World Tree

As he walked out of the trees and into the clearing formed by the battle the previous week, Chún nodded, but he was too absorbed in surveying the fantastic changes to the landscape around him,compared to the last time he had been here, to respond verbally.

Even without using Essence sense, everything shimmered with Elemental power. It reminded him of the first time Yijing had shown him into the deeper areas of the Mountain - how he had noticed that everything glowed with Essence mist and sparkles of Essence motes drifting from every tree, plant, rock, flower and stream.

He had gotten used to seeing that, so much so that he hardly noticed it anymore. This was especially so because the Heaven and Earth Vine had so much free floating Essence pouring off of it, that the clearing and cave he lived in was almost completely shrouded in thick Essence mist as well as lit by Essence motes and Dao patterns in the mist almost constantly. This usually made the other parts of the mountain he travelled through seem drab in comparison.

This however…

There was so much Essence in the air, that Chún's head was humming and he was feeling his skin prickle. Light seemed to bend in strange ways and seemed tinted orange. Pink grass, silver water in the stream, glowing blue leaves…

The closer he got to the entrance of the small canyon where once evil flowed forth, the stranger things got. The rocks of the cliff had transformed into transparent Essence Crystal and shone blindingly in the refracted light of the Golden Crow, casting rainbows across the clearing.

A sudden rush of air and rustling made him look up and he saw an enormous swarm of colourful butterflies passing overhead and flying into the small canyon, trailing glowing Essence dust in their wake.

The Sound of Essence, that he normally only heard deep in meditation, when igniting Essence sources or when dawn hit the Mountain seemed all around him now. He reached the opening in the cliff face and stopped in front of it.

Wonderingly, he reached out and touched the side of the crystal cliff with his right hand. The wall reacted with a ripple of colour that bounced off the other crystals and spread through the wall like a rock dropped in a lake; touching off new ripples has it hit new shapes within the crystalline cliff face.

The Crystal was cool to the touch, but hummed with barely leashed power, so much so that Chún immediately felt all his hair bristle. If he had still had body hair, he was sure all of it would have been standing straight up.

Involuntarily he gasped and realised he was actually finding it hard to breath.

"Friend? What is happening?" he asked up the link with some effort.

"My apologies, nothing serious, just a small miscalculation. Please stay still for a moment," requested the Mountain.

Chún thought he probably ought to feel alarmed, but could not bring himself to care, standing with his hand on the crystal cliff and watching the colours race around. It reminded him of his Essence flow, He felt himself sink into a light meditative state and was happy to see that indeed the flow of his own Essence matched the patterns he could see in the wall.

There was a sound like liquid falling and the surface of the cliff an arm span to his right melted to the ground into a puddle of crystal. Chún watched all of this curiously, absently wondering if it happened a lot. He guessed it probably did not, or there would not be any cliff left.

There was an odd bubbling sound and the liquid flowed upward coalescing into a transparent statue of an inhumanly perfect, beautiful woman facing him - wearing elegant robes, her hair caught up by a phoenix crown - with wide pupil-less eyes that glowed faintly with Essence. After a moment, the statue tilted its head to the left and despite the lack of any expression in its face or pupils in its eyes, Chún got the distinct feeling it was considering him.

He thought that it was a pity he could not move, or he would bow or something. He watched with interest as Essence flowed through the statue as her head straightened and she walked unhurriedly towards him, stopping a fraction from his outstretched arm.

The statue covered the hand he had touching the cliff face with its left hand and his right arm dropped free from the crystal cliff wall falling to his side, with his hand still clasped in the crystal statue's. There was a sudden rush of Essence flowing out of his arm into the statue and if it was not for the implacable grip he would have staggered as his ears popped and his head spun, suddenly feeling like he had been struck by lightning.

Shaking his head he realised he was breathing normally again. There was movement beside him - looking to his left at the statue, he saw its features ripple and shift until it was standing beside him - but now the statue was facing forward in the same direction as he was, her left hand still holding his right.

The statue started walking forward through the crystalline canyon at the same pace as before, pulling him along with her.

"Follow her," instructed his locus.

"Who is she?" asked Chún as he stumbled then regained his balance, adjusting his pace to match the statue's.

"Not a who. It is a Crystal Empress. It is a higher level of guardian than the Lord you met a few days ago in my Dao node. She is draining away the excess Essence you are accumulating this close to the World Tree," explained the Mountain.

"Oh. What happened?" asked Chún as he followed the statue's unhurried pace - not that he had much choice, with his hand locked in her crystal grip. At least it gave him time to observe the increasingly unlikely sights around him - plants bloomed in profusion; crazy riots of colour hanging from the Essence plants that grew from the canyon walls.

The scent of flowers hung cloyingly in the air until it was almost sickening and visible, his footsteps throwing up clouds of fallen petals and sparkling pollen.

Here and there were what seemed to be small flying people darting from flower to flower, hauling tiny buckets of glowing Essence pollen of different colours back and forth. The little creatures saw him and fluttered about in agitation, gathering mid air in clumps to point and shout with sharp birdlike sounds. A few appeared noticeably frightened, darting further back as the statue hauled him close, a few braver ones darting out, coming closer, then rushing back to the main groups, most returning to work as he was pulled further away.

"A True Cultivator's body is designed to channel Essence - especially so in your case as it has been reconstructed several times at this point. You always channel Essence through your body from your surroundings - here the amount of Essence coming in exceeds your body's ability to channel it back out - you were approaching burnout just standing there," responded his locus, " I requested a guardian be sent to help and she agreed. The Crystal Empress will allow you to spend time here without overloading."

They came out of the canyon into the open space that had once been a giant crater, but was now almost completely occupied by a single tree glowing brighter than the Golden Crow.

It was so large it felt like standing in front of an endless wall, the curve was so shallow. Upward, it extended without visible limit, the branches lost somewhere in the clouds.

"Wow, you really grew," Chún blurted as he gazed at the shifting, glowing, Dao patterns on the bark in front of him as they shifted slowly through a rainbow of colours. He felt like could obtain endless enlightenment, just by watching the patterns move and change.

A rustling noise pulled his attention further up the trunk and he watched in amazement as a whole segment of multi-coloured bark exploded outward into an enormous swarm of butterflies that swirled around the tree before flying out of the crater into the canyon.

The beat of thunder drums was so loud that Chún could not think - only let himself get pulled along by the current of power. He did not know how long he stood there, all of his feelings and thoughts washed away until an insistent tug on his arm pulled him out of the trance.

The Crystal Empress walked back towards the canyon exit, pulling him along with her.

Chún managed a hasty bow. "Farewell, Glad to see you are well," he managed to get out before he was pulled insistently away from the tree and back along the flower filled crystal canyon. He noticed the flowers and plants seemed a lot brighter now, then realised it was because dusk was falling.

The Crystal Empress pulled him out of the canyon, across the clearing and into the tree line, then gave him a strong physical push, letting go of his hand as it threw him ten paces into the forest, sending him crashing to the forest floor in a flurry of leaf litter.

After a moment, he picked himself up and brushed himself off. "Right. Strong, silent type, clearly. I got the message. I guess collecting plants was not an option."

His cloak shifted and the Dao pots appeared. Each was filled with large amounts of herbs, plants and almost glowing Essence soil. The Dao patterns in the pots were gathering Essence at maximum capacity to keep up with their demands.

"These you cannot sell," warned the Mountain. "Bring them back to the clearing. The Essence is strong enough there that they will grow well, if not quite as vibrantly - we will add them to your garden, although they will need to be planted in the pots at first until they have adjusted. They will be grown to be used sparingly along with the other more ordinary Essence plants and herbs in the medicines I will teach you."

Chún rolled his eyes. "Ordinary' Essence herbs, he says." He leapt into the trees, travelling as quickly as he could, noticing that he was feeling stronger than he had been since the beast wave. "I rather think my concept of 'Ordinary', keeps getting redefined, my friend."

He chuckled as he bounced faster and faster from tree as if he were flying. "At this rate, I will not be able to relate to real ordinary at all anymore, soon."

"The other benefit to all that was that your body and meridians were healed and cleansed again. Your body matches a solid mid rank Sky Cultivator now."

Chún shrugged as he landed in the Heaven and Vine clearing, "The rest of me might as well not be a Cultivator at all. Whatever." He jogged over to his garden and looked at it with his Essence sense - looking for the area with the highest concentration of Essence.

"Plant them around the apple trees, they are giving off the most Essence and the new herbs will boost the seedlings and the area around them, increasing the quality of the Essence," instructed the Mountain, "Remember, leave them in the pots for now, just plant the Dao pots in the ground with the plants in them," it reminded him, "make sure the soil level is just over the top of the pots."

Following the directions of his locus, Chún planted the pots in specific locations around the two apple saplings, forming a Dao manifestation shape with the two trees at the centre that would draw Essence in and concentrate it in the area.

"This is just a formation, is this not?" queried Chún.

"Except… connect to the leftmost tree with your Essence," instructed the Mountain, "good, now like you did with the concealment formation, boost it and hold the extra overflow from the ignition."

Chún pulsed his Essence and was awarded with the sapling growing thicker and taller - about the height of his shoulder - fresh silvery leaves and faintly glowing pink flowers bursting into bloom along the branches along with a blast of Life, Earth, Wood and Water Essence motes as it advanced.

The ignition wave crashed outward and was almost immediately swallowed up by the newly planted herbs and plants, a slight brightening the only sign that they had just swallowed a lot of Essence.

"Good," approved the Mountain, before continuing, "now feed that line of Essence power into the first herb, make sure to pulse your Essence into the herb as you connect. It will not advance, but a small excess will be generated - and the herb will let you keep the connection - rather than taking all of the Essence from the connection - for itself."

Following the instructions of his locus, Chún connected each herb and plant together in the same order that they had been planted. By the end of the cycle, Chún felt like he was holding a sparking, hissing snake of power. The new herbs and plants may have not generated much Excess, but it was very potent and accumulated, this small Manifestation seemed to almost have as much power as the much larger one he had created before.

"Connect the power to the other apple seedling now. Be careful when you drop it into the tree - pulse with it or you will get a heavy knock back," the Mountain warned.

The thump of Essence rushing into the tree was accompanied by a much larger ignition pulse and Chún felt his body dumping Essence back out into the Dao Manifestation as the second tree also grew and ignited as it advanced, the Dao Shape reaching naturally to reconnect back onto the first apple tree. The Manifestation glowed with contained power and all the herbs and plants - as well as the apple trees lit up blazingly with Essence, lighting up the clearing as a massive fountain of Essence blasted into the air above the grouping.

Chún felt a familiar prickle against his skin as the air in the clearing grew almost waterlogged with Essence. He looked down to see the new herbs and plants were glowing as strongly as they had back in the area close to the World Tree.

Alarmed, Chún slipped into Essence Sense to see a massive cycle of Essence swirling around the clearing. Before, Essence had fallen in a roughly dome pattern from the Heaven and Earth Vine into the clearing and drifting down into the jungle, mostly settling stagnant into the clearing until the Vine reused it.

Now the Essence in the clearing was being pulled from the clearing into the garden in a massive cyclone of Energy, where it seemed to be concentrating in a tight swirl around the Manifestation that had been set up, raising the amount of Essence available to the plants and trees. The Manifestation - which included the plants and trees - pulled in that Essence and then threw out small fountains of excess Essence, which was clearly of a much higher quality and potency than the original.

The fountains threw the Essence back out into the clearing. There was also a large plume of highly concentrated fresh Essence flowing back out into the clearing from between the two Apple trees. The new plants and the Manifestation pattern was cleaning and increasing the potency of the local Essence!

Chún could see the new Essence flooding out into the clearing and being picked up by everything in and around the clearing, including the Heaven and Earth Vine, which trembled then sent a fresh plume of Essence out itself, mimicked by everything else - all of which got pulled into the swirl above the garden.

Chún dropped his Essence Sense. "Now that is how a Manifestation of a Formation is - supposed - to work," remarked the Mountain smugly, "It is also, in case you are wondering, self sustaining, it does not change the overall pattern of Essence in the clearing - it all comes back out into the clearing, strengthening it."

The young teen frowned. "Is it also - sort of - creating? After all, have we not just created a natural treasure that was not here before - which has changed things for an improvement."

"Well done," applauded his locus, "yes, this is a Creation. Something new that adds to and changes the World in a manner without damaging the rest. Her Highness says thank you, by the way - cleaner, stronger that she does not have to generate will help her a lot."

"Just paying rent, your Highness" joked Chún. The vine's leaves and branches rustled in response.

"The best part is," the Mountain laughed, "Each cycle the quality of Essence output by the Manifestation will gradually grow stronger as the overall quality of Essence already in the clearing rises. Diminishing returns mean it will not match the Essence created by the World Tree, but as The Vine advances and puts out stronger Essence herself, it will eventually come close."

"As for the amount of Essence in the Manifestation, it is strong enough and concentrated enough for the new plants now and it will only improve," opined the Mountain with satisfaction. "In fact all your plants will benefit."

Chún nodded and was about to reply when a sudden curious sounding chirp sounded. Looking down, Chún spotted a pair of familiar looking tiny creatures poke their heads out of the mists of his cloak.

"Ha!" The mountain seemed pleased, "You have picked up a pair of hitchhikers! These creatures usually take care of the plants around the World Tree and the World Tree itself. They cannot survive in areas with low Essence - the mists of the Cloak must contain enough Essence for them to have managed it… and now that the Manifestation is running, the clearing will soon have enough for them to live in too."

Chún looked at the pair who had darted over to the apple trees and appeared to be examining the apple flowers with great interest. "Will they be OK?"

"As long as they stay near or in the Manifestation most of the time, they will be fine," his locus reassured him, "They would probably manage in and around the Vine as well, especially as she advances - they will be a great help to her Highness."

"How can they help?" asked Chún in fascination.

"They will help her the same way they would the World Tree - cleaning, pruning, fighting insect infestations and so on. They eat Essence fruit and pollen which the Vine has plenty of…" his friend explained.

"Nothing I need to worry about - in other words," said Chún as he turned and walked towards the fire pit, "it is time for dinner!"