into a blood realm," I admitted. "That's not something I'm able to do, and honestly it's not something I'd do even if I could, because I have other inhabitants who it would probably end up killing, but I think I can make things easier for you."
I looked at Snik.
“Come with me.”
The leader of the Leech-Kin gulped, I could tell that he wished I picked anyone else but him, even then, he nodded.
***
The Cathedral sat in the southwest quadrant, built from crystallized spiritual energy that shifted between silver and deep purple depending on the angle of the light. The architecture leaned toward the gothic: high arching ceilings, windows full of frozen geometric formations rather than glass, a central nave long enough to lose the far end in shadow.
The main feature was the cathedra at the center, the teaching seat where I could interface with the Cathedral's energy systems, surrounded by forty-nine smaller thrones arranged in concentric semicircles.
Most of them were broken or damaged, remnants from whatever their original purpose had been before the Cathedral took shape in my inner world. The ones that had been restored held the energies of cultivation paths I had encountered: Xuan Yi from the Realm of the Chosen, harmonic essence from the Realm of Living Lyrics, the martial qi of mortal cultivation, the organic living energy of rouqi.
Each restored throne had reshaped itself to reflect the nature of what it held. The Xuan Yi throne was obsidian and crowned, the harmonic throne was crystalline and soundless, and the martial throne was dense jade and iron.
Snik walked behind me into the Cathedral and stopped in the entrance.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"Think of it as a library," I said. "For different types of cultivation."
He moved his gaze along the rows of thrones. "And these chairs?"
"Thrones. Each one holds a different kind of power. The damaged ones are waiting."
“Waiting? What are they waiting for?”
“Who else but you?” I smiled.
My response made him take a step back, I wasn’t sure what was going through his mind, but he looked at the thrones as though they were going to devour him.
I walked to the far end of the semicircle, to one of the thrones that had not yet been used.
"Channel your energy into this one," I said.
Snik looked at the throne, then at me, then at the throne again. “Is it dangerous?”
“No,” I shook my head. “It’s actually the thing that will save your people.”
"What will happen?" he asked, still looking at it suspiciously.
"I don't know exactly," I said. "The Cathedral determines its own nature. But I have a reasonable idea."
Snik knew that his people couldn’t survive long in my inner world as it currently was. If he didn’t act now, him and his people would die. As the leader, even a mentally weak one, that wasn’t something he could allow.
Not to mention, I had shown myself to be trustworthy so far, I liked to think that was part of the reason why he took a deep breath and sat down on the throne. He placed his hands on the throne's arms and pressed his cultivation outward: the Sanguine Aristocracy bloodline, that deep concentrated power that had made a Leviathan tremble, channeled into the waiting frame.
The throne woke up, and it happened in stages.
The cracks sealed first, the crystallized spiritual energy flowing back into the gaps like water finding its level. The color shifted from the pale neutral of the unrestored material toward something darker, a deep crimson at the edges that moved inward until the entire throne had taken on the color of old garnets held up to the light. Veins of darker red ran through it in patterns that followed the structure of the Sanguine Aristocracy's bloodline cultivation.
I had done it.
I had added another energy source to my inner world.
And unlike the other sources that could be argued that they were righteous, this one was undeniably demonic.