The Window

According to what Lucian had learnt of the Spirit Orchid Field, the surroundings would feel vaguely different as they approached, like a shift in atmosphere, or a change in the quality of air.

Alas, neither he nor Tess had felt anything of the sorts as they continued to travel. They'd approached the rough area the field could be found in, but at the slow and alert pace they traveled, it would take a while to actually discover the field.

At one point, as Tess walked in front, Lucian saw her hair drift upwards without wind or reason, and immediately did as he had become accustomed to doing over the past few days.

His Life Domain exploded forth, pulsing out from him with force enough to shake the surroundings as it filled a large area, pushing back the fog by 10 meters, as six invisible figures were revealed floating in the air around them; every one almost entirely translucent with disfigured features and long claws.

The once invisible ghosts all recoiled as his domain pushed past them, their immaterial bodies erupting in brilliant golden flames as they shrieked, and Tess struck with her palms like a deadly hurricane, delivering the final blow to every one of her would-be ambushers.

Lucian did not move, as there was no need. He simply stood and waited for Tess' movements to die down before retracting his domain of life and letting the fog fall on them again.

With a deep thud, Lucian's heavy foot hit the ground as they continued to walk on.

With every day that passed the two became increasingly used to fending off the threats in this place. They did not pursue any noise in the fog, as most were deadly illusions, and always kept their minds primed for action.

Simpler encounters, like that most recent one, happened the most. Wandering ghosts were not an issue, it was only the strange apparitions that gave them pause, like the phantom heartbeats, or a spiritual doppelganger they had run into at one point.

As they traveled, Lucian often found himself pondering over a developmental rut he'd found himself in. He was lost on how to advance his two self-created techniques; the Bloodbond, and the condensation of blood, which he had come to call Boundless Condensation. The two were both created through a fusion of his Grand Life Tome's methods, and the Sanguine Control technique.

When he had created the bloodbond, it had been a method to steal and control foreign blood, achieving two things:

Firstly, a source of expendable blood, as his own was important. Secondly, while his withering ability now truly lived up to its name, its efficacy was even greater when combined with his bond's ability to steal blood.

But now it was proving to be too restricted for his needs. He could control his own blood far better than he could someone else's, and that lack of control in his bloodbond was becoming a problem.

Furthermore, with Boundless Condensation having been practiced to this level, every drop of his blood could be decondensed to fill a bowl, or forge half a weapon, so he had as much expendable blood within him as he could possibly need.

If that was the case, why not replace the bloodbond with one of his own blood? All reason says to do so. But Lucian just couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something. That the bloodbond, forged of stolen blood, had further potential he just couldn't put his finger on.

It was a frustrating sensation, like trying to remember the specifics of a dream, or having a word on the tip of your tongue and being unable to recall it. He was missing something, and he almost knew what, he just… didn't yet.

As for the Boundless Condensation technique, Lucian had no idea what to do with it in the future. Sure, condensed blood could absorb more lifeforce than normal, every drop of it being considered a 'psuedo-lifeblood', but that didn't mean he could truly transform all of his blood.

The end of the lifeblood realm was marked by the body's inability to sustain any more lifeblood, thus his full body of pseudo-lifeblood would forever be just that. So, what else could he do with it? What was the next stage for the Boundless Condensation technique?

That too, he could not piece together just yet.

As he thought on the matter, Lucian felt as if the air had grown chillier. It was always cold in this place, incredibly so, but this was… different.

It was like an immaterial coldness he couldn't quite explain.

Tess looked back and exchanged a glance with him before smiling.

"Almost there. Just follow that feeling!" She said with a growing smile before picking up the pace, Lucian right behind her.

The strange coldness grew increasingly pronounced as they moved, chilling them to the bones, or perhaps their souls, neither knew.

When finally the dense fog began to thin and fade from view, the two found themselves within a beautiful clearing, filled with majestic scenery. Silvery, crystal like roots arched over the ground, before burying themselves once more. Shining silvery-white flowers bloomed all over the field, a mystical aura about them.

In the center of the clearing, a translucent lake shone, drops of it's waters suspended in the air above.

What looked like statues too could be found, not of stone or marble, but of silvery plant life and crystalline features. Some resembled men, and others beasts.

Tess' eyes darted to the lake suspiciously, while Lucian eyed the statues. Neither let their excitement get the best of them as they approached slowly and cautiously, inspecting the potential dangers with every method available to them.

When Lucian confirmed that the statues were not anything living or undead, and Tess discovered a subtle upward jet of qi suspending the drops of water above the lake, the two relaxed slightly.

Lucian breathed in deeply as he closed his eyes for a brief moment, feeling the surroundings.

The immaterial chill was much more pronounced now, and to Lucian's senses, it reminded him of an open window in a heated room during winter. The cold air was so out of place it announced to all within that somewhere, there was an opening to the 'outside'.

Lucian knew that in this case, the 'outside' was the spirit realm. It was for this reason that no one ever plucked every Spirit Orchid in the field. Everyone who had the right to enter this place legally, and knew the location of the Spirit Orchid Field, were of the sects, nobility, or militaries of the various kingdoms, and they all used this place to help train every generation.

If plucked, a Spirit Orchid would serve as a great cultivation resource for daoists, housing large amounts of qi. But if left where they were, rooted in the ground they grew in, the Spirit Orchids would act as a window through the already thin barrier of the realms in this place, allowing cultivators to perceive beyond and gain insight in the dao.

Tess sat quietly in an open area, and Lucian sat behind her, his back to hers.

"You can go first" He said. "I have some things to work out in the meanwhile."

"Alright, tap me after a few hours." She replied quickly, eager to close her eyes and meditate.

Sitting in the middle of the field, the two would take shifts like this, one person digesting their gains and keeping watch, while the other meditated.

While waiting for Tess to finish her first session of meditation, Lucian's mind wandered back to the many crimson carnation flowers within the mist.

'I wonder if there is a way to pluck those flowers without making them sound the phantom heartbeat. I'm fairly certain it is our lifeforce the flowers are detecting, but I've tried hiding my lifeforce plenty of times in the estate, and it never worked.

'If I could get my hands on all those carnations, the sheer amount of life within them would aid my cultivation greatly.'

His inner voice had a tinge of yearning as he considered the prospect, but alas no solution to the problem was forthcoming. While the phantom heartbeat would not be a direct danger, now that he knew what he was doing, it would attract the things in the fog.

Lucian knew better than to assume he could best everything within this place. There were many apparitions he would likely be doomed against due to their mysterious nature. Not everything here was undead after all, and not all the undead could be so easily burnt by his flames.

Lucian let out a small sigh. He felt there were a hundred things he wanted to try, a thousand techniques to develop, and a million possibilities to pursue, but he was only one man, and he needed to prioritize.

'For now, let's focus on the bloodbond.'

Willing his crimson bladed sword out of its sheath, Lucian rested it across his lap. The hilt and guard were still black and silver, following the will of his glamour, but the blade was left red. He felt it had a certain intimidation factor in battle. Even if it was only subtle, every advantage was one to take.

Clearing his mind of anything unnecessary, Lucian split his thoughts between theorizing about the bloodbond and listening in to things in the surroundings. He did not close his eyes, lest a silent apparition avoid his other senses.

After a few hours had passed, Lucian tapped Tess on the shoulder gently and then waited. It was best to simply notify the other party that time was up, and then wait for them to finish their thoughts, rather than shaking them out of it and ruining a potential insight.

Five minutes later, when she opened her eyes, Tess took a deep breath and absentmindedly whispered "you're up" before losing herself in thought.

Closing his eyes, Lucian cleared his mind and felt for the 'window' that surrounded him. It was a strange sensation, like a closed window beyond which only a very blurry image was visible, and no matter how he struggled, Lucian would never be able to open that window to reach out.

All he could do was focus on the blurry scenery, and try to make out the sensations beyond.

It felt like… chaos. Like a million shades of colors splattered randomly, or a thousand voices all talking over each other. The more Lucian tried to focus on them all, the more distant and undecipherable they felt.

Instead, he tried to focus on one voice, one colour, one intent. Gradually, the others began to vanish from his senses, as if moving far away, and Lucian was able to more clearly perceive the one he had chosen, as if the blurry window had become clear.

It was a wonderful experience he couldn't put into words. It was a whole new sense. Not like lifesense, that had began as an extension of his vision, and was represented in part with visuals even now that it surpassed sight. This sense, this feeling of the plains beyond, was something wholly new that he'd have never been able to imagine without experiencing it.

Like sight to one born blind, or sound to someone who has never heard.

When this new sense focused on just one among an infinite number of things, he found the subject of his scrutiny familiar. He did not know what it was, nor why he found it familiar. In fact, even as he tried to recall his cultivation and techniques to find similarities, he found he didn't remember what cultivation was. What had he been trying to recall?

Time passed at a snail's pace as Lucian explored this sensation and considered the many changes and distinctions within it. It was often… similar to warmth, and was more positive than negative, but even that was not set in stone. It felt… nourishing, while at the same time forceful.

After many hours had passed, a soft tapping on his shoulder jolted Lucian out of his amnesiac trance, as the sensations dulled with the return of his sense of touch.

'Ah, right. It's time to go.' he thought wistfully.

He still held a strand of something, like a thought he'd been in the middle of. Not wanting to let it go, Lucian let himself fall one foot back into that trance, to follow up on the thought. He did not know what it was, for it could not be put into words, but he felt as if it made sense. Like a vague understanding, that words had not been invented to describe.

When that thread came to an end, Lucian withdrew from that realm, taking his eyes from the window, and opening them as his senses returned to reality.

He sat open eyed and confused for a while, as the many things he felt and understood at the window began to dull and fade, like the memories of a dream. With an absent minded whisper, he said "you go", before closing his eyes and trying to digest what he had learned.

He was sure he had forgotten most of it, those insights and ideas fleeing back to the other side of the window. But he remembered some of it, and still held memory of just a few of those ever changing sensations that belonged to the plain he had witnessed.

The Plain of Life.

While the dao was not involved in the path of an augmenter, that did not reduce the profundity of it, nor did that exclude the dao as a source of learning and inspiration.

Taking a deep breath, Lucian felt glad he had come here with Tess. The insights that lay beyond the window here would aid him greatly in escaping this rut he'd found himself in.

Smiling, he looked forward to his next visit to the realm beyond.