Chapter XVII: The Sengoku Empire II
Sengoku Empire
The Great Plateau
Month of the Pangolin 7, 172 ,328 DE
After a two days and two nights, we pass by a border fort on the southern border of the Sengoku Empire. An uninhabited wilderness lies between the northern border of the Heian Kingdom and the Sengoku Empire, and a string of forts run along the north bank of the river that marks the Sengoku Empire's border. Less than two hundred years ago, the wilderness was another kingdom, but it was overrun and destroyed in a Beast Tide. Despite the Heian Kingdom and the Sengoku Empire laying claim to large tracts of the land, the descendants of the Beasts still dominate most of the wilderness.
The border forts have multiple cannons, but they are huge monstrosities meant to hurls sixty centimeter shells into masses of land bound targets. With no means to stop an airship, the border forts do not act as border-crossing or customs agents for air transport. They only serve to pass on a warning to the air patrols. While probing the interior of the fort with a thread from Telepathy , I find a communications officer sending a message about the Silver Princess via a far talker.
In less than half an hour, a Sengoku Empire airship comes into sight. It does not follow the odd design of the Shinobiyoru Tora , rather it is standard armored dirigible. Not approaching us, instead, it parallels our course from well outside our cannon's range.
Using a Telepathy thread, I search the airship, and find a crew of thirty men, all Cultivators at or below the Foundation Establishment realm. With the exception of the five officers, all the air-sailors seem to be commoners; men drafted into the service of the Tokugawa clan. The officers are actual members of the Tokugawa clan, but low ranking ones. As part of the clan's military, guarding the southern border of the Sengoku Empire is their job.
The Sengoku Empire does have an Imperial Military, but it only controls the eastern and western borders. The kingdoms west of the Kami Kaze mountains and the Ferocious Beast of the Demonic Wildlands seem to be the greater threats in the eyes of the Imperial Government. The more powerful clans and their vassal clans control the northern and southern borders.
When Vorn and Brigitte return to the bridge, Brigitte come to the pilot station, and I turn the airship over to her. With my attention still focused on the Telepathy thread monitoring the airship, I sit on a bench by the bridge's side window.
"Beast! Look! An Iron Giant!" While point out the window, Hoshi bounces on the balls of his feet and practically screams at the top of his lungs. Since picking him up from his clan compound, he has shown a mix of silent brooding and extreme exuberance. Anything that catches his interest sets him off, and as one of the ultimate war machines east of the Kami Kaze Mountains, the Iron Giant instantly sets him off.
Even seen from a thousand meters in the above the Great Plateau, the Iron Giant stands out. At a height of around fifty meters, the Iron Giant stands as taller than any of the trees in area. It looks more or less like a man wearing green and black Bushi armor, but the built in weapons make it clear that the machine is anything but human. It has triangular blades in place of hands, and the housings and barrels of huge guns adorn its forearms would make it impossible for anyone with his limbs intact to put on such armor.
It walks along a path through the forest that is barely wider than itself. From the depth of the path, it obviously has been worn down over decades, more likely centuries. Branches and other path can be seen stretching out in all directions like lines dividing the forest. A not-to-distant town has paths completely encircling its fields. Despite the town's walls, the several kilometers of surrounding field and rice paddies give clear testament to the fact that few Ferocious Beasts of any strength survive in the area.
"Beast, can we go down for a closer look?"
"No."
Noticing our airship, the Iron Giant bend back slightly at the waist and turns its head to look up at us. The barrels of more, smaller guns stand out above huge crystal "eyes" stand out in Demonic mask of its "face". As the Iron Giant focuses on us, a Mind Force technique tries to scan us and the Silver Princess .
Releasing my Telepathy thread, I form a blade-like thread of Trinity, and break apart the technique used by the Iron Giant's Sacred Elder pilot. While stronger than the probe used by the master of the Shinobiyoru Tora , this Sacred Elder show no better grasp on using Mind-based techniques.
Like the end of a huge club, another probe thrusts toward the Silver Princess , and once more, I cut it apart with my Trinity blade. I can feel that in just the few days since I encountered the Shinobiyoru Tora , my Mind has grown far more agile, but its strength seems to have changed very little. Even so, the Sacred Elder seems to have a weaker Mind than my own. I wonder how long will the Sacred Elder play around without attacking?
Apparently feeling something from the my clashes with the Sacred Elder in the Iron Giant, the other look around suspiciously.
Forming a new thread of Telepathy , I focus my awareness into it. As the world slows down around me, I extend the thread to the Iron Giant. The entire construct has a very faint feeling of being occupied by a Mind, but it proves no impediment to my Telepathy . I easily penetrate the fragile aura and seek out the real Mind of the Sacred Elder. Within the core of the Iron Giant's chest, a metal coffin sits in the center of an armored room. Sealed inside the coffin, a Body, sitting on the edge of death, house the Mind I seek. It has a solid feel to it that has been lacking in the mind of every other Cultivator, whose mind I have touched, but it is slow to react. From its sluggishness, this Mind appears to be far too firmly attached to its Body, and it has a concrete boundaries and a rigid form. Possessing a globular shape, the lower nine-twentieth's of its volume appears to be filled with water, which is in reality the Mind Force used by Cultivators The rest of the globular space has the appearance of a cloudy sky. There is a sense of something at the center, but I would need to penetrate the globe to get a clear vision of what that might be.
The Mind exists in the Eidos, and the Eidos is the Realm of thought, knowledge, ideas, and concepts. Ideas and concepts can be considered limited forms of Names. It is possible and very likely that this Cultivator's Mind has been shaped by his, as this Sacred Elder is a male, concept of what a Mind is, but because of the nature of the Soul, there is a limit on how much the Body or Mind can be altered.
The handful of Cultivation techniques that I have read manuals for have very strange ideas about what Minds and Souls are. They are in clear and direct confrontation with reality, but if a being has strong enough belief and Power to back it up, it should be possible one to sculpt ones Mind to this degree. In all probability, the structure of this Sacred Elder's Mind should be the result of his practice of Cultivation. I need to probe more Cultivators and see if all the higher level ones have Minds like this.
Since the strength of the Sacred Elder's Mind is considerably less than its rigidity, I should have no trouble breaking into it, but I hold back. I withdraw my Telepathy thread and examine the aura of his Mind that permeates his Iron Giant. Wire of gold run throughout the construct, and they all tie back to the armored chamber with the coffin. It appears that Sacred Elder has as much awareness of the Iron Giant as any normal Martial Lord would have of his own Body. I find myself curious about how the Sengoku Empire can build such a thing. It appears more than a few secrets lie hidden within the Empire.
The Sacred Elder seals his Mind behind defenses that resemble wards crafted from Yuan Qi, and the Iron Giant seems to fall into a dormant state. It appears that the Iron Giant is directly controlled by the Mind. While the Silver Princess continues sailing toward the north, I monitor the Iron Giant until we are outside the ranges of its weapons, but the Cultivator never lowers his defenses.
After the Iron Giant disappears in the distance, we see more walled towns and more of the heavily worn trails through the forests. A few cities come into view thirty or more kilometers to the west, but we do not go near them. The farther north we travel the more towns we pass by until we cross another river, and broad plains stretch out before us. The number of towns drops to almost nothing, and small cities replace them. As the sun sets in the west, a medium size mountain can be seen rising from the otherwise flat plains.
Vorn gestures toward the mountain. "That's Onin, the capital."
I glance at Vorn. "You've been there?"
"A few weeks before heading south. It's an …interesting…place." As finishes speaking, Vorn looks toward the mountain.
With the setting of the sun, the mountain and the plains to both its east and west light up. As we draw nearer the city, its massive size becomes obvious. From the foot of the mountain, the city sprawls more than thirty kilometers to the west, but we cannot cannot how far it extends to the north. While the western city has no signs of defenses, high walls surround the part of the city tightly hugging the foot of the mountain's eastern slopes.
Vorn points towards the city. "There's an aerodrome on the north side of the western city. Stay clear of the mountain, or we'll be attacked. The east side belongs entirely to the military. You don't want to go that way."
After Brigitte looks at me, and I nod, she steers clear of the mountain and heads north over the western city.
Perfectly straight, extremely wide main roads divide the city into a grid pattern, but the layout within each section of the grid varies wildly. The manicured ground of compound and estates fill some of the quadrants. In others numerous twisting alleys make the quadrants look like a twisted balls of string. For the most part, the father north we travel the more ramshackle and dilapidated the buildings look to be. From overhead, the lighting running along the main thoroughfares stands out the most. All the light have the steady actinic glare of electric lighting.
Electric lighting originated in the Sengoku Empire, to the best of my knowledge, it has not made much in the way of inroads to the kingdoms and empires west of the Kami Kaze Mountains. If it were not for Old Man Jones, the Heian Kingdom would have to import all their electric generators and lighting from the Sengoku Empire.
