Most of the Shining Coast was unpleasant for John, and not just because he had to spend time with sects that had previously rejected his presence. There was also the whole light element thing.
Though it was merely unpleasant instead of excessively burdensome. In fact, John thought he was more comfortable living among the antithetical spiritual energy than he had been with fire during his first visit to the Green Sands.
Being able to focus on training how he attracted the spiritual energy during certain social encounters was actually quite nice as formalities went on for far too long. The Solar Palace had been accommodating on his first visit, when he was still recovering his cultivation and hadn’t yet properly stepped into the Ascending Soul Phase. Now, the triumvirate was almost smothering.
John understood that he was someone important, but he really didn’t enjoy it. People took him seriously, which was good, but they also didn’t always see him as a person. That was what he had true friends for, though. And his close family, but John didn’t have strong ties with the majority of the Tenebach and Brandle clan members. Mostly a handful of those from his own generation plus his children and grandchildren. He still wanted things to go well for the clan members, but he wouldn’t even be able to name them all.
His ultimate destination was his favorite part of the Shining Coast. He did his best to not openly display favoritism in front of his disciples, but they would be able to tell. Any darkness cultivator would be more relaxed around the nocturnal cultivators of the Lunar Island. There was still plenty of light element, but it was less harsh than the rest of the region. At least during the time they were expected to be active.
Unlike previous visits, John came with a large number of disciples who did not have light element totems. The sect head regarded them with curiosity, but John’s ultimate intention to reach a full cycle of elements wasn’t unknown to the world. And there were light cultivators among the mixed group.
Szabina’s face showed some of the weight of years that had passed since their last in person encounter. Small wrinkles had expanded just slightly. The years weren’t catching up to her as quickly as they would otherwise due to her cultivation, but said cultivation wasn’t advancing at a pace that kept her young. It was a shame, really, that decent people didn’t always have the best talent.
The world would likely be a better place, where people didn’t have to reach for every scrap of power they could get. John thought that they’d achieved a decent balance in the current age, but he was aware that it wasn’t necessarily going to outlast him without some work. Or himself and his best allies, hopefully. The ‘club’ all got along with each other and had significant influence of their own.
-----
John had rooms on the far side of the tower, as before. The simple reason for that was because during the day he was less inclined to deal with excess light element, so dealing with light reflecting off of the bay would just impede his rest. He could have kept a diurnal schedule and trained with the stronger light element, but he wasn’t at a stage where he wanted that intensity. At some point before he tried to bind a light element totem? Absolutely. But he still had fundamentals that needed work even after all these years.
At night, the bay in which the Lunar Island’s central tower sat was gorgeous. Luminescent fish and other sea life lit the clear and shallow waters. The light of the moon and stars reflected off of the shores, focusing on the tower itself.
John’s current limits for storing light element were about a quarter as much as any other element. By comparison, a region rarely got counted as having a secondary element if that element was a quarter or less. Even if John had exactly two elements, light would have been a fifth of his total, barely significant. Instead, it was less than five percent of his total spiritual energy.
But even with that limit, John actually found it difficult to do much more than store it. He rarely used it in combat, because it was doubly limited by his quantity and his lack of control. However, if he let himself keep those habits he might never properly use light element.
John considered how to properly implement it without reinventing his fighting style. It would be a decent long range attacking option, forming light beams. He’d used it to blind people a few times. As part of an allied cycle, he could use it to enhance fire and air. All of those options were good. The last thing he did every once in a while was cause detonations. Light and darkness mutually annihilated, which was an excellent offensive measure if he didn’t hurt himself.
Blinding people concealed the battlefield as much as directly hiding something, if not more- though people didn’t just leave their eyes unprotected. A bright flash might provide temporary results, but flooding an area with light could limit perception without having to overcome defenses. That was more difficult to do when John simply didn’t have that much light element, but it was an area to explore.
-----
John sat out in the middle of the bay. He was fairly certain that his need to control water element was actually detrimental in such a situation as it took his focus away from other training, but it was worth it. After all, he was sitting on the surface of water, and that was fun.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Perhaps he was supposed to become a serious old fogey once he’d become a sect head, but if he stopped deriving enjoyment from his control of spiritual energy he’d doubt he would get far. He was taking his training seriously. He wanted to be strong so that he could fight as much as he wanted to be strong because sculpting hills and walking on water and flying were all thrilling.
John’s secondary excuse for sitting directly on the water was that a boat would have blocked the light. A perfectly clear boat with the same refractive index as water would be best, but he didn’t actually have one of those.
Light was constantly shining on John, and he was determined not to push it away. That was an instinct he’d built up over long decades of having practically no control of light. He was used to it eating away at his darkness element, even if it didn’t have explosive results.
But now, his darkness was kept in his core. His elements were carefully mixed, but he was doing so intentionally. It wasn’t one big soup or smoothie. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have islands or oceans or anything recognizable. He’d have… warm, chunky, aerated mud. Not a particularly enticing prospect, since he spent so long separating elements into usable proportions.
With darkness kept deep down, the way it drew in light was more constrained, and the other elements could provide a useful barrier between the two. But if that was all they were, John would be spending entirely too much effort keeping his elements in place and not enough making use of the power they could provide.
He’d had the most success with forming light into a sort of orbit around him. Light had the natural instinct to fly away, so matching that with the pull of darkness provided an enduring balance. Even if the orbit was imperfect, it would take a while to decay which meant it didn’t require constant upkeep. John was simply trying to get used to adding more to that orbit- and drawing from it without destabilizing what remained.
Those watching from the outside would have seen him fade from view as light was captured, then glow much like the creatures of the bay below as light was released. Just like the cycles of the moon that the Lunar Island was built around, he made his own small cycle. Though he didn’t think it was the ultimate form of what his control of light would be, it was valuable practice nonetheless.
-----
Twilight hours was where the light was most intense- while still being part of the local schedule. Nobody had exactly the same schedule, but in general a nocturnal sect would avoid the hours around noon the most. Being awake at that time was much like people being awake at midnight or early hours of the morning in any other sect. There were always a few, but the majority was fairly predictable.
John sat atop the peak of the tower with Szabina at dawn, watching the sunrise. This was as important of a transition as the phases of the moon. “Did our arrival this time have any special meaning?” John asked. She’d commented on their arrival date the first time they met, after all.
“None that you need to hear,” Szabina commented. She seemed to have more to say, so John waited patiently. “You can draw your own conclusions. Hundreds of cycles of the moon have passed, during which you grew more powerful than most would have anticipated, while I grew hardly at all. Just a few small ranks closer to the end of the Phase.”
“Do you see yourself reaching the Ascending Soul Phase?” John asked. “I think you have the potential.” His previous experiences made him believe she had the necessary traits, but obviously he couldn’t say for certain.
“No,” Szabina said. “I don’t think it is likely. My ambitions do not lie in that direction. Perhaps when I give up the mantle of sect head, I will make the attempt. But I think I would be better served teaching the next generation. And improving the beacons.”
“Are there any problems with them?” John asked. Communications infrastructure was one of the things he was using to bring the continent together, when they could. Light cultivators were particularly suited for the task.
“Here? There are not. Light also travels fantastically between the peaks to our east. But the communications break down among the winds, waves, and trees of many of our neighbors.”
“I see,” John said. He was glad she was serious about that. “What is your intention, then? Should you have specialists operating your communications towers?”
“I do not think that would be a bad option,” Szabina said. “A stable position that students could take for a time. However, I would prefer something that could be the same in all regions, as impossible as that might be. No matter which element one has, it might be corroded somewhere else.”
“Pairs of elements might be better,” John said. “Except for light and darkness. And if you pair them with one of their allied elements, you might have even more options than just one for each element.”
Maybe something like radio? John didn’t know how to make radio work, though. But something not relying on the spiritual elements might be best. Or alternatively, relying on all of them. Though that thought might be biased towards his own particular cultivation style.
“It works now,” Szabina said. “A message from Astrein takes only a few days to reach us instead of a month. Not many messages are sent, but enough.”
What about telegram? Surely they could make sturdy wires that could survive underground. As long as they weren’t reactive to too much earth element, it should be fine most places. Not the Molten Sea, obviously, and the Sky Islands couldn’t be connected to in that manner, but most places would be fine.
Maybe not the Green Sands. And did anyone really live in the Soulrot Bogs? Sure, the Glass Hills dealt with constant lightning but if they dug deep enough…
Alright, so a universal communication method was a bit unlikely. But if each region had their own system that worked expediently they merely had to come up with methods that crossed the borders more efficiently. Days happened to be fast compared to sending a letter, but if they had light relays the whole way John should expect a message to take less than a single day to cross the whole continent instead of going half that distance and taking several times as long.
Message security would be an issue still, but that was a problem people could figure out how to solve to within tolerance once they had a long term system. As it was, John didn’t know how his messages reached different sects half the time, he just told people to send a message and they figured it out. That was the best part of having competent subordinates instead of trying to manage all the details himself.
