Chapter 9-294: Of Cultivators and Mortals (1/2)
“Cultivating either method turns you into an inhuman creature, a Cultivator. Daoism turns you into a Daoist Immortal, a thing whose soul eats your own, takes your body and refines it into an alien, pursues the Dao, opposes Heaven, wants to alter the world you live on to its whim, and seeks to turn humanity into a breeding pool to create more Daoist Immortals.
“The Buddhist Mantra turns you into an Enlightened, a brainwashed, soul-bonded accessory wedded to the Nirvanic Enlightenment, an Axiomatic Hivemind, whose only thought is to serve the Mantra. Normal people are the way the Mantra grows, as it recruits all people who can Cultivate, adds them to the Mantra, and grows relentlessly, subjugating all others to the Buddhist Way as it does so, turning Powered into enslaved souls doomed to endlessly reincarnate in subservience to the Mantra!
“I have so far had to kill millions of the living who fell to both paths. They are inexorable, relentless, devious, patient, and utterly impossible to sway from their paths. If there is a substantial number of them present on this world when the Shroud goes down, we could lose the entire planet to the things they could call down from their unholy Heavens.”
And I gave them the vids.
I gave them the slaughter of the tribes in the island nations. I gave them the pill furnaces used to cook down the bodies of the Powered of all ages. I gave them the killzone of millions of Chinese they’d slaughtered just to create a buffer zone between us and them of undead, and to deny us the ability to take away their minions. I gave them the Chinese, a people never allowed to come into the modern age, who were forcibly reverted back over a hundred years of progress so that it would be easier to maintain power over them.
I gave them the Buddhists with their bright smiling faces, of all races and creeds, mindlessly singing out the Mantra and giving power to the acolytes, disciples, lamas, and abbots who battled for them and attempted to overwhelm and convert all who opposed them to worship.
And I showed me killing them.
If they were wondering about my power, they needed wonder no more. They watched me moving across battlefields and slaughtering thousands at a time. They watched me exploding Domes of Buddhist faith, and blowing apart battle lines of Cultivators. They saw me tear apart cities with hurricanes and lightning, rip apart Sects, and bring down temples. Endless Shrines and Monuments that were Qi-Making Formations were blown apart, or reversed to consume the stinking Qi.
They saw the Arhats, they saw the endless millions of civilians slaughtered by the Buddhists.
They saw the Devic Guards, mockeries of angels, doomed to be forever reborn as obedient servants to the Mantra, unless vivus took them and destroyed their very souls, the fate of all Powered who were overcome by the Mantra.
They watched me kill millions of Buddhists with their pious smiles on their faces even as they fought and died, and that didn’t stop me at all, just as the cold milk-white perfection of the Immortals meant nothing to me.
For humanity to grow, to even exist properly, those things had to go. They had no business in Creation at all.
“This is what I fought in the Yellowstone Firezone.” And I brought up Hastsezini in the Caldera, and all His forces. “This is an Old God, once given some worship by the native tribes, but retreating into His own realm as whatever primitive and partial magic that was here died away. With magic’s return, so too did He return... but He was close enough to being undead, enslaving the spirits of those who died close to his realm, that He was made a Shroudlord. Free, yet trapped once again.”
I didn’t go into Antarctica, because there was no need for them to know that, and Sama and Briggs wanted dibs on those shoggoth. They had to Level, see, and it was going to be hilariously expensive in Karma for them to do so. Giant CR 20 oozes were a great way to work on that little problem, and turn them into the toughest goddamn bastards on the planet as they did.
They were slowed down by how fast they could invest the Karma for all their high-priced innate racial abilities, akin to having to pay for Gear themselves and not being able to fob it off on other people for the boring part.
Still, when they got it done, they were going to be unstoppable, and the world was going to need them to be that way, there was no doubt about it.
“The Cultivators I will make my problem, because they are your single greatest threat,” I concluded, as the image of Bombay’s Dome shattering and the millions of Buddhists there being devoured by a living tornado faded away behind me. They were all gawking at me. “If they survive to bring down others like them... that could be very, very bad. They infest the mortal population like maggots; they grow, they breed more of themselves, and they are the mortal enemies of all of you, Powered and Warlocks alike.
“You are either slaves in body and soul, or you are pills. There is no middle ground with a Cultivator, only a delay until they can do that to you. You butcher them, or you submit and die.”
I let them stare and stew on what I had said. Perhaps they had not believed me when I said I could take out the Shroudzones. They definitely had no doubts I could do it now.
“I will return to the Cultivator fight tomorrow. It is something that has to be prosecuted, and all of their strongest slaughtered. I am going to have to scour most of Asia to find them and kill them all. It is going to be very annoying, a complete waste of time that could better be spent helping you all prepare for when the Shroud is coming down... but if they don’t die, everything you do to prepare is probably going to be moot, so I can only rely on you all to do what must be done.”
I let that hang in the air, with all the notes of dread and fear that went with it.
“And there is one other minor, but important item. That item also concerns me.” I clasped my hands in front of me, and let my gaze travel across them all. “Some of you are already terrified of me, and starting to make plans to deal with me if ever you cross me, because I am certainly a threat to your plans. Well, you needn’t worry about that.
“There is a price for the power I have been given, and that is that I am tied to the Shroud. When it goes, so do I... to some other place where the Shroud already exists, there to work to free that world.”
Despite themselves, they gasped. That also meant that I would not be there to help them face down the shit that was coming when the Shroud dropped!
I couldn’t BE the Queen they wanted, no matter how much they tried to convince me. If I could be their Queen, would that not have solved so many problems for their people and nation?