Everyone, a question for you all.
Dual Cultivation — what does it actually feel like?
In cultivation novels, Dual Cultivation is usually deployed as a stand-in for a certain activity, the better to dodge the censors.
And for run-of-the-mill cultivators — or, for that matter, for galgame veterans — Dual Cultivation tends to mean the scene you get when you unlock the final CG, which also tends to mean a relationship arriving at its perfect, finished state.
But for great powers whose lifespans run so long that their very sense of time no longer resembles an ordinary person's, such a thing seems to be little more than a way of paying respects to those years when they had not yet fully shed the mundane world.
If the Dual Cultivation in question stays strictly at the literal level — not half a step over the line — does it still count, for the two people inside it, as a major breakthrough in feeling?
For the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign, at least, it certainly did.
Under the pretext of helping him harmonize the technique, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign and Gu Chengming spent a stretch of time that was, comparatively speaking, rather intimate.
Gu Chengming's hand rested in her palm. Her fingertips ran cool. True essence seeped in through the gaps between her fingers and circulated slowly along his meridians, and the Cloud-Moon intent came flowing in behind it, like moonlight spilling through a rift in the clouds.
He could feel that force clearing the blockages for him, straightening the warp and weft, gathering up every scattered, muddled scrap of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following inside his body.
The scene really was indistinguishable from a proper session of "Dual Cultivation" — provided you ignored the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following standing beside Gu Chengming, visible to no one but him.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Following's phantom was in its CG-summoned state, its half-transparent figure pressed against his back, ten fingers laced through his own.
Gu Chengming couldn't see what was happening behind him, but he could feel the phantom's body heat with perfect clarity. The girl's presence was rather too strong.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign concentrated on ferrying her essence across. Gu Chengming shut his eyes and circulated his power, doing a very convincing impression of a man contemplating the Cloud-Moon true intent.
Which meant he had no way to explain why his forehead was beading with sweat, since nothing the Sovereign was doing crossed any line at all. At most she was holding his hand.
But there was no accounting for what the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following was getting up to on him. The girl's phantom pressed nearer and nearer, and at last simply draped herself across his lap.
In the next instant Gu Chengming's back went ruler-straight.
And of course the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign was sitting directly opposite him. One before, one behind. One moon, one flowing cloud. Gu Chengming was pinned in the middle of a most delicate sandwich.
The one in front was diligently transferring essence. The other one, well…
Gu Chengming kept his eyelids lowered and did not dare open them.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Following tightened her laced fingers a little, and perhaps because only Gu Chengming could see her, she behaved with absolutely no restraint at all — enough to give him the distinct sensation of committing a c■ime right in front of his mo■her.
Mercifully, the session did eventually end. Half an hour or so later the Sovereign's fingertips paused, and the true essence coiling through his meridians drew back like an ebbing tide.
She let go of his hand.
A patch of coolness lifted away from the back of it.
"Well?"
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign tilted her head, studying him.
Gu Chengming's face was drained of color, his brow filmed with sweat, a broad damp patch spreading across the back of his robe. He had the wrung-out look of a man who had just been thoroughly beaten.
The Sovereign blinked. All she had done was tidy up his Cloud-Moon intent a little. Granted, she had used the excuse of cultivation to get close to him, granted there had been a certain amount of private motive in it, and granted her conduct had been a touch more familiar than strictly necessary — but who could have guessed this little friend would react like that?
A flutter of anxiety rose in her, and she began auditing herself. Had she held his hand too long? Had she leaned in too close? Would the posture of the essence transfer have looked improper to an onlooker?
Had the younger generation of this age really grown so severe about the boundaries between men and women?
The tips of the Sovereign's ears quietly reddened. She lowered her eyes, and the small stirring thought that had floated up in her was pressed firmly back down.
"If my little friend felt I was too forward just now…" the Sovereign said, picking her words out slowly, "you might give me some warning next time."
Gu Chengming: "?"
It took him half a breath to catch up. Then he waved both hands in a hurry. "Senior thinks too much. This junior simply couldn't digest the Cloud-Moon true intent all at once. There was no other reason."
The trace of embarrassment in the Sovereign's eyes eased at once, and the corner of her mouth curved without her meaning it to.
Good. She let out a breath.
If it wasn't offense, then this little friend truly had struggled with grasping the true intent.
And thinking that, the small secret pleasure of maybe Gu Chengming doesn't find it unwelcome grew a shade more solid.
Moonlight filled the side chamber like still water. The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign rose, smoothed her sleeves, and nudged the dish of melon seeds — half of them already cracked open — toward him.
"Since you've gained something from it, we'll stop here for today."
Her tone was easier than before, as though she had picked back up the composure a Sixth Realm power ought to have. "Rest well, little friend. If anything troubles you tomorrow, come and find me."
At the door she paused and half turned, something unsaid on her lips, her moon-white sleeves stirring lightly against the frame. In the end she only nodded, and left.
The moonlight was shut out with her, all but a thin blade of it slipping through the gap, just enough to light the half-dish of melon seeds in front of Gu Chengming.
Gu Chengming was, in fact, somewhat annoyed. What the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following had just done really was a bit much — and entirely without his consent.
The air behind him rippled, and the sword art's phantom emerged slowly at his back, its half-transparent outline blurring like mist in the candlelight. Gu Chengming was fully prepared to give her a lecture.
"What you just did—"
He didn't finish. She wrapped her arms around him, cheek against his shoulder, and drifted slowly up toward his ear.
Her breath was like moonlight.
"Daddy."
The candle flame shivered at the word, and the bronze bell hanging from the eaves turned half a silent revolution.
[Huiyuan Sword Formula: ?]
[Hundred Bones Resonance, deeply unimpressed: How shameful. Heavenly Emperor Gu ■ed her until she's calling him Daddy.]
[Clear-Heart Formula, slightly put out: Why did she use the move I was saving?]
[Huiyuan Sword Formula: ???]
The night wind carried the damp of a distant mountain stream over the window lattice, brushed past the anger Gu Chengming hadn't yet managed to dissipate, and slipped soundlessly out through the crack of the door, chasing after the vanished moonlight.
All right. The Flowing Cloud, Moon-Following Sword Art really had undergone something of a hyper-evolution.
Gu Chengming lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking exactly that.
The current situation could hardly be blamed on him. Swap in anyone else and they wouldn't have withstood that offensive either.
And since resisting was off the table, all he could do was settle in and enjoy the CG.
The matter of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following Sword Art was settled for now. The child had gone off thoroughly satisfied.
In a certain sense, this sword art's CG was rather like running a Love Laboratory out in the real world.
Anyone here understand AR?
If the Love Laboratory is VR, then the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following's CG — [I Will Love You Until the End of Time] — is AR.
The former is more immersive. The latter hits harder.
Viewed from that angle, Miss Flowing Cloud Moon-Following had pulled off an epic overtake on the outside curve.
The business with the Yunyue Sect wasn't finished yet.
But the Sovereign's reminder had made Gu Chengming realize something: the time had come to seize the chance and settle a few scores.
They were at the tail end of a map upgrade. This stretch of time was obviously for squaring away old and new debts alike… he had always been the sort to repay every last slight, and now that the opportunity had come, the sensible thing was to finish the job while there was no risk attached.
With that in mind, he decided to go take his leave of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign first.
The Yunyue Sect. A side hall.
On the low table sat a pot of Cloudbreak White, and beside it a fresh-steamed plate of jujube paste cakes. When Gu Chengming pushed the door open, the Sovereign had just fitted the lid back onto the pot, and her spine straightened as she did.
"Little friend. You've come." There was something almost eager in the way she said it.
"Forgive the intrusion, Senior."
"It's nothing." The Sovereign shifted half an inch to the right. "Sit."
Gu Chengming sat and came straight to the point. "This junior will be taking his leave within a day or two. There's an old account I need to go collect on."
Her hand paused on the pot's handle, and the tea poured into the cup without spilling a drop.
Gu Chengming gave a brief account of his grievance with the Fubai Dragon Lord. The Sovereign made a small sound of acknowledgment, then asked, "How much does my little friend know about the origins of the jiao clan?"
"Only that they're a demon race out of high antiquity. At the founding of the Great Qian they signed a covenant with the imperial house, and were permitted to guard the East Sea in exchange for legitimate standing."
"Broadly, yes." The Sovereign inclined her head. "But that covenant is a rule of recent ages. The roots of that clan run further back — you have to trace them into high antiquity."
"The jiao clan are no upstarts. They are as old as the mountains and the seas. Long before Penglai ever split into sects, they already held the four oceans."
"Deep in the East Sea there is a Secret Realm formed by heaven itself, called the Dragon Transformation Pool." She went on, "The spirit-mechanism in that pool wells up from beneath the sea-eye. It opens once a century, and it carries with it a single root-fiber of a Dharma-Station."
"Which is why, within the jiao clan, there is almost always a Sixth Realm true dragon holding court."
Gu Chengming nodded. This much he did know — back then, the reason the Fubai Dragon Lord hadn't come to make trouble for him seemed to be that he'd gone off to the Dragon Transformation Pool hunting for opportunity.
Though it did leave him puzzled. Put that way, a Dharma-Station sounded like a family heirloom. The Myriad-Theft Gate was the same.
But the difference was that the Myriad-Theft Gate's patriarch had dug his Dharma-Station out himself, so keeping it pinned in place to be handed down through the generations was easy enough. How had the jiao clan managed it?
With no idea what he was thinking, the Sovereign followed her own train of thought. "The cultivation world of high antiquity never had much good to say about that clan. Vengeful over the smallest slight. Blood-hungry by nature…"
"To raise an entire clan up to the position of auspicious omen is the same as admitting that their fortune stands level with the fortune of the dynasty itself." She shook her head. "Whatever this Emperor of the Great Qian is doing, I confess I can't read it."
Something stirred in Gu Chengming. Ji Yixi had let slip a similar wind before — that the Emperor's seclusion was probably not so simple.
The Sovereign shook her head again, plainly disinclined to chase the matter further, and steered the conversation back to the Fubai Dragon Lord.
"A Fifth Realm jiao dragon is the craftiest thing alive. On dry land, dealing with him is a matter of one sword stroke. But once the creature burrows into the sea, that's a very different reckoning."
"The sea-eyes connect to the Outer Realm, and everywhere below the surface is jiao clan ground. Even a Sixth Realm sovereign would spend some effort dragging a Fifth Realm jiao dragon bodily out of the water."
Gu Chengming nodded. "This junior already has a plan for that."
The Sovereign glanced up at him, was silent a moment, and then seemed to gather her nerve.
"If my little friend doesn't mind me meddling, I could step in and help."
Gu Chengming went still. The Moon-Amid-Clouds Dharma-Station had been carved out as a way to live from a superposition of Mutual Annihilation. The Sovereign herself had walked out of it, but that thread of causality still hadn't been entirely nailed shut — and of all times, the Great Tribulation of heaven and earth had chosen this very juncture to spread itself open.
If she went down into the sea and casually cut down a jiao dragon sovereign, the debt-collector's brush long since poised above her might well come down along this fresh strand of killing karma.
For a Sixth Realm to kill a Fifth Realm is nothing more than a sword lifted and lowered.
The Heavenly Dao settling its accounts is another matter entirely.
Gu Chengming didn't let her say another word. He set down his teacup, rose from his seat, and bowed with cupped hands.
"Senior's kindness is taken to heart. But if this account isn't balanced by my own sword, I doubt I'll ever be able to lift my head in front of old acquaintances again."
"Besides, this junior has come by some insights in swordplay lately that haven't yet found solid ground, and I've been short of a proper whetstone. An old jiao putting to sea while still wounded amounts to delivering himself to my door."
The Sovereign had meant to press him once more. Cutting down a wounded jiao dragon would hardly be more complicated for her than boiling water and steeping tea — why should her little friend insist on shouldering the risk himself?
But the words stopped at her lips and she swallowed them. She remembered the year she had gone down into the sea to slay a jiao herself, and how that old friend of hers from Penglai had worn precisely this expression, and refused flatly to let her lend a hand.
A cultivator's own accounts diminish by a portion each time someone else takes them up. Take them up twice, three times, and the account is no longer yours. She had always understood the principle. It was only that this was the first time in her life she had stood on the side being politely refused, and she found she didn't quite know what expression to wear.
The worry gathered at the corner of her mouth melted slowly into a faint smile.
"Very well, then." She slid an exceedingly thin jade slip from her wrist, moon-patterns drifting across its surface, and pressed it into his palm. "Keep this."
"Sealed inside is a strand of my qi." Her fingertip tapped the slip's edge. "Crush it, and I can follow that strand to you."
She paused, as though trying to quietly withdraw the eagerness she'd just held out, then feared withdrawing it too obviously would come across as cold. Something else rose to her lips — and she swallowed that too.
"Take care on the road."
Gu Chengming nodded and accepted it.
Half an hour or so later, he stood to make his farewell.
The Sovereign saw him to the hall doors. Her sleeve caught for a moment on the doorframe, as if there were something she wanted to say. In the end she only nodded.
Gu Chengming stepped out. At the far end of the covered walkway his figure turned a corner and was gone.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign stood in the doorway a while before going back to the table.
The plate of jujube paste cakes was still there, laid out in tidy rows of four and six, stacked with perfect neatness. Not one corner had been touched.
She looked at the dish for a moment, then reached out, picked up a cake, and put it in her mouth.
"I did lay out rather too many."
She picked up another. This one she didn't eat, only turned it over in her palm — and then a wisp of moonlight wrapped itself around the little cake, and it was tucked away into the storage pouch in her sleeve.
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