Chapter 132
To Flee or to Fight
Lu Yang, Liang, and Yue (she insisted) departed at the crack of dawn, not even staying for breakfast. Leo, as well as some of his furry friends, escorted them some ways away before he spun around and went back to the camp, just in time at that. Shui'er came out yawning and wiping her eyes, greeting him absentmindedly before she passed by him and went to the pond for her early morning bath.
Azariel came out, too, though he was already awake—he was always awake, howeve. Unlike the others, he hadn't yet chanced upon the beauty of sleep, electing to cultivate and meditate instead. He nodded as Leo pointed around at the various campfires that needed some flames. The man did it without protest, speeding up what was usually a rather tedious part of Leo's morning.
"When will they be back?" he struck up a conversation in the midst of it.
"I don't know," Leo replied. "Depends. Why?"
"Just curious."
"It will give us more chance to not talk about what happened with that woman," Leo said as Azariel glanced over at him with a rather frustrated look in his eyes, clicking his tongue and swiftly looking away. "I'm not judging."
"You are."
"Inwardly, though. It's the best you could hope for."
"Still unwarranted," the man said.
"... should I not have killed them?"
"You should have," Azariel said. "They were pestilence, as before, so now. They got away with everything because their Grandfather was one of the False Immortals, and because he fed them both the Poshi Flower. Not because they earned it, or even because he earned it—rather, he defied the laws and simply gave it to them." Leo listened without interjecting. "It is just that--" he paused, catching himself and sighing right after. "They were a stain and would have done irreparable damage not just to the Forest but to the rest of the world were they allowed to run amok. Which begs the further question," he added, looking over at Leo rather strangely. "How did you kill him? Xaia, I understand—her compulsion was rather weak, and anyone with marginal willpower could resist her long enough to kill her. Xu, on the other hand, was... different. His physique was inordinately compatible with Poshi Flower, and gave him an equal measure of compulsory powers.
"Even False Immortals, if entirely unprepared, would fall under him for ever a moment. So, how was it that you killed him... and taken upon yourself no wounds?"
"..." Leo pondered for a moment whether to divulge the truth but chose against it. Though he didn't think Azariel would betray him anytime soon, anyway, he did not trust the man enough to speak about something that was especially the reason he was put in a time chamber. If he'd told him he achieved what his ancestors deemed to be the only way to ascend past Earthly Immortal (whatever that was), he couldn't quite predict the man's reaction. "Do you want me to lie or say nothing?"
"... very well," he shrugged it off as the flames beneath the cauldrons began to roar. "All that matters is that they're gone. As I said, leaving them alive would have caused dire consequences. I imagine they have already wiped out all the other groups here?"
"To my knowledge," Leo nodded, taking out buckets of the water as Azariel and he started pouring it into cauldrons.
"You starting a Sect," he asked, his voice a notch quieter. "Is that... is that because of, you know?"
"That debased thing in our basement? A bit, yes," Leo nodded, smiling at the man rolling his eyes. "I've already pegged you for a position as an Elder."
"Aren't you afraid?" He paused, straightening up suddenly and facing him. Leo fell silent and followed, flames between them flickering.
"Terrified," Leo said.
"Then... how? You saw that thing," his voice was a whisper. "That... ungodly abomination! Even if it were bereft of any Qi, its sheer mass would be enough to lord over the realms! And Gods know that thing was not bereft of Qi!"
"What's the alternative?" Leo quizzed. "Run? Where? You yourself said that this entire place was a hidden realm. That there's nothing else besides it. Kick the fight down the line and let the kids figure it out while I spend my last days in a drunken squalor?"
"..."
"There are times in life when you don't get to make a choice, Aza," Leo said. "And, instead, the choice is made for you. Now, you can ignore it, you can run from it, you can ignore it. All those are reasonable things to do, after all. But the choice's consequences arrive all the same. If an army of cultivators were invading the Ashlands instead, would you fight? What if it were an army of phoenixes? Or perhaps Qilin? Where is the breakaway point for you when you say, 'Okay, this is something that's too big; how can we fight?'
"Besides," Leo chuckled. "What else am I going to do? Go fishing? I was never good at it. I look around and see... everything that I've built here. And I choose to fight. Now, I'm not asking you to fight Aza—far from it. If you feel the quake in your knees on that day, run. I will give you the wind, even. All I ask is that you help stoke the flames a bit, for now."
"I'll fight," he squeezed between his teeth. "Of course, I will fight!" he looked almost offended that Leo presumed he'd run, surprising the latter a bit. "Guilt bleeds in my veins, and the only way to exorcise it is to fight the demons my ancestors caused. I just... I just want to know how you are so calm. That's all I want to be—calm. To not feel this... agonizing, almost, restlessness and terror. How can you all just close your eyes and fall asleep at night, like mortals, and not be haunted all night long?"
"Well, for starters," Leo said, sitting down by a boulder, taking out the chopping board and vegetables, and going to town on them. "You could just... try it. It's not magic, just another choice we make, Aza."
"Uncle Leo, Uncle Aza!" Shui'er broke out like thunder, sprinting over and throwing herself into Leo's lap. "Where is everyone else?"
"Ah, they left the Forest for a little bit," Leo said.
"Oh. Did... did they not want to take me?" she quizzed in a low voice.
"You wanted to go?" Leo asked.
"Hm."
"I'm sorry," he said with a smile, patting her gently. "I didn't know. They went to do some business for me, but the next time they go, I'll ask them to take you, too."
"Oh, okay!" her spirits lifted, she shuffled at the boiling water in the cauldrons, her stomach suddenly growling.
"Ha ha," Leo laughed as she growled back at him. "Okay, okay. Give me a second. Ah, here they come. Go greet them; by the time you're done, so will be the breakfast."
Azariel still wasn't completely used to seeing the swarm of animals break between the trees so early on in the day. He flinched and hunkered down, making himself as invisibly small as he could. Leo merely smiled at the sight, quickly chopping through all the ingredients and tossing them into the cauldrons.
With all the fanfare in the past couple of weeks, he'd never gotten around to hunting, so they were still eating the vegetable stew. Truthfully, he was getting a bit tired of it; though still delicious and invigorating, he began yearning for those 'cheat meals,' as it were. He wanted poultry, he wanted fish, he wanted souffle--or, really, anything with eggs.
These weren't just immediate and temporary concerns, either—if the Sect establishment went well, he'd soon have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of kids to feed, and however delicious the stew was, he imagined they'd get bored rather quickly of it. While the meat stew was a good curveball here and there, it was still just two meals.
But, try as he might, he could not find a body of water with fish in it; he could not find any animals laying eggs (well, save for the Long Janeson, who was still hunkered down in her bunker), but even if he did, it wasn't as though he would take them. This meant that he'd have to establish some kind of a trade with people on the outside.
Furthermore, now knowing the kinds of effects that his food (largely because of the ingredients used) had on the body, he knew it would have to become a reward rather than a standard.
There were so many things to consider, and he seldom knew where to begin.
Shui'er greeted every animal with a hug—whether they were 'pretty,' or fluffy, or 'ugly,' she did not discriminate. By now, all the animals knew her and loved her, and they'd all let her ride them if they were remotely big enough. And she'd laugh and spew words of love every which way, and there'd never be silence.
By the time the stew was done, the first batch walked up; Leo quickly distributed several dozen platefuls worth of food, all of which were gobbled up in less than a minute, vanishing as though he never made them to begin with. Then another dozen platefuls, then another, then another...
It would be a full two hours before he himself could sit down and eat. Animals had either dispersed, retreated into the longhouse for a nap, or were sunbathing out in the open. There were some usual suspects hanging around Shui'er who, too, was planted on the ground, lying flat on her back, and even around Leo.
Hoot and Red, though they did play with Shui'er, still seemed to love him ever so slightly more. Whenever possible, they'd find him and plant themselves on either one of his shoulders. When there was nobody else to talk to—like now, since Azariel had gone to take a bath—he'd ramble randomly at the two of them, burying the silence.
"--You know, there's this strange principle, right?" He said, taking a sip of fruit juice. "Imagine someone locks you up in a hypothetical box, and in that box, there's also a vial of poison. Now, to the world outside the box, you're both dead and alive—at once! Until they open the box and check, it's a toss-up." Hoot hooted, and Red called out, swinging over to the front. "Insane, I know. Anyway, the point is that nothing exists in one state. Reality's just a bunch of strange probabilities, all until we take a look—and then... well, then, there's an outcome." Red looked at him confusedly for a moment before swinging back around and lying against his back. "What? Did I bore you? This is good stuff, I promise! Okay, okay, listen to this—there's this thing called the Riemann Hypothesis, right? So, there are prime numbers, and prime numbers are very important numbers, and they can't be broken down--" Whether Hoot and Red understood, or even bothered listening, Leo didn't really know. He rattled on and on, something he did often, in a bid to remember all those fascinating things from Earth that were in danger of just... disappearing from his mind.
He didn't think they'd have any practical application, far from it, but the sensation of forgetting was... beyond terrifying. Thus, he committed himself to his ramblings, however incoherent they may sound to the animals. They did stick around, at the very least, as they often did—sometimes they appeared engaged, sometimes it looked like they were listening in to the most boring lecture at the university, and sometimes Leo himself was stumbling through a concept that he barely understood back on Earth (if that) and had certainly forgotten most of it by now. That was his life—marvelous and unburdened, and perfect in so many strange little ways.