Calculating Cultivation

The wind was rushing too fast too talk as we were carried up to the Floating Island of Death. A flying sword was clearly not designed with safety or seatbelts in mind, but it was surprisingly stable. It didn’t rock or tilt in the slightest.

Old Hengar kept one hand behind him on my shoulder and another hand in front of him on Wen Xue’s shoulder. He kept a firm grip on both of us while the air rushed by. It was too noisy to easily move. We had been flying through the night and most of the morning, fairly high up as well, avoiding the clouds thankfully. It was already quite cold.

I noted that he wasn’t flying in a straight line. He was looking for the floating island doing large loop. I spotted Mount Atlas in the distance. There were a number of buildings and people on the frozen summit. No one would spot us at this distance, unless they were watching the sky carefully for a moving dot.

Even then I wasn’t too worried. Anyone past the first bottleneck in their cultivation would already be on the island. Not waiting on a mountain. The sword began to turn a bit more than before, and then I spotted where Old Hengar was headed. The floating island had come out behind some clouds.

While there had been many amazing sights and cultivation was not something that existed on Earth, there was something truly magical about a floating island that was hard to put into words. I noted the many ropes trailing off the side of the island, and the jagged rocks sticking out below. It was less an inverse pyramid, and more of an inverse mound.

The sides were thick, and the bottom wasn’t pointy. The island was higher than us, so we began to ascend. If we came from above the zombies would spot us. People had tried that in the past, but it was a death sentence. The island was moving at a decent speed through the sky and as we got closer, I estimated it to be about 25 miles, 40 kilometers, in terms of the radius. Or about 4 miles across, which would be about 6.5 kilometers.

It was massive. I hadn’t seen any of the buildings at a distance, not even the wall that was supposed to be around the buildings in the center. We were coming in too low for that. I noted small streams of water trickling off and dispersing into the air. Trees and roots lined the outer edge. They weren’t the twisted small trees one would see at the top of mountains. These were big, thick trees, one would find in an ancient forest.

Old Hengar adjusted our course slightly and we came up over edge of the floating island, where he matched its course and speed. He tossed us both off without a word and I had to make sure I didn’t trip and fall with two packs on my back. Wen Xue landed near me as well. Right after we were tossed onto the floating island, Old Hengar took off to do a loop of the floating island and then leave back to Black Rock City.

I had been scanning the island with my eyes, and the number of motes around this place was at least triple that of the Cloudy Moon Sect’s mountain peak. Since we had come up from below, I hadn’t spotted anything of note, except that the trees had energy within them. They were all spirit trees, and based on my guess around rank 3 or rank 4.

The value of the trees alone was immense. I had no idea how null metal would exist in a place like this, but I needed to find some no matter what. The first step was to find a hiding spot. I then looked at the trees again and then moved close to Wen Xue.

“Don’t damage the trees,” I whispered out as quietly as possible. He gave me a look and then nodded. The fact the trees were still around and hadn’t been ripped off and tossed to the ground below, implied they were protected in some way.

If I was a cultivator looking to make some easy money, I would have climbed up here and started cutting these spirit trees for their value. The fact that none of them were cut implied they were protected in some way.

I took point as we slowly moved away from the edge and began looking for our first base. The ground was very uneven. The trees grew up and around large rocks, and there was not much soil either. The roots were massive twisted things, making for an uneven ground. The air was still frigid, and slightly hard to breathe. Thankfully we could handle the environment as cultivators in the third stage, but it was important to note there was no environmental barrier around the floating island.

It might be slightly warmer than the mountain peaks below. Since there was no ice or snow. Making our way through the outer forest carefully, I wanted us to get near the wall and then find a hiding spot. We carefully made our way through the forest. I kept scanning the area in front of us and listening carefully.

After half an hour of quietly walking, I saw the wall through the trees in the distance. I adjusted our course to move clockwise around the island, through the outer ring of trees, looking for a spot. Then I saw a larger tree in the distance. I froze, since I also noticed that there was already someone on top of it.

I had us go around the tree, and away from whomever was hiding up there. They moved a couple of times but didn’t bother us. Starting a fight or a commotion, was a death sentence. The zombies were the real threat. That wouldn’t stop someone desperate, but no one up here was an idiot.

It took another hour of walking and we finally ran into another larger tree. It was further back from the wall, but there was no one hiding up it as far as I could tell. I pointed up and Wen Xue nodded at me. I leapt up into the air, making sure to kick off the ground as quietly as possible. I carefully took my time ascending up the tree.

I got to the height of a four story building before the branches became too small to keep going safely. I didn’t want to break them in any way. I pulled out a thin, but sturdy wood plank from my spatial ring. I then laid it across two branches, up against the tree. I carefully set my packs down on it and Wen Xue did the same.

We then both used some rope to carefully tie off the end of the blanks to the tree branches it was resting on. “See anything?” he asked me quietly once we were done. I shook my head.

“Nothing,” I replied. Our little base was on the opposite side of the tree from the wall. Zombies patrolled it regularly, so taking any kind of risk was unacceptable. We both had some water. “No arrays or formations,” I added as well.

“It is cold up here, and there is a breeze,” Wen said quietly. It was chilly, but we would survive. It would be uncomfortable, but on our trip out here from the sect we had slept at the rest spots between cities. I could tell he was bringing this up to ease his nerves and to be ready for the night.

We settled in, onto our plank. Now came the challenging part going forward. Trying to figure out where to go from here and sneaking inside the wall without dying horribly. I wanted to see a zombie first, hopefully getting a better idea of their capabilities first, and how hard they were to actually spot. The first rule we had both agreed on was to not rush.

That’s why I had insisted on the extra packs of supplies. We could last out here for quite a while. “There was someone on that large tree we passed earlier,” I said quietly as Wen Xue and I both sipped some water.

“Really? Hiding? What stage?” he asked.

“I think fourth, but it was hard to tell. They were concealed quite well,” I replied. We both had rings of concealment, that would blur and hide our cultivation to any kind of sensing techniques. They were decent items, but neither of us had a clear picture of how well they would work against the zombies.

I pulled out a Beast Hiding mixture, which was really scent concealer and sprinkled it on the plank we were sitting on. I then put it away. Another one of our many safety precautions. “You going to scout now?” Wen Xue asked me, and I nodded.

“Yes. No time like the present. Other side of the tree, I think.” It was about as thick and wide as a car. These were massive trees, and this was the second biggest we had run into. I wasn’t about to run off yet. It would be too easy to get lost and turned around.

Wen Xue made sure the packs were secure, while I got up and carefully went from branch to branch, around the tree. I slowly ascended up the tree, being careful not to break any branches. I eventually found a good branch to see at a distance. I laid down on the branch. The needles at the end of it shook lightly, but none of them fell.

I pulled out a set of binoculars. Another rank 3 treasure, but one I had picked up from the sect in order to have as many options as possible. We couldn’t get supplies now that we were here, and I wanted to use my spatial rings to their maximum.

The wall was about five stories tall and made of green and black stone in swirling patterns. That was when I saw my first patrol of zombies moving along the wall. My only advantage over other cultivators was my energy vision and I was hoping it would give me an edge.

I had talked to Wen Xue about it once we had left. That was why I was in charge of the scouting, and he was in charge of the traps. He had been annoyed that the heavens favored me but had real hope we could succeed in getting some resources and escaping.

Normally cultivators had a structure and possibly a flow of energy inside of themselves. As my cultivation had progressed, my vision had gotten better as well. I could make out tints of color inside someone’s cultivation and more details of their cultivation structure.

Higher ranked cultivators were much blurrier, and the Sect Leader was near impossible to tell anything about. But that also let me work out a person’s cultivation approximately. The harder it was to see, the more dangerous they were.

The zombies were weird, like nothing I had seen before. They had a cultivation structure, but energy was flowing out of them, instead of into them. It was different for each zombie, but they had a blurry area somewhere in their body. Foot, head, chest, and that flooded energy through their cultivation and out of their body in a weird way.

The internal cultivation structures were distorted on the zombies I spotted. The larger the blurry spot, the stronger the zombie, if I had to guess. I kept watching until it began to get dark and then carefully went back around and down the large tree.

Wen Xue didn’t ask me questions thankfully as I had some food and water. “Well, I can spot them. Can kind of make out the stronger ones, but not through thick structures like the wall,” I replied. I then explained about the blurry spot.

“A demonic cultivation method?” Wen Xue suggested, and I nodded.

“Most likely. But with how long the floating island has been around and the strength of some of those zombies, I would have to guess that whoever set all this up is long dead,” I explained. I had asked why Immortals didn’t deal with places like this, but the Sect Leader had told me they were an outlet for the more adventurous cultivators.

If an Immortal came and solved everything, then they would have to pick who got what resources and it would be a hassle. Instead, leaving places like this was convenient to get rid of ambitious cultivators not favored by the heavens.

After a short meal, I went back to watching. I could see buildings behind the wall. The buildings had thick stone walls, narrow slit windows, and were arranged in some pattern that wasn’t a grid. Supposedly the zombies changed things around occasionally, which made mapping pointless.

I kept watch every moment I wasn’t asleep. When I did sleep on the plan, Wen Xue kept watch. There was very little external noise, and I noted that the floating island didn’t run into clouds. It might move near them, but it didn’t enter them if it could help it.

The problem with proceeding further, was that I had no idea on the sensory range of the zombies. One mistake and they would swarm. After 11 days, we both heard the first noise in a while and all the zombies began moving in another direction, leaving a huge gap on the walls, swarming to another part of the island.

I quickly went around to Wen Xue who was alert. Thankfully it was the middle of the day, so there was light. “We need to move, the zombies are chasing someone,” I said, and he nodded. We both leapt down the tree and quickly made our way to the wall.

In the days of watching the wall, I had already picked out a tree near the wall and we quickly climbed up it. I looked around, and saw zombies in the distance moving off into one part of the forest. It was a good distance away and there were no nearby zombies. There were no arrays on the wall and we leapt onto it.

There were stairs and towers on the inside to climb up the other way. I scanned the interior of the city. I thought I spotted some zombies in some of the buildings, but others didn’t have any. “That building,” I pointed out and we both leapt down off the other side of the wall and rushed over.

There was no door, and the same green and black stone that made up everything else made up the buildings. “Array,” I said after we entered and I pointed at the next doorway. There was nothing in the current room. No furniture, and just a bit of dust on the floor. I could make out the glowing energy in the ground. It was faint, but I could see it.

I quickly began to describe it. We had worked out strategies for me to describe the arrays we found and for Wen Xue to disarm them. The hardest part of arrays was knowing what to do. The fact I could slightly make it out and provide information took what should have been a careful process done for days and weeks, to something that could be figured out in minutes.

Wen Xue pulled out a thin rod and pushed it into a portion of the array. It quickly unraveled, the energy composing it, disappeared into the background energy. We went into the next room, and there was a stone bookshelf, but no books.

There was also a stone table and chair, but nothing worthwhile that I could see. We quickly left and went to the next room. I scanned for returning zombies, but nothing. We checked a second room, and found an armor and weapon’s rack. Unfortunately, the equipment had rusted over time and was worthless. There was nothing even worth salvaging.

The screaming from the zombies in the distance stopped. We quickly retreated back up the wall and back to our hiding spot. It took the zombies about half an hour to return to their normal movements, but I noted that they had come back in fits and spurts. Once the alarm was over we would only have minutes to leave.

That evening, while I was eating, Wen Xue and I began brainstorming. “The arrays are simple. They are alarm arrays. Nothing complicated, just annoying to deal with. With your sight, it is easy to find the pivot point holding it all togeather.”

“But we barely checked one floor of one building and there is an entire city. Possibly something underground,” I said with a heavy sigh.

“We would need to go into the city itself and stay there. You have been watching the buildings? Do the zombies go in them?” Wen Xue asked.

“Not the one we checked, since the dust was undisturbed for a while. But the problem is getting over the wall and back. Once there is another opening, we can’t leave until a third opening in their patrols occurs.”

“Well, we did well on disabling the arrays without triggering anything. Our communication was good. It cuts out a lot of time knowing how it is laid out,” Wen Xue said and I nodded at this. That was a major reason why I brought him along.

“I think I can get us over the wall, but the risk is high. Better to wait for another incident. Then explore the city itself. Bring our packs and hide out in the buildings,” I suggested.

“One mistake and we will be dead,” Wen Xue said heavily. He was absolutely right, but we couldn’t turn back now. “So, waiting for the next incident?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Yes. Could be a while-“ I was proven wrong as zombie screams went up in the distance. I carefully moved back around and up the tree to my observation spot. The zombies on the wall were moving away. Clearly, they didn’t have much intelligence since they swarmed. It was both a strength and a weakness.

It was a strength since whatever they attacked would get overwhelmed. A weakness since it left a huge gap in their defensives. I quickly returned to Wen Xue and we packed up our camp, taking only one set of packs with us. The other set we would leave here. We couldn’t be encumbered by that much. While we could carry it, we wouldn’t be able to move as quickly and silently as we needed to.

Returning back to the wall, we went up and over once more. I saw the zombies swarming another part of the city. Apparently, someone had a similar idea to us, using the first break in patrols to sneak in, but then they had been caught.

Staying in the streets, I maneuvered us deeper into the city, avoiding zombies while keeping track of the nearest building without any. They were quickly filling up. Perhaps this wasn’t a cultivation technique, but a method to build an army?

I finally found a building without zombies and we entered, while I looked for arrays. There were several as we began clearing the building. Wen Xue would disable them, we would check the room for stuff, there was nothing and then move on.

That was when we came across a room in the middle of the three story building that had an alter. That was a floating crystal and a formation around the alter. A formation was made of multiple arrays, so it getting to that floating white crystal hovering in the air above the alter, or pedestal would not be simple. I checked for approaching zombies but there were none.

I began to quietly point out the various arrays to Wen Xue. He made notes. We had a system down on how I would handle the descriptions, to waste as little time as possible and streamline the time he spent conducting an analysis.

“Not possible,” he said to me. I nodded at that and we left the room, and finding some stairs to go to the second floor. Wen Xue had the ultimate call on the traps we found. If he didn’t think he could disable them safely without sending up an alarm we would move on. The entire expedition couldn’t afford risks.

The second floor just had some stone furniture, but nothing interesting. The third floor, had a chest in one of the rooms with an array around it. A single array was much easier to deal with than a formation. Wen Xue had explained to me, that with a formation, one could set up conditions so the outer array in the formation acted as a failsafe.

It had been the standard practice for a long time. While there were methods for getting around this they weren’t simple. If the outer array was turned off, then the inner arrays in the formation could activate. It wasn’t enough to disable the array, but suborn it and block the connections.

This is where things quickly got very complicated. Array disabling wasn’t a common practice. So while there were methods, none of them were simple. Most advice involved, tossing someone or something else into the array and triggering it that way. Or using such an event to get a better idea of how it functioned. Or to carefully study it, try and reconstruct it, and then work out the best method of disablement from the reconstruction.

Neither method was acceptable. That was why we moved on. It also wasn’t a matter of cultivation either, but a matter of knowledge. While senior cultivators might have more knowledge on arrays and formations, they couldn’t brute force them without risk.

That was a big part of why this was a forbidden zone even to high rank cultivators. The traps triggering would be something a rank 8 cultivator could set off or a mortal. Thankfully Wen Xue knew what he was doing and managed to disable the array around the chest. He looked at me for confirmation while I inspected it closely.

“Nothing else that I can see, and I can see through it, barely,” I said quietly, and he nodded. I was the scout portion of our duo, which meant that I got to open the wood chest. It was the first wooden object we had spotted. Opening it up, there were stacks of gold coins inside.

Absolutely worthless. I looked at Wen Xue who shook his head and I closed the chest. Gold had no value to either of us. It wasn’t even spirit metal either from what I could tell. Just regular gold. The floating island had junk like this scattered about as well that the zombies collected and stored.

Once the building was cleared, I looked out the narrow slits in the walls carefully at the surrounding buildings. There were zombies in each of them. Some were just standing around, clumped togeather in rooms, while others were patrolling.

Making any progress would be a massive headache. We found an interior room on the third floor to settle in for the night and discuss our plans. The green portions of the stone glowed slightly in the darkness, which was unnerving and made me think of radiation. I didn’t feel sick and other people who had come and stayed on the Floating Island of Death hadn’t gotten radiation poisoning, so I wasn’t worried in that regard.

“We need a way to check the other buildings,” Wen Xue said quietly while we had some food and water. That meant using our ambush plan. “You can see their routes, right?”

“Yes. But that assumes a zombie will walk onto the array plate,” I said. We had a portable formation inscribed into a metal plate. It wasn’t cheap, but it was a means of offense. The zombies had to be taken out instantly, otherwise they would alert others.

“If the other buildings are full of zombies we have no choice,” Wen Xue said, and I nodded at this. I spent the evening looking around at the nearby buildings. There was one a bit deeper in the city with only one zombie patrolling each floor.

The following morning, after making sure the coast was clear, we made it to the building. I pulled out the metal plate into a doorway the zombie passed through while walking about. Wen Xue quickly set everything up and gave me the trigger mechanism. Two beast cores were somehow crafted to connect to each other. Pushing energy into one would cause the other one to trigger.

Waiting was torture, but there was nothing to do. Eventually the zombie paused for a moment at the metal plate, but then continued over it. I triggered the formation. The outer array silenced any noise, energy. While the interior array created a contained pulse of crushing force. The zombie was crushed into a ball of flesh and fell on the plate.

We quickly returned, and I saw the zombie flesh ball had no more energy. There were no screams either. We had managed to kill one, without being killed ourselves. I returned the array to my spatial ring, while the flesh ball stayed behind.

We then went up to the second, and third floors repeating the process with the next two zombies before we began clearing the building in earnest. Each use of the formation plate cost 4 rank 3 spirit stones. It wasn’t cheap to kill zombies like this. While I could afford to kill a fair few, I had no chance of killing all of them.

This time we found a sword in one of the rooms. It was made of rank 5 spirit metal and was fairly large. The same rank as the sword I currently owned. It would sell for a decent amount, but it wasn’t what I wanted to find.

After putting it in one of my spatial rings, we kept exploring. We rested in one of the corner rooms, that evening. It was incredibly stressful as we took turns keeping watch. The next day I looked for another building to explore that wasn’t packed full of zombies.

Eventually I found another building, but I spent the entire day checking on the patrol routes and timing. There was no need to rush. Rushing was how we would end up dead. It was much better to take our time and avoid confrontation wherever possible.

We just needed to take things slow and steady and hope we would hit the jackpot. I absolutely needed that null metal no matter what.