eastbound | audio | un: yiling patriarch

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audio | un: yiling patriarch

We've just heard from our friend Haltham about the fighting between Unhalad and Anurr forces nearby, so here's a question for everyone, brought up originally by our companions who got themselves drugged and fight-happy against the second living: what actions do you think we should or shouldn't take?

In Haltham's encouraging words, think wisely. Whatever we're doing or not doing has an effect by merit of choice. Also, a reminder that we still need to not end up in either's hands or revealing our location, given the reason we were summoned here has not changed, and our deaths can be a benefit to either side. Our lives benefit ourselves and our rescuers and the peoples here, by keeping us out of warlord hands.

( He's not opening up with his thoughts because he doesn't want it as a discussion against his take, but as people offering their thoughts after he asks the question. )

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( He pauses because he considers that possibly his martial uncle wants other people to respond and discuss, so he holds off for a moment before he also engages. )

And your advice for how those assisting with the captives will do so as covertly and misleadingly as possible?

( A pause, then... a memory that's not his, but also his, now. )

How sensitive has your sword been to the energies of the dead here? Have you noticed any difference between those of different, ah, origins?

[He'd rather not talk to him, but, again, he'll play nice.]

I admit I don't have any concrete ideas. This isn't my area of expertise.

[He really is much more straightforward in problem-solving, though that hasn't always gone well for him. Maybe he can learn from this experience if all goes to plan...whatever that plan turns out to be.]

I suppose it would be too much to hope that any of us have cultivated the ability to use a transportation talisman. That would be the simplest solution, I think.

[Get close enough to the miners and then, bam, pop 'em all out.

But he keeps thinking, because relying on a slim hope isn't going to help.]

The hostages are with Unhalad's men, correct? If we could distract them into focusing solely on Anurr's forces, then that would be the best outcome for this idea. And yet one would think they'd already be focused on their enemy if these skirmishes we've been hearing are any indication. There has to be something more we have to do.

[He falls silent again, but then inhales, a little sharply, a more detailed idea forming in his mind.]

...I've been to a meeting for Anurr's supporters. It probably means nothing, but it could mean something. They gave me a pin and told me to ask for a certain person when I came to another meeting, but I never did, but maybe it could be enough...

I could be a distraction of some sort. Use my loyalty to Anurr to gain the trust of Anurr's forces here and distract whoever of Unhalad's men is undoubtedly guarding the hostages and free up an opportunity for us to free them.

[He speaks more quickly as this idea gains traction in his mind, even leading into Wei Wuxian's other question.]

And Shuanghua has almost constantly been on edge since it was returned to me. I'd be able to protect myself like normal, like back home.

[That doesn't really answer the question, but...it also does? Corpse energy is corpse energy, after all.]

Xiao-ge ge, I will tie you up in a closet. Please don't test me.

[ Smile. :) He's smiling. This is his happy voice. :) ]

[Happy voice or not, Xingchen is stubborn.]

You can stow me away after we've saved these people, Bai-di di.

That would require you to be intact enough to stow. I know you're far from helpless, but this plan is too risky for anyone to undertake alone.

Then I bequeath to you whatever pieces are left of me for safekeeping.

Absolutely not.

Then I hope you would bury the pieces of me well and burn at least some money for my wanderings.

Please be assured, if any part of this plan even comes to fruition, there is no way I'd be able to carry out all of it on my own. Nothing has been written in stone yet.

Not one of the words that have passed through your lips have left me the least bit assured.

Please keep me appraised as to who will be doing what in your plan, Xiao-ge ge. I should not like to find out from news of disaster.

Shuanghua may be too sensitive to fully trust here, that's all I want you to keep in mind. Disable before killing. Please.

( you are not knowing for this. it's a problem. very specifically a problem in your life. )

I don't think going to that length would help make things less complicated. As it is, portals—Five can teleport, if he wishes to help, but that needs asking, not presuming or demanding.

[A known killer worried about someone else killing indiscriminately... Odd.]

Do you know something about these corpses...undead? I know they're not exactly like the corpses we're used to, but they still need to be put to rest.

[And listen, it was an idea, and something more specific, so he's not sorry about it. But as for this Five... It's a name he's heard mentioned, though he isn't sure if he's met the person themselves. But this possibility presented feels better than anything else.]

Then we should ask him.

The corpses we're used to?

( He sounds puzzled by this. )

I'm not sure what you mean, but the issue with swords... well, Archeval brings up a good point. To your sword, do the ones transitioning into this not-life, not-death state register as anything different?

As for that, yes. We should.

Walking corpses, fierce corpses -

[He cuts off his litany of the common types of dead because...this new bit of information is, frankly, worrisome.]

...Transitioning.

[His voice lowers a little.]

They're not...dead?

I... I don't know what you mean. All we dealt with were the puppets Wen Ruohan made of the living, and some later tried to recreate, but the dead I dealt with were all... unbodied. Resentful energies, spirits, things like that?

( Where the hell does this fierce stuff come from!? What walking corpses! He feels like he needs to fight someone on Wen Ning's behalf, but shoves that out of the way. )

The captives? Not right now, but if you're asking if they're transitioning toward that state of being we've encountered, they... they might be. Weren't they from the mines? Something's been transforming those trapped in the mines, we've run into that already, too. If they're suffering the same exposure, it could be a matter of time. I still don't know enough about how it works here, they have a... how do I describe it? With Unhalad's forces, at least, the insides don't feel like they match the outsides.

[Okay. Okay, he needs to stay calm, despite the implications that are trying to bombard him. If these hostages are transitioning and may or may not be dead, does that mean that others he's fought and...killed...were the same?

His hands shake and he has to grasp them tightly. He can't do the same for his voice.]

I'm sorry, I'm...also confused how you wouldn't know what a fierce corpse is. Your Ghost General was a fierce corpse created by you unless all the stories have been blown completely out of proportion.

[Which is possible, as with all stories and rumors, but there has to be some seed of truth, so what is it?]

If this exposure is the cause of their...death, then if we are not able or willing to seek out a means to stop it, then surely there must be something we can do to reverse the effects. If they're not dead yet, then that means there is hope to treat them. There has to be.

Wen Ning never died, he was left to die. And yes, he's got a higher concentration of resentful energies within him, but that's not his fault, and it's fully under control now, his mind wasn't lost.

( This is about the most firm he's sounded, and a touch protective: which he is, about Wen Ning. Who has found himself now and started looking forward to the life he wants to live, back home, not... here... can he even get angry at a dead man for accusing another man of being dead? )

People accused him of being a puppet, but never a fierce corpse.

( Added, after a moment. )

I don't know, that's the problem. I don't know, and it takes either the knowledge, the people or books or scrolls of that knowledge, and the time to undo it—the best we might be able to do is slow it down, the worst is speed it up. Even so, that's a choice we can offer, knowing nothing of how to make it work, not something we can assume for them.

[Puppet is a new term to Xingchen and he'll need to puzzle this out when he has time and the energy to do so. All he knows right now is that nothing is matching up to what he knows and it's leaving him unbalanced. If he can't trust in how dead people are here, then why should he be able to believe something the cultivation world's enemy says? He doesn't know.]

I only know what I have heard and what I have been taught and practiced my entire life.

[This whole conversation just keeps getting worse.]

...We probably won't be here long enough to properly deal with the source of the problem, will we. I just... It doesn't sit well with me to walk away from this suffering, even if we have ourselves to take care of first.

I only know what I've dealt with personally, and the puppets were... new, when the yin iron was put into play?

( Turning it into a question, because this is well known now, and should be to Xiao Xingchen, unless...

... He's not sure. Did not being dead change memories for those who'd passed? )

I don't like finding problems I can't apply myself to fixing either. This may change across each realm we find ourselves in, too. Those... were you at the ship?

...The yin iron?

[Puppets, Wen Ning being not dead, now this yin iron. Either this man isn't Wei Wuxian at all - he did have plenty of followers and impersonators, after all - or Wei Wuxian got up to even more than what he ever heard about.

...Honestly with his reputation, the latter wouldn't surprise Xingchen.]

I wasn't at the ship. I've only met one person who was on it.

[That he knows of.]

... Ah, yes, the yin iron, the one that was broken up and sealed away by the five sects after the defeat of Xue Chonghai, during the great war where they established themselves. I remade a portion of it into the Stygian Tiger Seal, but destroyed most of that sixteen years ago.

( Before taking a fall, looking for a fast exit out of this world that'd just lost him most everything he held dear, and might have murdered the last of what he loved too, he thought, if he'd still been around. )

Ah, well. Did they mention the mermaids?

[Xue Chonghai? Great war? Xingchen didn't grow up in any sect and therefore didn't get the same kind of education a normal disciple would have, but surely even his knowledge of the cultivation world isn't so shoddy.

Ah, but the Stygian Tiger Seal, that he knows.

...And then this conversation loses him at the mention of sixteen years.]

Sixteen years. That's impossible. You've been -

[...Okay, maybe presenting one's death so bluntly isn't the best way to go about this, even if bluntness might be the best way to get any of this confused information cleared up.]

Last I heard the Seal was destroyed only a few years back.

...I know nothing of these mermaids.

Ah, I was... presumed dead for sixteen years?

( Questioning statement. )

The, ah, the mermaids were under the influence of whatever working there was on the mirror on board. They died in the single minded pursuit of the mirror, and arrived here, dead-alive, still trying to retrieve it. There are forces at work that can compel a body to continue working even after perishing, and those minds, for what they were in their unfamiliarity, were still there. But obsessed, admittedly.

[...Okay, well at least he's aware of his death. That's...something?]

I don't think our years match up. Many things don't seem to match up.

[The talk of these mermaids - half-dead? - and a mirror that draws them in is, of course, confusing. But he still thinks on it, tries to make sense of what he's told.]

Do you think the mirror has something to do with the others losing their life energy? It sounds like some cursed object that feeds off of life.

What do you mean? ( A pause. ) This fierce corpse thing you were referencing?

( He says the years don't match up, but that also doesn't... mean anything when Xiao Xingchen died before Wei Wuxian "revived." )

Ah, yes, possibly. It could be the object itself carried the means of it, whatever talisman or thralling, or it could be a medium through which something else was syphoning all these things.

( People touching that lake at night need to share the things they've seen. There are unseen links in this world, things none of them know right now, really. )

It kept those mermaids enthralled with it even after its destruction, but from how I heard it took time for the people we'd freed to recover, then I suspect something similar happened for them, even as twice-living.

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audio | un: yiling patriarch

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un: anglicized

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*caveat that i might be quoting the wrong feeling for the wrong force and will need to look up later

thank you both canons for your vagueness etc

time for them to continue the point and stare meme

this is a mess

two men, confusing the heck out of each other

buddy, I need a drink

time for body shots

wei wuxian and xiao xingchen open up a bar...

are they going to make traveling bars a thing

the world could be a brighter place

or a slightly drunker one