Chapter II: Unfriendly Visitors II
Shizukana Gake
Heian Kingdom
The Great Plateau
Month of the Pangolin 2, 172 ,328 DE
As we enter the plaza fronting the lords manor, a disdainful awareness sweeps over us, but after passing us by, it turns back and focuses on me. A heavy presence slams into my own awareness and pushes toward the outer boundaries of my Mind. The force behind the presence tears through my awareness like a club punching through rice paper.
While halting my steamer bike, I turn the majority of my attention to the Realm of Mind. The flow of time seems to slow. While the attacking awareness batters its way through my own awareness, I wrap my awareness around the hostile one, clinging to it like cobwebs. My intention is not to defend or slow the invading awareness. I only want to examine it unnatural structure.
My awareness can be considered an extension of my senses. Its purpose is to perceive and gather information through the Realm of Mind. It spreads outward from my mind like a gossamer web, picking up information from everything it touches upon. Since becoming a Triune, I can use Trinity to expend on its range, but that takes conscious effort. Even were I not a Triune but still able to control Psi, I could use Psi for the same purpose to similar effect. Ever since developing a true awareness, I have yet to encounter a Cultivator that can perceive it.
The dense club of awareness battering its way through my own is different. It is a thick mass of Power. Formed from a core of what feels like polluted Psi, the Power that Cultivators call Mind Force, threads of Yuan Qi give it a cone-like shape. More than a sense, this awareness has the feel of a Martial technique formed in the Realm of Mind as opposed to the Realm of Body. It has all the subtlety of breaking down a door with a sledgehammer to hear listen to a conversation on the other side.
Before the attacking awareness can directly impact my Mind, I weave a net of Trinity. A the club of awareness slams into the Trinity net, the net gives way at first, but the further the club pushes forward, the more the net resists. When the club can come not closer, I wrap the net around its end to keep it from escaping. The net is not a proper Mind technique. It is more like a brute force application of Trinity, but it still trumps the crude mixture of Yuan Qi and Mind Force in that club of awareness. Despite thrashing around wildly with the club of awareness, the Cultivator does not manage to free it from my grasp.
Sending out a thread of Trinity, I trace the club back to the Shokaku class battleship, but as the thread nears the airship, the club of awareness dissipates. Since the airship feels even more unnatural with my Trinity thread near it, I withdraw the thread.
My steamer bike comes to a complete halt, and I lower the support stands. Vorn, having noticed my bike stopping, rides his in a circle and comes to a stop next to me.
As Vorn follows my line of sight to the battleship, he frowns. "Something bothering you with that battleship?"
The Shokaku class battleships have a completely different design from any other airships east of the Kami Kaze Mountains. Instead of having a gas bag superstructure with a gondola section beneath, the Shokaku class was built like a dowel with a flattened top and a keep-like superstructure rising from the middle. Its design is similar to a ship meant to float on water. The Engineering journal articles on the class estimates it to have ten to fifteen centimeter thick outer armor, which should make it weigh far too much to fly. The Engineers on the Great Plateau lack a clear enough understanding of gravity and how to counter it. There is no way they should be able to craft sigil that would let that mass of metal fly.
"There is a Cultivator on that airship, who practices Mind Force techniques. You didn't notice his probe?"
Vorn glances at me. "Him? You're sure its a man?"
"Males and females have vast differences in the Bodies, Minds, and Souls. Even with the way Cultivators try to make their Bodies look like Okama bitches, you can still easily tell a male from a female. It's no different with the Mind and Soul."
Vorn frowns. "I don't know if I would say it's easy to tell with all of them. Some Cultivators look so much like women, I need to look for a visibly protruding larynx. But I encountered one that didn't even have proper cartilage developed around his larynx."
Narrowing my eyes, I stare at Vorn. "You don't even need to look at them. Their scent gives them away."
"You have a dog's nose."
"Go fuck a cat."
"Asshole."
After stopping his steamer car at the front gate of the City Lord's manor, Hoshi realizes we are not with him. He leans out of the cockpit and looks back at us. With his natural lack of guile, his confusion is plain to see on his moon-like face.
"Hey, Beast! Come on!"
"Get away from there!" Feeling the wildly surging Yuan Qi from multiple Cultivators rushing toward the gate, I do not move any closer.
While looking more confused, Hoshi continues to stare at me.
"Fat pig commoner! Get out of the way!" Waves of Yuan Q infuse the Cultivator's shout. From the Yuan Qi's intensify, the Cultivator should be at the peak of Foundation Building or the beginning of Core Formation. He is far stronger than Hoshi, who has yet to break into Qi Condensation.
Whatever else Hoshi may be, he is still the son of the current Clan Leader of Clan Okada. He has his pride. With his moon-like face turning the color of a blood moon, he spins around.
Sense a huge wave of Yuan Qi building, I channel Trinity into my muscles and spring into a sprint.
"Fuck you, asshole! I'm a no-" Hoshi's angry shout abruptly cuts off, and he dives out of his steamer car.
Boom!
As a ball of fiery Yuan Qi plows into the front of Hoshi's steamer car, the explosion sends shard of broken metal flying. The level of Yuan Qi in the fire ball was nowhere near enough to destroy the armor on the front of Hoshi's steamer car. Its destructive power must have been enhanced by a Martial technique, one a level or two beyond anything possessed by the clans or Shizukana Gake.
"AAAAARRRRR!"
A jagged, ten centimeter wide, shard of armor pierces Hoshi's leg, just below his hip. Blood sprays from the wound. As Hoshi rolls onto his back, clutching his leg, his agonized scream echoes tragically in the plaza.
Reaching Hoshi in less than two seconds, I sink my awareness into his leg. The armor shard shattered his femur and tore the artery apart. Forming a thread of Trinity, I insert it into Hoshi's leg and use it to temporarily tie off the ruined artery.
While I unbuckle my weapons belt and strip the knife sheathes from it, a group of Cultivators walk out from the gate of the City Lord's manor.
"Ha-ha-ha! If that trash commoner lives, he'll know better than to talk back to a noble." The voice is the same as the one that shouted earlier. With him being in the range of my awareness, his peak Foundation Establishment Cultivation stands out.
Over the past month, I have refined my ability to measure the Cultivation level of Cultivators, but I need to have them close enough for my awareness to perceive their patterns and Dantians clearly. There are probably Martial or Cultivation techniques that obfuscate Cultivation levels, but I have yet to encounter one.
While wrapping my belt around Hoshi's leg as a tourniquet, I look over the Cultivators. There are ten of them, all around the same age as Hoshi to maybe a three years older. Seeing how the group stands in relation to one another, the speaker, who is rather bulky and brutish-looking for a Cultivator, is not the leader. He, also, does not have the highest cultivation, only being at the peak of Foundation Building. A real okama-looking bastard, who has Cultivation clearly in the Core Formation realm, appears to be the leader. He has two female Cultivators clinging onto either arm, and both girls have broken into the Formation Establishment realm. The rest of the Cultivators consist of four males and two females, all near or at the peak of Qi Condensation.
Based on Cultivation levels, the scions of the noble clans of Shizukana Gake really are nothing but trash when compared these ten.
With the tourniquet binding Hoshi's leg, I stand, and moving closer to the ten, I stare at the okama-looking leader. "What's an okama doing with two bitches hanging onto him. Shouldn't you be bending over and spreading your ass cheeks for the loudmouth?"
Except for the leader, the other Cultivators face momentarily pale before flushing crimson. The loudmouth springs at me and flaming Yuan Qi wraps around his fist. It does not look like a martial technique, just a brute force manipulation of Power.
Squatting down, I duck under the straight punch, and hammer an upper cut into the loudmouth's balls. The burst of Trinity I release on impact tears through his internal organs, and the force of my punch send him flying five meters into the air.
As I step back to avoid the falling loudmouth, none of the other nine cultivators says word. With shocked expressions, the eight flunkies look at their okama leader.
I spit on the dying loudmouth. "You looks more like shit than trash."
The okama-looking leader stares at me with a bored expression. "Gaijin dog, if you do not want your entire family of clan to die with you, kneel down, castrate yourself, and pull out your intestines with your own hands."
I put on my most obnoxious smirk. "I can't decide if I should puke at the sight of your okama bitch appearance or laugh at your stone stupid idiocy."
The okama smiles derisively and point behind himself. "I have the Shinobiyoru Tora . I can level your city and not even the frog-in-a-well Heian King will dare to say a word."
"Ichi-sama. If you do not wish to become an enemy of Grandmaster Jones, that would not be advisable." The statement comes from a man standing just inside the gate of the City Lord's manor, Otoko no Kage. Next to him, the City Lord glances at the collection of noble trash before focusing his attention on me.
Unlike Otoko no Kage, who still has a somewhat masculine appearance, the City Lord very much exemplifies the androgynous appearance of the normal higher realm Cultivators. He looks to be middle-aged, but with his Martial Lord realm Cultivation, that could mean he is easily over two hundred years old. If he were from a kingdom, sect, or empire with a strong heritage in Cultivation techniques, a middle-aged Martial Lord would probably be at least five to six hundred years old, but for the Heian Kingdom, a Martial Lord will be luck to live more than six hundred years and showing his age at that point.
"Raymon-kun, go home! Do not cause more trouble for me."
I give the City Lord a mocking smirk. "That shitty old man left me in control of the Watch Tower. You know what that means? Don't you City Bitch-kun?
