Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1230

The news of Prasad’s death was unsettling for Zazil. The deaths of cultivators was nothing new, of course. However, Prasad had been with the alliance nearly from the beginning. Tauno as well, but his death had been in the middle of a war. Now, the odds of advancing to Domination appeared fairly close to fifty percent- but Zazil knew it wasn’t like that at all. Most likely, over time, far more would fail than succeeded.

Timothy and Catarina were a special case, and even Prospero was only a success as a direct result of Hoyt’s failure. There was a significant chance that Zazil would not quite find the perfect flow to hold onto. The results of failure weren’t likely to be a setback of some years. Death was more likely than not.

She should have been discouraged. She had so much to lose… and yet, at the same time, most of her ambitions would live beyond her. The Scarlet Alliance was good about that. The One Thousand Palm Sect wouldn’t suddenly stop existing without Prasad. Perhaps they might fall in prominence, or perhaps someone else would rise from within them.

Zazil’s early ambitions had already been accomplished long before. Fighting against the Harmonious Citadel to establish her place in the world had been her goal. Now, she projected the fear and uncertainty their power had over people onto the great powers as a whole. Her part of the fight wouldn’t end without her. Though personally, Zazil liked being alive. She had many plans, most of which would be easier to accomplish with more power.

If only she could make the attempt without being foolish. Stepping into Domination hadn’t been on her radar until just about the time that Timothy and Catarina had been successful. A distant dream at best, something even the most ambitious cultivators didn’t truly believe. But here she was, considering how it might be accomplished, as well as balancing against the consequences of failure. Prasad, perhaps, had been a bit too confident in his success.

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A lone human stood next to a lake, seemingly alone in the forest. But he was far from alone.

“Do you like plants, Abioye?” Bear Hug prompted.

“I don’t dislike plants. But language is my area of study, which often has very little to do with plants.”

“Until you came up with a plant language!”

Abioye tilted his head. “I don’t know if I would say that this is a plant language.”

“Most of the speakers are plants. Anton likes plants. It’s a plant language now.”

Abioye chuckled. Bear Hug wouldn’t pick up on such small motions, so he included a humorous lilt to his following words. “Well, if you say so. Are we counting by volume? Because you might tip the scales all on your own.”

“Briar is bigger, I think.”

Abioye thought back to what he had seen. He didn’t spend much time in Klar, merely reviewing videos later. He wouldn’t have been good at avoiding physical confrontations and was not strong enough to protect himself while having the choice to be nonlethal. “I suppose Briar is bigger on average. But you can be larger. And without causing harm to anything.”

“Except maybe taking space away from other things,” Bear Hug said. “And making certain fishies outnumber others. Then they start bullying the small ones away. It’s really mean. I want to teach these ones better.”

“I’m not sure if that will be practical. Especially since you should be spending more of your time away from this lake.”

“Oh, that’s right! They want me to plant a bunch of things.”

“That is, in fact, what the goal is here. A number of spatial bags has been prepared.”

“Spatial bags are weird. Have you ever been two places at once?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, it’s like that but some of you isn’t anywhere. Except it is. I don’t want to get some of me stuck in a bag.”

“That seems like it would be bad,” Abioye agreed.

“Is anyone learning to speak?” Bear Hug asked. “I want to talk to more people.”

Abioye looked off into the distance. “Not everyone is interested in learning a new language style just to speak with a limited number of people. Most would prefer to speak to the most individuals possible.”

“Then we should teach everyone the energy language! It’s supposed to be good for that. Except void ants. But they can kinda do it.”

“Indeed,” Abioye said. “They can do many things, when properly motivated.”

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Bear Hug’s job was to help start plants that needed significant energy devoted to them. Spreading seeds for plants and trees could be accomplished easily by humans. Splitting up into a few bodies was rather irrelevant when thousands of drones could easily plant all day and night with perfect precision. If choices needed to be made, human operators could take over.

But there was no substitute for strong cultivators giving things a kickstart. Active energy control was important for such a task. Merely using energy-based fertilizers wasn’t the same.

“You’re gonna be a tree~” Bear Hug commented in a singing fashion to a seed they were burying carefully in the ground. “A big tree. Powerful tree. Full of energy and stretching to the sky. You’re gonna shelter the land from interstellar winter and keep everything safe and good. I’m gonna make sure you become super good and also noooot~ sapient in case you die horribly when the atmosphere freezes~ No~ Sapience~ Here~”

It was too bad, really. Bear Hug kind of wanted to try to make other thinking plants, but it was probably better to do that on Klar. Nobody could tell them what to do there. Just what they should do, but the Alliance didn’t claim ‘jurisdiction’ there. Though Anton was going to successfully Unity people soon, probably.

Bear Hug couldn’t really hand around a single seed for long. There was only so much energy it was reasonable to put in. It turned into a little sapling rapidly, but would need to grow in the sunlight for a while. “Make sure you become something people can make into weapons, because humans like that!”

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Some trees looked normal, like Liberty. Liberty was an evergreen conifer, which was normal. Evergreens might survive better in space. Maybe. Bear Hug wasn’t a scientist. Or even a plant specialist, unless the plant was themself.

Other trees were really cool. Bear Hug planted a tree that was going to be a whole forest. A clonal tree, apparently. Some of them could share stuff through their roots. That seemed like a good way to survive bad times. “Make sure to store up lots of nutrients and maybe some sunlight! But probably not actual sunlight because that sounds like cultivation, and you’re not~ supposed~ to be~ sapient~”

Bear Hug didn’t know how to make sapient things, but it probably involved too much natural energy in either the wrong or right way, depending on the result you wanted. So they stuck to the prescribed amounts, planting neat things.

“This place is going to have a lot of fungus~” Bear Hug declared. “But only after other things grow big and dead so you can eat them~” It was really neat to learn how everything affected everything else. And that even dead stuff became something else.

Bear Hug moved on, planting a rare seed that they might not be able to make grow. Everyone said it was okay if it didn’t, but Bear Hug didn’t think that sounded right.

“Little sharp seed, grow up well~ Please stop cutting me as I try to put you in the dirt~” It was supposed to be… a sword tree? Which didn’t make any sense. Swords were weapons and people made weapons. But apparently this tree was in honor of a fallen warrior who found some in a place made by a guy nobody seemed to like. Even the people from planets that had never come in contact with him. “Grow tall and sharp, sword tree~”

Bear Hug had some concerns. About the sword tree in particular, certainly, but also about the other trees. People were still acting like everything was going to die and be frozen and that it was okay for that to happen. But if they really thought that, then how could they be planning to add bunnies and squirrels? Adorable fishies, even if they tried to eat you, shouldn’t be planned to die.

Then again, humans did that a lot. And if Bear Hug couldn’t live purely off of sunlight, random nutrients in the water, and natural energy they would probably be responsible for a lot more death. But even if they were planning for everything to be killed and used by humans, it seemed wasteful. It would be better if everything was alive and fresh when it got there.

Anton said he understood that, but nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. Planets were kinda big, but surely people could keep one warm and cozy for a few years. And then a few more years. And some years after that. They just needed some people watching it.

Humans didn’t do good outside of the right spot, though. Without natural energy, Anton would be… less. There were apparently a whole lot of people that used another energy. Bear Hug wanted to taste it. Was the sunlight good in the upper realms? Who would go with them?

Maybe Bear Hug could convince Lev to bring them. Lev went to the upper realms and did plant stuff there. There was probably more room in the ship. It would be sad to go without sunlight for a bit, but Bear Hug could handle that.

“Do you think you’ll like ascension energy?” Bear Hug asked a little seed that was going to be a big tree. “I think you’ll like it. It could taste like winter sun. Or double summer. Just make sure you radiate off the extra bits, okay? Or maybe someone should help teach you when it’s time.”

Bear Hug remembered something about them not wanting their own energy in the stuff, actually. How would they do that? Would they put the planet in a box? Maybe if they put a layer of dirt on top, it would keep everything below protected. Dirt was good for protecting roots and stuff. Though in this case, it would be everything. That probably went with the ‘everything dies’ plan.

They probably really needed someone to watch over the planet. A lot of someones, probably. Or a big Unity cultivator that could go to the upper realms. Too bad they didn’t have any of those. Maybe Lev would do it? Lev wasn’t that far from Unity, apparently. But Bear Hug couldn’t just decide that other people had to do things. Maybe Lev would be busy.

But Bear Hug wouldn’t. So they had to figure out how to survive that. Probably, being ‘around Life Transformation’ wasn’t good enough. Assimilation sounded good. Bear Hug didn’t have normal human cultivation, but they for sure could become stronger. Strong enough to… protect a pond?

That wasn’t very ambitious, but Bear Hug was trying to be realistic. A nice lake might work, except for the part where they wouldn’t be able to recover energy. Then it might be too big.

Why was everything so hard? Surely the humans should have answers to all these things. They’d been around for tens of hundreds of years. They had to have done everything at least once by now.

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Zazil’s idea sounded foolhardy even to her own ears. But she didn’t make cultivation decisions with her ears, but with her gut. Some mix of instinct and insight, and occasionally cultivators included their heads as well- but never their ears. So even if it sounded terrible, that just meant she didn’t know a good way to say it.

There were, of course, a few practical issues. The locations she had in mind were not the safest ones imaginable. Choosing one would be difficult. However, long experience had told her to stick with what made sense. The origins of the Dark Ring were practical, perhaps the same could be true for something similar at Domination. Assuming she didn’t get herself killed in one of the various ways it could come about.